Gyula and Klari Biro with their son, Tamas

This is my mother's sister, Klara Torok, with her husband, Gyula Biro, and their son Tamas at the age of two. The photo was taken in Budapest in 1936. Gyula was a hardware dealer, to be more precise he was a co-owner in the hardware store of his father Albert Biro. He didn't have a talent for business, he was rather interested in humanities, he read very much, he liked classical music and the cinema. Klari didn't work, only as much as she had to in the household, with some help. She cared for her son very much. She told me very much about an interesting excursion they made: the three of them traveled around the Balaton, with a so-called 'penny train.' Perhaps it wasn't exactly this way, but this is how I remember. Tomi didn't go to nursery school, only for a couple weeks in the summer for 'child bathing.' Two nursery school teachers took a group of five to ten year old children to Margit Island, to the Palatinus bathing establishment. I went with them a few times. The nice life of the Biro-Torok family was short. Gyula died in 1940, of a sudden heart attack, while in forced labor. Klari didn't survive the Lichtenwörth concentration camp. Tomi was raised by my parents.

Photos from this interviewee