Alice Kosa in the 1980-90s

This is me, Alice Kosa, in the 1980-90s.

I took on a job late, I worked for six years and eight months only. It has a story too - life consists of these minor stories.

Since I wasn't ugly at all, my husband didn't want to let me go to work by no means.

He cheated me, but he couldn't stand that I would cheat him. But I never had something like this in my mind.

Juditka [Alice Kosa's daughter] was a kindergartener. In this street, very close to us lived a pretty, divorced woman - she was also called Aliz, Aliz Farkas - with a five-years-old little girl, Ildiko, who came to play with Juditka.

She was here playing with Juditka. Juditka liked little dolls, I bought her a lot, she was five, but she cut holes in old rags, and put them on [the dolls as skirts].

Around three o'clock someone is opening the door, my husband was coming home.

And the little girl says: 'Uncle Kosa is coming.' I was staring open-mouthed.

I say: 'So dear, do you know well uncle Kosa? How do you know him?' 'He usually visits us.' Ah, that's it, here in the neighborhood, and uncle Kosa frequents that house.

Well, let's see to do something, because one may never know. I'm getting old.

I earned well, because I was mending invisibly, I was selling home-made chocolate, my sister sent me from Brasso coffee, everything I could sell.

So I didn't feel the want for anything, but it wasn't a secure ground. I needed a secure ground.

Alright then, if he goes there, then I would go to an office.

And I found a job, against his will, because I said myself, what would happen if time passed and he left me? I have to do something.

So I reported to the employment agency, and that's how I got a job from 1st August 1952.

I was the chief accountant of the county headquarters of the Agricola. I had ten branch offices, ten villages had agricultural engineers, they all fell under my responsibility.

I liked accounting very much, and that was what I had learnt, it's true that I forgot everything.

But I learnt again very fast, and the Agricola had a much simpler accounting system than if I were chief accountant in a factory.

Maybe I wouldn't have taken on a job in a factory, but this was a small [enterprise], I had ten points [villages], I could do it properly.

In 1958 I fell ill, I had temperature for three months constantly, even the doctors didn't know for a long time what my problem was.

Then they figured it out: heart valve stenosis. I became a second-degree disabled due to my heart, they pointed out at that time already that my heart was of two and a half inches on the left side, three and a half on the right side, the blood-pressure was over two hundred.

And look at me, in 2005 I'm still alive. And my dear child isn't.

My heart is still big. Two years ago I went to a very kind, young Romanian doctor with my grandchild, I told her that I was still alive after so many years, because I didn't take the medicine [doctors prescribed me].

I retired on 1st April 1959, I had six years and eight months, that's the period I worked.

I had a low pension, I retired with seven hundred fourteen lei pension. In 1988 my husband died, I live alone for seventeen years.