Piroska Hamos with her sisters

These are the three of us, my sister, Etel on the right, and our step sister, Magda on the left. The picture must have been taken in 1928 in Budapest, but I don't know for what occasion. We had really nice dresses, but they weren't made by Mom, but in the clothes salon. My step-mother's brother and his wife had a ladies' clothes salon, but it was an elegant outfitter's, not an off-the-peg store; so it was an elegant salon and they made it. But we did have to pay for it. My step-sister was called Magda Daimant, but she magyarised later. She became Maria Desi. She was a very interesting child. She was only obedient to her mother, and to nobody else. When Mom wasn't at home, she could be incredibly naughty and impertinent. Basically, we were on very good terms, though. Magda attended the same elementary and middle schools we did. She wasn't a good student and she didn't finish any other schooling after the four years of middle school, but she was a clever woman. She educated herself; she read a lot. I don't really know what she did before the war. They lived together, because my sister Etel used to live with my parents, and Magda lived there as well. They lived in several places in Budapest. The last flat was in Almassy Square. After the war, Magda worked as a clerk in the town hall, and later she also worked as a caretaker at resort by Lake Balaton. But in the end she worked in a cake shop, as a coffee-maid. I think she met her husband at one of those resorts. They married around the end of the 1950's. His name was Dr Imre Horvath, and he was five years her junior. He became a mental specialist, a psychiatrist. But basically Magda supported her husband and he had her to thank for the fact that he was able to finish medical school at all. He died in 1982 and Magda in 1984. They had no children.