Tag #138140 - Interview #78464 (Bernard Knezo Schönbrun)

As I’ve already mentioned, after my father’s death I moved to Michalovce, so that I could recite the Kaddish. Because that’s how religious we were. I was around nine, ten years old. My mother sent me to Michalovce, to her sister Ilonka. Ilonka was a very brave person, when she added me to her already eight children. They had only two rooms to live in. Their children were named Boriska, Anuska, Sarika, Rozika, Zolika, Sanika, and unfortunately I don’t remember the names of the last two. Aunt Ilonka’s husband was named Blau, and had a quasi-café. Quasi because you can’t compare it with a café in today’s sense of the word. Auntie Ilonka baked tarts, supplied them to her husband, and he sold them in the café. Old Jewish men used to come there to play cards. During cards they’d order coffee and a tart to go with it.

Still during the time of the First Republic, Ilonka and her husband sent their oldest daughter Boriska to America, to live with some family. Thanks to this she stayed alive. After the war my wife and I invited her to come for a visit. We drove her around Eastern Slovakia. She was overjoyed, and wept profusely when she stood in the places where she had grown up. I wasn’t all the same to me either. Well, and we also were in America to visit her.