Sandor Mestitz and his siblings

Sandor Mestitz and his siblings

These are the children of Albert Mestitz, the older brother of my father, Henrik Mestitz. From left to right: Erno, Sandor, Paula and Vilma. The photo was taken in Marosvasarhely on 8th January 1909.

Uncle Albert managed the store of the furniture factory on the main square. The family had a house there and they lived in it. He married his second cousin, Sarolta Mestitz, born in 1865 came from Raudnitz, from Bohemia. Uncle Albert went there on business or something, met her there and fell in love with her. She was pretty and cute, and I adored her so much that I visited them every day. However, she never learned to speak proper Hungarian. Albert died in 1937 in Marosvasarhely. They had four children, two boys and two girls: Sandor, Erno, Vilma and Paula.

Sandor, the oldest son, grew up with us. Later he moved to Temesvar, but when Marosvasarhely was returned to Hungary, he came home. We were deported together. He ended up somewhere in Warsaw. During the bombing they had to leave in the morning, and they left him there with a head injury. When they could return in the evening, everything had burned down. I still don't know whether he perished or was taken away from there. The other son, Erno, worked here at the store with his father, and married one of my Christian girlfriends.

Vilma married Dezso Grunfeld from Medgyes, a very kind man. They lived a wealthy, very rich life. One of their sons was 14 or 15 when he emigrated to Palestine. This was when children were carried on two ships and one of them sunk. [Editor's note: Three ships set off for Israel in August 1944: the Morina, Mefkure and Bolbul. Mefkure was sunk.] Fortunately he was on another ship. At first he lived in a kibbutz, and he loved it there. Three or four years later his brother followed him to the same kibbutz.

Uncle Albert had one more daughter, Paula. She lived here in Marosvasarhely. She had a very nice beauty salon and I learned beauty treatment from her. She co-owned a salon, and when she saw that she wasn't allowed to work upstairs in the shop, she continued her beauty treatment in a small room down a few stairs. She worked as a cosmetician and also had some clients. She married a Romanian, Timu Dradeteanu, who later became a quality control director.

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