Vera:
And we did all this hard work during the sugar - what they called the campaign of the factory.
Title: PHOTOGRAPHS
Vera:
But after that one had time to travel. And my mother was very pleased to have the fraulein and the two children there.
This was in Italy. Can you think of a lovelier spot? The mountains, the sea, the old buildings. I’ve got photographs of all this. I ought to take my photographs out to remind my poor head.
Vesuvius. It’s very, very few people who see this, or take the picture. Now we go somewhere else.
And there was this photographer who was interested in these. Kleinberger was his name. Now I remember. And he said, ‘You have marvellous pictures. Let me enlarge them.’ He didn’t just enlarge them. He retouched them I think. But this I think is a very successful picture. He was so delighted with my photography.
If ever you get a chance to go to Spain and don’t grudge time these places which the Arabs have built are just magnificent.

Title: EDDI
Vera:
‘Eddi.’
Ah ha, gosh what a good film it is. You see I wear no hat. There you can see what straight hair I had. And that's my mother and the pram with Eddi in it. You can see, 'Zuhause in Ripiceni.’ Well of all things!
I felt that the best thing for me is to go back to Sárvár and have the baby there. The doctor said, 'Since my university days I haven't assisted at a child's birth, but I don't know what to do with the baby.’ So the midwife arrived and she quickly bathed the baby and she stayed for a fortnight in the house. Would you believe it, a fortnight?
'Fünf Monate alt.’ Five months old.
Music cue: I Lift Up My Finger and I Say, ‘Tweet Tweet’
Vera:
Oh look at him. He’d just had his vaccination.
And that is in the playpen. The wood tastes very good. And that’s when he started to crawl all over the place. There we go. Oh look at that. Now he is walking.
‘Beim Balaton.’ That’s the old granny. And that’s Lily there I think. And that’s Bob. He didn’t like to be splashed.
‘Eddi macht tuff tuff.’ ‘Tuff tuff’ is on the car.
He was a lively one. Isn’t he a lovely child? Aren’t you lovely? Yes.
There is Bob. I thought the world of him.
I had no nanny. I had a good cook and a good housemaid, so that was enough.

Title: TRAVELS
Music cue: Tain’t What You Do
Vera:
Naples, Paris, Milan, Köln, Vienna, Nice, Venice, Amsterdam.
I knew next to nothing about Britain except when they invited my father to see the first sugar factory that was built in Britain in Bury St. Edmonds. And I had just finished my secondary school and my father said, ‘If you have good results from the school you can come with me to England.’
A colleague of my father's, who worked in Budapest, he said, ‘My daughter has just spent a year in London and she is still there through the summer.’ And this girl - Annie Bergel was her name - showed me London and I don't know what other places, lots and lots of other places. And you know I think that girl returned to her family in Hungary and they all died. They took them to the concentration camps. Ja.
There was a great exhibition just outside Paris. France had lots of colonies. ‘Colonial exhibition.’ That's what it was called and we thought that would be very, very interesting to see.
There you are. All the people on the bicycle. ‘In Fischerdorf Vollendamm.’ Oh look at that. I wonder whether that still exists.

Title: ELEMENTAL FILMS PRESENTS

VERA EISNER élete

(kisfilmek zenéje a Magyar Jazzkutatási Társaság lemezéről)

Title: RIPICENI
Music cue: Solitude
Vera:
So when did I get married? Nineteen twenty-nine, I think. At nineteen.
Bob said, ‘What would you think of Egypt?' I said, 'Egypt? I'd love it.' And I did!
On the way back we took a ship that went to the Black Sea port in Romania. Bob was asked would he mind taking over the running of the factory in Ripiceni. If you know where that is. We would have gone straight to Ripiceni but there was such a snowstorm that the train, everything was stopped. So we stayed in Bucharest for a few days. And the owner of the sugar factory in Ripiceni was living in great luxury with his wife and the wife said, 'You have plenty of time to get to Ripiceni, you will soon know it - enjoy it while you're not there.’
Nowhere was there such a poverty stricken village as Ripiceni was. Very remote. It's at the end of the world it seemed.

Title: BOB
Vera:
He was never called Josef. Never.
Music cue: My Heart Belongs to Daddy
Vera:
When we met I was either nine or ten and by sixteen I was properly in love with him. But he didn't know. I didn't let it out. He was very, very taken with my mother who was a very, very delightful person. But there was not much going there..