Roza Hasko at work

My mother in the lab.

My father was a chemical engineer, he graduated the Polytechnic University in 1912 In 1935 my father bought laboratory equipment, set up the lab in one of the rooms of our apartment, and from then on he worked at home. He taught my mother and she worked with the chemical balance.

My mom used to go a hairdresser's, Bandel, which was at the beginning of Andrassy Avenue. This was a hairdressing saloon, where there was a dryer and curler. My mother had an updo for a while, not a bun, but her hair was simply put up and there were some curls on the top, she was stylish of course. She had a ticket for combing, she went to Bandel every morning and they combed her.

My mother also used to go on balls. There were many goldsmiths and they had a serious social life, and there was a goblet ball every year. The goldsmiths' club and a big ball room were in the big corner house across the Dohany Street synagogue. They held the goblet dinner there every year, the first ball of my life was a goblet ball right after the war. I don't know who sewed my dress, perhaps my mother did, it was a checked gored skirt, with checked waistcoat, and with a short sleeved red silk blouse. I remember that it had heavy glass buttons. That kind could be found. But my mom had beautiful evening-dresses, and my father had a tuxedo. And when they got dressed for an occasion like this, we the children liked it very much, because the tuxedo shirt is firm in the front, we called it 'drumbelly', and my father wore a cat-tie [bow-tie] with it. My parents had a busy social life, my father had many friends.

She could sew very well, my mother knew everything, she was unbelievably creative. she completed four classes of middle school. After that she studied all kinds of things, which grandpa allowed her to study. She learned French, German, she learned to make hats, to sew, to sing, to play the piano and to dance, she used to go on balls, just like any decent middle-class girl, and when she was a teenager, she did the administration of the workshop for my grandfather.

Photos from this interviewee