The Kallos Family Book 2022

PART 1: THE KALLOS FAMILY • 13
profession, law; this was their punishment for
remaining supporters of Hungary after World
War 1, so both families took in boarders, which
gave them their income.
The Nemes household was an unhappy one,
so after a year Biri moved out and joined the
Krauss household, a very wealthy family whose
house was decked out with Persian rugs and
mahogany furniture.
As there were classes at the gymnasium on
Saturday Biri returned home to Ťačovo to see
her family only on Sunday each week.
For the entire two months of each summer
school holiday from 1935 to 1937, Biri attended
an exclusive summer camp in Slovakia’s Tatra
Mountains. The first camp was in the spa village
of Nový Smokovec, where Biri stayed just 2 kilometres
from the high Tatras at Hotel Amalia,
which still exists today. Biri was accompanied
there by her mother Lili. Biri, aged 9 at the time,
was so excited at the prospect of her first summer
camp away from home that she vomited on the
train ride and Lili had to pay to have the mess
cleaned up.
On arrival Biri and Lili first stayed together in
a hotel for a few days, after which Biri went to
the holiday camp and Lili returned to Ťačovo.
Hotel Amalia is a small pension that accommodated
only the children and their teachers.
Jewish teachers worked there over summer so
they could continue to earn income over the two
months of the school holidays. The hotel had a
swimming pool and there was a full daily program
of activities, including hiking in the Tatras. Many
wealthy Jewish families from Bratislava, Slovakia,
Budapest, Hungary and other nearby large
cities sent their children to the holiday camp.
The camp had kosher and non-Kosher
kitchens. Because he loved to spoil her Zoltan
paid extra money so Biri could have her favourite
ham sandwich at morning tea.
After her first summer at Hotel Amalia, Biri
spent the following two summer holidays at
a resort in Gánovce, a village situated below
the Tatras; her brother Laci joined on the last
holiday. Zoltan accompanied his children there
each time and stayed for few nights before he
returned to Ťačovo. The resort had two buildings
– a children’s section and an adult section
– and two mineral water swimming pools. A jazz
orchestra played every afternoon and evening.
In the afternoon the children danced and Biri
had her first dance with boys.
At the end of the holiday Biri and Laci were
collected by a parent who once again stayed a few
nights to relax before they all returned to Ťačovo.
Biri was still boarding in Chust in September
1938 when, as a result of the Munich Agreement,
appeasement-minded British Prime Minster
Chamberlain, hoping to arrest Hitler’s aggression
in Europe, gave the antisemitic dictator the
Sudetenland, a border region in Czechoslovakia’s
northwest inhabited by three million ethnic
Germans. Hitler, who had already annexed
Austria into Nazi Germany (the Anschluss) promised
that the Czech Sudetenland would be his
‘last territorial demand in Europe’ claiming that
this annexation occurred only because he had
wanted to unite all German speaking people.
Zoltan, fearing war was about to break out, picked
up Biri in a taxi and took her back to Ťačovo.
Six months later, on 15 March 1939,Czechoslovakia
disappeared from the map of Europe.
Breaking his Munich promise, Hitler occupied
western Czechoslovakia and, at the same
time, gave his friend, Hungary, all of eastern
Czechoslovakia, which included Ťačovo. This
occupation was to last for the next five years.
As a result Ťačovo became part of Greater
Hungary again, which eventually encompassed
Czechoslovakia’s eastern-most province of Sub
Carpathian Ruthenia and the southern part of