Tag #138507 - Interview #78216 (Olga Banyai)

My parents were distant cousins. Our grandmothers were sisters. My mother went to visit at my father's house, and they fell in love with each other. My grandmother was very much against it, but then a wedding came out of it anyway. It wasn't a bad marriage, just the problem was that my father was religious, there were religious problems. My father was more religious than my mother. My mother was already a more modern thinker at that time. That was the problem, but there weren't any arguments. Once in a while, they'd quarrel. My father said, that's because my mother wasn't religious enough.

My father wasn't a soldier in the First World War. They dripped something in his ear [to avoid conscription], and he carried that with him his whole life, he had a bad ear. They ruined his ear so he wouldn't be a soldier. A Hungarian soldier. There he wouldn't have gotten kosher food, and he insisted upon it [eating kosher].

My parents were tent marketeers. Once a week there was a big market - Huszt was a small town, at that time about 25,000 residents. They put out a table, full of all kinds of things, and they came and bought candies, and whatever else they sold. I don't know, ...they sold fruits, whatever there was at the time. Then my father gave that up, and became a salesman.