Tag #137634 - Interview #78465 (Egon Lovith)

At the end of 1938 there was a qualifying examination at the Institutul Regele Carol al II. [Editor’s note: King Charles II Institute was the successor of the Franz Joseph University in the interwar period; today it is called Babes-Bolyai University.] I was told that without a qualifying examination I wouldn’t be able to find a job. The exam was necessary for any non-specialized jobs and for specialized jobs besides this exam, it was also required to prove one’s vocational schooling. The qualifying examination was available for anybody but in reality it was a hidden form of numerus clausus in Romania [10]. It wasn’t stated that a person of a given ethnic background wasn’t allowed to work, but they rather said that the person needed to prove he was qualified. At the examination there were tests that had nothing to do with anything. First there was the medical examination; blood tests, throat, teeth and other check-ups. I was a skinny but strong kid. I remember a bunch of intelligence tests: there were math problems and logic problem sets. I was excellent at the observation and logic tests. They gave some sort of tricky pictures and I had to complete them. They showed the original complete pictures for a moment and I had to remember what the details were. There was also another test where they showed me a picture for a short time and then took it away and afterwards gave me a piece of paper and I had to complete whatever parts of the original picture were missing. For instance I saw a bear walking in the snow but the footprints were missing. And there were other things missing as well that I had to finish. I must have gotten a high score for noticing so many missing details.