Bernat Sauber

This photo was taken in Marosvasarhely on 9th March 1999. A German delegation from Switzerland visited us then, they are standing in the left. They helped us when we renovated the synagogue from Marosvasarhely. (The works took three years, and the synagogue was consecrated in 2000). They donated 30,000 Swiss franks, and this was a large sum then. We became very good friends. One time, when they were here, they asked us whether the former ghetto still exists. so we took them to the brick factory in Koronka. The four on the right are us: I am the first one, beside me that's Eva Deutsch, she even was in that ghetto. She did the most of talking, since she was there. Third from the right is Sandor Ausch, the secretary of the community. We weren't at home by the time the deportations began, we were already in the Soviet Union as POWs. We only went there as the leaders of the community, but Eva Deutch related what happened there, because she was there for almost three weeks. What you see on the picture is only a small part of what was left of it. On the left, in that storied building, there was the so-called commandment of the ghetto, which was mainly comprised of Jews. Unfortunately this photo doesn't show the area where the detained people lived and slept. There were these open dryers for tiles and bricks. Drying meant just placing them there and covering them, without any walls around, to allow the wind and the air to circulate. The Jews were living in there, and those who had no room inside, had to sleep in the yard. This was in April 1944. In the long building in the background of the picture today there are some warehouses, but back then some of the Jews lived there, especially the elderly, the sick and the small children. This was still in the ghetto. But 70% of people lived in the dryer, and at least 30% of them outside, in the yard. They made small linen tents: they put the linen on four wooden sticks and stayed underneath.