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Deva

Romania

Interviewer: Oana Aioanei

Date of interview: October 2003

Mr. Lorincz is a rather short man who looks remarkably like his maternal great-grandmother, as his old photographs obviously show. He spends his mornings at the headquarters of the Jewish community in Deva, whose secretary he is. On Saturday mornings, he never misses attending the synagogue - even on good days, there aren’t more than eight men who gather for prayer. I first met him at the community’s office, located right next to the synagogue. When I visited him at home, I admired his neatly arranged library: he has about 2,500 books, including, for instance, an eleven-volume world history in Hungarian. The walls are decorated with paintings. He lives with his wife, his daughter, who has undertaken the process of restitution of the family property, and a cat, which they all consider the fourth member of the family. [Andrei Lorincz died in March 2005.]

My family background

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Glossary

My family background

My maternal great-grandparents, the Seigers, came from Peremishl [Przemysl], Poland. My maternal grandfather, Gottlieb Seiger, was born in 1864, in Hunedoara County, and lived in Deva. He was a butcher by trade. He had a brother, Lazar Seiger, who married Ida Czitrom from Blaj. They didn’t have children and Lazar died of tuberculosis, long before 1930; he’s buried at the Jewish cemetery in Deva. My maternal grandmother, Hermina, nee Roth, was born in 1878, in a village near Deva, I don’t know its name, and lived in Deva. She was a housewife. Both my grandparents were extremely religious, very Orthodox 1. But, despite that, they didn’t go to the synagogue every week, only during the holidays. My grandfather didn’t go during the week and not even on Saturdays.

My maternal grandparents’ house is still there today, but it no longer looks like it used to. It’s a 180-year-old house built at the time of my great-grandmother and great-grandfather. It fell into ruins in the 50 years of Communism and there’s not much of it left now. However, in my childhood, it looked all right, relatively well. It had three rooms and a kitchen; there was no bathroom. My grandparents had electricity, but no gas. The kitchen was plumbed. They didn’t have a garden, only a courtyard, and they had cows, horses, and a dog.

My grandmother was a nice person; she kept the accounts for my grandfather’s butcher’s shop. We didn’t use to eat at her place, but we visited her at least three or four times a week, especially because she lived very close to us: ten or twenty meters away. My most beautiful memory about my grandmother is that, every Sunday, before noon, my brothers and I would pay her a visit and she would give us money to go see a movie. Back then, a theater ticket cost about 1 leu and 50 bani. When the war started, in 1940, she didn’t live on her own, but with her granddaughter, Irina Lorincz. My maternal grandparents both died in Deva. My grandfather died in November 1924, and my grandmother on 17th January 1941.

My mother had two younger brothers: Bernat and Ernest. Bernat was born in 1900 and graduated from the School of Electrical Engineers in Bratislava. He lived in Deva and worked as a butcher and stock exporter. He was a very hard-working man and made a fortune after my grandfather’s death. He delivered cattle and swine – live or slaughtered. Uncle Bernat owned refrigerating cars. In winter, he stored ice in cellars; ice was collected from the Mures River. He went to many places, from Israel to England: he delivered cattle in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Germany, England; he went to Constantinople [today Istanbul] or to Rome countless times, for instance. He traveled across the entire Europe from 1930 until 1940, that’s for ten years. Bernat never got married; he didn’t have a family. He died in 1980, in Deva.

Ernest was born in 1901. He worked as a butcher in Deva too. He sold both kosher and non-kosher meat. He and his wife, Gabriela Herschkowitz, had two daughters: Sonia, born in 1929 and Nadia, born in 1932. The family also raised a third child, Vera Breier, who was Gabriela’s daughter from her first marriage to a man named Eugen Breier. Ernest lived in two other places: he stayed in Cluj Napoca until he was arrested by the communist regime, but he never worked there, and in Ineu, where he died, in 1976. However, he was buried back home, in Deva. At that time, I was living in Ineu too; Uncle Ernest died at my place. His wife left for Israel before he died. Sonia and Nadia lived in Cluj until his death, and then they left for Israel too. Sonia married Doctor Mihai Marina and bore him a daughter, Marina Monica. Marina is a doctor in Fula, Israel, and is married to engineer Blanaru. Nadia married Victor Klein; the two of them had a boy, and then got divorced. Their son, Norbert Klein, became an engineer in Israel, but I don’t know where exactly he lives.

My mother, Gabriella Seiger, was born on 10th January 1899, in Deva. Between 1916 and 1918, she went to the Medical School in Budapest for two years. In 1918, when Bela Kun 2 brought Communism to Budapest, she came back home. [Editor’s note: Mr. Lorincz is talking about the 1919 events, when the Hungarian Soviet Republic 3 was proclaimed in Hungary.] Afterwards, she never went to college again and she married my father. He had been courting her ever since the age of four. He had met her while in kindergarten and he had waited until she grew up.

My paternal great-grandparents, the Lorincz family, came from amidst the Szeklers [specific Hungarian region called Szekler land situated south-east of Transylvania]. They were born in the commune of Corund, in the Harghita County. Francisc Rakoczi 4, the governor of Transylvania 5, required all of them to declare themselves either Szekler or Jews. Thus, a part of the community joined the Jews, and the other part stayed with the Szeklers. I believe my great-grandparents were pretty religious people, since they chose to declare themselves Jews. I don’t know how they ended up in Deva. [Editor’s note: In 1868 in Bozodujfalu most of the Sabbatarians 6 converted to Judaism and it’s very likely that Mr. Lorincz refers to this event. Ferenc Rakoczi II was the Prince of Transylvania and Hungary between 1704-1711, thus mentioning his name isn’t appropriate in this context. Moreover during his reigning, he didn’t force people to make such choices.]

My paternal grandfather, Daniel Lorincz, was born in 1870. He lived in Ilia, where he was in the shoemaking business; he was a shoemaker by trade. In 1921 or 1922, he moved to Deva, where he worked as a clerk in a lawyer’s office for the rest of his life. My paternal grandmother, Helen, nee Grun, was born in 1876 and lived in Deva too. She came from the commune of Barastii Iliei, near Hateg, in Hunedoara County. She was a housewife. I remember my grandfather was a thin, tall man. My grandmother was short and thin. The two of them never had their own house, they always paid rent, and this is why they never kept animals. My grandfather wasn’t interested in politics. They were friends with all their neighbors. They lived next to Jews, Hungarians, Romanians and all that. They were on good terms with everybody, and my family was very popular and respected in town. My grandfather suffered from bronchial asthma and died from it. Both my paternal grandparents died in Deva: my grandfather in 1929 and my grandmother in 1951.

My paternal grandparents kept all the holidays. I remember Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and all the other holidays. They celebrated Chanukkah, Purim, Pesach, Shavuot and so on and so forth. I didn’t have any problems with the food, and I don’t have any now: whatever my grandmother gave me, I ate.

