Silviu Grossmann
This is my son, Silviu Grossmann on the main square of Des.
My son is Silviu, but everybody calls him Avi, this is the short for Abraham. He was born in 1953, I gave him the Jewish name - Abraham - after my husband's father. Both Avi and Erika were very good students. Learning wasn't a problem for them, it just went into their heads, they resembled my husband [Fulop Grossmann] what concerns brains. My son wanted to study medicine, and he was preparing for that. But if I cut down a hen, he became unwell when he saw blood. He couldn't bear looking at it. He liked chicken so much, he was playing with them, I had to cook chicken in secret, so that he didn't see it. He said: 'Do you want me to eat the chicken leg?' If it was chicken leg, I cut it into pieces, I told him it was ham. That's how he ate it. I could see he was a very sensitive child. A sensitive child is not cut out to be a physician. Later he realized this himself, he said: 'Medicine is not suitable for me. I feel much too sorry for everybody.' So he finished the university in Temesvar, he finished mechanical engineering.
After the university they placed him to Nagybanya, but there was a local girl who was pregnant, her husband was in Nagybanya too, she submitted an application, and they gave that job to her. And Avi got to Szatmarnemeti, and got married to a Romanian woman. I never told him not to marry her, if he wanted to, why should he reproach me something later? He met his wife in Szatmarnemeti, her name is Florica Milea. She was a divorced woman, she had a four years old daughter, Juliana, who is a dentist now in Nagyvarad. My son got a job in the Unio factory, I think this factory manufactures cranes for ships, for mines. He started from the bottom, first he was a master, he was at the production section for a long time, then in 1990 he was appointed sales manager, and now director general. They wanted to appoint him on this position five years ago, but he didn't want to accept it. Now they said if he didn't want to accept it, he should look for another job. He had no way out, he accepted. It's really serious, he's in the factory day and night. Florica is an engineer as well, she works at the Mondiala, the clothes factory, but she's a production manager, she has a good job, she's a very bright woman. She speaks Hungarian very well, and she speaks German very well. And she often goes to Germany, because the factory where she works belongs to a German.
They have one child, a girl, Iris, she was born in 1987. My son's daughter is baptized. She was in a bad health as a child, she didn't eat meat, and the colleagues of my daughter-in-law said that this was because she wasn't baptized. And so they baptized her in the Greek Catholic church, she was ten years old. But they didn't tell me anything, they asked me afterwards if I was upset. I said I had no say in this matter. But the girl doesn't observe religion.
My grandchildren call me Babi as well. My grandchild from Israel is religious, but my grandchild from Szatmarnemeti was born in a mixed marriage, she doesn't know anything about Jewry. However, she too calls me Babi. I was wrong, I should have intervened a little more, but I thought I wouldn't say my word, they might have not liked it.