Tag #138655 - Interview #78499 (Bernat Sauber)

I continued my activity within the Red Aid in Magyarlapos, as well. My family didn't participate in these actions, I was the only one involved, it was kind of a private matter. Nor my father, nor my brother, nobody knew anything about this. The fliers only circulated in secret about what the Soviet Union, communism and equality meant, and which stated that hatred between nations should be prohibited. And this is exactly what we needed to hear in the situation we were in. Why should we be 'budos zsido' or 'jidan imputit'? [In Hungarian and in Romanian, both meaning 'dirty kike'.] Or why should we be thrown out of the stores? And bearded Jews were seized in the night, got their beard pulled, then cut off. These actions began already in 1937-1938. There were several such cases in Magyarlapos. This made us believe everything was to be changed, and this is our redemption. No longer I would be a Jew, but equal to the Romanians and the Hungarians. Because what was it all about? Anything happened in the country, the Jews were to blame for it. It's true there were many very wealthy Jews, in Magyarlapos, for example, every trader was Jewish. And this was the reason the entire Jewry had to suffer, because it was considered that Jews traded and they had properties. But if they knew what trading meant… My father bought 1 kg of flour for 3.50 lei and sold it for 3.75 or 4 lei, because it wasn't like today, when the profit margin is 20, 30, 50 or 100%. One couldn't afford to do that those days, because there were 6-7 such small stores, and if you tried to sell it for more, the customer went to the other trader and asked him whether they would sell him for less, say for 3.90 instead of 4 lei, and if they did, the client would buy from them.