My father had two brothers and two sisters: Henrik, Ludovic, Margareta and Ileana. Henrik lived in Budapest and worked as a clerk for the Ministry of Health. Ludovic was a clerk too, and lived in Deva. He was married to Elisabeta Schneider, a German woman from Baia de Cris; the two of them had a son, Tiberiu, who became an engineer, and married Mariana, a clerk. They had twin sons: Valentin and Radu, who are now [in 2003] in their thirties. Margareta was a clerk and lived in Deva, Timisoara and Satu Mare. She died in Deva and didn’t have a family of her own. Ileana married Doctor William Grun, a dentist, and was a housewife. The couple had two sons, Petru and Gheorghe, who became engineers and now live in Deva.

My father, Eugen Lorincz, was born on 7th June 1898, in Ilia, in Hunedoara County. He graduated from Law School in Cluj Napoca, and worked as a lawyer. He did his military service between 1917 and 1918 – I don’t know where and how, but I know he was a soldier in the Romanian army. [Editor’s note: He couldn’t have been a Romanian soldier in Deva unless after 1920, after the Trianon Peace treaty 7, but was rather a soldier in the Austro-Hungarian army 8.] He lived in Deva.

My parents got married in 1921, here in Deva. There was a ceremony at the synagogue. They were both beautiful, very beautiful looking people. As far as their clothes are concerned, my parents wore what all the others wore at that time, nothing exceptional about that. They had a good financial situation. My father was a lawyer and was one of the most skillful men in town. As for my uncles, they were rich, there’s no doubt about it.

Growing up

I, Andrei Lorincz, was born on 4th November 1924, in Deva. I had two brothers, Ernest and Pavel, who were both born in Deva too. Ernest was born in 1923, and Pavel in 1926. I was the middle child. I got along well with my brothers.

Ernest graduated from the Decebal High School and worked as a clerk here in Deva. He was never married and didn’t have any children. He was never involved in politics, but he was a great traveler. In 1953, when the International Youth Festival was held in Bucharest, he left for Western Europe dressed as an Arab and got as far as Germany. [Editor’s note: The fourth Youth and Student International Festival took place from 2-14 August 1953. This was the first direct contact since World War II with foreigners, who were the few thousand youth attending the festival.] He went to Frankfurt, then to Hamburg, where he boarded an American ship. The Americans caught him, beat him up and forced him to disembark, so he had to return.

He arrived back home on 7th June 1954, right on time for our father’s birthday. This is the reason why the Securitate 9 seized him that same year and took him to Cluj. They held him there for two weeks and they killed him because he refused to declare that he was an American spy. They had no valid charge against him, but they came up with something. I know nothing about this story, except that, on 1st July 1954, I received a telegram from the Neuropsychiatric Clinic in Cluj; they told me to come pick up my brother’s dead body, as he had died at the clinic, where the Securitate had brought him in a state of coma.

Pavel graduated from the Medical School in 1952, and worked as a physician and university assistant in Targu Mures, at the Clinic for Contagious Diseases, until 1960, when he left for Israel, where he did quite well. He lived in Nazareth, Haifa and Natanya. He was declared physician emeritus of the State of Israel. I visited him twice: the first time I found him living in Nazareth, where he first stayed and worked after he moved to Israel. The second time I saw him, he lived in Natanya. Pavel died of liver cancer in 1984, in Natanya. He was married to Iudita, who had been born in Deva too, and had a daughter, Carmen. She did part of her studies in Targu Mures and part of it in Rome [Italy]. She’s now a maxillofacial surgeon in Rome.

How do I remember Deva? It didn’t look like it looks today, that’s for sure. There were no apartment buildings, not one, but I remember there were large, beautiful houses. There was the Prefecture and the Palace of Justice. When I was a child, between 1930 and 1940, I believe Deva counted about 12,000 inhabitants, out of whom 800-900 were Jewish, i.e. around ten percent. The town had Germans, Hungarians, Romanians, Jews, Gypsies, Bulgarians, Slavs – it had all these ethnic groups, and they all lived together in peace and had no problems with one another. It was a successful mixture, with peace and friendship at every step. There was no inter-ethnic problem.

The Jewish community in Deva was Orthodox. In fact, there were two communities: one was Orthodox, and the other one considered itself even more Orthodox. There were also two synagogues: the prayer house on 23 August Street, where the rabbi and one guard lived, and the greater synagogue, with the houses of the clerks, the secretary and two guards. My father was only a president of the latter community between 1928 and 1948. The former synagogue had its own president, but I don’t remember his name. The prayer house was demolished; I don’t know in what year, but it was definitely after 1945. In total, there were 850-900 community members in Deva. 150 of them were affiliated with the prayer house and the rest with us. The others were more Orthodox than us; our Jews weren’t that narrow-minded. Back then, there were two rabbis in Deva: Iuliu Fischer and Filip Klein. We were shepherded by the former: he was the chief rabbi of the larger community. Filip Klein served at the other synagogue until World War II started. As for the clerks, our community had a secretary and two hakhamim: Friedmann and Stossel. The other community had a hakham named Adler Chune, the father-in-law of Rabbi Huffman from Bucharest. Our hakhamim both came from rabbinic families.

Our community had all sorts of members, from four or five lawyers, about five physicians, intellectuals, teachers and engineers, to craftsmen: shoemakers, tailors, shopkeepers, tradesmen. I can still remember some of them: doctors Ludovic Deutsch, Henric Grunfeld, Ernest Szego; counsels: my father, Miksa Grossman, Paul Kain, Ludovic Berkovits; teachers: Ervin Valmos and Mihai Berkovits, who, I think, taught Math, and was the deputy principal of the Decebal High School for a short while; engineer Ioan Kalman, [the owner of] a glass shop on Unirii Square. Among the richest people in Deva were my uncles, the Seigers, two wealthy butchers, Stossel, a multimillionaire who was in the business of processing skins, Blum, a banker and liquor tradesman, Maler, a construction materials tradesman, and Nandor Gall, who was a banker and owned a mill.

I grew up in a beautiful house. It belonged to my parents and it was large enough to comfortably accommodate my father, my mother and us, the three brothers. The house was located at 1 Lucian Blaga Street. It had five or six rooms and a beautiful courtyard. We had running water. We used wood and terracotta stoves for heating. We didn’t have animals, except for a dog. We always had a service staff of two Ceangai: a cook and a maid. [Editor’s note: Ceangai is a Hungarian-speaking population of Catholic affiliation who moved from the south-east of Transylvania to Moldova 10. But people in Deva, including Mr. Lorincz, called those Szekler families, who moved to Deva from Bukovina 11 at the end of the 19th century incorrectly Ceangai.] They both lived with us and we got along very well with them. We, the children, also had a nanny from Vienna [today Austria] – her name was Teresa. She lived with us for four or five years, as long as we were little, then she went back to Austria. We had books by the thousand: all sorts of books, in German, Hungarian, French, and Romanian. My mother may have been a housewife, but she was an extremely cultivated woman. She spoke French fluently and she also knew German. We must have had about 2,500 books at home.

