When I was circumcised, my father wasn’t at home yet.
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Displaying 48271 - 48300 of 50826 results
Laszlo Galla
My father was given leave, but a very short one, and they knew in advance when it would be, so my mother traveled down to Belgrade. They met there in the officers’ wing of the barracks – my father had joined up as an ensign officer and was a captain when discharged – and they spent a few days there, and I was made [conceived] there in February 1916.
My father got together with my mother in the following way: Aunt Maca was married in Hodmezovasarhely [at that time], and my father, as a young man, used to visit her, and met my mother there. It might have been arranged, but of course, I don’t know that.
First, Grandfather ran a grocery store in Szentes, which went better and better for him, and by the end, he became an ironmonger. So the spices and ox tongue and such that he sold at first gradually fell off and were replaced with hardware, more spare parts, like car parts, tools for blacksmiths, carpentry tools.
In Szentes there lived about 500-600 Jews, and they were all middle-of-the-road religious. Mako was 80 kilometers away, where a much more intense Jewish life went on than in Szentes. There was an Orthodox [4] synagogue and a Neolog one, and a few thousand Jews lived there. Szentes was nothing compared to that. The town was about as big as Mako and the region was also the same, but the Jewry in Szentes was fairly assimilated. There was a synagogue, it was very beautiful, today it is the town library. There was a Jewish community, my father was its vice-president, then its chairman. There was a Chevra Kaddisha too, of course, which dealt with burials – the cemetery was very beautiful. There was a Malbish Arumim Society which dealt with charitable works for the poor, and there was a Jewish Women’s Association, my mother was its chairwoman for a while. Even though everyone got along in the Jewish community, there was a fairly big battle when it came to community elections, since that’s when they decided who should be the chairman, and his people then made up the tax committee, who took less tax from its own people, its supporters. The community tax at that time was collected like ordinary taxes, you had to pay them. So there was a battle mainly because of this, and the community was divided in two over it.
Uncle Berci, who had legal training, and worked then as a freelancer for some Pest paper, was given the job. He went abroad, and was Kossuth’s secretary for three years, [Bertalan Gunst was Kossuth’s secretary from 1879-1883] and his memoirs were written in that time. He is even mentioned in the Szentes High School yearbook – since he attended this school, as did my father, and then me – as a famous old pupil, Bertalan Gunst, Lajos Kossuth’s secretary.
From then on he had his workshop and business there. Not only did he make shoes to measure, but also for the warehouse, and he sold them.
I know that my mother, after completing four years of civil school [2] went to school in Temesvar [today: Timisoara, Romania] there were higher girls’ schools [3] at that time, where they learned housekeeping and community skills. I think it was for two or three years, and my mother graduated from it.
My mother, Erzsebet Kohn, was born in 1887, in her birth certificate she appears as Orzsike and her Jewish name was Eszter.
They observed the high holidays now and then, perhaps they even ate kosher.
The change in regime [26] didn’t really affect me. I was quite old already at that time, and the way I see things, my lack of religious feeling didn’t change. Naturally, I look at manifestations of anti-Semitism, which lay dormant and has come to the surface since 1989, and tries to take up more and more space, and it affects me, but I am optimistic.
I support the formation of Israel, its survival and development with all my heart; I have done so and will continue to do so. I think it’s extraordinarily important from a global viewpoint – so not just from a global Jewish viewpoint – from a total world view, that it exists and flourishes.
,
After WW2
See text in interview
When I got married again, I got a two-room apartment in Wesselenyi Street from the Planning Office. At the time, offices and big companies had the means and it was customary to award apartments to recognized workers. My younger son was born there. And my mother and I had had enough of her living in a rented apartment, so she moved in with us. So my wife, my mother and my little boy and I lived together until 1962 when, with the help of my mother-in-law, we exchanged the two-bedroom apartment for a three-bedroom one on Damjanich Street, and we lived there until my next divorce.
She didn’t graduate from university, but became a very talented journalist. She worked for various papers and for the press service of the Hungarian Chamber of Commerce, for the press service of Hungaropress. Her English and German were perfect. The Hungarian Chamber of Commerce was an organ of the Foreign Commerce Ministry, and so she was often sent as Hungarian press attaché to the Hungarian section of trade fairs abroad.
During the war she went into hiding, her mother hid her in some convent.
Thirst for knowledge, reading, respect for writing, love, respect and honor – I feel these are the virtues by which I am Jewish, and not because I read the mah nishtanah or my children do. And usually, I came together with these types too.
In 1956, I met my second wife, Agnes Kovacs, on vacation. The Planning Office had a vacation resort at Revfulop, and her first husband had also worked at the Planning Office.
