Zsuzsa, Judit and Margit Maszler in Pilisvorosvar

This photo was taken in our garden in Pilisvorosvar. I am standing on the right, my sister on the left and our mother in the middle. My father inherited the house from his parents. It was on the main street of the village. Our mother did not work but looked after us and kept the household, helped by a young Christian servant. She loved sewing and needlework. She made most of the clothes for us and was happy to teach anybody in the village various tricks in needlework. My dear father worked as a business agent in the local coal mine. His job was to collect orders for call from Budapest. We went to elementary and middle school in the village. In 1936 my mother saw an advertisement by the Berta Neumann salon, a very elegant dress maker salon located in the center of Pest, in the newspaper and she paid a visit to the owner and asked her to take us on. We were accepted and worked there until the German occupation of Hungary. We had to get up at 5 every morning and leave at 6. The train arrived in Nyugati station and half past 6, from there we took a tram and then walked. We had to change into our elegant working clothes-a blue gown with a white collar. At 8 sharp the manager of the workshop said: 'young ladies, it is time to start.' At half past 9, the first table could go and have a bite for 10 minutes. Then the next table. We worked until 1 and then we had a two-hour lunch break. The girls who lived outside Budapest brought their lunch with them. There was a small stove and we could heat our lunch on it. In the summer we went out to have a walk in the lunch break or we sat in the Gerbeaud [a famous patisserie nearby]. Then we worked until 6. We arrived home around 7. We envied those who lived in Pest because they could go to the movies or go out. We had to go home to Pilisvorosvar. There were 50-60 girls in the workshop, many of them Jewish. We sewed beautiful clothes for countesses and famous actresses.