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We spoke at home Hungarian and Yiddish. My grandmother on the mother’s side didn’t speak Hungarian, she was speaking Jewish [Yiddish]. But we spoke Hungarian, because mum and dad went to school in the Hungarian era [in the time of the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy], they spoke a very good Hungarian, but they didn’t speak perfectly Romanian.
They were reading the Hungarian newspaper – as they couldn’t understand the Romanian one – and Hungarian books. There was a printing house here in Sziget, there were two of them in fact, we had Romanian and Hungarian newspapers in my time, that’s what I remember, that must have been in around 1940 [at the end of the 1930s].
And the state didn’t forbid people to write in Hungarian or to publish Hungarian books. As if the parents went to a Hungarian school, they would read Hungarian newspapers, they liked to learn of the news. In those times very few people had a radio – in this street there might have been two radios, not more –, I won’t even mention television sets.
They liked to listen to the news, and they could get some from the newspaper. Here in Sziget Jews talked a lot in Hungarian generally. Where Jews were staying, in that house they spoke Jewish. The elder spoke, but not all children did. A very few spoke German, only those who lived environs Viso, where Germans, Saxons lived. Here in Sziget only those spoke German who were taught to, who kept a governess who spoke German. Hereabouts Jews spoke mainly Hungarian.
They were reading the Hungarian newspaper – as they couldn’t understand the Romanian one – and Hungarian books. There was a printing house here in Sziget, there were two of them in fact, we had Romanian and Hungarian newspapers in my time, that’s what I remember, that must have been in around 1940 [at the end of the 1930s].
And the state didn’t forbid people to write in Hungarian or to publish Hungarian books. As if the parents went to a Hungarian school, they would read Hungarian newspapers, they liked to learn of the news. In those times very few people had a radio – in this street there might have been two radios, not more –, I won’t even mention television sets.
They liked to listen to the news, and they could get some from the newspaper. Here in Sziget Jews talked a lot in Hungarian generally. Where Jews were staying, in that house they spoke Jewish. The elder spoke, but not all children did. A very few spoke German, only those who lived environs Viso, where Germans, Saxons lived. Here in Sziget only those spoke German who were taught to, who kept a governess who spoke German. Hereabouts Jews spoke mainly Hungarian.
Period
Location
Maramarossziget
Romania
Interview
Golda Salamon