Urban Albert

“There was a hill overlooking us, and the boys and girls would always meet up there after lunch. They’d talk and talk, and someone would suggest they’d throw a party. They sent someone for a musician, and there was music and drinking. That’s how people enjoyed themselves there. Say, they’d send some younger boy to go to so and so and bring a girl. To ask her parents for permission, that her betrothed had requested it. People knew each other there, so they’d let her go.”

“He came back one morning. It was early dawn, and we had this one little dog, and he was awfully persistent. The dog barked and barked, so I went outside, it was still dark, and I said: ‘There’s someone coming our way.’ We went to have a look, and it was Ignác! In a Russian coat. The moment he came, we quickly took it off him. It was full of lice. Mum dressed him up straight away. Many of them came back like that. As far as I remember, after the second world war, there were five or six people who didn’t return just from our vicinity. Our neighbour didn’t come back, then my dad’s sister’s son, and another neighbour, and the two Morong brothers. Of those who were drafted before my brother, almost none returned.”