Tag #140682 - Interview #78783 (magdolna palmai)

I went to Professor Ferenc Merei with my friends from the university. Since they had been excluded from the university because of the numerus clausus, they continued their studies this way. Professor Merei lived on Klotild Street 10, in the 1940s, and we went to his place for cramming courses. [Ferenc Merei (1909-1986) graduated from the University of Sorbonne, then he returned to Hungary where he mainly worked as a pedagogue and clinical psychologist.] Literature, psychology, politics - we talked about everything. Professor Geza Hegedus [Hungarian writer] was there, too. I can still remember the way we sat at Merei's, Geza Hegedus put up a blackboard and said, that if the police came we had to say that we were learning graphology, the letter 'g' in graphology - and he wrote a 'g' - and showed us how, for example, a criminal would write the letter. So this was the conspiracy. It was a wonderful period. We had to leave the apartment one by one, first we looked outside if there was a policeman there or someone else. There were 10-15 of us at these meetings. The lectures went on for two to three years, until 1942 or 1943, but in 1944 we didn't meet at Merei's anymore, that's for sure.