Selected text
My parents started to do new work. They bought a three-room apartment with space for selling poultry and eggs. My father bought a big truck and wagon and rented it out to the people who supplied us with poultry and eggs from neighboring villages. Quickly he opened a slaughterhouse with a freezer and a hen-house for holding the poultry. My mother used her perfect knowledge of German and Hungarian to make contacts abroad. We started with export of slaughtered and live poultry and eggs. We worked with the British, with Germans and Italians. The capacity was not so big but the business functioned quite well. Turkeys were exported to England, geese to Germany and small poultry to Italy. My sister Ruzica and I had to spend our free time helping in my parents’ business. In addition, our mother insisted that we learn to cook which we learned from our Hungarian cook.
Mother Cornelia ran all the sales and father Ignac took care of purchases, food for the poultry and work in the slaughterhouse. They had a business manager and one helper. The work advanced well, and my parents bought a big house which had two separate residential units, each measuring 60 square meters and they bought a hairdresser shop.
After finishing the gymnasium in 1929, I enrolled in a two-year college for export in Grac. A year later, my sister Ruzica also came to Grac to improve her German. Upon our return, we both joined in the family business. I corresponded with foreign buyers in German, my mother gradually brought me into the business. She transformed herself from an ordinary teacher into a real businesswoman.
Mother Cornelia ran all the sales and father Ignac took care of purchases, food for the poultry and work in the slaughterhouse. They had a business manager and one helper. The work advanced well, and my parents bought a big house which had two separate residential units, each measuring 60 square meters and they bought a hairdresser shop.
After finishing the gymnasium in 1929, I enrolled in a two-year college for export in Grac. A year later, my sister Ruzica also came to Grac to improve her German. Upon our return, we both joined in the family business. I corresponded with foreign buyers in German, my mother gradually brought me into the business. She transformed herself from an ordinary teacher into a real businesswoman.
Location
Serbia
Interview
Jelisaveta Bubic