INT: That’s a lovely story. And looking back over your life are there any reflections, any reflections on your life as a whole that you would like to make?
ML: Well I’ve been through quite a lot especially in my, in those years when actually my character was forming and I think what I’ve been through has made me a better person and more tolerant and more understanding of other cultures and other people and other peoples manifestations so…
INT: And are you glad that you came to Scotland and you didn’t go to America?
ML: Yes, absolutely. Because I have two sisters in America and when I went to visit them I didn’t like America. It’s too… I think it’s a very selfish country and too much money minded and too much rushing around and I’m not particularly very fond of Americans anyway because I don’t like the way of living.
INT: Well I think we’ll stop it there, Marianne. Thank you very much for telling us about your arrival in Scotland and everything that happened to you before and afterwards. Thank you.
ML: Some of it. Well they can’t hear it.
[break]
INT: Ok we’re recording again with Marianne Lazlo. This is an additional piece she would like to include in reflections on life.
ML: Now, since I’ve been in Edinburgh and made Edinburgh my adopted home and I was very happy here and I used to have, or still have, a friend on the East coast in Longniddry and sometimes I go to visit her. And then to go to get to Longniddry, to the East coast I had to go through Craighall, Newcraighall.
There was a brick factory near the railway, exactly the same situation as I was reminded by this to my home town in Debrecen when we were deported and marched to the brick factory and kept there for a few days until the cattle wagon pulled up on the railway and we were forced into the cattle wagon and deported. And then this brick factory always reminded me of this event when I was a child because the brick factory all over in Europe I think, everywhere, is built in the same style and the same, under a…, like a blueprint on the same print. It’s like the Germans were doing the whole, during the Holocaust – the concentration camps, every concentration camp, which was all over; in Poland, Austria and Germany where-ever, all built on a blueprint, were all the same.
And then this brick factory obviously reminded me of that time when we were rounded up and had to march to the brick factory. And then it always brought back memories for me from my childhood.
However, I always wanted to forget it because I don’t like to remember bad things. But one day they rebuilt, or improved the environment and improved the town and I found that the brick factory was completely demolished.
In Edinburgh, at Newcraighall there is a lovely new shopping centre built on top of it and then when I noticed that I felt free, really free because I thought now the last reminder of the Holocaust, of my Holocaust, was disappeared. So now I am free, really free, now in Scotland, in Edinburgh because there is no more brick factory to remind me of the bad time.
INT: I think that’s a wonderful story Marianne to add into your memories of settling in in Scotland and your reflections on life. Thank you.