Abraham Pressburger taking a walk with his sisters

Abraham Pressburger taking a walk with his sisters

This photo shows me with my sisters on a walk in Bratislava, around the year 1930. On the left is my older sister Any, in the carriage is Lucy, and I'm standing on the right. I was born in Bratislava, on Panenska Street, if I'm not mistaken it was number 17. I was the second, the middle, of three children. All three children were born at home and not in a hospital. When I was six, we moved to Spitalska Street, close to Marianska Street, into a four-story building. In Bratislava, Jewish children usually attended Jewish elementary schools. My elementary school was on Zochova Street. When you went up the street, at the beginning there was this 'realka' [technical high school]. The realka, as opposed to the gymnasium [general high school] had seven grades and focused more on mathematics, while in our high school we had Latin almost every day. Next to the building of the Technical High School, on the left, was a Neolog elementary school. During the winter they usually poured out water and you could skate. That Neolog school was German. Then there was an Orthodox German elementary school with five grades. Close by was a hospital, a maternity ward where childbirths took place. I'm describing this so that you know how busy that street was. Across from these four institutions, the technical high school, two German Jewish elementary schools and the hospital, was a big, long building, also with three or four stories, in which were the offices of the Orthodox community. The community president had his office there as well, I think, and there was also a Slovak Orthodox elementary school and council school there. I attended an Orthodox school.
Open this page