Tag #140477 - Interview #78556 (Gyorgy Preisz)

I would have chosen a musical career after graduation, if I could have. I didn’t learn music, but I liked and adored the opera. I didn’t have a gramophone at home, but I was always listening to the radio; the radio was always next to my ear. But I couldn’t continue my studies. One day a woman, who had come from the tailor’s where she had had a costume made, came to our house, and asked, ‘Do you know a graduated boy whom they could engage as an apprentice?’ ‘Gyuri, would you like to be a women’s tailor?’ they asked. I had never ever held a needle in my hand. It was terrible. I went in the morning. He told me to sit down on a chair. He gave me a needle without thread and a piece of cloth to poke with the needle and the thimble again and again. He showed me how to sew. I did this from 8 o’clock in the morning until midday, then I went home to have lunch. The family always had lunch together, my father slept half an hour, and then he went back. Then I was there from 2 pm until 6 pm. I spent a year there, from 1941 to 1942. When I was finished, I worked in a very cool place on the Duna-promenade in the Molli showroom. It was a very distinguished place.