Jeno Simonovits and Golda Salamon

That’s me, Golda Salamon and my husband, Jeno Simonovits.

This is my wedding photograph. My husband looked very good, and the photo represents him much better than me.

I got married, I knew this man, as his [first] wife had been my cousin. That's how it had to happen, it was fate.

My husband, Jeno Simonovits - in Jewish they call him Jajni, Jojne - was born in Remete [Palosremete, today Remeti] in 1907.

In this war [World War II] my first husband was taken to a forced labor camp in 1943. People received their call-ups, and they left.

That was in the Hungarian era [See: Hungarian era]. They were taken to the frontline, they didn't even know that we were deported in the meantime.

He says that he was at the river Don, where the battle was the hardest. Russians really ran into Germans and Hungarians [there were heavy fights].

He could get back from there [the river Don] that he became a prisoner. Russian women went there [in the camp], whose husband and sons were fighting in the war, and asked people who would go to work for them.

My husband spoke Russian well, many Ruthenians lived in Remete, the village where he had been born.

Thus he presented himself, because he could speak with them. He worked as a prisoner in a house where they ran a farm. He was set free very early, he was at home in March 1945 already.

I knew my prospective husband, because one of my cousins had been his wife, who had left with two children, and didn't return.

They lived too in this street, opposite to our house. He knew me well too and my parents from home.

That's how I became his wife. We had only a religious wedding, but not a civil marriage.

My husband used to say that if we had children, it was worthy going in for getting married, but if we hadn't, it had no reason.

We didn't have any children. I don't blame him, as he had had wife and children, but he never allowed me to see a doctor, to get examined, because it might have been a minor problem.

I would have liked to have at least one child. He said that if God didn't give us in a normal way, he wont' let me see a doctor, he won't let me undergo an operation, to go to baths, he won't let me anywhere.

He didn't want to let me anywhere. That's how I lived next to him thirty years.

While my first husband lived, I couldn't go anywhere, we were farming, and I couldn't leave the house.

We were keeping all kind of poultry, we had cows, we had horses, and my husband didn't want to be left alone even for one day.

When I got married for the second time, I left my husband at home, and I could travel. In 1973 I visited Israel, and in 1975 America.

In Ceau's time [Ceausescu, see: Ceausescu, Nicolae] they would let you out [from the country] in every second year [see: Travel into and out of Romania].

In those times a return plane ticket to America cost 13,000 lei, to Israel 2,500 lei.