When I was born both my great-grandmothers lived with us. I was 3 years old when Betti died, I think she had skin cancer, and I was 7 when Katalin died. As a matter of fact she raised me, because my parents worked day and night, and I was committed to her care. She was very-very nice, she always took me on a walk in the Pap Garden, which was about 200 meter from our apartment, and I could play there, My parents used to say that when I was very small she took me by the hand and she adjusted her steps to mine, and when I grew older and I wanted to hurry, I dragged her after myself. She loved me very much, and I loved her very much, too. She did everything in the world for me. They told me that when I was small and slept, she sat by the baby carriage and flapped the flies away with a green branch. She didn’t like her own grandchildren, and they didn’t like her either, but I was the oldest great-grandchild and she loved me very much.
- Traditions 11756
- Language spoken 3019
- Identity 7808
- Description of town 2440
- Education, school 8506
- Economics 8772
- Work 11672
- Love & romance 4929
- Leisure/Social life 4159
- Antisemitism 4822
-
Major events (political and historical)
4256
- Armenian genocide 2
- Doctor's Plot (1953) 178
- Soviet invasion of Poland 31
- Siege of Leningrad 86
- The Six Day War 4
- Yom Kippur War 2
- Ataturk's death 5
- Balkan Wars (1912-1913) 35
- First Soviet-Finnish War 37
- Occupation of Czechoslovakia 1938 83
- Invasion of France 9
- Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact 65
- Varlik Vergisi (Wealth Tax) 36
- First World War (1914-1918) 216
- Spanish flu (1918-1920) 14
- Latvian War of Independence (1918-1920) 4
- The Great Depression (1929-1933) 20
- Hitler comes to power (1933) 127
- 151 Hospital 1
- Fire of Thessaloniki (1917) 9
- Greek Civil War (1946-49) 12
- Thessaloniki International Trade Fair 5
- Annexation of Bukovina to Romania (1918) 7
- Annexation of Northern Bukovina to the Soviet Union (1940) 19
- The German invasion of Poland (1939) 94
- Kishinev Pogrom (1903) 7
- Romanian Annexation of Bessarabia (1918) 25
- Returning of the Hungarian rule in Transylvania (1940-1944) 43
- Soviet Occupation of Bessarabia (1940) 59
- Second Vienna Dictate 27
- Estonian war of independence 3
- Warsaw Uprising 2
- Soviet occupation of the Balitc states (1940) 147
- Austrian Civil War (1934) 9
- Anschluss (1938) 71
- Collapse of Habsburg empire 3
- Dollfuß Regime 3
- Emigration to Vienna before WWII 36
- Kolkhoz 131
- KuK - Königlich und Kaiserlich 40
- Mineriade 1
- Post War Allied occupation 7
- Waldheim affair 5
- Trianon Peace Treaty 12
- NEP 56
- Russian Revolution 351
- Ukrainian Famine 199
- The Great Terror 283
- Perestroika 233
- 22nd June 1941 468
- Molotov's radio speech 115
- Victory Day 147
- Stalin's death 365
- Khrushchev's speech at 20th Congress 148
- KGB 62
- NKVD 153
- German occupation of Hungary (18-19 March 1944) 45
- Józef Pilsudski (until 1935) 33
- 1956 revolution 84
- Prague Spring (1968) 73
- 1989 change of regime 174
- Gomulka campaign (1968) 81
-
Holocaust
9685
- Holocaust (in general) 2789
- Concentration camp / Work camp 1235
- Mass shooting operations 337
- Ghetto 1183
- Death / extermination camp 647
- Deportation 1063
- Forced labor 791
- Flight 1410
- Hiding 594
- Resistance 121
- 1941 evacuations 866
- Novemberpogrom / Kristallnacht 34
- Eleftherias Square 10
- Kasztner group 1
- Pogrom in Iasi and the Death Train 21
- Sammelwohnungen 9
- Strohmann system 11
- Struma ship 17
- Life under occupation 803
- Yellow star house 72
- Protected house 15
- Arrow Cross ("nyilasok") 42
- Danube bank shots 6
- Kindertransport 26
- Schutzpass / false papers 95
- Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (1943) 24
- Warsaw Uprising (1944) 23
- Helpers 521
- Righteous Gentiles 269
- Returning home 1090
- Holocaust compensation 112
- Restitution 109
- Property (loss of property) 595
- Loss of loved ones 1724
- Trauma 1029
- Talking about what happened 1807
- Liberation 558
- Military 3322
- Politics 2640
-
Communism
4468
- Life in the Soviet Union/under Communism (in general) 2592
- Anti-communist resistance in general 63
- Nationalization under Communism 221
