Juci Scheiner with friends

Juci Scheiner with friends

We had a beautiful little house at the Maros dam; this picture was taken there. I'm the third from right. First from right is my best friend, Duci Weinberger; she came from Gyergyo. Her father was an accountant at the city hall. Andras Mestitz, my younger brother, is sitting on my right. Behind me there's a Jewish girl called Eva Citrom, who later turned out to be very nasty. A few years before the war she came to my beauty salon and watched me work. One day she asked me to teach her. Later, in Auschwitz, she was very mean to me. The one with the bow tie is an acquaintance. I don't remember the guy and the girl to the left.

We had a small cabin by the dam on the Maros. Dad always checked the weather to see if we could go there - he was crazy about the place and loved going there. We didn't cook there, we just brought ready-cooked food with us. There was an underground storage room, a hole they cut inside the cabin floor. In this hole with a trap-door we put the containers of food. The roof of the cabin was longer than the cabin by the length of a room, and the outer part was supported by pillars. We used to have lunch under this covered portion, so we had full comfort. We had two boats, one belonged to my parents; we called it Doc-Doc, like dad used to call mom when she was pregnant. My younger brother had a skiff, a one-man coxed, long and narrow boat. We were living a life of ease then. Next door my uncle Erno had a house, a caravan he converted: not the outside, he only furnished it.

There were always so many people coming and going. When we grew older, our parents allowed us to go there on our own, with our friends. As soon as we had some time off, we used to go to the Maros dam. There were only Jews in our group. We were there all the time and had lots of fun. One could go rowing up the Maros, and there were some islands one could go to.

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