Ferenc Sandor's mother Julia Sandor with her parents Ferenc and Janka Rosenthal

My mother with her parents in Sopron. My grandfather was a brother of Cecilia, my great grandmother, and this rather unfortunate thing happened: he married his own niece, my great grandmother's daughter, a very beautiful young girl. But then my granddad was a full-fledged schoolteacher, and when he took fancy to Janka, the 17-year-old niece of his, the poor creature was duly married to the schoolteacher. He was twenty-four when he got his degree. The general nickname for teachers in those days was ?light" or ?lamp.? People called my grandfather was that. He told my grandmother that he once met an upper class Jew who remarked: ?I wear velvet and you wear rags, yet you are the one called ?the lamp!?? My grandfather wrote reviews of performances staged at the theatre in Sopron. I had the chance to read a few of them. And if the primadonna happened to show her ankles in some performance, he went to see that play thirty times in a row. He most have been a man of brains for sure. My grandparents lived in comfort, had a fine house, and were able to provide well for their daughter, their only child. My mother attended the upper middle school for girls in Sopron. Then her parents registered her for a one-year course in a business school.

Photos from this interviewee