My father also remarried in 1945. He married a young Jewish woman from Brasov, Margareta Rosenberg, who got pregnant. She was 16 years younger than him. But my father fell ill, he had very high blood pressure. He went to Sibiu for merchandise for his depot, and his blood pressure went up very quickly. He had a stroke and died before he could get to the hospital. He died in Sibiu in 1946 and was buried in the Jewish cemetery there. Sibiu didn't have a rabbi, but there was a minyan. I don't remember who recited the Kaddish; maybe one of my father's cousins who were there, or somebody from the community. And on the very same day he died, his wife gave birth to his son, Benjamin. His wife was devastated; she loved him very, very much. She came from a very poor family: her father was a watchmaker, but he didn't have a shop, he worked at home. She had another sister and a mother to support. So Margareta had to work as a laborer at a weaving factory here, in Brasov.
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Ruth Greif
My parents divorced in 1943. I remember the divorce wasn't final yet, and Rabbi Deutsch, came to our house, to try and patch things up, like it is the custom when a Jewish pair wants to split up. He didn't achieve anything, however. The reason for the divorce was that my mother fell in love with my father's associate at the dental material depot, Iosif Juhasz. She was still young, I was 12 or 13 then, and she wanted a divorce. After the divorce, my mother married him and I had to stay with her. After many years, they had problems as well, so they also divorced, and he left my mother and left for Germany. After that, my mother worked as a nurse to support herself.
I went on vacation with my parents, I remember going to Sovata, to Cluj [Napoca]; I remember we had an old car back then, a BMW, and we used to travel in it. By that time my father already had that dental material depot. I remember going to a maial - it was a rustic party - with my parents in our car. Since it was very old it broke down and it took us several hours to make this half an hour trip. These parties were held where the present neighborhood Racadau is; back then it was nothing but vacant land. Back then, when I was a child, there was also a little train, more of a tram actually, which connected Brasov to Racadau and the seven villages of what today is Sacele. We - my parents and I - also used to go out, eat out, usually at Aro [famous hotel and restaurant in the center of Brasov]. We had money back then, it wasn't a big deal like it is today, especially after the nationalization [7] came.
Also, Jews weren't allowed to walk in the street, for example, in groups, and four people were already considered a group. We suffered from all these restrictions, but I cannot say that we suffered from hunger because my father still had the dental material depot, along with his Hungarian partner, who did the traveling. We only found out that there were extermination camps and not just labor camps, as we had thought, after the war, when some Jews started to come home. Usually, they were very reluctant to talk about what had happened to them, but that's how we found out in the end.
My grandmother had to put up that sign outside her shop, and of course the business didn't go so well because most people didn't want to buy from Jewish shops because they were afraid of the consequences. And in the end, I don't remember when or the details, they took the shop along with the house from my grandmother because she was Jewish. The Saxon shops had a sign outside saying, 'Der Eintritt von Juden und Hunden ist unerwuenscht' ['The access of Jews and dogs is not wanted'].
I remember we learnt about the deportations from the BBC, in 1943 or 1944, I think. We lived in fear. I remember one time a convoy of legionaries passed by our house, with a lot of noise, in cars and motorcycles, and my mother looked out the window, saw their uniforms - all legionaries were dressed in black leather jackets and green shirts - and she immediately turned all lights off and we hid. Legionaries usually knew where the Jews in Brasov lived, and she didn't want to risk anything. They would just force their way into one's house. There was no direct incident concerning our family, but we suffered from the restrictions all Jews in Brasov suffered from: we weren't allowed to go shopping in most of the stores until 10 o'clock. Jewish stores were forced to have a sign outside saying 'Jewish store', so that people wouldn't come in.
And we were affected by the anti-Jewish laws: I was thrown out of school, and my father had to have an associate to continue his business. There were no deportations in Brasov, but we had to give up our radios, and each Jew had to give a new bed sheet, shirts, other clothes and even money, I think, to the regime. We brought all that to the police headquarters.
Anti-Semitism started when the legionaries came to power, but I also remember talks in our house about Hitler's rise to power, about the Anschluss [6] of Austria. We listened to the news on the radio, on BBC; I can still remember Hitler's shrill voice. My parents were very happy that they had left Vienna because by that time they would have been in Germany.
Then the legionaries came to power in 1940, and I was thrown out of school. The teacher came into the classroom, read my name out loud in front of the class and I had to pack and leave. Judita was also kicked out of school. So eventually I had to go to the Jewish industrial high school, which had four elementary grades and eight grades of high school, and which was located in a private house. After a while we had to move from there as well, to another private house. Judita went to the Jewish industrial high school as well.
I remember that Judita and me used to take little 'hikes' - the adventurous kind. One time we went to the airport, where the railway station is today, just to see the planes, although we knew very well we weren't supposed to go there - two girls on their own - because it was dangerous. We had to cross two railways, but still, we wanted adventure!
