In the spring of 1935, a few days before Pesach (Passover) according to the Jewish calendar, I completed my 13th year. We celebrated my Bar Mitzvah on the last Saturday before Pesach (called Shabbat Hagadol, the "Great Shabbat"). This festive event symbolizes a great change in the life of every Jewish boy, the transition from childhood to, quasi-adulthood. From this day forth, the teenager becomes responsible for his own deeds, which until then had been charged to his father's "account"; he has to obey the laws of the Torah—not just the Ten Commandments, but all of its 613 “dos and don'ts” every day he has to put on his new Tefillin (phylacteries, praying ribbons) during his morning prayers.

On his Bar Mitzvah day he is solemnly and personally "invited" to read a chapter from the weekly Torah portion, just like the full grown-ups. It is customary for the young celebrant to make a festive speech, a Drasha, as the supposed climax of his Bar Mitzvah party. It consists of welcoming the guests, referring to the importance of the happening and to the pertinent Torah portion, and expressing his gratitude to his parents for having brought him up that far. It ends by wishing the guests a good time and enjoyment of the party. The same Rabbi or Torah teacher who had instructed the would-be orator how to recite it correctly, usually composed the Drasha. The language of the speech, in orthodox circles mainly, was Yiddish, or sometimes German. Only the "Neologs" (Reform or Conservative Jews) used Hungarian for speeches of religious content. This linguistic restriction made the task of the young candidates much harder of course.

Beside his other pedagogic pursuits, my father wrote many Bar Mitzvah speeches in German for the local boys, including my older brothers and me. He prepared an especially beautiful speech for me, dealing with the four different types of boys described in the Haggadah (the traditional text read at the Seder, the Passover Eve meal). I remember no special difficulty memorizing this text, since I had learned to translate the Five Books of Moses into German for years and the language was familiar to me; it did not break my tongue, and I still remember the better part of it.

The whole community took part in the party my mother had prepared with endless love. Everybody was curious to hear "what this little Weiss knows". I am quite confident that I disappointed neither my beloved parents nor our dear guests. The expression of general satisfaction, the stormy applause, and the loud, enthusiastic cries of thanks caused us great joy and relief.

I was the "Little Weiss" in the literal sense as well, as I was short and thin, compared to my peers. Nevertheless, I was among the best sportsmen in gymnastics at school. I also suffered from frequent headaches. My mother, singling me out of her eight children, always put some extra delicacies she knew I liked on my plate. My dear brothers and sisters never protested against this preferential treatment.

My older brothers had been sent to Yeshivot (schools for studying Talmud and Judaism, where Rabbis are trained and ordained) right after their Bar Mitzvahs. I was likewise obliged to prepare for leaving home, the warm family nest, to join a preparatory Yeshiva in Bratislava. I still had to finish the senior compulsory grade that was still ahead. Like all my future peers, at that preparatory school, I was to pass the last grade as an afternoon course in a German Bürgerschule (public middle school). But my beloved teacher, Rudolph Heller, had more ambitious plans for me. He wanted me to graduate from high school instead, hence to complete my senior year there.

First, he had to convince my father. Orhodox Jewry was opposed to "high schools", because their curriculum included Darwin's theory of evolution and The Origin of Species, which doesn't exactly agree with the concept of Heavenly Creation, as described in the book of Genesis, as well as the heliocentric astronomy of Copernicus and Galileo that also threatened basic religious beliefs. Moreover, My father did not like the general behavior of high school students. Heller argued that I was not going to be regular student, but only an "extern," a special student who attends a preparatory school and only visits the high school to take his final exams there.

I had to pass an entrance examination to be admitted to the 3rd grade of the Hungarian Junior High School in Bratislava, capital of Slovakia. Mr. Heller was confident that I would pass it without any special preparation, and I did so. After finishing my written test, the Slovak language teacher asked me where I had learned this language, and he couldn't believe that I studied only at a rural Hungarian elementary school, in that overstuffed classroom. My exams in the other subjects were likewise successful.

My two older brothers, Józsi (Joseph) and Erno (Ernest), had lived in the big city for several years as students of the "High Yeshiva" (parallel to "Yeshiva College") conducted by Rabbi Alive Schreiber, descendant of Rabbi Moshe Schreiber, the famous Chatam Sofer, a great Jewish religious leader in 19th century Europe. This Yeshiva was recognized as an academic institute entitled to governmental support, and its students enjoyed appropriate privileges.

They lived in a sublet room in the "Jewish quarter" of Bratislava, not far from my Preparatory Yeshiva, where I could join them as a third occupant. Both of them made their living, like most Yeshiva students, as "correpetitors", private tutors who helped younger pupils, mainly with subjects of Judaica.

My father took me to the big city, where we visited relatives and some of his friends, who readily agreed to host me once a week for lunch and dinner, because our family budget could not afford a more costly arrangement and neither could the modest income of my brothers. In the jargon of those times, this arrangement was called "eating days," i.e., eating every day at a different family. My hosts were very nice to me, making the effort to serve me my favorite menu; the parents of my teacher, the senior Hellers, excelled in this matter. The motherly lady asked me after every meal what I would like to have for lunch next Wednesday. I was very thankful for their kindness and helped one of their grandsons with Hebrew reading and religion lessons. In most places I had to speak German, mainly with the younger generation who did not speak Hungarian. I had no difficulty, I only had to improve my pronunciation in order to adapt to the local dialect, but I overcame this hurdle in no time.

I also had to pass an entrance exam at the Preparatory Yeshiva, where I was admitted, free of tuition fees, to the fifth grade, out of six, in which most students were somewhat older than I. With the curriculum I had no difficulty whatsoever, but as a new boy I was considered and treated as a stranger. What's more, as a country boy, my rural dialect was subject to much malevolent jeering. It took me quite a while to find my proper social position in the scholastic "pecking order". However, after a serious fight with the head of the jeerers, in which I had to beat him up as he deserved, all provocation stopped. From then on I was respected as one of the gang. I was invited to take part in the games played during the lunch breaks, where I earned the trust I was given. Some boys even invited me into their homes and introduced me to their families. At the end of the semester I was one of the most popular kids of my grade.

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