This was in 1929, in Bratislava, at the Maccabi tennis competition. From left to right, Dr. Balog's wife, then me. Frida Vertes is standing next to me, she was a tennis player from Kosice. She got married in Bratislava. From the right, the first woman's name was Vilma. Unfortunately, I don't remember her last name, but she also played tennis. She was from Malacka. From the left, the first man is a player named Wahlman, who played in the Maccabi. He was a functionary in the Jewish sports union. From the right, the first gentleman was called Emil Freistadt. He was a well-known person in Bratislava. They had a sport shop on Sedlarska Street for more than a century. In 1939, he escaped to Palestine and fought there until the end of the war. He came back here just as Israel formed. He married here.
I started playing tennis in Maccabi when I was fourteen years old. I got along well with the others. In Bratislava, there was another tennis club, the LTK. It was a Slovak club. On the occasion of the summer dance party, we regularly invited members of the LTK, and they would invite us. They had a beautiful, elegant building, in which many kinds of events were held. So, Maccabi and LTK had an absolutely good sporting relationship.
I played tennis and went for light athletics. I swam in the SK Bar Kochba but I had more friends that were not Jewish, than Jewish ones. I was a 'Czechoslovak' until the beginning of 1938. My social circle was always comfortable. Of course, there were a few mixed marriages, too. All the way up to 1939, it was such a natural thing. Naturally, the sadhen was at my friends house, sometimes, we would even look for, let's say, some girl who had a big dowry. But those who had the big dowry, wanted a groom who had some title, at least an engineer or doctorate degree, a lawyer or a doctor. There were a few of them, naturally, but not in my circle of friends, since the greater part of them weren't Jewish. Sports brought us together. It didn't matter if I competed for the Maccabi team, if there were a lot in the Slovak sport clubs, we mutually competed.