Relatives

This must be Jozsef Oblath, one of my mother's brothers (back row, far left.) This must be her other brother Miska (back row, far right.) The one in the middle, must be Andor Oblath, Uncle Naci's eldest son. This is definitely my younger sister-in-law, Klari (second right, front row,) and this is my elder sister-in-law, Iren (far right, front row.) At the lower left, this might be Jeno, Uncle Naci's other son. In the middle row, on the left, this is the daughter of one of my mother-in-law's sisters, Lili. She became a singer, but she didn't perform very often in Budapest. I only heard her singing once, at the Music Academy, after the war. She was successful abroad, in Germany. I have no idea when and where this picture was taken. It must have been on some occasion, maybe somebody's wedding, because everybody is dressed smartly. Jozsef, or Joska, was a doctor. He graduated from university. Before the war, he was the local doctor for Szentendre and its neighborhood. He married a Goldberger girl. She was a very rich, but really ugly woman. He had two sons. They were younger than me. Uncle Joska didn't marry very young. His wife was also much older than me. They lived in Szentendre, in their own house. They had lots of nice pieces of furniture, pictures, they had everything. They were not show-off people. Let's just say his wife wasn't a very nice lady, and uncle Joska was very busy -he had a big practice. They visited us once in Matyasfold; they had a very good time there, and we also visited them once. They were all deported; nobody from that family came back. After his wife, there were some houses we could have requested, but in the meantime they had been nationalized and renovated and we would have had to pay so much in exchange for the renovation, that nobody in the family could afford it. After the war, we were happy to be alive at all. One of the houses was turned into a maternity home after the war. A hardly know anything about uncle Miska. I don't even know, what sort of school he finished, I only know, that he took over uncle Feri's shop. This was a small grocery shop, its name was Zsigmond Kertesz and co. grocery and spice shop, Zsigmond Kertesz was Aunty Linka's husband, who died at an early age. I don't think they had any employees. They sold cheese, cold cuts, and some spices. If I remember rightly, when you entered the shop, the counter was on the left hand side. But what sort of cash register they had - I don't remember at all. The shop had a back area; my uncle kept the cheese there. In 1929, they still had this shop, I used to go to the Trade High School in Miklos Horthy Road, not far from it. But I went to school in the morning, and when school was over, I went home. I only went to the shop a few times, maybe just once or twice. I think, they must have had it until about the middle of 1930s. Uncle Miska married very late, around 1940, and I think he must have married a well-off woman, because when he was already married, he wasn't in the shop anymore, but in their candy shop on Erzsebet Avenue, next to the Hirado cinema. And very late in life, he had a little boy. He committed suicide before the war, sometime around 1943 or '44. Andor was born in 1901. He was a clerk, but I don't even know where, but he was already married. He must have gotten married around 1933 or '34; their son, Peter, was born in 1935, and lives in Australia too. They used to live in Budapest, I think in Tuzolto street, but by the time the house was built, they had moved to Matyasfold as well. There was an attic room there, the youngsters and the small boys lived up there. Andor died in 1945 of typhus, supposedly due to the typhus injection. When I arrived home, he was already dead. Jeno was born in 1903, and at the age of 33, he got blood poisoning, and there were no penicillin yet (at that time), so it killed him. He finished high school; he was a clerk, but he was unemployed for a long time. And in 1930 or 1931, when they were building the house in Matyasfold he managed the construction work. He was unmarried and lived at home.

Photos from this interviewee