Donation made by Carol Springer, in memory of his mother-in-law, Adela Iszakovics

This is a paper from 1948 which certifies that my father, Carol Springer, made a donation for a tree to be planted in Erez Israel, in the wood of the martyrs of Transylvania. It was done in the memory of my maternal grandmother, Adela Iszakovics, who was gassed in Auschwitz in 1944.

My grandmother was married to Bernard Iszakovics, who owned a jewelry shop; she was a housewife, but she helped him run the shop: she had graduated from a business high school in Budapest and did the bookkeeping for him. She was born in Targu-Secuiesc in 1885, and she spoke Hungarian as well. Grandmother was Neolog, like my grandfather, she didn't observe the kashrut, but she lit the candles every Friday evening and went to the synagogue on the high holidays.

My grandparents lived in a rented house with three rooms and a garden in the center of town; they didn't grow anything, just had some flowers and maybe some fruit trees. Their house had electricity, but there was no running water in Odorhei in the 1940s; a carter brought drinking water in two and five-liter earthen vessels. Each citizen had some sort of subscription, and the cart with the water - I believe some of it was mineral water - came every day. Grandmother had two servants, who cooked and did the chores around the house. I remember that the laundry was washed in Tarnava. They didn't observe the kashrut strictly, but for Pesach, for example, they had separate tableware.

In 1943, I think, my grandparents were deported to Auschwitz, and that's where my grandmother died, in 1944. [Editor's note: The deportations in Transylvania took place in April/May 1944.] My grandmother had two sisters. One of them died in Auschwitz. The other one, named Klari, married in Yugoslavia and emigrated to Israel. Only my grandfather came back from Auschwitz when the war was over, and he stayed in Odorhei.