Tag #130402 - Interview #78005 (Rudi Katz)

We had a library in the house; my mother read good novels in German, and my father was fond of history books. We also had religious books, like the Mazor. I loved reading, and my father was sometimes annoyed because I read too much or I read things I wasn't supposed to read. He once burnt some of my books - I liked to read books from a series called 'Famous Women': it was about famous women throughout history, like Anne Boleyn, the mistress [second wife] of King Henry VIII of England, and that kind of reading was prohibited - and so my father smacked me. He got very upset when a neighbor gave me a Magazine of Science and Travel because he thought it distracted me from studying. [This is a magazine with scientific articles and feature articles on different countries.] He never thought that kind of reading was useful for a child's evolution. He believed I should read only books for school, and that I should be obedient and polite. My mother usually took my side when it came to reading. I didn't go to a library, because there wasn't one nearby, but my father had a friend, a high school teacher, to whom he advised me to go. I borrowed from him Romanian literature, like Creanga or Sadoveanu [Ion Creanga (1837-1889) and Mihail Sadoveanu (1880- 1961), famous Romanian writers]. But back then I was crazy about Karl May, adventure books, the Magazine of Science and Travel.