G. knew he was Jewish but he wasn’t circumcised. This subject was always, how shall I say, in the air, especially in the first years, when we were not far removed from it – you know, he was born in 1950 and the Holocaust lasted until 1945, but I never thought of, how shall I say, ‘holding a course’ on it. They had Christmas in their childhood. I didn’t go to synagogue, and didn’t live a religious life. Perhaps we spoke of Chanukkah, but no Chanukkah candles were lit at home, that’s for sure. So he didn’t grow up in the religious spirit. But he thinks of himself as Jewish. Perhaps more so than I do. He married a Jewish woman.
And I struggled a lot with how marriage and a child would work out. It didn’t really, because we divorced in 1953.
I first got married in 1948. We only had a civil wedding in the II District council offices. My first wife was Eva Erdos. She was four years younger than me, I believe. She was Jewish, born in Veszprem, and had studied hairdressing, but at the time we met, she was working in book distributing at Kossuth Publishers. She had a stand at the party committee office in the IV District, which was still downtown, where Kossuth Publishers, which dealt with political type books, sold books for cash or in installments. And that’s where we met each other. I was renting an apartment, she owned a studio apartment, so I moved in there.
But my real job during these events was to secure food and a normal life for us. Just like in 1945 when I never thought about not going home, in 1956 I didn’t think of defecting. I am from here, I belong here. If I look out of the tram window and spot a certain house, I know I am at the corner of Terez Ringroad. I know the natives’ language, their habits. Here I know how to think and do my thing. That’s how I feel. My father felt he had to be a merchant in Szentes, he didn’t move to Budapest, they deported him – he might have survived in Budapest. He belonged in Szentes as an iron merchant; I belong here, in Pest.
When I returned to Szentes in 1945, I had become fairly left-wing given past events, so that I immediately joined the Hungarian Communist Party [24] there in Szentes.
I did not go further up the ladder – this is probably because I hadn’t been a party member since 1956, and generally, among those qualified, they chose party members as high functionaries. But I didn’t mind, because I didn’t need to do any managerial tasks that would have taken me away from my field. For example, I didn’t have to employ or dismiss people, so I was very happy with this situation.
so at the beginning of 1953 I started working at the head office of investments of the National Planning Office and I worked there for 15 years. I started as a lecturer, and in the end I was an assistant manager, an advisor.
I magyarized my name in 1948. At the time I’d just moved from Szentes to Budapest, and I already had a job at VASERT, and no one understood my name on the telephone. I was thought to be Kuncz, and many similar names, but not a Gunst. That’s when I decided to change it, so that everyone could easily say my name. The rule was to submit three names, which the Interior Ministry could choose from. I only submitted ‘Galla.’ I mused on this one and that one a bit, then decided that the only good name for me was one that was easy to pronounce everywhere.
As much as I disliked retail, I liked national iron trading. I became a company leader, I had the task of obtaining stock. In the spring of 1948 I got a position as one of the directors of a nationalized iron trade company, until it was merged into the VASERT.
My mother – with whom I was living – told Ella in a letter about the difficulties we had in Szentes, and then I got to Pest through Ferenc Kende, who gave me an agency position to distribute various papers in certain places in Budapest and Fejer County, where I had to distribute the children’s magazine Huvelyk Matyi [‘Tom Thumb,’ children’s monthly magazine published from 1947 until 1949], and the official journals of the Material and Price Office. I didn’t get a salary, but worked on commission. I went around the countryside by train, on foot, by cart, it was hard work. I lived from this for months, looking for a way to break free from it as soon as possible.
She went to the railway cashier, where they knew her, in fact, she was a well-known journalist there, and she got a ticket on credit for the fast train to Pest. She had no money, but the ticket lady gave her one on credit. She traveled up to Pest with the next fast train – she had acquaintances here in Pest through whom she found a place. Bela Balazs was a close acquaintance of hers, he also helped. She went into hiding with fake papers, and in the end she got through everything. She had an old Christian friend, called Ferenc Kende, who had a book and newspaper distribution office, he also helped her.
Despite her 61 years, my mother was like a 40-year-old in many ways, she didn’t like being idle. On top of that, my father’s cousin, from whom we rented the two rooms was quite a difficult woman to bear, my mother also wanted to get away from her, so she got a job through an acquaintance as a cashier in a state enterprise called ‘Clothing Store.’ And my mother had very good times there, she worked for at least ten years until she retired. Somewhere there are certificates praising her work, what a good worker she was.
Our house was our own and when I knew that I was coming to Pest, I wanted to sell it. There were not many idiots who bought houses in 1947, when the winds of nationalization [23] were blowing through the country, yet I found two who divided it up and bought it. Naturally, for a ridiculously low price since I needed the money to get furniture in Pest. After selling the house we moved to Pest. My father had a cousin here, a widow who had a big apartment, which was also empty, so we rented two rooms from her and furnished it with our own furniture. I lived there with my mother until I got married, and my mother stayed on there.