My parents were very religious, very Orthodox – especially my mother. She observed the kashrut, the Orthodox kashrut, which means that she kept meat separately from dairy products. We used separate dishes for Pesach – they were very beautiful, with a blue edge, and were kept in the pantry. My father went to the synagogue every week, as he was the president of the community. My mother only went on the high holidays. She was always present during the major holidays, but it was rare to find her at the synagogue on Friday evenings or on Saturdays. On Friday evenings, she would light the candles – they were five, one for each member of the family. We had challot on our table – their shape was oblong and they were homemade. My father would slice them and give everybody their share. Friday evening was always special because my father went to the synagogue and took me with him. My brothers didn’t really want to go. On Saturdays, the two of us would go to the synagogue too, but it only felt special on Friday. This is how things were back then! My father didn’t go to the mikveh, only my mother did. The larger community had a mikveh, which was located in the courtyard of the community headquarters – there were several buildings there. My mother went there, at least once a week.

I couldn’t say I had any favorite holidays, but I liked Chanukkah, Purim and Pesach a lot. On Sukkot, we played with nuts: we put two or three nuts in a row and threw at them like they throw at skittles, trying to hit the winning nut and thus win the entire row. We had a great time at holidays.

What I also remember about the holidays is that, once every year, on Simchat Torah, almost the entire community, including the rabbi, was invited to our place – my father was the president of the community for 20 years. There were about 300 guests in the courtyard, I mean, the garden, and there were tables and chairs prepared for everyone. We had a very large garden. The whole house was lively with celebrations. On Simchat Torah, various women came to give us a hand, for my mother couldn’t make preparations for 300 people all by herself. Everything was homemade – cakes, coffee and all that. Only the wine was bought. Men weren’t separated from women – everybody sat where they felt like. They talked about this and that, but never about politics or other business – they only discussed ordinary, casual things. There was eating, and talking, and praying before and after the meals.

My parents weren’t interested in politics. They lived in the center of the town and their relationship with the neighbors wasn’t only good, but extremely good. Our right hand neighbors were Hungarian, and our left hand neighbors were Romanian. To the right, there was the headquarters of the Reformed Community, where the town’s reformed pastor lived. To the left, there lived a notary public named Conda. We used to visit the pastor, who taught us Hungarian, literature, and the history of Austria-Hungary. His name was Alexandru Fazakas. There were also Jews living on our street – five or six families: the pharmacist Nussbaum, Doctor Grunfeld, tradesman Heller, etc.

As for the family friends, it was my mother who had more friends, for my father was busy with his legal practice most of the time; however, he was friends with all the judges, prosecutors and lawyers in town; he was on good terms with all of them. Our house was frequented by judges, lawyers, doctors, and all sort of intellectuals; the place was open for everyone, and we had no problems with anyone. At the community, my mother was a member of the Jewish club WIZO, which helped the destitute. [WIZO: Women's International Zionist Organization; a hundred year old organization with humanitarian purposes aiming at supporting Jewish women all over the world in the field of education, economics, science and culture.] They met at least once a month. At first, the community managed to raise all the necessary funds, but, during the war, we received money from America, from the Joint 12. My parents never had problems of anti-Semitism, except during the time of the Legionaries 13; but even then, there was nothing really serious.

We spent our vacations in Deva. We didn’t see our relatives very often, only occasionally. Our relationships with them weren’t too close; everybody had their own problems. We did see our grandparents very often though. After all, Grandmother Seiger lived right next to us – there was a gate that led to her place in our very courtyard, so we could drop by whenever we wanted, without any restrictions.

When I was little, I went to the kindergarten for three or four years and to the cheder for three or four years too. There was no talmud torah in Deva, but there was this cheder, which I used to attend some 70 years ago. I started going there at the age of four. Courses were held in a room in the synagogue’s premises. Back then we were 10-15 boys. The other community had its own cheder at the prayer house, and they also had 10-15 boys. I enjoyed the cheder. I sat at the table and studied with the other boys. The master was a short man. He wasn’t a local and his name was Isac Rubin. He taught us the Jewish history, and how to read and write in Hebrew. I remember he held a stick in his hand. We didn’t have any special textbooks; we used religious books. Every morning, I would go to the cheder, then, until I was six or seven, to the kindergarten on Aurel Vlaicu Street. At noon, I would go back home.

When I turned seven, I started going to the school on Mihai Eminescu Street. This was my elementary school. I would go to classes, return home, study and do my homework. My favorite subjects were history and geography. I never had any problems with my classmates or my teachers. I had many friends. They came to our place, where we played in the courtyard. Afterwards, everybody minded his or her own business.

I took private piano lessons for about two years, but I quit. We had a very nice Viennese piano at home, but learning to play it didn’t appeal to me. My mother, however, did play the piano; we later sold it. Nevertheless, I did enjoy music, and I still do. I like classical music, opera and operetta. I like Verdi, Strauss, Mozart, Puccini, Bizet. My favorite opera is Verdi’s Traviatta.

I had my bar mitzvah here in Deva, in 1937. For a month, I studied with Mr. Rubi the Torah passage that I was supposed to read. They called me to the Torah and I read the entire passage about Abraham’s return to Canaan, the ‘Leh Leha’ Pericope [Genesis 12:1-17:27]. I didn’t deliver any speech. Then I went home. I had a festive meal with my family and that was it. It was very nice.

During the war

When the war started, in 1939, Iuliu Fischer went to Nairobi, Kenya; from there, he left for London, and then he reached Chicago, USA, where he eventually died. Filip Klein spent the 1940-1944 period here, and, after the war, moved to Targu Mures. From 1947 or so, they were replaced by Rabbi Muller, who was succeeded by his brother from Petrosani, Frederic Muller. The Muller brothers were arrested in 1959, along with my father. Frederic’s brother was killed by the Securitate, while Frederic left for Nazareth, Israel, in 1960. I visited him there, while he was a rabbi. He died in Israel. The father of the Mullers was also a rabbi in Petrosani.

At that time, in the interwar period, the Jewish community in Petrosani was larger than the one in Deva – they had at least 2,000 people. The Jews in Petrosani had come from Maramures, the same time as the miners. When the coalmines on the River Jiu Valley opened, the first miners who came were from Sub-Carpathian Ukraine and from Maramures. The Jews came along with them, and settled in Lupeni, Petrosani, and Vulcan. Few of the Jews were miners. They were craftsmen: tailors, shoemakers, tradesmen, and some of them were even intellectuals. So, mining on the River Jiu Valley brought about the Jews from Maramures. And these Jews came from Poland.

I spent my childhood in a sane political environment. There were never any problems, not even during the Legionary regime. Our town counted 30 Legionaries or so, and all they did was hold meetings. However, on 6th December 1940, they gathered all the Jewish tradesmen and confiscated their stores [because of the Statute of the Romanian Jews 14 of 8th August 1940] – this happened while deputy mayor Nicodim Borza was in office. We didn’t have anti-Semitic incidents in Deva. The anti-Jewish laws [in Romania] 15 however, affected me in a serious way: I first lost my house in 1942, during Antonescu’s regime 16, and then I lost it for the second time to the Communists, in 1952. The house of my grandparents, the Seigers, was also confiscated during Antonescu’s regime; my Lorincz grandparents didn’t have a house of their own. We were kicked out of our place. After we lost the house, we rented a place from a landlord in Deva. They also took away my father’s job – he was disbarred and couldn’t practice law for four years, while Antonescu 17 was in power. We survived from selling the things we still owned: silver, gold, china, crystal, and anything else we had gathered in the 20 years during which my father had been a lawyer.

