Travel

Izaak Wacek Kornblum
Warsaw
Poland
Interviewer: Anna Szyba
Date of interview: November- December 2005

I met Mr. Wacek Kornblum in his apartment in Saska Kepa, a district of Warsaw. We talk in his living room. There are pictures and photographs hanging on the wall – Mr. Kornblum is an amateur photographer. There are plenty of books around. Some in Hebrew, some in Yiddish, most of them in Polish – both Polish classics, as well as works of Jewish authors published in Polish. The house has a warm air to it, someone is cooking, somebody else is cleaning up, Mr. Kornblum’s wife remains in her room and reads throughout our conversation. Mr. Kornblum willingly talks about the pre-war times, his stories are colorful and full of details, I often feel as if I was watching a movie about his life.

My family history

My name is Izaak Kornblum, I was born on 5th March 1926 in Paris. I was born to an intellectual family. Father, Szlomo Kornblum, born in 1894, was a writer, he used to write in Yiddish. Mom was born in 1901, her maiden name was Zamosc, she came from Mszczonow [49 km south-west of Warsaw], near Warsaw.

Father’s family was a large family, where several generations came from Powazki near Warsaw [a village near Warsaw before the war, now a district of Warsaw]. I only vaguely remember Father’s mother, her name was Miriam. I don’t know what year she was born in, I don’t know what year she died. Father’s father’s name was Icchak, I have my name after him. I don’t remember him. He must have died fairly early. Father’s parents must have been religious, whereas all Father’s sisters and Father were not.

Somewhere on Nowolipie or Nowolipki lived Grandmother Miriam’s sister, her name was Kajle Zonszajn. We didn’t use to go to visit the Zonszajns often before the war. There were also kids there, there was Mosze, there was Miriam and Reginka [diminutive for Regina]. They were all much older than us, of course. 

Father had a couple of sisters and a brother. The oldest sister of Father was Aunt Frania [Franciszka]. She lived on 26 Wielka Street, if I remember correctly, they were best off before the war. Aunt’s husband, Motek [Mordechaj] Braunrot, had a hardware warehouse on Bagno Street. And they had a daughter Maniusia [Mania, diminutive for Miriam], most emancipated, there was a son older than her who had already left home, and a younger one, Salek [Salomon], who was about two years older than me. Maniusia later married some other Salek and they had a daughter Paulinka [Paulina] in 1940.

Father’s older brother, Mosze, went to Paris at the beginning of the 1920s, along with his wife, who had a family there. And later they went to the United States from Paris. I don’t know when he was born, but he was about four years older than my father. Uncle married a Jewish woman from Warsaw. I don’t remember her name, they had three daughters. One of them, Suzi, committed suicide in Washington after the war, as a very young woman. The other two, Lilian and Madeleine, lived until not long ago, one died maybe half a year ago when she was 90 something years old, the other, who we keep in touch with from time to time, is still alive.

Another sister of Father’s, Aunt Doba [Debora], had a husband whose name was Szlomo Gilf. They had two sons, Zewek [Zejw] and Chylek [Chil] and a daughter Maniusia [Miriam], who was a bit older than me. It was a non religious family. Uncle had a grocery store in Wlochy near Warsaw for many years, but later, because of various anti-Semitic incidents 1, moved to Warsaw just before the war. He had a store there for some time, but it wasn’t going well. In 1939, Chylek and Zewek were drafting age and they were both drafted to the army. Chylek was in cavalry and was taken to a POW camp, which he escaped from and returned to Warsaw, that was before the ghetto. Zewek was in the army and defended Warsaw until the capitulation [the Warsaw defense went on from 8th until 28th September 1939].

Father’s other sister, Aunt Ryfcia, also married a Gilf, Szymon, Aunt Doba’s husband’s brother. Uncle was a miller. They used to live on 54 Przykopowa Street, and I remember there were huge flour sieves at the back of the house. They had a daughter, Maniusia, born in 1922. Later they were in the ghetto and we even lived together for some time [on Niska Stret].

Then there was Aunt Rozia [Roza]. To tell you the truth, she was a half-sister, because I don’t remember whether there was a common Grandfather [father] or Grandmother [mother]. They lived on 35 Niska Street. The husband of that Aunt was Lejb Gefen, she was his second wife. He was a very wealthy man, he was one of the five richest bakers in the ghetto, a man with a heart of gold. They had two sons. Poldek [Leopold] and Julek [Juliusz]. Julek and his girlfriend ran away to Russia in 1939 and we never heard from him again. Poldek with his wife Anka stayed with the family all the time. They were a very handsome couple, about ten years older than me. And they remained in the ghetto until the end.

Father’s half-sister, but of a different combination [than Aunt Rozia] was Aunt Zlatka [Zlata]. Her husband was Abram Zymelman and Aunt Zlatka had three daughters, Bronka [Bronislawa], more or less same age as Uncle Gefen’s children, and two daughters, twins, my brother’s [Borus] age: Halinka [Halina] and Dziunia [Jadwiga]. Halinka was a very pretty girl, and Dziunia was such a skinny creature, they didn’t look a lot alike.

The youngest sister, Father’s favorite who he used to always help, was Aunt Chawcia, that is Chawa. Her husband Beniamin was also a Kornblum, he was Father’s cousin. They had two sons. One was Icchak, the other one Kuba [Akiwa]. Icchak was three-four years older than me, and Kuba was my age, my best friend who kept getting me in trouble. They lived in Warsaw, on 17 Panska Street. It wasn’t a religious family, but a traditional one, they had a kosher kitchen. Aunt’s husband was very active in Zionism. Kuba used to go to a Hebrew school, and probably belonged to Betar 2. They had a piggy-bank for Karen Kayemet 3 at home and his father, whenever he could, would give [money]. My father didn’t like it, Mom even less. Izaak was very talented. He used to play the violin, paint. He used to go to the Pilsudski School of Lithography on Konwiktorska Street in Warsaw. He also sang in a choir, in the Large Synagogue on Tlomackie 4, and whenever he had shows, the entire family tried to get there. I remember that synagogue as a large palace, staircase going up, lights. I felt strange there, a bit uneasy.

Father was born in 1894. He went to a cheder for certain, but what school he went to afterwards, I don’t know. I don’t think he took high school exams. I remember when Dad used to sit and write, I remember his handwriting. He wrote by hand, very specific handwriting, so that where there were long Nun, Chet [at the end of a word], there was a thick line. And he wrote on sheets of lined paper, but folded in half in such a way that there were thin stripes of paper.

I don’t know much about my biological mother. In Father’s first book, published in 1921, there is a dedication: “Dedicated to you Menuchele”, so he knew her in 1921 already. [My parents] got married probably in 1921. Since I was born in 1926, I suspect they spent those few years in Warsaw and then went to Paris, where the family of my uncle, Father’s brother, was living. They went there to work, because they had a place to stay there. I know that Mom died in Paris. I know she died of tuberculosis. I know that after Mom died Father gave me, a few-month-old baby, to the nuns, to some convent in Strasburg, apparently there was no one to take care of me, and probably after about half a year Father took me back and brought to Warsaw. All these memories are based on unfinished allusions, by Mom’s sister, Aunt Mania [or Mina] Zamosc from Mszczonow, who lived in Warsaw.

Aunt Mania was an old maid, [I don’t know when she was born], she probably died in the Warsaw ghetto 5 in 1942. My earliest Warsaw memories are such that Aunt Mania would come over to our home, where there was Father’s second wife, Mom – Lonia, already, and take me for a walk. I can’t tell how often those visits used to happen, but I know they were unenthusiastically accepted at home by Mom and Dad. Later it came to it that Aunt Mania somehow would sneak me out. I rather liked her, but can’t say I loved her. When I was a child that could remember something, when I was about 9 - 10 years old, the family of Mom - Lonia, who lived in the same yard as we did [on 42 Sliska Street], when they knew, I don’t know how, that Aunt Mania was coming over for me, they would sneak me out of the house and hide me in their apartment. I don’t know what caused that.

Aunt Mania used to come several times a year and take me to her family, that is, the family of my Mother. And I remember there was an older Aunt, on Wielka Street, across from the house where Father’s sister, Aunt Frania, lived. I remember, though vaguely, that that Aunt’s name was Bela, and Uncle Jankiel Goldwaser, he was a religious Jew, with a beard. There were no children there. And there, on a bookshelf, were twelve crystal elephants [placed] from the smallest to the largest, and I was allowed to take them and play with them. That old Aunt would also take crystal glasses, attach strings to forks, I would hold both ends of the string near my ears, move my head, the fork would hit those glasses and the bells rang!

I remember two events at that Aunt’s on Wielka Street. Once: the entire family sits at a large table, on the honorary place there is an old Jew in a capote, with a grey beard, in a cap. Dad brought me there, because it was somebody’s wedding, I can’t remember whose. I was told to walk up to that, as it turned out, Great-grandfather, he looked at me, they said I was Izio [diminutive for Izaak]. That was my Great-grandfather, Mother’s grandfather. The second event at that Aunt’s, I must have been even smaller, Aunt Mania brought me there, Dad came, I hadn’t seen him in a while. The air was tense, Dad sat on a sofa, picked me up and held me between his knees, because I was struggling to get out, and Aunt Bela was arguing with that Aunt Mania, and Dad took me home. I think what happened was that Aunt Mania took me for some time and didn’t want to give me back. I suspect the basis of the entire story was such that Aunt Mania hoped to marry Father, after Mother died.

The second family [from my mother’s side], that I remember, lived on Panska Street. There were two sons, one of them was my age, the other was older. [When you entered their house, there was] a hallway, a large clothes hanger on one side, colorful glass door led to the kitchen, then you’d enter the living room, and there was a desk, I think it was that older boy’s desk, with some lamp, and there was a shelf above it, with volumes of Plomyczek children’s magazine. And I used to sit there and look at and read those magazines. It was fairly dark in that apartment, but I liked going there.

[The last memory related to Mother] comes from the times of the ghetto. When Borus was on the [so called] Aryan side, and Dad was very emotional about it, and we knew that I would get out in a few days, Dad called me and took a folded envelope out of his wallet, and from that envelope [he took out] a folded see-through paper that held golden locks of hair. He gave it to me and asked if I knew what it was. I said I knew, because I figured that was Mom’s hair. And Dad said: ‘Do you want to take it?’ I said: ‘Yes’. He said: ‘No! Give it back to me.’ That was the only time when my mom’s subject was touched. There was some pressure not to talk about it, so I didn’t even ask.

Some time around 1929 Dad got married the second time, to Lonia [Lea], maiden name Mileband. Out of parents of Mom Lonia Mileband [in the rest of the story, whenever Mr. Kornblum talks about Mother, he means Lonia Mileband] I only remember Grandmother, her name was Bube Gele [Yiddish for Grandma Gele]. She was born in Warsaw, I don’t know which year. She came from a religious family. I remember her as if through fog, only in bed, because she was sick. Not a small woman, dressed traditionally, in dark colors, she had a white collar. She treated me rather coolly. When I was a very little boy, I remember that whenever she was to visit us on Friday, Mom would quickly light candles, which I couldn’t understand, because it was so unlike Mom. I think it was about 1933 when she died. Mom’s father’s name was Ber Wolf Mileband. I know nothing about him.

Grandma [Gele] lived at the same yard as we did [on 42 Sliska Street], at Mom’s sister, Chana. Aunt Chana’s husband, Jankiel Tygiel, [was] very traditional, he had a parted beard [in the middle] with two spikes and completely orthodox clothes: a black gabardine and a square hat with a tiny black peak, on holidays he would put on a black velvet capote with a string tied around his waist, not to mention a tallit whenever he went to a synagogue, he dressed himself as a Hasid. Aunt used to wear a wig and ran a religious house, but Aunt’s children absolutely did not [they were not religious].

Stefa, Aunt’s daughter [Aunt Chana and Uncle Jankiel’s Tygiel], came from this house, a teacher, who taught Polish in a Polish school in Wolomin. She left her home very early and lived on Zelazna Street. A very well read person. I remember that before the war I used to go to her, and she taught me some French. I was her favorite, she used to take me everywhere. To Aleje Jerozolimske, to the National Museum – I went there for the first time with her (there was an agricultural exhibition, where I drank pasteurized milk for the first time, that was a novelty back then). Stefa was the most intelligent out of that house, completely emancipated, I’d say assimilated. She wanted to have nothing to do with anything Jewish. She used to go to Paris to her aunts, and was in France when the war broke out. She survived the war in France, in Toulouse, when Germany took over a part of France, they all ran south. She was an old maid, and only in France she met Jacques, a true Frenchman with whom she married and outlived. They had no children. They ran a so-called salon. Stefa came to Poland after the war, she had lots of friends among people close to authorities in the People’s Republic of Poland ad used to come to us for a month or two, she lived in Warsaw. Her [Stefa’s] sister, Bela, had to escape from Poland before the war, because as a very young person she belonged to the Communist Party of Poland 6. She went to France. She had a husband there, last name Pachholder. A rather strange man. I think he came from Poland. She has a son, who is seriously ill now, Jean.

The third sister was Renia, a very pretty woman, who lived with her parents, married, before the war, Elek, who was mildly cross-eyed. Elek was a taxi driver, when he was to take a test to become a taxi driver, I questioned him about where what streets were, and he would tell me off hand how to get there. He used to drive a German car, a Steier.

There was a younger brother, Dawcio, Dawid, a boy older than me a good few years, and there was the oldest one, Beniek, who married Lodzia and had a child, Mareczek, born in 1940. They lived in Praga where Beniek had a wine store. He was on such bad terms with our mom, that Mom didn’t go to his wedding. I don’t know why, it was some family story.

Mom had a brother, Mosze Mileband, who died during my early childhood. For many years his daughter Estusia lived with us. They were very poor, so Mom took her in. Estusia was both a family member and also helped around the household. She and Mom were both caught on Umschlagplatz 7. [Estusia] had a brother Dawid, but he didn’t live with us. Dawcio had [in about 1937] a shoe stall in Hala Mirowska [a Warsaw market hall built in 1899]. We used to go visit him there from time to time, later he drove a rickshaw at the very beginning of the existence of the ghetto.

Mom also had two sisters in Paris. Aunt Mania and Aunt Emilia. Emilia lives until this day, she’s very old. Aunt Mania died of Parkinson’s disease, many years ago. And there was a brother, religious, in a cap, in a capote, who had something to do with selling and buying currency. I don’t remember him or his wife. I know they lived on 10 Twarda Street. They weren’t well off, they had lots of children. There was Fredzia born in 1931, another girl older than her, there was a son with a hump, Elimelech and maybe some other children. Fredzia was a beautiful girl who lived with us for a while in the ghetto, and to whom my brother [Borus] used to give his lessons that he took secretly during the war.

There was one more sister of Mother, from Zdunska Wola [a small town 190 km west of Warsaw], Aunt Mala and Uncle Mendel Staszewski, a very religious family, they had a daughter Irka and a son Beniek, who emigrated to Belgium when he was young. Irka studied in Warsaw and I remember that one summer she lived with us on Sliska Street. We never went to Zdunska Wola.

My mom [stepmother], Lonia [Lea] Mileband, was born in 1900, I don’t have information what school she went to, but she was a teacher before she got married, a home room teacher, and she may have also taught Polish at Korczak’s 8, on Krochmalna Street [until November 1940 the Korczak Orphanage was located on 92 Krochmalna Street, later it was moved to the ghetto to 33 Chlodna Street]. When I was little she didn’t work, but later, when we weren’t doing to well, she learnt how to make corsets, there were two additional sewing machines at home [for Mother]. I learnt how to sew and used to help Mom to sew bras, so-called full ones, you had to put the cups in first. Later Mom realized it would be better for her to open her own store instead of providing bras to other stores. And she opened a store on Rymarska Street, in the other part of the store there was a dressmaker or a haberdasher. It could have been in 1936, didn’t last long. We used to go there some time to visit Mom, Wladek [Borus] was nuts about those visits.

I knew Lonia wasn’t my mom, but I didn’t feel it. Mom was a very smart woman. But from the time perspective, I realize I didn’t experience true motherly love. I was a bit browbeaten, always very shy. I know that Mother’s niece, Estusia, who stayed with us, used to pick on me a bit. And Dad would always get very upset about it, I remember. Once in a summer resort she made me a hardboiled or soft-boiled egg – not what I liked, another time in a row. When I protested, Dad got upset, he was drinking a glass of tea with milk. He didn’t finish, threw the glass over the porch. Mom didn’t say anything.

[My brother] Borus was born in 1932. Borus derives from Ber - Dov in Hebrew, which means a bear. [Mr. Kornblum calls his brother also Wladek, or Wladzio – diminutives from Wladyslaw, his Polish name]. I remember when he was born Grandmother [Gela] was lying in bed [she was sick]. In Yiddish ‘brist’ means ‘brisket’ that’s how we call meat: brist. And brit mila means circumcision, but here [in Warsaw] people used to call it brist mila. And Grandma asked me when I came to visit her: ‘Vus makht di mame?’ [Yiddish: ‘what is mom doing’?], ‘Zi makht a brist’, [she’s doing ‘brist’] I answered, thinking about meat and everyone laughed in the whole family. I remember very well when Borus lay in the other room in a bed with a lifted front, with bars, so that he wouldn’t fall out.

Dad was a writer and he wrote a few books. It’s not big literature, but it’s prose with a large poetic load, so descriptions, accounts of events. He also used to write to Jewish magazines, to Folkshtime 9, to the newspaper Haynt 10, to the newspaper Radio 11, that was an afternoon newspaper, and to the newspaper Moment 12. He belonged to a Union of Jewish Writers in Warsaw, on 13 Tlomackie Street 13, where he used to take me to as a child, where Itzik Manger 14 also used to come. Some of Itzik Manger’s poems I remember today, and when Father took me there, I used to sit in his lap and recite. I met Itzik Manger later in Israel on ‘Di Megle’ show, but he was quite old then already and didn’t remember anything.

13 Tlomackie Street I remember as a row of rooms, lots of people, noise, cigarette smoke. I remember the name Horonczyk [Szymon Horonczyk, (1889 – 1939), a Jewish writer who committed suicide in the first days of September 1939], that was one of the writers who used to come there. A strange man, with big hair, who was extremely afraid of the war and the Germans. And he was one of the first to run east 15, but he didn’t get far, he cut his wrists in some barn. It was a well-known story in that world then.

Various writers, painters, and also Mom’s friends, teachers, used to come over to our house. They drank a bit, but I remember them [the artists] to be in rather bad material conditions. And Father, whenever he was able to, used to help them, but where did he get the money from? When he was in Paris, he learnt how to make women’s handbags. He was very good at it, he used to come up with styles himself. He had a shop that throughout various periods of life was located either in our house or in some rented apartment. For some time even in the house of Aunt Chawcia – [Father] helped them this way by paying rent, because they were not too well off. Mom used to help at the shop, and I, when I grew up, and I know how to use a sewing machine until today. [Father] used to sell [finished] purses to various stores, on Aleje Jerozolimskie, on Marszalkowska Street, where I used to go with him often. But there were various periods, too, sometimes it was better, sometimes it was worse. [When it was] better, [Father] had three, four apprentices.

My neighborhood

We lived on 42 Sliska Street, in the spot where Jana Pawla II Avenue runs now. A long yard, a gate, which used to be locked at night. The gatekeeper lived there, he had a son whom I was very afraid of for no reason. A tall boy, a lot older than me. We lived in the back premises, on the second floor in a four-story building, in a apartment with two bedrooms, a kitchen and toilet, there was no bathroom.

When you entered, there was a gas meter, on which I broke my arm chasing after my little brother [Borus]. There was a mirror over the gas meter. The first door on the left led to the toilet. There was a small window high up in the toilet, which looked onto the kitchen. In the kitchen there was a bed behind a curtain, for a servant. There was a living room, there was a large table, folding iron bed, when it was folded it became a type of a table. And there was a couch. I used to sleep on that folding bed, I think Estusia slept in the kitchen, and the third, much smaller room, was my parents’ bedroom. There, in the alcove, there was the [parents’] bed, and a crib where Borus slept. Out in the yard, under the bedroom window stood a garbage can. For Friday my parents used to buy hot challot, which they put on the window to cool them off. And Brother, since he was a huge rascal, would sometimes sneak in and push [those challot] straight onto the garbage. And I had to run downstairs and rescue them.

In the living room, on the right, there was a large, very old cupboard. It had glass doors, some pottery inside, lower down there was also door and a table top on which various things stood. And it fell on me, like a house made of cards. A horrible experience. I must have been very little then, [it was] probably before Wladek [Borus] was born, nothing happened [to me], but there was a huge row.

The kitchen was narrow and on the left there was a sink, in the shape of a half-circle at the bottom, and next to the sink there was a huge box, opened at the top, and we kept coal for the tile stove in there. Kuba put me into that box once and closed the lid, and I had to sit in there, I can’t remember why, but it was a game. When I got out of that box and Mom saw me… Well, Kuba didn’t come over for two or three weeks! We had to bring the coal from the warehouse, at the end of Sliska Street near Twarda Street, so it was always a problem who was going to bring it, we used to hire porters, they had such huge baskets they put on their backs. I remember there was Mom’s cousin, who was in very bad financial conditions, a religious Jew with huge beard, and he was a porter. There was time that he used to bring us that coal. Of course Mom didn’t pay him the regular fee [she paid him more].

In that kitchen they used to do laundry in a wash-tub. A washerwoman used to come to do the laundry, later it was just Mom and Estusia who did the laundry. And there was a hand wringer, I liked working it a lot, but it was quite hard, especially when a sheet got in there and then we had to hang it. There was an attic over the 4th floor, but they used to steal there. And in the kitchen, under the ceiling, over the window, there was such a frame and ropes, and on the opposite wall there were hooks, and a part of that frame was pulled over to the other side, and then we had ropes like [guitar] strings along the entire kitchen, and we had to climb a ladder to hang [the laundry]. Once I climbed that ladder and fell straight onto some box with nails and until this day I had this triangle here on my hand, you could identify me by this.

[I often played in front of the house]. Once they bought me a scooter, a good one, massive, wooden, it had rubber wheels. And I used to let myself ride it on the road. There was never heavy traffic on Sliska Stret and once a navy-blue policeman came by and took that scooter from me. I, of course, ran home and Dad went with me to the police station, at the police station they said: ‘Yes, we have it, but you have to go to the constable on Grzybowski Square, he directs traffic there.’ So Dad and I went there from Sliska Street to Grzybowski Square, he stood on a platform in the middle of the road, we went up to him, Dad told him what we came for: ‘That’s 10 zloty’. So Dad took out 10 zloty, that was a huge amount of money, gave it to him, we went back to the police station and I got my scooter back.

Across from our house there was a grocery store, ‘at Rudele’s’. Rudele was a red-head. It was a Jewish store, you could cut big pats of butter with a wire, like a bow. And we kept going to Rudele’s, there were no fridges, you had to buy everything fresh. I liked going there a lot. The smells! Incredible. Next to it there was a soap store [a soap store - store with cleaning articles], there was everything, soap, kerosene. A dark store, an older woman stood behind the counter, she must have been very religious. Her sons with sidelocks were there, in caps, that store was connected to their house.

At the corner of Sliska and Komitetowa Streets they used to sell ‘baygels’, that is bagels, if I remember correctly, 3 for 10 groszy [Polish change]. Today’s bagels are not the same thing. Baygels were braided, and the whole thing was to sell them while they were still warm. I know how they made baygels, because later we lived on Niska Street, where Uncle [Gefen] had a bakery: they made dough, quickly rolled out, the baker braided – two braids, then they threw it on the boiling water, fished it out with a long rod and put into the oven, it sat in the oven briefly and was taken out with a shovel. It was crunchy, brown. I never experienced that taste again.

Every once in a while peddlers would come to the yard. Among others a juggler. I was happy when they gave me some pennies, I stood and watched next to that blanket where he was showing tricks. Sometimes an old Jewish woman came, pulling a barrel on a small platform with wooden wheels and shouting: ‘Uliki, uliki’. A type of a herring, uliki.

In our part of Warsaw everything was around Twarda, Sosnowa, Zlota, Wielka, Sliska, Komitetowa Streets [before the war these streets were located in the Jewish district]. On Komitetowa Street there was an extraordinary Jewish cold cuts shop. On the way to school I often dropped by in there, bought a Kaiser bun and so called ‘varieties’, that is, scraps of various cold cuts. There are no ‘varieties’ today any more, like many other things.

I remember the Saski Garden, near the Unknown Soldier’s grave, there were eleven arches, it was called ‘eleven gates’, and it took the entire stretch between the Saski Palace, which isn’t there any more, and the buildings of the general headquarters. There are only three [arches] left out of that (I think). It was a well known architectural accent and we used to go there to [watch] changing of the guard. We used to go to the Saski Garden often. It was nice in there, there was a Japanese house, which doesn’t exist today, there was a garden, a railing around. And whenever we went to the Saski Garden, we had to jump on the wall where the railing was, hold Mom or Dad with one hand in order not to fall down, and walk like that the entire way. At the entrance, at the Pilsudski Square, right to the left, there was a huge café Sigalina where we used to go for kefir, and at the entrance they used to sell ice-cream Eskimos, on a stick. And there was a sundial, which is still there today, a temple of love, and a famous fountain, a pond that turned into a skating rink in the wintertime and we used to go there to skate. I wasn’t good at skating.

In our house we spoke Polish with Mom, Yiddish with dad. Parents spoke usually Yiddish to each other. Mom was from Bundist 16 circles, but I can’t say she was an activist. It was rather a group of friends, well-wishers of Bund. Among others she kept in very close touch with the family Lifszyc. There was Estusia Lifszyc and her husband Joske Lifszyc [Josef Lifszyc – a dentist, Bund activist, a co-founder and chairman of Jewish Socialist Youth Club Tsukunft], who was a famous Bund activist, very close friend of Erlich 17. He was a dentist, on 1 Pawia Street he had a very well equipped dental office, I think they lived on the third floor, and the office was on the fourth floor. I used to go there, because their daughter was my friend. Her name was Mirka. There was also an older brother.

Joske Lifszyc escaped to Lithuania at the very beginning of the war, as a Bund activist. Estusia was left with the children. She stayed and didn’t want to leave because she was taking care of the dental office. She was in the small ghetto [a part of the ghetto covering streets south of Chlodna Street. The little ghetto was liquidated in August 1942], I even visited her. And I remember how they used to say that she stayed because of the office. Miraculously she sent away the older son, before the ghetto was created, and later at the very beginning of the ghetto she got in touch with some Pole, who, in the wintertime, put Mirka into the train, dressed in some fur, and drove her to Eastern Prussia. Then he led her by foot trough the border to Lithuania. In Wilno [presently Vilnius, capital of Lithuania] she met her father and his brother. Then she went from Lithuania to Japan through the Soviet Union. She survived the war and found her brother in London again.

At home we used to read Folkshtime, Radio and Haynt, and also a magazine for children Grininke Baymelekh, there were columns for children, various stories, books printed in series. We subscribed to books, there was a large library, also for children. There was a Jewish publisher in Warsaw called Kinder Fraynd and they published known youth fiction in Yiddish. I probably read the entire children’s fiction in Yiddish. For example The Pickwick Club, Emil and The Detectives, although whatever I read and recited later on various celebrations and shows in an amateur theatre, all that was in Polish. From our library, right when the war broke out and the Germans were coming closer, Dad took out all works by Lenin and Marx and threw them out to the garbage.

My parents were anti-religious. Never in my life did I go to a service in a synagogue, not even on Yom Kippur. There were holidays [present in our life], because there were generally holidays in the Jewish world: Rudele closed her store, Dad didn’t work, the shop was closed. And we went to visit the family.

I remember that on Purim we used to visit the Aunts. Wladek [Borus] was quite small then, but I already had a deal in it. There is a custom that on Purim children used to get purimgelt [Yiddish: money for Purim]. And I remember Uncle Braunrot prepared for that holiday a roll of grosze [small Polish change] and we got that. We had little flags, greger [Yiddish: grayger – a rattler], it’s a little mechanism on a stick, like a flag, which, when span, it rattled. The more you spin it, the more it upsets Haman. There was also a spot for a candle at the very top.

During Chanukkah we used to play dreydel [a cube spinning top] for money, and for many years we had a very nice dreydel. Whenever Grandmother Gela came, Mom would take out a little lotto. Those were cards with numbers on them, you threw dice and depending on what you got on the dice, you’d put on those numbers same numbers that you had in a sack. In the sack you had small dice with numbers on them and you had to put those numbers on the appropriate square on the card. Whoever filled his card first, won.

[I also remember] we used to buy matzah and for that matzah we had to go to Uncle Gefan on Niska Street. It was a special matzah, round, very thin, in packages made of brown paper. To get the matzah we took a horse carriage there and back, which was an event, because we didn’t used to use horse carriages since they were too expensive, but we couldn’t take matzah on a tramway, because those were big parcels.

I had a non-religious bar mitzvah. Every boy who celebrates bar mitzvah first has to learn some part of the Torah at some rabbi’s. And then he puts on a tallit, tefillin, but I had nothing to do with that, I didn’t know Hebrew, I didn’t know any service prayers. The family came to our house and we ate something. Some sisters of Father surely celebrated [religious holidays]. Interesting, there were some boys, but I never went to any Bar Mitzvah. We never criticized orthodox Jews, but we spoke of Zionists 18 with some contempt or disapproval.

My best friend was Kuba [Kornblum, the son of Aunt Chawcia and Uncle Beniamin]. He used to come over to our place, I used to go there, we played together, together we constructed the first radio detector with headphones, which was a big achievement. We used to tease Kuba’s older brother, Izaak – we often broke his violin. We used to play with photographic film. We played it as follows. On Sliska Street there were cobblestones, we had pieces of a photographic film with five frames on each, and two coins. We’d throw the coin on the ground, between the cobblestones, and we had to toss the second coin as close as possible to the first one. We measured the distance with our fingers. The thumb and the little finger, that was the largest distance, but if you could touch both coins with the thumb, then you’d win most. The smallest bid was five frames.

I didn’t have Polish friends, everything revolved in the Jewish world. But I remember once I was going home from school and on Komitetowa Street I got beaten up by a bunch of some Jewish boys, they thought I was a goy. I came back home all in tears.

I remember a student anti-Jewish rally. Before the war on Swietokrzyska Street there were many bookstores with school textbooks and always at the beginning of a school year young people with their parents would go there to buy books. And I remember some students on Swietokrzyska with long bats with razor blades, scaring people off: ‘Don’t buy from a Jew’, they stood in front of Jewish stores and wouldn’t let people enter. But it didn’t concern me personally.

When I was 6 years old I went to school on Krochmalna Street [Chmurner school number 36] because of Bundist sympathies at home. I started going to Freblowka [a pre-school ran according to the pedagogic system of F. Froebel] in the same building where the school was. I have very funny memories from Freblowka – I fell in love with a girl, Nomcia, I think Apfelbaum, who I [later] met in the ghetto, after such a long time, and it turned out Father knew her father, who was also a writer. I remember a boy, I can’t remember what his name was, but he had a runny nose all the time and he never wiped it, even when he would eat a bun. I remember a girl, I think Hanusia, who left Poland with her parents and went to southern America, which was a big deal. The entire pre-school walked her to a bus, which was strange, and that bus was to take them somewhere. Maybe to some port somewhere?

I went to Freblowka on Krochmalna until the 6th grade. I didn’t do the 7th, because I went to the Laor [Hebrew: light] high school [2A Nalewki Street]. On Krochmalna the teaching language was Yiddish, except history and Polish which were in Polish of course. There were crafts, once I hurt my finger with an iron file. In the gym there were ladders on walls. We had to climb them. I wasn’t good at gym, I couldn’t jump over any vaulting horse.

I remember that the school corresponded with another school n Vienna, possibly also a Bundist school, we wrote letters, to various kids, in Yiddish. I remember a gentleman used to come over, I think his name was Melech Rawicz [originally Zacharia Chone Bergner (1893-1976), a poet writing in Yiddish, a traveler], who used to show us slides from Africa. I always liked geography, biology, animals.

I don’t remember the school on Krochmalna well. I think it was in the back premises, because we used to exit onto a yard. I remember a big room, where they used to show us the slides, a classroom, double door, a blackboard on the right, desks on the left, I always wanted to sit with Pola Boznicka. She was my sweetheart. They caught me once when I cut out the name Izio and Pola from a newspaper, from an obituary I think, and I glued it in my notebook, everyone laughed at me. It must have been in the 1st or 2nd grade.

There was a hole for an inkstand in the desk, we used to write with a pen called ‘mendelowka’ or ‘krzyzowka,’ those were nib pens. ‘Mendelowka’ was long, ended with a kind of a flat circle, it wrote completely differently than ‘krzyzowka’ which had a cut in shape of a cross. I didn’t have good handwriting, the teacher didn’t like it. We were 30 in the class. There were lunches at school, but I never ate them. I used to go home for lunch, and bring breakfast from home.

I remember the action of drinking cod liver oil. We had to go [to school] and it annoyed me that I had to do the trip again from Sliska to Krochmalna in order to drink that horrible cod liver oil, and there wasn’t always a lemon to kill that taste in your mouth.

I remember the Nowosci Theater 19. I used to perform there with a group of kids from Freblowka, we walked in a circle there, and my hat fell off, I didn’t pick it up, it was a horrible experience. I remember hallways at the back of that theatre, where artists got dressed. It was terribly cold there, dimly lit, they were dressing us up in something. We used to go there to various shows, I remember some show with Ida Kaminska 20. I remember a verse of a song: ‘Khotsmekh iz a blinder, hot er nikht kayn kinder’ – ‘Khotsmekh is blind, he doesn’t have children’.

The teaching method in Folksszule was different [than in other Jewish schools]. I can’t describe precisely today how it differed. It was a secular school, they for example taught stories from the Old Testament, with no religious overtones. I remember that when I went to high school, it turned out there were gaps in my knowledge of religion. I was very young when I started going to Skif 21. I might have been 8. I used to go somewhere on Karmelicka Street, I didn’t really like it. There were readings, some singing at the meetings. Parents must have been happy I went there, but I think it was obligatory at school.

I walked to Krochmalna on foot, it was a long way. On the way, on Prosta Street, there was a navy-blue mounted police station, and I had to stop there, when the gate was open, I could see horses and barns, it was very exciting, but it didn’t always work. Sometimes I would meet friends on the way and walk the last parts with them. Always, when we got to Krochmalna, we waited to see cars: Haverbusch and Schiele. On higher numbers of Krochmalna [the school was located on 36 Krochmalna, so Mr. Kornblum is referring to buildings located further] there were breweries. Haberbusch and Schiele [Haberbusch and Schiele United Warsaw Brewery, founded in 1869, was located on the corner of Krochmalna and Wronia Streets]. And that beer in barrels was transported by special cars built in such a way that the barrels stood tilted on those cars, but that wasn’t the attraction yet, but the horses that pulled those cars. Those were Percherons, huge, slow, fat, massive horses. And always two or four horses pulled such a car, slowly, and I still remember the clot of their hooves. We used to run there, stay as long as we could, and then back the other way, to school, with our backpacks on. Past Krochmalna, there was a parish on Chlodna Street and there was a theatre next to the parish. And sometimes we’d skip school and go to that theatre for such films: Tom Mix, cowboys, with Indians. On the way back I used to see many porters, and carts on two wheels that they pushed. I think they were [entirely] Jews, because it was a completely Jewish street, with a bad reputation, because the poorest people lived there, so porters and prostitutes, and thieves.

I remember gymnasium well. I remember the principal who used to go to Majorca, and would tell us stories, his name was Tenenbaum. There was also a high school and once a geography professor came to our 1st class during the Latin lesson, taught by Bella the ugly Latin teacher, he interrupted her, whispered something in her ear and called me out of the classroom. He took me to a class in high school which he was teaching, and showed me to everybody: ‘See, this is a Nordic type’. In Laor I started studying Hebrew. I didn’t like this language.

I shared a desk with Adas Minc. Adas Minc, a fat boy, his parents were communists. They lived in Praga. They weren’t well off. He liked me a lot, I often shared my breakfast with him, I think they lived on Zamenhofa Street. It was far from Sliska, but he used to walk me home and then go back to his home. I had another friend in high school, Izio Brustin – a brilliant mathematician students from higher classes used to come and talk to him [about school matters]. He used to solve various problems for them. Teachers, professors knew that whenever there was something to solve, they would send from the 1st grade of high school to the 1st grade of gymnasium, to Izio. Izio looked particularly Semitic – he had a hook nose. He lived on Majzelsa Street.

Almost every year we used to go for holidays with the family, usually to the so called Linia [a row of tourist-health resort towns located on the line Warsaw-Otwock]. We went to Otwock, Falenica, once to Swider, many times to Miedzeszyn, once to Jablonna [summer resort towns near Warsaw] and once to Kazimierz. We usually took a train to the Linia, but we took a ship to Kazimierz [on the Vistula River, from Warsaw]. And our things, because we used to bring everything, [we used to send] by a horse carriage. I remember we would load things up at 6am and the horse carriage would get to the destination by night.

We used to go for a month, sometimes two. Estusia would come with us, of course. Once she stayed behind on the train station, she didn’t manage to get on [the train], and it was a big fuss, was she going to come on the next train or not. She did. Some summers Kuba came with us, too. Once Dad did it so that Aunt Chawcia and Izaak came as well.

Kazimierz was really a lot of fun. A lot of people, we used to walk up the Mountain of Three Crosses, go to a castle, we went to Naleczow [40 km from Kazimierz], to Pulawy [about 20 km from Kazmierz]. I think Jewish writers used to go there, because Dad went to some meetings there.

In 1939 we went to a summer resource in Falenica, and Father even had a shop there, but without apprentices, I helped him there a little, but not much, I didn’t really feel like working. I was 13, there were girls, Kuba was with us. Kuba was very popular with girls, he was outgoing, dark [was handsome, had dark hair], I was jealous. There was the hosts’ daughter, a pretty girl, Ziutka. When we knew that the war was coming, boys and girls [used to say]: ‘Well, Ziutka, be careful, when the Germans come, you’ll be doomed. But before that, you’re for Kuba.’ In Falenica Parents decided to move [after we returned to Warsaw]. We had been promised an apartment in the same house as Uncle Gefen, on 35 Niska Street. A huge building, two back yards, one after another, typical Jewish neighborhood. We could see Umschlagplatz from our balcony.

[In the new apartment] there were more rooms, one large room, second one even larger, a balcony at the front, two windows, a small room across, then a walk-through living room, and from there you could go to a small hallway, a bathroom and a toilet separately, and a kitchen and from the kitchen there were another exit onto a stairway. One room was always cluttered and we used to put stuff in there that we didn’t have anywhere else to put. We lived in a dining room, there was our Parents’ bed. On the opposite wall there was a crib for Borus and a large wardrobe. Father used to work in the kitchen. The large room at the front was rented out. A mother with a daughter lived there, Jews, completely assimilated. Mrs. Henel or Hellen, refined, white-haired, [spoke] beautiful Polish, they had nothing to do with anything Jewish. The daughter, too, very pretty. Wladek liked them, that daughter used to teach him something.

Across from the building on the even side of Niska there were lumberyards all the way to Parysow [a district of Warsaw], and opposite our house there were some small stores. In the back yard, in the back premises, there was Uncle Gefen’s bakery store, and in the corner of the back premises there was the entrance to the bakery. There was a counter behind which they used to sell bread, and further there was and entrance to the huge bakery which fairly modern stoves, machinery, there was also a shower, and on the left there was a bread storage, where bread was cooling down on shelves. It was a basement which windows went out to the back yard, and when the Germans entered [Warsaw], those windows were covered up with wooden planks. Later we used it as a temporary bunker.

Immediately after bombings began in 1939, one of the first igniting bombs fell on the lumberyards on Niska. The fire was horrible. Everybody was scared, didn’t know where to run. And Parents decided we would escape from there to some place on Sliska, and we left with bags. It was before the ceasefire. We finally got to Sliska, but not to [our old] apartment, but to the soap store. It was full of people, because it was downstairs, and people would always come down from higher floors, being afraid it would be worse upstairs.

Later we went to Aunt Dobcia, on Panska, she had a large apartment. There were lots of foreign people who didn’t live in those buildings, but who, like us, were running away from other parts of the city, but nobody asked any questions. We all went to the basement, because they announced a bombing, and a bomb fell on that house. I know I lost consciousness. Everything went dark, it must have taken a while, when I woke up the basement was full of black dust, and people were pushing their way towards the exit to the stairway, I instinctively got out, and then heard some woman scream: ‘Vu iz mayn man un mayne kinder?’ [Yiddish: Where is my husband and my children?’]. And it was my mom. Then Dad showed up and Borus and Estusia, and it also turned out that in the same house there was Aunt Chawcia with her husband, Kuba and Izaak. And when we met at the gate, it turned out Izaak wasn’t able to walk. Aunt Chawcia said there was a wooden exit door, and it hit him in the head. And when we all got outside to the street, Aunt Chawcia decided to go to Aunt Frania’s on Wielka Street, and Dad and Mom decided to go back to Niska. We parted and from later stories we know that Izaak died two days later.

Financial hardships began for us then. After Warsaw surrendered we decided to somehow sell the stock of handbags that Dad still had. And I remember Mom and Dad packed those handbags into some special white boxes, and Mom and I went to Swietokrzyska Street to stand in a row [to sell the handbags], there were lots of people [selling various things]. Uncle Lejbisz Gefen, who was quite well off at the time, ended up with no flour and couldn’t do anything either. After some time a [Polish] man came to Daddy, and it turned out that through some common acquaintance who used to have a handbag store, he found out that Dad used to deliver handbags to that store. The man said he’s willing to buy handbags from Father. And he took a couple boxes with handbags, and said that if he sells them, he’ll be back with the money. And, surprisingly, he came back a few weeks later and that’s how the cooperation began. He used to come once every two months.

Then they started building the wall [April-May 1940]. At the beginning we didn’t know what it was, because they didn’t build it continually, but pieces on various streets, so that nobody realized they would be connected. Then they created the ghetto and there were passages in the walls, and as long as there were passages, that man kept on coming. They used to search people on those passages, but he was a huge man and he used to hang those handbags, without boxes, on himself, under his coat, and he just seemed much heavier then, he also bribed those guards. He came a few times when it became more difficult to get inside and outside of the ghetto [in January 1941 the penalty for leaving the ghetto without a pass became stricter], he kept coming to bring money, but once he came, took the handbags and never returned. He most likely couldn’t get in any more.

At first, before the ghetto was created, I used to go to secret classes in the Krynski gymnasium [the pre-war, Jewish, mathematics-biology oriented Magnus Krynski gymnasium was located on 1 Miodowa Street 22]. Wladek [Borus] also took those secret classes, at the beginning I used to walk him to Pawia Street. [Mr. Kornblum’s brother writes in his memoirs the secret classes on 1 Pawia Street were taught by Miss Greta and Miss Cylia. Wladyslaw Dov Kornblum, The Last Descendant: Memoirs of a Boy from the Warsaw Ghetto, 2002]. Later, after some time, to Smocza Street. [In the ghetto] he often used to go to Gesia Street, to a so called garden, those were classes for little children, children would get together there in the summer and there were caregivers. They even taught them something there.

In the ghetto, when my parents realized we would most likely be separated [Mr. Kornblum most likely refers to summer 1942], Dad wrote down the address of his brother in America and I put the piece of paper with this address on it into my wallet that Dad made for me. [My parents] also sewed canvas backpacks for us, and we put in there a change of underwear, extra shoes, things like that, so that in case they’d catch us and take us away, we’d have it with us.

Before the war Daddy used to obtain leather always from some place in Nalewki, where there were warehouses, we had to bring it and I used to go with Dad, the leather was rolled up in rolls in a brown paper wrap. At home Dad would cut the leather, according to design, and then this leather had to be taken to a special shop where they had special machines that scraped the endings of those pieces so that it was easier to fold and glue them. In the ghetto the leather was cut by a craftsman’s widow, who lived on 33 Niska Street, with two children, in very bad conditions, and Dad used to send me there. Whenever I went there, Dad, despite the fact that we didn’t have much either in that period, always gave me something to bring them.

I need to say that Dad was by nature a very good person .Very sincere, warm-hearted, very sensitive, and – it stuck with me since I was very young – he always helped people.  He used to help other artists, kept giving to Aunt Chawcia, organized bread delivery for Jewish writers in the ghetto. In the later period in the ghetto, when there was horrible poverty, and children wandered about on streets and died on sidewalks, they used to also beg. A young boy used to come to Niska where we lived and shout: ‘A stikele broyt’ [Yiddish: ‘a piece of bread’]. And Father once brought him upstairs, fed him, found a flat box with a string that he could hang on his neck, and I don’t know how, but bought him a box of candy to sell. And he came by a couple times, and finally he came once and said he’d eaten all the candy.

At the beginning, when there were the first blockades, Dad was involved in some backyard self-defense. Every house had a self-government. People helped one another, it was done both for social reasons and for the sake of maintaining order. And I remember that people came and demanded money, supposedly for the underground, but we all knew it was a plain robbery and theft, and Dad, somehow, for his money, bought knives, and gave it to some of the young people in the backyard, and the self-defense was created. People imagined some things could be arranged for this way.

Then the typhus epidemics broke out [the peak of the typhus epidemics in the Warsaw ghetto was between July and September 1941]. In the ghetto we had a Judenrat 23 decree and a so called ‘13’ 24 kept a close eye that anyone who came down with typhus was taken to a hospital, it was banned to be sick at home. They were afraid the epidemics would spread. Those taken to the hospital usually never came back. And Uncle Lajbisz Gefen’s brother, Szmelke, who lived in the same back premises got sick with typhus first. Lajbisz lived on the second floor, and his brother on the first. He didn’t have children, had a significant hump, lived with his wife. And as Uncle Lajbisz was a good man, his brother and brother’s wife were considered to be bad people. They never helped anyone, they were withdrawn, sullen, he was a co-owner of the bakery. He was always sickly, pale, because of that hump probably too, and they knew that if they took him to the hospital that would be the end of him, but they had to call a doctor when he got sick. They brought a doctor in, and I remember they tried to bribe him with golden dollars, or so called ‘piglets’, that’s what we used to call Russian rubles, but the doctor refused and reported and they took [Uncle Gefen’s borther] to the hospital where he died.

Mother had a very good friend, a teacher, Bela Szapiro, her husband came from Pinsk, was color-blind, and as a color-blind person he worked [in Warsaw] in a factory of colorful bands and strings, like for a bathrobe. Everyone was surprised how he could discriminate those colors. It turned out he had some numbers on those strings. They had a son Michas, three years older than me, who used to teach me German before the ghetto, I used to go to them on Walicow Street. He taught me enough that I could write using Gothic letters and could read, of course. I read, when we still could, Volkischer Beobachter. Bela, his mother, came down with typhus. The hospital was located on Stawki [the internal and infectious diseases units of the Starozakonnych Hospital on Czystem, was locatd on 6/8 Stawki between May 1941 and July 1942] and they took her there, and there was nothing to eat there. Michas used to come to our place every day and Mom would give him food in flasks and he took them to the hospital. And one day Michas came, took the flasks, and came back half an hour later with all that, stood in the doorway and said: ‘Mom died’. Later we had no contact with typhus.

It was getting worse and worse, raids began. They were making so called blockades 25. They would come to the building, to the backyard, gathered people and took them to Umschlagplatz. They did the blockade on 35 Niska, we were at home, everything went quiet as if there was not a soul anywhere. They [the Jewish police] 26 started going from apartment to apartment, banging at the doors, pulling people out, unbelievable screams. And they started pounding on our front door. I know that Dad opened the door just a little and said something, and they shut the door and it lasted for a long while, but nobody banged on the door any more, and then everything went quiet and we understood they all left. Then a policeman came and Parents gave him money. It turned out that Mom, without Dad’s knowledge, kept putting some money aside in the wardrobe, under the linens, and she managed to collect some. And when that moment came, she took it out and we bought ourselves out this way.

Later, when shops began [from the mid 1941 a dominating form of production in the ghetto were German manufacturing enterprises, so called shops], they announced that whoever had a sewing machine could sign up. Since we had three sewing machines, one for leather, two of Mom for sewing corsets, we went with Szmil to the Oszman shop on Ogrodowa Street. Szmil was a bakery worker, who had a yellow horse wagon with a sign ‘bakery’ on it to deliver bread to various stores or selling points. At the beginning, for as long as he could keep the horse, that wagon was the transportation means for the entire family in every situation, because the police usually didn’t stop it.

The shop on Ogrodowa Street was located in a small building, where they had already taken everybody out of [after the Great Action only the Jews capable of working remained in the ghetto]. I remember we didn’t do anything there, just sat at the machines. That shop existed for a very short time, it’s possible that they didn’t manage to organize anything to work on then yet. The management of the shop were Jews who had dealings with the Germans. And they had a registered sort of a factory. They did it for money and to save themselves. There were also shops where they did work, but you had to pay to get in.

Once we came back home [from the shop on Ogrodowa] and we found out that Dad got into a leather shop on Nalewki Street, I think Brauer’s [the Herman Brauer leather and tailor shop at 28-38 Nalewki Street]. And then the leather sewing machine got transported, but me, Mom, Borus and Estusia remained on Ogrodowa. We also wanted to move to Dad’s because Nalewki was near Niska and we wanted to be together, near Uncle.

One time [before Dad went to work on Nalewki] we were on our way to that shop [on Ogrodowa] and the Jewish police caught us on the street [according to Wladek it was on 24th July 1942], Mom, Estusia, Wladek and I, and a few more people who they caught on the street there, and they took us all to Umschlagplatz. On the way, as they were taking us, I noticed Edek Buch on a street. We started to shout: ‘Buch, Edek, go to Uncle, tell him they’re taking us to Umschlagplatz!’. And he ran and alarmed Uncle. In the meantime they took us through the gate [to Umschlagplatz].

Then they started to push people through a passageway, behind the building, to train cars. People went there rather eagerly, hoping it may be good to be there first. And then a policeman appeared and started shouting: ‘Kornblum, Kornblum!’. He came to us, said: ‘Sit here, don’t move’. It took a couple of hours and then everything went quiet, they must have taken those people away, that policeman showed up again and took us through the gate where the Germans stood. We went back to Niska. It turned out that one of Uncle Gefen’s cousins had a son who was in the [Jewish] police. I suppose we got out somehow through him. After some time that cousin policeman was at Uncle’s, and it was already the curfew. And he left to go back home. The Germans killed him on the street.

People ‘belonged’ to bunkers [the ghetto inhabitants built bunkers after the January action]. There were huge bunkers in the ghetto, hooked up to sewers even on the Aryan side, electricity, there were bunkers with a telephone. We belonged to Uncle Lajbisz’s bunker. In the bakery, where the shelves with bread were, they built a temporary bunker. One of the walls with shelves could be moved to the side and you could go behind that shelf and there was a small room.

Once a German came [to the bakery] and asked for a loaf of bread and we all froze, because that shelf was moved to the side, you could see the passageway. And he looked – he was somehow dumb or from the Wermacht – and took that loaf and left. Whenever there was a raid in the ghetto we sat there behind that wall with bread: Parents, Wladek and I, cousin Bronka, Polek with Anka, Aunt Rozia and Tusia [Estera] Gersztensang’s parents. Tusia’s mom, Nacia Gersztensang was Uncle Lajbisz Gefen’s cousin. Tusia’s father was tall, there was something wrong with one of his eyes, I don’t know what he used to do. They came to our house probably from the little ghetto and lived on the highest, 6th floor. Tusia was my age, but she slept in a baby crib. They were very poor. The bakery workers had another bunker. Under the stoves, there was a deeply dug huge bunker for 40 people, that you entered from the room with a shower. A part of the wall moved to the side there.

One day an order came to our shop, that whoever has a pass must go to Majzelsa Street [according to Wladek it was on 27th August 1942]. It turned out there would be a selection there.

They set us all up in a square. Mom was a terrible coward, was always afraid of something. Dad wasn’t with us there, he was in his shop [on Nalewki]. And Mom with Estusia stood at the back. And I stood in the first row. Two Germans stood before us. Two people from the shop management stood beside them with pieces of paper in their hands – they had lists. And they would call out a name and that person would run across to the other side of the street and a new block of people would form there [who were staying in the ghetto to keep working in the shop]. At some point I realized they read the same names twice, because they called and nobody would come up, I realized they wanted to save some people this way. And after some name there was such a moment of silence, and I jumped ahead to that other group. When they finished the selection, all those ‘chosen ones’ were pushed to a backyard of some building, they opened the gate, the police surrounded us, people ran up to those policemen, because they knew that among the detained were their relatives who didn’t make the selection. I had some money on me, because we all had some money then just in case, I got a hold of one and said: ‘Listen, there is my mom and a cousin, take this money and give it to them’. And I gave him all I had, I’m certain he didn’t pass it to them. I didn’t know where to go, I went to Nalewki [to the apartment near Dad’s shop].

Now I think my parents knew something was about to happen with that selection, because Borus didn’t go to Ogrodowa then [he usually went with Mom to the shop]. He slept in the apartment on Nalewki. In ‘our’ apartment there were still beds and bed linens, before we went to Ogrodowa with Mom and Estusia on that unfortunate day, they decided that he [Borus] would stay and we covered him with the bed linens in the bed. I remember Dad was worried he wouldn’t be able to breathe.

I went back, the door was locked, the key was taken away so I couldn’t get open and inside, I sat on the stairs and waited, maybe they’ll open. Dad learnt earlier Mom and Estusia were taken away. Uncle tried to get something in motion, some policeman apparently went to Umschlagplatz. Too late. Dad came back, I told him how it was, we opened the door, uncovered my brother and he started to scream: ‘where’s Mom’, but he understood. He was in despair. We went back to Niska, to the bunker. There were only: Dad, Wladek, and me. And I remember how Dad just sat alone and cried.

From the Aryan side Jehuda Feld used to come visit Dad. He had something to do with the Bund underground, [he used to] talk to Anka and Poldek [Uncle Gefen’s son]. They were involved, because I also remember how armed Jews came to Uncle’s bakery and took money for the underground. I witnessed such a robbery once, Uncle wasn’t there then, Aunt was sitting there, she opened the drawer and gave them all the money. I think she even took her necklace off and gave it to them, too.

Since I had [so called] Aryan looks, people kept asking Dad why he’s keeping me in the ghetto. But we didn’t know anyone. And there was a problem with Borus who had a very dark complexion, I don’t know if he looked like a Jew as a child, but he surely stood out. And Dad also knew he had to save both his children, he knew he didn’t have a lot of time. He was afraid that if I left first, he’d loose touch with Feld, Borus wouldn’t leave. It was easier to send me away at the last moment because of my looks. That’s why Borus was to go first. Dad talked to Feld and Feld found on Gilarska Street, in Praga, a railway man, Polish, his name was Duriasz, who agreed to take in a Jewish boy from the ghetto, for money. It was the beginning of December 1942. We said our goodbyes and Dad took him to the gate and Feld moved him. On the Aryan side a woman was waiting for him, probably that Duriasz’s wife. Duriasz, of course, was getting money only for some time, later he wasn’t, but he was a very decent man, as opposed to his second wife. And Wladek sat there in a shed and lived out his own, huge, story.

I remained in the ghetto with Dad. And talks with Feld began to take me out as well, but Feld disappeared. In the meantime I fell in love with Tusia [Gersztensang]. She was very pretty. She looked totally Polish, she spoke perfect Polish, was a well read, intelligent girl. Once, in March, Feld let me know he’d come for me. The day before I said goodbye to everyone and Tusia said: ‘Will you come back for me?’ I said I would. Feld came and took me to the gate on Chlodna Street. There was a column that was on the way to work, to placowka 27, I joined that column and knew that on Zelazna Street there would be a guy waiting for me. I wore everything I owned, including rain boots and my gymnasium coat. And there was a guy waiting for me, and he took me to Marki near Warsaw to his family. There was a sister and two brothers, he was the third one, lived separately. As it turned out after the war, they all belonged to PPS 28, active in the underground. Once [after I already left] the Germans came there, surrounded the villa, shootings began, they had a machine gun, the Germans were throwing grenades, an armored car came and they even out the house, killed everybody, including that girl.

I slept there and the next day the eldest brother, who picked me up, was to take me to some village. And I told them I have a girlfriend in the ghetto, I wanted to go back. ‘But will there be money?’ I said: ‘Yes, there will’, but blindly, with nothing. And I went back [to the ghetto]. I found Dad, he didn’t ask why I was back, I told him myself, he didn’t say anything, I ran upstairs to Tusia. I said I needed money. [Tusia] went to her mother and later Dad went to Lajbisz and came back with the money. Next morning we got ready and went through the gate the same way. There was no problem, we again left with ‘placowka’. The guards weren’t bribed [not now and not before], we just sneaked in with Tusia to that column and they didn’t control everybody. And we got to Marki. They gave us identity cards. Tusia’s name was Jasia, and I got a birth certificate for the name of Waclaw Bartkiewicz, born in 1925, in Marki. And next morning we went [east], on foot, with that eldest brother who we called uncle. It turned out there was nothing arranged with any farmer. And he led us on foot, usually in evenings. It took two, three days.

We got to the Bialostockie voivodship, to the area of the town of Sokoly [ca. 220 km north-east of Warsaw], it was a rather Jewish town before the war. Somehow, he wasn’t successful in finding a place for us. In the end he told me to wait, and took Tusia somewhere. Some three days later he came back, told me where he’d left her, and he had to go back home. [He told me to keep asking farmers, tell them I was from Warsaw and I wanted to get hired as a shepherd.] I tried to take side roads, finally at some spot, on some field, I met a plowing farmer, [I told him] my story, that my parents died during bombing. He agreed to take me in and sent me to his home, and told me to wait until he gets back. It was a farmstead, a shabby house, a huge barn, a cowshed, another house, somehow neater, it turned out that his sister lived in that second house, married, with two children.

Stasiek [Stanislaw] Sliwowski, 25 years old, an old bachelor. He lived in a village Kowalewszczyzna [10 km east of Sokoly], with an elderly mother and a sister [her married name was Janeczko]. I worked for them as a shepherd. Mrs. Janeczko washed my clothes. Stasiek, you could tell right away, was a good man. They used to give me some food for the road, and I would spend almost all day with the cows in a forest.

[At the beginning of my stay at Stasiek’s] I went to that address where Tusia was and we met a few times. One day I didn’t find her, and I had no idea what happened. A year after the war I received a letter, Tusia found me. She was in France. It turned out that [in the village she had been] people started suspecting something and she, along with some young Polish girls, signed up for work in Germany [where] she worked for some farmers, and next to it there was a camp for French soldiers held captive by the Germans. Tusia met her future husband there and didn’t return to Poland. She immediately had a baby, and then two more girls. We kept in touch, I even went there. Tusia died of Parkinson’s disease [in 1996].

I still kept going to the forest with the cows. One day, as I was getting ready to go back, the cows stopped all of the sudden in the forest and didn’t want to go further. I walked over, looked, there were people in their underwear. I immediately understood, my throat went dry, I said: ‘Are you Jewish?’ ‘Yes.’ A married couple with a little girl, two more men and a woman. All together. I said: ‘Ikh bin oykh a yid’ [Yiddish: ‘I am also a Jew’]. Which I wasn’t supposed to do. They started asking questions, I started telling them a little, they asked me where I was staying. I told them that, too.

Stasiek didn’t know I was a Jew, but I wasn’t behaving right. I never went to any parties, games, I had no contact with boys or girls. I was shy, hidden, isolated. I also didn’t go to church and that wasn’t good either. I was dazed, depressed, I knew there had been the uprising in the ghetto 29. People would say: ‘Jews are fighting, they’re being liquidated…’ [Editor’s note: The information about the uprising wasn’t parallel to the events].

Some other time, walking with the cows again, I met a woman with a scarf on her head on the road. She was dressed like local peasant women, but I immediately sensed it, and so did she. She was Jewish, Marysia Olsza, we chatted a little, she told me where she was staying. She worked as a maid. She had to escape from that place after a few days. Later she was hidden at Stasiek’s sister’s, in the forest. Some other time I was sitting in the pasture with the cows, some guy walked up to me, in a ‘maciejowka’ [flat hat with a peak], in tall farmer’s boots, he looked like a rich farmer. He talked to me, it turned out he was Marysia Olsza’s brother. Perfect Polish. The Olszas were from Sokoly, they knew people in those villages. I think they were very rich before the war.

Stasiek realized I was Jewish by my behavior, and because something was going on with Marysia Olsza [Because I kept in touch with her]. And he came to me once to the field, brought me something to eat, and on the way back he said: ‘Wacek, don’t worry, I know who you are. You’re at my place, everything will be all right.’  Later I learned Stasiek had a Jewish fiancé during the war, a girl from Sokoly, he was in love with her, she used to come to him. Stasiek wanted, when there was a ghetto in Sokoly 30, for her and her parents to live with him, he wanted to build a bunker under the house, and they almost did that, but eventually those people decided to go back to the ghetto.

While herding the cows every once in a while I could see a fire, a glow, I could hear some shots. I knew [it meant] the Germans found Jews at some farmer’s and were burning down the house, the farm, killing the people 31. [From time to time] the Germans would come to the village, there was a big post in Sokoly and a big post in Waniewo [10 km east of Sokoly], they would ride bicycles across the village, and if I wasn’t out in a pasture with the cows, Stasiek would say: ‘Wacek, get inside’. And I would run to the barn, hide, in case one of them came by. Besides, Stasiek wasn’t certain of the people in the village.

One day Stasiek called me and said: ‘Listen, I can’t keep you any more, [people] in the village are talking, I’m afraid’. But he found me another place. It was early winter 1944. In the evening somebody knocked, a tall man came in, dark hair, dark Jewish complexion, introduced himself as Abram, and took me to the forest. It was quite far, on the way he told me that himself and a few more people sit in a dugout dug in the ground. And we went to that forest, at some point he walked up to a large juniper, picked it up along with its roots, underneath there was a hole of a girth just like a man’s,  and I went in there. In the dugout there was Abram, his sister Rachela, three-four years older than me, and their mother, Mrs. Kaplanska. The Kaplanskis were from Sokoly, [before the war] they had a textile store. Their father was killed. It was a very Zionist house, they spoke Yiddish and Hebrew [at home before the war]. There were also three more people, there was Szmil, his sister and sister’s husband, a tailor. Szmil – a carpenter, was a man from an underworld, his sister and that tailor weren’t much better. He didn’t look Jewish, he was fat and blond.

It turned out that among those people who I had met by accident in the forest with the cows, there was also Szmil with his sister and her husband. They remembered me.

That dugout was built by Szmil and that other man, the tailor, and the Kaplanskis gave them money. The entire dugout had two rooms connected with a narrow passageway. Everything was deep just enough, so that if you ducked you had a ceiling right above your head. The first room was about 3 meters by 3 meters, the passageway you had to crawl through, the second room was maybe 2 meters by 3 meters, and there was also a toilet in the second room. The walls of the dugout were timbered with young trees, light flexible branches were entwined, and the trunks touched each other. The roof was also made like this. The toilet had a door made of that timber and whoever went inside had to hold that door. In the first room there was Rachela, Abram, their mother and Szmil. They lied beside each other and Szmil across on their legs. In the second room there was Szmil’s sister and her husband. And I got the passageway. When somebody from the first room wanted to go to the bathroom, they had to crawl over me. We had to sit in underwear, because even in the winter it was very hot in there.

Rachela and Abram decided to teach me Hebrew. And I started to tell them about books I had read in Polish. At night we used to go outside, a few steps further there was a ditch in the ground, we made fire there, and if we had something to put into a pot, we cooked. Whatever we managed to get from farmers. When I was there, at first it was pea-soup. The Kaplanskis had money and Abram used to go to trusted farmers at night to get some food. In the morning, before we went to sleep [we slept during the day], we finished the leftovers for breakfast.

It was winter, some snow fell, and that was a problem, because when we came out, there were traces left. And therefore a great danger. Szmil and his brother-in-law came up with an idea to make wooden shoes with 4 pegs at the bottom. When you put your foot on the snow, only 4 holes were made in the snow. Often, when sitting in the dugout, we would hear some patter: of hares or some other animals. Every time we thought somebody found us.

We didn’t have anything more to eat. The Kaplanskis knew that in Waniewo there was a priest, his name was Ostalczyk, and Szmil or the Kaplanskis had a fox fur collar and they decided that I would take that collar and go to Waniewo during the day and try to sell that fox to the priest for food. I went there during a day, I arrived in Waniewo. The priest, a young, handsome man, brought me inside, to his office. I took out the fox: ‘And what’s that?’ – he asked. And I told him my story. [I didn’t told him I was Jewish] I told him I was from Warsaw, that my parents died. He was very moved. And I asked for food, which I could take back, in exchange for that fox. We started talking, he brought me to the kitchen, ordered to make me scrambled eggs with four eggs. I remember until today: on bacon. It went dark, he came to the kitchen with me again, said to cut two sides of pork fat. He walked me out not to the road, but through the vegetable garden, blessed me and off I went. It was a good few kilometers, they were already waiting at the edge of the forest, [that lard] was a treasure!

The second time they also decided that I would go and try to get some food in exchange for dollars. The priest told me: ‘If you’d like to come one more time, see, I sleep here in this room, you can come on the porch and knock at the window’. This time it was at night, I went on the porch and knocked at the window, [after some time] he opened the door and let me in, asked what I came for. I told him I had dollars and if he was so kind, maybe some food again. He sat me down on a stool and said: ‘It turned out that the fox you sold me, some Jew had already tried to sell it in the village earlier. Your entire story isn’t true. But I’ll help you.’ I gave him those dollars, he gave me the food.

When it got warmer, we came out of the dugout to the forest. The Kaplanskis and I went to the area of the village of Druzgolachy and we sat there in the bush, rye wasn’t tall enough then. And Abram brought food every once in a while from some farmers he knew, the Druzgolaskis. Once I went with him. It was night. Abram told me to wait outside. I saw a couple of men walk by, talking loudly, towards Lachy [Druzgolachy], I heard some noises in the village. It started to dawn. I decided to go back to the rye, I thought Abram had already gone back, but he wasn’t there. It turned out that the Druzgolaskis tied him up, threw him on a horse cart and took him to a military police post in Sokoly. I knew he was beaten up, they wanted him to tell them who else he was hiding with and where. At the same time they sent carts to the forest to find other Jews, and we saw those carts. They killed Abram. And we don’t know until this day where he is buried. After they killed Abram we went back to the area of Kowalewszczyzna and sat there in the rye which was tall enough to hide us.

It was hot, we had to go and fetch water, somewhere to abandoned wells, and one day Rachela with Mrs. Kaplanska went. I stayed alone and a German found me, a military man, who was taking letters from the general staff to units. He took me to the company. It was the Wermacht. It turned out there were a lot of people from Silesia, they spoke Polish. They knew I was a Jew, they gave me a haircut, kept me with them until their commander ordered them to take me to the military police. At the same time they got an order to withdraw and they took me with them, at night they were going through Sokoly, but couldn’t find a military police post, and they didn’t give me away, they took me far, towards Eastern Prussia. In the end they had to take me to the military police, but they didn’t tell them I was a Jew, they brought me as a boy who wandered around the village.  It was in the fall of 1944.

 [In Eastern Prussia] they assigned me to a German company which dug ditches. Finally I escaped from there and began to wander in forests, I slept in the forest, ate berries, sometimes knocked [at some door] and got bread with butter. Finally I arrived in some village where a farmer took me in not knowing who I was, and then I knew there had been the uprising 32 and I told him I was an uprising fighter from Warsaw. Later a family of runaways came [to that farmer’s] and they took me with them, and we got to the village of Zbojnia, near the former border with Eastern Prussia.

In January the attack began and in the morning there were Russians, lots of snow, so they followed one another, because they were afraid of land mines. And we knew then the Germans were gone. I stayed there for two more weeks, until traffic towards towns started. Russian trucks would come by, always stop in the middle of a village or town, and people would get on. And so, on a horse wagon, in horrible cold, I got to some town where those trucks used to come. I wanted to get to Bialystok, since it was the closest city, I thought maybe some Jews were there.

I arrived in Bialystok in February and immediately heard somebody speak Yiddish on a street. I was one of first ones to arrive. And there was a Jewish committee 33 and in the first words of my story I mentioned the name Kaplanski, they said: Rachele and her mother are alive. And they gave me their address. And I immediately went there and stayed with them for a while, until I discovered I was sick with tuberculosis. They examined me, sent me to a military clinic. The first one who x-rayed me, said: ‘Well, boy, you’ve come too late’. I had such changes in my lungs, but after some time the committee, most likely, organized for me to go to a health resort in Otwock [a tuberculosis health resort founded in 1893 by doctor Jozef Geisler].

In Bialystok I found Irka, Aunt Mala’s daughter, who in 1945 took my brother Wladek from Warsaw and placed him in an orphanage in Lodz. I wanted to move him from there to Otwock. I arrived in Warsaw. One night I slept somewhere, [then] right in front of the Jewish committee I met Antek Cukierman 34, who I knew from Bialystok, he used to come to Rachela [Kaplanska] and sleep at the Kaplanskis’. The Dror Organization organized a transfer of Jews to Palestine 35. He gave me some money so that I could get Wladek out of Lodz.

Wladek wanted to hear nothing of Judaism. He was shouting he wasn’t a Jew. I wanted to bring him to an orphanage [in Otwock]. The orphanage was right next to a health resort. The manager of the orphanage was a wife of a deceased Bund activist, Bielicka [Luba Bielicka-Blum, (1905-1973), a principal of a nursing school, wife of Abrasz Blum]. Emissaries of Dror and some other Zionist organization would come to the orphanage, and children would agree to go to Israel 36. I didn’t want to let Wladek go, but he told me he was going. Stefa was in France then and I hoped that she’d keep him, but he didn’t want to. He met his [future] wife, Linka, in the orphanage. In Israel Wladek was in a kibbutz, he worked very hard with bananas.

I spent a long time in the health resort [in Otwock], I was very sick with tuberculosis, in both lungs. There was no streptomycin back then.  And I had a friend in that health resort, Michal Janik, a boy my age, who unfortunately died of tuberculosis. I want to say that in the health resort everyone knew I was a Jew and there were four of us in the room, then six, and I absolutely cannot say anything bad [about other patients].

They sent us to a dentist. And there was Mrs. Filipowicz, a dentist, also a Jew, who survived. And [my future] wife used to come to that dentist as well, a young woman, who also had sick lungs. Mrs Filipowicz set up our visits in such a way, that I used to meet my future wife there.

My wife, Jasia [Janina], maiden name Aneksztejn, was born in Warsaw in 1923. She was the only child in an assimilated family, her father worked in the American Embassy and was far from Judaism, like her mother, Helena Aneksztejn, nee Finkelblech. She went to a Polish gymnasium on Miodowa Street, but had Jewish friends. She had aunts, one in Holland, and another one, who survived the war in Russia, then went to London with her husband, we used to go there. We got married in 1950.

I spent a few years in the health resort, then I took extramural correspondence courses in economy and bookkeeping and I started working in the Department of Internal Trade. And we stayed in Otwock. I used to commute to Warsaw by train, it was a hassle. And my wife didn’t work.

In 1957 the harassment began 37, it was first period of Gomulka’s ruling 38. Psychological pressure started. Jews worked on various positions in that department. It became very unpleasant. I belonged to the party 39, my wife didn’t. I went to the secretary Rysiek Wiazek, said: ‘Rysiek, see what’s going on, I’m returning my party membership card.’ There was no surprise.

The decision about leaving was easier because of emigration psychosis and the anti-Semitic witch hunt. The atmosphere was awful, suffocating. People would leave with a travel document [a travel document took away Polish citizenship of the person leaving], you had to wait for a long time to get it. This document said that the person who had it had undeclared citizenship. We had a friend in the Ministry of Internal Affairs and she helped us obtain this document sooner. People used to take all their belongings and custom officers would steal them. We heard of a customs officer, Mr Piechotka, who, in exchange for money, would come to your home and do the customs clearance. He came to us, to Otwock, he even helped us pack, and we sent off those sealed boxes, they made it to Israel 4 months after we got there. We left from Dworzec Gdanski [the Gdanski Train Station], through Vienna to Genova. The Czechs didn’t want to let the train through, there were some problems, we waited for 24 hours with no food or drinks. In Genova we waited for a ship to Israel. And we arrived in Israel. At first we lived with Wladek, who was already married, in a basement apartment, in Ramat Gan. Wladek’s wife’s name is Lina. She’s also from Warsaw, went through the occupation and the ghetto. They have two daughters: Dafna and Anat. Anat is in London, Dafna lives in Tel Aviv.

My wife’s father sent us money and we bought a small apartment, I got a job in the Ministry of Labor, then in the Ministry of Treasury. I took Hebrew, not for too long. My wife learnt it for longer and so she knows it better than me. We spoke Hebrew at work, but everybody working there was from somewhere [from Europe] and that Hebrew was never perfect. I worked with a [post-war] president of Warsaw, Fedorowicz. My wife usually didn’t work, only in Israel when we were very badly off, I had extra work I used to bring home and my wife usually did that.

I got the position in the Ministry thanks to Mosze Zonszajn [Aunt Kale Zonszajn’s son]. Mosze Zonszajn had a wife, Fajgusia [Fajga], they were in Russia during the war, and he was quite active, I think in Poalei Zion 40, after the war they went back to Israel, lived in Jerusalem and they both died there. He [Mosze] was very active there, he was a vice minister at the Ministry of Labor, he was quite well known in the first years in Israel since he had a visible position and was socially active. A very good man. She [Fajgusia] was a painter, they had a son, Tuli, a  handsome boy, when we first got to Israel after a year there was Tuli’s wedding. Tuli married a girl named Warda, she was born in Israel, but she spoke Polish. And we were very surprised by that. It turned out that her parents and a grandmother came from Poland. She was raised by her grandmother who spoke only Polish to her. Warda is still alive today.

Mosze’s sisters, Miriam and Reginka, were also in Israel. Miriam had a husband, he was a carpenter, from the real Jewish proletariat in Poland, heavy communist, his name was Chaim Goldberg. A golden hand, was able to do everything around the house, he worked in Israel as a teacher – carpenter, and at home all furniture was handmade by him. Miriam in Israel, in Ramat Aviv, she reads a lot of Polish literature. [She has] a large collection. A small apartment, but filled with Polish culture.

In Israel everybody celebrated Jewish holidays, but not in a religious sense of course, but in a sense of a day free of work, trips, and so on. Mother of Lina, my sister-in-law, was a very good cook, so always for Pesach the entire family would get together, there was very good food, we chatted, played games. We never went to the synagogue.

Our connection to Poland was based on buying Polish books, subscribing to Przekroj [a weekly illustrated magazine which has been published from 1945 in Cracow]. In Tel Aviv there was the famous Neustein bookstore 41, on Allenby Street, which used to get books and magazines for as long as Poland didn’t break off relations with Israel [from 1967 until 1989 there were no diplomatic relations between Israel and the satellite countries of the Soviet Union]. We subscribed to Przekroj, my brother has [all of them] from the first issue. And we spoke Polish at home. With Brother as well. He almost forgot his Yiddish. We kept in touch by writing letters, we had friends in Poland, who left later, in 1968 42.

We knew there was anti-Semitism in Poland, that whenever there was something wrong, Jews were blamed, but 1968 hit us very hard when it comes to our feelings. I can’t say it brought about hatred, because I kept dreaming of going back to Poland. There was no way. And we came for the first time in 1989 43 on an individual trip, for a month. We lived on Bagno Street [in Warsaw] in a rented apartment, we walked about, did sightseeing.

I worked in the ministry [in Israel] until 1989. [Later] I got a job offer from an American company in Warsaw. And we left everything, apartment, everything, and went to Wroclaw, because that company was located in Wroclaw at first, and moved to Warsaw after half a year. I worked as a vice director of financial and administrative affairs. And they kept extending my contract for yet another year, until we stayed. I went to America a few times, because the headquarters were in Chicago. And I worked until the end, until that company went under in 2000. The economic situation changed, because the company dealt with building large industrial outlets in the food industry. The company built twenty-something large plants in Poland.

In 2002 Wladek turned 70. The initiative to organize his birthday in Poland was an idea of his wife Lina, they gathered together the entire family, Anat with husband and three daughters from London, and from Israel Dafna with husband, a daughter and a son. They came for a short time, but Wladek and wife stayed. And I decided to have a birthday party for him in Warsaw. I found a former singer from Mazowsze [a well-known Polish folk music and dance ensemble existing since 1948], with her own band, and I got in touch with her. We made a list of songs from my and my brother’s childhood. When we all sat down at the tables, along with that family who didn’t speak Polish, a curtain was drawn aside, and a band walked in, there was a violin and an accordion. My brother knew all those songs, started to sing, his wife too, and me and my wife, we all sang, and Brother’s both daughters helped with the chorus at some songs, and that was the celebration. Then we ate, drank, of course.

I keep in close touch with Wladek. I call him every Sunday. They come to Poland every year. Wladek is one of the leaders of a Polish-Jewish Society in Israel. They used to come more often when he worked in PKO in Tel Aviv [a Polish bank].  He was in the supervisory body - they organized trips for them once a year, supposedly for reports. Last two-three years they’ve been coming for a month, three weeks, somewhere in Mazury, then they spend a week in Warsaw.

We never thought of going back to Israel. Wife is very interested in politics, she reads, comments, watches television. We are not engaged in activities of the local Jewish commune, but we are affected by all mentions of anti-Semitic writings that show up on walls somewhere, by politicians’ remarks with some anti-Semitic accents. But we know it has to be like that, that we need some two generations, and then maybe anti-Semitism stops being a topic altogether.

GLOSSARY

Nico Saltiel
Thessaloniki
Greece
Interviewer: Paris Papamichos-Chronakis
Date of interview: October 2006

Nico Saltiel is a quiet, but dynamic, 86-year-old man. He and his wife Rosy live in a comfortable apartment in the center of Thessaloniki. Nico Saltiel is not very tall. Having run a successful import-export business for almost 50 years, he is now retired. A veritable bookworm and a lover of classical music, Nico is fluent in Greek, French, English and understands Judeo-Spanish. However, he is extremely quiet and attentive and chooses his words with great care. Having survived the war and saved the lives of his younger brother and mother in a feat of courage, Nico nonetheless prefers to speak about current affairs rather than his and his community’s past. At times, this silence and circumspection make him a very demanding interlocutor. But for anyone willing to listen attentively, this very silence and hesitancy are as telling as the most eloquent speech.

Family background
Growing up
During the war
After the war
Glossary

Family background

My grandfather on my father’s side was Isaac Saltiel. He was born in Thessaloniki, but I don’t know the exact date. He was a merchant. He lived with his wife Doudoun on Italias Street, which was after Agias Triadas [street in the eastern suburbs of the city inhabited by middle-class families]. At first, when the children were young they lived there too. Slowly-slowly they started leaving: some went to France and some to Italy. So out of their ten children only two or three were left here. 

They had a maid and a horse carriage with which they brought home the daily shopping from the market. The maids were always Jewish. Grandfather Isaac was well off. I don’t know when he died. I didn’t know him, but I don’t think he was still alive when I left for France. I don’t remember him at all.

My grandmother Doudoun [Saltiel, nee Bourla] lived in this house until her death. Two of her children, who were single, Sam and her youngest daughter Margot, lived with her. The house had a courtyard. It was a two-story house and Grandmother lived on the first floor. It was a big apartment that she rented. As all the houses in the past it had a large living room in the center, rooms all around, and on one side, either right or left, was the kitchen. 

I went to Grandmother’s house often, either on Saturday or on Sunday, to visit her as well as my uncle and aunt. I used to stay there at noon for lunch. I loved my grandmother because she had many children but didn’t have many grandchildren in Thessaloniki. I went there often with my brother, but most of the time I went alone. My brother was too young.

The neighborhood was mostly Jewish. All the streets in the neighborhood, Italias and Misrahi streets, and most houses, across the street and next to the house, had Jewish families.

Grandmother Doudoun spoke with me in Judeo-Spanish 1. During the years I met her she wouldn’t leave the house. In the neighborhood there were synagogues of course, but it was the men’s duty to go to synagogue, rather than the women’s. My grandmother organized the celebration of Jewish holidays, such as Rosh Hashanah, in her house with her children. There was always a mezuzah in the house.

Grandmother dressed in European style. She didn’t cover her hair. When I came back from Paris and often went to visit her at home, the oriental style did no longer exist; it was rather a mixed or neutral style.

My grandmother had very many books at home. My uncle and aunt read them. When Grandfather was still alive, Grandmother went shopping. But when he died her daughter and son, who lived with her, took care of that. They kept the horse carriage all the time Grandfather was alive. Later, these carriages slowly started to disappear.

My grandmother was supported financially by my uncle, her son Sam, who lived with her. He paid the house rent.

Moise Venezia and Donna were my other grandparents. They had four children, my mother and three boys. Moise was probably born around 1870 and he died in 1941, the day the Germans entered the city. [Editor’s note: The Germans entered Thessaloniki on 9th April 1941.] Moise had Italian citizenship and though he was born in Thessaloniki he kept his foreign citizenship. His family had been in Thessaloniki for a long time. He surely went to a Jewish school. He knew Turkish very well and he also knew Judeo-Spanish, French and Albanian.

Moise was a merchant. Before World War I he imported cereals from various countries. In the past we even imported beans from Hungary. But during World War II he switched to building materials. He must have been among the well-known merchants of Thessaloniki. But in 1922 he stopped working. Similarly to many others who made business with the Allied Forces [the French, British, Italian, Russian and Serbian armed forces who were fighting against the Central Powers and their allies in Macedonia and were stationed in Thessaloniki], he had made a lot of money from his deals during the war and so he chose to stop.

In 1922 he left for Lausanne because he was of the opinion that his boys had more opportunities to have a career in Lausanne than in Thessaloniki. This was because after the war a serious economic crisis struck Thessaloniki. They chose Lausanne because it is in the French part of Switzerland and my three uncles knew French well.

Moise invested the money he had made in commerce in a company, which he founded in Lausanne for his sons Elie, Jacob and Vitalis. This company was named Venezia and dealt in spare parts for bicycles. Grandfather Moise made his home in Lausanne and while my grandmother stayed there permanently, he traveled. He went here and there, stayed in one place for a while and then came here to spend some time. Here he had many friends and economic interests. He owned real estate.

My grandfather came to Thessaloniki two to three times a year. He didn’t stay long in Lausanne. He would spend a fortnight there and stayed here for the rest of the time. He could have stayed here for months. Transportation was not easy at the time; it took two and a half days on the train to arrive. He owned real estate in Thessaloniki and loved the city very much.

When he came he stayed at our home on Evzonon Street [a street in the eastern suburbs of the city where many middle-class Jews used to live]. It was his home and we stayed there together with our mother when we returned from Paris. It was a big three-story house. He lived in one apartment and rented the other two. He rented them to several families, both Jewish and Christian. The house had a very big garden where he grew vegetables. It had a water pump which was called ‘Tulumba.’ Moise ate at home where my mother cooked. And at night he stayed home too. He didn’t entertain himself while he was here, he didn’t go to the movies. He went out however, walked with a cane, put on his hat in a careless way and went for a walk.

In the winter, though, he stayed in the hotel Majestic [one of the most luxurious hotels of Thessaloniki], which was on the corner of St. Sophia Street with the seafront [in the very center of the city]. He liked more the company he had there. He had friends who also stayed there permanently because it was better heated. His friends were General Kalidopoulos [a well-known General at the time], another politician named Serefas, and some others. They were his friends, his closest friends. They played backgammon and did not bother with politics and such things. They spoke Greek. His Greek was very good. He had learned it from commerce, because he was in the market for so many years and he didn’t have many Jewish friends. He had more Christian friends. I remember a certain Molho who was a big trader and brought coal from England.

Moise went rather often to the synagogue near home, near Evzonon Street. In the synagogue Midrach Carasso, on Velissariou Street [a street in the eastern suburbs of the city], where the Gestapo headquarters were later. Midrach means small synagogue. It was a tiny synagogue with a big courtyard. A very lovely synagogue, I remember it very well. My grandfather took me there often because he was religious. And on Friday, my brother said, that he took him there too. He had to go at least once a week, on Friday night. And he also went on Saturday morning. He also celebrated the high holidays there. He didn’t read religious books at home, neither did he pray there.

My grandfather knew Hebrew because when he was small he went to a Hebrew school. He knew how to read in Hebrew, the prayer books, but he didn’t know how to speak Hebrew. My mother and I, on the other hand, don’t know Hebrew.

Moise didn’t deal with the communal affairs. He only dealt with religious issues, in other words, he was one of those who went to the synagogue. He didn’t deal with political matters either. Holding Italian citizenship he didn’t have the right to vote in the Community [after 1921 only Jews holding Greek citizenship had the right to vote in the communal elections]. The whole family was European-oriented. In other words they were not Zionist, neither my grandfather nor my father. I don’t know if my grandfather gave some money to the Community’s collections, but he most probably did. All the Jews contributed. And he also gave to the synagogue.

Moise also lent money to his Jewish friends. Many of those who had money lent money. My grandfather paid the tuition for the Lycée [the high school of the Mission Laique Francaise] 2.

There was a big age difference between us and Moise, so we didn’t have a lot to say to each other. We had a formal relationship. I had my own circle, in the French Lyceum or Lycée, my studies, my books and he had his circle, his friends. He was a reserved person as a human being. He had a very good relationship with my mother. He had not lived with my father so as to have a relationship. At one point we left and when we lived here, we lived separately, so we didn’t have a lot of contact.

I did not have a bar mitzvah. We were in Paris when I was 13 years old, and my father, who was a liberal and never went to synagogue, didn’t care for religion much. So he never took care of it.

Moise’s wife, Donna Venezia [nee Saporta], I remember very well. She was born around 1895 and died in 1965 in Lausanne. She spoke Judeo-Spanish and some Greek, but badly. She also knew some French, and read Ladino.

She was from a well-off family. Grandmother’s family, her brothers, were educated. She had one brother who was a medical doctor and another who was a dentist. The family took care and sent them to Istanbul to study in the medical school and return here to work. So her family was well-off, but the habit then was to take better care of boys’ education and not women’s. They married young and did not get an education.

Grandmother Donna lived in Lausanne. She never came back after she went there. These trips weren’t easy. Besides, she kept the house, her children were unmarried for some time, and she saw no reason to leave. I used to see her frequently when I lived in Paris because I often went to Lausanne. Every summer I stayed there one month or more. I spoke French with her rather than Ladino because I didn’t speak it well. My grandmother didn’t go out often. She would surely go to the synagogue, mostly on the high holidays, but not every Friday like men did. She didn’t pray at home, and she must have had a mezuzah, but I don’t remember for sure.

In the summer, in Lausanne, I spent my time doing various things, going for walks, swimming in the lake, visiting my uncles at their shops. I didn’t go out for walks with my grandmother. After the war I went several times to Lausanne and saw her, but I don’t think I went there from 1935 until the war. I corresponded with my uncles, my mother’s brothers, but not with Grandmother.

My father was born between 1887 and 1890 and died in 1934 in Paris. His name was Shemtov officially, but they called him Sinto. He was a merchant dealing in textiles. It wasn’t a family business. He chose this field because it was a common one. He had his shop on Victor Hugo Street [a commercial street in the center of the city]. The shops which were on that street, in an old building, were all alike, around 80-100 square meters each. They didn’t have a window. It was a square surface with shelves whereupon lay the textiles and there was also a bench and inside glass doors. There wasn’t anything like a time schedule; shops were open continuously from morning until night.

My father spoke very good French, Greek and Ladino. He had Greek citizenship. He was a Freemason, and those that frequented the Masonic loges were somehow indifferent to religion. We knew that he was a Freemason because he often went to the loge, but we didn’t know where it was or what they talked about. He didn’t go to the synagogue at all. I do not think he even went during the holidays. We celebrated the high holidays such as Rosh Hashanah, Pesach and Sukkot at home. Mother, on the other hand, was religious because of her father.

My father went to a club, known as ‘Club de Salonique’ [one of the most important clubs of Thessaloniki]. He went there once or twice a week to play cards. The ‘Club de Salonique’ was across the ‘Pathé’ [the most important Jewish-owned cinema of Thessaloniki situated in the eastern suburbs of the city]. He spent his time with friends rather than his relatives. He didn’t go out for fun with his wife Sarina. I don’t think they went to shows together. He read the paper. In Thessaloniki he read the French newspapers.

My mother, Sarina Venezia, was born around 1900 and died in 1975. She was born in Thessaloniki, but she had Italian citizenship. She had studied in the Lycée of the Mission Laique Francaise, both in the elementary and the high school. She therefore spoke very good French and Judeo-Spanish. She didn’t speak Greek well and didn’t know Turkish.

In 1919 she married my father Shemtov by ‘shidouh’ [arranged marriage]. Her father gave her quite a big dowry, 5,000 gold sovereigns. She had me in 1921.

She didn’t work at all while she was in Thessaloniki. She brought us up herself without a nanny. While we were here we had a maid at home. But she cooked the traditional Jewish dishes herself. I don’t remember what she cooked exactly.

Growing up

We left for Paris at the end of 1928 because my father’s businesses didn’t do well here. There was a general crisis in Thessaloniki and my father thought he had more chances and would do better in Paris. He preferred Paris to Naples where other members of the family went, because he didn’t know Italian. We left for Paris, all of us together.

Before we left for Paris, I remember we went for a visit on Velissariou Street. In a small house a little further from Evzonon Street, lived my grandfather and grandmother on my mother’s side. I was very impressed because they wore the ‘antari’ [the main traditional dress of the Jews of Thessaloniki, a caftan made of cloth or most usually of silk]. They both wore the traditional dresses with a ‘cofia’ [a traditional Sephardic head cover] and they just sat there. I remember we went to visit them a couple of times.

We lived in the center of Paris, in the nineteenth district [a lower middle class district in the north-east of Paris where many Jewish immigrants still live]. We stayed there all the time we were in Paris and didn’t change house. Our apartment was in one of these huge building complexes. We didn’t even know to whom they belonged, because they belonged to a big company. Ours was a big apartment with three rooms and a living room. And it was in a good neighborhood near a big park and a school. There were schools everywhere; it was a rather wide street in a very good neighborhood.

The shop wasn’t close to the house; it was 20 minutes away by subway. It was in a neighborhood called Sentier, in the Rue des Rosiers [the most Jewish street in Paris]. And my father continued to deal in textiles and ties. Mother was sewing the ties at home and Father sold them at the shop. Having never worked before, she started to work out of need. She seized the opportunity to find models that helped her cut the material. These were good ties. They sold because they were made of good quality silk material. She was a good and sophisticated craftswoman. She sat and worked in the living room. In the afternoons, when I didn’t go to school, I often watched her work.

I guess my father kept the shop by himself. The working hours were pretty long and I remember that when in 1935 the government applied the 40-hour week it was a revolution. It was a great thing, and was applied gradually. Before that, people worked for 15 hours a day.

Life in Paris was very different. It was a different environment and a different situation. Here in Evzonon, we lived in a neighborhood surrounded by Jewish houses. There, we were much more isolated. Long distances. For instance, I remember a family with who my father was friendly; they lived in Neuilly [a district in the north-western part of Paris]. We had to travel for one and a half hours by subway. We had to go on a trip, so to speak. Conditions were different, and much more difficult. We had no neighbors that were friends, and we didn’t even know who lived next to us. Our apartment wasn’t in a Jewish neighborhood [Editor’s note: this is most probably incorrect] and there were no social relations between the families. Big buildings of eight stories each, with a lot of apartments.

My father was short, a little chubby and bold headed. He wasn’t at all strict. My mother wasn’t strict either. She was a very open character. She was a sociable person with friends. At home we didn’t have very much to do with each other. I lived in my own world and Father was at work. In the evening, he arrived tired while I was studying for school. On Sundays and holidays, however, he was very nice, talkative and pleasant.

In Paris we celebrated the Jewish holidays at home. Mother kept the traditional mores. In Paris we went to the synagogue only on the high holidays. It was in a synagogue frequented mainly by Sephardic Jews 3. I think that at one point we went to a synagogue with my father because he had some friends and we went together with them.

My father wasn’t a Zionist at all and in France he didn’t get involved in politics because he didn’t have the time. We never discussed his political beliefs. In Paris he read the French newspapers. He didn’t play cards. Mother read newspapers both in Paris and here, but she never spoke of politics.

Mother did the shopping in Paris. Father didn’t deal at all with matters of the household. I don’t think he had the time. When we stayed in Paris we didn’t have olive oil. There wasn’t any olive oil and she used peanut oil or ‘huile d’arachide.’ This is what was sold at the shops. In Paris, if Mother went to the big shops, she went there every fortnight. She shopped on her own and we went to school.

While Father was in Paris he never came to Thessaloniki. Life in Paris was tough. It was during the recession, and as there was an economical crisis here, there too was the same. And surely the crisis had started from France and Germany. We were never careful with money at home, but business in general wasn’t going well. The business didn’t do any better in Paris. Everybody lived conservatively. We didn’t go out to eat. Rarely on weekends, but never during the week. My parents didn’t go to the movies, and I don’t remember ever going to the theater. There was no spare time and the days were long and tiring. 

On the main holidays, the French ones, such as 14 Juliet [July 14, the celebration of the French Revolution], we didn’t go out at all. We didn’t go to the parade. We didn’t have a radio while in France, it was a novelty and not very widespread. Our fun on weekends was going for a walk in the park or to a friend’s house, as was in general common in Paris. 

In Paris my father had quite a few friends whom he met regularly on weekends together with Mother and us. They were old friends from Thessaloniki who had immigrated to Paris earlier than us. I remember a certain family, the Beraha family. My mother had fewer friends in Paris than in Thessaloniki. It wasn’t easy for her in Paris. Here we had many relatives, cousins and friends; there she had none.

My father got sick and died from problems with his heart. He was buried in Paris, in the ‘Père la chaise’ cemetery. I didn’t go to his funeral because Mother didn’t allow it. When father died, we were naturally a little lost, and the fact that we had to leave Paris and come back here was somehow like being uprooted for us. The decision to leave Paris was taken by our uncles in Switzerland. They thought it would be better for our mother and us. Since our father had died, we didn’t have the means to stay. The fact that our grandfather was here alone and had his own house was important too. It was the only solution. My mother, what could she do? She couldn’t act in a different way. Stay in Paris and do what? We lived in a rented house, and we had to close the shop.

Father had nine brothers. Ovadia was a merchant and was married to a woman from Thessaloniki. He had already married in Thessaloniki before he went to Lyon around 1920. He died after the war in the 1950s. The deportations in 1941 had taken place only in Paris, in Lyon they were all saved, all our relatives survived. I never met Uncle Ovadia, we were not in touch with our relatives in Lyon, because it was quite far. We didn’t even go to Lyon to see them, neither did they come to Thessaloniki. My father must have had a correspondence, but while he worked either in Thessaloniki or in Paris, he didn’t have any professional relations with his relatives.

My father’s second brother was Pepo. He was born around 1900 and died in 1992. He lived in Naples where he went in 1919. He went there because he knew Italian very well having graduated from the Italian school in Thessaloniki [one of the most important foreign schools in Thessaloniki]; He lived in Naples until his death in 1992. I knew him, even though we never went to Naples before the war.

In Naples he was successful in his work; he was a commercial representative and a journalist. He was educated, one of the most educated ones in the family. He had very little to do with religion. He married an Italian, a Catholic called Maria. He remained a Jew until the end; he didn’t convert to marry Maria. Maria was of course younger, but not very much. She died before my uncle. He loved her a lot. They didn’t have children and were very attached to each another.

During the war Pepo was saved together with Maria. He may have had some protection because he had married an Italian. He did not go to the extermination camp and I do not think he hid. Deportations in Italy took place mainly in Rome. I do not remember about Naples.

Pepo never returned in Thessaloniki after 1919, even though he is Greek and remained so until the end. Greek all the way through, all his life. He kept his Greek passport; he spoke Greek until the end and very well. In Naples he was close to the Greek consulate, but he never came back to Thessaloniki. When we visited him he asked me about Thessaloniki and he wrote to me often, three-page long letters, but he did so in French.

My father’s third brother was Sam. He was born around 1890, if I remember well, and he died in 1960, in his seventies. He was unmarried. He was a ‘représentant de commerce’ [commercial representative], and dealt in imports and exports. When he was young he went to Germany, Austria and Hungary to study languages and I don’t remember what else. In any case, I remember he knew German very well, and he had also learned Hungarian and knew it perfectly. He also knew French and English very well. He was very well educated and loved foreign languages. Grandfather had financed his studies. Grandfather had enough money to sustain ten children. But he also had Sam and Pepo educated. The other siblings, including my father, had never gone to study at university.

Sam lived abroad for many years, maybe his studies lasted four to five years, but after that he lived abroad. He returned to Thessaloniki only before Grandfather died, around 1928. When he returned he continued Grandfather’s business together with his brother Saul. The two of them represented many factories, mainly German, French and Italian. He also exported agricultural goods. The business offices were at 2 Ermou Street [one of the main commercial avenues of Thessaloniki]. The business did very well. He bought real estate and big plots of land in the port and in the municipality area.

In comparison with the Alvo business, my uncle Sam’s business was much smaller. Before the war the Alvos had one of the two or three most important businesses in the sector of hygienic items, and they were very important in this sector. While my uncles’ [Sam and Saul] businesses were, let’s say, rating average. They did very well, but they were not among the most profitable.

Sam was the most successful in the family and was the big boss. He was very active, authoritarian and had principles. He had partners that were Christian, and this is why his Greek was excellent. He also dealt in other businesses in association with his partners. 

Before the war it was common for a Jew to go into partnership with a non-Jew. Jews were very appreciated, especially as commercial representatives, because people trusted them. They were trustworthy. Before the war, commercial deals were based on word of honor. One gave his hand and it was his word of honor. 

Sam, for example, had many partnerships with many Christians in Thessaloniki, with whom he didn’t have a contract, nor common companies, or anything else. For example, he exported agricultural goods with a company name Dimitrakopoulos-Xenakis, with whom he had no contract. It was simply based on mutual trust. Their collaboration must have started in 1930. They bought the agricultural products, we exported them through my uncle’s company, and figured out the accounts at the end of each month easily with no problem.

Sam did business with other friends too. Since he had many contacts with Austria and Germany, he came up with the idea to manufacture velvet tablecloths in Greece. So he made an association with a friend of his – he had many friends, close ones – someone named Konstandinidis Kostas. Konstandinidis was from Asia Minor and had a factory producing textiles on Langada Street [an industrial street on the western outskirts of Thessaloniki]. So my uncle proposed to him to bring the machinery from Austria, special machinery to produce tablecloths. And so they started the business in partnership. This must have taken place in 1930. 

The business did very well and continued after the war, but not in partnership. Konstandinidis continued on his own. When the import of special threads for the tablecloths stopped, because of the war, my uncle decided to sell the machinery to Konstandinidis and to walk out.

My uncle did business with Jews too. It didn’t make any difference. He had very close collaborations. With a certain friend, Molho, he imported certain products which he represented. He brought them under the name of a friend of his because he didn’t want to bring them on his own. He didn’t want to bring them under his name because he distributed them to clients and didn’t want to raise competition.

My uncle wasn’t a member of the Chamber of Commerce. He didn’t go to clubs, neither did he play cards. He saw his friends. He had a lot of Christian friends and very close ones, who appreciated him very much because he was a man of integrity and very honest in his dealings. His friends were the lawyer Spiliakos who saved him, Dimitrakopoulos, who was his associate or his partner, and a director in the Emboriki Bank [Commercial Bank], who’s name I cannot remember. He had many Jewish friends of course. Molho, Nehama, Beraha. The Molhos and the Nehamas had a shipping agency, with George Nehama, who died recently.

My uncle read philosophy such as Heine, Schopenhauer. He got into it while he studied abroad. He must have been reading a lot of Greek books because he knew Greek very well. He didn’t have time to read the papers because he was very busy.

He didn’t take part in the communal affairs and had nothing to do with Zionism. He was not a Zionist, rather, he was a liberal and admirer of the West. A Germanophile. It was his culture and he had great admiration for German education and culture. He was an admirer of Heine, of Schopenhauer. He read a lot of Schopenhauer. He read books mainly in German, but also a lot of them in French.

My uncle wasn’t religious. I don’t remember him going to the synagogue often. Not even on holidays. But he never ate pork, out of respect for the family tradition, not some other reason. And this was his limit and respect to tradition.

My uncle traveled a lot. He traveled to visit his relatives in Lyon and in Naples, and for commercial reasons generally in Europe.

During the war Sam managed to escape to Athens thanks to his friends. And in Athens some of his other friends took him in and that is how he was saved. These friends of his were Christians. He left when the deportations started. Because until the very last minute nobody believed that what happened could have happened. He hid in Athens until the end of the war. As soon as the Germans left, he returned straight back to take care of his affairs. 

After the war he continued his work until 1960, when he died. He did exports and was a commercial representative, and continued to have Christian associates, as he did before. The main reason he came back instead of staying in Athens and organize a business there that would be more worthy, as many did at the time, was that his friends in Thessaloniki would help him more. And so they did.

After the war I never heard him discuss the issue of whether Israel should exist or not. This issue didn’t preoccupy him. And he also didn’t deal with the community.

Uncle Sam died in 1960 in Naples. At a certain time he got bronchitis. He also had asthma, and so he decided to stop working. He went to Naples, because here apart from me and my brother, he didn’t have any other relatives. He chose to go to Naples, to his brother, whom he loved very much, as well as his two sisters.

My father’s other brother, Saul, was born around 1870. He lived in Thessaloniki all his life and spoke Judeo-Spanish, Greek, and French, but not very well. He spoke better Greek than French.

