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He swore the oath, and next morning he found his son dead in his bed. It’s not an invented story. My husband said – he had been for him to swear – that he had had a very bad conscience that he had agreed to his swearing. Since he loved very much that boy.
He was such a nice child, 16 years old, they had only this son, they didn’t have any daughter, nothing. It didn’t take even two weeks, and that man [his hair and beard] turned to snow-white, he became completely white because of this annoyance [grief].
He used to have brown, dark brown hair and beard. People told him: ‘You see, they told you three times to swear the oath only if you felt you knew nothing on this issue. Since what you are going to say, it is not a simple [spoken oath]. It will have an effect.’
I kept this in my mind, my husband talked a lot about this story, because he was attached to his [Gyula Gordan’s] son. He had to go once in a week there to give an account of how many bread had been baked, how much flour had been used, that’s how he knew the child. He knew all these matters before the war, and he related them to me.
He was such a nice child, 16 years old, they had only this son, they didn’t have any daughter, nothing. It didn’t take even two weeks, and that man [his hair and beard] turned to snow-white, he became completely white because of this annoyance [grief].
He used to have brown, dark brown hair and beard. People told him: ‘You see, they told you three times to swear the oath only if you felt you knew nothing on this issue. Since what you are going to say, it is not a simple [spoken oath]. It will have an effect.’
I kept this in my mind, my husband talked a lot about this story, because he was attached to his [Gyula Gordan’s] son. He had to go once in a week there to give an account of how many bread had been baked, how much flour had been used, that’s how he knew the child. He knew all these matters before the war, and he related them to me.
Location
Romania
Interview
Golda Salamon