- Illegal communist movements 98
- Systematic demolitions under communism 45
- Communist holidays 311
- Sentiments about the communist rule 930
- Collectivization 94
- Experiences with state police 349
- Prison/Forced labor under communist/socialist rule 449
- Lack or violation of human and citizen rights 483
- Life after the change of the regime (1989) 493
- Israel / Palestine 2190
- Zionism 847
- Jewish Organizations 1200
Displaying 22891 - 22920 of 50826 results
Ferenc Leicht
![](/themes/custom/centro/flags/hu.svg)
So this is how my parents met, and when I was born they lived in Keszthely for a short time. My deceased grandfather, whose name was Lipot, wasn’t called Uncle Lipi [Lipot] for some reason, but Uncle Pali. In the Jewish families it is customary to name the children after the deceased grandparents or parents. When I was born and my mother had to give in my name she called me Ferenc, because I would have had an uncle called Ferenc on the paternal side, if he hadn’t died of lung cancer at a young age.
But five days after I was born my maternal grandfather, Uncle Lipot died.By the time I was 8 days old, at my circumcision I got his Hebrew name. So my Hebrew name is the same as my grandfather’s, I got the name Jehuda Arje, just like him, but my Hungarian name, Ferenc is the name of my long ago deceased uncle whom I didn’t know.
But five days after I was born my maternal grandfather, Uncle Lipot died.By the time I was 8 days old, at my circumcision I got his Hebrew name. So my Hebrew name is the same as my grandfather’s, I got the name Jehuda Arje, just like him, but my Hungarian name, Ferenc is the name of my long ago deceased uncle whom I didn’t know.
My mother was born in Veszprem on the 5th July 1906. She learned the baker’s trade for 3 years in my grandfather’s bakery in Nagykanizsa, and she graduated with distinction at the apprentice school in 1924. It wasn’t usual for a woman at that time to have an assistant’s certificate.
My mother was approximately as heavy and tall as I am now, but she was 10 times stronger than I have ever been. If she slapped someone in the face, he fell against the wall. A bolting-bag weighed 85 kilograms, and she could easily lift that. At that time the kneading machine had not been invented yet, or at least they didn’t have one, and they baked 800 kilograms of bread daily, and pastries, too, and my father and her kneaded it all, or when there was an apprentice the three of them did..
So this is how my parents met, and when I was born they lived in Keszthely for a short time.
My mother was approximately as heavy and tall as I am now, but she was 10 times stronger than I have ever been. If she slapped someone in the face, he fell against the wall. A bolting-bag weighed 85 kilograms, and she could easily lift that. At that time the kneading machine had not been invented yet, or at least they didn’t have one, and they baked 800 kilograms of bread daily, and pastries, too, and my father and her kneaded it all, or when there was an apprentice the three of them did..
So this is how my parents met, and when I was born they lived in Keszthely for a short time.
My father was in the 4th grade of high school in Csurgo – at the school which was famous because Csokonai [Editor’s note: Mihaly Csokonai Vitez (1773 - 1805), Hungarian poet, was born in Debrecen. Csokonai was a genial and original poet, and wrote a mock-heroic poem called Dorottya or the Triumph of the Ladies at the Carnival, two or three comedies or farces, and a number of love-poems.] had taught there – when he was sent down from the high school because once he didn’t greet the Catholic priest on the street.
When they called him for account he said that the Christian students didn’t greet his father either. Namely there wasn’t a rabbi in Csurgo, the shammash was the head of the Jewish community, which was my grandfather, and they didn’t greet him either. Then my father became a merchant apprentice. He realized very soon that he didn’t have any talent for that, and then he became a baker’s apprentice. He served his apprenticeship in 1923, at the age of 18, then he got on a bike and went to look for a job.