Saul was married. My uncle’s Saul family was well off. They had Greek citizenship. They lived somewhere in the area of Agia Triada, in an apartment. He had a son, Ino, and a daughter, Daisy. He was a family man and not much of a society man like my uncle Sam. Besides work we didn’t see Uncle Saul that much. There was no reason, since I saw him at the office where I went every day. He celebrated the Jewish holidays with his own family and we did with my mother’s family. But with his children, my cousins, we had a very close relationship.

Saul wasn’t religious, or not seriously so, but I cannot be sure, because there was such a big age difference between us that we didn’t discuss such issues together.

He was in partnership with my uncle Sam. He was very industrious, and they had a very good working relationship without problems. Saul dealt with things other than those Sam dealt with. Sam dealt more with representations. Saul supervised the warehouse, the workers, and the exports. They concentrated on agricultural goods which they stored and prepared for export. A lot of work. He was very friendly to me at work. 

With my uncles Sam and Saul we spoke in French. French was also the language we did our foreign correspondence in. We mostly used French. My uncle had a lot of correspondence in German and English, depending on the place of origin of the goods we represented.

My uncle Saul had nothing to do with the Jewish community. None of my uncles was a Zionist, since none went to Israel.

Saul and his wife died in the extermination camps. They were deported like everybody else. Saul didn’t have a fortune and neither did he have property. He lived in a rented place. He had left his things and furniture at home. They left with their personal things in a bag and their belongings were looted by their Christian neighbors. 

My cousins were older than me. There was a five to six year age difference with Daisy and some age difference with Ino. Ino must have been born in 1918. They both went to the Lycée. Ino must have gotten the Baccalauréat [the French high school diploma that gives access to university studies in France], and Daisy surely did too. Ino didn’t go to university because there was no university here before the war. There was only one department [Editor’s note: This is incorrect. The Aristotle University of Thessaloniki was founded in 1926 and at that time it had several departments]. So one had to go to Athens to study, and this was not easy because not everybody had the means to pay rents. 

Ino and Daisy spoke Greek very well, French and Judeo-Spanish. Before the war we didn’t go out together, I had my own circle and they had theirs. We met however, even though I don’t remember where.

Ino wasn’t a member of any Jewish associations. Before the war he worked in the office for a while and then he worked somewhere else, but I don’t remember where. He didn’t have a good relationship with my uncle Sam. He had his own ideas and Sam was a little strict. He wanted the work done as he wished.

Daisy didn’t work at all after school.

They both survived the war. My cousin Daisy came back from Auschwitz, but we never spoke of her experience. She didn’t stay longer than a year in Thessaloniki. She went straight to Athens, because she too had a difficult relationship with our uncle. Not only were her parents dead, but she had no family here. So she decided to go to Israel, as others did too, looking forward to a better future. She didn’t keep her Greek citizenship. She married and took up the Israeli one. Today she lives in Tel Aviv. She came a couple of times to Thessaloniki after she left.

My cousin Ino was in the army and found himself in the Middle East and Egypt during the war.

My aunt Flora Noah was born around 1900 in Thessaloniki. In 1920 she left with her husband for Naples. Before the war she never came to Thessaloniki. I didn’t meet her then, but my uncles corresponded with her frequently. And Uncle Sam went to visit them often in Naples, every two or three years.

I didn’t meet her husband because he was arrested in Italy and died in an extermination camp. But Flora managed to hide here and there. After the war my aunt Flora continued to live in Italy. She didn’t remarry. She had a daughter who died in 1965.

Flora visited Thessaloniki after the war. She came a couple of times. Her Greek was very good, but we spoke in French. We also corresponded in French. I think that her relationship with the Jewish religion was better after the war. Besides, before the war, such Jewish communities as were the ones in Paris, but also in Naples, were not closely tied; I don’t know how it was in Lyon. Distances were long and they were strangers. Naples is a big city, and she most probably had none to go with to the synagogue. While here it is much easier. Our synagogue was five minutes away from home.

My other aunt was Ida Bivach. She married in 1920 and then they left and went to Naples. I don’t remember what exactly her husband did. He was a Jew from Thessaloniki. I don’t know when he died. He still lived after the war, but when exactly he died, that I don’t know. In 1970-1972, when we went to Naples, he was already dead a few years. Aunt Ida died around 1987. She had two children, Nina and Albert. They all survived the war. She corresponded with my uncles Sam and Saul.

After her was my aunt Bella Matarasso. She was born in Thessaloniki. My mother, Bella and a few others, whom I don’t remember now, had gone to the French Lycée and had a French education. Aunt Bella spoke French. Other members of the Jewish community, such as my Uncle Pepo, went to the Italian school.

Around 1920, Bella married and left for Lyon. After 1918-1919, because of the recession, everybody left, my mother’s siblings too, and many of my father’s cousins. Her husband’s name was Sam Matarasso. He dealt in silk textiles. Besides, in Lyon silk textiles were the main business. These were Lyon’s specialty. Bella never came to Thessaloniki before the war. But we corresponded. My uncle Sam had a regular correspondence with her. My aunt Bella survived the war and so did her husband and their two children, their daughters.

My father’s second to last sister was Lucie Saranno. She also lived in Lyon. They had also gone to Lyon during the same period as the other siblings. I didn’t have any contact with them.

Last was Margot. She wasn’t married and lived in Thessaloniki. I saw her very often in my grandmother’s house, where she lived with my grandmother and uncle Sam. She was a very joyous and pleasant girl. She spoke French and Greek, and Judeo-Spanish with my grandmother. She spoke Greek very well, without an accent. I don’t think she went to the Lycée. She didn’t work, she was sustained by Uncle Sam.

I knew she had a lot of friends and neighbors, as well as classmates from school. She used to go out for shopping, or to see some of her friends. But she didn’t take us out for walks.

Margot wasn’t really religious, but she would certainly go to the synagogue during the high holidays. The Saltiel family were not very religious, none among them was. Here in Thessaloniki, the middle class was very loose on religious matters. Those traditions were kept by other social classes, such as the ones that went to religious schools and let’s say had a more intensive religious education. To the Talmud Torah went children from the poor layers of society, workers and clerks. There they learned Hebrew and had a closer contact with religion. While those that went to the French school, such as I, had started not to care. They didn’t know Hebrew. None of my father’s family knew Hebrew.

Margot left for the extermination camp with her mother. She didn’t want to escape on her own. She could have left earlier with the help of Christian friends, but didn’t want to abandon her mother.

My mother’s three brothers Elie, Jacob and Vitalis, all three migrated to Lausanne around 1920. I met them in Lausanne. I didn’t have contact with Uncle Vitalis because he was dead already by the time I went to Lausanne.

Elie was the eldest. He was a nice person. He was educated, active and very polite. He drove a car until he was 75. He went to the French Lycée, to the Mission Laique. He spoke French, Judeo-Spanish and Greek. He had not forgotten these languages because they left when they were already in their twenties. Besides, in Thessaloniki neighborhoods were mixed and they had many Christian friends.

Elie was a merchant. The three brothers were partners in a business selling spare parts for bicycles. Elie had a very wide field because bicycles were very popular in Switzerland at the time when cars were few. Elie never came to Thessaloniki. From 1920 until 1940, none of the three ever came; they were very busy with their work.

Elie married a Polish Jew name Tola, Uncle Jacob married Jeanine, who is still alive, and Uncle Vitalis married Yvonne. Elie has a son named Aldo. Jacob has a son too, named Manuel, and Vitalis has two children, a son and a daughter, whose names I don’t remember.

When we came back, our grandfather sustained us but we had everything we needed. Before we had left for Paris, Mother didn’t participate in any associations, neither did she in Paris. When we returned to Greece, she became very sociable. She had many friends, cousins and relatives. Her friends were all Jewish. They were of the same age, mostly classmates. There was a certain Mrs. Saporta, Mrs. Frances etc. Before the war she didn’t have Christian friends.

I don’t think my mother went to the movies or to restaurants. Women didn’t go out unescorted in those days. There weren’t any places to go to. Apart from a couple of patisseries. It wasn’t common to go out. Of course she went to the synagogue, because my grandfather was religious and no doubt she followed the rules. She went to the synagogue during the holidays, but she didn’t pray at home. Besides the mezuzah, there weren’t any other religious objects.

Before we went to Paris, and after we came back, shopping was much easier because there were mobile merchants who came by the house. I remember that before the war, when we lived in Evzonon, the vegetable man would come by every morning. The fisherman and the fruit merchant, they would come by with their carriage. All shop owners before the war in the Modiano market [the covered market in the center of the city named after its architect, Elie Modiano] were Jewish. There were no special areas in the market where merchants were mainly Greek or others where they were mainly Jewish. But the majority were Jewish businesses.

My mother cooked herself, kosher, to avoid pork. She knew that from tradition. They ate kosher without knowing why they did so. At Pesach, for instance, we didn’t eat bread. I never ate pork, because I respected my mother, not for any other reason. Before the war people were not very strict about the kashrut, but tradition took care of that. In our family we ate kosher, but were not very strict about it. We didn’t separate the dishes for meat and dairy products. Before the war there were many Jewish butchers where they only sold kosher meat. But while in Paris, it was not easy for us to keep the kashrut. Here the Jewish butchers were many, while in Paris it wasn’t easy to find one. This was our limit of respect to tradition.

My mother read books in French, not in Greek. She didn’t buy the newspaper and we didn’t have a radio, nor a telephone. She didn’t discuss politics with us or anybody else. In 1934 we had no idea [of the rise of Nazism].

My mother was careful with her appearance. She had her clothes made by a dressmaker. She was of regular height, and when she was young she was slimmer. She was a very good looking woman. She never neglected her appearance, not even at home. She had good taste when it came to clothes.

My mother was from the high bourgeoisie. She differed from the middle class because she was educated, and because of the Lycée, where she had completed her French education. This social class were snobs. So snobbish that those like us, who had gone to the French Lycée, did not associate with those that went to the Italian school, we ignored them. Even though many of them were our brothers and cousins, our relatives. The Mission Laique was a top school.

My mother spoke to us in French. After 1935, when we returned to Thessaloniki, she didn’t supervise us with schoolwork. She trusted us with our studying. She had a very good relationship with my grandfather Moise, who loved her very much. Also our uncles, Sam and Saul, my father’s brothers, loved her very much. She didn’t have a preference over me or my brother Maurice.

She didn’t go on excursions. My grandmother went to spas, my mother didn’t. My grandmother went to Langada [a small town known for its spas, 30 km north-east of Thessaloniki] once a year. So she mainly stayed at home, like the rest of the inhabitants of Thessaloniki. Maybe her friends came visiting her at home, I don’t remember.

Before the war she didn’t speak to us about our father. She must have missed him, but she didn’t speak about him. She said nothing to us. What could she say?

After the war my mother spent the rest of her life in Thessaloniki. She stayed here until she died in 1975.

I remember my school years in France as being very pleasant. I didn’t have any problem to adapt, because I knew French when we left. At school I won a prize for my aptitude. I was the first in class. The school had only boys. I had no problem with my classmates, but there we didn’t have any friendships as I had here when we returned. Maybe this was due to the fact that I was a foreigner, because the French are not very hospitable. The teachers, of course, made no distinctions, but society did.

I returned from Paris in 1934. I was sorry to leave. I left my school, we changed environment, we changed country, it was difficult for me. But when we came back I adapted immediately. Naturally it was a very good environment for me, because here we had many relatives. But I missed Paris because of its museums, for instance. 

In Paris I went visiting the museums on my own. I had been to the Louvre forty times. It is huge, how can one see it all? If I had a couple of hours I would see one part of it. My parents knew where I went and they did not object. I was 13-14 years old, but I went out alone. Also the parks were very beautiful. I went there with my mother and my brother. I never knew Paris by night, I did not wander around. The only thing that attracted me was the Louvre. 

There was also a lending library near home where I also went. I borrowed a lot of books. This is natural if you care about culture. There was nothing else to do, anyway. There was no television, and I didn’t read the newspapers. The only entertainment was books, and for me personally the museums. My most favorite books were those of Montherlant [Henry, de (1896-1972): French novelist and dramatist] and of Romain Rolland [(1866-1944): French dramatist, essayist and art historian, received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915], whom I liked very much. I did not read much poetry; we read a lot of it in school. But I read Verlaine [Paul (1844-1896): French poet of the Symbolist movement] and some others.

When I returned to Thessaloniki, my friends were not impressed that I had come from Paris. Of course they asked me out of curiosity and interest, but this did not make me somehow special. Maybe I was different to them, but I didn’t feel it.

In Thessaloniki I registered in the French Lycée. It was near our house since we lived in Evzonon. I started from the second class of high school and studied for three years: the second, the first, and the baccalaureate. The baccalaureate studies lasted for two years. The last year was the premier ‘bachot’ [Baccalaureate], and the second year was the ‘deuxieme bachot.’

The Lycée was a school which was mainly attended by people of the middle class and higher. We considered it a privilege, something outstanding, a French school. But others thought of it as just a very good school. All the families tried to send their children there. One didn’t have to take an entrance examination to be admitted to the Lycée. One had to be registered to a class and then follow courses. But we took exams at the end of the year. Some passed them and others did not. These exams were difficult. But I wasn’t worried. I liked school, and I liked the courses, certain courses. It was nevertheless a difficult school, and it had French standards. And tuition wasn’t expensive.

The Italian school was very good too. And so was the German one. Both the Italian and the German school also had a commercial section. The French had a commercial section where all the students were incompetent. They didn’t do well in the regular school and that is why they went to the commercial section. Those attending the French school thought of the ones going to the Italian one as inferior, but it was not so. They were children from similar families to ours, but we were arrogant because we had been admitted to the Lycée.

All courses were French-oriented. In other words, History of France, Geography of France, all courses followed the French school curriculum. We didn’t have anything about Greece. I followed only the French curriculum. When I arrived in Thessaloniki I didn’t speak any Greek. We had gone to Paris and I forgot it, and before the war, before we went to Paris, I went to the French Lycée too. The rest of my classmates, though, either Jews of Christians, they all knew very good Greek. They followed courses in Greek. It was only one course twice a week, something like that. There were no other courses in Greek.

We had gym and music, and learned German, but not seriously. We didn’t care. In the Lycée we didn’t have a course on religion, neither did we have a morning prayer. Most of the students, 95 percent were Jewish. It was a secular school. In the morning we went straight to class. We had our own class. We also had chemistry labs. We didn’t raise a flag in the Lycée either. On 14th July the school was closed, but I cannot remember if it also closed during the Greek holidays.

I didn’t skip school, neither did my friends. We had no reason to do so. Classes were pleasant, and so was the environment, so why should we then? And it was also dangerous. What made school pleasant was that it had few students. And it was like a company, we were very attached to each other. And we were very competitive. Some did well and others did not. I studied a lot. Others may have studied less, but I liked studying. 

I studied for the courses I liked. I mostly liked mathematics and philology. I was very good in those, but not so good in History and Geography. I was a top student because I was so good in Math and Philology, so it was overlooked if I didn’t do so well in the others. I didn’t have a good memory. I liked Philology because I read a lot, and I liked to write good essays. 

I read French literature – literature in general. I especially liked what was fashionable then such as Balzac [1799-1850], Lamartine [1790-1869], poets. And the contemporaries, Jean Giono [1895-1970], Montherlant, and various others. I continued reading French books in Thessaloniki when I came back. There was an alumni association called ‘Associations des Anciens Elèves de la Mission Laique Francaise.’ It was in a building at the corner of Paraskevopoulou Street [a street at the eastern extramural district of the city]. It was a club with a huge space and had a library there. I did not buy books, I went there, borrowed them and read them. 

For a certain period of time the librarian was my cousin Raul Benusiglio, who also lived in Lausanne. Raul asked me to help him, and he released himself, leaving me at his place as librarian, and so I read hours on end. I also read in Paris. I liked reading, this was my pastime. 

We did not do any sports. Generally very few among the youth did sports at the time. Tennis was an expensive sport and was not very widespread, only a small elite exercised in it.

Most of the teachers were French. There was only one woman, the rest were all men. The French teachers stayed here permanently, in rented houses near the Lycée. We had one Greek teacher only, a certain Papadopoulos, who taught the Greek course which I did not attend. I liked him. He was young and closer to the students. He used to socialize with my classmates and this is how I knew him. I met him during the breaks.

In the Mission Laique we were around 20 youngsters in class. In the Premier [last year, the French Baccalaureate classes are counted conversely] we were around 12-13. Before the baccalaureate section there were also some girls. Among 15 students there were ten to eleven boys and around five girls. All 15 were Jews. We didn’t have any Christian classmates. Only one Armenian and one Christian girl. 

It was not easy. We were brought up in the French language. In other words, apart from me, my other classmates spoke French at home since they were children. This did not happen with the Christians. One cannot learn it as easily when one is ten or twelve, if one does not know it. It was a bit tough.

I had a classmate named Botton, of the known Botton family who had the jewelry shop, Isaac de Botton. Another one was Moise Agi. And another was Charles Pessah, who is now in Barcelona. He was in the class of Mico Alvo [son of Simon Alvo, of the Alvo Bros business]. The Armenian was Arthuro Muzikian. There were also two siblings Sam and René Molho. René is also a man’s name. Nina Florentin was my classmate in the second class of the school, but during the second year of the baccalaureate she dropped out. She did not have the background to acquire it.

The courses were difficult and during the baccalaureate we were only five in class. We didn’t have too many girls in the last two grades. Before the war they left in order to get married. They didn’t care that much and their relatives were not so keen on educating the girls.

The teachers were very strict. They didn’t give in. This is because they were French and they thought of us as inferior. They were governed by French arrogance. They showed some liking to me because I was a good student. I was especially liked by the teacher of Math and he brought me books from home. Relations between teachers and students were generally very pleasant. They were not formal at all.

There was a great difference between the French school in Paris and the Lycée in Thessaloniki. A different school and under completely different conditions. Nothing to do. A different school and a different atmosphere. The courses, however, the curriculum were completely identical. This is because the Baccalaureate is one and the same in France and abroad. French teachers came from abroad to examine you, it was an identical program. 

In France, of course, the teachers were better. Those that came here were not the best. Who would care to go to a foreign country to teach? There were a couple of young ones, the others were old. These teachers came and stayed for many years. Each one with his wife. But they didn’t get into the Greek world at all. One teacher, who was here with his wife for four years, didn’t know a word of Greek. I wondered how his wife went shopping since she didn’t know any Greek, not even how to say ‘Good morning.’ The French have always been conceited when it comes to their language. They never try to learn a foreign language. For them above everything is French.

This French education made me acquire some love feelings for the French culture. Since my mother tongue was French, I especially liked their literature. But I didn’t identify with the French Revolution. I read a lot of history, but I didn’t learn it by heart, I didn’t care much about it. The democratic spirit of the ‘Republique’ was taken for granted. 

School finished at one thirty. Then I returned home with my mother, grandfather and my brother. We finished lunch around 3-4pm, and then I went for a walk. I met my friends somewhere. Then at night I studied. The neighborhood I went to was Gravias [a street in the eastern suburbs of the city where many Jewish middle class families lived], because this was where my friends were. One was Hector Florentin, the other Moise Agi, who lived a little further down on Martiou Street, and the third one who now lives in Barcelona., was Charles Pessah. There were two or three more. They were all Jewish and were my classmates. 

We met at Gravias where they lived and then we went for a walk. We went to patisseries nearby, such as ‘Ivi’ on Georgiou Street. This patisserie was owned by a Christian and it wasn’t one of the student’s parlors. It was, however, convenient since it was in the neighborhood where my friends lived. We went there and talked for a couple of hours and then we returned home. 

I had my own room in the house, and so did my brother. I started studying late, around eight or nine, and sometimes I finished at two or three in the morning. And in the morning at eight, school again. This was the daily routine. My mother had no objection. In other words it was not strange. I did well and she had no reason to force me.

The Baccalaureate exams were written and oral. They took place in different periods. One week for the oral ones and one for the written ones. The oral exams were certainly a headache. French teachers came from Athens, I remember, special examiners, and the exams took place in the IKA [Idrima Koinonikon Asfaliseon, Social Securities Foundation] hospital, at Frangon [street in the western commercial part of the city center]. 

Among the two options I had for the Baccalaureate I chose to be examined in Math. There was no chance I would go to the university because I would have to go to Athens. My aim was to graduate and go work at my uncles’ office. None of my classmates went to the university, except the brothers Alvo. And another one of my classmates, Molho, started studying dentistry. The others did not. Those were difficult years to go to the university in Athens. Who had the means to go, to rent a house there? Here in Thessaloniki there was no university, only one or two schools, Chemistry and Law. [Editor’s note: Mr. Saltiel means there were not many schools and faculties.]

I maintained very friendly relations with my classmates. We met also after we graduated. The classes were mixed. But in the last class in the second bachot, of the second Baccalaureate, we were only boys. Because at that time, before the war, the girls weren’t supposed to be more educated, neither to go to work. They were destined to marry. That is why they didn’t continue. Some of them were smart enough, but they didn’t try too hard. One needed to study hard to manage. 

There was also a lot of competition, and I felt antagonistic towards certain people who were in my group. Besides the whole class was a small group, and it was more like a friendly competition rather than jealousy.

We didn’t discriminate at school, we didn’t know who was and who wasn’t a bourgeois. Neither did we care. All the houses were more or less the same. Neither did one show off one’s wealth at the time. Except two or three families who had villas and such things. We were classmates and we were all equal. There was no such snobbism at the time.

There were no separate groups at school at the time. We even socialized with students from all classes. Such as Hector Florentin, who was younger, and Pessah who was in the same class with Mico Alvo, two years younger than me. I did form friendships very easily then. It was a closed circle, a small circle. I had four or five dear friends with whom I used to meet and go out more often. Boys and girls. Nina for instance was in our company.

Every fortnight we had a party in someone’s house of course, but not with the parents there. We were older youth, why should the parents stay? And this was a party with whatever we brought. Somebody brought food, somebody else brought wine. And there came our classmates, boys and girls, from school. And we danced whatever was in fashion at the time. Tango, foxtrot. All houses had a gramophone, but I don’t think we had one. But all our friends had records. I never thought of buying a gramophone.

The parties started at 5pm and ended at 8:30-9:00pm, 10pm at the latest. Afterwards, we went home. The girls stayed in the neighborhood, we didn’t escort them. Everybody lived in the neighborhood. In those times, in the Lycée, the youth was flirting, which means couples went out on their own. And the girls’ parents may not have been aware. But it was among friends, within the same society, it wasn’t among strangers. There were youngsters of families that knew one another, sometimes even relatives. And this didn’t go further than a kiss, at the most.

I started learning Greek in 1939, after the Lycée. I had no time to learn it before. With friends we only spoke French and Judeo-Spanish, which I didn’t know. There was also no reason for me to know Greek. We spoke in French and there was no problem. My friends were brought up in Greece and often spoke Greek amongst themselves. This didn’t bother me. There was no chance that we would speak in French in the street and the people around us would object. 

At the time before the war, Thessaloniki was a multinational city and Judeo-Spanish was spoken in the open. It was spoken in the port, at the market and no one had a problem with it, no way. They may have made fun of us, but it was common to hear it. At the market, for instance, Jewish shops were one next to the other, and often they spoke among each other Judeo-Spanish unreservedly.

I also went to the movies with the same group of friends. We went to watch American and French films shown at the time. We chose a film, for instance, and said we’d go to this or that movie house tonight. All movie houses were very nice. The four that were in the center of town and ‘Ilyssia,’ ‘Dionysia’ and ‘Titania’ [renowned cinemas of Thessaloniki]. We never went to ‘Pathé.’ We mostly went to ‘Ilyssia’ and ‘Dionyssia.’ Before the war I went to the Fair [International Trade Fair of Thessaloniki, which took place every September]. I went with company, it was a feast.

I had a bicycle, but it wasn’t mine, we rented it. I used to take it and go on excursions, such as to Panorama [small village on top of a hill north of Thessaloniki] or Peraia [a seaside resort east of Thessaloniki]. I went on excursions with my group of people, my friends, two or three friends. We went on Sunday. We set off in the morning and went riding with the bicycle. And we returned in the same way. We didn’t have a certain place to stop. We went for the ride, we didn’t have a picnic and didn’t sit down anywhere.

None of us lived in the center of the city. Our neighborhoods were from Evzonon onwards. This was known as the area of Campagnas [countryside; area east of the city where most middle-class and upper-middle class families lived in detached houses]. We went downtown to go to the movies. There were three open air movie theaters in Aristotelous Square [the central square of the city]. There was nothing else. [Editor’s note: due to the devastating fire of 1917, the city center was still in the process of reconstruction.] 

After the end of the film we went back home. We didn’t go to have a drink somewhere because there weren’t any such places. There were a few patisseries in that part, no more. There was the Almosnino patisserie [the most famous Jewish-owned patisserie of Thessaloniki], where my grandfather Moise went. It was a simple patisserie in Aghia Triada.

There weren’t any shops in the center of town. The commercial market was as of Aghiou Mina onwards [in the western part of the old city]. I didn’t go to the shops. I didn’t go shopping. My mother bought my clothes and shoes were ordered to be made. I never went to the department stores. Neither did my classmates. There were not any shop-windows at the rate there are now, so I didn’t look at the windows. For instance many houses in Tsimiski Street [presently Thessaloniki’s High Street] had no shops at the ground floor.

Neither did my friends of male classmates care about fashion. Some of my classmates were more elegant. Almost all of them wore a tie. Our female friends had their clothes sawn; some by their mothers. The way they dressed was according to their character. We didn’t care much about that kind of thing. Of course, when we went to a party we all took better care, but up to the point we could afford. 

My classmates didn’t visit any brothels on Aggelaki Street [where many brothels were situated]. None. Only Dick Benveniste [president of the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki in the 1970s], who was two years older and smoked while he was still a student, went to the ‘girls.’ This is what he told us. Otherwise, none of our classmates smoked. Smoking was not in fashion.

Besides school, I was not in any athletic associations. I never did sports, and did not watch contests. There was the Maccabi 4 where I never went to. Maccabi was an athletic and Zionist association. None of my friends had been there either. There was the Yachting Club, but I didn’t go there either. Some of my friends went there, I think Mico did. There was also the Tennis Club, but we didn’t go. I don’t know of any of my friends that went.

I didn’t celebrate my birthday. They didn’t give me any presents either. They gave me an allowance for the whole week, but very little. We didn’t expect more. Life was simpler. There were no bars or night clubs for us, we didn’t know of such a life. Our only expenses were a pastry or two at the patisserie, the tramway fare, and that was it.

In the summer, school ended at the end of June. And once again we started in September. In the summer we stayed in Thessaloniki. My mother didn’t go to the sea. I went with my friends. Before the war I didn’t do any yachting. But in the morning I went swimming and in the afternoon we played bridge regularly. There were two or three places very near our house in Aghia Triada where we could go swimming. I had learned how to swim in the lake in Lausanne. My grandmother had sent me, rather, my uncle did, to a summer camp or ‘colonie de vacances,’ near the lake and there I learned how to swim. This was a summer camp for children of my age.

I didn’t know anything about Zionism, nor was any of my classmates a Zionist. Probably this was accidental, but Zionists didn’t go to such schools. Palestine didn’t mean anything to me. It wasn’t like a motherland in other words. If someone asked me where I was from, my answer would be: ‘My family has lived in Thessaloniki for the last 500 years.’ 

But when we were in France we were Greeks. According to the law in France I was ‘le petit grecque,’ the young Greek. I was the only foreigner in class, and my surname was a Sephardic family name, but they didn’t know it. The French didn’t care about religion, the only thing they cared about, if they knew it, was your origin, your nationality, and my nationality was always Greek. I never took up French nationality. 

In France, when they told me I was the young Greek, I felt flattered. It wasn’t insulting, no. The French had a negative opinion of the Poles in general, and especially of the Jews that were Polish, and they couldn’t stand them. They were the ‘dirty Jews’ [‘sales juifs’], because they were an element that didn’t want to be incorporated in the French society. I didn’t know if any of my classmates at school were Jewish, such things we didn’t know.

I personally didn’t feel anti-Semitism. But I became aware of it later, by reading, learning details of what had happened until then, for instance. I had no idea at the time though. I didn’t feel it personally because we didn’t associate with the rest of society. We lived by ourselves. The Jews I knew didn’t speak of anti-Semitism. About Campbell 5, for instance, nobody spoke. Besides, my folks had many Christian friends. And my uncles had business associates who were Christian. They also had friends, colleagues, bank directors with whom they collaborated. They didn’t have a problem.

During the time I went to the Lycée, as of 1934-1935, that was the period of the rise of Nazism in Germany and Italy, but we had no idea. I don’t know how this could be, we lived in a different world, and in general people ignored this situation. Even in France people had no idea. 

I don’t remember the Metaxas dictatorship 6. I didn’t mind at all when the Jews of Thessaloniki were excluded from ΕΟΝ 7. We had heard of ΕΟΝ, but we didn’t care. We lived in ignorance of the situation. We also didn’t know anything about the communists. There was the concept of Communism which we all knew, and we all knew Karl Marx, but we had no special opinion. We didn’t read political books and we were not interested in politics. We also didn’t speak at all about religion. Nothing. We were all liberal. We cared more about culture, reading, philosophical and metaphysical discussions, such matters. We read the works of philosophers, Germans, French, both in and out of school.

Before the war, the street where we lived was occupied almost entirely by Jews. A medical doctor across, another one next door, a photographer that I remember, a little further down, a lady friend of my grandfather across the street. In that neighborhood in Evzonon lived mainly the middle classes. We didn’t make distinctions and we didn’t know who had a lot of money and who didn’t. Some were merchants, others were clerks. The poor lived in the suburbs. 

The houses were two-story buildings. Almost all had a garden, and were built on big plots of land. We had a garden, a big courtyard at the back of Evzonon Street. In the back we had a garden with a water pump. On a small piece of land in the back my grandfather grew tomatoes and similar vegetables. My grandfather took care of the garden; we didn’t have a gardener. I and my brother helped him. We picked the tomatoes. 

Lily Molho lived across from us. Her family name was Alkalay. Her youngest sister was my classmate. We were together in the same class, the second class, in the Mission Laique. Then she left, she disappeared. But we saw each other because she lived across from us. The house still exists. It is among the few in Evzonon which is not ruined. A beautiful two-story house.

Before the war we knew there were working-class quarters. We saw the workers, they went around in carriages. They came into the city in the morning and headed for the port. At the corner of our office there were carriages with porters. It was in the center, in the Banks’ Square [square near the port where the major banks had their offices]. But I never went to the working-class quarters. 

These three to four years before the war started, I was never outside Thessaloniki. Those were not easy trips, moving around wasn’t easy either. And I had no reason to go, neither in Larissa [the principal city in Thessaly, 150 km south of Thessaloniki], nor in Drama [a major city of Eastern Greek Macedonia, 60 km east of Thessaloniki]. I had no special reason. Neither did my mother travel anywhere.

Throughout this period my relation with my brother Maurice was very good. Maurice was seven years younger than me. In Paris he went to the kindergarten. Afterwards he went to a Greek elementary school and thus learned Greek. He then went to the Konstandinidis High School [the oldest Greek-owned private school of Thessaloniki]. Maurice was a classmate of Andreas Sephiha [president of the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki in the 1990s]. But he had Christian friends at the time and spoke with them in Greek. At home, however, he spoke with my mother in French. My brother had his bar mitzvah. Before the war it was simpler. After the war it became more luxurious, let’s say. At the time it was just a ceremony.

I finished school and only then did I start learning Greek. I had to learn Greek in order to be able to work. Also because I lived here and had no prospects of going anywhere else, I had to learn it. My uncle Sam found me a teacher, a certain Molho. And I had lessons for six months. Afterwards I slowly learned it by studying. But it was mainly the reading. The books, Karagatsis [important Greek novelist of the interwar period], etc. The dictionary, paper and pencil and taking notes. I learned languages easily. I found Greek difficult, because when I came back I didn’t even know the alphabet.

I started working in the summer of 1939. Until the war started I worked at my uncles’ office, and continued to live with my family. I didn’t dream of any other job. I didn’t have many choices. But this didn’t bother me. It was pleasant, very interesting work. My relationship with my uncle was very good. But he was strict. Before the war my duty was to write on the typewriter. To write letters, letters no end. He dictated them to me.

The office was at 2, Ermou Street, on the square called the Banks’ Square. It was at the junction of Frangon and Ermou Street. The Stock Exchange building was in the corner opposite. It was there even before the war. Many years ago. Those were very big offices in four big rooms. Prior to the war, my uncle Sam, his brother Saul, and three clerks worked there. 

We had an employee who was very active, he knew foreign languages. He did the correspondence and had the responsibility of exports and of some of the houses we represented. We also had an employee, a girl, who did errands. Before the war they didn’t have an accounting section. Things were ‘flou,’ I don’t remember the way the state collected the taxes. Except for the girl who was a Christian, the others were Jews. 

We spoke in French. Everything was done in French, the correspondence too. Only a section of it concerning exports to Germany and some German and Czech representations had its correspondence in German. And another section relating to England and a few other countries was done in English. But our daily routine was in French. I think that my uncles spoke to the errand girl and one of the employees in Greek, which I didn’t know well at the time.

During the war

We didn’t know that the war would spread in the rest of Europe. It was between France and Germany. It had worried us that the Germans conquered France so easily. It was of course very sad that the French lost the war. On the first day of war we knew that there was a war in Albania 8. Some friends of mine that were older than me went to the front. Dick Benveniste went. The feeling of patriotism was widespread. It was a time when life was a lot tougher. Providing supplies had become very difficult. At home we didn’t have a shelter. Bombardments were not too frequent in most areas, and didn’t worry me personally.

I had a cousin Daisy Saltiel who had become a nurse. She took lessons, she became a nurse and worked very much. The day the Germans entered Thessaloniki Grandfather died. He died where we lived, in Evzonon. He was old. It was a difficult period. When the Germans came I stopped working. We did no longer communicate with the rest of the world, there were no imports, the office had slackened and I did no longer go there. I did various jobs, whatever I could find. Black market. I had a friend who had a warehouse with razors and I helped him sell them. This was done in the open, there was no control. It was a difficult time. 

Since Grandfather died, my mother had some income from rents and we lived on it. She owned some property. The house on Evzonon Street was ours. She had some shops on Kalapothaki Street [in the commercial district of the center of the city] and two apartments. My uncles Sam and Saul didn’t help us at all. We didn’t need any help.

There was of course great shortage in many things, but I don’t remember that we starved. We shopped in our neighborhood. There was food, but in very limited quantity. There was lack of meat and fish. This is how it was in the winter of 1941. And the same was the case in 1942. We lived on income from rent, which wasn’t much. This is because the rents were frozen. Some paid and others didn’t, it was a bit tough. But we received some money and lived on it. 

During this time I did nothing much. I would meet my friends, in the same places, in the house. A couple of times we went to Tsitsanis [Vassilis Titsanis, the most celebrated rebetiko folk song singer and writer of Greece]. In 1942 he was somewhere on Pavlou Mela Street [street in the center of the city where Tsitsanis had opened a tavern], somewhere nearby. We went by coincidence. I had a friend who was a couple of years older than me, and who smoked, he was more modern. Boubis, he was more street smart. One day he proposed that I go and listen to bouzouki [Anatolian plucked folk instrument] and we did. I hadn’t a clue about bouzouki. At the time it was associated with the world of hashish smokers and small criminals.

In 1942 I started working in the Jewish Community. I didn’t have anything else to do and went there as a volunteer, to spend my time and write on the typewriter. There was always work to be done: lists, translations and other things. I worked there on and off until 1943. I remember Rabbi Koretz 9. I just saw him when he came by the Community while I worked there. He was an important person. He was the chief rabbi.

In July 1942 the concentration of Jews in Eleutherias Square 10 took place. I was there also. There was an order for men from 15 or 17 to the age of 60 to present themselves there. We went there without any suspicion in mind. They didn’t inform us why we had to go there. We got there in the morning and stayed there for four or five hours. It was a huge crowd. There were no people on the balconies. There were no tenement houses, only hotels and shops. I didn’t suffer anything; the sun didn’t bother me. Some among those that were at the front were beaten, or had to do some exercises etc. but I wasn’t aware of it. And then I went back home and thought that worse could follow. 

In 1943 [actually 1942] the German measures alarmed us. Everybody tried to survive. Of course, some were taken to forced labor work 11. Some, a little older than myself, went to the forced labor camps created by the Germans in Leptokarya [a small village 60 km south of Thessaloniki]. In a short while the Germans called on me too while I was working in the Jewish Community. They summoned me for forced labor. I remember we broke stones. Just like that, for no purpose, just because some entrepreneur who was a collaborator of the Germans had some land near Sedes, at the military airport [area east of Thessaloniki]. We sat down and broke stones. Never mind, we even cracked jokes. We were young lads, we had no idea what awaited us. We were not seriously aware of the dangers.

While I was in Sedes, I heard that in Redestos [a small village nearby] they had potatoes. I left many times to go and look or steal, I don’t remember what, I think potatoes. I bought a sack of potatoes to take it along and bring it home. Because every day they took us on a lorry back into town.

In Sedes we broke stones. I stayed in Sedes 15 to 20 days, or a month, I don’t remember exactly. And then a friend of mine intervened. He was a graduate of the Italian school, he knew Italian and had managed to go work under the Italians. So I went to a warehouse somewhere in Kalochori [a small village west of Thessaloniki]. And there it was much better, let’s say. It was more pleasant because they fed us with spaghetti every day at noon. And we carried sacks, quite heavy ones. There were two or three Jewish porters, professionals, who showed us how to pick up the sacks and how to carry them. 

And then the deportations started either at the working class quarters or in the ghettos. Because the Germans had created three ghettos, and emptied one after the other in an orderly way up until they reached the Community, which was near us in Evzonon, where the last ghetto was. Many families had come from other ghettos to our house, since we had four apartments which we could rent. Some were crowded in one room or in two. Among them a family we knew, the Matarasso family. They were distant relatives, because one of their uncles was married to one of my father’s sisters in Lyon.

I wore the star of David. They were distributed to us by the Community, if I remember well. It was a difficult situation. There was an atmosphere of terror. One tried to escape, others didn’t risk it. There was a general atmosphere of fear both among the Jews and the Christians. Because those Christians that would be discovered to have helped Jews could suffer serious repercussions and be executed. 

There was fear also among the Jews. I remember a cousin of mine, Errera, who with three of his friends, had agreed to escape with some ‘caique’ [small sailing boat] from the sea of Thessaloniki. And the guy who had supposedly arranged it – this scenario – and taken their money, betrayed them just after they gave it to him, and they were shot, all four of them. They were youngsters of 15 or 16 years of age. In the cemetery there is even a monument for those four that were then shot. 

Some who were trying to help some of my friends or some older ones, to escape to the mountains, were sometimes successful. A lot of youngsters, however, didn’t want to leave because they didn’t want to abandon their parents, especially the girls. For the girls it was even more difficult to escape. Where would they go?

Throughout this time I occasionally met with my friends. Everybody took care of his ill state, some worked. I remember a friend of mine made shoes, somebody else became a fisherman, some other wandered around, it depended. We were somehow isolated from each other. Some of my friends tried to leave. Some must have left before the deportations, without letting anyone know, of course. Everybody tried, in secret, for his sake without informing anyone. I was, for instance, very close to my cousin who was executed by the Germans. I loved him very much, and he was my cousin and we played bridge together, and even so, I didn’t know he was trying to leave.

Margot, my aunt, and my grandmother were deported before we got to the Baron Hirsch camp 12. We did not know it, only a posteriori. How could we have known? Yes we did know that the ghetto of 25th March Street was evacuated 13, but we didn’t know anything else.

I want to come back to the Matarasso family, who lived in our house. He had a lot of money, of course. He had a jewelry shop and such things. It was a very wealthy family, and they found a way to survive. But he was on the list of rich Jews that the Germans knew about. These people the Germans had occasionally forced money out from. He was listed, in other words, in their records. The Germans found out immediately that he had escaped, and they made it sound as if my mother was to blame. She, as the house owner, was supposed to have let the Germans know that they had left. So they arrested her.

It so happened that my brother, who was much younger than I, was at home. This was taking place during the second or the third deportation load, in March 1943. They informed me in the Community where I worked as a volunteer, and I immediately ran to see what was going on. Since I knew German, I went straight to the Gestapo. There I found out that they kept her there. I tried to protest and say this or that, but of course it was not taken into account, and they ordered us to leave immediately. To take our personal belongings and to go to the Hirsch camp, in the old railway station. We went there on the very same day, of course. There was nothing to be done. 

We stayed there for a fortnight with my mother, where, upon a conversation, we found out that the Italian consulate was providing certificates to Italian families in order to move them to Athens, which was occupied by the Italians. This we hadn’t taken into account before.

My mother, who was a daughter of an Italian citizen, thought then that she too could acquire a permit and leave from Macedonia [Greek Macedonia, occupied and administered by the Germans] to go with us to Athens. But the thing was that for these procedures she had to leave the camp and go to the consulate, and leave us behind in the camp. For two days she was beside herself, she cried continuously, it is difficult to describe her feelings. 

She managed to get out of the ghetto because she went to the Germans’ collaborators and explained the situation to them. And some of those Jews that were there and were helping the Germans knew my mother and they knew that she really was an Italian’s daughter. She said, ‘I want to go out to get the papers so I can leave,’ and they accepted it. It wasn’t easy to get out, you had to have a good excuse. The permission for her to get out of the camp was given orally by the Germans, after a recommendation. The application was carried out by the collaborators.

Finally she managed to leave. It took her ten to twelve days. I don’t remember exactly how many days were necessary for the procedure. She went back and forth to the consulate to acquire the necessary papers, to prove she really was an Italian’s daughter, and to come to pick us up in order for us to leave. And we did.

My brother and I stayed in the Baron Hirsch camp for six or seven weeks, for something like two months. [Editor’s note: this period is significantly longer than the period Mr. Saltiel’s mother was away, so it must be inaccurate.] During this time trainloads left every five days. These deportations didn’t take place according to some name list, they deported anyone they could lay their hand on, crowds of people. The Germans raided one house after the other, yelling, ‘Raus, raus’ [‘Out, out!’] and chased them to the old train station where they loaded them on the wagons. The camp was empty and three or four days later more people would arrive. 

We were young and had this hope that we might leave and therefore we hid. We had no protection, simply out of cunningness. We hid under the beds. During this time of course we stayed without food, because during the days the people were imprisoned they somehow fed them. But in the days the ghetto was empty, there was no food. During this time we had absolutely no contact with our mother. So we stayed there without our mother for 15 days.

After that she came and picked us up. We went to Evzonon Street, gathered our things, and realized our house had been looted. The house had been emptied of its Jewish lodgers and people had stolen everything. In the meantime we had given certain things to the Italians also, in order to thank them for helping us.

When I came out of the camp and found our house on Evzonon Street looted, the only thing I found under a staircase were some books, among them a dictionary they had given me as a present in Paris, as a prize, and I took it along. I was pissed off that they had taken our furniture; we had very nice furniture. 

I don’t know how, but I decided to go to the Gestapo to complain and ask to get the furniture back. And they gave us some back. They gave me a SIPO [German abbreviation for ‘Sicherheitspolizei’ or ‘security police’]. These SIPO wore badges, they were policemen., We went straight to one warehouse and they gave me some furniture, which I sold to get some money since we were going to leave anyhow. We were left without any money, except for what we had taken along, but this too we had spent. 

And one day we got onto the train heading for Athens. It wasn’t a non-stop line; it had a change in Bralos [a place along the railway line in mainland Greece], because the train couldn’t go through at a certain point. They loaded us onto lorries to continue, and then we took the train again somewhere in Atalandi [a small town in mainland Greece], and then we reached Athens. There they took us near Omonia [a central square in Athens], to an empty high school, where there were twenty other families of Italian citizens who had left before us from Thessaloniki. These were real Italians, not like my mother who had married a Greek citizen. And we stayed all together for a while.I didn’t like this concentration, which was dangerous, even though deportations had not begun then in Athens. I simply thought we would be better off if we were separated. So we went and lived in a house on Alexandra’s Avenue, in Gizi [a neighborhood in central Athens]. In a very beautiful house, we rented a small apartment in our name, since there were no deportations yet. In other words we didn’t know if the situation would change. We of course rented the apartment from a Christian.

Six months later, after the surrender of Badoglio 14, they started hunting the Italians. Both the soldiers and the officers. And I remember that next door lived a lady who had a boyfriend, an Italian officer. As soon as these things happened, he threw away his uniform, wore civilian’s clothes and hid in this house. A few days later we saw him with a carriage selling tomatoes.

After we had left the Hirsch camp in Thessaloniki, when we lived on Kalapothaki Street while getting ready to leave Thessaloniki, we were in need of money and sold a shop to my uncle’s former partners. Those were called Dimitrakopoulos-Xenakis. We sold them a shop in the building on Kalapothaki Street. The price we got wasn’t very high of course, but this too helped us. We lived on it for a while in Athens. But after a while since we didn’t have any money once again, we did some work in Athens. We took a bench selling soaps. My brother of course helped me; we sold ‘Sapone di lusso.’ And this is how we managed to survive.

After the surrender of Italy by Badoglio, some Jewish collaborators started going around in Athens, but nobody knew us. This was taking place among the Athenians. Nevertheless, it wasn’t easy for us to stay in the center. People knew us, they could have traced us somewhere, in some grocery shops where we had used our food allowance tickets we had gotten with the help of the Italians, to buy food etc., so we tried to go somewhere else. 

At first we went to Nea Philadelphia [an Asia Minor refugee settlement on the outskirts of Athens], and stayed there for a while. And after that, I don’t remember how, we were approached by two members of EAM 15. They offered to help us. They never gave us their names, and that is why we couldn’t find them after the war. They acted anonymously and with a lot of precaution. They proposed to us to leave Nea Philadelphia, where it was not that safe, and to move higher up. They proposed Nea Ionia [an Asia Minor refugee settlement on the outskirts of Athens]. 

In Nea Ionia most of the inhabitants were from Asia Minor, who knew very little Greek. There was no fear they would understand us. We told our mother not to speak, to pretend she was deaf and dumb, so she wouldn’t betray herself. And then they issued identity cards for us. My new name was Niko Alvanos. There were two sources for issuing identity cards in Athens. One was that of Evert 16, who was the chief of police, the other was that of EAM. The EAM had orders to help the Jews. And with these identity cards we had some cover. 

Since I wasn’t the type of person who would sit at home and we also were in need, because we didn’t have any money, I went to downtown Athens. There were some ‘gazozen’ busses, as they were called at the time; those were like small lorries with a boiler at the back. They came by on and off. And one of those EAM people, who had helped us, came and visited. And because he made conversation with us, he realized I had to find some work to do. 

He proposed to me to work on tobacco leaves. It seems he too did some work of this kind, either before or at the same time, I don’t know. He knew nevertheless and he taught me, he gave me couple of instructions and some simple books. He also brought me in contact with someone who brought tobacco leaves from Agrinio [a major tobacco center in western mainland Greece]. I bought leaves from him, and I cut them and made pipe and cigarette tobacco packets. 

I had fabricated a primitive scale and I thought of going and selling tobacco to the Germans. In Menidi [a neighborhood on the outskirts of Athens] there were the houses of the officers and pilots who had a base in Tatoi [the area where the Athens airport was situated]. And the Germans, of course, didn’t have tobacco for the most part. I went there on foot from Nea Ionia. How I managed I don’t know, the distance is a few kilometers. I went a couple of times a week. The Germans I met in coffee shops around Menidi. I didn’t take money from them, I took bread or cans, or cigarette paper. I spoke broken German so they wouldn’t know that I knew the language and wouldn’t get suspicious, thinking I was some spy.

I knew German very well at the time. Before the war in all the schools I went to, also when I was in Paris, we learned it as a second language. I had chosen German. Most people chose English. In the Lycee, when I came back, all my classmates learned some kind of English. I continued with German together with three other chaps. Carlos my friend, Botton and someone else, whom I don’t remember. There were three of us and we learned German from a certain Mr. Neftel. An Ashkenazi teacher in the French Lycée. And now I remember that before the war the gothic script was still in use. It was the first thing I learned. I couldn’t write German otherwise. Only in Gothic script. Afterwards I forgot it. No, let me rephrase that: I did not forget it, I rejected it.

For me it was like a game, let’s say. I was young and cool… in general the Saltiels are known to be weird. And neither did my brother nor my mother knew what risk I was taking. It was a very dangerous job. They knew I went somewhere, but not exactly where, this they didn’t know, so they wouldn’t worry. There was no reason for me to tell them where I went. And it was a distance, as I recently calculated, of 12-15 kilometers. back and forth. I was young and I had no problem. And one day I went to Athens. There was a market for cigarette paper on Athinas Street [a main commercial street in downtown Athens], and there I traded them or sold them. I also sold cigarettes. And this is how we survived, until the Liberation [the Germans abandoned Athens in October 1944].

I knew of EAM since 1942-1943, because some of my friends had contacts and went to the mountains: Hector’s brother, Moise, and our two friends, the Cohen brothers. These had contact with their friends with whom they were very close. Some of our friends that were not away, like we were while in Paris, had old friendships with the Christians in the neighborhood. And some of them were leftists or had friends that were communists.

In Athens we had ration tickets from the Germans and for a while we went to pick them up. Even though it was dangerous and this was stupid. I nevertheless went. I also went to the Kaufmann bookshop [the most important foreign-language bookshop in Athens] on Stadiou Street and borrowed books. I went to concerts. When I went downtown to sell tobacco paper, which I collected from the Germans, I sometimes went to a concert. There were some revues; these were concerts of popular music, somewhere near Omonia. And since I was near there, I went. My brother went out in the neighborhood, he went shopping, he also did something, I don’t remember what exactly. My mother stayed home, she cooked and didn’t go out. We had brought some clothes with us.

I saw Hector and Nina when we lived on Alexandras Street. Maybe we met by accident because we lived in the same neighborhood. I went to see them a few times. Another time I went to Nea Philadelphia, I don’t recall where, and I met the sister of a friend of mine. The one we had gone to Tsitsanis with together. And she recognized me, I also recognized her, we kissed and hugged, and I asked for my friend’s news. She said he was well and made an appointment for me, so I met my friend who came to find me. I brought him cigarettes because I had some and he did not. 

A while later he told me that his older brother tried to find a way to escape, as Nina did, of course, separately from one another, one family after the other. They escaped through Euboea by boat. But we didn’t have money, so there was not such a chance for us.

Uncle Sam survived because he hid in a house in Athens. He had money. I didn’t even know where he was, we had lost touch with each other. He must have left Thessaloniki before us: at the beginning of the deportations or even before. He left his mother and his sister behind. Everybody tried to save his own neck.

I saw my aunt Margot during the occupation, because I went to visit my grandmother. During the occupation my uncle Sam still sustained them. They lived together. At one point Sam wanted to leave, but Margot didn’t want to leave and abandon my grandmother, because it was difficult for her to move. She wasn’t a very old woman. But at that time a 65-year-old woman was a grandmother. 

Saul and his wife were deported. His two children survived. My cousin Ino was in the army, but my cousin Daisy was arrested with her mother and father. They left before the deportations, before us. Daisy went through two or three camps. She wasn’t in one camp permanently. There were transports. She survived, but her parents did not. And she came back.

When Daisy returned from the camp she stayed here for a couple of months. She had no one here any longer; both her mother and father were killed in the camp [Auschwitz]. Her brother too was in Athens. She believed she would have a better future in Israel. It seemed she had contact with her friends, and picked up and left. She did wrong of course to leave, because would she have stayed here she could have married and made a family, as many of her age did. But she wanted an adventure.

My cousin Ino was in the army, he was a lieutenant. At the time he was in the Middle East and did not go through the occupation in Greece. Afterwards, when he returned, he stayed in Athens for a while. He married, but they didn’t get along well the little time they lived together. Then he wanted a divorce, and he picked up and went to Italy.

The end of the war found us in Athens, in Nea Ionia. I went out in the streets to celebrate together with the others. We learned that the war had ended from the papers. And about the bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we learned that from the newspapers too. It was a decision of the United States, so that the war would end.

As soon as we saw that the Germans had left and that we were no longer in danger we went downtown. We sought an apartment, and we found a nice one, in the center of Athens, on Kallidromiou Street, if I remember correctly.

About a month after the liberation my uncle Sam was the first to leave for Thessaloniki to put things together. To reorganize the office, to meet old friends, and to see how to reorganize some work. We stayed in Athens for a while, until February 1945, I think. I was working. We had created some mobile business in the center, on Sophokleous Street. And I remember we once again sold soaps, out in the street. 

I even went there during the civil war, the so-called ‘Dekemvriana’ 17. There were demonstrations. I had been in one, from Omonia to Klafthmonos Square [a square in downtown Athens]. But this demonstration was progressing very slowly, they were shouting, singing, holding flags. I don’t know why, but I left the demonstration at one point and went back. Maybe I was bored or they waited for me at home or something like that, and I had to go. 

Afterwards I heard that as this demonstration continued until Syntagma Square [the main square of Athens in front of the Parliament building], policemen were waiting there and they started to shoot them. There were killings. It was the first demonstration, at the beginning of December. And in this demonstration I gather I held a red flag. We personally had been saved by people from the EAM. 

During the Dekemvriana, I remember I followed things closely, though I didn’t take part. I had no connection whatsoever. We had gone through so much, that we didn’t need this. We no longer had connections with EAM. Those that had saved us had disappeared. We don’t know what became of them. We didn’t even know their names. They acted completely anonymously.

Kallidromiou Street is high up, and we lived at the highest point, on Strefi Hill. And one day, as my brother sat in the bathroom, a bullet passed next to his head. A stray bullet. Because they were shooting from morning until night, even during the night occasionally.

After the war

We returned to Thessaloniki in February 1945. The first scenes of Thessaloniki when we came back were very sad. Very, very sad. Almost everyone, from a population of some 50,000-60,000, had disappeared. The few survivors from the camps started to come back. During the time we were in Athens we had, of course, heard they had gone to the camps. 

When we returned we went to live in our house in Kalapothaki. The Evzonon house was occupied by various families that had appropriated it illegally in order to stay there. In one of the apartments in Kalapothaki stayed a policeman with his wife. We told them that it was our house and that we wanted to live there too. In the beginning they gave us a room, and then a second one and then they left thanks to us putting pressure on them. Then came another relative of ours, Mr. Benrubi. He didn’t have anywhere to go and came there with his daughter.

Various families lived in Evzonon. Later on we collected rent from them. Some rent, very low, because there was a rent control after the war and rents were extremely low and frozen. And there were some that paid and others that did not, it was a whole procedure. It was difficult. This situation continued. 

We did not go back to Evzonon. We stayed on in Kalapothaki, until I got married. The house in Evzonon did not belong only to us; it belonged to my mother’s three brothers. My grandfather had four children, three boys and my mother. But in his will he named my mother as his heiress. On the one hand because he had endowed the boys, and on the other hand because it was the only way to save his fortune, as my mother was a Greek citizen. Otherwise, it would have been frozen because it was considered the property of foreign citizens since they were Italian citizens who lived abroad. There was no way to export money or exchange it. In other words, he could not have the rent income, and so he left it to my mother.

Years after, of course, my uncles claimed their part and at one point the house in Evzonon was sold. It was divided into four parts, between the three brothers and my mother. It was sold to a Greek from abroad, so they would get the money. It must have been sold in 1975, because when Mother died we were building it in association with a building constructor. My brother kept one apartment and I also got one. 

Upon our return to Thessaloniki I started working at my uncle’s Sam office. We were the only two left from the family and we started trying to put work in motion: representations and exports, again in partnership with the company Dimitrakopoulos-Xenakis. I was an employee, not a partner. After the war the office continued to have employees. The clerk was the same and we had two Christian girls. The business did very well. 

There were a lot of problems before we started, but there was a lot of work too. The borders had opened and so business started. In general the market was in need of imports which had stopped for three years. We still had representations from before the war and new contacts of which my uncle took care. We brought in merchandise and did exports. We had our own storage houses, and very many clients and collaborators that were Christian. We didn’t have many contacts with Jewish merchants, since most of them were no longer around. In Thessaloniki we were one of the biggest representation offices.

My brother started working too, and my mother had some income from rents, low rents, nothing big, but it was something nevertheless. During that time the Joint 18 helped too. I did not get anything there, because the Joint dealt mainly with people who had returned from the camp and had nothing. Those, who didn’t even have a family, nor a house, nor money or anything else. These were helped very generously by the Joint.

In 1946 the first elections took place, I did not react and went to vote. [Editor’s note: The Jewish Community of Thessaloniki called for abstention because the Jews were to vote in a separate electoral college]. The Civil War 19 didn’t touch me at all, as I was so busy. Besides it was far away, in a different area. We were not politically involved, not I in any case.

During that period, in the 1940s, I didn’t go to the synagogue at all and neither did I attend any other activities in the Community. I never dealt with the community. And after the war my relation with the Jewish religion didn’t change at all. It stayed the same.

During that time, I don’t remember exactly when, some friends and I, among them Mico Alvo, created the ‘Club of the Friends of the Sea.’ This is where we spent our free time. I had a great love for the sea. Mico and I saw each other a lot before the war. I, of course, knew him but from far. He belonged to a different social class. After the war we were in the club together with another ten friends. It was a meeting place. We also had some small boats and went sailing a couple of days a week. Either on Wednesday or Thursday or on Saturday and Sunday. We sailed to Aghia Triada. I had my sailing boat too. It was made by some boards of scrap wood, of poor quality. There were not too many girls, but some came for a ride on the sailing boats.

We went out to eat. We went to ‘Luxemburg’ [a renowned restaurant and dancing club of Thessaloniki], for dancing, of course. I went out with other Jews of my age. But there were also Christians in my company, and good friends, very close friends. There weren’t too many Jews left anyhow. The Christians were my friends’ friends. Some of them, for example, were classmates of Moise Florentin, Hector’s brother. Moise had not gone to the French Lycée. He had been in a Greek school. This is because there was a law that after a certain age one had to go to a Greek school. [Editor’s note: In 1931 a law was passed stating that all Greek citizens should attend state-run elementary schools.] 

So Moise had gone to a Greek school and had Christian classmates. And after the war he had a big apartment of one of his uncles on Gravias Street. This is where another five or six of his old friends went and settled, of whom one did not have a house, the other wanted to leave his parents’ house, and thus they all stayed there. So I went and I met them and we became friendly. One was a journalist, the other worked, say, at his father’s shop, another was a liquor merchant, had a small factory of liquors. They were very good friends. They loved us very much.

In 1950 I went to the army, the year the Korean War started. Until then I had the right not to go because as an orphan I was considered the head of the family. So I served less in the army, something like a year and a half. I presented myself in Haidari [a district in Athens with a military training camp] where, I think, I stayed for a month. And after basic training I was sent to Drama and then to Corinth [a city in northern Peloponnesus 60 km from Athens], and after that to the school for interpreters, because I had applied for foreign languages. From the school of interpreters I was posted to the American military command in Kozani [a city in western Greek Macedonia, 70 km west of Thessaloniki]. 

Around 1951 the Americans undertook the training of the divisions that the English had before. A lot of officers had come. At first, when I went to Kozani, there were eight or ten American officers, majors or generals, each directing a sector, so to speak. Strategic tactics, training of the army. My work as an interpreter was translations. We did written translations of the texts the Americans had with them to give to officers of our own army, and during the training I translated since none among the officers we had then knew how to. 

I learned English because I wanted to forget German. In 1945 or in 1947, I don’t remember exactly, a friend pushed me to go together with him to a language school for English. And I went for a semester, but I was bored. Because in this school the training advanced very slowly, and because I knew other languages such as German and French. So I had no problem learning the language. In other words, with the help of a dictionary and books. I translated from magazines and books with the help of a dictionary. I took a pencil and paper, wrote things down and this way one can learn. A couple of hours of work every day, and one can learn on one’s own, if one wishes, but there is work to be done. 

It was not hard for me, besides I had the example of my relatives. My uncle knew eight languages, my grandfather knew four or five, I think. I work fast and I read fast. Not everybody reads with the same speed. I read very, very fast, almost vertically. I have read thousands of books. 

I remember that when I started learning English and I reached a point where I could read, I went to the American library. Then I went to the British Library. I went through all the books. I went to work in the morning, and in the afternoon, and sometimes at night until ten or eleven I read.

This job I undertook as a secretary helped me very much because I sat with the dictionary and worked for many hours. I had to learn English for the work my uncle assigned to me. It was a condition that I had to learn English very well because a large part of our work was in English.

I didn’t stay in Thessaloniki during the time I was in the army. In fact I remember that after my training in Corinth, I went to an infantry sector outside Larissa. I had become a distributor of rations and taught English to some officer, the commander of the battalion I was serving in. It was very pleasant and I had a good time. When we went to Haidari for instance there were many of our acquaintances from Thessaloniki. And with some who were from Thessaloniki who I didn’t know we became very attached. 

It was known I was a Jew because of my name. But with those friends I made in the army, I never had a problem because of that. Neither with the officers. During the Jewish holidays they gave me a leave of absence. It was an opportunity for me to ask for a leave and come home. The leaves of absence were something like a routine in the army. And there was never any comment.

During the first years after the war Athens and Piraeus started developing faster, while Thessaloniki stayed idle. And there were more prospects for Athens to develop. Many people from here left for Athens and instead people came from Trikala, Larissa and Volos [three major cities in Thessaly with important Jewish communities before the war]. They came to find a better future in Thessaloniki. These communities in Thessaly and further down in Athens are Romaniote Jews, not Sephardi. They came to find a better future in Thessaloniki which was closer to them. And for us, the Thessaloniki Jews, he who does not know Judeo-Spanish, is not considered a Jew. But they were Jewish all right. They had their synagogues, and were even more religious than us. Those were smaller communities, and they were more attached to one another.

Around 1955 some of my friends chose to leave for Athens. More precisely, during this time three of my very good friends decided to do business in Athens. They thought it would be a more profitable activity. Some succeeded and some did not. One was Haim Botton, the other was Freddy Abravanel, and the other was Armando Modiano.

Moise Florentin was also one of those who left to Athens in 1955-1957. He was one of my closest friends here while he worked for an uncle of his, his mother’s brother. But at a certain point he decided to go to Athens. None of my acquaintances left for Israel or the US. Some left for the US in 1945. Among them were those who didn’t find a family or a family business they could have continued, and thus decided to go to the US.

In the 1950s I had also decided to go to the US. I had applied and my application was approved, but my mother didn’t agree and I didn’t want to go alone and leave her here. I don’t know for what reason I took this decision. In the first years the financial situation was a bit difficult.

My mother’s life changed a lot after the war. Everything changed. Thessaloniki’s physiognomy was very different because so many Jews were lost. Very few of us were left. My mother had five or six friends she knew before the war and she spent her time with them. They were Jewish. 

In fact my mother took the initiative and created again a society, an association of Jewish women called WIZO 20. WIZO was inactive during this time and my mother and some of her friends took initiative and they gathered and decided to continue this work. After the war she was the first president and kept the presidency for six consecutive years. Before the war I don’t think she participated. We were not here. She took this initiative because she wanted to contribute. She could feel something ought to be done. But they didn’t collect much money, as there simply wasn’t any money at the time. The work was mostly social, mainly in Thessaloniki.

Besides WIZO, my mother had no other dealings with the Community. She went to the synagogue because my grandfather was quite religious. Not excessively, but he honored the traditions. But I didn’t see any change in my mother after the war. She was a sociable person. She went out very much. And because she was a widow, and, unfortunately, there were many widows who were available for company they went out together. They met in houses, in our house or in some other house. With them she only spoke in French, and also in Greek, but not in Judeo-Spanish. 

My mother didn’t go on vacation. I don’t think she had political beliefs. Not that his was something that didn’t preoccupy her. She had a very good relationship with her grandchildren. But she didn’t stay with them at night because they had somebody at home permanently.

When the war ended my brother was 16 or 17 years old. He had his bar mitzvah at an older age in Thessaloniki when we returned. It was a very simple ceremony. He didn’t receive any presents. It wasn’t common for children to get presents when they had their bar mitzvah. It was during the years when things were very simple and very poor. My brother learned Hebrew for his bar mitzvah. He took lessons with a rabbi. He most probably went to the synagogue. Very few people were able to do this job.

When we came to Thessaloniki my brother went to high school in Konstandinidis for a couple of years. But before he went to school he worked for a couple of years. He worked at the Zaharopoulos bookshop, not in my uncle’s Sam office. And this because he didn’t know how to write well in French and was very young. But I told him to finish high school. We supported him with some rent income and with what I made. But he also got an allowance.

After my brother finished school he had a friend and classmate who was a merchant’s son and had a big business with iron wares. It seems his friend proposed to him to go and work in their shop. And he worked there until the day that he retired. The business was called Sephiha, ‘Ifestos’ [Vulcan] Sephiha.

Before I met my future wife Rosy I had relationships mostly with Christian girls. In our company it didn’t make a difference whether they were Jewish or Christian. But this didn’t attract me because to make a proper family with one from another religion was not so… Of course, we had relations with some Jewish girls with whom we went out dancing but innocently, without…And not alone. We were say two or three friends and we had two or three girls with whom we went out dancing. 

There were then some music clubs with orchestras somewhere in the Depot [a neighborhood in the eastern suburb of the city, which took its name from the nearby tram depot], where a lot of people gathered. These were girls of our age. But when I decided to get married I wanted to get a girl younger than me.

At one point when I turned 35 and started to have a better situation financially, I thought it was time for me to stop my bachelor life and to get married and have a family. At that time marriages were fixed. Many people came to the office constantly from Larisa, Volos, from Athens, with girls who wanted to get married. They were exclusively Jewish. And here there were also a few.

Rosy and I got married in 1957. I knew her very well because I knew her family, her mother I knew less. Her father I knew better because our uncle Sam advised him and protected him. And since I knew Rosy, I thought of her. I told my uncle Sam who agreed and spoke with her father and we got engaged. I did make a choice, a sensible choice, as they say.

Rosy’s father was Alphonso Levy and her mother Sol Levy. Before the war Alphonso was the director of the Community. My uncle advised him not to go back to this position, but to open a business. He opened an office and started dealing with his own representations. He was a very nice man, very active and very friendly with everybody. He tried to deal with various activities. He ran around all day. After the war he continued to be active in the Community. He also had friends who participated actively. He himself was vice president of a Jewish organization which had various activities, social, educational etc., the Keren Kayemet Leisrael, KKL, the Jewish National Fund 21. He had many friends in Israel with whom he corresponded. He went very often to Israel for trips to see his sisters and brothers. He had two sisters and two brothers. As a personality he was very pleasant. I had a very good relationship with him. The fact that he was a Zionist and that my relationship to Israel was very loose, did not create any problem. Alphonso died in 1995.

Sol was younger than Alphonso. She was very good, a very good cook and housewife. She was a different character than Alhonso, had a different disposition. Everyone has his own disposition. She was sociable, but not all that much. She didn’t participate at all in social activities. Her company was mostly couples who liked each other and visited each other often, and mostly her sister. 

Alphonso and Sol spoke Judeo-Spanish with each other. When the four of us met we spoke in Greek. Alphonso’s Greek was good, since he had been the director of the Jewish community before the war. Sol spoke very good French and Judeo-Spanish. Sol died around 1990, she was not that old.

After the engagement we started going out together. We got married a few months later. It was a regular wedding and ceremony. There were guests. We were so few then. My mother invited many of her friends. For our honeymoon we went to Vienna. We stayed there for more than 25 days. It so happened that one of Rosy’s friends married at that time also, so we agreed to go to Vienna together. The four of us spent some time in Vienna together. We had a lovely time, free of cares, very nice.

After the marriage we first stayed in the same house where we had stayed before in Kalapothaki. We took the apartment next door, which we had emptied, and my mother and brother lived on one side and we lived on the other, in our own apartment.

After the marriage, my life was completely different. That’s because there were two of us now and we had many friends, other couples. We went out with other friendly couples. At first with one of Rosy’s classmates, Papadema was her family name. We met with them a lot, I remember at one point we went out with them every evening for a walk. To the movies, everywhere, we went dancing. I remember in Aretsou [a seaside resort very close to the east of Thessaloniki] there was a dancing club where we went every so often, ‘Water Lilly’ it was called. I used to dance before and after my marriage.

After I became a soldier and was away for a year and a half, I didn’t go to the ‘Club of the Friends of the Sea’ again. I didn’t bother. After I came back from the army, I don’t remember by who I got persuaded to do so, but I registered in some other club, the Β.Α.Ο. [Byzantine Athletic Club], an excursion club. And I went on excursions, long before I got married. I went every Sunday, and sometimes for the entire weekend, on an excursion somewhere: to Chortiatis [a mountain nearby Thessaloniki], Mount Olympus, Chalkidiki [a peninsula nearby Thessaloniki], various places. In Aghia Anastasia, along that way. On foot. Five to six hours on foot. After we got engaged, sometimes Rosy came with me, but she didn’t really enjoy it.

In 1960 my uncle retired from the business. He wasn’t married, and had some health problems and wanted to leave. Here he had no one except us, but he had two sisters and a brother in Naples, who invited him to go and live with them. So he decided to leave. As a result I remained alone and I somehow reduced the business. In other words I stopped the exports; I couldn’t do both things. And I tried to develop the imports, the representations’ sector. I didn’t have any specific imports that did really well. These things continuously change. One has to adapt. 

We had a lot of textiles, the textiles didn’t do that well, so I decided to find other products. At first I turned to iron wares. My first representations were from a contact I had at the International Trade Fair of Thessaloniki. They had a stand, and let’s say that they started some contacts. Then I turned to representation of hygienic products. I also had some collaborations with friends from Athens who needed a person to develop the Thessaloniki market. And this opened other doors to me, with other representations of houses in the market of hygienic products. These friends of mine from Athens, who had the hygienic products, were Jewish: Abravanel and Amarillio. 

The business did very well, the turnover continuously grew. In every branch, we had clients in every specialty. There was a lot of competition from other representatives and factories from abroad, because every representative was representing his own factories.

The choice of representations is often a question of luck. Luck, coincidence, if certain people look for factories through their friends, third parties.

There were some products we brought that were very, very successful. An English factory from Leeds produced woolen textiles for men’s suits that were very popular. One enjoyed working with this material because it was a very good product that the customers appreciated.

My customers were in the majority Christian, because the market had drastically changed after the war. The big clients were Christian businesses. Thessaloniki was a small city in the 1950s and 1960s and we had friends. My uncle had friends that knew who he was and trusted him and this relationship was transferred to me. 

The fact that I was Jewish didn’t stand in the way, on the contrary. This is because some representatives, from Athens mainly, were liars and were not reliable in their business dealings. But they trusted me more because the Jew in general tries to win trust and to behave properly, so that he doesn’t risk to lose a client, and so that he can invest in his work. This is a smarter tactic than fooling the client. 

Before the war and just after the war the promise, that is the commitment, played a very important role. It meant that when you say something you must do it, as if it is a written commitment, even if it is not. Say, for instance, in the business of exports that we had before the war, we had a typical oral agreement with the associates at the office which was based on mutual trust. We didn’t have a contract or anything else. We got money, gave money, did exports, and in purchases we also had full trust, very kind and correct. And this was never shattered.

There weren’t many Jewish merchants here. Not in my area of products. Except for Alvo in products of hygiene with whom we didn’t work that much. I had other more important clients who preferred me a lot more than Alvo. The Alvo family had a somewhat different policy. They wanted to have exclusivity of their products, I didn’t give exclusivity, and so we didn’t have a very good collaboration. We almost had none at all. I didn’t have relationships with other representatives who did similar things like me. Except for my friends in Athens who were representatives and with whom we had collaborated.

The atmosphere in the business was very good. I had employees, two women. One of them, whom I had for many years, got married, had a daughter, then divorced and continued to work for me. The other, who was single, married and left my office. They were secretaries. Took calls, did the correspondence and took care that orders were properly executed when I was away on a trip or visiting clients.

The salaries were paid according to the state law. When business was good, I remember, for many years we gave a bonus to the employees, at Christmas. I kept the business until I retired in 1995. I didn’t participate in any professional associations, but I had to be a registered member in the association of representatives. I never ran for office, because I didn’t have time for this kind of thing, neither did I have such ambitions.

Throughout my work, I had no problem either with the Income Tax office or the authorities. When I hired employees I didn’t ask what their political beliefs were; no one paid attention to such things. I would hire people that were recommended by people I knew. 

The work pleased me; it is a very interesting kind of job. One deals with people, one meets people, it is a sociable profession. During the week my time schedule was visiting clients in the morning, and office work. Often I came late at noon, and once again in the afternoon because at the time we had a lot of correspondence, and it was my personal job to keep it updated. At the time we had no other way to communicate. Letters no end which I wrote until 10-11 at night. The employees, the girls, generally filled in the order files, notes, took care of the daily routine. But the correspondence I had to do myself. The whole week went by mainly at work and during the weekends I was with my family.

I was away very often. Sometimes in Athens and sometime abroad. And when I was here I went visiting clients every morning for two or three hours. I took a lot of trips to France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Finland, Holland, and Poland, where I’ve been a couple of times. Those were trips that lasted four to five days, not longer. At the time hospitality was much more developed. Later it was reduced, mainly after 1985, because businesses tried generally to cut down expenses, and mainly hospitality expenses. Before that foreign businesses were very generous. They often paid for the hotel and entertained us not only during the day but they also invited us out at night. 

Sometimes my wife came too. Everything was very pleasant. To see a foreign city is always interesting. Paris, Amsterdam, Reims, where I went many times with my wife. Hospitality was cordial because we had very close and pleasant professional ties. On all these trips there were not any Jewish monuments I would go visit. I never went to see a concentration camp in Poland. I didn’t want to. The rest, museums, monuments and other similar things I did visit when I had the time.

I never hid my origin when I was introduced to people. Besides, they asked your name, where you came from etc. I told them straight out we were refugees from Spain, something like that. Naturally, I also said I was Greek. They knew of Greece and they asked various things connected to whatever they had learned at high school. 

Germany and France had the history of Greece in their main curriculum, and this certainly interested them. I was a Greek and a Jew, both. I didn’t make a special effort to approach factories that were Jewish owned. Sometimes one doesn’t even know that. For instance, once I acquired a representation of a company in London named Barkley’s. Later, when I asked to meet the director I met someone called Shatz, who was a Polish Jew.

Rosy never worked after we got married. We had three children. The first, Tony, was born two years after we got married, in 1959. Tony is a derivative of Sinto [Sinto in Judeo Spanish stands for the Hebrew name Shem Tov]. It was my mother’s idea to change Sinto to Tony. And two years later, in 1961, we had Solita.

I took Tony out for walks and excursions. I liked that. I didn’t have much time to deal with the children in the middle of the week. It was more my wife’s occupation, my mother-in-law’s and my own mother’s too. And in the first years we always had some help when the children were born. She would help with the housework or keep the children when we were out. She also stayed with the children at night, because she slept in the house. But on the weekends and during vacations, it was my duty to take care of my family.

We wanted more children, but it didn’t happen. We had a third child, but much later. And he died when he was five years old.

Our life changed very much after the children were born. We didn’t go out less because we always had someone to help and this allowed us to go out at night. At a certain time we went out every night. We went to the movies, to restaurants, music halls. Always with other company. There was this one couple that we met with very often. Our friend was called Vassilis Zoras and he was married to a classmate of Rosy’s; they were Christians too. 

There was no chance I would go out alone without Rosy, or with my own company. We were always together. Neither did I play cards. Those that went out alone were those who played cards, bridge or backgammon. I didn’t have such hobbies. Neither did I go to football games. Often we went out with my father-in-law and my mother-in-law and the children.

With the children we didn’t speak Judeo-Spanish, but often they followed the conversation. Both of them understand it. We spoke with them in Greek, never in French. My mother spoke Greek.

The children started going to summer camps. During the first years it was the Makedonika school summer camp in Chalkidiki. Afterwards, Solita went to the YMCA summer camp in Agios Nikolaos [a spot on the Chalkidiki peninsula], and Tony mostly went to the school’s summer camp in Chalkidiki. 

After 1972 we decided to go have a vacation in Chalkidiki and chose to go to a Xenia hotel [the first, state-run chain of hotels in Greece], in Paliouri, where we stayed for one month or 40 days. Until then we didn’t go on vacation. We spent the whole summer in Thessaloniki, and kept the shop open. During this time also Rosy stayed in Thessaloniki. Where could we go when the children were so young? We didn’t have a house in Chalkidiki, nor anywhere else and there were no hotels. The Xenia at Paliouri was the first hotel one could go to.

The beach was very nice at Xenia and we had very good company. But we stopped going after a while because the others stopped going too. These were Christian couples. Rosy I and the children liked the sea very much, but there were no hotels where one could go anytime one wished. Say, one wanted to go to Palini [Palini Beach Hotel, one of the biggest and most important hotels in Chalkidiki] on 15th July, there were no rooms available. And I personally don’t like hotels very much. 

In Xenia it was different when we were young, it was more pleasant. But over the years one expects more things and we chose to have our own house. We’ve had this house since the beginning of 1970, in Flegra, in Chalkidiki. It is more practical to have one’s own house and go whenever one wishes. At the time I worked very much and could stay no longer than 15 or 20 days in a row. And we preferred to go on weekends, which is difficult to do in hotels. We found the house because many friends we had made in Paliouri had also bought houses there. 

I acquired a radio between 1948 and 1950. I had learned to drive a car in the army, but didn’t get one afterwards. I bought one a couple of years after I got married. I had three beetles [Volkswagen Beetle]. They were inexpensive and practical. It didn’t accelerate easily when it was uphill, especially when we were four or five and sometimes six people in the car, the latter when the maid came along as well. My friends and I had no problem in buying German goods. I have friends who bought exclusively goods from Germany. For instance, I have a friend who brought all his products, 100 percent, from Germany.

We didn’t think there were any elements of the Jewish tradition we had to transmit to the children as they grew up. Of course when my in-laws were still alive they had friends who were much more religious than us. And they often organized dinners twice or thrice a year with 10-15 people, where all traditions were strictly kept. So the children learned about Jewish tradition.

We didn’t discuss the children’s upbringing with my mother or my in-laws with regards to Jewish religion or the Sephardic heritage. Maybe there were discussions, but not intentionally so. We did what we had to do, and didn’t abolish anything. We didn’t have a reason to disagree because we did what we had to do. My in-laws or my mother didn’t insist we ought to do something more or something less. My father-in-law kept the traditions and we, out of respect to them and to our religion, our nation, also kept them. 

Tony was taught Hebrew by the rabbi for his bar mitzvah. I don’t recall for how long, two or three years. Surely the Hebrew one learns for his bar mitzvah is limited. One is taught only to read some part of the Bible [Old Testament]. The bar mitzvah is a ceremony where one invites the family, relatives and friends, some Christians too. These ceremonies always take place in the Monastir synagogue 22. But Tony didn’t have a bar mitzvah because the little kid was ill.

Solita had a bat mitzvah, but this is not like a bar mitzvah. Three to four girls of the same age celebrate it together in the synagogue. They wear a long white dress. The bar mitzvah is a religious celebration where the young man reads a part of the Torah, while the girls don’t read. The Jewish religion doesn’t integrate the female aspect. For instance, for a prayer ten males are needed. Women just listen. B’not mitzvah took place before the war too.

If I recall well, Tony went to ‘Makedonika Ekpedeutiria’ elementary school [the most important private elementary school in post-war Thessaloniki, where many Jews sent their children] and after that he went to Anatolia College 23. Some Jewish children went to this college because it was and still is the most expensive school. And because my wife graduated from this school we thought it would be the proper school for our children too.

In the American school there were of course many Jewish students, boys and girls, and it was common that they should be exempted form the course of Religion. This was also the case in ‘Makedonika,’ and there were many Jewish children that went there too. On the Jewish holidays the children would have permission of absence. This too is commonly accepted, the Americans know it well. And so they did in ‘Makedonika,’ they too knew it and applied it. I never dealt with these details myself; it was my wife’s duty. But I do not remember us facing any problems.

In school, Tony and Solita were very good students. Tony was good. Solita had some problems in the beginning. Later she learned to concentrate seriously. She was good, very good. But Solita was a bit of a revolutionary, and my wife had to face trouble a couple of times.

All these years I didn’t participate in housework. There were no things I undertook such as cooking myself, for example. I had so much work at the office, that there was no time left.

After college, Tony went to university in Israel. The choice was in part his and ours as well. We thought it was preferable he would go to Israel where we had relatives instead of going to Paris or London. In Paris or London we had nobody. He first went to Tel Aviv where my father-in-law’s sisters lived, and three to four years later he went to Jerusalem. This is where he graduated. He studied Sociology and stayed for seven years in Israel without doing any post graduate course. He learned Hebrew very well and knew it in the first two years. 

In Israel, where there are many foreign, French and American, students, courses are in English during the first years. It was a very good experience for Tony. Life was carefree, very nice. After that he came back, went to the army and came straight to my office. And after my retirement he took the office up on his own.

Solita also went to ‘Makedonika’ school and afterwards to the American College. Then she took her university entry exams and was accepted in the School of Law. She worked for a year after she acquired her degree and did a post graduate course in the London School of Economics. She came back, worked for another year and left again to get another degree and to work for a while for a barrister in London. Then she came back and got a job here.

I remember the graduation ceremonies at Anatolia College with some, not much, emotion. There was a stage. Tony wore a red shirt. When he graduated from the university in Jerusalem we didn’t go to the ceremony, but we visited him a couple of times during the time he was studying. When Solita graduated here we went, but not in London.

Tony is married to a Christian. He married ten years ago, in 1995, and we have two grandchildren, a boy and a girl. My grandson is called Nikos and my granddaughter Nana. They are ten and nine years old. The fact that Tony fell in love with a Christian was a big problem, because we naturally didn’t want him to marry a Christian. In the same way Christians do not wish for their children to marry a Jew or a Muslim. This became an issue that caused a lot of friction and fights.

We hadn’t encouraged our children to socialize with other Jewish children, there was no such aim. Besides they had our own example, which was that we socialized equally with Jews and non-Jews, without discriminating. Of course we sent them to the Jewish Club [a club run by the Jewish Community for the youth], but without insisting that they should only socialize with Jews. This never occurred to me, I am not a racist. Solita has fifteen girlfriends that are all Christian. 

The community’s club was meant to be for younger kids. There is one club for adults too, but I never went there, because all they do is play cards. A place where women used to meet, mostly to play cards. The only thing that has happened on and off recently is that the association ‘Greece-Israel’ holds a big dinner once a year, where we go. This association aims at the tightening of relations between Jews and Christians. One of the people in charge is Micos’ [Alvo] daughter. In the association’s gatherings there is usually one who hold a ten-minute speech. He is usually a Christian. We are not members, we are just supporters. We have a lot of friends in this organization and want to contribute and help them.

In Thessaloniki I also participated in the events of the art society ‘Techni’ [‘Art,’ the most important literary and artistic society of Thessaloniki during the 1960s and 1970s]. One of its founders was Maurice Saltiel, who was a very good friend and I wanted to support and help him. And I became a regular spectator. I was interested in the events and I fully enjoyed them. 

I knew Maurice, we were not related, may be we were distantly related. But after the war he was a very good friend, younger than me. His shop was at the corner of Plateia Emboriou [lit. ‘Square of Commerce,’ situated in the commercial part of downtown Thessaloniki]. I often went there and we talked about many things in general, but we also did business together, he was also my client. He sold textiles and I was his sales representative. 

Maurice was a fine man. He cared more for art, for the ‘Techni’ art society and its activities, rather than his commercial profession. That is why he gave it up to dedicate himself to ‘Techni.’ But he got deceived, because when Zannas [Alexandros Zannas, offspring of one of the noblest families of Thessaloniki and the founder of ‘Techni’], who liked him a lot, died, the others, who were jealous of him, pushed him aside. And while he had closed his shop with the aim to dedicate himself to art, he ended up being pushed aside. 

Maurice worked very much, because it’s simply impossible to create such an association without a lot of work and without method. He was very methodical and very ambitious in this field. He wanted to do things. He didn’t so much care about literature as he did about music. He was a musician himself. He played the violin beautifully since he was a child. I don’t know how he was saved during the war. This we didn’t talk about. His wife is Christian; he married her long after the war.

In the art society ‘Techni’ they never talked about the Jews of Thessaloniki. This was not one of the topics that occupied this society. Its subjects were exclusively artistic. When I first went there I wasn’t married yet. I don’t remember going there with Rosy.

There were no other artistic associations that I went to in Thessaloniki. Only ‘Techni.’ It was an artistic association, but at the same time it was also a milieu of progressive people. Those who were members of its committees were often distinguished personalities, very interesting and liberal. Other Jews followed the activities at the ‘Techni.’ Such were Freddy Assael, and some others, but few. Those were hard times and everybody cared mostly about his bread-winning occupation which wasn’t easy.

I didn’t buy books, because for me libraries were a very easy alternative. I read Greek books, but very few. Less than English or French ones. These latter attracted me more. Besides I read English books by necessity in order to learn better English. And French because I was used to read French literature or art books. For instance, in the British Council [after World War II a branch of the British Council, a cultural organization funded and run by the British state, was established in Thessaloniki], I borrowed many books about archaeology, which I was very interested in, and still am, and I read a lot. And same thing with architecture, I borrowed a lot of books from the British Council on this subject. I didn’t follow Greek literature at all. I didn’t attend any literary soirées.

Archaeology interests me. In Paris, when I was young, eleven or twelve, I thought one weekend of going to the Louvre. And I enjoyed it so much that thereafter I went very often. I went on my own, of course, by subway. I visited the archaeological museum while I lived in Athens during the occupation. And I also went to the Parthenon for at least 30 times. When we went to Istanbul we were taken right and left [to the European and Asian side of Istanbul], and I had heard there was a very good archaeological museum, and I told the driver to let me off near it. I went there on my own. It is a general interest which is confined to Antiquity. I don’t visit churches that much.

Before the war one of the main entertainments for me was to go to the movies. There were very good films, and many movie theaters. I liked American films both before and after the war. They screened more American films in the cinemas than French ones. I saw them all, because those that were shown were all good films. I enjoyed comedies, as were those of the Marx Brothers [famous pre-war American comedians] and Monsieur Hulot [famous post-war comedies by French director Jacques Tati]. I wasn’t a cinephile, but we went often. It was a classic entertainment. We didn’t go to clubs or cafeterias. There weren’t any as there are today. We didn’t go listen to bouzouki either. I don’t like the theater, but in Athens I went to musicals. I enjoyed them very much.

I listen to a lot of classical music. In Paris, in the Lycée, I was taught music. They played us a record and then they explained to us. They told us who wrote the piece and what its meaning was. A nice and well-taught course. And this is what had impressed me then. This definitely stimulated me, because at the time I had no idea. When I was in Paris I couldn’t go to concerts, alone I couldn’t go.

I started listening to music after I bought a stereo and started buying records; this was long after the war. Here in Thessaloniki, I went for many years to concerts of the state orchestra in the festival hall of the university. I went when I liked the program. I went alone, Rosy never went to concerts. In the ‘Megaro’ concert hall in Athens I have been innumerable times. This hall was founded in 1990 and I started going from the very first month. For a certain time I had a house and a car in Athens, for business reasons. Every 40 days I used to go there and stay for a week. And instead of going to tavernas and other stupid entertainment I chose to go to the ‘Megaro’ which had very nice programs, in contrast to the ones we get here that are worth nothing.

I especially like Mozart and Bach, and pre-classical music, Vivaldi for instance. I developed this interest for classical music by myself. My mother played the piano before the war, but not after the war. She played before we left for Paris. I remember her very well, she played so and so.

I did vote in the communal elections. After the war there were some parties in the community which differed according to personal interest. In other words, one could have been so many years in the Community, and may have taken advantage of it. Because there were always accusations from one party against the other. So it is time that they go so we can come to power. Simply, I was never interested in this sort of thing. I personally voted for people I know and trust. I prefer the people I know, rather than opportunists and those whom I have no reason to trust.

I watched the activities in the Community from a distance. I didn’t care much and wasn’t interested. Even though those that came to power were close to us. For instance, one of the first presidents was my uncle Haim Saltiel. Later, a classmate of mine, Dick Benveniste. After him another close friend, Andreas Sephiha, who was a classmate and a friend of my brother, with whom we were very close for years. At one point Mr. Leon Benmayor, who was a friend of my father-in-law, was the president. Various people, who were very close to us, didn’t encourage me to become involved myself more actively. They knew I wouldn’t accept.

In the Community things were never good, and what can one expect from a Community that will soon disappear. It is of course sad; it is only a reminiscence of the old community’s glory and has no future. From 1945 onwards it has been desperate, a remnant of the old community. 

Solita participated in the museum management. I do go to the events organized by the museum. I have visited it, and I thought that the two exhibitions that were organized there were very good. A lot of work and preparation. An important success.

I don’t think that my attitude towards the Jewish religion changed after the war. I went to the synagogue only during the high holidays, during Passover and weddings and celebrations. Religion never attracted me very much, simply because I never learned Hebrew. And one feels bad when the others hold books they read, even if supposedly they don’t understand what they read. I did try a couple of times to learn Hebrew by myself, but I didn’t manage. I now go to the synagogue rarely.

My mother died in 1975 and we did the annual Kaddish, but it has been years now we haven’t done it for practical reasons. The yearly Kaddish is a ceremony that can take place either at the synagogue or at home. In the past they used to do it at home, but now not enough people come. There have to be ten men and there aren’t. Now they don’t gather as many even at the synagogue. 

However, we mention my mother by name during [Yom] Kippur in the synagogue. During Kippur there is a special ceremony when the rabbis mention the names of the dead. Everyone who ascends the bimah to read a passage from the Torah has with him a list and the rabbi reads it, first the men and then the women. Some fuive to ten names. I don’t go up to the bimah because I don’t know how to read, my son Tony does. And so the rabbi mentions the names of the family’s dead. Tony goes to synagogue during the holidays too, and so does Solita. Solita doesn’t know Hebrew. Tony keeps traditions in a similar way as we do. 

We started learning about the Holocaust in 1945, when the survivors started to come back. First came a cousin of mine, Daisy. She told us stories, not too many, but in any case we knew what had happened. What did we know? We knew who survived and who died. They didn’t feel like telling us a lot. It was due to the necessity to survive and that people had to work in order to live. And this is general. It so happened in France and Germany, they tried to forget somehow.

I started reading about the Holocaust around ten years after the war. There were no books during the first years. The first books were written by my friend Mrs. Counio and another friend of mine, Marcel Nadjari, whose manuscript was found much later buried in Auschwitz. A friend and classmate of mine, René Molho, who lives in America, wrote a small book about the history of his family that was killed in the extermination camp. The most important book was of course that of Erica Counio. 

These publications didn’t change the way I looked at this period. This is because we knew everything since we had lived through these events. And I didn’t start talking more. Some events that were organized starting at the beginning of 1990, about the history of Greek Jews, I did follow, from morning until night.

I never spoke about the Holocaust to my children because they knew about it and had heard about it from my mother-in-law and my wife. I didn’t want to speak about it on any occasion. There was no reason, there were books. We had many books at home. There wasn’t any encouragement though, and it wasn’t an issue that came up in our discussions.

Shortly after the war there weren’t any celebrations on behalf of the victims of the Holocaust. At a certain point, however, the Community took initiative to build a monument in the cemetery. There were some celebrations, but a lot later, in 1955.

I do go to the ceremonies for the commemoration of the Holocaust. These haven’t changed over the time. The only difference is that in the meantime many of the survivors of the camps have died. Because the tradition is to call the survivors, ten or twelve, I don’t remember, to light a candle. They become fewer and fewer. These commemorations take place in the synagogue. It’s a religious ceremony for the day of remembrance. Psalms, speeches and candle lighting. Once Venizelos [prominent local MP and ex-minister of the Greek socialist party PASOK], and another time Psomiades [the prefect of Thessaloniki] spoke, on other occasions our own people do. 

The ceremony at the Concert Hall is something recent and was introduced a year ago. But our own ceremony in the synagogue is something else. It is a different ceremony. And where the anniversary of the creation of the State of Israel 24 is concerned, it is especially celebrated by the ‘Greece-Israel’ association with a big evening event.

In the past the Jewish presence in Thessaloniki was ignored. Let us take into account that Thessaloniki had a very small population before the war. And as it grew it absorbed a lot of people from villages, and small towns of the inland, who had no idea that there were Jews in Thessaloniki. These people simply didn’t have a clue. 

However, people in politics or those that were mayors knew. When I heard them speaking about Thessaloniki as the ‘bride of the Thermaic Gulf,’ or ‘the city of Alexander the Great,’ Byzantine city etc., I understood that they didn’t speak at all for the Jews of Thessaloniki. Silence for a long time. It was done intentionally, and there was ignorance from those who didn’t know. 

A girl asks you in a federal office, ‘What is your name?’ - ‘Saltiel.’ - ‘What name is that, what are you? French, from Chile?’ - ‘No, Jewish,’ I say. ‘Did you come from Israel?’ I say, ‘Did you come from Koritsa?’ [Editor’s note: a city in southern Albania with a significant Greek-speaking population]. This has not changed. Since the Jews are an extinct element, or under extinction, it is natural. 

In my daily contacts I don’t feel like talking about the Jews of Thessaloniki, and sometimes I even stop such conversations. I have no reason to discuss such issues with people I don’t know, and give them a lecture. Since they don’t know that once the city was Jewish, let it be.

I never got involved with politics. I didn’t want to get involved and I didn’t care. And I have an aversion. I did vote, but I have an aversion to politics. There are of course some worthwhile politicians, there is no doubt, but unfortunately the results of the state government are very unpleasant. There never was a perfect government or party. They all make promises and especially so on where Thessaloniki is concerned. We have heard 100 times we will do that or the other and nothing happened. I always thought this way. 

This indifference of Athens towards [Greek] Macedonia and especially about the issue of the name brought us to the Macedonian question [the controversy between Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia in the 1990s over the name of the latter]. They let it drift, so after many generations everybody believes that Macedonia is theirs. Nobody made a point at a certain moment for various reasons. On the one hand the indifference of the Centre and the Right, and on the other hand the fanaticism of the Communists who did not want to bring up this issue for fear it would upset Tito 25. 

I could tell even before 1990. Those that traveled could see the label ‘Macedonia.’ This bothered me, it was disgraceful. But it was silenced and so it was imposed. When an issue like that is neglected and not discussed, two, three generations later it becomes established. Then it is over and one can no longer react. The others will rightfully wonder where you were all this time and how come you thought of it only now.

I had pinpointed the problem and so I talked about it to people in Athens who were involved in politics. I had for instance a friend who was president of the Chamber of Commerce. He was in a very good position and had to do with ministers on a daily basis etc. I tell him, ‘You have been indifferent for so long, and you thought of it now that it is too late?’

I didn’t go to the demonstration in 1993. [Editor’s note: In 1993 almost one million Greeks demonstrated in Thessaloniki against the use of the name ‘Macedonia’ by the F.Y.R.O.M.]. I was too old at the time. I agree with those that claim that Macedonia is Greek. Alas, how else can it be? Naturally, Thessaloniki was Greek also. But if these same people say Macedonia is Greek and Thessaloniki too, and the Jews never existed, this is something else. This is irrelevant.

I didn’t go to watch whenever national parades such as on 28th October [national holiday celebrating the Greek-Italian war of 1940-1941] took place in Thessaloniki. I did participate in national parades when I was a soldier. I didn’t even go when the children took part in it. It was too much for me to stand there. 

I did put up the flag during the celebrations of 28th October and 25th March [the day of the commemoration of the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence against the Ottoman Empire in 1821]. I still do put it up because we have some national consciousness. We are Greek subjects, we have a Greek passport. Those that don’t put up the flag consider this as a matter that is self understood. Maybe we have a more developed awareness.

In the past I didn’t despise politics and politicians. I didn’t have a political consciousness before the war. But after the war I had a very developed political awareness. In general, I judged that politicians are not up to their office. They make promises but do nothing. I like Karamanlis 26. Except for Karamanlis’ time there was not, let us say, a general direction. Every minister, every prefect, whoever, did whatever came to his head. There was never a general policy. Everyone did whatever. Simitis 27 was very sympathetic. And Karamanlis, the uncle, did many things I approved of. Papandreou 28 not so much, no. I never trusted him; he was an opportunist, a thief. 

After the war, most of the Thessaloniki Jews voted ERE 29. They never moved towards the Center Union Party 30. They still vote for the right. 

It didn’t have any connection that I voted for ERE and at the same time followed the ‘Techni’ events. ‘Techni’ wasn’t a political organization. No, it may be that some members of the board were leftwing, but this didn’t mean anything. Maurice wasn’t politically oriented either. We never spoke of politics with Maurice; he did have a position, but never expressed it.

During the 1950s and a little of the 1960s [the post-civil war decades when authoritarianism and anti-communism dominated Greek political life] I never felt I should be careful with what I said. I never made public statements, neither did I do so in the newspaper, but I said what I felt and discussed it with friends and acquaintances. 

I remember the assassination of Lambrakis 31 in Thessaloniki. I was here. The climate was terrible. I was not only something that just put me down, but much more. I was not scared by the dictatorship 32. I was not scared by the Germans, would I be scare of the dictatorship? I had no reason to be afraid. I was neither a communist neither did I have any active part anywhere.

I did buy a newspaper, a Thessaloniki paper, not an Athenian one. I bought ‘Macedonia’ 33. For many years. But ‘Macedonia’ is no longer a newspaper I like. I stopped buying it. Ever since it went under, I stopped buying it. For a long time I bought it every day, the janitor brought it to me.

There still are certain Sephardic dishes that we cook. My mother often cooked traditional dishes, but my mother-in-law did so even more. One of my favorite dishes is the lamb my mother-in-law cooked. She also did small cheese pies very well.

After the war and the Holocaust my connection to my Jewish identity changed. I became much more Jewish. What happened with the Holocaust, no doubt influenced the identity of many Jews who before the war thought of their Jewishness as something taken for granted, while after the war there was a change in their mentality.

After the war, I didn’t notice any change in the way that Christians treated me. We had not faced a problem from that point of view. Neither did I face a problem because of my identity card where my religion was registered as Jewish. I didn’t speak a lot with my Christian friends about the Holocaust, or about the Jews of Thessaloniki. In the first years we didn’t even talk about the State of Israel.

When the State of Israel was created we were all very happy. It was a very pleasant development. In other words, let me say that the state of mind of the Jews changed completely. They finally had their own state. This I felt too, but not especially in connection to Zionism. I never contributed in any way to the State of Israel.

We have been to Israel a few times. These trips are like a pilgrimage. We went for general purposes. First to see Tony who was there. Afterwards we went a couple of times to see Rosy’s relatives, and some friends of my own who live there. The first time it was an extraordinary feeling. A very well-organized state, very laborious and very developed. And the museum in Jerusalem. The Jewish Museum. In the first years these people worked like crazy to build roads, houses, the kibbutzim, extraordinary agricultural cultivations. A great development. This made me feel very proud as a Jew. I felt differently as a Jew.

There are some places of reference that every Jew who visits Israel has to see. The Wailing Wall, the Jewish Museum in Jerusalem, is of course very important, Yad Vashem 34. In addition there is a very beautiful museum in Jerusalem, the museum Beth Hatefusoth, which is near the house of our friends, the Florentin family. 

I didn’t relate to the Wailing Wall as if it was an archaeological site. I was extremely moved because it is a site of pilgrimage. There is no doubt that when one is there one feels the religious atmosphere. I have never placed a wishing note. 

We also went to the Holy Places, and to the Muslim temples. I visited them some time ago when it wasn’t restricted. And I did this even though Rosy’s relatives told me not to go. I went because I wanted to see them.

Most of the people we met there were not the most fervent Jews, and they were not religious. I’m pointing this out because one also meets a small minority of 5-6 percent who are extremely religious. In other words, these are those that for the most part do not work and are dressed differently, as they used to dress in Poland when they lived in their ghettos. Our people there, however, that is Rosy’s relatives and my cousin, are liberal and normal.

The Lebanon war 35 in 1982 was something that made a great impression on me. I was against it but of course we don’t have the right to state our opinion on such things. They know better than us, but in general I didn’t approve of it. And at that time they had an excuse, but since then they overdid it. These are issues we don’t discuss with our relatives or friends in Israel. Not even with Hector and Nina. When we are together we speak of other things. We don’t go into details. We discuss them among us.

In the Lebanon war in 1982, the Christians didn’t change their position towards us. No one dared tell me anything. I don’t give anyone the excuse to speak to me. My friends and acquaintances know that I am not among these people that will listen to anything. There were of course some comments that bothered me, but I didn’t pay much attention.

I retired around 1991-1992. My life hasn’t change at all since then. One changes, however, over the years. In the past, I used to spend ten hours at the office. Slowly-slowly I reduced the office hours, especially since my son took over the business. Right after I retired, I worked regularly. But it has been some years now that I no longer spend so many hours there. The time has passed and I get a bit tired. For the last five or six years or so I have not been going out in the evenings any longer. We have a lot of friends, but they also grew older and don’t go out as much any longer. 

Glossary:

Jeni Blumenfeld
Botosani
Romania
Interviewer: Major Emoke 
Date of interview: September 2006 

Mrs. Jeni Blumenfeld is a talkative person who, to her unhappiness, doesn’t have many people to talk too. 

There is nobody of her family left in the country; she doesn’t have any friends either.

She has been living alone in a flat apartment since 1990 when her husband died.

Her apartment looks rather neglected, another consequence of her loneliness.

• ​My family history
• Growing up
• During the War
• After the War
• Glossary

• My family history

My paternal grandfather’s name was Strub Leib Segal, he owned a glass factory in a little town, in Lespezi [Lespezi, community in the district of Iasi, is at a distance of 62 km south from Botosani]. According to the communists, I am of bourgeois origins. I was a member of the Communist Party but they kicked me out for that reason.

