Travel

Anna Mrazkova
Prague
Czech Republic
Interviewer: Dagmar Greslova
Date of interview: December 2006

Anna Mrazkova is a nurse by occupation. She comes from Luze, near Vysoke Myto, an important center of the Jewish community, where her grandfather and father were presidents of the Jewish religious community. Thanks to this fact, she was raised in an Orthodox spirit, and her family observed all Jewish religious holidays. The family, however, also devoted itself to Czechoslovak activities, such as attending Sokol 1 - even now, Anna Mrazkova poignantly recalls the atmosphere of the last pre-war all-Sokol Slet [Rally] in Prague in 1938, and to this day has kept piously stored away the garland she as a teenager wore on her head during the exercises. Her adolescence was significantly marked by the proclamation of the Protectorate of Böhmen und Mähren 2; at first she was prevented from going to high school 3, and later the entire family was fundamentally affected by the anti-Jewish laws 4, when gradually almost their entire property was confiscated, they were denied access to public places, forbidden to associate with their friends, and ordered to wear a six- pointed star 5. In December 1942 deportation to Terezin 6 followed, where Anna worked as an assistant in a hospital. From there, in 1943, she was transported along with her parents and sister to Auschwitz-Brezinka. After the selection in Auschwitz, Anna was separated from her family, ended up in Block B VI, and worked in the so-called 'Weberei' [German for 'weaving mill']. Towards the end of the war she did forced labor, cleaning up the aftermath of air-raids on Hamburg, from where she was transported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp 7. There she experienced the liberation, and from there she returned home in July 1945, after finding out by chance that her mother and sister had survived the war. During the Holocaust, she lost 27 members of her family. After the war she worked at a research institute, and later helped out at the Jewish religious community in Prague. She married twice. She is childless due to the consequences the Holocaust had on her health. Talking to Anna Mrazkova was exceptionally pleasant - despite all the tribulations that fate has bestowed upon her, she is an utter optimist, a woman full of life, who always manages to look at life with detachment and with her characteristic ironic humor.

Family background">Family background

My grandfather on my father's side, Hynek Polak, was born in 1860 in Jicin. He graduated from business academy and devoted his entire life to business; he and Grandma owned a shop where they sold liquor. His son, Bedrich Polak, and his wife Greta also had a store in the same building in Jicin. His other son, my uncle Josef, had a daughter Hana, who died in the Holocaust, and Vera, who survived the war. We used to go to Jicin to visit my grandparents, but I don't remember it that much, I was still very small.

My grandparents were believers, but observed Jewish holidays more out of tradition, as some sort of folklore. They practiced, but we never really talked about it much. I do know that my father used to go to the synagogue, because it was necessary for ten adult men to meet, meaning men that had had their bar mitzvah, so that they could have a minyan for prayer.

My grandmother, Helena Polakova, née Alterova, died in 1934. Grandpa Hynek spent the whole war in Terezin, luckily he had cataracts, and so always when he was supposed to go into the transport, he went for an operation and thus avoided deportation. This was because the Germans didn't deport sick people eastward, because they were still claiming that there were work camps in the east, and it would thus have been suspicious if they would've been sending the disabled and ill to work. It seems that the Germans were counting on him dying of disease in Terezin, as he was 85! But Grandpa survived all his children, most of his grandchildren, and died long after the war, at the age of 96.

My father, Emil Polak, was born in 1895 in Jicin. He had two brothers, Bedrich and Josef, and a sister, Hedvika, who died as a sixteen-year-old girl. When as a child I asked how she'd died, they told me that she'd fallen out of a window, but under what circumstances, that I never found out.

My father and mother were cousins. Because my father's mother [Helena Alterova, née Polakova] and my mother's father [Max Alter] were siblings. As if that wasn't enough, my mother had the same name as her future mother- in-law - Helena Polakova, and both had the maiden name Alterova. So if I'm a little meshuga, it's my family's fault! In genetics class, one professor told us that unions like that are very dangerous, but if good qualities combine, a genius can actually be born! Could that be my case? But I've got to say that though they were cousins, they didn't know each other as children or youngsters. It was only when my father's brother Bedrich got married in Prosec, that they went to visit Luze, where my father saw my mother for the first time. And that was that!

My mother's parents were named Max Alter [1860 - 1930] and Kamila Alterova [1865 - 1938]. Grandpa Max loved me a lot. That nice relationship was mutual, I also loved him a lot, we used to go out hiking together and for walks in the forest, we'd pick mushrooms and blueberries. I got a lot of mileage out of my grandpa during my childhood, because my parents were very busy with the store, and so I spent a lot of time with Grandpa and Grandma. Grandpa Max died in 1930, and is buried at the Jewish cemetery in Luze. Grandma Kamila died in 1938, after Munich 8, when Hitler annexed the Sudetenland 9, but she didn't live to see Hitler occupy us. Grandma was the last person to be buried at the Jewish cemetery in Luze during the war.

I remember that when Grandpa died I was six, I probably missed going on the walks that I used to take with him, so once I went off on my own. I met some ladies, and they asked me where I was going, alone like that and far from home. I said that I was going for a walk. They took me with them and led me back home, where they told my parents that they'd run into me by the river, alone. My mother was terribly distraught, her head was full of the things that could have happened to me, that I could have gotten lost, or drowned in the river. She told Father that he had to teach me a lesson so that I'd remember that I'm not allowed anywhere by myself; at that time Father had to give me a whopping, but I think that it hurt the poor guy much more than it did me.

My mother, Helena Polakova [née Alterova] was born in 1901. My mother was one of five children, her siblings were named: Jiri, Karel, Bedrich and Marie. My mother's oldest brother, Jiri Alter, was an astronomer. When Hitler came to Czechoslovakia, Uncle Jiri got an offer to go work at an observatory in England. He took the offer, and left with his family for safety. In England Uncle Jiri's daughter, my cousin Erika, wanted to join the Czechoslovak army, but as they didn't take women she joined the English one. She learned perfect English, so even native Englishmen couldn't understand why it said in her passport that she was a Czechoslovak citizen, they couldn't believe that she wasn't a native Englishwoman. Jiri's son, my cousin Bedrich, left for Palestine. Uncle Jiri's youngest son, Arnost, was arrested for illegal activities back when the transports weren't on yet, he was the first of the family to perish, even before we were deported.

My mother's second brother, Karel Alter, was president of the Czech Council of Jewish Communities during the Protectorate, was a doctor of law and had two sons - Bedrich and Pavel. Another of my mother's brothers, Bedrich Alter, fell during World War I. My mother's sister, Marie, married Karel Kraus from Caslav, and they had two children together, Milena and Frantisek.

Growing up">Growing up

I was born on 6th June 1924 in Luze in the Vysoke Myto district. I've got a sister, Eva Liskova [née Polakova], who's five years younger than I am, born in 1929. Today my sister lives in Losina, out in the country near Pilsen, and belongs to the Pilsen Jewish religious community.

I attended Sokol from the age of three, my father used to attend it as well, and when my sister Eva was born, they also had her registered at about the age of three. I liked Sokol a lot, but later we stopped going there, so as not to endanger the rest of the Sokol members by associating with them. I exercised together with my father at the last pre-war all- Sokol Slet [Rally] at the Strahov Stadium in 1938. To this day, I've still got the garland that I had on my head back then! The last rally was very nice, I've got beautiful memories of it. The atmosphere was pleasant, and none of us back then wanted to admit that things would soon so drastically change for the worse, that Munich and the war would come.

I remember that Uncle Jiri used to know one piano virtuoso from Vienna, Steurmann, for whom he used to help arrange concerts in Prague. He had a daughter, Mausi Steurmannova, who played the piano beautifully. During one visit to our place they asked her to play, it was magnificent. I was supposed to play after her, but I hid in a corner, as I would've been embarrassed to play after her. My parents paid for piano lessons for me, but soon realized that I'd never be a virtuoso!

I attended public school in Luze, and then my parents decided that I had to go to high school, and because there wasn't one in Luze, they sent me to attend high school in Prague. I attended first and second year, so two years, of high school in Prague, and during that time lived with Uncle Jiri. I did third year of high school in Vysoke Myto, I then managed to make fourth year, but then Hitler arrived, and apparently was afraid that I was too smart, so forbade me from studying. But I have to admit that I was actually glad, because I didn't like studying too much. School was my number one enemy!

So then for a year I studied to be a seamstress, but then even that wasn't possible, I could only be there on the sly, the lady in charge became afraid that she could have problems if she kept me on as a student. So a friend of my father's who was a tailor took me on. However it then began to be dangerous for him too, he was afraid, so I left. So then I was at home, and sewed various bags, and then when the transports began I sewed various bedcovers, embroidered blankets, everything that could come in handy for us. But it was only for us or for friends, so for free, as I was no longer allowed to be employed anywhere.

My parents ran a prosperous business, a general store with fabrics as well as some groceries like coffee, but they didn't sell bread for example, because there were three bakers in the area. The store was right in our building, made a decent amount of money and was fairly prosperous; my mother and father worked in it. But when Hitler came, my father had to close the store, and the only work they allowed him to do as a Jew was shoveling snow and similar menial activities. Our neighbor, who had a bakery next door to us, told my father at the time: 'Mr. Polak, if what happened to you happened to me, if they took my store away, I'd probably hang myself!' and back then my father said to him: 'As long as I'm with my family, nothing else can affect me.'

In Luze our family had been living for generations in an old family home at 202 Jeronymova Street; alas today our house is no longer there. We had five rooms and two kitchens - one large and one smaller one. The street was named Jeronymova, but people used to call it Zidovna [from 'Zid' the Czech word for Jew], as earlier there had been a Jewish ghetto there. At the time I lived there, Luze was a relatively small town - there were only about 1360 people living there. But located in Luze was the center of the Jewish religious community for surrounding towns as well. All Jews from the area belonged to the Jewish religious community in Luze.

My grandpa, Max Alter, was the president of the Jewish religious community. After my grandpa's death some Mr. Cervinka was president, and after he died my father, Emil Polak, became president of the Community. My father became president when the war hadn't started yet, and remained so up until the transport, so all organization of handing over of property was done by my father.

First was the decree that Jews had to hand over animals. For me, as a young girl, that was terribly sad. I took it very hard, because I loved our animals very much, we had these clever and very good dogs. To me they were friends, I believe that animals have intelligence, and that they're capable of experiencing, when they feel something, they're able to express it. For example, when my mother was angry with me and wanted to punish me, all it took was for her to raise her hand at me, and those dogs would jump at her hand and thus show that they didn't want her to punish me. I loved our animals very much, and took it very hard when they were taking them away.

Religious life was, understandably, practiced in our family, if for no other reason, than because Grandpa, and later after him my father, were presidents of the Jewish religious community in Luze. I've got to say that it was tradition, that we lived in a religious fashion, but our family never went overboard with it.

We observed all the Jewish holidays, at least until Grandpa died. On Friday evening we'd light candles and pray, though I never understood the prayers at all, I had them memorized and always recited them exactly. But I wouldn't say that observance of holidays was done in some affected fashion, to me it's more this traditionalism than some sort of religiousness. During the Sabbath the men would leave for the synagogue, they dressed up in traditional clothing, carried prayer straps - tefillin, and Grandpa covered his head 10. During the Sabbath my mother and I baked barkhes. The table had to be set festively. We cooked various puddings, which later however, when poverty and the war came, we had to stop making, because they used up lots of eggs and butter.

My mother also baked excellent little cakes with blancmange. To make blancmange, my mother always mixed eggs and wine in a water bath, and mixed for so long until she'd whipped up an awfully good froth, which would then be poured over the cakes. While Grandma and Grandpa were still alive, we used to use kosher dishes 11.

My father had a sense of humor; I remember when the we were observing the Long Day [Yom Kippur], an all-day fast, they'd be praying in the synagogue, and as a joke my father says to the rabbi: 'Forget about all this here, come over to our place, we've got roast goose at home!' and the poor rabbi had to stay there and all day his mouth would water.

At our place the tradition of Jewish holidays was strictly observed. While my grandfather was alive, we observed only Jewish holidays, celebrating Christmas was out of the question! But I remember that once this peculiar thing happened in the family - when my cousin Franta Kraus was born in Caslav, as a baby he was seriously ill, he got an ugly case of pneumonia and was apathetic and breathing laboriously. Back then it occurred to my aunt that she had to think of something to break through my cousin's apathy, something to get his attention. She decorated a Christmas tree with lots of candles and lights - and it really worked, and the lights got my cousin's attention, so in the end he got well. Thanks to a Christmas tree he survived a serious case of pneumonia, but of course later the poor guy ended up in the gas because of Hitler anyways.

In Luze we normally associated not only with Jews, but everyone else, too. My best friend wasn't Jewish. We knew each other from nursery school, her father was a basket-maker. We got along very well, but then I left for high school in Prague, and she for Pardubice. We had a gentile servant, then later we just had a helper that used to come over, and during the war we understandably had no one. One servant was named Baruska, our dolls were named after her, she was very nice. Another was Andula, she was also awfully nice and loved us a lot. During the war, when we weren't allowed to associate with so-called Aryans, Andula used to do so proudly, so much that my mother was afraid for her, and told her that she shouldn't come over, for her own safety.

The Jewish community in Luze was quite large, as it was the center of Jewish life in the region. During the war the shammash's apartment was occupied by some person that cured rabbit hides, and he dried them right in the synagogue! This basically had one advantage, that during the war the synagogue wasn't dank and didn't go moldy, as because of the drying of rabbit skins it had to be ventilated a lot. After the war the Luze synagogue fell into disrepair. Today it belongs to the Prague Jewish community, and was renovated several years ago; it's no longer used for religious purposes, but concerts and exhibitions are held there.

During the synagogue's reconstruction they found some hidden baby shawls that had been hidden there for ritual purposes. The Jewish cemetery in Luze also fell into disrepair after the war, and was partially pillaged, as tombstones were very valuable. Our family's tombstone was also pushed over, but because it was very heavy the thieves didn't steal it. The cemetery was also renovated a few years ago.

During the war">During the war

Forty-one Jews left Luze for the transport. Before we left for the transport, my mother's sister, Marie Krausova [née Alterova] moved from Caslav with her husband and children to stay with us. This was because there were a lot of anti-Semites living in Caslav, life there was difficult for my aunt, and so my mother told her to return along with her family to her old family home. They lived with us for some time, it was nice for the family to be together, but soon my uncle received a summons from the Gestapo, and the transports began.

My aunt's family was sent to Lodz 12; my aunt died before we were even deported. The way we found out about it was that we got a correspondence card from my uncle. Of course nothing specific could have been written in it, they wouldn't have allowed my uncle to send it then. That's why my uncle used this secret code - in the space for the sender, together with his name [JuDr. Karel Kraus] by the address he wrote the year of my aunt's birth and the year of her death, and underlined the whole thing, so we realized that this was his way of secretly telling us that my aunt had died. After that we never had the opportunity to find out from anyone what had happened, but she had most likely died of some infectious disease, because many people in the ghettoes died of infections.

Uncle Karel died in Auschwitz. As I found out later, my cousin Milena Krausova could have saved herself. However, during the war some unpleasant aunt who Milena didn't like was constantly with her, and so she said to herself that she didn't care where she goes, the main thing would be for it not to be with this person. Alas, Milena went into the gas.

I remember realizing that the situation was bad when they annexed the Sudetenland. People who up to then had been closet Fascists suddenly showed their true colors, and that was quite a big shock for us. But I've also got to say that at home in Luze the situation was a little different, in that Jews, as a quite strong community, had lived there for generations, and there weren't any problems. We'd always associated with non-Jews as well, no one differentiated there.

For example, when Jews were ordered to turn in animals and other things, the Czech police chief, some Mr. Burian, came to notify us ahead of time. Mr. Burian came ahead of time and warned us that they had a confiscation order, so that we'd have time to hide valuables with friends where they'd be safe. Almost everything was being confiscated: valuables, jewels, gold, furs, dishes, carpets, cars, bicycles, radios, dogs, cats, household animals.

So thanks to the warning, we were for example able to hide our furs with friends, and turned in these horrible old ratty moth-eaten furs - when you touched them, clouds of vermin would rise from them. Or we for example turned in our bicycles, but this policeman, Burian, came after the war and brought our bicycles back. He was an awfully decent and honorable man.

What's ironical is that they somehow forgot to confiscate our car. Because we had a four-seater Praga-Picollo convertible. It was a very beautiful car, a light coffee color with black fenders. Riding around in a car like that as a little girl was a huge experience for me! The roof was taken down for the summer, for the winter it was put back up, the windows were of mica, so you couldn't see much through them, we could see only forward. When my father used to go on vacation to Slovakia with friends, he always took our Pragovka. To make up for the fact that we'd stayed at home, our father would send us one or even two postcards a day from various towns in Slovakia!

For some reason the Germans forgot to confiscate our car, and as we later found out, our car was taken by partisans during the war. After the war someone advised my mother that she should ask for compensation, but she refused, with the words that if our Pragovka served a good cause, for partisans, there's no way she'd ask for any compensation. What's more, she herself didn't know how to drive, my father was no longer alive, and we were moving to Prague. To this day I still occasionally run into similar Praga Picollo cars on the streets of Prague, now they drive tourists around in them on sightseeing tours, and I always say: 'Hello Picollino!'

When they forbade my parents to run their store any longer, my mother told their former customers to come, that we'd sell them various things. People were thrilled, because already at that time things were bad, and lots of things weren't available. We for example had a little coffee roaster that had belonged to Grandpa, and in the store there was a bale of green coffee beans left. We were roasting the coffee, and suddenly my mother realized that you could smell it everywhere, as coffee has a beautiful and penetrating aroma.

Another time, we'd bought a half a pig from some friends, someone brought it to us through the back door, as right across from our house, they'd moved the head of the NSDAP [Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, National Socialist German Workers' Party or Nazi party] into a house that had belonged to some Jews. This head of the NSDAP, a German, had been a non-commissioned officer in Vysoke Myto during the First Republic, and had a wife who was a former 'Bordelmutter' [Madam of a bordello]. But she was kind-hearted, actually she was a very decent woman, because she had no problems talking to us from her window across the way. Even though everyone was already forbidden from talking to us. And so it happened that when we were baking the pig, and she must have smelled the aroma, she leaned out of her window and asked if someone had brought us meat. I told her that after all, everyone wants to eat. She didn't inform on us, although she must have often seen that we were doing something forbidden.

I remember that we got a large yellow sheet, from which we had to cut out and trim six-pointed stars, and we had to sew them onto our clothes, there where your heart is. I've got my star hidden away to this day, it's this reminder of wartime. I didn't feel that wearing the star was something I should be ashamed of. We were Jews, everyone knew that, so I didn't perceive it as an insult. Once my cousin Milena Krausova received a summons, and was walking along the street in Prague with a star on her lapel, and two young workers she didn't know came up to her, each of them took her by one arm, and proudly walked along with her. It was this nice gesture, they showed demonstratively that although no one was allowed to talk to her, they were proudly walking around with her. Because my cousin was also a very pretty girl!

My sister, mother, father, Grandpa Hynek Polak and I all went into the transport together. We got a summons, packed our rucksacks with the allowed 20 kilos. We took practical things - some dishes, a pan, mess tins, I think a cooker, too. It made no difference, because they confiscated a bunch of things, and also stole all sorts of things along the way.

I must admit that I took it all fairly optimistically, I was even looking forward to Terezin, because there were no young people in Luze, and I was hoping that I'd meet someone there I could talk to. So, on 2nd December 1942 we got on some trucks, and they drove us to Pardubice. Just from Luze there were 41 of us, they took us there together with the rest of the Jews in the Pardubice district. There, we slept a couple of nights just like that on the bare wood floor of the Pardubice Sokol Hall.

Around the 5th or 6th of December, we got on the transport to Terezin. We went by train, it wasn't in cattle wagons, but a normal passenger train. The whole time in the train, I had this tendency to keep by my family. I met some young people there, and they told me to come sit with them, but I didn't want to leave my parents. So much so that my father had to tell me that everything was fine, that I should go ahead and go chat with them. The Deutsch brothers from Policka were there, these nice guys, there were about five of them. The entire way, we told jokes and stories, it was great fun - we laughed all the way from Pardubice to Terezin.

Back then there wasn't a spur line to Terezin yet, so we walked from Bohusovice to Terezin with our rucksacks on our backs. It was cold, our bags were so heavy, we were wearing two coats, we looked like we were pregnant...

In Terezin they were registering us, we were standing in line, and they asked Jirka Deutsch and me if we were husband and wife. So I said: 'Jesus Christ, no!' - 'So you're engaged?' - to this Jirka answered 'Yes,' so I had to say 'He's full of it,' and he was terribly insulted, that I hadn't said that we were together. If I would've said that we were engaged, they would have given us a place to live together, and who knows how I would've ended up, because the Deutsches went right on the next transport to the East, in January. I would probably have died along with them. Back then, everything was a question of coincidences like that!

We didn't know much about life in Terezin, it was more of a hunch. For example, we knew that we'd be living separately - men and women and children separately. But we didn't have much information, as it was forbidden to write and associate with other people in the region. The first prisoners, the men from the AK1 transport, who'd been summoned to prepare the ghetto for the future camp, weren't allowed to write anything home. Some of them broke the prohibition and managed to smuggle out information. They were sentenced to death for it, and what's more in such a fashion that they had to shoot each other, so that the Germans didn't dirty their hands. Later, Fischer the executioner took care of executions in Terezin. He was a person who was a former executioner, and applied for this job in Terezin on his own accord.

My father lived separately, with the men. My mother, my sister Eva, my cousin Vera, her sister and mother and I lived in this smaller room. We were six relatives living together, we were extremely lucky that Vera's husband was from the AK [short for 'Arbeitskolonne' - 'Work Column'], so he arranged this room for us. The room was relatively puny, on top of our suitcases we laid the straw mattresses that we slept on at night, and during the day we shoved them against the wall.

The room was full of bedbugs, it was terribly unpleasant. One night my cousin and I could no longer bear it, and took our mattresses outside, where we laid them down on these small stools. We thought that we'd sleep better outside, and that the bedbugs wouldn't torment us. We didn't improve our lot very much, however, because someone poured a bedpan out the window above us right onto where we were sleeping... As I say, there was no shortage of excitement in Terezin!

My cousin Vera survived the war, but her husband died during a death march. After the war Vera remarried and had three children - Jana, Hanka and Petr. Jan Munk, her oldest son, is the director of the Terezin Memorial.

In Terezin I worked at the outpatient clinic, I worked as a sort of auxiliary nurse, although at that time I hadn't yet taken nursing. I helped wherever it was needed, I sterilized equipment and so on. The head physician at the clinic was Dr. Leichstag, who was a Hungarian who'd studied medicine in Czechoslovakia, got married here, and before had been a doctor right in Terezin. So he went from Terezin to Terezin! Doctor König, with whom I later worked in Prague, also worked there. The nurses at the clinic were always changing, because they were leaving for the transports. That's why they gave a quick nursing course there, which I registered for.

One day a nurse came to the clinic to apply, and during the interview we found out that before the war she'd worked in a ward where my uncle Karel Alter had been a doctor. This nurse ran off, told me to close my eyes and open my mouth, and placed a chocolate-covered date in my mouth. A chocolate- covered date was an immense rarity in Terezin! I asked her what I had done to deserve such a gift. She said because I was a relative of Dr. Alter's.

Cultural life in Terezin was of a very high standard, concerts took place, plays were put on. I remember the plays of Karel Svenk, 'At zije zivot!' [Long Live Life!], another was named 'Posledni cyklista' [The Last Cyclist], that one played in Prague after the war as well. The play of course had a political subtext, but that's not why it was popular, the play was mainly really very well written.

As a young girl I was hungry for culture, I attended all the various cultural events I could. For example, the conductor Karel Ancerl rehearsed 'Eine kleine Nachtmusik' in the ghetto. [Editor's note: Serenade No. 13 for strings in G major, K 525, more commonly known as 'Eine kleine Nachtmusik' ('A little night music'), one of the most famous compositions by Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791).] The pianist Alice Hertzova also played in Terezin. Those were beautiful experiences! However, when a transport left, lots of these people left and the concerts and plays had to be rehearsed anew, with different members. I remember 'The Bartered Bride' put on as a concert, where a children's choir sang beautifully, back then that touched me greatly.

You had to get tickets to the concert, I never had one, so I used to go listen from behind the doors, and whenever the custodian by the doors wasn't watching, I'd secretly sneak inside. Everyone thought it was very funny. My boss noticed me too, and was a bit astonished that such a young girl, I was 18 at the time, was interested in classical music.

Then when I got the summons for the transport to Auschwitz, my boss offered to get me an exception. But I said that even if he managed to get me an exception, my family would have to leave anyways, and I didn't want to remain alone in Terezin, knowing that my family was far away in the East. When I went to the clinic to say goodbye before departure, Dr. König and the playwright Karel Senk were lying there as patients. I told them: 'Guys, you be good here, I'm being promoted,' I remember that Svenk's eyes were full of tears, he probably suspected what was waiting for me, and probably said to himself it was a shame, such a young girl. In the end I survived the war, while Karel Svenk died in Auschwitz in 1944.

We boarded the transport to Auschwitz-Brezinka on 18th or 19th December 1943. We went in cattle cars, we didn't know where they were actually taking us. Suddenly we saw the sign 'Auschwitz,' we froze a bit, but the train kept going, so we were still living with the hope that they'd take us elsewhere. We had no idea that the camp was so big. We stopped in Birkenau, which was of course part of the camp. Then everything went lickety-split - the men here, mothers with children here, old people here. My mother and I ended up amongst the women, because though my mother was already 40, she looked very good for her age.

Right upon arrival they tattooed us, which hurt, they were tattooing with a needle, point after point, absolutely amateurishly, crooked and ugly. We were terribly tired from lack of sleep and hungry, they led us into some buildings where it was terribly cold, and instead of a floor there was only packed dirt, on which we slept.

I got into a building together with my future friend Ruth Blochova and her brother, whom I met the first day in Auschwitz. The two of them had been working in the children's kitchen in Terezin, so they'd been relatively well off. Their mother had gone on the previous transport to Auschwitz, and they'd been afraid for her and wanted to be together with her, so they got onto our transport on the sly, in the hopes that they'd meet up with their mother. But in Auschwitz they soon found out that their mother had ended up in the gas. The boy was a born organizer, so he came up with the idea that at night we'd lie down in this circle, always one head on another's legs, who had someone else sleeping on his legs, so we at least warmed ourselves up a bit, and could get some sleep.

Right after we arrived, they took our things and our clothes. We were issued clothes made of burlap that hung off us, darned socks, and wooden shoes carved from one piece of wood, so you couldn't bend your feet properly in them. Sewn on the clothes were two triangles of various colors, forming a six-pointed star. Various groups had differently colored triangles, murderers for example had green, political prisoners red, homosexuals purple, I think. Then we got coats from people that had gone into the gas. But so that we wouldn't have normal clothing, we had to exchange various parts of clothing amongst ourselves.

I got a light gray coat, and along with it the sleeves of my girlfriend's green coat - this was so that if we by chance succeeded in escaping, we'd be conspicuous at first sight. As my friend Lala had the same red hair as I did, and we had basically the same coats - I a gray one with green sleeves, and she a green one with gray sleeves - they would mistake us for each other. Back then that was a great compliment for me, because Lala was an awfully pretty girl, so I was glad that they were mistaking me for such a beauty!

Soon came another selection, where the men had to go separately, the women separately, the children separately. From that moment on, we were completely separated as a family, because Eva went among the children, my mother among the women, my father among the men, and they ordered me to go to Block B VI. They were selecting young girls, and my father was terribly afraid of what they were going to do with me there. I was calming him down, and saying that I was lucky that I was a Jew, that because of that no Nazi would dare do anything with me, because he'd be afraid of 'Rassenschande,' so-called 'racial defilement.'

For Block B VI they wanted young and more or less good-looking girls, no emaciated ones, due to the fact that in Block B VI, jazz was played for the entertainment of the SS. For us it was like a miracle, because in the Protectorate of Böhmen und Mähren, jazz wasn't allowed to be played, due to its being American music. In Auschwitz they didn't care that it was actually black music, they somehow forgot about that, or perhaps they didn't even know it! In any case, a band played there to entertain the SS soldiers, and we were allowed to be there, so that when Nazi visitors came to have a look at us, it looked like we were content and not lacking anything.

Our daily food ration was a quarter brick of bread, melta [a coffee substitute] without milk or sugar, and at noon something they called soup. Often not even that though, because those that portioned the bread often managed to steal some, so our rations were shortened. The conditions were especially horrific during the winter. On one side of the camp were latrines. On the other side was a building where we had the only washing facilities, which were two troughs in the middle of which were taps with cold water. We were issued one dirty, small and smelly bar of soap, which was supposed to last us for the entire time in the concentration camp.

When you wanted to wash your clothes, it was only in cold water, there was of course no other kind, and as everyone had only what they were wearing - nothing spare existed - you had to put on wet clothing that then dried on you. In the winter that was especially unpleasant!

Each morning was a roll-call, then another two or three during the day, I don't remember exactly anymore. Lots of times we had to stand for even several hours before they came to count us. Once during a roll-call, when we'd been standing a long time, I fainted. They dragged me off a ways and were trying to revive me. I remember that I was already coming to a bit, and I heard a girl standing above me saying: 'Uh oh, she's not going to see another day!' As I was coming to my senses and heard her words, I was suddenly filled with this amazing strength, and to myself I said: 'You know what, you stupid goose, I will, too!'

Surviving the concentration camp was among other things also a question of willpower and attitude towards life. I was always an optimist, I felt in myself strength and resolution to survive it all. I do though remember one girl who was terribly pessimistic. She was constantly repeating that we were all going into the gas, she wasn't capable of thinking of anything else, and saw everything from the worst perspective. She survived, but after she returned home, she remained a pessimist. She soon died, and I think that her pessimism and negativism was to a large degree at fault. Such a useless death.

We lived in wooden barracks, in the middle of which was a so-called chimney. They heated in the winter, but one can't talk about any sort of warmth, because you could easily lay your hand on the stove, it was completely lukewarm. Both sides of the barracks had three-story bunks - lower, middle and upper. Lying diagonally above me was one girl that was pregnant, her stomach was already large, she was in an advanced stage of pregnancy. I still remember her when we were leaving for Hamburg, we girls hid her stomach so that no one would notice she was pregnant. She was still with us during the clean-up work in Hamburg, but then they sent her away somewhere, and I didn't know anything about her after that.

Post-war">Post-war

After the war I found out that she'd survived and written a book. In her memoirs she writes that she survived, but for the price of having to strangle her own child. She was forced to, they gave her a choice - either they'd kill her along with the child, or she'd survive, but would have to kill her own child... Even terrible things such as these happened during the war. A person that didn't live through it can never comprehend what a concentration camp was. Years later I met her, luckily she'd managed to start anew after the war, she moved to Israel. She's got children and grandchildren, and looks great. She published a book, her autobiography.

In Brezinka I worked in the so-called 'Weberei,' a weaving mill, where we wove belt substitutes. There was a leather shortage, so we were weaving belt substitutes from plastic string, which then soldiers had attached to their machine guns. Or other times they forced us to carry rocks from one place to another, just like that, for no purpose. They were thinking up absolutely senseless work, so that they could harass us. We had to do it, but on the other hand we didn't mind so much, because we at least had something to do. Being in Brezinka and doing nothing would perhaps have been even more depressing.

In Auschwitz we met the September transport that had gone from Terezin before us. On the birthday of President Masaryk 13, 7th March 1944, the entire September transport went into the gas, which was a bad omen for us. We did the math, that the next time it would be our turn, that likely in June we'd go into the gas. However, one day they herded me and some other women prisoners, amongst whom there were, however, no members of my family, onto a train. We had no idea what they were planning to do with us. We rode along for a relatively long time, and the entire way were thinking about where and why they were transporting us. Until we arrived in Hamburg, which was horribly bombed-out, and there we found out we'd be doing clean-up work.

After an air-raid we'd always clean up the rubble and then moved somewhere else where a bomb had fallen, and that's how it went time and again. We lived in various barracks and similar buildings.

After the war we were contacted by a man who lived in Hamburg, and in one of the locations where we'd lived in Hamburg, he had a memorial plaque installed; every year on the anniversary of the liberation he went to Israel and visited Czech Jewish women that had survived the Holocaust.

The conditions in Hamburg were hard, many of us died there. We lived through many air raids, which were mainly at night, sometimes even twice or thrice. However, they weren't normal air raids, but so-called phosphorus ones, which was horrible filth, because when phosphorus fell on asphalt roads, people got fried. It may have been horrible, but it was reciprocity. The Germans also did filthy things!

Our work was to then clean up the debris, they'd take us there, as they didn't worry themselves over us dying there during an air raid. They couldn't afford to risk the lives of Aryans, because there were unexploded bombs lying around everywhere, but our lives were, of course, of no interest to them. I've got to admit that we were praying for there to be still more and more of those air raids, 'Dear God, more heavily and bigger drops!' Of course, we wanted them to miss us, but for there to be as many of them, and for the war to finally be over. In Hamburg, as we'd been selected for hard work, on top of our ration, which in Brezinka had been one piece of bread a day and black melta without milk, we also got somewhat thicker soup, so that we could withstand the physical stress.

From Hamburg they transported us for a time to Bergen-Belsen. Compared to Bergen-Belsen, Auschwitz, even with all its gas chambers, was still paradise! Bergen-Belsen was the worst concentration camp, hell on earth, the conditions there were truly catastrophic. We slept on a packed dirt floor, it was incredibly cold, we laid packed one against the other. We warmed each other, until we'd suddenly realize that the person beside you is no longer warming you, because they're dead. At night you couldn't even turn around, as we were lying right on top of each other. When you wanted to go to the toilet, you had to step on the others. There were no latrines there, and there was dirt and excrement everywhere. The conditions were unspeakable! From that filth and overall deficiency, we got typhus. All of us fell ill, without exception, and if there was one, it confirmed the rule.

This was the miserable state we were in when the English liberated us on 15th April 1945. I remember that I saw my first Englishman, and then I don't remember anything more, because I had typhus and for a long time was out of it. I was bedridden for a long time, and quite a long period has been erased from my mind. I got into a hospital, and thanks to that I was able to survive. Lying there with me was Ruth Bloch, who I'd made friends with right the first day in Terezin.

Ruthie stuck to me like glue the whole war, she went everywhere with me, because she was a pessimist, and I was on the contrary an incorrigible optimist. She even stood beside me during the selection in Auschwitz, and was nodding towards me, that she had to come with me. I was afraid, I told her that I didn't want to draw attention to myself in any way, that it was enough that I had red hair, which already made me quite conspicuous. Despite that, during the selection Ruthie ran over to me, she would perhaps rather let herself be shot than leave me. And so in Bergen-Belsen she didn't leave me in the hospital either, and laid beside me.

Later she told me that when I was out of it, I'd been looking for something under my pillow. She asked me what I was looking for, and I answered her: 'Lemon juice. My Mom brought it for me.' You see, typhus affects the brain as well. I was hallucinating and looking under my pillow for lemon juice from my mother! I, of course, didn't know anything about my mother, I was just babbling, I was completely out of it. Ruthie was then telling me about it, and said: 'Yeah, well, that's you all right.' Ruthie survived the war, and after the war she got married to a man in Israel.

When I felt a bit better, I would go outside to look around, there was a Czechoslovak committee there, where they were making lists of who'd survived, who'd died, who was looking for whom. These notices hung behind a window. Once I went there, and noticed that there was a letter there, and by the sender you could still see a stamp saying 'Vysoke Myto' and the addressee 'Mrs. Eva Schwarzova.' I looked for and found Eva Schwarzova. I told myself that I must know the person that sent her that letter. The letter to Eva was from Eva Koudelova, her brother's fiancée, and among other things, the letter said that a bus from Luze had arrived in the Vysoke Myto town square, and out of it had stepped Mr. Schwarz, Eva's husband, and Mrs. Polakova with little Eva. So that's how I found out that my mother and sister were alive, and that they were home.

They didn't know about me, they'd even read somewhere that I was dead. I also had no idea what had happened with my family. I was overjoyed when I found out that I at least knew for sure about Mother and Eva, that they'd survived. As I later found out from them, they both went from Auschwitz- Brezinka on a death march 14, it was during the winter, they were walking barefoot, and slept in barns. They managed to escape from the death march, and while on the run ran into the Red Army, which was advancing from Slovakia. My mother worked for the Russians as a cook, and got to Bohemia with the army. My father died on a death march from the Auschwitz-Brezinka concentration camp sometime in January 1945. We never found out the exact details of his last moments, I'm assuming that he was already weak, and couldn't handle the journey in those terrible conditions.

If back then in Bergen-Belsen I wouldn't have learned that someone from my family had survived, I would have probably gone to Sweden, which was offering those concentration camp prisoners who didn't have anyone good conditions for starting a new life. If I wouldn't have found out that my mother and sister had survived the war, I really would have gone to Sweden, because I was afraid to return home, where there was no one. I was afraid that it would be a terrible shock, and I didn't know if I could have handled returning alone. But in the situation where I knew that I had something to return to, I couldn't wait to see my family again.

It wasn't easy to get to Czechoslovakia, the train tracks had been bombed, but somehow I finally got to Prague by train. The irony of fate is that I still didn't have anything proper to wear - I'd thrown out my lice-ridden clothes, and in Bergen-Belsen I'd found some SS tunic, which I put on. The whole way home in the train, I was saying to myself: 'Dear God, just don't let anyone think that I'm from the SS!' Life is full of paradoxes!

I arrived in Vysoke Myto around 15th July 1945 I think, and as it was Sunday, there was no longer a connection to Luze. Eva Koudelova's family offered that I could sleep over at their place in Vysoke Myto, and then go to Luze on Monday. To welcome and treat me, her family made roast pork with dumplings and sauerkraut and a roast goose. I didn't want to insult them by not eating it, and so I ate all that food after that long period of starvation. But I couldn't wait till the next day to see my mother and sister, so I decided to go home on foot. It was about sixteen kilometers from Vysoke Myto to Luze. Eva offered to accompany me, and because it was far, we decided to go on a bicycle.

However, along the way I began to feel terrible, my organism had gotten unused to food after that terrible hunger and illnesses, and I got horrible digestive problems. I was feeling really horrible, so I told Eva that she should go back home, that I'd manage somehow, and would rather go the rest of the way on my own. So Eva left me the bike, so that I could lean against it on the way, because I probably wouldn't have managed to make it there without some support.

Finally, even with those problems I arrived in Luze towards evening, I was walking along the street, leaning against the bike, and suddenly a group of young girls came walking by me. Suddenly one of the girls said: 'Hey, Eva, that's your sister!' My sister Eva stared and didn't even dare believe it, she was afraid that it didn't have to be the truth. We walked home together, and my mother almost fainted. They no longer believed that I was alive, they had even already read somewhere that I was dead. So that's what our reunion was like!

My mother and sister and I lived in Luze for some time longer, and everyone from the vicinity was sending us fresh cow's milk from the sheer joy of our being alive. So it happened that I got foot-and-mouth disease from that milk! On the other hand, maybe it was lucky for me, as because of the foot- and-mouth disease I couldn't eat anything, so what happened to many people after starving - that they overate and their stomach burst and they died - didn't happen to me. As it was, I couldn't eat anything at all, everything hurt, even swallowing saliva was extremely painful.

My mother had brought home with her several girls who'd managed to escape from the concentration camp. These girls had lost their families, and had no one. At the end of the war they were barely sixteen, so it's actually a miracle that they survived the war, as in most cases children were sent straight into the gas. One girl was named Rezka, she later went to Israel. Another girl was named Gita. On the way home my mother had been taking care of one more girl, but one Jewish doctor, a general of the Red Army, upon finding out what had happened to her, took her home with him to the Soviet Union, where this girl married his son.

After the war, my mother had an 'In Memoriam' plaque installed at the Jewish cemetery in Luze, for my father and the rest of our relatives who had perished during the war. My mother decided that we'd move to Prague, as our house in Luze was dilapidated, and there was nothing to keep us there. We still didn't know what had happened to Dad, and were hoping he'd survived. But we said to ourselves that Luze is a small town, so if he returned, the neighbors would tell him where to look for us. My sister had to finish public school, and I had only four years of high school, and my mother thought it would be best for us to finish school in Prague. So we moved to Prague, to my cousin Vera's, who'd gotten an apartment after her first husband.

The first year after the war, I worked in Prague in a Jewish old-age home as a night nurse. I attended typing and shorthand courses, but I didn't like it too much, I told myself that that wasn't anything for me. I decided to become a nurse, and took a two-year course at a nursing school in Jecna Street. Later, while working, I took an extension in that two-year specialization, and after taking night courses got my diploma. I worked at the Research Institute in the clinical department in nutritional research, later I transferred to the experimental department, where we did experiments on animals.

I was supposed to retire at 52, but I continued working part-time for another two years. Right when I was retiring, the Jewish religious community was looking for someone to help out, so in 1978 I went as a retiree to do some office work and help out at the Jewish religious community in Prague.

Right after the war I joined the Communist Party 15, my reason was that the Communists had fought against Hitler. However, when the trials 16 started, I saw the light. It was quite a major shock for me. I went to see the party chairman, who was by coincidence a doctor, also a Jew, and told him that I could no longer be in the Party, if he didn't see it that way [too]. Then at one meeting someone proclaimed that Jews are evil, and that they didn't deserve anything else anyways, and it was then that I decided that that was the last drop. I wrote a letter that I was leaving the Party, and also took the luxury of saying why. It bothered me how they were behaving towards Jews, and what they were saying about them.

The leadership sent this young guy to come see me, to find out why I had left, and he tried to change my decision. I didn't feel like talking to him at all. He came to see me at work at the research institute, and I told him that it was a dangerous environment for him, isotopes, radiation everywhere, that he'd better leave. He apparently thought that if I could be there, that nothing would happen to him either, and wouldn't let himself be brushed off. He says to me, whether I didn't think it was a shame to leave the Party after so many years, whether I wouldn't still change my mind. I stood fast, and again gave him the same reasons, that the officials' anti-Semitic statements were insulting to me. That young guy says: 'And you're going to leave the Party over a trifle like that?' I lost my patience, and forcefully told him that if he feels it's a trifle, then I certainly do not. Twenty-seven of my relatives had perished in the concentration camps, I'm Jewish, I never denied it, it's neither something virtuous nor shameful, and I'll always stand by it. There was nothing he could say to that, he didn't have any arguments against it, and he left.

I wasn't worried about problems at work, the most they could have done was transfer me to some village hospital, but that wouldn't even have mattered to me. There was a shortage of nurses, and they themselves would have had a big scandal if they would have persecuted me, a nurse. After all, I hadn't done anything bad. At work they understood my decision, as there were reasonable people working in health care, I think that they though the same, just didn't have the courage to say it out loud. I think that they understood me, and didn't have any problems with it, because they knew me and knew what I thought.

