My paternal grandparents lived in a one-floor house, opposite the railway station; it was pretty large, but it wasn’t theirs, they paid rent. The place had belonged to a non-Jewish man who had no family. Eventually, he donated it to the Romanian Christian Orthodox Community in Lipova. As my grandfather got to Arad in 1890, he may have rented the house directly from the church. When the block of apartments was built, it was demolished; this happened around 1944 or right after the war. The house had a pretty large courtyard, but it had no garden. My grandparents didn’t breed animals.
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Displaying 48121 - 48150 of 50826 results
Andrei Popper
For a while, he lived in Socodor, where he kept a store, but he moved to Arad in 1890, when my father was one or two years old.
I’m sure he did his military service because he had become a sergeant; I think he served in Vienna [today Austria].
Just like my father, she wasn’t too religious.
As there was no high school for girls in Arad at that time, my mother was sent to Timisoara, to the Higher School for Girls.
He was buried at the Jewish cemetery in Simand. There’s a great cemetery there and the children’s tombs are right at the entrance.
Irina, born in 1887, was a housewife and lived with her husband, Iosif Somogyi, an accountant in Arad.
Then the Jewish Community called me, and I went to help them with their legal matters. I stayed with them for 23 years, from 1977 until 2000 or so, when I became ill and had to go to surgery.
After my retirement in 1975, a friend of mine who worked as the chief secretary of the County Council called me to do voluntary work for his office for a couple of years.
The revolution of 1989 [12] had no effect on me. I think nothing has changed. I had already retired when it came.
I also went to the USSR, a two-week trip across the Black Sea, to Riga and to the North Sea.
I only went to Israel once, in 1968. I was left with a good impression. I went to a niece of mine, Eva Brenner, right during Pesach. My niece is married to a Romanian from a place in Tara Motilor, near Baia de Cris. His name is Pavel and he’s a very decent man. He wanted to move to Israel and persuaded her to do that. Pavel worked as a locksmith in a factory; Eva is a clerk. They are doing well. I stayed with them for a month and they drove me every day to see as many places as possible. Each day, I visited a new town and some new places.
I never had any problems with the Communists. I only met very few of them who liked to cause trouble. The county’s prime secretary of the Communist Party was the only one who had the right to check on me, but he never interfered with what I was doing. This was the order from Bucharest. My coworkers were nice people; as for the clerks I worked with, I was lucky because they did their jobs well. I also had Jewish coworkers: Livia Halmos, Maxim Goroneanu, Ladislau Samuel.
I knew other people who had been accepted in the Party despite their origin. There used to be a bank in Arad; it was called Goldschmidt and it was owned by a Jew. His son, much older than me, studied Economics in Paris [France] before World War I. Back then, one couldn’t study this in Romania, but only in Vienna or Paris. While in Paris, he joined a communist society and became a fervent Communist, although his father owned a bank. When the Communists came to power in Romania, he received a high office in a ministry and was even sent to Hungary as a diplomat, for he spoke Hungarian.
I became a party member against my will. A friend of mine, Ladislau Lakatos, a druggist in Buteni, had gone to college in Bucharest before the war. There he joined a group of communist students and became a fervent Communist too, although he came from a family belonging to the Hungarian nobility. After 23rd August 1944 [11], he joined the Party and signed me in too, without asking me about it. I took part in activities organized by the Communists and I had to attend weekly meetings. However, I didn’t become a party member out of conviction, but because Ladislau and me were very good friends. He was a good chap, a true gentleman.
Under the communist regime, I was still a lawyer; I was a judge president until 1975. When I turned 60, I applied for retirement.
How come I didn’t immigrate to Israel? I was born in Arad, I lived in the Arad County all the time, and I happened to be appointed as a judge in Arad too. I don’t think too highly of the people who move too much. I believe that, once you start working in a certain place, it’s best to stay there till you die.