He co-owned the factory with two other people. But this was all when my grandfather was young. Afterwards, my father’s parents lived in Botosani where my grandfather owned a fabric store. I don’t know what happened to the factory in Lespezi, only the dead know.

When I grew up I knew the fabric store but my grandfather was old by now, so his sons had taken his place. The shop was in the old centre of Botosani, opposite to the Christian Orthodox Church Uspenia in which Eminescu was baptized 1 [Ed. note: The Christian Orthodox Church in Botosani was founded 1552 by Lady Elena Rares].

My grandparents’ house with its balcony and the shop at the ground level still exists. I did not know these grandparents too well, they died in 1945 and I was young. After my grandparents died, my mother, father and my sister (whom we lost) lived in the house.

In 1948 a decree of nationalization was issued, when the big factories were taken and our house was nationalized as well 2.

After 1990 I filled in some documents but I did not get the propriety back. They won’t give it back to me because I do not have the document of ownership, I don’t even know when my grandfather bought it. And there is nobody alive from that period. But ah well, I have enough.

My grandfather had a sister in Paris who was very rich. My father’s cousin lived in Braila. Her father was my grandfather’s brother. Her name was Shely and I think her husband’s name was Liviu. Their surname was Solomon. They married in 1935. 

But we did not really stay in touch because we were not a very close family. War came and we all stayed in our own caves. They did not have children, they lived in Braila and I think they left for Israel after the Second World War.

My paternal grandmother was one of five sisters, so many relatives that you can’t even name them all. One of them, Nela, had ten children She died in Dorohoi.

Another cousin of my father was called Mada Filvar. She was from Dorohoi as well. She married in 1926; her husband was Herman Filvar.

After the war they lived in Iasi. In 1980, when my husband had to have surgery in Iasi, I visited her; she lived on Stefan cel Mare Street. Her husband had already died and because she was a rather difficult person to deal with, I stayed at a hotel.

My father had two brothers and two sisters. One of his brothers was Bernard Segal. He was a merchant and owned a small-ware shop on Lipscani Street in Bucharest. He did not stay in touch with us; he and my father weren’t close, because my uncle was an arrogant man. My father was more timid, more provincial and they lived in Bucharest, in the capital. His wife’s name was Any. She was a lady and my grandmother did not want her as a daughter-in-law, because her reputation wasn’t too good.

My uncle Bernard was a handsome man, handsomer than my father, with curly hair, he was her lodger, and she bewitched him, caught him. They had a son – a handsome man as well – Charley was his name, his mother gave him a French name. After the Second World War, in 1945-46, my uncle, his wife and their son left for Venezuela where they had some relatives. Charley lives in Caracas, we lost touch. He is divorced and has two daughters in California, in Miami.

My father’s other brother was Jean Segal; he co-owned the shop with my father. He was younger than my father but is not alive anymore. He died in Israel. His wife Zoela died in Israel as well. They did not have any children.

One of my father’s sisters was Clara; she had the same name as my mother. She lived in Bucharest. Her husband, Jean Chelner, was some kind of accountant at Petrol in Ploiesti. He lost his money through gambling; he was a gambler. They had two sons: Henry, -nicknamed Ricu- and Silviu. Ricu was of the same age as me [born in 1927], and Silviu was younger.

The boys were well educated; they graduated from university. Henry, the older one, became a doctor and died in the end in Israel. Silviu changed his surname to Costin – Silvian Costin- and appeared as an author in communist books. He was a historian and during communism he was a chief editor at the history desk of Casa Scanteii

[Ed. note: The newspaper Scanteia, an organ of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party, was legally published since 1944]. He was married to Geta, they had two children, Andy and Ina, who first went to Israel and from Israel went to the United States.

And ah well, we were in communism, Ceausescu was ruling and if you had relatives in America – in the country of your enemies – how could you continue working at Casa Scanteii 3? They fired him. And he, out of anger, had a heart attack. This happened during the last years before the Revolution 4, I think in 1988. They took revenge; they did not want us to have any connections to the West.

My father’s other sister was Berta; she was married to the other shareholder of the store, Adolf Moscovici. So my father, his brother Jean Segal, and Adolf Moscovici were co-owners of the store. But oh, did that brother-in-law of my father cheat us.

He guarded the store’s money because my grandmother wanted him to do so. So he kept the Napoleons. They were gold Napoleons and he safe kept the coins. And in those years after the Second World War, there was a huge inflation; today you would sell one coin for 2 million, tomorrow for four.

And when my father went to Adolf and asked for the money because he had a daughter whom he wanted to continue her studies, he told him that he had sold a coin for 3 million. And the next day he sold one for 7 million. Adolf betrayed my father and uncle Jean.

They had children, a boy and a girl, both of whom are not alive anymore. They had a beautiful girl, Estera, who married and eventually died in Israel. Her wedding was here in Botosani but we did not go. They are to blame for the way they treated their relatives…

Estera had a brother, but I don’t know what was wrong with that boy, he suffered from depressions and he was committed to an asylum. He died there. His parent did not treat him very well. Both, aunt Berta and her husband died here in Botosani, I don’t remember when. They were buried at the Jewish cemetery but I never go to their graves, with them… [I have nothing to do}.

My father’s name was Samuel Segal. He was born in Botosani [somewhere in the 1890s], I don’t exactly remember when but he was bit older than my mother. My father did not have a lot of schooling, I think he only went to primary school. I don’t know exactly how many classes he finished but less than my mother anyway, who graduated high school.

My mother’s parents lived also in Botosani. Her father’s name was Iosef Raisher, who was also a merchant. Many Jews were merchants. My grandfather owned a grocery store. My grandmother died when I was four years old [in 1931] so I only knew my mother’s father. My grandfather died before the beginning of the Second World War [somewhere in the 1930s], I don’t remember exactly when, he was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Botosani.

My mother had three brothers: David Raisher, Isac Raisher and Leon Raisher. David Raisher lived in Bucharest; he was an accountant at a bookstore. He had two girls who went to Israel [Palestine] before 1945; one of them has died by now. After the war, my uncle went to Israel as well. He has died since then. He was older than my mother [he was born in the 1890s].

Isac Raisher was also from Bucharest, he was a merchant of colognes, he had a shop, but when the communists came to power they confiscated that shop 2. He went to Israel as well, died there of old age. He did not have any children. Leon Raisher was a food trader here in Botosani.

He had the same line of work as my grandfather but opened a separate shop. He was married to Pauline, and they did not have children. I don’t want to talk badly about him because he is dead, but he was very greedy. He was buried here in Botosani; he died at the age of 85 years.

My mother came from Botosani; her maiden name was Clara Raisher. I think she was born in the year 1900. My mother had a degree. She finished high school, graduated in 1917. But at that time women did not continue their higher studies. There is a German riddle that perfectly describes a woman’s life at that time “Kinder, Küche, Kirche” – children, kitchen and church. That was the mentality of that time.

• Growing up

My parents married in 1926 and I, Jeni Segal, was born in 1927. When I was nine years old [in 1936], my mother gave birth to another girl – Bianca, her Jewish name being Braha. We had a happy and abundant childhood. The house, in which we lived, on the Transilvania Street, wasn’t our own but a rented house. The houses from that zone do not exist anymore, they were demolished and apartments were built instead of them.

We had maids; my mother did not have to work because my father was a merchant. I am a merchant’s daughter; my father was a merchant of traditional fabrics. He had a store in the old center of Botosani together with his brother, Jean Segal, and a brother-in-law, the husband of his sister Clara.

My father was a quiet man; my paternal grandmother was very talkative. I probably inherited this from my grandmother because I am talkative as well. Maybe I even talk too much. But my father and my mother were both very quiet.

When I was 13, my mother would be quiet, my father would be quiet and I would say: “You bore me. I am leaving” And then I went to the Kling family, they were also Jews, who lived on a street nearby. He was a baker and had two boys and two girls, one of them, Neti, being of my age and my friend. We would meet, talk, and joke.

My parents were very strict about keeping traditions. My father was religious; he was a Jew who kept the Law. He did not wear a beard – he was not quite that extreme – the beard was for the rabbis and the extreme religious people. He only went to the synagogue on Saturdays but every morning he would put on the Tales, the Tefillin – in Hebrew Shel Rosh and Shel Yad because those two items contain the Law

 [Ed. note: Tefillin are worn in a prescribed manner so as to represent the letters shin, daleth, and yod, which taken together form the divine name Shaddai. The hand phylactery (tefillin shel yad) has one compartment with the texts written on a single parchment; the head phylactery (tefillin shel rosh) has four compartments, each with one text], and he would do all the prayers at home, he would pray alone and read from religious books. We had many prayer books at home. On Friday evenings my mother would light the candles and before we ate, my father would say the prayers.

My mother kept a kosher kitchen and had separate dishes for Passover – she was very religious as well. For Passover we had separate dishes, which weren’t used during the rest of the year. She kept them in the loft, in a separate case. Before Passover all the bread and yeast were taken out of the house and a big cleaning had to be done in order to remove all the breadcrumbs, traces of yeast, the wheat flour would be put away and matzos were brought into the house. Eight days long we would eat matzos, we weren’t allowed to eat bread.

At that time the matzos were still made in Romania, now they sent us those dry matzos from Israel. Before the war there was a matzos factory in Botosani, that is were we use to buy them from. At that time there were many Jews, there were 14 thousand in Botosani.

The evening of Seder was celebrated in the family – my mother, father and us two girls. It was how they do it now at the Community, with the same ritual.  My father would read the Haggadah in Hebrew and one child would ask the four questions, the Mah Nishtanah, when you ask why we eat every night yeast and matzos, except for this night when we eat only matzos... I would say the Mah Nishtanah, for I was the oldest – the oldest child asks the four questions.

[Ed. note: Hebrew Mah Nishtanah, or four questions. Traditionally recited by the youngest at Seder during Passover, when reading from the Haggadah begins.] If I still know them? „„Maniştana... haila zeh huloh maţa.” [Ed. note: Mrs. Blumenfeld remembers only parts of the questions. Ma nishtanah... halailah hazeh, kuloh matzah. Why is this night... on this night only matzah.]” 

We didn’t hide the matzos. Nowadays they do it here at the Community. Afterwards, you had to open the door so the prophet Elijah could enter the house. At home we would not quite do it like this. My father would do two Seder evenings, as it is supposed to be.

Nowadays only the first evening is celebrated at the Community. There are only few of us and we do it together, Finkel reads the Hagadah [Ed. note: Gustav Finkel, son of Mrs. Berta Finkel who was interviewed by Centropa].

When I was a child, we did the kappara for Yom Kippur. This was done with a living bird, the women would take a chick or a chicken and the men would take a rooster, it would be swung around above the head three times and a prayer had to be said: „Zia tanuva, zia capura, zia...”,

[Ed. note: The phrase Mrs. Blumenfeld recites is actually this: “Zot tenuvati, zot halifati, zot kapparati. This is my exchange, this is my substitute, this is my atonement.” She forgot the second word, which is for the substitute] and then it had to be slaughtered by a shochter.  

And this was a kappara, a sacrifice for you so God would lengthen your life. [Ed. note: The kappara ('atonement') is a Jewish folk custom during the days prior to Yom Kippur to transfer ones sins to a hen (women) or a cock (men). The woman recites the text in feminine gender: "Zot halifati, zot tmurati, zot kapparati.

Zot hatarnegolet telekh lemita, vaani elekh veekkanes lehayyim tovim arukhim uleshalom." 'This is my substitute. This is my commutation. This hen goes forth to death, but may I be gathered and enter into a long and happy life, and into peace.'] I don’t do this anymore. Who would slaughter the bird for me? It needs to be ritually slaughtered.

I did not dress up for Purim. For when I was a child, I lived during those hard time, it was war, we wore the yellow star we did not think about dressing up 5, My mother would make those pastries with the three corners, filled with nut, Hamatashen, they were very tasty – you can make them as well with bee honey.

There is also the story with Estera Meghila, which is read at the synagogue and when the name of Haman is mentioned, a gragger is used and you have to make noise [symbolic] because we curse Haman. All those who wanted to kill the Jews had a name starting with H: Haman, Hitler, Hussein, Hamas, and Hezbollah – I wonder if this is a coincidence?

Eight candles were lit for Hanukkah and put in front of the window. We did not have a Hanukkiah, my father would put the candles in a block of wood,; there was one candle [shamesh] which was used to light the all the other candles. Every evening the children would light an additional candle.

This is also a holiday on which we celebrate that we were not extinguished as a nation [Editor’ note: Hanukkah, also known as the Festival of Lights, is an eight-day Jewish holiday, which also commemorates the Macabbees’ uprising and the re-consecration of the Temple in Jerusalem. It is observed for eight nights, starting on the 25th day of Kislev according to the Hebrew calendar.]

There was a ritual bath in Botosani, but I did not go to the ritual bath, I never even entered it. We weren’t that religious. I don’t know who used to go there because my mother wouldn’t go either. We had a bath at home; we had a bathtub in the house in which we lived.

To be more exact, my uncle Jean Segal had an apartment with a bathtub. He had a nicer apartment and every once in a while I would take a bath there. We were neighbors. The bath was in a separate room, with a tub, wash-hand basin and a toilet. They had a kind of long oven, heated by wood, which would warm the water.

My parents spoke Romanian and Yiddish with each other – all the Jews in East Europe spoke Yiddish. I can speak Yiddish as well because it is similar to German. I studied German for three years at school. I never went to the cheder, neither did I go to private Hebrew studies. I learnt Hebrew and the history of the Jews at the Jewish high school with a professor, Lorlich, he taught at the Jewish High School during those war years.

After the four years at primary school, high school with the classes one to eight followed. That was the educational system at that time and at that time studies would still be taken seriously. I was a good student – if I may boast a little about myself.

After the four years at primary school at a Romanian school, I went three years to a Romanian high school. I was in the third grade of the high school in 1940, when they kicked us Jews out of the schools 6. They did not only kick the Jews out of schools; lawyers were banned from the Bar, doctors weren’t allowed to profess their skills, pharmacists weren’t allowed to be in pharmacies.

After the decrees of Hitler, the Nazi’s and the legionnaires, the Jews were considered outcast 7 – the legionnaires did not only kill Jews but also Nicolae Iorga, Virgil Magiaru, Ilie Duca and Armand Calinescu [Armand Calinescu (1893 – 1939); president of the Council of Ministers, anti-Nazi and anti-legionnaire, partisan of the Alliance with France and England, who had the courage to tell king Carol the Second, in 1939 that “the Germans are a danger, and alliance with them means being a protectorate”. He was killed by the legionnaires in Bucharest on September 21st 1939].

• During the War

It’s interesting that on the street where we lived, Transilvania Street, we had a German officer as a neighbor, who lived there during wartime. The German officer was a polite man: “Kuss die Hand” [Kiss your hand – traditional greeting in Romania reserved for women and elderly]. That is how he always greeted us and he knew we were Jews. The German army, the Wehrmacht was not on Hitler’s side, only the SS was.

There were only a few legionnaires in Botosani. Most of them were in Iasi, there was the pogrom as well, another pogrom took place in Bucharest 8. Here in Botosani I do not know of any incidents. Jews were only allowed on the streets until six o’clock in the evening and my husband told me once that he was late and got caught on the street after six, they warned him or they took him to the Police Station but they did not beat him up or anything like that. No, they weren’t that … [inhuman].

Although, I met one with a green shirt as well – the legionnaires wore green shirts and diagonal ones – I knew one by face. His name was Iacovlov, a handsome boy, but he was a legionnaire. There was an incident afterwards, in 1945 in Iasi, a scuffle between the young non-communists – the old legionnaires – and the young communists.

I was a student in Iasi at that time, in my first year and I know that this Iacovlov, who was a legionnaire, was shot and died in that incident. But this wasn’t connected to the Jews but to communism. There were also the liberal ones Saratescu, Oltescu, there were the historic parties until the communists started their rule with Gheorghiu-Dej 9, Ana Pauker, Vasile Luca – of whom it was said that he was a Hungarian, Laszlo I think he was called 10 [Ed. note: Laszlo is the Hungarian version of the name Vasile].

I was 13 years old in 1940 and I had to wear the yellow star 5. The Magen David, our star, was on a black cloth of some sort and then it had to be sown onto our coats. And we were only allowed on the streets until 6 o’clock. We were lucky, they did not deport us, they took only the north - Câmpulungul, Gura Humorului, Suceava, Vatra Dornei, Dorohoi, only they were sent to Transnistria 11.

In the autumn of 1940, I started studying at a private high school so I would not get behind with my studies.

[Ed. note: In October 1940, Jewish pupils and students were denied access to public education of all degrees. The Jewish people were free to organize private primary and secondary schools. The Jewish schools were allowed to function but they weren’t allowed to be advertised. The graduation diplomas were not recognized by the state and had no practical validity regarding the graduate’s admission into a profession.]

The opened a private high school for Jews in the house of a rich Jewish guy, Iosipovici was his name – he was a landowner. There is a building on Unirea Street and behind it, there was that building on an alley, on Verde Street, I think. The house had a few rooms, which contained different classes.

Jewish teachers taught at the school: a lawyer taught us law, a pharmacist taught us botanic studies. We weren’t that many in one class, maybe four girls and four boys. I only went to that school for the fourth and fifth grade of high school after which this school was closed down because those were the bad years, the years of the Nazism horror, the years under Antonescu 11. And afterwards, year six and seven of high school I studied at home. My mother would buy the study books and I would study alone. I was a good student. 

My exams would be only twice a year: in February and in the summer, also with the teachers of the Jewish high school. After the war all the studies were recognized, because everything had ended badly and they had to recognize the studies. And after the war we were free, free to go wherever we wanted, to study wherever we wanted to study.

After the War

In 1944, when war was over, I finished the eighth grade of high school and wrote my final exams. During that eighth grade I went to the Jewish high school Focsaneanu in Bucharest, on the Colonel Oroianu or Oroieru Street. I don’t remember many details from that time, I was there only for one year and many years have passed since then. We were only Jews.

And as was the system at time, there were only girls in my class. I don’t know why I went to Bucharest… maybe I wanted to? I had an uncle in Bucharest, David Raisher, and my mother took me to them. My uncle and my aunt were living alone, their daughters had already left for Israel, and I lived with them from the autumn until the spring when my final exams took place.

In Bucharest I prepared for the exams with a Romanian teacher, if I remember correctly. The exams themselves took place at a Romanian high school, the Iulia Hasdeu High School – named after Iulia, the daughter of Iuliu Hasdeu – which was on the Obor Square.

After my exams, in 1945, I went back to Botosani and applied to university in Iasi. At that time there were no exams of admittance. I don’t remember how many people graduated from high school. From 1945 until 1949 I studied French – Romanian at the Faculty of Philology at the “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University in Iasi.

My father died of heart problems in his sleep during a night in 1948. I only had my mother and sister left. Poor them, they did not call me for the funeral so I wouldn’t have to spend my money – I was in Iasi. All because of that Adolf. What can I say ...

My mother was a widow and she didn’t work, the shop was co-owned by the two uncles and the things were not properly divided, the uncles kind of left us with nothing. Afterwards the shop was nationalized and everybody became poor. Ah well and that uncle – Adolf Moscovici – was a terrible man.

He told my mother:  „If you don’t have the money, let her drop out from university”. But my mother wouldn’t let me. She said: „She needs to learn a profession.” And I studied; I was a good student in Iasi.

I spoke my French so well, that once I met a French woman on the streets in France who asked me: „Are you a teacher here in town?” „No, not here in France.”  And because of that, because I was spreading the French culture she served me with cakes and pastries. I speak fluently French. And I really love it. I finished university in 1949 and became a teacher.

I started working in 1949 and I was a teacher until 1985, I think. In the first years I taught chemistry and history, I couldn’t teach French until Stalin died. I went to middle school, grades 5, 6,7.  Fortunately Stalin died in 1953 and things got a little bit better. Until then we weren’t allowed to talk about France or England. Stalin’s death was a moment of great joy for us. I taught French at the Pedagogic High School but in the last 15 years I taught at the Economic High School Bucovina.

The Stalinist period was a very difficult one; Jews weren’t allowed to leave the country during that time. It was a very difficult era, the dictatorship was horrible, and you wouldn’t hear a thing about Western Europe. After Stalin’s death, things got a bit better. When Stalin died, everybody breathed easier, it was a great relief.

I did not submit any acts to leave for Israel, they would have fired me from work and I couldn’t afford that. But my mother did not have a job and she left in 1953 with my 17-year old sister. And my sister married a young man from a Kibbutz there, she stayed in the Kibbutz and my mother stayed with them – Kibbutz Bar-Am at the boarder with Lebanon, close to the city of Naharia. My mother suffered in Israel, she couldn’t adapt and died at the age of 58-59 [in 1958-59].

My sister had three children who only speak Hebrew because their father was Polish. There, in Israel, you aren’t called an Israeli. They call you a Romanian, Hungarian – according to the country from which you come. Hungarian Jews buy things in Hungarian stores. Polish Jews buy from Polish Jews.

There are Moroccans as well, people from all over the world. Unfortunately my sister died at the age of 37 [in 1973], she had vertebral cancer. Her destiny was tragic. And she was so beautiful ... I wasn’t ugly either but my sister was really gorgeous. And she died young. My only sister… I still mourn deeply.

The children lived, they are big now, have married and have their own children. She had a boy, whose name is Nimrod Benish. Nimrod has a Christian wife, Lena. She is from Finland, she like the Kibbutz-live and moved to Israel. She gave birth to three children.

But her little girl died at the age of 4 – gorgeous, with black eyes – she died of a virus. They have two other children: Mary and Or – Or meaning ‚light’ in Hebrew. And Nimrod had another son, Gay, with the wife he had before Lena. He is in the army. Nimrod has a sister, Noa Breemhaar, who is in the Netherlands and has three children as well: Sivan, Jonathan and Elrom. I have to congratulate her; the day after tomorrow is our New Year. And Karmel Benish, the youngest one, is still at university in Tel Aviv, where she studies design.

After my mother and my sister went to Israel, I was alone, a teacher. I married in 1953. We didn’t have a religious ceremony, there was nobody to officiate it. We had the legal ceremony and a meal at a restaurant.

My husband’s name was Leon Blumenfeld, born 1919. He was from Botosani, he had a sister and brother-in–law here, his mother lived here as well.

My husband worked in labor camps during the war; he spent two years in Transnistria. That is the reason the Romanian State pays me a million a month [Ed. note: 100 new lei], I don’t pay taxes for the house, I do not have to pay my phone bill, I do have some advantages. We met here in Botosani.

His wife had died – he had a young wife – also of cancer and he was left alone with his little daughter, whom afterwards we raised together. And I lived many years together with my husband, 37 years.

He was a good man even though he had not had a very high education. He was an accountant but never went to university. At the beginning he worked at the District Council but they fired him because of his lack of education, so he worked at a depot.

My husband wasn’t religious. He was a sort of communist. He ate matzos for Passover because I made him eat them, but he wouldn’t fast for Yom Kippur. And I forbade him to eat in front of me on Yom Kippur. „Eat where you want but not in front of me”. 

I did not light the candles on Friday evening. Neither did I have separate dishes for dairy or meat. Those were the times of the communist ideas, we young ones, did not give traditions the same importance our parents had given them.

My husband and I were both members of the Party. During university I already became a member of the U.T.M. or U.T.C. – first it was the U.T.M., Uniunea Tineretului Muncitoresc [Ed. Note: Union of the Working Youth] and afterwards it became the U.T.C., Uniunea Tineretului Comunist [Ed. Note: Union of the Communist Youth].

And at the end of the meeting, we sang The Internationale. My husband believed in the communist ideals and a cousin of his, who did not really believe, became the secretary of the Party and received higher benefits. My husband was an idealistic person. And afterwards he saw that he didn’t make money. But when they gave him the job at the depot, he got some bonuses and we had the money to buy this apartment, in which I still live. My husband died in 1990, I have been alone ever since.

Unfortunately, I never had children – I didn’t want them at that time. If I would have had a son or ... Well, everybody has a destiny, I can’t change it.

I have a daughter, Solange – my husband’s daughter from his first marriage, born in 1947 –who went to university in Bucharest and studied French studies as well. She and her husband –a non-Jew- went to Israel in the 1970s, they lived in Nazareth, where her daughter Kathrin Blumenfeld Pavlov was born.

After a few years they went to America, got divorced and Solange remarried in New York. Her current husband, Eliot Lievermann, is a Jew and a professor – he is retired now. She still works as a translator for some lawyers.

She came to Romania in 1983 with her husband Eliot and her little girl who was 8 years old. They came with a group of Americans, who organized excursions to Poiana Brasov and Valea Prahovei, after which they spent six days at the sea [Black Sea]. But there was a person from SRI who guarded us [Securitate] – a woman accompanied us everywhere.

There was a Securitate person because they were American tourists 13. She joined them at the airport, traveled in the same bus but didn’t explain a thing [she was not a guide]. Those people were stupid.... We, parents, weren’t allowed to travel in the same bus from the airport to the North Station.

There was only one train at the train station so we could travel together to Sinaia. We went with them to Poiana Brasov, where they stayed at a beautiful hotel, Hotel Alpin, built especially for foreigners. There were some terrible hotels, built under Ceausescu’s regime, where only those with cash could go 3.

We saw some rajahs, Arabs with burnus – that white robe. But because they were Americans - they had dollars -, we weren’t allow to sleep in the same room. At Poiana Brasov, where we dined as well, we would sit at a table with Solange and her family, and that woman would sit at the table next to us and listen to what we say.

But they left the group and came to Botosani so Solange could show her husband her hometown, to visit their relatives in the cemetery. We did not get into trouble because of that. Afterwards we went with them to the sea [Black Sea}, to Neptun, where the rest of the group was gathered. At that time all those elegant and big hotels –Panoramic- used to be in Neptun, now I don’t know what is left.

I did not have any problems during communism despite the fact that Solange was in America. My husband had a friend who was a colonel at the Securitate. He would ask me on the street: “Have you been to America, to France?” I had been to Paris.  ‚And how is it?” I said: „How is it? It is a capitalist state. There are beggars, rich people and poor people.” What should I have said? He smiled and said: „All right, Mrs.”

I had the luck that I could travel when I was younger. My daughter and I – my husband didn’t come – went on a group trip, the ones they used to organize by the U.T.C. through the party, with BTT [Bureau of Tourism and Transport], very cheap, I think 2500 lei: a day in Budapest and six days in Czechoslovakia – the Czech Republic and Slovakia were still united at that time.

I like Hungarians; I think they are more civilized than Romanians. Hungarians are generally speaking more educated. In Budapest we admired the Island of St. Margaret, the bridge over the Danube, between Buda and Pesta, and a square with statues of riding kings – if I’m not mistaken it was Arpad or something like that [Note: Mrs. Blumenfeld is probably to the Hero’s Square]. And we were in the Church of St. Stephan as well and also at Corvin’s grave.

We spent only a day in Budapest and from Budapest we went to Bratislava – they told me that it’s only 5 km to Vienna, but we weren’t the big adventurers-, we stayed two days in Bratislava after which we went to Brno and Prague. Prague was beautiful. Prague is superb, wonderful.

The cathedral of St. Vitru, the Valtava River.... We were also in Pilsen, where the famous beer is made; we were in Karlovy Vary, in German Carlsbad because the Austro-Hungarian Empire once ruled there. That was the first excursion. It was the year in which the Soviets entered Prague, when there was a try for rebellion in Prague, that summer [summer of the year 1968] 14.

I spent two weeks in Paris. I went alone with Solange’s dollars. When she visited me, I said: „Solange, I want to go to Paris”. So she wired me the money. I paid for the road but I had to stay at a hotel and the money wasn’t enough so I had to sell two rings.

I saw everything you have to see in Paris: the Louvre, Notre Dame, Sorbonne, Pantheon, the bank of the Seine, 30 bridges ... The Louvre is wonderful, with all those paintings ... The Rubens Room, the Rembrandt Room, the French painters, Goya, Velasquez, The wedding in Kana. In the evening, the guide told me: „You can’t see the whole Louvre in one day”. It is huge; you cannot visit it one day. I was in Versailles as well – beautiful, superb.

In 1985, my husband and I went to America. We only stayed in New York but there we visited the Metropolitan [Ed. note: Metropolitan Museum of Art, art museum in New York City, one of the largest and most comprehensive art museums in the world, founded in 1870.], we saw the Jewish Museum, we saw the house of Bashevis Singer [Ed. note: Singer, Isaac Bashevis (1904-1991), Polish-born American writer in Yiddish language.

In 1978 he won the Nobel Prize in literature for an “impassioned narrative art” that is rooted in Polish-Jewish culture.], Solange took me to Fifth Avenue, where there is a Museum of Modern Art [Ed. note: Museum of Modern Art, institution founded in 1929 in New York City.] with a sculpture of Brâncuşi. [Ed. note: Constantin Brancusi was an internationally renowned Romanian sculptor whose sculptures, which blend simplicity and sophistication, led the way for modernist sculptors]. I liked Paris better; you can’t compare the two cities. Paris is more cultured.

I was in the Netherlands as well, in 1990 from October 17th until November 17th. At that time the dollar was worth 20 lei. Afterwards the dollar grew a lot. I am content with what I saw.

I was three times in Israel – when my sister was still alive. I was in 1973 as well, after my sister died, to visit her grave. I only was in Israel when Ceausescu was still alive. A passport cost 1000 lei at that time, a lot of money. But I had 4000 lei salary a month and 4000 were thousands.

Now you need millions. I liked Israel – it is our country after all. I visited all the holy places, Jerusalem, Nazareth. And although I am not a Christian, when I arrived in Jerusalem and saw that mountain from where they say that the wood for his cross was taken, I was terrified.

When I saw the Mountain of Olives, Via Dolorosa, where he walked with his cross, I trembled as well. Some things are just myths, but Jesus did really exist. He was a Jew at the beginning, his mother being a great-granddaughter of king David. My nephews live on Kibbutz’ in the north of the country – the kibbutz is an agricultural farm where everybody is equal.

I was in Nahariyya, I was in Netanya, I was in the south in Beer Sheva, of course in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and the big Rishon LeZiyyon, Herzliyya – I visited all the big cities. My brother-in-law drove me to the places of which everybody talks, the Westbank etc. – I was there and I saw.

I received some money from a Mrs. Erica Goldner from Bnei Ibrit, an organization that helps Jews in Eastern Europe. First they sent some acts to the Jewish Community in Botosani – to those who lived during the Nazi period – which we filled in by saying that we were persecuted [during WWII], that we had to wear the yellow start etc. 

They sent me three times every six months 180 euros. Now they don’t send anything. Maybe they will start again. The Community gives me food and I have a pension. Unfortunately. I am alone because I am a widow. My husband died 16 years ago, a year after the revolution and ... C’est difficile. [It’s difficult]. But ... God will keep me.

Sometimes – for example tomorrow morning – I go to the market, cook some food, wash some things, sometimes I read and the rest of the time I stare at the TV. What should I do? I love movies. Every day I watch soap operas. I watch Grey’s Anatomy. Desperate Housewives – American, nice – those romantic movies with the Widow Bianco who looks for children ... I keep in touch with the Jewish Community in Botosani.

When they organize a Seder or a meal for Hanukkah, they usually invite us and I go. Now they sent us a card for Rosh Hashanah. Yesterday I was at the synagogue, on the first day of the New Year and I will go again on Yom Kippur, for if I’ll stay at home, I’ll eat. And I can’t eat on Yom Kippur; I keep the complete fast.

Yom Kippur will be on a Saturday this year. I will cook, eat Friday afternoon, Friday evening and Saturday evening. Saturday I will fast. I will drink a little bit of water so that I can take my medicine,; that is allowed by Law. Afterwards Simchat Torah follows, when the reading of the Torah is finished and they walk circles through the synagogue with the Torahs – then I will go to the synagogue as well.

• Glossary

Rifca Segal
Botosani
Romania
Date of interview: August 2006
Interviewer: Emoke Major

Mrs. Rifca Segal is a very friendly, cheerful person, who takes great pleasure in talking to people. My first interview with her took place at the Jewish Community in Botosani. But she requested that our second meeting should take place at the city’s Public Garden, where she is keen on going, even though she has difficulty moving about because of her weight. She also invited me at her place – a two-room apartment in a block of flats, furnished very modestly, decorated especially with ease-of-use in mind –, and I must admit I also enjoyed the backgammon we played together. When we said good-bye to each other, she also gave me a porcelain stork as a present.

My family history
Growing up
During the War
After the War
Glossary

My family history

My grandparents from my father’s side were Iosif and Perla Calmanovici. They lived in Sulita, in the county of Botosani. [Sulita – former borough, a village at present – it is located 35 km south-east of Botosani.] They were merchants in the borough of Sulita, which was a small borough where the majority of inhabitants were Jewish – there were around 300 Jewish families. It was a nice, commercial little borough, all the peasants came from the countryside and bought merchandise here. My grandparents had a store where they sold haberdashery, shoes, perfumes, small ware. They brought the perfumes directly from Paris. They came in small parcels – smaller than a suitcase – by mail, and my grandparents paid for them on delivery. It was Bob Germandre, Chypre fine Cologne. Nowadays the brands are completely different, and they are expensive, it costs millions of lei to buy a fine perfume. But it was affordable back then, you can’t even compare the prices

I didn’t even know my grandfather, I only knew my grandmother. My grandfather died in the 1920’s. He went to buy merchandise in Botosani – people supplied their stores by cart then –, and it probably rained heavily on the way back, he caught a cold which developed into a pneumonia and you couldn’t cure it back then – he died, poor soul. I think my grandmother was around 35-36 when my grandfather died, and it was her who raised the children, she ran the store afterwards. My grandmother was a rabbi’s daughter. Her father was a rabbi in Radauti. But I don’t know his name – he was my great-grandfather. After my grandfather died, she kept running the store, as the children helped her. Then my father took over. My grandmother from my father’s side lived with us. I loved her immensely, and I can’t go to see her grave, for she had a daughter in Galati, and she went to visit her, and that’s where she died in 1946. I went to see her grave only once.

My grandmother from my father’s side had a sister, her name was Haia Liba – Hai’ Leba in Jewish –, who married a certain Rotaru. They livd in Sulita as well, he was a carpenter. They had several children: Iosif, Bella, Max, Rahel, Elca, Roza… They were around 8. The girls were housewives, they got married, all of them. You know, parents didn’t formerly want their daughters to have jobs – they married them. It was the men who had to have a job. Iosif – his Jewish name was Iosl – was a carpenter, just like his father. Every single one of them lived in Sulita, then they too were evacuated 1, relocated to Botosani during World War II. These cousins of my parents lived in Botosani for a while as well, but eventually all of them left to Israel, absolutely all of them.

My grandmother told me that she had 13 or 14 children. A very large number. Poor soul. She wasn’t allowed to have an abortion. If you’re a religious person, I think you aren’t allowed to do that, regardless of your religion. They married at 15, 16 back then, that’s how it was. But in the end, 4 of them lived, whom I have met: my father, two other brothers and a sister. The eldest was Ozias, followed by Ana, then my father and then Marcu. The others died. Perhaps they were older than them.

Ozias Calmanovici got married in Falticeni with a rich girl – her name was Fany. He got a rich girl and a cruel fate. The legionnaires 2 took everything they had. They had a manufacture store in Falticeni. They too were relocated to Botosani, and then they left to Israel right after World War II, the whole family. They had 4 children: Iosif – Ioji –, Paul, Ada and Ietti. 2 gaughters, 2 sons. They had 4 children, but one of them, Iettica, poor soul, died 6 years ago [in 2006], and now only three of them are left.

My father’s sister, Hanah Kizbraun, a noble woman, got married in Galati. Her husband, Moses Kinzbraun, was an accountant, she was a housewife, and they had an only son, Ioji [Iosif], who is an engineer. After finishing his studies, the boy was given a position in Bucharest, he got married there to a girl from Bucuresti who studied chemistry. I visited them many times. And after they settled there, they brought their parents to Bucharest. They found them a studio flat to rent – back then you rented  them, you couldn’t buy them –, and they settled [moved] to Bucharest. My aunt was the first to die, then my uncle died, and that was the last I heard o them. Ioji is now in Haifa, and he also has a son who is a doctor in Jerusalem.

Also, one of my father’s brothers lived in Focsani, his name was Marcu Calmanovici, who also married to a very rich girl – that’s how it was back then – from Falticeni, her name was Bety, and he opened a large store in Focsani selling manufacture products and ready-made clothes. They had no children. He was arrested during communism on the grounds that he owned gold coins. He was denounced for owning gold coins, they searched his house and arrested him. He went to prison as well, but since they took the gold coins away from him, he received a light sentence. His wife died in Focsani in 1992-1993, after which he left to Israel. Let me confess another thing: he had a sweetheart from his youth, and she go married, had a daughter, but they continued to write each other secretly, through third parties. And when she heard that his wife died, I’m not even sure a year passed since she died, she came and took him to Israel. They were old by then, but you see what youth love means? I visited them in 1993, when I traveled to Israel, they lived in Naharia, they invited me to dine with them. She was very nice with me, and she gave me gifts, for she saw he loved me very much. He was my father’s brother, he didn’t have any children, and he loved me very much. And he was happy he could invite me there to see him. I think he died in 1994.

As for the others… I have no news of them anymore. That’s all I know, that one of them died in the war [in World War I]. There is also a monument at Mareata Sulita with all the poor people who died in the war, and Calmanovici is listed among the heroes who died. His name was Haim Avram. He died in 1917, my grandmother brought him to Botosani, he is buried here. And I can’t find his grave. I know the alley, the number, and the cemetery caretaker can’t find it. I wanted to build him a very simple monument.

My father’s name was Aizic, but people also called him Mose. His Jewish name was Mose, but his official name was Aizic. My father was born on August 8, 1900. I loved him very much, and each year I knew when his birthday was. He had no higher education. In small towns, you didn’t need higher studies if you were a merchant. If they earned good money, merchants didn’t go to the faculty. My father only graduated primary school, and so did my mother. If they were rich, why would they need schooling? My father wanted me to become a pharmacist. He wanted me to be a pharmacist in Sulita, I should own the pharmacy, and he should supply it.

The name of my grandfather from my mother’s side was Iancu Moise Mattes, and my grandmother’s name was Tauba. She was a housewife and my grandfather had a store in Sulita, too. That’s how it was in small towns – trading was the occupation of Jews. There were also Jews who dealt in buying and selling cereals, there were Jews who raised sheep. People said Jews weren’t good at agriculture – I must be objective. There were Jews who owned land, but they didn’t toil it themselves, they leased it to other people. There were 2 brothers. Their name was Blumer – my parents were friends with them – who were partners and had 2 mills, but they were no rudimentary mills, a windmill and a water mill – for there was a river there, but don’t ask me the name of that river, for I no longer remember. Such were the people of Sulita, and they were doing fine, they were rich enough, even very rich. There were also very many Jewish handicraftsmen in Sulita. There were shoemakers, tailors, carpenters, tinkers… all kinds.

This grandfather had a manufacture store – fabrics only. I know that my grandfather from my mother’s side bought merchandise from Iasi. My grandfather died in Sulita, he is buried there. I really want to go to Sulita, to visit his grave. He died around 1934-1935, for we went to Falticeni to a wedding in 1936, and grandfather was no longer alive. After my grandfather died, the grandmother from my mother side lived with her daughter Branica at first, at Frumusica, then she came to Botosani together with them. And then, after the daughter died, when uncle Heinic married his second wife, my grandmother left to live with my mother’s other sister – who is living in Israel at present, but she was still living in Botosani back then – as the grandmother from my father’s side lived with us. The grandmother from my mother’s side died here, in Botosani, in 1961, I believe she was 80 or 81. She is buried here, I go to visit her grave.

My mother had 2 sisters who were younger than her. I know that she also had a brother, who died when he was little. I don’t even know what his name was, I don’t know anything about him.

Branica was one of my mother’s sisters, Brana Mendelovici – born Mattes, changed her name to Mendelovici after she married. Her husband’s name was Heinec Mendelovici, and they had 2 sons: Froim and Iancu. Froim was the same age as my younger sister, so he was born in 1937, and Iancu was a few years younger, I think he was born in 1940. They lived in Frumusica, my aunt married a man from Frumusica – near Sulita. [Frumusica is located 27 km south of Sulita, 39 km south-east of Botosani.] My uncle was a merchant as well, he too had a manufacture store, he sold shoes in Frumusica. [When they came] In Botosani, they probably had gold coins, I couldn’t say for sure, I don’t know about that, they kept it a secret from me, and they bought sheep, they kept them close to Botosani. And he was more well-off than us, and he helped us. My mother’s sister, Branica, died in 1946, and after that my uncle got married again with another woman named Augusta, a very nice woman. And Heinic and Gusta, his new wife, left to Venezuela with their 2 sons, I believe it was in 1953 or 1954. Gusta had brothers there who owned gold mines. And I believe they paid a fortune, I couldn’t know how much they paid. For you had to pay for the retrieval [that is, you paid in order to leave the country]. And I so wanted to know how much they had to pay, but I don’t know to this day. [Ed. note: It is not likely that Venezuela paid Romania for the Jewish emigrants, rather the people paid a sum so that the Romanian authority let hem leave. “By 1950, in spite of immigration restrictions, there were around 6,000 Jewish people in Venezuela. The biggest waves of immigration occurred after World War II.”]. And they had another son in Venezuela. But their third son left to Israel, he didn’t want to live in Venezuela. He’s not relative of mine, I have nothing to do with him, yet I visited him in Israel.

And I have another sister of my mother’s living in Israel, she’s still alive. Her name is Rifca Peisich. She got married here, in Botosani, in 1944, her husband’s name was Iancu Peisich, they left to Israel together. This aunt of mine is very old, she turned 88, may she retain her good health. She calls me on the phone every day. And we don’t have something to talk about every day. But: “Are you well?” “Are you well?” That’s it. So that we hear from each other. Fate made us drift apart. She lives in Rehovot, it’s such a nice city… I’ve been there. She had an only daughter, who died of cancer when she was 56. Her Jewish name was Reiza, her official name was Rozalia, but we all called her Rodica. She had a daughter who is alive, may she retain her good health, her name is Monica, who has a child herself. So my mother’s sister, Rica Peisich, is a great-grandmother. And my aunt is living with her son-in-law, and the son-in-law – it’s only natural – brought another woman in the house, but she is treating her very well. Yet she has heart-related problems, and her eyesight isn’t that good anymore.

My mother was born on March 3, 1903. People called my mother Anuta, but officially, her name was Hana Lea.

My mother had a dowry, my grandfather was rich, richer than the grandfather from my father’s side. And do you know how it was formerly? If the dowry were large, cousins, relatives would marry each other, so that the fortune wouldn’t be estranged – such was the notion. But my mother – it’s not the fact that she was my mother, yet – was both very beautiful and very smart. And my parents were cousins. You wouldn’t believe it, if I told you. My father’s mother and my mother’s father were brother and sister. And they weren’t allowed to get married according to the laws that were in force back then, during the rule of king Mihai. [Ed. note: The ruling of the Romanian kings during these decades is the following: King Ferdinand I. 1914-1927 3, King Michael 1927-1930 4, King Carol II. 1930-1940 5. After King Ferdinand’s death in 1927 the Romanian Monarchy goes through private and political crises]. They needed a royal exemption in order for them to get married. For the fact that they were cousins was public knowledge in Sulita. If this were to happen in Bucharest, the people at the registrar’s office would have been none the wiser. And then my mother wrote a complaint – or her parents did, I can’t say for sure – to the king, and she had to base her argument on the fact that they had lived together. Formerly, sleeping with a man before getting married – oh my, it was a crime. To make love – I won’t say to have sex, for I dislike saying that – before the marriage, oh my, it was serious. Especially in a small town. And they were so chaste – that’s what they tell me, I wasn’t born at that time. And that’s how their marriage was approved.

And my mother had a dowry, she was richer, and they bought a nicer, more elegant house than my grandparents’, they had more money to invest into the store. My mother was a housewife, and my father was a merchant. My father inherited his father’s and grandmother’s store, he continued to run their store. They sold haberdashery, shoes, perfumes, small ware, everything. My parents bought supplies from Botosani. There were merchants who came from Botosani with cases of merchandise, who recommended you products, and you chose what you wanted.

My father’s handwriting was extraordinarily beautiful. He could also write a German gothic style, which I think nobody could write at that time. The letters had certain embellishments characteristic of each letter. He liked it very much. He was a self-taught man, for he didn’t go to any faculty. He drew the shop signs himself, he did such a good job of it. For you placed a shop sign outside the store, o a piece of painted iron plate. The store didn’t have a proper name, the iron plate read “Calmanovici’s.” I can picture it now. On a black piece of iron plate my father wrote the name in white paint, and my mother, in order for someone not to cast the evil eye on him, bound a red ribbon around his arm as he was painting the sign. And I used to laugh… She loved him very much. And they lived a very nice life.

Growing up

My parents got married in 1927, and I, Rifca Segal, was born in 1928. Officially, my name is Rifca, they named me after a great-grandmother, the mother of my grandmother from my mother’s side. But people call me Rica, as Sulita’s county chief – his name was Hotupasu – had a daughter whose name was Rica. And my parents were very good friends with the county chief.

My brother was born in 1930, people called him Ioji, but, officially, his name was Iosif. There was this custom, which I see that people in Israel don’t observe anymore nowadays, of naming people after the dead. People even paid money in order to have someone named after a dead person. [Editor’s note: The custom of paying to a woman to name her newborn after a dead was common. Giving the dead's name to the newborn was even considered as a mitzvah (ritual commandment or generally any act of human kindness.] And so both my aunt, and my uncle from Falticeni, and my father named their son after their father.

My brother didn’t go to the faculty. He worked as an assistant in the laboratory of the Botosani mill. At first, he worked there without having any schooling, and they sent him to Iasi to a school for laboratory-assistants to follow some specialization courses and he specialized. He was held in very high esteem. The courses lasted 3 years, but he didn’t stay there all the time, he came home, he went there again. He wasn’t married. He had a disappointment in his love life. He was engaged to be married. His fiancée received the approval to leave to Israel with her parents, her parents didn’t want to leave her here all by herself – for they weren’t married, they were only engaged – he was going to leave as well, his request was denied, which is to say his departure wasn’t approved. This happened in 1959. Not only his request was denied, people’s requests were denied by the dozens. And he didn’t leave, after all. But he was the only one of our family who requested permission to leave to Israel, for the sake of his fiancée. He lived in Botosani as well, but we didn’t live together. He died 2 months ago, on June 5, 2006. Ah, how ill he was…

I also had a little sister, Rozica, who was 9 years younger than me, she was born in 1937. She died in 1947, she was almost 11, she had just graduated 4th grade of primary school. Had we found some sulphamid back then in Botosani, perhaps we might have saved her. She contracted typhoid fever. This was after the war, it was that drought, we had no money…

It was nice in Sulita. We led a good life there. I miss it even now, as we led a very good life there. We had a house with several rooms, a cellar, an attic, a courtyard, and a barn in the courtyard. It was a brick house, like they built them in small towns, one next to another, adjoining. If, God forbid, a fire had broken out, all of them would have burned to the ground. In front, in the same building, there was the store, which was large enough, and then there was a kitchen to one side followed by three rooms, in the back. Small town kitchens had a fireplace with a cooking stove and an oven. It was made either from terracotta or from bricks. And when my parents renovated the house, they modernized it, they built a terracotta fireplace in the room in the middle. They left the one made of bricks in the bedroom as it was. Besides, it was very nicely built, with pillars. It was a house with an attic, a cellar. We dried laundry in the attic, and stored the food in the cellar – for we didn’t have refrigerators back then, we didn’t even have electricity in Sulita. We used lamps and lamp oil for lighting purposes. But we had a nice lamp, with silk. And of course, the toilet was in the courtyard. We didn’t have a bathroom in the house. Even though my grandparents from my mother’s side had a fountain in the courtyard, and they drew water from it using a water pump, and they built a bathroom inside their house. They had a bathtub, and they had a cauldron in which they drew water from the fountain through pipes, it reached the cauldron, the lower part of the cauldron – like in a terracotta or zinc stove –, had a compartment where you placed firewood, you lit the firewood, and the water was being heated. And it was very good, I used to go there myself to take a bath. For at home, my mother bathed me in a small tub. That’s how it was in Sulita. But she added Chypre cologne from Paris to the water. But she bathed me in a small tub. That’s how it was, and it was fine. Our life was so good! Had they not evacuated us, it would have been very well.

When I was just a baby, I was sleeping in my parents’ room, where I had an iron crib; it was elegant, painted white, and it had painted angels at the head of the bed – I take pleasure in remembering that. And then it was my brother who slept there. When I grew up, after the age of 9-10, I slept in the middle room on a sofa. But they placed a carpet on the wall, so that I wouldn’t touch the wall.

We played domino and “car” in Sulita. “Car” is a game that you play like this: you draw a rectangle on a piece of cardboard, another rectangle inside it, yet another rectangle inside it, you draw lines connecting them to create a labyrinth, and you placed a button or a coin, and you had to reach the center with the button or coin. You moved, and moved, and you tried to move only along the lines. But it was very difficult to manage not to jump over the lines. You played individually, but you played against someone. If you didn’t succeed, you didn’t win, and then the other one took his turn, your opponent, and if he succeeded, he won. I liked that game very much. I also liked domino. Even my parents stayed indoors on winter evenings, when it was cold and frost, by the fireplace, and played domino. They played separately, while we did our homework.

My mother, may God rest her soul, was very severe. She established things around the house, what needed to be done, what needed to be bought. Well, she was harsher, may God forgive her. Whereas my father was meeker. I loved him immensely. I loved my mother as well, but it was different with my father. And do you know how parents were in former days? They loved me very much, but they didn’t spoil me. My father called me using a diminutive, Ricola instead of Rica, but he wouldn’t caress or kiss me. Yet I could feel he cared for me. So did my mother, but my mother, may God rest her soul, was more distant. She would yell at me, if something didn’t agree with her. I think my father never yelled at me as long as he lived. Mother was severe with me. When I was little, she even used to beat me. But it was for my own good. But when I got married, she washed our clothes at her place, and she brought them over already ironed, and she had the keys to our front door and wardrobe, and she put the clothes in the wardrobe. She cooked for me, I sometimes didn’t have the time to come and get food from her, and she brought me the food home. As a mother would, no doubt. But she never caressed me, she never told me “my dear,” or something like that. She was more distant, but she was very honest.

I loved the grandmother who lived with us immensely – the grandmother from my father’s side. She was very religious, but modern. Just like my father. My father was religious. But a conductor came to Botosani, his name was Weber, he performed opera shows there, operettas, ballet, and my father used to attend, he liked it. I couldn’t conceive going to see them without my parents, and I bought tickets for them as well. And you know how ballerinas… And I had a friend who went with us as well, and she used to say: “Mr. Calmanovici, do you look at naked legs?” Well, he was both modern and religious. So was my grandmother, too. I went to school at the Jewish High School, and afterwards this high school was even mixed. And boys came to see me, my grandmother let them in, offered them a treat. So she was both modern and religious. And my mother was more in charge of the store. And that’s why I loved my grandmother very much. Oh my, how I loved her! She loved me very much, too. I loved my mother very much as well, how could I not love my mother, but she didn’t have time for me.

My mother had separate dishes for milk and meat. My grandmother was there, to see to it… of my, did she see to it! She was quite something, poor thing. When I grew up, I offered my opinion myself [on Jewish traditions]. But my oh my, my grandmother observed… Was I allowed to speak my mind in these matters? Do you know how she called me? ‘Bolshevik.’ For she knew Bolsheviks didn’t observe religion.

My mother took the fowl to the hakham to be slaughtered. And here, in Botosani, my mother, poor soul, used to run with the basket full of fowls – it wasn’t far –, and slaughtered them at the hakham. For instance, if you take the liver out, and it is stained, you have to throw the fowl away. The whole fowl, not just the liver.

My mother went to the ritual bath, I was there with her myself. The ritual bath in Sulita was very rudimentary, it consisted of bathtubs that were placed one next to another, and if you went to the bathroom, you undressed in front of women. But haf of it was for men, half was for women, there was steam as well, and also a mikveh. There wasn’t a separate mikveh for women and one for men, just one, but they took turns going there. I think they changed the water, you couldn’t do it otherwise. But this wasn’t for washing purposes, it was a ritual tradition, holy water. [Editor’s note: Mikvah or (mikve) is a ritual bath for the purpose of ritual immersion required by biblical regulations after ritually impure incidents (e.g. sexual activity, menstruation) have occurred. The word mikvah means a 'collection', generally a collection of water. The water has to be "living water" such as springs or groundwater wells. Full immersion in the mikvah nullifies most forms of impurity. It is not the water itself that purifies but the act of the immersion, which is subjected to detailed regulations specified in classical rabbinic literature.] But I never entered the mikveh, I have always been nauseous by nature. I only saw it, it was very rudimentary, with a cement pool, and a few stairs for getting into the pool, the water was up to the waist, but it wasn’t clean. My mother used to go in, for my father’s sake, as my father wanted to go to the mikveh. Here, in Botosani, the Jewish bathhouse had tubs as well, but it had separate dressing rooms. I went to the bathhouse in Botosani, I used to go to the bathhouse every now and then.

And let me tell you a story about the ritual bath. Women must go to the ritual bath before getting married. The brides, that is. I had to go there myself. There was a rabbi here, in Botosani, his name was Burstein, who had a small pool inside his house, a mikveh. It wasn’t large, it was like a whole in the ground, with cement walls, it had steps for going into it, he filled it with water – from what I could see, it wasn’t very deep, I think it went up to the waist –, and I was supposed to go in there. And I didn’t want to go in that water, I was nauseous. And there was this woman there, she was very mean. But I didn’t go into it. At the risk of not getting wed – God forbid! And I gave that woman 5 lei, and told her not to make me go in there, and she gave me a written proof for the rabbi, so that he would perform the wedding.

In principle, synagogues are all equally nice. And the one in Sulita had a place for keeping the Holy Scrolls, with plush curtains, with historical paintings on the walls. The one in Sulita had a balcony for women. Here, in Botosani, there is a separate room for women. There is also a balcony – you reach it by means of a circular staircse –, but it is out of use. In Sulita, you could go there every day, even in the middle of the day. Oh my, how I liked to go to the synagogue when I was little!

They say that the Sabbath, after Yom Kippur, is the largest Jewish holiday, which is celebrated every week. People observed the Sabbath very religiously. In Sulita, that is. People didn’t cook, didn’t do any laundry, didn’t work, didn’t sell things in the stores. You didn’t light the fire in the winter, there was someone who came – a boy, rather poor –, and he lit the fire for you. There were brick or terra cotta stoves, he made the fire, chopped wood, and came to put wood into the fire. And he was paid for it. You weren’t allowed to shred a piece of paper. All these customs were observed. And then, as general customs, there were separate dishes, separate dishes for meat, milk, not only on the Sabbath, it was an everyday practice.

Friday evenings were very nice. We ate on an oilcloth during the week. They set a tablecloth on the table on Friday evening. Married women lit candles and recited prayers. My mother lit candles as follows: 2 for themselves, 3 for the children – 5 candles. [Ed. note: It is customary to light two candles, although some families light more, sometimes in accordance with the number of children]. When my grandmother was still alive, she recited the prayer for her living children separately. I couldn’t tell you, I don’t remember how many candles she used to light. But they had yellow candlesticks. And we had 2 large candlesticks – I have them now, and I thought they were made from silver, but they aren’t –, they placed those at the head of the table, and on the other side, where my mother recited the prayer, they placed 5 candlesticks. After father returned from the synagogue, the 2 candles were lit, my father recited the prayer… like that, gravely. There were 2 loaves of bread and a knife placed on the table – the knife was placed between the 2 loaves of bread –, with salt, father would slice a morsel of bread, dip it into the salt, recited the prayer, after which he would eat that morsel of bread – only father, who recited the prayer. It was beautiful. In my home, with my husband, we didn’t have something like this.

Mother didn’t bake bread at home, she bought it. She baked when we lived in Botosani, but it wasn’t the case in Sulita, as you could buy it, it was awesome. The bread they had in Sulita, you couldn’t buy it in the heart of Paris nowadays. There were bakers, and such a white bread… Or when there was a holiday, especially on Purim, they added raisins to the bread. They baked kneaded bread for Saturday – the bread for Saturday was called challah. But the bread they baked during the week was very good as well.

And there wine at the table on Friday evening, father would first pour a glass, recite the prayer: „Bori pri agafen” [Editor’s note: Barukh ata adonai eloheinu melekh haolam borei pri hagafen. Praised are You O Lord our God king of the universe, Creator of the fruit of the vine.] –, would drink a sip, then he would pour into mother’s glass some of the wine in his glass, so that she could taste this blessed wine as well. Usually, it was traditional on Friday evening – for there was the Dracsani pond near Sulita – for us to eat fish, as meat jelly. And we also ate essigfleisch – boiled meat prepared with lemon juice, and dried plums were sometimes added to the mix. You boiled the meat, the vegetables – mostly carrots, so that it was sweet –, you sliced it down to regular pieces, as you do for meat soup, after which sour cherry preserve and lemon were added – lemon was added instead of vinegar; if you didn’t use lemons, you added vinegar. And it was actually very good. I never prepared this dish. This was the vorspeiss. If you had this dish, you didn’t eat fish anymore. If you had fish, you didn’t eat this dish. And then you had soup, meat – it was a must on Friday evening. Boiled meat, simple, there was no side-dish, we ate it with bread. And there was desert after the meal. And we had the same for lunch on Saturday, soup and meat also, with noodles added to the soup.

But everything was prepared on Friday. It’s not like you were allowed to do this on Saturday. Do you know what we used to heat the food? There were some oil lamps, and we placed the food on that and warmed it up. But someone had to come to light the lamp. But I had an aun in Galati, who later moved to Bucharest, and this is how she did it – you see, this religiousness –: the previous evening [before Sabbath began] she turned a chair upside down, placed the lamp on the chair, lit it in such a way as to burn with a small flame, placed the food there, covered it with towels, with this and that, and that’s how she kept the food warm for lunch the following day. It was rather dangerous. And she had natural gas in Bucharest, she left the cooking stove burning, but she only placed the food there on Saturday.

I will tell you the holidays in chronological order. The first holiday, which is usually celebrated in January-February, is Rosh Hashanah Lailanot – New Year for the Trees –, which occurs during Hamiş Aşar Bişvat, on the 15th day of the month of Şvat. [Editor’s note: The holiday of Tu B'Shevat marks the new year or the birthday of the trees in Israel. Tu B'Shevat translates as the 15th day of the Hebrew month of Shevat.] It isn’t such a great holiday, it’s not as if you aren’t allowed to work, or anything like that. You eat exotic fruit, you recite certain prayers. But not all the Jews celebrated it. They celebrate it in Israel. We observed this holiday as well. It was a more festive meal, we ate regular food, but after the meal we ate oranges, figs, dates, raisins. You could buy all sorts of exotic fruit prior to World War II, even in Sulita, and especially in Botosani. But we observed this holiday when we lived in Botosani as well. After 1972, a kind of relaxation occurred in Romania, there were many products available to buy. I remember there was a store here, in Botosani, opposite the monument [Ed. note: The monument “Major Ignat’s machine gun company mounting an offensive,” erected by the Botosani-born architect Horia Miclescu and inaugurated in 1929.], where they had barrels of olives, shelves filled with chocolate, oranges, figs, raisins, fine khalva. But afterwards these products started missing again. And in those years when you couldn’t buy exotic fruit, you ate apples, pears, you waited at queues and bought grapes. This wasn’t the case in Sulita, there was plenty of everything.

Purim is celebrated on the 14 of Adar. Megillat Ester is read on the eve of Purim, the Story of Ester. They read this at the synagogue, not at home. And then, still on the eve of Purim, father performed the table ceremonies, he read the prayers specific for Purim. You prepare a festive table laden with all this world’s goodies, if you have the money to buy them. Housewives vied with one another with their cooking, who cooked better food. Everyone cooks whatever they want, but sweets are a must. They baked cream cakes, cookies, and those triangular cookies in particular – which resembled Haman’s hat – which were called hamantashen. I never bragged, for I never took care of that – I devoted myself to my profession. And parents sent children with sweets to relatives, friends, and each friend sent something in return. [Ed. note: Mrs. Segal is referring to shelakhmones here, sweets given to friends as gifts.] You could have friends over on Purim, relatives. Or we called on someone, we visited my mother’s sister, my husband’s brother. It wasn’t obligatory for us to celebrate it at our place, we called on one another on Purim. It was beautiful…

I only wore a mask as a child, in Sulita. And my mother gave me sweets to take to her friends. I wore my mother’s skirt, my mother’s jacket, her high heel shoes, on which I was really breaking my legs, and I wore a veil to cover my face, so that I wasn’t recognized, and I couldn’t see where I was going. But they recognized me immediately. I didn’t wear a face mask. Some wore masks as well, and they went from house to house. Those who wore masks also called on other people’s houses on the eve of the holiday, the second and the third day after the holiday. There were gypsies living in Sulita. And gypsies play the violin. And they went from house to house with a violin, an accordion, a cembalo, and they played Jewish songs for us, typical Jewish songs, and they were given money, so that they turned an honest penny. And the lights were on everywhere, it was so beautiful… Until 1941 – a fatidic year. Everything went to pieces in Botosani. We had no heart for all that in Botosani. We were even afraid. We still observed tradition, I can’t say that we didn’t. But people didn’t visit one another like they used to. We were in dire straits. These customs have disappeared.

After that, in March-April – on Nisan 15 –, we celebrate Passover. Passover is celebrated to mark the fact that Jews left Egypt and escaped slavery. We celebrate it in Galut, it lasts 8 days in the Diaspora, and 7 days in Israel. First and foremost, the day before the holiday, on the eve of the holiday, you must search all corners, all drawers in the house, so that no bread or anything that leavens is left in the house. For you aren’t allowed to eat anything that leavens throughout Passover. You weren’t even allowed to eat cocoa – we instated an exception with regard to cocoa. [Editor’s note: There are some additional food (besides chametz that refers to bread, grains and any other leavened products) that are traditionally not consumed in Pesah (Passover). The prohibition of consuming cacao derives from the suspicion of hametz that could have been mixed with the cacao during its grinding. Nowadays there is cacao (or coffee) on the market that is specifically marked "kosher for Passover".] And you wrap all the bread you can find in a piece of cloth and place it in a wooden spoon, and you burn it, spoon and all. The man does that, the head of the family. And if there is pasta or wheat flour in the house, you must make a list of them, and take it to the rabbi to show him what you have in the house. The rabbi probably recited a prayer or something like that, to the effect that we should be allowed to use it afterwards. You placed all these in a cupboard. For you didn’t have to take it out of the house if you gave the list to the rabbi. [Editor’s note: In many Jewish communities, the rabbi signs a contract with each of his congregants, assigning him as an agent to sell their chametz. One who keeps the sold chametz in his or her household must seal it away so that it will not be visible during the holiday. ]

Mother had separate dishes for Passover, which were stored in the attic. You weren’t allowed to mix them [the Pesach dishes and everyday dishes]. And another thing. We had no tap water in Sulita, and there were some people, poor souls, who carried water by cart in wooden pails. And when they brought water on Passover, we had a special, very large barrel, which we covered with a cloth, and the water was poured in the barrel through the cloth. And they didn’t bring water only on Pesach. They brought it all year long. But on Pesach this cloth was placed on top of the barrel, so that the water was more kosher, more “peisaldich” [pesachdich], in the spirit of Pesach. Who knows, it could be that that wooden pail wasn’t as it should be, wasn’t kosher.

Before World War II, matzah was prepared here, in Botosani. Nowadays we receive it from Israel. And when you prepare the meal for the Seder evening, there is a “cara” with 3 pockets, inside which you place 3 pieces of matzah. The cara is a sort of a small cloth sack, of maybe 50 by 50 cm, nicely woven – you write in Ivrit the word Pesach on it very beautifully, you make a Zion [magen David]. We didn’t embroider it, perhaps some people embroidered it, but I believe ours was done by my mother, or perhaps by my grandmother. It was made from white cloth on top, with yellow satin crepe, and the red writing. But those who were very religious didn’t put regular matzah, the kind we bought, inside the cara. They baked their own matzah in their oven, so that it was baked more religiously. This more kosher matzah was called shmura [shmura matzah]. Rabbis baked it. But in the latter years, there was no shmura anymore.

Then you place a piece of meat on a large plate, a piece of liver, a leaf of parsley, an egg, a piece of potato, horse radish. [Editor’s note: A roasted shank bone is put on the Passover Seder plate symbolizing the Pesah sacrifice. This bone could have been substituted by any other type of meat, e.g. by liver.] And a plate of hrotiot – hroisas [charoset] – is placed on the table for the table companions; the charoset is made from apples and walnuts and wine. Another very large, a little deeper plate is placed on the table as well, filled with boiled potatoes, boiled eggs and salted water. If the table is large enough, several of these plates are placed on the table. Each person at the table must have their own glass. And the glasses are filled with wine. There are 4 stages when you drink of this wine, and you recite a prayer. It is called “Arba’a kosot” – meaning four glasses. A prayer is recited in the beginning, and everyone drinks a sip. Then you take a piece of matzah from the first pocket of the cara, and the person seated at the head of the table recites a prayer: “Baruch ata Adoshem…” In fact, if you don’t perform an actual prayer, you aren’t allowed to say “Adonai” – “Baruch ata Adonai…” –, you must say “Adoshem,” so that you don’t take the name of the Lord in vain. [Editor’s note: The title "Adoyshem" is a substitution for "Adonay" used when someone utters the name of God aside from the proper religious context. Mrs. Segal only recalled the text of the benediction, thus did not intend to utter God's name. (It is very common to say "Adoyshem" during Torah study or when someone recites only half of a biblical verse.) It is a biblical prohibition to pronounce God's name in vain.] And everyone is given a small piece of matzah. And everyone dips the matzah in the charoset and eats. Then horse radish is taken from the large plate, it is placed between two pieces of matzah, and the one who performs the table ceremony gives each table companion a small piece of it. Then we ate boiled potatoes and boiled eggs from the large plate filled with salted water. Everyone ate as much as they wanted. I like eggs a lot, and I always took a whole egg and a whole potato. Then something is read: “Avadim ainu, bataum bamitzraim…” “Slaves have we been in the land of Mitzraim…” Mitzraim is Ivrit for Egypt. [Editor’s note: “The correct form is this: Avadim hayinu le-pharoh b’mitzraim”, “We were slaves to Pharaoh pharaoh in Egypt.”] And that prayer is read. Afterwards, a child has to recite the mah nishtanah. The four questions. It was my brother who recited it, he was the youngest. I recited it myself, even if I was older, as I liked to do it. Both of us could recite it together, for there was no problem with that. Mah nishtanah goes as follows: “Why do we eat tonight both sweet and bitter food?” “Why every evening we eat sitting or reclining…?” [Editor’s note: These are the asked questions: "Why is it that on all other nights during the year we eat either bread or matzoh, but on this night we eat only matzoh?" "Why is it that on all other nights we eat all kinds of herbs, but on this night we eat only bitter herbs?" "Why is it that on all other nights we do not dip our herbs even once, but on this night we dip them twice?" and "Why is it that on all other nights we eat either sitting or reclining, but on this night we eat in a reclining position?"] My father sat on a cushion when we celebrated Seder at home, and when a child recited the mah nishtanah, he used to recline, which is to say he tormented himself, so that he wasn’t seated comfortably. A prayer is recited afterwards, “Baruch ata Adoshem, elocheinu meleh haolam, bore pri hagafen.”, and everyone drinks the second glass. [Editor’s note: "Barukh ata Adonay eloheynu melekh haolam bore pri hagafen." “Praised are You O Lord our God king of the universe, Creator of the fruit of the vine.”] Not all at once, you still drink it by taking small sips.

After that a prayer is read, on and on – a part of the Haggadah is read – until “Gua litruel” is uttered, meaning “Gael Israel, ” meaning the redemption of the people of Israel. And then you are allowed to eat. [Editor’s note: The last benediction before the Passover Seder meal starts with the following words: "Barukh ata Adonay eloheynu melekh haolam, asher gealanu vegaal et avoteynu mimitzrayim, vehigianu lalayla haze eekhol bo matza umaror.”Blessed are Thou, Adonai our Lord, King of the universe, who redeemed our ancestors from Egypt, and brought us to this night to eat matzah and maror.”] And the characteristic of Passover food. First you eat eggs with potatoes – it isn’t a salad, the egg is mashed with potatoes, onion – with matzah, of course. Then they serve minced meat balls borsch. And this borsch is prepared specially – you aren’t allowed to prepare it from husk, God forbid. Husk comes from wheat. And you place beat in warm water and it goes sour. But I never prepared it myself. Nor did my mother, only my grandmother. After that we ate soup with khremzlakh, made from eggs with matzah flour. After the soup, we ate meat with latkes – baked from matzah flour –, and with keyzl – prepared in the oven, also from matzah flour and eggs – and horse radish. Then we ate stewed fruit made from black plums, and we served cream cake. But you weren’t allowed to prepare the cream cake using butter. My mother baked cream cake using scalded walnuts, and she prepared a cream made from butter – but this was after my grandmother died. As long as my grandmother was alive, we didn’t use butter for the cream cake, for it was made from milk, and you aren’t allowed to have milk after meat.

At the third koys, at the third glass, when the bracha is recited, meaning the prayer, they say “Svoh, amoh…” Which is to say the door is opened, for the Messiah to come. [Ed. note: In fact, they waited for the return of Prophet Elijah to drink a glass of wine with those who lived in the house. The front door of the house is opened after drinking of the third cup of wine. At this point Psalms 79:6-7 is recited in both Ashkenazi and Sephardi traditions: "Shfokh hamatkha el hagoyim asher lo yedaukha veal mamlakhot asher beshimkha lo karau, ki akhal et Yaakov veet navehu heshammu."] There is a glass of wine set aside for him, so that he should come and drink. I believed it, as a child. For my father went to the door, opened it, and I believed he would enter. But the Messiah never came. And at the fourth koys the afikoman was stolen, the third matzah of the cara. You eat the first one with hrosiot, the second one with horse radish, and the third is stolen. It was my brother or I who stole it in our home, and we asked our father money in return for it. For he couldn’t find it. And then mother pointed to us the place where to look in order for us to find it. Children’s games.

After the meal is over, the “Chad Gadya” is recited. [Chad Gadya, One Little Goat], which I know by heart as it is very nice, but it is like a tale. You must sing it, for it is written using musical notes in the Haggadah. My father sang it in our family. But people don’t sing it nowadays. I drew attention to this fact here at the Canteen. We have a choir, why should they not sing it? But still, I managed to entice them to do something, and they sang it last year: “Chi lo nue, Chi lo iue.” [Editor’s note: “Ki lo nae, ki lo yae.” “For to Him is it fitting, for to Him is it suitable.”] And at the end it closes with “Ehat mi odea.” – [Echad Mi Yodea, "Who Knows One?"] It was my father, meaning the one seated at the head of the table, who had to sing that.

But we always celebrated Seder in the family. We celebrated it at our house, and father was the one in charge of everything. And when my grandfather was alive, I think it was my grandfather who performed the ceremony – I was too little. There were very many people. We had less money, but it was done as it should be done, with all ceremony. Those who took part in it were our parents, we, the children, my mother’s sisters, both of my grandmothers – may God forgive them. But after I got married, my husband came as well, and my husband’s brothers with their family. And then it was like a beautiful holiday, as Ihil, my husdband’s brother, used to bring his violin along. And he played the notes in the Haggadah. And his son, Tucu, played the accordion. And it was very nice. And after the Seder was over, he played waltzes, tangos, we left the world of religion behind. Or he played Ciprian Porumbescu’s Ballad. [Ed. note: Ciprian Porumbescu (1853-1883): Romanian composer.] My husband liked it very much, and his brother played it. And we invited the neighbors as well. But this was after the Seder. We didn’t invite the neighbors on the Seder evening. And we celebrated the Seder for 2 successive evenings. But in Botosani we only have one single evening, at the canteen of the Community. You need money. And there aren’t any to be had.

During the last month of the Jewish year, called Elul, men go to the synagogue every morning, and they blow the shofar. That is the New Year calling. You call the New Year, and you shout, and you pray. Men do this, women never did it.

On New Year’s Eve, on Rosh Hashanah, we ate fish. We always ate fish as vorspeiss. We liked carp very much. There is a pond in Sulita, the pond of Dracsani, where they grew great fish. And the peasants brought us fish – not only to my parents, but to all Jews. And people ate fish. The Jewish tradition is to boil it, and especially the heads. I did that myself. First you boil a whole onion, until it is entirely soft. And it depends on how much fish you have, you boil so many onions. And after the onion is completely soft and after it gets cold enough, you strain it – by rubbing it. And almost all the onion is strained, if it is well boiled and soft. And after that you place this soup on the fire, you add a few peeled, washed potatoes, and you add the fish. The fish can be whole or sliced, depending on how you like it. You add a little sugar, pepper, salt, and after you stop boiling it and let it cool, the sauce becomes as thick as jelly, you can cut it with a knife. And this was done using the heads, mostly, for the heads are better for making that sauce turn to jelly.

And then, when I got married, I wanted to show I knew a thing or two – my husband wasn’t pretentious, on the contrary, he wouldn’t even let me do chores –, I prepared fish. But I also prepared fried fish. But I fried it using wheat flour, not corn flour. It is softer if you use wheat flour. It is very good if you use corn flour as well, but corn flour makes the fish harder. My aunt Rica taught me this. She is a perfect housewife. My mother was, too, but my aunt surpassed her when she baked sweets and anything else. And she told me: “If you want the fish to taste good, use wheat flour. For it makes it softer.” I slice the fish, I disembowel it, first I dip it into wheat flour, you need to beat 2-3 eggs separately, as many as you need, you dip it there – and it pays to let it there for longer, a quarter of an hour –, and then you dip it into wheat flour once more, after which you fry it. To be honest, I like fried fish better.

After the New Year, before the Great Day, which is called Yom Kippur – the Day of forgiving –, people go to a course of water. [Ed. note: On the first day of Rosh Hashanah, after the prayer after the meal, religious Jews went to a spring or a course of running water, where they shook their pockets clean – this procedure is called taslich]. In Sulita, we went to the lake after the meal, to the Dracsani lake. But I never did this here in Botosani. You go there, and you turn your pockets inside out, and you shake yourself free of all sins. Also, at the synagogue, you pound yourself with your fist on the wall, and say: “Al het hudusi” – “hatati” in this modern language, but I knew the “hudusi” variant, and you ask God to forgive you for the mistakes you committed. [Editor’s note: This prayer is part of the Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) service. Confession (viddui) is a step in the process of atonement during which a Jew admits to committing a sin before God. A form of confession has been added to the daily prayer. The elongated confession is said only in Yom Kippur. The formula "Al het shehatannu" 'on the sins we commited' is repeated and competed many times.]

On the second day after the New Year, which is to say a day before Yom Kippur, you take a fowl – a rooster in the case of men, a hen in the case of women, and in the case of children it depends, either a rooster or a hen –, you spin it above your head, and you say: “Zot – it is zot in Ivrit, but it is zois in Hebrew – capurusi, zot halifusi...” I know the whole prayer. “This is the human being that dies instead of me, passes away instead of me.” For God writes your name in the book on New Year’s Eve, and on Yom Kippur, on the 10th day he announces the verdict, whether or not you will live. You spin while holding this hen… The Jewish name for it is kapores, but it is called kaparot in Ivrit. [Editor’s. note: The kappara ('atonement') is a Jewish folk custom during the days prior to Yom Kippur to transfer ones sins to a hen (women) or a cock (men). The woman recites the text in feminine gender: "Zot halifati, zot tmurati, zot kapparati. Zot hatarnegolet telekh lemita, vaani elekh veekkanes lehayyim tovim arukhim uleshalom." 'This is my substitute. This is my commutation. This hen goes forth to death, but may I be gathered and enter into a long and happy life, and into peace.'] I never liked it. I wasn’t afraid, but I felt ill at ease. The whole family did this, turn by turn – we, the children, as well. They used to buy a chicken for me and a small rooster for my brother – they bought young chicken for the children. And all these were slaughtered at the hakham, and were eaten at the family table. We observed this tradition in Botosani as well, but ever since there is no hakham, you couldn’t do this anymore. We gave them to charity after that. For giving a poor man some money is the same thing. Not to the effect that – God forbid –, the poor man should die instead of you, but you give something to charity.

When autumn holidays approached, we sacrificed many fowls so that we had plenty of food. And mother brought along to the synagogue liver, gizzard, those small yellow eggs that can be found inside the hen – larger, smaller eggs, only yolks. Oh my, how good they are! She boiled all of them in a soup, together with the poultry. But she took them out of the soup, she placed them in clean handkerchiefs and we, the children, went to the synagogue especially for that purpose, so that she gave us this to eat. Not only me, but the children of other parents as well. They tasted extremely good. And as soon as they gave us the food, we went to play – we were little. The parents stayed there for as long as the prayer lasted. 2 hours, 3 hours. The morning prayer could have lasted even for 4 hours. On holidays we also went there in the afternoon. But they didn’t give us food in the afternoon anymore, we ate at home. This happened on New Year’s Eve as well, and on Yom Kippur, when people fast. We, the children, didn’t fast on Yom Kippur. They didn’t even recommend that children should fast. I believe I started fasting ever since I became more aware of myself, when I was 7-8. And I’ve observed the fasts every year since then.

Sukkot comes after Yom Kippur. We built a sukkah on Sukkot in Sulita. The sukkah was built in the courtyard, everything – the roof as well – was made from reed, it was adorned with rugs and furnished with tables, chairs. It had 3 sides and another one, the one through which you entered, was open. You placed inside the sukkah the nicest things you had in the house. You placed on the walls and ceiling the nicest rugs you had. And you adorned it with all the fruit you had and could buy: with walnuts, apples, pears, grapes. That symbolizes the harvest. You hung fruit on the ceiling and walls. It was very beautiful. The Jews who are very religious sleep there, but my parents didn’t. Nor did my grandmother. You ate for 8 days inside the sukkah, as long as the holiday lasted, even if it rained, it was built with that in mind as well. We served all three meals inside the sukkah. Both breakfast, and lunch, and dinner. The food wasn’t special on this occasion. But we recited a prayer at every meal: the prayer for the bread, for the wine, for the food. There is also a separate ritual, involving the esrig [etrog in Hebrew]. The esrig is an exotic fruit, like a lemon – the exact colour of a lemon, even the size of a lemon –, and it has a leaf growing upwards. And it had to be pointed, for you couldn’t use it if it weren’t pointed. They sent us esrig fruit from Israel [Palestine] before World War II as well. You hold the esrig in your hand, and you recite a prayer, you bless the harvest. There were also some leaves beside it, which looked like corn stalks, which are part of the esrig. When this fruit grows, it has its own leaves, and they look like corn stalks, and you had to hold these leaves in your hand together with the fruit. Throughout the Sukkot, father recited the esrig prayer every day before the meals. This was traditional in Sulita. In Botosani, God spared us the joy of having a sukkah. One thing less to worry about.

Simchat Torah comes after Sukkot. It means the joy of the Torah, which means that you celebrate the Torah. It is a very beautiful holiday. Each synagogue had a member who was the most well-seen of all, the richest, and in Sulita, my father was the front-ranking one, the most reliable member – it was called gaba [gabe, gabbai]. And there were 2 synagogues in Sulita – they were competing with each other. And I always remember this: the members of the synagogue and children came to our door with little Zion flags – with magen David –, and an apple stuck on top of the flag, and with lit candles; they sang songs that are sung on Simchat Torah, and they invited the front-ranking member of the community to the synagogue. And then they went to the synagogue, they recited the prayer that needs to be recited every evening, but especially on that occasion they take out the Holy Scrolls, and they give the believers – the men – turn by turn a Holy Scroll, which is to say the Torah, and they walk – the rabbis wearing sideburns and beards dance – around the altar [Mrs. Segal is referring here to the bimah] and they sing. And when I was a child I used to walk around it myself next to my father, and I used to sing, as well. Father was holding the Torah, and I held father by the coat, by the hand. Oh my, it was such a joy…

Chanukkah is nice. Chanukkah is also called the holiday of lights, on account of the fact that people light candles. The Chanukkah candlestick has 8 branches plus an additional one which is the helper, the shammash, which you use in order to light the candles. And you lit one candle on the irst day, 2 on the second day, 3 candles on the third day, and you lit one extra candle on each successive evening. You lit them by the window. My father lit them. Then it was my husband who lit them. We had a large, beautiful one, but we gave it as a present to Mihai Pascal and Lucica, whom we visited in Petach Tiqwa. And people sang beautiful songs. “Ane rotala lu, alalu, / Ane rotala lu, alalu / sianu madlichim…” – “These candles that we light, may they remind us of the miracle…” –, this is the song I sang along with father, I liked it very much. [Editor’s note: This text of the song is the following: "Haneirot hallalu anahnu madlikin al hanissim veal haniflaot al hateshuot veal hamilhamot sheasita laavoteinu bayamim hahem, ubazman hazeh al yedei kohanekha hakedoshim. (...)" 'We light these lights for the miracles and the wonders, for the redemption and the battles that you made for our forefathers, in those days at this season, through your holy priests. (...)] Each evening during the 8 days, we sat down at the table to eat. People baked potato dumplings and red borscht, this was the traditional food. They also served meat and cream cake, that’s a different matter, but this was symbolic. The red borscht was prepared from beat and borscht made from husks, which we bought. It is called barrel borscht. You slice the beat, boil it, added a lot of vegetables, parsley, dill, carrots, you name it. And then you took all of them out, and you scalded it with this borscht, which has a greenish color. I never prepared it myself. My mother prepared it for me, then someone else prepared it for me. They still serve it to us every year at the Community. But only on one evening, that is all. They see to it that they serve it on a Sunday, so that those who have to work be able to come.

As children, we played with a spinning top. They were made from wood, metal. 4 letters are embossed on it, whose meaning is: “A great miracle was performed there.” N – Nas –, miracle. G – gadol –, great. Hei – haia –, meaning was performed. And sin – sam –, there. [Ed. note: "Nes Gadol Hayah Sham", referring to the miracle of the oil.] They gave me Chanukkah gelt when I was a child. They didn’t give me money, my parents gave me candy or they bought me shoes. Just as on Christmas or on St. Nicholas. It is a very beautiful custom.

I went to the cheder in Sulita, since I was 3 and a half, 4 years old, until I was 7, until I started going to school. I went there with other small boys, around 2 hours a day. But there weren’t many girls there. My grandmother, my father’s mother, was a very religious person, and she spied on me to see that I attended the cheder. And I actually liked it. I had a Lehrer – Lehrer means teacher, his name was Motas. And he used to say: “Odapam, odapam!”, meaning “Once more, once more!” [Editor’s note: "Od pam" means 'again' in Hebrew.] He taught Yiddish, not Ivrit. That’s why I can write and speak Yiddish. The letters are the same as in the Hebrew alphabet. But the words are different, and you write differently. I learned Yiddish only at the cheder, and afterwards I wrote and read Yiddish by myself, and I didn’t forget it. There was a bookstore in Botosani, where they sold books written both in Yiddish, and in Ivrit, and in Romanian as well. You could buy them, and I had at home books written in Yiddish, in Ivrit. But I kind of destroyed them under communism, I was afraid. I still have a few dictionaries and a few books in Ivrit, but that’s nothing compared to what I had.

During the War

Until I was 13, my childhood was a happy one. After that… it was awful. We had been rich until 1941, when the legionnaire regime 6 came to power and they kicked us out of our home and we left with the clothes on our back 1. And we began to experience dire poverty. Hadn’t the legionnaires come to power, we would have had such a good life in Sulita. They destroyed us back then.

There were legionnaires everywhere 2, they were in Sulita as well. There was a worker at a mill in Sulita, it was a Blumer mill – and they were rich –, and he carried wheat sacks at the mill. And when the legionnaires came to power, he became a leading legionnaire, and he came and knocked on our window shutters – well, someone put him up to this –: “Jews belong in Palestine!” But we didn’t want to leave. And then they kicked us out. My uncles who were living in Frumusica left, they came to Botosani as they feared the legionnaires. I couldn’t say when exactly, but still I believe they came to Botosani a year, a year and a half before we did, when the legionnaires came to power. But they moved there because they were afraid, for the legionnaires were in power by then, and they were knocking on windows, doors, they were threatening us. And they didn’t wait to be thrown out of their home. We did, and we were wrong to do so.

We kept our window shutters closed, we were afraid of the legionnaires. And one day that man who used to carry sacks at the mill came, he had become a great legionnaire, and was one of their front-ranking members, and he pounded on the window shutters: “All Jews must prepare for they have to leave.” At first, they didn’t tell us where we had to go. At first, men were supposed to go somewhere, and women and children somewhere else. But there was this woman, Filica, she worked as a telephone operator at the post office in Sulita, a woman of extraordinary nobility, whom my parents had befriended. My parents were very good friends with the mayor, the county chief, the notary, the scool principals… And there was nothing they could do, poor souls. But this woman, Filica, came and told us: “You know, if they find out, they will shoot me on the spot.” And I remember, she took my father in the back room – we didn’t know what was happening, we were also scared –, and she told him that a telephone call came through from Botosani, that they didn’t have train cars to send the men and women separately, and so we all had to leave to Botosani together for the time being. Well, we were happy to hear that.

And in June 1941, when we came to Botosani, a drizzle was falling – it was very fine, with no lightning’s or thunders –, and we sluggishly came to Botosani in a cart pulled by oxen – a distance of 32 km [35 km]. We were supposed to look for a peasant to rent a cart from him. We brought along as many things as we could carry. I couldn’t tell you exactly what… But I do remember that we certainly brought along a quilt, a pillow, the clothes that we were wearing, for we couldn’t take more, there were 6 of us. I had another sister and a brother, and my father’s grandmother lived with us. And so my parents plus my grandmother were 3 persons, and with us, 3 children, we were 6, all in all. Well, how many things could we take with us? For the entire merchandise, things, furniture, everything was left behind. And then the legionnaires burned it. They burned everything, houses, things. And I wanted to claim it back nowadays, based on law 112 [Ed. note: law no. 112/1995 for regulating the legal situation of some buildings destined for housing, who were entered in the property of the state.], but the lawyer – I’m surprised by it, he was a good lawyer –, who drew the sale-purchase deed of the house to my parents, didn’t record the surface area. He wrote: it has a common border with such, it has a common border with such, it has a common border with such. As they used to record these things formerly. And they didn’t record my claim. And I lost some money. If it were only for the money…

And you imagine, a fine rain was falling, and we used whatever we could take along in order to cover ourselves. We traveled in a group of carts moving together and accompanied by gendarmes. And they left us in the cattle market, where there was a cattle sale the following day. And the following day we were free to go wherever we wanted, for it was a cattle market, and people were coming there to sell cattle. My mother had a sister in Botosani, who was married and lived in Frumusica, and they had come to Botosani for fear of the legionnaires. They rented a house with 2 rooms, and we went there as well. They were 5, including the grandmother from my mother’s side – for the grandfather had died, too. And we were 6. And we lived like that in 2 rooms until we found something to rent. We found a room and a hallway in the same courtyard – which we turned into a kitchen –, and we moved out of there. And, I remember, they paid the rent for us. My uncle had sheep. I believe he had them registered under the name of a Romanian peasant. I’m sure of it, but I can’t say, for I don’t know for sure. I was around 13-14, and I didn’t meddle in their affairs. And they had money, and they helped us. There were very many things…

After they evacuated us, we were very destitute. We became poor people. I couldn’t say how we managed to get by. At a certain point we lived in a house located near the street, and they allowed us to open a small small ware shop. But I don’t know if it was enough for them to make ends meet. I remember that once, as a child, I told them I wanted to eat two eggs, and they told me they couldn’t give me more than one egg, for they had to give some to the other children as well. Do you know how sad it was? I liked eggs, I still do to this day, mainly fried. And I said: “I want two eggs.” And I started to cry. And mother, who was more severe, may God forgive her, would tell me: “I have 3 children, I must give an egg to each of them.” I wanted to show you how we lived. It was horrible. We almost considered begging in the street. But we were also helped by this sister of my mother’s, Branica. It was very difficult.

Not to mention the fact that starting with 1941, after we arrived in Botosani, we had to wear the yellow star 7, and during summer we weren’t allowed to go out after 8 o’clock in the evening. It’s not as if we went out during the day, either. You were afraid to do it. Yet you had to buy something, eat. But if you were caught in the street after 8 o’clock in the evening, they took you to the Police station. Children as well. We didn’t go out after 8 o’clock in the evening. We were afraid to do so.

The things that happened in Dorohoi… The things that happened in Iasi… A lawyer from Iasi, Avram Riezel, a very handsome man, who was a second degree cousin of my parents’, was boarded on the death train 8. He died in that train car, together with his wife, Sally. They had no children. He was born in Sulita, but he married in Iasi with a very beautiful woman, herself a lawyer, they were very well off, she was rich, and he was rich when he left Sulita. His parents owned sheep. And they also had land, I believe, but they didn’t till it themselves, they hired people to do that. And someone who survived the death train experience – a friend of this cousin of my parents, someone who moved to Bucharest afterwards, and we met him – he told us how, forgive me, they relieved themselves right there, on straw, they weren’t given any water, food, nothing at all. And when the train stopped in Targu Frumos, there was this lady, Garici, may God rest her soul, and she approached the train to give them water to drink. For the train car had small, barred windows. And they slapped her over her arm, and she had to leave, otherwise they would have shot her. There were gendarmes on guard duty. And there is Yad Vashem 9 in Israel – I was there –, and there is a road there, where they planted trees “Righteous among the nations.” And Mrs. Garici has her own tree planted there. She passed away. She has a daughter here, in Romania, I don’t know how old she is, who has cancer, I believe. And she was sent to Israel for treatment. Well, if they could save her… But still, her mother’s gesture was extraordinary.

In 1943 – I remember precisely, it was during autumn – my father was taken hostage by the legionnaires – but no longer remember whether it was with the help of the Police or of the army. And I thought they were going to shoot him, that they would ask him to do some things, and if you didn’t perform what they required of you, then they would shoot you. For you were in danger of being shot during the legionnaires’ regime. I remember this man, his name was Catana, he was a legionnaire. For I can see him before my eyes with his green shirt and leather belt. They had this uniform: green shirt and a slanting belt strapped to a girdle, and they wore a badge attached to the belt, but I couldn’t tell you what bas embossed on that badge.

Had they wanted money… But they didn’t want money. My aunt Rica, my mother’s sister, went to the house of one of the officers – I couldn’t tell you exactly who, but I believe he was from the Police –, whose daughter she had befriended, so that she could negotiate with him. Nothing could be done, the legionnaires were very mean. We were desperate, as father was there and they could have shot him at any time. But my father escaped with his life. He was held hostage for a few months, until April 1944. Until the Russians came. If the Russians hadn’t come, I believe he wouldn’t have survived, they would have shot him. But the day of April 7, 1944 came, when the city of Botosani was released. The city was bombarded on April 7, 1944, and the Russians came. If it weren’t for the Russians, we would have ended up in concentration camps. They held these hostages as a means of exchange. They didn’t take them out [they weren’t taken to perform forced labor]. They beat them with a belt, that’s what my father told us. They were held hostages in a synagogue, the synagogue that they still use to this day. There were several Jews there, around 20 of them. They were the richest ones. And afterwards there was a mess with a certain man, whose name was Calmanovici as well, and whom they arrested as well. And he claimed they took him because of my father, for he had the same name. Well, you think my father could have had any say in that matter? My father was taken away based on the lists they had when they came to our house. They brought along a list and the financial means were written on that list. Next to my father’s name was written “good.” And they took away all those who had good financial means. But it didn’t make any sense. We had nothing left at that time anymore, for we left everything behind in Sulita. But if they hadn’t burned what we had in Sulita themselves, they could have taken everything from there. I have the list, I took it from the Centre for the Study of History in Bucharest. As I am a beneficiary of the law 118 [Ed. note: Decree-law no. 118 passed on March 30, 1990 with regard to granting certain rights to the persons who were persecuted on political grounds by the dictatorship in force after March 6, 1945, as well as to those who were deported abroad or were taken prisoners (updated until April 19, 2002)]. The one regarding those who were relocated, deported.

When I came to Botosani, I believe more than 50% of the population of Botosani was Jewish. And what did Jews have? Stores. There was a man in Botosani, his name was Bogokovski, who had a large store, and then, in order to be able to keep the store open, he entered a partnership with a Christian, he recorded the shop as being owned by a Christian friend 10, but he was a nice man – I forget his name. And the store was recorded under the name of that man. That man wasn’t a nobody, either, financially, that is. And they caught them, they found out the former registered his shop under the name of the latter, and they arrested Bogokowski. Only the Jew. I remember this, for we were outraged back then. Life was very hard. But he escaped with his life as well when the Russians entered Botosani.

The Russians entered Botosani on April 7, 1944. Afterwards, it wasn’t long until August 23 came 11. And on April 7, when the Russians came, there was such a bombardment… The Germans bombarded the city, for they knew the Russians had entered the city. They bombarded the theatre building – it was rebuilt –, and I don’t know what other buildings they hit back then. We hid inside the cellars. Had they bombarded the house, we would have been dead.

After the War

After World War II, it was the Joint 12 who helped us. We were very poor. Later on, I had my own salary, and so did my father, but we couldn’t afford to buy neither furniture, nor any fancy clothes. The Joint founded a canteen in Botosani in 1945. And my father, poor soul, he had a superb handwriting, it was very beautiful, and very accurate, and at first he was hired at the canteen as administrator, then he was in charge of primary book-keeping, and I don’t know exactly what other position he had there. I believe this canteen was open until 1948. The Joint canteen was located near the co-operative that was founded in 1948. It wasn’t an agricultural or a craftsmen’s co-operative, it was a co-operative whose object of activity were countryside stores. And then they employed him at the co-operative in the billing department. For he wasn’t an accountant. And he had that job in the billing department until I don’t know when. The co-operative’s offices were located in the courtyard in front of the Community – the Jewish Community of Botosani. And they were missing a cashier at the Community. And they knew about my father, perhaps father visited the Community center, I couldn’t tell you that, and they employed him as a cashier. And he was required to write everything that needed to be written, records, stuff. For father’s handwriting was very beautiful and accurate, he wasn’t illiterate. And he worked at the Jewish Community until his death, in 1969.

I do my own praising: I was a very good pupil. As long as my parents lived in Sulita, I graduated 4 grades of primary school at the Jewish school. There was a Jewish school in Sulita, but we had to pass an exam at the end of each school year, which validated our graduating that year. There were 2 schools in Sulita, “Andreescu” and “Scurtu,” I passed my exams at “Scurtu.” It is as if I see before my eyes the building where the Jewish school was housed: you entered a long corridor along which there were 2 classrooms on either side, a teachers’ room, and I don’t know what else. The classes were mixed, made up of boys and girls. Goldenberg was my teacher from 1st grade until 4th grade, he taught all subject matters, only Ivrit did I study with a certain Zinger. I remember there were 2 other teachers, Nuta Schwartz – Nathan Schwartz – and a certain Balter, but they taught different classes. After I graduated 4 grades of primary school, I went to high school in Botosani. I graduated the 1st and 2nd year of high school at a high school for girls called “Carmen Silva.” And I rented a room from someone, for my parents could afford to pay for that. After 1941, I was no longer able to study at the Romanian school 1, and I skipped a year. All Jews were expelled from schools. After the Jewish High School was founded, I studied there. But I skipped a year, until this high school was founded. And then I sat for an exam to graduate the year – those of us who had skipped a year were allowed to graduate 2 years in a single one. And I studied for an entire summer. The Jewish High School was founded in 1942. Be that as it may, Antonescu 13 approved the founding of the Jewish High School. There was a rabbi in Bucharest, his name was Filderman, who had influence over him. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Filderman] Filderman spoke Romanian so well… we’d all be glad to speak it as well as he did. And he intervened around Antonescu for the foundation of a Jewish high school. And I entered the Jewish High School, and I graduated 3rd and 4th grade. But girls weren’t allowed to study at this high school. They enlisted us, but they kept separate rolls. And there was an inspection once – I will never forget this scene –, and the principal stormed inside the classroom: “All the girls must run out of here immediately, for there is an inspection!” Well, we ran and we returned afterwards. You can imagine the situation we were in. That’s how I studied.

Classes were held in the rooms of the synagogue. Carol Mizes was the principal. He was a tall, handsome man, I believe his profession was that of a lawyer, and he couldn’t work anymore – lawyers were disbarred as well. And I had Jewish teachers. Biology and zoology was taught by a pharmacist, our teacher of mathematics was actually a former teacher who was fired from the “Laurian” High School or from the “Carmen Silva” High School, which were high schools in Botosani. Our drawing teacher was very likeable, his name was Isaia. For I didn’t like drawing. I was very good in mathematics. I’m not bragging, I actually studied at the Faculty of Mathematics, even if I didn’t graduate from the university – because of financial reasons. And this drawing teacher saw that I wasn’t good at drawing, and he treated me very nicely. I couldn’t draw a straight line. And I had problems in trigonometry. I liked it very much because it involved equations, and I strived to draw lines. But as far as drawing pictures goes, I wasn’t good at it. And I still aren’t, to this day. I write very quickly, in an overly-correct manner, I like to place commas where they belong, but my handwriting isn’t beautiful. I didn’t inherit my father, whose handwriting was extraordinarily beautiful. I took after my mother, who wrote correctly as well, but her handwriting wasn’t beautiful.

We studied Hebrew at the Jewish High School. And there were very few children, especially among those from Botosani, who had attended the cheder. And when we had to pass the trimestrial exam, they wanted to be seated close to me, so that they could copy from my paper. Our Hebrew teacher was a rabbi, his name was Motal Frenkel. He was very likeable, I liked him very much. I was thinking: “This one isn’t married. I will marry him.” I give you my word of honor. But I was still in school, he was older than me. And he was very fond of me, for I knew this – since I attended the cheder in Sulita. And I wanted to marry Motal. But that’s what I was thinking back then. He was a very handsome man. And he didn’t wear a beard, in spite of the fact that he was a rabbi. And I was thinking: “How so? Shouln’t rabbies wear a beard?” He went to Israel after the war, and I heard that he grew a beard in Israel, all the way down to the ground. Why, if he wore a beard I wouldn’t even have looked at him.

And then, starting with the fall of 1944, we were allowed to attend the Romanian high school. The Jewish High School was recognized – there were school rolls, and everything else –, and I didn’t lose the years during which I studied there. I sat for my baccalaureate exam in 1946. I remember that my subject at the Physics oral exam was the electric bell. And I answered the theoretical questions perfectly. And this probably didn’t sit well with the examining teacher, for the commission was made up entirely from outside teachers, so he asked me to draw it. It was as if someone was gripping my hand… I couldn’t draw it. And they gave me a 4 [Ed. note: the equivalent of an E in the American system of grades]. Oh my, how I cried. And I was so good at Physics. I cried just like a baby, I was bleating as they gave me the grade. But it wasn’t an eliminatory system. If your overall grade was 6, it was good enough to pass. And I passed the baccalaureate exam, for my overall grade was higher than 6. I scored better grades for the other subject matters. I was very good at Chemistry, Mathematics was no completely out of the question.

I liked Mathematics, and I went to Bucharest at the Faculty of Mathematics, I sat for an admission exam, I passed it. But my parents couldn’t really make ends meat, they couldn’t support me, and my sister died, whom I loved enormously, and so I returned home, I entered the workforce. And then, when I got married, a girl friend and a friend of mine went to study the A.E.S. [the Academy of Economic Studies] under the optional attendance system. I wanted to go as well, but my husband said: I won’t let you work, there’s no reason for you to do this.” And after approximately 3 years I said: “I want to have a degree myself. I feel capable of having one.” And I enlisted myself at the A.E.S. in Bucharest under the optional attendance system – for it wasn’t available in Iasi. My husband was a Mathematics teacher and he was the one who filtered my materials. But I didn’t pass the state exam as well, because my husband said I didn’t need it. He didn’t want me to work.

I met my husband at some lectures we attended here, in Botosani. The ones formerly held by the Party Cabinet, they were party lectures. He was in charge of propaganda, I attended the lectures, and he walked me home one evening, then again on another evening… I attended these lectures once a month. But a lot of people attended these lectures, teachers… It was nice, I liked it, for it brought people together. Everybody attended these lectures, they made you attend them – [if] you didn’t attend them, you were against the party. I liked the poems very much. And once we discussed the poem “Glossa” as part of the lectures [Ed. note: written by Eminescu, Mihai (1850-1889)] 14. And as I walked home with my husband, he accompanied me and we talked. He too liked poetry very much – he was a sentimental person, even if he studied Mathematics. But you should see how good my memory is! He used to recite me another one of Eminescu’s poems: “Cu maine zilele-ti adaugi, / cu ieri viata ta o scazi. / Si ai de-a pururea in fata [Avand cu toate astea-n fata] / numai ziua cea de azi [De-a pururi ziua cea de azi].” [“With life's tomorrow time you grasp, / Its yesterdays you fling away, / And still, in spite of all remains / Its long eternity, today.“ Translated by Corneliu M. Popescu]. He was quite the philosopher, this Eminescu. That’s how we met, we fell in love, there were even certain hindrances… anyway.

My husband, Iancu Segal, was older than me. But it didn’t matter. I thought of him as being younger than me. He was born in Stefanesti, which is also located in the county of Botosani. His parents were no longer living at the time when I met him. My husband had a very hard childhood. His mother, poor soul, died when he was around 10. She died when she gave birth to his brother, Ichil. And his father remarried, he had 2 more children, both of whom died in Israel.

