This is me as child, and my mother, Johana Bozoky. The photo was taken in 1932, I was only two years old, in Budapest.
I was born in Budapest, in 1930; it was a splendid city, as it still is now. The financial situation of our family was rather good, because my father earned very well. My father was an accountant, he was the chief-accountant at a food factory that belonged to a Jew, something with import-export, and he had about 20 people subordinated to him. My mother was a housewife and she looked after the house.
My mother had help in the house, there was a woman who came once a week; she cleaned, she also came when my mother did the big cleanings in the fall and the spring, or when there was a lot of laundry to be done. But my mother was the one who cooked. The food wasn't kosher, because it was very expensive and the kitchen we had in the house wasn't adequate for two tables, separate stoves and tableware, there was a problem with space and the expenses.
My mother used to beat me because I was a terribly naughty child. I was a tomboy: I climbed trees and I don't know what else all day long, and I didn't eat, I was as thin as a dried herring. And, of course, my mother was the one who tormented herself with me; I stayed mostly with her, because my father was at work. She had reasons to be upset, if I had been in her shoes, I would have killed such a kid, nothing else. My poor mother always told me, 'If you'll have a kid, let it be at least half of what you are!'
My father loved me very much; he spoiled me. It was a wrong education, because my father spent very little time with me and when he came home, of course he spoiled me; and as I barely ate, I caused problems when we were seated at the table, and my mother was already fed up with me, and my father used to defend me and say, 'Leave my child alone, you want to kill my child, leave it to her, she'll eat I don't know what.'
