Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Lisa Kallai - January 28, 2008

Do you remember if your, if your, your parents at home talked about what was happened in Germany or even in Austria at the time?

Not too much in front of me. I think they tried to protect me. At least I don't remember too much but I do remember before the Anschluß that there were certain things...German goods that we did not buy. I remember very much wanting some colored pencils which everybody else had and I couldn't have because we were boycotting German goods. But uh, that was about the extent of it.

And what did your father do?

Sorry?

What did your father do?

My father was a business man. My family had a factory...a small factory for brushes...brooms and brushes.

So you were a middle class...

Yes.

...you would say, middle class family. And you said you had...your father had a large family in Vienna...

My father was one of ten.

So how many cousins did you think...

Very few...fewer than ten.

But aunts and uncles...

Inverse, inverse pyramid.

But your aunts and uncles...you had nine aunts and uncles.

I had eight, one died uh, before I was born and I was the oldest...my father was the oldest and I was the oldest of, fo my generation so while I was in Vienna there were only two other cousins.

So, your extended...

I had lots of aunts and uncles but I didn't have many cousins.

Your extended family um, how large do you think that would have been? Aunts, uncles, then those two first cousins...about how large? From both your parent's sides.

Uh, well, my mother only had...my mother had a brother but he lived in Czechoslovakia so in Vienna it was, I mean, the immediately family was my father's eight siblings and they all lived in Vienna and we met regularly so...

So a dozen, a dozen people. How many survived the war?

Most of them did. One died in ???. All except my parents managed to leave it in time. My parents didn't but they survived.

They survived the war?

Mm-hm.