Tag #156785 - Interview #78659 (Vera Szekeres-Varsa)

In 1943 I finished elementary school, and in the autumn of 1943 and it was no longer easy for a Jewish girl attending whichever school her parents chose. There were two options: either a civil school or the Jewish Gymnasium [see glossary]. There was a disagreement between my parents because my father said that the child should not go to a denominational school. My mother said that the child should go to a place where she was sure not to get any diseases. She would be more exposed to illness in the civil school. So I went to the Jewish Gymnasium, but not to Abonyi Street, because we didn't get a spot there. There was a private school called Lázár Piroska [see: Lázár Piroska's Public Educational Institute for Girls in Budapest], an external branch of the school on Abonyi Street, on the first floor of an apartment building in what is now Balassi Bálint, then Személynök Street. Fifty-five of us studied in one class, and two rooms were opened into one. The hall and one other room had been turned into a gym earlier, but it could only accommodate half a class, so the timetable was set as German/Gymnastics, Gymnastics/German. While half had Gymnastics, the other half had German, and then they switched. This school year didn't even last a year.