Eva Ackermann - December 6, 1982
Anti-Semitism
Let me ask you a couple of more questions about before uh, do you remember if your mother or you ever went to uh, the theater in Budapest?
Went to the movies mostly.
The American movies?
Um, some and um, some were Hungarian movies and uh, some American uh, uh, I remember the uh, uh, Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Oh, with Charles Laughton.
Yeah, I, uh watched when he was uh, uh and uh, but mostly Hungarian movies. The theater, not so much, because uh, everything was quite expensive and these were, a theater was sort of a luxury that uh, but I was very satisfied without uh, I had uh, as a teenager, I had friends and, uh...
Did you every experience any anti-Semitism?
Uh, not so much until uh, 1944, October, uh.
Nothing in school?
Nothing in, no not that much. Don't forget, I finished school at the age of fourteen, so there, I didn't, from then on--then I went to learn a trade that was in uh, I was sort of always in a Jewish environment, so for me, it was uh, I, I don't know, I uh, I didn't--I wasn't in a position where I would have, I probably didn't read the paper so much.
But you--no, no children in school called you names or anything like that?
No. I really uh, no.
You lived in a Jewish neighborhood?
Yes. Uh, uh, sort of a mixed neighborhood, no, not, I would say mixed. Yeah, mixed neighborhood. No, you couldn't call it, but uh, two functions we went to the Jewish center, so uh, that's where uh, that's where we met and we went to teas. That was uh, for teenagers over there, it was like uh, uh, in a hotel, they had five o'clock teas and then there was dancing and that's where generally those very same Jewish kids went. When I talk about kids, I talk about uh, seventeen, eighteen and, uh...
So you had a reasonably normal childhood?
Reasonably normal other than the heartache that I felt that uh, was, sort of, with me, but other...otherwise, I did because uh, as a girl I enjoyed a certain amount of popularity and when you--at that point, as I started to tell you before, that the first really hardship that I remember that uh, hit home, when the provinces were taken and, uh...
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