I know that he went from Somogycsurgo to Nagykanizsa by bike, which is about 26 kilometers. And in 1923 he became a baker’s man in the bakery of my maternal grandfather. But there was another assistant there, Terezia Herczfeld. She was my mother, who was the third, the biggest and strongest Herczfeld girl.
When they called him for account he said that the Christian students didn’t greet his father either. Namely there wasn’t a rabbi in Csurgo, the shammash was the head of the Jewish community, which was my grandfather, and they didn’t greet him either. Then my father became a merchant apprentice. He realized very soon that he didn’t have any talent for that, and then he became a baker’s apprentice. He served his apprenticeship in 1923, at the age of 18, then he got on a bike and went to look for a job.
I know that he went from Somogycsurgo to Nagykanizsa by bike, which is about 26 kilometers. And in 1923 he became a baker’s man in the bakery of my maternal grandfather. But there was another assistant there, Terezia Herczfeld. She was my mother, who was the third, the biggest and strongest Herczfeld girl.
My father, Geza Leicht was born in 1905 in Nagyszakacsi. He had 3 sisters: Julia, who was born in Modor in 1898, Olga, who was also born in Modor in 1899, and Frida who was born in 1904 in Enying. His oldest sister Juliska [Julia] lived in Nagykanizsa and was a seamstress, and a good one. She had a fiancé when she was 20, he was called Bela Remenyi, and during the Hungarian Soviet Republic [2] he was a member of the directory, and because of that he was hanged in 1919, after the fall of the Hungarian Soviet Republic.
Juliska sunk in herself because of this, and she only got married in 1937 to a widower, Imre Hirschler, who had 2 children. All three of them were gassed later. Juliska got married again after the war, to another widower, Vilmos Balazs, whose daughter and first wife had been gassed. After the war they came to Pest, because it wasn’t a very fortunate thing to be a Jew in the countryside.
[Editor’s note: During the Holocaust almost all the Jewry from the country was deported and killed, so after World War II the communities in the country, which were flourishing before, disappeared.]
Olga remained in Somogycsurgo at first, then she came to Pest with Juliska and her husband. She had never had her own apartment or household, the poor thing was a victim of the anti-Jewish laws [3] all her life. She was a shopkeeper for 25 years, but she was fired because of the first anti-Jewish law, and in 1944 she was deported to Bergen-Belsen.
Then she was in Sweden for a year in order to recover, and when in 1954 she was of retiring age, they didn’t count in the previous years because she didn’t work for more than 5 years before, so she had to work 10 more years in order to get the minimal pension. She died at the age of 93 as a maiden.
After the war, in 1942 or 1943, Frida moved with her husband from Somogycsurgo to a big apartment in Pest, where her husband’s relatives lived. Then her husband was drafted into forced labor and was killed. I was on very good terms with their son Miklos, he was the only one of my nephews who survived the Holocaust. Frida died in 1957, Miklos in 1992.
Juliska sunk in herself because of this, and she only got married in 1937 to a widower, Imre Hirschler, who had 2 children. All three of them were gassed later. Juliska got married again after the war, to another widower, Vilmos Balazs, whose daughter and first wife had been gassed. After the war they came to Pest, because it wasn’t a very fortunate thing to be a Jew in the countryside.
[Editor’s note: During the Holocaust almost all the Jewry from the country was deported and killed, so after World War II the communities in the country, which were flourishing before, disappeared.]
Olga remained in Somogycsurgo at first, then she came to Pest with Juliska and her husband. She had never had her own apartment or household, the poor thing was a victim of the anti-Jewish laws [3] all her life. She was a shopkeeper for 25 years, but she was fired because of the first anti-Jewish law, and in 1944 she was deported to Bergen-Belsen.
Then she was in Sweden for a year in order to recover, and when in 1954 she was of retiring age, they didn’t count in the previous years because she didn’t work for more than 5 years before, so she had to work 10 more years in order to get the minimal pension. She died at the age of 93 as a maiden.
After the war, in 1942 or 1943, Frida moved with her husband from Somogycsurgo to a big apartment in Pest, where her husband’s relatives lived. Then her husband was drafted into forced labor and was killed. I was on very good terms with their son Miklos, he was the only one of my nephews who survived the Holocaust. Frida died in 1957, Miklos in 1992.
