LGMW MAGAZINE

This object is important because it is the only material memory left of my maternal grandmother. She never wore jewelry, not even a wedding band. Most likely, she didn’t have any jewelry to wear. I remember her in the same housedress for all occasions. My maternal grandparents lived their little lives in constant fear of something, a choked-up life of deprivation, one can say. The only sweet memory, the only luxury they had was Grandma’s piano that she played from time to tim

Lajos and Nina Kolozhvari There are two people on this picture thanks to whom I bear my remarkable surname: my grandfather, Lajos Kolozsvari, and my mother, Nina. When I first arrived in Budapest, I was stunned in front of a small church built in memory of those who were lost in the First World War. The bas-relief depicted a hussar falling from his horse, with God catching him like a son. I saw my grandfather in that hussar. His parents and sister never found out what had hap

This dish is important to me because it comes down through the years and has been one of those family ‘members’ that has always somehow been there. These ducks were transported from Nazi Germany to Australia, to England and then to me in France – we have many such objects, and even more photos, in our family - sometimes too many to cope with it feels… This dish sat for decades at Mumse and Michael’s, my paternal German Jewish grandparents’ home, where we would often go and ha

I have always loved trains. Sometimes they say that the genes have memory.  Maybe it is true as one of my ancestors was involved in engineering of railways in 1870s when he moved to live to Yekaterinoslav (now Dnipro city in the Eastern Ukraine, founded in 1776). He was a German, Baron Von Beck if my spelling is correct. The peculiarity of the industrial development of Yekaterinoslav province was its internationalism.  All this led to a boom in the region in the 1880s.  This