I met my first husband, Karel Capek, at the faculty hospital in internal medicine. At the time I was working at a clinic, and he was there as a medic, doing a thesis in rehabilitation. Back then they wanted to transfer me to the countryside, to be a head nurse somewhere far outside of Prague. But I didn't want to be a head nurse, because that work is more about arguing with employees and cleaning ladies. While I'd gone to study nursing mainly because I wanted to work with the ill. Alas, back then they told me that because I was single, they weren't going to discuss it with me at all, and would simply transfer me to the country. I was complaining about it to the medics, and at that time Karel said: 'All right, I'll marry you!' We were married in 1950, but as I say, just the circumstances of the wedding were a sign that the marriage wouldn't last long. After a year we were divorced. My second husband, Karel Mrazek, was an academic painter.

The first years after the war, I didn't have the desire to tell anyone about what I'd lived through. Shortly after the war, one doctor from Luze who'd moved away to America approached me, whether I wouldn't write down my reminiscences for him. He was interested in my history, what I'd gone through in the concentration camps. But back then I had to refuse, I apologized to him, that it wasn't the right time yet. I needed to forget those horrors, not bring them to life.

I've also never gone to Auschwitz to have a look, I was afraid of that, today I probably don't have to be afraid anymore, but visiting Auschwitz doesn't entice me in the least. On the other hand, we girls who'd been in the camp together used to meet regularly in Prague. I remember that the son of one of them was terribly surprised at how it was possible that we always laugh so much together, that he'd never heard so much guffawing as when we meet and recall the concentration camp. But we used to have fun like this in the camp, too! To this day, I attend various memorial events, and my friends and I always have a laugh.

When I realize that at our age we're all so optimistic and full of humor, I have the feeling that that Hitler fellow conserved us, whether he didn't on the one hand benefit us in the end. Sometimes I say to myself, that I've lived through so many illnesses, a heart attack, two cancer operations, a war, that maybe I'll never die, illnesses are afraid of people like that! I'm lucky to be an optimist.

Glossary">Glossary

Daniel Bertram
Cracow
Poland
Interviewer: Edyta Gawron
Date of interview: January 2004

Daniel Bertram is a retired civil servant, a bookkeeper educated at the pre-war Jewish School of Commerce in Cracow. He is active in the life of the Jewish community in Cracow and regularly attends meetings organized by the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation and other institutions dedicated to Jewish culture and tradition. He is one of the few Cracow Jews (presently there are about 180 Jews registered at the Jewish community in Cracow) who regularly attend the synagogue and can pray in Hebrew. He was born in 1920 in the Cracow Jewish district of Kazimierz, where he spent many years of his childhood and youth. During the war he was exiled deep into the Soviet Union. In the 1980s he moved in with his partner, Renata Zisman, and they were one of the few Jewish couples in post-war Cracow. Since Ms. Zisman's death he has lived alone outside the former Jewish quarter. Neither Daniel Bertram nor Renata Zisman had children.

Family background
Growing up
During the war
Post-war
Glossary

Family background

I only remember one great-grandmother, who lived on Szeroka Street opposite Remuh [one of the synagogues in Cracow]. She was called Fajga Sobelman, Butner, Bertram, and then Rapaport. I don't know in which order. Her maiden name was Koszes. She was so healthy that she outlived four husbands and changed her name four times. She lived 90 years. When she was 14 she already had either a husband or a fiance. Guests asked her parents where the fiancee, the 'kale', was. 'Kale' [Yiddish] in Hebrew is 'Kala' - a fiancee or young lady. And her parents said that she was in the courtyard with the other children playing shtrulki [dice or pebbles that children used to throw; a game].

I saw my great-grandmother once in my life. I was two or three years old and I was at Granddaddy's house. She only walked across the room towards the window, looked at me, didn't say a word. She had red rings under her eyes, I don't know if it was from an inflammation or what. And after that I only saw her portrait, it was probably hanging at Granddaddy's house. She was dressed in black, wearing the black hat, already quite an age, nearly 90. One time I asked my daddy: 'Where's Grandma Fajga?' And he told me that she had died. I didn't go to the funeral, but Dad took me to her apartment. And there they were saying the prayers for the dead. I didn't see anything being eaten. Daddy told me that she was a moneychanger, meaning she was involved in the money market on the Main Square. She had this bag and exchanged currencies.

Abraham Bertram, my grandfather on my father's side, had a watchmaker's shop opposite his house. Both the one grandfather and the other were watchmakers and jewelers, you see. My other grandfather had a shop together with my uncle on the same street as their house. Granddad Abraham worked until the last moment of his life. He suffered from diabetes, but he worked. He lived 72 years. He walked very little, led a sedentary life. And then in 1938 or 1939 he died at home. And I had to phone his shop. My mother happened to be in the shop at that moment. When I told her that Granddaddy had died she closed the shop. And then it was the funeral already, because Jews have it very quickly, and after the funeral, there were prayers in Granddaddy's house. My grandfather was a very religious man. He never said a word to me. Once, when he tested me on sidra, he said in German, or in Yiddish, 'Owsky zeykhnet', which means 'excellent' [German - ausgezeichnet, Yiddish - oysgetseikhnt]. Both families - on my mother's side and my father's side - were religious. They kept all the traditions and observed all the holidays, and they were kosher, just as it was supposed to be.

I didn't know my grandma, my father's mother, Estera, or Ester Bertram. She died before I was born, or just after I was born. I only knew her from her portrait. Her maiden name was Tilles. When my dad was working in Belgium as a diamond cutter, Grandma had him come back. She said she was ill. He came and stayed. What his mother probably wanted was for him to get married, for him not to be a bachelor. Dad didn't tell me anything else about his mother. She is buried in the Miodowa Street cemetery [the new Jewish cemetery in Cracow], in the second row, or the third. You used to be able to see the inscriptions from a distance; I wasn't allowed to go closer. And they're not there any more, because all those monuments were stolen during the occupation [see German Occupation of Poland] 1.

Abraham and Estera Bertram had four sons. Bernard was the eldest, and then there was Saul, my father. The third one was Salomon. He was the only one of the brothers to survive the war. As to the fourth one, I don't know what he was called; he died before I had a chance to meet him. He might have been called Jankiel. I haven't even seen a photograph of him.

My father was a watchmaker and jeweler. Uncle Bernard was a goldsmith, but when he married Miss Grossfeld, well, then he worked in her business. She had a corset workshop, 'Gracja' [Grace]. And he started working there with her, probably as a cashier. Dad had a sister, too, Otylia, my aunt Tyla. She married a Ryngiel. Otylia Ryngiel, she was called. And they lived in Mannheim [Germany].

My maternal grandfather was called Bernard Stiel, in Polish Bernard, and in Yiddish Bejrisz. And in the synagogue, when they called him up to the Torah, or when the Kaddish was being recited, they hailed him Dojw. Dojw is 'bear' in Hebrew [Dov], you see, and Bejrisz is 'bear' in Yiddish. He had a shop on the street where he lived. He was a watchmaker, but he had shoes in the shop as well. He would often come and visit us, because we didn't live far away at first. He died in 1929, at the age of 65. He was buried in the Miodowa Street cemetery. I was nine then.

Debora Stiel was my grandmother on my mother's side. Debora, and Doba in Hebrew. [Editor's note: Debora, in English Deborah, is one of the seven prophetesses in the Bible; it is a Hebrew name itself. Doba, the diminutive of Debora was probably affectionately used in the family.] She was an older woman; she wore a wig. She had three daughters. My mother was the eldest - Ettel Bertram. The second was Anna, Hania, Chana, I'm not sure of her name. My grandparents' youngest daughter was Bluma. She married Aleksander Eintracht. My grandmother also had two sons. One son was Lazarz, Luzor in Hebrew. The other son was named Jankiel, Jaakow. I didn't know him; he died in Vienna. He was very devout. Hania, the middle daughter, married Izydor Grinbaum. He had a bookkeeping and audit office. They had two children. Halinka was the older and Heniu was the younger.

Lazarz immigrated to Buenos Aires in 1927. In Cracow he met a girl by the name of Karola. Granddaddy didn't want to allow that marriage, because her family was poor. Her mother sold bagels and Granddaddy didn't like that. They wanted to have an intelligent family, or some money, or a dowry. There used to be this tradition among Jews that she had to have a dowry. When he emigrated, she went after him as an unmarried woman. Three weeks she was at sea, sailing on a ship. He set himself up there; he had friends in Argentina that helped him. He did well; he was a goldsmith by trade, and here in Cracow he had been out of work. And he married that Karola in Argentina. They had only one daughter, a pretty girl. I even have a photograph, a tiny one, which they sent me in a small package. My uncle was a very good goldsmith; he did this very precise work on rings, silver and gold trinkets. Then he opened his own watchmaker and jeweler's shop.

Chaja Molkner was my mom's aunt, so great-aunt to me. I remember that she was a widow, and a very devout person. One time, when I was pre-school age, I was visiting my grandmother and she came. She persuaded me to learn broche for every kind of food. And she gave me this notebook, to write down every broche and for every broche I would get 5 groszy [the Polish currency: 1 zloty=100 groszy]. And so I wrote them down, and in the end I saved up 8 or 9 zloty. She lived very frugally; she was very devout. Because she didn't have kosher milk she wouldn't drink milk at all, only black coffee. And probably because of that she became hunched, and she went around with a hump on her back. She sold cloth; she would just go round various acquaintances and sell cloth. When I was nine, I wanted to go with Mom to see the grave of my granddad, her father. Mom had an anniversary and she went with her aunt Chaja Molkner. And Mom wouldn't let me go in there, but that devout aunt let me. She asked how old I was, and said that if I wasn't 13 yet, I could. Chaja Molkner died in 1938; she was maybe 84 years old. She was trampled by a horse and lay injured at home. I didn't go to her funeral.

My Mom was Ettel Bertram. She didn't like her name, so she said that she wanted to be called Eda, and that's what they called her. Mom kept house in the mornings, brought in the shopping and made dinner. She had her culinary repertoire. In the afternoons Mom went to the shop and sat there, and either wrote letters to her brother in Argentina, or watched the customers, because you had to be careful in that line. Dad often said to Mom in Hebrew 'watch', or 'watch out'. I remember one instance, when a handsome young lady was looking at rings and she hid one ring up her sleeve.

Once there was this case, I think it was in winter, when Dad and Mom went to the shop in the early hours of the morning. They had been called out by the guard who watched the shops and every so often dropped a note in with the time on it, saying that he had been there and checked things. He said there had been a break-in, and a roll-down blind had been damaged. There were things missing: watches from the display. Dad was insured, I don't remember if it was with Fenix [an insurance company], but he didn't get compensation. As it turned out, only the safe was insured, and not the display. Dad always put the most expensive articles into the safe.

Growing up

I was born in 1920 when my parents lived on Krakowska Street with my mother's parents, and then we lived on Mostowa Street, in the same house, in the apartment next-door to Granddaddy [paternal grandfather] and my uncle. I found out that I was born on Krakowska Street from books, because I thought that I was born on Mostowa. I was two, I think, I don't remember exactly, when we were gassed there. I was gassed with my parents. The man who lived beneath our apartment had a shop with cooked meat. And he explained in court that he had been cleaning a gas lamp. On Mostowa Street there was gas lighting, both on the street and in the apartments. So he had been cleaning a lamp and hadn't turned it off, and that was why the gas escaped. An ambulance came; there was a crowd, an awful lot of people gathered then. Uncle Salomon rescued me. They threw me up and down so that the gas would come out. Apparently I was in a terrible way, because I was already yellow or green. And my parents were poisoned just the same, but they saved us all. The people from the ambulance services said that ten more minutes and we'd have had it. My father didn't tell me whether that neighbor was punished, or whether he got any compensation for it. We lived on Mostowa Street for perhaps two years.

After that we moved to a street in a Christian neighborhood. There we had two rooms. And there, once I was seven, I was very close to the elementary school 'Florian' that was a government school named after St. Florian. I was excused from writing on Saturdays. There were a few of us Jews. One was called Reinstein, one was called Romer and one Ginter, I think, the son of a dentist. Four altogether. In the neighborhood I had a few Catholic friends, one a girl. She lived in the same house with her sister, the daughter of a plasterer, a kind of sculptor. Her name was Krystyna Pilchowska. Her sister was called Irena.

Before I went to school I spent a lot of time on my own. Because I didn't go to nursery school I got bored. I really needed nursery school, but my parents didn't want me to go to the nuns' playschool, with Christian children. Sometimes I would play with the sewing machine, I would ride on it as if I was a streetcar driver and I was going along, stopping at all these stops. Sometimes I would sit in the shop too. Then, when the safe was near the display, I would get up on the safe. Customers would come in and I would be sitting on the safe. My brother didn't go to nursery school either, but my sister did.

I remember my bar mitzvah. My father's family came, which meant my father's brother, my father's sister-in-law, and her daughter. There was no one there from Mom's side. The only other person there was Granddaddy. My uncle was there, all from the Bertrams' side. And there was my rebbe, the beak who prepared me for my bar mitzvah, Nuchim Schpitz. He was this thin man who promised me that he would bring me a watch. And apparently he bought me a watch for my bar mitzvah in Vienna, but he said that it had been stolen. When I repeated that to dad, he said to me: 'khusid ganev'. 'Khusid' [Galician Yiddish] means Hasid, and 'ganev' means 'thief'. He could have said 'liar', but he said it so sharply because Dad was a 'misnaged' [an opponent of Hasidism].

That rebbe prepared me a droshe. And I had to talk about tefillin, in Yiddish, which I had never spoken. I learnt it by heart. And I said it. Granddaddy understood, my uncle understood, I don't know if my aunt spoke Yiddish. Then I translated into Polish. Instead of preparing me for something else, to read the Torah on Saturdays, he made me translate a speech like that. But I was allowed up to the Torah, of course. Then Dad said: 'Baruch shebetranu main on shoi sheluze'. That more or less means that I cast all my sins off me. Because that is when you join the community.

I was the oldest of us brothers and sisters. My brother Henryk was four years younger. My sister Ernestyna, or Nusia - that's what we called her - was seven years younger than me. Each of us went to a different school. Nusia went to 'Konopnicka'. That was a girls' school. And on the next street was the boys' school. Henryk went to that boys' school first, and then he moved. After that he went to evening school, to an evening grammar school on the Main Square, and worked at the same time. My brother and sister and I never spent time together. All we did together was eat breakfast, or dinner or supper. And other than that each of us went his own way. For all meals the whole family always sat at the table together. But other than that everyone went their own ways and I didn't know anything, what kind of life my sister led, what my brother did, where he went to school, if he had a tutor. I didn't know anything.

When I finished elementary school, so seven classes, Dad asked me whether I wanted to study or work. So I said: 'I want to study'. So they enrolled me in a school of commerce. But my brother didn't want to study, he preferred to work, preferred to be earning money. And he learned his trade from my father. So in his workshop Dad had both an apprentice and my brother.

I spoke to my brother and sister in Polish, and my parents spoke to each other in Yiddish. Dad talked to us very little, perhaps because he couldn't speak Polish. We talked very little then, unfortunately. Dad usually spoke Yiddish. You see, when he asked me: 'Profitierst?', I had to work out what he meant: 'Is it worth it?' He was talking about a placement in my uncle's office that I was doing at the time. And every Saturday he either read the Hummash or he read 'Kol ish, yesh cheylek, leolam haba'. I'm saying that in the Sephardi 2 fashion now, but then people spoke in the Ashkenazi manner. So Dad would say 'Kol ish, yiesh chailek leoylem habu' - Every man has a place in the world to come. [Editor's note: This sentence is very close to the Mishnah quotation said before studying 'Pirke Avot': 'Kol Yisrael yesh lahem cheylek laolam haba', or in the Ashkenazi fashion: 'Kol Yisroel yesh lohem cheylek loaylom habo', meaning 'Every Jew has a part in the world to come'. It worth noticing that Mr. Bertram -probably unnoticed- replaced 'every Jew' with 'every human being' when citing the quote.] And Dad believed that and every week he would read it, so that I would hear it too. I stayed longest at the table. You see we all ate together at one table in the kitchen, and on Saturdays in the living room. But other than that everybody went different ways.

I was interested in my own subjects; I would sit up until eleven at night. I was the last to bed, sometimes Mom was. I had to get up early in the morning to get to school. Once I was late, and we had the one commerce master in whose class there was a very high standard of discipline. If anyone was late - and I was late - as a punishment I had to arrive the whole week at 7.30 until further notice. Well, and he taught me so well that I'm disciplined now, and wherever I go, I'm always punctual. You could take your breakfast to school and eat at school. I ate in my cap, because that was what I was used to. There were some of my friends, you see, who ate with their caps off. My parents were always telling me about the commandment 'Do not commit adultery.' I didn't even know what that meant. My father wanted me to go to different schools; he was even prepared to enroll me in university. There was money enough for that. When I went to the elementary school I had private lessons. This so-called tutor would come round. It was Mom who made sure I had help. I had problems concentrating, you see. I didn't have 'very good' in all my subjects. I had 'good', or sometimes 'satisfactory'. I didn't have 'unsatisfactory'. My best marks were for behavior. But at home sometimes I'd run riot, fight with my brother.

I went to four schools. First of all to 'Florian', and after that I went to Mizrachi [the elementary school founded in 1921 in Cracow by the local branch of religious Zionist organization 'Mizrachi'], next to the Izaaka synagogue. And another Mizrachi school was being built at that time next to the Tempel [Synagogue], at number 25 or 26. One day, Dad went with me on a Sunday to Mizrachi, to enroll me in the third class there. And the teacher told me to sign my name in Hebrew. I didn't know how to sign my name. I had gone to cheder, to two cheders, but they didn't teach writing there at all. There we only translated from Hebrew into Yiddish. And you paid for that. The students didn't understand anything. Only the ones that understood Yiddish. And as I didn't know Yiddish, I didn't understand. And the rebbe never translated into Polish. And no one asked what it meant. He thought that we all knew Yiddish. I didn't tell my parents. My parents were never interested. They didn't care about anything; they had just the business on their minds. And when I couldn't sign my name, Dad didn't help me by saying 'beyt, reysh...' [bet, resh in modern Hebrew, the first two letters of the name Bertram]. And because of that I had to repeat the second grade and I lost a year.

At Mizrachi in the mornings we had Hebrew subjects and in the evening we went to the new school that was being built for Polish subjects. One of the teachers was Mom's teacher and mine at the same time. Hoffman, his name was. After that, my third school was Kraszewski School. After the war it was called Dietl School. Now the old entrance has been bricked up. We went there five days a week, because it was a government school. The teachers were mixed, Poles and Jews, and the students were just Jews. Well, and the first time I went there, there were more or less 25-30 pupils. Suddenly I saw 14 pupils dressed identically. I thought that one mother had 14 children. And it turned out that each of the boys had a different surname. And they talked about an institution. It turned out that it was the Orphans' Institution.

Next I went to the School of Commerce. I went to school longer than either my brother or my sister. It all cost money. The fees were 20 [zloty] in the first year, but I got in for 15 zloty. Then more and more every year; you paid more or less every month or so. It was a co-educational school. A Jewish high school of commerce, coeducational, a very hard school, one of those with four grammar school classes with a school-leaving exam. We had a few foreign languages: besides Polish there was German, English and Hebrew.

There were 16 teachers there, men and women, 23 subjects altogether. Among those who were still alive after the war was Mr. Aleksandrowicz. Mr. Szlang also survived the Holocaust. He probably immigrated with his wife to Israel. Of the other teachers, I met Mr. Bart in Lwow. Mr. Natel - bookkeeping - and Mr. Mandelbaum - commerce and commercial correspondence - taught there too, in a partner school. Bart taught commodities and calligraphy. There in Lwow there was Mr. Silberfenig, teaching Palestinography. There was Miss Szylingier, she taught geography and history. And Mr. Guzik taught us religion and Hebrew. Mr. Szlang taught religion and Hebrew too. Mr. Mandelbaum was taken away from the school, because some Ukrainian student turned him in, repeating the teacher's words that this was going to change. He meant that the system was going to change, but there you weren't allowed to say anything. And that was how he got arrested. That was probably in 1939. In 1945, in front of the former School of Commerce building, I met his wife, Mala Hofszteter. She was a Polish teacher. They got married before the war. And then she immigrated to Israel and met her husband there, who had served in the Polish Army during the war. But then he had a brain hemorrhage. In Israel a Stanislaw Mandelbaum school of commerce was opened.

I got my best school marks in stenography. I remember all my stenography to this day. I took part in three competitions: at school, in Cracow, and in the Polish national championships in Warsaw. And this guy, the best Polish stenographer, came to me and asked whether I would like to go to Warsaw. I turned him down, unfortunately, because I already had a job then. Since I'd got a job - and it hadn't been so easy to come by, and it was on two shifts as well - I had to refuse. That guy was called Maslowski and he took us for stenography.

After school I had work experience at Izydor Grinbaum's, who was the husband of my aunt Hania. He had a bookkeeping and audit office. And I did my office internship there. He promised that after three months I would get 30 zloty. Unfortunately I didn't. He wanted to give me a fountain pen, but I said: 'thanks, but no thanks'. I said I didn't want it. I wanted 30 zloty. So Dad banned me from going there. Greenbaum was a very clever guy; he ran the office and had two people employed there as well. First of all there were two sisters, then this one guy called Blemmer, and then a girl by the name of Pajno. They were working professionally, earning. But I did typing there, was getting good, using the ten-finger system. Was that what I needed to go to school for, to do typing? Sometimes I helped out with inventories too. There was this firm, Kohn, which was in the iron business. And another firm, his brother Kohn, some razor blade outfit. During the war, in Lwow, my uncle told me that that guy was a spy.

All the men in the family wore head coverings. Only my father wore a hat; all the others wore yarmulkas. Today they're round, but then they were different - these forage caps like the army wore. Usually they were black, sometimes dark blue. There weren't any others, round ones. These forage caps were in place of yarmulkas. My dad didn't wear the gabardine [caftan] and he didn't wear the streimel. Only my grandfathers wore the streimel. They had gabardines too, but they didn't have side locks, just beards. Dad didn't have a beard, he didn't have side locks; he shaved. My family was Ashkenazi Jews, because we're all Ashkenazim here in Poland. And the ones who used to wear the streimel, they were Hasidim 3. My one Granddaddy, and the other, wore the streimel, but they weren't Hasidim. They wore it for tradition; only on Saturdays did they wear the black gabardine. But their sons didn't wear it; they dressed in the European fashion. My father dressed in the European fashion too. It was when my father went to Belgium that he stopped wearing the gabardine.

We went to several synagogues. The first synagogue I went to, when I was of pre-school age, was Shomer Umonim, which means 'Watchman of the Believers'. Dad was the gabbai, the administrator there. And Dad was always complaining that if he weren't the gabbai he wouldn't neglect his business. Once, perhaps, we went to 'Amster', there was a synagogue called that. They held Sukkot there. We went to those synagogues when we were living in the Christian neighborhood. After that, in 1933 or 1934 we moved back into the Jewish quarter. And in the center of town we went to a synagogue opposite the bank, that was Ahavat Rayim, or 'Love for Your Neighbor' [Editor's note: 'Ahavat Rayim' means 'Love for One's Neighbor'].

Dad went with me on Fridays. Once there was a friend from Mizrachi there. He was called Dawidson and when he was still a boy he was a chazzan there. That was the synagogue where Schperber's choir was, famous in Cracow. The boys in the choir had the same black gabardines, and he was the conductor. Schperber conducted at Tempel as well. On Saturdays we went to Migale Amikes Shil. The other Jewish name was Barbl Bes Medresh. I don't know whether that means 'on the hill', or something else. Migale Amikes has been in existence for probably 350 years. [A synagogue and institute in which Nathan Spira lectured, called after his work 'Megaleh Amukot', 'he who reveals mysteries'.] Long ago the famous cabbalist Spira was connected with that synagogue [Nathan Spira (1584-1633): the rabbi of Cracow, devoted to the study of the Cabbala]. Before the war only men went there, and there were Hasidim too. I don't know whether they were really Hasidim, or just Orthodox. There were some who had the streimel, the fox-fur. And there were some that didn't. And if there was a separate prayer, at the Halel festival, in the evening some of them prayed separately in another room. They were probably Sephardi Jews.

All the men from our family went to that synagogue on Saturdays. Granddaddy and Dad, my brother and I, my uncle, Granddaddy's son, Granddaddy's other son, and my uncle's son as well. Seven of us from the family there were. Two friends of mine from school went there as well, this one - Grossbart, his name was - went there. The Bossaks went there and the famous Aleksandrowicz [Prof. Julian Aleksandrowicz]. There was this one odd guy there, too, who wore the streimel and shaved. That was the only time I saw a clean-shaven man wearing the streimel. He would wear it on Saturdays. He had this redbrick shop, a newsstand.

Before the war I only went to a few synagogues, not all of them. I also went to Tempel then. When I went to Kraszewski School we used to go there on all the national holidays, because it was very close. [Most Polish national holidays were celebrated in the religious institutions too, as the members of Tempel synagogue were tending to assimilation and they were involved in politics. The synagogue used to be a place for national manifestations of the Jews.] At Tempel Synagogue they celebrated national holidays like 3rd May [the anniversary of the signing of the first Polish constitution, in 1793], and maybe the November Uprising 4 and others. Tempel Synagogue was the only Reform synagogue in Cracow. The president was Dr. Ozjasz Thon 5. He was a deputy to the Sejm [the Polish lower house of Parliament]. Pre-election rallies were always held in his house. Our school always stood in one of the side naves, to the right of the entrance. And in the middle sat army officers - Jews. I don't know if there were any ethnic Poles among them. Dr. Ozjasz Thon always gave a sermon in Polish. He would start his sermon: 'Dear young people, devout listeners...' But before the sermon they would play the Hatikvah 6 there. And there was a mixed choir. And they played and sang 'Boze cos Polsk?...' ['O God, who Poland...' - a patriotic Polish song, at this time almost chosen as the Polish national anthem]. My uncle, Aleksander Eintracht, my friend Henryk Kleinberger, and the wife of the president of the Jewish Community Organization, I don't remember her name, sang in that choir.

After the death of Dr. Thon, Dr. Schmelkes gave the sermon there. I remember I went to Dr. Thon's funeral. The mounted police were there keeping order, because a very large crowd had gathered. And we stood outside the cemetery on the street, because so many people had come. I only went to that synagogue on a Friday once. No one was praying. They either didn't know the prayers or they didn't have prayer books. Only the cantor was praying. He was dressed in this black silk coat and had a hexagonal black hat, if I remember rightly, like students in the US have, not square, but six-sided, flat. And the porter who stood at the entrance was dressed like that too. I only went in there once. They used to say that it was only progressives that went there, once a year. Always on Yom Kippur there were vast numbers of cars there.

As for other synagogues in Cracow, there was Stara [Old] Synagogue. Except then they didn't call it 'Old' in Polish, but Alte Shil in Yiddish. All the Yiddish names of the synagogues were used. Stara Synagogue, Migale Amikes Shil. Then Poper, then Wysoka [High] - they called it Hoyhe Shil - Izaak [Isaac] Synagogue. And on the left of that one was the temporary Mizrachi school. And opposite that one, Izaak, was another synagogue, but I don't know what the name was. Then there was one on Krakowska Street; I don't know what it was called. I only went there once. That was where my uncle's father went to pray. Then there was Cypres, and after the war there was a printers' school there. There's Kupa Synagogue too, Kupa Shil, that's what it was called. Then there's Mizrachi, but I don't know if they prayed there before the war. That building that's built there now was a school, you see. But after the war they prayed there, there in Mizrachi; I looked in there once. But whether it was a prayer house before the war I don't know. And on Dietla Planty [a strip of grass alongside a road called Dietla Street] was this temporary shack, a prayer house called Astoria. Then there was the synagogue where the rebbe that came to us and taught me at cheder was from. He either came to our house to collect me, or took me home or to cheder. Once, at Yom Kippur, there were prayers in a house on one of the city squares. But I don't know if it was a permanent prayer house. Perhaps there was an inn or maybe a hotel there.

There was another synagogue that I never went to but Mom used to talk about. And where the [Jewish] Cultural Centre is now, was Bnei Emuna - 'Sons of the Faith'. And there was Bnei Sheyrit. And Chevre Tylem [Association of Psalmists], that was where Mom always went, once a month, when they had the 'Blessing for the New Month' prayer. That was where women went before the new month. They were always up in the gallery, up above, because downstairs were the men. Once I went there, on some holiday, probably Yom Kippur.

As I was walking to Szeroka Street one day I saw the first Hasid I'd seen in my life, a young man, who had a black hat, I don't think he had the streimel. He had a black hat, and side locks, and that black silk gabardine, and white socks. That was the first time I'd ever seen white socks. That was an unusual sight for me.

I remember the Jewish theaters too. There was the Ida Kaminska Jewish Theater. And the other theater was the summer one, in the Londres Hotel. I went to both of them. I went to the summer theater with my father and my brother, to see 'Sulamit'. That was the title, 'Sulamit'. I don't remember everything that happened in the play, but there was a priest in it. 'Ikh bin Nussem Hakohen'. 'I am Nathan the Priest'. In Hebrew 'Nussem ha-kohen'. I remember that. That was the first time I'd been to a summer theater like that. Mom had gone away with my sister somewhere then.

I also remember how we used to walk to my grandparents' on Krakowska Street, and later to the streetcar, the number 1. And on the wall of the old town hall there, there was this plaque, a bas-relief showing Jews bringing the Torah to King Casimir the Great [King of Poland, 1333-1370]. I don't know if it was a homage, if they're thanking him for accepting the Jews, who were persecuted in various countries in Europe. That plaque isn't there any more; the Germans took it down. [In fact, the Cracow City Council restored it in 1996.]

In our family no one belonged to any political party. Dad told me never to belong to any political party. I once talked to a man who said: 'A man who doesn't belong to any party is worth nothing.' But I think that it's best not to get mixed up in things like that and to be objective. And observe from a distance, which is the best system. The communist system had its pros and cons, you see, and the present system has its different pros and different cons. There's no such thing as the ideal system.

A few times people tried to get me involved, agitating. I went once on a Saturday to Hashomer Hatzair 7, another time to Shomer Hadati. They had these miserable little places. Once I went to Akiba [Zionist youth movement] with a friend and my aunt's brother-in-law. But it didn't appeal to me, somehow. With hindsight, though, I can see that I should have got involved. I was afraid my studies might suffer, but you had to go to one of those organizations! One of them, because there were various different ones: Akiba, Hashomer Hatzair, Shomer Hadati, Ichud [left-wing Zionist organization], there was the Bund 8, too.

We did support the building of the Jewish state, though. In every Jewish home there were two tins [money-boxes]. We had two: Keren Kayemet 9, and the other one was Keren Hayesod 10. A collector came round, once a month, I think, to collect the money. There was money in those tins and he collected it and passed it on for the restoration of Palestine, to buy land.

All the food in our house was kosher. There was dairy in the morning and dairy suppers. And I asked why we always had dairy suppers except for Fridays and holidays. And Mom said that rich people eat meat suppers. We ate different things, sometimes herrings, usually scrambled eggs, or sardines, or sprats. I don't remember exactly. In the morning it was mostly scrambled eggs and coffee with milk. I remember it was chicory then. I don't know whether it was real coffee or ersatz. On holidays Mom and the maid prepared different dishes. But it was all kosher. The crockery was separate - separate for dairy products, separate for meat. And at Pesach, we would bring out this hamper, which we had special crockery in. The hamper was in the loft all year. And then we changed over all the dishes. The gas cooker was covered with this metal sheet. That was observed very strictly too. And when it was all over, what good did it do... Nothing! More unreligious people survived than religious ones.

At home we lit candles in candlesticks. And at Chanukkah my father always lit candles for 8 days, I mean every day, every evening, one candle more. And he said the brochot, or the Chanukkah blessing. There are three blessings: three on the first evening, but only two on the next evenings.

And after a funeral, if there was a wake we ate either round peas or perhaps egg. You sit on low chairs for seven days. It's only devout people that keep it up for seven days, and then again on the 30th day too. And you recite the Kaddish for the dead person for twelve months.

I remember a few anti-Semitic incidents: seven or eight, a few happened before the war and a few after the war. It started one day when I came home crying, as a preschooler. This one guy attacked me, hit me, near our home in the Christian neighborhood. I didn't know what for, I didn't know what a Jew was, I didn't know what an anti-Semite was. And there were anti-Semites there. There were anti-Semitic youths; they were brought up like that. As I stood there by our gate, as a preschooler, he had a go at me. There were some older kids there, not my friends, walking along the river. They would gather there and sing anti-Semitic songs. I even remember those songs. I didn't say anything to my family. I didn't know that it was important to tell them. It went in one ear and out the other. To this day I remember this one short song that the older one taught the younger ones: 'Jew, Jew! The Messiah is born' and there was another sentence that I can't remember. I remember another sentence from the song: 'Ai vai kimmeshai, don't touch my beard! My beard is blessed, curled on a stick!' But that was nothing. Once they hauled me down there, down by the river. And I wore new velvet clothes. I even have a photograph of them. They were standing there on the bank of the river. The water was dirty. Well, and someone pushed me. I fell into the water and went home all wet. Granddaddy was very angry, and so were my parents. None of my friends owned up. The girl I suspected, Ola Mleczko, told my Mom: 'I didn't do it.' Granddaddy told Mom to go and report it to the police, but she didn't.

Later on, in 1935-36, I went to military preparation lectures. Military service was two years, you see, but if you went to military preparation they shortened your period of service by six months. So you had a year and a half. I went for two years, a friend, Landau, persuaded me. I was supposed to learn how to shoot. I didn't say anything to my parents, because that was how they had brought me up: not to tell them anything. They weren't interested in us at all; they didn't have time. When Mr. Aleksandrowicz, who took us for gymnastics, asked who wanted to sign up, I signed up. So I went for two years. And I went on a two-week camp to Stary Sacz. And in Nowy Sacz we were supposed to have a march-past. I desperately wanted to take part in the march-past, with that rifle in front of the general at arms, General Kasprzycki. We spent a long time practicing for it. And one of the students from the very beginning called me Morytz [perceived by some Jews as a derogatory name, similarly to Icek, often used to replace 'Zydek'- little Jew]. He was in front of me in the line and he would shout: 'Morytz!' OK, Morytz, fine, I didn't say anything. But on the last day, when they all went for their certificates, I couldn't, because of that boy. He offered me some soup, which he must have tipped some powder in. I had a vomiting attack. They all received their certificates except me.

I remember when I was older, school age, I saw this shop, which said 'money- changer', on the corner of the Main Square. Currency exchange. It was the only shop of its kind I saw in Cracow. Other than that, in the park at the foot of the castle, Wawel, just by the Royal Hotel, was what was known as the 'black money exchange'. They were Hasidim, who exchanged currencies, mostly dollars, illegally, I think. 8.90 the dollar cost, and the official price in the bank was 5 zloty 25 groszy, but you couldn't buy it at that price.

I also remember that before the war, when I was seven, Polish Radio was in the center of Cracow. And I even went there, to the radio, in the first grade of elementary school. We gave a performance; we said something on the radio. And that was the first radio, in 1927, the first time there had ever been radio in Poland. And our class put on a performance of some kind. We didn't have any Jewish neighbors when we lived in the Christian neighborhood. And when we were back in the Jewish district we didn't have any contact with our neighbors, because they were mainly progressive Jews there.

From our time in Kazimierz 11 I remember Purim. As a child I always went to Krakowska Street with my parents. We stood on the pavement and thousands of people in masks walked down the road. It was a masquerade, in Hebrew 'adloyada'. Some just wore masks, some were all dressed up. We even met one dressed up as a cat. Mom recognized him as the furrier. We didn't dress up; we just stood on the street. But Mom bought my brother and me masks. I was staying with Granddaddy and my uncle then, on Mostowa Street, I was in the first grade of elementary school. And my uncle told me to sing, so I sang what I knew from school - 'A birdie flew along the street', or something.

During the war

In the summer of 1939 I was with my Mom, brother and sister in Zawoja [a mountain resort in Poland]. And Dad called to tell us to come home immediately, a week early. I asked Mom if we couldn't go just yet, because I didn't want to leave. There was a swimming pool there; it was nice weather, fresh air. We didn't know that war was going to break out. We didn't realize, we hadn't read the papers. But Dad realized, because every day before he went to work he read Nowy Dziennik [Zionist newspaper, published in Cracow in Polish from 1918-1939]. So he knew that war was going to break out. So Mom put our departure off, because we didn't want to go. And then Dad sent this car, and seven families left with us. We went back to Cracow and Dad was angry that we were delayed. But we arrived more or less a week before the outbreak of war. Then Dad decided that I would stay with the family and my brother, four years younger, would go out into the world. But my aunt, Granddaddy's sister, advised my father that I should leave home and escape, and my brother stay, because he was younger. The Germans were taking boys of my age and sending them to the German- French front; those were the rumors. If it hadn't been for my aunt I wouldn't be here and perhaps my brother would still be alive; perhaps he would have survived.

And then Dad went with me to buy a rucksack. I have that rucksack to this day. We bought the essential clothes for two weeks, because everyone was lying, saying that the war would last two weeks. The neighbor also said that I should take my matriculation certificate and my birth certificate. Well, I didn't want the matriculation certificate because it wouldn't fold up; it lay so nicely in my desk. So I took my birth certificate; I didn't have my ID card yet, just my school ID.

So the decision was made that I should go. Dad had approached the neighbor and found out that he was going, that he was going to evacuate, or escape. He was supposed to be going with his brother-in-law and his friend. And on Monday 4th September he said that they weren't going. Dad came back from the neighbor's with the news that they weren't going. And it wasn't until Tuesday 5th September that he found out that they were going. But on the Sunday I'd met a friend called Grossbart outside his parents' shop. And he told me that people were escaping, that there was illness in Wieliczka [a small town outside Cracow] and starvation. He wanted to escape with me, and I should let him know. So I sent my brother on 5th September at 6 in the morning to tell him to get ready to leave. My brother went to his place, and he said that he wasn't going, he wouldn't go. So then I went at 8 in the morning to see him. His mother was there, and his sister too. They stood in a line and he said that he wouldn't go. 'What will be will be!' I wanted to go with him; I wanted to save him. His mother was trying to persuade him, and his sister, but he didn't want to go. And he died! In Remuh synagogue there is a memorial plaque, white marble, in English and Hebrew, saying that he - Joel Grossbart - and his whole family died. One of my friends married Grossbart's sister after the war. She was the only one of the whole family to survive. I suspect that she had Aryan papers. It was a Hasidic family.

I was packed up and I said goodbye to my family. They all stood in a line outside the door: Mom, my brother, my sister and Dad. And they all said goodbye. That was the last time I saw them. I didn't know it was the last time. I thought I would be going back, that I would meet up with them. So I set off then. Mom saw us off; she walked down the opposite sidewalk. She wanted to give me a blanket. I didn't want it, because it would have been too heavy for me to carry. I already had to lug my overcoat during the heat wave, and all that in my rucksack. So my journey was very tragic, because I walked nine days and nine nights. And I slept 15 minutes, in a ditch.

There were four of us: my next-door neighbor, his brother-in-law, a friend and me. We walked in the direction of Plaszow [a station in the east of Cracow] and there we boarded a cattle wagon at noon. There weren't any windows in there, just a bench along, and another bench. It was dark, and all the seats were taken, but they made room for us. We traveled like that until 3am. The others traveled on, but we got off, because the train was going too slowly. It was dangerous, because the Germans were already close to Cracow, and Cracow was taken on 6th September. Then we jumped onto another train. That was the first time I had ever jumped on when the train was moving, and with my rucksack as well! We couldn't get inside because the door was locked. We couldn't open it. And the handle was very cold. And I didn't have any gloves. And we had to hold onto the handle for half an hour and stand on the steps: each of us on a different step, because two of us wouldn't fit on one step.

We were heading east: via Debica, Tarnow, Rozwadow, Przemysl, Lwow, and then on to Zloczow. [see Annexation of Eastern Poland] 4 In Zloczow there was a holiday celebration, the New Year festival, Rosh Hashanah. We slept and in the next room they were praying. Then we went back to Tarnopol [today Ukraine]. I spent a few days in Tarnopol. When we arrived in Tarnopol there was another holiday, this time Sukkot. There this family took us in, or two families actually, because I ate with the older couple, and the others stayed with their daughters, in the same building. They were called Fleischman. They had a daughter, and in the other place there were two older daughters. He was a poor man, a barber; he had one or two rooms and a kitchen. They were supporting me; I wanted to pay them before I left but they wouldn't take anything.

After that we went back to Lwow. In Lwow they left me. For the first time in my life I was away from home alone; it was awful for me. I was without a roof over my head, you see, and I had nowhere to sleep. So I found out that there was a hall where you could sleep. People slept there side by side on the floor: men and women on the same floor. There weren't any straw mattresses there, and there was no room for me, so I slept on the corridor. That was from Friday to Saturday. A guy my age noticed me and took me to the synagogue on the Saturday. I already had a temperature, and neither a place to stay, nor an emergency room, nor a hospital. So there I was with this temperature sleeping in the first room in the synagogue, and there in the next room everyone was praying.

After the prayers that friend spoke to a tailor, a poor guy, who took me back to his place. He had a wife and two daughters. And I didn't say anything, because I never said much. I was shy, didn't have much to say. I just slept for three days, and that friend talked to them. The tailor sewed me a lining in my overcoat. And after three days I thanked them and left, and went back to the [first] house, because I didn't have anywhere to sleep. That time I got into the hall. I hung my cap on a nail and lay on the floor. And in the morning I get up and see lice on my cap - well, there's no way you can live in conditions like that! But it was hard to find anywhere else to stay, so I went back. And then the Germans caught me and moved back to the west, so I worked on the roads in Wieliczka, then in Niepolomice and Biezanow [satellite villages around Cracow]. I worked for a few months and then I escaped from them again, over to the Russian side.

In April 1940 I went back to Lwow, found myself a place to live. First I lived in an apartment with a friend, and then I moved elsewhere, to an apartment with a Russian family [Russian Jews who had escaped from Russia because of the persecution during tsarist times]. It was a housewife with two sons and her mother. Only the younger son lived elsewhere. I lived there with a guy from Sosnowiec, and in the apartment next-door were some people called Meller. One day they started arresting people, first of all capitalists. I heard that they'd arrested Monderer too, as a capitalist. I'd done a commercial internship with Monderer and Erlich [some business owners in Cracow] in the winter holidays before the war. That was a kind of textiles business. Then they arrested Polish officers, and then they arrested 'byezhentsy', or deserters [those who were running away from Poland, to the East].