My husband had 2 brothers. He had a brother, his biological brother, here in Botosani, his name was Ichil Segal. He worked at the Botosani Philharmonic under the employment of Weber, and he taught at the Music High School. He played the violin very well. He hadn’t graduated from the Conservatory, he was a self-taught man. He too was an extraordinary person. His wife’s name was Fani. Both she and Ichil died in Botosani. But they have a son here in Botosani, his name is Talic too – he too was named after his grandfather –, but we call him Tucu. He was married to an extraordinary woman, Monica. She was considered to be the best teacher of Romanian. I’m not saying this because she was my niece, as I even had some quarrels with her. I debated literary issues with her. I liked Eminescu the most. She didn’t like Eminescu the most. But she died, poor soul, some 5 years ago [in 2001].

The other brother – they only had the same father –, Itic Segal, left to Israel in 1959. He was married, he had a 3-year-old son when they left. The little boy was born in November 1956. His actual name was Talic, but we call him Tion. They named him Talic after his grandfather, after my father-in-law. This brother of my husband’s, Itic, was an electrician when he left Romania, and he studied in Israel – he had no money to do that over here –, and he became an engineer. He worked at a large factory, and he earned less as an engineer than he did as an electrician-in-chief. And then he requested that he should retain his former position as electrician. They lived in Naharia. What a beautiful city… It was like a garden over there. And now it was bombarded. I was there every time I traveled to Israel, a total of 4 times. And once I even stayed there for a month. My husband’s brother died. He was younger than my husband, but he had a stroke. His wife, Rozica, is still living in Naharia. Tion got married, then he divorced his wife, he married for a second time and had a child. And he left to America, to California, he was sent there by his factory for a period of 2 years. And what did Mr. Tion do? He stayed there for good.

My husband had 2 other sisters. One of them – she was older than him –, whom I didn’t even get to meet, got married in Chisinau, she also had children, and she was probably deported to Siberia by Mr. Stalin, and we never heard from her. And he had yet another sister – Tipora Segl, Tili –, who left to Israel together with Itic, my husband’s other brother. She was about my age, but she had a heartattack and died when she was 39 [in 1967, approximately]. She was married, her married name was Blumenfeld.

My husband came from a family of merchants. But he showed intellectual interests, and in the beginning, I think right after he graduated from high school, before going to the university, he worked as a teacher at the Jewish school in Stefanesti. I don’t know for how long exactly, but he worked as a teacher for quite a few years. Then he attended the Faculty of Mathematics in Iasi. And his father’s financial means were rather limited, but he had wealthy relatives in Iasi, and he lived with his relatives, he too struggled, poor soul. His father’s condition, in return for supporting him financially during his studies, was that he should attend the yeshivah at the same time as well. That’s what he told me, I didn’t know him at the time. He blackmailed him, for his father was a very religious person. And so, poor soul, he went to the yeshivah. He attended the yeshivah in Chisinau. He studied for 2 years at the yeshivah, but not for 2 full years, attendance wasn’t continuous. He studied Mathematics in Iasi, and during the summer he used to go to the yeshivah in Chisinau. But it was good for him. His knowledge was much greater than mine.

After he started earning some money, my husband supported his father and his father’s family, for his father was old by then. He, poor thing, spent everything he earned on the family. Even if, at some point in time, he left Stefanesti as his stepmother treated him very badly, he still sent her money even afterwards. They were looking for a school principal at the school of the cloth factory in Buhusi – it was a very famous factory –, he applied for that position and passed an examination, as they did in those days, and he left, he couldn’t put up with it anymore. But he still looked after his father, and after his brother and sister from his father’s second marriage. His father had been a merchant in his youth. His mother is buried in Stefanesti, his father died here, in Botosani. They too had been evacuated to Botosani. But my husband no longer lived in Stefanesti at that time, he was living in Buhusi.

But he wanted to become a lawyer, and after World War II he also attended the Faculty of Law in Iasi, but under the under the optional attendance system. He practiced as a lawyer, but only for a very brief period of time, until he saw they dictated him what to say, how to plea; he refused to do so, and he took refuge in the educational system. Back then, they dictated what plea you should make. Every word of it, nothing was tried justly. Which is to say it depended on what the [Communist] party wanted to do: who should be convicted, who shouldn’t be convicted. And he was allowed to plea only to that effect, to observe the indications given by the party. And he was a very just person, he couldn’t take it. And at a certain point, given the fact that he had a degree in mathematics, without saying why he did so, he renounced his law practice and started working in the educational system, and that’s where he worked until his death. Poor soul, he got bone-cancer in 1986, and he was gone. It was all so sudden. We even went to Bucharest for a medical examination. “No, nothing will help. Nothing will help.”

He came to Botosani and started teaching in 1951, and we got married in 1955. We had both a religious and an official ceremony, absolutely everything. First we got married at the registrar’s office, at the Town Hall, for they wouldn’t perform the religious ceremony otherwise. And we couldn’t not be married religiously because of our parents. It would have upset them if we didn’t. But I would have rather we didn’t, to be honest. These were the customs laid down from times immemorial by our forefathers, grandparents, great-grandparents, parents… It isn’t so important nowadays, but it was back then.

The religious ceremony wasn’t performed at the synagogue. They brought the canopy to my parents’ house, for I was a member of the party and so was my husband, and they would have expelled us from the party, had they known we had a religious ceremony performed. It wouldn’t have been such a disaster if they expelled us from the party, but they would have automatically kicked out my husband from the educational system. It was terrible. The ceremony was attended by my parents, our wedding sponsors – Itic, my husband’s brother and his wife –, one of the grandmothers who were still alive, the one from my mother’s side of the family, the other one, poor soul, was no longer alive, and by 2 girl friends who were close to me – one of them was Minuta and the other was Trudi, one of them died and the other is living in Israel – with their husbands. That was it. There was no one else present. We were afraid to invite anyone else – for fear they could inform on us. You couldn’t trust anybody. And we covered the windows, I remember it as if it were yesterday, so that you couldn’t see inside the house. It was as if we committed a crime back then. God forbid! But the wedding was performed by the book, no detail was left out. With a canopy, you walk around it three times – the groom, the bride, the wedding sponsors and the parents, all in a file. They walk around the altar [the bimah] in the synagogue. I didn’t have this opportunity, I walked around the rabbi. [Editor’s note: The bride usually gets around the groom three (or seven) times at the wedding under the chuppah (canopy).] The name of the rabbi who performed our religious ceremony was Smucler. And then the groom and the bride stand next to each other and the rabbi offers the groom a drink, and then the groom gives the bride a drink from that blessed wine, then the glass is placed in a handkerchief, and the groom must step on it and brake it. And they say that if he manages to break the glass properly, it is he who will be the rooster in the home. I told my husband: “Don’t break it properly, for I want it to be me who rules, not you.” He broke it, but he wasn’t the rooster in our home. No, he was gentle, kind… And we organized a meal after the wedding ceremony. It wasn’t like in a restaurant, it was a regular meal. It was during winter, in November, we had no eggplants, no tomatoes, we had soup, meat, they managed to bake a cream cake, and it was very modest. People had no money back then, where could one get the money from…

After I got married, we didn’t live with our parents. We first rented a room, then someone moved out of there and we rented yet another room. But we had nothing in the beginning. No glasses, no spoons, no forks, we needed the money. We could barely make ends meet. The poverty was so dire… But we were happy, we didn’t mind.

In time, my husband and I started earning more money, I was head of the cost price and financial planning department – I had a higher salary –, my husband was teaching a double norm, it was allowed back then, he also taught pupils in private, and we rose financially. And in fact I didn’t let him teach pupils in private, for I didn’t want him to strive too hard. I told you, he was older than me. But it was me who came home more tired from work. He was very punctual at school. If he had classes from 9 o’clock, he went there at a quarter to 8. If I had to be at work at 7 o’clock, I used to get out of bed at 10 minutes to 7. He didn’t understand, he didn’t understand. Well, I worked for 8 hours straight, he had “windows” at school. For instance, it could be that you had classes from 8 until 10, and then you had no class until 11 o’clock – that’s what people call a window. After he retired, in order to be able to teach, he even taught Latin at the music high school, for his brother was teaching there, and he recommended him. I didn’t like Latin, it was very hard. And I used to ask my husband: “How come you, a teacher of Mathematics, know Latin?” Well, he studied privately. He studied very much.

And, at first, he was a rather withdrawn, lonesome person. He liked it when we strolled outside of town, to see the sheep graze – he was a sentimental person. I say: “I’d like that too, but I have no time for it.” He liked it when we talked, analyzed poetry. He also knew French well. Lamartine had a poem, “Le Lac.” [Alphonse de Lamartine (1790-1869), Méditations poétiques (1820) «Le Lac»]. “Ô temps, suspends ton vol! - O, time, suspend your flight / Suspendez votre cours - Suspend your course / Laissez-nous savourer – Let us savor, / Des plus beaux de nos jours – Our most beautiful days.” I know it in French, but still, it was my husband who taught it to me. Even if I had a French teacher in high school, Charlotte Sibi, who was Romanian, but talked to us only in French. She didn’t speak Romanian at all.

It isn’t nice to praise your husband, but you may ask anyone who met him, he was a man of rare gentleness and kindness. If he saw in the street a man carrying something heavy, and if that man were poor, he might have been carrying something, he used to give him a hand, help that man. That’s the kind of man he was. And you imagine the life we had: I was in charge. But only so as to favor him. None of my decisions would put him at a disadvantage.

But my husband, God rest his soul, wouldn’t let me work. We had hired a woman who cleaned the house for me. This is what he told me: “None of this concerns you. Your only concern is that you shouldn’t work.” But I worked very much. He wanted me to stay at home, for he said he could teach a double norm, he could teach pupils in private, and he didn’t need my money. But did I give up my job? God forbid! How much retirement money would I get now, had I stayed at home? I would have had half of his retirement pension.

For instance, as I was very much absorbed by my job, we ate at our parents’ at first. They didn’t live far from us, and my husband and I went there to eat, so that there were no dishes to wash, either. And since my parents had a very hard life, we contributed a sum of money, and we didn’t calculate the expenses, we all ate together. After my mother died, we had a cook, my husband didn’t let me cook. After the cook died, we had another cook. She came by my place once a week. And I told her what to buy and what to prepare, and what my husband liked to eat… She cooked enough food to last us almost an entire week. For we also ate polenta with sour cream and cottage cheese, if we ran out of cooked food, potatoes with a side dish, we also went to a restaurant when we had the time, for we both earned well. But it was a shame our parents weren’t alive anymore. I was very fond of them, I loved them immensely.

My father died on February 4, 1969, and my mother died in 1981. But after my father died, my mother suffered – not a psychological shock, God forbid, but – a terrible shock. She loved him very much. They lived together for 42 years, from 1927 until 1969. They might have had their ups and downs, but they lived a beautiful life together. I liked so much the way my father spoiled my mother. For instance, he enjoyed going to the cinema on Saturday. And she first wanted to wash the dishes after lunch. And it made us run late. And he would go, and caress her nose: “Lizica, it is late.” And I liked that. I had a great deal to learn from them, for they lived very beautifully. But It’s all in the past now.

I wasn’t a mother. My husband wanted a child so badly, he loved children. I said: “Who will work? I’m not giving up my job.” Anyway.

I started working in 1947 and I worked until 1986. At first, I worked at a home for children, it was called Andrei Bernat, it belonged to a Jewish organization, as it was subsidized by Joint – I was hired as assistant accountant, for I had no studies – but they weren’t required back then, they required you to know your job. I worked there until 1950. Then I was transferred to the ready-made clothes factory, where I was an accountant at first and then I was in charge of cost price and financial planning. And that’s when I started to evolve. And I started to enjoy it. There was the Commercial Department, and there were resort industries, which were independent yet coordinated by the Commercial Department. And I was in charge of Industrial Mechandise, someone else was in charge of Alimentara, someone else at LPFST [Local Public Food Supply Trust]. And I worked as a chief accountant for 25 years in the field of trade.

Since I wanted to have a leading position, and I wanted to be in charge, to have a high salary, they made me join the [Communist] party as a mandatory condition. And my father said he would cut off my legs, poor soul. He couldn’t conceive it, try as he might. I told him: “Father, what would you have me do, work as a mere accountant until the day I die? Look here, I can get a promotion…” “No, and no, and no.” But I didn’t listen to anybody, and I did what I pleased, and I hope I made it to the top of the pyramid. It’s not as if I became the Finance Minister or anything like that.

And I was a chief accountant, I entered the financial world, I became acquainted with everybody, my husband worked at school. After he left the educational system – previously, he was afraid to do so, for they would have kicked him out of the teaching profession – he was an active member at the Jewish Community in Botosani. He was in charge of the talmud torah, the teaching of Hebrew, the teaching of Jewish history, he checked the children – he knew Ivrit better than me, he also went to the yeshivah. There was a certain Stechelberg, who taught the talmud torah, and my husband guided him, for that man wasn’t a teacher of Ivrit. But my husband wasn’t in charge of the synagogue. He didn’t go to the synagogue. He was a religious man by nature, but he couldn’t show it, for he was afraid to do so. He didn’t go to the synagogue, but he helped out at the Community. As he didn’t get to go to the synagogue from the very beginning, he didn’t go there after he retired, either. But he performed the prayers at home every day, in the morning and in the evening. And my father, poor thing, performed the prayer at home as well, for he was afraid, too. It was very strict. On Passover, for instance, my husband – all class masters, not only him – had to accompany his class at a pupils’ ball, so that he couldn’t go to the Resurrection ceremony.

You can’t even imagine how it was in the days of the Securitate 15. You were afraid of opening your mouth to talk. If you listened to Free Europe 16 on the radio, you piled pillows on top of the telephone so that they couldn’t listen in by any chance. People were terrified, no doubt about it. Even if you had no stain on your personal record, nothing at all, you were afraid. I am still afraid to this day, when I watch a movie on TV and if it involves guns and shooting or I don’t know what, I look away. I am easily scared by nature.

One of the 2 sons of Branica and Heinic - the older one, Froim – returned from Venezuela. He came to see his mother’s grave. That was in 1966. Where could he stay? 17 We were afraid because of the Securitate – for he was a foreign citizen. I wouldn’t have him stay in my house for the world, my aunt was scared, my parents were scared. Anyway, he stayed at my parents’. But he saw we were all afraid to have him stay over. I think it was my mother who went with him to the cemetery to show him where his mother’s grave was, and he stayed for 2 or 3 days and he left. He could see that everyone was afraid to have him around. He came to see his mother’s grave and we were afraid to have him come over. It was as if the devil himself had come over. And we loved him so… You tell me, was that fair? Those were the times.

In 1977 I wanted to go to Israel myself. My husband was more fearful than me: “What if the Securitate calls us for an inquiry?” I said: “If they call us, fine, let them take away our jobs.” I was a chief accountant, I would have been the one they would have demoted. And even if they fired me, it wouldn’t have been the end of the world. I was an accountant. But they would have kicked him out of the educational system for good. And one day I got mad, I didn’t go home after work, I went to the Public Garden, which is very beautiful. My husband phoned at my workplace, he phoned my friends, I was nowhere to be found. He suspected something, and he came to look for me in the garden. And he saw me, he came and sat beside me. I didn’t want to talk to him. But we didn’t have arguments. I can say it actually was an ideal marriage. And he said: “Tomorrow we go and we draw the paperwork to be granted permission to go to Israel.” And then I said: “We had to get to this point, me not returning home from work?” “Fine. What if the Securitate calls us in for an inquiry?” We were lucky, I believe it was a once-in-10-million chance. They didn’t call us in before we left, nor after we returned. It was enough for them to call you there and ask you: “Whom did you meet there? What did you talk about?” For it was a matter of state treason. We had such a blind luck. They probably gathered information about us, they knew what sort of people we were. We were both fearful by nature. Oh my, had they called us in, I think I would have gone insane. They didn’t call us in, neither me, nor my husband.

We stayed there for a month. But a nephew of mine – the son of Itic, my husband’s brother – was getting married 10 days after our residence permit expired. And you could ask to prolong it. My husband and I: “Oh my, they will say we defected, that we aren’t coming back. My mother is there.” My mother was still alive. “The Securitate will call her in for an interrogation. They will torture her.” My husband: “No, we’re not staying for the wedding.” It was his nephew. I said: “I want to stay for the wedding. What is 10 more days…” And that’s when I telephoned my director, and told him: “File a request in my name, to prolong our residence permit, a leave of absence without pay for 10 days.” And he filed the request. When I returned, the Securitate didn’t call us in, or anything like that. But my director told me: “Why did you telephone me? They called me in, they asked me what you told me.” And we had made a mistake, for we had greatly wronged him. For they [the Securitate] intercepted everything that came from abroad. And they thought we were communicating using I don’t know what code. Oh dear, how it was in those days!

I went to Israel for 4 times: I first traveled there in 1977, then in 1988, in 1993, and then in November 1999 – February 1, 2000. On every occasion, I stayed there for 3 months. Only the first time, when I went there with my husband – I was employed, he was employed – we applied for a 30-day visa, but we stayed there for 40 days. I never wanted to stay there for good. I enjoyed my life over here. I had Romanian friends, Christian friends… my colleagues were very nice, I still have Christian friends, and no Easter or Christmas goes by without them inviting me to come.

I liked many things in Israel. Yet there was one thing I didn’t like, that there were soldiers on guard everywhere I traveled. When I went to Jerusalem to see the tomb of Jesus, it was guarded. If we went to a cinema, they searched us from head to toe. We were afraid everywhere we traveled, lest there should be a suicidal bombing. I said: “Is this what I should come here for? I have such a good life in Romania. I don’t belong here.” And a freak coincidence happened on our visit in 1977, for my uncle Heinic was traveling to Israel as well, he was in Jerusalem, and I went to see him. And they said: “Rica, stay here with your husband. Look, I will give you money, you can open an accounting practice. I can’t promise you anything for your husband, I can’t promise him a teaching position, for it is more difficult. But he knows Ivrit, and here all the Jews who came from Romania want to learn Ivrit, he will teach private lessons.” And I said: “Not for the world. It is beautiful here, but I can’t live with this fear.” All the more so since my mother and brother had stayed over here, in Romania.

But I liked in Jerusalem the neighborhood where they built houses on different levels. Its elegance is something else… with black, red, white marble, some extraordinary buildings. They built some buildings just as they did in the middle of New York, to hide the city of New York, or in Paris – I’m not talking about those classic buildings, the Elise Palace, or something like that. For instance, I liked Nathania more than Jerusalem, except for this neighborhood, which is something from a fairy tale.

I stayed at the orthodox monastery in Jerusalem for 10 days. It is a Romanian monastery, only for Romanian nuns. A certain Mandita Vamanu lives in my block of flats on the 3rd floor, and she has a sister who is a nun there, mother Nicodina. And we contacted her, her sister had told her on the telephone that I was coming, and that nun took me to see all the historical sites. It is very interesting to see everything there is to see. I liked all the historical objectives I visited. I visited various churches, monuments. Masterpieces. I went to the Wailing Wall, I left notes there. And I stayed in Jerusalem, for I wanted to see Jerusalem, visit the downtown area as well. As for those tall buildings, with 32, 42 floors, they are made of glass and concrete. And colorful, and with something to bewitch you.

But I got along so well with the nun… She is a gorgeous woman. She said she had a rented place in Jericho, that I should go and stay with her in Jericho – the first city of the world, they say. I said: “Sure thing, why not?” When I saw Palestinians in the street I said: “I’m not staying here, I’m not staying here.” “Stay, for they don’t know… [that you are Jewish.] Say that your name is Maria. Must you say that your name is Rica Segal?” The nun was an intelligent, refined woman. I was sitting with her on the porch one day, and I see a black man there in the courtyard, a Palestinian. I said: “This one knows I’m here, that I’m a Jewish woman from Romania. Somebody denounced you.” “Hold on, he’s the man who reads the water meters.” They have water meters on the smallest of streets over there. Civilized people. And she took me to see the Jericho Mountains, and there are some grottos over there, and tourists go inside them. I said: “I won’t go in, even if you kill me.” And I was torn to pieces: “I want to go back to Jerusalem, I want to go back there. I’m afraid in Jericho.” For there are many Palestinians living in Jericho. The city was still under the rule of Israel, but it isn’t anymore. And a woman from Jericho had to go to Jerusalem with her sick child. They were Palestinians. And they didn’t allow her to enter Jerusalem, she didn’t have a valid passport. And the nun knew this, but she didn’t tell me about it. She took a taxi, this nun, and she took that woman to Jerusalem. There were some tunnels that people used to enter Jerusalem. And the taxi driver drove through there. When I saw I was entering a tunnel, and when I looked out of the window, I saw a precipice in front of the car’s headlights… I didn’t say a word, I sat there tensed, and when we exited the tunnel, I said: “Mother, and I trusted you…” But when she told me what it was all about, that the child was sick and they couldn’t treat him in Jericho, I was somewhat appeased. But we could have fallen in that precipice, nobody knew how to find us. The taxi driver was Palestinian, too, and he knew the road with his eyes closed. But had I known [the road where he was taking us], I wouldn’t have left with them. I would have taken the bus, for there was a bus connection, and I would have left by myself. I tell you this so that I can relate you an incident as you see only in movies. And I had other incidents with this nun as well.

The nuns had organized a trip to Egypt. And there was a priest at the church in Jerusalem, his name was David, but he is anything but a priest. He was a businessman of sorts… He was bearded, but he didn’t wear religious clothes. And the nun, cheeky, went up to him and said: “I have someone, but she is Jewish” – well, it made no difference to him – “and she wants to go to Egypt too.” Then I agreed, and I had to pay a fee, I don’t know how many shekels, 100 shekels or 200 shekels. I was happy, I would have paid more, had he asked me for more. How now, I had traveled so far and I shouldn’t see Egypt? Especially since the itinerary included a visit to the pyramids. And then I thought: “Yes, but I must show them my passport at the border. And what if they see my name is Rica Segal? I’m not leaving anymore, not for the world.” I said: “If you give me my money back, fine, if not, that is also fine, but I’m not leaving. I’m a very fearful person.” And that priest, David, said: “Don’t be afraid, I’ll deal with this.” “I’m not going, no matter what.” Especially since I had experienced that trip through the tunnel with the nun, I said: “Who knows through what tunnel he might take us, I’m not going.” Now I’m sorry I didn’t, in a way. I should have taken a chance. What could have happened? And I didn’t see the pyramids. And I could have seen them for a song. Well… that’s that.

And I stayed at the monastery, I ate there, slept there. But the nuns lived in such crammed and miserly conditions… I didn’t like it at all. They have both small and large rooms. I slept in a room together with other girls from Romania, who went there to work, and the church offered them a place to sleep, and charged them 10 shekels a night – it was very little, it was symbolic. The church didn’t take any money from me. The nun didn’t let me pay for anything. But I believe she paid for the fact that I slept there. She didn’t pay for the food. And the food they eat there is so good! Oh my, oh my. During the 10 days that I stayed there, we ate in the courtyard. But the courtyard wasn’t that large, with long tables. They have the best dishes there. And they don’t worry about it, there is such an abundance…

In 1988 – my husband was no longer alive – I went there with my friend. And we went to the market in Tel Aviv, it is called “suc,” and we bought a branch full of bananas. And they also gave you a bag, so that you didn’t throw the peel on the ground, and we walked in the street like that and ate bananas. I had cravings. It’s not like you could buy bananas in Romania in 1988. You could only buy them under the counter. And we said: “You see, here you can eat as much as you want even if you have no money. And when we return to Romania and if we have money, there are no bananas you can buy.” Well, now you can buy them at every street corner, but you couldn’t before 1989.

When the revolution 18 broke out, people from the Textile Factories gathered in the street, but there were no victims. Do you know how developed the industry was here in Botosani? Well… Textiles, electric appliances, nuts and bolts… And nowadays I think only a ready-made clothes industry remains. But everything is upside-down nowadays. It is revolting for me, the fact that there are no handicraftsmen nowadays. There were shoemakers, tailors, carpenters, tinkers… there were all sorts. But why have they shut down all these things? When I see we import this from here, that from there, it is revolting for me, I can’t conceive it. They make us export our best products and, on the other hand, import and pay higher prices. That isn’t how an economy is run. Who could run things? I’m not afraid to say it. There is no one who can run things.

From 1991 until 2001 I taught Hebrew and talmud torah classes for children at the Community. There was a man named Stechelberg who taught there before me, he left to Israel, I knew Ivrit, there was nobody else, and they asked me to do it. I was no teacher, but I liked it. They sent me punctuation books from Israel – for you must teach children the punctuation at first. There were 18 pupils in the beginning, then there were 12, 10, 9, 8, and in the end there were 4 of them left. I don’t teach anymore, for there is no one to teach to, there are 2-3 children. 

What traditions do I still observe now? For instance, I don’t sew, wash or perform any kind of work on the Sabbath, I don’t clip my fingernails. You aren’t allowed to bathe, either, but I do, I don’t observe that part. And I don’t do these things on all other holidays. Even if the washing machine washes, I don’t. As for ironing clothes, I don’t do it during the rest of the year, either, I got used to the way they do it in Israel: they don’t iron clothes. If you really want to observe tradition to the letter, you aren’t even allowed to write. For instance, you aren’t allowed to eat salami or poultry that wasn’t sacrificed by the hakham. But what can you do? I eat them, on holidays as well.

I don’t go to the synagogue on Yom Kippur. I’m not an atheist. I’m not a religious person, either, but I fast on Yom Kippur and on this day. It’s the least I can do. I observe the fast fully, I don’t even drink water, I only take my medicine without any water.

Ever since I started teaching children, so after 1991, I have been going to the synagogue on Simchat Torah, and I was going there with the children. For there was a choir, and a choir conductor as well, and they sang in the choir. But now they no longer sing at the synagogue here in Botosani – the people are old. On Pesach: that’s the only time when I go to the community’s canteen.

I never lit candles on Friday evening, even if I had candlesticks. You have to light candles after you get married, not before that. And I regret that very much, I regret it profoundly, I regret I didn’t light candles as long as my husband was alive – I have no interest in the period that came after that. I observe very strictly the cult of the dead. I go to the cemetery very often.

I can say that I lead a good life. I can’t complain about anybody. I complain about the fact that perhaps I should have had a higher retirement pension. But other than that… As long as I have my good health. One of my hips aches, my legs hurt… I avoid standing up when I am in society and someone can see me – I stand up with great difficulty. But when I walk, I walk. But I am young at heart.

Glossary

Marim Haller
Botosani
Romania
Date of interview: September 2006
Interviewer: Emoke Major

Mrs. Maly, Marim Haller, is a very welcoming, cheerful person, wearing a wide, warm smile on her countenance for everyone. She is rather short, and despite her age of 91, she is very energetic. Ever since her husband died, she has been living alone for 10 years in their two-room apartment. She reads the press, cooks – I enjoyed a very well done ginger bread when I visited her on Rosh Hashanah. She also attends the synagogue every now and then – that’s where I made her acquaintance –, even though she is a little disappointed, for in the room reserved for women – and where, to tell the truth, one couldn’t hear much of the religious service –, they only talk, discuss cooking recipes, and don’t read prayers.

My family history 
Growing up
Religious life
During the War
After the War
Glossary

My family history

I didn’t meet any of my grandparents. I know that the grandparents from my father’s side were living in Harlau, in the county of Iasi. [Harlau is located 58 km south-east of Botosani.] My grandfather’s name was Nuta (Nathan) Ghebergher.

My father had 2 sisters – Sura and Ruhla – both of whom I’ve met. The name of one of his sisters after she married was Sura Solomon. I didn’t know her husband, he died during World War I, too. She had 3 children. Their names were: Nathan, Benu, and Slima. I grew up together with her children, they were about my age. They lived in Maxut, a hamlet near Harlau, part of the village of Deleni. [Maxut is located 3 km north-west of Harlau, Deleni is located 6 km north-west of Harlau.] But they too moved to Harlau afterwards. My aunt kept – as was customary in those days – a small store in the countryside, in Maxut, and they lived off it. And after they moved to Harlau, they had no income, she lived off her pension [a war widow’s pension]. Nathan Solomon was about 5 years older than me. He was married to Esterica. But I no longer remember whether he had any children or not. He had a store, something like that, or he was employed in a store. He lived in Harlau. He also died there, in Harlau, but I no longer remember when. Benu was a pharmacist – the pharmacist Solomon –, he actually had a drugstore in Botosani. Slima was married to Zizi Aron – Aron is the family name –, who is still living in Israel. And his son’s name is Avram Aron – people call him Adolica –, I don’t know what he does for a living but, in any case, he has a very highly placed position, he is living in Petah Tiqva. They had no other children – he was their only child.

The name of Ruhla’s husband – the other sister of my father – was Avram Kesler. They lived in Iasi, but I no longer remember what they did for a living. Their sons’ names were Leon and Saul. Ruhla had another son as well, David Kesler, who lived in Dorohoi, and who had a daughter, Jeni Kesler. Jeni Kesler was an actress at the Jewish Theatre in Iasi [Ed. note: The first professional theatre in Yiddish was founded in Gradina “Pomul Verde” (The “Green Tree” Garden), today the Park in front of the National Theatre in Iasi, as it was intended for a Jewish audience, the vast majority of Jews living in the Podul Ros suburb.], and then in Israel. She was married to Martin Bercovici, who also had a bachelor’s degree, but I forget in what field. They got married here, and left to Israel. I couldn’t tell you whether Jeni is still alive. I believe so. But we haven’t exchanged letters for a long time. She also had a little brother, his name was Solomonica, I think.

My father, Calman Leib Ghebergher, was born in Harlau. I never knew my father, for he went to war when I was a few months old, and he didn’t return. I don’t know what he did for a living. He was a very good man, everyone loved him and had a kind word to say about him, that’s what my mother used to tell me.

Nor did I know the grandparents from my mother’s side. The name of the grandfather from my mother’s side was Buium Klein.

All I know is that my mother’s brother was a very endowed man, as they say. His name was Avram Klein, but everybody called him Avromta. He was a tall, handsome man, and he was renowned, he was very well read, had a Jewish culture. He observed tradition, he often went to the shil [shul]. He also performed prayers at the temple on many occasions. But he did so voluntarily, didn’t receive any money for it. He was a pious person. He was about 5 years older than my mother. He had a leather shop in Botosani. My uncle died when he was around 90 [probably in the 1960’s]. He died here, in Botosani, he has a monument at the cemetery together with his wife.

His wife’s name was Seindl, and they had 8 children: 4 sons and 4 daughters. Clara Rintler, Saly Haimovici, Roza Flaiser, Liza Malis – these are the daughters. And these were the sons: Marcu – the youngest –, Iancu, Iulius, and … oh my, what was his name – I can’t remember it just now. They were all older than me. The youngest of them was 4-5 years older than me. All of them graduated high school. The boys were merchants, their father’s trade. But not all of them lived in Botosani. Iulius lived in Targu Ocna, he too ran a leather shop. [Targu Ocna is located 82 km south-west of Bacau.] I once went to visit them, I was young back then. He had 2 sons, the name of one of them was Beno Klein. Clara Rintler – uncle’s oldest daughter – lived in Targu Ocna, she got married there. They had a son, Beno Rintler. Liza Malis lived in Falticeni. [Falticeni is located 27 km south of Suceava.] Saly Haimovici and Roza Flaiser lived in Botosani. Saly’s husband’s name was Max Haimovici, he ran a haberdashery store in the old downtown of Botosani, around the corner. They had children, but I don’t remember their names. They all left to Israel after World War II.

Leon Flaiser was Roza Flaiser’s husband. They ran a furniture store here, in Botosani, on Dragos Voda St. There is a synagogue right at the top of the street, and their house was located next to the synagogue. They had 2 children: a son, Marcu, and a daughter, Alexandra – Sanda, Salica. They both have a bachelor’s degree, they graduated from I.E.S. [The Institute for Economic Studies]. Marcusor is married to a Christian, her name is Tuti. She is Romanian, but she converted to Judaism. They left to Israel. And they have a daughter – Raluca, who has a bachelor’s degree herself by now. Alexandra’s married name, was Rosianu – Rosenberg. Her name was Rosianu, they issued Romanian names as well. They live in Bucharest. Sanda is about 10 years younger than me.

My mother had yet another sister, Dora Solomovici. She was 1 or 2 years younger than my mother. She lived in Botosani as well. On Calea Nationala St., as you head towards the cemetery, way up, that’s where she lived when the children were small. Her husband – whom I haven’t met, either – died, and left her with 4 children. However, all of them graduated high school, they made a life for themselves. These were my 4 cousins: Liza, Tili, Benu, and Lazar. Lazar was the eldest, followed by Liza – she was 1 year older than me. Benu and Tili were younger – Benu was 1 year younger than me and Tili was 3-4 years younger than me. And my aunt was left a widow to raise the children, and my uncle – Avram Klein – supported her and the children. He took care of most anything when the children were little – he supplied them with various things, gave my aunt spending money. And there was also the money that the eldest child earned – Lazar. My aunt sent him as apprentice to a watchmaker, he learned watchmaking, and he helped supporting the household, as much as he could. He learned watchmaking because my uncle said he had to learn a trade. And he worked as a watchmaker here, in Botosani, but he worked for an employer, he didn’t run his own shop. He was a very good lad. But he had tuberculosis and died when he was young, when he was in his 30’s. He wasn’t married. He is buried here, in Botosani.

Benu graduated from the Superior School of Commerce, and the girls graduated high school. Liza won the title of Miss Botosani. I no longer remember how she was voted. All I know is that she was declared Miss Botosani. She had beautiful blue eyes. Liza got married in Bucharest, her name was Liza Schwartz afterwards. Her husband died not long after they got married. Liza didn’t have any children. She died in Bucharest, I forget when. In any case, it happened later on, for I knew her even when she was in her 40’s, 50’s. Benu was married to Martzy Schuffer and had a child – I no longer remember its name. Benu worked at the Scanteia newspaper, his name was Barbu Stoian, but I couldn’t tell you if he officially changed his name or only published under that name. [Ed. note: The Scanteia (Spark) newspaper, instrument of the Romanian Communist Party Central Committee, started to be legally published in 1944].

The name of the youngest, Tili, was Puscaciuc – her husband’s name. She is married to a Christian and has 2 children: Sandel and Raluca – accomplished children, they both have a bachelor’s degree. I’m not on such good terms with Tili – I no longer remember what it was that made us drift apart. However, I still thought about calling her on the phone to see if she was still alive, how she was doing, for it’s been years since I no longer have any news of her. She is the last of my cousins that might still be alive.

My mother’s name was Sura, daughter of Buium [Sura bat Buium] – my grandfather’s name was Buium. That’s how they named children in those days. And the family name was Klein. She could read and write Romanian, she could even read Jewish [Yiddish], but I don’t know about the rest [, what her studies were]. She was a very cheerful, kind-hearted person. She helped others very much. People used to go begging in those days. There were various older Jewish women who would come by our house and ask for alms. And my mother would always give to others from the little that she had. She was a very kind woman, and a very good housewife – all her grandchildren loved her. She cooked 100% kosher. She was a religious person.

Growing up

I was born in Harlau in 1915. Officially, my name is Marim, but people call me Maly. I was named after a neighbor whom my mother knew. At school, I was registered as Marim Nuta, even though my father’s actual name was Sin Nuta, after his father. Formerly, that’s how people were named, Sin Nuta, Sin This, Sin That – son of Nuta, son of this, son of that. [Editor’s note: The word “sin” is a dialect form of the Yiddish “zun” (zin)=son.] Afterwards, I secured an attestation from the court of law stating that Nuta and Ghebergher were the same name. It doesn’t matter, I changed it afterwards, when I got married.

I was born late in their life. My mother wanted children, but it was a very long time before I was born. I know that I was born after 10 years, 10 years after my parents married. I had no brother or sister. My father died in the war [World War I], I lived with my mother. My mother administered a business in the house, in the very room where we lived – half the room was occupied by the store. She sold tobacco, cigarettes, and she also received a pension after my father – that was our livelihood. My mother loved me very much. Seeing that it was only after 10 years of marriage – for she couldn’t bear children – that she had me… I was the apple of her eyes. I don’t recall her scolding me. Perhaps she scolded me if I did some mischief, but I don’t remember.

We lived at the outskirts of Harlau, and my father’s sister lived in a village, in Maxut; well, it was at a distance of 1 km from where we lived, we walked up the hill and reached her place. And then we used to go to her place, in the countryside. On foot. Her children and I grew up together. We played with dolls, we also played Popa Prostu’ [Editor’s note: it is a card game called “foolish priest”.] – but I forget how it is played.

I started going to school at the Romanian school in Harlau. There was also a Jewish school, but I completed [the first 4 grades at] the Romanian school. That’s where my mother enlisted me. I believe we lived in Harlau until I was about 10.

And afterwards we moved to Botosani, my mother and I. We lived in a rented house on Dragos Voda St., which had 2 rooms and a kitchen, and mother would rent one of the rooms to tenants – she rented one of the rooms, and we lived in the other room – so that we could get by, she rented the room to pupils – that’s how life was in those days!  

I started attending the Commercial School in Botosani, it consisted of three grades, and then, if you wanted to, you could continue studying there. After that, I attended the Superior School of Commerece, another 4 grades. I graduated the Superior School of Commerce in 1934. I didn’t have to pay schooling taxes as my father had died in the war. And I was a prize-winning pupil, I was a good pupil. I couldn’t continue my studies, even though I sat for an exam and passed it. I sat for an admission exam at the Commercial Academy in Bucharest, but I didn’t continue my studies. There was no one to support me financially, my mother was alone, life was hard. I had a job, and I had to support my mother as well.

I entered a job when I was 13, and I was already earning money by then. Little as it was, but it helped to support the household. If my mother was unemployed… [I would go to] School during half of the day, [and go to] work during the remaining half. It was like this: if I had classes in the morning, I would go to school in the afternoon. If I had classes in the afternoon, I would go to work in the morning, and again at 4 in the afternoon when I returned from school. And I worked until evening. My employer’s name was Solomon Margulies, he had a store where colonial products were sold, retail and wholesale – he also sold products wholesale to others who supplied themselves from him. At first, I was hired as a commercial intern – but I was paid for it. We were required by the school to complete a period of internship. And by completing my internship there, I remained employed afterwards as well, and worked as an accountant.

The name of Solomon Margulies´s wife was Seindl Margulies, but people called her Janeta. They had two children, a son and a daughter. The son, Lica Margulies, died on the Struma 1. He left to Israel and died on the ship. He was 1 year younger than me [was born in 1916]. His sister, Aniela Margulies, is also younger than me, we may be some 6-7 years apart [was born around 1920-21]. She married after World War II, at the end of the 1940’s, beginning of the 1950’s. The wedding took place here in Botosani, they left to Israel afterwards – she was already married when she left. She left to Israel early on, around 1950. Indeed, I have no news of her anymore.

They, the Margulies family lived in Carol Square. The Margulies store selling colonial products was downstairs, on the ground floor, and they lived on the first floor. It was located opposite the monument. [Ed. note: The monument “Major Ignat’s machine gun company mounting an offensive,” erected by the Botosani-born architect Horia Miclescu and inaugurated in 1929.] There was a park in Carol Square, and there were stores on both sides of it. It was still part of downtown Botosani, but it wasn’t located on the main street.

There were very many Jews in Botosani before World War II. There were more than 10,000 Jews living in Botosani back then. [By means of immigrations from Galicia, “through natural growth,” the number of Jews was going to increase significantly: in 1832, there were approximately 1477 Jews living here; in 1930 – approximately 12,000 Jews, today there are only 125 left. The Jewish Community of Botosani.] There were only Jewish stores throughout the old downtown area: manufacture shops, stores selling colonial products, an inn, 2 restaurants – there were all kinds of stores. All the traders in downtown Botosani were Jewish. There was Moscovici, Oizderovici, there were many of them. There was only one Christian trader – his name was Anchele.

There were youth organizations, Zionist organizations. Such as the Hashomer Hatair 2, I don’t remember any other. But I couldn’t attend the meetings as I was at work, and I didn’t enter that organization. I didn’t have that much spare time, since I was working for my subsistence. I was working very hard. I even put in extra hours until late into the night, and I was tired. Both school and work at the same time. Do your homework, this and that – I had no spare time.

I used to go to the cinema every now and then, and the odd ball. There were balls organized by Jews. The ballroom was rented. There were several ballrooms. One was located where the cinema still stands nowadays – the Popovici hall. It housed a movie theatre. And the cinema was suspended when a ball was organized, and it became a ballroom. Usually, it was Gypsies who played at balls, they were the ones who provided the music. But they could play Jewish music very well and they played it at balls. I wasn’t too keen on dancing. I couldn’t dance very well, I only knew a couple of dances. Well, when the partner would lead during the tango, I would dance, but when it came to other dances… I never waltzed. I didn’t know how to waltz. There were also meetings of the Jewish youth, and I used to attend those. Several activities were performed there… There was also a Jewish library, and they conducted reviews of the books in the library, they would discuss a specific book, analyze it, everyone offered their opinion. We used to meet at a classmate’s place on many occasions and began discussing books, authors.

We used mixed languages at home – both Romanian and Jewish, Yiddish. I knew a little Hebrew, but I forgot it. I didn’t learn it at the cheder, I took private lessons – I paid for and received private lessons –, but very few. I might have been 9-10. I started receiving private lessons from a teacher. He used to come over at our place, if not, I would go to his – it varied. In fact, he wasn’t an actual teacher, he simply knew Hebrew. But I dropped out afterwards.

Religious life

My mother, my uncle – they were pious people. I couldn’t say the same for myself. My mother was religious. She cooked 100% kosher. That’s what we had at home – kosher. There was no other way in those days. Almost everyone kept kosher. People didn’t eat milk and meat mixed together. And they didn’t mix the milk dishes with those for meat, everything was kept separate. I didn’t really observe this tradition. That’s life.

Nobody in our family wore a wig or had their hair cut short. But my mother always covered her head with a head kerchief. She wore regular clothes. As the fashion was in those days. Dresses coming down below the knee. It seems that clothing back then was as it is nowadays, with little differences.

She went to the synagogue on holidays and very rarely on Saturday. As a child, I used to go with my mother to the synagogue. My mother stayed inside the synagogue and we, the children, used to go in and out. Later, I didn’t go to the synagogue anymore.

My mother used to sacrifice a fowl every Saturday, she also did so during the week if needed. She didn’t raise fowls, she bought them. It was like this, everyone had a small cage and kept a bird or two there until they sacrificed them. But they didn’t raise them. She took the birds to the hakham to be slaughtered – people couldn’t do without a hakham. [Editor’s note: According to Alan Unterman (Dictionary of Jewish traditions) among the Sephardim Jews the rabbi was also called hakham (in Hebrew: wise), but according to Dr. Slomo Leibovici-Lais (President, World Cultural Association of Jews from Romania) who lives now in Israel, writes in his ‘Lexicon’ that the name of hakham ’in Romania was addressed to the shochet’ (book supported by the ‘Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture’ and ‘Biroul pentru Comunitati din Agentia Evreiasca’ (ie. the Office for the Communities of the Jewish Agency), Liscat haKehiot)] There were kosher butchers at the market as well, who sold kosher meat. It wasn’t mixed with treyf. And only the upper part of the animal was sold, the lower part wasn’t for consumption. That’s according to my knowledge. Only when it came to larger animals. [Editor’s note: Among the four-footed animals the artiodactyl and ruminant animals are kosher, like the cattle and the sheep. The joint tendons have to be eliminated, but this requires to be done with skill. If there is no expert, it is simpler to consume only the upper part. This came into the general use.] We ate all the meat of fowls. Including the gizzard and the leibara [the liver]. People cooked “anghiact” – meaning you chopped the lived, added onion and mixed in a little oil and salt. This was served as vorspeiss [appetizer].

On Friday she baked some very nice, kneaded bread – coilici. [Ed. note: Coilici is a variant for challah, similar to the word „kajlics“ used by some Hungarian-speaking Jews in Romania. Both words have as origin the Hungarian word „kalacs“.] And when she lit the candles she placed them on the table and covered them; she lit the candles when she recited the prayer. She always used to light 6 candles on Friday evening. I forget why 6. [Ed. note: It is customary to light two candles, although some families light more, sometimes in accordance with the number of children]. She always lit candles on holidays.

We always had meat soup on Friday evening. There was also a vorspeiss [appetizer] – either some “essigfleisch”, or meatballs, pite [petcha, here is a variant of the calves' foot jelly], something. You cook a regular soup, you take the meat out of the soup together with a bit of soup, then add sour cherry preserve – it was the sour cherry that made it sour –, and you have essigfleisch. Pite [petcha] is as follows: after boiling the soup, you add an egg to the soup liquid and let it curdle, add some more lemon juice or a bit of vinegar, stir, and add the meat to the mix. This is usually cooked from entrails: joints, legs, neck. We ate the meat from the soup, and then there was stewed fruit and, if we had it, something sweet for desert. Usually, my mother prepared kighi [kugel]. It’s like a pudding, you prepare it on Saturday – you can use apples, or other fruit. And we had kighi at the end of the meal.

On Saturday, lunch consisted of a vorspeiss [appetizer] – whatever you had, you could even prepare a salad –, and then we had soup, meat with pickles, something, and then we had kighi. Saturday’s dinner was less pretentious, you ate whatever you had. Mother didn’t work on Saturday. No, God forbid! Neither did uncle – the store was closed on Saturday. It was completely closed. An acquaintance would drop by our home on Saturday to light the fire for us, check if it was still burning… And you paid for that.

Mother had separate dishes for Passover, it was stored separately, in the attic. That was the custom. And when Passover approached, she would take the dishes down from the attic, wash them, prepare them, go to the hakham to have the fowl sacrificed, start preparing the food. She recited a prayer, and I believe she used to throw the small morsels of leftover bread into the fire. We didn’t eat bread, flour, or pasta. Everything made from flour was removed from inside the house, a prayer was recited, and we had a room that we didn’t use, that’s where everything was stored, and it was retrieved 8 days later.

Ussually, on Passover she cooked soup and ‘parjoale’ – meatballs with onion and garlic – it depends, she cooked all kinds of dishes. The food on Passover was almost the same as on all other days. Meaning that the difference wasn’t that great. We didn’t eat bread, we ate matzah, keisal [keyzl], latkes. Keisal is a pudding made from eggs and matzah flour, which is cooked in the oven and then sliced. It isn’t sweet. You eat it with meat, if you cooked anything that involved a sauce. People cooked borsch with meatballs. The borsch was made from beet, you prepared it in advance. You placed the beet in a jar and you made borsch for Passover. Water turned sour. You took the beet and left it to macerate in water. And it turned sour. And you used that to make the borsch sour. After boiling the greens and vegetables for the borsch [for the soup], you added that to the mix. And you also used the borsch to prepare the meatballs. Either that or lemon. Lemon was allowed. You gave it a sour taste by using lemon juice.

We never had a Seder evening organized at home – my father died during the war – but I’ve seen it done. We visited my mother’s brother on many occasions during the first 2 days. The boys were grown by then, they asked questions [Mah Nishtanah], I don’t know what. Well, it was a family reunion. The afikoman was hidden away, somebody would find it and steal it. They had to pay in order to get it back. I didn’t even try to look for it [I would let my cousins do it].

On Purim we were invited over at my uncle’s, Avram Klein’s, and a large table was laid, with all the children, his sister, we all got together. It was beautiful! We ate, talked, laughed, sang. I forget what songs we used to sing. I don’t have a musical voice and that’s why I didn’t even remember the songs. I believe that we, the children, used to wear masks. I used to go out of the house, put the mask on, go inside again, they pretended not to recognize me… I was little! I think my cousins wore masks as well. But I can’t recall any of their mischief. And other people came, sang. And they were given money, food. Jews came as well, there were all sorts of people. The Jews [acquaintances, friends] paid visits to each other. Grown-ups didn’t wear masks. For you didn’t even let them in if they wore masks – you couldn’t know whom you were dealing with.

On Purim my mother baked cakes. Hamantashen were ever-present. I myself bake hamantashen today, and offer them to the people I know. And that’s how it was, people sent each other cakes, they offered them to you when you visited them. And you would keep hamantashen to last you from Purim until Passover, in order to have them as farfostan before Easter. To farfost – that’s how they say in Jewish –, meaning that you had a meal before fasting. You ate whatever food you had, a good, full meal, and at the end, you also had hamantashen for desert. And that was a closure, you didn’t eat bread for 8 days, during Passover. Farfostan occurred several times a year, both on Passover, and before Iom Kipar [Yom Kippur]. [Editor’s note: Before the beginning of the fast, on the afternoon before Yom Kippur there is the “seuda mafseket”, the traditional meal before the fast. The word farfostan is the Yiddish variant of the German word Vorfasten, which means ‘before the fast.’]

I don’t remember any details about Chanukkah. I did have a spinning top. I received Chanukkah gelt from my mother, from relatives, and I bought whatever I had to buy, whatever I needed.

On Sikkes [Sukkot], people built a sukkah and even ate inside it. We didn’t build one, we went to our uncle’s. We didn’t do this every day, he invited us to come over, say – once or twice. He built the sukkah in their courtyard. It was like a pavilion made from planks and wood, fitted with chairs and a table. They decorated it with paintings – rather regular paintings –, carpets, they also decorated it with apples with leaves and everything – just like that, still attached to twigs. In the evening, when we left the sukkah, we removed all the things, lest they should get stolen! It usually served for eating lunch. A prayer was recited on this occasion as well. It was recited before and during the meal, and a broche was performed for the bread, the wine, for everything.

The main holidays were Ros Hasuna [Rosh Hashanah] and Iom Kipar [Yom Kippur]. We performed the kapores before Yom Kippur. [Ed. note: Kaparot is a ceremony performed by some Jews on the evening before Yom Kippur, when sins symbolically transfer from individuals to a white rooster and a white chicken for women.] Both my mother and I had a chicken. We didn’t mix them. You held it by the legs and wings, placed it on top of your head and turned it. In the meantime, mother read the necessary prayers, and I repeated after her. And then the chickens were sacrificed during the holidays. On the evening of Yom Kippur we were summoned to perform the offostan [affasten] and we were given sweets and some liquor, without fail. [Editor’s note: The ojfastn or affasten is also a Yiddish word, means to stop or finish the fasting. This is also a somewhat ceremonious feast.] People baked honey cake, especially on holidays – on Rosh Hashanah, on [the evening of] Yom Kippur. As a child, I fasted until 12 on Yom Kippur – I broke the fast afterwards. I brought along a parcel of food – for my mother was at the synagogue, I would go to see her –, and I ate on my way there or outside together with the children.           

I forget on what holiday, but I know people went to a fountain, somewhere where there was water – and this was a tradition. I used to go as well, to enjoy myself. You could go to a fountain or to a creek if there were any. And everything was shaken to remove the dust. All the sins were shaken off and left there. [Ed note: This tradition is called tashlich – an expression describing the symbolic casting away of sins. Devout Jews gather by a river and recite prescribed passages that speak of God’s willingness to forgive a repentant sinner.]

During the War

Life was pretty hard for us during World War II. I lived with my mother here, in Botosani. Jewish children weren’t allowed to attend school 3, but I was exempted and could go to school, as I was a war orphan. My father died in the 1916-1918 war, and, as a result, I was allowed to attend – even though Jews couldn’t attend school, I did. [Editor’s note: Mrs Haller was in her 20s when the anti-Jewish laws started, so she had already finished shool long time before.] I wore the yellow star 4 on my chest when I went out into the street. I didn’t have to wear it at school. I used to wear it until I arrived at school, and take it off once there. There might have been other restrictions for Jews as well, but I no longer remember. The head is small, there isn’t enough room for everything.

I worked at Margulies since 1929 until 1943. I remained employed at this store for colonial products for a very long time. And then I obtained a transfer to Societatea Hartia [the Paper Company], where I was in charge of bookkeeping until 1944. From June 1944 until September 1944 I worked for the City Hall of Botosani. Many goods had been confiscated from Jews in 1943-1944, or people left and abandoned their goods, which were taken over by authorities, and they all needed to be assessed and registered, and there was an institution in charge of this – Botosani Urban Goods.

After the War

Cooperatives were organized after the war, and I obtained a transfer to the Citizen’s Cooperative as head of department. After that I worked at the Alimentara Commercial Organization from 1948 until 1956, then at the Recolta [the Harvest] Regional Industrial Unit for Acquisitions – it was still an industrial unit for cereals, and you got transferred from one place to another because they always kept closing down and received a new name, everything was being reorganized. I also worked at the Ready-made Clothes Factory, and at the Medicinal Plants Industrial Unit from 1960, where I was accountant-in-chief already. I worked there until I retired in 1970. I never missed a day at work.

My husband was recommended to me by David Kesler, my cousin in Dorohoi. My husband was a teacher in Dorohoi, and my cousin knew him well. My cousin came with him to our house in Botosani. I went out with him for a walk, and [on returning] when he entered the house, he said: ‘We are engaged.’ And actually it wasn’t long afterwards that we got married. We saw and liked each other. At first sight. We knew details about each other beforehand from this cousin of mine. I knew what he did for a living, what sort of person he was, how he conducted himself. Mother was very fond of him.

His name was Iacob Haller, he was from Siret. He was 1 year older than me, he was born in 1914. He graduated the Faculty of Natural Sciences in Cernauti. At the time when I met my husband, his parents weren’t alive anymore. They were 2 siblings: his sister and him. His sister’s name was Rebeca. She lived with my mother after I got married. And she left to Israel afterwards. She didn’t marry.

I got married in 1946. I had a religious ceremony performed, in Margulies’ house. He was actually my sponsor at the wedding. They wedded me. They had 4 rooms, and that’s where my wedding was held. They brought a chuppah there, and Burstein performed the wedding. He was a Ruf [rav], he wasn’t a rabbi. A Ruf who also performed chores – the slaughtering of animals for meat, kosher, what have you… [Editor’s note: The Ruf or Rof is a pronunciation variant of the Rav which has the same word root as the Rabbi. The difference between the two (mainly in the 20th century) is that the Rabbi is who was anoint, the Rav is who is an expert in the Jewish traditions, for instance, he is a important Talmud scholar. The Rav is an honorific title and not an authorized one. He could decide about dubious kashrut issues, because he had enough knowledge about it.] The wedding sponsors hold you arm in arm under the chuppah, the groom stands still and you turn around him together with the sponsors. Afterwards a drink is given, the husband drinks, then you are given to drink. That’s how the ceremony went. A wedding contract was drawn up [ketubbah] – I still have it, I ran across it the other day. And there were guests, a feast, people ate, just like at a wedding. The guests were relatives, acquaintances. There weren’t many people. There were, say, enough persons to fit into a house.

I lived on Dragos Voda St. after I got married. That was our first house [home]. We paid rent. It was a large house, but we only had a room and an entrance hall, and our kitchen was in the courtyard. But our room was very nice, it measured 5 meters by 5. We had a dog when we lived on Dragos Voda St. And once it accompanied my husband to the high school and returned home all by itself. We moved here from Dragos Voda St., in a block of flats. We moved just after they finished building the blocks of flats. And we paid by installments and purchased the apartment. We never owned a home until we bought the apartment in a block of flats. Where could we get one?

My husband obtained a transfer from the high school in Dorohoi to the “A. T. Laurian” High School in Botosani, and it wasn’t long before he became principal of the “A. T. Laurian” High School. He was principal for a few years. He wasn’t a party member – nor was I. He taught biology. He was known to be a good teacher. He was on the board of examiners for the baccalaureate examination, he was a highly esteemed teacher. He worked at the “A. T. Laurian” High School until his retirement. He retired around 1972-1973. And he departed [died] in 1996 and that’s that.

My husband spoke both Romanian and Yiddish, too. He wasn’t very religious, moderate I’d say. He went to the synagogue very rarely. He did so on holidays. Especially when prayers for the dead were performed, he always attended the synagogue as well. He also wore the tefillin at home from time to time.

I used to light candles on Friday night, and I still do, to this day. I pray for those that are no longer among us – I light these candles in their memory. I don’t recite that many prayers. That’s all I say – may they rest in peace! I light 2 candles – I’ve grown into this habit. The candlesticks are made from silver, I received them as a gift from our wedding sponsors, the Margulies family. I didn’t have separate dishes for meat and milk. I didn’t even eat meat and milk separately, I somewhat mixed them.

After my mother died, I sat shivah for 8 days in her memory. [Editor's note: In Botosani, I have come across the custom of sitting shivah for 8 days instead of 7]. I honor my parents’ memory very much. You place a rug on the floor, and you sit on it. You stand up from time to time. These are the customs. The dead are buried in white sheets. People make clothes for them, sew, but they must be white, in any case. The dead are not dressed in a suit of clothes, no. You pay money to the Community, they buy them, manufacture them – a woman at the Community makes them. That’s life!

When I was married and was on holiday, I used to go on vacation every year, at spas, at a resort or other, we used to go on organized trips. I used to go everywhere with my husband. We traveled to Cernauti, Chisinau, Leningrad, Moscow, Warsaw, Berlin.

I’ve been to Israel around 3 times. But I traveled there without my husband, for he had died. I don’t remember in what years I traveled there. I’ve been to Jerusalem, Haifa. After that, I visited all the places on a trip. I’ve also been to the Dead Sea. I was thrilled by what I was seeing there. A beautiful country, a country built by means of hard work. Why, it was in the process of being built, it was just beginning, but still, beautiful things. Much has been done there. I always saw something new every time I traveled there. People worked there. A beautiful country, but it was surrounded by enemies. That’s how it was.

How could I pass the time now? I read the press – “Adevarul” and “Monitorul de Botosani.” [Ed. note: “Adevarul” (The Truth), Romanian newspaper. It was issued weekly in Iasi during 1871-1872 and, with intermissions, daily in Bucharest between 1888 and 1951; “Monitorul de Botoşani” (The Botosani Monitor)] I have a subscription for the “Adevărul” newspaper, and I only buy “Monitorul…” once a week. I also buy books now and then, go out for a walk, a friend visits me once in a while – this, that. And time passes. The Leontes come to visit me too – Elena and Vasile Leonte –, who support me, look after me.

Glossary

Berta Finkel
Botosani
Romania
Interviewer: Emoke Major
Date of interview: September 2006

Mrs. Berta Finkel is a short person who talks fast, with a Moldavian accent. After a life of hardship, typical for sheepherders, she liquidated the household in 1996 when her husband died, and she moved in with her unmarried daughter in a 2-room apartment in a block of flats. But the consequences of her hard life remained: her feet ache, which is why she moves with great difficulty – even inside the house she can only move by supporting herself against the items of furniture. But, on high holidays, this doesn’t stop her from walking slowly and clinging to her daughter in order to attend the synagogue in Botosani where, to her pride, her son, Gustav Finkel, performs the religious service.

My family history 
Growing up
During the War
After the War
Glossary

My family history

My father’s parents were handicraftsmen, my grandfather was a furrier. My grandfather’s name was Moise Grimberg, and my grandmother’s name was Marim. They lived in Sulita, they died many years ago. [Sulita is located 35 km south-east of Botosani]. I didn’t know them, they died before I was born.

My father had several brothers. The first-born was Fisel Grimberg, followed by David Grimberg, the third born was my father, Marcu Grimberg, and then there was Sloim Grimberg.

Fisel Grimberg lived in Braila, and he had 3 children. I can’t remember what he did for a living, what his profession was. He divorced his wife, and then he came to live here, in Botosani. He is buried here, in the Jewish cemetery in Botosani. The children were married as well, some of them left to Israel, and I believe I still have a cousin living in Israel, Ietti Grimberg, who is older than me, she is over 80 years old. But what do I know, perhaps she’s no longer among us, perhaps she’s no longer alive… I am no longer in touch with them. She also had a younger brother, his name was Lica Grimberg, he too was living in Israel. He came to visit his father’s grave in Botosani not long ago, some 4 or 5 years ago. He died in the meantime. I don’t know whether or not he has any children.

The name of the second born was David Grimberg, he lived in Sulita. He was a dyer, he dyed wool. This is how it was in days of yore [formerly]: people dyed wool, they weaved woolen rugs. His wife’s name was Liza, and they had 4 sons: the name of the eldest son was Iancu Grimberg, the second born was Rahmil Grimberg, the third born was Lica Grimberg, and the fourth born was Nuham Grimberg. David Grimberg died in Bucharest. He died just after the war – I believe my brother died that year as well, so it was in 1947 – he wanted to leave to Israel with his wife and children, but the old man died on the way, before boarding the airplane, and they had to bury him in Bucharest. But I don’t know where he is buried, in which cemetery – there are several cemeteries in Bucharest. His wife died in Israel. Of the 4 sons, I heard that Nuham Grimberg, the youngest, died. Three of them are still alive. They are married, I think they got married in Israel.

My father had another brother, Sloim Grimberg. His wife’s name was Elca, and they had 3 children. The name of one of the daughters was Cerna, and the name of her younger sister was Binca. Sloim Grimberg had a son as well, Aron Grimberg, but he died when he was young, he wasn’t even married. He is buried here, in Botosani. I think about this every time I go to the cemetery: ‘Aron Grimberg, I must light a candle for him.’ But I don’t know where his monument is [his grave]. They lived in Sulita, and then, when people were evacuated 1, they settled in Botosani. The old man traded fowls back then, when he lived in Sulita, he bought and sold fowls. I was living in Sulita when Elca and Aron Grimberg died. Sloim Grimberg died in Israel. He too left to Israel with his 2 daughters. The eldest of the daughters is no longer alive, she died in Israel. This cousin has 2 sons. Binca is still alive, she too is married, with children.

Fremita Segal was another of my father’s sisters. Her husband’s name was Leon Segal, he was my father’s brother-in-law and traded in scrap iron. They left to Israel, both my aunt and uncle died there. But one of their daughters is living in Israel, she is the same age as my sister, she is married, with children.

My father’s name was Marcu Grimberg, but at the shul he was called Mortha [his Jewish name was Mortha, Mortkhe]. I don’t know in what year he was born, but he was around 5 years older than my mother [he was probably born around 1895]. He belonged to the 1916 contingent, but I no longer remember how old he was at that time. My father had no formal education. And he actually had other brothers as well, but I don’t know if Fisu [Fisel] or David Grimberg went to school.

My mother’s parents lived in Sulita as well. I didn’t get to know them, either. I didn’t get to know any of my grandparents, neither from my father’s side, nor from my mother’s. The name of the grandfather from my mother’s side was Sulim Meerovici. I don’t know what my grandfather did for a living, my mother didn’t tell me. But he had a lot of children. He had my mother while he was married to his first wife, but his first wife died, and my grandfather remarried. The name of his second wife was Leia. I don’t know how many husbands this grandmother had. At first, she was married to a man named Tierer, then she was married to my grandfather from Sulita, Sulim Meerovici; after Sulim Meerovici died, she left to Iasi with one of her sons, Moise Meerovici – for he wasn’t married yet, he was a bachelor –, and she married once more – the name of her last husband was Ornstrein.

I had an uncle in Bucharest, Carol Meerovici, meaning one of my mother’s brothers. He was the son of my grandfather’s first wife. This uncle of mine was an accountant. But he died many years ago. He had 3 sons, they left to Israel. The name of the eldest son was Jinel, he was married and died in Israel. The name of the other one was Puiu, and they had yet another brother, Leonard, who left to America and got married there. At present, I have no news of them anymore.

Peisic Meerovici was another of my mother’s brothers. I no longer remember what he did for a living. Afterwards, when he left Sulita and settled here, in Botosani, this uncle of mine, Peisic Meerovici, worked at the DCA [facility for collecting scrap iron], and then, as he grew old, he retired. He left to Israel after he retired, he was an old man by then. Both he and my aunt died in Israel. And I had a cousin who was 8 years younger than me; he married and had 2 children. They lived in Bucharest, but they too left to Israel, and that’s where he died. I don’t know how he died – for he left there, so far away, I don’t know.

Some of my mother’s brothers died during World War II as well, I couldn’t tell you which of them, I couldn’t remember their names. Zeilic Meerovici was one of them, he lived here, in Botosani. He was married, had a family, and I even have a cousin, Beatrice, who settled in Israel. And I also had a cousin, his name was Lazar Meerovici, he was older than Beatrice, he too had children, but he died in Israel.

There was also Moise Meerovici, who was the son of my grandfather and of my mother’s stepmother. He left to Iasi, he had a job there, he got married to a pretty woman and had 4 children – 2 daughters and 2 sons. And they all left to Israel. He died there.

My mother’s maiden name was Toni Meerovici, and her Jewish name was Toba [Tobe]. She was from Sulita, she was born in 1900. She went to school in Sulita, I don’t know how many classes she graduated. But my mother spoke French, she learned French in private, my grandfather hired a private teacher for her.

I don’t know how my parents met, I didn’t even ask. But they were both from Sulita, they probably knew each other. They certainly had a religious ceremony performed. Formerly, Sulita was a nice little borough when I was a child. 300 Jewish families lived there. Now there is no Jew left in Sulita. There were handicraftsmen, tailors, it had everything. There were several merchants in Sulita, they had large businesses, they had money. One of them was Hers Lehrer, another was Simhe Meer Schwartz. They left to Israel, but I don’t know if they’re still alive. One of them was David Lazarovici, he had an inn, but he passed away, he and his wife are buried here. User Goldman lived next to us, he had a large store where he sold wheat flour, candy, chocolate, scrabia [Probably a variant for “scrumbie” (scombroid fish) used in the region of Moldavia], all sorts of olives, lamp oil – one could always buy that there. And he had some 4 daughters and 3 sons. One of the boys is buried in Sulita, he was deaf and dumb. The other children left to Israel, and they all died, only the youngest of them is still alive, Rahmil Goldman. He came to Botosani 2 years ago and said: ‘Where is little Berta, I would like to meet her so.’ My name is Berta. Since we were neighbors there, in Sulita, and lived wall-to-wall, we were friends. Their father was a big millionaire. My father wasn’t such a wealthy person, I couldn’t say that, but we had enough to get by. And he wanted to see me. And another man living in Sulita, who is 1 or 2 years younger than me, didn’t want to take him to see me, although he knew where I lived. We are not on such good terms. When I go to the shul, he doesn’t even tell me ‘Happy New Year!’

My mother didn’t have a job, she was a housewife – that’s how it was in those days. My father raised sheep. He had no other job besides that. But he didn’t keep the sheep at home, there wasn’t enough room, he kept them somewhere else. We also raised white cattle, and my father also had a horse, which he rode to Botosani. He also had a cart, some sort of hackney carriage, as they say, with only one horse, and he came by cart every week to Botosani and the neighboring villages – he was familiar with all the surroundings, all the villages –, and he bought skins. For my father was trading in skins. There were all sorts of skins back then. There were also karakul skins, with finer, nicer, woollier fleece. My father sold the skins there, in Sulita. All sorts of merchants came there, from Baia Mare, Falticeni, from everywhere, from Ardeal [Transylvania] as well. Christians came as well, they bought merchandise and returned home by train.

80 houses burned to the ground in Sulita in 1935-1936, and our house burned down as well. We had that house from my mother’s parents. Someone washed some laundry and probably left the stove outside [burning], and 80 houses burned to the ground. But we received no help back then, not in the slightest, so to speak, absolutely none [not even from the authorities]. My father worked by himself, as he was such a hard-working man, and he rebuilt that house. And by now it has already collapsed, that rebuilt house in Sulita came apart. When I travel to Sulita I’m staying at some neighbors’, who live there, close by.

I had a brother, Sulim Grimberg – his Romanian name was Salo –, who was younger than me, he was born in 1927 and died in Sibiu in 1947. There were several Zionist organizations in Sulita. There was Bnei Akiva, there was Gordonia 2 as well, and others – there were all sorts of organizations. My brother was a member of Bnei Akiva. They did this and that, I don’t remember what their activities were. I attended Bnei Akiva’s meetings myself, but could one remember something that happened so many years ago? Everything gets depleted. Back then, in 1947, my brother left with the organization, he was 19 when he left to Sibiu. Several members of the organization went there on that occasion, for about 2 weeks. I’ve never been to Sibiu, but I heard others tell that there was a lake there, a sort of large marsh, and my brother and another young man from Botosani drowned in it. I have no idea how it happened. Probably they couldn’t swim, and they both drowned there. The other young man was a nephew of Moisa’s – his name was Moise Ciubotaru – he was the one who washed the dead. They distributed food at the Community back then as well, not only nowadays. When I settled here [when I got married], I know that he received food. They brought him from Sulita to Botosani, and he was the one who washed the dead. He too had 5 children: 3 daughters and 2 sons. All of his children left to Israel. He was an old man by then, why would he have stayed here? He and his wife applied for permission to leave, and they left to Israel. And this nephew of Moise Ciubotaru’s was a friend of my brother’s, they were the same age, and they both died in 1947. That’s life. And afterwards, when my sister returned from Israel, she traveled to Sibiu, gave money to the Community there, and they built him a funeral monument. 

This brother of mine was a rabunam. These people, who read at the altar, are called rabunam – rabbies, just as priests are for Christians. Had my brother lived, he would have become a great man in Israel. He spoke Hebrew very well, he knew the prayers well. There was a great rabbi here, in Botosani, Burstein – he was an elderly man –, he tutored my brother when we lived in Botosani. My brother always went to see him in the evening, and he studied with him, may God forgive him. And he returned home late in the evening. We had to wear the yellow star, and you weren’t allowed to go out, but he went there and then returned. He wasn’t afraid, he went to see that rabbi. And that rabbi, Burstein, taught my brother, he taught him all that is required.

I have a sister, her name is Miriam according to the birth certificate, but people call her Marica. She is younger than me, she was born in 1936. My sister had higher education, she studied law in Iasi, and that’s where she met her future husband, Falic Hermon, Foli. My brother-in-law, Foli, was from Iasi. They were 3 siblings: there was Foli, there was also a sister who was younger than Foli, and there was Srulica, the youngest of them. Srulica Hermon lives in Israel as well, he is married, and has 2 sons. My sister married in 1961. After they married, my sister and her husband lived in Iasi, for he was from Iasi, and then, when people started leaving 3, they left to Israel. They left a long time ago, in 1963, for both her daughter and mine were nine months old when they left Romania. Both of them are the exact same age. My sister has 2 children, a daughter and a son. My niece’s name is Solange, Sulamit – she was named after my brother, whose name was Salo, Sulim. She is married, her name is Frenkel now. They live in Ranana. The son, Dani, was born in Israel, he is 36-37 by now. He too is a jurist, a lawyer. He lives near Petah Tiqwa, but I don’t know exactly where. This nephew of mine is married, he also has a son, he was born in January this year [in 2006]. My sister lives in Petah Tiqwa. She worked as a lawyer, but she is older now, she is in her 70’s. Time passes. She visited me this year. She hadn’t come to Romania for about 3 years, but this year was the 1-year anniversary of her husband’s death, so she came to see us as well, to see how we are doing. But she was upset, her face looked completely different, as if she weren’t my sister.

Growing up

I, Berta Finkel, was born in Sulita in 1925. When I was little, I was a rather sickly child – I don’t know why –, and my mother and father – may God rest their souls – went to the rabbi in Stefanesti, rabbi Friedman, and he told them: ‘She will grow stronger in time.’ They visited the rabbi in Stefanesti only once. This was a long time ago, when there were many Jews living in Stefanesti – I don’t know whether there are any left there.

They were pious people, both my mother and my father. My mother didn’t wear a wig, she wore her hear naturally. My mother was a tall woman. My father was a rather shortish person. They dressed appropriately. They wore good clothes, especially when they had to go to the shul. ‘Metit un desensta kleidar, ve ne geitan sil ara.’ [Editor’s note: This is the correct form of the Yiddish phrase: ‘Me tit (zakh) un di shenste kleyde(r) [az] me geyt in shil arayn.’] Meaning: ‘We wear our most elegant dresses when we go to the shul.’ That’s what my father always said when they went to the synagogue.

My father was a very religious person. Not going to the shul was out of the question for my father. As a young man, he also went there during the week. People went to the shul every day in Sulita, in the morning and in the evening. There were several synagogues in Sulita. There were rabbis, and hakhamim as well – or how they called them, I can’t remember anymore. There were around 3-4 synagogues back then – all the shuls have been destroyed there, as well. Some were larger, some were smaller. Only one of them had a balcony, it was located downtown. My parents attended a different shul, still a large one, where my father was a sort of a gabbai. I know that Rica Calmanovici’s father [Note: this reference is about Rifca Segal, interviewed by Centropa.] was a gabbai, but I forget what my father was – he helped the latter, Mr. Calmanovici. Eventually, what with children being born, with this and that, my father stopped going to the shul – which is to say he didn’t stop going, but he didn’t go as often as he used to –, as he didn’t have time, he was busy with other things.

There was also a Jewish bath in Sulita, I went there myself together with my mother. The bath in Sulita had buckets. There were small buckets, so that everyone had a small bucket to get water in order to wash themselves. There was also steam, you had to go up some stairs. There was also a small mikveh there, but I don’t remember it very well. I didn’t go to the mikveh for I was a child. My mother or my father, it was they who went to the mikveh. My father always went to the mikveh, every week. Not going was out of the question. But my mother went as well. Men went there on Friday morning, while women went in the afternoon. The mikveh was open once a week.

Tradition was observed very strictly. We didn’t work on Saturday. On Friday evening, if we wanted to have heat, we always called someone over, my parents gave them something in return, and they lit the fire. Christians lived nearby, and they came over. Or on Saturday morning. During the week, I would sometimes light the fire, or my mother would, or my father. And my mother prepared soup, meat for the lunch on Saturday, and someone would come, light the fire, and we heated the food on the kitchen stove. That’s how it was back then.

My mother lit 5 candles on Friday evening. [Ed. note: It is customary to light two candles, although some families light more, sometimes in accordance with the number of children.] When father returned from the shul, we, all the children of our household, would sit down to eat, and mother served soup, meat, what she cooked in advance. My mother baked bread every Friday. We had an oven when we lived in Sulita, and she baked homemade bread. It used to last us for the whole week, and we didn’t buy bread from the bakery. For Saturday and holidays, she baked kneaded bread, colilici. [Editor’s note: Coilici is a variant for challah, similar to the word “kajlics” used by some Hungarian-speaking Jews in Romania. Both words have the origin of the Hungarian word “kalacs”.] My mother used to buy fowl. We had a cage in the back, and that’s where she kept the fowl until they had to be slaughtered. For back then, when I was a young woman, there were hakhamim in Sulita as well. It was father who took the fowl to the hakham.

We performed the kapuras before Yom Kippur. [Editor’s note: Kaparot is a ceremony performed by some Jews on the evening before Yom Kippur, when sins symbolically transfer from individuals to a white rooster and to a white chicken in the case of women.] We performed it at home. My father, may God forgive him, gave me the chicken or the hen, depending on what we had, opened the prayer book for me, and I recited the necessary prayers and spun around three times holding the hen. Afterwards, he took those fowl to the hakham to be sacrificed. This tradition was observed in Botosani as well, as long as there was a hakham. We went to the canteen, and the hakham slaughtered the fowl that we previously used to perform the kapuras ceremony. But since nowadays there is no hakham anymore, where could I take the fowl to be slaughtered? I can’t simply take them to just anybody…

We didn’t build a sukkah on Sukkot. People didn’t do that in Sulita. Later, when I came here, to Botosani, they built a tent for Sukkot. It was made out of reed, in the open air, it extended to a side, adjacent to the canteen. The women who worked at the canteen prepared meatballs and other dishes, and the meals were served inside the sukkah. I never ate there, only the men who went to the shul ate there.

On Chanukkah, father lit a candle and called us: ‘Come, children, light candles yourselves.’ The candles were placed on a brick that lay on the table. And every child lit a candle. We lit candles for 8 days, an extra candle was lit on each successive evening. Our parents didn’t give us chanukkah gelt. They said: ‘Work and you will earn it.’ I didn’t have a spinning top. Our parents didn’t give us toys.

On Purim, people baked all sorts of cookies. My mother’s baked cookies were very good. She didn’t send cookies to wealthy people, she gave them to women whom she knew were poor and couldn’t send her cookies of their own in return. [Editor’s note: It is about the custom of mishloach manot, "sending of gifts", on Purim, which is sending ready-to-eat foods like cakes, fruits.] For she didn’t like to exchange cakes, she didn’t want to receive cookies in return. She gave them away so that the people to whom she sent the cakes didn’t have to send her others in return. People wore masks on Purim and called on households, and they made merry. Everyone made merry as they saw fit, songs were sung as well. People came to our parents’ house as well, back in the days when I was a young lady. And those whom they visited had to guess who they were. For you couldn’t recognize everybody, given the fact that they wore all sorts of masks. I never wore a mask on Purim. I remember that when I lived in my parents’ home in Sulita many people came to Sulita from Botosani in order to celebrate Purim there. They came to visit their relatives – for there were 300 Jewish families in Sulita, and not just one or two persons –, and they made merry. They called on people wearing masks, they also called on our home. We sometimes recognized some of them, and then we invited them in and offered them something to eat and drink.

Everyone celebrated Pesach at home. People cleaned their homes very thoroughly before Pesach. We cleaned every nook and cranny, so that no cornmeal or wheat flour was left in the house. If there was some flour left, we placed it somewhere in the attic and left it there until Pesach was over. We had a set of dishes for Pesach, which was used only on that occasion. People didn’t bake matzah in Sulita, they bought it here, in Botosani. I remember that when I was a child my father used to come to Botosani before Pesach and bought a lot of matzah, for there was plenty of it in those days. And not only him, everyone who lived in Sulita bought matzah here, in Botosani. Back then, matzah was cheap, too. But they made all sorts of matzah varieties in those days. They also made matzah for the afikoman. This type of matzah was more special, it was for the people who were more pious. My father bought regular matzot, and matzah for the afikoman as well.

Only family members attended the seder ceremony. Namely my parents, myself, my brother and sister. We went to the shul first, then we returned home and recited the seder prayer and everything else. My father was the one who recited it, he recited the entire Haggadah in Hebrew. We placed an extra glass of wine on the table and opened the door for Elijah ha-nevi to enter. I used to open the door if I wasn’t tired, my mother opened it if she happened to be near it, in front. Then, my father hid the afikoman. Afterwards, everyone received a piece of the afikoman to eat. Usually, my father bought 2-3 pieces of matzah for the afikoman so that there was enough to last until the following evening, for he had to recite the seder the following day as well. But if it so happened that he didn’t buy enough, he hid a piece of the afikoman from the first evening for the following day. When my brother was alive, it was he who recited the mah nishtanah. And we ate, my mother served soup, meat, latkes prepared traditionally using matzah flour. My mother prepared all sorts of dishes for Pesach, I helped her a bit as well. She made latkes from matzah flour, “malaies” from potatoes, this and that, whatever she could. “Malaies” is made either from boiled or raw potatoes that are run through the mincing machine after which you add eggs, salt and pepper to the mix, and fry them as you do meatballs. And that’s what we served with meat. And when the meal was over, after we finished eating, father also had to recite the prayers that are recited at the end of the seder evening. And it took a while until he finished reciting the prayer, and we went to bed very late, around 11, 12 in the night.

My parents spoke Jewish, Yiddish. They taught us, children, Yiddish as well, but, since we learned Romanian in school, we spoke Romanian. Our parents spoke Yiddish to each other, but we spoke Romanian. We studied Hebrew in school. We didn’t go to the cheder – there was no cheder in Sulita. But we attended the Jewish school, and that’s where we learned Hebrew. Our Hebrew teacher was a certain Mates Iui, he was an old man, and there was another teacher, Balter, who was from Bessarabia. And afterwards, when the war broke out, Balter returned to Bessarabia 4. He was the younger of the two. And we had another 2 teachers, who were Jewish, but we learned Romanian at the Jewish school. And Hebrew was a separate subject matter. And then, if we didn’t make progress, my father would call the rabbi, Mates Iui, to visit us at home, and he taught us to read Hebrew, both my brother and me.

The Jewish school consisted of no more than 4 grades. The attending children were rather numerous, there were several grades: 1st grade, 2nd grade, 3rd grade, 4th grade, but after so many years I cannot remember how many classes there were in each grade. The boys and the girls were mixed, we learned together. All in all, I graduated 8 grades there, in Sulita. I graduated 4 years at the Jewish school and 4 at the Romanian school. I graduated 8th grade in 1937-1938.

Afterwards, my parents’ condition depreciated, they were broke, and we had to move to a village, to Hlipiceni. [Hlipiceni is located 57 km south-east of Botosani, and 22 km south-east of Sulita, respectively.] And we had our share of misfortunes… many of them, so to speak. We had a sort of a grocer’s shop, a small shop where we sold a bit of everything. Just like in the countryside: you sold this, you sold that. And my father was a butcher, he slaughtered cattle there, in Hlipiceni. He had a partnership with one of his older brothers’ brother-in-law, David Grimberg, who lived there, in Hlipiceni. The name of that in-law was Srul Rotstein, and he too had a grocer’s shop, he too sold this and that in addition to being my father’s partner at the butcher’s shop. He bought the cattle, and my father slaughtered them. There was an army stationed at Halta Rauseni, and it consisted of vagrants – that’s how they called those soldiers. [Rauseni is located 5 km south-east of Hlipiceni, and 63 km south-east of Botosani, respectively.] And someone came every week, someone with a higher rank, who was captain or colonel, I’m not sure, and he bought meat for those vagrants.

We lived in Hlipiceni for less than 2 years. There weren’t too many Jews living there, only Christians. There was another family, but eventually they too left. And as the village was inhabited by Christians, and they knew we were Jewish, people started mocking us. We lived at a Lipovan’s, and we had a large gate, which I had to close in the evening. And they came and smeared the gate – forgive my saying this – with faeces, with excrement – to use such a word. When he saw something like this happened, my father told my mother: ‘We’re moving back to Sulita, for we can’t live here.’ We dropped everything and returned to Sulita. In 1938-1939 we returned to Sulita.    

As long as we lived in Hlipiceni, one of my mother’s cousins, who had a manufacture store, lived in our house. His name was David Saia. I don’t know whether he was a first-degree cousin of my mother’s or whether he was a more distant cousin, I can’t remember. He left when we returned. In Sulita, my father continued his trade as a butcher. He slaughtered the animals at the slaughterhouse, and sold the meat at the butcher’s shop. We had a store there, where the house was located as well, my father had a chopping block and an axe, and all the necessary equipment.

During the War

Then the war broke out, and from Sulita we came here, to Botosani. At first, Jewish people came to Sulita from Stefanesti, from Harlau, from all corners across the country. And where could you lodge so many people? We had it rough, we, Jewish people. And then, we all came here to Botosani in 1940. [Ed. note: The Jews from Sulita were evacuated to Botosani in June 1941. 1 Mrs. Finkel isn’t accurate with dates, in most cases she approximates them.] They informed us that we had to leave, I believe it was the police – I no longer remember, I was still a child. It took us a whole day to get there. It took a while, as we were a file of around 80 families. We set out at 8 o’clock in the morning, and we arrived in a file in Botosani at 10 o’clock in the evening, as it was dark by then. For evening comes at half past nine, ten o’clock during the summer. We came by cart. The carts were supplied by the state, I believe, we rented them. And what could we take with us? We left everything behind, at home, and it went to smithereens, as they say. We brought a sack or two of corn flour, and a bit of grain that we kept in the attic. I no longer remember if soldiers came with us or not.

In Botosani, we lived at one of my mother’s sister-in-laws, the wife of Zeilic Meerovici. Afterwards, we lived at one of my mother’s nieces, Beatrice, the daughter of Zeilic Meerovici. We lived there for a while, then we moved on Bratianu St., we rented the place. Meanwhile, my father was sent to Tiraspol, for he had declared he was a furrier by trade. And those who knew a trade had to go to Tiraspol. I don’t know what he did there, I think they gave him other jobs. Did my father know the furrier’s trade? My grandfather knew the furrier’s trade, may God forgive him, but my father didn’t. But he left there as a handicraftsman. He wasn’t the only one, several Jews from Botosani were taken to Tiraspol. My father stayed there for 3 or 4 years.

And we lived without him. We had our share of misfortune as well. We had a cow, which we kept somewhere in a stable. I can’t remember exactly, but I believe we bought the cow in Botosani, we didn’t bring it from Sulita. I couldn’t milk a cow, nor could my mother, and I believe a neighbor used to come and milk our cow, and then we strained the milk, took it and sold it, so that we could have some money, so that we could support ourselves. We had to wear the yellow star 5. We weren’t allowed to go to the market in the morning until 10 o’clock. And what could one find at 10 o’clock?

After the War

But I don’t even remember how the war ended. It was over… We stayed on in Botosani for a while, and in 1949 or 1950 – I don’t even remember when – we left to Sulita again. In Sulita, my father continued the butcher’s trade, he sold meat, just as he did before the war. We found the house destroyed, the doors and everything we left there had been removed. We rebuilt it. We had to earn money, this and that, so that we managed to rebuild the house the way it was. And what good came of it? Now my parents’ house is demolished, in a ruin. The house is no more. When father left to Israel, he sold everything. 

Together with my mother, my father submitted a request to go to Israel; my mother died in the meantime, and my father left to Israel by himself, he stayed at my sister’s, and he died in 1981. My mother died here, at my place, in Botosani, on Zimbrului St. After she fell ill, they took her to Iasi, then they brought her here, to Botosani. My mother died in January 1973, she is buried here, in the cemetery.

I married here, in Botosani, in 1951. I met my husband through some relatives, namely one of my father’s brothers-in-laws, Leon Segal. This uncle of mine was in the scrap iron business, and my husband was passing by, across that market, my uncle knew him, and told him: ‘I have a niece, would you like to get married?’ For he had 2 sisters who left to Israel, and he stayed here, and his parents were elderly people. And I came to Botosani, my aunt, Fremita, was still living here; I stayed at their place for a day or two, and I met him, somewhere downtown. I am old now, but I was beautiful back then, and I was dressed neatly, elegantly, and he liked me.

My husband was born here, in the city of Botosani. His name was Mikel Finkel, Mahal [Makl] was his Jewish name. He was born in 1925, just like me. He attended 4 grades here in Botosani, that was all. There was a Jewish school on Karl Marx St., that’s where he went to school. And from where he lived, on Zimbrului St., it was very far for him to come home to eat. But there was a kitchen there, at the school, and, in order for him not to come home to eat lunch, he ate there. My father-in-law gave them beans, this and that, so that he could study. My husband said: ‘I ate there until I entered 5th grade.’ That was all. They wanted him to continue his studies, but there were no spots available, he couldn’t fit somewhere, at a school, so that he could continue his studies. His parents were old, also, he started working this and that. What could he do? I used to tell him: ‘You see, if you had gone to school, perhaps you would have married a girl that was more well-read, more refined. But since you didn’t?’

I met his parents. My mother-in-law’s name was Gitla Finkel. I know that my mother-in-law had a younger sister, Clara, who left to America and married an upholsterer there, his name was Abram Zamist. They had a daughter and a son. They sent word for my husband to go there, to America, but he didn’t want to leave his parents here, for they were elderly people, and he said he wouldn’t leave. My father-in-law’s name was Alter Finkel – his Jewish name was Haim Iosuf –, he was born in Cernivtsi. He was a rather severe person, he didn’t talk much with younger people, namely with me. My mother-in-law did, she talked with me. As they say, she was a smart woman, my mother-in-law. They weren’t too well-off, my father-in-law bought cereals, he traded cereals. When I got married, my father-in-law was an egg-checker, meaning he checked the eggs in a store. That’s how it was in those days, this was a job, too.

My husband was the youngest of the children. He had 2 older sisters, both of whom married here, in Botosani, and they left to Israel; both of them died there. But they have children. The name of the oldest was Janeta, she was married to Froim Blaicher. Froim Blaicher was the youngest of the brothers. Itic Blaicher was the oldest of the brothers; he had 2 daughters, but has passed away. They had another brother, Meer Blaicher, and a sister, Mina Blaicher. Janeta had an only son, Haimut, who keeps in touch with us by phone. The name of my father’s other sister was Fany, she was married to Joil Goldfracht; she had 2 daughters, Beatrice and Anica, who live in Israel, too. Beatrice has an only son, who studied in some far-away country and then, people say, returned to Israel. [That’s what] My niece, the lad’s mother, told me [on the telephone], as she calls me now and then.

We lived with my parents-in-law, at their place on Zimbrului St. My parents-in-law lived in the kitchen, which was a separate building, and we lived in two rooms. My mother-in-law died in 1955, and my father-in-law died in 1960.

We took an old man in the house when my mother-in-law died – his name was Haim Meer Hersch –, so that my father-in-law didn’t sleep alone. In former days, there were poor people who begged for alms. And this man had the habit of doing that, he begged with yet another person. But after we took him in, we didn’t let him beg anymore. And there was a canteen in those days [the canteen of the Jewish Community in Botosani], he went to the canteen every day, they served him meals, and the Community [the Jewish Community in Botosani] gave him food as well, they gave him everything he needed, for he was a poor man, even if he lived with us. For I couldn’t provide for him. But since there was the Community and they could spare… They also gave him clothes, they gave him everything. I don’t remember the year when he died, my own children were of school age, they were grown by then.

I wasn’t a member of the Communist Party, nor was my husband. I didn’t have a job. We raised sheep. That’s what my husband did for a living before we got married. We had a large garden where we lived, we also had an enclosure in the back, and he had room for the sheep. And there was this man, who didn’t live with us, he only came during spring to milk the sheep. Then, around May, when sheep are put to pasture, they constructed a sheepfold, and we sent the sheep to the sheepfold. There, at the sheepfold, on the pasture, it was a different matter, it was out of the city. I used to go to the sheepfold myself, I went on foot, I sometimes brought my daughter along, even though it wasn’t nearby. That’s what I mean, each of us worked, for I don’t know how to describe the work that I did. But I seem to remember we had many sheep. We had 20, 30 sheep. You couldn’t keep too many sheep, for the number of sheep you could keep was very strictly regulated during the Ceausescu’s regime 6. You weren’t allowed to put the sheep to pasture in the spring, when the grass starts growing. You weren’t even allowed to let them out of the courtyard until it was time to put them to pasture. People always put the sheep to pasture as late as May, you weren’t allowed to do it sooner. I had to keep them at home, feed them. And I did, what could I do? And I had to keep the homestead clean, the courtyard as well, I couldn’t let it get dirty. They didn’t come to check every day, but still, they did so when they remembered to do it, the courtyard had to be clean as well, everything had to be clean. That’s how it was during the Ceausescu regime. They erected the sheepfolds in May – everyone brought planks, this and that. That’s where the sheep were kept until autumn, when the cold sets in, and then the sheepfold was dismantled. Two shepherds lived there, and people took milk by turn. When your turn came, you went to the sheepfold, and took as much milk as you were due. It was very hard. We had a hard time raising sheep as we did, stop asking me questions about it.

We raised sheep until my husband died, and then we sold them, we stopped raising sheep. Ten years have passed since my husband passed away, he died in 1996. That’s when we also sold the house where we lived in Botosani. We had 2 rooms there, the porch was in front of the house, and the kitchen was in the back. And we had to go out in the cold during winter, and we cooked there, for that’s where we had the cooking stove and everything else. And in 1996 I moved in a block of flats where I live with my daughter.

I didn’t have children right away, it took a while. My son, Gustav Finkel, was born in 1958. He went to the talmud torah. There was this man, Haim Aranovici, who eventually taught him. I sent my son to study, and he studied. My son is very skilled at reading the Torah, he also performs the religious service at the synagogue. When my son was 16-17 – I don’t remember what grade he was in, but he attended the Laurian High School –, rabbi Moses Rosen 7 – who has also died – came to Botosani, and he wanted to send him to study in France, to learn Ivrit there. In fact, he knew Ivrit, for he learned it here, but… And my husband said he wouldn’t send him there, that he should first go to university. He graduated the Faculty of Polytechnics in Iasi, he’s an engineer. He served his military service before going to the faculty, when he was 18-19. He served in Buzau, he was part of the transmissions unit. He got married in 1992. His wife is Jewish, too, her maiden name was Beatrice Brif. They also had a religious ceremony performed at the synagogue in Botosani, I think Bruchmaier came from Bucharest to perform the service. I have a grandson from my son, Avi, he was born in November 1992.

I also have a daughter, Carola Finkel, she was born in 1963. She isn’t married, we live together.

My husband and I observed traditions. We had separate dishes for milk, for meat. We took the fowl to the hakham to be slaughtered. A hakham lived here, a certain Moscovici, who performed the slaughtering every Thursday. And my mother bought fowls in Sulita, she sent or brought them here, I took them to the hakham, he slaughtered them, then I plucked off the feathers, did all that was necessary, and sent them home. This hakham, Moscovici, was from Stefanesti. When he lived in Stefanesti, he was a sort of a traveling salesman. I believe his first wife died in Stefanesti, he had no wife when he settled here, in Botosani, he had only his children with him – he had a daughter and a son. And probably the Community gave him a place to live somewhere, and he got married again. But this hakham left to Israel too, with his second wife and two children, and he and his wife died there. Nowadays we still have a hakham in Bucharest, his name is Bruckmaier, but he is old, he is in his 80’s, and he won’t come to perform the slaughtering.

There was a Jewish bathhouse here in Botosani, too; when mother came here, I used to go with her to the bathhouse. But now that we live in a block of flats, we all have a bathtub, we take a bath in it every week, do you think I still go there and pay an entrance fee? In fact, there is a central bathhouse here, but it is state-owned. There no longer is a Jewish bathhouse.

On holidays, we always went to the shul in Botosani too. My husband went there more often. He went there twice a day, in the morning and in the evening. My son always accompanied him on Friday evening and on Saturday. The shul was there, close to where we lived – a house of prayer –, on Zimbrului St., just a bit further up the road. My husband went there twice a day. Formerly, people went to the shul both in the morning and in the evening, as well as during the week. Nowadays, they don’t do that anymore. Here, men go to the shul only once a week. They only go there on Friday and on Saturday, that is all. There aren’t even so many Jews, many of them died, and most of them are older, elderly people. I still go to the shul during the autumn holidays – on Rosh Hashanah, on Yom Kippur; we don’t go there on Sukkot, but we go there on Simchat Torah. But when we go there, do women participate in the prayers? They sit there and chat. How one of them made fruit preserve, how another made zacusca [Ed. note: traditional Romanian vegetable spread]…

On Yahrzeit, when I mourn after my parents, after my husband’s parents, I always commemorate them in a prayer at the synagogue. I just commemorated my husband’s death this Saturday. I bought brandy, I baked ginger bread, sliced it, wrapped it nicely in napkins, and I gave them away to people at the shul. What can we do? The dead must be remembered every now and then.

I light candles on Friday evening. I light 5 candles myself, just like my mother. I do that, as I have several in-laws [who are dead]. My sister’s husband died a year ago, and I also light a candle for him – even though he is so far away, in Israel, and I am here. I also say a prayer when I light the candles on Friday evening. I say it in Hebrew, for I can read Hebrew. I have a small prayer book, someone gave it to me before leaving to Israel, that’s where I read the prayer from. My daughter lights candles as well. She uses two smaller candlesticks for doing that. I light the bigger ones. She says a prayer as well, she reads her own prayer, we don’t read the prayer together.

I sometimes bake bread for Saturday as well. Now I no longer have the patience to bake kneaded bread, but if I do, I have a small baking tray where I can fit 6 small loaves of bread, and I bake 6 loaves of bread from 1 kg of flour that I buy at the store, and I give some to my son as well. And it rises so nicely, as if I used some special ingredient or something. I no longer bake cookies on Purim. It isn’t even convenient to bake cookies – to have them there in order to eat something. You can still bake them today, but it’s only for those with better financial means. Formerly, people used to bake cookies, hamantashen, there were many varieties. Hamantashen are very delicate to bake, believe me. I can cook them, but then they go dry after a day or two. It’s either because of the flour I use, or… I don’t know what to say.

Formerly, we celebrated seder at home. I always celebrated seder with my husband. Just us, the family – we, my father-in-law, my mother-in-law, when they were still alive. Now, they don’t celebrate it as they once used to. Now people no longer celebrate it at home, now they invite us at the Canteen, and that’s where we celebrate the seder evening. I go there myself, and my children do too, every year. That’s when we eat a piece of kosher meat, for they send meat from Bucharest. And they cook soup at the canteen, they do everything that is required for Pesach, and they serve us a nice a plate of soup, and meat, matzah, potatoes, latkes, this and that. Formerly, they made matzah for Passover here in Botosani as well, but now they send it over from Israel. And they give us rations, they don’t give us as much as we need. They invite us at the Canteen, when we celebrate Chanukkah, the Light of Lights, they call us then and serve us all sorts of dishes, especially dumplings filled with potatoes. The Canteen is located on 7 Aprilie St. There was also a synagogue there, ran by Moscovici, but it no longer exists now. The Canteen is near the old cemetery, a little further up the road. But it is no longer functioning, only on Passover, on the first seder evening, and on Chanukkah, when they organize a meal – that is all. The rest of the time the Canteen is no longer functioning.

Now they no longer observe tradition as they once used to. Everything has been shattered. But we all remember just a little bit.

None of my relatives are still living here. I only have my son and daughter. The others have all left abroad, most of them to Israel. I’ve been to Israel in 1996 myself. I also have a sister there, it is through her that I learn some news about my family. What can we do, since we’re so far apart from one another? I’d go to live there myself with my daughter, but how can you go there if there’s a war? I don’t even know the name of that president, for I hold such a grudge against him that I can’t even begin to describe it. How so? At this day and age, in 2006, it will be 2007 soon – may God hold us in good stead – the war is still going on, still going on? This war will never end, God forgive me, it’s neither black, nor white – as they say. 

And time passes. And we live for as long as God will suffer us to live.

Glossary

Fani Cojocariu
Dorohoi
Romania
Date of interview: August 2006
Interviewer: Emoke Major

Mrs. Fani Cojocariu is a short, rather plump person. She lives alone in a very small, one-room flat in a block of studio flats that, despite being located in downtown Dorohoi, is dark and derelict, for lack of maintenance. But after a lifetime of poverty and want, even this represents a high degree of comfort for Mrs. Fani. The room in which she lives is clean, orderly, the only luxury items being a telephone and a radio.

My family background
Growing up
During the War
After the War
Glossary

My family background

The grandparents from my father’s side were already dead when I was born. My grandfather’s name was Iancu Cojocariu, and my grandmother’s name was Sura. They lived in the countryside; they lived in Dumeni for a while [Dumeni is located 12 km north-east of Dorohoi, in the county of Botosani], I believe that’s where their children were born, after which they moved to Cordareni [Cordareni is located 19 km east of Dorohoi, in the county of Botosani]. They settled in Dorohoi later on, that’s where my grandparents died. My grandfather manufactured sheepskin coats, hats, singlets – as people wore in those days. And their name was supposed to be different, in fact. For my mother always told me: “This isn’t the real name, the actual name. Our name was Segal.” Which is to say my father’s name was supposed to be Segal. Cojocariu is a nickname as my grandfather was a furrier. They gave him this name, this nickname of “Cojocariu” [Romanian for furrier] after the job he had, and the name stuck, he was recorded in official documents with this name.

I don’t remember my grandmother very well – I seem to remember she was a rather slim, thin woman, she didn’t wear a wig. But I remember my grandfather well. He was a quiet man, tall, thin, scraggy – just like my father. He worked as long as he was able to, but he had diabetes during the latter part of his life, and they amputated his legs because of the diabetes, he lost both legs by the time he died. I couldn’t say when they died, in what circumstances. I was a child then. It could have happened 4, 5 years prior to World War II, something like that, I reckon.

My father had other brothers and sisters. He had a brother who was such a beautiful man… He looked so fine, a bit on the plump side, with a much stronger build than my father’s, he looked better than my father, as if they weren’t even brothers. This uncle came to see us every now and then from Braila or Barlad – something like that. Perhaps he had a family – I don’t know. He came alone. He had another brother in Galati. I really didn’t meet the one living in Galati.

And he had yet another brother, who was the most unfortunate of all of them, poor soul, he was more wretched, sort of… he was actually mentally challenged. I even know his first name – Sloim Cojocariu. He was never married. He lived at the home for the elderly. I don’t know if someone from the family, if his parents committed him there, or if he went there on his own, but that’s where he ended up, despite being young. And as if it weren’t enough that he was wretched, he had such a tragic end, to boot… Oh, Lord! A funeral took place here, in Dorohoi, in 1940. A Jewish soldier who was killed during World War II was brought from Herta [today Gertsa, the region of Chernivtsi] to Dorohoi to be buried in the Jewish cemetery. Herta is now located in Ukraine, in the territories occupied by the Russians, by the Ukrainians, but it wasn’t occupied at that time, it belonged to Romania. And among those who attended the funeral were both old and young, there were people of various ages, and a company of soldiers came to salute the Jewish soldier. And what do you think happened? The army was retreating from the war in those days [from the front], they passed through Dorohoi, and I don’t know how it happened, they started shooting, and they shot all those who were attending the funeral. The uncle I was telling you about was shot there as well, for he had attended the funeral himself. [Ed. note: At the end of June 1940, the Herta country from the county of Dorohoi was occupied by the Soviet Union, the city and the rest of the the county of Dorohoi becoming a corridor for the retreat of Romanian troops, on which occasion some Romanian military units carried out murders and robbery against the Jewish population. For instance, the anti-Jewish pogrom of July 1, 1940 in the city of Dorohoi.]

My father had 2 sisters as well. I seem to remember they were living in Chernivtsi. But you should know they didn’t correspond with my father, they didn’t keep in touch. In fact, we know nothing of them anymore.

My father’s name was Avram Cojocariu, he was born in 1898 in Dumeni, the place where his parents lived.

The name of the grandparents from my mother’s side was Leizer. My grandmother’s name was Malca. My grandmother was no longer alive when I was growing up, only my grandfather was, but I don’t know his first name. My grandfather was like a rabbi: he was short, and he wore a large, long, white beard. He worked at the synagogue [he held a position at the synagogue], but I don’t know if that was actually his occupation in life – I couldn’t say what he did for a living anymore. Had I been around him for longer, I would have found out more, I would have learned more, but since I weren’t… He too lived in Dorohoi, and he came to see us from time to time, but on rare occasions. He would come see us, and then we didn’t see him for I don’t know how long. His visits were as if on the run, and we didn’t even have time to sit and talk, all the more so since we were just children. And what could we remember 70-75 years later? He treated us, his grandchildren, very nicely, he was a gentle, quiet person.

