Then the legionaries came to power in 1940, and I was thrown out of school. The teacher came into the classroom, read my name out loud in front of the class and I had to pack and leave. Judita was also kicked out of school. So eventually I had to go to the Jewish industrial high school, which had four elementary grades and eight grades of high school, and which was located in a private house. After a while we had to move from there as well, to another private house. Judita went to the Jewish industrial high school as well.
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Displaying 31 - 60 of 50826 results
Ruth Greif
I remember that Judita and me used to take little 'hikes' - the adventurous kind. One time we went to the airport, where the railway station is today, just to see the planes, although we knew very well we weren't supposed to go there - two girls on their own - because it was dangerous. We had to cross two railways, but still, we wanted adventure!
Back then, when I was in the state school, I had a good Jewish friend, Judita Graunfelds was her name. She lived on the same street as me, but farther from school than me and always came to pick me up. We were in the same class in school, we were of the same age. On our way we had to pass by a German high school for boys, and whenever we passed by, they came down and started to beat us, or called us 'stinking Jew'. The German boys beat us both several times. They knew we were Jewish; they probably saw where we were going. We were elementary school girls, and they were in high school, but that never stopped them. I saw one of those boys later, when he was an adult, and he pretended he didn't recognize me. The teachers didn't intervene. My parents knew about the beatings, but they couldn't do anything. In those times you were happy you got away only with that.
I started studying at a regular state school in town, on Agriselor Street. One of my hobbies back then was gymnastics. My teacher was Borbala Farkas, a Jew; she had studied rhythmic gymnastics in Budapest, and she was very talented. She held the classes in her house, and several girls went there.
I don't know why we moved to Brasov, but we came here when I started the 2nd grade of elementary school, in 1940. My father set up a dental material depot here, along with a Hungarian associate, Juhasz. On paper, this associate was the owner of the depot, and he was the one doing all the traveling because Jews weren't allowed to travel by train [because of the anti-Jewish laws in Romania] [5].
Our teacher from elementary school was a Jew named Cain. He was very religious: he never entered the classroom bare-headed; he always wore a kippah. We had religious classes with him as well: he taught us the alphabet, how to read prayers in Hebrew, things from the Old Testament, but I don't remember how often we had those religious classes. And as a rule, I was more fond of literature than of mathematics. When I was in elementary school, somebody always came to pick me up after classes; my mother or Kati.
I wasn't confronted with anti-Semitism in Sibiu, maybe because I went to the Jewish elementary school there.
I also remember I had a Jewish friend, Rose- Marie Springer, who lived across the street from us; we grew up together. She was two years older than me, I believe. Her mother was a doctor and her father was a jeweler. We used to play together, in our courtyard or in hers; we enjoyed going for walks in the central park, which had lovely alleys. She remained in Sibiu, and studied at the Jewish school.
When we were in Sibiu, our financial situation was rather good, medium; there was no poverty.
There was only one synagogue, but there were functionaries, like shochetim and hakhamim. There was also a cheder, but that was only for boys. The community also had a Jewish elementary school, and it was for boys and girls alike. Jews lived all over the town, but I believe that the majority lived close to the synagogue: my father's relatives, his cousins, his brother and sister and their families lived there.
The Jewish community in Sibiu was small, I cannot say how many Jews there were, but I know that the community offices, the Jewish school and the temple were all in the same courtyard, near the railway station. Most of the Jews in Sibiu were merchants, or had shops - all my relatives there ran shops - and there were also doctors or jewelers, like my friend's parents, but not too many.
My parents always fasted on Yom Kippur and so did I, even when I was just a child: first until 10 o'clock, then until 12, and then the whole day. I think I was 12 when I started to fast all day long.
My favorite holiday was Pesach. All the family gathered around the table, and my father read from the Haggadah. Usually it was I who hid the afikoman, or some younger friend - we always had friends over as well - because it is the youngest of the participants who hides the afikoman. My father led the seder, and of course he had to look for the afikoman, so that I could get my present. However, when we reunited with all of my father's family, whoever was the eldest used to lead the seder, and that was, I think, my father's uncle.
We went to the synagogue on Sukkot as well, but my father never built a sukkah.
On Chanukkah, I received Chanukkah gelt, and I spent the day at the Jewish community, with my colleagues. We used to play with the trendel [dreidel].