Hungary
So I didn’t know any of my grandparents, but I did know my two great-grandmothers. They both came to Hungary from Vienna [Austria] and they outlived their children. One of my great-grandmothers, the mother of my maternal grandfather was Katalin Herczfeld, but she called herself Kadi [Hungarian for cadi], so in my childhood I thought that she must have been a Muslim judge in her youth, then I found out later that she had been a fraulein, a governess. She only knew German practically, that’s why she pronounced the name Kati as Kadi, and that stuck until her old age. I thought that she was my Kadi grandmother, she was about 80 years old when I got to know her. She was born in 1852 and she died in 1936.
My other great-grandmother, the mother of my maternal grandmother, was called Betti Weisz. She was also a fraulein all her life. She was born in 1850, and she died in 1932. I didn’t have any great-grandfathers though, because they both had a child without getting married. When I was small I thought that their master had seduced them, whereas one of them had a child at the age of 31, and the other one at the age of 29. I have no idea who my great-grandfather was, and nobody else knows anymore.
My other great-grandmother, the mother of my maternal grandmother, was called Betti Weisz. She was also a fraulein all her life. She was born in 1850, and she died in 1932. I didn’t have any great-grandfathers though, because they both had a child without getting married. When I was small I thought that their master had seduced them, whereas one of them had a child at the age of 31, and the other one at the age of 29. I have no idea who my great-grandfather was, and nobody else knows anymore.
My paternal grandparents lived in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, in Pozsony County. I don’t know exactly where, but the Jews migrated in that region – Szent Gyorgy, Bazin, Nagyszombat [today Trnava, Slovakia], Modor [today Modra, Slovakia]. The family lived in these villages for centuries. My grandfather, Mozes Moric Leicht was born in 1867 and died in 1929.
First he was a mercer, but he got ruined in 5 minutes, in the Leicht family there wasn’t any business spirit, we couldn’t even make 20 fillers with business. If someone doesn’t employ us, we die of hunger. Later my grandfather became a shammash in Somogycsurgo. My paternal grandmother, Ida Diamant was born in 1870 and died in 1922.
I didn’t know any of my grandparents from the maternal side, because they both died in 1929, before I was born. My maternal grandfather was called Lipot Herczfeld, he was born in 1881, and my grandmother was Malvin Maria Weisz, she was also born in 1881.
They were exactly of the same age, and they died of cancer at the same time. My grandparents migrated to Transdanubia, they lived in Tilaj, then in Veszprem, and in the end they got settled in Nagykanizsa. My grandfather was a baker, they had 7 daughters.
First he was a mercer, but he got ruined in 5 minutes, in the Leicht family there wasn’t any business spirit, we couldn’t even make 20 fillers with business. If someone doesn’t employ us, we die of hunger. Later my grandfather became a shammash in Somogycsurgo. My paternal grandmother, Ida Diamant was born in 1870 and died in 1922.
I didn’t know any of my grandparents from the maternal side, because they both died in 1929, before I was born. My maternal grandfather was called Lipot Herczfeld, he was born in 1881, and my grandmother was Malvin Maria Weisz, she was also born in 1881.
They were exactly of the same age, and they died of cancer at the same time. My grandparents migrated to Transdanubia, they lived in Tilaj, then in Veszprem, and in the end they got settled in Nagykanizsa. My grandfather was a baker, they had 7 daughters.
I can only trace back my family tree until my grandfather, I don’t know anything about my great-grandfather. We had information about him in our documents, but we took those with us to Auschwitz so that we could prove our Hungarian origin. This wasn’t a lucky idea, because nothing remained of them. My parents wanted to arrange their citizenship in 1941, because at that time they deported the Jews, about 20000 people, who couldn’t prove their Hungarian citizenship to Poland, and they handed them over at Kamenetz-Podolsk to the Germans who killed them.
[The massacre of Kamenetz-Podolsk][1]. In Slovakia, in Pozsony county, where my grandparents lived deportation had not started at that time, there was still order, the cemeteries had not been devastated, so it was relatively easy to find the grave of my great-grandparents.
[The massacre of Kamenetz-Podolsk][1]. In Slovakia, in Pozsony county, where my grandparents lived deportation had not started at that time, there was still order, the cemeteries had not been devastated, so it was relatively easy to find the grave of my great-grandparents.
