Gabriella Seiger

This is my mother, Gabriella Seiger, at the age of 20. The photo was taken in Deva in 1920.

My mother was born on 10th January 1899, in Deva. Between 1916 and 1918, she went to the Medical School in Budapest for two years. In 1918, when Bela Kun brought Communism to Budapest, she came back home. [Editor's note: Mr. Lorincz is talking about the 1919 events, when the Hungarian Soviet Republic was proclaimed in Hungary.] Afterwards, she never went to college again and she married my father. He had been courting her ever since the age of four. He had met her while in kindergarten and he had waited until she grew up.

My mother may have been a housewife, but she was an extremely cultivated woman. She spoke French fluently and she also knew German. We must have had about 2,500 books at home.

My parents were very religious, very Orthodox - especially my mother. She observed the kashrut, the Orthodox kashrut, which means that she kept meat separately from dairy products. We used separate dishes for Pesach - they were very beautiful, with a blue edge, and were kept in the pantry. My father went to the synagogue every week, as he was the president of the community. My mother only went on the high holidays. She was always present during the major holidays, but it was rare to find her at the synagogue on Friday evenings or on Saturdays. On Friday evenings, she would light the candles - they were five, one for each member of the family. We had challah on our table - their shape was oblong and they were homemade. My father would slice them and give everybody their share. My father didn't go to the mikveh, only my mother did. The larger community had a mikveh, which was located in the courtyard of the community headquarters - there were several buildings there. My mother went there, at least once a week.