There was an agreement between the city’s Jews and the local education system that Jewish children would come to school on Shabbat but would be exempt from writing, so as not to disobey religious laws. I remember one Hungarian teacher who tried to insist that we Jewish children write on Shabbat and he became furious when we wouldn’t. One day, this teacher took all the schoolbags of the Jewish children in the classroom, mine among them, and threw them out the window, saying we should all be sent to be cannon fodder for Hitler. It was a terrible insult.