We lived in Deva during the war, but we also stayed in Arad between 1941 and 1942. During the Holocaust, between 1942 and 1944, I was sent to forced labor for a year and a half. I worked at the construction of the Deva-Brad railroad, in the 107th Railroad Detachment. There were 400 men on the site, and they were all Jews from the surrounding areas. I loaded and unloaded rocks and railroad tracks. I lived in Deva, at Mr. Dragomir Voiosan’s house; we had already lost the house by then, and I went to work every day. My father didn’t get sent to forced labor camps, because he was the president of the community at that time. We didn’t have access to radio or newspapers back then. We didn’t have any relatives who had been deported, and our family stuck together so that we could come through.

After the war

After the war ended, I went to Targu Mures, where I was a student at the Medical School between 1945 and 1951. All I did in college was study. Nothing more. While in Targu Mures, I used to go to the synagogue on Friday evenings and on Saturdays before noon. I got along well with Rabbi Filip Klein. I often visited him, and we talked about various things. When my mother came to Targu Mures to see me, she stayed at his place. Compared to Deva, Targu Mures had more Jews, and they were all Orthodox. Neither in college, nor later, at work, did I have any problems because of my Jewish origin.

My parents stayed in Deva. My father was accepted back in the Bar, but he couldn’t work as a lawyer anymore, because he had already reached the retirement age. So, in 1945, they appointed him as a consultant at the armaments factory in Cugir, in Alba County. My father went from Deva to Cugir only when he was needed to solve some problems. In 1959, the Communists arrested him on the grounds that, during the Holocaust, he had sent the Jews from Deva to the concentration camps of Auschwitz [Poland] and Buchenwald. The truth is that not one single Jew from Deva and the entire county of Hunedoara was sent to the camps. And they accused him, the very president of the Jewish community, of this! One gets the goose bumps on reading the file they made up to trial him. The only deportation had involved five Jews who had been sent to Transnistria 18 because they were Communists. One of them was shot to death there, but the other four came back.

My father died on 1st May 1965, in a clinic in Targu Mures, and my mother died in March 1973, in Ineu. She had been paralyzed for eight years; she had spent her last years lying in bed, just like a plank of wood. I had my parents carried to Deva. They were buried here. I’m used to reciting the Kaddish in their memory; I visit their tombs every year on Yahrzeit.

I did my military service at the Officers’ School in Oradea, between 1951 and 1952. While in college, I did my internship as a regiment’s chief physician. I later became a reserve captain. I worked as a hygiene physician, a state medical inspector, a district chief physician and a regional deputy chief physician.

I first got married in 1960, at the age of 36. At that time, I was working in Petrosani, as a deputy chief physician of the Disease Control Authority, and I met an actress whom I eventually married. Her name was Milena Rizescu; she had graduated from the ‘Ion Luca Caragiale’ Drama Institute in Bucharest, and was the daughter of writer Ioana Postelnicu, the author of ‘Plecarea Vlasinilor’ [‘The Departure of the Vlasini’], which was adapted for the silver screen in 1983. [Editor’s note: The Romanian cycle ‘Plecarea Vlasinilor’ (film adaptation directed by Mircea Dragan, pictures the life of the Transylvanian shepherds in the Sibiu area, the experiences, suffering, determination and fight of the Vlasini. The history of a small shepherd village acquires a power of meaning that’s equivalent to that of a myth.] Milena’s father, Felix Pop, was Jewish. Our marriage lasted one year. I got divorced in 1961 and left for Arad. I haven’t heard of her since our divorce.

I couldn’t find a job in Arad, but since Dr. Raznicu, the chief inspector in Oradea, was a good friend of mine, he got me a job in Ineu. I was a commuter for six months or so [the traveling distance between Arad and Ineu is 62 kilometers]. Then, they appointed me manager and gave me an apartment. When I got the place, I was able to marry the woman who’s still my wife now. The wedding took place on 15th March 1965. My wife, Maria, nee Toduta, was born on 27th January 1933, in Ineu. She’s not Jewish. She worked as an accountant. The two of us observed separate holidays – I celebrated my own and she celebrated her own. We never had any problems because of that.

Our daughter, Gilda Eugenia, was born in Arad, on 6th April 1966. Her mother raised her in the Christian-Orthodox faith, but later, when she went to Israel [in 1986], at the age of 20, things changed. How come she decided to go? In my opinion, this wasn’t a good move, but I suppose she didn’t have a choice. She took the entrance exam at the University in Timisoara, but, although her grades were high enough, she wasn’t admitted; naturally, this was the doing of the Securitate. So the poor girl said there was nothing else she could do here, that she had no future. She signed up for Israel, she left, and she stayed there for seven years. She went to Haifa. She first lived in a student hostel, then with a lady who had made friends with her and let her stay at her place. She graduated from college in Haifa; she got a BA degree in French and English language and literature. She also lived in Natanya. Gilda speaks Hebrew perfectly.

She’s Romanian by her mother, but, after she left the country, she went to Paris, to one of France’s chief rabbis, took a course, and went through all the formalities in order to convert to the Mosaic religion. She became a Jew – she holds a ‘rabbinic certificate’ to prove it, and she has Israeli citizenship. She currently lives in Deva; she returned because she didn’t like it there anymore. She keeps her degree in her pocket and lives at my place – she’s single. For a while, she worked as an assistant at the Ecology Faculty in Deva, her degree is recognized by the Romanian authorities, but now she’s attempting to recover the values that the Communists confiscated from my family and my uncles. I don’t know for how long she plans to stay here.

I didn’t immigrate to Israel because I couldn’t. I had a paralyzed mother, an old mother-in-law who was a Romanian peasant, a Romanian wife, and a daughter aged six or seven. How was I supposed to go to Israel on my own and make enough money to support five people? I couldn’t do it, so I stayed here. Our working conditions were good, we were paid very well, and our pensions are all right. I mean, they’re not great, but my wife and I do receive a monthly total of seven million. I have been a retiree since 1984.

I was a party member for 48 years, but not by conviction – I was forced to. I became a member of Titel Petrescu’s Social Democratic Party in September 1945, and, when the parties united in 1948, I automatically became a member of the Romanian Communist Party. I had no problem with the communism spread by the Romanians. My attitude towards Communism was a passive one. I never did any harm, I never stole anything, and I never killed anyone. I minded my own business, I was a physician, I held the offices that I held, and I did my job well; although my father, my uncle and my brother had been sent to prison by the Securitate, although our houses had been confiscated, the Party kept me for 50 years – 48, to be more precise – because I had the ability to work well. However, when realizing that a county prime-secretary of the Party did nothing but stupid things, I told him what I thought – of course, in a subtle way, because I couldn’t say such things bluntly. Before the Revolution [Mr. Lorincz is talking about the Revolution of 1989] 19, I took part in all the social activities that my office required me to reunions, meetings, organizing medical inspections.