Oh my, you should know that my grandfather had many mishaps in his life. His first wife died when she was 36 – and how did she die! I remember this from my mother as she used to tell us what happened to her mother. There were several siblings in her family, they argued about the inheritance, things like that, and her other sisters and brothers hit the grandmother from my mother’s side in the back with a candlestick, and that was the cause of her death. What do you know. And my mother did so many good deeds for charity… She visited old women who lived alone and had no children, and she cut and brushed their hair, washed their hair, clipped their fingernails – that’s what she told us. For that was her way of doing good deeds.

My grandfather was married a second time, but I don’t know anything about his second wife. That’s all I remember, that he had children from both his marriages, both from his first wife and from the second. My grandfather died long before the deportation started, but perhaps that was after the grandfather from my father’s side died.

My mother – may God rest her soul, may she rest in peace – was the oldest of all my grandfather’s children, her mother was his first wife. These were the children he had with his first wife: our mother, her sister, and a brother. And, being the eldest of the 3 children, our mother raised the other 2 after their mother died.

I knew my mother’s sister, for she came to see us – she came all by herself. I no longer remember her name, I couldn’t say for sure. Nowadays, I forget things instantly, how could I remember things that happened long ago? They lived in Botosani – I believe –, and her husband was a cabman on a hackney carriage – as there were in those days. Throughout her life, our aunt was always sickly, ailing, and she died young. She had three children – two daughters and a son. And we know nothing of those children. The time came when they got married, they came to see us now and then, but that was prior to the last war, too [World War II]. One of them, the eldest, was living in Darabani, she was married to a barber. The next was [working] in a store in Botosani, she came to see us now and then. But the son… I believe we never saw or met him. I heard talk of them leaving to Israel eventually, I reckon they did that after World War II. But who knows anymore? Many left for Israel, they placed an ad in the newspaper if they wanted to see some relatives, some in-laws, a cousin one more time, and they kept asking around and looking for one another until they managed to get in touch. Do we still have news of our cousins? We have no news of them anymore. They have no news of us, we have no news of them. That’s all I know, that they left to Israel.

The name of my mother’s brother was Lupu Leizer. He learned a tinker’s trade – as they call it. But you see, my mother always wept and said: “Look, I was the eldest of the children, I raised him, for he was the youngest, and today he doesn’t even come to see me.” He lived right here, in Dorohoi. But what do you know? His wife made him estrange his family. And he had an only son, who did so well in school that he became a public prosecutor or a judge. But in the end, this family amounted to nothing. The parents died, the son died as well. I believe the son – he too was married with children – lived in Bacau. But he never corresponded with us [wrote us letters].

My grandfather’s second wife had children of her own, but I no longer remember any details… Perhaps my mother told us about it, but I don’t remember. So many years have passed since then…

My mother’s maiden name was Hana Leizer. She was born in Dorohoi in 1898.

My parents got married in 1923. They met here, in Dorohoi, but I don’t know the circumstances, they didn’t tell us. My father probably came to the city to get married at some point, and he met my mother. They got married while he was doing his military service, that’s what they told us. My father did his military service in Iasi, and they lived there, my mother lived in Iasi as well during my father’s military service. It could be that my father’s military service lasted for 3 years – the military service was very long in those days. And our father told us how his officers loved him during the days of his military service – those people, the toffs, his superiors –, and how they cared for him.

And when my father finished his military service, they moved back to Dorohoi. They paid rent, and when my father went to rent a place, the owner would ask: “Do you have any children?” “Yes.” That was it, they wouldn’t want him anymore, they didn’t rent him the room anymore. “Do you have any children?” “And how many children do you have?” – That was it! And that’s how they kept going from place to place. Until my father set his mind to building a place of his own, so that he wouldn’t have to pay other people anymore. And he obtained a narrow plot of land somewhere – as wide as the house, no wider –, for I don’t know how they worked on building the house. So he secured a small plot of land, and paid a contractor to build the house. It was located near the train station, on a street that was once called Carmen Silva, formerly; it was called Republicii St. lately, and now it is called George Enescu. For the George Enescu Museum is located on that street as well, and they named the street George Enescu as well.

We had 2 rooms and a kitchen, and you passed from one into the other, they were in a row – like a train carriage. And there was a basement underneath for storing firewood – for we didn’t have a shed in the courtyard –, and we stored food in that basement, odds and ends. Our street was close to the street, in the front, and we had to walk along such a narrow walkway to reach the stairs leading to the basement, so narrow that I scraped against the wall of the house when I walked along it. About half a meter wide – that’s how wide the path to our courtyard was.

I was the youngest sister, and we were already living there when I was born, my other sisters were born elsewhere, when my parents paid rent. My eldest sister – Malca – was born in 1925, the second-born – Neti – in 1927, and I – Fani – in 1929. We were born 2 years apart.

Growing up

We had some relatives from my mother’s side as well, their name was Groper, the Groper family. They were 3 brothers – Bernardt was one of them, I no longer know the names of the other ones –, and they had a very large store. And my mother and father used to tell me: “When you were born, they [the Groper brothers] came and said: <<We heard that a child was born to you, we want to name it after our mother.>>” For that’s the Jewish tradition, people name children after dead relatives, so that the name is passed on, so that it isn’t lost. [Editor’s note: The custom of paying to a woman to name her newborn after a dead was common. Giving the dead's name to the newborn was even considered as a mitzvah (ritual commandment or generally any act of human kindness).] And, anyway, my parents accepted the name. When I grew a bit older, my parents used to send me to that store: “Go and tell them that you are Fani.” For they didn’t know me. The only time when they visited us was when they found out I was born. But did they come to see us afterwards? Did they ever come to see us? [No.] And I went to the respective shop. They said: “Oh… you are Fani?” “Yes.” “Here, take a pair of socks.” A pair of socks that cost 2, 3 lei – that’s what they gave me. But I was hoping for something more… But had I not gone there, they wouldn’t have come to see me at all. Niggardly people… I know they came to see me only once; a few candy in a little box – that’s what they brought me.

We didn’t have a happy childhood, as other children did. It is a known fact that Jews especially raise their children very well, they give them milk, butter… We saw none of those. We led a very hard life. God forbid! My father managed to build that house as best as he could, with toil and bitterness, but he didn’t install any electricity, despite the fact that there was electricity downtown, and the post was in front of the house. I don’t know, to have the post in front of the house and not to install electricity… Because that’s what he thought: “We have to pay the bill for it eventually.” And they couldn’t afford it. We struggled with gas lamps our whole life! And whenever the lamp broke and they didn’t have another one to replace it with, as we had no extra one, my father took it and glued it back together with paper. And just as no electricity was installed, they didn’t make any terra cotta stoves, either. Had they at least built a brickwork stove or a kitchen range stove – they didn’t do that either. They installed a tin stove in the room, with wood as fuel, and it only gave a little heat, as long as the fire was burning, after which it became cold. Tin gets cold, it doesn’t stay warm like terra cotta. We were freezing. During winter, my mother – I remember – used to sweep whole basins of snow off the walls. During winter, we used to move from room to room until we reached the last room, and we were freezing with cold. My father bought potatoes for the winter, so that we had food to eat. We slept on the bed, and underneath the potatoes became as hard as stones. When we took the potatoes from underneath the bed, they rattled like stones! They froze inside the house. But you should see how water used to freeze… They didn’t let us leave the tiniest amount of water lying about over night as it turned to solid ice.

And our life was full of hardship. Our parents were poor and ailing and ill – that’s how they were, that’s how I remember them. My mother was very anemic. And as the town of Chernivtsi was free in those days [that is, it belonged to Romania], that’s where my father had her hospitalized on many occasions – for the town was larger; compared to Dorohoi, Chernivtsi is larger. On some occasions, he took us there as well. We went by carriage, by cart, as people travelled in those days. They were the same as today’s carts, save for the fact that the wheels rumbled… Nowadays, wheels have tires, and they offer a completely different ride. They don’t even call it a cart, they call it faiton (faeton), they came up with this name.

I remember, what a hard life we led, ever since we were children. More than anything, we grew up as if we were living in orphanages. Our parents were ill all their life. The front door of our house wasn’t even locked, anyone at all could come in and take whatever they wanted. And we were out in the street. Our neighbors took pity on us and took a couple of us in, gave us shelter, food and a place to sleep. And that’s how we grew up… I know they even put us in a nursery – I don’t know who took us there.

My mother was a housewife, and my father was a shoemaker. They always worked at home, they had workers, apprentices – they had 2 workers hired at all times. Because back then things were not like today – we buy ready-made shoes in stores. Back then they were custom-made. My father had a lot of work, he knew his trade well.

My eldest sister, I tell you this in earnest – didn’t observe the Saturday and worked on that day. But our parents and us, the other 2 sisters, we didn’t work on Saturday. We didn’t even light the fire. On Saturdays, my parents had someone come over to light the fire, even from the street, whomever happened to be around.

We had fowl at home, my father raised fowl – hens, ducks. As for slaughtering them, my mother took them to the hakham – that man who slaughters the fowl –, or it was my father who took them there. In the old days, the hakham even came at our house to slaughter the fowl, for there were many hakhamim here, in Dorohoi. I never looked when they slaughtered the fowl – I don’t want to see the fowl being killed. We had very many hakhamim here, in our town, we had many rabbies – there aren’t any left anymore.

They observed tradition, both my mother and my father. We had candlesticks and my mother lit the candles on Friday evening, she said the necessary prayer. I don’t know how many candles she lit, in fact I think people say you should light an odd number of candles – either 3, or 5, something like that. My mother kept kosher, she had separate dishes for meat, for milk. She also had separate dishes for Passover – she took them down from the attic when Passover was approaching. For salt, for horseradish, for everything – all the dishes have to be replaced, to celebrate Passover.

Before Pesach, you gathered the flour and bread from inside the house, if any, and I believe you set it on fire, you burned it. And a rabbi came and wrote with chalk on the kitchen walls, I remember, that this chametz should go to Christians, not to Jews. [Editor’s note: the chametz is leavened dough, fermented food, or any substance that is forbidden to be used during Passover.] But I had my own reckoning: “How so? Bread is so good all year long and all of a sudden you hate it on Passover? You develop a grudge against it and throw it away now?” And after all the chametz was removed from the house, as my father had customers from the countryside as well, they searched them when they entered the house: “You wouldn’t happen to have any bread on you?” “Oh my, take the bread outside, don’t enter the house with it!” Or if they happened to have wheat flour, perhaps that man – or woman, as was the case – happened to have bought some flour: “Oh my, oh my, it isn’t allowed, it isn’t allowed!”

Father went and bought matzah. Back then, there was a factory where they prepared matzah here, in the town, and father went there and bought it; or someone in charge of this brought it to us in a large basket or, if not, in a sack used especially for matzah. It wasn’t like today, in little boxes. And he bought a lot of matzah.

My mother would start to peel potatoes… whole buckets of them. On Passover, potatoes are used especially instead of bread. Since you aren’t allowed to eat bread… For matzah will never satisfy your appetite. You are also allowed to eat polenta, for a change, but people eat mostly potatoes on Passover. And what couldn’t one cook from potatoes? People prepared meatballs from raw potatoes or, if not, from boiled potatoes… the things you can cook from potatoes. The same goes for matzah flour – what can’t you make from it? Mother even used it to bake cookies, she made all sorts of things, she was such a good cook…

My father observed the Seder Nacht at home: he donned a tallit, and he read the Haggadah in Hebrew, he recited prayers. The celebration was prepared beautifully, with wine, with everything that is necessary. You don’t eat matzah during the first evening, you aren’t allowed to taste it. Even nowadays they still say that you aren’t allowed to eat matzah on the first evening. You are only allowed to eat boiled potatoes, horseradish, and parsley roots – something like that. And eggs, I think. But I think they said you aren’t allowed to eat meat on the first evening. The first evening was like a sort of fast. And on the second evening we ate matzah, and other, more varied dishes. On Seder Nacht we all had a glass on the table, and father gave wine to each child. I couldn’t tell you any details about the questions the father is asked [mah nishtanah] or about the opening of the door [waiting for the prophet Elijah]…

Father didn’t lie on pillows. I seem to remember it is the rabbi who has to lie on the pillows. After World War II, when they celebrated Seder Nacht at the canteen of the Community, and rabbi Wasserman attended as well, he was dressed in white, he was wearing something resembling a robe – it appears that is the custom on Passover –, and I remember there was a white pillow for him to lie on. [Editor’s note: Mrs Cojocariu is referring here to the ritual of leaning. At several points during the Seder, participants lean to the left - when drinking the four cups of wine, eating the Afikoman etc. This ritual is associated with freedom. In ancient times only free people had the luxury of reclining while eating.]

When our parents were still alive, we observed the fast on Yom Kippur. And we went to the synagogue – both our parents and us. My father always attended the synagogue. Back then, they performed the religious service both in the morning and in the evening as well – that’s how it was formerly. Especially when the autumn holidays commenced, I don’t know what holiday exactly – either on Sichis [Sukkot], which lasts for 8 days, or on I don’t know what other holiday – he went there at the break of dawn to recite prayers. It was during the night, and he went to the synagogue to attend the religious service. This lasted 8 days, for he had to go there every day.

On Oisana Raba [Hoshana Rabbah, the seventh day of Sukkot], still during the autumn holidays, a Jew came to our house as well – from the synagogue, he was employed to do this – with a lemon and with some sort of branch bearing leaves. [Editor’s note: Etrog is the Hebrew name for the citron. It is well known as one of the four species used in the rituals of Sukkot. The three types of branches: lulav, myrtle (hadas) and willow (aravah) branches and the etrog are held together and waved in a special ceremony.] And we smelled that lemon… Perhaps that man recited some prayers as well, I don’t know, that’s all he gave us – that lemon to smell it. Every day at dawn for several days in a row, he came with that lemon and that branch, as long as the holiday of Sichis [Sukkot] lasted. We didn’t make a sukkah at home. But after World War II they built a sukkah at the Community canteen. They hung corn, grapes, and apples inside it, and we, the guests, ate our meals there, both lunch and dinner.

Purim was nice too, formerly, when there were many Jews. Children and even grown-ups wore masks – they covered their face with a mask, wore motley clothes, all sorts of things –, and they visited the people they knew, friends, to wish them well, and they were invited to come in, offered sweets. For people baked all sorts of cookies on Purim. Usually, people baked hamantashen, and some other dish – it was called fluden – which was stacked high, out of dough sheets stacked on top of one another and with filling in-between them, but it wasn’t really filling, it was made from walnuts, or Turkish delight, something like that… and it was compacted, for it was very high… Where could you see the likes of that nowadays? You couldn’t, that’s for sure. I never wore a mask on Purim. Perhaps my father did, but I don’t remember. Nevertheless, people came to our house wearing masks. I believe it was customary to send sweets to friends, but so many years have passed since then, how could I remember this anymore?

There were several synagogues when I was a child, we had approximately 10 synagogues in Dorohoi. But I don’t remember which of them we attended and when we attended, for all of them were demolished. There was a mikveh in Dorohoi as well, but I never went there. It isn’t for girls, unmarried women. Women go there when they marry, and married women go there, too. I don’t know whether my mother went there or not.

We learned Yiddish at home as children. We also spoke Romanian, but we spoke mostly Jewish [Yiddish]. We didn’t learn Hebrew. Our parents were so skilled in reading the holy books… We don’t know anything. Jewish children are sent to the cheder, to a teacher, as they say, at the age of 3, approximately, and they start to learn Hebrew – they start with the beginning, with the alphabet, and then they learn more things. Our parents didn’t send us to the cheder. Here, in Dorohoi, both boys and girls went to the cheder, but we didn’t, and that’s why we can’t read a word of Hebrew.

We studied at the Romanian school. Both Jews and Christians attended the Romanian school, mixed together. But there was no hatred or enmity, or persecutions against on account of our being Jewish. All in all, I graduated 4 grades. But you should know that’s how it was back then. In Jewish families, for instance, if a child had 4 grades, it was enough. They taught them to read and write and then they quickly had to learn a trade – become either a barber, or a tailor, or a shoemaker… It wasn’t like today, when everyone must go to college – back then it was unheard of. Children had to learn trades!

After graduating the 4 grades of primary school, both my sisters and I started a trade. We all chose different trades. The eldest was working for various employers, she learned a tailor’s trade and worked as a tailor. Initially, the second-born started learning a tailor’s trade as well and learned from a lady, but she abandoned it subsequently, and she learned knitting: vests, blouses, sweaters… For in those days, during World War II, right after the war, you couldn’t find these things in stores, there was a shortage of fabrics as well. And she took me under her wing, and I helped her. For she could barely keep up with the workload. That’s because she didn’t have a knitting machine, you had to do it by hand, loop by loop and row after row – that was my expression –, and that takes time.

I myself was apprenticed to a tailor. Oh my, they were actually relatives of ours from my mother’s side, Jews like us, their names were Hova and Ita – two sisters. Naturally, they were living together until they got married, and they had a workshop at home. Their family name was Rachita. They were many sisters, and their father had a cart drawn by horses. For Jews did this too in those days – they carried wood for various people, or something like that. And, God, how I learned a tailor’s trade as a small child… Given the fact that they sent us to Transnistria when I was 12, I think they apprenticed me to a tailor when I was 9-10. Back then, pleated skirts were in fashion – the whole skirt was made of overlapping pleats. They were made from terylene, a fabric people wore in those days. And I was in charge of stitching them, so they could iron them. How was it that I managed to do that, how did I find the skills for that? Just an example, overcasting a girdle at the ends to prevent fraying – for people wore girdles in those days, it was fashionable. I just managed. But still, I didn’t remain there afterwards, I quit.

During the War

They deported us to Transnistria 1 when I was 12. At first, they imposed some restrictions because we were Jewish – but I couldn’t say what year that was. People started wearing the yellow star 2, we were allowed to go out for only 1 hour a day, that was all, the town authorities imposed those decisions. I believe you were allowed to go out for 1 hour in the morning, and that’s when you had to buy something to eat, anything, and you had to hurry back home, you had no business being in the street. And in 1941 the deportations started. The town’s prefect lived just across the street from our house. And my mother went to talk to him, to see if we could stay. But he said: “Yes, everybody wants to stay, but everyone must leave!” That’s what I remember. And yet there were some Jews who stayed, but they had some restrictions too, they were punished as well and didn’t have a good life.

And they came to every house, telling us to come out. We took with us whatever we could – at least an eiderdown, or a pillow, or whatever else there was –, we paid for a cart to take us to the train station. There were train stock cars waiting for us there, and they crammed us in, I don’t know how many persons in a stock car. And the furniture, and everything else, was left behind in the house. And what we took with us – we didn’t mange to hold on to that, either. We travelled for a long time, I don’t know the route of the train, for they added cars to this train in Chernivtsi as well, or somewhere else along the way we went in order to cross the Dniester. When we arrived in Atachi – it was located in Bessarabia – and the train came to a stop, they came up to the stock cars – whether they were soldiers or not, I couldn’t say – and said: “Get off now and take with you whatever you can carry, we will bring you the rest by cart in the morning.” A man told me: “Little girl,” he says, “take my luggage for mine is better.” How could he know his luggage was better than mine? Who knows what precious items he had inside, that’s why he said it. But do you think I did that? Do you think I took his luggage? No. I carried mine, whatever I had, and his luggage was left behind in the train car.

It was night when we got off the train. But what darkness, what pitch darkness… We could see only mountains around us, such high mountains that it seemed they rose all the way into the sky. And how could you walk? Everyone got off the train, you stepped on people, you didn’t even know where you were going – that’s how dark and gloomy it was. We got separated, we lost our second-born sister, but we somehow managed to find her there, in the synagogue where they took us. In the morning as soon as we woke up in that synagogue, we saw it was all as if it had been machine-gunned [destroyed], it was all red with blood and there were holes, cracks everywhere in the walls. Who knows what happened there, how many people died there.

And wouldn’t you know it, we could see them in the morning passing by and transporting the luggage from the train cars – they were taking them somewhere else, to the city hall, but not to us, in any case. That’s how it was. And we ended up only with what we brought along with us. We were left with hardly anything. My father had taken some shoe-making tools with him – those were left behind in the train car as well.

They took us by boat from Atachi to Moghilev 3. In Moghilev, a Jew who had come there earlier, I believe he was a resident of Chernivtsi, told us: “Run, for they are taking you from here to a concentration camp!” And he asked us to give him a sum of money – for we exchanged some of our money in rubles –, he requested money to take us, our family, out of the group. And we somehow managed to slip away. It seems this convoy wasn’t escorted, or the security wasn’t that strict, anyone could manage to slip away. After that, we somehow ended up at a woman’s place – she was a local, a Jewish Russian –, and she rented us a bed. Which is to say we had to pay for a bed in which 5 persons slept. How was that possible? It was the three of us and our 2 parents. Oh my, we couldn’t stretch a leg, we couldn’t move, that’s how crammed we were! And some other persons, some other families stayed in that room, each with their own bed. And every morning she came to our bed and asked us for the money. And how long could the money last? My father had a couple of suits, they were actually good-quality suits – one was navy blue, one was brown –, he started selling them in order to buy bread. And that’s what we said: “Oh my, we had no idea back home how good an onion can taste! We had no idea back home how good garlic can taste!” And the bread there was so black… It was simply as if it were baked from soil: it creaked when you chewed it, as if it were made from sand, but it was as dark as the darkest soil – that’s how the bread was.

Another thing – and suffice it that I mention it. We were ridden with lice… In that Russian woman’s room where we lived, there was an old man – a Russian like them, but he was Jewish. Oh my! He just sat there all day and looked for lice to kill them. That’s all he did. He eventually died one day. But until he died, he screamed all sorts of howls, animal-like. And to witness such circumstances, and to see with your own eyes someone die and agonize before dying… Well, may something like this never exist again! God forbid!

Afterwards, we left that place, we left that woman’s place, and we lived somewhere high up in a room inside the Town Hall – I remember it was a very large room. We didn’t pay for that, there was no one to pay money to, no one asked us for money. Oh my, and we slept on the floor –where could one get a bed –, during winter, and we had nothing to cover ourselves with. We were the only ones living in that room, but that room had many doors, on the left, on the right, leading to other rooms where other people lived, too. Oh my! Every day they took out the dead. People died of diseases, of hunger. When life became so hard… People came from a good life to such a hard life, to such an agony, how could they not fall ill? There was an outbreak of typhus – we didn’t catch it there. You saw men and women who had shaved their head – when you have typhus you must shave your head completely, I don’t know why. Many people didn’t have clothes to wear anymore, they wore burlap sacks.

A life of hardship commenced. Money – there wasn’t any. You could find anything, the market was well-supplied, with all goods, but there was no money to buy with. We didn’t consider stealing. We didn’t stoop to that. God forbid! We went begging – that, we did. We begged, and there were Jews who were a bit better-off, who could spare a crumb of bread, a piece of polenta, things like that… There were also Ukrainians there, in Moghilev, but we went to Jewish people.

For instance, people used to eat sweet peas there. But it was hard, it was several years old. They also eat yet another food there – lentils. And it boiled and boiled… In that large room where we lived there was a small stove next to a wall. And we started boiling corn, the variety people feed to fowls. Well, could it be boiled after it turns dry? How could it boil? We had nothing to eat. Some man came to see us, a local Ukrainian – he spoke Ukrainian, that is –, he handled horses, he was a coachman. He took pity on us and brought us some of the food that the horses ate. We didn’t have to pay him anything for it. It was a special mixture for horses, it was made of several ingredients: sweet peas, barley, oats. But it tasted so good after you boiled it… Extremely good! Also, when it came to drinking water: people formed queues for water, such long queues… There weren’t any fountains, but some pumps, some taps – as it were. And you had to go down into a basement, you gad to descend some stairs into a basement, that’s where these water pipes were.

During the night we went to a sort of police station – it was called co-ordination –, and those who didn’t have a permit [to stay there], who had no right to stay there. At midnight, when people sleep the soundest, deepest sleep, they came and knocked on the door: “Do you have a permit?” “No.” “Come, you must move on. To the concentration camps.” And children started screaming, mothers as well, all you could hear were screams, weeping… And they didn’t spare anyone then. They even detained their own compatriots, local Jews, they detained them and took them to concentration camps. This was done by some sort of police, but it also had Jews in its chain of command. There was a doctor here, in Dorohoi, his name was Danilov, and he had a brother who was involved in something like this. [Ed. note: Mrs. Cojocariu is referring here to the attorney Mihail Danilov. Hirt-Manheimer Aron, Introduction and comments, from the book Siegfried Jagendorf, The Moghilev Miracle (Memoirs 1941-1944), Ed. Hasefer, Bucharest, 1997, p. 48.] He took this up so that he could earn his living, so that he could provide for himself. He reckoned it would help him live a little better. But what a tragic end he had in the end… This was after the war, he was run over, either by a car or by a train, I can’t remember precisely. He didn’t live in Dorohoi, he lived in Romania in another city. And people said: “You see, God paid him his due.” 

There was a mayor in Moghilev, who was a colonel in the army and filled the position of mayor. And my father went to see him one day and asked him to approve his request, that he should be allowed to stay as the town hall’s shoemaker. And he said “Yes.” And my father was issued a staying permit. But otherwise, if we didn’t have this permit, we wouldn’t have returned home, they would have taken us farther on, to a concentration camp, and we would have died God knows where. We stayed in Moghilev all the time. There was a small room in the Town Hall, somewhere on the ground floor, that’s where my father worked, and the employees used to come there to give him items that needed repair, a pair of shoes, anything. I don’t know if they paid him any money for this. How should I know? But our father befriended other Ukrainians as well, and he sometimes went to their homes. He had an iron leg that he used in order to hammer against the sole, a hammer, and I don’t know what else, and he went to their homes, he repaired this and that, and they gave him some food, which he brought home. Our mother didn’t work. It’s not as if you could find a job there. We moved from place to place, but still inside the Town Hall, for it was a large building, it was all connected, as they say, with corridors, and it had 3 exits. But it too was like after the war, it looked deserted. They also had offices there, but there were few of them. You moved on your own, nobody said anything about it. And we stayed in bed all day long. What could we do? How our childhood’s best years went by… 

But when we arrived there [in Moghilev], you could hear: “Those from Dorohoi are going home!” As soon as we arrived there. And we heard those rumors for 2 years and 2 months. Until one day they put up posters either at the Town Hall or at the Police station – I don’t remember where that might have been –, to the effect that we were actually going home, those from Dorohoi were going home – only those from Dorohoi, I think. And before sending us home they put our clothes inside drying stoves in order to disinfect them, and we had to take a bath. Still, we returned home inside cattle cars again. And until we made it to these train cars… A table was placed somewhere in front of the train station, and that’s where they drew the paperwork for those who were returning home. And there were many people, and when your turn came there were so many papers to fill, and it took so long until your turn came… And it was late autumn and cold – I believe it was around November when we returned home –, and we said: “We can’t stay here like this, we’ll freeze to death. If only we were inside the train car, on the train, whatever the conditions, as long as we were there!” But it was better on the way back, they handed the people inside the train cars bread, carrots, pork lard, and onion. I am amazed they gave us something to eat then, I truly am! I don’t know who provided the food for us, some management structure, they gave it to us on the way back. And when we reached Dorohoi, the Community director – who left to Israel and is no longer alive, his name was Rolick – welcomed us at the train station with hot tea.

We couldn’t enter our own house, for it was occupied by a Christian woman. But we were in luck, for do you know what happened? The Jews returned home, and the Christians left – they were seeking refuge, as they said. The employees from the Town Hall, from various institutions, from everywhere, they all left. They weren’t fired, they simply feared the war, they feared that there will be a war there and that’s why they left. The Christian woman who was occupying our house left in the same manner, and we could take back our dear little home. And then the Community started giving us this and that, for there really was nothing left in the house. Everything was removed from the house after we left. For other people lived there – first a family, then a woman –, and they removed everything from the house. They gave us a small, square stove, and some planks to make a bed, so that we had something to sleep on.

And things still weren’t well – the Russian army entered our country then. God, you were afraid to stay at home, for soldiers came and settled in most houses. A Russian soldier came to our house and took the door off its hinges. And do you know what they were doing in the countryside? People said: “They simply go and take a calf, a sheep, whatever there is, in order to slaughter it.” That’s how cheeky they were. They slowly discovered that my father was a shoemaker, that he worked as a shoemaker. And the Russians opened a shoemaker’s workshop next to our house, they employed Russian shoemakers. We, girls, were quite big by then, all three of us, and, whenever a Russian entered our house, we used to hide behind our mother, stay close to her. But one of them said in Russian: “This is how Jewish girls live, under their mother’s skirt?” In Russia, women too were enrolled in the army as soldiers. For there were actually many companies like that here, made up of Russian women. But I was so afraid… A young Russian came once, a handsome man, and he placed an order with my father for a pair of boots. The Russians had their own shoemaker’s workshop next to our house, but he didn’t place his order with them, he placed it with my father, he came to us for the boots. And my father made them just like that, in no time. They looked as if they came right out of the store, that’s how good his workmanship was. Perhaps he paid my father, I don’t know. But he was no common soldier, he was a higher-ranking officer. We stayed for 2 years in Moghilev, we started to understand a word or two, but we didn’t speak Russian properly.

After the War

After the war, my father continued to work as a shoemaker. My mother didn’t work. But actually, my mother didn’t live for long. After returning from Transnistria, she only lived for a year. She almost died there, for she had developed such a bad case of asthma, and she gasped for air. And we barely failed to lose her. I don’t know how we managed to keep her alive until our returning home! And when she made it home, she lived for one more year, after which we lost her. It was 1946, she was 48. She died in Iasi, in the hospital, for my father had taken her there. He so wanted to settle in Iasi.

At first, she was hospitalized for a month or longer here, in Dorohoi. And she asked him to take her to Iasi. And it turns out she also suffered from a nervous condition. When father took her from the hospital in Dorohoi, she only stayed home for a night, no longer, but boy, was she screaming and yelling… on and on, to Iasi, to Iasi, to Iasi! She kept saying she wanted to go to Iasi. Early at dawn, around 5 o’clock, I saw her to the station as well, she boarded the first morning train, and my father went with her, while I returned home. He took her to the St. Spiridon Hospital in Iasi – that hospital was for patients with mental conditions, somewhat. And she lived there for another 3 months, approximately. We were quite big by then and we kept urging our father: “Go and take mother home.” “Why don’t you go there and take her home?” We kept expecting father to go there. But he had his trade, and he wouldn’t leave his work to go there… he simply wouldn’t! “I’ll go, I’ll go.” He said this one day, then the day after, then the day after that… three months passed by. 

A woman from Dorohoi had someone, a relative of hers, committed to that hospital as well. And it turns out she was in the same reserve with my mother, for my mother sent word through that woman who had come to see her relative, she told her: “Tell him to come and take me home, I don’t want dying in a hospital to be on my conscience.” My father brought me along as well, and we went to Iasi. I don’t know what time it was when we set out, but we arrived late in the evening, and we put up at Jewish family, acquaintances of my father’s from the old days. We slept there, we left for the hospital in the morning, and when we arrived there, my father inquired: “Hana Cojocariu?” “But she is no more…” “Oh my!” – I was stunned. “But she is no more.” “Well, are you certain?!” – but my father wouldn’t believe it. He went and asked someone else as well, he asked some doctors, too… “No, for she died three days ago.” There, she wasn’t able to see her children, and her husband. And she always prayed not to die in a hospital. She was so young, but death was all she could think of! Death was all she could think of – may she not die in a hospital! And it was her fate to die in the hospital…

And we went to the Community [the Jewish Community in Iasi], for it was the Community that buried her. The custom in Iasi is to put the dead in a cart and to take them to the cemetery by cart. And the Jews there said the horse didn’t want to move at all, he just didn’t! The horse wouldn’t move – that’s what I remember. My father jotted down some directions at the Community, as to where we could find her, as to where we could find her grave, at least. And we went to the grave, it was recently dug, she was buried for 3 days. And there was a gravedigger there – he was digging another grave for a girl who somehow drowned, she was Jewish, too. Oh my, and I was crying so: “Dead though she may be, I still want to see her!” And that gravedigger took so much pity on me, caressed me, told me not to cry anymore, and that if the administrator weren’t there, he would dig her up so that I could see her. 

Father told us he once went to Iasi, he struck a deal with a man who owned a cart, and he and that man took a large, heavy tombstone from another older, deserted cemetery, and he took it to my mother’s grave and inscribed her name on the tombstone. He did it during the night, so that no one could see him, for it is forbidden to take a tombstone from somewhere else. My father went to the grave on several occasions, for he had acquaintances there, and he travelled to Iasi repeatedly. But he always went there alone. He knew the location of the grave, he knew where our mother was buried, but we… Had we gone there once with him, perhaps we might have remembered something. But, as it is, we don’t know where our mother’s grave is. And I’ve been to that cemetery. Every year in Iasi they commemorate the Jews who were locked in airtight cattle cars 4 during the heat waves, and they were transported, and they had no water, and died there. And the Jewish Community in Dorohoi provided a bus for us, and I attended the commemoration myself together with my eldest sister. The second-born sister didn’t want to go, she said: “You go, I’m not going!” We did this for 2 years in a row, I believe – but many years have passed even since that happened. And we arrived still in that cemetery where mother was buried as well. But what could we look for? It wasn’t as if we knew how and where to find it. You must know your way about… That’s what our father told us, that he placed a tombstone at her grave, but how could we recognize it? Especially after so many years, since no one went to her grave anymore, the writing must have faded away, and how could we find it?

After the war father developed a sclerosis as well, he became soft-minded. He had a case of hernia for about 30 years, and was afraid to undergo surgery. We lived together, how could I not know his situation… He was very fond of Iasi, for that’s where he did his military service and where he lived, so he went there once, to see some old acquaintances. And he was struck by a sudden seizure, he lay down in the street, just like that, for he couldn’t bear the pain, that’s how bad it was. And people saw that, they called an ambulance, and they took him to the hospital. When he woke up in the hospital, he said: “No, I will not undergo surgery!” For all his life he was afraid of the knife. But the doctor said: “No, now that you are here, we must perform surgery.” And he might have lifted a block of wood, something heavy, when he returned home, and his operation opened up. He liked to work – as Christians do, not as Jews do: he did everything around the house, he didn’t have someone else do these things, he didn’t pay someone else, he did these things himself. There was a very good Jewish surgeon here, in Dorohoi, and it was he who operated him the second time. The third time it was the same. But he told him on the last occasion: “I can’t guarantee anything anymore.” He told him straight to his face. And his last years were very tormented. He started smoking when he was 12 – he told us. And he still smoked while he was ill. But this is what happened! A particularly nasty growth appeared on his esophagus, a tumor, for he had seizures during the night on many occasions, he choked, he couldn’t breathe, and we rushed to the hospital at 1, 2, 3 o’clock in the night in order to commit him. There was a hospital right on our street, near our parental home. I know that he carried on like that for 4 years. And he wasn’t allowed to eat anything, for the food didn’t reach his stomach, it stopped in his chest area. He died at 73, in 1971.

My father is buried here, in Dorohoi, at the Jewish cemetery. The Jewish custom is to dress the dead in white. Special clothes are tailored for this occasion, there are tailors who still make them. We sat shivah after our father died, all three of us. We sat shivah both after our mother and after our father. You place something on the floor, a carpet, a pillow, something, and you sit there for 8 days. And who could come to bring us food? We had to cook ourselves, we had to stand up, cook. And they say you aren’t allowed to do that, it’s a sin to stand up from there. But since we couldn’t rely on anyone to bring us food… But I don’t know anymore, whether you’re supposed to sleep there during the night, or you can stand up and sleep on the bed. I don’t remember that, I don’t remember how we did that. And we paid someone, a Jew like us, who actually had a connection to our family, he was actually a friend of my father’s as a young man – his name was Rabinovici, he had a store in the old days –, and he recited prayers for my father for an entire year. And that’s what he said: “It would be good if you had his name mentioned in the prayer for the dead every month at the synagogue.” And every month throughout the year I would buy liquor, crackers, according to Jewish customs.

When father fell ill and was so lost and neglectful, people said: “Oh my, what a handsome boy he was in his day, look what has become of him!” He became oblivious of himself. The years passed by, he was alone. And he told us what a ladies’ man he was in his day – he wouldn’t miss any ball whatsoever. But we, did we ever go to a ball in our life? We never went to balls. He went to parties for us as well. We tended the house, mostly. As the room where we lived gave onto the street, we could see the Jews taking a stroll and talk and discuss. For the people living in the city used to stroll beyond the city limits, towards the train station, they walked to the train station, they were out for a walk – that was what they called a stroll out of the city. I used to say: “Look, they are out for a walk! We are going to bed now, we are in our bed, and people are out for a walk.” That’s how our life was, that’s how it went.

There were Zionists in Dorohoi as well. I wasn’t one, but there were young people who were getting ready for leaving to Israel, they went to chop wood, to gather grain, they learned any trade they could – which is to say they all went there to learn, to get used to doing that.

My eldest sister knew dressmaking, the second-born knitted, and I helped her. My eldest sister had a sewing machine. And then the second-born sister bought one, but she sold it, for it was old and she didn’t like it. She could sew her own clothes, make her own dresses, this and that. We worked at home. Sweaters, gloves, socks – we sewed most anything. People could see my sister was doing a good job, that she was skilled and talented even, and people came to her by word of mouth. They came to our house and placed an order, depending on what each of them wanted done. There was a time when Brasov wool was the material of choice – that was its actual name –, a sort of prime wool, as it were, dyed in all sorts of colors. But many people asked us why we didn’t get a steady job. A textile factory had been opened there for the first time, and people told us: “Girls, why don’t you apply for a job there? So that you might have some pension money when you grow old.” Well, none of us entered a steady job. We all carried on doing what we had been doing.

We lived together, all 3 of us, then we separated, my sisters moved out one after the other, they moved somewhere else. The eldest was the first to leave, she moved in a studio flat, while the second-born and me remained in our former parental home. Well, the second-born sister had started to catch on by then. For we led a very hard life there. We didn’t make a fire there after our father passed away, we stopped using the stoves. There was smoke everywhere in our house. Our house was located near the street, and in wintertime, during the most biting frost we opened the door. People passed in front of the door, and I used to say: “I wonder what these people are thinking. ‘Look, it’s too hot in there!’” But the stove let out so much smoke, you couldn’t see in front of you. So that’s why we didn’t have any heating anymore. By then, people started urging us. There were many Jews, they lived on every street. A woman used to come by our place, she told us: “Why don’t you leave? You have no family, you don’t have a proper house – why are you staying here instead of leaving?” For people were leaving for Israel in great numbers. But you think we heard that from only one Jew? Well, we didn’t manage to do this either, leaving, that is. And we stayed. There is a saying, to the effect that the worm gnaws its way inside a horseradish and says that one can live there as well. There are worms that eat and prefer horseradish, which is actually so hot. That’s how it was with us – just like the worm, we had gnawed our way inside the horseradish and wouldn’t leave anywhere, neither here, nor there, not for the world. Well, that’s how it was and that’s how we stayed.

Afterwards, the second-born sister moved out as well – this was already after the Revolution [after 1989] 5 –, and I was living there all by myself in a derelict house located near the street, and only gypsies lived on that street. I was so scared after nightfall… My sister once came here, and she said: “I can feel your loneliness, I can, you, living alone.” But that means they weren’t sincere, either. Why didn’t they take me to live with them? I could have lived either with one, or with the other, for it was known it didn’t do me any good to be living by myself. In a block of flats you live all by yourself, it’s a different matter. There is a door to keep people from looking inside your house, it has no glass through which they could see you. I lived there alone for a few months, until a family of Christians took me in – their name was Atitenei, they are dead now. They had a house in the courtyard, like a kitchen, as it were. But they didn’t cook there, they had the large house to themselves, like a villa, they had their own kitchen there. This was a house where they formerly kept tenants, girls, and the woman’s husband came with a push-cart and helped me take from there the most useful, valuable items, and I moved there. In the meantime, I was given a studio flat, too, I believe it was in 1990, but, even though I had a studio flat, I still lived with them, slept over at their place. I lived with them for a year.

Then I too moved in a studio flat. I paid rent to IGO every month. Everyone bought the apartments, I was the only one who was paying a rent. I was afraid then they might evacuate me from the house. The things people do nowadays, the things that come to pass… Someone might go and pay a fat, handsome sum of money to these men who have come to power, and lo and behold they strike a deal with them and I am put out in the street. And I feared very much that this would happen. We had a Community canteen, and the woman who cooked there – the cook – told me: “Fani, draw a contract with them, for you will end up in the street.” But what I bought with one hand I sold with the other. I donated it to the Community. And I receive a small help from them in return. But should I or shouldn’t I? Not to mention I am a member of the Deportees Association [the Association of Romanian Jews Victims of the Holocaust], and that amounts to some support as well. One of our presidents, Feder – he is no longer alive –, he is the one who drew the necessary paperwork

I wasn’t married. In fact, I mentioned this before: when you reach an older age you shouldn’t mention you weren’t married. For what would a stranger say? “Oh, the devil himself wouldn’t marry her!” It no longer sounds right, not having been married, you should rather say: “I was, but my husband died.” It is nicer than saying you weren’t married – it means no one courted you. I didn’t have any reasons for not getting married. My sisters were the ones who were picky. They didn’t want to marry just anybody. For there were Jews here, but they were poorer, more inferior – they didn’t want any of those, they wanted something better. Still, the young men of better condition wanted someone from a big family. We were in-between. And there you go, that’s why they remained single. By then, people said: “If they didn’t want to, why didn’t you marry them?” I had a saying, I used to say: “Since they can wait, why should I hurry? I can wait too, can’t I?” And furthermore, at this age, one of two would surely be no more…

I have no friends, I have no one. I have no one left. My eldest sister is living here, in Dorohoi, but I haven’t spoken with her in 8 years [since 1998]. And I’m not the one to blame for that. She has always been like that. After all, we had the same mother and father. She bore such a grudge against her family… She didn’t love mother, she didn’t love father, as for her sisters, it goes without saying. And the second-born died 10-11 years ago [around 1995-1996]. I sat shivah after my sister too. I was living here, in the studio flat by the time when she passed away, poor soul. As far as working goes, I worked as long as my sister was still living. Afterwards, whom could I work for? I only started knitting as I still had some balls of wool around the house, all sorts of colors. Now I have come to the point where I no longer do anything.

I don’t really travel anywhere. I’d go to Dorna, should I be able to. For I have been there 3 times, with some free tickets offered by the authorities. But it’s hard to see myself get there, for that too is far away. I have also been to Borsec, I went there several times, but many years have passed since, this was actually before the Revolution. I didn’t have to pay for the reservations to Borsec either, everything was free of charge, provided by the Community, for we were entitled to receive support with regard to food, reservations. And the Community had its own car – an Aro, a popular car in those days –, you showed up at the Community, got on the car there, and they took us by car to Borsec, and 14 days later – I think that’s how long our stay was – the car came and took us back home. The Federation [the Federation of Romanian Jewish Communities] has 2 villas in Borsec. There is a villa that also has a canteen, and there is another one near the central bus station. We didn’t want to be under the constant supervision of the boss, and we asked to be lodged at the one near the bus station. At the other villa, they also had a mikveh, and a synagogue inside the courtyard, and many rabbis came to recite prayers there, they wore very large felt hats, for they performed a religious service every morning and evening. Very many rabbis from England, America, Israel came there for treatment with their wives and children – the children had such nice sideburns, along the ears. I used to say: “Look, this is the only place where I can still see rabbis, since I can’ make it to Israel.” So many rabbis came to Borsec until approximately 20 years ago. They performed medical procedures in Borsec, all sorts of treatments, but I heard say long ago that it no longer exists. Perhaps they still come for the local waters, for there are springs there wherever you go. [Editor’s note: Borsec, in Harghita county, is one of the most renowned regions of mineral water springs in Romania.] Borsec is very beautiful.

We had a Community canteen, it was in operation for about 30 years. It was a very good thing to have, this canteen. We had a meal we could count on, a piece of meat – for there was a dish with meat almost daily, it was rare when there wasn’t meat on the menu. I had a reason to go out now and then, and it makes a difference to have the table set, ready for you. They brought me the food home lately, for I collapsed many times here, on the stairs of my block of flats. The canteen was closed a few years ago, for there are few Jews left, and there was no one to run it. In fact, I think we don’t have a canteen anymore since 1994.

Years ago, they even organized a Seder Nacht at the canteen, but they stopped doing that long ago. We had a rabbi, his name was Wasserman, but he left to Israel, for he had 6 children there – 4 daughters and 2 sons. I think he left after 1990. And they stopped organizing the Seder Nacht ever since this rabbi left.

I can’t observe the Yom Kippur fast. It happens all the time. It’s as if the devil urges me to eat during the fast. I fast until 4 o’clock in the afternoon, at most, I can’t fast longer than that, my stomach starts to gnaw – to weaken my will, wouldn’t you know it!

Whatever tradition I still observe nowadays is the Sabbath. What more can I do? I don’t work, don’t wash, I steer clear of those things. I light candles on Friday evening, but I can’t find those long white candles on the market, the kind that you must light o that occasion, nowadays candles come in small round metal cases, I still have some of those. I can buy long yellow candles, but you are allowed to burn yellow candles only on Chanukkah – you must light candles for 8 successive days on that occasion, but I don’t really do that, to be honest. You must light an odd number of candles on Friday evening – either 1, or 3, or 5. I light 3 candles, for 3 persons: my mother, my father, and my sister. When I light them, I pray to God in Romanian or in Yiddish to give me strength, good health, so that I can still walk on my legs, so that I can look after myself – I think about the situation I am in. But I see I pray in vain, for it is going from bad to worse.

I have a heart condition, I have a case of hernia, I have asthma just like my mother, and this is only to list just a few things I’m ailing from… But I have endured hardships ever since I was a child, I lived in the cold for so long in our home… I used to go to sleep with my feet numb with cold, and they wouldn’t get warm all night long. That’s how they stayed until I woke up in the morning, numb with cold. Where do you think my rheumatism comes from? And to think I still wish things were well.

Glossary

Margit Schorr
Suceava
Romania
Date of interview: August 2006
Interviewer: Molnar Ildiko

Mrs Schorr is a small woman living alone in her flat with her two budgies. She is in a good physical condition, likes to go out and take walks in the nearby park. She loves the sunshine. She also likes cooking and baking; I was treated with “dulceata” (very sweet jelly jam) and with cookies during our sessions. Her relatives visit her regularly; they take good care of her. She lives a quiet, neat and bright life.

My family history
Growing up
During the War
After the War
Glossary:

My family history

My paternal grandfather’s surname was Ashkenazi, I don’t know his name or his date of birth, he came from the region of Odessa, fled one of the Russian pogroms. He settled down in Focşani and became a jeweler, where he owned a jewelry shop. Later on he moved to Suceava and owned the jewelry shop where my father would work as well. My grandparents were religious; everybody was religious at that time. He died before the First World War somewhere in the 1910s. My father did not really talk [about him].

My grandmother Ashkenazi Margit, whose maiden name and date of birth I don’t know, was a very quiet and reserved woman. I did not know either one of my grandparents but was named after my grandmother. My mother got to know her as her mother-in-law for a short while, my grandmother died in the 1920s. What I remember is that I used to have very thick hair and my mother always told me, that I inherited my grandmother’s hair, she had thick hair as well and always had to cut it because it was too heavy. I don’t have any other memories of her. A few years ago, I discovered my grandmother’s grave by chance; she is buried in the cemetery of Suceava. The guard there is a young man, I kept asking him and he searched until he found the grave, it’s not even in the back of the cemetery, for our cemetery … you can hardly walk through it, it is in such a terrible state… there is no one left to keep it, there are no more Jews.

My grandparents had three sons: my father, Karl Ashkenazi born 1873 in Focşani, after which they moved to Suceava. My father had two brothers whose names and dates of birth I don’t know, they both emigrated to America. After we came back from Transnistria, in 1945, one looked for us through the Red Cross, he sent us a photo and a food package because he had heard about our state of being, afterwards we lost contact. I don’t know anything about the other one; we never met. They lived there, we lived here in Suceava, and we never got in touch. That is all my father told me, very vague.

My father went to a normal school, or high school, I don’t know and learnt the handicraft of jeweler from my grandfather. He was an educated man, an autodidact, who read a lot. How many times did I wake up in the night – he had lost his first wife and son and was stressed about and couldn’t sleep at nighttime. Whenever I woke up in the night, I would find him reading. He had been through all the libraries in Suceava and read and read … He read in German for we spoke German at home.

My father’s first wife was a Jewish woman, her name was Berta Ungarisch, as I remember, and she was from Suceava. I don’t know how my father met his first wife, but it was a love match. They had a son, I don’t remember his name but [if he have been alive] he would have been my half-brother, he died of meningitis at the age of 12. Berta died soon afterwards of heart problems. My father did not really talk about these events. She was buried next to my grandmother in the cemetery of Suceava.

My mother’s maiden name was Jetty Rosa Kinsbruner, who was left all alone after her mother died so my uncle, Hans Kinsbruner, her brother who lived in Gura Humorului, intervened and arranged the meeting between my father and my mother. I think a shadchan [matchmaker] arranged their meeting.

My father was a widower; my mother was an old maid as they used to say at that time, she was 30 or 31 years old. I don’t know how long it took my father to remarry after the death of his first wife. They married around 1918, both being serious people who had been hit by fate. My parents had a religious wedding ceremony. If they had a written ketubah? I never saw it because we were deported and lost everything.

My maternal grandfather was Moişe Kinsbruner, I don’t know where he was born but it had to be somewhere in the 18402. My grandmother, Sosie Kinsbuner nee Rubel, was born in the 1850s but I don’t know where. My grandparents had seven children: Salo Kinsbruner, born in the 1870s, Hans Kinsbruner born in the 1870s, Liebe Kinsbruner born in the 1880s, Dora Kinsbruner born in the 1880s, Puike Kinsbruner born in the 1890s, my mother Rosa Kinsbruner born in 1887 in Şcheia-Suceava and Fany Kinsbruner born in the 1890s.

Grandparents Kinsbruner lived on the countryside, in different villages and here in Şcheia, very close to Suceava. My grandfather worked for a landowner and I think he brew ţuică [brandy] or some other drink for a living. At one point my grandfather refused to clink glasses with the landowner and the landowner fired him. I don’ know anything about that landowner, this story is the only thing I ever heard, that the landowner got mad because a jew wouldn’t clink glasses with a christian. So when my grandfather fell out with the landowner, my grandmother and the seven childred moved to Cernăuţi where they opened an inn run by my grandmother. Maybe my grandfather was still alive at that time, I don’t know.

Grandmother Sosie was a troubled woman who had to run the inn by herself, I don’t know if she had any help, she had seven children and when she came home tired after work, loaded with packages they would all wait hungry for her. And then she would stay: „One moment, one moment, set the table”  but she wouldn’t even start to cook. They would set the table and wait. They had enough food, they were wellfed, I don’t think they ever went hungry.

My grandfather was a very religious man yet I don’t know if he wore a mantle and a kippah, I never saw a photograph of him because religious Jews do not get their picture taken. I don’t know how many days a week he would fast. At the age of 50 something, he was so weakend through all that fasting that my grandmother ran to the rabbi and told him: „Rabbi, what can I do with my Moise? He will die. He is fasting …” So the rabbi sent him home and said : Go home and eat. You are responsible for your children.” He still died in the 1900s at the age of 50 something. I know that my mother used to reprimand me many time because I am not religious by saying: „ You are the granddaughter of Moise Kinsbruner who died of hunger because of all his fasting …”

My grandmother was religious as well, I know that she covered her head with a shawl or a wig. Grandmother Sosie died young in the 1918s, she was somewhere in her 60s. My mother was the sacrificed one. All her siblings were married and spread throughout the world so my mother took care of her dying mother. I don’t remember if they still owned the inn at that time or if they liquidated it when my grandmother got sick.

Salo Kinsbruner lived in Vienna. He married a Viennaise probably before World War I and was the first of the siblings to leave. I never met him. He died young because of war wounds and was buried alive, that is what I heard. Salo had two children, a son or a daugther and if they still live they should be in America. We never were in touch with Salo who lived in Vienna but his daughter, whom I think already died in America, visited us once.

The second brother was Hans Kinsbruner, he lived in Gura Humorului and I don’t know anything about his wife. They had a very sweet daughter, Dora.  She was deported in the same period as us. They came back from Transnistria and on their way home the borders closed and they got stuck in a place I don’t remember. The girl went out to gather wood for the winter, to keep warm and a beam fell on her and killed her on the spot. They went back to Gura Humorului without their girl where they had a shop with clothing material and linen. And slowly, as time passed, one after the other died. I visited them every summer, I used to spend my vacations in Gura Humorului. It is very beautiful there and there were many Jews, many of them religious, those people with sideburns. Hans wasn’t religious in his youth but after the death of his girl he turned into an ultra-religious person. He would sit and rock himself all day and his sisters would even make fun of him because he would shake and fast and keep the holidays too much.

My mother’s older sister lived in Czernovitz. Her name was Liebe Kinsbruner, married Scholl, we were deported together to Transnistria and even shared a room in Sharogod. She had a daughter named Rachel. After they came back from deportation, they moved to Israel. She died in Israel.

Another sister was called Dora Kinsbruner, married Stern. They lived in Rădăuţi where uncle Stern ran a fish shop, he sold fish. They had a son named Max Stern. My daughter-in-law was befriended with Max, they grew up together, they used to be neighbors in Rădăuţi. They emigrated during that period when most of the Jews left, around the years 1950-60 1. Max died in Israel, he left behind a son but I have no idea where he is.

Puike Kinsbruner lived in Czernovitz as well. I don’t know her real name, everybody used to call her Puike, she later married a Kahan. Her husband was an architect, they had two sons. One of them died in Suceava, his wife came to Suceava as well and remarried. His daughter is still alive though, she is somewhere, pciking strawberries I think, but he died. His older brother was an architect as well and died in America, he had a daughter. They used to live in Czernovitz but then his wife died and he went to America where his daughter already lived.

The other sister who lived in Czernovitz was Fany Kinsbruner, married Brill who was the youngest of the sisters. My uncle was a photographer, his name was Iacob Brill and they lived in Czernovitz. Iacob and Salo Brill were two brothers, both photographers, who started out working together but by the time I was a child they weren’t together anymore, both of them had an own studio in a different part of Czernovitz. I did not know Salo too well, he moved to the Russian Street, „Russische Strasse”, which I discovered when I was in Czernovitz with my sons last year. The studio of my uncle Iacob Brill was on the Water Street, „Wasser Gasse” it was called in German. Afterwards, when the Romanians came, the street was renamed Ferdinand Road, it was wellknown in town, I spent a lot of time there. My aunt Fany had no children of her own, she consider me to be her child. The studio was beautiful, at the entrance there was a show case advertising photo’s, then you entered into a large room with an interior stair case which led to the studio it self. I remember that the stair case was built out of wood and it was squeaky, and I, being little, descended and fell and rolled all the way down. Everybody was terribly scared but I was alright. My uncle would receive his clients downstairs and then he would take them upstairs to photograph them, downstairs was also the living space of my aunt and uncle. Iacob Brill was shot by the Romanians or the Germans, I forgot, and I don’t remember if it was an accident or if it happened on purpose. Fany was deported as well but she ended up at the other side of the Bug River, where the Germans were, and she died there in 1942-43. She died young, she wasn’t even 50 years old. When we were still deported, in Transnistria, we received a card written by her during her deportation. She said she was fine, that she had to clean the bathrooms in a German military hospital. We never heard anything from her again, she probably died of typhus or she was killed.

My mother’s siblings weren’t very religious, they would observe the holidays nicely but wouldn’t exaggerate. All the cousins and aunts kept very much in touch and during vacations they would come visit us in Suceava or we would „frequently” go to Czernovitz, once a month, once every two months. When I would visit aunt Tiny, I would take the bus Suceava – Czernovitz, and we would go to Czernovitz through Siret, it would take an hour and a half, maybe two hours.

Jewish life in Cernovitz was nearly identical to Jewish life in Suceava. They were a bit more pretentious, would go to cafe’s or to a restaurant maybe. They maybe were more elegant, their city was bigger. But otherwise it was the same. Holidays were the same and the rich market in Czernovitz, their market was very abundant. People from Czernovitz were more snobbish and at my aunt’s house …. You would eat, there was so much food you would get sick. I had a fat uncle, Kahan, he loved to eat and my aunt weighed more than 80 kilograms.

Last year I was in Czernovitz with my sons. One of Karl’s neighbors has a big shop in Czernovitz and he guided us around and lodged us at a hotel in the center of the city. We walked around and I tried to discover the places where I spent my childhood. If we would’ve stayed another day, I would’ve found more, now time was too short and too many had changed. We did not go to the street where my aunt lived, but I know where it is; we did see the National Theatre and the house where my other aunt used to live. It was very emiotional to see those places again, the places where I spent part of my childhood. Not many things had changed. I had forgotten many things and had to try hard to remember them. Czernovitz’ atmosphere has changed though. There are no more elegant people standing in front of the café’s and everybody speaks Russian. They don’t even want to speak Romanian or maybe they forgot. While we were walking along the National Theatre, we saw a beautiful house and some companies, we opened a door and entered a jewish center. There was a long table, set, and the old people and the younger ones were sitting and eating, they were celebrating the evening of Rosh HaShana. And when we entered and introduced ourselves as Jews and Romanian, they told us to sit down and served us dinner as well. It was hard to understand eachother because they don’t speak Romanian but luckily I know Yiddish. Next to me sat an old lady and we started to talk with each other – I told her that I had been deported to Sharogod, that I had spent their almost three years – „ Ah, Mrs., I am from Sharogod a well!”. And we remember common acquaintances and talked a long time, my son took a picture of us and I sent them a copy as well, I asked for their address. I would’ve liked to go there again, to talk again with that lady, to remember those years in Sharogod. I did not get the chance but it is an extraordinary thing, that while walking through Czernowitz you accidently find a Jewish Community on the evening of Rosh HaShana. Afterwards my son wanted to see the synagogue in Czernovitz, I didn’t know where it was and we didn’t speak their language, so we walked and walked for two or three hours, up a hill down a hill – Czernovitz is full of hills. When we finally found the synagogue it was closed, for it was Saturday. We took some pictures in front of the synagogue and that was that.

The family would gather there in Czernovitz. One of the cousins would play the piano and sing happy songs, the aunts would sing, only my mother would be the sad one. They would sing in German, that was the spoken language here, maybe even in Hebrew, I don’t remember. They were all kind of songs, not only traditional ones, but also happy ones, jazz. I remember that the three aunts Fany, Puike and Liebe and I don’t know how many cousins would meet and it would be such a merry gathering. Those from Czernovitz lived beautifully and joyfully. They lived beautifully and died horribly.

My mother, Jetty Roza Ashkenazi nee Kinsbruner, was born 1887 in Şcheia, which was next to Suceava. She went to elementary school and spoke Yiddish and German. My mother was very modest. I had a sister named Suzi Ashkenazi, born 1919 in Suceava, named after my grandmother Sosie and then I was born 1923, also in Suceava. My sister died of diphtheria in 1924; she was only four years old. She is buried here in Suceava. When my sister died, Fany – my mother’s sister from Czernovitz- came and took me with her so my parents could grieve. I stayed a whole year with Fany. When they took me back, I didn’t want to go to my mother, I didn’t recognize her.

Growing up

Karl Ashkenazi’s store was the name of my father’s jewelry store, named after him. It was in the middle of the center and behind the shop was our house. It was a rental house. The shop was little, you had to climb three stairs, enter the shop and in a corner would be his table, he sat and worked there all the time, with a loupe, he was almost blind at the end. He worked alone; he did not have any help. Also in the shop was a counter with all kind of jewels, it disappeared after we were deported. My father would import jewels and watches from Czernovitz and sell them. Behind his shop was our house, which consisted of two rooms and a kitchen. We had cold water, I think also during the night; if you wanted to take bath the water had to be heated, we had a round tub. We did have electric light and our heating system was an oven functioning on wood. We would buy wood in the autumn, a farmer would bring us a wagonload of wood, then we would hire someone to chop and arrange the wood; you would warm up so well at a fireplace!

When you exited the house at the back, you would enter into a large courtyard with wood chips on the ground; there was another shop in that house, a big grocery store and wine store, there were wine barrels and the merchandise was unloaded there, for example olives. It smelled of olives and I would walk around, looking for a little bit of grass, I missed the green. The courtyard was closed in by houses and in one of the house, which was a bit more behind the others, lived to sisters named Plesciug, probably Ukrainians, who owned a photography studio. They lived in a little, dark house. As a child I would enter everywhere, I would play in the courtyard and walk everywhere, I could be found in every house, everybody knew me and everybody played with me.

My mother would go to the market if she needed anything. Farmers from the countryside came to market and brought chicken. Suceava had good markets and all the stores where owned by Jews and my mother would buy from them. My father’s jewelry store was there as was his workshop. We always had a maid. My mother spent a lot of time with my father in the store; she would help him so she couldn’t get everything done in the house. That is why we always had a maid who would clean, help with the groceries and probably took care of me as well. Apparently, my parents could afford it because as far as I remember, we always had a maid.

I was well dressed as well, my mother knew how to sew and she made me some beautiful dresses. She made most of my dresses but every once in a while she would take me to a tailor for a coat or a dress. At that time most clothes were sown, not bought. You would by the fabrics in town and go to the tailor who would make it for you.

There were three or four cars in town during the inter-war period belonging to some rich people from Suceava; there were carriages as well.  Most of the carriages belonged to Jews and when you had to go to the train station, you would hire a carriage. I remember one of the owners, his name was Tedica, I think; he has died. They would come to pick you up from home, you would take seat in the carriage with your luggage and then you would go: trample, trample... go to the train station.

There were at least four or five synagogues in Suceava before the war [Editor’s note: by 1939 there were 12 functioning synagogues in Suceava], there were many rabbis and shochets [ritual butchers] in town. There was the Grand Synagogue to which my mother went and where she had her own place, then there was the Tailor’s Synagogue, I don’t remember the other ones. The Grand Synagogue was downtown, in the old part of the city when you come from the train station, which was where the Jewish quarters were. That synagogue does not exist anymore; it was demolished. The synagogue that still stands is the Gah synagogue. The shochet that I knew wasn’t next to the rabbi’s house, no it was further away, closer to the house where I was born and spent my childhood; there was a Jewish center there as well.

I knew rabbi Moscovici very well; I used to go to their house because his daughter Miriam was my friend. The rabbi’s house was on the road, when you entered Suceava from the direction of Iţcani. Their house was like all the other old houses in Suceava, little with only a ground level. I don’t remember how it looked from the inside, nowadays the house doesn’t exist anymore. I don’t remember if the rabbi’s wife was still alive at that time, I have no memories regarding her. Miriam I remember well though, we met at Hebrrew school. It is interesting because I have a photograph from that time but don’t remember a thing from my time at Hebrew school. I had a teacher, I learnt the alphabet and know how to read but how I learned …? Years after the war I met Miriam in Gura Humorului. She had married  a rabbi, I think rabbi Frankel. It was summertime and she had come to recover a bit. Poor Miriam, she was troubled, she said to me: „I can’t do it anymore…” because every year she gave birth to a child, it is a mitzvah for them to have many children. She wasn’t in Suceava anymore after the war, I don’t know if she still is alive, if she is in the country or in Israel, she was a bit younger than me … She had a brother and this brother would ride a bike and all the people, especially the more religious ones would say: „What does it mean that the rabbi’s son rides a bike through town? It means that he isn’t too rabinnical [meaning he doesn’t keep the Law’s commandments].”  Moscovici was wellknown in Suceava and he was respected by everyone, I don’t know though if he was orthodox.

I don’t know how many Jews lived in Suceava before the war, but percentage wise it could have been half of the city’s population, maybe 40.000 – I’m not sure. A part of the Jews were the intellectuals, lawyers, medics etc. A big part consisted of the artisans and the merchants who were in the center of the city, they were the middle class, and then there were the poor of Suceava, who lived on Nesermete, that was the road which went down from the citadel, a downwards road and there they sat: coachmen, women plucking feathers, little artisans. My father was a jeweler; he was a craftsman in his profession and a merchant, having a shop in the center of Suceava. According to me there were three categories of people: the intellectuals, the merchants and the third category might have contained a few merchants and the poor.

I don’t know if there existed a form of help for these poor Jews, maybe the Hevra Kadisha, those who buried the poor, helped them. I know that money for the poor was collected into those money boxes, I saw them at Keren Kayemet LeIsrael [K.K.L.] but not at our home. I visited an exposition in Israel, which showed moneyboxes from all over the world.

My mother was religious, my father wasn’t. They made some sort of agreement when they married: “You keep your traditions as you want, I will do as I want.”  They got along very well. My father did not go to the synagogue on holidays but he knew all the Jewish laws and on his deathbed I heard him pray all of a sudden. He once had a disagreement with someone from the Community and from that moment on he did not go to the synagogue anymore. But, for example, if there was something of which he thought that it might be beneficial for me, for example the swinging of the kappara he would do it because it was for his child.

My mother went to the synagogue on the Holy days not on Saturdays when women don’t really go. I am not sure if she ever went to the ritual bath, maybe she went to the city one. I’ve heard that there used to be a mikveh when you entered Suceava from Iţcani. I don’t know if my mother ever went, maybe when she got married to my father. My father wasn’t the kind of person who would force her to go but maybe the community wanted her to go so they could give her the blessing. My mother used to fast, she bought matzos, kept kosher, I knew of all the holidays, she went to the shochter when something needed to be cut, she wouldn’t let a christian slaughter the animals, she did not mix dairy with meat products, but I don’t remember if she washed the dishes together or not. We had a mezuzah at the door but I don’t know anything more than that.

My mother kept the Shabbat. My father ate a lot, you know that all diabetics eat a lot. My mother prepared Jewish food and fried fish and all. We probably had Challah as well, it’s some sort of bread, but we didn’t make any special preparations. I don’t remember, I think it was in Israel, that somebody explained to me that the Shabbat is a holiday bigger than any other. It is the biggest celebration of the Jews. My mother did not cook “sholet” [a traditional Shabbat dish] but she told me that my grandmother would make it. She had a special dish made out of clay that had to be in the oven for a night, on coal, to keep warm and make the sholet. And last year, my grandson Herbert came and wanted to make sholet. He went to the market by himself because I told him: “Leave me alone, I don’t know how to make sholet” so I went to the market by himself and came back with carrots, beans … He turned my whole kitchen upside down. I told him: “You know what, go to your aunt – Karl’s wife – and make the sholet at her place.” But she doesn’t know how to prepare it either. So he made a mixture of sholet. He had heard about it in Israel, he wanted to make it here, that’s how the crazy idea came to his mind. He made sholet and that was the first time I ate it. He taught me how to cook it but I haven’t tried any new recipes since then. I simplified them because I diet.

My mother had special dishes for Passover in the loft. They would be taken down for Passover and then my mother and I went to a bakery where they made matzos and sometimes I helped. The matzos were put in some oval baskets and covered with a clean cloth and then you could take them home. Every corner of the house had to be cleaned … I liked the holiday atmosphere, you felt as if you were preparing for something. Passover was without bread but otherwise with the regular food: fried fish, meat, and Jewish food. My mother would cook Jewish food but not for all the seven [eight] days of Passover.

For Passover my parents would send me to friends so I could see how the Seder rituals had to be kept. Every year I visited a different family friend. For a while I went to our neighbor, he was a lawyer and his daughter died in Israel. Another time I went to other friends, I don’t remember but I went every year. I remember that matzos were stolen, younger children than me would do that and the boys would do the Manishtanah questions. I remember that you had to open the door so the prophet Elijah could enter. And in that moment when the door was opened the cat would strategically enter. We were so entertained … only small things, details, stay in your mind. And afterwards the Seder food, I remember everything you have to do then.

At Yom Kippur my mother and I went to the synagogue and my father would stay at the opened door to hear the Khol Nidre, he wouldn’t enter the synagogue. He did not fast for Yom Kippur, because he was sick, he had diabetes. I only remember him as a sick man. I don’t know if there are any exceptions in religion because of illness, I couldn’t say. I did not research those things; they are too personal.

At Purim I was afraid of the masks. I had a room all for myself in which I would hide, covering my head with pillows so I wouldn’t have to see the masks. For me Purim was a torture, I was terrified of the masks. And my parents would tell me about how Purim in Suceava was when they were young. People would hire carriages because the masked ones would go from one acquaintance to another and they would share sweets, sing and dance; they would tell me about Purim and the merriness on the streets but I did not live during those times. I lived in those times when the masks would go from house to house for treats. When I was little Purim was celebrated as they once did: the dressed up [masked] Jews would come home, my mother would bake, pastries with honey and nuts but for me it was horrible, I didn’t know where to hide. My mother baked very tasty things, they would buy fruits, and we had everything we needed. I don’t remember Hanukkah; I don’t think we ever lit the candles. Now I have the candles but I don’t think we did at that time.

My father was a very social man. Our home was always opened to friends, especially my father’s younger friends because he would say: “I am old, why shouldn’t I have young people around me?” They would come, gather round the table, talk politics and my mother would serve. We had an open, receiving house. My mother was of a closed nature, she wasn’t merry but she received everybody warmly.

My father loved nature very much and on Saturdays he would close the store and we would go into the wilderness where it was green and beautiful. We would take food with us, my father would walk in front of us carrying his walking stick on his shoulder, my mother would limp after him and than I would be the last and sometimes the first; those were our Saturdays and Sundays. In the evenings we would be home, the walks were short. When I was bigger, I would go to the beach of the river Suceava with my friends.

My parents never went away for vacations, they couldn’t close the store, they were tied to it. Every once in a while they would go to Gura Humorului and then they were happy. During the summer we would all meet there. My aunt from Gura Humorului had siblings all over the country and they would all meet there: the ones from Czernovitz, us from Suceava – our aunt had to deal with us all. All the relatives would sojourn in the country. They had a big house, my aunt’s mother lived upstairs and she owned the house, which had many rooms.

My teacher in primary school was Mrs. Buduhos who loved us all equally and who sent me a photograph of the third grade when I returned from Transnistria. I was a dreamy child, rather spoiled but not in the annoying kind of way, I was happy. I would sing all day long, felt sheltered, had dolls and played with them until I was 12, I had a thousand and one friends. Only ones I got a horrible beating, which I’ll never forget again. I did not like to wake up in the mornings. My mother dressed me while I slept, pulled me for I had to go to school. And I didn’t react. Afterwards she took me out of bed, put me on my feet and pushed me out of the door, because the school was next door. And when I heard the school bell ring I would run half asleep to school. And one day my father had enough. And he gave me a good beating, which I’ll never forget: “ Or you wake up properly or you get it!” And he gave me a good beating. That was the only time.

If you walked out of the house, passed through the courtyard, you arrived at some kind of roundabout; one way went to the high school to which I belonged and on the other side lived my two friends Ruth and Melany – who later on changed her name to Monica -, and that is where I spent my childhood. We were three girls who grew up in the same neighborhood, we went together to school, we went together to Transnistria, we were together all the time. Ruth died last year in Israel, in a moshav, I visited her a few times and Melany lived in Bucharest, she married a Christian. We kept in touch for while and afterwards we lost contact; she didn’t write, I didn’t write. We saw each other a few times, she was in Bucharest at the beginning afterwards I don’t know where she was, we didn’t even speak on the phone afterwards so I didn’t know anything about her. But last week [august 2006] a young woman came and introduced herself as Corina Hoancă and said: „ I am Monica’s daughter and I came to see the places where my mother grew up and I would like to hear some of your memories regarding her.” I showed her photos of her mother, the photo from school and I told her many things about Melany. I showed her the places where she used to live, where our high school was, I took her to the synagogue. During our childhood, the city looked completely different. Some of the old quarters stayed more or less the same but most have changed. I walked with Corina and I was hard for me to rebuild the places where her mother lived eventhough it was in my neighborhood, near to the high school. But the interesting part is that I told her to come to my place and tell me about her mother, about how she was doing. „ My mother died three or four months ago.” It felt as if she had hit me with something on my head because even though we hadn’t seen each other for a while, I always knew that Melany was in Bucharest.

„Lady Mary’s High School”  was the name of the high school I went too, I still have the basque with the initials of lady Mary. When I was 12-13 I became a “străjeriţă” 2, we had to wear the grey or blue uniform, I don’t remember, and a tie. And I would take part in the activities of the strejarie, I would march, sing, we never went to camp, all the activities took place here, I actually went only for four years to that high school. War came, I couldn’t go to school anymore, the strajeria was disolved, another regime took over. We were kicked out of school in 1939. Jews did not have the right to go to high school. I don’t know on what grounds [probably because of the numerus clausus in Romania]3 but I couldn’t go to school anymore so everybody had to try and find a way to complete their studies. Those of us who could afford it went to Czernovitz and studied there. I went there as well, lived with my aunt Tiny and went to some courses for a year. It was a private school run  two ladies,  probably retired teachers, who gathered a number of girls and taught them general culture and languages.

I didn’t feel any anti-Semitic manifestations before the war, just when the war started to draw closer.  In primary school there was a teacher who would say a few anti-Semitic things as well as two girls who didn’t want to have anything to do with us. But most of them behaved very nicely until the very last moment. There was a girl, she still lives in Suceava, who would take our arm, walk with us through the city, to show people how they had to behave. There were others who didn’t want to have anything to do with us. But they were only two or so. The rest behaved properly.

I never suffered any harm from my colleagues or my professor. Contrary, the mayor’s assistant from Suceava who was a cuzist 4 and was known as a Jew-eater, was a professor but I forgot his name. And when the Germans came to the city, he went from house to house to find rooms for the officers. And when he arrived at our house, of course my parents were frightened and looked at me, he came with a Romanian officer I think, and said: “We can’t put anyone here, there is a young girl living here …” and he left.

During the War

I wasn’t aware of the beginning of the war until it really broke out and the Polish fled to our regions, because Hitler had entered their country. Everybody went outside to serve them. They were dressed in furs; the rich had fled Poland by taking their own cars and crossing the borders. And everybody walked by to serve them with drinks and other things and I know that some of hem said: “You are Jews, we don’t take from Jews”. And then we said that there actually were coward Jews after all, that we shouldn’t serve them.

My father was a social democrat but in the end he abandoned politics just as he had abandoned his religiosity, something had displeased him and he stopped doing politics. I don’t remember if he ever discussed those things in front of me, I was too dreamy as a child. We did not have a radio. My parents would go somewhere else to catch up with the news. At that times they were broadcasting those programs with Hitler barking through the radio, with commentaries, typical war broadcasting. My father liked the newspapers, with politics, spoke with friends and discussed the news and he felt that a catastrophe was coming closer. They didn’t discuss possible solutions or what to do and how to react. Maybe not even my parents could anticipate the tragedy that was waiting for us.

Throughout all my childhood, I knew that my father was sick and his health slowly started to deteriorate, his kidneys started to play up. He died slowly, working until the very last moment. He was sitting, couldn’t breathe anymore and made a pair of wedding rings for this man who wasn’t a guard but a legionnaire of some kind, a man who had hanged many Jews in Bucharest, he was a Jew-eater. He was the husband-to-be of one of my school colleagues, who was a very nice girl, and he wanted a pair of rings so he could marry that girl. And my father, already dying, told him that he wasn’t able to do it. The guy hit the table with his walking stick and said: “Either you make me the rings or I can’t guarantee the outcome”. So my father made the rings, it was his last job. He made the rings, gave them, went to sleep and never woke up again. This happened in February 1941, my father was 68 years old.

After my father died, my mother continued to run the store as best as she could but she would only sell things. The workshop was closed down for my father had been the only one who worked there. Before our deportation, a couple of guys came and asked for a watch and a ring in order to ‘guard’ our house, they all left with something. We had crystals, silverware and we knew that it was in vain but we wanted our peace and gave them the things so they would leave us alone. This happened after the deportation had been announced. We were deported in October.

One day we were announced that we had to pack our bags and than they sent us in three shifts over the Bug, over the Dniester 5. It was very primitive back then, a drummer would walk on the streets and that is how all the news and commands were transmitted to the people. He would walk, beat his drum, gather people around him and say what he had to say. Maybe there even was a written statement, I don’t remember. Those were the days of utter chaos and I just don’t remember.

We were in the third transport, we had two or three days to prepare ourselves, I don’t remember exactly how many but it was too short. Those who left before us had been less lucky; I know that people told us that we, transport number three, were the lucky ones. I don’t remember what happened to those from the first two transports. None of them is still alive, maybe Mrs. Victor, an old teacher, still is. She was there and she remembers, but now she isn’t able to discuss those time, neither does she want to be reminded of them.

We didn’t know where we were going. Maybe others knew. But I was young, 18 years old, maybe for me it was also somehow a sort of adventure, but I didn’t know a thing. I know that my mother gathered what she could carry and when our time came, we hired a carriage with a friend, put our entire luggage in the carriage, sat on top of them and went to the train station. And in the train station the cattle trains were waiting, cattle wagons and in one of them were we and our fellow citizens; maybe some of them were in different wagons, I don’t know but they locked us up and we traveled towards the Dniester.

Romanian soldiers guarded us. They didn’t do anything to us, nobody beat us, and nobody pushed or shoved us. The worst thing was the humiliation. Here [at home] I lived a normal and civilized life, as you would, I was a merchant’s daughter, a jeweler’s daughter; there we were humiliated all the time. They put is in cattle wagons, they took us out of our homes and before we crossed the Dniester they would touch us and search for jewelry. They didn’t shoot or hurt anyone, at least I didn’t see it happening, the shootings and beatings followed later.

We sat down in the wagon and as I remember there was a toilet, our friends and other acquaintances were in the same wagon as us and everybody was mourning the things they left at home. But we traveled towards the unknown; we didn’t know where we were going. We arrived at Otaci, which is still on our side, on the Romanian side of the Dniester, and there they transferred us into boats so we could cross the Dniester and arrive in the Ukrainian part. On one side was Otaci and on the other side Moghilău 6. I think that there had been innundations in Moghilău because the houses were half-destroyed and that is were they lodged us, at a local woman’s house and I don’t know how long we stayed there.

Many young ones were caught and sent to the other side of the Bug, where my aunt died as well. I managed to escape and hired a carriage with some friends … And here all of a sudden my memories disappear, I don’t know anything anymore. All I know is that we crossed a field and arrived into a community named Murafa, a poor place with small houses and we entered a house where a widow and her little child lived. My mother and I stayed there for a while. Afterwards a friend, who was in Shargorod, sent a carriage to pick us up.

He found us a place to live in a Jewish house, in the Jewish quarter of Shargorod 7. „Hagiaica” master was a furrier and had two or three sons and a daugher who died of typhus. Two of the boys were soldiers and the boy with a disabillity was at home and we became friends. He could sing beautifuly and we became really good friends, I heard he died. My mother and I shared a big room, our masters behaved nice towards us. Afterwards all the refugees from Czernowitz came and lived with us in that room: my mother’s oldest sister Liebe Scholl, uncle Polak and cousin Rachel. They emigrated to Israel after they returned from the deportations. And than my aunt died in some home in Israel. My aunt and cousin slept on a table, my mother and I on a narrow bed of iron. Then typhus appeared. Rachel got typhus. My mother got typhus as well and I had to stay with her in one be. There was a hospital as well and my cousin Rachel was sent to it. Our doctors from Suceava, we had doctors, were there as well but I don’t know if they got paid for their services.

A family from Câmpulung Moldovenesc had to walk through our room as well, family Schiber. Five people lived in a small room and we stayed in the front room and they had to walk through our room all the time. A mother and her husband, daughter and son and the docter whom the Mrs. Schiber would marry after the war when she came back from Transnistria where her husband died.  She lived in Suceava and died last year. Mrs. Schiber’s son was quite the businessman abd brought them all kind of things into that room. He recently died in Israel, I mean he died in Viena and was transported back to Israel, I was in Israel at that time. Another family lived with Hagiaca in their kitchen. They had an old stove, inside of which was a pot of clay in which they cooked. The mother and the cousing cooked our food separatly. They were very retarded. They would tell us full of pride that they had curtains in front of the window. We had to admire their curtains because they were oh so proper. They were partely indeed proper and partly we had to admire them because it was in their interest, we were a connection to the rulers [romanian occupiers].

Our hosts were Jewish as well, they spoke Russian and Yiddish. I could communicate in Yiddish with them. They were somehow happy that we were there because we were able to talk to the Romanian soldiers, there were Romanians there, and they felt somewhat protected through our presence. They were happy that we were in their house or they just tolerated us because we were a connection to the Romanian occupiers. But we did not have any connections to the Romanian soldiers, we rarely saw them. They were under Romanian occupation and there was a, I do’t know how he was called, a prefect called deputy. He was a brutal man but he left us more or less alone because of certain reasons.

We survived and the interesting thing is that I was 18 years old and was rather well-built because I ate jacket potatoes all the time. They were so tasty, ah they tasted so good, we didn’t have anything else. We would cook them with their skin, bake them, put them in salt and eat them and the Hagiaica baked very good bread which we are. That region is a very rich regions with very good markets, all that you would want, they are Ukraine’s granary. Most of ours died by the time we arived and stayed in Shargorod.

The things we had taken with us we used to survive: pillow cases, I don’t know, all that we could carry we sold to the Ukrainians. Afterwards a cousin and her mother from Czernovitz came and stayed with us, the old woman was a seamstress and she would sew all the time. I don’t know who borrowed a sewing maching, one of those that turn around, and she would stay and sew and then sell the things. And after a year or maybe a year and a half, our family from Czernovitz found a trustworthy person and sent us some things… We survived because we were lucky enough to be placed into a house with an oven and we weren’t cold and kept selling the things we had taken from home and so the first winter passed and it was a nightmare, it was horrbile. And afterwards we just kept living.

There were Jewish labourcamps in Dorohoi and the Jews were taken out of the camps and sent to Transnistria [to Sharogod]. They arrived barefeet and full with lice, they brought typhus with them and they put them in an empty synagogue, it was winter, minus 20 degrees Celsius and the next morning one by one all the bodies were taken out and I saw that. I didn’t know what the people kept putting into those carriages and all of a sudden I realised that they had to be bodies…

Sharogod was a wretched town without toilets. You had to go outside, to a filthy pond, we had buckets and we would empty them into the pond. There was no water in the house but there were some primitive wells, just some holes in the ground, from which we would take the water. The locals taught me how to take water out of the well, to throw the bucket in and pull the water up, to carry it up the hill because we lived on a hill. Once during the winter it was icy and I carried two buckets of water and just when I had arrived on top of the hill, I fell and all the water fell on me. We carried the water and in time we made ourselves a sort of oven on which we could heat our food. A human gets used to things, he adapts to whatever comes on his path.

There was on the market [a currency used for business], we could buy things but I don’t remember if it was a special currency, Ruble or Lei. I was lucky that at my age of 18 years old, I did not completely realize the tragedy of our situation. It was very tragic indeed. To be taken out of your house, to be left with absolutely nothing, whoever wanted could exterminate you. In Sharogod the leaders were more tolerant. My daughter-in-law comes from Rădăuţi, she was born there but she was in a different place, Giurin I think.

We would go out of the house, walk around, befriend the Ukrainian youth, with would speak Yiddish with them, they were Ukrainian Jews. It was there that I learnt a handful of Russian. I couldn’t really learn that language. It is a difficult language. But we were friends and we would meet every evening and talk…

None of us from Bucovina were sent to work across the Bug. We had to pick tobacco leaves. They gathered us and than they took us to work where a lawyer from Suceava supervised us. There was a lot of youth and we would pick tobacco leaves. Mister deputy didn’t like something and we had to stay in line and in front of us he slapped the lawyer a few times. And we, youngsters, just watched. Afterwards I got sick of tobacco intoxication as a result of the leave picking and I was sick for a few days. I didn’t go often, maybe once or twice.

We stayed in Sharogod until May 1944. In May 1944 Sharogod was liberated, the Germans retreated, I watched them retreat, watched them how they ran as lunatics. We were surrounded by hills and I saw the partisans descent those hills. The Germans were still in town and the partisans were already descending. We hid somewhere in cellar under the ground and stayed there. We heard the Ukrainians pass by, they were the ones that left with the Germans because they felt guilty or where connected to the Germans and oh, the savages went with them. We heard them trample through the house; they didn’t find us so they left. We exited the cellar and the partisans came, we cheered for them because they were our salvation because if those Germans and Ukrainians had stayed for a few more ours they would have exterminated us. And afterwards, we hired a carriage and went home. We arrived in Czernovitz and stayed for a week or two with one of my aunts, after two weeks we left them as well and went home, again in a hired carriage with some friends.

After the War

We came back in May 1944, two years and seven months after the deportation but we did not find a single thing. We had locked the door when we left home but of course there was nothing left when we returned, they had emptied the house. I found a pile of papers, thrown outside, and in that pile I found my French study book, it was half torn. There had been a fire at our home. When we returned we didn’t stay in the same house, we lived with some friends.

I am not sure if my mother reopened the jewelry store but she wasn’t capable, she wasn’t a merchant. We did not keep the store after we came back.

I went back to school. Mrs. Lovi, a teacher, had opened a Jewish high school here in Suceava. I entered 10th grade and I skipped two grades because I had already done four years of high school and I wanted to write my final exams, I wanted to go to medical school. I don’t remember how many students and how many classes there were. One of Mrs. Lovi’s sisters was a judge, she taught Logic and Argumentation; then there was professor Rimmer, from Fălticeni, he taught mathematics. The others I don’t remember. I don’t even know where that school used to be. That’s the way that period of time went by and even though I don’t remember, it was very hard for me. Mathematics and Physics weren’t my cup of tea and so, when my husband came and proposed, I accepted very quickly so I could marry and did not have to become a doctor as I had wanted. That is how studying and schooling ended for me.

My husband’s name is Julius Martin Schorr, born 1906 in Suceava. His father was also from Suceva but his step-father named Schafer was the one who actually raised him because his biological father died in Iasi when Julius was six. His step-father was a respected man in Suceava, he was a lawyer. His mother was from Suceava as well, she and her sisters died of typhus on a table in Transnistria. She was a gorgeuos woman. My husband had two brothers: Schorr Siegfried who was an economist and died with his wife Gerda, also Jewish, in Struma 8. The other brother was Schorr Herbert, a doctor, who lived in France and died 1978 in Paris, he had a daughter named Nicole.

My husband lived with his parents and after his father [stepfather] died, he continued living with is mother. They had a house in the center of Suceava, it was opposite to the Court, on the other side of the road. They had a beautiful house with a big garden which don’t exist anymore. Apartment buildings have been built on that spot.

My husband was a handsome man, admired by the women from Suceava and because he was a bachelor until he was 38, I know he had a few girlfriends before he met me. He was a quiet, peaceful and serious man who professed the law. Before the war he had been a lawyer for a short time and after the war, when he came back, he was a civil servant.

My husband had been deported to Transnistria as well but we didn’t meet there. We met here, after we came back. I remember that he used to sit on a chair in some store and he would sell things. We were acquainted but he wasn’t part of my social circle, he was 17 years older than me. I was childish, had other friends, he was a man with life experience. We met at a wedding after our return and he decided that we should get married. He like me, I liked him, we both had been to Transnistria and that shared experience united us. He spoke with my mother and than we got married.

We married during spring 1945 in Suceava. We had a religious wedding but there wasn’t a ceremony because only my mother and me were left. I know that a rabbi appeared at our civil wedding but I don’t know if he was from Suceava or not. My husband wasn’t religious but he respected absolutely everything that had to be done, out of respect for my mother. We were married at home, we had a chuppah from the Community. As a widow my mother wasn’t allowed to stand under the chuppah. There were some acquaintances, not even friends, at the place where we lived but they could not have been more than six. He had nobody left so nobody came from his side. His mother and aunts had died, he was the only one who had returned from Transnistria. He was alone and as poor as I was. He had nobody left. I was poor, he was poor, we had absolutely nothing. But my mother made me a pink dress, I don’t know how she got the fabric, we borrowed the veil and that was it.

There is a big house in the center which belonged to one of my husband’s uncles, and he had room. After we married, we moved into that house and we stayed there until we moved to Câmpulung Moldovenesc. We got some furniture from the abandonned goods because many of those who had fled, died and didn’t return and they gave us a table and a chair, it was easier to collect than to buy furniture. My oldest son, Karl Berthold Schorr was born in 1945 and Siegfried, the younger one in 1949, both were born in Suceava. My husband started to work as a civil servant and I started to raise the boys, first one than both and that is how live went by.

We moved to the district’s capital Câmpulung Moldovenesc in 1952 9. As a civil servant my husband had been transferred and he took me, our boys and my mother with him. He went back, when he was transferred back to Suceava. I stayed six years in Câmpulung with the boys because I had fallen in love with the mountains and the forrests. My mother would take care of her grandsons, would take care of the house and I would climb the mountains. My mother only died in 1960 when we had already returned to Suceava. We all moved back to Suceava in 1957.

We lived in a deputy’s house in Câmpulung Moldovenesc, my husband somehow got the house and that’s where we lived. The house’s owners weren’t in Câmpulung Moldovenesc, I don’t know where they were. We lived on the first stock, another family lived on the ground floor and we had to pay rent and all those other things [bills and expenses]. There used to be many jews im Câmpulung Moldovenesc but all of them left or died … there is no one left. There used to be a synagogue as well. We had many friends and acquaintances there.

I had spoken German with my parents, I spoke German with my husband as well. He spoke a beautiful and pure German, I have many books that used to be his family’s. Now I have started to forget my German because I am surrounded only by Romanians. This used to be Austria and the older generation of Romanians all spoke German, the younger ones can’t.

My husband was a passionate hunter, he had a weapon and a permit, he had also an eagle which he kept for hunting and before the war he would often go hunting. During our marriage he hunted every weekend as long as he was still healthy enough and he would bring home hares, once a wild boar and all kind of fowls. I raised the children, he went hunting. When the boys grew up they accompanied him everywhere, they went hunting and fishing.  Every summer we would take a vacation and because we loved nature, we would go to Câmpulung, to Vatra Dornei, we would take long walks.

My husband was a civil servant at the prefect’s office, than at the Secretary of State and afterwards at the State’s Arbitration where he worked until his pension when he was 62 years old. He never had any problems regarding his nationality, on contrary, he was a respected man, regarded as a sort of activist. Under the communist regime we lived as everybody did. We didn’t have any problems because my husband was a social democrat and all the social democrats were automatically merged into the communist party. My husband was a communist and he entered me into the communist youth union [UTC]. They would have basic organisational meetings which I rarely attended because it did not interest me. If I went, I went for my husband so he could keep his chair.

I don’t know if the news of the formation of the Israeli state in 1948 preoccupied me. People started to mass-emigrate in the 1950s. One day I went into town and saw a mass of people in the center and there I heard, that those were the people that had gathered to leave, many people left at that time. I was very happy that we never spoke about leaving. My husband never though about leaving, he was also very ill. The truth is that a week or two before he died, he told me: “Just so you know, if both our boys will leave, we will leave as well”. But nobody wanted to leave. Until that moment we hadn’t even thought of it. My son Siegfried was the first who came home with this issue but only after my husband died.

My oldest son, Karl Berthold Schorr, was born 1945 in Suceava. He went to primary and high school here. He studied at the Faculty of Law in Iasi and worked for a while at the State’s Arbitration when my husband retired. When that institution was dissolved, he started working as an independent lawyer, which he still does. Karl is a hardworking man, just like his father was, when you have a job you fully dedicate yourself to it, he did so while he worked at the Arbitration but also at any other job; he knew that he to do it properly. His relationship with the Community is more of an emotional nature. He goes to the Community, they know him there but he doesn’t keep the holidays as strictly as you are supposed to. Neither do we. Karl never though about making Aliyah.

Karl’s wife is Jewish and originally from Rădăuţi, where her parents used to live. She spoke German at home. She worked as a mechanical engineer at the Cooperation here in Suceva. They did not have an arraged marriage. Karl had a group of friends through which he met his wife. We never said that his wife had to be Jewish. If he would’ve met a Christian girl and had insisted, we wouldn’t have stopped him and it wouldn’t have been a tragedy. But we also wished, as did he I think, that he would marry a Jewish girl. My sons never had these issues, maybe my grandchildren do. They were married in 1974, their civil marriage being in Suceava an their religious ceremony and the party took place in Rădăuţi. Robert, their oldest boy, was born after nine months in 1975 and is now in Bucharest and has a job at an advertisment company, at the subscription’s office of the newspaper Capitalul, he has an apartment in Bucharest as well. The other boy’s name is Edgar and he is in Suceava, he is two years younger than Robert. Both of them studied at the Faculty of Law.

My youngest son, Siegfried Schorr, was born 1949 in Suceava. He went to primary and high school here after which he studied at the Polightchnical Institute in Iasi, he is an engineer. He met his wife through some acquaintances, someone from Bacău was interested in our family and got in touch with us, we agreed and that is what they call an arranged shadah. They met in Iasi, liked each other and got engaged. For a while he would visit her every weekend. Siegfried’s wife, nee Herta Fischer, is Jewish, born in Roman in a family of religious Jews, her parents weren’t too overly religious but were good Jews who kept the holidays in good tradition. Their religious ceremony took place in Bacău, I think the rabbi was from there. Anyway, they had a religious ceremony with all the customary rituals, exactly how it should be. Herta is a good, hard-working girl, an engineer and worked, I think, at the hydrotechnical instalations, she studied mechanics. At the beginning Siegfried and his wife didn’t speak about leaving but after my husband’s death and when their friends and acquaintances started to leave en masse, they wanted to leave as well. It was also during that hard time when you had to stand in a queue for  peace of salami, life was hard so he decided to leave. All of a sudden. My husband died 1984, they left 1988. It was before the revolution, I don’t know if they had any difficulties obtaining their pasports because they lived in Bacău. My children lived in Rehovot, where they live now as well, just in a different house. At the beginning it was very difficult, it took them two years to find permanent jobs. After many interviews and courses, Herta obtained a job at the Ministry of Finances. Now it would be all perfect, if things were peaceful there.

They have two sons: Sasha-Luis and Herbert who was named after father’s brother from France. Sasha is wonderful, he is a golden boy. To study medicine at daytime and work at the airport during nighttime is not easy. Sasha’s wife studied together with him in Bucharest and is a medic as well, now she studies again so she can profess in Israel. Herbert studied law at a private university and is looking now for a lawyer’s office where he can work or do an internship. In the meantime he keeps having problems with the army. The drafted him, sent him home, drafted and sent him home again and now [situation with Libanon] I am convinced that they will draft him again, if it hasn’t already happened. Both of them had hard army careers, Herbert is a trained parachutist. He is the devil embodied, he jumps with the parachute, dives into the oceans, he goes wherever he finds danger. They integrated well and especially the young ones became 100% Israeli. Herbert has a girlfriend there, who originally came from Morocco. They have a melting pot of languages and nations there, it is a very interesting country which I love a lot. Maybe I am influenced by the fact that my children, grandchildren and friends are there although there aren’t too many left, one by one dies.

Siegfried and his family live a more Jewish life than we do here, especially since they are in Israel, they keep the holidays, there they don’t work on fridays and saturdays, my daughter-in-law lights the candles, they don’t eat bread for Passover and do the traditional Seder ceremony. They lit candles for Hanukkah and the younger one, Herberrt, would say the prayer during which you light the first candle. I was there for Purim and the boys were masked, the holiday when you eat fruit, my son bought a lot of fruits, I ate Hamantashen there, they do exactly everything because they live in a Jewish environment in Israel. Here they didn’t really have a place where they would see those things.

My children know things about Judaism from me, not from my husband. There was a rabbi at the bris of the boys. Both of them went to Talmud Tora for two or three years. Their teacher was the head of the Community for a while and he was very pro-active and gather the jewish youth: he taught Talmud Tora, there was a choir, there were more Jews back than, a lot more who could come to the Community. He was transferred to Bucharest afterwards and I think that he still works at the Federation nowadays, he became a representative there. The Talmud Tora kept losing children and at one point there were only two or three left.

I taught the boys all I know about Judaism. I don’t know if it is enough. Herberts knows more, he comes and teaches me now, he fasts and observes the holidays because they live in Israel. The children here, they know that they are Jewish. That is important as well, to know and to feel that you are Jewish …  if you keep traditiond or if you go to the synagogue is a lot less important. To feel that you are a Jew, to feel that the things that happen in Israel hurt you as well, to feel that it wounds you terribly when somebody denies the Holocaust. Sometimes I want to throw my television out of the window when a historian appears and says that everything is a lie, that things did not happen like that. I was marked by Transnistria, I can’t watch a movie with nazi camps in them. I can’t stand to hear them talk at their round tables about all those theories that the Jews want eternal sympathy… Those are the things that hurt me. And that is what it means to feel Jewish, my son feels Jewish just as I do. My grandchildren feel it a lot less, they are from a different generation. The young ones can’t understand or grasp those things…impossible. I told them a few things about the deportations. But they used to live with their grandmother, they were already big boys and their grandmother told them, anyway, they have always known and still know now that they are Jews.

Every summer my huband and I would go to Câmpulung, to Vatra Dornei for a vacation. We loved nature and would take long walks. I was for four weeks in Germany in 1986, I visited a friend in Munchen and I have been four times in Israel. I felt extraordinarily well in Israel, I felt home among all those Jews but it was just as nice to go home again. At first my husband was still alive, but he never was to Israel, he was sick all the time.

In 1976 I was there for the first time, I visited friends for six months and everytime I stayed three, four weeks at my friend Ruth in Jerusalem who isn’t alive anymore. I had another friend who was from Iasi and went to Israel, she taught at university in Jerusalem and I visited her every time for two or three weeks. She is mentally unstable and weak now that her husband died, she has none left to talk too. The second time I was in Israel was in 1989, after the revolution 10, actually during the revolution. Siegfried and Sasha came to pick me up, they arrived at th bored and they weren’t allowed to enter the country. The borders had closed, the revolution had started. So I arrived a few days before them in Israel and I have visited three more times since then. I visited all the beautiful places in Israel. I was at the Western Wall in the old city of Jerusalem, I was at the Dead Sea as well. The last time when I was in Israel my son took me to a place with a scale model of Israel. It is a beautiful peace of art, with little figurines and it represent all of Israel, the buildings from the country and the economical situation of the country. I was never afraid in Israel. I would walk in the evenings to my children, but now, unfortunately, the situation is different. But here, the last time, I am afraid. There are more and more thieves now who come and rob you.

I never thought about moving to Israel because I have children here. If both of them would have moved, I would have gone but I wouldn’t like to stay there too long. I am too old to learn new things, there comes a moment when you have to settle down and stay in your place, why should I pack and go? I feel very good here because I am with Jews, with my children and although my son offers me all what is best and beautiful there, I know I have to go home when my visum expires because eventhough I am there, I am here in my soul.

Siegfried used to write me loads and loads of letters. A few months ago, when I came back from Israel, I destroyed them all for there is no point in keeping them. Now that the world is modernising he keeps in touch with Karl via e-mail who prints them and gives them to me. And twice a month he calls me. And now that there are battles, misunderstandings, wars if I may say so, Siegfried calls me more often, he takes care of me.

My daughters-in-law are very nice to me, which I especially felt when I was sick and in the hospital in Fundeni, Bucharest. They are good girls. The young one, Herta, came from Israel and spoke to the professors and Edgar, my grandson, drove me to and from the hospital.

My son Karl has a beautiful little cottage and garden in Mitoc Dragomir, district Suceava, we nicknamed it his ‚estate’. We would go often, many times during the summer but now they don’t have time anymore. My grandson Edgar is very busy and he doesn’t have the time to take me there. This summer I was there only once. We never go all together, everyone goes alone. My grandson and his friends, my son and daughter-in-law with their friends and sometimes they bring me along. We stay there for a few hours and than we go back home.

The demolishing that took place during Ceausescu’s rule didn’t affect me, to the contrary, every new building interested me. Nowadays, when I walk through Suceava, I try to remember how it used to be. If you are alive and see that a new quarter is being built, you forget how the old one looked. But there used to be small houses, the center was paved with riverstones, there were two or three cars in Suceava. It was a litlle provincial town, quiet, where we walked the main road up and down, girls separated from the boys. This was before Transnistria. Everything changed after Transnistria and then, under Ceausescu, all kind of apartment buildings were built.

When the regime changed in 1989, I felt relieved. I could talk agan about what I wanted, I did not have to watch out. We lived under pressure. You lived under the impression that you couldn’t breathe in peace and I waited for that big happiness, which still hasn’t come. I have to say that we achieved some progress: shops are full, there is a circle of people with a lot of money, the rich people, which doesn’t disturb me, it is well. I would have liked for things to be different but I don’t regret them. I never cared about politics, that’s why I have no idea what is going on. I watch tv, Antena 3, and listen to all those people talk about politics and parties but it enters one ear and leaves through the other. To be honest, it never interested me.

Every three months I get money from Germany, because I was deported; it isn’t a lot but it certainly helps me. I get one million and two hundred lei from the Romanian state and together with my pension, I manage just fine. I don’t have to ask my children for help. I’m not very pretentious. I don’t need fancy toiletry, the things that I have, my daughter-in-law sent them from Israel.

During the last years the number of members at the Community in Suceava was reduced to 80, most of them are not even Jewish. And all the time somebody dies. Before the revolution, during the holdiays, it was a struggle for the Community to find daily ten men for the minyan. Now they manage maybe once a week even during the holdiays. The old ones can’t anymore, the young ones have to work as they are not yet retired. My children don’t go as well.

