Katarina Lofflerova and class mates

This is a picture of me and my class mates in the 6th grade of the gymnasium I went to. The photo was taken in the academic year of 1925-26, in Bratislava.

There was one Slovak gymnasium and I didn't speak Slovak very well, so my parents sent me to a Hungarian Evangelical gymnasium, which had a rather good reputation. We were taught by clergymen, and they were great. We were only three girls. Later the school was nationalized and it was difficult for girls to get accepted there. A German gymnasium also opened nearby and we learned along with those students once each week in the mornings and then in the afternoons. We also had physical education together.

As soon as I graduated, I wished to continue my education. I was very good at drawing fashion designs and my professor advised my parents to send me to a design school. However, such a school was only in Vienna and it would have been too complicated to send me there because I wasn't 18 years old yet. And young girls couldn't go so far and to such a big city. So, I started to work and I became an active sportswoman. I played tennis at Maccabi club. Our tennis club was located near the river Danube. There was everything: a tennis playground, a soccer field, showers. I took it very seriously. I was sometimes featured in newspaper articles, too, but I don't have any copies. I participated in the Jewish Olympiad in Moravian Ostrava in 1928. There were 4,000 Jewish sportsman from all over Europe. I won the third prize.

I had to go to work. My father believed that if I wanted a tennis racket, I had to earn it. So during my free time, I had to work in his bank. I also loved swimming, and have such nice memories of that. I swam in Barkochba; we were only two girls. I was older and was there along with the later champion of Bratislava, Ilusa Doplerova. After six to ten years or so more girls came. I had training twice a week in Grossling swimming pool and our coach was from Germany.