In 1978, I left Ineu and came back to Deva. I bought the apartment I’m living in because Deva was my native town and I wanted to spend my retirement days here. I moved here before my retirement. That same year, 1978, the president of the Jewish Community, Zoltan Farcas, appointed me councilor, without consulting with me. I have been a councilor ever since, but it was only in 2001 that my position became official, following our elections. As far as today’s community life is concerned, I can say I’m doing all that must be done. Our president is Mr. Alexandru Max, who came here in 1984, as a councilor. Until 1987, he was in charge of the social assistance – he unloaded the food supply vehicle, he distributed the food, the aids, the clothes and so on and so forth. In 1987, the former president died, and Zoltan Farcas assumed the vacant office. I come here every Saturday to pray. There are no more than eight of us now. Only President Max and myself can read Hebrew.

In my spare time, like all the retirees, I go walking, I go here and there, and I go shopping to pass my time. I have all sorts of books at home: in Hungarian, in Romanian, in German, in French, in English, and in Hebrew – six languages in total. They cover various fields: novels, historical, religious. I like to read newspapers. I’m a subscriber to ‘Romania Libera,’ ‘Hunedoreanul,’ ‘Cuvantul liber,’ ‘Academia Catavencu,’ and ‘Nyugati Jelen.’

Glossary

Andrei Popper

Arad

Romania

Interviewer: Oana Aioanei

Date of interview: September 2003

Mr. Andrei Popper lives in an apartment on the banks of the River Mures. Being an elderly man, he spends most of his time indoors: watching TV and reading the newspaper. His living room shelters several pieces of old furniture, while the walls are covered with paintings. One of them was made by his maternal grandfather, while in high school. Two Siamese cats are sprawled out in the armchairs of the entrance hall. Mr. Popper possesses a rich collection of postcards and photographs that he took in various places in the country. He’s a history enthusiast, so he really enjoys telling stories. [Mr. Popper died in August 2004.]

My family background

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Glossary

My family background

My mother’s maternal grandfather, Ignatie Pollak, lived in Sebis, where he was in the trade business. His tombstone reads ‘Pollak Ignatie’ and ‘Sebis’ between brackets – the place he came from. I found out from some documents in Sebis that he was one of the leaders of the community there; he had an honorary chair. I think that, at a certain point, he moved from Sebis to Rapsig, because my maternal grandmother, Matilda Pollak, was born in Rapsig, in the Arad County, between 1858 and 1860. Ignatie Pollak bought a house in the center of Arad in 1870. My mother’s maternal grandparents, the Pollaks, were buried in Arad.

My mother’s paternal great-grandparents, the Werners, came from Germany. My maternal grandparents came from a German family; Werner is a German name. One of the Werners fell in love with a Jewish girl and converted to Judaism for her sake. But the girl’s parents chased her away from home, from Germany, and the couple emigrated some time between the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century and settled in Santana, in the Arad County; Santana was a village of Germans. The Werner great-grandparents were buried in Santana. In time, some of the members of the Werner family moved from Santana to Pancota, Beliu or Baia Mare; many of them went to Budapest, where they changed their name to Timar. Great-great-grandfather Jakab Werner was married to Maria Wolf; the two of them had three children, all of whom were born in Santana: Lipot, my great-grandfather [1817-1894], Moric, born in 1823, and Adolf, born in 1831. Adolf had two children: Dr. Miksa Werner, who worked as a physician in Arad, was a bachelor, had no children and died in 1920 in Arad, and Eszter Werner. Eszter married Sandor and the two of them had two children: Artur, who had no children, and Lenke, who married a Krausz and had two children: Anna and Dr. Miklos Krausz, a physician in Cologne [Germany].

Lipot Werner, my great-grandfather, had nine children: Carol, my maternal grandfather, Adolf, Henrik, Simon, Karola, Cili, Imre, Maria and Rozsa. Adolf was the last of the Werners who lived and died in Santana. He was a tradesman and had five children: Mici, who married a Zeisler and had no children, Renee, who married Dr. Wiener and had a son who is a physician in Germany, Pavel, Lajos and Laszlo. Henrik had eight children: Sandor, who had three children: Marta, Bozsi, who in her turn had two daughters, and Viktor, who died in Germany and had a son who worked as a doctor in a military hospital, probably in Cologne, Frida, Regina, Frigyes, who had a son, Alexandru, Ede, Karola, Gyozo and Geza. Simon had four children: Sandor, Jeno, Jozsi and Geza. Karola was married to Samuel Nussbaum. Cili had three children: Lajos, Bela, and Frida. Imre had five children: Roza, who married Adolf Fodor, Maria, who married Dr. Mihaly Deutsch and had a son, Lorant, a PhD in Law, who died in Tel Aviv, Olga, who married Filip Gruner, and Janos. Maria married Adolf Grosz. My grandfather’s youngest sister, Rozsa, married Emil Bauer and had three children: Tuli, Misi and Olga.

My maternal grandfather, Carol Werner, was born in Santana on 15th May 1850. He went to high school in Beius; it was a Greek Catholic high school. I was told that the teachers there were wonderful. A painting he made when he was a student is hanging on one of my bedroom walls. It’s a very beautiful painting: a country house in the middle of the field, a lake in front of it and a boat with two fishermen on the lake’s shore. Everyone says it’s a very valuable painting. My grandmother didn’t know that my grandfather could paint. She only learnt about the existence of the painting after her husband’s death. Grandfather Carol wasn’t a very religious man. I don’t know where he did his military service.

My maternal grandmother, Matilda Pollak, who became a Werner after she got married, was a housewife. She had a brother, Ignatie, and two sisters, who were housewives too: Rozalia and Fani. Ignatie Pollak owned a vineyard in Cuvin. He had two daughters. One of them, Margareta, who married a Szolosi, was a teacher and a high school principal in Arad; she had a daughter, who was a housewife. The other daughter of Ignatie’s, Terezia, married Dr. Venetianer, who was chief rabbi in Budapest. [Lajos Venetianer (1867-1922) became a rabbi in 1892. In 1893, he was in Csurgo, in 1896, he was in Lugoj; he became chief rabbi in Ujpest in 1897. Apart from theological studies, he wrote works on the history of the Jews. He was a professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary-University of Jewish Studies in Budapest and chief rabbi in Budapest.] The two of them had a daughter, Vali Ilona, which was her stage name, who was a very well known actress in Budapest. I don’t think her family had any problem with her being a renowned actress. Rozalia lived in Ghioroc and had a boy and a girl. The boy died when he was a student. The girl, Terezia, who married a Szekely, had a son named Ladislau. Her husband worked as a veterinarian in Glogovat. Ladislau’s son bears the name Ladislau too and works as a physician in Germany. My grandmother’s other sister, Fani Freund, had a boy who died while he was a Law student. Fani became a widow and died in Arad.

Grandfather Carol and Grandmother Matilda lived in Simand. In 1892, they moved to Arad. Grandmother Matilda was in charge of the household; she went to the synagogue for the two great holidays: the New Year and the Day of Atonement. She didn’t keep the kashrut and wasn’t too religious; she did light the candles on Sabbath. My grandfather traded grains and hides. He ran his business in Arad. He had a grain warehouse near his place and a hide warehouse located somewhere else. During World War I, his employees were exempted from military service. In Arad, the Werner grandparents lived in the center of town, in the house that had been bought by my great-grandparents. It was the first house that the Communists demolished. When the nationalization 1 of the houses came, their house was on the list, even though my mother was the rightful owner. This is the house where I was born. I got along well with both my maternal and paternal grandparents. None of them were interested in politics. They were all on good terms with their neighbors. I remember that, after my grandfather died, Uncle Alexandru [Werner] visited my mother every day; he was a pretty renowned dermatologist here in Arad. My maternal grandparents both died in Arad: Grandfather Carol died on 2nd January 1916, and Grandmother Matilda died in 1936, when I was 21.