I used to go to the Community every once in a while to be surrounded by Jews. During a meeting we decided to start a sort of group, a group for us women where we coul meet and discuss, we even chose a person who would be responsible for the club but nothing happened, there is no one left to those things with: Mrs Victor, Mrs. Feller, Mrs. Wister. So there are no activities. The community used to organise the Seder, it was rather pleasant. They would bring the food from the Jewish cantines in Dorohoi or Bacau. The president of the Community has been here for only two or three months, the one before him is old, 90 years. Sometimes rabbi Rosen and other deputies from the Federation would come and then some Jews would gather.

I light candles at the Jahrzeit of my husband and my parents, I actually received electrical candles from Israel. I will put them in a socket and keep them on for 24 hours, I don’t light real candles anymore. It was the tradition that at a Jahrzeit you would give cake and brandy to the Community but I never did and I don’t think anyone still does nowadays. Unfortunately, I can only rarely go to the cemetery, maybe twice or three times a year, because it is far away and very solitary. So I have to go with my son or whenever Siegfried visits we go together. I take the candles with me and light them at the graves of my parents and my daughter-in-law’s parents who are burried there as well and I light candles at the graves of all those who were close to me or my friends. I pray daily, I take the calendar and read in Romanian,  I don’t know something else, and I say our Hebrew prayers not the ritual ones in Yiddish and I pray to the One up there and tell him what I want. Every evening I say „Lord, take care of my children …” and I ennumerate them all so that he won’t forget their names.

As long as it is summer, I am like, how shall I put it, those flowers who vegetate during the winter, you don’t have to give them water, they fall, dry up but stay in a bulb and when springtime comes, they blossom again. That is how I am during the summer. I am human in the summer, I can go out in the evening,  gossip with my neighbors, walk around, take very long walks. When the autumn and the winter come with their rain, than the tragedy starts. I can’t stand it to stay in the house, I have to go out but I can’t; either it’s too cold or it’s too slippery or I don’t know what and that is the greastest punishment for me. It’s horrible to be locked up in your house all the time. During the remaining time, what can I say, I read a lot, I read extremely much especially in German and Romanian. Now I can’t read anymore, I can’t concentrate, my thoughts fly everywhere… and these eyes don’t help me anymore, I have cataracts and other things in them and I don’t read much anymore. Even the television started to annoy me during the last period but still, every evening I watch TV. During the day I am busy. Although I am alone, I have to go the market or cook or clean. Twice a year I hire a lady to help me clean for the rest I do everthing by myself. That is my schedule. I don’t have friends, except for the neighbors and the acquaintances who are Christian but nice, but I have no more real friends left.

Glossary:

Carol Margulies
Targu Mures
Romania
Interviewers: Julia Negrea and Ildiko Molnar
Date of interview: December 2003

Mr. Margulies is a thin, short man aged 84. He works in accounting at the office of the Jewish Community in Targu Mures. One can often spot him on the street, always in a hurry to get to the bank or public institutions in order to solve the problems of his community. He’s very interested in politics and everything that’s related to the issues dealt with by Jews all over the world. He reads the ‘Realitatea evreiasca’ [Jewish Reality] newspaper and various German-speaking magazines which he gets by mail. Because his wife was ill, this interview was conducted at the Targu Mures synagogue, before the Friday prayer.

My family history
Growing up
During the War
After the War
Glossary

My family history

My paternal grandfather was born in Sadagura [today Ukraine]. [Editor’s note: The small, insignificant market town of Sadagura, in the vicinity of Czernowitz, where the Ruzyner Tzaddik Israel Friedmann (1796-1850) settled in 1842 and established his ‘court’, became the center of Chasidism. From there, the tremendous influence of the Tzaddik spread to the depths of Russia, Ukraine, Bessarabia, Moldova and Eastern Galicia. Today it’s a quarter of the city of Czernowitz.] My grandfather’s name was Karl Margulies; his Jewish name was Chaim Nute. He died in the 1900s. As he had passed away before I was born, I was given his name. When I came to Romania, I got an identity card that read Carol instead of Karl. The police told me, ‘So what’s the big deal? This king’s name was Carol, too!’ [Editor’s note: reference to King Carol I 1 and King Carol II 2 of Romania]. I can’t remember the maiden name of my paternal grandmother or the year of her birth. I know she was born in Sadagura too, but I know nothing about her family. All my father told me about her was that she died at a very young age, around 1885-1890, and that she was a tall and very beautiful woman.

She and my grandfather had two children: a daughter, Regina Margulies, who was older, born in the 1880s, and my father, Arthur Margulies, born in 1885. They were both born in Sadagura. All I know about Regina is that she got married to a man whose name I can’t remember; after World War I, in 1919, and they left for America. They had a boy there. I don’t know his name. He was married and had children of his own, but we didn’t keep in touch. Right after we came back from the camp, Regina wrote to us, asking whether we needed anything. She used to send us nylon stockings: one piece in one letter and its pair in another. She died in 1948; her son died shortly after.

My paternal grandfather’s second wife, whose maiden name I don’t know, was also born in Sadagura. She was rather quiet and soft, like Jewish women used to be at the time. They didn’t have children together. This grandmother was almost a stranger to us. I remember that she only came to our place a few times, when passing through Czernowitz [today Ukraine].

My grandfather was in the cattle business: he bought cattle for export or consumption. They spoke Yiddish at home and observed the kashrut. My grandfather was very religious. After all, he lived in Sadagura, in a very strong Jewish environment, where everyone was very religious. He used to smoke a lot. Tobacco affected his bronchi and lungs and his end was slow and painful. He died around 1900. He was already very ill when he summoned my father, who was still in high school at the time: ‘See, this is what tobacco did to me. If you ever put a cigarette in your mouth, I’ll kill you!’ So my father never smoked.

Before the war, they used to say: ‘Czernowitz, near Sadagura.’ Sadagura was a larger town and belonged to Austria-Hungary. When my grandparents were alive, there were still many Jews there, but they left during World War I, so Sadagura disappeared as a town. It has never been reborn. Even today, only a few ordinary people live there. There’s a book on Sadagura, written by a Romanian author, I don’t know his name, entitled ‘A name from Sadagura.’ [Editor’s note: Mr. Margulies refers to a play written by Vasile Alecsandri (1818-1890), ‘Iorgu de la Sadagura’ (Iorgu from Sadagura), premiered on 18th January 1844 at the National Theater in Iasi. Alecsandri was a Romanian poet, author, playwright, folklorist, politician, minister, and academician; he was the founder of the Romanian theater and dramatic literature, a remarkable personality of Moldova and then of Romania during the entire 19th century.] I went there more than once; it wasn’t far, you only had to cross the River Prut. My uncle, who had a candy and chocolate factory, used to take us riding on Sunday. We made trips to Sadagura, to remember how things used to be there.

At that time, all the children had to go to cheder from the age of four. So did my father and he could read Hebrew. He went to high school in Czernowitz and got a graduation certificate. When World War I began, my father wasn’t called up to the front. He remained at the post office. He wore the imperial outfit [the uniform]; he was an officer and was in charge of the Czernowitz post office. In 1915, when the Russians entered Romania, my father gathered all the papers, telegraph machines, and telephones, purchased horses and two large carts in which he loaded everything and carried the items deeper into the country, to Seletin [town in Bukovina, 228km south-west of Czernowitz], which the Russians hadn’t occupied yet [Editor’s note: This is highly likely to have happened in 1918, shortly before the annexation of Bessarabia to Romania 3]. For his deed, he was decreed by the Emperor of Austria-Hungary, King ‘Apostolosin Koning von Ungarum’. The order read, ‘Awarding, on 23rd March 1915, to Abraham Margulies from Czernowitz, post office and telegraph specialist, the Golden Cross for valor.’ He also received a nice ribbon that read ‘Franz Josef’.

Before World War II, my father was a high-ranking clerk in Czernowitz, Bukovina, which belonged to Romania at the time. He was responsible for the security of the news that entered the country. He used to check the newspapers like an agent of the Siguranta 4, like it was called back then. As he spoke several languages, he read various newspapers; when he came across an article that attacked the royal family, he simply blocked that newspaper from reaching the population. At that time, the country was under a royal dictatorship, and they [the authorities] didn’t want the people to find out that King Carol II had a girlfriend, Lupeasca, while Prince Michael 5 was still a child. [Editor’s note: The woman was Elena Magda Lupescu, daughter of a Christianized Jew. Carol met her in 1922. She was known under various names, including Lupeasca or Duduia – the latter was the one by which Carol used to address her.].

By the time the war began [World War I], my mother, whose maiden name was Antonia Engler, had finished school in a catholic monastery in Vienna [today Austria]. The Austrians didn’t trust the Czechs and Poles, as they wanted to have the country just for themselves [be independent], so they treated them as enemies, not as friends, especially after the war began. So they took those girls who had studied at the monastery and sent them to Czechoslovakia. This is how my mother got to Dulmen [Editor’s note: At that time, Czechoslovakia didn’t exist as a state, so the city mentioned was under Austrian-Hungarian authority.], where she worked with my father for a police station. My father was an officer and clerk in Czernowitz, but he got sent to several cities across the country; this is how he got to Dulmen, where he met my mother. After a while, my father was sent to another place, Seletin, but he kept in touch with my mother by mail.

When the war ended, my father returned to Czernowitz; and so did my mother. She didn’t go back to Vienna, because, once the Austrian-Hungarian Empire collapsed, the Czechs, Poles, and Baltic people founded their own independent states. The Romanians received a part of the territories, too. In those days, the Russians had their Revolution 6. My parents got married in 1920. I don’t know if they had a religious ceremony. They settled in Czernowitz, which belonged to Romania at the time.

My maternal grandfather’s name was Berl Engler. He was born in Sadagura. I don’t know the year of his birth, but I know he died in 1910. His first wife, whose maiden name was Schrager, died in 1893, was very young, and I know almost nothing about her. They had two daughters: Tiny Engler, born in 1889, and my mother, Antonia Engler, born in 1892. My maternal grandfather’s second wife was Polish. Her name was Malca; I don’t know her maiden name. They had two sons: Leo [Zuzu] Engler, who was born around 1894, graduated in Vienna and became a doctor, and Sigmund Engler, born six years after his brother, around 1900; I don’t know what school he went to. Our grandparents couldn’t get along any better. Malca was a very kind woman; we didn’t know that she was our step-grandmother and loved her very much.

My mother’s sister, Aunt Tiny, got deported with us and died in Transnistria, in Tivriv [today Tyvrov, Ukraine], in 1943. She was married to a man named Mendel Sandman, born in Sadagura, too. He owned a candy and chocolate factory that was called Sandia. He employed around 20 workers. Only some of them were Jewish. They had a boss who my father had brought from Austria. The goods they produced were sent across the entire country. My uncle had agents who traveled and sold his merchandise in all the cities. My uncle also owned about six carts and each had a pair of horses; those were very beautiful and well groomed animals. They shone like dolls. There were Jews who traveled through the villages and sold the merchandise. My uncle’s house was where his factory was. It was a large place, with spacious and beautiful rooms. It had a bathroom. It only had one floor, but had a courtyard, where the stables were located. They had a very good social position; he was the first [in Czernowitz] to have a car and chauffeur. Uncle Sandman and Aunt Tiny weren’t very religious, but they observed the major holidays. No one ate pork. They spoke Yiddish and German at home. My uncle died in 1940, before the Russians came [Editor’s note: Mr. Margulies refers to the annexation of Bessarabia to the Soviet Union 7]. He was 50-52 years old. In fact, he was lucky he died; otherwise, he would have surely been deported to some place in Siberia.

Sandman was a people’s man. His house was large, so he accommodated several relatives; each family occupied two rooms. The women weren’t employed; they stayed at home and looked after the children, if they had any. Among the occupants were the Zimblers, the family of one of my uncle’s cousins, Tony Zimbler. He worked for a newspaper in Czernowitz, ‘Allgemeine Morgenblatt’ [General Morning Paper]. He sold copies in the street every morning at 6 or 7. There were a lot of newspapers in Czernowitz, Romanian, French, and German. They dealt with local events more than with politics. Everyone spoke German there. Well, there were the hutulii [People belonging to a Slavic population which inhabits the area of the Northern Carpathians] and the Ukrainians who didn’t speak it too well, but they would learn it, too. They had a daughter, Silvia. She’s still alive and lives in Israel. When they returned from Transnistria, Silvia and her parents left for Israel from Iasi. They stayed in Cyprus for a year or two, as they weren’t allowed to go to Israel right away.

The Hausemans lived at my uncle’s, too. The father was a distant relative from my mother’s side of the family. Hauseman means ‘man’s house.’ They had two daughters, but I don’t know their names. One of them got married. In the 1930s, some people from America came to Czernowitz looking for Jewish girls to marry. She married, had a girl named Ester and stayed home. Her husband later came back and took them to America before the war began. The other daughter worked as a lawyer for the sugar trust in Czernowitz. She had an affair with the manager or something like that. Only a few days before the war began, they left for Bucharest. The man was some big shot there and she continued to work, having a German name, Hauseman. When the Romanians returned to Czernowitz, at the beginning of the war, she came home a couple of times and brought us money, as we were in need.

She never got married. Her lover had a wife and child and his wife denounced her for being a Jew. They [the authorities in Bucharest] hadn’t known about that, because she had a German name. When they came to seize her from the hotel where she stayed, she committed suicide. When we left for the camp, we gave all our gold and jewelry to Mrs. Hauseman, who left for Bucharest. Our family also had some silverware, spoons and the like, which I took to Uncle Sandman’s factory and hid in a large attic. When we returned, we found them where I had hid them. But all that we had given to Mrs. Hauseman was lost. She had committed suicide in Bucharest, and the gentleman she was with claimed he hadn’t received anything from her and didn’t know anything. So the jewels were gone.

A cousin of theirs lived in my uncle’s house, too. Her name was Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger. Eisinger was her father’s name and Meerbaum was the name of her mother’s second husband. She was my cousin too; we were related through my great-grandfather, Abraham Schrager. Selma and her parents weren’t deported with us. They stayed home for an extra year. But they were eventually taken with the second wave, in 1942. They got to the Mihailovca camp, across the River Bug [today Mikhaylovka, in Transnistria 8]. Selma caught typhus and died on 16th December 1942, at the age of 18. After her death they discovered she had kept a diary, like Anne Frank. My cousin, Silvia, who lives in Israel, sent me an article published in an Israeli newspaper [Editor’s note: Mr. Margulies doesn’t know the name of the newspaper; the author of the article is Gideon Kraft.], pointing out that the publishing of the diary was ‘due to Teacher Hersch Segal, who discovered her.’ [Editor’s note: The works published by Hersch Segal (1905, Strzeliska-Nowe, Galicia - 1982, Rehovot, Israel) include the diary of Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger, Blütenlese, Gedichte, Rehovot, 1976.].

It’s an article in German which claims that Selma was related to Paul Celan [Editor’s note: Paul Celan, born Antschel, in 1920, in Czernowitz. He committed suicide in 1970, throwing himself in the River Seine. An internationally renowned poet, he was considered for the Nobel Prize in 1966. He was supposed to share the prize with Nelly Sachs, but the vote was against him.] The article renders a fragment of Selma’s diary, written in German, ‘Spring. The trees are only now naked, and every bush is a sweet whisper, like the first announcement of the new joy, and swallows will return tomorrow, too.’ [Frühling. Die Bäume sind erst jetzt ganz kahl, und jeder Strauch ist wie ein weicher Schall, als erste Nachricht von dem neuen Glück, Und morgen kehren Schwalben auch zurück.]

Zuzu [Leo] Engler, my mother’s step-brother, was a doctor. He studied in Vienna. He left for Israel during the war [World War II]. Zuzu initially bought tickets aboard the Struma 9. When the time of the departure came, they told him the seats were already taken. But he didn’t wait for too long until he finally left on another ship. He took his wife, Saly, their son, and mother-in-law. He left his mother, Malca, behind. She was 60-65, had diabetes, and was in hospital, in Czernowitz, where she found her death. At first, Zuzu had a hard time in Israel. Then his brother, Sigmund, who lived in America, sent him money and he was thus able to buy an x-ray machine. He was specialized in stomach diseases and got to the point where patients had to schedule an appointment several weeks in advance.

Zuzu’s son got married against his parents’ will. He lived in Tel Aviv. Zuzu once went to the seaside with his wife. She was on the threshold of getting drowned, so Zuzu’s son jumped to her rescue. He was the one who drowned instead, while his mother was saved. This was God’s way of punishing Zuzu for everything he had done and for his pride. It was the worst punishment. Zuzu died a long time ago. His wife, Saly, died in 2001. I wasn’t on good terms with her. She didn’t behave appropriately. Before the war they wanted to take a trip to Paris and didn’t have enough money. So they went to Malca to get the rest. She gave them the money without asking the other children. When I went to Israel, in 1987, actually, that was the only time I went there, I was invited to eat at Saly’s. I found her upset. She had a beautiful, large house in Tel Aviv. She had kept all my uncle’s clothes for me, they were all like new.

The other brother, Sigmund Engler, was 18 when he left for America, in 1918, after World War I. He knew many people there. At first, he worked for a car wash owned by a friend of his. Then he obtained a loan and, after his friend died, took over the business. He developed it and made a living out of it. His girlfriend, a Jewish woman who had stayed behind, eventually joined him in America and they got married. After a while, my uncle’s wife, I don’t know her name, had an affair with an American man. When her husband found out, he told her to move in with her lover. She refused. She locked herself in a hotel room and killed herself. Sigmund remarried. He picked a beautiful American girl. They came to his native country together in 1926 or so, when I was about five. They had two sons. One of them took over the business; I don’t know anything about the other one. My uncle died a long time ago. His wife survived after him for quite a while, but she is dead now.

My mother, Antonia Engler [Jewish name: Taube], was born near Czernowitz, in 1892. Jewish girls didn’t have to go to cheder. She went to school at a catholic monastery in Vienna. She got her high school graduation certificate there. She was particularly good at French and could also speak and read German and Yiddish. After she got married, she stopped working. My father was a high-ranking clerk and was paid well enough. We could afford a maid. I was born in Czernowitz, in 1921. My brother, Hary, was born in 1924. At home, we spoke German with my father and French with my mother.

Growing up

My father was the first descendant of his family who lived in Czernowitz; he bought a house there in 1923. It wasn’t downtown, but wasn’t far from it either. We lived in that house until we were taken to the ghetto. It had three rooms and a fairly large garden with fruit trees. We bred chickens and, for Passover, we bred a lamb which we used to play with. The house didn’t have tap water. There was a man, a Jew, who used to bring us water. He was short and poor; he would carry a water vessel on his shoulder and deliver to each house. He would only take our money at the end of the month, to have it all at once.

We had a very big piano. It occupied more than half of the room. It was a ‘Kaps’ concert piano that my mother used to play. She had a cousin whose last name was Goldhaufen who had a girl, Heidi. Heidi was about two years younger than me, had been to piano school in Vienna, and gave me piano lessons. My brother didn’t like the piano, so he never took those lessons.

My parents were religious, observed the holidays and kept the kashrut. On Fridays we would go to the town’s Turkish bath; the place was mostly frequented by Jews. They lit a fire and the stones warmed up and became red. They poured water on them and the steam was so dense, that you couldn’t see anything when you entered. We would go there in the morning, to have enough time to hang around. My father used to go to the synagogue every Friday evening, while my mother pronounced a benshen, i.e. she said a prayer before the candles. On Saturdays, my mother occasionally did some work; we weren’t that devout after all. On Friday evenings we would eat various traditional dishes. I remember one of them. It was called pitze: it was made with eggs and was very spicy. But the dish that we ate most frequently was fish. In Czernowitz, the church’s estate had a large fish market; in addition, there were 15-20 places where one could buy fish. Every other house had its own pool with live carp inside. You just went there and said, ‘Give me a half’ and you got it. Everyone ate fish on Friday evenings and Saturdays. At Passover, the town didn’t have any bread. Most of the bakers were Jewish, and they wouldn’t bake bread on Pesach. So everyone ate matzah. They wrapped them in a piece of cloth and carried them from house to house, so that everyone could buy.

My father spoke Romanian, too. This was the language spoken at the post office. It went like this: from time to time, he had to sit for an exam; if he succeeded, he got promoted to a job that was higher and better paid. One day, just before such an exam, my father was wandering around the post office when he saw a rabbi enter. He went straight to him and asked, ‘Rebe, what are you here for? Can I help you?’ The rabbi told him what he wanted. My father assisted him, and then said, ‘Rebe, I would like to ask you something. Could you please wish me that I do well in my exam?’ The rabbi asked him, ‘Do you pray every day?’ He replied, ‘No.’ And so the rabbi said, ‘If you promise you will pray every day, you’ll succeed in your exam.’ At that time, every other or every third house in Czernowitz had a rabbi. So my father started to go to the rabbi’s house before getting to work to say his prayer. This way, although he didn’t speak Romanian perfectly, he was among those who scored the highest in the exam. From that point forward, he kept his promise and prayed every day.

There were many Jews in Czernowitz. Most of them were lawyers, physicians and tradesmen. 90 percent of the stores were owned by Jews. Those were nice stores and they sold all sorts of things: food, clothes, and shoes. They never had problems with the Christians.

There was a large Orthodox synagogue. It had a rabbi whose name was Mark. He was like a king. He had a large house where he accommodated his bocherim: this is how his disciples were called. He was well paid for that. On New Year, major holidays and Saturdays, people went there to pray. When there was no room in the synagogue for all the people, the town’s cinema would be rented. There was a chazzan who sang beautifully. They hired him for the holidays and all those who wanted to listen to him had to pay for their seat. In the 1940s, when the Germans came [in 1941], they murdered the rabbi and set the temple on fire; it burnt down with everything that was inside.

I started to go to school in Czernowitz. It was an ordinary, public school, with classes taught in Romanian. On the street where Grandmother Engler lived, ‘the Jewish street,’ there was a school where classes were taught in Hebrew. Most of the pupils were from Bessarabia 10 who already wanted to leave for Palestine and join the aliyah. My father paid a girl from that school to come to our place and give me lessons. She sometimes ate at our place; it was as if she was part of the family. I didn’t go to cheder or anything of the sort. There were many Jewish pupils at the ‘Mihai Eminescu’ School, where I studied. I didn’t have any problems and had many Christian friends. We got along extremely well; it was as if we were brothers. They used to come to the synagogue on Yom Kippur. They fasted like we did and stayed there like us. There were two separate benches for them in the synagogue. They spent the entire day there.

My father prepared me for the bar mitzvah. I had to say a short speech, a few words. I read it, and then sang the Hatikvah 11 and other similar songs [traditional]. A lot of people were present: relatives and acquaintances. My parents had to find extra help with the kitchen. There was eating and drinking and I got presents.

As a child, before I went to school, I spent most of my time in my uncle’s house. They didn’t have children and enjoyed having me around. Uncle Sandman would take us for a ride in his car and sometimes to the restaurant. There were many Jewish restaurants in Czernowitz to choose from. In the evening, we would go with our aunt [and Sandman] to eat; they were kosher. Friedman’s was particularly famous. They even had music. They didn’t serve meat, only vegetables and milk. They had red beet soup. They don’t eat red beet here [in Transylvania]. We used to, and I taught my wife how to cook it. There was another restaurant called La dracu [Hell’s] [Editor’s note: pun based on the Romanian expression ‘as far away as hell’]. It was really far away, but people still went there. They had various bands playing and you could hear their music from a distance. For a few lei, a carriage would take you there. In the evening, you could go to the cinema or theater. At midnight or 1am, you could still buy hot sausages from people who sold them in the street. They kept them in special carts.

Every week we used to go to the Jewish theater, which featured Sidy Thal. The first performance of a Jewish theater took place in Iasi, thanks to a Jew named Goldfaden. Czernowitz was the second town with a Jewish theater. We didn’t miss any play.

The town had streetcars that ran in all directions. When my father was on vacation and school was over, we would take a streetcar from downtown and go to the swimming pool. It was located on the River Prut. There was a loudspeaker that played music all day long. People bought passes for longer periods. There were booths where you could undress. We usually got there in the morning and left in the evening. We took food with us. This is where we used to spend our time in summer for a month, a month and a half, as long as the fine weather lasted. We also went on vacation to Vatra Dornei every year. We had relatives there and used to stay at a boarding house called ‘The German House’. We would also go to Vijenca [Wizenka in German, in the Wiznitz district], a small resort not far away from Czernowitz, in Bukovina. My mother took me and my brother there and we rented a room from a relative of our grandmother’s for a month. My father stayed home because he had to work, but he came to visit us sometimes. There was a champagne [mineral water] bath there; it sprung from underneath the rocks and was as white and foamy as champagne.

When the Russians came, in 1940, I had one more year to go until graduating from high school. So I had to finish the tenth grade under Russian occupation. In fact, the Russians didn’t give us a hard time. Things only got difficult when the Germans arrived. I was 18 at the time. Our system consisted of eight grades, while the Russian one had ten. In order to finish the final grade, I signed up for a school where they spoke Yiddish. We used the alphabet letters, not Russian ones. When the Russians came, my brother, Hary, who was three years younger than me, was in the ninth grade at the same high school where I studied. The town had many high schools, but there was only one where classes were taught in Romanian. Others used Ukrainian or Russian or other languages: any minority had its own school. Russians paid particular attention to education; everyone had to go to school. When I got to the final grade, I could also speak Ukrainian blended with Russian, but I spoke neither of them well. I managed quite well though, because I had had contacts with the ruteni [Ukrainian-speaking minority in Bukovina]: the girls whom my parents hired to help around the house belonged to this population. They would learn Yiddish from us. There was no graduation exam: simply finishing the final grade was all it took. The Russians were interested in having people working, not spending years in school.

Everyone had to learn to speak Russian. In the large, beautiful parks of Czernowitz, you could come across elderly people who sat on a bench with the ‘Izvestia’ newspaper in their hands, learning how to read and write in Russian. [Editor’s note: Izvestia (the name in Russian means ‘news’ and is short for ‘Izvestiya Sovetov Narodnykh Deputatov SSSR’) functioned as a long-running high-circulation daily newspaper in the Soviet Union. While Pravda served as the official mouthpiece of the Communist Party, Izvestia expressed the official views of the Soviet government as published by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.] The Russians had very few communist Jews. In fact, people were anything but Communists in Russia. During Stalin’s regime, people were sent to prison for no reason at all. We didn’t know that from official sources, but we knew. Along with the Russian army came a number of civilians who occupied the vacant houses in Czernowitz and settled there. One day, my mother met a Jewish woman at the marketplace. She knew she was Jewish because of her outfit. She didn’t speak Russian, only Yiddish. My mother asked her, ‘How are things in your country?’ She replied, ‘Things will be just fine; if not for us, then for our children; if not for our children, then for our children’s children. Things will be fine.’ This was all she said. She was afraid to add anything else. The following joke was born at that time: Some people who were visiting Russia noticed that most Russians had bruises on their face. ‘What happened to you?’ ‘I went to the dentist.’ ‘So? Teeth are inside the mouth, not on the outside.’ ‘It’s true, but, down here, we aren’t allowed to open our mouths.’

In 1938-1939 our problems began. In universities, the numerus clausus 12 had already been applied. [Editor’s note: restrictions established by the law passed in 1934] Some said, ‘Look, if these guys [the fascists] are coming, you won’t get a retirement pension or a salary anymore, because they’ll sack you.’ My father went to a hospital and bribed his way into getting a medical certificate that gave him the right to an early retirement. He wanted to make sure he would at least get his pension.

During the War

In 1940, when he found out the Russians were coming, my father took a carriage to the border and told the guards, ‘I want to go back to Romania’. But they didn’t let him pass, because a Circular General Order had been issued stating that Jews weren’t welcome in the country. Back in Czernowitz, my father was worried he would have problems because he was unemployed. So he asked my uncle for help; he hired him as a worker in his candy factory. He worked there until 1941, when they deported us. Before the Germans and Romanians arrived, I was doing my pre-military service. Then the trouble began. [Editor’s note: The following territories passed under the Romanian administration: the five counties of Bukovina (Campulung, Suceava, Radauti, Storojinet, and Czernowitz), Hotin County in Northern Bessarabia and, starting from October 1941, Dorohoi County (the entire territory of today’s Czernowitz region, plus the South of Hotin County. The ethnic minorities were reluctant towards this new situation, the Jews being affected the most.]

In July and August 1941, the Jews from the rural areas and towns were gathered in temporary camps. In September, they began to be deported to Transnistria. The Tighina Treaty of August 1941, which recognized the Romanian civilian administration of Tighina, stated that the Jews who would be sent there would be detained in concentration camps and used for labor. Between 1941 and 1943, almost 100,000 Jews were deported to Transnistria. [M. Barbulescu, D. Deletant, K. Hitchins, S. Papacostea, P. Teodor: ‘Istoria Romaniei’ – ‘The History of Romania’ – p.46.]

In 1941, we were in the Czernowitz ghetto and were forced to wear the yellow star 13. We weren’t allowed to go to the marketplace before 10 or 11am. I can’t remember exactly. Many Jews got beaten up in the middle of the street. They would seize us and make us sweep the streets. There was a period when we had to report for duty in the morning and were taken to clean houses.

One day, my father went out to buy food at a forbidden time. He put on his golden cross, assuming that the Germans would treat him better if they saw the German [Austrian-Hungarian] decoration. A German officer who passed by ripped it off and put it in his pocket. He yelled that a Jew wasn’t allowed to wear that cross. This lasted for two or three months. We spent less time than others, because we had a neighbor, a German woman, who wanted our house and had us kicked out. I don’t know if she got it.

One Friday morning, we woke up to find the town full of gendarmes. They announced that any Jew who would be found at home after two o’clock would be shot. We took some things, left our house and ended up at my uncle’s factory, crowding alongside many others. They started to gather up people to send them to Transnistria.

While we were in the ghetto, Uncle Zuzu, God forgive him, made a terrible mistake [towards us]. He found out which streets were to be evacuated and knew he could escape by moving to another street, so he went to stay with the Hausemans. He came to us and all he said was ‘We’re leaving.’ He didn’t say, ‘Why don’t you come with us?’ My mother was his sister, yet he didn’t tell us anything. My father told him, ‘I heard about people running away. But where can we go? Besides, it’s only a matter of time. Maybe we’ll find a way to manage when we get there.’ No one from the street where Zuzu had moved was deported. If we had stayed for one more day in the ghetto, we wouldn’t have had to leave, because public clerks were exempted from deportation.

Our mayor was a decent man. His name was Traian Popovici and he was Romanian. His best friends were Jewish and he did business with Jews. I even heard he was buried at the expense of the Jewish Community. He arranged for the public clerks not to be deported. But nothing could be done for those who had already left. That was our life’s misfortune. God knows what would have happened to us if we had stayed. We probably wouldn’t have starved for four years. [‘Traian Popovici passed away in Bucharest on 4th June 1946. Dr. Filderman (one of the people who knew best what Traian Popovici had done for the Jews during World War II), on paying him a ‘last tribute’, said, ‘Many were those who made secret efforts in order to help a single person; but few were those who had the courage to publicly rise to the defense of an entire community. A good Romanian, he’s also considered to be a ‘good Jew’ by the Jews, although the suffering was all he had in common with them. What was mortal within him has gone. What has remained is the immortal essence.’ He was declared immortal posthumously, on 2nd January 1969, when he was awarded the Righteous Among the Nations medal and a tree was planted on his behalf on the Avenue of the Righteous Among the Nations, on the Mount of Remembrance, in Jerusalem. It’s the highest reward that the State of Israel offers to those who saved Jews (fragment from ‘Oameni de omenie in vremuri de neomenie’ – ‘Decent People in Vicious Times’ – by Marius Mircu, Bucharest, Hasefer Publishing House, 1996, pp.78-79)

They came to our place and told us, ‘You have 40 minutes to leave the house. Nobody is allowed to take more luggage than they can carry!’ They confiscated everything we took with us anyway. I’m not talking about wedding rings and other pieces of jewelry: this goes without saying. But they took our papers, too, ‘You won’t need papers where you’re going!’ They took the school certificates, identification cards and didn’t give us any identification papers. They took us to the station. A day later, our entire family left for Bessarabia by train. We traveled in a cattle car, next to four other families. The soldiers made sure no one escaped.

The journey lasted for two days or so. We got off in Atache, where the border was. It may have been a commune, but all we could see was an endless open field. We waited in the field for four or five days. This happened in October 1941 and it was already cold outside. Every day a raft took Jews across the river [Prut], from Atache to Mohilev-Podolsk 14, in Transnistria, Ukraine. The officers made a horrible joke. They took a family [father, mother and a couple of children] and told them, ‘God saved you Jews from the Egyptians and helped you cross the sea. Well, maybe that miracle will happen again.’ They put those people in a sack and threw them into the water. The entire family drowned. The officer who ordered this was Romanian. But he didn’t show up the following day. They transferred him. While we waited, we heard a rumor saying that the public clerks didn’t have to go. People gathered money and sent a delegate to Bucharest, but to no avail. After four or five days spent in the open air in October 1941, they took us across the border to Mohilev.

The situation was desperate there. The houses were in ruins and the thousands of people who arrived had nowhere to stay. We ended up in an abandoned house. It had two floors. Downstairs was a barber’s shop where a hairdresser lived and worked. The Russians called him ‘Parikmacher’ [Yiddish-Russian word meaning ‘wig maker’]. The house had been hit by a bomb and the staircase that led to the upper floor was broken. We had to climb an improvised staircase. We slept on the floor.

Mohilev was overcrowded; we couldn’t stay there anymore. They didn’t give us any food. We had finished our supplies on the way. They had confiscated our money and given us in return German marks specially issued for Transnistria. It was the only currency that was permitted there. I don’t know how my parents did it, but, for a while, we bought food. There were a few peasants who had remained in the area; they sold things like potatoes and eggs. [Editor’s note: The German authorities pursued the introduction of a special currency, only to be used in the occupied territories; in Transnistria, this German mark was called ‘Reichskreditkassenschein’ (RKKS). The exchange rate of the ‘Transnistrian mark’ was 60 lei or 10 rubles for one unit. Dora Litani, ‘Transnistria’, pp.42-44.] The Jews in Mohilev had been killed; maybe two or three had survived. We stayed there for two months. As there were too many people, they started to take them to other places. We ended up in a village called Tropova [today Ukraine].

My mother had a large handmade tablecloth with flowers, beautifully sewed. She gave it to a peasant woman from the village to let us sleep at her place, as the winter was there already. We were lucky to find shelter, so to speak. The peasants there had absolutely nothing at all; they were as poor as church mice. All they got for working in a kolkhoz 15 was some wheat. This is all they ate. In order to get a shirt, they traded potatoes or any other food they had. The peasant in whose house we stayed didn’t have relatives. Her son-in-law had probably run away or had been seized, as the Ukrainians were very nasty. When the war began, they didn’t fire one single bullet at the Germans, because Hitler had promised that Ukraine would be an independent country. So they waited for the Germans.

When they finally arrived and started to send them to forced labor in Germany, their enthusiasm was over. They changed their mind, became partisans and started to fight against the Germans. [The Ukrainian population saw in the arrival of the German army the liberation from the domination of the Soviet Union. They welcomed it for several reasons. On the one hand, the Soviet collectivization of the 1930s had dissolved all privately-owned farms, depriving the peasants of their means of existence. On the other hand, in the 1930s, the Soviet authorities eliminated the intellectuals’ class and suppressed the activity of the Ukrainian catholic and orthodox churches. As a result of the Soviet terror, during the decisive battle of Kiev, in 1941, the German troops encountered minor resistance from the Ukrainian army. But the locals were soon to be disappointed by the occupants, who began molesting the Ukrainians.]

We spent the entire winter at that woman’s place. She shared a cow with three other families; she got to keep it every fourth month. The hazaika [woman] occupied half of the house and the cow the other half; this is how the houses were built. Poverty was extreme: they had to steal in order to stay alive. They didn’t have fire wood; they had nothing. That situation didn’t make them feel revolted; they had been born like that and thought that was how things should be. Our host even had a book by Lenin and she was persuaded things were going well. We all slept in the same bed, together with Aunt Tiny, my mother’s sister. When the winter was over, we went back to Mohilev. We didn’t ask for any permission. We looked for a place to stay, but I can’t remember where we found it. The Jewish community gave us a paper saying: ‘The Margulies family was deported, and is here, and are composed of the following members…’ It contained our last names, first names, and our ages; when I came back to the country, this paper allowed me to prove I had been a deportee.

We spent very little time in Mohilev, because there were too many people. We went to Skazinec [today Skazintsy, Ukraine]. The locals called it ‘Barracks’ because there were 10-15 large barracks; they put us in one of them. It was summer already. There was a stream two or three meters away; I had some water and caught typhus. Every day, the Community, which was based in Mohilev, sent a large pail of pea soup to Skazinec, where there lived one or two thousand people. It was made of peas for cattle. There were many small children whose parents were gone; nobody looked after them and they were as skinny as a rail. There were no toilets, only an open field full of dirt. Those poor children used to walk the field and pick peas from the dirt; it was a terrible sight.

While I was sick, I stayed with my mother. They took her to another room, lest she should get sick, too. There were about 50 rooms on one side and the other; they had no doors or windows. The sick stayed on one side, and the others on the opposite side. There were many people there. The doctors were the first to get sick and die. We had no medicines, but God had mercy on me. We stayed in Skazinec until fall, when we were moved to Tivriv. I was recovering from my illness, so I was able to cover the 100-kilometer distance on foot.

We walked during the day and slept in the open air at night. We were escorted by Ukrainians, who were worse than the Germans. Those who couldn’t walk were shot. At a certain point, we got to a commune where they [the Ukrainians] knew there were Germans. They left us waiting and went to the Germans to tell them they were delegates escorting Jews. Two Germans came to see us and we started talking to them. It was 1942 [Editor’s note: This may have happened later, in 1943.]. The Germans already knew the course of the war was beginning to change, but we had no idea. Anyway, they didn’t hurt us. They asked us where we were going and we told them about Tivriv. ‘Good, they’re waiting for you with a hot meal there. Walk in peace!’ We found a kolkhoz there. We spent the nights all crammed up in there. The Jews who had been there before had been killed by the Germans. We were taken to Tivriv in 1942. The end of 1943 caught us there. In fact, we stayed there until we heard the end of the war was near.

There were rumors. One day, two Russian tanks arrived. We were so glad! They went to every commune where they knew there were gendarmes, seized them and hung them by their feet. A group of Jews went to the Russians and pleaded for the release of the gendarmes, who hadn’t done us harm: we used to work for them, chopping wood and things like that. The Russians took them down and let them go. The following day, the Russian tanks disappeared and the Romanians were back. Do you know what they did? The [Romanian] gendarmes gathered everyone [the Jews], had them standing behind a house and fired the machine gun at them. Some died, some were injured, and some escaped. They didn’t go after the ones who had escaped. As we lived in a more isolated place, we had no idea of what was going on. We simply heard gun shots all of a sudden.

We had very little food: they gave us some corn flour and one or two potatoes. The gendarmes told us, ‘We’ll leave you alone as long as you don’t leave the premises. If you do, we’ll shoot you!’ One morning, my father announced, ‘I’m going to trade some clothes for food. It may get me killed, but, if I don’t, we’ll starve to death.’ He took the clothes and left. He never returned; he was shot dead. The Jewish Community helped me bury him in the former Jewish cemetery in Tivriv. There used to be Jews there, but they all died. They issued a death certificate. When we returned to Czernowitz, my mother hired lawyers and submitted this certificate to the post office; she got a pension.

We stayed in Tivriv until we found out the Germans were far away. We started to walk back home and got there in fall 1944. It took us several weeks. From time to time, a truck with Russian soldiers would stop and give us a ride for one or two kilometers. We spent the nights in cemeteries lest the Russian policemen should catch us and send us to God knows where in Siberia.

After the War

My mother, brother and I got home after four or five weeks. We found an empty house. The windows were broken and everything was gone. Our beautiful furniture, paintings, books, stamp collection, were all gone. We found some photos lying on the floor and the neighbors told us they were of the man who had lived there. I don’t know who he was. They told us that one day after our departure, our piano was loaded into a truck and sent to Bucharest. I know this for sure, because I asked them.

So we had nothing when we returned. My mother went to this cousin of hers, Goldhaufen, and she gave us some trifles. Some Christian neighbors came by and told her, ‘Madam, come to our place; we want to give you some things!’ Her cousin didn’t let her, ‘Don’t go anywhere! I’ll give you everything you need!’ But she didn’t; she only claimed she would. Others did give us this or that though. We placed a rudimentary wooden bed in the house, but we were used to sleeping on planks. A neighbor recognized us and gave us something to sleep on. From time to time, she bought us things from the marketplace. Everything was expensive. We paid in rubles, but, because of the war, money had devaluated. I went to my aunt [Goldhaufen], who was rather well-off, and she gave me some things to sell at the flea market. There wasn’t anything that couldn’t be sold. The Russians had money and they bought anything, whether they needed it or not. My aunt told me how much she expected to get for each item. I sold them for twice as much and made several hundreds of rubles every day.

The Goldhaufens hadn’t been deported because my aunt’s son-in-law, whose name was Balan, had German origins and worked for the National Bank. They weren’t known to be Jewish; they didn’t even go to the synagogue. Eventually, Balan was seized by the Russians [because he was German], and so he suddenly wanted to be a Jew. He could play several instruments. The Russians, who are fond of music, took him to weddings and other events. He had a harmonica, so he led a good life there. [Editor’s note: Mr. Margulies doesn’t know where he stayed in Russia.]

We didn’t give up the Romanian citizenship. We knew that, if we came back to Romania, where my father had worked as a state clerk, my mother would get a better pension than in Russia, where she received 30 rubles a month; and a kilo of meat cost 32. That pension was a good thing though, because it kept the police away. ‘What do you do for a living?’ the policeman would ask. ‘I have a pension.’ ‘You do? All right then!’ We had to report to the police to be registered. My brother was registered as a pupil and my mother a pensioner. As for me, I didn’t register and got caught one day. They asked me all sorts of questions, but in the evening they let me go home and I never saw them again.

In Cousin Heidi’s house lived a man who was from Czernowitz. I believe he was in the business of getting people out of Russia. He had connections and could make arrangements. With his help, we were able to leave Czernowitz. We reported to the border and said we were Romanians. The three of us were assigned to Targu Mures. I still have the paper proving we were assigned in April 1946, after we crossed the border. They sent my cousin Heidi and her mother to Cluj. Her aunt, Berliner, who was traveling with them, was sent to Sibiu. Heidi found a job at the Opera as a pianist right away. She came to Targu Mures a couple of times in concert. She came to see us, but she was upset all the time, because they had lost everything. Her husband, Balan, came home to Cluj, got a position at the cinema, but died three months later, at a very young age. My cousin was left alone and there was little she could do. She could hardly survive with what she earned from the Opera. Her mother was still alive and cooked for various people. At times, she stayed with us, too. Heidi never remarried. She worked for the Opera until her retirement.

Heidi had a cousin whose name was Goldhaufen too; we barely knew him. His family didn’t observe the kashrut. One day, he came home and said, ‘Mother, as of today, I will no longer eat in your house. I’m leaving for Israel, no matter what. You don’t cook kosher!’ He left for Israel in 1943 or so, joined the army right away, became an officer and was among the first to enter Berlin [today Germany] with the Jewish and Russian troops. The Germans were screaming, ‘Oh, no, the Jews are coming, the Jews are coming!’ They were running away because they were afraid. I heard this story from Heidi. [Editor’s note: Mr. Margulies can’t remember the immigration of Heidi’s cousin in full detail. That cousin couldn’t have possibly joined the Israeli army because Israel didn’t exist in 1943 as a state. So the Israeli army couldn’t have taken part in the liberation of Berlin.]

So we arrived in Targu Mures in 1946. They gave us a place to stay in the large house near the synagogue, which shelters the Health Insurance Company today [The County Department for Public Health, 19 Aurel Filimon Street]. We must have been 20-25 families: all Jewish, all from the area of Czernowitz. Each family got a room. We had a communal kitchen where we could cook. We lived there until they found me a job. My mother received a pension, but it wasn’t much. My mother’s brother, Zuzu Engler, who had been living in Israel for a long time, would help us by sending us all sorts of things. Then we got a little room in Bernady house, opposite from where we lived in the beginning. [Editor’s note: That house is actually called Teleki and is located in Bernady Square] We didn’t have anything, but the place was good. We had a room and closet. All three of us lived there at first. Then, it was just my mother and I.

When we got to Targu Mures, my brother Hary signed up for the ‘Papiu Ilarian’ High School. He finished his final grade: he completed two grades in one year [thanks to the Voitec Law 16] and wanted to pass his graduation exam, but my mother wouldn’t let him, because it was very difficult. He spent his nights studying in the light of a small gas lantern and it paid off: he was one of the best in his class. His natural sciences teacher, Mrs. Croitoru, a very strict woman whose husband was a lawyer and who knew us from Czernowitz, told my brother that he was the best pupil she had.

My brother finished high school, waited for a year and passed his graduation exam. Then he went to Bucharest, was admitted at the Polytechnic and became an electrical engineer. He graduated in 1954 or 1955. They wanted to send him to specialization courses in Russia, but he said, ‘That’s where I come from and never want to return to again!’ Those courses could have helped him get important positions, but he didn’t want to go. After he finished college, he was assigned to a power station in Doicesti, in Oltenia. It was at the end of the world. Misu Kraft Davidovici, a former fellow-student said he wanted to work there, too; they made him the manager of the power plant in Craiova. During Khrushchev’s 17 visit to Romania [in 1958], there was a power failure in Bucharest one evening. My brother was in charge and the Securitate 18 wanted to arrest him. But my brother couldn’t say what had gone wrong. Electricians went out into the field and discovered a stork that had built its nest on the power lines, which had caused a short circuit. My brother got away, but he made a decision, ‘I’m not staying here anymore; I’ve had enough. I’m going to Israel.’ Nevertheless, he stayed. He met a girl who finished college in Bucharest, too. Her name was Elena Zavate; she wasn’t Jewish. He married her. Meanwhile, Kraft got him out of Doicesti and moved him to Craiova, to his power plant, where he appointed him deputy technical manager.

He married Elena in Craiova. They received an apartment there. They had a son whom they named Arthur Margulies, after his grandfather. They lived in Craiova for a number of years. One time, when the plant’s technical manager went on vacation, my brother had to replace him. When the manager returned, the workers addressed the management, ‘Please don’t remove Mr. Margulies from this office; if you do, we’ll leave, too!’ There was nothing they could do; they couldn’t change him, so he remained there until he retired. Arthur became an electrical engineer, too. After he finished college, he married a girl from Craiova who had graduated from Medical School. Eventually, they moved to Bucharest. She worked in the research field as a physician and my nephew received a special position [Editor’s note: Mr. Margulies doesn’t know where]. He had to stay alone in a locked room where no one could enter. When he wanted out, he kicked the door; the guard opened it, and then locked it again.

One time, when my mother went to visit them, she noticed their little girl, Alisa, couldn’t see right. They took her to a doctor, but they were told, ‘You’ll have to wait some more and see what happens; but you should know that this case is very difficult to treat in our country.’ At a certain point, my brother’s wife had some differences with her superiors, so Arthur decided that she should go to London for a week or two, on the grounds of her daughter’s eye condition; she went there on her own, while my nephew stayed home with Alisa and their second child, a little boy who had been born one month ago. She went to the Leeds hospital and spoke with the doctors about her daughter’s condition. They told her they could solve it. So my nephew took the girl to England. The operation was successful, but none of them returned to Romania. My nephew went to the Jewish Community over there and told them he was in trouble. They listened to him, filled up his refrigerator and treated him well. The little boy they left in Romania grew up here. Every time they tried to get him to England, the British Embassy refused to grant him the visa he needed to join his parents.

While he stayed in England, my nephew was granted the right to work. There was a company for which he would have liked to work, but, before he got there, a man came to him and made him an offer, ‘Look, I have a factory that makes very large burners for factories and we’re the only ones making them. I can’t pay you as much as my competitor is ready to give you, but, still, I would like you to come work for me. I can only give you this much now, but, in time, things will improve.’ Arthur had my brother sell everything they owned here: about three houses in Bucharest, and sent the money to England. Since they didn’t let him bring his son, who was already four, they decided to leave England. They applied for Canadian visas and got them. My nephew’s English employer told him, ‘You may be leaving England, but you’re not leaving my company! You’re going to Canada and you’ll start up a factory just like mine. I’ll give you a monthly salary and a share of the profit. I’ll also give you shares and so on and so forth.’

They settled in Toronto, where they bought a nine-room house; they were finally reunited with their son, who was already five or six years old. There was a law there that didn’t allow children under 14 to walk the streets unaccompanied, so my brother and his wife, who were already retirees, joined them in the 1990s. I think my brother recently got an apartment from the State, but only a one-room apartment. Their daughter, Alisa, signed up for college in England. They’re not religious, but they keep in touch with the Toronto community and attend their meetings. The community erected a monument in memory of the Holocaust, there in Toronto. I got a picture of it.

In the beginning, after we settled in Targu Mures, I got a temporary job picking berries. We had to go to Stanceni [88km from Targu Mures], where we lived in huts. We gathered the fruit in barrels together with some German women from Sibiu – they were very stout women. I spent three or four months there.

In school, at handicraft, I had learnt how to compact books. In Targu Mures, I met a man who was from Czernowitz. I hadn’t met him back home. We went to his place from time to time. He had a radio set and we listened to the news. I loved to listen to the news in the evening. He worked in a bookbinding shop and got me hired there. The place was located in Gyorgy Bernady Square. I spent little time there, because the workshop was taken over by the printing shop. As an employee of the printing shop, I still did bookbinding until I got transferred to billing. I had to centralize sales, receipts, everything. My work was done in an hour as I had a calculator. I didn’t spend too much time there either, as they transferred me to accounting. But, right after that, they made personnel cuts. I wasn’t fired, but they lowered my salary. I told the manager that I couldn’t go on with that kind of salary. I went to see Borshivetzki, the manager of ‘Cartea Rusa’ [‘The Russian Book’, the bookstores’ organization, today Sedcom Librarii Company], and asked him if he could hire me. This is how I got to their accounting department. The head of the department was a married lady named Luca. Her husband had remained in Sibiu. They had a daughter. I don’t know how she had ended up in Targu Mures. We became friends. She came by our place almost every evening: she became a friend of the family. We listened to the radio: we had an ‘Orion.’ She spoke German, so she could converse with my mother.

One day we received an order; an employee had to go to Sibiu to collect a typewriter that we had been assigned. My boss told me, ‘Go and bring the typewriter home!’ It was the first time I set foot in Sibiu. I went to see the Black Church [Editor’s note: Mr. Margulies mistakes Brasov for Sibiu. There isn’t a Black Church in Sibiu.], I had a walk and, in the evening, I picked up the typewriter and headed for the station. But the train was so crowded, that I couldn’t get on. So I spent the night standing with the typewriter in my arms. I took the first train in the morning. I got home and went to bed. My boss sent someone to call me to work: ‘I’m not coming to work today! I haven’t slept all night!’ The following day she sent me a piece of paper informing me that I had been fired.

So I went to see an acquaintance who worked in finance and asked him whether he had a job for me. ‘Mister, there’s nothing for you here, but there’s this gentleman who has just arrived and is asking me if I could find him someone.’ His name was Zicherman and he worked in planning at Vinalcool [the enterprise for wine and alcohol processing]. He told me, ‘If you want to, you can come work for us. This guy is going to work for the Securitate, so the position is vacant.’ Vinalcool had several divisions; the spirits division was located near ‘Cocosul de aur’ [‘Golden Rooster’, famous restaurant in town, at 106 Kossuth Lajos Street]. The wines section was elsewhere. Shortly after I was hired, the company had a new manager. He was Jewish. His name was Rodan, but I suppose it had been Rosenstoch and he had changed it. After he consulted with the central management in Bucharest he called me to his office and informed me, ‘As of tomorrow, you’re the new head of work planning. What do you say? Do you want to?’ So they made me head of planning at Vinalcool. I spent almost 29 years there before I retired. It was a good employment. When I got hired by Vinalcool, we received a room in an apartment building on Gheorghe Doja Street.

I wasn’t a party member. There was another boy who came to work for the planning section and he wasn’t a party member either. We were the only employees in the section for a while. Then the secretary of the enterprise’s political organization was transferred to our section; they didn’t like him, I don’t know why. The manager asked me, ‘What should we do with him?’ I told him, ‘Mister Manager, there is a girl sitting at a desk; move her to another office and send the party secretary to ours.’ So he came. We got along very well. He didn’t try to persuade us to join the Party. I was among those who had come from Russia. People in my situation who had joined the Party were sacked. [Editor’s note: Mr. Margulies refers to a policy conducted at the beginning of Ceausescu’s regime, which considered those who had come from Russia Russian spies.] I never got involved in politics. I was never in trouble at work because I wasn’t a party member. I didn’t attend the party meetings, but I had to go to rallies. Everybody had to be there – party members or not.

In my opinion, there was no communism in the past. You call that communism? What we had here wasn’t communism at all. There was widespread stealing and everyone knew it. Here’s a story I heard. A Russian man who had four children wrote to Stalin, ‘Comrade Stalin, I beg of you, give me a better job, so that we can get by; my wife isn’t employed, because we have four children and she has to look after them.’ Three months later or so an order came. The man was transferred to a guard’s position; the salary was even smaller than before. What could he do? Well, this is what he did: at night, when trucks would stop at the gate that he guarded, he would grab two or three pairs of shoes or anything else they carried. And his life took a turn for the better. This is how things went.

After we settled in Targu Mures, I sent letters to all the Jewish communities, looking for a Jewish wife. Two or three answered. There was this girl from Timisoara, an agronomic engineer, with whom I exchanged some letters. It didn’t last, because I would have had to move to Timisoara to be with her. Ceausescu 19 didn’t let agronomic engineers stay in their home town as they had to relocate wherever they were assigned. [Editor’s note: Mr. Margulies refers to Ceausescu’s regime, when college graduates were assigned to a specific location right after graduation and couldn’t change it if they wanted to.] She once sent me a letter, ‘Please, stop writing to me. I got the approval for leaving to Israel.’

Another girl was from Ploiesti. I went to her town. She was divorced. She was a nice girl who lived with her mother in a single room. They were poor. One week after I had got there, she got the approval for leaving for Israel, too. And there was another girl from Oradea, I think. She was a math teacher, a beautiful girl. I went there too. Her mother wasn’t Jewish, only her father, but I agreed to marry her anyway. I invited her to spend one month at our place. We went to Sangiorgiu. My mother wasn’t feeling well and couldn’t cook for us. We ate at the restaurant. In the end, she left; I met her again only once. Nothing happened. There was a girl who came from Suceava. I didn’t like her, but my mother did. That persuaded me that marriage isn’t according to one’s wish, but according to one’s fate.

My wife’s name is Raveca Besinei. I met her when I was working for the ‘Cartea Rusa’ bookstores’ organization, between 1948 and 1950. We were both in accounting, so we sat opposite each other at the same desk. She was born in 1922, in Targu Mures. She was a Christian and had graduated from high school. When the personnel cut stroke, she was sacked because she had owned a bookstore before the Russians [the communist regime] came. I used to go to her place from time to time and ask if she needed anything. After a while, she got another job at a company in charge of restaurants. It was located downtown, where the police station is. We got married much later. My mother got ill and bound to bed for two years. I had to cook, clean and go to work. It wasn’t far, a ten minute walk, so I could go home at least twice a day. There was no one who could help me; my mother didn’t put up with anyone. This is why I didn’t want to get married. Given my mother’s condition, I couldn’t just get married and tell my wife, ‘Take care of my mother now.’ But Raveca and I were friends during all this time. While my mother had nothing against my marrying a non-Jewish woman, I had. My mother died in 1979, at the age of 87 or so. She was buried in the Jewish cemetery of Targu Mures.

After my mother died, I went to Israel. Cousin Silvia sent me the money I needed to do that. I didn’t stay long and didn’t consider moving there permanently. The manager had pledged for me; he had trusted me and I didn’t want to get him in trouble by not coming back. I liked Israel. I spent eleven days there. Every day my cousin took me places. I saw the Negev Desert, where the most recent houses in Israel are located. We spent one night in Jerusalem and, in the morning, we went to the Dead Sea. I took a bath in it.

I got married in 1981. My mother wasn’t alive anymore. I was alone and everyone urged me: ‘Don’t be silly, take this girl, she’s nice and pretty.’ My brother insisted, too. So I married her eventually. I couldn’t live like that. My wife had a house that had belonged to her parents; on 12 Painii Street. It only had one room, kitchen, and pantry. We added the bathroom that we made large enough for a washing machine to fit in. We didn’t have children. I was lucky with my wife, I can’t complain about that. She was loyal to me and minded her own business. She worked hard. Now she’s no longer able to do much. I’m having a difficult time with her. She’s not lying in bed because she’s ill, but because she can’t walk. Before November came, she went to the cemetery. When she came back, our dog assaulted her and made her fall. She had to be operated. But her leg is shorter now; she can only walk using a walking frame. And she started to forget things.

I began working for the Community right after I retired, in 1992. My position doesn’t have a specific name – I’m in accounting, go to the bank and provide help where it’s needed. While I was employed, I observed all the major holidays. When Passover or Rosh Hashanah came, I just went to the manager and told him, ‘Sir, I have a holiday, so I’ll be going!’ I never had problems because of that. I went to the synagogue for holidays; when my mother was well, we cooked better dishes, to feel it was a holiday. After I got married, I also observed Christian holidays with my wife: Christmas and Easter. I didn’t forbid her to do that. One’s belief is one’s belief and it can do neither harm, nor good.

I couldn’t tell if the community life was more active after the revolution 20. We received some aid, but no compensation for the deportation, like Jews in other countries received. I remember that the government had us file a compensation claim 20-25 years ago. Things stopped there and we didn’t get any money. But the community is giving us aid, no complaints about that. The pension provides enough to survive. Of course, it’s easier for a couple who earns two pensions. We’re not picky. How can anyone be picky after experiencing the camp?

Glossary:

Életrajz

Dr. Sólyom Olga egyedül él egy szabadsághegyi társasház másfél szobás lakásában. A barátságos lakás berendezését a könyvespolc dominálja. Sólyom Olga számítógépet használ, otthonos az interneten, levelezését is elektronikusan bonyolítja.

Apai ágon a dédmamám Kohn Hani, akiről a nevén kívül semmit nem tudok. Egy kép maradt róla, amit az egyik nagynénim hagyatékában találtam. Hani férje Schwarcz Leopold volt, aki 1823-ban született Balassagyarmaton. Őróla annyit tudok, hogy százkét évig élt, és rendkívül egészséges ember volt, sose volt beteg, halálakor egy foga hiányzott. És úgy halt meg, hogy elaludt. Ez a családi fáma.

Apai nagyapámat, Schwarcz Jánost még ismertem. 1859-ben született, szép szál ember volt, sovány, szikár, jó megjelenésű. A végelbocsátó leveléből kiderül, hogy tizenkét évet szolgált a k. u. k. hadseregben. Hordár volt a Nyugati pályaudvaron. A család egy kicsit szégyellte is, de hát végeredményben ebből nevelte fel a gyerekeit. Arra emlékszem, hogy a Szent István parkban az unokabátyámat meg engem a karjára vett. De csak párszor láttam, mert aztán elment Balassagyarmatra. Idős volt, már nem is dolgozott, a gyerekei tartották el, és valami nőismerőse után ment. Korán megözvegyült, és nem nősült meg még egyszer. Végül Balassagyarmatról vitték el Auschwitzba, nyolcvanöt éves korában.

Apai nagyanyám, Rosenfeld Hani 1868-ban született Szölgyénben Rosenfeld Marcus és Weisz Cilli gyerekeként [Magyarszőgyén – (azelőtt: Magyarszölgyén), kisközség Esztergom vm.-ben, 1891-ben 2000 lakossal, Trianon után Csehszlovákiához került. – A szerk.]. 1894-ben ment férjhez nagyapámhoz, és szült kilenc gyereket: Hédit (aki 1895-ben született Szelényben [Szelény – kisközség, Hont vm., 1910-ben 200 lakossal. Trianon után Csehszlovákiához került. – A szerk.]), Elzát (aki 1896-ban született Magyarszölgyénben), Miklóst, az apámat (aki 1898-ban született Újpesten), Erzsébetet (aki 1900-ban született Újpesten), Ödönt (aki 1901-ben született Újpesten), Sándort (aki 1903-ban született Újpesten), Olgát (aki 1905-ben született Újpesten), Margitot (aki 1907-ben született Újpesten), Pált (aki 1909-ben született Újpesten) és Renét (aki 1912-ben született Újpesten). Aztán nagyanyám 1929-ben, 61 éves korában meghalt.

Édesapám legidősebb nővérének, Hédinek a férjét Kertész Sándornak hívták. Egy szappangyárban dolgozott vezető beosztásban, elég jól keresett, jómódúak voltak. Ők voltak a család gazdagjai. Volt egy háromszobás lakásuk egy nagyon elegáns házban a Személynök utcában, ami a Margit hídtól indul [ma Balassi Bálint utca]. Mind a ketten hosszú életet éltek meg, a nagynéném nyolcvanhat évesen halt meg végelgyengülésben. Nem volt kedve tovább élni. A nagybátyám nyolcvanöt éves korában halt meg, betegségben. Három gyerekük volt, két fiú és egy lány. Az idősebb fiú, Tibike tizenvalahány éves korában skarlátban meghalt. A másik fiú, Laci 1945-ben kiment Olaszországba, ott meg is nősült, és lett neki egy gyereke. Aztán továbbment Amerikába. Mindenfélével foglalkozott. Nagyon szép hangja volt, énekelni tanult. Itt-ott próbálkozott énekléssel, de azzal sem ment sokra. Egyik nőtől a másikig tengette az életét. Jó pár évvel ezelőtt találkoztam vele utoljára. Megvolt. Nem tudom, miből él. Hédi néni lánya, Elza 1939-ben, tizennyolc évesen hozzáment egy Korvin nevű férfihez, akinek a keresztneve nem jut eszembe. Egy abszolút mutatós fiú, elegáns, nagyvilági férfi  volt, nagy bohém. Nem tudom, mi volt a foglalkozása. Nagyon hamar megszületett a gyerek, és nagyjából utána el is váltak. Elza, későbbi férjével, a nyilaséra alatt a Nemzetközi Vöröskeresztnél, ill. valamelyik zsidómentő szervezetnél tevékenykedett, és – feltehetően ismervén Wallenberg sorsát – talán 1945 végén vagy 1946 elején elmenekültek Ausztriába. Akkor már megvolt a kislánya, Zita, aki 1940-ben született. Itt hagyták a gyereket, aki akkor volt hat éves, mert bizonytalanra mentek ki, és nem merték magukkal vinni. Zitát a nagymama nevelte fel. Aztán amikor a kislány leérettségizett, az anyja kivitette magához. Elza Ausztriában nem dolgozott, a férje tartotta el. Nem tudom, hogy a férje mivel foglalkozott, tizenöt vagy húsz évvel ezelőtt halt meg. Elza még él, de nagyon beteg, és Ausztriában egy idősek otthonában van.

Sándor nagybátyám, édesapám egyik öccse a legszebb férfi volt a családban. Ezt ki is használta. Utazó ügynök volt [A Révai Nagylexikon szerint az „utazó ügynök” nem alkalmazottja a megbízójának, működését önállóan, sokszor több cég érdekében fejti ki. – A szerk.], és rendkívül jól élt, elegánsan öltözött. Nőtlen volt, de rengeteg barátnője volt, sok fénykép maradt utána, ahol különböző nőkkel van levéve. Szlovéniától kezdve a Balatonig, a Magas-Tátráig mindenütt nőkkel van körülvéve. Valahol mindig összekapcsolta az üzleti utat a nyaralással. Fogalmam sincs, milyen áruban utazott. Meghalt, megölték a munkaszolgálatban. Csak a háború előtt láttam néhányszor. Elég sokat utazott, keveset volt itthon, Magyarországon.

Az édesapám egyik húga, Margit libás volt. Nem az övé volt az üzlet, hanem az anyósáé, és odament dolgozni. Tulajdonképpen egy húsbolt volt, de csak libával és csirkével foglalkoztak. Nem tudom, hogy kóser volt-e, de nagy a valószínűsége, hogy a háború előtt az volt. A bolt  valahol a Bulcsú utcában volt, a Lehel piac környékén. Margit 1932-ben ment férjhez. Ez az első férje, Emilke nagyon hamar, egy-két évi házasság után meghalt, én nem is ismertem. A második férje Benedikt József volt, aki még a háború előtt jött haza Brazíliából. Elvette a nagynénémet, aki akkor özvegyasszony volt. Benedikt József anyjának is volt libás üzlete, és a nagynéném besegített az anyósának. A férj is csinálta, úgy, ahogy, de dolgozni nagyon nem szeretett. Amikor meghalt az anyja, akkor a nagynéném vitte tovább. A háború után a nagynéném a Lehel piacon nyitott egy libás üzletet, amit haláláig megtartott. A háború után magukhoz vették Benedikt József elpusztult lánytestvérének a két gyerekét, akik akkor nyolc-tíz évesek lehettek. Nekik nem volt gyerekük, a nagynénémnek nem lehetett gyereke. 1956-ban a két lányt a nagynéném külföldre küldte. Az egyik Ausztráliába ment, a másik Kanadába. Nem tudok róluk semmit. Aztán meghalt a második férj is. A nagynéném végig ebben a szakmában maradt. A Lehel piacon volt libás standja. Sok zsidó baromfiárus volt a Lehel piacon, körülötte is volt néhány, aztán persze lassan fogytak. Egészen a haláláig ott dolgozott. Hetvennyolc éves korában, 1987-ben halt meg szívinfarktusban, márciusban. Decemberben, karácsony előtt még lent állt tíz-tizenkét órákat a piacon. Ez a libás nagynéném néha támogatgatott minket, kaptam tőle ezt, azt, amazt, de nehéz természete volt, meg nekem is, így aztán időnként összebalhéztunk. Amikor férjhez mentem 1955-ben, és nagyon csórók voltunk, minden második héten vettem tőle egy nyolc-tíz kilós libát. Nem kaptam, hanem vettem. Ő tudta, hogy melyiknek van nagy mája, úgyhogy nekem már libamájmérgezésem volt. Mindig libát ettünk.

Erzsi nagynéném, akit Örzsinek hívtunk, már eléggé benne volt a korban, amikor férjhez ment. A apám hozta össze valahogy ezt a házasságot egy zsidó lakatossal, Reisch Mártonnal, akivel együtt dolgozott, és barátok voltak. Örzsi varrónő volt, és amikor a férjét elvitték munkaszolgálatra, akkor délelőtt viaszos vászon kötényeket varrt, délután meg este ruhatárosnő volt a Dunapark kávéházban. A lakatos életben maradt, és visszajött Mauthausenből. 1945 után Örzsi egy KÖZÉRT-ben volt eladó. Az unokabátyám, Frigyes 1932-ben született. 1956-ban kiment Svédországba. Ott nősült meg, itthoni szerelmét vette el, aki 1956-ban a szüleivel Svájcba ment. Három gyerekük született, Ann-Britt, aki jelenleg Izraelben él, és négy gyereke van, valamint Andres és Lotta, akiknek két-két gyerekük van. Ők ketten Svédországban élnek. Később Örzsi a fia után ment, és egy Stockholm melletti kisvárosban,  Jacobsbergben halt meg nyolcvanhat éves korában Alzheimer-kórban.

Pali nagybátyám volt édesapám legfiatalabb fiútestvére. Nagyon későn nősült meg, valamikor a háború után. Előtte még el akarta venni feleségül anyámat, de ő nem ment hozzá. Ez a Palika olyan volt, akire azt mondják, hogy slemil. Négy polgárit végzett [lásd: polgári iskola], és 1945 után egy textilüzletben dolgozott eladóként. Aztán mikor elment nyugdíjba, mindenfélével seftelt. Végül Margit nagynéném, aki gyakorlatilag az életben maradt családtagokat dirigálta és segítette, valamikor az 1970-es évek elején szerzett Palikának egy feleséget, akit Arankának hívtak, de a vezetéknevére nem emlékszem. Özvegyasszony volt, és volt egy Tomi nevű tizenéves gyereke. Nagyon szépen éltek, aztán az asszony rákban meghalt a nyolcvanas években. A nagybátyám egyedül maradt, nem tudta magát ellátni, és beköltözött  a Vadász utcai nyugdíjas házba. Odaadta a lakását, ez egy tanácsi lakás volt, és beköltözött oda. Nyolcvanhat éves korában, szívinfarktusban halt meg.

Édesapám legfiatalabb húga, René egy nagyon csinos, szép és mutatós nő volt, aki a Corvin Áruházban volt elárusító. Azt hiszem, négy polgárit végzett. Rengetegen udvaroltak neki, de nemigen vették őt jómódú fiúk feleségül. 1944-ben ő is elpusztult.

Anyai ágról a nagyapámat, Weisz Antalt nem ismertem. Itt éltek Budapesten, Angyalföldön. Nem voltak vallásosak. Van egy fénykép 1916-ból, amin katonaruhában van, úgyhogy biztos részt vett az első világháborúban. Szabó volt, és tüdőbajban halt meg 1929-ben. Akkor a nagymamám, Pollák Hermina, aki 1889-ben született, negyvenegy évesen itt maradt három gyerekkel. A legidősebb volt József, aki 1912-ben született, utána jött anyám, aki 1914-ben született [A 6. fénykép tanúsága szerint 1912-ben Weisz Ferenc született, aki 1915-ben meghalt. Az 1913-ban készült fénykép alapján József 1910 körül születhetett. – A szerk.], és volt egy öccse, Pali, aki 1917-ben született. Józsi nős volt, gyerekük nem volt. Nagymamának, amikor megözvegyült, dolgoznia kellett, bérelt egy tejcsarnokot. Addig háztartásbeli volt, nevelte a három gyereket. Abban a házban, ahol lakott, volt egy tejcsarnok, OMTK-nak hívták annak idején a tejcsarnokot, de nem tudom, hogy minek a rövidítése [O. M. T. K. – Országos Magyar Tejszövetkezeti Központ (al. 1922). A 19. század végén és a 20. század első felében többféle, rendszerint egy-egy termékre szakosodott értékesítő szövetkezet működött Magyarországon. Közülük a tejszövetkezetek hálózata tudta a parasztokat leginkább mozgósítani, főleg a Dunántúlon. (1881-ben Szombathelyen alakult meg az első tejszövetkezet, Tolnában és Baranyában pedig – nem függetlenül a két megye német lakosságának kezdeményezőkészségétől – már az 1890-es években húsznál több falusi tejszövetkezet működött.) Az első világháborúig nem tudott igazán kibontakozni az Országos Tejgazdasági Felügyelőség által felügyelt tejszövetkezeti mozgalom: sok kis szövetkezet jutott csődbe, s csarnoka bérbeadására kényszerült  (Magyar Néprajz). – A szerk.], ezt bérelte, és egészen 1944-ig abban dolgozott. Aztán a nagymamámat kivitték Theresienstadtba, és ott ölték meg.

A legidősebb nagybátyám, József 1933-34 körül dolgozni kezdett, azt hiszem, szabó lett. 1944-ben Mauthausenbe került, vesezsugorral jött haza, és már 1946-ban meg is halt. Pali volt a legfiatalabb fiú, nem tudom, mit csinált, csak azt tudom, hogy ifjúkommunista lett, birkózott, ilyen sportoló alkat volt. Szegény, nagyon fiatalon mint ifjúkommunista, még az 1940-es évek elején került ki Ukrajnába, munkaszolgálatba. Ott mindenféle balhéi voltak, kikötötték, szörnyűségek történtek vele, és már 1943-ban elpusztult.

Anyukám a nyolcosztályos gimnáziumból négy évet végzett el, a Zsidó Gimnáziumba járt, és amikor a nagypapa meghalt, abbahagyta, és ki kellett tanulnia a fehérnemű-varrónőséget. Fehérneművarróként dolgozott valamilyen varrodában. Tizenhét éves korában ismerte meg apámat, nem volt még tizennyolc éves, amikor összeházasodtak. Apukám akkor harminckét éves volt. A templomban ismerkedtek meg, de hogy melyikben, ebben nem vagyok egészen biztos, azt hiszem, a Dózsa György úti [akkor: Aréna út] zsinagógában. Amennyire ilyen közvetett dolgokból ki tudom venni, anyámnak ez nem volt egy nagy szerelmi házasság. Fiatal volt, azt hiszem, még nem volt elég érett a házasságra. A házasság után rögtön lett gyerek, méghozzá egy ikerpár, akik koraszülöttek voltak, és meghaltak. De rögtön jöttem én 1934 májusában. Az apukám, akinek négy polgárija volt, tisztviselőként dolgozott a Beszkártnál [BSZKRT], anyukám otthon maradt, és nem dolgozott egészen 1940-ig. Otthon volt velem [Sólyom Olga többször említi, hogy édesapja a Beszkártnál (Budapest Székesfőváros Közlekedési Rt.) dolgozott, azonban az iratok szerint a Budapesti Helyi Érdekű Vasutak Rt. volt a munkahelye. – A szerk.]. Amikor az apukámat először elvitték munkaszolgálatra, akkor anyukám kénytelen volt elmenni dolgozni, és Rotschild Kláránál dolgozott mint varrónő [Rotschild Klára (1903–1976): divattervező. 1934-ben nyitott önálló szalont. Neve nemzetközileg is ismert volt. 1945 után állami alkalmazottként a Clara-szalon művészeti vezetője volt. – A szerk.]. Nem fehérnemű-varrónőként. Nagyon jó keze van anyámnak. Itt dolgozott, amíg lehetett, egészen 1944 elejéig.

Apám 1919-ben, huszonegy évesen vörös katona volt, a románok elfogták, és halálra ítélték [A Magyar Vörös Hadsereg a Tanácsköztársaság (lásd ott) fegyveres ereje, felállítását 1919. március 22-én rendelték el, augusztus 6-án feloszlatták. – A szerk.]. Egy egész éjjel álltak a kivégzőosztag előtt, de valamiért megkegyelmeztek nekik. Ezen az éjjelen apám megőszült, én már csak így láttam.

Anyám soha nem volt vallásos, de betartotta az összes kóserságot [lásd: étkezési törvények], mert az apám vallásos ember volt. Nem ortodox, hanem neológ. Minden este lejárt a Tar utcai imaházba. Péntek este volt gyertyagyújtás, az ünnepeket megtartottuk, apukám tartotta mindig a szédert. Anyám a nagy szegénységben is kóser konyhát vitt. Volt két vájdling a mosogatáshoz, a tejes edények fehérek voltak, azok voltak a kredenc egyik végén, és a pirosak voltak a húsosok. A háború után ennek vége lett.

Kiskoromban a nyaralást az jelentette, hogy kimentünk a Palatinus strandra. Annak idején a Margit-szigetre nem lehetett csak úgy ingyen bemenni, hanem fizetni kellett. Az édesapám mint Beszkártos tisztviselő ingyen bérletet kapott a Margit-szigetre. Valami kedvezmény a Palatinus strandra is volt, ezért én a gyerekkoromat nagyrészt a Margit-szigeten töltöttem, vasárnaponként hármasban, apukámmal és anyukámmal. Úszni is úgy tanultam meg, hogy az apukám a Palatinus strandon bedobott a mélyvízbe, és ott állt mellettem. Nem féltem, és nem haragudtam, hanem élveztem, mert bolondoztunk. Az apukámmal folyton bolondoztunk. Imádtam az apámat, akinek nagyszerű humora volt.

Elemibe a Hollán utcai zsidó iskolába jártam, ez egy koedukált osztály volt [lásd: koedukáció], fiúk, lányok vegyesen jártunk. 1940-ben kezdtem az elemit, és 1944-ben fejeztem be. 2003-ban megszerveztünk egy ötvenkilenc éves osztálytalálkozót. Összejöttünk húszan. Izraelből, Kanadából, Amerikából és természetesen Budapestről, és egy nagyszerű társaság jött össze. Kiderült, hogy mindenki vitte valamire. A társaság kilencvennyolc százaléka értelmiségi lett, és nem is akármilyen. Van köztük kémikus, költőnő, pszichológus, egy nagy kanadai cég elnök-vezérigazgatója, számítástechnikus, fizikus. A húszból, akik összejöttek, körülbelül a fele Magyarországon él.

Imádtam az apámat, akinek én voltam a mindene, egyetlen gyermeke. Ma is érzem a kezemet a kezében, amikor hatéves koromban iskolába kísért, ami ugyan messze volt tőlünk, de épp ezért reggelente korábban indultunk el otthonról, hogy egy jó darabon gyalog mehessünk, kettesben legyünk. Közben mesélt, viccelődött, nagyokat nevettünk – ez volt a boldogság. Nem tartott sokáig. Hét éves voltam, amikor először vitték munkaszolgálatra, és mi anyámmal vasárnaponként Nagytarcsára mentünk el, ahol egy-két órára együtt lehettünk vele.

Aztán jött 1944. A harmadik emeleti ablakunkból zokogva néztem utána, ahogy viharkabátjában, valami hátizsákfélével lassan eltűnik a szemem elől. Tudtam, felfogtam, lehet, hogy soha többé nem látom őt viszont.

Aztán jött a csillagos ház. Mi az Ó utca 40-be költöztünk, valami távoli rokon háromszobás lakásába, ahol húszan vagy huszonöten zsúfolódtunk össze. Aztán eljött október 15. Ez vasárnapra esett, és a Budapesten lévő munkaszolgálatosok  néhány óra eltávozást kaptak. Apámmal együtt hallgattuk délben Horthy proklamációját [lásd: Horthy-proklamáció], ujjongtunk, hogy vége a háborúnak, majd egy-két óra múlva  a végső kétségbeesés lett úrrá rajtunk [lásd: nyilas hatalomátvétel]. Tudtuk, hogy ez a vég. Könyörögtünk apámnak, ne menjen vissza a századához, maradjon velünk, már úgyis minden mindegy, legalább együtt vagyunk, de ő hajthatatlan volt, mert azt mondták nekik, ha valaki megszökik, akkor a többieket megtizedelik. Ezt ő soha nem vette volna a lelkére. Visszament. Soha többé nem láttam.

A háború után, a zsidó gimnáziumban, napi rendszerességgel volt szó arról, kinek a hozzátartozója hol volt és mikor, és honnan nem jött vissza. Az én esetemben az első angolórán derült ki, hogy a tanárnőm férje ugyanabban a században volt, ahol az apukám, és megadta nekem annak a bajtársuknak a címét, aki onnan visszatért. Ő mondta el, hogyan és miként halt meg apám, akinek az utolsó szava is az volt, hogy mi lesz a kislányommal. Sopronbánfalván flekktífuszban halt meg 1945. február 13-án vagy 14-én [A flekktífusz vagy kiütéses tífusz – magas lázzal és fejfájással járó fertőző betegség, főleg a ruhatetvek terjesztik. – A szerk.].

A csillagos házból anyámmal, apám Erzsébet nevű testvérével és a Frigyes nevű unokatestvéremmel svájci Schutzpass [lásd: menlevél] révén bekerültünk a Kolumbusz utcai úgynevezett nemzetközi védett táborba [lásd: Kolumbusz utcai menekülttábor]. Itt ideiglenes fatákolmányokban zsúfolódtunk össze, földön, falócákon ülve, fekve, mint a heringek. Mindenkit beoltottak tífusz ellen, amitől nekem negyven fokos lázam lett, de gyógyszer persze semmi. Közben iszonyatosan tetvesek voltunk. Anyám negyven fokos lázasan és tetvesen minden áldott nap kivitt a mínusz tíz fokba, csak hideg víz volt az udvaron, és abban lefürdetett, és a velünk lévő ruhákat cserélgette. Túléltem. A nemzetközi védettség persze nem akadályozta meg a nyilasokat, hogy megszállják ezt az intézményt. Összeterelték a többnyire nőkből, gyerekekből és öregekből álló tömeget, majd kiválasztották a még munkaképes nőket, akiket különállítottak, és valahova elvittek. Köztük volt anyám is. Én ott maradtam a nagynénimmel, akinek sikerült magát öregnek maszkíroznia, és a szintén gyerek unokabátyámmal. Bennünket aztán elhajtottak a gettóba.

Itt a Klauzál tér 13-ba kerültünk, egy szép régi ház harmadik emeletére. Innen akartam szinte naponta leugrani, mert úgy éreztem, apa és anya nélkül már nem akarok élni. Szegény nagynéném teljesen odavolt, hisz most már ő felelt értem. Elment apám Hédi nővérének akkor húszéves Elza nevű lányához, aki, mint már említettem, a Nemzetközi Vöröskeresztnél tevékenykedett, és könyörgött neki, hogy valahonnan kerítse elő anyámat, mert nem tudja, mit csináljon velem.

Anyám a Teleki tér 5. szám alatti nyilasházba került [A Teleki tér 4–10-ben (az egykori Antiszemita Párt egyik gyülekezőhelyének – Teleki tér 8 – szomszédságában volt nyilasház – gyűjtőház –, ahova 1944 őszén „utcán elfogott, lakásokból kirángatott zsidókat hoztak be… . Egy csoportjukért, ötven-valahány ember, akiket december első napjaiban elhurcoltak a nemzetközi gettóból (Tátra utca 15), Wallenberg emelt szót. Nap mint nap ki tudott innen menteni néhány embert, mindenkit azonban ő sem” – olvasható a „Zsidó Budapest” c. munka 480. oldalán. Ezek szerint a Kolumbusz utcai menekülttáborból is hurcoltak ide embereket. – A szerk.], és ott véletlenül összekerült Margit nagynénémmel. Anyám, a csodával határos módon, egy kisnyilassal elküldött egy levelet Hédinek, és tudatta, hogy hol vannak. Így tudta meg Elza, aki végül is kiszöktette anyámat és a nagynénimet. Mint vöröskeresztes élelmet vihetett be a foglyoknak, de előbb végigjárta az épületet, míg rájuk talált, és akkor kilökte őket a kapun, hogy segítsenek behordani az élelmiszeres zsákokat. Amint kívül voltak a kapun, sikerült elvegyülniük a tömegben és elmenekülni. Aztán Margit is bujkált, a libás mivoltából fakadóan rengeteg keresztény embert ismert, piacozókat meg szállítókat, és azok bujtatták.

Én egyik éjszaka azt álmodtam, hogy állok a széles lépcsőházban, és látom, ahogy anyám jön fölfelé. Két napig egész nap ott strázsáltam, és a harmadik nap – pontosan úgy, ahogy megálmodtam – megjött anyám. Ezt követően anyám és a nagynéném úgy döntöttek, nem várjuk meg, amíg lezárják a gettót, ki kell szöknünk, mert ott biztosan elpusztítanak bennünket. Még tartott a keresztényeknek a gettó területéről való kiköltöztetése, és egy kiskocsit húzó család mögé álltunk, mint akik segítenek a kocsit tolni. A Csányi utcán át „kisétáltunk” a gettó területéről.

Ekkor elkezdődött körülbelül öt hétig tartó bujkálásunk kálváriája. A gettóból való kimenekülés után, jobb híján, visszamentünk az Ó utcai csillagos házba, mert azt reméltük, hogy az elhagyott lakásba még nem költözött be senki, és ott meghúzhatjuk magunkat. A házmester azon ritka kivételek közé tartozott, aki a lehetőségeihez mérten segíteni  igyekezett. Egy-egy éjszakára meghúzhattuk magunkat a házban, és figyelmeztetett, ha baj volt. Egyik nap a házmester figyelmeztetett, hogy a lakásokba németek költöztek, így innen el kellett mennünk. Valami úton-módon eljutottunk a Kisfaludy utcába, egy elhagyott bútorgyár szuterénjébe, ahol a helyiség egy emeletes fapriccsel ketté volt választva, és ahol nyilasok „vigyáztak” ránk. Ezért az ott dekkoló zsidók fizettek. Emlékszem egy esetre, amikor az éjszaka kellős közepén hirtelen berontott két fegyveres kisnyilas, és ordítva közölte, hogy a főtestvérnek azonnal adjunk össze tízezer pengőt, mert különben az egész bandát kiviszik a Duna-partra, és a Dunába lövik [lásd: zsidók Dunába lövése]. Összejött a pénz. Aztán egy nap, amikor már javában folyt Pest ostroma, és naponta többször bombáztak, a pincénkbe is becsapott a bomba [lásd: Budapest bombázása]. Én csak arra emlékszem, hogy üvöltök, körülöttem minden elrepül, és hullik rám a vakolat. A bomba, mint kiderült, a szomszéd házba csapott be. Másnap azt az épületet, ahova behúzódtunk, ugyancsak lebombázták, így tovább kellett menekülni. A helyzet nagyon veszélyes volt, mert akit sötétedés után az utcán találtak, szó nélkül agyonlőtték. Így volt olyan, hogy nyilvános vécében bújtunk el este, rettegve, nehogy valaki be találjon jönni.

Aztán a nagynénim [Reisch Mártonné Schwarcz Erzsébettel és Frigyes nevű fiával együtt hagyták el a gettót. – A szerk.] kitalálta, igényeljünk ki egy elhagyott zsidó lakást. Iszonyú nagy vakmerőség kellett ahhoz, hogy a két nő bemenjen az elöljáróságra azzal a mesével, hogy most menekültek el az oroszok elől egy akkor épp felszabadult Pest környéki helységből, és  itt vannak két gyerekkel, adjanak nekik valami lakást. Az unokabátyám sapkáját az orráig be kellett húzni, hogy a vörös haja és szeplői ne áruljanak el bennünket. Csodák csodájára kiutaltak egy lakást az Aradi utcában. Rettenetes lelkiállapotban mentünk oda, mert nyomasztott az a tudat, hogy bemegyünk egy zsidó lakásába, akivel ki tudja, mi történt már azóta. Ugyanakkor féltünk is, hogy mi történik velünk, ha éjszakára nem lesz fedél felettünk. Tehát bementünk a lakásba. A legnagyobb baj az volt, hogy iszonyúan éhesek voltunk. Fűteni nem volt mivel, éhesek voltunk, és még villanyt se mertünk gyújtani, remélve, hogy nem vesznek rólunk tudomást. Ráadásul pokolian féltünk a bombázástól. Az éhezést és a bombázástól való félelmet nem bírván, másnap lementünk a pincébe azzal, hogy lesz, ami lesz. Akkor Pesten már mindenki ott élt. Ezek után a nagynéném két bombázás között kimerészkedett az utcára, és hozott egy kis krumplit, amit valahonnan lopott. Alighogy feltettük a közös tűzhelyre főni, megjelent a nyilas házparancsnok, élet és halál ura, és közölte, amennyiben egy órán belül nem szerzünk valamilyen igazolást arról, hogy nem vagyunk zsidók, elvitet minket. Otthagyva csapot-papot, krumplit, leléptünk. Az unokabátyámmal még évtizedek múlva is azt tartottuk az egyik légszörnyűbbnek a háborús emlékeink közül, amikor a várva várt ennivalót ott kellett hagyni. Akkor elváltunk a nagynénémmel, ő a fiával külön bujkált.

Aztán megint jött a nyilvános vécé, az egy-egy éjszakára elbújás valahol. És akkor megint az Ó utcai házmester segített. A háború előtt az Ó utca az utcalányok utcája is volt. A házmester ismert egyet közülük, akinek épp gyereke született, és szüksége volt pénzre, így ez a nő befogadott minket a Rózsa utcában lévő lakásába. A gyereknek mákfőzettel átitatott cumit adott, hogy ne bőgjön állandóan. Többnyire az én dolgom volt ringatni. Ekkor már az ostrom utolsó napjait éltük, és végképp nem volt mit enni. Amikor az első orosz katona bejött a pincébe, rám esett a tekintete, amint valami rongyon feküdtem szinte élettelenül. A tolmács révén megkérdezte, mi van velem. Anyám közölte, hogy már négy napja egy falatot sem ettem, és olyan gyenge vagyok, hogy nem tudok felkelni. Ekkor kiment, és egy tele csajka étellel jött vissza. Mint kiderült, ez az orosz scsí volt [A békebeli scsí savanyú- vagy édeskáposztából vagy mindkettőből sok zöldséggel és marhahússal készült leves. – A szerk.]. Anyám kávéskanalanként adta nekem, majd napokig ettünk belőle.

A háború után továbbra is a Lehel út 49/A-ban laktunk. A Lehel út egy hosszú szakaszán kaszárnyák voltak, amikben természetesen oroszok voltak, akik között orosz katonanők és katonafeleségek is voltak. Ezeknek varrt anyám cukorért meg zsírért, valami kajáért, mert infláció volt [lásd: feketézés, cserekereskedelem]. Különösen a cukor volt fontos, mert én 1945 őszén  sárgaságot kaptam, és ezzel semmiféle zsiradékot nem szabad enni. Ugyanis 1945 nyarán a Joint elvitt valahova Balatonra, nem emlékszem, hova, talán Aligára, és nem volt vonat, amivel hazahozzanak. A kaja is elfogyott. Nem volt más választás, a faluban volt egy Hangya szövetkezet, és ott lehetett párizsit kapni. Kenyér nem volt, ettük a párizsit minden nélkül, ettől kaphattam sárgaságot. Ezenkívül a fiúk elvittek barackot lopni, mert jól tudtam szaladni, és volt egy olyan ruhám, amit a derekán meg lehetett kötni, és körbe lehetett rakni őszibarackkal. Úgyhogy szatyor helyett engem használtak. Rendkívül finom őszibarackot hoztunk.

Amikor az oroszoknak való varrás abbamaradt, anyám továbbra is varrt, de már magyar kuncsaftoknak. Sokat dolgozott, mert ez volt az egyetlen jövedelemforrás. Miközben anyám dolgozott, én ott ültem, és tisztáztam, és vezettem a háztartást.  Úgy tanultam meg főzni, hogy mialatt anyám dolgozott, közben mondta, mit hogyan kell csinálni  Így aztán tizenkét éves koromban gyakorlatilag a teljes háztartást tudtam vezetni. Sőt még előbb is, mert 1945 tavaszán az anyám elment vidékre kajáért egy kis kocsival, és én ott maradtam tizenegy évesen egy beriglizett lakásban egy hétig, és elláttam magam. Nem tudom, hogy, de elláttam magam, nem haltam éhen. Érdekes módon nem is féltem. A bombázástól féltem, a nyilasoktól nagyon féltem, de a háború után eszembe sem jutott félni. Semmitől nem féltem. Az oroszoktól sem féltem, pedig félhettem volna [lásd: malenkij robot].

1945 márciusában megkezdődött a tanítás. Anyám még 1944 nyarán  beíratott a zsidó gimnáziumba, így eleve oda mentem. Akkor az Abonyi utcai iskola a Rökk Szilárd utcában volt, a mai Rabbiképző helyén. Csak hetente háromszor volt tanítás, mert a közlekedés még nemigen működött, én is gyalog jártam a Lehel utcából, ami több mint egyórás út volt. Az egész tanév akkor három hónapig tartott, de elvégeztem az első gimnáziumot. Az 1945/46-os tanévet már a Hollán utcai iskolában jártam, ez az Abonyi utcai iskola egy tagozata volt, csak lánygimnázium.  

1946 és 1948 között hegedülni tanultam. Margit nagynénémtől kaptam egy hegedűt, és ha már volt, tanultam kábé két évig egy zeneiskolában. De nem szerettem a tanáromat, meg 1948-ban mentem a népi kollégiumba, meg nem éreztem különleges tehetséget, így nem folytattam.

Az anyám a háború után belépett rögtön a kommunista pártba. Gondolom, hogy mint az összes többi felszabadult zsidó, úgy gondolta, hogy ott a helye. Soha előtte nem politizált. Valószínűleg sokuknál ez a vallás egyik megnyilvánulási formája volt. Nálam is. Kellett egy másik felettes ént keresni. Magamról is beszélek, mert én is ugyanezt éltem át. Szóval, belépett a kommunista pártba, és ott tevékenykedett. A házunkban lakott Nezvál Ferenc, későbbi igazságügy-miniszter [Nezvál Ferenc (1909–1987): a háború előtt bőripari munkás, 5 elemit végzett. 1928-ban belépett a Kommunista Ifjúmunkás Szövetségbe (KIMSZ), 1929–1939 között ún. házi internálás alatt volt. Miután megszökött, a szovjet csapatok bevonulásáig illegalitásban élt. 1955-ben jogi doktori oklevelet szerzett az ELTE-n. 1956 decemberétől 1966 végéig, nyugdíjazásáig volt igazságügy-miniszter. – A szerk.]. Abban az időben nem volt gyerekük, engem nagyon szerettek, sokat összejártunk, és elképzelhető, hogy az ő hatása is szerepet játszott ebben, hogy rádumálta anyámat, hogy lépjen be a pártba. Anyám lejárt a pártba, és én is lejártam vele. Elég sokszor voltak ilyen összejövetelek. Nem kifejezetten taggyűlések, hanem valami szemináriumféle. Ott engem nagyon megkedvelt a Tóth Gyuri bácsi és a Szerémi Boriska, akik a 13/15-ös körzetnek voltak a vezetői. Ők illegális kommunisták voltak, ők is gyerektelenek voltak, és engem nagyon megkedveltek. Megkérdezték, hogy hajlandó lennék-e analfabéta angyalföldi asszonyokat tanítani írni-olvasni. Elvállaltam, és csináltam is egypár hónapon keresztül. Amíg ősszel iskolába nem kezdtem járni, tanítottam az asszonyokat. Akkor kezdtem az első gimnáziumot. Tizenkét éves voltam, de abszolút érett.

Nem voltam még tizennégy éves, amikor Tóth Gyuri bácsi elkezdett győzködni, hogy te egy olyan klassz gyerek vagy, öntudatos, nem akarsz-e belépni a pártba. 1948 áprilisában elintézte nekem Kádár Jánosnál – ő volt a XIII. kerületi párttikár –, hogy különleges engedéllyel vegyenek föl a Magyar Kommunista Pártba. Annak ellenére, hogy 1945-ben, 46-ban, 47-ben cionista voltam, alijázni is akartam, ami anyám jóvoltából nem perfektuálódott. Szóval korkedvezménnyel beléphettem a Magyar Kommunista Pártba. Én mindig szerettem segíteni, mindig valamit dolgoztam, valami társadalmi munkát végeztem.

Elég sok konfliktusom volt az iskolában, mert 1948-ig a zsidó gimnáziumba jártam, és ott tudták rólam, mert én soha semmit nem titkoltam, hogy a pártban ügyködök. Volt a hittantanárommal ilyen hitvitám meg minden. Tudniillik azzal együtt, hogy zsidó gimnáziumba jártam, amikor megtudtam, hogy megölték az apámat, akit végtelenül szerettem, és aki mai napig nincs nap, hogy ne jusson eszembe, valami mérhetetlen elkeseredés uralkodott el rajtam, és azt mondtam, hogy ha – mert én is vallásos voltam természetesen apám révén – egy olyan embert, mint az apám, aki segítőkész volt, jó volt, vallásos volt, tisztességes volt, az Isten hagyta megölni, akkor nincs Isten. Elkezdtem vad istentagadóvá válni. Emlékszem arra, hogy az anyám éppen nem volt otthon, és jöttek a hitközségtől az adót beszedni. Ez 1946-ban volt. Mondtam, hogy nem fizetünk. Azt mondták, hogy akkor ki kell lépni a hitközségből. Ki kell lépni? Fogtam magam, felöltöztem, és lementem oda a Dózsa György úti [Aréna úti] templomba, és kiírattam magamat és anyámat a hitközségből. Egyszerűen kiiratkoztunk. Amikor az anyám hazajött, közöltem vele, hogy ez van. Nem foglalkozott az egész kérdéssel. Úgyhogy én ilyen vad ateistává váltam akkor. Pedig a zsidó gimnáziumban közben héber nyelvi versenyt nyertem, és Bibliát tanultam, de ez már nem hit volt, hanem az iskola és a közösség. Nagyon fontos volt számomra az a közösség. Szép emlékeim vannak innen is, mai napig tartom a kapcsolatot néhány osztálytársammal. Aztán 1948-ban, amikor államosították az iskolákat [lásd: iskolák államosítása Magyarországon], ezt is megszüntették. Akkor már Budán laktunk, és fogtam magam, elmentem, megnéztem a Szilágyi gimnáziumot. Nagyon szimpatikus volt, és beiratkoztam oda. Mindent magam intéztem, az anyám jóformán azt sem tudta, csak közöltem vele, hogy éppen hova járok, melyik iskolába.

A Lehel úti lakásunk egy egyszobás lakás volt. Anyám úgy gondolta, hogy költözzünk valami nagyobb lakásba. Úgy emlékszem, csere révén költöztünk az első kerületbe, a Fazekas utca 4-be, egy két szoba hallos, személyzeti szobás lakásba. A lakás az ötödik emeleten volt, a legtetején laktunk. Gyönyörű szép lakás volt, csak északi fekvésű, központi fűtéses, és olyan  iszonyú hideg volt, hogy soha nem fáztam annyit, mint abban a lakásban. 

Szóval, 1948 őszén a Szilágyi gimnáziumba kerültem, és ott is érettségiztem. Ott még tanultunk hittant, és elég nagy konfliktusom is volt, mert a hittantanárunk feladott egy ilyen dolgozatot, hogy a profetizmus és a szocializmus közötti összhang. Én dühös lettem ettől a megfogalmazástól, és az én nagy filozófiai tudásommal bebizonyítottam az ellenkezőjét. Ebből is lettek kisebb-nagyobb konfliktusaim, de hát túléltem, és az 1949/50-es tanévben már nem volt hitoktatás [1949 szeptemberében törölte el az Elnöki Tanács 1949: 5. sz. törvényerejű rendelete a kötelező iskolai hitoktatást. – A szerk.].

Amikor 1948-ban a zsidó gimnáziumból átiratkoztam a Szilágyi Erzsébet leánygimnázium ötödik osztályába, anyám úgy gondolta, hogy nehéz körülmények között élünk, menjek el egy kollégiumba lakni. Nem lett volna erre égetően szükség, ennyire nem nyomorogtunk, ő dolgozott, szóval azt hiszem, egy kissé a terhére voltam. Így aztán beköltöztem a középiskolás Kádár Kata népi kollégiumba, itt csak lányok voltak. Nappal iskolába jártam, néha hétvégére hazamentem. Én voltam a kollégium káderese, fogalmam sincs, miért pont én. Egy tanévet voltam ott, aztán 1949-ben a Rajk-per kapcsán fel is számolták. Egyébként életem egyik nagyon szép éve volt, rengeteg élmény, kisebb-nagyobb balhék, éjszakába nyúló „viták” politikáról, erkölcsről meg mit tudom én, de nagyon komolyan csináltuk. Szombatonként táncolni jártunk a jogász kollégiumba, utána mindenki elmesélte az „élményeit”. Pataki Ferenc volt az igazgatója, aki, azt hiszem, akkor még egyetemista volt, ma akadémikus, pszichológus. Nem volt könnyű dolga hatvan-hetven kamaszlánnyal. A kollégium a Budagyöngyénél lévő Belvederében volt, gyönyörű ősparkkal, ma valamilyen egyházi intézményé. Senkivel nem maradt a későbbiekben kapcsolatom, valószínűleg azért, mert egyedül én jártam a Szilágyiba, a többiek más iskolákba.

A háború után egészen 1948-ig a varrásból éltünk, akkor anyám elment egy édességboltba eladónak. Abba a boltba, amelyik a Váci utca és a Régiposta utca sarkán ma is megvan. A varrás már nem ment, nem voltak kuncsaftok, és már nem is volt kóser dolog maszek dolgozni [A ruházati iparban az egyedi szabóságok száma az államosítás, valamint a kisipari termelőszövetkezetek szervezése következtében a korábbi létszám töredékére csökkent. A Magánkisipari adattár 1938–1971 (KSH, Budapest, 1972) adatai szerint az 1948-ban dolgozó 57 384 iparosból 1953-ra mindössze 9433 maradt. – A szerk.]. Célszerű volt állásba menni. De nem volt sokáig ott, talán egy évig. Elküldték pártiskolára, és 1949 végén bevitték az igazságügy-minisztériumba előadónak. Schwarcz Miklósné, született Weisz Klára. Azt mondták neki, hogy jó lenne, ha magyarosítana. Apámnak még nem volt meg a holttá nyilvánítása, tehát az asszonynevét nem magyarosíthatta, csak a lánynevét. És akkor azt mondtam, hogy tudod mit, magyarosíttassuk az enyémet is. Akkor volt Budapest rendőrfőkapitánya Sólyom László [Sólyom László (1908–1950): altábornagy. 1941-ben mint vezérkari századost nyugdíjazták, az Egyesült Izzóban helyezkedett el. 1942-ben belépett a KMP-be, és bekapcsolódott az antifasiszta mozgalomba. 1945 után a főváros rendőrfőkapitánya, 1947-ben a honvédség vezérkari főnöke. 1950. májusában koholt vádak alapján letartóztatták, halálra ítélték és kivégezték. – A szerk.]. Sólyom László egy rendkívül csinos ember volt, és én kisütöttem, hogy a Schwarcz után nagyon jó lesz nekem a Sólyom. Mire az anyám közölte, hogy ő is Sólyom lesz. Ezen nagyon összevesztünk, mert én azt mondtam, hogy ő legyen Vértes a Weisz után. Nem tudtunk megegyezni, úgyhogy egy szónak is száz a vége, az anyám Sólyom Klára lett, én meg Sólyom Olga, mintha törvénytelen gyerek lennék. Így lettem aztán 1949-ben Sólyom.