Szekeres-Varsa Vera
![](/themes/custom/centro/flags/hu.svg)
One of my maternal great-grandfathers, Ármin Weisz, was a wholesale dealer in agricultural products in Komárom (Komárno)1. I don't know when he was born, only that he died in 1913. His wife was born Regina Weisz. Regina had a brother who moved to Vásárhely (Trhovište) and became a judge and member of the Upper House of the Parliament. There is a picture of him in the festive garb of Hungarian noblemen, with a sword at his side. I do not know Regina's date of birth, and I only know that she died sometime during the Great War. They were well off; all the family relics show it. I have a seventeenth-century rug from them, for example. I have never seen the house in Komárom; I only heard about it. It had many rooms, a coach house, a carriage, horses, and servants. A cook, a maid, a coachman, a Fräulein, a mademoiselle, a master for the children.
One of the five children, Ernő, came to Pest, changed his name to the more Hungarian-sounding Vadász, and became a banker. They were well-to-do; he and his wife went on holiday to Abbázia (Opatija),2 visited the Opera in Vienna. On the nineteenth of March 1944, when the Germans marched in, he hanged himself in his apartment.
The other child, Blanka, married Béla Leveleki, a Jewish forester, lumberyard owner, and wholesale dealer from Transylvania. They had a large apartment in Marosvásárhely (Târgu Mures) and a summer house in Szováta (Sovata). Aunt Blanka was so much of a Hungarian that when Transylvania was reannexed to Hungary,3 she appeared in Bocskai.4 My father desperately told her that the re-annexation might not bring such a bright future. The couple was taken from the local ghetto to Auschwitz and never came back.
In 1988 I went to the founding meeting of the Social Democratic Party. There were very nice old organized workers there, old social democrats. I left the meeting with the idea to become a party member by the time I got home. But I didn't, because fortunately I realized in time that I would be in a place where I would be out of my element again. Then I looked into the Hungarian October Party of Gyuri Krassó, but it was clear that this was not my place either, even though I had known Gyuri Krassó for a long time.[106]
Then I checked out another party, they called themselves 4-6-0. This referred to the first world war lasting four years, the second six years, and the hope that the third would last zero years.[107] I liked that. It sounded nice enough, but they were mostly sixteen-year-old kids. And then I joined SZDSZ. I've been a member of SZDSZ ever since. I got on the list of candidates before the first municipal elections and became a representative in the fifth district. I was the chairman of the cultural committee. In France, in Saint Paul de Vence, I organized an exhibition of artists from the Fifth District. Saint Paul de Vence is the Mecca of modern art. I served one term as a member of parliament and one term as an external committee member. I was also briefly a trustee of SZDSZ district unit. In the second term, by the way, András was elected, and at that time FIDESZ was in power in the district, and hardly anyone else was allowed a seat. But they did not dare to make the vice-president of ICOMOS sit among them and not be the councilor for cultural heritage management.
Then I checked out another party, they called themselves 4-6-0. This referred to the first world war lasting four years, the second six years, and the hope that the third would last zero years.[107] I liked that. It sounded nice enough, but they were mostly sixteen-year-old kids. And then I joined SZDSZ. I've been a member of SZDSZ ever since. I got on the list of candidates before the first municipal elections and became a representative in the fifth district. I was the chairman of the cultural committee. In France, in Saint Paul de Vence, I organized an exhibition of artists from the Fifth District. Saint Paul de Vence is the Mecca of modern art. I served one term as a member of parliament and one term as an external committee member. I was also briefly a trustee of SZDSZ district unit. In the second term, by the way, András was elected, and at that time FIDESZ was in power in the district, and hardly anyone else was allowed a seat. But they did not dare to make the vice-president of ICOMOS sit among them and not be the councilor for cultural heritage management.