Back then, when I was in the state school, I had a good Jewish friend, Judita Graunfelds was her name. She lived on the same street as me, but farther from school than me and always came to pick me up. We were in the same class in school, we were of the same age. On our way we had to pass by a German high school for boys, and whenever we passed by, they came down and started to beat us, or called us 'stinking Jew'. The German boys beat us both several times. They knew we were Jewish; they probably saw where we were going. We were elementary school girls, and they were in high school, but that never stopped them. I saw one of those boys later, when he was an adult, and he pretended he didn't recognize me. The teachers didn't intervene. My parents knew about the beatings, but they couldn't do anything. In those times you were happy you got away only with that.
I started studying at a regular state school in town, on Agriselor Street. One of my hobbies back then was gymnastics. My teacher was Borbala Farkas, a Jew; she had studied rhythmic gymnastics in Budapest, and she was very talented. She held the classes in her house, and several girls went there.
I don't know why we moved to Brasov, but we came here when I started the 2nd grade of elementary school, in 1940. My father set up a dental material depot here, along with a Hungarian associate, Juhasz. On paper, this associate was the owner of the depot, and he was the one doing all the traveling because Jews weren't allowed to travel by train [because of the anti-Jewish laws in Romania] [5].
Our teacher from elementary school was a Jew named Cain. He was very religious: he never entered the classroom bare-headed; he always wore a kippah. We had religious classes with him as well: he taught us the alphabet, how to read prayers in Hebrew, things from the Old Testament, but I don't remember how often we had those religious classes. And as a rule, I was more fond of literature than of mathematics. When I was in elementary school, somebody always came to pick me up after classes; my mother or Kati.
I wasn't confronted with anti-Semitism in Sibiu, maybe because I went to the Jewish elementary school there.
I also remember I had a Jewish friend, Rose- Marie Springer, who lived across the street from us; we grew up together. She was two years older than me, I believe. Her mother was a doctor and her father was a jeweler. We used to play together, in our courtyard or in hers; we enjoyed going for walks in the central park, which had lovely alleys. She remained in Sibiu, and studied at the Jewish school.
When we were in Sibiu, our financial situation was rather good, medium; there was no poverty.
There was only one synagogue, but there were functionaries, like shochetim and hakhamim. There was also a cheder, but that was only for boys. The community also had a Jewish elementary school, and it was for boys and girls alike. Jews lived all over the town, but I believe that the majority lived close to the synagogue: my father's relatives, his cousins, his brother and sister and their families lived there.
The Jewish community in Sibiu was small, I cannot say how many Jews there were, but I know that the community offices, the Jewish school and the temple were all in the same courtyard, near the railway station. Most of the Jews in Sibiu were merchants, or had shops - all my relatives there ran shops - and there were also doctors or jewelers, like my friend's parents, but not too many.
My parents always fasted on Yom Kippur and so did I, even when I was just a child: first until 10 o'clock, then until 12, and then the whole day. I think I was 12 when I started to fast all day long.
My favorite holiday was Pesach. All the family gathered around the table, and my father read from the Haggadah. Usually it was I who hid the afikoman, or some younger friend - we always had friends over as well - because it is the youngest of the participants who hides the afikoman. My father led the seder, and of course he had to look for the afikoman, so that I could get my present. However, when we reunited with all of my father's family, whoever was the eldest used to lead the seder, and that was, I think, my father's uncle.
We went to the synagogue on Sukkot as well, but my father never built a sukkah.
On Chanukkah, I received Chanukkah gelt, and I spent the day at the Jewish community, with my colleagues. We used to play with the trendel [dreidel].
My mother and I only went to the synagogue on the high holidays; women didn't have to go back then, only on the high holidays. I didn't have to spend Saturdays or Sundays at home, there wasn't a special program for me. My parents used to talk to me about religion and tradition. It was usually my mother, who did so; she loved to read about these things. She used to talk to me about our history, about the exodus from Egypt, about Moses, Adam and Eve, about Abraham, about the first Jews. My father was also fairly religious, and it happened that he would talk to me on Saturdays about history, about the Torah, traditions, and so on.
On Friday evenings, my mother used to light the candles and say the blessing and for dinner we also had barkhes. My father went to the synagogue every Saturday, for the minyan, and both my parents tried to observe Sabbath. I think it happened that my father went to the synagogue on Friday evenings sometimes as well, he went whenever the minyan took place. On Saturdays his shop was closed, and my mother tried not to work.
Neither of my parents was very religious in an extreme way: my father didn't wear payes and my mother didn't wear a wig, but they both observed the high holidays.
My father wasn't involved in any political party, but I know he had social-democratic convictions, not communist ones. My mother, on the other hand, wasn't into politics at all. They never had to push me as far as reading was concerned, I myself was very passionate about reading. I used to read under the covers with a flashlight. Those were usually my mother's books, which I wasn't supposed to read at that age because they were a bit 'too explicit' for a girl my age!
They both read in German, and we had religious books as well, the Siddur in Hebrew with Romanian or German translations, and the Haggadah for Pesach. My parents also read newspapers, like Universul; that's the one I remember.
We had a library in the house; my mother read a lot of fiction. My father, on the other hand, was very fond of lexicons and difficult philosophy books. Every night, before he went to bed, there was a pile of books on his bedside table, and I always teased him about it.
Both my mother and Kati cooked, but we didn't observe the kashrut. I think we even ate pork.