A minisztériumban anyámat rávették, hogy menjen egyetemre. És elment a közgazdasági egyetem levelező tagozatára. Még érettségije sem volt. Ebben az időben egyetemre kerüléshez nem kellett feltétlenül érettségi, különösen nem az esti és levelező tagozatra, ahova leginkább felnőttek jártak [Többnyire azért kellett az egyetemi továbbtanuláshoz legalább szakérettségi. Lásd ott. A szakérettségi tanfolyamokat azonban 1948-ban kezdték csak szervezni, elképzelhető, hogy a káderhiány idején úgy ment valaki egyetemre, hogy nem érettségije, főleg ha elvégzett valamilyen szintű pártiskolát. – A szerk.]. Nem volt könnyű dolga, sokat kínlódott, de végül elvégezte. Mivel anyám az egyetem mellett dolgozott, nekem kellett a háztartást vezetni. Akkor persze még nem volt semmiféle háztartási gép, a mosókonyhában, teknőben mostam, hordtam a kályhába a tüzelőt a pincéből, szóval mindent én csináltam. Anyám csak vasárnap csinált otthon valamit, mert akkor még szombaton is munkanap volt [Az ötnapos, heti negyvenórás munkarendet egy 1981. áprilisi minisztertanácsi határozat írta elő, amit a kéthetenkénti szabad szombat előzött meg néhány éven át. – A szerk.], arról már nem is beszélve, hogy abban az időben mindenféle taggyűlések, szemináriumok stb. voltak, amiken kötelező volt részt venni, és amik mind munkaidő után voltak. Nem volt könnyű élet. 

Én a sorsomat gyakorlatilag tizennégy éves koromtól magam intézem. Például 1948-ban a nyári szünetben elmentem a Láng Gépgyárba magkészítő segédmunkásnak. Ez az öntvény mintájához kell, nem éppen női munka. Nehéz testi munkás pótlékot kaptam utána. Plusz hús, plusz cukor, plusz kenyér. Ott dolgoztam négy hetet. Kemény munka volt, mert szörnyű meleg volt. Aztán táborba mentem, ilyen iskolai táborba. Tizenhat éves koromban Sztálinvárost építettük az iskolával [A mai Dunaújvárosról, az egykori Dunapenteléről van szó, amely 1951 és 1961 között a Sztálinváros nevet viselte, és ahol 1950-ben kezdték építeni a Dunai Vasművet. – A szerk.]. Minden nyáron minimum hat hetet dolgoztam, mert az anyámtól meglehetősen kevés pénzt kaptam, és nem is szerettem kérni. Közvetlenül érettségi után például a Fém- és Alumínium Kutató Intézetben [Vas- és Fémipari Kutatóintézet] a laboratóriumban dolgoztam, különböző összetételű ötvözeteket kellett csinálni. Hetven fokos melegben dolgoztunk, amikor kijöttem a harminc fokba, fáztam.

Az anyám azt se nagyon tudta, hova járok iskolába. Mindig csak vittem haza a jeles bizonyítványokat. Szerettem tanulni. Angolt külön is tanultam, anyám erre áldozott. Így aztán, amikor 1949-ben kerestek tolmácsokat a VIT-re, jelentkeztem, és föl is vettek [Világifjúsági Találkozó (VIT) – Az 1945-ben alakult Demokratikus Ifjúsági Világszövetség (DIVSZ), a világ kommunista- és munkáspártjai ifjúsági szervezeteinek a nemzetközi szövetsége által szervezett fesztiválsorozat. Az elsőt 1947-ben rendezték Prágában, a másodikat 1949-ben Budapesten. A politikai cél az volt, hogy az egyre erősebb hidegháborús légkörben a Szovjetunió növelhesse és demonstrálhassa befolyását az ifjúság körében. Eleinte kétévente szervezték, 1959-től háromévente, 1968-tól ötévente szervezik. Mai neve: Világifjúsági és Diáktalálkozó. – A szerk.]. Hát ugye káder is voltam, párttag is voltam, megbízható is voltam. Először az angol delegáció mellett voltam tolmács. Aztán a VIT után egy héttel volt a DIVSZ kongresszus (Demokratikus Ifjúsági Világszövetség), akkor meg az indiai delegáció mellett voltam. A kettő között pedig az indonéz delegáció mellett voltam. Nagyon érdekes társaság volt. Nekem nagyon tetszett ez a kvázidiplomáciai tevékenység, és úgy döntöttem, hogy diplomata leszek.

Anyám különben nem volt sokáig a minisztériumban. Utána különféle KGM vállalatoknál dolgozott [KGM – a Kohó- és Gépipari Minisztérium rövidítése], a Láng Gépgyárban meg nem tudom, hol mindenhol. A Gammában [Gamma Optikai Művek] személyzetis volt. A többi helyen előadói beosztásban a munkaügyi osztályon meg ilyen helyeken, lévén közgazdasági végzettsége. A személyzeti vezetőn kívül soha nem volt vezető beosztásban, de hát az is ilyen egyszemélyes munka volt. Már nem is emlékszem, melyik gyár munkaügyi osztályáról ment el nyugdíjba.

1952-ben leérettségiztem a Szilágyiban, és jelentkeztem a Külügyi Akadémiára. De volt egy ronda antiszemita igazgatóm a Szilágyiban, aki elsinkófálta a kérvényemet. Mire észhez kaptam, hogy nem hívtak be felvételire, addigra lezárult minden. De 1952-ben lasszóval fogták az egyetemre a diákokat. Jöttek a különböző egyetemekről, és az érettségiző osztályokkal beszéltek, hogy gyere hozzánk, gyere ide, gyere oda. Én a matekhez, fizikához meg a természettudományos tárgyakhoz hülye voltam, engem a történelem, irodalom, ilyesmi érdekelt, tehát humán beállítottságú voltam, de tanár nem akartam lenni, hogy bölcsészkarra menjek. Hova lehetne még menni? Akkor jöttek a Lenin Intézetből, és azzal csábítottak oda, hogy ott eleve két nyelvet tudok tanulni, és ha elvégzem, és rászánok még egy évet, onnan mehetek egyenesen a Külügyi Akadémiára [A Lenin Intézet 1952 tavaszán alakult az Egyetemi Orosz Intézetből. Feladata: „Magas színvonalú marxista-leninista képzettséggel rendelkező és az orosz nyelvet jól ismerő egyetemi előadók, ideológiai munkaterületen dolgozó funkcionáriusok képzése.” 1956-ban szűnt meg; Külügyi Akadémia – az 1948. évi LVIII. törvénnyel létesített intézmény; két évfolyamra tagolódott, felügyeletét a vallás- és közoktatásügyi miniszterrel egyetértésben a külügyminiszter gyakorolta.  – A szerk.]. Így öt év alatt két diplomám lesz. Ez rendkívül vonzó volt a számomra, úgyhogy elmentem a Lenin Intézetbe felvételizni a marxizmus-leninizmus szakra. Felvettek. Heti huszonkét óra nyelv volt, orosz és angol, és én ezt rettenetesen élveztem. Tanultunk mindenféle történelmet, földrajzot.

Talán érdekes iskolatörténeti adalék, hogy milyen tantárgyak voltak és milyen óraszámmal: 

                    I. félév: Marxizmus-leninizmus alapjai  – heti 4 óra

Magyarország története – heti 4 óra elmélet

Politikai és gazdasági földrajz – heti 2 óra

Magyar irodalomtörténet – heti 3 óra

Orosz nyelvtan – heti 8 óra

Orosz lexika – heti 10 óra

Testnevelés – heti 2 óra

Honvédelmi ismeretek – heti 3 óra

II félév: Marxizmus-leninizmus – heti 6 óra

Orosz nyelvtan – heti 8 óra

Orosz lexika – heti 8 óra                   

Magyarország története – heti 4 óra

Magyar irodalom – heti 2 óra

Politikai és gazdasági földrajz – heti 2 óra

Honvédelmi ismeretek – heti 3 óra

Testnevelés – heti 2 óra

III. félév:  Marxizmus-leninizmus – heti 6 óra

Orosz nyelvtan – heti 8 óra

Orosz lexika – heti 10 óra

A Szovjetunió földrajza – heti 2 óra

A magyar munkásmozgalom története – heti 2 óra

A korszerű természettudomány alapjai – heti 3 óra

Testnevelés – heti 2 óra

IV. félév: Marxizmus-leninizmus – heti 6 óra

A Szovjetunió népeinek története – heti 2 óra

Egyetemes történet – heti 3 óra

A magyar munkásmozgalom története – heti 4 óra

Orosz nyelvtan – heti 6 óra

Orosz lexika – heti 6 óra

Testnevelés – heti 2 óra

V. félév: Az SZKP története – heti 4 óra

Politikai gazdaságtan – heti 4 óra

A Szovjetunió népeinek története – heti 6 óra

Egyetemes történet – heti 3 óra

Orosz nyelv – heti 6 óra

Angol nyelv

Az SZKP története, szakkollégium

VI. félév: Az SZKP története, szakkollégium – heti 2 óra 

  Az SZKP története, szakszeminárium – heti 2 óra 

  Dialektikus és történelmi materializmus – heti 2 óra

  Politikai gazdaságtan – heti 4 óra

  A Szovjetunió népeinek története – heti 3 óra

  Egyetemes történet  – heti 4 óra

  Orosz nyelv – heti 6 óra

Elsőéves egyetemista koromban versenyszerűen kézilabdáztam, de úgy eldurvultam, hogy éreztem, hogy ezt nem szabad folytatni. Viszont mindig komolyan túráztam meg úsztam, de nem versenyszerűen. Közben, mivel én nagyon csóró voltam, muszáj volt dolgoznom. Az anyám szerzett egy műszaki rajzolói állást a fogorvosiműszer-gyárban. Heti tizennyolc óráért ötszázhatvan forintot kaptam. Műszaki rajzot soha nem tanultam, de attól még csinálhattam. Összeszorítottam a fogamat, és megcsináltam, amit mondtak. Igen ám, de ez délután volt, és akkor kötelező volt minden nap délután kettőig az egyetemen lenni. Szombaton is. Nem volt más választásom, mint időnként meglógni egy-egy utolsó óráról. Csakhogy mindig vannak jótét lelkek. Valaki bemószerolt, hogy én meg szoktam lógni az utolsó órákról. Ezért a harmadév vége felé egy taggyűlésen közölték velem, hogy fegyelmit kaptam. Hogyhogy fegyelmit? Nem is volt fegyelmi tárgyalás. Irtóra berágtam. Akkor adták ki az indexet a vizsgaidőszakra, és utasítottak, hogy menjek be a rektorhoz, és írassam be az indexembe a fegyelmit. Na, több se kellett nekem, bementem, kitálaltam, hogy micsoda disznóság, hogy jönnek ahhoz, engem meg se kérdeznek, hogy miért csináltam, éhen halok vagy nem. Mire közölte, hogy ő nem írja be, menjek az igazgatóhelyetteshez. Bementem, ott is előadtam magamat. A pasas nem szólt egy árva szót sem, elvette az indexemet, és egy évre antedatálva írta be a fegyelmit. Ami azt jelentette, hogy abban a pillanatban el is évült. Ezt megláttam, rájöttem, fogtam magam, és ezzel az indexszel átmentem a közgazdasági egyetem oktatási osztályára. Megkérdeztem, hogy átvennének-e. Hova? Azt sem tudtam, milyen tagozatok vannak, csak azt, hogy van ipar szak van, mert az anyám oda járt. Mondom, az ipar szakra. Mikortól? Ősztől. De még egyszer kell járni a harmadévet. Jó, akkor harmadévre. Át is voltam véve. A barátnőmmel üzentem a Lenin Intézetbe, hogy többet ne várjanak.

Ez volt 1955-ben. Ez egy szörnyű év volt. Közölték, hogy különbözetivel le kell tennem az első két év anyagát. Nyelvből nem kellett, marxizmusból nem kellett, meg mit tudom én, miből nem kellett. De nyolc tantárgyból kellett különbözeti vizsgát tennem a harmadév folyamán. Ebből négy szigorlat volt. Plusz a saját évfolyamom vizsgái, úgyhogy tíz hónap alatt húsz vizsgát tettem le.

Közben 1955 júliusában férjhez támolyogtam, és 1956 januárjában már terhes voltam. Az utolsó különbözeti vizsgámat Berend T. Ivánnál tettem le 1956 augusztusában gazdaságföldrajzból, aki úgy megijedt, amikor meglátott ekkora hassal, hogy azt hitte, ott szülök meg [Berend T. Iván (1930) – történész, egyetemi tanár, a Magyar Tudományos Akadémia elnöke volt 1985–1990 között. – A szerk.]. Kérem, ne izguljon, nem lesz semmi baj. Ő idegesebb volt, mint én. Végül bukás nélkül végigcsináltam ezt a harmadévet.

1957-ben végeztem a közgázon ipar szakon. Akkor már persze nem voltam jeles, örültem, hogy hármassal szépen átmentem. Nem is voltam szabadságon, mert július 28-án kaptam meg a diplomát, és már szeptember elsején dolgoztam.

A Gumigyárba, a Kerepesi útra kerültem. Ennek az a története, hogy anyám összetalálkozott Somogyi Palival, egy régi ismerősével, aki a Gumigyárnak volt az igazgatója. Kérdezte anyámat, hogy nem kell-e neki állás. Mert 1956 után rengeteg embert kirúgtak az állásából. Anyám mondta, hogy neki nem kell, de a lánya most végez, nem venné-e oda. Bementem, és a Somogyi Pali rögtön valami vezetőnek akart kinevezni. Mondtam, hogy ne hülyéskedjünk, és elmentem a kalkulációba, mert éppen ott kellett valaki. Később átkerültem a kereskedelmi osztályra [1890-ben alakult a Magyar Ruggyantaárugyár Részvénytársaság (MRG), a háború előtti legnagyobb gumiipari vállalat. 1949-ben a magyar gumigyárakat államosították. A kisebb gyárak megszűntek, csak a három legnagyobb működött tovább. 1963-ban megalakították az Országos Gumiipari Vállalatot (OGV), mely 1973-ban a Taurus Gumiipari Vállalat nevet vette fel. (1996-ban a Taurus Gumiipari Rt.-t megvette a Michelin.) – A szerk.].

Az a Somogyi egy teljesen tanulatlan zsidó ember volt, az eredeti szakmája bádogos és vízvezeték-szerelő. Azt hiszem, sikerült vele elvégeztetni egy év gazdasági akadémiát, de azt is nagyon nehezen viselte. Viszont egy abszolút természetes eszű és született vezető volt. Imádták az emberek. Nem játszotta meg az eszét. Egy keménykötésű pali volt. Úgy vállalta el a Gumigyár vezetését, amikor 1948-ban [1949-ben] államosították, hogy megkérdezte, hogy ki az, aki ért a gumigyártáshoz. Megvolt a természetes esze, hogy rájöjjön, valamit mégis kéne tudni róla, mert a vízvezeték-szerelés kevés. Mondták, hogy az a két ember, a főtechnológus és a főmérnök sitten van szabotázs miatt. Elkezdett utánanézni, hogy mi volt ez a szabotázs, és kiderült, hogy semmi. Kikötötte, hogy csak akkor vállalja el, ha ez a két pali kijön a börtönből, és vállalják. És kihozatta ezt a két pasit a börtönből. Gondolhatja, hogy mit meg nem tettek a gyárért! Egy ilyen pasas volt. Soha senkinek nem ártott, nem vitetett el senkit, nem rúgott ki senkit, ha valaki hozzá ment segítségért, segített. Irtó emberséges ember volt. 1956-ban elterjesztették róla, hogy a Rákosi meg a Gerő rokona. Semmi köze nem volt hozzájuk. És 56-ban [lásd: 1956-os forradalom] sem lett semmi bántódása, mert a munkások megvédték.

Miután 1957-ben odakerültem, majdnem minden nap találkoztunk a folyósón. Hogy van anyád? Mi van anyáddal? Közben meghalt a felesége, és ott maradt egy tízéves gyerekkel. Egyszer meglátogatta anyámat, végül elvette feleségül. Anyám meg nem bánta, mert egyedülálló nő helyett igazgatóné lehetett. Összeköltöztek, de három-négy év után el is váltak. Az én anyukámmal nem lehet együtt élni. Ő egy magának való valaki, akinek elképzelései vannak, és ha az nem úgy alakul, akkor azt nem tudja elviselni.

Miután Somogyi elvette feleségül az anyámat, nem akartam ott maradni. Különben is kerestek a külker minisztériumban iparban dolgozó, nyelvet tudó egyedeket, én ezt megtudtam, rögtön jelentkeztem, és így kerültem 1961 februárjában a MINERALIMPEX-hez (Magyar Olaj- és Bányatermék Külkereskedelmi Vállalat) piackutatási előadónak. Akkor már tudtam oroszul és angolul. Ez egy nagyon nehéz korszak volt, mert bekerültem egy idősebb, abszolút polgári társaságba. Az osztályvezető, Szirmai bácsi nagyon régi olajos ember volt. Ott mindenféle újságokat kellett olvasnom, kivonatokat kellett csinálni az üzletkötőknek meg az igazgatónak. És ezek mind fantasztikusan tudtak von Haus aus nyelveket, de oroszul rajtam kívül senki nem tudott. Eléggé cikiztek és lenéztek. Egyébként egyedül nekem volt diplomám. Akkor szereztem magamnak némi renomét, amikor ez a Szirmai bácsi éppen szabadságon volt, és ki kellett dolgozni a Barátság II. olajvezeték gazdaságosságát, szemben a hordós szállítással. A vezérigazgató engem bízott meg, hogy dolgozzam ki. Amikor nekikezdtem, azt is a szótárban néztem meg, mi az, hogy barrel. Fogalmam nem volt, hogy az micsoda. Összeszorítottam a fogam, és elhatároztam, ha törik, ha szakad, én ezt megcsinálom. Három hét alatt meg is csináltam. Összejártam mindenkit, házon kívül elmentem olajosokhoz, irodalmat gyűjtöttem, szóval, megcsináltam. Aztán én mentem el szabadságra, mert ez nyáron volt. Jöttem vissza szabadságról, az osztályvezető, Szirmai bácsi azt mondta, hogy kislány, ez férfimunka volt. Nekem ez egy akkora sikerélmény volt! Azért persze nem szerettek meg, még jobban utáltak, úgyhogy amikor 1963-ban a mellettünk lévő házba költözött a Chemokomplex, akkor átmentem, hogy szeretnék ide jönni dolgozni. Ez a Chemokomplex a Komplex nevű külkereskedelmi vállalatból jött létre 1962-ben, amikor a nagy vegyipari beruházások elkezdődtek. Erre létesítettek egy külön külkereskedelmi vállalatot. A Chemokomplexnél nem volt ismerősöm. Én mindig így mentem valahova be. Fölmentem Gyöngyössy István vezérigazgatóhoz, és bejelentkeztem, hogy szeretnék ide jönni. Ez a Gyöngyössy István a Rajk-per kapcsán nem tudom én, hány évet ült. Egy fantasztikus, nagyszerű ember volt. Annak idején Aschner Lipót mellett dolgozott az [Egyesült] Izzóban, ő volt a személyi titkára [Aschner Lipót (1872–1952) – 1918-tól az Egyesült Izzólámpa és Villamossági RT vezérigazgatója volt. A gyár világvállalattá fejlesztése érdekében kimagasló képességű kutatógárdát gyűjtött össze. 1944-ben a németek Mauthausenba hurcolták, az amerikaiak valamilyen fogolycsere révén Svájcba menekítették, ahonnan a háború után hazatért. – A szerk.]. Egy szuper művelt, intelligens, nagyvilági úr volt. Imádtam őt, egy óriási betűkkel írt EMBER volt. Később ő lett a Külkereskedelmi Bank londoni képviselője [„Gyöngyössy István (1910–1994), jogász. 1932-től az Egyesült Izzólámpa és Villamossági Rt. munkatársa, 1939-től cégvezető. 1946-tól a bukaresti magyar diplomáciai misszió vezetője, majd a külügyminisztérium protokollfőnöke. 1949–1954 között politikai perben elítélt. 1956-tól a Ferunion, majd a Chemolimpex [helyesebben: Chemokomplex] Külkereskedelmi Vállalat vezérigazgatója, 1967–1977 között a Magyar Nemzeti Bank munkatársa, elnöki tanácsadója, majd a Banco di Sicilia budapesti fiókjának vezetője” (Az idézet forrása: Az oral history archívum életútinterjúinak annotált jegyzéke). – A szerk.]. Elbeszélgetett velem, és megbeszéltük, hogy oda mennék dolgozni. Át is mentem 1963 októberében. Már ott dolgoztam egy ideje, amikor a személyzetis, akivel jóban voltam, elmesélte, hogy az apósom, aki a Ferunionnál valamikor együtt dolgozott Gyöngyössyvel, felhívta őt azzal, hogy oda akar menni a menyem, aki egy nagyon okos nő, de egy bestia. Gyöngyössy azt válaszolta, hogy tényleg nagyon okos, nem érdekel, mit mondasz, fel fogom venni. Így kerültem én a Chemokomplexhez, és ott tizennégy évet húztam le. Életem legszebb korszaka volt, mert nagyszerű kollégáim voltak, és szerettem, amit csináltam. Ott teljesedett ki a kereskedelemhez való érzékem.

Üzletkötőként kezdtem, a TVK [TVK – 1953-ban alapított vállalat (Tiszavidéki Vegyi Kombinát néven, 1962 óta Tiszai Vegyi Kombinát, 1991 óta rt.), Tiszaújvárosban működik (korábban Tiszaszederkény, 1970–1991 között Leninváros). – A szerk.] műtrágyagyár berendezéseit, illetve alkatrészeit importáltam a Szovjetunióból. Ott értem meg Fodor Gyuri disszidálását. Fodor György volt a TVK vezérigazgatója 1963-64-ben [1956 óta]. Kossuth-díjas volt, szóval egy menő pasas volt. 1964-ben egyszer felhívott, és megkért, hogy ezt meg ezt intézzem el, mert ő elmegy szabadságra. A vezérigazgatókkal jóban voltam, mert közvetlen kapcsolatban voltam velük. És Fodor Gyuri családostól együtt egy Moszkviccsal, a Kossuth-díját a fiókjában hagyva, eltávozott Németországba. Képzelje el, micsoda balhé volt ebből. Valószínűleg akkor már megkapta ott azt a bizonyos ezer márkát a népet kárpótlásból, mert érintve volt ebben a műfajban. Elege lett ebből az egész szocializmusból. Egyébként most hallottam, hogy még mindig él, és menő ember lett ott. Nagyon okos, tehetséges mérnökember volt. Szóval, 1966-ig voltam ezen a műtrágya osztályon. Sokat utaztam a Szovjetunióba. Nagy élmény volt, mert ott mindig nagyon jó banda jött össze, mindig heteket töltöttünk kint, mert ott nem lehetett egy-két napra kimenni, minimum három hétre kellett kimenni.

A főosztályvezetőm egy régi vágású öregúr volt – korábban a Salgótarjáni Szénbányáknak volt a főkönyvelője, aztán kitelepítették –, és egy kicsit nehezen viselte el, hogy nő vagyok, zsidó vagyok, párttag vagyok, és még nem is vagyok egészen hülye. Ezt borzasztó nehezen viselte el. De mindenki mást is halálra szekált. Egyszer jött a közvetlen főnököm, az osztályvezető, hogy a főnök azt kéri tőled, hogy… Ettől olyan dührohamot kaptam, hogy elkezdtem üvölteni, és elküldtem őt melegebb éghajlatra. Egy fal választott el a főosztályvezető szobájától, és mindent hallott. Másnap behívott, hogy kedves Olga, ha volna olyan kedves … Szóval megijedt: hogyha valaki ilyen hangot mer megütni egy magasabb vezetővel, akkor a mögött áll valaki. Én ezen jót röhögtem, de azt mondtam, hogy ebből elegem volt. Bementem Gyöngyössyhez, és elmondtam neki, hogy ebből elegem van. Épp létrejött a gumi osztály, amúgy is dolgoztam már a Ruggyantában, nem mehetnék-e át az új osztályra. Megértő volt, azt mondta, hogy teljesen igaza van, miért kell magának lenyelni ilyeneket. És áthelyeztek arra az osztályra. Sőt, noch dazu, még a közvetlen főnökömet is.

Akkor – 1966-ban – kezdődtek a Taurusban a nagy beruházások, a Semperit gyártási technológiáját vettük meg. Ez óriási nagy munka volt, millió dolláros szerződéseket kellett csinálni. A gumigyári beruházáson kívül én, ill. később az én osztályom, mert később osztályvezető lettem, végeztük még a Tisza Cipőgyár fröccsöntő gépeinek az importját, aztán a Kábelgyár nagy beruházásait, a Villamos Szigetelőgyár, a Duna Cipőgyár és kisebb szövetkezetek gépeinek és szerszámainak a behozatalát. Ezeket a berendezéseket, szerszámokat és alkatrészeket már nemcsak a Szovjetunióban szereztük be, hanem Nyugaton is. Sokat utaztam ezekben az években, részben nyugati, részben a szocialista országokba. Szerettem utazni is, de élveztem a komoly tárgyalásokat, főleg az ártárgyalásokat folytattam nagy élvezettel. Igaz, anyagi hasznom nem volt ezekből, pedig rengeteg pénzt takarítottam meg az államnak. De hát abban az időben ezt nem díjazták különösképpen.

Ez a munka a következőképpen nézett ki. Azt mondták, hogy kell három gép: egy kalander [Egymáson forgó hengerekből álló, lemezek préselésére, simítására használt gép. – A szerk.], egy keverő és egy vulkanizáló, ilyen és ilyen kapacitású. Erre a világon van, mondjuk, hat cég. Van, amikor kevesebb, mert minél komplikáltabb, annál kevesebben tudják csinálni. Tudom, hogy melyik a legjobb, és kiküldök minimum három ajánlatkérést. Bejönnek az ajánlatok műszaki részletezéssel és árral. Idáig még nincs utazás, csak levelezés. A műszakiak megnézik a műszaki ajánlatot, összehasonlítják, megállapítják, hogy ebből ez hiányzik, abból az hiányzik. Pótlólagosan bekérik, hogy tudják-e módosítani. Miután kiválasztanak, mondjuk, az öt ajánlatból kettőt, hogy ez felel meg az igényeinknek, akkor megnézzük. És akkor jön az utazás. Referenciát nézünk meg. Közlik, hogy például Olaszországban itt és itt működik ez a berendezés. Odamegyünk, és a műszakiak beszélnek az üzemeltetővel. De volt olyan is, hogy én tárgyaltam. Szóltak, hogy Olga, kérdezz. Rettentő sok primitív ember volt abban az időben, akik nem is értettek hozzá, és csak azért jöttek, mert aktuális volt, hogy most ő utazzon. Szóval megnézzük a gépet, és akkor kezdődik a tárgyalás. Elhívjuk a szállítót Budapestre, és akkor jön az én nagy élményem, elkezdek alkudozni. Nagyon kemény alkudozó voltam, minimum tizenöt százalékot mindig lealkudtam. Ezt a kemény alkudozást kizárólag passzióból csináltam, mert nem voltak nagyon kemény anyagi korlátok. A szocializmusban nem számított a pénz. Én hobbiból csináltam ezeket a rettentő kemény áralkukat. Amikor a Semperittől vettünk egy komplett berendezést a Taurusnak, majdnem egymillió dollárért – képzelje el, a hatvanas évek második felében mit jelentett egymillió dollár! Iszonyatos nagy pénz volt –, olyan sokat lealkudtam, hogy még tudtak venni egy csomó villás targoncát, ami szintén nem volt olcsó.

Amikor megvoltak a végleges ajánlatok, akkor a KKM [Külkereskedelmi Minisztérium] úgynevezett Engedélyezési Főosztályára kellett benyújtani a három ajánlatot, és megmagyarázni, hogy miért ezt. Akkor ott összeült egy grémium, és engedélyezte vagy nem engedélyezte. Hogy minek alapján, azt nem tudom, mert a Külker Minisztérium Engedélyezési Osztályán senki nem értett semmihez. De hát ő volt a minisztérium.  

Egyszer volt egy olyan, hogy a Graboplastnak valami katonai sátrat vagy mit kellett gyártani, és ahhoz kellett berendezés [Graboplast – 1905-ben alapították Grab M. (Miksa) Fiai néven. Bőrvásznat, viaszosvásznat és linóleumpadlót, 1908 óta műbőrt gyártott. 1923-ban megalakult a Grab-féle Textilipari Rt. 1948-ban a két gyárat államosították, majd 1950-ben Győri Pamutszövő- és Műbőrgyár néven egyesítették. 1969 óta: Győri Pamutszövő és Műbőrgyár, 1996 óta rt. (holdingtársaság). – A szerk.]. Lebonyolítottuk, megvolt egy jó ajánlat, és elkezdtek kötözködni, ami a hozzá nem értés csimborasszója volt. Én elég harcis nőszemély voltam, elkezdtem velük üvöltözni, hogy mit képzelnek, egy katonai akármi, majd jól rájuk uszítom a honvédelmi minisztert. Úgyhogy végül engedélyezték. Ez mindig erőszakosság kérdése volt. Hol így csináltam, hol úgy csináltam. Például – ez már a nyolcvanas években volt – Svédországba és Amerikába exportáltunk bőrkesztyűket. A svédek ezt a Szovjetunióba szállították tovább a felső tízezernek. A pécsi kesztyűszövetkezet álomszép kesztyűket csinált. Ehhez viszont Olaszországból kellett a bőrt behozni. Volt egy sürgős svéd megrendelés. Az olasz bőrgyártók leállnak nyári szabadságra, és nagyon sürgősen meg kellett rendelni, hogy időben beérkezzen a bőr, és le tudjuk gyártani. A KKM Engedélyezési Főosztályának a vezetője egy buta, rosszindulatú és hozzá nem értő pasas volt. Tudtam, hogy rajta áll vagy bukik. Megkértem az engedélyt. Majd holnap, majd holnap, majd… Akkor más módszerhez folyamodtam. Fölhívtam telefonon, és mondtam neki, hogy uram, maga az egyetlen az egész országban, akinek a révén megcsinálhatjuk ezt az exportot. És elkezdtem neki gazsulálni. Két óra múlva megvolt az engedély. Ilyeneken múlott.

Hogy ezek az emberek hogy kerültek ezekre a posztra? Az kellett, hogy ne értsen hozzá. Kapcsolat kellett hozzá, benyalás és szervilizmus. Semmi egyéb. Én eltöltöttem majdnem harminc évet a külkerben, sok mindent láttam. Hogyan került valaki kirendeltségre? … Amikor a fiam leérettségizett, tudtam, hogy el fog menni katonának, itt maradok egyedül. Ráadásul eléggé nehéz anyagi körülmények között voltam, és akkor úgy gondoltam, jó lenne kimenni kirendeltségre pár évre. Kicsit megszedném magam, biztosítanám a fiam jövőjét. Valakinek elmondtam a tervemet, hogy beadom a pályázatot, és azt mondta, hogy ha lefekszel velem, akkor elintézem. Kész. Ezen múlt. Nem is mentem ki kirendeltségre.

Akkoriban is volt olyan, hogy a nyugati cégek megpróbálták lefizetni az üzletkötőt. Főleg az iparvállalatoknál azokat, akik kiválasztották a berendezést. Én tudtam róla, hogy kinek cserélték ki a kocsiját, kinek hoztak kocsialkatrészt, ki mit kapott. Akkor az életszínvonalbeli különbségek nem voltak olyan nagyok, mint ma, és lehetett látni, hogy ki az, aki sokat utazik külföldre nyaralni, mert ellátják őt. Velem is próbálkoztak, de aztán híre ment, hogy nagyon gorombán kioktattam valakit, akiről tudtam, elmeséli mindenhol. Aztán egyszer utólag, amikor már régen lezajlott minden, jött az egyik ügynök, akit nagyon bírtam, egy magyar származású, jó humorú pasas volt, és azt mondta, hogy Olga, én tudom, hogy maga soha előre semmit. De nagyon köszönjük, hogy ennyit harcolt, engedje meg, hogy valamivel … Őt is elküldtem melegebb éghajlatra. Úgyhogy én például jóval később, amikor elkezdődtek ezek az ügynöktörvények, elkezdtem gondolkodni, hogy Olga, miért nem akartak téged soha beszervezni. Sem itthon, sem külföldiek nem akartak beszervezni. Rájöttem, hogy közismert voltam a nagy pofámról, és arról, hogy nem lehetett megfizetni. Na persze hazudnék, ha azt mondanám, hogy olyan nem volt, hogy kint voltunk egy delegációval, és a kintiek foglaltak szállást, és ki is fizették. Ez a pénz megmaradt nekünk. Nekem ettől állandóan gyomoridegességem volt, de a többiek közölték, hogy fogjam be a pofámat. Mit csináltam volna? Gondoltam, ennyi nekem is jár. De ez talán csak kétszer fordult elő. Soha semmit nem kaptam, nem fér össze velem, nem bírom lekötelezni magam.

Szóval tizennégy évet töltöttem a Chemokomplexnél, ahol időközben osztályvezető lettem. Nem vihettem többre, mert ott voltak a férfiak, akik még magyarul is csak középfokon tudtak. Közben elvégeztem a szakközgazdászit, ledoktoráltam, és az én boltom nagyon jól ment, a mi osztályunk szuper volt. Velem abszolút meg voltak elégedve, fantasztikusan jó üzleteket csináltam, sokat kerestem ennek az államnak. Egyszer csak meguntam, hogy mindenki leköröz, már főosztályvezetők, igazgatóhelyettesek, és én még mindig itt vagyok, pénzt sem adnak. Akkoriban jöttek létre az úgynevezett export fővállalkozások. Ez azt jelentette, hogy Magyarországon létrejött egy cég, és – mondjuk – vízkutatást és kútfúrásokat vállalt Líbiában, vagy mezőgazdasági létesítményeket épített valamelyik arab országban. Ezeket export fővállalkozási cégeknek nevezték, és részben külker jogot is kaptak. Egy napon Kozma Ferenc, aki a Nemzetközi Gazdasági Kapcsolatok Intézetében volt főosztályvezető [Kozma Ferenc (1931–2005) – közgazdász, egyetemi tanár, számos könyv szerzője. – A szerk.], és akit Moszkvából ismertem, felhívott telefonon, hogy idefigyelj, most jön létre az első ilyen fővállalkozás, nem volna-e kedved idejönni, én volnék az elmélet, te lennél a gyakorlat. Ő ugyanis a doktori vagy nagydoktori munkájában ezekkel az export fővállalkozásokkal foglalkozott. Hát, mondtam, ez egy jó buli, valami újat csinálni, OK. Fogtam magam, és 1977-ben elmentem az AGROBER-hez. A Chemokomplexnél volt nagy sírás-rívás, de elengedtek. Mert akkoriban csak áthelyezéssel lehetett állást változtatni [lásd: kikérő levél].

Nahát ez egy katasztrófa volt. A főnököm egy kis mitugrász, nagyképű, mindent jobban tudó alak volt, akivel iszonyatos konfliktusaim lettek, miután én értettem a szakmához, ő pedig nem. Elég az hozzá, hogy csak pár hónapig maradtam, mert nem lehetett kibírni. Tatai Ilonka, aki akkor már a Taurus vezérigazgatója volt, a baráti társaságomba tartozott. Oda tartozott még Fehér Erzsébet is, a Pannonplast vezérigazgatója [Tatai Ilona (sz. 1935) – vegyészmérnök, 1959-től a Taurus Gumiipari Vállalatnál fizikai munkás, laboráns, technológus, közép-, majd felsőszintű vezető, 1975-től vezérigazgató. 1988-89-ben tagja volt az MSZMP Politikai Bizottságának; Dr. Fehér Erzsébet – 1962-ben diplomázott a BME-n, majd a Taurusnál dolgozott. 1978-tól a Hungária Műanyagipari Vállalat vezérigazgatója, igazgatóságának elnöke. Fehér Erzsébet az MTA Ipargazdasági Bizottságának tagja, 1990–94 között a Magyar Vegyipari Szövetség elnöke, majd alelnöke volt. – A szerk.]. Összejártunk, együtt nyaraltunk, bridzseltünk. Sokat utaztunk együtt. Amikor megkaptam a doktorimat, marha nagy ünnepséget rendeztek nekem. Szóval, Tatai szólt, hogy „hallom, milyen szarul érzed magad az AGROBER-nél. A Chemolimpexben a gumiiroda vezetője ki fog menni Amerikába képviselőnek, mit szólnál hozzá, ha te lennél a gumiiroda vezetője?”. Azt mondtam, hogy ha ez neked megfelel, akkor nagyon szívesen. Ismerem a gumiipart. Így aztán átmentem a Chemolimpex gumiirodájába, először tanácsadónak. Meg kellett ismernem az egészet, és még úgysem volt teljesen elintézve a vezető amerikai útja. Minden levél, minden irat nálam landolt, megnéztem. Ezen kívül semmit nem csináltam. Azt nem tudja elképzelni, hogy az a kábé nyolcvan ember, aki ott volt, hogy kezdett el nekem gazsulálni. Borzasztó az emberi oldala az ilyen dolgoknak. Dolgoztam, megismertem mindent. Többek között a kezembe került a Michelinnel kötendő szerződés, amit a gumiiroda vezetője csinált Amerikában. Na most én a szerződéskötéshez fantasztikusan értettem, mert a Chemokomplexnél több millió dolláros, bonyolult, negyven-ötven oldalas szerződéseket kellett kötni, minden részletre kiterjedően. Én ezt ott nagyon megtanultam, félig már jogásszá vedlettem. Hát ez a szerződés valami szörnyűség volt, kis túlzással olyan volt, hogy a Chemolimpex eladja a Michelinnek saját magát. Szóval, valami teljes kiszolgáltatottság. Hát, most mi a fenét csináljak? Ezt a szerződést így nem szabad aláírni. Próbálkoztam ezzel, azzal, semmi nem ment. Végül bementem a vezérigazgatóhoz, aki elhárító tiszt volt, egy szervilis, undorító féreg. Bementem hozzá, és selyempapírba burkolva elkezdtem magyarázni, hogy ez így nem jó, nem szabad aláírni.

Egyszer csak azt vettem észre, hogy megfagy körülöttem a levegő. Én rendkívül érzékeny vagyok az ilyesmire. Nem tudtam elképzelni, hogy mi történt. Nem jöttek be a szobámba, nem kaptam a papírokat, tehát mindaz, ami addig volt, egyszer csak megszűnt. Akkor már nyolc hónapja ott voltam, még mindig tanácsadóként. Akkor elmentem a Tatai Ilonához, hogy mi a fene van. Hát, tudod, az van, hogy a vezérigazgató elvtárs fölvetette nekem, biztos, hogy jó lennél-e gumiiroda vezetőnek. Elkapott a harctéri idegesség. Idefigyelj, mondtam. Nem vagyok elég szervilis? Hogyhogy nyolc hónap után egyszer csak kiderül, hogy nem vagyok alkalmas? És honnan tudja? Hát nem beszélt velem! Kérdezett valamit valaha tőlem? Mégis mitől? Hát én nem tudom, de gyere ide, kapsz főosztályvezetői beosztást. Mondom, tartsd meg. Tatai Ilonával ezek után enyhén szólva meglazult a barátság. Nem vesztünk össze, csak befejeztem. Sajnos Fehér Erzsébettel is megszakadt a kapcsolatom, egy teljesen magánjellegű okból kifolyólag. Nagyon sajnáltam. Most újból találkozgatunk, és beszélgetünk meg e-mailezünk egymással. Már ő is elment nyugdíjba. Tatai is elment nyugdíjba, egy dúsgazdag spiné lett belőle, és éli világát. Nagy ritkán vele is találkozom.

Iszonyatos mázlim volt, mert kiderült, hogy a gumiiroda vezetőjét nem fogadták be Amerikában. A pasas idült alkoholista volt, olyan részeg volt időnként, hogy szabályosan összepisilte magát. Gondolom, az amerikaiak nem akárkit engednek be oda hosszabb időtartamra. Nem fogadták be Amerikában, tehát engem nem ért presztízsveszteség: azért nem lehettem a gumiiroda vezetője, mert ő nem ment el. Egyébként a rossz szerződés mögött a butaságon és a hozzá nem értésen kívül semmi más nem állt. A vezérigazgató pedig azért nem örült annak, hogy akad valaki,  aki ezt észreveszi, mert nem voltam manipulálható. Ő csak azokat tűrte meg maga mellett. Neki az ilyen nagypofájú, semmitől nem félő személyek nagyon az útjában álltak. Ez neki fontosabb szempont volt, mint hogy az a cég, aminek az élén áll, jól működjön.

Az esetet követően a véletlen úgy hozta, hogy elég sok munkám lett, mert a Gumiirodának volt egy olyan reklamációja – mezőgazdasági abroncsokkal kapcsolatban –, aminek a gyártási know how-ját és néhány berendezését még én vettem a Chemokomplexnél utolsó tevékenységemként. Ennek rendezését persze rögtön rám testálták. Utána ki kellett mennem Vietnamba valami bérmunka-ügyben meg Kuvaitba egy kiállításra. Szóval mindig adódott valami. Ráadásul 1979 nyarán beiratkoztam a marxista egyetem kétéves szociológiai továbbképzőjébe [lásd: Marxizmus-Leninizmus Esti Egyetem]. De egy idő múlva elegem lett abból, hogy nem végzek érdemleges munkát, és 1980-ban otthagytam a Chemolimpexet.

Évek óta dolgoztam a KNEB-ben társadalmi munkában, és Sándor Pista, aki még ma is a Számvevőszéknek dolgozik nyugdíjasként, szólt, hogy egy volt évfolyamtársa külkerest keres maga mellé az OVIBER-be (Országos Vízügyi Beruházási Vállalat). A NIKEX-en keresztül végeztek fúrásokat Líbiában és még valahol, de kellett nekik egy saját külkeres, hogy a NIKEX-szel szemben legyen valaki. Elmentem oda. Félelmetes társaság volt. A főnököm, az osztályvezető alkoholista volt, és szétfolyt minden a keze között. Az OVIBER igazgatója egy iszonyatosan primitív pasi volt. Egyedül a főmérnök értett a szakmához, és okos is volt. Abszolút okos és hozzáértő volt, csak utált hazamenni. Megbeszélés címén állandóan bent tartotta az embereket munkaidő után is, és piáltak. Esténként elfogyott egy-két üveg whisky, konyak meg minden. Ez alól egyszerűen nem lehetett kibújni. Én azért próbálgattam. Mondogattam, hogy fölösleges vagyok itt. Vagy fél óra múlva kimentem vécére, és elfelejtettem visszamenni. De ez egy undorító, szervilis társaság volt.

Elkezdtem dolgozni, de nem volt könnyű ezekkel a mérnökökkel, mert a szakmához sem tökéletesen értettek. Egyszer adódott egy több millió dolláros lehetőség vízkutatásra. Egy dán cég volt a fővállalkozó, ők szerezték az üzletet, és mi lettünk volna az alvállalkozó, velünk végeztették volna el a munkát. Úgy szólt a megállapodás, hogy a pénz nyolcvan százaléka a miénk, és húsz százaléka az övék. Megnéztem a szerződést, és láttam, hogy az egész pénzügyi tranzakció rajtuk keresztül bonyolódott volna. Valamiért szagot fogtam, hogy ez a cég teljesen megbízhatatlan, mert nem adott meg banki garanciát. Közöltem a főmérnökkel, hogy itt valami bűzlik, ugrani fog a pénzünk. Azt mondta, Olga, járjon utána. Ő legalább ennyit mondott, mert a többiek lelkendeztek, hogy jaj, micsoda nagy szerződés, hárommillió dollár. Elmentem a NIKEX-hez, a főosztályvezetőhöz, aki illetékes volt az ügyben. Nem kell annyira szőrözni, mondta. Ne haragudjon, de ez így nem megy, mondtam. Fogtam magam, és bementem a Nemzeti Bankba. Zdeborsky Gyuri volt akkor ebben az illetékes, és előadtam neki öt mondatban a dolgot. Azt mondta, igaza van, ki kell oda menni. Mondom, jó, de jöjjön velem valaki a Nemzeti Banktól, én a pénzügyekhez részleteiben, a banktechnikához nem értek. Végül megszerveztem egy utat Dániába ehhez a céghez. A Nemzeti Bank elküldte Londonban székelő illetékesét, és még jött a NIKEX-től is valaki. Kértem a dán céget, hogy az ő bankjának a képviselője is legyen jelen. Képzelje el, hogy bementünk egy irodahelyiségbe, ahol volt egy asztal, egy szék és egy üres szekrény. Na, mondom, ez a cég egy hamis cég, ez azért jött, hogy legombolja a pénzt, és utána eltűnjön. Elkezdtünk tárgyalni, én csak eszelősen, hogy bankgarancia. És a saját bankosa közölte, hogy ő nem tud bankgaranciát adni. Kiderült, hogy voltak ilyen cégek, amelyek kihasználva a szocialista országok hozzá nem értését, eltették a pénzt, és aztán eltűntek. Ez volt az egyetlen olyan alkalom, amikor a főnökömtől pénzjutalmat kaptam, mert egy üzletet sikerült meghiúsítanom. Ez tulajdonképpen a nikexesek hibája volt, nem azoké, akik fúrtak volna, mert a külker vállalat feladata, hogy biztosítsa az üzletet pénzügyileg.

Aztán volt egy másik ügy. Líbiában vizet fúrtak, és egymás után beletörtek a fúrók a talajba. Francia fúrófejek voltak, és rengetegbe kerültek. Az igazgató odaadott nekem egy szerződést, nézzem meg, hogyan lehetne reklamálni a franciáknál. Elolvastam a szerződést egyszer, kétszer, háromszor, és azt hittem, hogy rosszul olvasok. A szerződésben nem volt kikötve, hogy milyen talajba kell fúrni, homok, tégla vagy kavics, mennyi ideig kell vele fúrni. Semmi nem volt kikötve. Vesz öt darab X átmérőjű fúrófejet és pont. Egyszerűen nem is lehetett reklamálni, mert nem volt semmi se kikötve. Visszaadtam az igazgatónak, hogy ne haragudjon, de ezzel nem tudok mit csinálni, ezzel reklamálni nem lehet, itt semmilyen feltétel nincs kikötve, nincs alapja a reklamációnak. Elvették tőlem az ügyet, és nem is tudom, mi történt. Itt is elegem lett ebből a hozzá nem értésből. Beleszólni nem tudok, a szerződést nem én kötöm, ebből elegem lett. 1982-ben ezeket is otthagytam.

Akkor jött a KULTURINVEST Fővállalkozási Betéti Társulás. Na ez volt a nagy buli. A KKM-ben volt egypár normális ember, akivel jó ismeretségben voltam, és egyikük szólt, hogy létrejön egy KULTURINVEST nevű külker joggal felhatalmazott cég. „Most jön létre ez a KULTURINVEST, és azt mondtuk nekik, hogy csak egy külkeres vezetővel adjuk meg a külker jogot. Hajlandó vagy-e odamenni?” Jó, elvállalom. Úgyhogy az én nevemre kapták meg a külker jogot. Ez a KULTURINVEST az Alba Regia székesfehérvári építőipari vállalattal együtt működött, és külföldi építkezési fővállalkozásokra jött létre. Sportlétesítményeket és kultúrházakat épített. A főépítész, aki a később leégett Körcsarnoknak volt az Ybl-díjas tervezője [Sólyom Olga föltehetően az 1982-ben, Kiss István és Vukovics Miklós tervei alapján épült és 1999 karácsonyán leégett Budapest Sportcsarnokra gondol. Kiss István (sz. 1924) 1967-ben kapott Ybl-díjat, és 1982–83-ban dolgozott a Kulturinvest Fővállalkozói Irodában. – A szerk.], egy nagyon okos, intelligens, művelt pasi volt. Az igazgató egy nagyképű majom, egy zsidó, az a fajta zsidó, akitől én is antiszemita lennék, ahogy szoktam mondani. Mérnökember volt, aki alapfokon tudott valamit angolul. Elkezdtünk dolgozni. Az első egy Portugáliában létesítendő sportcsarnok volt. Először a tervezés. Kint is voltunk Portugáliában. Folytak a tárgyalások, a végén nem lett belőle semmi. Végül ebből elegem lett, ezt is otthagytam.

1984 februárjában elmentem a  SOFORM-hoz (SOFORM Studio Építőipari Műszaki Fejlesztő és Kivitelező Kisszövetkezet). Ezt is a KKM-ben ajánlották. Menjél ide, mert ez egy fantasztikus hely, ennek a palinak van szabadalma, bizonyos könnyű, de masszív tégla, több millió pénze van, eladhatod a fél világnak. Odamentem. Kiderült, hogy a pasasnak nem pénze volt, hanem adóssága. Nem szabadalma van, hanem lopta valakitől. Nincs diplomája, csak egy szakmunkás-bizonyítványa. Nagy pofája az volt, egy link szélhámos volt. A KKM-ben mindent elhittek, amit mondott. Amikor elmeséltem nekik az igaz történetet, ott estek le a székről. Hogy ők nem vették észre. Hát miért nem kértetek be valami papírt, amivel igazolja, hogy ennyi pénze van, ilyen szabadalma van? Megismertem azt is, akitől a szabadalmat lopta. Per is lett belőle, nem tudom, mi lett a vége. Aztán kiderült, hogy egy osztrák pasas, egy huszonéves, segédmunkás színvonalú fickó volt a társ, akinek állítólag az osztrák Volksbanknál volt pénze. Hát nem volt. Az már csak utólag derült ki, hogy az egésznek semmi köze az exporthoz, hanem különböző hiteleket vett föl, esze ágában nem volt itt semmi érdemleges dolgot csinálni. Számomra akkor vált világossá, hogy mi folyik, amikor a műszaki vezetővel ki kellett mennünk Bécsbe a Volksbankkal tárgyalni. Ott teljesen egyértelművé vált, hogy forintkiajánlásra ment a játék. Annak idején Magyarországon rendkívül kötött devizagazdálkodás volt. Csak hivatalos árfolyamon lehetett forintot beváltani bankokon keresztül. A forintkiajánlás gyakorlatilag azt jelentette, hogy itt eladok valamit valakinek, és kint adja oda a pénzt devizában. Tehát nem ment keresztül semmiféle hivatalos banki szerven, mert nem banki átváltás volt. Ezt baromian büntették annak idején. Irtózatosan megijedtünk, hogy ez bennünket akar behúzni a csőbe, hogy mi, a külkeres és műszaki vezető bonyolítsuk le. Úgy megijedtünk, hogy hazajöttünk, és egyenesen bementünk a CIB Bankba, ahol az ügyeit intézte. Megkerestük az illetékes pénzügyest, és elmondtuk neki, hogy miről van szó. Mire másnap reggel bementünk dolgozni, a pasi már informálva volt. Ebből marha nagy botrány lett, és úgy döntöttem, hogy ebben a pillanatban fel is mondok. Nyolc hónapot, ha voltam itt.

Akkor már ötven éves voltam, és életemben először kerestem magamnak állást. Bementem a KKM személyzeti főosztályvezetőjéhez, aki egykori chemokomplexes kollégám volt, párttikár is volt ott, és mondtam neki, hogy nekem állás kell, mert ez és ez történt. Így kerültem a BŐRKER-hez (Bőr és Cipőkellék Kereskedelmi Vállalat) a Paulay Ede utcába. Ők akkor kaptak export-import jogot, és nem volt exportosuk. Így lettem export önálló vezető. Volt négy beosztottam. Amikor odamentem 1984 novemberében, volt vagy tízezer dollár exportjuk. Cérnát exportáltak. Akkor keresett meg bennünket a svéd Hollander cég egyik képviselője. Ez egy zsidó cég volt, a tulajdonos abszolút vallásos. Amikor kiderült, hogy én ott vagyok, és kicsoda-micsoda vagyok, marha lelkesek lettek, hogy velem aztán lehet üzletet csinálni. Akkor kezdtük el a kesztyű-export felépítését, ami elég kemény munka volt, mert ugye, bőrünk sem volt, azt is importálni kellett, és ki kellett alakítani a kapcsolatot a pécsi kesztyű szövetkezettel. Aztán elkezdtünk szőrmével és bundával is üzletelni, elvittük egy kiállításra, Bécsbe. Végül, amikor 1987 decemberében eljöttem, már négyszázezer dollár exportunk volt. A kesztyűt a Hollanderék vették meg. Nagyon jóban lettünk velük, mert bűbájosak voltak, jó szándékúak voltak, segítőkészek voltak, élvezet volt velük dolgozni. Üzletileg kemények voltak, mese nem volt, de nagyon jól lehetett velük dolgozni. És tudták, hogy mi megbízhatóak vagyunk. Ha azt mondtuk, hogy kedd, akkor az kedd. Szóval jó eredményeket értünk el, de én itt megint kifogtam. A BŐRKER cég kereskedelmi igazgatója egy örmény származású pasas volt, egy nagyon okos pali, de cezaromán. Borzasztóan szeretett volna külkereskedni, de nem tudott. Irtózatosan zavarta, hogy mi ilyen eredményeket értünk el. És én nem engedtem, hogy nélkülem utazzon és tárgyaljon a külföldiekkel. Nem érdekelte, hogy mi lesz, a legfontosabb az volt neki, hogy engem onnan kipasszírozzon, és akkor majd ő viszi tovább. A világon mindent elkövetett. Próbálta ellenem hangolni a beosztottjaimat, de azok úgy álltam mellettem, mint a betonoszlop.

Begurultam, hogy velem nem lehet így bánni. És akkor a fiam szólt, hogy van egy új cég, a TRADE-COOP Kereskedőház Rt., amelynek a vezetője egy olyan típusú nő, mint amilyen én vagyok. „Ott is van külker, menj el hozzá, most alakultak, hátha kellesz nekik.” Elmentem, meg is állapodtam a nővel, hogy odamegyek exportosnak. Akkor már ki lehetett lépni, akkor már nem volt az, hogy csak áthelyezéssel lehet munkahelyet változtatni, úgyhogy felmondtam. Kiléptem, és kiléptettem még három kolléganőmet. Jöttek utánam egy hét múlva. És vittem magammal az üzletet is, a külföldieket is és a belföldieket is. Ez volt 1987-ben. Eljöttünk decemberben, és márciusig nem tudták, hol vagyunk. Képzelje el, mindenki hallgatott, aki tudott erről a dologról. Kiléptünk, és nem mondtuk meg, hova megyünk. Ott is hallgattak, a belföldi partnereink is hallgattak. Akkor tudták meg, amikor a nyereségrészesedés miatt muszáj volt a cégeknek valahogy kapcsolatot létesíteni egymással. A TRADE-COOP-nál teljesen mással kellett foglalkozni, mint amivel addig foglalkoztam, a számítógép-monitortól kezdve a gyertyatartón át mindennel. Ez egy ilyen vegyeskereskedés volt. Én vittem a kesztyűt meg a bundát. Borzasztóan élveztem. Ott szerveztem meg az első izraeli utamat is hivatalosan. Kimentem Izraelbe, mert volt egy fröccsöntő cég, és annak a szerszámait kellett behozni kipróbálásra. Műanyag bilik, székek, asztalok szerszámait. Aztán miután nyugdíjba mentem, még pár évig náluk dolgoztam. Szóval mindennel foglalkoztam, nagyon jól ment az üzlet, irtó nagy haszonnal dolgoztunk. De itt is elkapott a végzetem. Ez a csaj, mielőtt létrehozta ezt a TRADE-COOP-ot, a Ferunionnál volt import osztályvezető, és az exporthoz abszolút nem értett. Egész életében importot csinált. Eleinte irtó jóban voltunk, én voltam a liblingje. Aztán jöttek a sikerek, és ez piszkálta a csőrét. Szörnyű állapotok lettek ott a cégnél, 1989-re már eléggé elfajultak a dolgok. Amikor a Grósz elmondta azt a bizonyos beszédet a fehérterrorról, akkor azt mondtam, hogy elegem volt a pártból, önként léptem be, és önként léptem ki [1988. november végén Grósz Károly, aki az év májusában lett Kádár János utóda az MSZMP főtitkári tisztségében, a Budapest Sportcsarnokban rendezett pártaktíván kijelentette, hogy Magyarországon osztályharc folyik, és ha nem tudnak „az ellenséges, ellenforradalmi erőkkel” szemben föllépni, akkor „az anarchia, a káosz és – ne legyen illúzió – fehérterror uralkodik el” az országban. Hangsúlyozta, hogy fenn kell tartani az egypártrendszert, mert az „történelmileg alakult ki”. – A szerk.]. Írtam egy A5-ös cédulát a párttitkárnak, hogy a mai nappal megszüntetem a párttagságomat. Különben azokban az évtizedekben, amíg párttag voltam, egyetlen egyszer volt funkcióm, a Chemokomplexben egy ideig pártbizalmi voltam. Más soha. Na, attól kezdve, hogy 1989-ben kiléptem, a vezetők nem köszöntek vissza. Teljesen marhák voltak. Én beértem a nyugdíjat, elegem volt ebből a sok küzdelemből. Kiszámíttattam napra, hogy mikor mehetek el nyugdíjba, és 1989 végén elmentem nyugdíjba. Utána ahhoz a műanyagos céghez, ahol nem tudtak se nyelveket, se kereskedni, oda jártam még négy évig tanácsadóként meg tolmácsként. Itt véget ért az aktív pályafutásom.

Amikor elmentem nyugdíjba, felmerült, hogy most mi a fenét fogok csinálni. Mindenfélébe belekaptam. Volt ez a mellékállásom, elvégeztem az agykontroll tanfolyamot, elvégeztem egy talpmasszázs tanfolyamot. Mert mit csinál egy zsidó nő, ha egyedül marad? Tanul. Az agykontrollt a mai napig használom. Én azóta nem vettem be például fejfájás-csillapítót, mert el tudom mulasztani. Meg parkolóhelyet is tudok találni. Tehát ezt csináltam, közben megalakult 1989-ben a Magyar–Izraeli Baráti Társaság, abban is részt vettem, mert mindenben részt veszek.

Én mindig szerettem volna valamit csinálni, valamit létrehozni. Nekem ez a mániám, hogy valami látszatja legyen. Közben kapcsolatba kerültem Naftali Krausszal. Az úgy történt, hogy 1987-ben mentem ki először Izraelbe. Úgy mentem ki, hogy van egy unokahúgom Jeruzsálemben, kimentem Svédországba, kértem, hogy küldjön egy meghívó levelet. Akkor még nem volt diplomáciai kapcsolat Magyarországgal [Magyarországnak 1967–1989 között nem volt diplomáciai kapcsolata Izraellal. – A szerk.], és a svájci követségen keresztül kaptam egy izraeli vízumot. Amikor a hajó Haifához ért, álltam a korlátnál, és hullott a könnyem, mint a záporeső, mert eszembe jutott, hogy én 1946-ban akartam ide kimenni. Eltelt negyven év. Amikor egy volt osztálytársam, a Hollander Dezső megtudta, hogy megyek, felhívott telefonon, hogy kivinnék-e a barátjának néhány újságkivágást Izraelbe. Ez a barátja Naftali Kraus volt, aki a „Mááriv”-nál újságíróskodott [Naftali Kraus 1932-ben, „Budapesten született. Zsidó iskolában, majd jesivában nevelkedett. 1949-ben Izraelbe emigrált, ahol jesivába járt, katonai szolgálatot teljesített, majd 1954-ben újságíró lett. Ma a Mááriv, a Hét Tükre és az Allgemeiner Journal (New York, jiddis) belső munkatársa. A Magyar Hírlap izraeli tudósítója. Több héber nyelvű könyv szerzője. A lubavitsi rebbe elkötelezett híve” (A szerző magyar nyelven megjelent könyvének borítója (N. K.: Zsidó ünnepek. A haszid legenda tükrében. Zsidó Nevelési és Oktatási Egyesület kiadása, Budapest, 1994, szerk. Sólyom Olga. – A szerk.]. Ezzel a Naftali Krausszal öt percen belül iszonyatos hitvitába keveredtem, mert elkezdte, hogy milyen zsidó vagy, és amikor kiderült, hogy a fiam nem zsidó nőt vett feleségül, hogy lehet úgy élni, én belehalnék, ha az unokáim nem volnának zsidók. Kurz und gut, elkezdte hogy galutban élünk, mire mondtam, hogy a jó isten nem jelölte ki minden zsidó számára Izraelt. Nem hagytam magam.

Öt évvel később már itthon egyszer csak csöng a telefon. Naftali volt az. Idejött Magyarországra, és gyakorlatilag én voltam az egyetlen magyar, akit ismert, kinyomozta, hol lakom. Akkor már az első könyve megjelenőfélben volt, de összeveszett a szerkesztővel, és megkérdezte tőlem, hogy vállalnám-e a könyvei szerkesztését. Életemben nem csináltam ilyet, hát próbáljuk meg. Csináltam egy próbaszerkesztést, Naftali odavolt tőle, és megbízott. Egy darabig nagyon élveztem is ezt a munkát. Eleinte nagyon nehezen ment, mert rengeteget kellett egyeztetni, a végén Naftali vett nekem ide egy faxgépet, hogy faxon kommunikáljunk egymással, mert telefonon kicsit zűrös volt. Meg is jelent az első két könyv, én szereztem a nyomdát, a kiadót, és még egy bemutatót is megszerveztem neki az Írók Boltjában. Az első két könyvnek elég nagy sikere volt, mert akkor még kevés ilyen tárgyú könyv volt. Nagyon büszke voltam, mert egy kritikában megdicsérték a könyv szerkesztését. Naftali egy büdös szót nem szólt. Megfizette, amit ígért, és kész. Jött a harmadik és negyedik könyv, majdnem egyszerre, és akkor kezdődtek a nagy vitáink, mert addig ő szépen tudomásul vette, ha kihagyok valamit, átrakok valamit, a durvaságokat kiszűröm. Például kihúztam azt, hogy gój. De hogy én ne javítsam ki őt, ő vállalja. Mondtam, ez Magyarország, itt keresztények élnek, azok is olvassák, miért kell az antiszemitizmust a másik oldalról szítani. Mi értelme van ennek? Nagyon összevesztünk, úgyhogy a másik két könyvre nem is engedtem a nevemet feltenni. Közöltem vele, hogy ezt még befejezem, és kész [Naftali Krausnak 1990 óta több mint húsz könyve jelent meg Magyarországon. – A szerk.].

A házasságom egy külön történet. A férjem, Ligeti Roland 1933-ban született Párizsban. A család zsidó volt, de a férjemet Franciaországban reformátusnak írták be. Az apósom esztergályos volt, és a nagy válság idején [lásd: 1929-es gazdasági világválság] még mint agglegény kiment Párizsba munkát keresni. Akkor már udvarolt az anyósomnak, és ő utánament. Ott született a férjem. Aztán 1938-ban hazajöttek, igyekeztek elérni az auschwitzi vonatot. Túlélték. 1945 után az apósom a külkerben dolgozott a Ferunionnál [Ferunion – 1949-ben alapított Műszaki Külkereskedelmi Vállalat], és az esztergályos végzettségével Törökországban ő volt a kirendeltség vezetője. Munkáskáder volt. Különben nagyon intelligens és művelt ember volt, sokat magára szedett. Rolanddal a Lenin Intézetben ismerkedtünk meg, egy évvel járt fölöttem. Elkezdtünk járni. Ő egyedül élt akkor itthon, mert az apósomék Törökországban voltak 1953-tól 1956-ig. Amikor összeismerkedtünk, meghívtam magunkhoz. Rendszeresen járt hozzánk kajálni, mert végre evett valami jót, nem csak menzakaját vagy hideget. Anyám is jól főzött, én is jól főztem, és ezt nagyon élvezte. Így mégis volt valami család. Hét-nyolc hónapot jártunk együtt. Egyszer valahova elmentünk egy hétvégére, és ott elhatároztuk, hogy összeházasodunk. Tárgyilagosan visszagondolva: összetévesztettem a szexuális élményt a szerelemmel. Húsz éves voltam, és minden áron el akartam otthonról jönni, úgyhogy belementem ebbe a házasságba, annak ellenére, hogy már akkor kétségeim voltam. Ugyanis még korábban terhes lettem, abortuszra mentem, és amikor kijöttem a kórházból, leendő férjem még csak nem is várt engem. Ez a Ratkó-korszakban volt, de lányoknak lehetett abortusz.

Én a nagyokos, csináltam magamnak egy listát, pozitív és negatív oldallal, és mivel kettővel több volt a pozitív, úgy döntöttem, hogy férjhez megyek. Az anyósomék beleegyeztek az esküvőbe. De előtte apósom hazaküldte a helyettesét azzal a titkos megbízással, hogy nézzen meg engem. Képzelje, hazajött kocsival Törökországból 1955 elején! Meghívott minket a Hungária kávéházba ebédre. A mai napig emlékszem, hogy 82 forint 50 fillér volt a számla. Nekem ez akkora élmény volt, hiszen azt sem tudtam, hogy kell egy ilyen helyre bemenni! Ez egy nagyvilági pasi volt. Nagyon pozitív véleményt adott rólam, és beleegyeztek a házasságba. Hazajöttek az esküvőre, és az anyósomnak az én esküvőmön a legfontosabb dolga az volt, hogy elment fodrászhoz, és ruhát csináltatott. Én ott álltam az esküvő reggelén, és még egy szál virágot sem kaptam senkitől. Senkinek nem jutott eszébe, hogy kéne annak a hülye menyasszonynak egy csokor. Úgyhogy én mentem el venni magamnak virágot. Nem egyházi esküvő volt, a Lenin körúti (ma Teréz körút) házasságkötő teremben házasodtunk össze. Utána a szűk család bement az Andrássy úton [Akkor: Sztálin út] a Lukács cukrászdába, ez volt a bankett. Aztán kimentünk a Szigetre sétálni ketten, ez volt a nászutunk. Nagyon szerettem volna valakivel találkozni, hogy bemutatkozhassam Ligeti Rolandnéként. Voltam mindehhez huszonegy éves. Az anyósomék aztán visszamentek, én pedig odaköltöztem a férjemékhez. A Sobieski János utcában volt egy kétszobás, félkomfortos udvari lakás. Mi beköltöztünk a kisszobába, mert a nagyszoba tele volt mindenfélével. Ott éltünk.

Közben láttam, hogy a férjem elhelyezkedése elég nehéz, végül a Tűzoltótiszti Iskolára ment marxizmus-leninizmust tanítani. A férjemnek el kellett végezni valami alapfokú tűzoltó tanfolyamot, szörnyű volt, még egyenruhája is volt. Akkor döntöttem el végképp, hogy átmegyek a közgázra. 1956 januárjában terhes lettem, elmentem az abortuszbizottsághoz, de páros lábbal rúgtak ki. Akkor mindent megpróbáltam: cipeltem, én vittem fel a pincéből a fát és a szenet, kinint szedtem, semmi eredmény. Az anyám el akart vinni egy zugorvoshoz. Mondtam, hogy nem megyek. Ha a gyerek ennyire meg akar lenni, akkor én megszülöm, ez a gyerek az enyém. Se az anyám, se a férjem nem akarta.

1956 szeptemberében megszületett a fiam. Akkor jött 1956. október 23. Borzasztó nehéz helyzetben voltam, mert szoptattam, és nekem csak tejtől volt tejem. Az üzletek zárva voltak, és akkor a férjem lopott valahol egy kanna tejet, amit fölforraltam, és azon valahogy elvoltunk. Lent voltunk egy hétig a pincében, aminek következtében a fiam kapott egy asztmatikus légcsőhurutot, úgyhogy szeptembertől tavaszig köhögött. Semmivel nem tudtuk kigyógyítani, végül amikor három éves volt, akkor beutaltak bennünket valahol Tolna megyében egy anya–gyerek üdülőbe, ami egy Zichy-kastélyban volt, húszholdas fenyőparkkal. Ez a két vagy három hét nagyon jót tett a gyereknek. Ez kétszer megismétlődött, és hatéves korára nagyjából kinőtte.

1956 novemberében a férjem elment karhatalmistának. Én ott maradtam egyedül a gyerekkel, tanulással, nyomorral. Időnként hazajárt. De nem nagyon törődött velünk. Ennek valamikor tavasszal lett vége, és bent maradt a belügyben. Addigra a házasságunk tönkrement. Pedig imádott engem. Én voltam az ő egyetlen nagy szerelme, ezt még utólag, a halála után, papírokból, mindenből látom. De teljesen egocentrikus volt, annyi empátia nem volt benne, mint ebben a szekrényben. Nem azt nézte, hogy nekem mi jó, hanem birtokolni akart. Azt hiszem, hogy az anyósom nevelte valahogy el. Bebeszélték neki, hogy hülye, hogy tanulni se tud. Szóval bent maradt a belügyben, aminek az lett a következménye, hogy én a világon semmit nem tudtam róla. Azt sem tudtam, hogy milyen osztályon dolgozik, hogy mikor jön haza, hol van. A gyerekkel nem foglalkozott, ha véletlenül otthon volt, akkor reggel elvitte a bölcsődébe, mert a fiam négy hónapos korától bölcsődébe járt. Minden az én nyakamba szakadt, nem lehetett semmit rábízni. Egyszer, még pár hetes volt a gyerek, letettem a rekamiéra, és szóltam, hogy kimegyek megmosakodni szoptatáshoz. Egyszer csak hallok egy koppanást. A gyerek leesett a rekamiéról.

1957-ben hazajöttek anyósomék, és ott laktunk abban a félkomfortos szörnyű lakásban. Nekik már akkor volt annyi pénzük, hogy vehettek egy lakást, és arról volt szó, hogy egy négyszobás lakást vesznek, amibe az egész pereputty beköltözik. Egy alkalommal véletlenül meghallottam, hogy a konyhában beszélgetnek, és az anyósom azt mondja rám, hogy „ez a nő”. Erre kaptam egy dührohamot, összepakoltam a gyereket, a magam néhány cuccát, és közöltem, hogy én nem megyek velük együtt lakni. Átmentem az anyámhoz. Hullott a könnyem, mint a záporeső, mert a helyzetem kilátástalan volt. Akkor végeztem épp. Anyámnak nem volt más választása, mint hogy befogadjon, de nem volt valami lelkes. Nem is mentem vissza, és megüzentem, hogy ne is vegyék meg azt a négyszobás lakást. Arra gondoltam, ha már most ilyen cirkuszok vannak, mi lesz később. A férjem néha odajött, néha elvitte a gyereket a bölcsődébe. De gyakorlatilag mindent én csináltam. Reggel hétre jártam a Gumigyárba dolgozni, a gyereket reggel fél hatkor fel kellett kelteni. Aztán a Gumigyár igazgatója, aki később feleségül vette anyámat, azt mondta, hogy én ezt már nem bírom nézni, és – kifejezetten az én kedvemért – a Mező Imre úton szervezett az egyik házra egy emeletráépítést gyári dolgozóknak. Margit nagynénémtől kaptam annyi pénzt, azt hiszem, tizenháromezer forintot, amennyit be kellett fizetni. Szegény, sose kapta vissza. A lakás 1959 őszén lett készen. Két szoba összkomfortos lakás volt. Hülye beosztású, mert a két szoba egymásba nyílt, és a belső szobából nyílt a fürdőszoba. Beköltöztünk, és én azt hittem, hogy most új élet kezdődik, de a házasságom továbbra is szerencsétlen volt. A férjem olyan ember volt, hogy könyörögtem neki, menjünk el valahova. Minek? Én meg egy társas lény voltam. Egyre jobban mentem tönkre, olyannyira, hogy iszonyatos memóriazavaraim lettek. Úgy bukott ez ki, hogy jártam külön angolra, mert abból is le akartam vizsgázni, és egyszer az órán egy megveszekedett büdös szó sem jutott eszembe. Olyan sírógörcsöt kaptam, hogy azt mondta a tanárnő, ezt már nem bírja nézni, és megadta egy idegorvos címét. El is mentem, elmeséltem, hogy mi van. Megállapította, hogy a betegségem melankolikus depresszió. Volt úgy, hogy otthon voltam a gyerekkel kettesben, a gyerek ötév körüli lehetett, ültem a fotelban, és a gyerek azt mondja, hogy anyu, éhes vagyok, anyu álmos vagyok. Nem keltem föl, nem adtam neki enni, nem fektettem le. Csak ültem. Jó, kisfiam, mindjárt, és csak ültem. A gyerek közben elálmosodott, ruhástól elaludt a rekamién. Egyszer anyám elvitte a gyereket, és akkor tizennyolc órát aludtam egyfolytában. Az idegorvos elkezdett gyógyszerezni. Ez egy rettenetes erős gyógyszer volt, idegbetegnek adták, és egy órát kellett feküdni, miután beszedtem. Javultam is, lényegesen jobb lett az állapotom, visszatért a memóriám.

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Egy jó darabig bent volt, valamit csináltak vele, mert a belügytől nem rúgták ki. És akkor kezdődött, hogy egy lakásban együtt éltünk, én a belső szobában a gyerekkel, ő a külső szobában. Én mindent megcsináltam, főztem, mostam. Szóval egy pokol volt. Aztán 1962-ben elváltunk, egy iszonyatos procedúra volt. Első fokon mindent megnyertem. A gyereket, a lakást, teljesen egyértelműen. Az anyának ítélik a gyereket, és akinek a gyereket, annak a lakást. Majd ő fellebbezett, és a másodfokon öt perc alatt visszacsináltak mindent: elvették tőlem a gyereket és a lakást, és köteleztek, hogy költözzek el.

Természetesen azonnal törvényességi óvást emeltem. Arra emlékszem, hogy a törvényességi óvás határozata az volt, hogy minkét ítélet törvényes. A fiamnak odaadtam az egész paksamétát, amikor végzett. Persze továbbra is ott éltem, mert hová mehettem volna. Végül jogcím nélkül laktam a saját és a nagynéném pénzén vett lakásban. Továbbra is elláttam a gyereket. Egy idő múlva egyszer csak valami véletlen folytán kiderült, hogy szerzett nekem valami zugalbérletet, és ki akar lakoltatni. Elkaptam egy józanabb pillanatában, és azt mondtam: én elköltözöm, de fizesd ki a felét ennek, amit a lakásba belefeccöltünk. Ebben valahogy megegyeztünk, és elköltöztem otthonról. Egy ismerősöm külföldön dolgozott, és addig odamehettem a lakásába. Akkor kezdődött nekem egy nagyon hosszú, iszonyatos kálvária gyerek nélkül. És fizetnem kellett a gyerektartást is. Persze tudtam, hogy mi volt a hátterében az öt perc alatti másodfokú tárgyalásnak. A vezető bíró egy idős bíró volt, és a belügy megfenyegette, hogy ha nem így ítél, akkor kirúgják. Teljesen egyértelmű volt, a belügy beleszólt. Tudtam is, de ez ellen nem lehetett védekezni.

Félévente lehetett gyerekelhelyezési pert indítani, ingyen és bérmentve. A gyereket úgy nevelte, hogy sehogy se nevelte. Odaadta néha az anyjáéknak. Kéthetente láthatásom volt, és minden egyes láthatás akkora cirkusz volt, a gyerek zokogott, sírt, rimánkodott, hogy anya, nem megyek vissza, anya, veled akarok lenni. Rettentő anyás volt a fiam, nagy volt köztünk a szerelem. Az apjával lelkileg semmilyen kötődése nem volt. Egy zoknit nem tudott ráhúzni. És uszították a gyereket ellenem. Olyanokat mondtak neki, hogy az anyád rosszabb, mint Hitler volt. Ilyen kedvességeket mondtak intelligens módon. A gyerek nagyon szenvedett. Akkor már a Cukor utcai általánosba járt, és odamentem délben, megnéztem a gyereket.

Szóval, félévente indítottam gyerekelhelyezési pert, és a bíró egyszer azt mondta nekem: „Asszonyom, ha maga a Keleti pályaudvar várótermébe lenne jogcímmel bejelentve, magának ítélném a gyereket. De amíg nincs bejelentett lakása, addig nem tehetem.” Szóval lakás kellett, és egyszer csak az anyám felhívott telefonon 1966 elején, hogy a KGM-ben valaki visszamondott egy lakást valahol a Deres utcában. A beköltözésig be kell fizetni negyvenezer forintot. Akkor éppen ötezer forint megtakarított pénzem volt, de rögtön azt mondtam, hogy kell. Később kaptam a volt férjemtől valami pénzt vissza, az OTP adott kamatmentes hitelt, tizenvalahányezer forintot, eladtam minden értékemet, volt egy szép hegedűm. A főnökeim irtó rendesek voltak a Chemokomplexnél, mert utaztattak. A főnököm lemondott egy útjáról, és azt mondta, hogy menj te, és akkor én hoztam valamit, azt eladtam. Tekerős számológépet, porszívót, műszaki cikkeket hoztam Moszkvából, farmert nyugatról. Ezeket „rendelésre” hoztam, hiszen akkor nem nagyon utaztak az emberek, itt meg nem lehetett kapni. A szó legszorosabb értelmében zsíros kenyéren éltem. Tíz deka parizer volt a luxus. Mire be kellett fizetni a pénzt, megvolt. 1968-ra lett kész a társasház, akkor költöztem ide. Már 1967-ben megindítottam a gyerekelhelyezési pert, be tudtam mutatni, hogy itt fogok lakni. Tudtam, hogy ez borzasztó nehéz dolog, mert nekem egyetlen tanúm volt, a napközis tanárnő. Mert a fiam senkinek nem beszélt semmiről az iskolában, és könyörögtem neki, hogy ennek a napközis tanárnőnek meséljen el mindent, amit nekem mesélt. És a gyerek elmondta. A fiam akkor volt tizenegy éves, és azt kértem, hogy pszichológus hallgassa meg. Meg is hallgatta. A szülőket is meghallgatta, és nekem azt mondta, hogy asszonyom, a maga férje nem alkalmas gyereknevelésre.

Még a per előtt történt, az anyámnál laktam, egyszer csak csöngetnek este hét óra körül, már sötét volt. Ott áll a gyerek az ajtóban, és azt mondja, hogy anya, éhes vagyok. Most is sírás fojtogat, ha eszembe jut. Hogy kerülsz ide? Apa azt mondta, hogy hazajön, ültem a lépcsőn, és már olyan régen ott ültem a lépcsőn, és az apu nem jött haza. Írtam egy cédulát, hogy idejöttem. Idejött, a Kerepesi útról a tizenegyedik kerületi Etele útra. Ha akkor ott van a férjem, én biztos megölöm. A gyereket megetettem, megfürösztöttem, lefektettem, együtt sírtunk. Elaludt. Tíz órakor csönget a néhai exférjem. A kukucskálón kinéztem, és azt mondtam, hogy ha azonnal nem mész el, megöllek. Másnap elvittem a gyereket az iskolába. Már 1966-ban beadhattam volna a gyerekelhelyezési pert, amikor befizettem a lakást. Mondtam anyámnak, hogy beadom. Erre anyám azt mondta, hogy várd meg, amíg készen lesz a lakás. Ez után az eset után egy szót nem szóltam az anyámnak, abszolút nem érdekelt, hogy mit fog mondani, beadtam a pert. Az új lakásba már a gyerekkel költöztem.

A sok munka mellett még tanultam is, társadalmi munkát is végeztem, és még társasági életet is éltem, színházba is jártam és olvastam. Magam se tudom ma már, hogy a fenébe fért bele. Baromi energiám volt. Amikor külföldön voltam, akkor a gyerek tíz és tizenhárom éves kora között anyámnál volt, utána már elvolt otthon egyedül. Érettségi után elvégezte a jogot, és ügyvéd lett. Megházasodott, a felesége nem zsidó, szintén jogot végzett, és van két gyerekük. Az unokákkal sokat foglalkozom.

Baráti társaságom mindig volt, és most is van. Most ezzel a bridzses társasággal nagyon kibővült. Mondhatom, hogy baráti társaság, mert már hat éve együtt játszunk rendszeresen hetente. Egymáshoz megyünk, hol ide, hol oda. És van egy másik társaság, amelyikkel most voltam négy napig Eplényben. Elmegyünk, délelőtt kirándulunk vagy uszodába megyünk, attól függően, hogy hol vagyunk, délután és estefelé bridzselünk. Meg jókat eszünk, meg piálunk. Azelőtt nagyon jól tudtam inni, de most már alig iszom. Kivel igyak, meg minek igyak?

Aztán negyven éve mindig van hangversenybérletem. Kezdetben, amíg négyszáz forintért nyolc előadást adtak a Zeneakadémián, ahol a Yehudi Menuhin is játszott, és az Abbado vezényelt, akkor egy évben két bérletem is volt, egy őszi és egy tavaszi. Most csak egy.  Sikerült a Fesztiválzenekarhoz bérletet venni. Hangverseny az kell, anélkül nehéz az élet. Színházba is el-eljárogatok, van, amikor visznek, van, amikor én veszek jegyet.

Nem emlékszem arra, hogy Izrael állam megalakulásával kifejezetten foglalkoztam akkoriban. Miután nem tudtam alijázni, a kérdés lekerült az életemben a napirendről, ráadásul 1948-tól már nem is zsidó iskolába jártam. Később nagyon fontos lett. Itt végeredményben nem volt nyílt antiszemitizmus, de azért  jobban és biztonságosabban érezte magát az ember a bőrében attól, hogy van egy ilyen állam. A két háború idején [lásd: hatnapos háború; 1973-as arab–izraeli háború] szorongva figyeltem a híreket. Arra emlékszem egyébként, hogy a nem zsidók is Izraelnek drukkoltak, mert ezzel az oroszok ellen lehettek. Így nem kellett titkolni a drukkolásunkat, sőt akkor rengeteg vicc volt ezzel kapcsolatban forgalomban, és én széltében-hosszában meséltem őket.  Ezzel kapcsolatban nem volt semmi konfliktusom, és nem volt két véleményem. Abszolúte nem érdekelt, ki mit gondolt.

Simon Meer 
Dorohoi 
Romania 
Date of interview: August, 2006 
Interviewer: Emoke Major 

Mr. Simon Meer was the president of the Jewish Community in Dorohoi during 1998-2005. 

But even now he feels a very strong connection to the Community, 
he insisted that all our meetings take place at the Community headquarters, during the work hours.

I didn’t meet the present Community president, but the secretary and the accountant showed singular respect towards Mr. Meer.

• My family history
• Growing up
• During the War
• After the War
• Glossary

• My family history

My father’s parents were born in Dumbraveni, in the county of Botosani. [Ed. note: Nowadays Dumbraveni belongs to the county of Suceava; it is located 27 km south-west of Botosani.] My grandfather’s name was Haim Meer, my grandmother’s was Frida. My grandfather, my father’s father, was a shoemaker. I didn’t know them and I have no memories of the grandparents from my father’s side. That’s because I was sent to live in Dorohoi when I was 5, and I had nothing to do with them.

We went to see them as well when we went to the countryside to visit the parents during holidays, but it was very rarely. I think I went to see my grandmother with my parents only once, “Good afternoon.” – “Good afternoon.” she offered us a bite to eat, and we were off. For that village is large – the village of Dumbraveni –, they lived at a different end of the village, it was far from where we lived, and we didn’t really go to see either my father’s parents, or his brothers. But they were Jewish.

My father had 3 more brothers and a sister, they all lived in the village of Dumbraveni. My father’s brothers and my father as well, learned the trade of shoemaking from their father, but, after they got married, seeing there was no parnose in shoemaking [parnose (Yiddish): livelihood, living] – as they say, you have no income –, they opened up stores. All 4 of them had small stores – general stores, selling all sorts of goods – in the village. Dumbraveni was a large village, just like a city.

My father lived in Salageni, my father’s other brothers had their stores near the village center. Nusan – Nusan is the Yiddish variant, but Nathan is the Romanian one – was one of my father’s brothers; he knew Hebrew well, and he performed the religious service in the synagogue in Dumbraveni. He also read the Sefer Torah – and the Sefer Torah is very difficult to read, for there is no punctuation. Sama was the name of another of my father’s brothers – Sauma in Yiddish, yet Sama in Romanian, in his identity card.

They had yet another brother, but I forgot his name. And they also had a sister who was a seamstress, I believe. In any case, they didn’t receive an education. They were all married, they all had families there, children – the children left, they studied in Botosani, in other cities across the country. But I have no memories of them either. If I had nothing to do with them… I was a child of 5 when they brought me to Botosani, how could I remember whether I met them previously, if I played with them. But I have no news of them whatsoever.

In 1939, when the legionaries 1 came to power, my father’s other brothers took refuge in Botosani. My father and mother were the only ones who came to Dorohoi – my mother being born there. My father’s other 3 brothers went to Botosani, they weren’t deported. The Jews from Botosani weren’t deported. Only these regions were, those belonging to Bukovina – Campulung, Vatra Dornei, Humor, Radauti, Suceava – and it included us too, the region of Dorohoi, with the surrounding towns – Saveni, Darabani, Mihaileni.

My father was the eldest among his brothers. His name was Froim Meer, he was born in 1893, in Dumbraveni. My father fought during World War I, I don’t know where exactly, but, in any case, I do know he did his military service with the 8th Regiment Dorobanti, Botosani. [Ed. note: Dorobanti is located 17 km north of Botosani.] He had a leg wound from the front, but he wasn’t limping.

The grandparents from my mother’s side were from Dorohoi. My grandfather’s name was Hanina Cojocaru – for I also had a brother whom my mother named after her father, Hanina –, and my grandmother’s name was Hana – Eni in Yiddish [Ene]. My grandfather was a furrier – he sewed sheepskin coats, hats. The old man especially, he went in the countyside, entered people’s houses, people had skins for hats, coats, and he sewed them right there, on the spot. And that’s how it was back then: for instance, if you were a shoemaker, your name was Shoemaker – the name for someone who made shoes. As my mother’s father was a furrier, his name was Cojocaru [Romanian for “furrier”]. The grandfather from my mother’s side died here, in Dorohoi, I didn’t get to know him.

My grandmother was still alive when I was born, of all my grandparents she is the only one I remember. All 4 of us boys lived at an aunt’s, her name was Ruhla Butnaru, and she actually sent us on many occasions to see our grandmother so that she wouldn’t be all by herself, we slept over at her place so that she wouldn’t sleep alone, as she was an elderly woman, a widow, so that she wouldn’t be afraid. She was very fond of us, this grandmother from Dorohoi cared for us so much, as if we were her own children. We spoke both Yiddish and Romanian with her. She was a seamstress – for my mother, being her daughter, learned the trade from her. She sewed bed linen, underwear. My grandmother had a sewing machine, and she had many customers.

She wore regular clothes. A dress or a skirt with a blouse – that was her attire. She wore dark colors. She didn’t cover her head. She only covered her head with a head kerchief on Friday evening, when she lit the candles for the Sabbath. She had her natural hair, which she braided it behind the back of her head and looped around, like that. No woman in our family wore a wig, as only the women [wives] of rabbis and hakhamim wore wigs – they wore their hair cut short and wore wigs.

The grandmother from Dorohoi wasn’t deported; she died before the deportations took place.

My mother had 2 brothers and a sister. The eldest of the brothers was Elias Abramovici, the second born was Elisa Cojocaru, the third born was Ruhla Butnaru, their sister, and my mother was the youngest.

I can’t quite figure why Elias Abramovici had the name of Abramovici and not Cojocaru. He had a store, he had a hardware store. He lived in Iasi, but he returned to live in Dorohoi; he died and was buried here, in Dorohoi, in the Jewish cemetery. His wife, aunt Ietti, left to Israel with their daughter – but he had died already. They had an only daughter, Sophie. My aunt is dead, too – only my cousin is still alive. Her married name is Sophie Peretz, she is married to Sapsa Peretz – he was born in Saveni. They live in Israel, but I don’t know in what city.

My mother’s other brother, Elisa Cojocaru, was married, but he didn’t have any children. They lived in Bucecea, in the county of Botosani. [Ed. note: A former borough, Bucecea is nowadays a village located 22 km west of Botosani, and 17 km north of Dumbraveni.] He had a manufacture store – textiles, fabrics. They weren’t deported, but they were evacuated from Bucecea to Botosani. They returned to Bucecea after World War II, and that’s where they died, both he and his wife, I believe they died around 1946-1947.

My mother had a sister in Dorohoi, who raised me and my brothers since we were 5. Her official name was Ruhla Butnaru – Ruhal [Rukhl] in Yiddish, Rasela in Romanian. As long as she lived with her parents, my aunt was a seamstress too, just like my mother. Her husband, Moise Butnaru, cut to measure the leather for shoes – he cut the leather and made the vamps for shoes. He is buried here, in the Jewish cemetery in Dorohoi. My aunt died in Israel, she left there with my youngest brother, she lived in Rehovot. I forgot the year when she died, in any case, she was in her 80’s by then.

My mother’s name was Feiga – Feiga Cojocaru was her name. She was born in 1898, in Dorohoi. As the grandmother from my mother’s side was a seamstress, my mother learned that trade from her as well.

I don’t know how my parents met. I wasn’t curious to find out. They lived in Dumbraveni for the most part, in the village of Salageni, a hamlet. The locality had several villages. [Ed. note: Salageni is located 32 km south-west of Botosani.] Dumbraveni was a large locality, with more than 20,000 inhabitants – that’s how large it was. Poorer families lived there, as well as richer ones, and then there were also really well-to-do people who lived there in the village. 12 Jewish families lived there as well.

My father was a small merchant, he had a store, a sort of a grocery selling almost anything: food, salt, flour, oil, even cloths – he supplied the store with everything. He brought the merchandise from Bucecea, a town located close to Dumbraveni, and from Botosani. He took a cart from the village, drawn by two horses, he went and brought a freight cart, so that he could supply the store with merchandise. So father was a merchant and mother was a seamstress:
she sewed underwear, bed linen: pillows, eiderdowns, odds and ends. And since she was a seamstress and was good with fabrics – manufacture, that’s what they called them – they also sold fabrics at the store. She helped father when it came to fabrics. She was in charge of textiles.
My mother came to Dorohoi by cart, she brought us food, bought supplies, and took back with her rolls of fabrics, lengths of cloth. That’s how we made a living.

We had a two-room house and the store was in one of the rooms. But we paid rent for the house, it wasn’t ours. We had a few fruit trees in the courtyard – sour cherries, plums, that was about it. They kept a dog, a cat, but no other domestic animals whatsoever. No fowls, no kinds of animals. For holidays, my mother bought fowls from there, from the village. There were, thank God, plenty of places to buy from.

My mother – just like my aunt – was a woman who observed religion, popular, to be sure! She liked to dress elegantly. Well, a pretty little dress, a skirt, a blouse to wear – as she was a seamstress – she cut them, stitched them together and made her own clothes. But when it came to finer dresses, for special occasions, for holidays, she went to Dorohoi – for she was born there –, and she had them made there by dressmakers – well now – more professional ones. For on holidays she too went with my father to the synagogue in Dumbraveni, and she had to wear something a bit more special.

• Growing up

I, Simon Meer, was born in Burdujeni, Suceava, in 1927. [Ed. note: Burdujeni is nowadays part of the city of Suceava.] I don’t know how this came about, my father’s business wasn’t doing well for a while – I wasn’t born yet –, and they moved to Burdujeni, near Suceava, and later they returned to Dumbraveni from Burdujeni. And it was just my luck, the fact that I was born when they were living in Burdujeni. All my other brothers were born in Dumbraveni.

I was the second-born. I also had an older brother and two younger ones. The name of my elder brother was Iancu, Iacov in Hebrew. He is 2 years older than me, he was born in 1925. Then Moise was born after me – Moshe in Hebrew. He was born in 1929, he is 2 years younger than me. For I don’t know how mother scheduled our birth, she gave birth every other year. Only Hanina, the youngest, the cadet, was much younger than Moise. [Ed. note: He was probably born around 1935.] He was named after the grandfather from my mother’s side, I was named after a cousin of my mother’s – Simon –, and Moise was named after my aunt’s husband, Moise Butnaru.

Our parents lived in the countryside, and we, the children, lived in Dorohoi from the age of 5. We lived with our mother’s sister, Ruhla Butnaru, who was a widow and looked after all 4 of us, boys, all 4 brothers. She was a widow, and she told our mother: “Listen, Foighe, – for my mother’s name was Feiga, but they called her Foighe [Foygl] in Yiddish – send those rascals here, bring them to live with me, so that they may learn the talmud torah here, go to a Jewish school and learn a trade!” For what could we have learned in the countryside? And they brought all of us, brothers, to Dorohoi at an early age, we attended the talmud torah, the Jewish school, and then each of us learned a trade, a profession. We came one after another. As soon as we turned 5, they sent us here. Iancu, the eldest, was the first to come here, followed by me.

My elder brother, Inacu, attended the talmud torah for 2 years, the Jewish school for 4 years, and then became a shop assistant – as they said in the old days –, a salesman in a shop selling chemicals and hardware. It was a private shop, as shops were in those days, before World War II, its owner was a certain Itcu Danilov. And when he left to Israel, in 1947, he was still a shop assistant. He didn’t learn any trade. Moise learned tailoring. He was apprenticed to a tailor, the owner of the workshop was called Herman. In 1947, when he left to Israel, he hadn’t finished his apprenticeship yet. And the cadet, Hanina, was about to find a job and learn a trade when he left to Israel. I believe he was 15 or 16 and hadn’t tried any profession yet.

I came to Dorohoi in 1932. And I somewhat broke the relationship with my parents who lived in Dumbraveni. I went to the countryside only during school holidays. And what is more, even then I didn’t spend too much time at home, I wandered, frolicked. I liked to take the herd in the fields to graze, and I went with girls and boys on the pasture where we took cattle, sheep to graze. I only spent 2-3 months a year with my parents, during the summer holiday. But here, in Dorohoi, I shared a bond with my mother’s sister who looked after us, brought us up, taught us, and even went with us to Transnistria.

We also saw our mother when she came to Dorohoi. Father didn’t, for he bought supplies from Bucecea, Burdujeni, Botosani. Mother came to Dorohoi by cart – for there are around 40-50 km from here to Dumbraveni [there are 43 km from Dorohoi to Dumbraveni] –, she came to see us, and by doing so, she bought supplies here, she loaded a cart with fabrics – materials for bed linen, for dresses, silk, cloths, all sorts of fabrics. She brought food when she came. Why, what do you think we lived on here? How do you think our aunt could feed us, four mouths to feed? Our parents provided us with clothing, shoes, everything.

Our aunt had her hands full with us: washing, ironing our clothes, feeding us, and taking care of us at school. She couldn’t cope with all that, she used to hire a woman now and then to wash her clothes, then she ironed them. She too took good care of her household. She was – as it were – a true mother. What other woman takes up taking care of four rascals? Four boys. Well, had there been a girl at least. A girl helps with things, for she learns these household chores at an early age. But we were four boys.

Our aunt had her own house – a small house farther down the street, on this very street. [Ed. note: The same street where the headquarters of the Jewish Community in Dorohoi is nowadays located, at present Spiru Haret St.] Now there stands a new building where her house used to be. The house had 2 rooms. When we were in the first grades of elementary school, we slept in the same room with our aunt. We weren’t ashamed, we were little back then. We were 5-7 years old when we attended the talmud torah, and we went to school until we were 14, then we lived there with her and learned a trade as well. But when we grew older, we – the boys – slept in the other room.

We spoke only Romanian at home, in our parents’ home. Our parents also spoke Romanian to each other, especially since they lived in the countryside [– where very few Jews lived]. Even here, at my aunt’s as well: I spoke to her in Romanian and she spoke to me in Yiddish. And I understood what she said perfectly well, but I didn’t speak Yiddish. We were accustomed to speak only Romanian, all my brothers. My aunt called me Simola. Simon is Simen [Shimen] in Yiddish, and Simola is a pet name.

I learned Yiddish at the talmud torah. I attended the talmud torah for 2 years, between the age of 5 and 7. There were several talmud torahs in Dorohoi, for so many Jews lived here. There were 4 talmud torahs in Dorohoi for a population of 8,000 Jews. We attended the one closer to our home, the one on Petru Rares St. We went there every day at 8 in the morning, and stayed there 3-4 hours every day – they had discipline there as well. There were 2 groups of 20-25 children at the talmud torah. We only had one teacher, a man, who taught us Yiddish. They also taught Hebrew there, but mostly the alphabet.

I learned Hebrew in school, I had teachers specializing in Hebrew. I attended the Jewish school from 7 until 11 years old; all subject matters were taught in Romanian there, and there was one special subject matter, Hebrew. I remember the Hebrew teacher, his name was Marantz. His specialty was Hebrew. I couldn’t say where he studied Hebrew, I no longer know that. But he spoke Romanian as well. We also studied religion subjects during Hebrew class, but mostly in Hebrew and less so in Yiddish. I learned Hebrew very easily. I remember the grades I had at Hebrew – I was a front-ranking pupil during the 4 years that I studied Hebrew. And when I traveled to Israel in 1969 I had a great difficulty remembering words in Hebrew – I remembered very little. Any language, if you don’t speak it, if you don’t use it, you forget it.

There were children, pupils at school who spoke Yiddish. They spoke Yiddish at home with their parents from an early age, and then they spoke Yiddish with the other children as well. But since we spoke Romanian at home, we kept speaking that. For instance, we went out at school during breaks, and some children spoke, conversed in Yiddish, others in Romanian. I spoke Romanian all the time.

But there were only Jewish children at that school. Each of the classes had 30-40 pupils. For some grades there were even parallel classes – for instance, during 1st grade, if there were too many pupils, there were 2 parallel classes. There were only 4 grades of primary school at the Jewish school. There were no mixed classes before the war, the boys studied separately, and so did the girls. The building was divided in two by means of a plywood wall – the boys on one side, the girls on the other.

There were classrooms for boys and classrooms for girls. But the courtyard outside was a joint one, we went there during breaks, met there, played there, boys and girls together. But if we were allowed to go out during breaks, we weren’t allowed to enter the other side, the classrooms for girls. The building can still be seen nowadays, it is on A. I. Cuza St. – the only building that is still “alive,” as it were. At present, it doesn’t belong to the Community, now it must be given back again, now it must be taken over.

The name of the school principal was Herscovici. There were both male and female teachers. My schoolteacher from 1st grade until 4th grade was Mina Solomon – her name was Mina Solomon before getting married, and Mina Kohn after she got married. I had her as my schoolteacher during the 4 years. Starting with 2nd grade, I also had other teachers, teacher Macus – I forget what subject matter she taught –, principal Herscovici – I believe he taught history, geography. From my classmates, I remember Leibovici – a tall man –, and Opincaru. Most of them left to Israel, I don’t know whether they’re still living. I have no former classmates living here, in Dorohoi.

I attended the Jewish school for 4 years until 1938. I was in the 4th grade in 1938, for I fell ill right during 4th grade, before the end of the school year, and they took me to Iasi urgently, I underwent surgery and had my appendix removed. But I had already developed peritonitis, they actually took puss from inside my abdomen, and even worms. At that age. I don’t even want to remember it… “Well now, son, you are one among many [one of the few, that is] who survived this operation.” Back then, there were no antibiotics, things like those…

I was at the Jewish Hospital in Iasi. Professor Busureanu performed the surgery, he wasn’t Jewish, he was Romanian, but the assisting professor was a certain Polack, who was Jewish. My mother came to the surgery, she hurried there from the countryside, and my aunt left my other brothers at home and came to Iasi herself. I couldn’t walk on my own feet when I got out of the hospital, for I had been lying in bed for over a month. And my aunt and my mother carried me on their arms from the hospital to the street, to the cab – as cabs were in those days, hackney coaches –, and I came by coach to the train station. And from the train station, we left by train – there was a direct connection Iasi-Dorohoi.

After I finished school, the four grades, I was apprenticed and worked for an employer. I learned a dyer’s trade and chemical laundry – that is my profession. Afterwards, during my apprenticeship, I attended the school for professions for apprentices for 3 years, I went there every day in the afternoon. Then, later on, I also attended the theoretical high school as part of the evening classes program. I attended there for 4 years. In the afternoon, after work, I attended classes. I graduated the theoretical high school as part of the evening classes program in 1962 or 1963.

My parents observed tradition, and my aunt, my grandmother, it goes without saying! But not all Jews observed tradition. Especially here, in Dorohoi, there were very many traders who didn’t observe tradition, on many occasions they didn’t even come to the synagogue on Saturdays – they were busy with commerce, business, and things like that. As a child, as long as I attended the talmud torah and the Jewish school, I went to the synagogue only on Friday evenings, on Saturdays, and on all holidays. During the week – I didn’t. There were fanatic children who attended the synagogue every day in the morning. I wore my good clothes when I went to the synagogue, I wore my clothes for holidays: trousers, shirt, blouse, a beret to cover my head. I wore a beret ever since I was a child, now that I grew older – I wear caps, hats.

There were 24 synagogues in Dorohoi. Most of them were large, roomy synagogues. The smallest of them would fit 40-50 men, and there was a second room for the women. But there were some synagogues that could fit 150-200 people. But all the synagogues were full on holidays. The synagogue I used to go to ever since I was a child was the Rendarilor Synagogue – but it no longer exists, this synagogue disappeared. In fact, most of those who attended this synagogue were merchants. Each trade, each guild had its own synagogue. For instance, there was the Shoemakers’ Synagogue, the Tailors’ Synagogue, the Carpenters’ Synagogue; cabmen and cart drivers had their own synagogue as well. That’s where I happened to go, to the Rendarilor Synagogue, for that’s where my grandfather went. He was no longer alive, but an uncle of mine was, one of my mother’s brothers – Elias Abramovici –, meaning my grandfather’s son, he went to that synagogue, too. And we, the boys, fell into the habit of going to our grandfather’s and our uncle’s synagogue.

The seats were bought by all the parishioners – everyone had their seat where they sat. The boys didn’t sit next to their father, for those were reserved seats, bought by each parishioner who paid a tax to the synagogue for the seat they occupied at the synagogue. For us, children, there were benches with tables where we sat. There was a separate balcony for women upstairs, and from the outside, you could only see their heads, their faces. The women listened to the prayers being read downstairs, but they had a sort of a rabbi woman who read in the balcony for the women the same prayer the rabbi read for the men. My aunt, my mother’s sister, the one who raised us, was very fanatical, she knew the prayers, and she was the one who read the prayer for the women on holidays.

