Marta Feher’s mother, Melania Schlesinger, on the beach

This is my mother [on the left] and my father [in the back]. I don’t know who the others are.

My mother worked at the pay-desk at the lido [in summer]. In winter she did needlework at home. When my mother was at the lido I used to splash about in the water.

I also played with the boys and rowed, and went down to the other mill; we had fun. My father had spent seven years on the Russian battlefield in World War I. He was taken prisoner. Communism was instilled into his heart out there.

It was such that there was a man who was in the Soviet Union too, and when he came to the lido where my mother worked, my father immediately started to speak with him in Russian.

My father, as far back as I can remember, worked in a textile shop as a shop assistant. He worked on the Sabbath as well, because at that time an employee wasn't permitted not to work on the Sabbath.

But on Jewish holidays they didn't have to [because] the boss was Jewish too and they closed the shop on high holidays. Then everybody went to the synagogue.