Olga Adler - July 26, 1982
Hungarian Takeover
Okay, where did we leave off, uh...
About schools.
Okay. And uh, before the war, I think you were talking about the incident out in front of the hotel.
Yeah, the hotel.
Yeah, yeah.
That's right. My first memory goes back that the Hungarians came in and, uh...
And what did you think about it then, what you saw?
Terribly scared. First we were not scared. First, when we heard that the Hungarians will come in that my father grew up under Hungarian regime. Because in Europe the history is very funny. Twenty, for twenty years you are Czech and then next twenty years you are Hungarian and then the next, so. So, you know, just after the First World War in 1918 when, when they established Czechoslovakia. And uh, my, my father's mother son was Hungarian and he went to Hungarian school too. So we, we uh, we thought ourselves Hungarians even under the Czech era because in 1938 they, they had a, a... How do you call it when you... [Asking husband] Poppi? How do you call an ??? ?
Husband: Census.
Census...
Oh.
taken. So, you have to, what nationality you are, so my hu... my, my father wrote in Hungarian. That's why I had trouble in Czechoslovakia and then I came to the United States to, to have a visa or being, to live in Prague, because we lived in Prague after the war because they hated the Hungarians because they took away their countries, in, in country in '38. So, my husband had a, a, an awful lot of uh, problems with my, in that identification that I was a Hungarian. So, what do I do in Czechoslovakia then and how should I come up in the Czech ??? if I was Hungarian?
Mhm.
Then I say that we associated so much with the Hungarians that my, my father wrote in 1938 that our nationality is Hungarian...
Mhm.
you know. So, he thought that the Hungarians will come in, so he was in the war and he was in uh, an officer, so Hungarian. But just two or three days, just took two or three days to find out that those are not the Hungarians under Franz, Franz Josef, you know, because the Jews didn't have any problems then. So, that's when the real problems started.
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