The daughter of Erzsebet Kadar, my piano teacher was both a piano and a dance teacher.
She had a dancing-school, and she directed performances. We presented them in Nagybanya in some sort of houses of culture.
The point was that cultural issues kept us busy. I’m on the right, I’m the smallest in the first raw.
In the center of the first raw is Sari Goldstein, we were together in the ghetto, but she didn’t come back from the concentration camp. I don’t remember the others anymore.
Most of them are girls, but there are some boys as well. It is written 1935 on the photo, so I was six years old.
I was born in 1929 in Nagybanya. From the age of three I lived at my paternal grandparents.
My grandparents lived in a village somewhere near Nagybanya for a while, I was with them there too, then in Nagybanya.
But when I was five years old, my father took me with him, he rented a quite nice apartment, in a nice part, let's say, of Nagybanya, in a villa.
The owner was a woman from Kolozsvar, a widow, her family name was Herczeg.
The rent was quite high, but it was in the outskirts, the air was fine there.
My father always feared that I got tuberculosis or something like that. This was when I was five.
We had somebody who did the housekeeping; my father had a good salary, in those times this didn't mean a problem.
Later it was my step-mother who did the housekeeping. Well, it wasn't her who actually worked, but she gave out the tasks for everybody.
It wasn't her who did the cooking, we had a cook. This wasn't a problem.
I inherited from my mother my liking for music. If I can, I listen to music all day. Classical music, not just any kind of music.
After my mother's death I took piano lessons too.
My piano teacher was called Erzsebet Kadar, she was the disciple of Bela Bartok. Her husband was Geza Kadar, the painter.
They were both communists in illegality, I don't know how they escaped.
And Erzsebet Kadar was Jewish, but she was christened, so she wasn't deported.
Her maiden name was Hevesi, and she had a younger sister, who was a pianist in Budapest - so they were both pianists -, and who was deported. She didn't come back.
So I was playing the piano from the age of five. We had a piano at home, and I enjoyed playing the piano, but I didn't want this to be my profession.
After I came back from the concentration camp, I continued learning it, I played the piano again, because I enjoyed it.
Then I got to the university, and it was over. I have a cottage piano, but I play rarely, because my fingers don't work anymore as they should, and it bothers me.
However, I like listening to music a lot. For example I like the violin and piano concertos of Beethoven and Tchaikovsky, I very much like Schumann's piano concertos, and I also like cello concertos.
I like many things. I like all good music. And I agree with those who say there is no light music and serious music, but good and bad music.
The truth is there are songs in light music, which are very nice, and I like them.
