4 - Love and War

Summary

Piroska was born on 23 October 1911 in Békéscsaba, a city in south-east Hungary. She developed an independent streak early in life. From the age of about 14, she had travelled regularly to Switzerland to study and practise languages — German and English — and to make new friends.

She had also suffered from a lung ailment since childhood and found, as had many others before, that the pure Swiss mountain air improved her condition. In early 1938, she demonstrated her verve when she decided to leave Hungary for London, leaving behind her upper middle-class family.

She wanted to learn English and to train to become a teacher. She was fearful of the rising tide of fascism in her homeland and resented the increasing intolerance against Jews in Hungary. In May 1938, Hungary restricted to 20 per cent the number of Jews allowed in certain professions. A year later, Hungary passed laws which prevented any Hungarian Jew from being a schoolteacher, judge, lawyer, or member of the government.

Piroska was not Jewish, as assumed by many and speculated later by some Western diplomats in Singapore. Her hatred of fascism was motivated less by direct personal experience than by her own sense of human morality and compassion. Hence, while the Australian High Commission in Singapore was mistaken when, in a diplomatic despatch in 1959, it described Piroska as “possibly a Hungarian Jewess”, it was spot on when it added that she “certainly detested both the pre-war Hungarian regime and anything that could be associated with German fascism”. She remained fiercely anti-fascist and antiracist all through her life.

In Hungary, Piroska's parents, who were Roman Catholics, were fortunate to have the means to fund her escape to London. Her father, Karoly (or Charles, in English) Feher, was a managing director of an electrical company; her mother ran a business producing home linen — towels, napkins, bed covers — adorned with handmade embroidery.

Piroska had a younger sister, Klara, six years her junior. Later, she married a lawyer, Dr Kiss Istvan, and became a full-time housewife. They had one son, Istvan, born in 1949.