Laszlo and Erzsebet Spiegler

This is a picture of my wife Erzsebet Spiegler (nee Reich) and me on vacation.The photo was taken in 1955 on the lake in Tapolca. After the war when life became a little easier, we went on vacation. This was the first time that I went to Tapolca, a well-known holiday resort and spa. We rented a boat and went rowing on the lake. My wife and I enjoyed this vacation very much. When I was demobilized in 1938, I learned to dance and we used to go dancing. At that time there was a café right here at the corner, it was called Pannonia café, and there I met my wife. Then I started to go dancing with her, and after a while I told her that I was going to betroth her as my fiancé. I pulled the ring off my finger and put it on hers. This was in 1939. Then they demobilized me, and then called me up again. I was released from service again, and then they called me up in July 1942, and I was there until the end of the war. The wedding was held because they said in March 1944 that they would take away the girls but not the women. Then I came home - I was in forced labor service at Kassa - and we got married. It was a civil marriage. When I returned home after the war we had our religious marriage in the synagogue of Ujpest. When we arrived back home, we saw that we'd been looted, the house didn't have anything, not even a glass. Only the walls remained of the house where my wife had lived with her parents before the terror. When she came back, she couldn't enter her own house. She had to lodge an appeal against it, and then she got back one room. Then I joined the co-operative in July 1952. I left the shop. I had bought it for 300 grams of gold and I had to leave it. There was no one to buy it. And then I worked in the co-operative. My wife learned to be a typist and shorthand secretary. She worked at a company. But I told her, 'Mum, don't go to work, I earn our living, and you don't have to.' But she wanted to go anyway. I retired in 1971.