My mother had several brothers and sisters who were all born in Simand; they were Alexandru, Francisc, Irina, Ivan and Leopoldina. The one I knew best was Uncle Alexandru, born in 1883, who was a physician in Arad and married Ileana Halmagyi. She was a housewife. The two of them had two children: Ana and Gheorghe. Ana died of scarlet fever in 1928, at the age of three or four. Gheorghe graduated from medical school, completed his internship, and came back to Arad. After two years, he caught a disease and died at an early age of 24; he had a daughter, Cristina Gordon, who got married in Cologne. Alexandru died in 1936, before Gheorghe’s decease; I was 22 at the time, and Ileana remarried.

Francisc [1884-1902] died young too. Irina, born in 1887, was a housewife and lived with her husband, Iosif Somogyi, an accountant in Arad. They didn’t have children. Iosif died in 1925, and Irina in 1969. Ivan, born in 1892 died at the age of two, in 1893. He was buried at the Jewish cemetery in Simand. There’s a great cemetery there and the children’s tombs are right at the entrance. The youngest child was Erzsebet-Leopoldina, who was born and died in 1896.

My mother, Margareta Werner, was born in Simand, on 11th April 1890. When she was about two, she moved with her parents to Arad. As there was no high school for girls in Arad at that time, my mother was sent to Timisoara, to the Higher School for Girls. She was a housewife. Just like my father, she wasn’t too religious.

My paternal grandfather was named Carol Popper and was born in Berechiu, in the Arad County, in 1864. He had a brother, Samuila, who lived in Cermei. He also had a sister, but I can’t remember her name. I’m sure he did his military service because he had become a sergeant; I think he served in Vienna [today Austria]. For a while, he lived in Socodor, where he kept a store, but he moved to Arad in 1890, when my father was one or two years old.

My paternal grandmother, Iuliana Popper [nee Werner], was born in Siclau, in the Arad County, in 1867/8. I don’t remember her having any brothers or sisters; she was a housewife. After she got married, she lived in Socodor; after a while, she moved to Arad, where she stayed until she died. My paternal grandparents lived in a one-floor house, opposite the railway station; it was pretty large, but it wasn’t theirs, they paid rent. The place had belonged to a non-Jewish man who had no family. Eventually, he donated it to the Romanian Christian Orthodox Community in Lipova. As my grandfather got to Arad in 1890, he may have rented the house directly from the church. When the block of apartments was built, it was demolished; this happened around 1944 or right after the war. The house had a pretty large courtyard, but it had no garden. My grandparents didn’t breed animals. My grandfather had a rather large store in Arad too. He was a tradesman; he sold all sorts of things and, apart from the store, he also ran a kind of pub. The store, which had been painted by Eugen Popper, a cousin of my father’s, was at the front of the house, while the dwelling space was in the back. My grandfather was widely known among the railway workers; they were his regular customers, since the store and the pub were located opposite from the station.

Neither my grandmother, nor my grandfather was very religious. They were like most of the Jews in Arad. My grandfather wasn’t a devout man, and the Jews in Arad kept their stores open even on Saturdays. However, the New Year and the Day of Atonement were special days. They all closed their businesses and went to the synagogue. On Friday evenings, women would light the candles, but they didn’t usually go to the synagogue to pray. This is how things were in Arad. Grandmother Iuliana died when I was about 18, in 1933. Grandfather Carol died when I was about 20, in 1935.

There was a Neolog 2 community in Arad. The great synagogue was built in 1834. It wasn’t an easy thing to do. Back then, the city didn’t belong to the Hungarians, nor to the Romanians, but to the Serbs. And they prevented any attempt of erecting something permanent. As a result, some representatives of the Jewish Community in Arad went to Vienna and offered the land to the Emperor as a gift. Gendarmes were hired to guard it and the construction could thus be completed. The entrance is through a courtyard, as the synagogue is surrounded by other buildings. Every now and then there’s a concert held there. It has a very good organ. An expert claimed that such a good organ is a rare thing and that moving it would destroy it and so the organ must stay in the building. I read somewhere how it was purchased and set up inside the synagogue: the Jews organized a ball in 1850, and all the intelligentsia of the city were invited, regardless of their faith; the income from that party was used to buy the organ. This information was found by Professor Gluck in the library of the University in Cluj. [Editor’s note: The interviewee is talking about Jeno Gluck who’s a present-day historian in Arad.]

On holidays, the synagogue was overcrowded with people. Until 1940, a summer theater would be rented on holidays; it used to be located on the banks of the River Mures, but it was demolished in 1940, and a service would be held there too. Towards the end of World War I, around 1917, the Jewish Orthodox Community 3 was established in Arad. The Orthodox synagogue was erected in 1921. Its architect was Tabacovici, a Serb who also designed the Roman Catholic cathedral of the Minorites. I met him; he was a great architect.

My father had three sisters and he was the oldest child. Their names were Matilda, Ileana and Irina. They were all housewives. He didn’t have brothers. The oldest of the three sisters, Matilda, married Sigismund Brenner, an accountant. They had two children: Zoltan, who committed suicide around 1969 and had a daughter, Eva, who married Pavel Brenner and left for Israel with him, and Edita, who was married too, lived in Oradea, got deported to Auschwitz [today Poland] and died there. Ileana lived in Arad with her husband, Friederic Fulop, a musician. They didn’t have children. Irina married Samuila Havas, a hide tradesman. They lived in Arad and had a son, Ladislau, who left for Israel, where he was wounded and died in the last day of the War for Independence.

My father, Alexandru Popper, was born on 15th January 1888 in Socodor. He moved with his parents to Arad in 1890. He graduated from the Faculty of Law; he had a PhD in law and worked as a lawyer his entire life. He studied the first two years in Budapest, but he finished in Cluj, in 1908/1909. He entered the faculty in 1905 and he was the youngest among his fellow-students, as he had begun going to elementary school at the age of five; he wanted to be the first to get his PhD. The only places in Hungary where the graduation exam, the most difficult, could be passed were Budapest and Targu Mures. My father passed it in Targu Mures. He wasn’t a very religious man. He did his military service in Arad. He liked to collect stones of various shapes from everywhere he went to; he once brought my mother a heart-shaped stone.

How did my parents meet? Arad wasn’t a very big city. My father was a Law student and my mother had gone to school in Timisoara. I think they met after they came back home. They got married in July 1914. They also had a religious ceremony at the synagogue. The next day after they returned from their honeymoon in Austria, World War I broke out and my father was drafted. He became an officer in the Austro-Hungarian army 4. All my grandfather’s employees had been exempted from their military duties and my father could have enjoyed that status too, but he wouldn’t stay home as long as there was a war going on. He served in the Northern Carpathians, in Poland. He found a stone there, which he sent to my mother; she had a silver plate added to it, with the place and the date: Komarno, 8th September 1914. This is where my father suffered a leg wound; he was sent to Arad after that. Then he went back to the front and became a prisoner of war in September 1914. He was taken to Vladivostok in Siberia, where he stayed for seven years: from 1914 to 1921.

