Tag #122959 - Interview #101186 (Leizer Finchelstein)

Anti-Semitism permeated the air before the war broke out, but we lived in the Jewish quarter and didn’t experience these manifestations very directly. If we left the neighborhood, we were verbally abused by some Christian neighbors. We were called ‘jidani.’ In addition to that, there were also the anti-Semitic publications: “Porunca Vremii” [The Time’s Commandment], “Sfarma Piatra” [Break-Stone]. I can confess that I even sold newspapers for a while. I was unemployed at a certain point and I was hired to sell newspapers at a newspaper stand. So I was forced to deploy these newspapers for all to see. They were all filled with caricatures of Jews with hooked noses. It was also from those newspapers that I learned of Hitler and the situation of Jews in Germany, but it was only later, after the war, that I learned of the concentration camps. In any case, at that time it seemed unimaginable for me that the Germans, with such a developed civilization, could perform such horrible deeds.