Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Peri Berki - December 9, 1983

Um, well, let's go back a little bit and discuss your background. What kind of family you came from and whether you had a happy childhood, or... What, what can you say about your background?

Once I remember this that I should write about my childhood adventure reading and writing class, and everybody wrote in very interesting stories. And I said my life, my childhood must have been very even and happy, I don't know any, any tragic and any ??? to happen. It was an even life, maybe. There was no catastrophes and no exaggerated events, so that's... I was born in Hungary and was brought up in Hungary and...

And your father did what? He was...

My father was born in Hungary, in fact, my grandparents were born in Hungary. And my father was a businessman. He, he owned a store of textiles and that was his profession.

Now you did not grow up uh, very Jewish in the sense that you're not Orthodox.

Not at all, not at all. As far as I remember, religion wasn't a factor, a very important factor in my family. No, we celebrated uh, Yom Kippur. We didn't eat on Yom Kippur. And we celebrated uh, Rosh Hashanah in a way that, once in a year my, once a year my mother went to temple. In Pesach we had a seder, a so-called seder, a nice family celebration.

How many... Did you have sisters and brothers?

We were five children. I had two brothers, and there were three girls and two brothers. And one died in the First World War, one brother, the second one was de... deported.

And sisters? You still have...

I have one sister living in California. The other one died a few years ago.