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My younger sister [Alzbeta Dukeszova, nee Vidor] was born in 1917 in Bratislava. I was seven years old when she came into the world. There is seven years between us, which is a big difference, and I always wanted revenge, because she was the baby, she was everything. I wasn’t. I was jealous of my sister. My mother’s sister came to visit. She found me sitting on the ground at the gate, with a lot of toys around me. ‘How come you’re here?’ I said, ‘I’m leaving this house, waiting for the bad people to come to take me away. I’m not staying in a house where they constantly hug and kiss such an ugly black baby.’
In spite of the fact that I was jealous of my little sister in the beginning, since everybody paid attention to her, we ended up having a really good relationship. After my sister finished her studies, she worked for a while in the cultural field at the Nova publishing company. It was a Hungarian publisher.
She married in 1938, in a Jewish ceremony, of course. The young couple lived in Nitra. First an apothecary from Roznava courted my sister. Roznava became Hungarian after the First Vienna Decision [10]. The apothecary went home, but soon came back to us, because he was drafted – there was a general enlistment here and there – and he didn’t want to serve as a Hungarian soldier, he wanted to go to Palestine. He wanted to marry my sister, and then she would follow him.
My parents objected – though he was a very nice, decent young man – saying that once he had already found a position in Palestine, and everything worked out, then he should come back for my sister. That suitor had a friend named Stefan Dukesz who had been courting a Catholic girl for a long time. When it came out that they weren’t allowed to touch each other [see Jewish Codex] [11], Dukesz was left without the Catholic girl, because they didn’t dare get together.
My sister and Stefan consoled each other. They consoled each other until they got married themselves. They were lucky, because their marriage was one of the most beautiful and best marriages I’ve ever known. Unfortunately, neither of them is still alive.
My younger sister had a daughter [Zuzana] and a son [Pavel]. The daughter was born during the war, while she was fleeing, which isn’t an everyday occurrence. My sister pushed the one-year-old baby’s bed over to the neighbor lady, who was a Christian teacher, and was raising four of her own children.
My sister went up to the mountains with her husband. They weren’t deported, but lived up in the mountains. When the war ended, and they came out of the terrible conditions in the mountains, completely broken from the cold, they searched for their daughter. The little girl was nowhere to be found.
In spite of the fact that I was jealous of my little sister in the beginning, since everybody paid attention to her, we ended up having a really good relationship. After my sister finished her studies, she worked for a while in the cultural field at the Nova publishing company. It was a Hungarian publisher.
She married in 1938, in a Jewish ceremony, of course. The young couple lived in Nitra. First an apothecary from Roznava courted my sister. Roznava became Hungarian after the First Vienna Decision [10]. The apothecary went home, but soon came back to us, because he was drafted – there was a general enlistment here and there – and he didn’t want to serve as a Hungarian soldier, he wanted to go to Palestine. He wanted to marry my sister, and then she would follow him.
My parents objected – though he was a very nice, decent young man – saying that once he had already found a position in Palestine, and everything worked out, then he should come back for my sister. That suitor had a friend named Stefan Dukesz who had been courting a Catholic girl for a long time. When it came out that they weren’t allowed to touch each other [see Jewish Codex] [11], Dukesz was left without the Catholic girl, because they didn’t dare get together.
My sister and Stefan consoled each other. They consoled each other until they got married themselves. They were lucky, because their marriage was one of the most beautiful and best marriages I’ve ever known. Unfortunately, neither of them is still alive.
My younger sister had a daughter [Zuzana] and a son [Pavel]. The daughter was born during the war, while she was fleeing, which isn’t an everyday occurrence. My sister pushed the one-year-old baby’s bed over to the neighbor lady, who was a Christian teacher, and was raising four of her own children.
My sister went up to the mountains with her husband. They weren’t deported, but lived up in the mountains. When the war ended, and they came out of the terrible conditions in the mountains, completely broken from the cold, they searched for their daughter. The little girl was nowhere to be found.
Location
Slovakia
Interview
Katarina Löfflerova