Magda Izsak

This girl is a cousin of mine, Magda Izsak. She was the daughter of mammy’s [Eszter Grosz, nee Klein] eldest sister, of aunt Ida Klein, called Izsak after her husband.

My mother had four full siblings: one girl and three boys. The eldest among the siblings was aunt Ida. Aunt Ida Klein established a family in Erzsebetvaros, a Saxon city [in Romanian Dumbraveni]. Her husband's family name was Izsak, but I don't know his other name. They were extremely wealthy people, because they were traders in leather, they had a leather store as well, they had a nice house, they were well off. In 1941 aunt Ida, her husband and their three children - Erno, Bela and Magda - were forced to move from Erzsebetvaros to Balazsfalva [in Romanian: Blaj], when we were going as well to Gyulafehervar, but later they went back to Erzsebetvaros. They survived World War Two.

Magda was a very beautiful, exquisite woman, a real beauty. She didn't get married, because she wanted to marry a doctor or a lawyer, she didn't take for a man anyone else. After the war Magda was helping her brother, and a lamp or something she was working with blew up, and she got burnt completely. She became ugly, she lost so much weight that she weighted thirty kilos. They had a vaulted door, Saxons have such doors, and they never opened it again, nobody was allowed to enter the house. She lived with her mother and her brothers, but they didn't let in anybody. It was a great tragedy. Mammy was there, she visited her, and she said Magda was unrecognizable. Later she was in hospital, an American doctor saw her, and took her to America, put her in a hospital there, and they restored her to a certain extent, they put new skin. Magda stayed in America. But she never got married. She was a fashion designer, and she opened some kind of salon, that's what I heard. She was in Israel for visiting only once, Erno said she had recovered, but one could not recognize her.