Tag #123189 - Interview #96535 (Vera Erak)

Already in 1938, intolerance towards Serbs and Jews had begun in Croatia. On one occasion the windows on my father’s store were broken. My family was no longer able to survive in Dubrovnik and we accepted an invitation from my mother’s distant cousin Josef Kronstein who lived in Novi Sad and owned three movie theatres named “Apolo,” “Odeon,” and “Rojal.” We moved to Novi Sad in 1939 and my father accepted an offer to run the Rojal movie theater. I enrolled in the second grade of the gymnasium. I had a lot of Jewish friends. Lia Stark, Egon Stark, and Vera Schlosberger were my best friends. Vera Schlosberger survived the war and became a famous pianist in Yugoslavia. Egon Stark was president of the Jewish community of Novi Sad until not long ago. He held that position continuously for almost 10 years.