My mother and I only went to the synagogue on the high holidays; women didn't have to go back then, only on the high holidays. I didn't have to spend Saturdays or Sundays at home, there wasn't a special program for me. My parents used to talk to me about religion and tradition. It was usually my mother, who did so; she loved to read about these things. She used to talk to me about our history, about the exodus from Egypt, about Moses, Adam and Eve, about Abraham, about the first Jews. My father was also fairly religious, and it happened that he would talk to me on Saturdays about history, about the Torah, traditions, and so on.
On Friday evenings, my mother used to light the candles and say the blessing and for dinner we also had barkhes. My father went to the synagogue every Saturday, for the minyan, and both my parents tried to observe Sabbath. I think it happened that my father went to the synagogue on Friday evenings sometimes as well, he went whenever the minyan took place. On Saturdays his shop was closed, and my mother tried not to work.
Neither of my parents was very religious in an extreme way: my father didn't wear payes and my mother didn't wear a wig, but they both observed the high holidays.
My father wasn't involved in any political party, but I know he had social-democratic convictions, not communist ones. My mother, on the other hand, wasn't into politics at all. They never had to push me as far as reading was concerned, I myself was very passionate about reading. I used to read under the covers with a flashlight. Those were usually my mother's books, which I wasn't supposed to read at that age because they were a bit 'too explicit' for a girl my age!
They both read in German, and we had religious books as well, the Siddur in Hebrew with Romanian or German translations, and the Haggadah for Pesach. My parents also read newspapers, like Universul; that's the one I remember.
We had a library in the house; my mother read a lot of fiction. My father, on the other hand, was very fond of lexicons and difficult philosophy books. Every night, before he went to bed, there was a pile of books on his bedside table, and I always teased him about it.
Both my mother and Kati cooked, but we didn't observe the kashrut. I think we even ate pork.
We had a Saxon servant, who cleaned the house, mainly the kitchen. Kati was her name. She was a stout woman, who was always dressed in long, large, pleated skirts and pleated blouses and wore black shoes with thick heels. That was how Saxon women dressed back then. She looked after me as well because my parents were rather busy with the tobacco shop.
Our neighbors were Romanians, and some Saxons I believe. We got along well with the neighbors there, but we weren't friends. There was no time for that because my parents worked a lot; that was the only reason. I don't remember my parents going on a vacation while we were in Sibiu. They couldn't afford to leave the shop because there was nobody to take care of it except them. They had no employees. That was the way people thought back then: of work first and then of fun. And I never went on a vacation or to a camp alone; back then there were no camps for children. When they had some free time, my parents used to go to the theater, but I don't know if they went to balls as well. The holidays we would spend with our relatives - they were our friends.
My parents came directly to Sibiu, where they had a tobacco shop. The shop wasn't in the same house where we lived, it was in the center of Sibiu, in a rented house: it had one room and a little storage room in the back. My parents served the customers; they had no employees. They sold cigarettes, stamps, cigars, pipes, and tobacco in small carton boxes. My father didn't smoke, but my mother, especially after we moved to Brasov, used to smoke a cigarette every now and then.
The shop was only two blocks away from the house in which we lived; it was on Bruckental Street, in the very center of town. It was also rented, and we occupied the second floor of the house. We had two rooms, a kitchen and a bathroom, running water and electricity. I remember we had a Persian carpet in the living room, but the rest of the house had ready-made furniture, nothing special. We also had a courtyard, but my mother didn't work in the garden, we shared it with the other neighbors.
My mother tongue, the language my parents taught me, was German, but my parents spoke Hungarian with each other, and I learned Hungarian like this, by listening to my parents talking to each other, and in the end I could speak it very well.
They married in the synagogue in 1929, with a rabbi, and they had a ketubbah. Then they left for Vienna together. I was born in Vienna in 1932 and I stayed there until I was three years old. My father was an associate with that friend of his in the bicycle business - I don't remember his name - and they stayed there for a few years. But they eventually went bankrupt, and thank God, my parents returned to Romania because the war started a few years after they had left Vienna and Austria was occupied by Germany.
During the legionary [1] regime, the shop and house were taken away from her, and then my grandmother rented a place, a house on Lupeni Street, with six rooms, each with a separate entrance. She kept a room for herself and rented out all the others, and that's what she lived from. She died in the 1970s, and she was buried in the Jewish cemetery here, in Brasov.
She got along well with her neighbors, I remember she cooked hamantashen on Purim and sent them to her Christian neighbors: sometimes she sent me, and I loved to go. I used to spend a lot of time with her, after we moved to Brasov.