Laszlo Ringel’s son Mikhail Ringel and daughter Vera Dolburd

These are our children: son Mikhail and daughter Vera in the yard of our house. This photo was taken in Onokovtse village in 1953.

I got married in 1946. In 1947 our daughter Vera, Dveira in Jewish was born. In 1947 our son Mihaly [in Hungarian], Moishe in Jewish, after his grandfathers, Lea's father and mine, and Mikhail in his Soviet passport was born. After our son was born, there was too little space for all of us to continue to live with my wife's cousin. We decided to move to Onokovtse. I managed to get back our little house. To my surprise, it took little time. I repaired the house as much as I could and we moved in there. I was surprised and moved, when local farmers began to bring the things that they had taken from our abandoned house. They returned pictures, portraits of my father and grandfather and some pieces of furniture.

My children were growing up like all other Soviet children. They studied in a general school and were pioneers and Komsomol members which was usual. They had Jewish and non-Jewish friends. For my wife and me nationality didn't matter. What mattered was the person. However, we raised our children Jewish. My wife taught them Hebrew and told them about the Jewish history, traditions and religion. At about the age of 4 my son knew 4 traditional questions in Hebrew by heart. When I conducted seder at home on Pesach he posed four traditional questions to me according to the rules. Of course, my wife and I told them that they shouldn't talk about it in the kindergarten or school since we might face problems if they did. It's strange, but the children understood this. We organized a bar mitzvah, when my son turned 13. Our friends, Subarpathian Jews, attended it, and the ritual was conducted according to the rules. My wife and I spoke Hungarian and Yiddish at home, and spoke Yiddish, Hungarian, and sometimes Russian to the children. I didn't know Yiddish as well as my wife: it was her mother tongue while I only studied it in the cheder, but I picked it promptly from my wife. My wife believed that our children had to know Yiddish.