Tag #136235 - Interview #78490 (Katalin Kallos Havas)

There were public announcements on walls regarding the date the Jews would be taken to the brick-yard, and what they could bring along. After one or two days, on 3rd May, the gendarmes came. When they showed up at our house, everybody’s bundles were already packed up. We left everything in the house as it was: furniture, pots, everything we owned. All we were allowed to take with us – food, some clothes and valuables – was packed in our bundles. They put my family – my parents, my brother and myself – on a truck, along with the other Jewish inhabitants of the house, and took us to the ghetto set up in the brick-yard. Many Christian citizens were happy they took us away, because we left many things behind, and everybody could have their share of them.

The brick-yard is still there, near the Irisz housing estate, close to the railroad. We spent three weeks in the ghetto, in terrible conditions. I don’t remember us cooking anything, since we had nothing we could cook in or on, and we had no electricity. I don’t remember whether we had a communal kitchen. I don’t even remember whether we had the possibility to clean up, there were no toilets. They gathered quite a lot of people there, the entire Jewish community of Kolozsvar. Every family had some three or four square meters of space, regardless of how many members they had. There were no chairs there to sit on; we couldn’t do anything. There were things to lie on, which we could take up and sit on. We were kept in the brick-yard.