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We rented an apartment near the Jewish school. When I was six, before I started to go to school, my parents bought a small house at the front end of what is now Cuza Voda Street [at the western edge of the main square].
I grew up there and we lived there until the deportation. We were very fond of that house, we constantly did it up. The furniture was simple. The house wasn’t too big, it had three rooms on the ground floor: a parlor, a living room and a bedroom. Above one of the rooms there was an attic room – we loved it –, accessible from the hallway via a wooden staircase.
My brother later moved in and made it his room. I always thought how lucky he was to have a room of his own. I was on very good terms with him, there weren’t any particular problems, despite the four years that separated us. We had a good brother-sister relationship.
There was a beautiful courtyard in front of the house. My parents loved flowers; they arranged the yard very nicely. In the first year an expert arranged it, making flower-beds and planting fruit-trees: apple, pear, plum, cherry and sour cherry; a little bit of everything. We also had red-currant and gooseberry bushes, and lots and lots of flowers.
In the back we had a wood-shed because back then the heating fuel was wood. Each fall we had to purchase it. Collecting the wood was a whole story in itself. I think there were some companies who did this, and we paid them for it. It was quite costly to get all the wood for winter during fall, because one would have wanted to have enough to last until spring.
The wood we bought was carried home, the big trunks were unloaded in front of the house, then the machine sled came – a machine pulled by a donkey – and chopped the wood up into smaller pieces. Then one had to take it into the house because all this took place out in front of the house. Back then the traffic wasn’t as heavy as nowadays, so this could be done.
Finally the saw-dust had to be cleaned up. The logs had to be carried to the wood-shed and arranged. We then cut up these pieces so one could make fire with them in the stove. There was plumbing in the house, I remember we even had a bathroom.
It wasn’t a shiny one like those you see today, but it had a bath-tub, a sink, a flushing closet and tap water. The kitchen had tap water, too, and outside in the yard we had a kind of well. We had a water-hose for watering the flowers and the trees.
I grew up there and we lived there until the deportation. We were very fond of that house, we constantly did it up. The furniture was simple. The house wasn’t too big, it had three rooms on the ground floor: a parlor, a living room and a bedroom. Above one of the rooms there was an attic room – we loved it –, accessible from the hallway via a wooden staircase.
My brother later moved in and made it his room. I always thought how lucky he was to have a room of his own. I was on very good terms with him, there weren’t any particular problems, despite the four years that separated us. We had a good brother-sister relationship.
There was a beautiful courtyard in front of the house. My parents loved flowers; they arranged the yard very nicely. In the first year an expert arranged it, making flower-beds and planting fruit-trees: apple, pear, plum, cherry and sour cherry; a little bit of everything. We also had red-currant and gooseberry bushes, and lots and lots of flowers.
In the back we had a wood-shed because back then the heating fuel was wood. Each fall we had to purchase it. Collecting the wood was a whole story in itself. I think there were some companies who did this, and we paid them for it. It was quite costly to get all the wood for winter during fall, because one would have wanted to have enough to last until spring.
The wood we bought was carried home, the big trunks were unloaded in front of the house, then the machine sled came – a machine pulled by a donkey – and chopped the wood up into smaller pieces. Then one had to take it into the house because all this took place out in front of the house. Back then the traffic wasn’t as heavy as nowadays, so this could be done.
Finally the saw-dust had to be cleaned up. The logs had to be carried to the wood-shed and arranged. We then cut up these pieces so one could make fire with them in the stove. There was plumbing in the house, I remember we even had a bathroom.
It wasn’t a shiny one like those you see today, but it had a bath-tub, a sink, a flushing closet and tap water. The kitchen had tap water, too, and outside in the yard we had a kind of well. We had a water-hose for watering the flowers and the trees.
Period
Location
Marosvasarhely
Romania
Interview
Eva Deutsch