I was a deserter. So I went with my rucksack to a restaurant run by Redlich, a friend of my uncle's from Cracow. And that uncle of mine, the one I had worked for in Cracow on my office internship, he was there: as a friend and as the bookkeeper. First he had been in Russian captivity; I saw him the first day that I was in Lwow. He wore an army coat and said that he had returned from captivity. He was always trying to persuade me to go back to my parents. I went to my uncle, to that restaurant, with my rucksack because he had offered to let me sleep there. And I slept one night on some chairs. The next day I went to the baths, to the post office, I had a card to send to my parents.

That day, I remembered that I'd left my pajamas at the Russian woman's apartment. I went to get my pajamas at 2 and she offered to let me have a nap. I wasn't at all sleepy, but I lay down for two hours. At 4 I got dressed and suddenly the housewife's son, Marek, comes running in. And he said 'Hide, because they're looking for you.' So I hid in the toilet, but they caught the other guy who was with me. And they wouldn't have caught me if I hadn't given myself up. I came out of the toilet and went with them. I even had to pay 30 rubles' lodging, several days in advance! I thought they'd catch me the next night anyway, so I gave myself up. I did right, because if the Russians hadn't caught me then, the Germans would have caught me later, and shot me like they shot my uncle.

Two of the Russian soldiers from the NKVD 12 led us. They had loaded rifles. They took us to the barracks. We were there for three weeks, without baths. We slept on bunks. We didn't know how long we'd be there. And when I was asleep that guy from Sosnowiec stole my watch. I got it back, but there's no knowing how many times he stole from me at the house. He could have stolen money from my wallet, because I never kept tabs on it. I was trusting; I never thought that anyone would rob me. And then he said goodbye because he was going with a different group. After three weeks they took us away in this lorry, to the station in Lwow. We didn't know where we were going. They loaded us into cattle cars. There were these bunks with palliasses, and a tiny window with a grille. The heat was terrible, but every day it got colder, which meant that we were traveling north. They gave us a meal once a day. They gave us this kind of round loaf to share between four. Then some of the others among us, in their underwear, got out at lunchtime and carried a pot with noodles. They were pleased to be out a bit in the fresh air. They called it 'lapsha' over there, noodles.

We traveled for six days and got right out to Rybinsk. There we got out and were given a set of clothes, camp clothes, dark blue, our own belt and a dark blue hat with a peak. They gave us dinner, and then took us to the barber, who shaved our heads. But when I was at the barber, the others went to where General Rapaport was giving a speech. He talked about our obligation to work and about discipline. That was Friday. They loaded us onto a ship. We sailed up the Sheksna. The Sheksna flows into the Volga. There were a few devout Jews among us on the ship. And they wanted a minyan, so they co-opted me. They weren't at all worried that we were going to a camp; they just prayed. Then they put us off at the camp, which was called Turgenevo.

There we got these little pink tokens and on that basis we got breakfast and dinner. Only twice a day there was food: before going to work and after coming back. And during the day only work. The next day early in the morning this 'nevalny' woke us up. 'Nevalny' is Russian for 'orderly', and we were called 'zakluchony', which means 'prisoner'. Everyone got a saw and axes. And they took us to the forest, where we had to fulfill a plan. I sawed; we were clearing forestland. We had roll calls as well. It's called 'povyerka' in Russian. Every gang foreman had 16 people. One was called Epstein. He offered us cigarettes; the first cigarette I'd ever smoked in my life. Some of them preferred to smoke than to eat bread; they'd exchange bread for cigarettes. There was a roll call before we went to work, a roll call in the forest, and a roll call after work. And then again in the zone, in the camp, another roll call, to check that no one had escaped.

In Turgenevo there were some who tried to form a minyan. So they got me into the minyan and gave me a prayer book, because I didn't have one. They took my prayer book off me in a search; there were ten searches, you see. They took my prayer book and my tefillin. But they left my tefillin batu, that's this bag for the tefillin, I still have it to this day [Tefillin batim is the cover of tefillin; 'batu' is the local pronunciation of the word]. And then, it was Yom Kippur, this one functionary Russian found my tefillin. And he ripped it out of my hand, took my prayer book off me. We didn't even get a chance to pray on Yom Kippur. 'You're not allowed to pray!' But one old man managed to keep his tallit. So he prayed, put it on sitting on his pallet on the top bunk. And my friend, who I was in Georgia with afterwards, and back then in the camps, saved his tefillin, because he hid it under his knee. I was in Turgenevo for a few months. They sent us out there on 20th July 1940.

Then, in the winter, they took each one of us with a different gang in a different direction. In the next Gulag 13 there were better conditions. The conditions in Turgenevo were harsh, you see, at first you weren't allowed to write letters, weren't allowed to have a pencil. You weren't allowed more than 50 rubles, or jewelry, or a watch, or any sharp instruments. If anyone had jewelry they handed it in, it was put into the safe and they got a receipt. I was the only one who had a watch, hidden on my elbow, wrapped in a kerchief and tobacco. But at first I had it inside my trousers. So they'd say 'Bertram - your trousers!' when they wanted to know what the time was.

The second camp was called Kanatna Droga. We went there in the winter, by sleigh - I even drove the sleigh. And there were 'boytsy' [this is what they called Russian soldiers] there. There were a few of us [Jews]. Stones were transported there; it was on the Volga. From one bank to the other on this cable car thing these little trucks went back and forth. They were called 'kubonetki' in Russian and were 0.6 cubic meters, these little trucks. The stone was transported to our bank. It was washed automatically and sorted. And our people carried these 'nosilki', 'carriers' all day long. Stones on these carriers. I felt as if it was 4,000 years ago in Egypt, where the Jews were slaves. And for the most part the majority of us were Jews, but there were Catholics too. There was this one priest, Father Jacek, without a cassock. There were Silesians too. For the most part they were older people; I was one of the youngest. Well, at Kanatna Droga I worked voluntarily as well, in my free time. Then that job ended and I said goodbye to them.

I was taken to yet another camp, Piatiy Uchastek. And we were there for another few months. We were driven there, because it was a different season. We were driven in lorries, but not petrol powered, but wood powered. Every few kilometers the driver would stop and throw the blocks of wood into this cylinder. And that's how we traveled. We didn't know where to until we came to Piatiy Uchastek, or 'the fifth section'. They were always chopping and changing the groups, a different team every verse end. Different people. A stranger among strangers, I was. I didn't know anyone. And work again. The conditions were harsher there. The best conditions were in Kanatna Droga.

There was this huge project: there were an awful lot of Russkies [derogatory term for Russians], who were building a hydroelectric power plant. We were reinforcing the sluicegate, all the time, near the Volga. And then one day, one night, 4th September 1941, we found out about the Sikorski amnesty. We didn't know about Majski then [the Sikorski-Majski Pact] 14. The next day we were called out to the registration committee in alphabetical order. And they asked me where I wanted to go. Did I want to go to Kokand [Uzbekistan] or to Tashkent? I wanted to go to Astrakhan, because there was Russian industry there. But a friend from Cracow told me that the Cracovians were going to Georgia, and that I should go there too.

So I went to Georgia: anywhere to be free, so to speak, and not in a camp. There was no question of the West, only what was then the Soviet Union. And everyone could go where he or she wanted, it only had to be at least 100 kilometers from the border, meaning from the front, and we weren't allowed to go to the central cities. They didn't want a large influx of people. They suggested Kutaisi [today Georgia], so that was what I chose.

So we went to Georgia, arrived in Tbilisi. Before the war it was called Tiflis, and afterwards Tbilisi. We get there and straight from the station went to the prayer house. It used to be called a prayer house. Synagogues are built differently, you see, and a prayer house is this tiny room, or in somebody's house. There it was a small room. There were Jews from Kiev there, who had escaped. And it turned out that when we got there it was Rosh Hashanah. Morning and evening we had to go to the prayer house. In the evening, when the hakham spoke, I didn't know what he was saying. I thought he was speaking Yiddish and that's why I couldn't understand him. It turned out he was speaking Georgian. He was appealing to all the Georgian Jews to look after all of us that had come out of the camps. And they invited us for dinner and let us sleep that first night. I got this host where I had dinner and I slept one night there.

There in Georgia this Georgian woman asked me: 'Is it true,' - because she had been reading the newspapers - 'is it true that they are killing Jews?' I replied that I didn't know anything. But two people from Lwow came to Georgia. One was called Zelmanowicz and the other Gutman. And they said that there, in the ghettos, there was starvation. I don't know how they got to us. But we went to this one prayer house every Saturday afternoon. And one of these Kiev Jews gave a 'droshe'. 'Droshe', in Ashkenazi 'drasha', in Sephardi, means 'speech'. And he gave this speech about the Torah what is said on a given day, what 'parsha' [parashah], or 'polsyk' [according to Mr. Bertram the word used in prewar Cracow for parashah]. And right at the end he told us about the tragedy, that over on the other side they were killing people by then. He already knew everything; perhaps he had read a Russian newspaper or a Georgian one. Perhaps he had found out from Georgian Jews. But we didn't really believe it; we didn't really take much notice, because we didn't know whom it affected. We just listened.

I had a few friends in Georgia. On the whole they were good people, though a bit selfish. I've got a photograph of them. The oldest one, in glasses, with the Lenin beard, was from Podgorze [then a town near Cracow, now a district of Cracow]. He was an artistic signwriter, could turn his hand to anything and did very well for himself. He promised me that I would be his partner. That was Abraham Lamesdorf. His wife had stayed behind; she died with their son, probably in Belzec 15. My other friend was called Dawid Kos Klajman. He had two names, I don't know why; I think he was some kind of salesman. He said he came from Brygl. Brygl, I think in Polish that must have been Brzesko. He never said it in Polish, all he said was Brygl. He had a secret from us: he had a lady friend, who fed him, and he was at her place all day long, after work, of course. We didn't keep tabs on whether he went to the synagogue on Saturday or not. But it was a small town; it was uncomfortable in that little town to be seeing a non-Jew. Especially because on Saturdays and holidays I went with the friend I talked about to the synagogue. There was no one else from among our people at the synagogue, only the two of us.

We went regularly, but we didn't have access to the 'liye' [according to Mr. Bertram the word used in prewar Cracow for 'aliyah' - going up the bimah to read the Torah]. We didn't have any money, and you had to pay an awful lot. And the hakham called people up. It went to the highest bidder. 'Assima naty, to...orrasi manaty, sammassi manaty... tiskula mitzvah'. That was what he said, in Georgian and Hebrew. 'Tiskula mitzvah' means 'you will be doing a good deed', or 'commandment'. And what I said at the beginning, that was the bidding. 100 rubles... 'mana' is rouble [in Georgian]. '100 rubles, 200 rubles, 300 rubles.' We couldn't afford such luxuries.

We sat at the side, and over there they were bidding for the reading. That's the way it is all over the world, except in Poland. Others of our people didn't go to the synagogue because they were busy with work. And one of them criticized me terribly when I asked him if he'd been to the synagogue, because I was surprised that he hadn't been. Well, he offended me terribly. He found out that I'd been to the synagogue, and told me that I was 'as stupid as a shoe off the left foot'. But the older one in glasses said to me: 'Don't worry, Bertram, the Lord won't forsake you.' This barrister, Goldberg, was in the apartment too, and he added: 'If the Lord God doesn't forsake you, then people will!' And I can't forget that. Very few people went to the synagogue there. Synagogue was luxury. They were busy working, to earn money to buy bread. But because we went to the synagogue, we had these hosts. And they would invite us to their homes every Saturday and every holiday. And we would eat Georgian kosher food; we waited for that meat all week, of course, because other than that, privately, I didn't eat it. For lunch we had gruel, flaked corn. And that was our lunch. I don't think I ate anything else. We didn't get a second course there. And as for breakfast, they did very well for themselves, only I was the worst off. I'm talking about our private lives now, not about the factory.

There was a time, you see, when I didn't even have enough money for breakfast. I went through a whole month like that, and they persuaded me to sell my Tissot [a watch-brand] that I'd been given by my father when I graduated from school. Well, I sold it. I wanted 5,000 rubles, but I only got 3,400 or 3,500. And then I had to give my two housemates some money to buy oil, for arranging the sale.

I was working in a clothing factory. 'Shveyna fabrika', or 'The Kiev Clothing Factory'. The director was called Macharadze, and the other one Karikashvili. A year I worked there; then I got seconded to the Labor Battalion [group of the prisoners from the Labor Camp, who worked in much harder conditions]. I was in that Labor Battalion six weeks; those were the harshest conditions. No prison on earth has conditions like that. Six weeks I slept on the bare ground; it wasn't a hut, just a tent with no roof. No roof, just branches. So I spent six weeks in my clothes, six weeks on the ground, six weeks without a bath, and on top of that: lice. I didn't know how long I'd stick it there, because the work was hard and they gave us very little to eat. I got weak, could hardly walk; like an old man. I stayed in Georgia from the time they liberated us from the camp on 4th September 1941 almost until the end of the war.

Post-war

The war ended on 9th May 1945, and I left Georgia on 22nd April 1945. I left, but at that time we still weren't allowed to leave! My neighbors left earlier than that; they kept it a secret from me, but they came back. They were turned back by this NKVD functionary, because he asked them, on a train during an inspection: 'Where are you going?', and they said: 'To Poland.' 'Go back, there is no Poland!' They came back, and then my neighbor got himself and me passes from the militia, to travel on family affairs, but not to Poland! We only got two rail tickets: on one we were to travel to Slavuta [Ukraine], and in Slavuta we were to throw that ticket away and go to Kamenets Podolski. We were traveling for three weeks, changing trains every other day, because there was no other way.

It was very hard to get on a train, and the conductor was on the running board, and people everywhere. How were we supposed to get on, with a rucksack, and him with a briefcase? Well, that neighbor of mine was cunning, the one in glasses, with a beard. 'Comrade, sir!' - he said and winked conspiratorially. So he [the conductor] got all excited that he was going to get some money. And when he'd let us into the wagon, he didn't give him any. And he would do the same thing with every conductor.

In Tbilisi my wallet was stolen. I had 90 rubles in it, my school ID, my secondment papers from the camp, and three or four letters or so from my parents, postcards. And at the militia station where I reported the theft, they put my witness and me in a cell: all night, with young Georgian criminals. And in the end the duty officer opened up and the chiefs came with a list and let us all out. They'd let my witness out earlier, at 8 o'clock in the morning. But I'd been kept in until noon.

Once I was free I picked my things up from the deposit. They gave me to understand that I should travel without a ticket if I didn't have any money. Outside the guy with the beard, Lamesdorf, and my other future partner were waiting for me. And we went on. So we were in Kamenets Podolski, and the border is in Rovno. There they told us that we had to hand our passports over. So we handed them over, and we then had to get a stamp on our passports and military service books. We went individually, not waiting for a transport. We got on a train in Rovno. All of a sudden there was an inspection; this NKVD functionary came round. He let the three of us through, and we were on our way to Poland. In Kovel, at 2 o'clock in the morning on 8th May 1945, there were shots. I asked what the shots were, and they said that the war was over. From there we went in the direction of Cracow. The one from Brzesko went straight to Cracow too, because there were lots of people coming to Cracow from small eastern towns.

We arrived in Cracow on 9th or 10th May. We reported to the Jewish Committee and there they registered us. And there, this couple, Aleksandrowicz was their name, a young married couple, asked me: 'Do you have a cousin named Olga?' So I said, 'Yes.' And she said that she used to go to school with her. And she told me that she had left Lwow and crossed the border somewhere with a guide. And I found out that she had managed to get to Los Angeles, via Yokohama, together with her husband, who was called Erteschick, from Cracow. They hadn't managed to get married here, but they got married there, in Los Angeles.

I registered with the Committee, and from time to time they gave us some money, some food: dried cod. There may have been dinners there too. They helped us as much as they could, because we weren't working and didn't have anything. Everyone who came back from Russia was poor. We reported to Albin Kenner, who was a friend of Lamesdorf's from cheder, but he had also been in the same camp as us. He was the chief administrator in the hostel, and told us that there was no room for us. There were only places for people from the German camps. So I went to another registration point, but for Catholics. And there they were surprised, and said that they could give me a ticket to a hut with no floor. 'Why don't you go to your own people?' So I went back to the other place, and Lamesdorf had somehow managed to persuade that Kenner to take us in, as a favor. We slept on straw mattresses on the floor, for two weeks, in this tiny little room on the ground floor. We were happy just to be lying on those straw mattresses.

Later on, in the early hours of the morning, I heard that my aunt had arrived. And my sister-in-law; I recognized her voice. Later on, I met up with them. My uncle, my aunt's husband, Aleksander Eintracht, was still on his way back; he had been in a different camp and came back much later. I went to the radio with my aunt and there we registered that we were seeking our family. That was where everyone went who was looking for family, Polish Radio. We put out an announcement that we were seeking our family. We gave first names and surnames, I my nearest and my aunt her husband's. But we never found them...

After that, two weeks later, we were offered a better place in the Jewish hospice. Downstairs used to be a firm, Michal Kahan and Company. He had materials downstairs, and upstairs I think there was a warehouse. It was in the same building where our School of Commerce had been. We sawed up shelves to have somewhere to sleep, because there weren't any mattresses. I took my neighbor, Lamesdorf, to see our old apartment from before the war. We looked at it; I only went into one room. A family called Werner was living there. He was the director of the Cyganeria cafe, where Liebeskind 16 from the ZOB 17 had thrown the grenade [see 'Cyganeria' Campaign (22 December 1942)] 18.

We went to the lawyer, Keiner, who later changed his name to Korczak. His son was called Janusz, just like the famous Korczak 19. That lawyer, Keiner, or Korczak, said that if the judge knew what was what, he would allocate me at least one room. There was a hearing. The judge was called Guzek. He said: 'If you had a mother I would allocate you one room, but since you're alone you'll manage.' And they carried on living in our apartment, because that Werner came to the hearing, to the second hearing, with the caretaker, a woman called Mikolajowa. She was the caretaker from before the war, an old woman by then. And she said that my father had sold the furniture for 5,000 zloty to some guy from Warsaw [this probably should prove, that there was no property in the apartment, which could be claimed back; but also that moving had been planned].

Apparently my parents had moved to Czerwony Pradnik [a district of Cracow] before they went into the ghetto; I didn't even know. I also found out from my aunt that my parents had lived on the ground floor in the same building in the ghetto as her. And they had gone in the first transport, on 2nd June 1942. Apparently, first of all, on a Saturday, they had gone to do some road works, and my father hadn't managed to get them a blue card, which could have helped them live longer [Editor's note: The card confirming employment and necessity for the Germans, and permission for staying in the ghetto, was of blue color and attached to the 'Kennkarte']. And people who didn't have a blue card were deported at once along with the whole transport via Plaszow camp 20, and at Plaszow into what were probably cattle wagons. My uncle told me that they spread lime there. And then, when they went to Belzec, there weren't gas chambers at that time, but just exhaust fumes from motor vehicles. They weren't all taken away at the same time; other relatives went in later transports. All my relatives were there, my uncles and my aunts. They went in later transports.

My aunt, Otylia, or Tyla, from Mannheim, she and her family must have gone to Belzec too. And my uncle, the one whose name was Eintracht, who after the war settled in Czestochowa, and the others, were lucky: they went in different transports, to other camps, and somehow managed to survive the Holocaust. Hania, my Mom's sister, died, unfortunately. During the war she was taking kosher meat into the ghetto, as an Aryan. She looked Aryan. At the time she was living in Sedziszow, and she probably died there with her children. Her husband was shot in Lwow. It was him I had met in Lwow; he was the bookkeeper in Redlich's restaurant there. The Germans shot him and the Russians deported me. It was he, Izydor, who had tried to persuade me to go back to Poland. But I had registered myself and he hadn't. And it was probably because he hadn't registered that the Germans shot him. A guy I knew in the camp, Pukiet, told me about that.

Bluma, my mother's sister, had two children, two sons. One was perhaps five when the war broke out. The other was born in 1939. The elder was called Beno, and the second Macius. During the war, it could have been 1942, the end of 1942, the children were taken to the woods in a cart. Bluma and her husband were in the camps; they survived the Holocaust. Afterwards they lived together and had a daughter, Danuta. They are dead now. They were the only ones of the Stiel family to survive from Poland. Bluma is buried in Radomsko, because the Jewish cemetery in Czestochowa has been closed for a long time. My uncle was buried before her in the Jewish cemetery in Radomsko. And I made sure that my aunt was buried in a Jewish cemetery, because she was in danger of Poles burying her in a Christian cemetery. I couldn't have let that happen.

Their daughter is handicapped, mentally unstable. She lives in Czestochowa. She doesn't listen to me when I give her advice. I help her out financially. She dresses nicely, even gets a little benefit. She has a son, too, but from a mixed marriage. They live apart, because her son doesn't want to have anything to do with his mother; he hates her. He was christened without her knowing. Her husband, persuaded by the neighbor, took him to church to have him Christianized. They said they were going to the dentist. But my cousin doesn't know herself whether she's a Jew or a Pole or a Christian. I wrote to her and told her that she is a real Jew, but she doesn't know the Jewish religion; as a child she went maybe once to a prayer house in Czestochowa with her parents. I don't know whether she remembers.

Otylia Ryngiel, Dad's sister, died too. In 1938 her husband had to leave Germany because of Hitlerism. He used to come to Poland via the border crossing in Zbaszyn, and then he would come to Cracow and go to some place in Podgorze district. Dad told me that he was worried that he would commit suicide, that he would jump into the Vistula. But he didn't jump. In 1939 my aunt sent him a telegram: 'Our panes smashed'. They had a beautiful shop, you see, a fashion house selling clothes. And Uncle Jakub didn't know what that meant. He thought that 'our panes' [in Polish 'szyby'] was some minister in Africa... And she moved out of their four-roomed apartment and sent all the furnishings from the four rooms here, to an apartment where some Poles lived. That's what my uncle said. And they both died, probably in Belzec. When I went out that day, back then on 5th September, to my friend's place to ask him if he wanted to escape with me, I met her. And she said goodbye to me and kissed me. I didn't know it was for the last time. You see, everyone was saying, lying, that the war was only going to last two weeks. A group of us from the Jewish community organization went to Belzec, in 1960 or 1961. There's a mass grave there. Those who wanted to cried, and then Fogiel recited the Kaddish.

We stayed in the building on Stradomska Street for a long time, until 1947, 14 of us, sleeping on bunks on mattresses. There was one woman, who slept on the floor under the window. She said she had been in hiding in the Missionaries' Church, just next door. But she left very soon. She was an older woman. Then Goldberg the barrister put this young woman from Gliwice in with us. She didn't have anywhere to sleep, and he let her stay. But there was this one older man there, a very devout man, who had worn a beard in Georgia. But when he came to Poland he shaved it off completely because he was afraid of anti-Semites. And he made a great fuss to the barrister: 'you can't do that, it's forbidden, our religion doesn't allow it, and it would be yayzokhore! [Polonized Yiddish]' In Yiddish 'yeyzey hara', 'temptation'[evil desire, yetzer hara in modern Hebrew]. But the barrister defended her and she slept there one night.

There were 14 of us there, and there were families in the neighboring rooms. There was a friend of mine from school, from another, higher grade, Gries, with his parents, who had managed to survive, in the Soviet Union perhaps. There was another family, called Fajg; he was a tailor. He and his wife lived next door. They already had a son, and their daughter was born there. They emigrated.

In January 1947 I moved into a little room on my own. There were a few houses like ours [shelters for Jews]. After the war whole families lived in them for quite some time, each family in a separate room. One night a family of Kiev Jews who had come from Georgia stayed there: two couples, older parents with a daughter, who had married a guy called Mozes from Lodz out there in Georgia. We went to their wedding. But all the families there were thinking about leaving and they emigrated. In the former Jewish Theater the Zionists were agitating, encouraging people to go to Palestine. And then there was a talk on the subject in another theater. This guy from Canada [a Polish Jew who survived the Holocaust in Canada] came and said that he was going to Palestine. They held these lectures and tried to persuade other people to go to Palestine. I went to two of those meetings. I thought about going. At the time the talk was of illegal emigration, just as emigration before the war was illegal.

When we arrived in Cracow in 1945, on Shavuot we went to Kupa Synagogue. There were entrances on two sides. On one side of it there was a market, and they would hang their rugs and other wares on the wall. And there was this one young chazzan, or cantor, but not a professional one. And he was leading the prayers. And during 'Shmoneesre', one of the lads from the market threw a stone on the roof. And after 'Shmoneesre' the chazzan took him into the synagogue. He didn't do anything to him, he was just in there a few minutes, and then he let him out. The prayers finished and we all left the synagogue on the other side. But the market traders had already got in position, all men, in two rows. And we went out down the middle, and were very lucky that they didn't beat us up or kill us. I don't know exactly what the casualties were. Someone just said to me that some woman called Bergier was killed and someone dragged her along a street. And then there was talk of the Kielce incidents, perhaps a year later [see Kielce Pogrom] 21.

When it started here, with that stone, the caretaker ordered us to keep the door of our house locked. Some people started getting worked up and thought that the only thing to do was to get out of here, emigrate to Palestine: because if people were coming back, out of German and Russian camps and then started throwing stones at them here too, then things were very bad. Some people coming back to their homes were threatened, and they had to go to Palestine because they didn't have anywhere to live. And then in Kielce I think 42 people were murdered because they wanted to live in their own homes. No one did anything to us. We lived together, kept ourselves to ourselves, stayed on the street where our house was. And we had one route: from there to the synagogue and back. That way we didn't come into contact with Christians. Lamesdorf went to his friends', Poles, because he knew them from before the war. They were very nice people.

The largest emigration wave was between 1945 and 1950. You either needed an invitation or you went illegally - to Israel, to Palestine. As for me, my uncle promised to get me out. Uncle Luzor kept in touch with the family in Poland and pressed them to get me to go out there. When I went to HIAS 22, and asked if there was any chance of going to Argentina, they said that they could pay for me as far as Gdansk or Gdynia. I could have paid that, too; it was the journey on from there that was the problem. Aunt Karola wrote to me saying that the journey cost 10,000 pesetas. I didn't know how much that was in dollars. I didn't go. Karola persuaded her sister to go, though, after the war. My uncle wrote to me saying that I should borrow the money for the journey from her. But I didn't want to ask her, that Mrs. Hudes. Her first husband had been a barrister; the second one was the director in a materials factory. She was pleased that I didn't want to ask her for a loan. She emigrated with her son, a dental technician whose name was from his Aryan papers - Adamowicz. Her second husband died. After that I lost touch with them. They emigrated towards the end of the 1940s.

Another one of my uncles promised that we would go together, but I wasn't to tell anyone. He was going with his sister-in-law, because his wife had been killed. And he went. His ex-fiancee told me that if I would work with her then I could go with her. I worked for her for a few months. And she went and I stayed. Before that, my uncle ordered me to split from my friend, who I'd been in the camps with, and in Georgia, and in Cracow. And that friend went too, and I was left alone, high and dry. So they all fleeced me.

Then when I tried to arrange to leave through official channels, the authorities refused me. I paid 5,000 zloty, and went [to Warsaw] for a passport, because I received a summons. So I went and stood in the queue at the Ministry of Public Administration in Warsaw. This tiny little window; there weren't any bars like there are in prison, you just stood in the corridor. Apparently ten people were refused that time, and I was one of them. You either had to have 'protection' or you had to bribe them. I didn't have any protection there. One lady told me that she'd met a tailor up there in Warsaw who made the superintendent's clothes. So she managed to get one through her connection to him. I didn't know how you did these things. They told me to go back home and go to work. So I went; it was a holiday, the end of Sukkot. During Sukkot I was still up in Warsaw, but I was in a hurry to get back to Cracow, because I hadn't taken enough money with me.

After the war I changed my [first] name; I don't remember which year that was: perhaps it was 1954, or earlier. I changed it for a position. I wanted to get a position. A policewoman asked me whether I wanted to change my name. So I said 'Yes, to Daniel'. But when I went to the registry office, she said: 'That's just as bad.' Friends were changing their [family] names. One of them was called Sternrei. So he changed it to Sterynski. Goldwaser changed his name to Garda. In the Jewish Community people weren't interested in whether you changed your name or not. I wasn't interested in who changed their name and who didn't. People who converted must have changed their names if they had Jewish ones. We had this teacher in the fourth or fifth grade, and he said: 'You can say you're a Catholic, but you mustn't say that you believe in Christ.' That's what he said to us. I don't know how many people in Cracow converted after the war.

There were a lot of people who had had Aryan papers during the occupation and that's how they survived. They got these papers from a priest; I don't know if they had to convert, or pray, or if they had to kiss the cross. Or if they had to convert, or if they got the papers just like that. I think they must have had to learn prayers and play the role of a Catholic. However, my wife and I met a woman who lives near here. She looks like ten Jewesses, Semitic. And she says that she hid in churches. But she would only travel in 'nur fuer Deutsche' [the signs on the streetcars actually read 'Fuer nicht Juden']. But that seemed unlikely to me. And that woman deceived me, offering me help with formal matters connected with compensation [financial compensation for being sent to the Soviet Union and for the forced work there during the war].

Initially after the war I had casual work; it was hard to find a steady job. Amongst other things I took orders for signs that my friend made, and I started training in a watchmaker's workshop. I also worked in the Cracow Vodka and Liqueur Factory. Then I did office work in a few design offices for the coke, construction and mineral industries. After that I found employment in the Wawel Transport Cooperative and for a few years I was in their department in Balice [a village near Cracow]. In subsequent years I was a bookkeeper in the Cepelia Artistic Crafts Foundation and in the company RSW Prasa Ksiazka Ruch. I've been retired since 1985.

After the war in Cracow, in the first few post-war years, marriages between Jews took place; there were weddings. There was this one marriage between these children from an orphanage. The bridegroom was a teacher, I think. And they were married, and then there was a reception in the Jewish Community building. The people there were mostly orphans, who later emigrated. It was Maciej Jakubowicz [president of the Cracow Jewish Community till 1979] who organized it so that they could go. There were about 40 of them, but some people say that there were 100. All the children from the Jewish orphanage went to Palestine.

After the war prayers were held in Kupa Synagogue at first. I went there perhaps once. After that we went to Tempel [Synagogue] all the time, 25 years to Tempel. And other people went to Remuh. There was this split: Tempel and Remuh. The community organization decided, you see, and the Jewish Social and Cultural Society [TSKZ] 23, and this one barrister, Maurycy Wiener. I believe it was he who decided which synagogue to have renovated, to be open. One of all those synagogues had to be chosen to be open. They chose Tempel and Remuh. And I went to Tempel. And once I went to Remuh, because I wanted to observe an anniversary, because I'd been directed there. So this Gries, from the board of the Jewish community organization, told me that if I went to Tempel, I shouldn't go to Remuh. And then another guy from Remuh co-opted me from Tempel, told me I should go there [to Remuh], because there were fewer and fewer people there. I didn't know what had happened for there to be fewer and fewer people. I thought that they were dying, but in fact they were emigrating.

Far more people went to Tempel than to Remuh. After the war I even saw my teacher Mr. Aleksandowicz there; he greeted everyone, including me, as one of his pupils. I liked going to Tempel, because it was close. The president of the Jewish community organization, Maciej Jakubowicz went there too, and lots of other people. That synagogue was renovated in 1946 or 1947. And I painted the Magen David, the Star of David, and the four letters, the name of God. A full renovation was carried out much later, between 1994 and 2000, thanks to an American foundation.

The first seder was held in 1946. At that time Maciej Jakubowicz was the chair of the community. But for ten years under First Secretary Boleslaw Bierut 24 seders weren't allowed. The chairman was afraid, and the community was afraid, because the country authorities didn't allow it. And then there was the time when all the chairmen of all the Jewish communities and presidents of JSCS had to sign a declaration saying that they were against the Israeli-Arab war. Anyone who didn't sign was arrested. Maciej Jakubowicz didn't sign and he was arrested and sent to Wroclaw, and was in prison there. And then when we did have a seder after that, the chairman wasn't there, because he had been arrested for not being against the war in Israel.

Just after the war, when I was learning watch mending, the shop where I was working was open on a Saturday. But I was excused and didn't go to work on Saturdays. I went to Tempel. They [the shop-owners] were Jews, so they let me. And they worked. They were all camp survivors. I knew two of them from school. I went with one of them to Mizrachi, and with the younger one to the School of Commerce. They left too; two of them with their families went to Israel, and the third, a bachelor, went to Belgium. The family was called Tennenbaum, one was Benek, the second Izek, and the third Moniek. Their mother survived a concentration camp. Their father had been a watchmaker before the war; he'd had a little shop in the entranceway to our School of Commerce. He didn't survive the war. And the guy who worked with them, called Dawid Rap, he emigrated to where his brother was; it could have been New York. I saw him off at the station.

The policy of the state after the war was such that if they greased somebody's palm or if they had contacts they could go to Israel. But if you didn't know the right people and didn't give a bribe, you couldn't go. They had a quota, a limit. So and so many people could go. And the people who went, even illegally, were in camps after the war [Displaced Persons camps]. They lived in Germany for two years, waiting for them to get houses ready in Israel, in Palestine. There was no repression for belonging to the Jewish community. Anyone who was Jewish, who had ID, could be a member. I didn't have any unpleasant experiences at work on that account, other than a few incidents.

Back then, I don't know if it was 1968, Gomulka was on his way out [see Gomulka Campaign] 25. He fired people on the quiet; there was this order that all Jews who were directors should be fired. And he had them branded Zionists. They didn't have anything at all to do with the synagogue, or with religion. They hadn't seen a synagogue in their lives. Gomulka gave a speech and made a show of not being anti-Semitic. He gave a shameful speech, and the whole world knew it. Everybody got fired and had to leave, because they couldn't get work. There were already others in their places. And because of Wladyslaw Gomulka the economy got a lot worse and there were riots. And the army came; there were tanks on the street. On the Square [the Main Square in Cracow] there wasn't a soul. I wanted to get to the streetcar. I got near to the crowd at the corner of the Square. The police didn't let anyone onto the Square. When I joined the crowd there was gas, tear gas. We had to cover our eyes and noses and get off the street. Yes, he made the situation worse. He took people who weren't experts to head important enterprises.

My partner Renata Zisman was born in Zywiec. She had one sister. She lived in Zywiec with her parents and her grandparents. Her father came from Poronin. There's even a card that he wrote to his wife-to-be, his fiancee, in German. They lived in Silesia, so they spoke German, like all Germans. It was a progressive family. They would go to the synagogue there when it was the feast of Pesach, or Yom Kippur. But other than that they didn't keep kosher. Her grandmother had kept kosher, but they didn't bother. Renata stuck together with her sister, because they were in five concentration camps together, to the very end.

Renata was 18 when the war started. She was seeing Jerzy Sussman, a friend from Zywiec. He came round to her house a lot. Renata's father didn't like his visiting her, but he came anyway. During the war Renata and her family were sent to the Cracow ghetto. When her parents were taken away to Belzec on 28th October 1942, Jerzy looked after Renata and her sister Elzbieta. From the ghetto the two girls were both sent to the camp in Plaszow. While she was in the camp [in Plaszow] Renata managed to cross the wires into the men's barrack. There, before witnesses, she and Jerzy Sussman were married. After that there was kogiel mogiel [made of egg and sugar, the symbolic wedding party, cause they didn't have anything else], but Renata didn't say who ate it. And that was the end of the whole ceremony. I don't know who married them.

Soon afterwards Renata and her sister were transferred to Auschwitz- Birkenau. After that Renata was in two more camps in Germany. She stayed together with her sister Elzbieta all the time; they were together in all the camps. Usually families were split up but they managed to stay together until the end. After the end of the war Renata first went back to Zywiec, because it was her hometown. Then she came to Cracow and lived here with her sister, in the home of some servant of her grandparents: temporarily, because she didn't have a roof over her head. Her sister, Elzbieta, went to music school, and had a very nice mezzo-soprano voice. I didn't know her, because she died very young; she was 39. She left two sons. She had a very nasty husband. She was very unhappy with him.

Later on Renata found her husband, who was in a group of returnees from the camp. They went back to Zywiec together. After selling the family home they returned to Cracow. Because they didn't have any documents confirming their marriage in Plaszow - no ketubbah had been drawn up - after the war they had to have their marriage confirmed by the courts. My wife [partner] taught piano at a music school. She taught for 40 years in the same school, and it was very hard to make a living from one school. There were several head teachers, and one was Jewish; Hoffman, his name was. Another one was called Tippe. My wife Renata was a member of the Jewish community organization and the JSCS. She also belonged to the association for survivors of Auschwitz-Birkenau. And she would often play [the piano] there for free. She got acknowledgements in 50 different newspapers. She went to the synagogue, but the women didn't go regularly. The women only used to go on holidays, or when there were prayers for the dead. My partner didn't know the Hebrew alphabet. The best proof of that was that when she sat in the synagogue she held her prayer book upside-down. And someone told her. Sometimes she'd come to the synagogue without informing me in advance. I didn't know whether she'd be coming or not.

Renata didn't want to be alone. She was a widow when I met her. Her first husband had died; he was 22 years older than her. We were together a long time, 20 years. We couldn't get married because I told Renata that there was no rabbi. At that time there really was no rabbi. And secondly - I don't know whether, if there had been a rabbi, he would have let me marry a widow. I'm not allowed to marry a divorcee; as to a widow I don't know. [Mr. Bertram is not sure whether he could marry a widow, but in fact - according to the law- he could.]

My wife liked her nephews very much, but they emigrated. One lives in Holmes, which is some 600 kilometers north of New York, I think. And the other one lived in New York and in California. He was there with his wife. And after eight years they had a little girl. After 14 years he came here and gave some lectures on American business. He didn't live in Cracow, but in Myslenice. And to this day he lives in Myslenice, but I think he commutes to Cracow. He's in real estate brokerage, with his half-brother Marek. Their father had two sons with Renata's sister and a third with his third wife. He had three wives. The first wife and their little daughter were murdered by the Germans. His second wife was Elzbieta Rand, Renata's sister.

Before 1989 I used to go abroad like all Poles. Because we had very low wages, in the 1970s and 1980s we used to travel to trade [to other countries of the former socialist bloc]. All the Poles used to do it, everyone who was young and healthy. We used to buy things here - we knew what to buy here, what to sell there, and what to buy there, to bring back here to commission shops. I used to go to Romania, and after that to Hungary. When I started traveling with Renata I stopped trading.

My wife went to Israel two or three times at the invitation of her uncle. It was very hard to get a plane ticket. And later, thanks to Renata, I went too, invited by her uncle. It was the 1980s when I went, because I remember communism was still in force. I spent twelve days there and came back. That was when my wife was still alive. She died in 1999. After the death of my partner I also saw Europe. I've been to places including Britain and Germany.

After the war, I was riding on the back running board of the streetcar when I heard a familiar voice from my childhood. I recognized it as my friend Reinstein, Szymek or something, his first name was, I can't remember exactly. And I turned round, and it really was my friend Reinstein. He said that he was now called Rogulski, and had come back with his wife. They had come from Paris. I don't know whether she was Polish. She spoke Polish, but she could speak very good French. Where he managed to survive I don't know. He was working here in some design office. He wasn't here for long. The kid, a son, was at boarding school. That was in the Gomulka era. The little boy was persecuted. And she, the mother, hauled her husband over the coals, the father of her son. She said she was leaving Poland. She said that in France, the richer a Jew, the more respect they have for him. And she was going back to France. An energetic woman, she was. So they went to France; I saw them off at the station. On the last day, when I was at their apartment, I saw that they had a cross concealed. A big cross, hidden behind this kind of wooden partition wall from a bed. I don't know if he converted.

Another friend of mine, Henryk Kleinberger, was in the camp at Turgenevo. After that I lost touch with him, because he was deported to another camp with another gang. And after the war, when I was back in Cracow, I didn't know where he was. I met him near Tempel. He had come back from Germany. After that he studied pharmacy, and when he graduated he did his compulsory military service, as a pharmacist. While he was in the army, they asked who wanted to go to Israel, or to Palestine. So he was among those who decided to go. He was in the army at Olsztyn. After that he came back to Cracow, was here for a short time, and then he started to prepare to leave for Israel. He went there and got married. I found out later from his wife, when I wrote him a letter, that he was dead; he'd had a stroke. He died young; he was 57, I think. And I met him in that camp, so far away, and he'd lived so near me before the war.

After the war I worked in various enterprises, and I was the only Jew so I had to get used to that company. Over about two years I traveled [as a sales representative] to 22 shops and 16 towns on business. I didn't have a private life at all, and I was always alone in hotels. I went on one of those trips with this woman Asbury. We were doing inventories. And once she offended me; she said to me 'You Jew!' I was offended; I didn't want to go to work. There was another woman there, who persuaded me to go. So I went to work as if nothing had happened. But after that they had this conciliatory committee, for her to apologize. That was a meeting in the workplace where she had to explain herself. Asbury claimed she had been out of her mind. I didn't know what right she had to be drinking alcohol before work; we started work before 7 or at 8. And she should have apologized to me. But the commission said that I had to kiss her.

The second was Mrs. Krawczuk, the wife of a judge. Well, her husband worked in the courts, so I don't know whether he was a judge or a prosecutor or the porter. I wasn't afraid of her, but she offended me. She said 'You Jew!' too. First she asked me about Gomulka, about Palestine, and about what Zionism was. I answered: patriotism, love for one's fatherland. And one time she said to me: 'You Jew!' So I had her up before the commission just the same, so that she would apologize to me. And in spite of requests I didn't withdraw my motion. When I was at the Workers' Publishing Co- operative Prasa Ksiazka Ruch there was this one Ukrainian woman there, Marysia Wlodarska. And at 3 sharp everyone left. I was getting my coat on too, taking it off the peg. And Marysia came in with her friend. She opened the door, and I was stuck between the door and the wall. 'That Icek's gone!' [Icek - a derogatory name for Jews, from a shortened Jewish name Yitzhak]. And I just stood there and didn't say anything. And then she closed the door and saw that 'Icek'. That was the anti-Semite she was.

Other than that all the other women were very good. There was one time I brought a packet of matzah to work. And I gave each woman one - they were all women there. Only one of them didn't want to accept it, because she had been brought up to believe that there was Christian blood in it [the blood libel myth]. And she wouldn't accept it. Otherwise she was very good to me, but she wouldn't take the matzah.

There were two rabbis in Cracow after the war. One was called Steinberg and the other Lewertow. Lewertow went to the US, and there, apparently, he was rescuing someone from being run over and was run over himself and died. They didn't stay long in Cracow, because rabbis didn't want to stay here. They thought they wouldn't be able to get kosher food here. The only kosher food was from the Jewish community organization, where you could eat lunch for free every day. But they thought it was their sacred duty to go to Palestine or to the States. They thought that there wouldn't be any Jews here any longer, that they wouldn't have anything to do here. Why would a rabbi want to stay around here with only non-Jews. So for a long time there was no rabbi at all. Even if anyone had wanted a wedding, a ritual one, they couldn't have, because there was no way. There were only civil weddings. Only later did Rabbi Joskowicz come, for a few years. [Pinchas Menachem Joskowicz, the chief rabbi rabbi of Poland from the late 1980s till 1999, officially lived in Warsaw, but spent most of his time in Israel.]