By the time I became a court president in Ineu, there was no synagogue there anymore. In 1945 or 1946, the Federation from Bucharest ordered that all the synagogues from the towns where there were no Jews or very few of them were to be demolished. There may have been one family or two left in Ineu. The synagogue in Cermei wasn’t demolished, but it was bought by the Baptist Community and used as a prayer house. I know that the synagogue in Buteni had to be pulled down too, and the land was sold. The Federation issued such an order because there were no Jews left in these places. Dr. Weissblatt, one of the best dermatologists in Arad, once told me about the time when many workers from the furniture factory in Pancota, a very large facility, had caught a skin disease. He was sent there as an official delegate. While in Pancota, he learnt that a worker who had taken part in the demolition of the synagogue had fallen down from the building and died. The whole village found that incident to be pretty natural, since what they were pulling down was a church.
The synagogues in Chisineu Cris and in Seleus were demolished too. I was once at the town hall in Seleus and the mayor showed me the furniture of the place: it had been bought before the destruction of the synagogue, and the mayor’s chair was the old rabbi’s chair. The synagogues in Arad and Salonta are, to my knowledge, the only ones that survived in the entire Arad County. But I heard a few years ago that the synagogue in Salonta no longer exists either.
The synagogues in Chisineu Cris and in Seleus were demolished too. I was once at the town hall in Seleus and the mayor showed me the furniture of the place: it had been bought before the destruction of the synagogue, and the mayor’s chair was the old rabbi’s chair. The synagogues in Arad and Salonta are, to my knowledge, the only ones that survived in the entire Arad County. But I heard a few years ago that the synagogue in Salonta no longer exists either.
I was also a court president in Ineu for six years and in Chisineu Cris for ten years.
I was also a court president in Ineu for six years and in Chisineu Cris for ten years.
I lived in Buteni until 1946, when I was appointed judge in Arad. Eventually, I became the president of the court between 1952 and 1968.
After graduating, in 1944, I started my lawyer’s internship with my father, who took me for about two years.
During the Holocaust, I was sent to forced labor from 1941 till June 1944. First, it was in the Fagaras County, then in the Arad County, at the canal of the vineyards of Arad [Paulis, Ghioroc]. I came home when work was interrupted.
When Jews were evacuated from the villages, in 1941 [because of the anti-Jewish laws in Romania] [10], my parents moved back to Arad, where they lived until 1944.
Roman Law was a real delight. I had a professor in Cluj, Mosoiu, whom it was a real pleasure to listen to. He spoke freely, using no notes. And he always organized his time very well. And there were other professors as well prepared as he was. For instance, during a specialization course in Bucharest, after my graduation, I remember the subject of the Supreme Court being taught very well. But I also came across teachers of another kind. For instance, the German teacher would come to class, write a text on the blackboard and have us memorize it. This is all we did during the entire class. The Latin teacher didn’t explain anything to us either. There were no inspections back then, so teachers did whatever they felt like.
I graduated from the Faculty of Law; I chose Law because I liked it. I started in Cluj, in 1935. Later, in 1939, as I wanted to gain one year, I moved with several fellow-students and friends to Cernauti [today Ukraine]. Both in Cluj and in Cernauti, there were great professors. The difference was that Cernauti had a preparatory year, then three years of study; this is why we wanted to move there. We graduated there, but we never got to pass our last two exams, for the Russians invaded Bukovina [9], in 1939. [Editor’s note: Russians entered Bukovina in June 1940.
I graduated from the Faculty of Law; I chose Law because I liked it. I started in Cluj, in 1935.
There were Legionaries [8] in Buteni in the interwar period. I remember seeing ‘Only speak Romanian’-like posters in stores, but they weren’t a real threat. I didn’t have any problem caused by anti-Semitism.
Before World War I, there used to be several Jewish schools in the county: not just in Arad, but also in Buteni and in Simand, which were pretty important Jewish centers. Buteni had a Jewish elementary school until 1943. Incidentally, before World War I, the headmistress of the Jewish school was named Popper; she was Jewish, but she wasn’t from our family. My father met her son during a visit in Budapest, around 1925, and it was interesting for them both to discover that they shared the same name, they were both lawyers and they both came from Buteni.
I passed the graduation exam in 1935. It was very hard: out of 114 students, only five succeeded. I was one of them.