Tag #136652 - Interview #78463 (Bela Muller)

The situation was that in Transylvania, after the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the Hungarian culture was predominant in the cities, and thus the Transylvanian Jewry spoke Hungarian and adapted to the Hungarian culture. In the villages, where the population was Romanian, the local Jewry spoke mainly Romanian. But Kolozsvar was, for example, a cultural city, so we assimilated the Hungarian culture. We considered Judaism as our religion, because we were raised in a religious spirit. But we spoke in Hungarian with our friends and acquaintances. We studied in Romanian [before September 1940], but outside school we spoke Hungarian. I didn’t learn any other language, besides Romanian and Hungarian.