After him came Sasza Pecaric [the rabbi working at the Lauder Foundation center in Cracow till 2003]. And if anyone wanted to get married, he married him or her. He married perhaps two couples. As to the first one, she was English and he was an Austrian from Vienna. We went to the wedding service and the reception, which went on all night. And the wedding took place on Lag ba-Omer, which is the 33rd day counting from Pesach. I can't remember what year that was in, but I have a photograph. After the war marriages tended to be mixed. All the people who have been going to Remuh for some time now, those who stayed and didn't emigrate, all of them have Polish wives, except Reiner. Reiner's wife was Jewish. And I didn't have a Polish wife. But other than that they all had Polish wives.

My wife died on 30th July 1999. I had to organize her funeral. It was very hard for me, because the chairman said the funeral would be soon, and he set the date. I had too little time. Some people came back from vacation especially for the funeral. My wife had an awful lot of friends. And there was a speech at the grave. The chairman's wife, Ribenbauer, spoke. And as well as that there was an article in the press; it could have been Gazeta Wyborcza [a Polish national daily]. And there was one in a Warsaw Jewish paper as well. It was on 2nd or 3rd August 1999. I had a tombstone made, a beautiful one. And I listed all the camps: her name and surname, and her maiden name, and the date of her death. The Jewish community organization took care of funerals. There had to be a minyan, ten people, at least. And there was this one guy, Fogel and either he recited the Kaddish or 'Eyl mole rakhamim' [El mole rachamim - God full of mercy] at the cemetery, or Stein did [Wlodzimierz Stein, cantor in the Cracow Jewish Community]. Since Fogel's been gone [dead], Stein recites it. But it's getting harder and harder to get a minyan together in Cracow.

After the collapse of the system in 1989 I didn't work any more. I retired in 1985, in January. I was 65 then. I wasn't needed in my workplace any longer; the feeling was that young people should be taken on. I looked for a job in other places, but the only one I was offered was as a porter, so I turned it down. Not very much changed in my life in 1989. Only the fact that you started talking about the war, with both friends and people you didn't know. We reminisced about being expelled, about our time in the camps. We hadn't talked about that since the war, you didn't talk about who had survived and how. But after 1989 television crews started coming, and they began a series of interviews about experiences during the war. So we started reminiscing. A lot of Jews came to Cracow, but most of them were no one we knew. After the collapse of communism people who had formerly been conspiratorial about being Jewish started to reveal it and started coming to the synagogue, people who often had changed surnames, sometimes even people who had been baptized as Catholics.

During Jewish holidays I go to the synagogue, and on Friday evenings and Saturday mornings too. I have been a member of the Jewish community organization since 1945; I mean first I joined the Jewish Committee and then the community organization. I am one of its oldest members, because a lot of people have died, a lot of people have moved away. I also belong to the TSKZ, and recently we've had a Seniors' Club created. I take part in the meetings of the TSKZ Jewish Combatants' Association. Unfortunately not many people come to these meetings. There are a lot of older people, but then again the type of activities on offer don't appeal to everyone. We are informed about all the most important events, we organize trips together, we meet in rooms owned by the TSKZ and the Jewish Community.

These institutions also offer various types of assistance: material, medical, rehabilitation. During the week, for instance, I get free kosher dinners. A few times a year I go on 'camps' [organized by the Lauder Foundation] to Srodborow or to Ladek Zdroj, or to a sanatorium. I also meet other Cracow Jews on Sabbath and holidays at the synagogue. But not many people come to the synagogue [Remuh synagogue on Szeroka Street], and unfortunately we can't make up a minyan. The only ones who come are [Wlodzimierz] Stein, Tuszynski, Akerman and Liban. Liban is this kind of caretaker, shammash, who didn't start coming to the synagogue until 1989. Or maybe even later. Usually there are five of us, but [Henryk] Halkowski [trained as an architect, but by choice a journalist and translator, author of a collection of essays, 'The Jewish Life'] also comes in at the very end of the prayers. And when groups [of tourists] come to the synagogue, mostly from Israel, then there is a minyan. Jews from other countries come too, and then we usually speak in English in the synagogue.

Glossary

Bluma Lepiku
Tallinn
Estonia
Interviewer: Ella Levitskaya
Date of interview: March 2006

I conducted this interview with Bluma Lepiku at her home. Bluma lives in a one-room apartment in a new residential compound in Tallinn. Her apartment is very clean, cozy, and full of light. Bluma is short and plump. Her black wavy hair with gray streaks is cut short. She has bright and young eyes. After her husband died, Bluma has lived alone. Her relatives passed away a long time ago, and Bluma is very lonely. Her forced loneliness is a hard burden on her. Due to severely ill joints she spends most of her time at home, and this causes a lot of suffering to her. She even complained to me that she begins to forget words having nobody to talk to. Bluma is sociable, very spontaneous and lively. She finds everything in the world interesting. She was very interested in hearing about Ukraine. Bluma reads and thinks about what she has read a lot.

My family history 
Growing up
Going to school 
During the War 
After the War
Glossary

My mother and her family did not come from Estonia. My maternal grandmother, Dora Gore, and my grandfather Gore were born in the Russian Empire, but I don't know the exact place of their birth. My mother Luba, nee Gore, her sister Fanny and her brothers Samuel and Lev were born in the Russian town of Yekaterinoslav [in 1926 Yekaterinoslav was given the name of Dnipropetrovsk, which is currently one of the largest administrative centers in Ukraine. It's located 400 km east of Kiev]. My mother's Jewish name was Liebe. My mother was born in 1897.

I don't know when my mother's brothers and her sister were born. I can't even say for sure, whether they were younger or older than my mother. I would think that Samuel and Fanny were older, but there is nothing I can say about Lev. I never met him. All I know about him is what my mother and grandmother told me. Regretfully, I've forgotten a lot. I am 80 years old already and my memory often fails me now.

My mother's family lived in Yekaterinoslav before the 1900s. When Jewish pogroms 1 started in Russia, they decided to move to where it was quieter. I have no information about my grandfather. I don't know what he did or how he died. He might have become a victim of pogroms. At least, my mother's family moved to Estonia without him. It was my grandmother and her four children. Though Estonia also belonged to the Russian Empire, but Jews lived a very different life in Estonia than in other areas of the Russian Empire. The Pale of Settlement 2 was not applicable in Estonia. Jews were not restricted as to the area of residence and were treated as equal members of the community.

There were no Jewish pogroms in Estonia. There were no restrictions with regard to education or career applied to Jews. Jewish young people from all over Russia came to study at Tartu University. There was not only no quota 3, but there were even Jewish students' corporations. [Editor's note: Students of Jewish origin studied in Tartu University since the end of the 19th century, and they had their associations and corporations. The student's money box was established in 1874, and in 1884 the academic society with the name of Akademischer Verein für jüdische Geschichte und Literatur (Jewish Academic Society of History and Literature). Jewish students formed the 'Hacfiro' society. There were two corporations: 'Limuvia' and 'Hasmonea.' The 'Limuvia' was a secular organization, and the 'Hasmonea' was Zionist oriented. Since there were relatively few numbers of Jewish students at the university, their organizations were small. In 1934 the Academic Society listed 10 members, the 'Hacfiro' - 20, 'Limuvia' - 43, and the 'Hasmonea' - 30 members. The societies owned large libraries: the 'Limuvia' had about 3,500, the 'Hasmonea' - 1,000, the Academic society 2,000, and the 'Hacfiro' had 300 volumes. Jewish students also had a cash box. This was the first Jewish students' organization in Estonia. The purpose of the cash box was to support Jewish students from poor families. Wealthy Jewish families made annual contributions to the fund, and the board distributed the amounts among needy students].

There were many wealthy Jewish families in Estonia, and they made contributions to the cash box to give talented students from poor families an opportunity to pay for their studies. This was not the case in any other areas of the Russian Empire. Jews have always been treated nicely in Estonia. Perhaps, this was why my mother's family decided for Estonia. They settled down in Tartu, the second largest city in Estonia.

My mother hardly told me anything about her childhood. I don't know how they managed without their breadwinner, but my grandmother managed to raise her children all right. They managed to get some education. At least, my mother, her sister and brothers could read and write. My mother's older brother Solomon was a sales agent. He supplied popular Czech imitation jewelry to local stores. My mother's older sister Fanny moved to America at 17. My mother attended hat making trainings and one year later she became a skilled hat maker. All I know about my mother's bother Lev is that he was regimented to the army at the beginning of World War I and disappeared at the front. His family kept hoping that he was captured or wounded and was in hospital, but he never came back.

My mother's family was religious. My grandmother was a believer. She observed Jewish traditions and raised her children to respect them. The whole family went to the synagogue 4 in Tartu on Jewish holidays. They also celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays at home and followed the kashrut. Each family member spoke fluent Russian since they had arrived in Estonia from Russia. However, the language they spoke at home was Yiddish. In Estonia all of them learned Estonian, including my grandmother. Though Russian was an official language in Estonia like everywhere else in the Russian Empire, the majority spoke Estonian, their mother tongue.

When my mother and her brother Solomon began to earn their own living, my grandmother moved to her older daughter Fanny in America. My grandmother corresponded with my mother and Solomon telling them about life in America. She was telling my mother that she should visit them in America. My mother finally decided to take the trip. This happened during the First Estonian Republic 5, after the war for independence was over 6, i.e., in 1920. My mother decided she would visit her folks and see whether she would be interested to move to America for good.

She had to get to Tallinn from Tartu to go on from there. Her brother traveled a lot, and he told my mother there was a little Jewish restaurant and an inn in Tallinn where my mother could stay overnight, if necessary. Solomon had stayed there himself on his numerous trips. He told Mama she should stay there as well. This was how my parents met. My mother came to the inn and told the owner her name, Gore. The owner of the inn and the restaurant, my future grandmother, Dora Reichmann, asked my mother if Solomon Gore was related to her. My mother told her that Solomon was her brother. The owner liked my mother a lot.

My mother heard someone playing the violin at the restaurant. It was beautiful. She asked who was playing so beautifully. The owner replied that it was her older son Yankl. She showed my mother into the restaurant where she introduced her to her son. They fell in love at first sight and there's no need to say that my mother cancelled her trip. She stayed in Tallinn and then went back to Tartu. Shortly afterward my mother and father got married. They had their wedding party in my grandmother's restaurant. It was a traditional Jewish wedding with a rabbi and a chuppah. After they got married my mother moved to Tallinn.

My father's parents came from Tallinn. My grandmother's sister, Martha Fridlander, also lived in Tallinn. She divorced her husband before I was born. I didn't know him. Martha had a son. His name was Hermann. He was tall and handsome. Marta was worried that he was single. I didn't know my father's father, Mendl Shumiacher. My father was born in 1897. His younger brother Michail was born in 1900. Their father died, when they were still very young.

My grandmother remarried. I don't remember her second husband's first name. His surname was Reichmannn. My grandmother had his portrait. He was a handsome man with moustache. They didn't live long together. Reichmannn died in a tragic accident. He was an electrician. One day he was killed by an electric shock. My grandmother never remarried again. She rented a house and opened a kosher Jewish restaurant and a small inn for traders and sales agents. When her business developed and she could afford it, she bought the building from its owner. The family resided in a rental apartment.

My grandmother was a terrific cook. I don't know a better one. Her inn and restaurant were always full, and a number of men proposed to my grandmother, but she refused all of them, since none of them wanted her children. They were talking about getting married and as for the children, they wanted to discuss this issue later. However, my grandmother did not agree to leave her sons on their own even for the time being. So, she never remarried again. She dedicated herself to the restaurant and her sons.

My father and his younger brother were very good at music. They studied at a gymnasium, but my grandmother could not afford to pay additionally to teach them music. It was too expensive. However, both of them wanted to learn music. Somehow, though I don't know how they managed it, they learned to play the violin. My father started earning money, when he was still very young. There were musicians playing the music during silent film screenings. My father played the violin at the movie theater. This was his good luck. A teacher of music took notice of him and offered him free classes. He lived in Tartu and convinced my grandmother to let her son move to Tartu to take music classes. His teacher taught my father diligently, and when my father improved enough to continue on his own, he came back home.

Perhaps, it's not proper to say this about one's own father, but there was no other violinist like my father in Tallinn. Who didn't know Shumiacher! My father could not afford to study at the conservatory, but he became a skilled musician. He put his whole heart into music. My father played in the largest restaurants in Tallinn: Astoria and Linden. Many visitors went to the restaurant just to listen to Shumiacher playing. My father's brother Michail also became a good violinist.

After the wedding my parents rented an apartment from Penkovskiy, a Jewish owner. We had a three-room apartment with stove heating. It was nice and warm. I remember piled stoves in our rooms. The piles were polished so thoroughly that one could look in them like in a mirror. There was one stove to heat two rooms: my parents' bedroom and the children's room. There was another stove in the kitchen, and it also heated the dining-room.

My father earned all right and could provide well for his family. My mother didn't work after her wedding. My older sister Mena, their first child, was born in January 1922. After my baby sister was born, my mother's mother came from America. She lived with my parents helping them to take care of the baby. I was born in October 1926. I was given the name of Bluma.

Growing up

My grandmother stayed with us a little longer before moving to Tartu where her son Solomon and his family lived. Solomon married Yida, an Estonian Jewish girl. In 1922 their son Michail was born. My grandmother died in Tartu in early 1940. She was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Tartu according to Jewish traditions.

We spoke several languages at home. My grandmothers and my parents communicated in Yiddish. Besides, my parents taught my sister and me German and Estonian. Actually, we learned Estonian playing with other children, and our governess Jenny was teaching us German. We also spoke Russian at home. Young girls from Pechory, a Russian town located on the border of Estonia and Russia, used to take up housekeeping jobs in Estonia. We also had one such housemaid. We heard our mother speaking Russian to her. My sister picked some Russian, but I couldn't speak any Russian.

Our father was not involved in raising the children or any household duties. My mother was responsible for raising the children and keeping the house. My father brought money home, and it was my mother's part to take good care of it. My mother was always alone at home at night. My father played at night-time. My mother and my grandmother became good friends. They went to theaters and concerts together. My grandmother liked my mother dearly. However, my two grandmothers did not get along. This is the case, when they say they were at daggers drawn with one another.

My mother was raised to strictly observe Jewish traditions. My father was not particularly religious, though his mother was a very religious woman. We followed the kashrut at home. My mother did the cooking herself, and all food was kosher. As for my father, he did not follow the kashrut. He had meals at restaurants and told us he commonly ordered pork carbonade or chops with fried potatoes and a shot of vodka. He believed having a delicious meal was more important than kashrut. As for my mother, she followed the kashrut strictly. We never had pork at home: we only ate beef, veal and poultry.

My father ate this kind of food at home. My mother was religious. My mother and my grandmother went to the synagogue on Sabbath and Jewish holidays. There was a large choral synagogue 7 in Tallinn. Men were on the lower floor, and women sat on the balcony. Mama always celebrated Sabbath at home. She made a festive dinner, lit candles and prayed.

On Saturday afternoon my grandmother invited us to a festive lunch. My grandmother was a terrific cook, and I still cook what I liked eating at my grandmother's. She always made Jewish kugel with ground potatoes, onions, pepper and spices, all mixed and baked in the stove. I remember how my grandmother's kugel was rolling in fat, and when taken out of the stove, it was 'shedding' the drops of goose fat like tears. Kugel and chicken broth - this was so delicious! I think Jewish cuisine is the most delicious. My grandmother also made potato latkes, fried pancakes. My grandmother served them with bilberry jam. It goes without saying that there was gefilte fish, stuffed goose neck and the herring forshmak.

There were sweets, too. My grandmother made teyglakh, rolls from stiff dough with raisins. Alcohol was also added into the dough. They are cooked in honey with spices. They taste delicious. We also liked aingemakht from black radish. Ground black radish was also cooked in honey with spices. This was a festive dish, and we liked it as well. As for common meals, my father used to make ground black radish with goose fat.

We visited my grandmother to celebrate Jewish holidays. The whole family got together. My mother's younger brother Michail, my grandmother's sister Martha Fridlander and her son Hermann, my grandmother's friends also joined us. There were at least 15 people sitting at the table. All traditional Jewish food was on the table.

We always had matzah on Pesach. My father conducted the seder. He broke the matzah into three pieces hiding the middle part, the afikoman, under a cushion. One of the children, whoever managed first, was to find the afikoman and give it back for a ransom. I remember once finding the afikoman. I received a bag of walnuts in return. We celebrated all Jewish holidays. On Purim my grandmother made very delicious hamantashen pies filled with poppy seeds with raisins, honey and walnuts.

On Yom Kippur my grandmother and my mother observed the fast. They spent a whole day at the synagogue. When they returned, they could have the first meal of the day. They usually had some fruit for a start and then had a meal about two hours later. I remember this. We also celebrated birthdays. My grandmother used to make a bagel for each birthday member of the family. They were beautiful bagels! They were decorated with oak-tree leaves made from dough, sprinkled with sugar powder and ground almonds. Bagels of this kind remained fresh for a week. My grandmother made her last bagel shortly before she died in 1948.

My father did not take part in raising his children, but we obeyed him implicitly. He could shush us just frowning or looking at us with a definite expression. We were never beaten or told out. The most severe punishment for me and my sister was when our father told us to stand in the corner. Our parents treated us with strictness. I remember that I liked dangling my legs, when sitting at the table. When my father noticed this, he made me go to stand in the corner. When everybody else had finished eating, I was allowed to sit at the table to eat.

It would have never occurred to my sister or me to disobey our parents, snarl at them or demonstrate disrespect. Things like that never happened. When we went out, Mama always told us at what time we had to be back at home. If we were ever two or three minutes late, we were not allowed to go out next time. My mother and father wanted to know our friends and where we went. However, we were never restricted in our choice of friends. I was never told to only make Jewish friends. I had Jewish, Estonian and Russian friends. What mattered for our parents was that my friends came from decent families and behaved properly.

There were wonderful winters in Tallinn before the war. There was a lot of snow in winter. The snow was white and clean. There were few cars, and the air was clean. My friends and I liked sleighing from the hill in the Old Town on the side of the Liberty Square. We liked walking in the park and along the narrow streets of the Old Town. Our family spent the summer months in Piarnu, a resort town. My father played in the orchestra in Piarnu, and my mother, my sister and I enjoyed our vacation there. I have beautiful memories of our stay there.

Jews had a very good life at the time of the First Estonian Republic. There was no anti-Semitism. Jews suffered from no restrictions in Estonia. The only restriction, as far as I can remember, was that Jews could not hold senior officer's positions in the army. However, I don't think this was so very bad, since they were free to engage themselves in any other sphere of activity. They were free to receive higher education and become teachers, lawyers and doctors. Lots of Jews were engaged in businesses. They enjoyed the same employment rights as Estonians. What was important was how skilled one was and how well one could perform, but one's origin was of no significance, really.

In 1926 Jews were granted the cultural autonomy 8 unlocking even more opportunities. There was no everyday anti-Semitism either. Routinely anti- Semitism can only evolve, when the government shows connivance. It can only develop, when it is not terminated, and there was no such ground in Estonia.

Going to school

My sister studied in a Jewish gymnasium in Tallinn. There were two gymnasiums sharing one building on Karu Street, though they both had the same staff and director, Samuel Gurin. In one gymnasium subjects were taught in Hebrew, and in the other one in Yiddish, while Hebrew was just another subject. My sister studied in the Yiddish gymnasium. When my time came to go to the gymnasium, I went to the Yiddish one. It was quite a distance from our house and my mother took me there in the morning and met me after classes.

We had very good teachers, indeed. Gurevich taught us music and religion. He was a wonderful teacher and a chazzan at the choral synagogue in Tallinn. Gurevich told us interesting tales from the Bible, the Torah. He brought a concertina to our classes to accompany us, when we sang.

Unfortunately, I only studied one year at the gymnasium. I fell ill with diphtheria and missed a number of days. I was to go to the second grade the following year. I went to the Estonian general education school near our house. Boys and girls studied together at the Jewish gymnasium, but this school was for girls. There were wealthier and poorer pupils at school. I also had friends from wealthy or poor families. This was of no significance for my parents. We retained our friendship. Unfortunately, many of my friends have passed away. And I keep in touch with those, who are here, we call each other and see each other occasionally.

My father insisted that my sister studied music. We both attended piano classes, but it was impossible to practice at home, when our father was there. God forbid, you play a false note. Father made a real blow-up yelling that no good musicians will come out of us. This was the worst oath he could think of. Therefore, Mama was always watchful that we did not sit at the piano, when Father was at home.

My father's younger brother Michail Shumiacher was also a violin player. He had no family. Regretfully, this was my grandmother's fault. Michail lived together with Ilze, an Estonian woman of German origin, for 13 years. Ilze was a very beautiful and intelligent woman. She knew 15 languages and worked as an interpreter in an embassy. She had a son from her first marriage. His name was Otty.

Michail and Ilze loved each other and wanted to get married, but my grandmother was strictly against this marriage. She had no complaints against Ilze, but one: Ilze wasn't of the Jewish origin. My grandmother believed that Michail had to marry a Jewish woman. My father and his brother respected their mother so much that it never occurred to Michail to disobey his mother and do what he believed was right. My grandmother kept introducing him to Jewish girls, but Michail only wanted Ilze. Otty hated Michail. When a child I thought Otty felt so because he was a fascist, but when I grew up, I understood that Otty believed Michail to be the source of his mother's suffering. I don't know what this was about.

In 1939, when Estonian residents of German origin started moving to Germany at Hitler's call-up, Ilze and Otto left, too. I remember how Michail came to see us then. He was very upset and told my mother that all he needed to say was, 'Ilze, stay,' and Otty would have left for Germany alone. However, he couldn't have said this, because my grandmother would not have recognized Ilze. He never saw her again, and Michail never got married. He dated women, but never stayed long with one.

We recalled Ilze and her son again in 1944, when we returned to Tallinn from the evacuation. The owner of the apartment where my uncle had lived before the evacuation told him that when the Germans occupied Tallinn, a German officer wearing an SS uniform visited her looking for my uncle. This was Otty. If my uncle had stayed in Tallinn, he would have killed him for sure.

In the mid 1930s my grandmother's condition grew weaker. The podagra disfigured her hands, and her joints were aching. She could work no loner, so she sold her restaurant. She spent all her time reading the Torah and praying. We often visited her.

During the War

I cannot remember what my parents thought about the Soviet military bases in 1939 9. The adults must have discussed this issue, but there was a solid rule in our family: the children were not to be present, when adults were having their discussions. They did not touch upon policy in our presence. Even when we had guests, we had to leave their company at 9 in the evening. Without any reminder we had to stand up, say 'good bye' to everyone politely and depart into our room. This was the rule. Therefore, we never knew what they were discussing.

In summer 1939 we were on vacation in the country, the town of Algvida. There was a railroad nearby, and a train with Soviet navy men arrived there. They were entertaining, sociable and even arranged impromptu concerts for the locals. My mother found them enchanting, and when she discovered Jews among them, she was delighted. My mother spoke fluent Russian and she could easily talk to the Soviet officers. She met a few of them and was very much interested in what they were telling her about life in the Soviet Union. I remember my mother saying to a Soviet officer, 'How come you've never traveled here before?' At that time we did not know yet what the Soviet regime was bringing to Estonia. In 1940 the Soviet rule was established in Estonia 10. Soviet Armed Forces came to the country. A few months later my mother was saying with horror, 'Why are they here?'

Estonian residents knew about the Soviet Union what they could read in newspapers or hear on the radio. This information stated that the USSR was the country where people were equal, all roads were open to all, healthcare and education were free and all nations lived as one fraternal family. Actually, these were the slogans that we were going to hear every day. In general, Estonians had a friendly attitude towards the Soviet newcomers. I don't know whether they were sincere or just realized that there was nothing they could do about having them in their own country. Anyway, the accession of Estonia to the USSR was undisturbed. The Soviet newcomers were even greeted with flowers.

Oppressions followed soon. They kept arresting politicians and the ones that failed to demonstrate their loyalty to the Soviet regime. The next step was the nationalization. They took away houses, stores and businesses, which became the property of the government. We were happy that Grandmother no longer owned the restaurant. Actually, our family had no other property. My father's 'production tools' were his hands and the violin. Therefore, our family suffered no implications then. Since we had no property we did not belong to the wealthy class of exploiters, according to the understanding of the Soviet authorities. The only change for me personally was that my classmate and I became pioneers 11. However, this was a mere formality for me and the girls. We hardly knew anything about pioneers.

The population of Tallinn grew all of a sudden. The military were the first to come, and then their families followed. They were initially accommodated in local apartments. This was when we experienced living in shared apartments 12. Nobody was accommodated in our apartment, though. Perhaps, they would have been, had there been more time. I don't think my parents were concerned about those on-going arrests. They probably believed there was nothing we should have been afraid of: we were decent people, we did not lie and our father was not involved in any politics. At that time my father was playing in the symphony orchestra at the drama theater.

On 22nd June 1941 Germany attacked the Soviet Union 13 without declaring a war. We had to decide whether we were going to stay or leave. We did not feel like leaving our home. My mother and grandmother were positive that we should stay, but my father said we should leave as far as possible from the place and there should be no doubt about that. His theater was to evacuate and we could go with it.

My mother packed a suitcase for each of us, just in case we happened to travel in different train carriages. Mother packed our best clothes and shoes. She also added our valuables and silverware into or Father's suitcase: a sugar bowl, a coffee pot and the tableware. My mother was hoping that we would be able to trade our silverware for food products, if necessary. However, this was the suitcase that was stolen at the railway station even before we got on the train.

My grandmother, my father's brother Michail and my grandmother's sister Martha went with us. Martha's son Hermann was mobilized to the Soviet army. The theater was to evacuate to Kuibyshev, they were told, but on the way the route changed. The Soviet government was evacuated to Kuibyshev and, of course, we were not allowed to go there as well. We arrived at the Kanash station, Chuvashia [about 700 km north-east of Moscow]. At the evacuation office we were told that our destination point was the village of Shemursha. The musicians of the orchestra and their families were distributed to various locations. In Shemursha we were the only family of an orchestra player, though there were many other people evacuated from their homes. They came mostly from Belarus. There was one family from Estonia and we became friends almost immediately.

We were accommodated in a small house located in the yard of the owner's house. We were the only tenants. There was a big room and kitchen with a Russian stove 14 in it. The stove heated the kitchen and the room. We cleaned the house. I washed the floors using a brush and some alkali solution. We made frilled gauze curtains for the windows. There was no other house with curtains in the village. The locals, when visiting us, admired how clean and cozy our house was.

There were actually many things we didn't know about living in the village. We didn't know how to cut wood, and my mother didn't know how to stoke the Russian stove. It took us some time to get used to doing things of this kind. My mother was trading whatever belongings we had with us for potatoes and flour. We baked potatoes in the Russian stove, and my mother baked our own bread. My sister and I picked brushwood, bringing it home in bundles. Someone delivered a few logs to us, and we cut them for wood for the stove. My mother or my sister never learned to cut wood. My father and I did this job. We had to learn it all. Misfortunes can teach anything.

There was a sauna in the backyard. This was new to us. We had never seen a sauna before. There are no such saunas in Estonia. You undress in the fore room with some straw on the clay floor. Coming out of the sauna, you get dressed standing bare footed on this cold straw. What is surprising is that nobody fell ill once there. I was very ill, when a child. I had probably all children's diseases in Estonia: scarlet fever, diphtheria, chicken pox, etc. And catching a cold was a common thing me, but I never had even a running nose in Russia, even though we came out of the sauna, when it was minus 40 degrees Celsius outside. When we returned to Tallinn, I started catching a cold often again. The climate in Chuvashia was very healthy with bright and hot summers, when it only rained occasionally, and frosty and dry winters.

The locals treated us kindly. We did not starve even during the first year of the evacuation. We have to thank our mother for managing to provide food for us. My mother started making sheepskin hats for the locals from the sheepskin they supplied. They paid with food products: potatoes, cereals, sauerkraut and pickles. At the start of the second year we received a land plot where we planted potatoes, carrots, cabbage, onions and garlic. Tatiana, our landlady, had a cow. She brought us a mug of milk every evening. My mother had cuts of fabric with her, and she traded them for butter, poultry and even honey. So, we had everything we needed in the evacuation, and our situation was very different from what others had to go through.

My mother and sister knew the Russian language, while my father and I could speak only a few words at the most. It was hard at the beginning. Mama taught me the Russian alphabet. I tried to read signs in the village. I made a few friends. They were local girls and the ones like me. They spoke Russian to me and before long I picked up some Russian. For a long time I spoke with a terrible accent and put all the wrong accents on words, but in due time I learned to speak.

Back in Estonia I had finished four grades at school, and in the village I went to the local school. It was hard at first, but I improved eventually. Schoolchildren used to write letters to the front. My friend helped me with writing letters. I drafted a letter, she checked and corrected the mistakes and I put together the final version. So, I learned to write without mistakes, eventually. I finished seven grades of a general education school in Chuvashia. I didn't join the Komsomol 15 at my school. They didn't pay much attention to such things there.

My grandmother's sister's son Hermann was regimented to the army before we left Tallinn. He was enlisted to the Estonian Corps 16, which was formed in early 1942. It was deployed in the Yelansk camps near Kamyshov in the Ural, which was not that far from our location. Hermann managed to visit us in our village. He fell ill with diphtheria, and when he was released from hospital, he was allowed a leave. Hermann stayed with us for a short time before he went back to his unit. This was the last time we saw him.

He died a tragic death at the very end of the war. This happened on Saaremaa Island. Herman was captured by Germans. He did not look like a Jew having fair hair and a straight nose. He was tall and spoke native German. Besides, his surname was Fridlander. The Germans thought he was an Estonian German. They did not kill him. When the Estonian Corps advanced to Saaremaa, he managed to escape. When Hermann joined with his unit, they met him with suspicion. They did not believe he was not working for the Germans. They couldn't believe the Germans had not killed the Jewish man. Nobody listened to what he had to say, and he was regimented to a penal unit where he perished. He must have been destined to die, and there is no escaping fate. After the war Hermann's fellow soldier told Aunt Martha about what had happened to her son after the war.

In 1943 my father was summoned to Yarsoslavl where an Estonian state orchestra was formed. My father's brother Michail was also summoned there. My father and Michail went to Yaroslavl. Before leaving they made stocks of wood for the stove. Even when we were leaving there was still a lot of it left. Some time later my father picked us from Shemursha and we headed to Yaroslavl [about 250 km north of Moscow].

My father worked a lot in Yaroslavl. He attended rehearsals, and the orchestra also went on tours to the front line. There was also a ballet and a drama troop. There was even a jazz band in which Uncle Michail was playing. They all gave concerts at the front.

My mother did not go to work in Yaroslavl, but my sister did, though I can't remember where. I finished a course of medical nurses at the medical school in Yaroslavl. I went to work as a medical nurse at the ophthalmologic department at the hospital in Yaroslavl. In November 1944 the Estonian Corps liberated Tallinn. We started preparations to go home. My father was offered a job in the symphony orchestra in Yaroslavl, a nice apartment and salary, but my sister and I insisted on going back to our homeland. We wanted to go back whatever there was in store for us! We could not imagine living anywhere else, but Estonia. So, our family headed to Tallinn.

After the War

We looked forward to getting to our apartment. We already knew that it was not damaged or ruined. Uncle Solomon's son got to Tallinn some time before we did. He served in the Estonian Corps that liberated Tallinn. Michail came by our house and wrote my mother that our apartment was all right. However, when we got there, it turned out there were other tenants living in there. Our Estonian janitor had moved in there. When we opened the door using our own key, he met us with the words: 'Jews, what are you looking for here? Why did you come back in the first place and how come they didn't kill you in Russia? My father asked him what he was doing in our apartment, but he only cursed us in response. To cut a long story short, he didn't let us in our own home. We had to back off.

My mother's friend, whose husband hadn't returned from the front yet, gave us shelter. My father addressed the court to have our apartment back. However, it turned out that there was no way we could force the janitor to move out. He presented the form stating that his son was in the Red Army to the court. As it turned out afterward this form was falsified, but we only found this out many years later. Well, at that point of time we were homeless. After numerous visits to the executive committee 17 and the Central Committee of the Party Mama obtained an authorization for us to move into two rooms in a shared apartment. We lived there a few years. Our co-tenants in this apartment were three other families. We had never resided in a shared apartment before and had to get used to the new way of living.

After the war my mother's sister Fanny found us. She lived in the USA with her family. She was so happy to learn that we survived! We had hardly any luggage, when we arrived in Tallinn. Mama only retained one decent outfit for each of us, so that we had a pair of shoes and a dress each to dress properly to go out. She didn't want people to say that we were a bunch of ragamuffins having come back from Russia. The rest of our clothing was sold or traded for food products. Actually, this was all we had at all. Our apartment and whatever belongings we had left therein were gone. Aunt Fanny started sending us parcels. She sent us sufficient clothes to dress for any occasion. We corresponded until my father was told that this was not safe 18 and our communication faded.

Uncle Solomon's wife returned from the evacuation. Ida and Solomon were evacuated to Uzbekistan. Solomon had poor sight and was not subject to army service. Solomon was a rather credulous man, and this played a wicked trick on him. One day in the evacuation a Polish Jew, an acquaintance of Solomon dropped by asking Solomon whether he might leave a bag full of clothes at his place. It goes without saying that Solomon did not mind. Later it turned out that this bag contained stolen things. The thief had been captured and confessed that Solomon had the bag. My uncle's place was searched. They found the bag and arrested my uncle. Solomon died in prison. Ida worked at a weaving mill in Uzbekistan. She was even noted for her performance. Their son Michail was at the front and survived. They lived in Tartu after the war.

After returning to Tallinn our family observed Jewish traditions. There was no possible way to follow the kashrut, though. Well, we did not buy any pork or pork sausages, but there was no place selling kosher meat. We bought beef, veal and poultry, then. Actually, we did that, when meat became available in stores some time after the war, of course. We celebrated Jewish holidays at home. My mother made matzah for Pesach. We did what was possible. The synagogue in Tallinn burned down in 1944. My grandmother and mother went to a small prayer house on major Jewish holidays. My sister or I didn't go there.

In Tallinn I went to work as a medical nurse in the navy hospital. My sister Mena was a manicurist at a hairdresser's. Our father played the violin in a popular café in Tallinn. Before 1940 it bore the name of Fleishner after its owner, and after the war it was renamed to the Tallinn café. Many people visited the café to listen to my father playing the violin. He played with a small orchestra. People applauded, when he stepped onto the stage.

My father liked Russian romances and musical comedies. He put his whole heart into playing the violin. He had four infarctions because of working so hard. When he died, so many people came to his funeral, as if he had been some celebrity. And my father was a celebrity in Tallinn, indeed. When renowned violin players from the USSR or other countries visited Tallinn, they always came to see my father. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Tallinn.

My grandmother returned to Tallinn all right, but her health condition grew worse. She had an infarction and died in 1948. In 1952 my father's younger brother Michail died. He had leukemia and died at the age of 52.

In 1948 Israel was officially acknowledged 19. My father was no Zionist 20, but he was as happy as a child would be. We also felt happy and proud acquiring our own country. The fact that the Soviet Union supported Israel was some reconciliation for making Estonia one of the Soviet Republics. The relationships between the Soviet Union and Israel were quite friendly at the start. Golda Meir 21, the Prime Minister of Israel visited Moscow, and this event was widely covered in the mass media.

We followed what was happening in Israel. We are Jews, aren't we? And every nation sympathizes with its own people. We were proud of the successes of Israel. Who wouldn't be proud? Then the attitude of the USSR toward Israel changed dramatically. The Soviet press kept calling Israel an aggressor. We listened to news from Israel on the Finnish and other Western radios. We were worried about the Six-Day War 22, the Judgment Day War 23. And we were proud, when the little country of Israel won the victory over its offenders.

However, my mother had no intention of moving to Israel. My mother used to say, 'East or West, home is best. Why go to another country? Our home is here and so are our dear ones and friends. Why give up all and go to where we don't know? It might be the case, if we were oppressed to persecuted, and otherwise there's no reason to leave your home.' When in the 1970s large numbers of Jewish people were moving to Israel, I particularly didn't feel like going there.

Poor people of Israel! I don't think they knew they were going to have their hands full with all of them, who were used to commanding and demanding what they believed was due to them. For some reason Soviet Jews thought that Israel owed to them and they kept demanding the benefits, which were granted to the native residents of the country that they had built in the middle of the stony desert. It never occurred to them that they had to contribute something before they were entitled to receive things. They aren't even willing to study the language. They want people to talk Russian in Israel.

Nowadays Israelites, perhaps, understand that they should have constrained their generosity, but can they change anything? Immigrants from the Soviet Union may cause a social upheaval soon... So, for this very reason I was reluctant to move to Israel. I sympathize with Israel a lot. Poor country. They are surrounded with the Muslims thinking of how to destroy them, and on the other hand, there are immigrants from Russia, unwilling to accept the rules of the country and trying to introduce their own rules.

I got married in 1950. I met my first husband, Victor Vatis, at a dancing party at the Palace of Officers. We started seeing each other and got married shortly afterward. Victor came from Odessa 24. His family moved to Tallinn after the war. His mother, Zinaida Vatis, was born into a family of district doctors in Kherson. Zinaida became a medical nurse. She got a very good education. She knew few foreign languages. She spoke fluent French and often spoke French to my father's brother Michail. Her husband, Yuri Vatis, was an accountant. They had two children. Victor, the older one, was born in 1927. His sister Tamara was one year younger.

Victor graduated from a College of Finance and Economics and studied at the Department of Journalism of Tartu University, the extramural department. Though Victor was a Jewish man, my mother did not quite like the fact that he wasn't a local man. However, my parents had no objections to our marriage. We had no traditional Jewish wedding. This was hard to arrange after the war, and besides, Victor was an atheist. We registered our marriage in a registry office and had a wedding dinner with our friends and relatives. Victor had a room in a shared apartment where I moved after the wedding.

Victor was a jealous husband, and insisted that I quit working at the hospital, because many of the patients were young men. I went to work as a medical nurse in the railroad children's recreation center. I got pregnant, and my pregnancy took a complicated course. The labor didn't go normal and the baby was stillborn. After that we started keeping aloof. We were no longer a family. We were just two people sharing a room for some vague reason. We divorced in 1953. However, I retained friendly relationships with his mother and sister. Tamara died young. She had the flu, and it affected her heart. She died in 1980.

I worked in the recreation center for three years. The Doctors' Plot 25 had no implications for me. This period was quite unnoticed in our part of the country. I remember the day, when Stalin died in March 1953. Many employees of the recreation center were not just crying: they were grieving and sobbing, as if they had lost their own father. They were lamenting and sobbing. I did not cry and had no feeling of grief. I could not understand why they were grieving. I was telling them that we are all mortal and one day we will go, too. I though to myself: are they so dumb? Don't they know that Stalin was an evildoer? As it happened, they didn't.

Stalin was mean in his treatment of doctors. It was a good thing he died and they were rehabilitated 26. However, even now many people believe that Stalin was a great person and chief. Well, let everybody believe what one wants to believe. For some people Stalin was an evildoer, for others he was an idol, and this won't change.

In the children's recreation center I contracted dysentery bacillus from children. I could not go to work with the children before I fully recovered, and I quit working at the center. I went to work as a typist at the railroad office. I issued train and load tickets. I thought it was going to be my temporary job, but when I fully recovered, I did not feel like going back to the center. My work there involved night shifts and continuous nervous tension... So I stayed at my new job.

There I met Ilmar Lepiku, my second husband. He was Estonian. He was a loader. We got married in 1962. My mother was no longer with us. She died in 1956. We buried Mama in the Jewish cemetery in Tallinn. In 1962 we buried my father next to her.

My second husband, Ilmar Lepiku, was born in the village of Aniya, Kharoyusk district, in 1932. His father and mother Ilmara were farmers. Ilmar had a younger brother. His name was Rein. Ilmar finished seven grades at the general education school in the village. He was not fond of farming and went to study at the vocational school at the shoe factory in Tallinn. After finishing it he worked as a shoemaker at the factory and lived in a dormitory, which saved him from the resettlement [see Deportations from the Baltics] 27.

His mother Maria Lepiku and his father were exiled. When the officers came to arrest Maria, her younger son was in bed. Maria had sufficient self- control to cover him with heaps of clothes, and the NKVD 28 officers did not notice the boy. Maria and her husband were arrested, and their son stayed at home alone. His neighbors found him and he stayed with them. They were kind people. Maria was exiled to the Krasnoyaskiy Krai and her husband was taken to the Gulag 29 where he died. Maria returned from exile in 1956. She came back an invalid. Estonians are very hard-working people. Maria worked at an elevator sparing no effort. She had her spine injured. It hurt her to walk. However, she lived to turn 91.

Ilmar worked at the factory until the late 1940s, when he went to work as a loader at the railroad. He earned a lot more as a loader. Ilmar was a sportsman and a very strong man, and hard work did not bother him much. He was very honest. He told me other loaders were stealing, when unloading trains. It was common for Soviet people to steal at work. I saw that, when I was in the railroad staff. I thought then: 'It's none of my business. Let them do what they want.' Ilmar did not even think about stealing things. When he quit his job, his supervisor said he was so sorry that he was leaving. There are few people like Ilmar.

When we got married, I quit my job and went to work as a controller at the Salva toy factory manufacturing dolls with Estonian folk costumes. The factory was located in the yard of our house, which was very convenient. Shortly before I was to retire I went to work at a toy shop. They paid a higher salary to the staff of shops, which was better from the point of view of my future pension. When my retirement time came, I was assigned the highest pension rate in the country, which was 120 rubles.

My husband and I got along very well. They say mixed families face the risk of confrontations due to their national differences, but I believe this all depends on the spouses themselves. Behave decently, respect your spouse's national identity, respect his/her people's traditions, and there are going to be no problems. This is how we believed it was proper. I never heard a mean word spoken by my husband against Jews.

However, Estonian people had no anti-Semitic convictions. There was no anti- Semitism in pre-Soviet Estonia in the past. It was imported to Estonia by immigrants from Soviet Russia. I wouldn't say that all Soviet people are bad. No. Like Germans, for example, besides fascists, there were also German people rescuing Jews during the war. I believe there is no evil nation, there are evil people. This is also true about Jews. Somehow, evil people draw more attention than decent ones.

My dear ones left this world early. My sister died of cancer in 1982, when she was 59. Mena was single and lived alone. My husband Ilmar died in 1992. He turned 74. 14 years ago my dearest person died. I don't know when it is my turn...

