Tag #133619 - Interview #100685 (Jozsef Farkas)

My pharmacist uncle, Jeno Hertzlinger, was an illegal communist. He went mad when he saw the deceit of communism. They tried to organize the communist party then [between the wars]. There were a few illegal communists in the alkali works from Torda, but in the glass factory as well. After 23rdAugust [2], they promoted my uncle and he became an activist. They transferred him to Kolozsvar, and then from there to Felsotomos [Timisu de Sus in Romanian, 20km south of Brasso], where he became the manager of a ‘casa de odihna’ [holiday home] of the ‘Comitet Central’ [Central Committee]. From there he was transferred to Bucharest and appointed executive manager of the Elias hospital. A man called Elias owned this hospital and he donated it to the Romanian state.It was a large hospital, and before 1989 it was the exclusive hospital of the communist leaders.Once the mother or father of some big shot died, and since there was nobody there, they called my uncle to go with the man. They entered the dissecting-room and could hardly recognize the corpses. 

Accidentally, my uncle showed him a different corpse. So they started searching and finally found the right one. The Central Committee found out and fired him. That was why he literally went mad, and became schizophrenic. In a few words, communism was cruel. As noble as it was in theory, just as cruel was its implementation. My cousin, his son, Joska, came home from Israel and visited him in the hospital, but he didn’t recognize his son. He spent some time in the madhouse, as well, but he was mainly taken care of at home. He died in Bucharest around 1985-86, and after that his wife and daughter immigrated to Israel, in 1987. My aunt, Edit Hertzlinger, died approximately five years ago [around 2000].