First, I sent the child to the district primary school, Fürst Sándor Street. Then I transferred her to Csanády Street, where I also taught. I transferred her because the company of children at the old school did not seem to be good. There, learning was not a priority. When I transferred her to Csanády, I knew who the teacher was going to be, and I knew she was qualified. Still. my daughter didn't go through primary school there, because in the meantime I was transferred to Trefort. In Trefort, there was a primary school, even so, I didn't want to take her out of her environment. But I found out that Trefort had much higher standards, so, to make the adjustment to high school milder, I transferred her after seventh grade. My considerations were justified; she only had to be tutored in music, arithmetic, geography and biology. As for extra lessons, the language lessons were at home: English, French, Russian from me, a little German from my mother. She learned to play the flute, but then she didn't feel like it. I taught her to swim, and then she did well in the sports club, but she didn't play competitively. She also played tennis. Finally, she graduated with honors, and was immediately admitted to the ELTE, the Faculty of Humanities, with the highest marks. There was no question that she would go on to university, not vocational school. She was admitted to study French and Russian.
My daughter considers herself Jewish, but she is completely devoid of faith. And she has never had any anti-Semitic incidents. When I discovered that she considers herself very Jewish, I blamed myself for a moment, thinking that I had made her life difficult. Because it is easier to be non-Jewish than Jewish, and if one is half this and half that, one could move in the either direction. If you're being raised by someone who is not Jewish, it's probably doable. I didn't raise her as a Jew, she didn't see us go to Synagogue as we didn't, not even my ancestors were religious. Still, it is inevitable, and should not be avoided, that the next generation knows or hears about the persecution.
I myself have an absolutely biased attitude towards Israel. I don't care about anything, whatever happens; this state needs to live, to flourish, to be strong. I first visited Israel in 1988, eight times in all. The last time was last year, in 2006.
The third child, Oszkár, did not get a noble upbringing; he befriended the coachman of the household. He was a printer and died quite young, in the 20’s. His wife was a seamstress. His son, Ferenc Vadász, joined the Communist movement in Czechoslovakia and became a worker-correspondent for a Hungarian-language, crypto-Communist, or at least strongly left-wing newspaper called Magyar Nap (Hungarian Day). Later he became a journalist. As a young Communist worker, he got into Hungary, where he was arrested and sent to Kistarcsa.5 Uncle Ernő helped his nephew and paid for a Christian lawyer because a Jewish lawyer would not have been credible. He was released from Kistarcsa, then somehow, he was arrested again, and first sent to Auschwitz, but not as a Jew, as a Communist. From there, he was taken to forced labor somewhere and survived.
The fourth child was Aunt Mariska, also uneducated, and she preferred to befriend the servants. Aunt Mariska married the Jewish railwayman József Gombos, later stationmaster of Baja. Aunt Mariska was like a grandmother to me because none of my grandmothers were alive when I was born, and Aunt Mariska came from Baja when my sister and I were born. I remember her as a very nice, curvy lady wearing a pretty white apron. Her arrival at Auschwitz and her husband's Uncle Jóska's arrival are recorded. They were already old people then. They had two daughters, but they survived the war.
Uncle Laci was born in 1893, graduated from high school in Szeged, then from KERAK,10 and then took an additional one-year course. He was a clerk in a mill, and he owned half the mill. In 1942, the Germans or the local Fascist shot him dead in Pancsova (Pancevo). I heard from a family friend who has since died in Israel that he was accused of being a partisan liaison, dragged out of his house, and shot dead.
My mother went to a public elementary school for six years.
When my mother was twelve, she started boarding school at the Public High School for Girls in Temesvár (Timisoara). It was a four-year school for girls, till the age of sixteen.
My mother already exercised at home and was a keen member of the Szeged Athletics Club, where she enjoyed rowing.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
Uncle Dezső married a Christian woman, Erzsébet Bogdánffy of Bogdánfi. My religious grandmother was devastated and made my father, who was still unmarried at the time, swear never to marry a Christian woman. My father swore. Uncle Dezső converted before the wedding and gave a reversalis vow, but the grandmother did not know about this.33 Uncle Dezső's two sons were brought up as Christians, and no one ever knew that their bloodline was not entirely clean.
In 1911 he graduated from the Public High School in Nagykikinda and wanted to go to university, but my uncle couldn't afford to do it. He knew that his uncle had to educate his own two sons, as well. So, my father, who wanted to be a Hungarian literature and history teacher, became a law student in Budapest, at the Pázmány University.37 It was the only university in Hungary at that time where it was possible to study, as we would say today, on long-distance courses.38 He took various jobs in Szeged as a clerk because, in the meantime, Uncle Dezső moved from Nagykikinda to Szeged. My father did not like law, but he did it properly. He did a lot of sports: athletics, including long and high jump. He was so good at sports that around 1913, even his participation in the 1916 Olympics came up, but the war intervened. The drafted students were allowed to take the final exams earlier, so in 1914, my father finished his studies and filed in. He received his diploma signed by Rusztem Vámbéry in 1918.
