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I didn’t associate with other people very much. I felt very good at home. I didn’t even go anywhere. I spent my spare time with my mother. I took care of her. We were like two girlfriends. I loved her very much, and she me as well. I of course loved my brothers very much, too. My parents didn’t address me otherwise than ‘kislany’ [‘little girl’ in Hungarian]. I was brought up honestly, justly, modestly and to respect my parents. I appreciated everything at home very much. Life is very hard for me now, I never felt better anywhere than at home. I had a very nice family. Our parents gave us everything in the world. Never ever in my life did I get a whipping from my parents. Never. When our father came home, we’d greet him: ‘Kezit csókolom!’ [from Hungarian: ‘I kiss your hand’] and we’d even kiss him. He didn’t call my mother by any other name than Ilonka [a diminutive, affectionate form of Ilona]. A very nice family we were.
I can’t brag that we lived God knows what sort of lifestyle. We couldn’t throw money around because we were living on only my father’s salary. On top of that my mother was very ill, too. There were three of us children at home, but our father gave all three of us as much as he could. All three of us graduated from high school. My oldest brother, Sandor Stern, even attended medicine in Prague, but then when the bad times came he couldn’t study anymore [10], and so he apprenticed as an auto mechanic. My other brother, Gyula [Gyuszika, Jiri, Juraj] Stern was an artistic carpenter by trade. Gyuszika was also in a concentration camp, and it hounded him his whole life. After the war he graduated from university and for the rest of his life he worked as an aeronautical engineer.
I can’t brag that we lived God knows what sort of lifestyle. We couldn’t throw money around because we were living on only my father’s salary. On top of that my mother was very ill, too. There were three of us children at home, but our father gave all three of us as much as he could. All three of us graduated from high school. My oldest brother, Sandor Stern, even attended medicine in Prague, but then when the bad times came he couldn’t study anymore [10], and so he apprenticed as an auto mechanic. My other brother, Gyula [Gyuszika, Jiri, Juraj] Stern was an artistic carpenter by trade. Gyuszika was also in a concentration camp, and it hounded him his whole life. After the war he graduated from university and for the rest of his life he worked as an aeronautical engineer.
Location
Slovakia
Interview
Viola Rozalia Fischerova