In 1985 the Jewish community of Estonia 30 was established. It provides great assistance to all of us. The community supports me. I keep to a strict diet and cannot eat the food they deliver. Therefore, they deliver food rations, and I can cook myself. I try to do everything about the house. The social community staff tell me off for cleaning the windows myself, when I can order this service. What I think is that as long as I can do things myself, why bother people?

I used to visit the community frequently in the past. I attended their events and celebration of holidays. Now walking is difficult for me, and I stay at home most of the time. The community covers some medication costs for me, though I have to spend a lot on medications.

In summer 2005 the government increased pensions of the people, who had been in the evacuation. We were equaled with those, who had been subject to repression, and provided some similar benefits. However, our utility bills are very high. After paying all bills I have 800 crones [about USD70,-] left, and this is far from sufficient. I don't know how I would manage, were it not for the community support.

It's hard to give a simple answer to the question about the breakup of the Soviet Union. In general the life of Jews in independent Estonia 31 has improved. There is no anti-Semitism now, or there's hardly any, I'd say. Nowadays they have job-related age and qualifications restrictions, but no nationality-based limitations. There are hooligans, but they exist in every country. However, they are just a few individuals, but it is not the policy of the country. Our President shows respect to Jews and highly values our community. He visited the community at the Chanukkah celebration recently. This kind of visit was out of the questions in the past.

I would say this happened to be beneficial to some people and failure for the others. The breakup of the Soviet Union is good for young people, undoubtedly. They have free choices. They can study in any country and they can travel all over the world. They have got more opportunities in Estonia, too. There was no entrepreneurship in the Soviet Union. People could only get jobs at the state-owned enterprises. Nowadays any individual can start his/her own business. This is good for the country.

However, pensioners have surely lost a lot. There were low prices and free healthcare in the Soviet Union. This is very important for the people of my age. Now we have to pay for healthcare services and medications. The members of the parliament responsible for lawmaking studied in free Soviet universities. And now they establish prices for higher education. Is this fair?

I know that I have already lived my life, and I'm not the one to have my word in what is going to become of Estonia. This is up to younger people. They are to live in their country and raise their children. What I know for sure is that to have a good life, one has to think about one's country and helping the needy besides taking care of oneself and his/her own family.

Glossary:

Erzsebet Radvaner
Budapest
Hungary
Interviewer: Eszter Andor and Dora Sardi

Herman Rosenberg, my paternal grandfather, was born sometime in the 1830s,
in Gonc, I think, and died in 1908 in the Jewish hospital in Budapest. His
wife was Regina Feuerstein. I do not know when she was born, but the age
difference between them was small and she died in 1908 too. They had eight
children: six boys and two girls. Three out of the six boys "magyarized,"
or changed their German surname for a Hungarian one. At the turn of the
century my father magyarized his name as well; he became Gonczi. I knew my
paternal grandparents, but as far as I know they were not very religiously
observant.

Ignac was the eldest son, born in 1852, and he was the only one who could
get an education. He became a lawyer, a legal adviser to the coal mining
industry in Petrozseny and the deputy of the town. He had a six-room flat
in Budapest; he was the rich man of the family. He died in 1920. He had
five children. Julia was the eldest. I think she died when she was three.
Imre lived in Petrozseny and in 1944 he was beaten to death by Iron Guard
men.

Judith suffered from heart disease and died in her thirties. Janos was a
student at the time of the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919 and he joined
an anti-revolutionary group. We never knew about anything it. He got
married, had a daughter, and in 1932 when she was eighteen she died of so-
called children's paralysis. There was an epidemic of it then. After the
war came the Rakosi era and the communists; Janos said that this was not
what they had fought for, and killed himself. Ivan was left. He became a
foreign trader, got married and they had a mentally handicapped son. I do
not know when he died.

The younger brother of Ignac was Lajos. He was born sometime at the turn of
the century. He emigrated to America and corresponded with the family while
his parents were still alive, then he lost touch. The next is Miksa. He
remained Rosenberg. He was the vendor of a textile factory. He travelled to
Paris and I don't know where else. He got married in Vienna. Izidor was a
furniture merchant. He had a factory, but he lost it playing cards. Then he
married a woman who brought a lot of money to the marriage and managed to
save his factory. He never saw his wife before the wedding. My aunt spoke
French. They had two daughters and two sons.

Then there was Ida, who married Bertalan Szilagyi. They emigrated to the
States at the turn of the century and they had a son there, who died when
he was six. My aunt became ill and the doctor advised my uncle to bring his
wife home, if he did not want to bury her there soon. They came home. The
second son was born here in 1905. Bertalan had a successful ladies' fashion
workshop. Aunt Ida died in 1919. The younger sister of my father, Malvin
was born in 1879 and she died in 1932. She had a bad marriage. She married
in order for my father to be able to get married himself, and she had two
daughters. Both daughters were deported in 1944 and died.

The younger daughter's husband was a leather merchant and they had two
sons. They were very observant: they went to synagogue on Friday and
Saturday, but to save the boys they converted to Christianity. On Friday
they went to the synagogue to say goodbye to the Jewish God and on Sunday,
with a prayer book with the cross on it, they went to the Catholic Church.
There was a sort of monastery on Maria Street: the boys were educated
there. The priests who taught the boys hid them during the war. Thus they
were saved. They live in Switzerland.

Jozsef Klein, my maternal grandfather, was born in 1847 or 1848 in Szilagy
County. I think it was Hadad. He was a stove-maker. He came to Pest, but I
do not know when. He met my grandmother here, who was a widow then. She
brought two daughters into the family. I do not know anything of them; they
died. I don't know where grandmother Regina Bloch came from. There were a
lot of sisters and brothers. I can remember an aunt whom we visited. I have
only a few memories of Grandmother Regina; I was very young when she died
in 1913. Grandfather died in 1920.

There were four siblings in my mother's family. The eldest was Mor Klein,
who became Mor Karman. He worked in the stock market and in 1932, when the
market collapsed, he killed himself. His wife worked in the clothing shop
his mother owned. It was an elegant shop. People didn't go there to buy a
shirt, they went there to order a trousseau. They had a son, Istvan Karman.
He was taken away to a forced labor corps and he died there in Koszeg in
1944.

There is one more daughter. She lives in America. She got married in 1936.
Her husband was quite observant. They had the wedding in the Rumbach Street
synagogue. That one was more orthodox than the one on Dohany Street; they
had no organ there. Klari was not too observant as a matter of fact, but
she kept all the observances with her husband. In 1938 when the Anti-Jewish
law was discussed in Parliament, her husband said that he did not want to
be a second rate citizen anywhere. They emigrated to America, to New York.
Here at home they had had a child, but it died; there in America they had a
daughter. Mor's wife was in my flat, which was in a protected house, and
she emigrated to America in 1947.

The next brother of my mother was Artur. He did not like studying, he
wanted to be an actor. My grandfather did not like that and so he had to
study to be a locksmith, though later he was a traveller. He wandered all
through Europe from Moscow to Madrid. In the end he lived in Hamburg. He
rented a room at the house of a Christian dancer, who was fourteen years
his senior and had two grown daughters. He married her. If there was ever a
good marriage, then it was that one. When my grandmother died he came home
for the burial with his wife and a common-law son of theirs, who was the
same age as I was. One more son, Ferenc, was born to them in Pest in 1914.
They were living in the house where my grandmother's siblings lived. When
the child was born, the neighbours went and registered him as Ferenc Jozsef
Klein, religion Jewish. Grandfather took him into the stove trade. He
needed a locksmith for work with ovens. My grandfather had a workshop in a
cellar, in fact it was a storeroom, as they did not work there. They went
to houses and were told everywhere that only uncle Klein would do. Only he
was called to work at the Lukacs Cafe.

Artur was a soldier in WWI. When Feri was born, he was not at home.
Grandfather gave his wife money and the money my grandfather gave was
always just too little. When her husband came home she complained to him.
In 1919 my uncle started saying that his wife was better than his sister
was and they had an argument with Grandfather. Without so much as a
goodbye, he left his father and everybody else and they went back to
Hamburg. He became a projectionist at a Jewish cinema and his wages were
not too bad. His elder son joined the SS and did not speak to his father.
In 1939 my aunt came to Pest to certify that their younger son was a
Christian. She had a birth certificate that the child was Jewish, but from
the Evangelical minister she got a certificate that the child had been
christened. Later in the court she swore that her husband was not the
father of the child.

The elder son died as an SS soldier in 1940, the younger became a Wehrmacht
soldier at an anti-aircraft unit and died in a bomb attack. My uncle
survived the war; while he was at work, in the projection room in the
cinema, a child was killed in the neighbourhood and he was arrested as the
killer. Everybody at the cinema testified for him. He was released, but
there were no apologies. Instead he was taken to an internment camp, which
he survived. In 1958 he came home for the first time since 1919 and I think
he died in 1964.

Then there was Berta, she died in 1905 when she was 23 and engaged to be
married. She had some sort of heart problem.

My mother was the youngest. She was born in 1884 in Budapest. She finished
four secondary classes and after that she learned sewing and then she
stayed at home. My mother did not study, nor did her sister. They learned
sewing from an acquaintance, but women had no profession.

My father was called Mano Mihaly. He was born in 1877 in Gonc. His parents,
the Rosenbergs, had their own house and a shop. Then another Jew moved
there, one who was cleverer and more skilled than my grandfather, and they
went bankrupt. They moved to Kassa (Kosice in Slovakia today). I do not
know what they did there. Maybe the eldest son was already helping them.
Then they moved to Pest. They lived on Garai Street. There they were not
working. There was a shop there too, but that one was their daughter's. I
don't know if they helped out in the shop or not. Then they died. At
school, my father finished four upper classes. Then he went to be a shop
assistant in an elegant furniture shop and he was also a designer there. He
could draw beautifully. They had a very big shop on Kecskemeti Street
which sold very elegant furniture. The customers used to come and ask him
to have a look at the furniture they wanted to have. Then my father would
draw the furniture. He would draw the bedroom, the dining room, the living
room and the parlour. If it was suitable, the joiner made it, they
delivered it and installed it, and then the customer could move in.
Everyone in the joinery trade knew him.

There was a ballroom where the Royal Hotel is now. There was some ball to
which my mother went to dance and there was my father, not dancing. They
met there and love and marriage followed. Getting married was not so very
simple. My father was the youngest son and he had a younger sister, Malvin.
The parents said: "You can't get married before Malvin." They married
Malvin off, but she had a very bad marriage and it was always blamed on my
father. They, my parents, got married at last in 1904 in Pest, in the
synagogue on Dohany Street. My father was in WWI for less than a year,
because his boss brought him back. The boss had inherited the shop from his
father, but did not know the trade. Someone in the WarMinistry ordered a
suite of leather chairs and new furniture for a whole room to help
discharge my father. He stayed in office work until the end of the war and
was behind the counter in the mornings. Then the shop closed because it
went bankrupt.

My father was unemployed. I do not know too much about this period. I
didn't ask and they never told me. Under the Hungarian Soviet Republic my
father was working in a furniture depot. Then he was fired from that job.
He did lots of different things, he changed his trade nearly every month
until 1928. Then he was working in a shop that sold kitchen furniture. It
closed due to the Great Recession. He was unemployed for many long years,
but then he became shop manager in the Zsigmond Nagy & Partner furniture
shop.

My elder brother, Laszlo, was born in 1905. I was born in 1908. I went to
the primary school on Nyar Street. I was the best pupil the whole time I
was there. Then there was the Maria Terezia higher school for girls, on
Andrassy Street, which lasted for six years. It was very difficult to get
in there, as it was just for the rich. The husband of the sister of one of
my aunts was the director of a publishing house and he had connections to
all of Pest. My mother went to him and told him that she would like to get
me into the Andrassy Street School. He said that he could get me into any
school in the town, but not there: "She would only learn to show off there.
Put her into the middle school," he suggested. That school was on Nagydiofa
Street. I was the best pupil there too. Going to the synagogue on Fridays
was compulsory. At the beginning my mother took us to school, but later we
went on our own. There was no public transport. Laci went to the Realschule
on Realtanoda Street. I used to go along with them as far as Nagydiofa
Street.

For three years I learned to play the piano, because we had a borrowed one
from my uncle. During the year the piano was at our house, but during the
summer they moved out of the town to Zugliget and they took the piano
along. Then they said that all the transportation was damaging the piano
and they would not bring it anymore. I practised all kinds of sports, but
wasn't good at anything except rowing, which I loved. I swam, but badly. I
skated, I played field hockey and tennis, but all these just a bit.

When my father had no job our grandparents took them in because my maternal
grandfather was earning good money. It was meant to be until my father got
a job. I don't know how long it took my father to get himself a job. What I
can remember was the time he was a shop manager at the Fodor Company. We
lived first on Kiraly Street, then on Kertesz Street in a three-room flat.
There were two rooms with a balcony facing the street. There was a dining
room and a bedroom. All of us, the parents and the children, slept there.
The room looking out onto the yard was my maternal grandparents' room. We
moved there in November 1912 and grandmother died in April 1913.

My mother had no job but tending to the home. We had the same helper for
thirty years, Erzsi. She was sixteen when she came to us and she was very
decent. She cleaned the house and cooked; she was an excellent cook. As
long as my grandfather was alive, the household was kosher. My grandfather
was observant, heart and soul. Each Friday he went to synagogue and each
Saturday the same. Each morning he put on the tallit and the tefillin and
he prayed.

My father had some stomach disease. My mother bought ham for my father's
dinner, he ate it from the paper, and he did not use cutlery or anything
else. But he wiped his mouth after it. Grandfather took the napkin used by
my father and after dinner he put it in the laundry. Grandfather really
took it seriously. As long as my grandfather was alive, he sent us, each
Friday from September till January, a big goose bought at the goose seller.
Erzsi opened it. She knew well by then how to cook kosher. She salted it,
put it to soak and she prepared it in the kosher way, but it was my mother
who shared it out. I used to wonder, how she could share a roast goose
among such a big family. Many times on Saturday there was cholent, but
that was reheated. There was no cooking on Saturday, just reheating. Then
in 1919 there came the Hungarian Soviet Republic and there was nothing to
eat.

My father was working in the furniture depot. Under the Hungarian Soviet
Republic those who presented a wedding certificate saying that they were
newlyweds got free bedroom furniture. The peasants used to bring 5 kilos of
pork bacon and smoked ham; they believed that they would get better
furniture like that. So we ate it. Grandfather ate it too.

There were great Seders at Pesach led by my grandfather. There were lots of
us at the Seder Eve dinner: my mother's siblings were there , but none of
my father's relations. We had separate dishes for the Seder, we kept them
in the attic until Pesach. Before Pesach we used to give the whole house a
big clean. On the last morning, Grandfather gathered the last crumbs with a
candle onto a wooden spoon and burnt them and prayed. I stood at his side
because I immensely loved everything linked to a festival.

On the Eve of Rosh Hashanah we had dinner in the evening, went to the
synagogue, and then my father took us to his brother Izidor's place, who
had four children. That was all we did. That was where my father's family
was. We would always go there.

Laci (Lazslo) was Bar Mitzvahed and he prayed every morning for months,
because Grandfather wanted it that way. Then he said that he had no time
for it. My mother wanted us to fast on Yom Kippur. I did it in earnest; I
was religious. But Laci was not. I think he hid on Yom Kippur.

We were at Siofok down by Lake Balaton every summer until the beginning of
World War I. We rented a flat with a servant, and we packed up everything,
including all the kitchen stuff, and went there. When Laci went to school,
then we were there from the end of the school year until it started again.
On Saturday evenings the husbands came to visit. Then in 1914 my parents
went to Abbazia. The whole family went to Nagymaros together in 1918. There
was no holiday in 1919. Then we did not have holiday for quite a few years,
because my father was unemployed. Then the family holidays were over.

My social circle was mostly Jewish. I had very many boys around because
anybody could come to our house, boys and girls. My mother was the most
wonderful person in this world. We would go to the zoo every evening during
the summer, because there were classical music concerts on the Gundel
Terrace next to the zoo. Two brothers, who were our friends, had entrance
passes for the zoo and we all got in with that one pair of passes. All of
us got in separately at different gates, giving the passes to each other
through the rails of the fence. There were ten or fifteen of us. From the
age of fifteen I always went to concerts. Before that, Laci and I and two
cousins of ours went to the town theater every Sunday afternoon. You can
not name a singer or a conductor whom I did not hear. My father was not
interested in classical music. My mother liked it, but never went to
concerts. It was the hobby of my brother. My brother was a very cultivated
child. He was only interested in classical music. And he read and read.
There were not too many books at home, but we read books from the library
all the time. And we read everything: Gardonyi, Mikszath, Jokai, and so on,
all the greats of Hungarian literature.

Laci went to the Realschule. There he had his bachelors' exam, but he was
not accepted to the university because of the Numerus Clausus, a legal
limit on the numbers of Jews allowed into certain institutions and
professions. First he worked at my uncle's, in the office, then he had a
workshop for small furniture. He wasn't very successful. In the end he had
a good job. He was a manager on an estate somewhere in Szilagy County in
the territory Hungary took back in 1938. This was already during the war.
He earned good money there and he and his wife had two sons. My brother
converted to the Protestant faith. When his wife became pregnant he changed
his religion for her sake. Their son Adam was born as a Protestant.

My younger sister, Anna, was born in 1917. She attended the Jewish school.
She studied well, and had trouble only with Latin. In the fourth form her
teacher said that if my mother did not withdraw her from the school, he
would make her fail her year. My mother withdrew her. She went to
bookkeeping school for a year. Later she learned pottery and languages and
she was a shop assistant in a tea and coffee shop. She had to leave it
because of the Anti-Jewish law.

I would have liked to have gone to medical school to be a pediatrician, but
the Numerus Clausus was already in effect. So then first I learned hat-
making in a private shop. Then we were told that I should learn sewing, and
that there was always demand for that kind of work. I got into Julia
Fisher, which was one of the biggest fashion salons in Pest. I was sixteen
when I got there. Once, at the end of the workday, one of the seamstresses
told me to take some letter to some place. I told her that I could not. The
next day the lady in charge came and said that because I hadn't gone, I was
fired.

My uncle sent word that I should go to the Korstner sisters. I had a nice
time there and I learned the trade there. I got my certificate there one
and a half years later, and worked there for two more years, because I
needed two years' practice to get a permit to open my own workshop. Then I
quit. This was in 1929. For thirty years after that I worked and I had a
ladies' fashion shop.

At first I worked in my mother's flat. My mother had a sewing machine which
she had received from her family. My clientele was mostly Jewish and I had
a well to do ladies' fashion shop. Sometimes I had 8-10, sometimes only two
employees, it depended on the amount of work. I had no time during the week
because in the morning I had to distribute the work among the girls, and
then the clients started arriving to buy or to try on. I had this ladies'
fashion shop until 1949.

My first husband was Tibor Grosz. He was fourteen years my senior. We had
no wedding at the synagogue. He was not non-religious, but he said that it
was nobody's business what two people did. Once we went to the synagogue on
Dohany Street at Yom Kippur. Even then I was disturbed by all the talking
going on. I go there either to pray or to discuss things. I never felt like
going.

He was a chemical engineer. First he was in the leather factory. It went
bankrupt. Then for a year he was unemployed and then he became the head of
the laboratory of the Leipziger Spirit factory. We lived in Obuda. We had
no phone, and after 11 at night there were no trams. Our guests had to walk
to Budapest from there and everybody left at one or two o'clock in the
morning, because they felt so good. In our flat we didn't talk about
politics. Then came that particular Friday evening. We were leaving my
mother-in-law's place and people were shouting that Vienna was under
attack. With that, politics came. We moved to Katona Jozsef Street in 1938.

During the war, 32 people lived in my three-room flat. Our house became a
protected house. In October 1944, all the Jewish women between the ages of
16 and 40 were called up to the Kisosz stadium. We went from there to
Mogyorod, and from Mogyorod to Isaszeg. We were told that we were being
taken to work. We were in Isaszeg for two days. There was a French break-
through and we were herded backwards. We were brought back to the brick
factory on Becsi Street, where we spent the night. In the morning we
started walking towards Hegyeshalom. From there we went on towards
Zurendorf, Austria. There the SS took over. They were mere boys of 14-15,
at least they looked that way to me.

They made us get into railway carts and in the evening the train set off.
We looked out in the morning to see where we were. It was some town.
Suddenly I shouted that we were in Hungary. The train stopped in Harka-
Kophaza, where we got off. We got to Kophaza on foot, where we had to dig
ditches. There were no SS around, as they were trying to run away by then.
Usually we were guarded by self-trained peasants, but there were still some
SS, of course. There were four of us together. My younger sister, a girl
from the house and an acquaintance of my sister.

At the end of March the Russians were already coming and they started
herding us away, but we went back to Kophaza. We went to the Jewish
canteen. There the Jews who were in forced labour gangs got some sort of a
soup that had some beans in it, and in the morning some black liquid that
was at least wet and warm. There was not even water and we suffered from
thirst all the time. Anna was very clever and resourceful. She went to the
local authorities and told them that we were left there at the Jewish
kitchen, but we had nothing to cook. It was announced in the village that
food was needed at the Jewish canteen. Suddenly the boys saw that on the
other side of the road, the German soldiers were loading food on cars. They
were stealing bread and artificial honey and artificial butter. Then we
heard sounds of the cars. I said that I thought the Germans were leaving
and there were no Germans at all in the village. Then the shooting and the
cannon fire started. We set out for home all the same: by train, by cart,
on foot. We got home on the 11th of April. My husband died in Bozsok in
February 1945. He was above the age limit, which was why he was not taken
to forced labour earlier. In 1944 on the 20th of October, the Nyilas men
(Hungarian fascists) came at five in the morning, they gathered all the
middle aged men who could still walk and deported them. I never saw him
again. We were taken on the 23rd of October.

My mother and my father were hiding, holding Christian papers. Those were
real papers, not fakes. A teacher couple, Lajos Kovacs and his wife, had
run away from Hajduszoboszlo. It was not difficult to learn the name of the
man, but the woman was called Julianna Oblidalovics. My father was not
deported. The housekeepers were decent people, because when the Nyilas men
came, they hid him in a wardrobe or in the lichthof (a shaft in the middle
of certain buildings that lets in light and air). There was a mezzanine
with a door to the lichthof. The key to that was in the pocket of the lady
caretaker. The Nyilas men walked around the flat, he was nowhere. "And this
door?" they asked. "This is just the lichthof," she replied.

My father went back to work right after the war, to the Zsigmond Nagy and
Partner furniture shop. He had to furnish a guesthouse in Matrahaza in July
1945. (Matrahaza was a fashionable mountain holiday village and still is
today.) They came to take him there, though he was he felt unwell.
Something was wrong with his stomach, but he went all the same. This
happened on a Saturday. On Tuesday he became ill and was immediately taken
to Gyongyos Hospital. His diagnoses was what they called Ukrainian
Diarrhoea, and there was nothing to be done. They sent us a telegram, and
my mother and I went there immediately. Four hours after our arrival he was
dead.

When he died I went with my mother to the community. The community had no
gravedigger, no rabbi, they had nothing. We wanted to take him to Pest.
They did not want to do it. It was the summer of 1945, there was no car and
they could not transport him by horse cart. If they took a bad horse, the
journey would have lasted for too long. If they took a good one, the
Russians would have taken it away. It was a really big deal, but I managed
to get a community member to organize the funeral the same day. He
succeeded in getting ten Jewish men who could pray together. Though it was
difficult during the summer of 1945, he succeeded. My father was buried in
accordance with the orthodox rites the very day after his death in
Gyongyos.

My brother was at death's door. He was in a forced labour corps in the
summer of 1944 when the carpet bombing of the Ferihegy airport happened.
One friend of his died on his right, another died on his left. Laci had his
trousers full of holes, like a sieve, but nothing happened to him. Laci ran
away. They lived in the Szilagyi alley with fake papers. My brother lived
as Sandor Vajk, my sister-in-law as Laszlone Gonczi. Her husband was
deported and she did not know where he was. On the 1st of January, 1945,
Laci's father-in-law had been wounded and he was taking bandages to him. He
had some notes in his pocket on which he had written several Russian words.
What probably happened is that he was reaching in his pocket for the notes,
and they did not know why was he doing so, and shot him. My sister-in-law
knew where her father was. She went there and he found Laci dead in the
snow. My sister-in-law buried him there in the Szilagyi Erzsebet alley.
After the war, My sister-in-law, together with her two sons, emigrated to
Sweden.

I worked at an ambassador's place for half of a year in 1949, but could not
earn anything there. Anna was in the Communist Party school and she had to
attend evening school too. She became a foreign trader. She made business
deals, and learned German and English. I was taken into the Communist
Party, though I did not want it. Then I worked at the Agricultural Ministry
in the Filaxia, a veterinary pharmacy. I got to the personnel department in
1950. The Filaxia was the most anti-Semitic company ever. I was told that
in the 1940s a friend of the director brought a christianised Jewish woman
there. Her colleagues found out that she was of Jewish origin and they said
that it was either one way or the other: either the woman was sent away or
they would not come to work anymore. They did not dare to tell it to my
face; they were all nice to me. There is nothing more base than the work I
was doing, where one has to build up a system of informants to spy on
others. Whenever I entered a room there was dead silence there. I never
knew a thing. I could never have asked for any kind of information. I did
not want to really. Each day I had to write an atmosphere report. I was
proud of the fact that nobody was fired while I did this work.

I married my second husband in 1948. He was a private merchant, and he
could trade with state companies. Then at the end he was a chief supervisor
in a cooperative. He went around to supervise the branches, but he came
home when he wanted. I was left in the flat in the Katona Jozsef Street and
we lived there. My daughter, Julia, was born in 1949.

When my father was on his deathbed I promised him that my mother would live
with me. In fact it was much easier for me like that, because Juli was six
months old when I had to give up my fashion shop and had to go to work.
They kept my baby for me. For twenty-one years, my work was such that I was
at home in the flat. So if my child cried, I could go to her in the other
room. My mother reared her from her age of six months. I had a domestic
helper. When I had my fashion shop it was cheaper to have one, than to do
the cooking and the cleaning in my own time. I got my job during the summer
and Emi, the domestic helper, said she would take Juli in. They went away
for two weeks that was the holiday due to Emi. I gave her an addressed card
for her to write each day. I could not have provided such things for her in
Pest in 1950; she got the first milk from the morning milking and every day
they killed a chicken to get the fresh liver into her soup.

Juli was head of the class in the gymnasium. She was accepted at her first
application to the Theater Academy. The next day I went to work very happy
and met our legal adviser, who told me, "You shouldn't be so happy. It is a
bumpy career, someone either is very successful in it, or not." I've
thought so many times. I am very sorry for Juli's actual life. She got her
diploma in 1971, and she was in the provinces. She got a contract in
Debrecen first. From there she went to other provincial towns. I retired
when Juli got her diploma.

We did not speak about religion at home after the war. My mother was
observant and Vili her husband was too. But I said that we could not
educate the child in two different ways. If she was told something at
school, we could not tell her any different. She didn't notice that the
dinner was different and at a different time. And in 1956, during the
revolution, the order came that beginning in September 1957, religious
education classes would be started. The ones who wanted their children to
attend had to sign for it. I did not want to, but Vili signed that she
should attend the Jewish religion classes. Juli accepted it without
knowing what it was.

Her next meeting with Jewish life was when a classmate of hers came to our
place to play. At that time biscuits were sent in colourful boxes by Jewish
organisations and the other girl liked them very much. My mother told her
that she could take them home if she wanted to. The girl replied that she
could not take them home, because then her parents would know that she had
been to a Jewish girl's house. My mother told her: "Forget about the boxes
then. Look, you can lie however you want at home, but don't come here
anymore." From then on, Juli knew that she was a Jew. We never spoke of it.
Then she noticed that there were matzoh dumplings. We did not keep Pesach,
but there were matzoh dumplings. There was the dinner after Yom Kippur, and
before that Vili fasted and prayed. I did not fast. I couldn't. My work
mates never asked me "Are you coming to have lunch?" except on Yom Kippur.
I worked on every Yom Kippur. Juli knew several things by then, but not too
much, and she didn't ask. Emotionally, she became a Jew at that time.

There was a great festival in the Erkel Theatre in 1948 when Israel came
into existence. I was there and I was very happy. But it never occurred to
me to emigrate . We wanted very much to go to Israel with Anna, but we
could not get passports from here. Towards the end of the 1970s, Anna found
out that visas were being issued in Vienna. The visa was not put into the
passport, but given on a separate sheet, which could be thrown away so that
the authorities wouldn't find out if someone went to Israel. We were making
preparations, but Anna was very ill. I said that we should wait until she
got better, but I knew she wouldn't. So we never made it there.

Jerzy Pikielny
Warsaw
Poland
Interviewer: Kinga Galuszka
Date of interview: February-June 2005

My interviewee lives with his wife, Nina Barylko-Pikielna, in a beautiful apartment, full of light and filled with books. I recorded Mr. Pikielny's story in the course of four meetings. Later we met another couple of times to put the tale together. Fortunately, Mr. Pikielny found the time for reminiscing, although he's still an active and constantly busy person. Throughout our conversations he would modestly maintain his stories were not going to charm anyone. Everything he'd say, however, would form a surprisingly considered history of the Drutowski and Pikielny families of pre-war Lodz. I'd like to emphasize, in accordance with Mr. Pikielny's wish, that he gathered much of the information given here from other people, and that he never met some members of the family he talks about.

I remember Grandma and Grandpa Drutowski, my mother's parents, well. I was their single, beloved grandchild and that gave me, of course, many privileges. I often went to see them and stayed the night. Grandma and Grandpa were wholly assimilated. I don't recall them observing the Jewish traditions.

Grandpa's name was Maurycy Drutowski, son of Samuel. He was born in 1869 in Czestochowa as Moszek, but he always used the name Maurycy. He went to a Russian school. His hometown, Czestochowa, was under Russian rule at the time 1. It wasn't a Jewish school but a state-run one, and with a classical curriculum, with Greek and Latin classes. Grandpa, according to his own words, was, however, a very good mathematician. After graduation he studied in Zurich, Switzerland, at the technical university there, and graduated as a mechanical engineer. It was there he met his future wife, my grandmother, who lived in Zurich at a boarding school for young ladies. When he arrived in Lodz Grandpa started work at Rosenblat's Cotton Garments Factory on Karol Street, now Zwirki [the building still exists, at no. 36], as head of the mechanical department.

In 1908 Grandpa Maurycy and his brother-in-law Jozef, whom he'd had come to Lodz, opened the Drutowski & Imass Mechanical Repair Workshop at 255 Piotrkowska Street. On 11th April 1924 the company was renamed the Drutowski & Imass Electric Appliances Factory. They manufactured things including electric meters, which were widely used in Lodz. That I can confirm myself, because I worked as an electrician in the ghetto, and while it was usually repairing engines in the workshop, I did sometimes find those meters in people's apartments. At the 1929 Universal National Exposition in Poznan the company received two silver medals. Simultaneously the partners ran a technical office at 111 Piotrkowska Street. Following some arguments with his brother-in-law Grandpa left the company in March 1931.

As far back as I can remember, Grandpa never actually had a job. He was, however, an active expert for the Polish Mechanical Engineers' Association [SIMP], an expert legal witness in the fields of mechanics and technical appliances, and a member of that Association [details taken from the biographical dictionary Zydzi dawnej Lodzi (Jews of Old Lodz), Lodz 2004, vol. 4].

Grandpa was quite tall, and he had a moustache. He was often mistaken for a nobleman because of his dignified appearance, that and his name of course. Grandpa liked to play bridge very much. He used to go to a café next to our house at 8 Nawrot Street. The café was located on the corner of Piotrkowska and Nawrot streets and was the property of Mr. Piatkowski. Grandpa had a seat kept for him there. Everyone knew you could always meet him there, or telephone and ask the waiter, 'Is Mr. Drutowski there?' I remember going there with him. He'd drink his small latte and I'd have a cream filled meringue. Grandpa was always spoiling me and was very proud of me. Grandpa also had good relations with the streetcar drivers. A streetcar would approach the house on Radwanska Street, slow to a stop, and Grandpa would step out. He knew how to talk with the drivers.

Grandpa had a brother, Emanuel, who lived in Lodz, too. Emanuel was a banker, and he lived in a residential quarter of Lodz which was called Jordanow in pre-war times and Orchideen Park under the Germans. He had a son and a daughter; she did a degree in hotelliery. I don't remember their names. I don't know what happened to any of them. We heard, but I don't know if it's true, that Emanuel's son was in Lwow as the Germans marched in. Someone told us he leaped from the column and started to shoot at the Germans. And so they killed him. I didn't know any other relatives from my grandfather's side.

Grandma's name was Aniuta, nee Imass. She was from Chisinau [now the capital of Moldova]. She was born in 1877 - she was eight years younger than Grandpa. My grandparents settled in Lodz after they got married. Their last apartment was at 25 Radwanska Street. They had two children: a daughter named Czeslawa, my mother, born in 1897, and a son named Leon, born in 1899.

Grandma was rather small, quite thin, you could call her petite. Perhaps it had something to do with the angina pectoris she suffered from. Apart from the education she'd earned in Switzerland she didn't go to any school. She never worked. She told me that in 1905 2 there was a great demonstration in Lodz which the Cossacks were dispersing, and so Grandma went there to take part in it, against the Cossacks naturally. She didn't have to go, her status did not force her to fight and protest.

Grandma Drutowska had a heart condition all her life and for that reason I didn't have such good relations with her as with Grandpa. She had a brother named Jozef, whom Grandpa had come to Lodz from Chisinau. I remember I met him once at an ice-skating rink. We even talked. I see the way he looked as I close my eyes. He was a bit younger than Grandma, not too tall, plump. As for Grandma, I cannot say anything more about her.

I don't know if my grandparents spoke Yiddish. They were a wholly assimilated, non-religious family. I know for sure that in the ghetto Grandpa would still recite Greek poems he'd learned at school. I never heard them speak Yiddish, though. We never used that language at our home either.

I only remember one of my grandparents' apartments, the last one, on Radwanska Street. They'd lived on Andrzeja Street before that. Tuwim 3, whom my mother knew personally, lived nearby. The last house was new, they had radiators there, which was a sign of modernity. There was a sizable collection of books at Grandma and Grandpa Drutowskis'. They had the collected plays of Fredro [Aleksander Fredro (1793-1876): author of comedies of manners depicting the life of Polish provincial gentry]. They had a dog for a while, a German shepherd called Lot. But later Grandpa gave it to some forester.

Grandpa died in the Lodz ghetto 4 on 1st April 1942 and was buried in the Jewish cemetery on Bracka Street. Ghetto Jews were buried in a specially allotted part of the cemetery but my grandparents are buried outside that area - I don't know why. I don't remember the cause of his death but he'd probably got pneumonia, and he also suffered from Graves-Basedow disease [overactive thyroid]. The more important cause of his death was, however, the fact Grandma had died a year earlier and he couldn't bear it.

My grandparents' son Leon we nicknamed Lolek. He was two years younger than my mom. He was born in 1899 in Lodz. As soon as the Legions 5 were formed, Lolek, who was still underage, ran away to the army and so Grandpa went to look for him. He found him brushing horses in some unit. Lolek was a co-founder of the Polish scouting organization in Lodz. The troop was named after Tadeusz Kosciuszko 6 and Lolek was its scoutmaster. He probably served in the army in the 1920s.

First he studied at Warsaw University of Technology and later at the mechanical and electrical faculty in Liege, Belgium. After graduation he returned for a short time and started to work at his father and uncle's factory. But, just like his father, Lolek didn't get on well with Uncle Jozef and soon went back to Belgium.

In Belgium he met his first wife, Dennise. At first he worked in Cologne, Germany, and commuted there from Liege by motorbike every week, coming back home for Sundays. Every time he crossed the German-Belgian border the Germans would halt him and order a personal search. He said that later he'd head straight for the control point himself. Later on Lolek owned an oil boiler factory in Belgium.

After the outbreak of the war he left Belgium and lived somewhere in France, in the unoccupied zone [central and southern France, including the Mediterranean coast, was unoccupied]. His departure was partly caused by the fact that Dennise's family strongly opposed their marriage, mainly because of his Jewish origins - something which I learned of from Uncle Lolek's second wife. Lolek was only intending to be away for a short time. Apparently, when he returned in 1944 or 1945 Dennise was already with someone else. He remarried upon returning to Poland in 1947. His wife's name was Maria Kazimiera, nee Kuras. That aunt is not Jewish either. She was born on 7th May 1914. Now she's partly paralyzed and lives in the Matysiaki Old People's Home in Warsaw.

After returning to Lodz, Lolek started work at the Military Automotive Works. A few years later he was transferred to the Ministry of Light Industry and Crafts. That's when he and his wife moved to Warsaw. Later he worked in one of the Ministry's institutes. He died in 1964.

My mother, Czeslawa, was born in 1897. She went to a girls' gymnasium in Lodz. She wanted to enroll in a university but Grandpa wouldn't allow it. I know Mom was musically gifted, she used to sing and play the piano back before her marriage.

My mom loved traveling. She went to Palestine with my father in 1930- something, I'm sure she went to Venice as well. She led quite an active life. Mom told me an anecdote once: apparently I told a teacher I had to be independent, because if I waited for Mom to get home and help me do my homework, I'd never do anything. She had her favorite café - on the corner of Piotrkowska and Moniuszki streets - which she used to go to almost everyday. She'd meet her friends there, but unfortunately I don't remember any of them.

My paternal great-grandfather was called Todres Pikielny. He apparently lived in Navahrudak [now Belarus]. He had six sons and three daughters. The sons were called Abram, that's my granddad, Izaak, Jochel, Tobias, Mojzesz, and Markus. The daughters were Rachela, Merka, and Sara. I didn't know most of that family before the war. The information I'm giving here was gathered later.

All I know about Izaak is that all of his family perished during the Holocaust. Jochel was born in 1886. He owned a factory. His wife's name was Chaja Cyrla, she was born in the same year as her husband. They had three children. The daughters were Mina, born in 1896, and Erlora, born in 1898. Their son, Symcha, was born in 1892. They were all killed in the Holocaust.

Abram, my grandpa that is, and his brother Jochel launched a manufacturing company, which operated in Lodz up till 1927 under the name Jochel Pikielny & Heirs to Abram Pikielny. That same year, the A. & J. Pikielny Textile Industry Joint-Stock Company was established in Lodz. It was to incorporate all the assets and debts and continue the first company's operations. A branch of the company was opened in 1928 in Zdunska Wola [50 km south of Lodz]. My father's brother Henryk was the manager of that factory.

Mojzesz was born on 25th May 1869 in Yeremiche. He had a twin brother, Tobias, who died before the war. In 1889 Mojzesz settled in Lodz, where he and his brother-in-law manufactured part-silk handkerchiefs, and after that he founded a wool weaving mill with Tobias, which was later transformed into M. & T. Pikielny, Inc. His grandson, Henryk, the son of his son Maks, known in the family as Henio, a citizen of Brazil, recently filed a lawsuit against the Polish state to reclaim the factory. [Editor's note: Jews of Polish descent have the right to seek restitution of property nationalized by the Polish state after 1945.]

Mojzesz had two sons and two daughters. The elder son, Maks, was born on 22nd January 1899 in Lodz. His wife, Fryda - I don't remember her surname - came from Riga [today Latvia]. Maks and Fryda had two sons, Henio and Serge. Before the war we lived in the same house, at 8 Nawrot Street, us on the third floor and them on the fourth. I was very good friends with Henio. Mojzesz' other son was called William. He was born in 1903 and he died in a bombing in eastern Poland in 1939. His daughters were called Betty and Hala.

Tobias had three children; two sons: Jozef, who emigrated to Argentina, and Herman. His daughter's name was Frania. She married Izaak Hochmann. Shortly before the war the Hochmanns moved to Brazil. Frania had a daughter, Iza, and a son, Aleksander.

My grandparents' other son was Markus. He and his wife were in the Warsaw ghetto 7. They had two children. The son, Robert, was a painter. He lived in Paris from 1923 and he also died there after the war. The daughter's name was Lili. She was in the ghetto with her family and they managed to get through to the 'Aryan side.' They moved to the USA after the war and later to France, where they died.

I learned from Iza de Neyman, my Grandpa's niece, whom I met after the war, that Merka, her mother, married Aron Lusternik. They had several children. Their son Lazar was a famous mathematician. Some of that family left Lodz and moved to Russia during World War I. Lazar stayed there, and lived in the Soviet Union all his life. The other sons were called Anatol and Maks. The daughters were Roma, Roza, Helena, Iza, and Anna.

Iza's married name after her first marriage was Klein. She was an actress, performing under the stage name Iza Falenska. During the war she was in hiding in Warsaw on the so-called 'Aryan side.' After the war she moved to France; she lived in Paris at first and later moved to Nice. There she met and married Stanislaw de Neyman, who'd been the Polish representative in the League of Nations 8. Iza died in Nice around 1990.

Anna lived in Lodz before World War II. During the war she was in the Warsaw ghetto with her family, but they managed to get out to the 'Aryan side.' In January 1945 they moved to Lodz. In 1968 they emigrated to France, where they died.

Sara, another of my great-grandparents' daughters, had three children. Her eldest son, Jozef, emigrated to France in the 1920s. After World War II he married Merka's daughter Roza, and after her death they left for Israel. They couldn't emigrate before that because Roza couldn't bear the climate. Jozef died in Israel. Sara's second child, a daughter, Ala, moved to France in the 1920s just like her brother and died there, long after the war. Sara's youngest son was called Moniek, he lived and died in Israel.

My [paternal] grandfather was called Abram. He was born in 1865 in Yeremiche [today Belarus]. Grandpa Pikielny died in 1923, that is, before I was born. From what I've heard he had his brothers come from the Navahrudak area to Lodz. Grandma's name was Sara. As far as I know she was the only one in our family to observe the kosher rules. I remember going with her at the high holidays to the synagogue on Kosciuszki Street - the Germans burned it down immediately after taking Lodz - to the women's part of it of course. I don't know how Grandma died. I was only told she sold cookies in the streets of the Warsaw ghetto, just to get by.

My grandparents had at least three daughters and at least three sons. They were all married and had children. One daughter, my father's sister, was called Estera. She was born in 1893. She lived in Paris back before the war. Her husband was Mané-Katz 9. They didn't have kids, and parted back before the war.

Estera's second husband was an art critic named Pawel Barchan. He died in a concentration camp during the war. She survived. I kept in better contact with her after the war than before it. Estera was a painter. She was known as Estera Barchan. Unfortunately, she lost her sight later. She died in November 1990. She was buried in the cemetery in Levalois near Paris.

My father's second sister was called Raja. She married Leon Szyfman, who was a doctor in Lodz. He was drafted into the army in 1939. He was held POW in an Oflag 10, and that probably saved him his life. After the war he moved to Paris for some time but soon left for Israel. He was a Zionist even before the war.