In 1915 he was shot in the lungs on the Eastern Front and was hospitalized. He recovered too soon, thanks to his strong, athletic body, and was sent back to the front. He spent six weeks in the trenches, where everyone had a cold or flu, and he caught TB. Then he was taken prisoner of war40 and in early 1916 he was sent to Krasnoyarsk in Siberia. He was sent to the officers' section of a vast prisoner-of-war camp. He told me how they tried to get rid of the lice. They buried the shirt, stuck a straw in the ground, and the lice would crawl through it. Then they dug up the shirt, dirty but free of lice. From time to time, there was no food, and that was terrible. He made friends with a certain József Fénykövi (he changed his name from Sonnenstein shortly before the war), who had a cube of sugar. It was their dinner-for-two because Fénykövi shared it with him. They moved around quite freely within the camp. For example, they amused themselves by setting up plays; of course, the boys played the female parts, too. Then there was a typhoid breakout. He never told me this, but when I met Señora Fénykövi in 1973, she told to me how my father had visited Fénykövi and cared for him when he was lying in the infected barrack. She, in turn, had never heard the story of the cube of sugar. So, these two men had done a lot for each other, but they only shared the stories of the other’s good deeds.
After the October Revolution41 the Russian army dissolved, and very slowly, with many difficulties, he came home relatively sound. He traveled for a day, then waited for two days in some Siberian village, then traveled again, then waited again. Eventually, he came home. But Fénykövi chose to go to China and ended up in Spain, where he became very rich.
After the October Revolution41 the Russian army dissolved, and very slowly, with many difficulties, he came home relatively sound. He traveled for a day, then waited for two days in some Siberian village, then traveled again, then waited again. Eventually, he came home. But Fénykövi chose to go to China and ended up in Spain, where he became very rich.
When my father arrived home in 1918,42 everything was already falling apart here. Because he had always wanted to be a literary man, he enrolled in the Faculty of Arts. But he dropped out in the first year because that was when the Jew beatings started at the universities.43 In Szeged, he passed the bar exam after one or two years and worked in a bank. He even started athletics again, but it was obvious that he would not be an outstanding sportsman, although he seemed in perfect health. He played sports for a long time, hiked a lot, and was even a coach at the Szeged Athletics Club. When he passed the bar exam, he took a job in a law firm.
Then, religion came back once again. In 1948, my father was in the hospital, obviously knowing that he didn’t have much of his life left, and suddenly he asked for a rabbi because he wanted to return to the Jewish faith.46 My mother argued a little, but not much. The rabbi was called, and my father converted back.
The apartment in the Phoenix House had a bedroom, dining room, salon, hall, maid's room, kitchen, bathroom, toilet, and pantry. Hot water all day round, central heating, a spacious garden in the courtyard, divided into four sections. Every spring, four big flower beds, and tulips of different colors were planted in them. In the middle stood a fountain with a female figure, a big statue. During the siege, her head was knocked off on the pedestal by an impact, and it always served well as a swing. I think the house was built in 1931, and my mother was very proud of her modern apartment. The apartment was furnished with furniture from Szeged, some of the carpets were so big that they didn't fit, so they were rolled up.
I started school in 1939, a private school. They didn't want to send me to a private school, and my mother told me very proudly and self-consciously that she was sent to the public school for girls.
At first, we had a maid, later it became unsustainable to pay and feed her as well. At that time, there was this "the tarp is spread for market but there’s nothing to sell" solution, which was called "couple for cleaning". A couple moved into the staff room, a certain Mariska and her husband. The wife did the housekeeping, she was not paid a wage but was allowed to live there with her husband. She was with us from 1938 to 1944. But Mama never left me, she took care of me herself.
On weekends, when my father was well, we would go on a trip to the Buda Hills. I didn't like hiking, but my father would show me the birds, which was fun. Before the war, we used to go to Pancsova in the summer, and we always spent two months there.