Eva Deutsch

This is a picture of me, when I was a child. The photo was taken on 20th February 1934 in a photo studio in Marosvasarhely.

On the back it's says in my father's handwriting, 'A souvenir from Evike with love'. His handwriting was beautiful.

My father, Jeno Moskovits, had a very good friend who lived in Budapest, and they used to write and visit each other. I think we sent him this picture, because it was him who gave it back to me after the war. He gave me other pictures of me performing, but I gave those to my older daughter, Klara Fodor.

I was a very good gymnast, I could dance and I even took up ballet. There was a ballet school, and the teacher was called Piroska Szalkay, and one could register there, but a fee had to be paid. There were many cultural events and charity balls, and the children were asked to play anything they could.

There were people who trained them to dance, to do gymnastics, to sing or to recite. I was always asked to dance. I appeared many times on the main stage of the Culture Palace or in the Transilvania Cinema, on the corner of Bolyai Street, beside the Transilvania Hotel.

This cinema was in fact a theatre hall, because it had a stage. Other performances took place in the Jewish community center, at the Progres cinema. I was invited many times because I was very skilled. Usually the dance and ballet teachers recommended the students they preferred for the representations, and they trained us for these events.

There were also festivals like Purim, when a Purim ball was organized. This was a holiday, and in the largest classroom - which wasn't that big though - the desks were put aside, musicians were hired and everybody could dance.

The musicians weren't Jews and they played dance tunes, not religious music. The students had to bring cakes, cookies, fruits and soda to the Purim balls - there was no Pepsi, Fanta or anything like that, we were quite happy with water.

Everybody brought what they could and they put it on a table in another room. That was how the buffet was set up. I don't remember whether we had to pay a small fee for the food or if we could eat for free.

However, maybe the money we raised had a certain purpose, but I don't know what it would have been used for. Every class had a presentation of something their teacher had rehearsed with them. There were students who could sing, others were good at reciting or learning a dance.

There were some Jewish dances, but other types of dances, as well. I only remember one kind of Jewish dance, a hora-like one, with people standing in a circle. We called it Julala. I remember we used to sing this word, and it also had a melody.

I remember the Jewish anthem, the Hatikvah, we always used to sing it at school. (Nowadays, many times when there is an event at the synagogue, I miss it, but we never sing it.)

Photos from this interviewee