Tag #156844 - Interview #78022 (mariann szamosi)

That was in 1947, then I was just twenty years old. I had no plans, intentions. I stayed in the student house, a smaller house of Joint13 on Zoltan street, for university and academy students. I was learning violin with Tatrai, and I started playing piano again. [Vilmos Tatrai, violinist, founder and director of the Tatrai Quartet and Hungarian Chambermusic Orchestra.] Then I applied to the College of Humanities, for history and geography. But I didn't have my high school diploma, I should have matriculated already, but I couldn't decide. I half went to University, I hung around with the medical students and the humanities students, and I had to leave the student house. By then I hadn't applied anywhere. I left the student house, became a renter, moving from one flat to the next. In 1948, I completed a crash course. That came about when Vera Lazar was already in the Travelling Chorus, and she brought me along. It was a chorus of the [communist] movement, and there were a lot of decent people there. I suddenly got this chance, they sent me to a vocational course. I went for four months, but it was very far from my abilities, to have to learn accounting and auditing. But I finished it, and found a position at the Produce Distribution Enterprise, and worked there for a good while. They arranged produce acquisition courses, and sent me in my twenties, to be the school director. I worked in Nagyteteny, Monor, Tordas and various places. They brought in the bright peasant kids, and I taught them. I taught them orthography, gymnastics, that kind of stuff, up to the 1950s, when suddenly it comes out that I'm a Jew, and I come from the bourgeoisie. I wasn't allowed to do that anymore. They fired me without any reason, and put me on forced leave - I already had a good position at the Animal Distribution Enterprise, and had married in the meantime.