Miklos Kallos

This is a more recent photo, where I am in the kitchen of my house where I presently live, on Brancusi Street in Cluj Napoca. The picture was taken in the 1980s.

I used to smoke the pipe for a long time. I remember that when I was young, about 15 years old, I was prepearing pupils for their bar mitzvah, this way getting money that was spent to buy cigarettes.

In those times there wasn’t so much noise against smoking as nowdays. I also remember that on my 17th birthday my father gave me a ‘tabachera.’

I studied Psychology for one year, after which I transferred myself to the Faculty of Philosophy.

I graduated in 1952. Concurrently, I was a student and a teacher: in the 2nd year, I became a tutor at the Philosophy Department. In the year of my graduation, I was already an assistant.

Then I went up the entire academic ladder. For a while, I was both the head of the Philosophy Department and the dean of the Faculty of Letters at the Bolyai University.

In 1959, the two universities were united and the result was the Babes-Bolyai University.

In 1959, he, Nicolae Ceausescu was sent - as the party's bully - to assure the unification of the Romanian and the Hungarian universities. It was no easy job.

He presided over the commission which came and achieved the unification.

There was a whole week of endless meetings: in the morning or in the afternoon; with the faculties or with the groups of students; with students or without students; plenary or open only to the teaching body etc.

Ceausescu was accompanied by the Minister of Education, logician and Academy member Joja. But the minister didn't say one word. It was Ceausescu who did the work, gave the orders and pulled the strings.

Since I had been the head of the Philosophy Department at the Bolyai University, I became, after the unification, the head of the Philosophy Department of the new Babes-Bolyai University.

They also appointed me assistant dean at the Faculty of History and Philosophy, an office which I kept till the late 1970s. In those days, the dean was Prof. Lascu.

Then I worked with Stefan Pascu and, later, with Camil Muresanu. I was a head of department until 1980.

I am still a consultant professor at the Babes-Bolyai University; I coordinate doctoral dissertations.

I also got involved in the activity of the Jewish Committee. I was its president; now I am a member in its leadership.