Alice Kosa and Judit Dezsi

This is me Alice Kosa with my little Juditka [Judit Dezsi, nee Kosa] on the balcony of our apartment in Sepsiszentgyorgy, in summer 1946.

We lived there [in Brasso] only for two years, and in 1940 we came back to Sepsiszentgyorgy.

In Sepsiszentgyorgy we lived in the Kozfurdo street - it [the house] is still there -, because Romanians left, and we rented a nice, one-storied apartment surrounded by a garden, and a large field in front.

It had three rooms, kitchen and bathroom. It belonged to a Romanian family, the Romanian man had a Hungarian wife, but she felt to be more Romanian than her husband.

Well, and they left [in 1940]. Romanians left from Sepsiszentgyorgy, maybe one or two had the courage to stay.

Because Szeklers were bad, they smashed everyone's window, they [Romanians] didn't dare to go out.

The Romanian entrusted somebody - a Hungarian man -, we paid the rent through him. And we lived there.

My brother went to Pest [for a visit] with his wife - I still have first-degree cousins there -, and he brought me a needle for invisible mending. I still have it.

But it's not so simple to have only a hook, but it has a little spring. Well, I set down and learnt how to mend stockings.

I could do it so rapidly, almost like the machine.

My hands got so used to it. Thus I earned more than my husband, because stockings were a problem, it wasn't that simple that I go to the shop [and buy].

Sometimes you could find, sometimes you couldn't. I had a lot of work, I always went to bed at half past one in the night.

Because during the day I had to cook, I had to do cleaning. And I had three rooms, I let out one, I was mending, we felt want for nothing.

My husband disapproved, didn't want to let me work.

All right, he didn't feel like letting me work, but I invented all sort of things, because he couldn't have supported the family from his salary.

In the meantime [in 1945] the family got a fourth member, and we couldn't have lived on his salary of a thousand and four hundred lei.

I invented all kind of things. I prepared chocolate, I filled slices with delicious Dobostorta cream, and I was selling home-made chocolate, cakes, with a modest interest, to say so.

I sold one piece of chocolate for one lei, and the cake too. And in the meantime I mended invisibly until midnight, I earned more than my husband.

Because I couldn't bear it, I needed it [the money]… And we had two children.

Then I was teaching German [at home], sometimes I even had nine students [during one academic year].

My Juditka was born in 1945. Juditka too liked languages very much, I thought she would study languages.

But she took to mathematics, and so only engineering… And she could have chosen a profession, a university, which was close.

We didn't have the financial means - though she had a scholarship too.

And that's why she had to choose something which was in Brasso, she finished timber engineering.

She finished her studies in 1968, and I told her: 'If there are jobs in Marosvasarhely - since they put out a notice-board with the jobs -, I advice you to choose Marosvasarhely, to be in the same town with Alpar, your brother.

'Cause you see, your father is forty years older, I'm ill with my heart - well, I was always burying myself, I thought I had a short time to live, well, my feet and arms swollen, full with water, my face was filled with water many times -, my life is uncertain, and you shouldn't be left alone.'

That's how it happened indeed. There were three places in Marosvasarhely, and she got one of them, in the furniture factory.

She had to do practice in the factory for three years, it was compulsory.

During the time she was accomplishing those three years of practice, they were looking for teachers for the timber engineering high school of Marosvasarhely, for the evening classes.

And they called on Juditka as well in the factory, if she wouldn't like to teach in the evening classes - those who attend evening classes.