2.

Komárom County

We move now some 300 miles westward and find ourselves in

Komárom County.
The city of Komárom is located at the confluence of the Danube
and Vág rivers, on the left bank of the Danube, approximately halfway
between Budapest and Pozsony (Bratislava). The city is now called
Komarno and it is the southernmost location in Slovakia. King Béla IV
founded Komárom in 1265. As it was established by royal charter, it
was officially recognized as a city. King Károly Róbert confirmed
these privileges in 1331, expanding the importance and influence of
the city.
There was also a famous castle overlooking the city. The
autonomous status of the city caused constant tension with the
castle’s commanders appointed by the king, who attempted to
exercise their presumed authority over the city. As a result of these
conflicts, the city attempted to join the community of free kingdom
cities, thereby extricating itself from the authority of the castle. Queen
Maria Theresia eventually granted this privilege in 1745.
During the 1848-49 Hungarian War of Independence, György
Klapka defended Komárom for two months, and finally surrendered
on honorable terms.
Komárom is an important cultural center. Mór Jókai (1825-1904),
the most important Hungarian novelist of the 19th century, was born
here.
In the second half of the 19th century we find a poor Jewish
family nearby, in Tata-Tóváros, “the town of waters” which is not far
from Komárom but on the other side of the Danube. The town and its
beautiful lakes attracted nobility from all over the country, including
Count Miklós Esterházy, who built a castle here in the 18th century.
There were horse races here every fall, drawing participants from as
far away as England.
 Ignátz Weiner and his wife, Johanna Lőwinger, however, did
not live in the castle. They lived in a one-room and kitchen apartment
with tiny little windows in an adobe house on the banks of the Metsző
creek. They had several children, but some of them died in childhood.

2
Two girls and two boys survived. The parents went to work early in
the morning, but the family frequently went to bed without eating
anything for supper.
Mr. Weiner was a common carrier who transported sugar beets
from the farmers to the sugar factory with his horse carriage. Once
his horse kicked him; from then on, he limped but had good spirits
and tried to avoid the problems of life. He had a moustache and a full
beard. He loved his children very much; he liked talking to them and
listening to their imaginations. “Tell me what happened and how you
feel about it; not only one or the other but both” – he used to say to
his children. He died in 1907, leaving his wife and four children
behind.
He had a nephew, Pál Weiner, a young man who looked like a
hawk and worked as a tailor in a theater. We will meet him again in
1945.
Johanna’s father fought in the Hungarian War of Independence
and was killed in the Pákozd battle in 1848. Johanna was born in the
same year. After the Hungarian defeat, her mother had to flee her
village and ended up in Tata where she spent the rest of her life.
Johanna was a proud woman who after the death of her husband
carried the burden of the family on herself without complaining,
usually dressed in black, and her voice was like that of a bird. She
died in 1926, at the age of 78.
Johanna’s brother Ludwig was an influential government official
who had no contact with his family besides weddings and funerals.
Henrik, Johanna and Ignátz’s older boy, became a tile stove
builder. He went abroad soon after he became a journeyman. He
worked in Austria and Germany for many years. After he came back,
he started to deal in second-hand goods. Commerce brought him
some wealth; he started a family and forgot about his poor parents.
Márton, the younger son, was a mild-mannered boy with blue
eyes. He learned the trade of printing and moved to a little town in the
middle of Hungary where he met his wife, a nice, quiet girl. Later he
established a printing shop in a nearby village. His wife, Ilma, went
from village to village to sell lace tablecloths at local markets. This
was an exemplary family. However, being far away from Tata,
they also lived their own life without too much contact with their
mother.
Ida Adél (born May 25, 1879) remained in Tata-Tóváros. She
was her father’s favorite child, not very tall, an ordinary girl with blue

3
eyes, majestic bluish black hair, and a very beautiful voice. She was a
bit of a romantic, and she had a tendency to call everything in
diminutive terms. She was not religious but feared God and spoke the
dialect of Western Hungary with some charm (kényér, nékéd, csén
légyén, alunnyi kő má, etc). She used only her middle name (Adél)
and nobody ever called her Ida. She was fascinated by the beautiful
dresses worn by the ladies who accompanied their cavaliers at the
horse races and tried to create such dresses herself. When she was
14 years old, her father bought her an old Singer sewing machine,
and eventually she became a seamstress who went from house to
house with her machine to repair old dresses and sew new ones.
Instead of working with her Singer machine she could have
become a singer herself. She liked to sing during her work in the
dressmaker’s shop where she was an apprentice. Once a rich couple
walking on the street heard her voice. The man happened to be an
impresario with a foreign opera company. He was quite impressed
and offered to take the girl abroad to teach her music. Johanna
angrily rejected the offer: “Who do you think my daughter is to make
her an actress?” Adél was too scared to utter a word.
Adél’s younger sister, Katica (born in 1887) was like Adél with
the exception that she had blonde hair and a thinner figure. She
earned her bread by combing rich ladies’ hair. She spoke good
German which opened the door to the richest houses in town. She
married another Mr. Lőwinger, a relatively well-to-do merchant in
Komárom, and they eventually became quite affluent. They had three
children, Edit, Éva, and László; their fourth child died in infancy. They
had a maid and could even afford to hire a big-bodied blond Sudeten
German fraulein to take care of the children and teach them German
while their parents attended to the shop.