Erzsebet and Tibor Bato

This photo was taken of my parents shortly after their wedding. My father, Tibor Bato, was born in Budapest in 1896. He studied for four years in an English gymnasium in Cairo, where his father was organizing the network of the Adria Insurance Company in Egypt and the Middle East. My father and grandmother moved back to Europe so that my father could finish his Hungarian education. He then went to Vienna and studied commerce at the Oriental Academy. When World War I began, my father was sent to the front. My father was a many-times decorated officer. After World War I, my father lived in Berlin, where he worked at Shell Oil. When he moved back to Hungary, he was the representative of Shell's Hungarian office. After the anti-Jewish laws were enacted, he started his own company, which bought oil from Shell and distributed it. My mother, Erzsebet Illes, was born in Budapest in 1899. She drew beautifully and was accepted into the Academy of Applied Arts, but then she met my father while still very young, married, and left the Academy. My parents later divorced.