Gabriella Domonkos at the age of 17

This is my mother, Gabriella Domonkos, at the age of 17. The photo was taken in Budapest in 1917.

My father got married for the first time right after World War I. When the front folded up at Piave, in Italy in 1918, my father managed to escape from being taken as a prisoner. He came home and married my mother, Gabriella Rozsa, immediately. She must have been around 18 years old at that time. She was a beautiful woman. The first child, Peter, was born in 1919, I was born in 1921, and my little sister, Anna, was born in 1923. By that time the marriage had gotten bad, and they divorced. I sometimes heard my father saying that my grandmother always set the heather on fire between him and the young woman. That's why their marriage might have got ruined.

I barely know anything about the maternal branch, because after the three children were born our parents divorced. My brother and I stayed with Father, and my sister stayed with our mother. As far as I know my mother didn't remarry. She lived with my younger sister at her parents', with the Rozsa family. They had a tin-wear factory, which prospered quite well. The Rozsa family was wealthy. So I didn't even know my maternal grandparents, I don't know when my mother was born either. After they divorced I never met my mother. I did meet my sister. We started getting together with my sister when I was a teenager. But she never told us anything about that family, and we didn't ask either. I only know that my sister felt good at home. As far as I know my father didn't have to pay alimony, probably because they split the burden, since the two boys remained with him.

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