Ferenc and Aranka Friedmann

These are my parents Ferenc Friedmann and Aranka Friedmann, nee Pollak. The photo was taken in our courtyard in Eger in 1938. When they got married, Dad and Mom lived in a rented flat on Dobo Street. There was Rosenberg, the textile merchant, and my father rented the house from him. The apartment wasn't big. We had two rooms, one for the parents and one for the children. There was a small stove in the room, and wooden floors - I remember that we had to scrub them. Dad was a master tailor, and a gentlemen's tailor at that. There was another tailor opposite us, he was a peasant tailor, as it was called back then. A gentlemen's tailor made proper suits. My dad was a very accurate, meticulous master tailor, he turned out beautiful work. Not so long ago, my grandson, Andris, found an article from Eger about Dad in which they said what a remarkable tailor he was. [In fact it was not an article but an entry in a book entitled 1930 Almanac of Hungarian Craftsmen, in which his name, age, profession and place of apprenticeship is mentioned.] Dad had his workshop in the same house we lived in. We could only go down to the workshop when Dad didn't see us because he didn't like it when children were hanging around there. Dad was a very strict person, but he was a good man; he loved his family and he was very fond of children. Mom was a housewife, as all women at that time who had many children. This [four children] was already considered many children. I don't know how my parents met; they never talked about it. Mom was 17 or so when she got married and she gave birth to Piri soon after. I was born in 1915, Bozsi in 1910, Rozsi in 1908, and Piri was born in 1906. We had a servant who helped with all that Mom did. Mom did the shopping but the servant went with her and helped her carry the stuff home. Mom did the cooking, the servant didn't cook but helped in the kitchen. She peeled the vegetables and Mom let her do the washing up as well. The cleaning was also done by the servant - every day, as was customary in those days. There was no extra space in the apartment, of course, but we had a kind of shed and the girl lived there.