The interesting thing about it was that the prisoners of war received an officer’s salary back then; the Russians actually paid them. When the war ended, they were in the Eastern part of the country, close to the ocean. They were gradually moved to East Siberia. The Americans came to rescue the officers of the Austro-Hungarian army; they took them to an island where there were a lot of children who had been evacuated there. The island was located east from Siberia. My father and the other officers were taken there as laborers. What he had to do was take care of two furnaces lest the fire should go out. They were very well looked after and the food was very good. They even received an honorary diploma from the Red Cross acknowledging their work there. My father spent a year and a half there and came home by boat. In his lawyer’s office, the three credentials hanging on the wall were: his BA degree, his PhD in Law degree and the worker diploma from the Red Cross.

Growing up

I was born on 29th June 1915 in Arad, in the house of my maternal grandparents. I was my parent’s only child. At the time of my birth, my father was already a prisoner. They would take a photo of me every month and send it to him in Siberia. In the evenings, my mother would pray with me so that God could bring my father home. I first saw him when I was five. He came back from the war in 1921. We lived in Arad until 1923, when we moved to Buteni, I was eight. [Editor’s note: The traveling distance between Arad and Buteni is about 71 kilometers.] But my grandmother continued to live in Arad. Before World War I, my father had a practice in Arad. In 1923, a lawyer passed his Buteni office to an uncle, who in turn gave it to my father. The Buteni courthouse spread its jurisdiction over more than 50 communes [administrative division smaller than a town and comprised of several villages], and the town only had three lawyers; one of them was my father.

Although the county capital was in Sebis, the courthouse was in Buteni; it was the largest building in the entire county. Back in the old days, long before World War I, the Buteni notary persuaded the peasants to send a delegation to Budapest in order to request the opening of a courthouse in Buteni, so that they wouldn’t be forced to go to Sebis anymore. This is how the courthouse was built, some time between 1901 and 1903. The building is still there, but it’s no longer in use, although it’s a wonderful edifice. One night, the county’s prime secretary of the Communist Party had the courthouse moved to Sebis, without notifying the Ministry of Justice. The decision wasn’t altered. But in 1952, when the courts of justice were distributed according to districts 5, the district court house was established in Buteni.

It was in Buteni that Karoly Csemegi ran a lawyer’s practice in the 19th century. He was a Jewish major in the Austro-Hungarian army. After the defeat of the 1848 revolution, he was forced to reside in Arad, where he opened a practice. Because the Austrians persecuted him, he sought refuge in the Romanian commune of Buteni, where he worked as a lawyer for eight or nine years. Csemegi was a very good jurist; he had studied Law in Budapest. After peace was declared between Hungary and Austria in 1870 [Editor’s note: There was no peace treaty in 1870; the interviewee refers to the Great Compromise of 1867.], he was hired by the Ministry of Justice and he ended up as a royal councilor. His greatest achievement was the completion of the Hungarian Penal Code, which is still used today. Until 1946, it was also used in Transylvania 6, up to Gurahont, Zam on the River Mures and to the border of the Bihor County on the River Cris. [Karoly Csemegi (Csongrad, 1826 – Budapest, 1899): criminal lawyer. He was a major in the 1848 war of independence, and because of that he was imprisoned after the war of independence was suppressed. He later worked in Arad as a lawyer, then, from 1867 – the year of the Great Compromise – he entered the Ministry of Justice and later became a secretary of state there.] The Hungarians didn’t have a written civil code, this was only written after World War II, so the Austrian civil code was used in Transylvania. The Romanian one was just a translation: Napoleon’s code was translated into Italian, with mistakes, and from Italian, it was translated into Romanian.

As far as the Jews in Buteni were concerned, I remember one of them was a tradesman, another one was a clock smith; the town’s physician was a Jew, and so was the chief judge, Dr. Erger, accidentally. I remember that during my childhood, there were many peasants who had beautiful handwriting and worked for the courthouse. The Arad County was divided into several electoral districts that counted for the Great National Assembly [the supreme body of the State power], and one of them was Iosasel (today part of Gurahont), which was located between Buteni and Gurahont. [Editor’s note: The traveling distance between Buteni and Gurahont is about 18 kilometers.] Back in those days, Gurahont was nothing compared to Iosasel [Iosas]. The landowner there was a Jew named Polacek. His castle is still there today. Polacek had acquired the estate during the war. He had bought it from the Purglis, an Iosasel-based family who belonged to the nobility, whose daughter became the wife of Horthy 7. I knew the Polaceks: they owned a spirits factory which is still there today. And since we’re talking about the Jewish landowners, I remember that the entire Moneasa and the Dezna Valley belonged to the Wengheims at the time of World War I.

Buteni had a pretty large Jewish community; there were 15 to 20 families. Jews didn’t live separately from the other inhabitants of the town. There used to be a beautiful Neolog synagogue, until 1924/25. It was about that time that many Jews came from Maramures and the Orthodox became the majority group. My father was the president of the community. We didn’t have Talmud-Torah classes; there weren’t too many children. We didn’t learn Ivrit, but we did celebrate our bar mitzvah when we turned 13; the hakham prepared us for the event. We didn’t have a rabbi in Buteni, we only had a hakham. The nearest was Rabbi Sonnenschein in Pancota, in Arad and in Gurahont there was Rabbi Schwartz. After World War I ended, a very powerful Orthodox community was founded in Gurahont; it was larger than the one in Buteni.

The market day in Buteni was Friday; then Wednesday became a market day too, I think. My mother did all the shopping. My family wasn’t very religious. My mother lit the candles on Friday evenings and ate matzah for Pesach. My parents celebrated the New Year, the Day of Atonement and Pesach. But we didn’t eat kosher food, nor did we use separate vessels for Pesach. I remember we had books at home, mainly Hungarian literature. Today’s high levels of crime are mostly due to the fact that, while the parents are at work, the children are left to do whatever they want. In the past, the mother stayed at home and raised the children. My mother always had an aid around the house. All the families used to have an aid back then; moreover, when there was a great clean up or laundry had to be done, more than one aid would be employed. The house in Buteni was rented. We had two to three rooms and running water; the heating was based on firewood.

My parents made sure that I was always well prepared at school. While in Buteni, I took music lessons for a few years, piano and violin, but I didn’t really like it. I also took private lessons in subjects taught at school, especially the foreign languages. In high school, French was taught from the first to the last year; in the second year, we began the study of German, and Latin was introduced in the third year. I think that Ancient Greek was also taught in the sixth year. But I was more interested in Math. My Math teacher was named Stan Crisan. I had friends at school. I also had some Jewish classmates. If I remember correctly, it was the hakham who taught the religion class. I studied the first and second year in Arad, then the third and fourth in Buteni, and then I moved back to Arad. We had classes on Saturdays too. The only day off was Sunday.