Raja and Leon had two daughters, Niusia and Inia. They were slightly older than me. In 1962, Szyfman published a book in Israel, in Hebrew: 'Got My Whole Life Ahead.' It contained translations of the letters his daughters wrote him during his Oflag imprisonment. Leon had suffered from depression before the war, and they tried to lift his spirits by writing him. There's a Xerox of one of the letters and a card sent from Poniatow [about 35 km from Warsaw]. Here's a fragment of a letter written 9th August 1940: 'We're sending our beloved Daddy a photo of us playing volleyball. My face is in the shadow, and Inia is standing in the middle. We kiss your little nose, moustache and those sweet eyes of yours. We're outside our house on the corner of Zielna and Chmielna.' That means they certainly were in the Warsaw ghetto by then.

The last letter was sent from Poniatow, I guess. Szyfman's daughters wrote: 'Dearest, beloved Daddy, we received a card from you yesterday, and a letter a couple of days ago. I haven't written from here yet as we didn't have the forms, and it's forbidden to write too much anyway. We live in a room together with Stefania [a lady whom the girls knew].' I don't know who this Stefania was. Not everything in these letters is clear to me anyway. 'We have very good conditions here. Stefania is very kind to us, she's really sweet. We'd love it if you could drop her a line or two. We're healthy, we work, and it's really very good here. The countryside is beautiful, woods, fields, and meadows. We hope for the best and we're filled with faith, just hold on, Daddy, and believe we're going to be together, all of us. Lots of kisses, your longing Inia.'

'Beloved, sweetest Daddy-pie, today I got yet another letter from you. Sending letters is a bit tricky here. So don't you be upset by the frequent lack of news. It's much better for us here than in Warsaw. The living conditions are great, we're very well fed. Trust us, we're strong, and hope for the best. Our health is good and spirits high. Daddy, I'm not making this up just to put your mind at ease, promise. I've got my whole life ahead. I have lots of energy today to fight and the health to enjoy it. I want to get letters from you that are not sad, that are full of anxiety, but also of strength and hope. We'll build us a life, come what may. Waiting for your letter, your N.' [Mr. Pikielny knows the letters from the book 'Got My Whole Life Ahead.' There were facsimiles of the Polish originals in it, too.]

Iza de Neyman, whom I've already mentioned, told me about Niusia and Inia. She said there was a chance to get them out of the camp. Someone who came to take them decided he could only get one of them out, otherwise the risk would be too great. They refused. And they both died. One of my cousins reported that to Yad Vashem 11, told them about their solidarity. He informed them that the girls were killed in the Lodz ghetto and that's not true. They'd never been there. I don't know where Raja and her daughters died.

My father's sister Frania was born on 8th September 1894, and her married name was Stuczynska. She lived in Vilnius with her husband. They had a daughter, my age, called Lidia. She was probably born in Vilnius, on 15th December 1926. All of Frania's family was in the Vilnius ghetto 12, from where they were transferred to one of the camps in Lithuania and were killed there.

One of my grandparents' sons was called Henryk. He lived in Zdunska Wola, he ran the A. & J. Pikielny factory founded by Grandpa. His wife's maiden name was Mazo. I don't remember her first name. They had two sons. Romek, who was older than me, went to a Hebrew gymnasium in Lodz; he commuted there every day from Zdunska Wola. All of Henryk's family was killed. They say Romek was in a camp somewhere. He went outside a building and there was standing an SS-man who said he had to kill the first Jew he saw. And unfortunately Romek was that first one.

My grandparents' third son was called Maks. He had two sons. The elder one's name was Alek. I remember him being unhappy with the fact he'd been born during the summer vacation and so couldn't throw a birthday party. He had his bar mitzvah in 1939. I think the second son was called Bronek. I've heard Maks's family was in the Warsaw ghetto at first. They all died.

My father's name was Lazar. We called him Ludwik at home. He was born in 1890. He was very musically gifted and even wanted to become a conductor, but for sheer practical reasons ended up a doctor. I think he studied in Vienna, Austria. He worked at the Poznanskich Hospital on the street that's nowadays called Szterlinga. He was a urologist but since there was no separate urology ward at the time, his patients were treated in the surgical ward.

Some of the information I have about my father comes from the book 'The Martyrdom of Jewish Physicians in Poland,' published in the USA by the doctors Malowist, Lazarowicz, and Tennenbaum. The authors say my father got his diploma in 1925. Father used to write articles on medical issues for various magazines. He worked mostly in a Jewish environment so I'm pretty sure he spoke Yiddish.

Father met my mother thanks to his cousin, whom Mother went to school with and was close to. The young couple lived in Lodz on 8 Nawrot Street. That's the fourth house counting from Piotrkowska Street [Lodz's main street]. There were five rooms in the apartment. Father had his office there and he saw his patients in it. All the rooms were so spacious I could ride my bike indoors.

I was born in 1926. I didn't go to school until third grade because I was always ill, I often had bronchitis. At first I went to a private co- educational school called 'Our School.' Most of the students were Jewish. Two Jewish women ran it. We had teas with our class tutor in her apartment. We spoke with her about almost everything. I don't remember her name, unfortunately. At 'Our School' we spoke freely with the teachers about the opposite sex, something unthinkable at the all-male school I later attended.

Naturally, the classes at 'Our School' were given in Polish. There were religion classes, which dealt mainly with Jewish history. I don't remember the names of the teachers. I do remember some of my classmates, though. One of them, younger than me, was Tadeusz Noskowicz. We didn't know each other while at school, it was only after the war that we met and realized we'd attended the same school. Tadeusz emigrated in 1968 13, he settled in Sweden and worked as a doctor there.

Another one was called Manfred Sawicki. He was born in Germany but in, I think, 1938 the Germans deported all the Jews with Polish citizenship to Poland 14. He came to Poland with his whole family. Manfred moved to South America after the war. We had a classmate we were all in love with, Jola Potaznikow. I know she was in the ghetto and then probably in Terezin 15, where she met a boy, a Czech, whom she married after the war. Unfortunately, she died giving birth to her child shortly after the war. There were also this brother and sister, Zosia and Michal Linde. She was in my class and he was a grade higher. They both survived in the USSR.

From sixth grade on I attended an elementary school which was part of a boys' gymnasium. It was known as 'The Communal Gymnasium.' The school was located at 105 Pomorska Street. Boys of different denominations attended it. I was already aware of the differences between that and my former school. The main one was the relationship between teachers and students, which was not as casual at the gymnasium.

I remember a classmate from that school, Tadzik Tempelhof, who lives outside Poland today. He spent the war in the USSR. After finishing his studies he moved to Australia with his wife and son, but they couldn't settle in. The Polish community wouldn't talk to her because she had a Jewish husband and the Jewish community wouldn't talk to him because he had a Polish wife. As a result they returned to Poland and then moved to Germany, where they live to this day.

We didn't observe any religious rituals at home. Grandma Pikielny's was the only place we had some contact with the Jewish traditions. We had holiday dinners there. Although my father was the eldest it was usually his brother Maks who led the prayers. Alek, his son, was a year older than me and had had a bar mitzvah. I didn't have one, because in October it was already war. I guess if I'd been supposed to have one I would've had to be prepared for it earlier, and there'd been none of that. I did have Jewish religion classes at school though, because they were compulsory.

I knew we were Jews. I felt it was a strange thing to be. During a stay at the Rabka sanatorium I shared a room with a boy and I told him I was Jewish. I don't recall having any trouble because of that. I didn't speak of it the next time I was there, though. During another stay, I don't remember what year it was, I met a boy, older than me. His father was an officer of some kind, or maybe even the deputy mayor of Warsaw. The boy told me the Germans would do us [Poles] no harm, and if war broke out, we would win it of course, and we would drop Jewish heads on Berlin from airplanes. Such were the moods at the time.

A seamstress used to come to our house sometimes. She lived somewhere near Lodz. She was German and a Baptist. She wouldn't refer to Hitler by any name other than 'the Antichrist.' She had a son, older than me, who used to come and teach me carpentry, because I had a carpenter's workbench at home, which I 'inherited' from Uncle Lolek. When the war broke out it turned out the Baptist youth organizations were part of the Hitlerjugend 16.

In 1937 I went to Sopot [Sopot was part of the Free City of Danzig] 17 for the summer vacation, with a friend of a friend of my mother's to take care of me. I don't remember her name. There were lots of people at the beach who had flags with 'Hakenkreuze' [Ger.: swastikas]. They also organized a 'Blumenkorso' [Ger.: a sort of parade]. I remember a very pretty young woman riding a horse at the head of the procession. She had a 'Hakenkreuz' armband. I met that woman in Lodz after the holidays. There were no major anti-Jewish incidents at that time, just these demonstrations.

In 1938 we went to Orlow [now a district of Gdynia]. We went to Sopot to see the people we had stayed with a year earlier. They already had very few guests. Jews were only allowed to use the part of the beach right next to the toilets. It was an area the size of an average room. There were 'Juden verboten' [Ger.: Jews forbidden] signs everywhere.

In 1939 Lodz was taken in seven days. Following the order of Col. Umiastowski 18, men marched east. There was no military protection. Near Brzeziny [a town 10 km from Lodz], where the road was full of people, German planes would fly over and shoot at them with machine guns. There was no way through. My father went there as well, but seeing what was going on he returned to Lodz. There was a rumor my uncle Leon Szyfman was lying wounded in a ditch somewhere. My aunt went to look for him, but didn't find him. All that happened during those first couple of days. Later we lost touch with our family, except for my father's brother Henryk. My mother kept saying we ought to go east, do whatever it takes not to be under German rule. Both Grandpa and my father thought it was exaggerated out of all proportion, though, and that the Germans wouldn't do anything bad, because they're such a cultured nation. But Grandma Sara left, and so did Raja with her two little daughters, Niusia and Inia, and probably also Maks, my father's brother, with his wife and kids. They must have got stuck in the Warsaw ghetto.

In 1939 I was due to start gymnasium. But the Germans closed all the schools. They also banned Jews from crossing Piotrkowska Street, except at the two ends [Piotrkowska Street is Lodz's longest street, 4 km long]. Later there was a school in the ghetto for some time, but my parents wouldn't let me go there. I was home schooled.

At the end of November or early in December 1939 the Germans told us to leave our house. There were just the three of us at the time - Grandma, Mom, and me. Suddenly around twenty SS men in black uniforms and some Volksdeutsche 19 entered our apartment. We had two hours to leave it. We were only allowed to take with us what the Germans threw out of the closets onto the floor. It later turned out a German doctor took our apartment, one of those so-called 'Baltdeutsche' [people from the Baltic states who voluntarily accepted German citizenship]. There was an agreement between Germany and the Baltic states that the Germans from those countries would be resettled on the territory of the Reich. Lodz was part of the Reich...

Before the ghetto was closed my father decided to go to our apartment. He spoke with the German, I think the German let him take some tools. There'd always been a picture of me on my father's desk and it was still standing there after we'd moved out of the apartment. That stuck in my mind because it was incredible.

We spent a night at my classmate Rutka's parents'; they were neighbors from the house opposite. They were called Zylberberg. Later we moved to my uncle Henryk's parents-in-law, who lived in Lodz on Pomorska Street. They were called Mazo. My uncle and his family moved in as well, from Zdunska Wola [50 km south of Lodz].

At that time I became close friends with my cousin Romek and two non-Jewish girls living in the same house. One was older and the other younger than me. We wrote rhymes. I remember the first lines of one: 'On the third floor, by the sewer pipe, at the very top, live the Wysockis - quite a lot...,' I don't remember the rest of it. One of the girls wrote this rhyme: 'And that Mazo, that 'avant,' was such a bon vivant.' Those were still sort of carefree days. We stayed at that house until my father was assigned an apartment in the area it was already known would be in the ghetto. The address was 40 Zgierska Street.

We moved in in January 1940. It was a two-room apartment with a kitchen. The house had its own running water supply from a well. The house was connected to the mains sewage system. Those were luxurious conditions, considering the time and place. In Lodz there was running water and a sewage system downtown only, and not in every building at that. Unfortunately, the water-pipes stopped working in the winter of 1939/40 as there wasn't enough heating to keep the water running.

For some time three families occupied the apartment. Ours, Grandma and Grandpa, and the Zylberbergs we'd stayed with after being thrown out of our apartment. They lived in one of the rooms with their daughter, and I slept there, too, while my parents and grandparents lived in the other. They got an apartment afterwards and we stayed there. There were heating problems in the winter, so later we generally used only one room.

Grandma Drutowski died on 7th November 1940 and was buried in the cemetery on Bracka Street, the same one where we later buried Grandpa. Her funeral was my first exposure to the cemetery and the ceremonies. I don't recall any prayers being said. I remember how amazing the way people were buried seemed to me. The body is wrapped in a white shroud and put straight into the ground.

I already said my parents didn't let me go to the only school, which was on the other side of the ghetto. At first I went to my teacher's apartment. He tutored me through the gymnasium curriculum. Neither I nor Mom worked at that time. It was only later that we all had to have jobs to be safer. [Editor's note: having a job was protection from being deported from the ghetto.]

I started to work in a company collecting and recycling rags. It was 1941 I think. At that time Jews deported to the ghetto from the Sudety region [now the Czech Republic] had set up a workshop by the 'Sortierungs- und Verwertungshalle f. Abfälle' [Ger.: waste processing plant], producing artificial jewelry. These were brooches cut out of metal plates. I began to work with them. We spoke to each other in English, which I had apparently learned earlier, because we did somehow communicate. Later I worked at an electrical and mechanical workshop, 'Betrieb 39 Elektrotchn.-Abtlg.' [Ger.: Plant no. 39, Electrical and Mechanical Branch], repairing electric motors. I worked there until the ghetto liquidation. [Editor's note: when the Lodz ghetto was liquidated 80,000 people were sent to Auschwitz and about 800 stayed].

My mother worked in a workshop producing slippers, 'Hausschuh-Abtlg.' [Ger.: Slipper Branch]. The establishment was located on the ground floor of our house. It wasn't a particularly hard job, there was no harsh discipline enforced, Mom didn't have to go there at a particular time. All the workshops were registered and managed by the community administration [the Jewish Council]. We got wages and also ration cards, but I don't remember any shops. I think you could go to the baker's and ask for bread. You needed both the card and the money.

There was a black market in the ghetto but I remember going for coal and food to the other side of Zgierska Street. Zgierska Street was divided - both of the sidewalks and the houses were in the ghetto, but not the roadway. You crossed it using a footbridge. All of the food was transported via Zgierska. The staples were rutabaga and kale. Mom also started to make chulent. Before the war I didn't know such a dish existed. In the ghetto it had the advantage that you gave it to the baker on Friday and took it back ready to eat on Saturday.

In the workshop where I was employed most of the workers were intellectual youth, mostly leftist. Leftist ideas were attractive at the time, because they promised to solve all the problems which had led to us being in a ghetto and which we'd been more or less aware of before the war. I hadn't experienced anti-Semitism personally but I'd started to read the papers before the war and knew what was happening.

I soaked up those left-wing ideas in the ghetto. We arrived at work one morning and they wouldn't let us in. Apparently something was missing and they wouldn't let us in until it was found. After some time they pointed to the ones who could go in and the ones who could not. We told them none of us had stolen anything and there was no reason for some of us to be let in and some not. And so the fuss started, we were accused of mutiny and they wanted to fire us. That could be dangerous, because you had to work somewhere. I didn't tell anyone at home, especially in view of my father, who had typhoid fever, and I left home every morning as if nothing had happened. One of the foremen, a turner called Kolerszejn, accused us of propagating communist ideas, which according to him was unacceptable. Finally the argument was settled and we went back to work.

There was an underground youth organization in the ghetto 20. I was not a member myself but I did co-operate with its members. It was a conspiratorial group operating around the workshops I worked in. The group consisted mainly of young people, whose task was to spread leftist ideas and distribute the works of the Marxist classics [Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg]. I know the organization had contacts with other such groups outside the ghetto. Thanks to that they had information on camps such as Chelmno 21 or Auschwitz. At some point they tried to spread that knowledge among the ghetto inhabitants. It wasn't perceived as credible, though. It's psychologically justified to some extent, that people wouldn't exactly embrace the news that their relatives were being killed or had already been killed.

The Germans, while preparing the liquidation of the ghetto, launched a special propaganda campaign, wanted to calm us. They tried to make us believe we were to be transported to another town, where we would carry on working. They encouraged us to take along everything we needed.

During the liquidation of the Lodz ghetto some 800 people were given the task of clearing the area. Some people went into hiding. Most of them were found. I know a tragic story, which I learned about a relatively short time ago from Dr. Mostowicz 22. Three young men were in a hideout and one of them caught typhoid. He had a very high fever. The others killed him, fearing his moans would lead to the discovery of their hideout. I knew the parents of the dead man, because his father was a doctor as well. They survived the war.

We stayed in the ghetto until the very end [August 1944]. Doctors were the last group to be deported. We were transported to Auschwitz in cattle cars, loaded in the morning. We saw Polish railroad workers along the way gesturing at us that we were heading for death. We reached the destination in about 24 hours, before dawn.

As we reached the ramp in Auschwitz-Birkenau we were told to leave everything in the cars. Men and women were separated. Afterwards both groups went through a selection, conducted by three or four SS men. They judged by people's appearance if they were fit to work. Both my father and I passed the selection. It later turned out Mom did, too. My father found that out when he started carting trash in Auschwitz, because people with a university degree were given that job. I was assigned to a different block.

They soon started to 'buy,' as it used to be called at the time, metalworkers [they were needed to work in the German workshops] in that block. They carried out a selection among those claiming to be metalworkers. The ones looking fit were picked out and sent to a different labor camp. You had to take off all your clothes.

I met a friend then, Bialer, who worked with me in the ghetto and was a member of the organization I spoke of. We started to hang out together and we were both 'bought,' to go to the AL Friedland camp [a subcamp of Gross Rosen] 23, where 500 people were transported. That was a place designed primarily as a labor camp. The conditions were rather harsh. Some of us went straight for factory training.

We worked in a plant owned by VDM, I think it was called Hermann Goering Werke, which manufactured plane propellers, and we also did some earthworks, or 'Stollenbau' [Ger.]. We dug large recesses in the slopes; I still don't know what they were for. It was a very hard job, the mountains were rocky and we had no special tools. We had a German foreman, an old man, who was rather decent but had no influence whatsoever. We were guarded by SS men, Germans, but also Ukrainians and Latvians, who were often worse than the Germans.

When the Soviet offensive reached Silesia, the death marches 24 began, which of course weren't called that at the time. All the camps were being moved further west. The people marched on foot, and had to stay somewhere for the nights. Our camp was one such place, along with the nearby unused Hitlerjugend camp.

On one such occasion, when I was lying ill in the infirmary, some fellow inmates rushed in to tell me my father was among the newly arrived. I asked the doctor, a Slovak, to let my father see me. He came and stayed with me overnight. Unfortunately, next morning he had to return to the group he'd come with from the camp in Kaltwasser [now Zimna Wódka]. In the middle of March 1945 he died in Flossenburg camp 25. He was probably killed.

A man called Abram Kajzer kept a diary during his stay at Kaltwasser camp and particularly during the march. He hid his notes in toilets. After the war he traveled the whole route again and collected them all. He wrote in Yiddish, because he didn't speak Polish, but in 1947 he asked Adam Ostoja of the Wydawnictwo Lodzkie publishing house to help him with the translation. The book was translated and published under the title 'Za drutami smierci' ['Behind the Wires of Death,' edited and prefaced by Adam Ostoja, Wydawnictwo Lodzkie 1962]. Kajzer wrote of being in Zimna with my father. He had fond memories of him.

Shortly after my meeting with my father I had an accident at work. A milling cutter injured two fingers on my left hand. The wounds wouldn't heal throughout the war, mainly because of malnutrition. Consequently, I was unable to work at all. It was sometime in March or April. I have some doubts regarding the exact date as we had no sense of time in the camp. We just knew if it was winter or spring.

Anyway, I spent the rest of the time in the infirmary. I came outside one day to chat with some friends. Suddenly someone came running to fetch me, as they were looking for me in the infirmary. I entered the room and saw all the patients standing naked before some Germans. One of them, uniformed, was collecting all the patients' charts. Behind him stood our 'Lagerältester' [Ger.: a prisoner in charge of all the others in the camp], a Jew from Lodz called Herszkom, and he gestured me to drop my chart on the floor and cover it with my clothes. So I did and stood naked, too. As soon as the Germans made sure they got all the charts, they left. A couple of days later a truck came and took all the people they'd taken away the charts from. I stayed. I guess Herszkom saved my life.

On 8th May 1945 at noon the SS guards ordered a roll-call. The weather was beautiful. The commandant of the Friedland camp, a captain, I think, said they were leaving, but not for long, and so they were leaving us there. They would know how we'd behaved as they returned. If we misbehaved, they'd punish us. A member of the German citizens' committee which had assembled in Friedland spoke next. He spoke in a different tone. He asked us not to leave the camp, so that we'd all be handed over to the Soviet authorities together. We were asked if we held any grudges against the leaving SS crew.

In the morning of 9th May it turned out the members of the committee had fled; the camp was situated next to a road leading to the town. We concluded we had to hide as well, because otherwise the retreating German troops could kill us. We ran uphill, into the woods. There were uniformed Germans there, very close to us, firing machine guns at the advancing Soviet troops. Later the German units moved away and the Soviets marched in.

That's how I made it through till 9th May. When the Russians entered, my friend Jakub Litwin and I left the camp. We had our camp clothes on. We were infested with lice. And in that state we went to the town next to our camp. It was called Friedland, currently Mieroszow [95 km from Wroclaw]. The town was already partially deserted, because the Germans had started to leave somewhat earlier. We found ourselves in a German woman's apartment, who welcomed us with open arms, although she hadn't been all that friendly towards us at the factory, where she'd worked as a nurse. We burned our clothes and took a bath.

We left her place the next day and eventually settled in the guards' room at the linen factory. A coachman working there lived in a two-story house by the gates. There was a room for the guards on the second floor, with a couple of beds. My friend Jakub and I moved in and dined downstairs. The coachman's wife cooked and we provided the supplies, which meant going over to the Soviet army cooks and asking them to give us something.

We became friends with a Tajik from the Soviet troops. I honestly don't know how we managed to communicate. He was a very nice guy. He asked us to pay him a visit, said if we came we would do nothing but lie back and eat water melons.

Soon Jakub's brother somehow learned of his lot and sent a car for him. Jakub was later to get a degree and become a professor of philosophy. He died of Alzheimer's five years ago. I was left alone. I heard my mother was in Lodz. It was May or June. So I went to Lodz and met my mother, but I don't remember how that was possible as I didn't know her address after all. Mom was staying with some relatives, who'd been in the Warsaw ghetto and later on the so-called 'Aryan side.' Because I didn't have a place to stay in Lodz, after a few days I returned to Friedland.

When she returned to Lodz, Mom went to our pre-war apartment, but the people who occupied it wouldn't even let her in. Mom filed a lawsuit and sent for me only after getting a court order that she was to get three rooms in the apartment. I came to Lodz sometime in August.

Mom started to work as a secretary in the Health Protection Society [TOZ]. Later she got a job at a textile industry export center, because she knew three languages - English, German, and French. She got married for the second time. She took her second husband's last name - Tikitin. My step- father was a doctor, Mom met him at the TOZ. She died in 1972.

After my return to Lodz I began to work at the Widzewska Manufaktura factory as an electrical mechanic. I enrolled in a school for adults. I went in at the fourth grade of gymnasium. I passed the lowers [Pol: mala matura] first and then the higher standard exams. [Editor's note: in the regular school system, examinations taken at age 16 and 18, respectively. The latter are school-leaving examinations at pre-university level]. I decided to become an electrical engineer. After graduating from school I moved with a schoolmate to Gdansk.

I began my studies at Gdansk Technical University in 1947. That's where I met my wife, Nina. Nina was born in 1930 in Warsaw, where she lived until the war. She did an engineering course, then a master's degree, then a PhD and a postdoctoral degree. The University of Helsinki awarded her a honorary doctorate.

My wife's brother was called Mieczyslaw. He was born in 1923 in Siedlice. He was a painter. He died in 2002 in Sopot. He had a wife, Eleonora, nee Jagaciak, and two children: Malgorzata and Mikolaj.

After graduation I lectured at Gdansk Technical University. I started a PhD at Warsaw Technical University. I never finished it. From 1956 until my retirement I worked in the Industrial Telecommunications Institute. Our son was born in 1953. He graduated from the Popular Music Department in Katowice. He has a son, Jakub.

My upbringing, but also my wartime experiences have made me a man who unequivocally declares not to believe in God. I think if God was truly the one to take care of justice, then what I've seen - and I'm not even speaking of what I've come through myself - cannot have been punishment for any kind of sins. And babies have nothing to be punished for. But in the Lodz ghetto the Germans would drop babies from the third floor straight onto the back of a truck, arrange them into an even layer, and then trample on them and lay a second layer... It's impossible to still have faith.

I didn't and still don't have any contact with the Jewish traditions. I'm a member of the Jewish Veterans and World War Two Victims Association 23, but that's an absolutely non-religious organization. I had a feeling I ought to get involved in social work, it's a kind of obligation that older people feel towards the young. I agreed to take part in the work of a welfare committee. That committee consists of representatives of various Jewish organizations. Recently I even joined the Association's Central Board.

I don't have any Jewish friends in Poland. I don't know if that's good or bad. Or what others think of it, either. I don't think only religious people can be Jewish, but maybe that is so to some degree.

Glossary:

Lydia Piovarcsyova
Bratislava
Slovakia

Family background

Growing up

During the war

Post-war

Glossary

Family background">Family background

I was born on 2nd April 1933 in Bratislava into an urban Jewish family,
whose Bratislava roots date back to the first half of the 19th century. The
Steiner family came to Bratislava in the 18th century. One could say that
our prime began in 1846, when my great-grandfather established a second-
hand bookshop he named after himself, Steiner. Today the store is managed
by my cousin Selma and I'm proud to say that it is one of the most
important cultural centers of Bratislava. It is the heart of the old town,
and the front of the store looks like it did a hundred years ago.

On the Steiner side, I didn't know my great-grandparents. When I was born
they were already dead. My grandfather Sigmund Steiner was born in Kojetin,
then Austria-Hungary, in 1821. As far as I know he was an Orthodox Jew. He
was married to Josephine Steinerova, nee Bendinerova, my grandmother, who
was born in 1814 and died in 1891 in Bratislava. They had a big family; ten
children: Jozef, my father, who died in Auschwitz in 1942, and then my
aunts and uncles Nely, Wilhelm, Moritz, Siegfried, Esperance, Max, Margit,
Gustav and Josefine.

Three Steiner brothers fought as soldiers in World War I. For some military
achievements - I'm not sure what exactly - they were all awarded medals.
The oldest of the three was Doctor Siegfried Steiner, Zelma's father. The
second was Jozef, my father, and the third one was Max, who was later the
owner of the Steiner bookshop along with my father. All the Steiner
brothers and sisters lived in Bratislava, except for their sister Margit,
who is buried in the Orthodox cemetery in Bratislava, next to my
grandmother.

My mother Margita Steiner, nee Abrahamova, was born in Banovce nad
Bebravou. Her father Jakub Abraham was a watchmaker. He was born in Tarnov,
then Austria-Hungary in 1876, came to Slovakia as a businessman and settled
in Zabokreky nad Nitrou. He fell in love with my grandmother Ella, they got
married and lived in Banovce nad Bebravou on the village's beautiful
square. He and my grandmother were both very good-looking people. He was a
Nordic type, blonde with blue eyes. My grandmother was of Spanish origin.
Her family left Spain when the inquisition expelled the Jews; their Spanish
name was Aguilar. She had a typical Spanish appearance, black hair, big
dark eyes and pale skin. In a picture of her, taken when she was fifty, she
looked like Jose Careras. I think they must have had the same ancestors; in
the family there were many singers, even opera singers. Many intellectuals,
university professors, in Vienna and other places, were from that family.

When my grandmother got married they lived in Banovce. From Banovce they
moved to Kezmarok in 1942 to live near their daughter Irenka. They learned
that their son was again wanted by the police and the police wanted to
arrest them as hostages. So they left for Kezmarok to avoid this. Later my
grandmother went to Budapest with Irenka. My grandfather Jakub died during
an operation in 1948; the doctors didn't know that he had high blood
pressure. He is buried in the Orthodox cemetery in Kosice.

My grandparents had a shop and lived with the Weinberger family. There was
a long yard, on one side there was the watchmaker and jewelry shop of my
grandfather, and just opposite was the big grocery store of the
Weinberger's. They were a big family; their daughter was called Renka. All
of them died in the gas chambers in 1942.

My grandparents on my mother's side had three children. The eldest son was
called Viliam. He was an educated man, a pharmacist and a chemist as well.
He was an illegal activist during the war. [Editor's note: He was most
likely an illegal communist] He was hiding, then he was arrested in Ilava
and imprisoned in solitary confinement. He learned several languages there.
He spoke ten languages. When he was released he worked in Smolenice with a
Hungarian pharmaceutical family. He lived there until 1944. He invented a
medicine against chin cough. He gave it to poor children for free. When the
Germans found out, they asked him to give them the medicine. He refused, so
they took him away and deported him to a concentration camp. He died of
typhoid fever in Landsberg concentration camp. I don't know where is it, I
just know that he died there. [Editor's note: Landsberg concentration camp
was situated near munich, today Germany.]

My mother had a twin sister, Irenka, who got married to Mr. Winczer in
Kezmarok. They had a son called Palo. Her husband was killed in a
concentration camp, they threw him down the hill on a pile of stones in a
stone quarry. The boy stayed alone. He lived in Poland for several years
and when they learned he was of Slovak origin from Kezmarok, they contacted
the police and the boy came back to Slovakia. Irenka married for the second
time in Budapest, then she lived in Kosice and died in Bratislava in 1997.
She is buried in the Neolog 1 cemetery in Bratislava under the name
Galambosova. When we went to see Irenka, she needed a lot of nursing: to
iron, to tidy, to do some shopping. There was always very little time, we
were in a hurry and had no time to see the cemetery.

My father was born in 1895 in Bratislava, Slovakia, then Austria-Hungary.
He also ended his life in the Holocaust, in Auschwitz concentration camp in
1942.

Growing up">Growing up

I often stayed with my grandparents in Banovce nad Bebravou during
holidays. At home I had a nanny because my mother worked. I have to say
that I was never really close to my mother. She never had time for me, so I
don't know much about her.

I studied at an Orthodox Jewish school on Zochova Street in my first and
second years, and Vilma Lowyova was my teacher. I remember one girl from
school. She was an orphan; her name was Kaufmanova. She died in the
Holocaust. We weren't friends. The children played together in groups
according to their social status. Children from better-off families were
grouped together and didn't know the others.

My best friend was Sulamit Nagelova. Her father had an antique shop on
Kapucinska Street, but a library is there nowadays. Sulamit was a blonde
girl with blue eyes and I loved her very much. She also died in the
Holocaust. One girl survived; she was called Ullmanova. One of her
relatives was a journalist. She had wavy hair, was so beautiful and so self-
confident - even as a child. I cannot remember the other children because I
grew up in quite some isolation. I had a nanny and wasn't allowed to play
with other children. I always had to play alone.

On Saturdays we used to visit our family, so I knew my cousins, but I
couldn't play with other children; they couldn't come to see us and I
couldn't really go anywhere. I don't know why it was like this. I had to
speak English at home. I could speak English perfectly then because Zigi's
mother was an Englishwoman and she spoke to me in English only. But I was a
lazy girl and I forgot all my English.

During the war">During the war

During the war the Jewish Center was on Kozia Street, in the house where
Mrs. Alexandrova lives today. I have a photograph of my mother taken on
17th July 1941. She looks terribly worried in that picture. My mother was
very pretty, and they used to speak about her as the beauty of Bratislava.
But in this picture her worries are already visible in her features. My
mother died in Auschwitz in 1942.

She filled in the mandatory Jewish identity card with her own handwriting;
she had a very nice handwriting, inherited from her mother. I would like to
donate that photograph to an institution, because I think it has historical
value. I tried to make a copy of it, but the copy wasn't good. The yellow
color of the card must be seen because I think it's symbolical; the
photopaper simply must be yellow.

During the war my grandparents and aunt in Kezmarok took care of me. After
the Slovak National Uprising 2 started and after Slovakia's occupation by
the German army, I stayed in Bratislava. In 1945 I was imprisoned by the
Gestapo and taken to Theresienstadt 3, where I went through atrocities
and sufferings. Finally, after May 1945, I was able to return home.

Post-war">Post-war

After the Holocaust, I lived with my relatives in Kezmarok. I graduated
from high school in 1952. Later on I enrolled in Economic University in
Prague and graduated in 1957. A few years before that, in 1953, I married
my non-Jewish friend Karol Piovarcsy with whom I have been living until
now. My husband and I returned to Slovakia, to Poprad, where he was
employed by an industrial company. My father's hair was thick and wavy; my
son Karol, born in 1953, inherited it, it's just not as pitch-black as my
father's. And in fact, I inherited it, too. The Steiner family had mostly
wavy hair, a bit African, I suppose you could say. Who knows where we
really come from.

Some members of our family are buried in Kosice, in the Orthodox cemetery.
It's very sad that there is nobody taking care of this cemetery. I've never
been to Kosice since the war. And we've only visited my grandmother's grave
twice.

Not long after the war I visited Banovce with my husband. The house was in
its place, and they even let me see the apartment where my grandparents
used to live. Later, when I was there on a business trip, I was completely
shocked. Not only that the Jews were all gone - everybody perished in the
Holocaust - but they had also destroyed the town. I mean that literally;
even the beautiful square was demolished during the Communist rule. In
Bohemia they would have never demolished such a beautiful square with its
typical one-storied houses. All the shops were owned by Jews.

The Steiner children who survived the Holocaust, apart from me, because I
didn't live in Bratislava are: Cvi, Cipora, Natan, Shoshana, David, Chana,
Jehoshua. All of them live in Israel now, only Cipora died long ago in
Israel. She was married to an Israeli scientist and her daughter is an
artist.

I worked as a high school professor in Poprad. In 1972 we moved with our
two children Karol and Jana, born in 1958, to Bratislava. I worked there
until I retired three years ago. At present, I work at the Bratislava
Jewish Community Center.

Glossary">Glossary

Roza Anzhel
Sofia
Bulgaria
Interviewer: Svetlana Avdala
Date of interview: January 2006

Roza resembles a heroine from a novel written in the 1940s - a lofty mien, a peculiar sense of dignity, tenacity of character, which can be spotted in her eyes and the corners of her lips. She speaks slowly and at the same time claims that she is extremely impatient which in practice means that she is able to control her emotions perfectly. She is always ready to help and to take on responsibility, which usually means a serious burden for her. Her husband Larry - Leon Anzhel - is joking that this is the reason for her hump (the slight bending of the spine which appeared because of her advancing age). In fact, although Roza is very sensible and keeps everything in order, and her house is immaculately clean, she is very emotional. This can be seen in the repetitions she makes, in the peculiar structure of her speech, which I have left in its authentic forms in certain parts. And this was most pronounced in her intonation patterns - slowly flowing speech resembling the sweetness of a fairytale, which gradates in certain repetition of words and in some phrases.

Family background
Growing up
During the war
Post-war
Glossary

Family background

My name is Roza Bitush Anzhel [nee Varsano]. I was born on 13th November 1924 in Sofia. I have one brother, Isak, and two sisters, Ester [Stela], born in 1926, and Rebeka [Beka], born in 1932. My husband's name is Leon Anzhel. We call him Larry and he was born in the town of Yambol [in Southeast Bulgaria, 261 km from Sofia] in 1921. We have two children, Yafa and Zhak. We are Ladino [Sephardi] Jews 1 2 both on the father's and on the mother's side.

Grandpa Yonto Almozino, a saddler by profession, my mother Olga's father, who loved us very much, told me that his kin had come from Spain 3 and settled down directly in Sofia 500 years ago. I have no memory of Granny Roza, his wife.

Grandpa Isak Varsano I don't remember and have no information about. Granny Ester I do remember - she was a woman of soft personality and was always wearing a kerchief on her head, she lived in the town of Samokov. I know more of my distant relatives on the mother's side.

My maternal grandmother's name was Roza Almozino and I was named after her. My mother, Olga, is the second oldest daughter. When my mother was about to be born, Grandpa threatened Granny that he would kill her if the baby were a girl. And sure enough, it turned out to be a daughter. All the neighbors gathered and went down by the river, on the bridge of Positano Street to wait for my grandpa Yonto in order to prepare him and calm him down because he was very temperamental. All was well but they struck a bad patch because that day Grandpa, who was a saddler, was commissioned a big order by the Tsar's 4 court for which he received a big amount of money. With the money he bought a lot of goods and full of joy he was returning home. When they met him on the bridge and saw that he was in a cheerful mood, they decided to tell him: 'Yonto, do you know that Roza gave birth?' 'So what she gave birth to had brought me luck,' my grandpa replied. And he was very happy and he accepted with a lot of joy his second daughter, Olga, no matter it wasn't the long awaited son.

As a saddler in the Tsar's court he started earning a lot of money. When my mother was born they used to live in a tiny house. The conditions there were basic; the well was outside the house. They used to draw water from there and they used to bathe in a tub, both in winter and in summer, or they went to the river. My granny Roza gave birth to her five children in those conditions: Soffie, my mother Olga, Izrael, Benyamin, Manoakh.

Grandpa was commissioned orders, earned a lot of money and after some time he bought a two-story house on Positano Street. He settled down there with his family but, unfortunately, Granny Roza was already incurably ill at the time.

How did Granny get ill? The women gathered every Friday to go for a bath. They used to usually bathe in tubs but that day they decided to go the river although it was quite chilly. They broke the ice in order to wash themselves. My granny was quite a fastidious person. And when she came back home Grandpa was furious because she dared do something so silly, he took her by the hair and pushed her into the well... So at the age of 45 she got ill and started suffering from asthma because of the stress. In fact, no one was sure about the reason for her illness and no matter whether due to fear or to stress the illness was a fact. Afterwards he took her to Vienna, and to Bucharest, and to Istanbul, for treatment because he had money, but at the age of 45 she departed from this life.

Afterwards Grandpa decided to marry for the second time, Buka, a Jew, too, who was 25 and had a child, Isak. Later she had two more children from Grandpa, Roza and Zhak. So mother had seven brothers and sisters in total.

Buka gradually led him to bankruptcy because she made him take her to bars, she traveled by carriage, spent his money on entertainment with a dash. She also usurped the dowry which Granny Roza had prepared for my mother, as she had bought things from the different places where she had undergone medical treatment - Vienna, Bucharest, Istanbul. Little by little Grandpa went broke, sold the house on Positano Street and they again moved to the tiny house in Dor Bunar on Pernik Street. In Turkish Dor Bunar means four wells and Iuchbunar 5 means three wells. Dor Bunar is the today's quarter of Konyovitsa which is next to Iuchbunar. The Vladayska River which crosses Positano Street and Klementina Street, today's 'Stamboliiski' Boulevard, separates Iuchbunar from Dor Bunar.

My grandpa used to be very religious, and my mother Olga was religious as well. He attended the synagogue and my mother went to the synagogue with him on high holiday.

My mother had a very hard life with her stepmother because she was the oldest in the family - her older sister Soffie had already got married - and had to look after all the other children. Buka often maltreated her in such a way that her brothers usually came to her rescue. One day she beat her in such a way that my mother lost her front teeth. Of course, her brother didn't let their stepmother get away with that and took his vengeance on her, but the fact was that my mother didn't have front teeth until she got artificial teeth.

My paternal grandfather's name was Isak Varsano. He married my granny Ester and they had two children, Bitush and Asher. After that Grandpa died. They arranged marriage for Granny Ester to a white-haired old man with a long beard and she had two more children from him, Yahiel and Rashel. But my grandfather's sister Matilda, who didn't have her own children, adopted my father and his brother - Bitush and Asher - and brought them up in her own home in Sofia, on Positano Street.

Before my mother moved to the old, ramshackle house with her whole family, which means before my grandpa Yonto's complete bankruptcy, she saw my father in the garden next door, as he used to live with his aunt in the same street. They saw each other there, through the window, she looking from one window, he from another one opposite, and they liked each other. Afterwards, by a coincidence, they sang together in the Tsadikov choir 6. I can't say anything about how they started singing there. I only know that later when they came back from rehearsals, and I don't know where those took place, they were learning the songs from the choir together with us, the children. Bit by bit, after attending the rehearsals and meeting there, they fell in love.

Then my father went to war 7 and he used to send letters then, too. I even have a photo which shows him standing in front of the gun in Tulcha, which I donated to the Synagogue museum. They even gave me a receipt that I had donated it. Let the people see that the Jews went to war and fought as well. I have dim memories of his stories about the war. It was a hard time for them, their clothes were torn to pieces, their shoes, too, their feet were freezing.

My mother and father had a poor wedding, without dowry, they married in the synagogue in Iuchbunar, on the corner of Osogovo and Bregalnitsa Street, in 1919 [the rabbi in that tiny synagogue was Haribi Daniel Zion] and immediately after that started living in rented lodgings.

Growing up

My father, Bitush Isak Varsano, had elementary education, but as a young man he started acquiring the tinsmith and the plumbing craft with some craftsman, a Jew, too, whose name I don't know. Afterwards he started working alone with some entrepreneurs on building sites. But at that time building was a seasonal job only during the summer. The winter days were ones of hunger.

My father was a very nice person, so good, with such a soft personality, he wouldn't harm a fly. He didn't know how to tell us off, he never cursed; I never heard him say such words, never. Not to say that he wouldn't ever slap us across the face. He was very hard-working - of medium height, let's say his complexion was fair, he wasn't dark, and his hair wasn't auburn. He was well-preserved; one couldn't say how old he was. He was religious; he spoke Ladino and Bulgarian and used to sing very well.

My mother, Olga Almozino, had taken the responsibility for our bringing up at home. She was quite strict but very amiable at the same time. She was telling us off, shouting, even beating us at times. She was very fastidious and wanted everything in the house to be immaculate. She gave all kinds of orders, about everything. And don't forget that she was illiterate and not because they didn't send her to school, but because she didn't want to study. But she used to test us to see if we had learned our lessons. She made us read the lessons aloud; she memorized everything and then she would open the book and pretend she was reading in order not to lose face, but in fact she didn't know the alphabet.

When her first grandson, my son Zhak, was born and started school, she decided to examine him in the same way. A good idea that was, but he was in the habit of, just like that, with no good reason, walking around while he was telling the lesson aloud. And he started walking around her in circles like that until one day he noticed that she was holding the book upside down.

