Jeno and Imre Fischer and Jolan Schwarz

You can see my two older brothers and my older sister in the picture. Jeno is standing on the left, next to him is Jolan and then Imre. The picture was taken in 1949 in Nyiregyhaza. They sent me this to Subcarpathia, I was already there at that time. Ironically we lived 14 years in the Soviet Union. My husband's neighbor in Nagybereg got a letter saying that his sister was on her way home from Bergen-Belsen, and because of that on 30th August 1945 we went to Nagybereg from Budapest. And while we waited there, they closed the border and annexed Nagybereg to the Soviet Union. Because in the summer of 1945 Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union made an agreement, that they would hand over a part of the former Czechoslovakia to the Soviets. Those who were Czechoslovakian citizens before, automatically became Soviet citizens. I could have become a Soviet citizen at that time at once, but I didn't want to, because I wanted to come home to Hungary. In the end that's how I became homeless and my husband a Soviet citizen, because he was born in Czechoslovakia so he got the new citizenship automatically. But we didn't know anything about this at the time when we were in Nagybereg, everything came out later. My husband and his family became Russian citizens, because before that they weren't Hungarian, but Czechoslovakian citizens. And I became homeless. My brother Jeno visited us in Beregszasz, because he got an entry permit. He was among the first who dared to come, or rather who was allowed to come to the Soviet Union. Earlier he had been a big democrat, and when he saw that here people still had to stay in line for bread and sugar he said aloud, 'I can't imagine why people have to stand in line for bread in a state, which had gained victory over the Germans.' I begged him to be quiet, because there were three kinds of people there: those who were, who are and who will be. He asked what that meant. I told him, 'Those who have been in prison, those who are in prison, and those who will be in prison.' He replied, 'Don't talk nonsense!' Only Jolan has a daughter. My brothers' wives weren't Jewish. Both Jeno and Imre lived in a very good marriage with their Christian wives, but neither of them had any children.