While in high school, I lived as a tenant with some strangers, non-Jews, although my grandparents lived in Arad. My parents thought my grandparents spoiled me, so it was only during my last year of high school that I lived with them. I always went home, to Buteni, on vacations: for Christmas and Easter. In the summer, while in Buteni, I would play tennis and go bathing with my friends. I can’t think of any other sport that I may have practiced. I passed the graduation exam in 1935. It was very hard: out of 114 students, only five succeeded. I was one of them.

Before World War I, there used to be several Jewish schools in the county: not just in Arad, but also in Buteni and in Simand, which were pretty important Jewish centers. Buteni had a Jewish elementary school until 1943. Incidentally, before World War I, the headmistress of the Jewish school was named Popper; she was Jewish, but she wasn’t from our family. My father met her son during a visit in Budapest, around 1925, and it was interesting for them both to discover that they shared the same name, they were both lawyers and they both came from Buteni.

There were Legionaries 8 in Buteni in the interwar period. I remember seeing ‘Only speak Romanian’-like posters in stores, but they weren’t a real threat. I didn’t have any problem caused by anti-Semitism. I can’t remember anything important politically that would have happened in my childhood. We would just listen to the radio at home and read the Hungarian newspapers in Arad.

During the war

I graduated from the Faculty of Law; I chose Law because I liked it. I started in Cluj, in 1935. Later, in 1939, as I wanted to gain one year, I moved with several fellow-students and friends to Cernauti [today Ukraine]. Both in Cluj and in Cernauti, there were great professors. The difference was that Cernauti had a preparatory year, then three years of study; this is why we wanted to move there. We graduated there, but we never got to pass our last two exams, for the Russians invaded Bukovina 9, in 1939. [Editor’s note: Russians entered Bukovina in June 1940.]

Roman Law was a real delight. I had a professor in Cluj, Mosoiu, whom it was a real pleasure to listen to. He spoke freely, using no notes. And he always organized his time very well. And there were other professors as well prepared as he was. For instance, during a specialization course in Bucharest, after my graduation, I remember the subject of the Supreme Court being taught very well. But I also came across teachers of another kind. For instance, the German teacher would come to class, write a text on the blackboard and have us memorize it. This is all we did during the entire class. The Latin teacher didn’t explain anything to us either. There were no inspections back then, so teachers did whatever they felt like.

I didn’t serve in the army. When Jews were evacuated from the villages, in 1941 [because of the anti-Jewish laws in Romania] 10, my parents moved back to Arad, where they lived until 1944. Then they returned to Buteni. During the Holocaust, I was sent to forced labor from 1941 till June 1944. First, it was in the Fagaras County, then in the Arad County, at the canal of the vineyards of Arad [Paulis, Ghioroc]. I came home when work was interrupted. I lost several years of my life and I only passed my last exams after the war, in Cluj.

After graduating, in 1944, I started my lawyer’s internship with my father, who took me for about two years. I lived in Buteni until 1946, when I was appointed judge in Arad. Eventually, I became the president of the court between 1952 and 1968. In Arad, I lived with Aunt Irina, in the old house of my maternal grandmother. I was also a court president in Ineu for six years and in Chisineu Cris for ten years. I was never married and I never had any children. My father died at the age of 80, in 1968. My mother died at 92, in 1982, in Arad. They were both buried here in Arad.

After the war

By the time I became a court president in Ineu, there was no synagogue there anymore. In 1945 or 1946, the Federation from Bucharest ordered that all the synagogues from the towns where there were no Jews or very few of them were to be demolished. There may have been one family or two left in Ineu. The synagogue in Cermei wasn’t demolished, but it was bought by the Baptist Community and used as a prayer house. I know that the synagogue in Buteni had to be pulled down too, and the land was sold. The Federation issued such an order because there were no Jews left in these places. Dr. Weissblatt, one of the best dermatologists in Arad, once told me about the time when many workers from the furniture factory in Pancota, a very large facility, had caught a skin disease. He was sent there as an official delegate. While in Pancota, he learnt that a worker who had taken part in the demolition of the synagogue had fallen down from the building and died. The whole village found that incident to be pretty natural, since what they were pulling down was a church.

The synagogues in Chisineu Cris and in Seleus were demolished too. I was once at the town hall in Seleus and the mayor showed me the furniture of the place: it had been bought before the destruction of the synagogue, and the mayor’s chair was the old rabbi’s chair. The synagogues in Arad and Salonta are, to my knowledge, the only ones that survived in the entire Arad County. But I heard a few years ago that the synagogue in Salonta no longer exists either.

How come I didn’t immigrate to Israel? I was born in Arad, I lived in the Arad County all the time, and I happened to be appointed as a judge in Arad too. I don’t think too highly of the people who move too much. I believe that, once you start working in a certain place, it’s best to stay there till you die. Under the communist regime, I was still a lawyer; I was a judge president until 1975. When I turned 60, I applied for retirement.

I became a party member against my will. A friend of mine, Ladislau Lakatos, a druggist in Buteni, had gone to college in Bucharest before the war. There he joined a group of communist students and became a fervent Communist too, although he came from a family belonging to the Hungarian nobility. After 23rd August 1944 11, he joined the Party and signed me in too, without asking me about it. I took part in activities organized by the Communists and I had to attend weekly meetings. However, I didn’t become a party member out of conviction, but because Ladislau and me were very good friends. He was a good chap, a true gentleman.

I knew other people who had been accepted in the Party despite their origin. There used to be a bank in Arad; it was called Goldschmidt and it was owned by a Jew. His son, much older than me, studied Economics in Paris [France] before World War I. Back then, one couldn’t study this in Romania, but only in Vienna or Paris. While in Paris, he joined a communist society and became a fervent Communist, although his father owned a bank. When the Communists came to power in Romania, he received a high office in a ministry and was even sent to Hungary as a diplomat, for he spoke Hungarian.

I never had any problems with the Communists. I only met very few of them who liked to cause trouble. The county’s prime secretary of the Communist Party was the only one who had the right to check on me, but he never interfered with what I was doing. This was the order from Bucharest. My coworkers were nice people; as for the clerks I worked with, I was lucky because they did their jobs well. I also had Jewish coworkers: Livia Halmos, Maxim Goroneanu, Ladislau Samuel.

I only went to Israel once, in 1968. I was left with a good impression. I went to a niece of mine, Eva Brenner, right during Pesach. My niece is married to a Romanian from a place in Tara Motilor, near Baia de Cris. His name is Pavel and he’s a very decent man. He wanted to move to Israel and persuaded her to do that. Pavel worked as a locksmith in a factory; Eva is a clerk. They are doing well. I stayed with them for a month and they drove me every day to see as many places as possible. Each day, I visited a new town and some new places. I also went to the USSR, a two-week trip across the Black Sea, to Riga and to the North Sea.

The revolution of 1989 12 had no effect on me. I think nothing has changed. I had already retired when it came. After my retirement in 1975, a friend of mine who worked as the chief secretary of the County Council called me to do voluntary work for his office for a couple of years. Then the Jewish Community called me, and I went to help them with their legal matters. I stayed with them for 23 years, from 1977 until 2000 or so, when I became ill and had to go to surgery. I used to go out for a walk when I felt better. But now I’m too tired to do anything at all; I just read my newspapers at home.

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