My mother was taught to read by my sister Rebeka's daughter, Albena. Later she was able to read the newspapers. She was very exuberant, a person of very cheerful and soft personality. Energetic, very energetic, very sociable, very easy-going, very outgoing she was. There wasn't a single person in the neighborhood who didn't know her, not a single person. 'Granny Olga!' 'Granny Olga!' Not a single person. They all cherished good feelings towards her.

I had one brother, Isak, and three sisters. I was the second oldest. My brother was three years older than me. I am only a year and a half older than Stela, Rebeka is eight years younger than me.

My brother Isak was born in 1921 in Sofia. Not only was he the oldest of all the children but he was also the only man. He was the one in charge, the ringleader, so to say. All of us more or less conformed with him. He helped my father to make our living by working after school and during the holidays as an apprentice at a barber's. He used to help with the tinsmith work, too, and after finishing the third grade at the Jewish school 8, he became a salesman.

In addition, Isak was very ambitious. After 9th September 9 he attended evening-classes and afterwards graduated from the Institute of Economics and became the director of 'Stalin' Vocational School. During our difficult childhood years he was not only responsible for us, but he also made sure we were in a good mood and thought of different games. While with people he would always attract and be in the center of attention, no matter whether he was with men or with women. He was a handsome, charming man. He got married at an early age, in 1942 or 1943, to Tsivi Nusan, who had actually come to our house to live with him a year before their marriage. She was so much in love. While he was a student my brother used to sing in the Synagogue choir. He was religious. My parents had arranged his bar mitzvah. He had two children with Tsivi, Subby and Rout. Isak died in Sofia in 1981.

My sister Ester or Stela Galvy, nee Varsano, was born in 1926 in Sofia. The fact that we were almost the same age made us very close because of the common problems we used to have. She was my first confidante who would often defend me in front of our mother. Stela finished the preliminary classes and the first, second and third grade at the Jewish school and the Jewish elementary school as well. After 9th September she started going to evening classes, but then she got married, the children came and she didn't complete her education. She worked as a seamstress. She got married in 1948 to my husband Leon Anzhel's friend, Aron Galvy. They have two daughters, Olga and Galya. At present Stela lives in Israel. She left twelve years ago, in 1994.

Rebeka or Beka Varsano was the youngest and she had the most independent way of development irrespectively of the fact that we have always been united. She finished the first, second and third grades at the Jewish school, which was in one and the same yard with the synagogue in the framework formed by the streets Osogovo, Bregalnitsa and Positano. After that we were interned to Vratsa 10. The classes in the school were discontinued. On returning to Sofia, she finished the Jewish school but after 9th September there was a completely new curriculum and in practice it resembled a Bulgarian school. After the Jewish elementary school she finished the Third High School for Girls and after that studied medicine.

My sister worked as a doctor in the medical center ISUL. She married the Bulgarian Vladimir Naydenov despite the resistance from our parents - they opposed this marriage not because he was Bulgarian, but because he was an actor. Later she divorced him. They have one daughter, Albena. In 1994 Rebeka left for Israel and lived there for ten years but then came back to Bulgaria and now she lives with her daughter Albena.

We had a difficult childhood. There we were - six mouths to feed - and the experience, especially during the winter, was quite hard. Our suffering during the winter was so severe that we, the children, would go to buy coal, one bucket at a time, from the warehouse, to warm ourselves. The skin on our hands would chap due to work and cold, our feet, too, they would itch, hurt. Poverty, great poverty we lived in. So bad was our hunger, but we didn't have a choice.

When my mother had Beka, there was this family, a man and his wife in our yard, tailors. They didn't have children and the woman was crying so much to give Beka to them, to raise her, to adopt her - Beka. But my father would always say: 'We may have nothing, but these are our children!' The woman who wanted to adopt Beka used to come often out of curiosity to see what my mother was cooking and, as Mom didn't have anything to cook, she would put water in a pot, place the lid on top and put it on the cooker. And when this woman came, led by curiosity, she would always ask: 'What meal have you prepared today? And Mom would reply: 'You are always asking, you want to know too much, I won't tell you, come on - go home!'

Sometimes we received aid from the Jewish school. Sometimes in winter they gave us a pair of shoes, an apron for school and a coat, but that wasn't much and, after all, there were four of us, they gave to one, to the others - not. And do you know what we did - my brother went to school in the morning, I went in the afternoon. I used to put on his shoes and go to school, and in the morning he would put them on again and go out, and I remained home.

Our poverty lasted till my brother finished the third grade at the Jewish school. Then he started work as a salesman. Whereas before that he used to work only during the holidays, he was going to a barber's shop, to assist, got tips and brought the money home. The meal we would buy with that money was the only one we got per day.

We were helped with medical treatment at a medical center on Osogovo Street, between Positano and Tri Ushi Street. That was something like a dispensary in which we were mainly examined by medical auxiliaries. The Jewish hospital 11 was on the corner of Hristo Mihaylov and Positano Street and it was a very elegant building. Women from our kin had given birth there and they told us that there was a room in which the brit ritual was performed.

When we were ill we turned to our family doctor, Doctor Burla, who had his private practice on Paisii Street. He would come home whenever one of the children got ill. My parents must have paid him, but I know that the fee was symbolic, for the poor families. I remember that when I was a child I got scarlet fever, the doctor came, made the diagnosis and after that I was sent to the regional hospital, to the isolation ward there in order not to infect my brother and sisters. I never went to the Jewish hospital.

There was also a Jewish soup kitchen. Our wealthy people, the wealthy Jewish people, wanted to show, to demonstrate how merciful they were on holidays and because of that they would give something to the school. But poverty remains poverty. In the summer life was good. My father was working and we could put some money aside for the winter but the saved was never enough. He didn't earn so much money; after all there were four children, six mouths to feed.

We usually lived in rented lodgings. We changed several houses. We usually had a room and a kitchen. We couldn't afford more. My mother and father used to have a bedroom suite that consisted of two panel beds whose boards we used to clean and polish. They used to sleep on the suite while we, the children, slept on the floor. Our parents would prepare a bed for us on the floor; they would lay mattresses that were removed during the day and put back again in the evening.

When we were on Morava Street, in Iuchbunar - we lived there for nine years, but where we had lived before that I don't remember because we were too young - we lived with Bulgarians. The owners of our place were Bulgarian. They had a son and a daughter and there wasn't much difference between them and us, the Jews. They spoke Ladino as well as we did. There were other Bulgarian families in the same compound and they also spoke Ladino, maybe because the majority of the tenants were Jews. So, everybody in the compound was speaking Ladino, we were living together.

In winter my brother would take a big board, put all kind of gadgets on it and turn it into a sledge, and on letting us, all the girls, get on the sledge, we would slid back and for, and all the children, we were all sliding in that sledge. They were all playing football together. We used to fight together, all of us from Iuchbunar, against Dor Bunar, down by the river. [There are several rivers that flow through Sofia. They are tributaries of the Iskur River. The biggest ones are the Perlovska and the Vladayska Rivers. The Iuchbunar neighborhood was divided into two parts by the Vladayska River.] They would throw stones at us, we, the girls, used to gather stones and give them to the boys to throw at the other side. A war was taking place.

After that we moved to Odrin Street. There we lived with one more family, only a man and his wife. While we lived there, there was one tiny living room that we shared with the other family, with a kitchen and two rooms. There were two chimneys in the kitchen - the other family cooked on one of them, ours - on the other. We, the children, were sleeping in the room, on those beds, and our parents bought a bed - the ordinary size and a half and were sleeping in the living room with our neighbors' permission because we were living together with them. There was electricity and my father, as a plumber, always ensured there was running water in the house.

The yards in Iuchbunar were brimming with life. When it was time for coffee, one or another of the women living there would take the brazier outside and would start the fire, and everybody would go there and put their coffee pot there. The most important thing was that they sat together to talk, to chat. They were all chatting - Bulgarians, Jews - everybody. In that respect the poor were living much more in harmony, they were more united, there was a feeling of togetherness, they got on with each other much better and they quarreled, quarreled, but there were no anti-Semitic attitudes. The children quarreled, the families quarreled with one another, for example if a husband returned home drunk, in the yard there would invariably be a real spectacular scandal - very Italian-like. There wasn't a distinctive line between wealthy Bulgarians and wealthy Jews, but there was a distinction between poor and wealthy Jews.

The majority of the wealthy Jews were merchants and bankers whereas the poor were porters, carters, house-painters, masons, workers on the pipeline, construction workers, cobblers, tailors...That version, that story, what people say that all Jews are merchants is not entirely true. Few of the Jews were bankers and wealthy people, only a few, a small percentage, relatively small. There was a serious gap between wealthy and poor Jews and we felt different. The wealthy Jews used to live in Sofia, in the center, let's say from Sveta Nedelya Church, from Halite shop onward, from Vazrazhdane Square onward, to beyond where the ISUL medical center is today, down Iskar Street, down Ekzarh Yosif Street, down Tsar Simeon Street, opposite the building of the fire brigade. Even now you can see the beautiful houses from those times, and that's where the wealthy Jews used to live.

During the war

Most of the Jews were hired laborers in the factories. My father, for example, before the internment had found a job in the Platno factory, in Hadzhi Dimitar quarter. [The interviewee is referring to the English- Bulgarian textile company which was registered in Bulgaria in 1921. That company also owned the textile mill Platno (Linen).] He was making ventilation systems there. When he started working there, poverty stopped being so severe but, on the other hand, we had already grown up, had started making our own living, as the saying goes, and life started being better. But at that time the camps appeared, he was sent to Somovit 12 and my brother to labor camps 13 and only we, the women, remained at home and we had to support ourselves, had to cope on our own.

I studied at the Jewish school; I had been to elementary school and to junior high school there - until the third grade. There were 35 to 40 students in class at that time. We studied all the subjects, which were taught in the Bulgarian schools, and Hebrew. At the end of each school year there would come a commission to test us - something like matriculation - in order to be allowed to move to a higher grade.

After that I started work, like my brother, as an apprentice to a seamstress in an atelier on 4, Denkoglu Street which later moved to Aksakov Street. I used to work in the day and go to school in the evening - to the Jewish school on Kaloyan Street. In that school they had organized, after the end of the workday, a school for vocational education. It was called ORT 14. Fintsi was our principal. I remember some of our teachers' names - Ilich Rafailov, or Todorova, who was our class teacher and so on.

After work, at 6 o'clock, we went to school and used to attend the vocational school for four hours - we studied how to draw designs, to embroider, to sew, all the different kinds of embroidery, of knitting. We had all kinds of subjects separately from the vocational subjects; we used to have Geography, History, Bulgarian, Arithmetic, Bookkeeping by Double Entry. In general we had all the subjects that were taught at both the vocational and the general high schools. They taught us everything.

The course of education lasted four years. That's why, when we went there in the evening, they gave us snacks after two hours had elapsed. They used to give us boza 15, or halva 16 on bread, gave us all sorts of sandwiches at eight o'clock and then we continued until ten o'clock and then we got back home. On completing the first two academic years we were examined by a commission. Some people came from the labor chamber, from the Ministry of Education and there were exams to prove we had successfully finished the first two years of education. After two more years we sat an exam again. We passed that exam as well and were ready to become masters.

The synagogue was wonderful, big, spacious. We always went there on holidays. And on Friday. We used to live nearby. We lived right next to the synagogue. While walking about, to some place or another, we would go round to the synagogue. I feel so sad that it was demolished. It used to be in Iuchbunar, on Positano Street like the Jewish school, somehow they shared one and the same yard. It remained in my memories as quite a big synagogue. The synagogue was in the middle, with its own yard - a big, beautiful synagogue. That's how it remained in my memories. When a ritual or some kind of holiday took place the men took their places on the floor below, and on the upper floor - the women, there was an upper floor. [The services were conducted by Rabbi Daniel, the most respected rabbi in the neighborhood]

As the neighborhood was rather big and the synagogue wasn't enough, right on the corner of Opalchenska and Positano Street there was a tiny midrash, as it is called, and prayers were read there. It was actually on Bregalnitsa Street. Between Stamboliiski and Positano there was one more tiny midrash, and there, too, prayers were read and on the corner of Dimitar Petkov and Positano there was a big yard and there was another midrash, where prayers were read, too. A lot of Jews, there were a lot of us, Jews, really a lot. There were sacred books in one of the midrashim, like in the synagogue, prayers were read there, there was also a rabbi to read the prayers [cf. Sofia Synagogues] 17.

My mother and father used to sing in the Tsadikov choir. I neither know where the rehearsals were taking place, nor did they take us to any concerts of the choir. [Apart from the fact that the choir was an establishment at the synagogue, the literature doesn't mention where the rehearsals were taking place. According to a bulletin of the Sofia Jewish Municipality, on 3rd August 1937 the first foundation stone of the Jewish Cultural Center was laid - in the place of the former and until then existing Cultural Center that had been built in 1892 on the corner of 4 Maria Luiza Boulevard and 3 St. Nikola Passage. As the edifice belonged to the Sofia Jewish Municipality and it subsidized the two elementary schools and the two junior high schools, the rehearsals of the choir probably took place there.] Usually in the evening, after coming back home from work, they would sit down and sing at home and we were around them. All the songs I know I've learned from them. Through the singing we used to forget about the poverty and the cold.

We used to go on excursions a lot. We frequently went to Vitosha Mountain, at that time there were no rucksacks and my mother would put all the things in a hamper, my father would carry it. And how were we setting off? By tram? A ticket was 5 leva, there were six of us - how could we find so much money! From Sofia to Zlatnite Mostove [The Golden Bridges - a site on Vitosha Mountain, which is not far from Sofia] we walked on foot. We first went to Knyazhevo and from Knyazhevo we climbed the mountain.

We used to play a lot of games - Jewish and Bulgarian children together. We would take walnuts and put them in a straight line but one of the walnuts we would leave aside. It was the captain. And the child who managed to hit that walnut took everything. Or until another child hit - he took everything. Or the boys would make a hole in the ground and started throwing whole handfuls of walnuts and if the whole handful entered the whole, the boy who threw it won whereas if a walnut went out, the other boy won.

We used to play the balls, too. The boys used to play the balls a lot. There was even a game with little lamb bones. The boys would scrape them and played with them. The game was called 'chilik' and it was extremely popular. A little rod was used, a little one, with its two ends sharpened and it was put in a hole and then thrown in a certain way. A lot of games there were.

I do remember Yom Kippur and this is how I remember it: we would take a quince and stick clove seeds into it so that we could smell it all day long, without any desire to eat. In fact, at home we had Yom Kippur quite often, that's what we used to say jokingly because we were often starving. And you know, the seamstress whose apprentice I was at first, was a Jew as well. Once I saw Tanti [auntie] Rebeka was preparing cookies and I wanted to taste them so much, while baking the aroma could be smelled from far away. She came and told me: 'Roza, have a cookie, eat it.' 'Oh, Tanti Rebeka, it is Yom Kippur today, I shouldn't eat.' The poor woman was flabbergasted and said: 'What are you saying, girl, what Yom Kippur, come on, have a bite. God won't punish you, it will be my sin.' You can imagine how terrible it was to be hungry.

At Purim and Rosh Hashanah there were amazing carnivals and not only at school. In Positano Street, in Morava Street, all the people went out in disguise, we were singing, laughing. 'Mavlacheta' were sold in the streets - those were made of sugar, colored shapes, like hearts, roosters, little red roosters, different circles. We used to buy those, there was such fun in the street and in the yard. The celebration was mainly around Positano Street, around the school, around the synagogue. We used to get together a lot, to play a lot. We used to make masks, put on different shirts. We found a way to disguise ourselves despite the hunger.

Rosh Hashanah was a big holiday for us. Very stately. No matter whether we had money or not, Rosh Hashanah was stately celebrated at home. And for Pesach they used to again give alms from the Jewish school. My father and brother would go there and load themselves with those round loaves, there were round loaves, very hard round loaves, called 'boyo,' which were kneaded not with yeast but the dough only and they were baked. They also gave us matzah and because we were a big family they gave us three kilos of matzah and a bag of boyo loaves. We took them home and had Pesach with the whole family. We had neighbors who didn't have children but were in a good financial situation. And they invited us to their home. For Pesach we didn't eat bread for eight days.

For the celebration of Chanukkah we used to light our candles, took turns to light them, we sang - we did all this at home.

Usually for all the holidays - for Rosh Hashanah, and for Sukkot, and for all the holidays - we were supposed to eat chicken. One would buy from the market a hen, a chicken, a rooster, and would go to the synagogue. There was a separate hall in the yard. On entering the synagogue yard, there was a little house, like a shed, where the cheese and other things were stored, there were some fountains nearby, before that some troughs were there and there was a Jew with a special task, the so-called shochet, who used to slaughter the hens and put them there to let their blood pour out; we took the slaughtered hen and ran home while it was still warm so that our mother could pluck it because the Jews didn't use to scald to pluck the hen's feathers, but plucked them immediately after slaughtering it. After plucking the animal they would take newspapers, set them on fire so that everything that remained after plucking would be burned, then they would wash what was left well, dry it and that was the way they cooked.

For Sabbath we would also slaughter an animal. At Sabbath we usually gathered, my mother would put on her kerchief, light a candle and start reading a prayer. And before laying the table, she cooked during the day and before she laid the table for Sabbath, we all went to the tub so that she could bathe us, give us a clean shirt, dress us. Everything had to be shining with cleanliness on the table. At Sabbath it was obligatory for us to have pastel [traditional Jewish dish made of flour and veal mince], obligatory. It was also obligatory to have a boiled dish - soup, boiled beef or some other soup. And this soup wasn't for eating. Then the meat would be taken out and roasted with a little pepper or some other seasoning, potatoes or rice would be added, and there you had a wonderful meal. We used to put noodles and a bit of parsley.

The people from Ruse [city in Northeastern Bulgaria 251 km from Sofia] who lived in Sofia were the best in preparing the soups I am talking about. They cooked the soups with hen meat because there was more fat in it - they used to boil the fat, to cook it with some seasonings - carrots, parsnip, other vegetables and on top of the pot they put other things to cook on the steam. We sometimes visited some families from Ruse. And that Ruse-style soup was the greatest deli for us because apart from the sauce there were veggies prepared on steam, which were extremely delicious. Apart from the pastel there were pasties with leeks, different kinds of scones and 'tishpishtil,' which was obligatorily prepared for the holidays. My mother used to cook kosher. When we bought meat, which wasn't often, my mother would always salt it so that the blood would go out.

The Jewish chitalishte 18, which didn't have a name, was located on the corner of Stamboliiski and Opalchenska Street, next to the Mako hosiery factory. [Mako Hosiery was founded in 1931. In the following year the Bulgarian Textile - Industrial Joint Venture 'Mako' was registered as well.] The things that were happening there took up most of my spare time. My brother and sister went to the chitalishte often, too, but I don't know if they were members of any Jewish organizations. My brother used to sing in the Synagogue choir. We used to borrow books from the library, there were lectures, discussions on different topics - we clarified Darwin's laws, there were history lectures or we made ourselves familiar with some topics from physics. The most important thing was that there we met other people with whom we organized some parties and we created a whole organization to raise money and to gather clothes and food for the poor. In fact the main activities of the chitalishte were educational, but while meeting we were actually performing some illegal activities, too.

In the chitalishte I also met Leon Anzhel - my future husband. He was a cheerful, natural and pleasant - a nice person to talk to. With him we often discussed the topics presented in the lectures or the books we were reading at the time. One day he told me: 'Do you want us to become comrades?' and that was how our relationship started. At that time I was 15.

My mother Olga would always find suitors for me. Some marriage arrangers used to come home. And on finding out they were home, I would run away. My sister, Stela, often covered up for me but after that got a licking for defending me. My mother could serve as an example even to the strictest tutors. And after finding out that I had a boyfriend she didn't allow me to go out and always found some work for me to complete. She wanted to marry me to a man of good stock - learned, gentlemanlike. She was looking for a different cultural milieu although she was illiterate. She was doing her research by interrogating my friends. One day I couldn't take all that any more and I told her I had a boyfriend.

'Well, then,' she insisted, 'I expect him to come and tell us, the parents, that he has serious intentions and one day you will get married. I want him to promise - it wouldn't be an engagement - but I want him to promise that his serious intentions will remain and one day you will get married.' And one day I told him - I was feeling too tormented that they wouldn't let me go anywhere; I wasn't allowed to go out at all. And I made him come with his mother, but he took some friends along to encourage him. He came home, talked to my mother. They liked each other and I was free to go out again. But the men were already being sent to the camps and we didn't see each other for a year. The year was 1942.

I became a member of the UYW 19 in 1939. My father had already joined the BCP 20 in 1937 or 1938. The poverty around us had given him a reason to join the Party and he believed that everything would change for the better some day. In general our family had leftist political orientation. In our houses we talked about justice that had to be fought for. My mother and father kept contact with the entire Jewish community because the quarter we lived in was Jewish but I don't know whether they had been members of any Jewish organization. At that time anti-Semitic incidents had started - window shops were being broken, signatures were collected against the Jews, the Jews were fired from work, we were wearing badges [yellow stars] 21.

When the men left for the camps I became the sub-group person in charge in UYW. I was supposed to lead four UYW groups, which were independent, which meant that they didn't know about the existence of the others and I had to monitor and coordinate their activities. I was supposed to give them instructions, to tell them to sell stamps, to write appeals and so on. But, quite unexpectedly, there was a failure in one of the groups. At a meeting there were two boys, somebody had drawn them to the group but they turned out to be provocateurs. They betrayed the whole group and all the members were arrested. They were taken to the Police Directorate. It was great that the work was organized in that way - that the people from the different groups didn't know each other. So, when the leader of the group was captured he didn't know the others and, thank God, betrayed me only.

While I was at work one day my future sister-in-law, Tsivi, who was living at home at that time, together with the agents and the policemen, came to the atelier where I was working. They couldn't find me at home and she took them to my workplace because the policemen didn't know where the place was and she couldn't explain it to them, so finally she decided to take them to the place. And then I saw the policemen, the agents and the leader of the group - he was with them but he could hardly walk because they had beaten him black and blue. On seeing them I went inside; the previous evening I had received stamps for seven thousand leva. I went inside and I was lucky - when they rang at the door it was me who went to answer the door, and, fortunately, on answering the door they asked for Mrs. Zvuncharova. That was my boss's name. I told them that I would tell her they were looking for her.

I went inside and said 'Mrs. Zvuncharova, somebody is looking for you.' And when she went out to see who was looking for her I managed to thrust my hand into the bag and to throw the packet with the stamps behind the radiator so that they wouldn't have any evidence against me. Then Zvuncharova came back and said: 'Well, actually, Roza, they are looking for you.' And they arrested me right there and took me to the Police Directorate. In my pocket there was a letter from Larry from the labor camp - I had forgotten it in my pocket. On the way to the police department we were on a crowded tram and with the policemen around me I managed to, little by little, tear it carefully to pieces and nothing could be heard as the tram was whirring and then I threw the little shreds of paper in the tram. We got off the tram but I had got rid of the letter.

I had to hide that letter - because I had received the letter from the labor camp - so that they wouldn't arrest him. And I don't want to tell you about the police department - the way I was beaten there, it's indescribable, even now... can you hear it? My jaw is still cracked. Electricity. My hair moved down to here. They used electricity - on the joints, on the hands, on the feet, here - on the face, my whole body was shaking - because they wanted to make me speak.

The leader of the group had told them that I had instructed him, had given him stamps, had gathered aids, that he had given me money from the aids the group had been gathering for me. What had I done with that money? Who had I given the money to? Those stamps, where had I taken them from to give them out for distribution? Literature, had I given out any appeals to the people to read? Where had I taken all that from? He had told them everything - he wasn't a provocateur but simply gave in because of the beating. He told them everything at the very first beating. And after that they were all... the police couldn't get any more information from them; they all turned their attention to me. And you can imagine what the next month was, a whole month of inquisition, what torture...

My stay there was very long because they wanted to find out everything no matter by what means. And they asked 'Who is involved? Who is involved? Who is involved?' 'Well', I say, 'It is Mr. Münchhausen...' I used Baron Münchhausen's name [a character from 'The Surprising Adventures of Baron Münchhausen' by Rudolf Erich Raspe, a collection of stories published in 1785, based on the German adventurer Karl Friedrich von Münchhausen]. 'Münchhausen. Who's that Münchhausen?' 'I don't know.' I said. 'We arrange to meet in Borisova Gradina [Boris's Garden].' 'Have you arranged a meeting with him for now?' 'We don't have a meeting.' 'Do you have any arrangement?' 'We don't have an arrangement.' And they were looking for that Münchhausen, they were looking but there wasn't such a person, he didn't exist. So they beat me almost to death and I had to tell them the names but I didn't tell them to the end and then it was over.

There was a trial I had to stand with the charges that I had been the leader of our activities but there was no evidence; there was no Münchhausen, no money, no stamps. I hadn't betrayed anyone so I had to be acquitted. But they couldn't just let me go so I was given a one-year suspended sentence. Afterwards I was interned to Vratsa [a town in Northwestern Bulgaria, 112 km north of Sofia] with my sisters... During the arrest and after that I received full moral support from both my father and my mother.

After the arrest I was forced to change my name by the police. In their opinion Roza was a Bulgarian name so I had to choose a Jewish one, for it to be obvious that I was Jewish. I was given a list and I chose the name Rout. And, as I got married before 9th September, my name in the marriage certificate is Rout. I restored my name after 9th September 22.

At first we had an invitation from the town of Kazanlak [in South Central Bulgaria, 170 km from Sofia] as there used to be an aviation factory, but there wasn't a single Jew to remain in the town. The Jews from Kazanlak were also interned to Vratsa. What can I tell you? The train was overcrowded - cattle trucks, we were carrying clothes, we had even taken the sewing machine, mattresses to sleep on. Can you imagine how much luggage we, the women, were carrying and were dragging to the railway station in order to move to Vratsa? We traveled all night long. That was the first time I had been on a train.

At the very station we were awaited by policemen and military officers and we were accommodated in the building of the school which was on the way to Vratsata [the 'Vratsata' site, which is not far from the town of Vratsa and the name literally means 'doors'], they called it 'kiumiura' [the charcoal]. We were accommodated in a classroom, how shall I put it, do you know what packed like sardines means - we were sleeping man to man. There wasn't enough room.

After a while we started looking for lodgings because we were given permission to do so. So we went to live on Tsar Krum Street. We were living in a cellar there - in a basement. There lived a lot of people - my mother and Tsivi and Stela and Beka. My father was in Somovit. Before the internment they had arrested him and sent him to Somovit. Opposite our place there was a Turkish bath house, which wasn't working, and there were rooms for rent. There we rented a room for my future mother-in-law who had been interned to Lom [in North-West Bulgaria, 128 km from Sofia] alone and we took her from Lom to Vratsa. So we helped her to settle down there, so that when her son came back from the camp he would have somewhere to live together with her.

We had to pay rent but in order to pay this rent we had to work, we didn't have money. There were work restrictions for us 23. But Granny Olga was woman of strong character [The interviewee is referring to her mother here]. She called one of our neighbors, who lived just opposite us and offered her to sew a dress for her because I was very skillful, and asked to tell her relatives and acquaintances about my skills if she liked the result. Then this woman brought some striped fabric and I sewed a dress for her to wear when visiting friends. The ends of the stripes met the so- called herringbone cloth. She was extremely pleased with the result. She was the wife of a lawyer and after that all her friends started calling on us. They came to bring the cloth and we only worked.

All the girls helped, Stela, and Tsivi, we used to even sew at the light of the gas lamp. We used to sew until we stopped seeing anything. We didn't have a mirror for the women to look at themselves. We used the window for those purposes. And we were making our living that way. It doesn't mean that we had a lot of work but at least we got some money to pay the rent.

As for the food, in the school there was a soup kitchen. And during the time in which we were allowed to walk outside, we took food from the school and then returned home. We had the right to be outside for two hours a day - between 8 and 10 o'clock. The rest of the time we didn't even have the right to show our faces at the windows because in Vratsa was the headquarters of the gendarmerie and there were blockades all the time, there were gendarmes in the streets. We couldn't go anywhere, even to buy bread. A bit later, I can't say exactly when, there started a UYW movement in Vratsa, but I couldn't join as I was too busy sewing.

We knew what was happening to the Jews around the world. When the men came back they told us about the trains full of Jews they had seen. It was rumored that we were supposed to be moved gradually closer to the Danube so that we could be loaded on barges and then sent, like all the rest, to the concentration camps.

While we were in Vratsa, Larry was working in the labor camps. They demobilized them from time to time, to spend the winter at home, and then mobilized them again. In the winter of 1943 he had come back to Vratsa. He came back and started living opposite us. We had decided to get married. We had made an arrangement with the rabbi in Vratsa, decided on the day. The wedding was between 8 and 10 o'clock because we could move about freely in this period. A lot of young people came. Granny Olga had prepared cookies with jam and had cooked some modest dishes, she had done all she could do and the wedding was fine. They had freed Grandpa Bitush from the camp [The interviewee is referring to her father]. He had returned. Otherwise what wedding would it have been? The date was 16th March 1944.

Before our wedding, there had been a big air-raid over Vratsa, a very big air-raid. The central part of the town was completely destroyed and burned to the ground by the Englishmen. Larry was mobilized in Vratsa to clear off the debris; they even made the women clear off, particularly those of us who were living in the center. The men were also digging the graves because there were a lot of victims from the raids. After we got married the air- raids continued. The raid alarm sounded twice that night, during our nuptial night. The first time we ran away because there were raids after all but we stayed after the second one - three of us in the bed as my mother-in-law remained on one side of the bed. The woman was very scared. We all survived after 9th September.

Post-war

We came back to Sofia in November 1945 - we had no place to live or any furniture because we had always lived in rented lodgings before that... A first cousin of mine who had the same name as me - Roza, a daughter of my mother's sister, told me: 'Come here, there's a little apartment on the ground floor - two rooms and a kitchen. It belongs to a relative of mine. His family won't return soon. They are in the town of Tolbuhin 24.'

The owner of the apartment, which she offered us, was the mayor in that town. My husband and I agreed to live there. My mother-in-law was with us. Thus started the ordeal of going to different commissariats because there wasn't a single window glass that had remained in the apartment, we had to repaint it, to clean it in order to make it decent to live in. The apartment was on Rakovski Street. We managed to clean the place and in 1945 I gave birth to our first child, Zhani [Yafa]. And then the wonderful owners of the apartment appeared and told us they wanted their apartment back despite the fact we had a signed contract. That was quite a situation for us. But being rather compassionate my husband and I decided to give them back the apartment, after all it was their property. And the four of us - Zhani, my mother-in-law, my husband and I - settled down in a single room until we'd find a proper place to live in.

It was a real hell when the owners returned. The husband was an alcoholic. He came back in the middle of the night although there was a curfew. There weren't restrictions for him and on coming back home he started knocking on our door, shouting: 'How long are you going to stay here? When are you leaving?' That was the situation. And as we were living on the ground floor and my husband had a shift job for the police, they made him ask a chair from me when he returned home from work. I gave him the chair through the window, he stepped on it, jumped and entered the apartment in that way.

At that time we knew about these apartments here, in the Zaharna Fabrika quarter. We had been told that there were apartments that were still being built and we submitted a request for such an apartment. When we told the people about the torture we had to go through, we were included in a list to receive an apartment here, which at that time wasn't ready. Nonetheless, without even knowing where the quarter was or which one the apartment building was, I asked the management of the Ministry of Interior to lend us a truck, we packed our luggage and came here. And on arriving here we saw our apartment for the first time.

Can you imagine how awful our life had been? We had let the people use their apartment despite having a contract with the owner. We were supposed to live there at least two years but he didn't wait even a year. We came to 'Zaharna Fabrika' quarter and settled down in the new apartment. And around us there was only mud, there were no shops, no place to buy milk from and we had a little baby.

At that time I started work as a telephone operator in the Ministry of Interior and I worked there for six years. Larry was a policeman. There was a lot of work in the police. My mother-in-law, who used to live with us, gave me a hand in the raising of the children. I worked in the Ministry of the Interior until 1951 and then I was dismissed for having connections in foreign countries, as was stated in the order for dismissal. I want to declare that wasn't true. All my relatives - my brother and sisters - at that time were here in Bulgaria. In fact, I was dismissed due to my Jewish origin. I started work in 'Voroshilov' works [in Sofia, situated in the region of 'Zaharna Fabrika' quarter, its scope of production included electricity technology and electronics] as a chief controller. I had already become a member of the BCP in 1944, immediately after 9th September.

The works was new, it was near our apartment and that was good for me because of the children. I knew that I would have spare time. I started work there and they appointed me a secretary of the Party despite my dismissal because I had been a member of UYW before 9th September. And things were going very well, they called upon from the Party and cited us a model because we were working very well.

One day Todor Zhivkov 25 came to attend a big meeting and they seated me next to him, on the platform and I was so grieved at what had happened in the police that I told him all about it. I sat next to him and told him everything: 'Before 9th September we were victimized for being Jewish. We were in disgrace and I was working here for seven years, my work was excellent and still I was dismissed for being a Jew.' 'Such were the times,' he started explaining. 'Those were the events, there was no other way...' Because a lot of Jews were dismissed. There were no consequences after that conversation, but at least I told him everything and felt much better.

There were 7,000 employees in the works and I was a chief controller there. Everybody knew me. They all knew I was a Jew, I still meet some of them, but they had never minded that - had nothing against my Jewish origin or me. The dismissal from the Ministry of the Interior was the only such case.

My first child Yafa, who was named after my mother-in-law, was born on 2nd June 1945 in Sofia. She goes by Zhani. She finished high school and got a degree in engineering. She used to work as a designer-engineer. Now she is retired. She got married to Yozhi Beraha in 1968. She has two children, Isak and Roza. My son Zhak was born on 23rd April 1949 in Sofia. He has a secondary vocational education and works as an electricity technician in the trade system. He is married to Emilia Dimtirova, a Bulgarian. He has a son, Leon.

We brought up our children in Jewish self-awareness. We kept the Jewish high holidays Rosh Hashanah, Pesach, Purim, but we didn't stick to all the rituals. For example, we didn't disguise ourselves at Purim; we weren't fasting for Yom Kippur. We went to the synagogue but rarely. The most important thing for us was that the whole family got together for the holidays. And we always had a great time.

There are no Bulgarians in the family with the exception of my daughter-in- law, Emilia Dimitrova, and that's why we are indifferent to Christmas and Easter. After my son got married I started visiting my daughter-in-law. For Christmas and Christmas Eve. She was working a lot and didn't have time to prepare for the holidays so I went to their place in the morning and prepared everything necessary for Christmas Eve. I don't go there anymore because I have grown old but she still uses my recipe for the hors d'oeuvre with walnuts. It is a very delicious dish.

We were all talking about the state of Israel. Not only with Larry and my mother-in-law, not with the children because they were too young at the time to discuss it with them, but I also talked to my mother, father and brother. We all discussed this issue but we all felt so tired of the ordeals we had been through and, additionally, we had already found jobs, had set up homes and we had simply got used to the things we had achieved with so much work... So we decided that we wouldn't go, at least for the time being, and at that time there was a big emigration wave 26, journeys, letters were coming - things not arranged, ordeals again. The people who left for Israel deserve admiration for all the things they went through but we felt so exhausted - from the camps, from all the ordeals we had survived - and the whole family decided not to leave. My two sisters, Stela and Beka, went there much later. Stela is still there, but Beka came back and now she is living with her daughter in Bulgaria.

I think about Israel with a lot of love and a lot of grief because there are a lot of incidents there, assassinations, other terrible things... And because of the fact that they continue although they have returned the Gaza Strip...We are deeply worried after each incident.

We left to visit our relatives in Israel during the period in which the relations between Bulgaria and Israel weren't very good 27. For us the official state policy wasn't a personal opinion. All the things that happened there made our hearts ache because it's true that my kin were here but my husband's brothers were there, the nephews, too, cousins - you can see how big our family is. We accepted all the incidents there with great pain.

It was very hard for us. I can't say that we overcame easily everything that happened after the change of the regime. Yes, I saw the mistakes that the Party and the state were making. Both my husband and I saw them well. We weren't blind. Regardless of all the plenums that were held all the decisions were formal, just on paper, nothing was put into practice. Nothing actually happened in reality. There was no food in the shops, there was no milk even. But there were good things before 10th November 28, too. Life was safer, there wasn't such a crime rate, but things weren't going well and we could see that. And there wasn't a single meeting without criticism, without us wanting the criticism to be included in the minutes. We sent out all the minutes but up to no effect.

My life changed after 1989. They put a limit to the size of our pensions, and that is normal, but, after all, one can live with a lot or with little. Thank God, we are not as poor as beggars, we have survived to the present day. I can't say what will happen in the future. My husband has been receiving some money for compensation for two years. [These are the compensations from Claims Conference given to all Jewish men from Bulgaria who had been in labor camps during World War II.] But why did he have to wait for so long - he worked in the labor camps for four years. There were cases when he got back home as thin as a skeleton, without clothes. The state didn't give them money and they worked dressed in their own clothes, with lice, sick, with malaria. Not to mention what condition we, the women, were in. We were interned, we suffered so much, we had to travel with so many bundles and all that without our husbands. And after so much suffering to be able to adapt to a normal way of living! We weren't compensated in any way. There is no justice.

Frankly speaking, we have been quite active in the Jewish Cultural Center [Bet Am] 29 for seven years. If there hadn't been the things done by the rehabilitation center, maybe we wouldn't have been among the living now because there are only the two of us at home - Larry and me. Our children don't live with us and they are very busy, they go to work. It has never been so quiet in this house before and we were simply looking for something to fight over, to quarrel about little things. We were rather irritable. Our big walk was to go to the market place and back. Well, we attended the synagogue, too, but only on holidays. It's great that this rehabilitation center was created and we started going there - not because of the food, we don't even eat there now, but because of the people we meet and spend time with.

In 'Zdrave' [Health] club we do exercises, sing in the choir, you saw the photos, didn't you? We dance traditional dances in the dance classes. There is more diversity in our lives now. [The interviewee is referring to all the activities and events of the Jewish organization in Sofia. There are similar activities in all the towns throughout the country where the life of the Jews is more organized and there are more Jews.] And no matter what the weather is - it may be freezing or boiling, we are always there.

Glossary

Zhenia Kriss
Kiev,
Ukraine
Interviewer: Zhanna Litinskaya
Date of interview: November 2002

Charna Kriss is an intelligent and sociable woman. She lives with her husband, Isaac Gragerov, in a nice spacious apartment. She is very ill and can only walk with two sticks, but she is very sociable kind and hospitable. She likes to talk about her occupation, science and the medications that she developed. It's a pleasure to talk with Charna. One can feel that she has had an interesting life full of events and accomplishments.

Family background
Growing up
During the War
After the War
Glossary

Family background

My mother, Sima Kodrianskaya, came from Makarov, a small town in Kiev province [50 km from Kiev]. It's a district town now. Before 1917 its population consisted of Jews, Russians and Ukrainians. There were synagogues and churches. During the Great Patriotic War 1 many Jews were exterminated by the fascists, and the rest of them moved out of town after the war. The only information I have about my mother's parents is that her father's name was Yankel Kodrianskiy. I don't know my grandmother's name, or my grandparents' occupation, or what kind of life they had. None of their children had any education - (they were all craftsmen -) so my mother's parents must have been very poor people. They died in 1905, one after the other, when my mother was 10 years old. My mother never answered any questions about my grandparents. It was probably too hard for her to recall them, or she probably couldn't remember much considering her age when they died. After they died, my mother was raised by her older sisters and brothers.

My mother's older brother, Zeidel Kodrianskiy was born in 1885 and he was a laborer. After the Revolution of 1917 2, when the family moved to Kiev, he took on a job as a loader in a store. His wife died in the early 1930s. During the war Zeidel's sons, Monia and Zinoviy, went to the army, and his daughter, Malka, and her family lived in the vicinity of Moscow. Zeidel couldn't go into evacuation, and he didn't want to either. He had severe eczema. His body was covered with abscesses and wounds. He was confined to bed. On 29th September 1941, when the 'zhyds [kikes] of Kiev' were ordered by German command to go to Babi Yar 3 and were shot there, Zeidel stayed at home. He didn't know anything about the order, and besides he couldn't walk. After a few days Zeidel's Ukrainian neighbors - they  had become policemen during the fascist regime and were drunk -) dragged the poor man down into the yard, beating and whipping him until he became quiet. They left him dying in the dust of the yard. Our neighbors told us this story. They watched the incident but were afraid to come to my uncle's defense and stop the murderers.

My mother's second oldest brother, Shloime, born in 1888, was a tailor. He was a quiet man and spent day and night working on his sewing machine. His wife, Hava, helped him with his work. They had two small children. During the Civil War 4, when the Whites 5, Reds 6 and Greens 7 raged in Ukraine, my Uncle Shlome was killed by bandits. Hava and the children moved to Kiev almost immediately after his murder. I don't know what happened to them after that.

My mother's third brother, Gershl, born in 1890, had three children: two daughters, Rachel and Charna, and a son, Munia. Munia was at the front during the Great Patriotic War. After the war he moved to Leningrad and married a Russian woman. Gershl, his wife and his daughters were in evacuation during the war. After the war they returned to Kiev. Gershl died in the early 1960s. Rachel and her children live in America, and Charna lives in Kiev.

I didn't know my Aunt Beshyva very well. She was my mother's older sister and died before the Great Patriotic War. My mother's other sister, Nehama, died during a pogrom in Makarov in 1918.

As far as I know my mother's brothers or sisters didn't go to the synagogue. They weren't religious, and they didn't observe any traditions or celebrate holidays. They were very poor, so poor that they couldn't even give my mother a home and food when their parents died. Getting education was out of the question. My mother had to become a servant: she washed floors, did laundry and looked after the children of richer Jewish families. Her masters treated her well, though. They were mostly distant relatives or acquaintances of the family. After a few years Shloime took my mother into his family. She became his apprentice and helped Hava and him with their work. During that horrific pogrom, when Shlome was murdered, Hava, her children and my mother were hiding in a haystack near town. After the pogrom my mother moved to Kiev with Hava and the rest of the family. In Kiev they rented a very small apartment in Podol 8. My mother lived with them for several months. She met a clerk from a wood store - Haim Kriss - whom she married in 1919.

My grandparents on my father's side, Pinhus and Rukhl Kriss, came from the small town of Sidelkovo in the north of Ukraine, near its border with Belarus. I don't know what my grandfather did for a living in Sidelkovo, but in Kiev, where he moved to at the beginning of the 20th century, he owned a wood storage. This was solid business because wood was always in demand, and he could provide well for his family. After the NEP 9 was over the authorities expropriated his facility. My grandfather was declared a nepman and deprived of his electoral right. He didn't get another job. My grandfather Pinhus was a very religious man. He spent his days studying the Torah and Talmud at home. He went to the synagogue in Podol every day where he had his own seat. They followed the kashrut in the family and celebrated Shabbat and all the Jewish holidays.

