Hedvig Endrei at a New Year's Eve party in Szeged restaurant

This picture was taken at Szeged restaurant at the beginning of the 1960s. I am the first from right. Laszlo Gal and Trudi Bornemissza are standing next to me. This was a New Year's Eve party, as far as I remember. Trudi was the chef, and Laszlo Gal, who wasn't Jewish, was my assistant. In 1952 they opened a café and cake shop on the corner of Himfy Street and Bartok Bela Street, and I became an assistant business manager there, then a business manager. The so-called 'gebine' shops came into fashion at that time. [Editor's note: This was in fact the smuggling back of the private or retail trade into the industry, which was stopped at the time of nationalization. It meant that a company or a co-operative rented a restaurant or a shop for a certain percentage of the income.] This was as if it was private, the owner [i.e. the one who took the shop in 'gebine'] had to account for the merchandise through the company, and the company paid the income, but he worked as if it was his own. The business manager begged me to take over the shop, so that he could go to a 'gebine' shop. This man, his wife and his mother lived on Karoly Boulevard, just as I did. He had a daughter and I always liked children very much. After three weeks of him begging me I took it on. That's when I started a coffee maker course, an ice-cream maker course, a cook's course and a business manager's course. I was there for eight years, and I got from there to Szeged restaurant as a business manager. When they transformed it into a fishermen's inn, I went to work in Kiralyhago restaurant, on 20-22 Boszormenyi Avenue. There was a band in Szeged restaurant, and Istvan Laki played in that band. He became my partner in life. We lived together 24 years, he died around 1982. He wasn't Jewish. He had two children: Istvan and Andor. Andor became my stepson, because I didn't have children of my own. Andor spent a lot of time in the shop, too.