My grandmother, who lived here, in Dorohoi, was very fanatical, and so was my aunt. On Friday evening, for instance, they set the table, lit the candles – before sitting down to eat, before entering the Sabbath, you had to light the candles. Grandmother used to light 3 and 5 candles – odd numbers. Sometimes she lit 3 candles, sometimes 5. There is also a short prayer that is recited when you light the candles. It is in Yiddish. And you must wear a kerchief to cover your head; you aren’t allowed to light the candles without covering your head. Both my aunt and my grandmother covered their head with a kerchief. After the prayer is over, the woman who is reciting the prayer must say “Ghit Soibas!” – “Shabbat Tov” in Hebrew, meaning “A good Saturday.” And after that, we sat down to eat. Sometimes, our grandmother invited us over. Not all four of us ate at our aunt’s. Two of us used to eat at our grandmother’s, two at our aunt’s – we pleased everybody that way.

They only cooked kosher food in our family. Hens were taken only to the hakham to be slaughtered. Pork never entered our house, God forbid. During the week, we ate the bread we bought at the bakery, for there were so many bakeries in Dorohoi – owned by Jews –, you couldn’t decide where to buy from. But it was mandatory to bake bread for Saturday, on Saturday you weren’t allowed to buy bread from the store, from the bakery. On Friday, even the poorest Jew baked “coilici” for Saturday. [Ed. note: Coilici is a variant for challah, similar to the word „kajlics“ used by some Hungarian speaking Jews in Romania. Both words have the origin of the Hungarian word „kalacs“.] My grandmother had a little oven, but my aunt had a stove instead – the kitchen range protruded and inside the wall there was the iron plate oven, and that’s where she baked the bread for Saturday, inside that iron plate oven. They baked coilici, regular bread, inside an elongated tray, either kneaded or as 3 or 4 rolls – my aunt, being younger, used to knead them. You didn’t place the whole coilici on the table, you sliced it. When you sat down to eat, the bread was already sliced and placed on the table in a special plate, and everyone took a slice from there to eat.

They served a vorspeis on Friday evening – fish, traditionally, if you had it, if not, chicken breast meatballs, beiligfish. The fish was served boiled, not fried, and portioned, divided into portions for each individual person. If it were a smaller variety of crucian carp, every person ate a small fish, but if it were a large fish – a carp – it was sliced, and everyone received a piece on his plate, with a little amount of gravy – the fish gravy was dense, it had a gelatin-like consistency, for it was served cold. And if you didn’t have fish, if you couldn’t buy it at the market, you made beiligfish, meatballs served as vorspeis. Then they served soup – only chicken soup, never beef soup. They boiled homemade noodles for the soup, you made them using a rolling pin and then sliced them. After the soup, we had chicken meat. We ate beef during the week, but there was this tradition of eating only poultry on the Sabbath. That’s my experience of it. And then stewed fruit at the end of the meal. In the old days, in my day, people used to eat stewed fruit made from carrots and chickpea. Plums also – more recently. Chickpea is a bean similar to pea seed, and you mixed that with a bit of rice and sweetened it, and that was the 4th course. And you had this ritual every Saturday afternoon. They didn’t make chulent. Chulent was prepared by the more fanatical families, relatives of rabbis, of hakhamim, but most people didn’t.

From Friday evening until Sunday morning, she didn’t light the fire anymore. But this despite the fact that there was someone – his name was Gheorgheol, Ghita, Gheorghe –, who went to Jewish homes and lit the fire for them on Saturdays, especially on the street where we lived, on Spiru Haret. My aunt and my grandmother lived close to each other, and we had a neighbor, a woman named Profira, who used to come over and lit the fire for both of them. My aunt, I recall, called her: “Prosira, Prosira, come on over!” She made the fire on Saturday in the afternoon, so that we could warm up the food – for the food was prepared on Friday, you didn’t cook on Saturdays. And during winter, either Gheorgheol or Profira came and made the fire to last us from Friday evening until the Sabbath was over.

At home, in the countryside, they observed tradition as well, my mother was a fanatic herself, oh my! She too baked bread, lit the candles on Friday evening. It is less frequent for women go to the synagogue on Saturday; they go to the synagogue mostly on holidays. And mother went to the synagogue only on holidays. But father went to the synagogue on Saturday in the morning – he closed the store on Saturdays and Sundays. There were 12 Jewish families in Dumbraveni, and they had their own synagogue.

There was a large, systematized mill in Dumbraveni, its owner was Jewish as well, and he put up a room for a synagogue there, on the mill’s premises, in an adjoining building. During the summer holiday, when I went to the countryside to see my parents, I went to that synagogue. It was nice – it had tables, chairs, an aron kodesh, an altar where they read the prayers, everything was fitted just as in a real synagogue. There was also a Holy Scroll – you couldn’t have a synagogue without a Torah.

The religious service was performed by one of the Jews living there, in the village, who knew Hebrew well. In fact, he was one of my father’s brothers, Nusan Meer. You couldn’t bring someone to perform for so few Jewish people – you had to pay him, and where would you get the money from? From the 12 parishioners living there? In Dorohoi, there were plenty of them. There were hakhamim, there were people who performed the religious service, people paid by the Community. The owner also fitted a small room for the fowl slaughterhouse, and the hakham from Botosani came there especially for the purpose of sacrificing the fowl for Saturday. And mother went there, the hakham sacrificed the fowl, she came home and plucked the feathers. But our traditions forbid scalding the fowl in order to remove the feathers, you must pluck them. She plucked the feathers, then lit a piece of paper and singed the fowl in order to get rid of the traces of feathers left on the skin. That’s the ritual.

We celebrated the holidays here, in Dorohoi, we didn’t go home. Many times on holidays mother would rush off to Dorohoi, so that she could be with us at my aunt’s, her sister’s. But she stayed there only for a day or two, and then she went home.

A cleanup of the house was performed before Passover, whitewashing, things like those, so that everything was kosher – as they said. “May it be kosher like User’s daughter” – there was a joke that ran like that. People also joked. You performed the “Faslam am Chametz” – meaning selling everything that had to do with flour. My aunt and my grandmother wrapped a wooden spoon containing a bit of flour, took it outside, and set it on fire. You say something in Yiddish – “Bahart breten khumetz. Far brananem khumetz” [Ed. Note: …] . Chametz is the Hebrew term, khumetz is the Yiddish one; “farbranen” means burning – the burning of the chametz.

People prepare matzah on Passover, it is made from matzah flour – people bake special cookies from matzah flour. You don’t use wheat flour during the 8 days of Passover, you aren’t allowed to do that, you don’t eat bread. The dishes made from meat are prepared in the same way as during the rest of the year: soup, meatballs, steaks, stews, everything, everything. But you do this without using the dishes and ingredients that aren’t allowed during Passover. Both my grandmother and my aunt had separate dishes for Passover… Oh my! If my mother, who lived in the countryside, knew she had to have separate dishes for Passover! Had you entered the poorest of homes, the home of the poorest handicraftsman, not having separate dishes for the Passover holiday was inconceivable. The poorest man, the poorest family!

As long as we lived with our parents at home, we performed the Seder ceremony. After we came to Dorohoi, we never went home to the countryside on Passover to do the “uprahnam Seder” – meaning that a child should ask his father questions, the father should answer them, that’s what “uprahnam Seder” means –, performing the reading, that is; for there is a special prayer that is read during the Seder. Uncle Elias had his own children so we didn’t go to his place on the Seder. We celebrated with our aunt.

My aunt prepared special food for Passover, everything kosher, with no exception. And she organized the Passover meal, but without the Pesach reading – as they said, the Seder Nacht. The food we ate was the same as throughout the year, but it was prepared in the kosher dishes for Passover. There is this tradition as well: the foods especially are no different from regular ones, yet the baked items are. For instance, on Passover you are only allowed to bake using matzah flour and potatoes. People bake small breads from grated potatoes, they make a pudding using matzah, but it is sweetened.

Chanukkah and Purim are simpler than Pesach. Baked foods are predominant on that occasion. There is a baked dish that is prepared especially for Purim, hamantashen, and there are other foods baked especially for Purim – I forget which. It is the same on Chanukkah [there are dishes baked especially for that occasion].

People lit candles on Chanukkah – for 8 successive days here, in galut, for only 7 successive days in Israel – using a special candelabrum and yellow candles. [Editor’ note: Chanukkah, also known as the Festival of Lights, is an eight-day Jewish holiday, which also commemorates the Macabbees’ uprising and the re-consecration of the Temple in Jerusalem. It is observed for eight nights, starting on the 25th day of Kislev according to the Hebrew calendar.] Jews aren’t allowed to light yellow candles on Friday evening, only white ones. For Chanukkah, however, all the Jews bought yellow candles. The Chanukkah candelabrum was utterly simple: a stand with 8 small holes, 8 holes for placing the candles, which you stuck into a candlestick. And on the first evening, for instance, you lit one candle, two candles on the second evening, and so on until the eighth evening when you lit all eight candles. And there is a separate candle [shammash], which is used to light the candles on Chanukkah. You don’t light them with matches. You lit this candle using matches, then you held this candle and said a bruha [broche - blessing], a prayer that is recited, and you used it to light the Chanukkah candles. When we lived at my aunt’s, it was us, the children, who lit the candles, but my aunt lit them as well.

When we were little, the boys and girls got together on Purim and went from house to house, as on Christmas caroling, as Romanians do on New Year’s Eve. On Purim, we sang and received sweets, money. There were special Purim songs, in Yiddish. For instance, they say: “Aghitam piramoula, vidaghei foulah, der bort ist berlong, des vart ist berkronk.” You said this by the window or they took you inside the house to sing on Purim. And here, in Dorohoi, just as we, Jewish boys, went with Christian boys on New Years’s and on St. Vasile, so on Purim: we took along Christian boys who went with us. They, poor things, couldn’t say the words or sing the songs, but received some sweets instead, or a coin – precisely, back then, when I was a child, there were coins with holes in the middle: 5 bani, 10 bani.

And just as Romanians sing “Plugusorul” on New Year’s Eve and masked people wander the streets – so on Purim we wore masks on our faces, so that people couldn’t recognize us. But I didn’t have a full outfit, I wore the clothes and the pants I usually wore. I put on something else as well – a domino, meaning a black robe – over my clothes, and the mask to cover my face. But they wore uniforms here. My former employer – where I learned my trade – had a special wardrobe to lend, the outfit for Caluti [Horses], for New Year’s Eve, for Capra [Goat], for everything, and he also had outfits he lent to children on Purim. And he received money in exchange for renting these outfits. But I didn’t rent an outfit. Where could I come up with the money to pay him? But on Caluti, on St. Vasile, on New Year’s Eve – those were specific outfits. He only didn’t have Calutul [the Horse], other than that, my former employer had the entire outfit. Someone else had the Horse, and the team – as it was called –, the gang of children borrowed a horse from that person. There was a separate outfit for Capra, for Calut, for all who wore bells, including a sort of small drum like a barrel with a tuft of hair attached to it, which sounded like the bellow of a bull when you pulled it… It was simpler on Purim. On Purim, you wore a mask across your face so that people couldn’t recognize you.

On the second day of Rosh Hashanah you went to a course of water – that was the custom, it was something traditional –, and you shook your pockets clean, you threw in the water everything you had in your pockets – meaning you cast away all the sins you committed during the year, you throw them into the water. People go taslich – meaning we are going there to shake our sins. In the morning, after the religious service was over at the synagogue, the Jews of Dorohoi went to do the taslich by the hundreds. We went at the town outskirts to the Jijia river, to a place they call Trestienii Bridge, and everyone shook their pockets clean there. [Editor’s note: The tashlich is an expression describing the symbolic casting away of sins. Devout Jews gather by a river and recite prescribed passages that speak of God’s willingness to forgive a repentant sinner.]

The Jewish bathhouse, the Community bathhouse was located across the street from where we lived, from my aunt’s place. It was customary for Jewish people to go to the Community bathhouse on Friday. We, the boys, went to the bathhouse on Friday as well. The bathhouse is gone, they built a block of flats where it used to be. There was a room with bathtubs, there was a room with steam – a separate one for men, a separate one for women. I mostly went to the room with steam, I didn’t go to the one with bathtubs.

They poured water so that it dripped, so that there was more steam. And those water drops burned you. You couldn’t stand the steam for long. But it was healthy, the steam was very healthy. And after you were exposed to the steam for a little while, your body burned a bit as a result of being exposed to the steam; if you wanted you could go into the other room and take a bath. There were no bathtubs in the steam room, but there were showers. That’s where I bathed, that’s where I lathered myself.

There was a mikveh as well, but I didn’t go there. The clerics used to go to the mikveh: rabbis, hakhamim – as it were, the men of God. The grandmother living here, in Dorohoi, was very fanatical, she went to the mikveh every week. So did my aunt – we found out – before we came to live with her, when her husband was still living. But young people were content to go there only once, on the occasion of getting married. For back then, when a young couple got married, they had to go the mikveh before getting married, it was obligatory.

You weren’t allowed to get married if you didn’t go to the mikveh. And I went to the mikveh only once, before getting married. You descended below the bathroom floor, there was a specially built pool you had to enter and pour water onto yourself there, inside the mikveh. And there was someone who read a prayer for you. For the brides, there was a woman who could read the prayers, and for the boys, it was the rabbi who took you into the water and read a religious prayer for you. You had to go into the water pool up to your neck and then come out.

The bar mitzvah is the ceremony of donning the tefillin, performed when you are 13. They taught us at the talmud torah, prepared us for the bar mitzvah, so that when we turned 13 we knew how to don the tefillin – you must spin that belt 7 times around your arm and 5 times around your finger, and you wear that when reading the siddur, the prayer book. It was mandatory for every single boy to go to the synagogue with his parents, bring sweets there, prepare a festive meal. I went with my aunt. She baked some sweets – sponge cake, ginger bread –, took them there, and offered the parishioners who were there a glass of wine, liqueur, something to drink – one couldn’t buy soft drinks in those days. The rabbi gave a speech in Yiddish inside the synagogue – there were rabbis who couldn’t speak a word of Romanian –, giving directions to the young man as to how to observe religion, “… for you are of age now, so you must fit into the ranks of grown-ups, observe the same ritual…”

I too keep my tefillin at home. I have the tallit which is worn on every holiday, on Saturdays, Fridays in the synagogue. But the tefillin – those things that are worn around the head and hand –, you wear that only during the week. You don’t wear them on holidays, you don’t wear them on Saturday. So I wore them only too rarely – for I didn’t go to the synagogue during the week, I didn’t have the time. I didn’t have this care, even when I was learning my trade, I didn’t go to the synagogue during the week. In my days, in my childhood, when I donned the tefillin, I had Frenkel as a rabbi. It was rabbi Frenkel who performed my religious wedding as well. 

Here, in Dorohoi, Christians and Jews got along very well. For instance, we, children, had Christian friends, they came over on Purim, on Chanukkah, and we went over on New Year’s Eve. It was a nice life together. It was only when the odious Horia Sima 2 and the legionary movement 3 came to power, then the war, Hitler, it was only when chauvinism, racism began – that was the end of it. “Death to the Jews” – that’s what they hollered but not all of them. Some instigators. They gave the legionaries pistols and there you had it, they ruled the country.

There were many legionaries 1 in Dorohoi. There were a few nests of legionaries. There were nests of legionaries everywhere, on every street. There was a nest of legionaries right on my street, on Spiru Haret St. Oh my, they performed drills, armed with automatic weapons, pistols – of course, we weren’t allowed to go out when they were marching in the street. We weren’t allowed to go out. Only 1 hour a day. Such a life… The green shirt and the slanting belt across it – that was their mandatory summer uniform. They wore some sort of helmet on their head. During winter, they wore a navy blue coat, it was like a great coat, like a cloak, but they still wore a slanting belt on top of it, and a weapon, an automatic pistol. You could sometimes see them wearing army-like khaki uniforms, but most of them wore navy blue uniforms. They organized marches, and they sang in the street. They had their legionary songs. There was a song that went: “The guaaaard, the Captain...,” “Long live the Guard/the Captain.” And I remember them, for I was a child then.

I don’t remember them having organized any special events here, in Dorohoi, I couldn’t say they have. I only remember this, that the legionaries and the head of Security 4 from the Police station, commissioner Mercur, entered the synagogue during a Jewish wedding. There was a chuppah in the synagogue for performing the religious ceremony. And as the chuppah was of a dark red color: “That is the Bolshevik flag.” And they arrested everyone in that synagogue attending the wedding – one of my brothers-in-law was among them –, they gathered them, took them to the police station, boarded them on a train and sent them to the Targu Jiu Labor Camp. There was a labor camp for political prisoners there, for communists. As it were… They convicted you for being a Communist without your being one. Who knew then what communist politics was, what Bolsheviks even were? For them, Bukovina 5, Bessarabia 6 especially was Bolshevik; they were on the border with the Russians, the Soviet Union. For my wife – she was a child of 10 – tells me that where she was taken in Transnistria, near the Bug river, there was a German occupation, and if the Germans heard you were from the Romanian Old Kingdom, they didn’t treat you the way they treated those who were from Bukovina – for they were considered to be Bolsheviks, all those who were from Bukovina and Bessarabia.

• During the War

The pogrom took place on July 1st, 1940. That’s when a part of the Romanian army who had been defeated on the Russian front had withdrawn here, at Herta [today, Gertsa, the Chernivtsi region, Ukraine], Chernivtsi. These were by then fragments of the army who hadn’t fallen on the front, a few companies of soldiers that had remained out of 2 regiments – part of regiment 8 vanatori, and another artillery regiment [Regiment 3 frontier guards and Regiment 8 artillery] –, which were retreating in this direction, towards the country. And there was a coincidence, the fact that a Jewish soldier who had fallen at Herta was being buried that day; he was killed by the Russians, and this is how he was shot: the Russians wanted to shoot the company’s leading officer, and this Jewish sergeant stepped in front of him in order to protect his captain, and the Russians shot them both with their automatic weapons.

The funeral of that Jewish soldier was under way in the Jewish cemetery that day, and the Romanian cemetery is located next to it, and the captain was being buried there. And as they were retreating on their way towards Suceava, and as the cemetery was by the side of the road towards Suceava, they saw the funeral, entered the Jewish cemetery, opened fire with their machine guns and killed all the people there, women, men… A group of 7 Jewish soldiers who had come from here, from Regiment 29 infantry, attended the funeral – who were stationed there, they weren’t sent to the front lines –, for captain Stino – I remember to this day – chose 7 Jewish soldiers who were to come to the cemetery to salute the soldier who had passed away. For that is the custom: when an officer, a soldier dies, a group of soldiers comes and salutes the soldier when he is buried. And? Do you think they bothered to see who was who? They took out their machine guns and shot these soldiers as well.

For that’s what they figured – that’s how the theory went: that in Herta, the Jews from Herta had allegedly fired at the Romanian army. That was a reason for what they did, let’s settle accounts and kill all the Jews attending the funeral. That was a pretext, which the commanding officer used in order to order the soldiers to enter the cemetery and shoot everybody on the spot.

But such was the weather that day, that it was raining heavily… And that’s what saved the city, for had it not been for this heavy downpour, the army wouldn’t have fled, wouldn’t have moved on, it would have stayed here and… For as they passed through Dorohoi with their automatic weapons loaded, they opened fire wherever they saw company signs bearing Jewish names… For instance, I worked as a dyer for Horowitz, and the company sign read Horowitz David. T

The army was passing right through there, the place where I worked back then, in 1940. But I was also lucky, for my employer had rented a room to an army officer – for he owned a larger building and had a room in the back, and he had rented the room to an officer. And this officer, on the day when the army retreated, placed a soldier in front of the house to guard it.

My lady employer, the old man and I placed pillows in the windows opening onto the street, for they said that bullets didn’t function against feathers or that feathers stopped them, what did I know… But the soldiers on guard duty, who was also armed, said: “No, no, no! Don’t shoot at this place, captain X is living here…” And the army kept moving forward and nobody fired at the workshop where I myself was at that particular moment.

But the 1941 pogrom from Iasi was a disaster, with the death train 7. If 50 people were shot here during the pogrom, in Iasi there were a few thousands – 10,000 or 12,000 Jews were on that train. Many years ago, my wife and I went and visited the cemeteries from Targu Ocna, Podul Iloaiei, and Targu Frumos, where - you should see it - there are rows of tombstones, rows of them. For this train travelled on a route from Iasi, Targu Ocna, Targu Frumos – back and forth, asphyxiating them.

They kept the people inside cattle cars, without air, without anything, and kept moving them forward. And, for instance, if they opened the cars’ doors in Targu Ocna, they got off the train in Targu Ocna those who were asphyxiated, who were lying on the floor, and the Community there had to take care of funeral arrangements. Others who were asphyxiated by the time the train reached Targu Frumos were taken off the train in Targu Frumos. Then the train started the journey back. That’s how they kept moving that train until they asphyxiated everybody.

When the legionaries came to power, in 1940 [Ed. note: Mr. Simon Meer is referring here to the period during the Antonescu regime], we were all forced to wear the yellow star 8. And if you were caught not wearing the star on your chest, they took you to the police station and beat you up, tortured you, kept you at the police station for several days and nights and beat you. Everyone manufactured their yellow star as best they could – the villains didn’t specify any particular dimensions for the yellow star. For there were so many tailors in Dorohoi, they manufactured them.

Everyone cut a piece of cloth to measure, placed it on a piece of cardboard – so that it had the 6 points –; if the material was darker in color, they sewed an additional yellow rim, so that it was clear it was a star. For if you used only a darker shade of cloth, on a dark item of clothing, you couldn’t notice the star, so you had to use a lighter shade of yellow, so that it caught the villains’, the legionaries’ eyes, so they could see it was a six-pointed star. We wore the yellow star for over a year, until we were deported.  

And we were allowed to go out only for one hour a day, to go to the market or do some shopping. For instance, I went to the workshop. I sneaked through certain places lest a guard should find me. And I kept the star in my pocket, I wasn’t wearing it – well, I was more of a punk, as children are. But older people, those who traded, the women who went to the market – they had to wear the star, otherwise they couldn’t enter the market if they didn’t wear the yellow star, or if they wanted to go to a store to do some shopping, anything. If the police caught you – an order had been issued: you were to be brought to the police station and administered a beating.

When the legionaries came to power, they drove away the Jews from the countryside 9, so in 1940 my parents came to Dorohoi as well. We, the children, weren’t at home when the Jews were evacuated from every village. But I will not forget, our father told us the story, that the peasants from where they lived, the village of Salageni in the locality of Dumbraveni, came to him, and that’s what they said: “Mr. Frochi, you don’t move from here. Should someone lay a finger on you, we’ll cut their throat.” Hundreds of people living in the village gathered around my parents’ house. But in the end my parents were scared, and they finally came to Dorohoi.

The villagers loved my father very much. I’ll give you an example. “I’m going to Bucecea, I want to buy two calves. Mr. Frochi, lend me some money.” “Yes, my good man, come over and I’ll give it to you.” Without asking for any security in return. That’s how much my father trusted them, he lent them money, and people returned the money they borrowed from him. That’s how good life was, until the legionaries came to power.

My parents rented a room in Dorohoi, and from here they left with us to Transnistria 10 on November 11, 1941 [Ed. note: On June 21, 1941, the Circular order no. 4147 was issued, by means of which the Interior Ministry communicated the disposition of the Head of state regarding the evacuation of Jews from the villages located between the rivers Siret and Prut to the concentration camp in Targu Jiu and neighboring villages. All Jewish families from the rest of the country were to be evacuated with the necessary livelihood means, to urban localities across the county.

The families that were evacuated weren’t allowed to return to the localities they left from anymore. The evacuation of Jews living in Dorohoi took place on November 11 and 12, 1941]. Dorohoi belonged to the Romanian Old Kingdom, the Old Kingdom of Moldavia, it wasn’t a part of Bukovina 5. But I don’t know what happened and they mixed us with those from Bukovina, they had included us to the lot from Bukovina, and they deported us to Transnistria together with those from Chernivtsi, Suceava, the whole Bukovina. And we got the short straw on that. We didn’t even have to be deported. I don’t know where this world of good originated. It was an order from high up, from Antonescu 11.

And when the deportation began, we, my parents, my aunt, us, packed everything, we packed everything into fresh bales, took a cart and went to the train station. There was a commission at the train station – representatives from the Prefecture, the Bank, the Police – they checked us to see if we had any jewelry, this, that, gold on us, what we had in our luggage – we had to declare what we had in our luggage –, and they boarded us on train cars. Our luggage and my aunt’s luggage alone filled almost half a train car. And all the bales were left behind in the train cars.

When we reached Otaci [Atachi], on the bank of the river Dniester, at 12 in the night, the army made us get off the train cars and told us: “Don’t take anything, you will come in the morning to pick up your luggage!” Were you there? As if we ever saw our luggage again! I remember that when they deported us, my mother wrapped the sewing head of the sewing machine in an eiderdown together with a pillow and baled it. But what was the use, since all our luggage was left behind on the train that night and we never saw it again. God forbid! I don’t even want to remember.

And we stayed in Otaci [Atachi] for one night in a derelict building, with no roof, with no windows – and it was cold by then –, we stayed there crammed, shivering. They crammed thousands of people in there, we spent the entire night standing on our feet, and in the morning, under escort – army troops, gendarmes –, they took us on the bank of the river Dniester – Otaci [Atachi] was located right on the bank of the river Dniester. The bridge, needed for crossing the Dniester, was destroyed by now, for the front had moved forward. We crossed the Dniester on ferries. Many of the older people, poor souls, even fell in the Dniester, that’s how crowded we were.

When we crossed the Dniester, we came upon the town of Moghilev 12 on the other bank of the river – a large town. In Moghilev, they lodged us in a former army building, where we stayed for several days and nights. There, as long as we stayed in Moghilev in the army building, we were guarded by the Romanian army, and peasants came and brought us some bread, this, that, and we, children, would sneak out to get things – I was 15, I considered myself to be still a child.

They received orders to take from there to Bug. Farther still. They made us fall into a column and we walked on, day and night. The elderly who couldn’t walk anymore sat down by the side of the road, near the ditch by the side of the road; they shot them with their machine guns right there on the spot. What difference did it make? You think they cared about a human being back then? They didn’t! When we reached a village after nightfall, if we happened to reach a village by nightfall, they dumped us in a kolkhoz 13, so we spent the night there, in the stables, together with the cattle.

When we arrived in November, we found there the Jews from Bukovina, Bessarabia – the deportations of those from Bukovina, Bessarabia had already taken place. And they were taken even across the river Bug. They took very many people from Bukovina, entire trains of people, on the other side, across the river Bug. The conditions for those who were taken across the river Bug were terrible. For instance, they were working on a bridge across the river Bug, and there is a very large lake there, and the Germans threw many Jews inside the lake, leaving them to drown in the water. We had nothing to do with the German army, but that territory was controlled by the Germans.

They left us somewhere before reaching the river Bug. They left some of us behind, through various localities we passed through. For instance, out of that file of so many thousands of people, 500 Jews remained in Sargorod [Shargorod], among whom was my family as well. Many remained in Moghilev, too. In Sargorod [Shargorod] they put us in abandoned houses, with no roofs, destroyed by the battles on the front – for the front had been there once –, and that’s how we passed the winter, with no windows or roof.

We were around 4-5 families living together in a large room; we stayed on the floor, with straws scattered around in the dirt. Typhus broke out, along with lice – and these killed people by the thousands. You just saw it in the morning the following day… There were carts provided by the Town Hall of Sargorod [Shargorod] which carried the dead, the corpses. Just as they did in Dorohoi in the old days with the dogs they collected from the streets, which were thrown somewhere in a dried up well, that’s how they collected the corpses from the houses in Shargorod, and took them to the cemetery, and dumped them in a mass grave. My parents themselves are lying there, together with approximately over 200 dead bodies, dumped there. We arrived there in November, and they died during the first winter because of the filth and hunger, in January-February 1942. My mother was the first to die, followed shortly afterwards by my father.

The first winter [the winter of 1941-1942] was terrible. People died then by the thousands. Because of the typhus, the filth, the hunger… Where could one get food? I, who was a punk of 15, went begging during the first winter. The army was there, guarding us to make sure we didn’t leave the city, but we, children, used to sneak out, slip by without being seen by the sentinels, and went into the villages now and then. You think I didn’t get caught? There were around 5 of us, 5 boys walking across a field, we were about to enter the village.

The field was supervised by the army there – they were called agricultural soldiers. And wouldn’t you know it, a soldier who was carrying a weapon stops us: “Hey, what are you doing here?” “Well, we were going here, to beg for alms – a loaf of bread, some polenta…” “Where are you from?” “From this place, from that place,…” In Sargorod [Shargorod], there were people from Chernivtsi, and from Suceava, from all cities in Bukovina. We grouped together and went begging for alms together. I said: “I’m from Dorohoi.” When that soldier heard the name of Dorohoi being mentioned… “Hey, I’m from Dorohoi too. I’m from Havarda – did you hear of…” [Ed. note: Mr. Meer is probably referring to Havarna. Havarna is located 22 km north-east of Dorohoi.] Did I know then where it was, where Havarda was? I didn’t know the villages to know which one Havarda was. And he was a good lad, he had a loaf of bread in his kitbag, he took the bread and gave it to me: “Here, you have a loaf of bread, you eat it!” Well, meeting such a person was a rare thing, it was a rare thing.

Afterwards, we – 500 Jews from Dorohoi – were taken from Sargorod [Shargorod] and sent to Caposterna – it was a village close to Shargorod. [Today, Kopystirin, Ukraine, it is located approximately 15 km north of Shargorod]. There, they put us in some stables for livestock again, for pigs; it was part of a kolkhoz located at the outskirts of a forest. And what do you think, this Jew, a certain Zaharia Pitaru, a small shoemaker who had more guts – I remember it to this day –, said: “If they shoot me, they shoot me.” For what do you reckon, were you allowed to leave the camp – the ghetto, as they say –, and go as you pleased? And he went to Moghilev, where the gendarmes legion was, the headquarters for the entire Moghilev region.

He went there, poor soul, and he made it, he managed to find the commanding officer’s aide-de-camp, major Orasanu. On hearing they put us in stables during the summer [it was the summer of 1942] – which meant we would have all melted away and died there, major Orasanu took this Zaharia Pitaru and said: “Get in the car and come with me!” The major came to Caposterna, called the gendarmes station – for there was a gendarmes station there –, and ordered them: “You will take everyone out of here and put them inside the peasants’ houses at once!” And we were very fortunate that the Ukrainian peasants took us in and we spent the winter in their homes.

The local Jews weren’t there. Many of them had been taken away, too, and shot. The front had already passed through there, the Germans had been there. The things the Germans did there as well – they destroyed the kolkhozes, confiscated the livestock belonging to the people, to the peasants. It was a disaster! Had we been there when the German occupation was present, all of us would have been shot. But as things were, still under Romanian occupation – we were saved.

And each of us went begging for alms in the village now and then, or we found some work here and there. There were handicraftsmen there as well – tailors, shoemakers… They went to people’s houses and sewed this and that, patched a pair of shoes or boots. Those of us – my oldest brother and I –, who hadn’t learned a trade, started gluing galoshes. For the Ukrainian peasants from those parts wore boots made from felt and galoshes. And the galoshes used to tear. I remember, we took a piece of sheet iron, drilled a hole in it, and turned it into some sort of rasp for scraping rubber, and we went to people’s homes and said: “Slusaite!” – Listen! – “Davai la taim vad (vab, vag?) galosii!” – “Give us your galoshes to glue them!” And they brought the torn galoshes and we repaired them, either with rubber bands, or with rubber, or with a piece of sole. We rasped the rubber, applied a solution to it – we had a solution made from gasoline and crepe rubber – and it glued them together, it adhered – rubber on rubber. And they gave us food. And that’s what got us through the winter.

But as soon as the winter was over, they grabbed those of us who were sturdier, and took us to do forced labor. During the first year we worked on a construction site on the Murafa – Erosinka road. These 2 cities, Murafa and Erosinka, were around 20 km apart, that’s where we worked in the beginning, laying stone. We were over 1000 Jews doing forced labor at this road. I was taken from this construction site to another one, at the peat extraction in Tulcin [Ed. note: Today, Tul’cin, Ukraine, east of Shargorod]. Those were the 2 places where I worked. I spent the whole summer of 1943 in Tulcin, until September, working on the peat extraction site, extracting peat.  There was a site there from where the peat was extracted, and we were 2000 Jews on that site.

We dug, always found water in the ground, there were water pumps that extracted the water from the ground, and we carried on digging using special spades and extracted peat out of the ground. And we slept in a sovkhoz 15, in stables for livestock, there were bunks with straws on them. Filthy, believe you me… There was a canteen at that peat bog, that’s where we ate. This canteen was run by Ukrainian employees, men and women. And we came there to eat, they gave us rations. Horse meat was a delicacy we ate at the construction site. Horse meat – that’s what they gave us as food. They made all sorts of dishes from horse meat. They only slaughtered horses there. Sometimes, on the odd Sunday, they would bring us a loaf of bread, so that we could make it from one day to the next.

And I worked in Tulcin until September 1943, when the front lines were broken at Stalingrad 16. Had the front not been broken at Stalingrad, none of us would have returned home. They had received an order from Bucharest to prepare us – all the Jews up to the river Bug, meaning the territory that belonged to the Romanians – to get us ready to be repatriated. They released us from the construction site, and we returned to Caposterna from Tulcin, from where they took us. My eldest brother returned there, too. He had been sent elsewhere – I don’t remember anymore where he was taken. My aunt and the 2 younger brothers stayed in Caposterna, and we found them still there when we returned.

And carts, and automobiles were made available for us, and they took us to Shargorod, where they put us in train cars. Still cattle cars, not passenger cars. We were content. But we didn’t believe we would return home anymore. I kept saying to myself: “This is our doom! This is the end!” Especially there, at that peat bog, I remember there was an engineer, his name was Salveciu – he frightened everyone on the extraction site. All those who happened to fall ill, or not be able to carry on working anymore, he saw to it that they drowned in those bogs where the peat was extracted. What, you think they cared about human lives there?

And we came to Moghilev. We arrived in Moghilev in December 1943. The Federation in Bucharest had by then already sent aid for us in Moghilev: food, clothing. They gave us clothes to wear. We were all naked. I remember I wore a pair of pants made from burlap. They loaded us on special trains, and we came by train from Moghilev to Dorohoi. There was an entire train of people from Dorohoi alone. They had formed trains in Moghilev, when they put us on the trains, based on routes, destinations. We left there on December 22 or 23, for on December 24-25 – on the first day of Christmas – we were in the Dorohoi train station.

• After the War

When we arrived in the train station in Dorohoi, delousing was under way – they had brought there some oven-like booths so they could put all your clothes inside the ovens, so that you didn’t carry any lice. They didn’t give you another set of clothes, you had to delouse the clothes you were wearing, put them back on, and you were on your way.

There was also a bath in the Dorohoi train station where we all washed, and returned to my aunt’s house. My aunt’s house didn’t have any windows; it didn’t have anything left, as if it were a devastated house. Furniture?! We lay on the floor. With time, we started building, gathering things. The Federation also sent us some blankets, and bed linen, which were given to us. They helped us around here when we returned, for what we found were empty houses: neither anything to put on your bed, nor anything to cover yourself with.

A few years later, my brothers left to Israel 17. Iancu and Moise left in 1947, and Hanina and the aunt who brought us up left in 1951. Hanina and Iancu lived in Rehovot, and Moise lives in Rishon LeZion. All three of them got married in Israel, all of them have children. I don’t remember too well the names of their wives and children anymore. That’s all I remember, that Hanina got married in 1959, his wife’s name is Rachel, and they have 4 children. Iancu has 3 daughters – the name of the youngest is Sarola – and 2 sons –

Slomo is the eldest of them. I believe Moise has 2 daughters and a son – 3 children. The name of Moise’s wife is Hermina – she is a nurse. Two of my three brothers living in Israel died. Iancu and Hanina – dead. My eldest brother had become an assistant manager of Michoroth Ierushalaim, a drinking water supply station, which supplied water to the entire Jerusalem region.

When I was in Israel in 1969, he also had a fowl farm. He sold the eggs, he didn’t sell the fowl. He died around 8-9 years ago [in 1996-1997] in a car accident. A car ran over him and he hurt his head against the street curb. Hanina was an administrative manager at a faculty of agronomy. The younger one died 2 years ago, in 2004. I still have Moise. Look, I forgot what he did for a living. But nonetheless, he is ill now, retired.

I didn’t leave. I didn’t want to go to Israel. My three brothers left, I stayed here. I was recruited in the army in 1949 and had to serve my military service. But they had issued an order: for those who had been deported, the forced labor they had performed during the deportation was to be counted as years of military service. And they counted my two years of deportation as my military service. And I managed to escape going to the army – the deportation saved me.

After the war, I was present at every single ball, every single party. Back in the days when I was a young man – prior to 1950 –, we had a reunion on every Saturday here in Dorohoi at the Jewish School, and on Sundays we had parties in the City Park. I had two friends, Lupu, he passed away, and Nathan Pitaru – Nahman in Yiddish and Nathan in Romanian –, he is still alive, living in Israel. We went together. Without fail… There was a large hall at the Jewish School, and that’s where they organized the reunions – dancing – every Saturday evening. There was an orchestra here, with Jewish musicians, they played every instrument. But there were many orchestras in Dorohoi!

I don’t remember any Communists living in Dorohoi before World War II. There weren’t any. Here, we became communists after the Romanian Communist Party was founded. Everyone was enlisting – some were enlisting in order to get jobs, in order to get better jobs. For instance, from 1946 until 1948 I was the president of the workers’ union, of the apprentices in the clothing-footwear sector. We had a youth syndicate – mostly young people, 400-500 young people –, all the apprentices working as shoemakers, barbers, tailors, you name it… all other trades were represented in the syndicate, and I was its president. But what do you think? Was I a communist? I was the president of the syndicate. And I held that position from 1946 until 1948, I was its president, I founded the syndicate – for the syndicate was formerly run by the handicraftsmen, and it wasn’t allowed.

How now, you, the handicraftsman, who exploit the apprentice and the worker, you are a syndicate member? And they split, and the separate syndicate of workers in the clothing sector was founded, and they grabbed me – I was more energetic, more combative, both in my trade, and as a youth –, they slapped me with the position of president. And I held that position until 1948, when I merged the clothing syndicate with the foods syndicate, and it became the Foods Mixed Syndicate, whose president was honorary, being kept in the production line, but they dismissed me from my job and appointed me the syndicate’s secretary, paid by the syndicate. And I worked as a secretary of the syndicate until 1951, when they sent me to Iasi to a party training school.

They saw I was more loquacious, more energetic, and they said: “Come, now, for this is an employee with a future, let’s lift him, send him to a party training school, make use of him.” That training lasted 6 months. There were 3-moths, 6-months, 1-year training sessions, and then there was the Stefan Gheorghiu University, which lasted 4 years – the Party University. And when I finished my training period, I thought I would return to the syndicate in Dorohoi. No [, that’s not what happened]. I probably received a good recommendation from the party school, and they took me, they sent me to the Botosani Party Region. It was organized – agrarian department, economics department, educational department. The Party structure had people running departments, sectors, and they put me in the economics department, and made me head of the Planning-Finances-Commerce-Cooperation sector – meaning I had to control the administrative instruments in that sector.

I lived in Botosani for 1 year. They forced me to move, but my wife didn’t want to move, for her parents were living here, in Dorohoi, and I finally succeeded – those from Botosani didn’t want to let me go –, and I returned to Dorohoi, at the Party District Organization, and they appointed me instructor in charge of educational-cultural matters. I supervised the educational and cultural sectors: schools, city and village mayors, I dealt with school principals, with party secretaries from schools, I had to be present myself, see how the party strategy was being enforced in the educational system; in addition, in the field of culture, there were the houses of culture, cultural homes in the villages, where I had to offer guidance and control. I filled this position until 1962.

In 1962, it first secretary from here, who wanted to be a wise guy, and he excluded me from dawned on some taking part in any party activities on the grounds that I have brothers living in Israel. As if I had concealed that! I wrote in my autobiography from the very beginning, that two of my brothers left in 1947 and the third left with my aunt in 1951. I didn’t conceal anything. As if they didn’t know until then that I had brothers living in the state of Israel! They thought I might disseminate some of the ideas of bourgeois theory here, in the educational and cultural systems, and they dismissed me from the Party structure and appointed me president of the Town’s Co-operative, which was a commercial facility.

Back then, city commerce was based on a co-operative system, the co-operative for consumption, and I was the president of the Town’s Co-operative. But I remained a member of the communist party, even until the Revolution, that’s when my Party membership card became history. And I worked there for 6 years in the commercial sector, as the co-operative’s president. Afterwards, the Handicrafts Co-operative Viitorul [the Future] was founded – all handicraftsmen in the town were members of this co-operative – and I was appointed there as vice-president; I worked there for 19 years, until my retirement.

I retired in 1987, as soon as I turned 60. I didn’t want to stay there, at the co-operative, an hour more than I had to. In January 1987 I turned 60, in January I filed my request to be dismissed from duty. The president was a woman – she was a very considerate woman, her name was Marcela Carp –, she wept asking me not to leave, to stay on: “Comrade Meer, why? Is someone dismissing you from your job? Why shouldn’t you stay here for longer, look, we work together, you are helping me…” And I said: “No, I’ve had enough!” I had been employed in the workforce for 46 years by then. I didn’t want any of it anymore. I had worked long enough to be eligible for retirement, I had my work registration certificate, I had everything, and I retired in 1987, “Goodbye!” No sooner did I turn 60, I retired.

I got married in 1950. My wife, Ietti Meer – her maiden name was Ciubotaru – was born in 1931 in Dorohoi. My wife’s parents were Avram and Liba Ciubotaru. My father-in-law was born in the village of Radauti-Prut, past Darabani. [Ed. Note: Radauti-Prut is located 56 km north-east of Dorohoi.] That’s where he grew up, that’s where he comes from, from the bank of the river Prut. She is from Dorohoi, a daughter of the city of Dorohoi. They lived here, in Dorohoi. He was a shoemaker, and she was a seamstress. During her youth, she and my mother were friends, for, after all, my mother is from these parts, she hails from Dorohoi. They were deported too, and they returned from Transnistria. After the war, my father-in-law continued to work as a shoemaker, and his wife didn’t work, she was a housewife. My parents-in-law lived on Spiru Haret St. as well, a bit farther up the street, near the street corner. Both of them died murdered. Gypsies broke into their house late at night; the old woman died beaten in 1988, and 4 years later, in 1992, the gypsies killed the old man in his home. For they received aid from the Jewish Community in Dorohoi, they were assisted by the Community, and the Gypsies thought the Community was giving them money. What money? They gave them food and medicine on a monthly basis.

They had three children: a daughter, who died recently, a son, who is dead, too, and my wife. My wife’s sister was the eldest – Betty. She died recently, these days [in August 2006]. She was 82 when she died – she and my wife were born 7 years apart. They lived in Suceava; her husband, Saul – Soil – Pietraru, was the president of the Jewish Community in Suceava. Ficu Pietraru is their son, he lives in Iasi, he is an engineer and I believe he might have retired recently [August 2006]. My wife’s brother, Sumer Ciubotaru – Sumar –, was 2 years older than my wife [he was born in Dorohoi in 1929]. He lived in Suceava, but he died many years ago. He retired in 1962 and died a month or two later. His wife, Tony, left to Israel and she too passed away; she has an only daughter who is living in Israel.

My wife and her parents were deported, too – they were taken to Tivriv, on the river Bug –, but they all returned together. She graduated 4 grades of primary school. She didn’t graduate 4th grade in 1941 because of the deportation. In 1943, when she returned home, she graduated 4th grade, then she went and learned a tailor’s trade. She was apprenticed, she worked here for an employer – her employer was a cousin of hers, Dora Pietraru. My wife doesn’t receive a pension, for she worked for few years, she didn’t work anymore after we got married.

I didn’t organize my religious wedding at the synagogue, on account of the fact that I was an activist; instead, I organized the ceremony at my parents-in-law’s, surreptitiously, so no one would find out about it. The parnusa [parnose], as they say in Yiddish, meaning the job, making a living, the position, the work made you do all these things secretly. I invited my close relatives, the rabbi, we placed the chuppah inside the room, we circled around it. We performed the entire ritual, by the book. The bride and the groom stand under the chuppah, the rabbi starts to read the religious text, which is in Hebrew, and then, together with the close relatives, you turn 7 times under the chuppah, and while you do that, the rabbi recites the prayers. At the end, the rabbi takes a glass wrapped in a napkin, places it on the floor for me to break it. The rabbi said: “Step hard on it!” And I did, I broke it, and the broken glass remained inside that napkin. And you have to keep that broken glass all your life. I wonder why myself, but you have to keep it. And I kept it for a while, but I no longer have it. It’s because after I got married I kept moving here, there, and you lose things.

After the religious ceremony was performed, we went to a saloon for the party – back then, parties were organized in a hall inside the house of culture, that’s where we organized the wedding, the party –, where we had… oh my, countless guests, and no joke about it! For the chuppah ceremony, when we took the chuppah to my parents-in-law’s place, only close relatives attended, but we had guests from all over the city at the saloon party. There were around 150 people. And do you know what people gave as wedding presents back then? Enameled dishes. I got married in 1950, and I still have, to this day, pots and pans from my wedding. Since we had so many guests… My wife was actually telling me the other day: “Look, Simon. I still have this pan, and we received it on our engagement.” For we also had an engagement prior to this, and my parents-in-law’s neighbors brought gifts. And they would bring a pan, or a pot, too. We organized the engagement ceremony in the family, too, and we had the rabbi come over. For the engagement ceremony, he only holds a speech, in Yiddish, not in Hebrew, so that all present may understand. At the wedding, we received as a present from a group of people a metal stove complete with oven, kitchen range, as they made them in the old days, with wood as fuel.

After I got married, I went to the synagogue every now and then – still at the same synagogue where I used to go with my uncle, Rendarilor Synagogue. I went to the synagogue until 1950-1951. As long as I was a member of the U.T.C. [Uniunea Tinerilor Comunisti, the Union of Communist Youth], I kept going to the synagogue, I used to sneak in, but then, when I became a party activist, that was it, I no longer went to the synagogue. I was afraid.

But instead, I observed tradition in my home. I observed tradition, but my wife is really fanatic, born into a family that was also fanatic. We observed all holidays at home. We didn’t work on holidays; we prepared special food, which is prepared on holidays. Saturdays were Saturdays. On Friday evening, my wife lit the candles. I worked for the party, and on Friday evening she lit the candles at home. One Friday evening, the wives of two activists decided to catch her in the act. They went to my wife without my knowledge in order to catch her lighting the candles. But when she lit the candles, she latched the door, drew the curtains, and no matter who might have knocked on the door, she wouldn’t open. And then, when they met, those two women told her: “Look, we came to see you on Friday evening.” But she said: “Well, I was visiting a neighbor.” They didn’t tell her they had come bent on catching her lighting the candles.

She still lights the candles on Friday evening to this day, the Sabbath is the Sabbath, and holidays are holidays, with no exceptions… She says: “Look, Yom Kippur is coming, we will fast!” In my home, we don’t cook on Saturday to this day. My wife observes the ritual. Oh my… God is always on her lips. She says: “I have faith.” She says” “I went to undergo surgery armed with my faith in God, believing that God will help me. And look, God helped me with my first surgery in 2002, and with my second surgery in 2003. That’s the only reason why God saved me in the face of such surgery, the fact that I observed and observe tradition.” Could I tell her otherwise?

She separates meat from milk; to this day my wife still has separate dishes for meat and milk. She has separate dishes for Passover. I keep them in the closet, somewhere high up on a shelf, all wrapped up, you know: cutlery, pots, pans, plates, forks, knives, everything. A day or two before Passover, we take them down from that shelf high up – I climb to get them, naturally, she can’t do it. I take them down, she scalds them, washes them for the Passover holidays. When Passover is over she scalds them, washes them, boils them, wraps them up and then we store them.

I didn’t organize the Seder at home, but my wife and I attended the Seder organized at the Jewish Community in Dorohoi on many occasions. They organized it at the Community headquarters where the Community canteen was, too. The Community prepared special food for Passover and the rabbi came there, recited the appropriate prayer, he performed the service right inside the canteen – the Community canteen had a large hall. And anyone who wanted could attend. We went there because we didn’t have our parents here, so we went to the Community. This was some time ago, decades ago. They didn’t organize it for quite some time, now. When Rolick was at the Community, the Seder was organized at the canteen every year. Elias Rolick was the secretary of the Jewish Community in Dorohoi, but he was a very good organizer, very active. The president was Lozneanu, a lawyer, but the president had more of an honorary role, Rolick was the one doing the work. After he left to Israel, no Seder took place at the Community anymore, nothing organized. I can’t remember what year it was when he left, in any case, it was before the Revolution 18. Rolick was no longer here in 1989, he had left. Poor man, he died in Israel.

In the old days, when I was a child, there were 3 rabbis and around 4 or 5 hakhamim in Dorohoi. And in the end, eventually, after 1950, let us say, there was just one rabbi left – rabbi Frenkel – in the entire town of Dorohoi. But there weren’t too many Jews left, either – if around 10,000 of us left Dorohoi, only around 4,500 of us returned from Transnistria. And the aliyah to Israel had started, from 1947 until 1950 – and people left, believe you me. To the effect that there were at the most 100 people, persons still living in Dorohoi by then, so that there was only one rabbi left until 15 years ago. Lately, after Frenkel, there was Wasserman here, in Dorohoi, for almost 25 years. And for the past 15 years there was no rabbi here in Dorohoi anymore. Nowadays, even the Federation receives rabbis who are detached from Israel, for there aren’t any left here, in Romania. There was another rabbi in Timisoara, he passed away. There is no other rabbi in our country. A hakham used to come to Dorohoi from Bucharest in recent years, as long as I was president. Bruckmeyer came here before holidays to slaughter fowls for those who wanted. Only on high holidays, that was all. He could barely manage it, for he had so many cities to go to – there were 2-3 hakhamim in the entire country.

During the period when I worked for the party – 11 years –, I couldn’t go to the synagogue. Despite the fact that holidays were observed in my home. I returned to prayer when I left party work, in 1962. That’s when I started going to the synagogue again.

There is one functioning synagogue – the Great Synagogue of the city, which is named after the last rabbi of Dorohoi, rabbi Wasserman. There is a small square near the Great Synagogue, it was called Piata Unirii [Union Square], and the City Hall changed the square’s name into Rabbi Wasserman Square. And they even built an obelisk at the square’s entrance, representing rabbi Wasserman. There used to be synagogues all around that small square – there were 6 synagogues there. Nowadays, only two of them still exist, on one of the square’s sides: one that is functioning and one that is to be demolished. There is a derelict synagogue near the Great Synagogue, only the wall is still standing, that is all. Rendarilor Synagogue was located there, too; that’s where I went, but it stopped working long ago. It was demolished, and the city’s heating station is located there now – furnaces, engines used for providing heat to the city.

And nowadays we go to the Great Synagoue. And considering how many men are still left today… [a synagogue is sufficient]. 9-10 men attend the synagogue, out of the 36 parishioners still living in Dorohoi. The rest are ill and most of them are women, widows, unmarried women. Nowadays, we don’t go to the synagogue during the week, for no one can. We are content to gather there on Friday evening, on Saturday, 7-8 men; we have someone who performs the religious service, reads by the altar, and everyone has a book before them, at the table and repeats after the man who performs the service. There are books, siddurim – the book is called siddur –, which list everything that is performed at the synagogue: what to read in the morning, in the evening, when to sit, when to stand. On Rosh Hashanah, we come to the synagogue during the first 2 days, we come to the synagogue in the morning on that occasion, and the service lasts until 12-13 o’clock. And then there’s Yom Kippur – the Great Day, a day of fasting. On that occasion, we come to the synagogue in the evening. And starting from that evening until the following day in the evening, when the stars appear in the sky – we fast. Everyone fasts, even children above the age of 13 – for after the initial celebration of their coming of age, both boys and girls had to observe the ritual of all holidays.

Even if you don’t go to the synagogue, holidays are observed at home. For instance, autumn is coming, and Rosh Hashanah with it, and Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Hamisha Asar, then Purim, Pesach, Shavuot – Great Sunday –, all these holidays are observed here, in Dorohoi. Let me tell you that the ritual has been preserved here. I don’t know about other cities, I couldn’t say, but in Dorohoi, at least, I noticed that people observe religion.

I only have two sons. The eldest, Fabian, was born in 1951, and the youngest, Sorin, 6 years later, in 1957. Both of them attended the talmud torah. Could it have been otherwise? It couldn’t have. Especially since my wife is very fanatic. The youngest attended for 2 years, the eldest, if I’m not mistaken, for 3 years. But normally you attended for 2 years, before going to primary school. For once they started going to school when they turned 7, that was the end of the talmud torah. However, the Jewish school didn’t exist anymore, they attended the Romanian school. But nevertheless, there were a few Jews here who tried their hand at teaching and went to schools, taught Hebrew classes – there were classes for teaching the Hebrew language. For instance, my sons had special Hebrew classes at the Romanian school. They allowed it. I also organized their bar mitzvah at the synagogue. You had to prepare a meal there, an Onech Sabat was organized. You prepared gelatinized fish at home, and on Saturday you took food at the synagogue: fish, bread, drinks, wine, some brandy, and sweets. My eldest son graduated the Faculty of Constructions, the youngest graduated the Faculty of Mechanics. After they graduated the university, they served a military service of 6 months. Fabian served in Constanta, and Sorin as far away as Targu-Mures, in a tank division.

My eldest son is living in Iasi. His wife, Reli, is Jewish. Her parents are living in Iasi. Her father, David Rotenstein, works as an accountant at the canteen of the Jewish Community in Iasi. And her mother, Adela, is a housewife. They met during college. But in fact, my son was in a relationship with another girl, from Galati, also during college. And someone came to him – someone from her family –, they got him: “Look, Fabian, I have a good girl for you.” And they met, and he left that girl from Galati, and began seeing this one. They got married in Iasi in 1979, the religious wedding was performed at the synagogue, and the wedding party took place in a restaurant. When my son got married, there was no rabbi in Iasi anymore, and the rabbi from the Federation came to perform the religious ceremony.

My son is a construction engineer, and he works for the Water Supply Industrial Unit in Iasi. Ever since he came to Iasi, he has had the same job. For he initially worked in Calarasi – he built the Iron and Steel Plant in Calarasi. And I went there and brought him here, to Iasi, for his damsel was living in Iasi and she didn’t want to live in Calarasi. In any case, it took some convincing to get him to come to Iasi. His wife studied chemistry, she worked as a chemist laboratory-assistant in a meat-products factory; the work scheme was revised and she became unemployed, and she didn’t look for something else. She worked for about 8 years, and that was it. And now she is a housewife, she stays at home.

My eldest son has a daughter and a son. My granddaughter, Simona, lives in Iasi, too. She graduated the I.E.S. [the Institute of Economic Sciences] and works in a bank. She is married – she got married two years ago [in 2004]. Her husband is Jewish, he is from Iasi, but I forget his name. My grandson’s name is Liviu Meer – they named him Liviu after my mother-in-law. The name of my wife’s mother was Liba, and after she died [in 1988], this baby was born, and they named him using the same initial, “l,” Leiba, Liba – Liviu.

My youngest son left to Israel in 1985, he lives in Holon. He isn’t married. He is a mechanical engineer, and his life is rather hard. He worked for several years in a factory producing electrical engines. The factory was sold and it was bought by a Russian owner. Romanian Jews were fired, and Russian Jews were hired instead. After he became unemployed, he attended a 6-months computing course, saying: “Perhaps I will secure a position at a bank.” He didn’t manage to be accepted, and believe me, he doesn’t even want to disclose what he does for a living anymore.

I didn’t leave, I didn’t want to go to Israel. My three brothers left, I stayed here. I was enlisted with the U.T.C. [U.C.Y., the Union of Communist Youth], I joined the Communist Party in 1947, and so where should we, party members, go? To a capitalist country? That was the politics in those days. And I didn’t leave in the end. But I corresponded constantly with my brothers and with my aunt. As proof of that, I visited Israel in 1969, I went there to see all my three brothers, all three of them married, my aunt still single. As soon as she saw me there, my aunt didn’t let me eat or sleep at my brothers’ place – I should stay with her for a few days.

Israel produced a lasting impression on me. Especially when I arrived there, the airplane circled a few times above Israel, I was lost for words… I was impressed by the settlements, constructions, systematization – the way the cities are systematized –, I didn’t believe this state could be so beautiful – it was a young state. Over there, you can’t tell a village from a city. Over there, the people who live in villages – they call it moshav –, and raise livestock there, in the village, don’t milk the cows as we do over here. Everyone has cow milking machines. I was impressed, especially by the kibbutzim they have there. Kibbutzim are organized in the same manner kolkhozes, state-owned sovkhozes were organized here time ago. But what kibbutzim… And inside the kibbutz – that’s where families live, that’s where they eat, that’s where they have the canteen, and the school, that’s where the young learn their trade, inside the kibbutz. It is very different from how we live, over here.

You won’t see any wells or fountains there. It doesn’t rain there, they have no water. Yet they have desalted water from the Dead Sea, and I believe from the Mediterranean Sea as well, in part. They draw water from there to supply these villages and cities. Crops over there… they use only irrigation on crops. The water is running in the field day and night. They use irrigation sprinklers, which spray water day and night. I remained, as the saying goes – as they say – open-mouthed! I liked it, I liked it.

I stayed for a month, throughout November. The heat is so high there in November – 35-40 degrees Celsius –, that, pardon me, I was wearing nothing but my undershirt. I roamed across the entire country. My brothers took me, this younger brother of mine, Hanina and Iancu. Moishe didn’t have a car. Iancu and Hanina had their personal cars, and they took me places. For instance, they took me to the Arab part of Jerusalem. They had there an Arab market underground, and they said: “Look, we’re not going in there, for it is dangerous.” And they didn’t take me there, Oh, you should see how well things are run there; when you entered a market – you could go to the meat section, to the fish section – the fish they have there – water pools and live fish. That’s the only way you find it for sale. Not as we buy it, some dead fish, brought from who knows where. Live fish. Everything inside a pool. Civilization, I’m telling you! Advanced civilization, very advanced. I didn’t believe it to be so.

In 1990, my wife and I had already received visas in our passports to go and live there, in Rehovot, where my brothers were living. I fell ill, we abandoned the trip. We had already bought furniture, and had it packed in special boxes, the way it was done when you left there, for you are going to Israel by boat. And after I fell ill, I underwent surgery, we sold everything we bought for our departure. But, as I have a heart condition, I wouldn’t have lasted for long there, on account of the heat over there. Those who left here suffering from a heart condition, died within a year or two. And so, I regretted it in a way, but I am glad, on the other hand, as I wouldn’t have been alive anymore, had I gone there. For many colleagues of mine from Romania suffering from a heart condition left there, and in a year or two they perished. You can’t resist there. Such is the climate – a dry climate –, and there is that sun which simply brings you down! There is no apartment without air conditioning units installed, without fans. You can’t resist without them there, you can’t resist.

I was the president of the Jewish Community in Dorohoi for 7 years, from 1998 until December 2005.

Now, as I am no longer employed, I spend my days as follows: I wake up in the morning, wash, I drink something, take my medicine – for I take pills three times a day, oh my! – I eat a snack, go to the market, and then come home. I am already tired when I return from the market – I am allowed to carry no more than 2 kg because of my cardiopathy –, I rest, then I sit down to eat lunch; after lunch I over, I help my wife with this and that, I sometimes wash the dishes – “blide,” as we call them – in the afternoon. I learned how to wash them, to separate those for meat and those for milk, to let them dry, then wipe them dry, place them in the cupboard. And then, I must exercise a bit after lunch, I go for a half-hour stroll around the city. All by myself, for my wife can’t do it. In the evening, after I return from my walk – television. We watch television until 10, 11 o’clock in the evening. That’s my daily routine.

• Glossary

Miriam Leah Bercovici
Bucharest
Romania
Interviewer: Ana-Maria Hincu
Date of interview: August 2003

Miriam Leah Bercovici, an 80-year-old doctor, lives in Bucharest, in a three-room apartment on the third floor of an old building. Inside we find the intertwining of tradition with modern technology. Paintings and collection pieces are placed beside the computer, and the library is packed with books in German, English, Yiddish and Romanian, some of them with beautiful leather bindings, showing the passion for reading of their possessor. Miriam Bercovici is a neat, extremely active person, and she is getting help in the household matters by one of her neighbors. She is now retired, but she is still writing, and she has published her personal diary she wrote during the deportation. Now she is putting together the diary her mother wrote in the last three months of her life, articles on medical issues, etc. She is also working part-time at the policlinic of the Jewish community.

My family history
Growing up 
During the War
After the War
Glossary

My family history

I’m originally from Campulung Moldovenesc, from a Jewish family three generations old in this town, a ‘town of dreams,’ as my best dreams are taking place there. My great-great-grandparents and their parents are resting in the Jewish cemetery of Campulung, which is so unkempt even now one can’t visit it.

In Manfred Raifer’s work ‘Die ältesten Judensiedlungen im Kimpulunger Bezirk’ [The Oldest Jewish Settlements in the County of Cimpulung], on pages 67–75, in the volume Ausgewählte Historische Schriften [Selected Historical Writings], Cernauti, 1938, on page 109, on the list of Jewish peasants in 1807, the name of a Jew called Michael Korber from the village of Musenita, Suceava county is mentioned. It is possible, as my grandparents told me, that we are originally from his family.

In search of my great-grandparents, following this thread, I visited all the Jewish cemeteries of the region, but I found nothing but rocks, with texts impossible to read. So I don’t know whether my grandparents were telling the truth or not. During my search I found both Jewish and non-Jewish names of Korber in Vienna and Berlin, and I found out that even in Romania, in Timisoara, there was a hat factory called Korber.

My paternal grandfather, Abraham Mendel Korber, was born in Campulung Moldovenesc in 1857. He finished elementary school and became a tinsmith and glasscutter. He was a very open-minded person. He used to read daily the Allgemeine Östidische Zeitung [The Eastern Journal] and the Morgenblatt [The Morning] newspapers, both in German, and all kinds of books, without any particular preferences – anything we could get him or that was published those days in Campulung. For example, a whole series of small volumes called Crimele Inchizitiei [Crimes of the Inquisition] was published, and he couldn’t wait to read them. He used to go to the synagogue twice a day. He was a gabbai at the Temple – there were two synagogues, the old one, built a very long time ago, and the temple, built more recently; he used to go to the temple.

My grandmother, Tony Korber, was illiterate, and I don’t know when exactly she was born. She took care of the household and I remember she made delicious cookies. She used to go to the synagogue, where there was a group of women one of who used to read the prayers. These prayers were written more plainly, that is, the stories with religious subjects were narrated in a simpler way, so even those who never went to school could understand them. My grandmother’s maiden name was Merdler, and I know she had three sisters: Taube, Sosie and Sur – I knew the two latter ones –, and two brothers, Feivish and David. She was religious, wore a shawl and had a kosher kitchen. Even during the deportation my grandparents tried to respect the traditions, lit candles, fasted and tried to observe the holidays.

My grandparents had ten children, and seven of them survived. The oldest daughter was Ana Sternberg, nee Korber. She was a war-widow as her husband, Izi Sternberg, died at the end of World War I. I know he was a typographer. The second child of my grandparents, Isidor Korber, studied medicine in Vienna, and in 1936 he emigrated to Canada. He died one year later of cancer, I think. He was the only schooled one in the family; all the others finished elementary school and began to work so he could study. The third sister, Meta Korber, was a bit silly and I know that in 1913 she went to one of her aunts in America, to Los Angeles. My father, Leon Korber, was the fourth child, and the fifth, Mitzi Korber, died before World War II in Siret.

Eva Korber, the sixth child, was the only one who got divorced after six months of marriage; it seems she married a potato trader and they lived somewhere in Roman. But Eva couldn’t take it anymore, divorced him and remarried Marton Szabo, a dentist from Maramures. They lived an extremely happy life in Sfantu Gheorghe. They were both killed in Auschwitz, and so were their children.

Rosa Korber, the youngest child, married Simon Blum, a shoe trader, and they lived near Cernauti. She was deported to Transnistria 1, to Mohilev-Podolsk. When they returned, they emigrated to Israel with their son, Martin Blum, who graduated from medical school.

The third child, my grandfather, also went to America, to New York, for some three years, there he manufactured and repaired roofs. This happened in 1892, during a massive exodus to the New World. He came back with some money, bought a small, one-bedroom house, where he accommodated his workshop. Later he opened a small glasscutter shop and hired some boys who learned this profession from him. It seems my grandfather had a brother, who was a tinsmith in Cernauti, and a sister; I don’t know anything specific about them. I think he had one more brother in America, and I assume he was the one he went to stay with in 1892.

My father was born in 1892 in Campulung Moldovenesc. He finished seven elementary grades, like any other youngster in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Then he became my grandfather’s apprentice and obtained his license as a tinsmith. Later he entered an exam for his master craftsman’s diploma; these things were treated very seriously in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. I know that before War World I my grandfather sent my father to Vienna for him to obtain a diploma that would give him the right to do autogenous welding. Any good tinsmith with self-esteem had to have all kinds of diplomas to certify his skills.

When World War I broke out, my father joined up as private – not voluntarily –, and when he came back home, he got married. With the dowry he got and the money he had earned working for my grandfather for two years, he opened his own business. He was a glasscutter and tinsmith, a respected craftsman in Campulung. I’m proud to say that the windows of the two Orthodox churches, the Catholic church, the Jewish temple and the hunting castle in Putna valley were put in place by my father.

My parents met in Siret. Grandfather Hutman was originally from Bukovina 2, and my father had a sister there. That’s how my parents met, fell in love and later got married.

My maternal grandfather, David Leib Hutman, nicknamed ‘Short hand’ Hutman, was born in 1874 in Botosani, I think. He had a brother, Iosef Hutman, who emigrated to Canada in 1934, and two sisters. One of them was Risla Hutman, who married Carol Katz, a poor middleman. She graduated from high school in Botosani and after she got married she became a housewife. She died in February 1944; I lived with them for two years during high school. Perla Hutman, my grandfather’s other sister, married a very rich non-Jewish man, a fur trader, who died in 1934 in a car accident though. She emigrated to Canada with her three children: Miriam and Romi, who remained in Montreal, and Martha, who emigrated to Israel.

All the Hutmans gave the name Miriam to their first-born daughter, after their deceased grandmother. My mother told me my great-grandmother went to Israel to die. This was a trend before World War I: people used to go to die on the holy land. From what I’ve heard and from my mother’s stories I know she first went to Chisinau, then to Vienna, and from there, by boat, to Israel. I looked for her grave, but I couldn’t find it, so I don’t know anything else about her.

Grandfather Hutman was a trader in Botosani, a very rich, but also very avaricious man, a hard giver. It’s a known fact that one never refused the poor. The obligation of business owners was to donate from Thursday to Friday morning. People from the synagogue came to collect, especially for those from Maramures, from Borsa, where following the 1928 pogrom the synagogue, but also the houses burned down. [Editor’s note: Between 1928 and 1930, the Alexandru Vaida-Voevod National Peasants' Party cabinet gave tacit assistance to the Guard, but Iuliu Maniu (representing the same party) clamped down on the Legion after July 1930. This came after the latter had tried to provoke a wave of pogroms in Maramures and Bessarabia. In one notable incident of 1930, Legionaries encouraged the peasant population of Borsa to attack the town's 4,000 Jews.] My grandfather though was very close-fisted, he always gave so little and all so hard, and he only pretended to be religious. He went to the synagogue just because he had to. He never ate pork. He looked religious, but in his heart he wasn’t.

I think my grandmother’s name was Ana. She died when my mother was eleven, in 1910. I heard she was a very delicate and fragile person. Grandfather remarried very shortly after her death, a Vexler girl from Iasi, a very good-looking woman, but just as severe as he was.

My mother, Klara Korber, nee Hutman, was born in 1899 in Botosani. I don’t know whether she had any brothers or sisters, and I don’t know much about her. I know she finished four grades at the Israelite-Romanian school. Before she got married she had a passion for reading and attended the reading club in Botosani, along with both Jewish and non-Jewish people. The only thing that brought them together was their passion for reading. The club had a rather leftist orientation, as many workers went there.

This reading club was in a way the predecessor of the library of Botosani: a large number of the books it holds are from this club. From the 1950s and until 1970 the librarian was a Jewish lady, Columbita Blumenfeld, a woman loved by everyone. I, too, knew her and I still visit her grave to place flowers on it. I always find fresh flowers there, which means people haven’t forgot her yet.

My mother got married to my father on 31st August 1922 and moved in with him in Campulung. Because she was a very smart woman and made calculations quickly and easily, she was very good at keeping the books of the store. She had a kosher kitchen, and even during the deportation and the communist era she did her best to respect the traditions and observe the holidays as accurately as possible.

My sister Silvia, or Sisi, was born in 1927 in Campulung. She was a chubby, extremely kind girl, and I totally dominated her. She studied piano and Hebrew just like me, but at her own pace. She had to leave school at 13 because of the deportation, and it was very difficult for her to catch up, but despite all that she managed to graduate and she entered the medical school, of course. Her first revolt was when she had to choose her specialization. She told us she couldn’t work on humans, so she chose the laboratory. She worked as researcher at the Cantacuzino Serum and Vaccine Institute in Iasi until 2003, and she is the discoverer of several vaccines, such as polidin.

One day she told me she had got married to Beno Hosie, an army-doctor with the rank of colonel, and later she told me she had given birth to a boy, Andrei Corbea Hosie. She always lived in Iasi, we kept in touch all the time, and we nursed together my mother during her sickness. My sister is a very delicate and shy person. She never told me anything about her accomplishments; I found out about most of her scientific discoveries from the newspapers or from television.

Growing up

I was born in 1923, when my father already had his small glasscutter shop, which later did quite well. Unlike my grandfather, he didn’t hire any help; we worked for him. We had a housemaid, but the entire family worked in the shop, everybody helped out. We even learned the method of unloading, so when a truck full of glass arrived we used to unload it. I was happy to help because I was paid for it.

If we did well, we went out to the cinema on weekends, and I was very passionate about it. Movies were showing three times a week, and a ticket cost 7 lei. I saw Chaplin films, the movies ‘Ben Hur,’ ‘Congress Dances’ and others I can’t remember any more. I was deeply impressed by the movie ‘Jew Süss,’ made by the Germans, reflecting their point of view, and I read the book to be able to make comparisons. [Editor’s note: Jew Süss (1934), film directed by Lothar Mendes based on the novel by Lion Feuchtwanger. It is a story of life in the 18th century Jewish ghetto of Württemberg. Süss tries to better himself with the help of an evil Duke.]

I had a normal life, one could say. I attended elementary school, and then the girl’s school in Campulung. I had good grades. I studied piano at home from the age of seven to the age of twelve with a music-mistress called Vanda Biscubska, who left the country around 1938-39. I studied Hebrew, French and English with a tutor, Doctor of Civil Law, attorney-at-law Berthold Hard. He was the son of the manager of the Eastern Bank and unable to work as a lawyer because he was Jewish, so he took up tutoring. Our parents weren’t too easy on us: they paid for private lessons in piano and foreign languages, but they bought us just enough clothes for the fellow citizens to see we were children of well-fixed people, but not more. We had to work to get money.

In the house I grew up we usually talked in German and Yiddish, the language of the simple Jewish people, craftsmen such as tailors, boot-makers, cart wrights and framers, and small traders. Our grandparents spoke with each other in Yiddish. Mother knew better Yiddish than Father. The town was quite small, so people knew each other; we had German, Romanian and Jewish neighbors, and we spoke with them in their mother tongue. At home, though, we talked in German, and even though I never had a German tutor, I never made mistakes. My family observed every Jewish holiday: Pesach, Seder, Purim and Chanukkah, and we never worked on Sabbath.

Mother sent me to Botosani to attend the 6th and 7th grades there because there was no girl’s school in Campulung. Thus I stayed at my maternal grandparents in Botosani and studied at the Carmen Sylva high school. I made some friends, girls and boys of my age, Jews, Germans and Romanians, and it seemed we were perfectly integrated in the town’s life. About half of the pupils in my grade were Jewish.

Immediately after 6th September 1940 – it was during Antonescu’s 3 dictatorship, under the Sima 4-Antonescu legionary government – while I was in the 7th grade, as a result of the numerus clauses [in Romania] 5 we were only three Jews left in my grade. The selection was made based on the parents, whether they were heroes of World War I, and on the achievements at school. I was allowed to stay because I had very good grades. They put the three of us at the same desk, which previously was used for the weak students; it was very hard for me to accept this role and after three days I stopped going to school. Several weeks later, when the numerus nullus [in Hungary] 6 was adopted, I wasn’t allowed to go to school any more, so I returned to Campulung.

An extremely difficult year followed [see anti-Jewish laws in Romania] 7: Jews were ordered out from villages and sent into the towns, and the identity cards of the Jewish people were changed based on deeds of citizenship. Later some were kept hostage in Campulung, and the wealthier owners were forced to stay in a Jew’s house on an outlying street during daytime. There, because they had nothing to do, they played backgammon and discussed things. They weren’t allowed to leave the house before dark, when they returned to their homes.

That year I decided to become a doctor because I had the opportunity to follow into the footsteps of one of my cousins, Berthold Merdler, or Berola, as we called him, a young doctor evacuated from Breaza to Campulung, who lived with us while trying to help anybody in need. He visited the sick for free, went to any village he was called to, and I thought this was extremely heroic, extraordinary. Later, in Transnistria, Berola worked in a hospital where he even fell ill with typhus fever. He was so dedicated he would have done anything he could to cure people.

That year I started to learn English zealously because I wanted to learn as many languages as I could. I also played the piano, I fell in love; I did everything a 17-year-old young lady would have done. I was aware about what was happening around me. I daily visited my paternal grandparents, who were left all alone because my aunt who was living with them moved to Cernauti to be with her daughter who was about to get married there. So I took over the responsibility of taking care of my grandparents; I read them the newspaper or the books they wanted every day, I kept them up to date with the developments in the town. My grandfather went to the synagogue daily. I felt very attached to my paternal grandparents, much closer than to my maternal grandparents in Botosani.

There was no girl’s school in Campulung, there were too few girls of that age, both Jewish and non-Jewish, people didn’t really have money for school and, furthermore, the situation was quite messed up and there were no exams held that year. The community itself was too poor to support a girl’s school. Under the circumstances my mother was afraid to send me to Botosani to continue my studies, and thus I had to give up school in the 7th grade.

During the War

Right after the war broke out, events got precipitated and restrictions got more severe. By winter-spring it became mandatory to wear the yellow star 8. I remember how I made it by stitching an approximately 1-cm-wide yellow ribbon on a black material. It had to be of certain dimensions, but I don’t remember them anymore. Restrictions were introduced for the Jews to travel by train; they needed special permits to be able to practice medicine, advocacy, teaching. On the other hand one could only have a Jewish housemaid; it was prohibited to have a Christian housemaid.

In September 1941 the frictions reached the peak in Campulung when every Jewish house was searched, exactly on Yom Kippur, searches in which, beside the soldiers and policemen, even our former colleagues and friends took part. I don’t know whether they had a permit for it or whether they did it only because they weren’t Jewish, but this hurt me even more. The way Rabbi Rubin was treated, a well-known and learned man, came as a warning for the Jews, but we couldn’t realize the gravity of the events that followed: he was harnessed to a barrow to carry everything discovered during the search, some food usual for any household, to the ‘Green House.’ It got its name from the color of the legionary uniforms, as it was a legionary 9 nest. I don’t know what happened to my parents’ house. I don’t want to talk about this any more.

Several days later, on 10th October 1941, rumors began to arise, then the next day a mayoral order was issued through which we found out that we would be deported from Campulung, along with all the Jews from Bukovina, regardless of age, health condition and social status, within the following 24 hour. It said that one should take only what one could carry, but no money or jewels, under the threat of prosecution and condemnation. Only one Jew was left in Campulung, one of the two pharmacists, who was to be replaced only after three months. We knew we would be taken to some town in Transnistria, where we would be reintegrated through work and could rebuild our lives. I thought this would only last for a short period, and it would be like a trip, just until things would settle down. We didn’t even think of hiding.

We left our houses open even though we were instructed to leave the keys for those who began to empty them even while we were still there: neighbors and friends with whom we used to spend Christmas or Purim. Suddenly we became ‘others,’ people who had to be sent away, and for whom no one felt, apparently, compassion or sorry anymore. Even the prosecutor of Campulung came to my father saying that if he had to leave the crystals and the Rosenthals [porcelain ware] behind anyway, it would be better to leave them with him. That’s how it all began. We set off with all the other Jews from Campulung, with the two 84-year-old grandparents, the asthmatic grandfather and the blind grandmother.

Accidentally I took with me a notebook with a leather cover that normally would have become my album of memories, just like the ones girls in my time used to have. The first note was by H. Bondy, the one who gave it to me. I also took something very dear to me: the transcription for piano of one of Ciprian Porumbescu’s ballads, a thin partition, one of the last things I had studied before we left. [Ciprian Porumbescu, (1853–1883) was a Romanian composer.] I didn’t have much luggage, on one hand because we only had one day to decide what to take with us, and on the other hand because I was responsible for my grandparents. When I finished packing, just like for a trip, we couldn’t imagine we could be driven out of our house.

The next day at 11am carriages began to set off to the railway station located at the other end of the village. A long, muddy road, full of carriages packed with sacks, bundles, children and elderly. On foot, by the carriages, were the young people. Gypsies were doing better because they had carriages. We arrived at the station where crying and screaming awaited us. They entrained us on trucks normally used for horses: 38 people in a truck, including four elderly over eighty and a paralyzed child. We set off for a remote village in Bessarabia 10 called Ataki [Chernovtsy province, today Ukraine], where we would be colonized and could pick up a living. This much we knew.

Two days later we arrived in Ataki. We stayed in the open until the evening; then we went into the town. On the way we saw thousands of people, hundreds packed in each house, all destroyed, without roofs and windows, houses of murdered Jews, because on the walls the names of the killed ones had been written with coal. We were stuffed some 30 in a room, together with Garai, the pharmacist.

During our first night at Ataki we saw what human misery means: people with inhuman faces, children with swollen eyes, frost-bitten legs, mothers holding their dead children, elderly and young people covered in rags. They were the Jews sent away from the Edinets camp because of typhus symptoms or lice, and almost starved to death. They overran Ataki without having the permit to stay there. That night Garai the pharmacist went mad. At 5am we came out of the house and found a host on the hill. We washed up ourselves in the Dnestr in stale and unclean water, we paid 20 lei for a bucket of clean water and my mother gave a ring with a gemstone for a hen. People were throwing their jewels in the toilet in fear of the house-searches. The weather was nice, so those who arrived after us were lucky to stay in the open air. In Ataki I saw hunger knows no shame.

We managed to pull through the house-search, but the weather had broken, it began to rain and the mud was more than ankle-deep. We arrived by carriage at the Dnestr, at the place of embarkation. First my mother and my grandparents crossed, then me and my sister Sisi, and then my father with the luggage and Horovitz the pharmacist. We arrived in Mohilev-Podolsk 11, where everybody talked in Ukrainian, and among the Romanian soldiers one could see a few scattered Ukrainian militiamen.

Through rumors we found out we should stay away from the convoys; these would have taken us to the camp, so we tried to go or run away as far as we could. We struggled to carry our bags from the Dnepr to a yard where we stayed shivering for two hours until we found ourselves a shelter: 30 people in a room. We stayed in the same room with the Hausvaters, the Horovitzs, the Hellers, the Segals, the Javetzs and the Tartars, all of them Jews from Campulung. We exchanged our money in Ataki, at a rate of 40 lei for a ruble. In Mohilev we had exchanged our money at the rate of 10, 7 and 6 lei, so this reduced us to almost complete poverty. The first news we got was that we would walk, so we sold everything we couldn’t carry. We paid more than enough because we lived in constant fear of being taken to a camp, and the Russians knew how to exploit us.

When those deported to Mohilev began to organize themselves, they established an asylum for the helpless from all over Bukovina, people who were really unable to go further. I left my grandparents there with some money, and my aunt from Cernauti remained there to take care of them. Everything had to be done without papers because there weren’t any, only passes. The other deported brought them food three times a day; otherwise they would have perished, as they were unable even to get themselves a cup of tea. One of the leaders of the asylum was a doctor from Campulung my father knew, Theodor Melman, and he helped us with our grandparents.

My mother and father began inquiring about how we could go further. Bondy managed to associate us with some Germans who, for a fee, were taking truckloads of Jews further into the country, so we paid them and they took us on a German truck to Dzhurin. That wasn’t a ghetto surrounded by barbed wire; it was a Jewish zone known and acknowledged beforehand by the Jews from Dzhurin. The guards were Romanians; rarely did we see Germans who handled the mail and had administrative duties. I remember one of the guards, Costica, who had a terrible dog and always held a scourge in his hand; he was a cruel man.

At first we stayed 13 in a room and slept on the floor. We were together with the Horovitzs and the Hausvaters, but then my mother went looking for another room. We apportioned our food so we wouldn’t starve to death in the next months. It was raining all the time, there was mud all over the place, there were no toilets at all, so, just like in Ataki, we all dealt with this problem as best we could. We found a room on a hill filled with mud. There was mud constantly, both outside and inside the house.

The Ukrainian peasants are very different from the Romanian ones: they are more underdeveloped, and are behind some 10–20 years. For them everything nice and modern was at the sugar factory. It had electric lighting, doors with keys, and only the sugar factory had toilets, but it was outside the ghetto. The other houses, in which we were living, were just like the Gypsy houses: holes, houses in verge of collapse because they were too old to stand. We heard rumors all the time about us going home, but after a while we didn’t believe them any more. I offered to work for strangers, to do some knitting, but there was no one I could work for as there was no wool.

In January 1942 we took a trip to Shargorod 12, without any special permits, of course. We ran through the woods because we knew we would be sentenced to death in case we were caught. We set off on foot at 9am and arrived there around 2pm. The way through the woods of Shargorod was beautiful; it reminded me of the woods back home. We got really scared when we saw a militiaman, as we had no authorization, but we ran away and nothing happened. My father knew where Berola was staying, so we went directly to him. But he had just moved three days earlier to the isolation hospital, where he was the head physician. I looked up my girlfriend Marghit, and I found her mourning, with her mother lying on the ground. She had died in the asylum of Mohilev.

In Shargorod I saw so much misery; I thought it can’t get worse than that. There was a typhus epidemic, brought by the people from Dorohoi, because only they were sent from camp to camp, while losing their clothes and health. The situation at the hospital where Berola was working was very difficult: misery was extreme, a doctor from Dorohoi and three charity nurses were already sick with typhus. Lots of people were dying daily and someone told me one day 40 people died. They had been buried in a common grave; it was thought that the sheets in which they were covered had been stolen later. Common graves were usual: 15-20 people in one grave.

Father went back on foot the next day at noon. He made his way back in six hours because it snowed heavily and made it difficult to walk. I remained until the next morning and returned on a sled.

It was a very hard winter, and one night half of the roof fell in on us; it was minus 30-35 degrees Celsius outside, and the wind was very strong. In February I found out my grandparents had died, probably from starvation. My father wept silently and mourned them in his heart. He paid his tribute to them with the daily Kaddish.

In the same period Mr. Wassermann passed away. I remember him with a stick in his hand and his straw hat. I used to salute him with ‘Shalom’ and he used to reply calmly, like he was from a different region, because he was a Zionist and his creed in Palestine was so strong he should have been taken by Providence at least to die in the country he had such high hopes for and died for eventually. But now he was dead in Mohilev, far from his forefathers and loved ones for whom he would have given his last breath.

The president of the Israelite Community of Gura Humorului [Suceava county] also died in Mohilev, from exanthematous typhus. My father also got sick, in the summer; he was hospitalized, but got well. Many died, less than half of the deported came home because typhus and starvation decimated them. We had been given the name ‘the Jewish colony of Transnistria.’ We were getting news from home through mail, and we found out the grandparents from Botosani sent us some money. We knew nothing concrete about them; we only heard through rumors that the Jews who were living in the former kingdom hadn’t been deported. I thought this could be true because only Jews from certain regions of Dorohoi were coming.

I remember when mother made her first cookies in Dzhurin: on 2nd March 1942; we were fasting, it was Estertanes [Fast of Esther in Yiddish, the fast that precedes Purim], and the next day was Purim. We prepared for Purim: we baked bread and made hamantashen. We made challah and some honey-cookies. These cookies and the catkin brought back memories of home. For Purim we were served turkey – only leftovers, but very delicious –, bread and brandy by the other deported we made friends with. On the next evening, for Shushan Purim, we invited them and made jam pockets with plum jam. For Easter, on the night of 28th April 1942, we made the preparations together with the other families. We baked our own matzah in our oven, that’s how we learnt to value it. It wasn’t allowed to bake matzah individually; you had to buy it from the committee. In Dzhurin Sunday was market day. We made beef soup and had some 20 eggs. It hurt that they forced us not to keep our national customs and traditions, even though I’m not devout.

Each week we were getting news from the I.P.A. agency [agency of Jewish lies – a notion invented in the ghetto]. Every time we were told other lies. So we were hearing all kinds of news about us going home on the 2nd, 10th or 20th of the respective month, or on any other date, but other news were saying we would be sent further towards the Bug. We fasted twice a week hoping we would be saved. We weren’t allowed to go to the synagogue because of the diseases, but the people wouldn’t get together anyway for the same reason.

In the summer my father got sick with typhus and after he had spent several days at home, he was transported to the hospital we, the deported, had set up. We visited him umpteen times a day – one needed lots of money for injections with camphor and caffeine, for the doctor and for the night duty. We were very scared, especially because illness wore you out and you didn’t know what would await you when you got well. After spending a lot and getting proper care, Father got well.

Around that time rumor said Engineer Jagendorf – the leader of the deported Jews – was called in to Bucharest in our interest. We didn’t know whether to believe it. Each day good news replaced bad ones, one rumor contradicted the other.

In June 1942 we received news from Romania, from Dr. Talik, a Jew who had been in a concentration camp in Transnistria and was in an army hospital in Tulchin. He came to Dzhurin to his sister-in-law, Ernestina Rosenfeld-Klipper, a lady-friend of my mother’s. He told us the Jews back home had a very hard time, they had to face humiliating restrictions, but they were living in their own houses. Our grandparents in Botosani were well, and he was convinced they wrote to us, but the letters sent to Transnistria were destroyed by the censorship back at the postal offices. Shortly afterwards we received letters and money through mail, which had been sent several months earlier. We got less than half of what was sent to us. We lost a lot through the exchange rate, and taxes, including the community tax.

In the same week an order had been issued stating that Jews and Ukrainians were only allowed to go out into the streets between 6am and 9am, on Sundays all day, on Fridays until 12am, on Wednesdays and Saturdays from 2pm to 4pm, when it was bath time. The gendarmerie made sure this rule was respected, so, apart from the beating, the fear of death was also in the air, because they had the authorization to shoot anyone who violated this rule, at least to set an example.

In July another rumor seized us with fear. Rumor had it that a large number of Jews from Dzhurin would be evacuated, first those from Dzhurin, then those from Hotin and Northern Bukovina. They were talking about sums of money the community should give to escape evacuation: 70,000 marks for those from Dzhurin and two million for our folks. Another evacuation would have meant certain death. People were in despair.

In August I managed to get a job at the Satkovitz kolkhoz 13, for three soups and 800 grams of bread daily. I didn’t go there alone; many well-situated girls were doing that. After eight kilometers of walking we arrived at the farm where they lodged us. We slept on straw, and the meal was promised for the next day. In the morning we went to work. We had to thin sunflower stalks. Then the common meal followed, but it was nothing like I imagined it would be. I thought it would be a hall where everybody would eat together, but, instead, one had to come with his or her own plate, and had to eat wherever one could. We had three meals a day: loblolly and 200 grams of bread, instead of the promised 800.

Most of us left after just a few days. I was ashamed to do that, and even though I had nothing to eat, I stayed. After two weeks I got sick and went home. After I got well I returned to work on the land. In September we began to work covered in blankets. I got high fever and jaundice, my mother fell ill as well; it was even harder throughout March 1943.

In the summer of 1943 rumors had it that we would be taken to a camp in Lublin, then to Bessarabia, but some said that this would only be 21 days of quarantine. Another period followed when we didn’t know what to believe. We heard about some cars at Lipnic [Poland] and that the Jewish community would have sent us facilities for the trip. Others said there would be an amnesty on 6th September, and the first to leave would be those from Southern Bukovina. Preparations to leave were in progress; people were agitated.

The first shock came when 100 men from Dzhurin were taken away for work, then 80 girls from Dzhurin and Hotin alone left. My father, too, was taken to work near Odessa; I only saw him again in 1944. We were hiding in a shed. The girls came back soon; it looked like things would settle down. Then we moved to another house; the host was filthy and unlikable. I knitted for strangers to earn some money, and I worked on the land six kilometers away from town, at our previous host’s, digging out potatoes.

On an afternoon in October 1943 my sister noticed a little too much agitation on the street, so my mother went to the center to find out what that was all about. At first everything seemed normal. Word went round that the head of each family, men and women, had to sign at the community, in the presence of the chief of the gendarmerie, a declaration that they wouldn’t leave the ghetto otherwise they would be sentenced to death. Because people were afraid, group leaders, policemen and even the leader of the colony [ghetto], Dr. Rosenstrauch, went out and encouraged people to leave their houses giving them their word of honor. My father left, too.

After people had gathered around a table in town, lists were drawn up and under the threat of guns the women and children were sent home and the men, both young and elderly, were taken to the gendarmerie, and from there to work near Odessa. Many escaped through slyness, bribery or courage, but the majority had fallen into the trap. The next days were horrible: the group leaders of a department were arrested because during a control the doctor didn’t find cleanness. Apparently they were taken first to Mohilev, and then to a labor camp in Ochitkov and then God knows where. The next time I saw my father was in 1944; I didn’t hear anything about him during this period.

In 1943, on Yom Kippur, everybody fasted either out of devotion, penitence or fear. At Kol Nidre the Jews crowded at the renewed temple of Dzhurin, made themselves shils [place of prayer in Yiddish] however they could and illuminated them sumptuously with barn lights, candles and kanitslach [lampion in Yiddish]. The prayer remained for many of us the last hope. We lived like animals, but we survived exanthematous typhus, typhus fever, hepatitis, scabies and other diseases, in cold, filth and constant starvation.

After the War
I returned home on 2nd May 1944, after a two-week long walk, together with nine other youngsters, following the tracks of the Soviet army that was marching westward. My mother and sister remained in Dzhurin until I’d found out what the situation in Botosani was like. I arrived in Botosani, at my maternal grandparents’; I knew there was someone there because they were sending us money. My father was already back, and I sent word to my mother and sister to come by giving letters to any Russian soldier I saw. One of these letters got through to them.

When we came back from Transnistria, my mother continued to be a housewife, and my father restarted to put windows he bought from Grandfather Hutmann. We were practically naked; the clothes we were wearing had to be burned. Grandfather laid off the housemaid and gave us a room to stay. He wanted me to get married. I was 21 and it was about time. I, however, had other plans; I came back from Transnistria filled with the desire of learning.

After the bombardment my grandfather hired my father as employee in his shop, but in 1945, when Grandfather died, my father, along with Grandfather’s former partner, one of his nephews, took over the shop. They had to give up the shop during the nationalization  14 and my father was employed as salesman in a grocery – just like those food stores in the communist era with all kinds of departments –, and he retired from there. It’s interesting that my mother died on 14th December 1970, and my father died on the same day and the exact time, only in 1987. That day he kept asking me what time it was, as if he had a date, and finally, when the time came, he died.

I started a new battle for readjustment to normal life, I re-learned to study and I redeemed the years of school I had lost. I finished the 7th and 8th grade at the Jewish high school in Botosani, and I worked at the same time as a clerk at the Mayor’s Office, as a Russian translator. I graduated from high school in 1945 and I entered the medical school in Iasi; that year those demobilized and those who returned from the camps entered without exams. The first year at university was an ordeal; it was impossible for me to concentrate. I didn’t even have my own books.

We were four girls and three boys staying in two rooms of a residence. The girls were Jewish and I know that after they graduated in Iasi they emigrated, one to Israel and the other two to New York. I used to get up at 5am and go to sleep at 12pm. I was the first to get up and the last to go to sleep. I had to learn by myself; I had even forgotten how to read. I passed all the exams and I was among the four students who were given a job in Bucharest, not even in the provinces. In that period after graduation everyone was assigned. I worked in a hospital from the 4th year, and I was competent in anything: I knew both the sick-nursing and the nursing profession.

In 1950 I was appointed to the laboratory of the Institute of Oncology, and I worked there until 1961, when the institute was transferred under the authority of the Ministry of Education. Then someone wanted to do me a ‘favor’ and sent an unsigned letter stating that I had enlisted to emigrate to Israel. I was laid off from university education and given a job at the new-born department. I was a doctor but I knew nothing about new-borns.

After three weeks the professor called me in and asked me whether it was true that I was enlisted to emigrate. He was probably stirred up by Manea Manescu’s wife, but he was desperate because he was working on a book he had to publish. [Editor’s note: Manea Manescu, born in 1916, was an economist and politician, vice-president of the Council of Ministers and Minister of Foreign Affairs in the communist era.] In fact I was writing the book – I was mentioned last in the list of authors –, and I had to finish it. I told him I wasn’t enlisted to emigrate, so he created for me a doctor job at the Fundeni Hospital in Bucharest [the largest oncology hospital in the country]. I had the same assignments as before, I worked with the students, but I wasn’t getting paid for my tutor position. I did my doctorate and after 44 years of work I retired with honors.

Apart from the year 1961, when I was laid off from university education, I had no problems; I was appreciated as a professional. After my mother died, I specialized in pediatric oncology, and I published my PhD thesis on the same subject at the Publishing House of the Academy. But I never missed the opportunity to warn my foreign students, especially since most of them were Arabs then, or even the professor, that I wouldn’t tolerate any Jewish jokes, not even harmless ones. I never started a course without telling my students I was Jewish and had to endure years of deportation, and could thus make some grammar mistakes. I suffered immensely and I was extremely concerned about the mistakes I made, because I had to think of a word before I could say it. When I came back from deportation there was a mixture of languages in my head: there, people had talked in Ukrainian, Russian, Yiddish, German, Romanian, so I forgot everything I had known.

I met my husband, Israil Bercovici, two weeks after I came back from Transnistria. I was a clerk at the Mayor’s Office in Iasi and he was in Bucharest. I used to write him, but he didn’t; he’d rather come to Iasi than write back. Because I had nothing, he made me a blouse from one of his shirts by tearing off the sleeves. Even though he wasn’t a shoemaker, he made me a pair of sandals, too.

He had a different social status than I did. He was from Botosani. His father was a tailor, poor, but with innate intelligence, full of jokes and sayings. His mother didn’t even know how to read. Her family made sweets for the rich. She was a very discreet woman. They came from ‘mendicancy,’ and in the provinces social classes were always very clearly delimited; they didn’t mix. Thus neither my, nor his parents were happy about our relationship, and never agreed with our marriage. Grandfather used to say that I would marry that man when hell freezes over.

When I met my future husband, they had a single room that served both as home and workshop, with the customer entrance from the street. My husband finished elementary school and, before the war, he wanted to be an agent to meet lots of people and travel all over the world. He ended up working in a shop, and then he was taken to forced labor from 1939 or 1940 until March 1944. He came home on leave and never returned because Botosani was occupied on 7th April. Forced labor meant carrying rocks in Edinets, Bentu, Otak and in other regions of Northern Bessarabia. He graduated from the Institute of Dramatic Art after the war. He became a publicist and, amongst others, he is the author of the only History of Jewish Dramatic Art in Romania. He was the literary secretary of the Jewish State Theater in Bucharest 15.

Because I wanted to work at the University of Bucharest, where I thought people were more open-minded and the professors better, I had to obtain a transfer from Iasi. But those days one could only obtain the transfer if based on a very good reason. Marriage was a good reason so we got married and I came to Bucharest. My husband’s friends became my friends and they still are.

My husband changed me a lot, I was an expansive person and he didn’t like to show tenderness in public. He was a good dancer and I would have wanted very much to go out dancing with him. He was very discreet and I could only manage to live with him by his rules. He thought only in black and white; I, on the other hand, accepted gray, I was much more malleable. For his sake I learned to read in Yiddish; he charmed me.

Why did I not leave Romania? Fate, destiny. In 1946-47, when things seemed to settle down, I chose not to go – neither to my mother’s brother in Canada, nor to my father’s brother in the United States, because I was a student and I was studying with frenzy. I asked them whether I could continue my studies there, and they told me I could have done anything as long as I would work. I didn’t understand how this could be done, and I couldn’t imagine one could work and study at the same time; I wanted to begin studying right away, without losing any more time. I said no. In 1951, while my parents were in Botosani, everybody enlisted to emigrate. I was working at the institute, I got married and I said no. And I haven’t changed my mind ever since. Even when they laid me off from university education I chose not to leave; then I waited for my daughter to graduate. Then she was going to get married and planned to emigrate to Israel, and we should have followed her. But she changed her mind at the last moment and married a non-Jewish man, so we remained here.

My daughter, Ada Bercovici, was born in 1953. She studied at the conservatory in Bucharest and became a university professor. She was deeply religious, lit candles, had a kosher kitchen and observed every Jewish holiday. She died in 1996. Her last wish was to be incinerated and have her ashes spread over the Black Sea. I’m not capable of commemorating her; my sister does that for me. After Ada’s death her husband left Bucharest with his son, my grandson, Emanuel Ulubeanu. The boy was circumcised and he is registered at the community, because immediately after my daughter died I registered him.

For me home means both here and Israel: I love both countries and I feel at ‘home’ in both of them. I also love Paris. I lived there with my husband for three months in 1987, when he was critically ill and dying. We have many friends in Germany; I like Germany as well.

After my husband died, after 1989 16, I had the opportunity to substantially better my situation by a marriage of convenience. I wasn’t tempted though. My husband is still there in his office, smiling back to us. I’m not capable of arranging the books in the bookcase because I can still feel his hands on them. I’m working at a table that shakes and creaks, but I can’t sit at his bureau because I can still feel his presence. Mr. Hart recited the Kaddish in his memory at the temple. I’m commemorating my husband every year and I lit a candle for a whole year; I respect the Jewish tradition.

After 1989 I worked hard for three years. I had to carry with me my bad social origin. I was a member of the Party. I was enlisted in honor of Stalin’s birthday, when a certain number of students had to join the party. It would be interesting to see my husband’s file. We were watched all the time; my husband was kind of an exhibition Jew.

In the first days of the revolution I was extremely happy: I felt like I was 20 again and I would have wanted to go to the Revolution Square. But I was cooled down by telephone calls in which they called me all kind of things: kike bitch, communist, etc. I didn’t know who was calling me; I changed my number and calmed down. After the revolution I continued to work as a doctor at Fundeni Hospital. I learned medicine with a great deal of idealism; I was in a group of idealistic people.

Times are changing rapidly. It took two years until Rabbi Rosen 17 gave me a part-time job at the community. In 1976 there was some misunderstanding between my husband and Rabbi Rosen – I still don’t know why and how it started – and we were put aside. The rabbi was stubborn, but my husband outdid him. Mr. Rosen asked my husband to bury any misunderstandings they had had, but he refused. Despite all this, when my husband died, Rabbi Rosen, who was abroad at that time, called us and saw to it that my husband would be given a resting place in the front row of the Jewish cemetery in Bucharest; I requested a place further back.

After my husband died I asked the community for help because I didn’t want to lose the books in Yiddish my husband had in the bookcase. I went for a meeting with Rabbi Rosen, who told me he couldn’t help me to send those books to the university in Israel because the community had no money, and that they barely managed to preserve the Torahs. Despite all this a series of my husband’s manuscripts and notes are in the Dramatic Art department of the University of Tel Aviv. The books ended up in Potsdam [Germany], in the Hebrew section, which now includes the donation of Israil Bercovici: 3,000 volumes in all, placed in a beautiful room.

I had no wish to return to live in Campulung although I visited it several times; I wanted to remember it as it appears in my dreams, as it was at the time of my childhood and adolescence, before the disaster. The events I lived through affected me deeply and, among other things, I’ve got a recurrent, incurable insomnia, and recurring nightmares in which the ghetto and my dead grandparents, along with different episodes I went through, appear with unbelievable accuracy.

A psychologist told me I should revisit the places of these events, and in 1967 I managed, despite adverse conditions, to visit Dzhurin and the town of Mohilev, the graveyards and common graves in which the remains of my dear grandparents are resting, and who, in my nightmares, are calling me to help them. But there is no cure for me and probably this is my condemnation.

By a happy occasion the diary I kept in Transnistria, the book with leather-cover Bondy gave to me before the deportation, its German translation, was published by the Hartung-Gorre publishing house in Konstanz [Germany] in 1993, along with a comprehensive historical documentation of that period. In 1995 it was published in Romanian by the Kriterion publishing house in Bucharest, with the support of the Soros 18 Foundation.

Now I’m working at a German kindergarten called Lauder and I have a part-time job at the policlinic of the community. I visit the community very often, on each holiday, but also every time there are some cultural or other events I find interesting.

It is necessary to bring to the surface everything that happened because the ghettos and camps, and even the deportations of Jews to Transnistria are either denied or, if admitted, are considered mishaps that should better be forgotten and for which solely the Germans should be held responsible. The horrors were committed by those who governed the country then, and everybody should know about the past as it really was, and these deportations to and crimes in Transnistria are part of that past.
 

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