Dénes Stromszky

My first occupation was when they took us to Szeghalom, a state farm, to hoe beef carrots. That meant it had to be cleaned from the weeds. Imagine this state economy, that's why communism failed, and it's failing where it still exists, for example in North Korea, that even the dog didn't care about the economy. Imagine that the turnip was this big and the weeds were such bigger! They drove me over and gave me a hoe. First of all, they taught me how to hoe, I have never hoed in my life, how do I know that? How should I know? We had to start, there were about thirty or forty of us. You had to be careful not to hoe the carrot. If you dig out the carrot, the carrot is over. This was the state economy: there was no one to work. The whole of communism was built on the fact that no one has any interests whatsoever. There was no community of interest.

Around 7 in the morning they rang the doorbell, there were two policemen, I went out, they brought a paper saying that a truck would be here tomorrow morning and we would be deported (relocated). Done, that's it. I had no other choice but to go to school at 8 in the morning and the first thing I had to do was to go to the director, that I - as a Stromszky, with "S" - would be on my turn sometime in 3 days, and I told the director that he should do something, that I be the first at the graduation, because tomorrow I will be taken to hell. I had no idea how this was going to happen, neither did any of us. An hour or a half has passed since I received the letter. Math was taken in written, and there was still a lot of orals. Graduation started sometime at 9, and I was the first. The only thing I asked for was that there were 160 questions in chemistry, and I could get prepared only with 120. I said that I know it is not a common request, but if possible, they would do it in such a way that they would give from the first 120, and that is how it happened.