My grandmother Rukhl was a housewife. They had seven children: six daughters and a son, my father. They were all born in Sidelkovo, but lived in Kiev from their early childhood years. They got education at home. My father's sisters and my father were moderately religious. They tried to observe the main rules and traditions. They only went to the synagogue on holidays, but they prayed regularly and celebrated all holidays at home. They didn't follow the kashrut, though. They spoke Yiddish at home, but they all knew Russian.

My father's older sister, Rosa, born in 1888, was a housewife. Her husband, Yufa, was a clerk. During the war Rosa, her husband and their daughter, Asia, were in evacuation. Their son, Anatoliy, perished during the war. Rosa died in the middle of the 1960s. Asia lives in Saint-Petersburg.

The next child in the family was Clara Waisberg (her family name). Her son, Munia, perished at the front during the war in the 1940s, and her daughter, Beba, who was very ill in evacuation, died shortly after the war. Clara died in Kiev in the early 1950s.

The next sister, Hana, was born in 1892. She was well educated and read a lot, the only problem was that she was deaf. She therefore didn't work and lived with one of her sisters. She lived with us for a while, too. She was single and died in the early 1970s.

Pesia was born around 1897. Pesia was written in her passport, but everybody called her Lena. She was the next child after my father. She graduated from a medical institute. During the war she worked in the hospital in Fergana, Uzbekistan. She died in the middle of the 1950s. The next child was Enta, (whom everyone called Lyolia). She worked as a conductor in streetcars in Kiev. She died in the middle of the 1960s. Lena and Lyolia were single. They both lost their loved ones to the war.

The youngest child, Olga ((Golda in Yiddish),) was born in 1905. She wasn't very young any more when she got married. Her husband perished during the Great Patriotic War, and her baby died on the train when they were on their way into evacuation. She didn't marry again. Olga died in Kiev in the middle of the 1970s.

My father, Haim Kriss, was born in Sidelkovo in 1893. I don't know what kind of education he got. (I believe, he only had classes with his tutors at home), but he was a pretty educated and intelligent man. He worked as a clerk at his father's wood storage. He had to know the basics of this business to do his work well. My parents met in the store when my mother came to buy some wood.

They got married in 1919. It was at the height of the Civil War, and they only had a small wedding with their closest relatives. But it was a traditional Jewish wedding with a chuppah at the synagogue in Schekavitskaya Street. This was one of the biggest synagogues in Kiev, a beautiful two-storied brick building. Although my parents weren't religious they had no alternative. They had to obey their families' wish and accept all religious rituals to be performed at their wedding, according to the rules that have been observed over centuries.

My parents rented a tiny apartment, (with one small room and a kitchen,) in Podol. I was born in this apartment on 23rd February 1920. I was named Charna at birth, but I didn't know my real name until the middle of the 1980s when I obtained a copy of my birth certificate. My parents called me Zhenia, and I was sure that my real name was Evgenia [Zhenia is affectionate for Evgenia]. In 1922 my brother, Froim, was born.

Growing up

My earliest memories go back to the time when I was five. My father was also declared a nepman and deprived of his electoral right - just like my grandfather. It was terrible that nobody wanted to employ him. He had to work as a loader or cart man for the rest of his life, even though he was an educated and intelligent man. It was hard physical work and he needed to be strong.

My father grew up in a religious family and observed Jewish traditions. I remember him sitting by the stove in our apartment, putting small pieces of pork fat on sticks and frying them over the fire. He kept saying, 'If there is a God, he is smart and understands that I have to eat pork fat to be strong, and that I need to be strong to keep my job, because if I loose it my kids will die'. This was his only breach of Jewish rules. He had a tallit and tefillin that he put on to recite a prayer. He prayed in a corner of the room every morning. We celebrated Pesach, Chanukkah, Purim and Rosh Hashanah in our family. My father didn't fast before on Yom Kippur, though. It would have been too hard for him.

My grandfather Pinhus or my mother's sisters usually invited our family on big holidays, because we were very poor, and my mother didn't have money to cook a festive meal. My grandparents lived not far from where we lived. I remember our parents asking us to be quiet when my grandfather conducted the seder rituals at Pesach. He was a serious man and couldn't bear any disturbances during religious rituals. I never saw my grandmother sitting down quietly. She was constantly doing something: cooking or treating somebody to a meal, washing or cleaning. She was thin and always wore a shawl. She obeyed her husband. I cannot remember any delicacies in their house, but there was always sufficient food, even if there wasn't any meat or fish. My grandfather died in 1935. I know that he was buried according to Jewish tradition. I remember a number of men with beards and payes, wearing black hats and black outfits, who prayed several days after my grandfather's funeral. My grandmother Rukhl died in 1937.

We lived a very poor life. My father worked until late carrying heavy loads. When he came home he was very tired and went to sleep. My mother sewed at home. I assisted her doing minor tasks. My mother had a hard life, but she was a very nice and kind person, she sympathized with other people and always tried to help them. She also supported Hava, Shloime's wife. She made clothes for her children and often sent me to take little treats to them. My mother had no education, but people liked her for her kindness. My mother was a good singer. We lived in the basement of the house and there were often people near our windows listening to my mother singing while she was doing her work. She sang Jewish and Ukrainian songs and Russian ballads. Once a stranger came in, charmed with her singing. He told her that she had a wonderful voice and could enter a conservatory and that he would help her to do it. My mother declined telling him that she had to support her husband and raise their children.

My parents spoke Yiddish at home. My father intended to raise us religiously, although he violated Jewish rules every now and then. Only boys were given education in Jewish families and when my brother turned five our father hired a teacher for him to teach him Jewish laws, traditions and rituals, and the Talmud and the Torah, at home. But the teacher's efforts were fruitless. Froim wasn't successful in his studies. I was in the same room and tried to explain tasks to him, but he told me that studying always made him feel sleepy. Our playmates in the yard were Young Octobrists 10 and pioneers, they sang merry patriotic songs and played ball. All this seemed so much more interesting and important than boring religious studies. We were growing up in an atheist surrounding, and my father realized that he wouldn't be able to turn my brother into a faithful Jew.

In 1930 my mother had another baby, Inna. Inna was born with Down syndrome and couldn't speak or walk until she was four years old. My parents gave her a lot of care. They loved her dearly and took every effort to get any possible treatment for her. And, she survived!

I started school when I was seven. It was a Russian lower secondary school - (seven years of studies) - that soon became a higher secondary school (with ten years of studies). There were Jewish schools in Kiev, but my parents believed that I would avoid language problems in my further education if I went to a Russian school. Our school was housed in several buildings. At first it was in a mansion that housed cultural associations of foreign countries, and then in the building of the cultural center until they built a new building near the hospital for workers [eit was a Jewish hospital before the Revolution of 1917 and now it is a regional hospital]. In 1928 my brother began to study at the same school.

I had a few Jewish classmates. The other children in my class were of various nationalities. We were all friends and our teachers were nice to us. I enjoyed studying and finished school with honors. I was an active pioneer and, later, a Komsomol 11 member. I was secretary of our school Komsomol unit. I conducted Komsomol meetings, arranged competitions between different classes, worked on improvement in studies and arranged the collection of waste paper and scrap. I took part in district and town Olympiads in chemistry, physics and mathematics. In 1937 my portrait was on the Board of Honor for the most advanced people in our neighborhood. I was very proud of it. This board was located in the park planted by pupils of our school, in front of the Rus cinema. We celebrated 1st of May and the Day of October Revolution Day 12 at school and attended parades. We enjoyed singing Soviet songs. We didn't celebrate Soviet holidays at home. However, my friends liked to get together at my home after parades where my mother treated them to delicious pies that she was the best at making.

Only my mother's cooking skills helped us to survive the famine of 1932-33 [famine in Ukraine] 13. By that time we were living in a one-bedroom apartment in a two-storied building. We had moved there in 1930, after our house was pulled down to create a construction site for the Arsenal Plant [the biggest military plant in Ukraine]. There was a kitchen and one room in our new apartment. The toilet was in the yard. There was a stove in the kitchen for heating the room, which my mother also used for cooking. During the famine my mother made pancakes from potato peels, and we also had sunflower seed wastes. Once my mother bought some cutlets at the Lukianovskiy market near our house. She bought them for our father, who needed some meat to be strong enough to work. My father had them and afterwards heard rumors that those cutlets were made of human flesh. He was sick for a whole week after he heard this. We sometimes got buns and small pies at school. They were brought to school from the Arsenal Plant and the cable plant that were supporting our school. Several times a military unit, located near our school, invited us to their canteen where we had delicious soup. It was so great to have a bowl of soup at that time.

This period was very hard for my father. He was haunted by two feelings for his whole life - the feeling of guilt towards his wife and children and the feeling of fear. My father felt guilty that he couldn't provide better for us, as he was actually deprived of the right to have a good job he deserved and received a miserable salary instead. This feeling of guilt became stronger during the famine. He believed that it was his fault that Inna was born an ill baby. He thought it had happened because his wife didn't get enough food when she was pregnant. As to his feeling of fear - he couldn't sleep because he feared that authorities would recall that he had been declared a nepman and would put him into an even worse situation.

In the late 1930s, during the period of arrests of innocent people [the so- called Great Terror] 14, my father didn't sleep at all. Every night he said 'goodbye' to us in his thoughts fearing that he would be arrested. Fortunately, nobody in our family was arrested - we were too insignificant for the authorities. But the nightmare of people being arrested and the suffering of their relatives was all around us. There was Lukianovskaya prison across the street from our house, and a shipment railway station from where trains full of prisoners were sent to prisons and camps was just nearby. Prisoners' relatives came to our garden and our house begging us to let them stay. They were hoping to see their loved ones for the last time on their way to the station, escorted by security guards and watch-dogs. We often saw prisoners boarding trains. Militia often came to our house to tear people away from our place. I felt sorry for these people, but I believed that they must be true 'enemies of the people' if they were arrested. Some lecturers and students vanished from the university where I studied. Our favorite teacher in physical culture, Benesh, was arrested. He was a Hungarian and a very educated and intelligent man. He vanished just like so many others.

After finishing school with honors in 1937, I entered the Faculty of Chemistry at Kiev State University without taking exams. When I was a first- year student I became a member of the Komsomol committee of the university. I was responsible for cultural and social activities. I arranged lectures, issued a wall newspaper and had lots of errands to do. I had a nice group of friends. We got together at my friend Ida's place. Most of us were Jewish. I especially liked one of them - Isaac Gragerov, a third-year student. We were fond of theater. Our favorites were the Red Army Theater and the Ivan Franko Ukrainian Drama Theater. There were Soviet performances glorifying the Soviet way of life and communism. Sometimes there were classical performances, but they also had a touch of Soviet propaganda against capitalist society. We also went to the cinema. Of course, those films and performances were of patriotic subjects, but the actors were very good. I liked reading most of all. We had a neighbor that worked at the Lukianovskaya prison. His name was Nikolay Bereg. He arranged a permit to the library of Lukianovskaya prison for me. It turned out to be a very good library. I borrowed great books from there: books by Russian and foreign writers and many historical books. I found it strange that the prison had such a wonderful library, because the inmates weren't even allowed to read.

We [Komsomol members] were educated people and had information about fascism and about the war, which was a real threat to European countries. We were aware of Hitler's views and saw the film Professor Mamlock 15. But I got really frightened when the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact 16 was signed. Although the official propaganda stated that it was an assurance against Hitler's aggression, I thought it was very dangerous to come to any agreement with fascists and that the signing of this pact was a precursor of war in itself.

In 1939 a one-year course for reserve nurses was established at the university. I was secretary of the Komsomol organization and was responsible for enrollment to this course. The best way was to be the first to enroll and I did so, although I was scared of everything related to medicine: injections, blood or dissection rooms. All girls in our group followed into my footsteps. I was very good at theory, and at training classes my friends were giving injections and applying bandages for me. After finishing this course we received certificates that said we were reserve nurses. We also had civil defense training at which we were taught to use gas masks and put out firebombs. In general, the country was preparing for a war.

During the War

But the war caught our people unawares. I was in the town of Rubezhnoye, Donetsk region, where we [fourth-year students] had training at the chemical factory, when the war began. We headed home immediately. Trains were overcrowded, and it took us a while to get home. People were going back from business trips and vacations to reunite with their families. I stayed at home for two days. We were sent to harvesting in Poltava region. At that time many people thought that the war was going to be over soon and that it was just a terrible confusion and our army would win. We, students, understood that harvesting was our important contribution.

We worked at Lemeshovka village [120 km from Kiev]. Our group of girls sorted tobacco leaves. We were to hang tobacco leaves on poles in the sheds and cut smaller leaves. Once I heard a man's voice calling my name. It was Isaac Gragerov. He was an army recruit already and had stepped out of his march while on the way to a training camp to find me and say 'goodbye'. My friend Ida Mahagon was in love with him, and I decided to take him to her. Isaac was a reserved man. He had never told me about his love, but this time he looked at me and said, 'Zhenia, it's war and I'm going to the front. I've come to say goodbye to you.' And he stressed this 'to you'. I understood his feelings then, but I didn't feel the fear that we might never see each other again. I said 'goodbye' to Isaac, and he ran to catch up with his unit. This happened in August 1941.

After a few days it became clear that the front was moving closer. We could hear explosions and the roar of war. I went to the central facility of the collective farm, where we were working, looking for our fellow students. It turned out that our rector, Gusko, lecturers and some students had left for Kharkov a few days before, forgetting about us. That was when I got scared! We didn't have any documents or bread cards. The other girls sent me to the university in Kiev, as I was the leader of our Komsomol unit. It never occurred to me that it was dangerous to go alone, and none of them offered to keep me company. I felt it was my duty to take care of my friends. I reached Kiev by taking trains whenever possible and going on foot.

I came home. The ceiling in the kitchen had fallen down after a bomb explosion near our house. There was a note from my parents on the table. It said that Froim had gone to the front and that they and my sister had gone into evacuation. My father wrote that they would try to reach Fergana where my father's sister Lena 0was working at the hospital. I walked to the university. There was military training in the yard. Some students that were not recruited to the army were preparing to join the Territorial Army. I saw Aunt Rosa's son and my cousin, Anatoliy Yufa. He was blinded in one eye by a slingshot when he was a child and was unfit for the army. Anatoliy took part in the defense of Kiev with a group of volunteers from university. Almost all of them perished. Anatoliy returned to the city, which was already occupied, and was hiding in an attic where his schoolmate had taken him. Shortly afterwards this same schoolmate reported him to the Germans, and Anatoliy was shot at Babi Yar.

In August 1941, when I came to the university, I obtained evacuation documents for the rest of the girls, bread cards and cards for 400 grams of candy. Before leaving Kiev I went to see my Uncle Zeidel to take him with me. He refused to leave. He couldn't even move, because his whole body was covered with abscesses.

I went to Lemeshovka by changing from one train to another. My friends were waiting for me there. We went to Kharkov on foot. On the way I walked until my feet were covered in blisters and couldn't go on. I decided to wait for a train at the railway station of Lemeshovka. My friends left me again. My best friend Ida Mahagon said, 'I understand that we cannot leave you here, but I'm too scared to stay. If we get captured by the Germans we won't be able to escape'. I stayed alone on the platform at nighttime. I was lucky. A train full of soldiers arrived. They pulled me inside, and soon I caught up with the girls again. Changing vehicles we reached Kharkov on the third day. It became clear there that the university was preparing for evacuation in Kzyl-Orda.

Kiev was occupied, and it was clear that the Germans were coming to Kharkov. Other girls and I went to the mobilization office to volunteer to the front. We were told that students had to continue their studies and weren't allowed to recruit. I found Isaac's relatives in Kharkov and told them that I was going to join my parents in Fergana. I left the address of the hospital with them for Isaac. We still didn't believe that the fascists would go too far in our country and we, 12-13 girls, headed to Konstantinovka in Donbass where a brother of one of the girls worked as chief engineer at the chemical factory. We were hoping to get a job there. In Konstantinovka we only met this man's wife with her baby. She told us that he had been recruited to the army, and the factory was getting ready for evacuation. We helped her to get packed to go to her relatives in the country. Then we went to the railway station.

Changing trains we headed to Kzyl-Orda where we knew the university was going to evacuate to. We slept in railway cattle-cars. We were dirty, freezing and starving. We got off near the town of Engels in Saratov region [1,250 km east of Kiev]. It was the capital of the German Volga region. The town was empty. Nice and clean houses were empty. We were struck by this emptiness. We didn't know that the Germans had been deported to Kazakhstan, just like some other nationalities that the authorities had found suspicious, 13 as soon as the war began. They didn't have time to pack their luggage and left all their belongings behind. We washed ourselves in one of the houses and found some clothes. There was nobody to ask permission to take the clothes, so we changed and moved on.

After about three weeks we had covered another 300 km on passing vehicles or on foot and reached Kzyl-Orda at night. Kzyl-Orda was a small town in a desert in Kazakhstan, Middle Asia. Its population was Kazakh. Kazakh people had no education and led a patriarchal way of life. We fell asleep on the railway platform. I woke up at night and saw a moving whitish tape. I took a closer look and saw that these were lice. I woke up my friends. We left the station and fell asleep in a park nearby. It got very cold at night, and some of us fell ill. The girl whose brother we looked for in Konstantinovka had a high fever, and we took her to hospital. I left the most precious thing that I had with me - my mother's woolen shawl - with her.

We went to the town which was located about 20 km from the railway station. We found out that the university wasn't going to open for a while, because it was difficult to find sufficient facilities for both the Kharkov and Kiev universities in such a small town. I decided to go to the place where my parents were. I asked my fellow students to notify me as soon as the university would begin to operate. I covered over 800 km to Fergana on foot and any transport, train or a vehicle, driving this direction.

I found my parents and sister in Fergana. They lived in a small plywood hut that had served as a shed for silk worms. My father's sisters also lived nearby. Aunt Lena worked at the hospital. There was a hospital deployed at the Kuwasai station near Fergana, and Aunt Lena found me a job as a nurse there. Soon the hospital was converted into a mobile military hospital and sent to the front. Near Kharkov the train was bombed, and I was scared of the horrors of the war. Survivors and personnel moved to Markelan, which was not far from Fergana. I had a small wound on my right leg, but I recovered soon and returned to my duties.

The hospital became a typhoid hospital. Our patients were soldiers and officers. I had to learn how to give injections, dress wounds and assist doctors - I had to do everything that I had been so afraid of doing before. The thing was that only Valia Shulman and I had some medical training. The others working there were girls that had just finished school. I became a member of the Communist Party in this hospital. It was easy to become a party member during the war. They admitted all people that had been at the front. I wished to belong to the advanced part of society, to be a communist, to fight the enemy. There were a few girls, overwhelmed with the feeling of patriotism. The leader of the party unit conducted a meeting where he handed our party membership cards over to us without any special ceremonies. We took an oath to be patriots and defend our motherland.

One evening I bent over a Polish patient and felt a bite on my forehead. It turned out to be a typhoid louse. Shortly afterwards I fainted. I had typhoid with complications: pulmonary edema, encephalitis and phlegm on the leg that had been wounded. The doctors were going to amputate my leg, but fortunately there was a talented surgeon from Leningrad in this hospital, whose wife and child had perished in the blockade of Leningrad 17 some time before. He performed a surgery on my legd and saved it.

I received quite a few letters from friends while I was ill. There was one from Isaac. There was so much love and care between the lines of this letter that I didn't even care to answer letters from other young men. I understood that Isaac Gragerov was the gift of my life. After about two months I resumed my work duties, although I was so weak that I fainted every now and then. Then I received a letter from the university, inviting me to come back to resume my studies. I wanted to continue my studies, but I felt sorry to leave the hospital. I had a discussion with the director of the hospital, and he promised to notify me as soon as the hospital would be ordered to the front again.

I arrived at Kzyl-Orda a month before New Year's Eve of 1942. I settled down in a hostel, passed my exams and took to my diploma thesis. I also worked at a shop established by professors of the university. I defended my thesis. Its subject was the generation of spirits from wastes of Kzyl-Orda rice. At that time I received a letter from the director of the hospital telling me that they were to be sent to the front. He also specified the time when their train would be passing Kzyl-Orda. Letters took a long time to reach their destination in wartime, and it turned out that their train was to arrive at Kzyl-Orda half an hour after I received the letter. I ran to the station to catch the train. I didn't have any documents with me, and they didn't have the right to take me along without documents. I asked the conductor to keep the train for two hours for me to get my documents. When I came back the train was gone. I was awfully upset and still have the feeling of hurt and loss. I worked in Kzyl-Orda for a few months when I got assigned to the position of head of laboratory at the iodine and bromine factory on Chiliken Island in Turkmenistan. My friend wrote a poem about our life in Kzyl-Orda that I still keep. It is an accurate description of our life there.

Some time we shall have a cup of tea and will recall like an old anecdote the brew we had at the hostel in the year of 1943 that we shall remember. The weather so freezing that even dogs tried to hide away. Macaroni soup once a day that was hard to get. And bread that was so little that we could feel no taste of it. Two spoons for the four of us and one bed for two. An oil lamp on a dark evening in the fall. Porridge with melon on Sunday, spiced with smoke for misfortune, And Zhenia's ballads in the evening, oh, yes, she does sing well. And her concert gets straight to the sole especially when the stomach is empty. We read Green before going to bed and Kuprin books aloud, And had a life with no makeup, no holiday drunkenness or wine. We were sober after parties and discussions, We drank tea from shaving sets and ate bread that we had saved. Some time at tea, under a lampshade where it is as bright as on the brightest day, We shall recall the brew in the hostel and make a mention of our friendship with a kind word. .

I arrived on Chiliken Island in a fisherman's boat. We came across the Caspian Sea from Krasnovodsk to this island - now it's a peninsula. There were iodine deposits and deposits of other chemical elements on Chiliken. In the 1930s a big factory was constructed there. It wasn't a big island. There were just a few villages, two or three stores, one school and an iodine-bromine factory. The majority of the population of this island worked in this factory. They were Turkmen. They were very poor people that had no education, but there were also employees from other areas. There were also few of us that had been sent to this factory on assignment upon graduation from higher educational institutions.

There was sand on this island, clear seawater and bright sunlight. There was one saxaul tree, and local schoolchildren came to look at it to see what a tree looks like. I stayed in the hostel. Although there wasn't enough drinking water and bread, no books, theaters and cinemas, I recall this period of my life with pleasure. There weren't enough qualified engineers at the factory, and I had to conduct training classes in mathematics, chemistry and physics. I was also elected secretary of the Komsomol unit of the factory. I was responsible for amateur clubs - dancing and theatrical groups and choirs - to make our dull life more colorful. We cooked at the hostel in the evenings and had meals together.

There were eleven other tenants in my room in the hostel. These girls were of various nationalities and came from different areas of the country, but we got along well. We supported each other and shared all food that we had. My job assignment lasted three years. I was a good employee and after three years had passed my management was very reluctant to let me go. My manager promised me promotion and further transfer to Moscow, but I dreamt of seeing my beloved Kiev again. I hadn't heard from Isaac for a long time. I had no information about him and was hoping to see him in Kiev. I had to make a plot. I had a friend, former partisan, David Shakhnovskiy. He had been in love with me a while ago. He went to my management in Moscow and said that he was my husband and wanted his wife back home. They let me go, and I returned to Kiev in 1946. It was in ruins after the war, but how I longed to see my city!

After the War

My parents and my sister had returned to Kiev from Fergana a month before I did. Our house had been destroyed by a bomb and they were living in the kitchen with our distant relatives. I moved in with them. Later a room in a shed in the same yard got vacant, and my parents moved in there. It was a small hut but all of us - my parents, my sister, my brother and I - lived in it. My brother was a war invalid and after some time he received an apartment from the plant where he worked.

In 1946 food was rationed. I began to look for work after I returned. I had received a small allowance when I quit my job on Chiliken Island, but I was spending it rapidly. My nationality - (it was called Item 5 18 -) was in my way wherever I went. When I went to inquire about a vacancy I was told there was one, but after I left my documents it turned out that there was no vacancy any more . It went on like this for a while. Once I visited the chemical laboratory at the Arsenal Plant asking if there was a vacancy. I was refused. When I left the egress checkpoint I saw Isaac. 'What are you doing here?' I asked him. 'Waiting for you,' he replied. He was a post-graduate student in Moscow and was working on his thesis. When he came from Moscow he found my parents, and they told him where I was. We hugged each other and went for a walk to the banks of the Dnepr River.

We got married a few months later. We had a civil ceremony and started moving my belongings to Isaac's parents, who had an apartment in a house within the area of the leather factory. We were detained by a drunk militiaman that thought we were thieves carrying somebody else's belongings. We had to spend some time at the militia office. They let us go after they clarified the situation, and when we returned home there were guests waiting for us to celebrate oure wedding. That's how our family life began.

Isaac got a job at the Institute of Physical Chemistry at the Academy of Sciences. It was so difficult for me. I finally got a job as senior lab assistant at the Department of Organic Chemistry at the Silicate Institute. I didn't like it. I managed to get the position of junior scientific employee at the Institute of Non-Organic Chemistry. After a few weeks the director of the institute called me and said that it was a mistake to employ me as junior scientific employee and that if I wanted to stay with them I had to accept the position of senior lab assistant. This was at the onset of anti-Semitic campaigns that became a state policy in 1948-49. [This was the so-called campaign against cosmopolitans.] 19

While working as senior lab assistant I prepared my thesis. But this took place at the height of anti-Semitism in 1952. My tutor Efim Grinein, a Jew, was fired. Nobody wished to even accept my thesis for review. I prepared another thesis under the leadership of Professor Fialko and defended it in 1956. I became candidate of sciences, but I had to work as senior lab assistant for ten years. I had many publications and students who were working on their thesis. But whenever I addressed the director of the institute, asking him when I would be promoted to the position of junior scientific employee he got embarrassed telling me that the time would come.

In 1966 I finally became a junior scientific employee then a senior scientific employee and, finally, a leading scientific employee. I prepared five candidates of sciences and worked on the development of new medications, based on compounds of metals with nucleic acids. I retired in 1997 when I turned 77. I broke my hip and became an invalid. My former students call and visit me. They come to see me or ask my advice.

I have been happy in my personal life. Isaac and I have two children: our daughter Irina, born in 1948, and our son Alexandr, born in 1953. My parents were helping me raise the children. My father wanted to go to work after the war, but we didn't allow him to. My parents lived with my brother and his family. My mother died in 1967, my father in 1970.

My brother Froim was married, but he didn't have children. After the war he graduated from the Kiev Polytechnic Institute. He was a talented engineer. He worked at the Kiev Relay and Automation Plant for many years. He died in 1999. My sister Inna lived in my brother's family after our parents died. I supported her buying her clothes and necessary medications. Inna was a very kind person like all people with Down syndrome. She died in 1991.

Our children, Irina and Alexandr, followed into our footsteps. They wanted to become chemists. It was next to impossible for Jews to enter higher educational institutions at that time in Kiev and they went to study in Moscow. Irina graduated from the Faculty of Chemistry at Moscow University. She married her fellow student Yuri Malitin. Irina and Yuri live and work in Kiev. They have two children: Andrei, who graduated from the Faculty of Biology at Kiev University, and Alexandra, who studies in the 10th grade of the lyceum at the Kiev Polytechnic Institute.

Alexandr entered the Technical-Physical Institute in Moscow. He became a specialist in molecular genetics and defended his thesis. During perestroika in Ukraine in the 1990s, when financing of scientific research in Ukraine was reduced dramatically, Alexandr went to work in America. Now he works on the development of new medications and manages a big scientific department. I am proud that he is my successor: I also dedicated my work to the development of medications that people need so much. Alexandr worked in New York, Chicago and Washington, and lives in Seattle now. Alexandr's wife is an architect, and his daughter, Masha, studies in art school. She has had personal exhibitions and dreams of becoming a designer.

My husband and I have visited our son in America. Of course, we miss him, but we don't want to leave the country in which we have lived all our life. I have never been religious and never identified myself as a Jew. My husband, I and our children have always been Soviet people, patriots of our country. We always liked to celebrate Soviet holidays. We've had friends of various nationalities. We liked to get together and sing beautiful Soviet songs. We've read a lot and attended theatres, art exhibitions and concerts.

Unfortunately, I've never been to Israel, but I've read a lot and watched TV programs about this wonderful country that suffered a lot in the past. I follow up all news and events in Israel. The situation is terrible considering all the deaths of innocent people and children. I do hope that the situation will improve and people will live in peace in Israel. I wish them happiness.

There is a number of Jewish organizations in Ukraine. There are Jewish newspapers and all this has become interesting to me. Unfortunately, we cannot attend lectures or concerts due to our health condition. We read Jewish newspapers and watch the Yahad program 20 on TV. Hesed provides assistance to us. We find it wonderful that Jewish life has revived in Ukraine.

Glossary

Grigoriy Sirotta
Lvov
Ukraine
Interviewer: Ella Orlikova
Date of interview: July 2002

The families of my father and mother lived in the Pale of Settlement 1, not far from the town of Nova-Ushytsya. Regretfully, I don't remember my grandmothers or grandfathers. They died before I was born. I know that my grandfather on my father's side, Moisey Sirotta, was a pretty poor craftsman. He was very religious, observed all Jewish traditions and always wore a kippah a small cap. My father told me that my grandfather was a very hardworking man. He was a great hat maker. He only spoke Yiddish and communicated with other Jews of his circle. My father remembered that the house was full of hat stands with a large number of hats on them. My grandfather didn't know his parents, that's why our family name was Sirotta [Russian for 'orphan']. My grandfather died in 1909 at the age of 63.

Nobody in my family ever talked about my grandfather's wife. She died a long time ago, at the end of the 19th century. I have no idea what her name was and what she did. My grandfather and grandmother had five or six children. Apart from my father, David Sirotta, I only knew one of them, Moishe Sirotta, who was born in 1872. He became a wine-grower. I saw him once in my life. We visited him in Dunayevtsy when I was 3 years old. I was immensely impressed by the barrels of wine in his cellar. I know that he died of some disease in the 1920s. He didn't have a family of his own.

My father was born in Shcherbakovtsy village near Nova-Ushytsya in 1874. He went to cheder every morning like all other Jewish boys. He was just a little boy, and an assistant from cheder often had to carry him there from his home, especially in winter because my father and his brother Moishe only had one pair of shoes, which they had to share. There were children of 4 to 13 years at cheder. They were all doing their tasks in one classroom, reading or reciting, and it was very noisy. The rabbi, who was also the teacher at cheder, slapped naughty boys on their hands. My father was an industrious pupil.

I don't know much about my mother's parents. My mother's father, Yankel Frishman, was born in 1855. He was a small merchant in Nova-Ushytsya. He sold haberdashery. Once he even owned a fish store but he went bankrupt. He was a very respectable man in Nova-Ushytsya. He went to the synagogue every Saturday and invited poor Jews to his house on holidays. He always tried to help them and treat them to a meal. My grandfather prayed a lot at the synagogue and at home. He generally spoke Yiddish, but he spoke Ukrainian to his Ukrainian customers. He died in 1912.

My grandmother, Riva Frishman, born in 1857, was a wonderful housewife. She always kept the house very clean. She always baked challah and made stuffed fish on Saturday. She was educated at home, but she loved Yiddish books and taught my mother to read. I know that she was a religious woman. She celebrated Sabbath. She was a very nice and kind woman. She died of spotted fever in the fall of 1914, at the beginning of World War I. I don't know how many children my grandmother had, apart from my mother.

My mother, Sarrah Sirotta [nee Frishman], was born in 1879. She was a very smart girl and, although she was only educated at home, she liked to read in Yiddish and always dreamed of seeing the world. She found the routinely life of a Jewish neighborhood a burden, but she was an obedient daughter and helped her mother with the house chores and her father in the store, when necessary. She found it a pleasant chore to light candles on Friday night.

My mother met my father in 1900. They were introduced to one another by a shadkhan, which was customary at that time. They got married the same year. They had a traditional Jewish wedding with a chuppah and klezmer musicians. After the wedding my parents moved to Shcherbakovtsy village. I remember that I had some 'aunts' in Nova-Ushytsya, but I don't know whether they were my mother's sisters or cousins. I don't remember any close relatives of my mother's.

My father worked as a miller for the landlord in the beginning, and later he rented the mill in Shcherbakovtsy. He was a very hardworking man. He went to work when we were still asleep and came back home when we were already going to bed. The mill mainly provided services to Ukrainian farmers. They treated my father nicely and with respect. Nobody ever abused him at work for his nationality. We were the only Jewish family in this village. My parents rented a house near the mill. My sister, my two brothers and I were all born in Shcherbakovtsy. Etl was born in 1902. She finished the Russian grammar school for girls in Nova-Ushytsya before the Revolution of 1917 2. She didn't tell me anything about her studies. She was very beautiful. My older brother, Misha, was born in 1909. He was a very active and lively boy. He went to cheder in the neighboring Jewish village. My mother took the boys there every morning. One couldn't call Misha an industrious pupil. The rabbi complained to our mother about Misha's behavior, which left much to be desired. Misha always helped my father at the mill. My second brother, Yasha, born in 1913, was a very industrious and exemplary pupil.

I was born in 1916 and the youngest in the family. I have almost no memories of our life in Shcherbakovtsy because we left in 1920. During the Civil War 3 there were many gangs 4 in our neighborhood.1. They robbed houses and killed people, especially Jews. The local Ukrainians were hiding us. I remember that we were hiding, but I didn't understand why back then. we were hiding at that time. Later my father told me that Petliura 5 soldiers broke into our house, pointed the gun at his face and said, 'Give us the gold and money'. But we didn't have money or gold, except for my parent's rings and my mother's earrings. They took those away and knocked out my father's teeth. It became scary to live there any longer, and we had to move out.

We moved to Zemikhovo, two kilometers from Shcherbakovtsy. There are many villages in that area, but Zemikhovo was a big one, and it soon became a town. Its population consisted of Ukrainians, Jews, Poles, Russians and even two gypsy families. There was no hostility among the inhabitants. People celebrated religious and Soviet holidays quietly and calmly with a benevolent attitude towards the representatives of the various nations. However, there were drunk people on holidays, and they had fights, but I believe it was more because there was no other entertainment than anything else. They tried to make amends for it and apologize the next day, and the peace lasted until the next holidays when everything repeated itself.

The Jews lived in the center of the village. There were about 50 Jewish families. They earned their living with crafts. There was a synagogue in the center, an Orthodox Christian church and a Catholic cathedral. All these religious edifices were kept in absolute order and very clean.> People of all nationalities treated them with care and respect.

My parents were very religious. They only spoke Yiddish, although my mother knew Ukrainian well, and a little Russian and Polish. My father also knew Ukrainian because he had to communicate with Ukrainian farmers. We strictly observed all Jewish traditions. The only thing where my mother took liberties was that she didn't wear a shawl. She had thick and very beautiful hair. My father always wore a cap in the summer and a hat in the winter. On Fridays my mother changed her clothes and lit two candles in silver candlesticks. Of course she covered her head during the prayers. She said a prayer quietly and sort of embraced the flames of the candles with her hands. My father usually returned late from work, but on Fridays he came back earlier to go to the synagogue. After he returned my mother served our dinner. My father said a prayer, praising the Lord, blessing the Holy Saturday and the food, and afterwards we all had dinner. My mother cooked food for Saturday and put it in the oven to keep it warm. On Saturday my parents rested or went to see relatives and friends. We, children, played in the yard.

On Pesach my mother cooked kneydlakh, little balls from matzah flour. They were very delicious. I've tried to make them but I failed. We began to make matzah a month before Pesach. My father brought a few bags of flour, and my mother baked matzah in the oven. I loved to help her. Freshly made matzah is ever so delicious. We had no bread at home throughout the 8 days of Pesach. My mother also bought red wine for Pesach. The whole family got together for seder on the first night of Pesach. My father read the Haggadah. I remember my older brother asking my father the traditional question [the mah nishtanah] in Hebrew four times, 'Why is this night different from all other nights?'. My father replied with quotations. I also went to the synagogue when I was a boy.

When I was 13 I went to the synagogue with my father to have my bar mitzvah. (coming of age of a Jewish boy).I can't remember well what was going on. It wasn't such a big event for me. It was more like a tribute to the ancient tradition, which was necessary to observe. I had to say the prayers that I had learned by heart. I had a teacher teaching me religion and traditions, and my brother and my father often read the Torah to me.

The mill that my father leased gave some profit, and we bought a house in Zemikhovo. It was a very nice house, and I can still picture it in my dreams. There were three rooms and a kitchen in the house. There was a dinner table, a carved cupboard, a sofa, silver candlesticks, bent-back chairs, which were called 'Viennese', and a big rubber plant next to the wall. The house had wooden floors and a tiled roof. We had a Russian stove 6 and kerosene lamps. In the other room there were two beds, my father's and mother's, and a big box. We had a small kitchen garden, in which my mother grew vegetables: onions, radish, parsley, dill. We had one, sometimes two, cows as well as chickens and geese. So we always had meat, eggs, sour cream, butter and milk. All this was kosher food. We never mixed dairy and meat products, and my mother always went to the shochet to have the poultry slaughtered.

Most of the Jewish houses were poor and required repairs. They had clay floors that were covered with a special mixture of clay, hay and manure. Each Jewish house had a store or a workshop inside it, such as a sewing workshop, a tinsmith's shop or a bakery.

The brightest memory of my childhood is my sister Etl's wedding. She got married in 1922. Her fiancé's name was Pynia. He worked as a tobacco cutter at the tobacco factory in the town of Kahles [28 kilometers from Zemikhovo]. This factory still exists. It manufactures the Podoliye cigarettes. The wedding took place in our house in Zemikhovo. It was a traditional Jewish wedding. There were tables in our big room with wine, cherry liqueur and vodka on them. There were strudels with sugar, honey and nuts. It was the food of the Gods! Of course, there was also stuffed fish. There was a klezmer brass orchestra from Nova-Ushytsya and people danced. I remember the sher, a beautiful Jewish dance. «I don't remember all the dances, but I remember a waltz that my brother Yasha and I danced together. He wanted to lead and so did I. In this regard we hit each other on the face. There were guests of honor, the rabbi and the shochet shoihet (he slaughtered poultry and made it kosher meat in accordance with the Jewish rules). The bride and bridegroom were married next to the synagogue. There were four posts and a beautiful cover on them [a chuppah]. The rabbi read a prayer. The procession went there with music, and the music was also playing on their way back. Many people came to watch.

After the wedding my sister moved to Pynia's parents' in Kahles. She gave birth to two boys: Yasha in 1924 and Misha in 1928. Yasha was a very musical boy. He played string instruments wonderfully. He could have become a great musician, I'm sure. As for the second boy, he liked reading and making things. Yasha and Misha treated both old and young people with great respect. They were handsome and good-mannered boys. Etl, her husband and their sons were killed in the ghetto in Nova-Ushytsya.

Our family was enthusiastic when the Soviets came to power in 1917. The new regime seemed to bring a fair and educated life to the people. We believed that there would be no oppression of the Jews, that people would be equal and that problems we faced were temporary. My mother liked to read the newspapers Der Emes [Truth] and Der Shtern [Star]. They were Soviet communist newspapers published in Yiddish. My mother also read many classic books in Yiddish. She was very proud that she was the same age as Stalin. My father read much less, but he also respected the Soviet Union, although, as a kulak 7, he was deprived of the right to vote and actually repressed.

Our house was sold at an auction because of we couldn't pay the high tax, which was levied on us by a visiting financial official. We didn't have the money to pay for it. This happened in the early 1930s when the process of the dispossession of the kulaks began. We moved into a one-bedroom facility with a kitchen. The conditions there were terrible. Two or three years later, when the parents of my sister's husband died, we moved into their apartment. It was a two-bedroom apartment with a kitchen. There was a clay floor in one room, and a plank floor in the other room. The kitchen was between the two rooms.

The authorities expropriated my father's mill [at the end of the 1920s] and he became a stableman. There were two collective farms 8: a Ukrainian and a Jewish one. The chairman of the Jewish farm was named Sholom. He was a very industrious and honest man. We went to the collective farm hoping to get something there. The horses in the stables were starving. My father guarded them at night. One night I had to replace him, as he had to go to the village. It was a terrible night. The stables were located between the Ukrainian and the Jewish cemetery. I couldn't help thinking of anything but the dead in white clothes. I was terrified whenever I heard a sound. I was 13 at the time, and I was alone. I wouldn't have done anything if somebody had come with evil intentions. But there were other times when boys from the Ukrainian collective farm and I took horses to the pasture at night. That was wonderful. What beautiful nights they were!

My friends were Jewish, Ukrainian, Russian and Polish boys. We spoke Russian. We went swimming in a pond. We were friends. Sometimes we had fights but no nationality conflicts. We didn't differentiate between Jewish and non-Jewish friends. I went to the Jewish 4-year school in Zemikhovo. We studied in Yiddish, but we didn't study any special Jewish subjects. All schools in the USSR had to comply with the standard and mandatory program. We also had Russian and Ukrainian classes. I shared a desk with Liza, a beautiful girl. Later her family moved to Russia.

I was a pioneer like everybody else. Once there was a relay race with a baton in our school. I didn't have any idea what it was like to run with a baton, but I was a good runner. There were many people on the route, which went uphill. When a boy gave me the baton he injured my hand, and I ran without the baton. Then I had to return to pick up the baton. Because of this delay another boy outran me, but he pushed me and I fell and tore my pants. I felt hurt that I had lost, and hit that boy in the face so hard that his nose started bleeding. There was a tailor at the competition, and he wanted to mend my pants. I went to his home. I had never seen such poverty before. He had a plank table and a sewing machine. That was all. I felt so sorry for him. I wrote a little poem in Yiddish about the poverty and misery of this man. He was a small man. Since I was the editor of the school newspaper, I placed my poem where it would be seen best. The director of the school, Smotritskiy, a Jew, called me into his office, said that I was talented and asked me if I wanted to write poems. I said that I did. My poetic activities ended where they began though. I had to move to Nova-Ushytsya to continue my studies in the 5th grade because there was only a primary school in our village.

After 1917 the lives of many people in Zemikhovo became much worse, and they wanted to move somewhere else. It was at that time that my older brother, Misha, got into trouble. He was the secretary of the village council, which was an official position. He was the second most important man in the village, after the chairman of the village council, and he issued two certificates to his Ukrainian friends. They wanted to continue their studies in town. During this period people weren't allowed to move from villages to towns, and the village authorities weren't allowed to issue such certificates. Misha was taken to court for issuing these two certificates and sentenced to imprisonment in jail in Dnepropetrovsk. He worked at the Petrovskiy plant. I visited him once in 1934. I spent three days with him and that was the last time that I saw him. Later he went to work in Ulan-Ude, Kazakhstan, as my brother Yasha told me. Yasha also found out that Misha perished in 1943. I have no idea whether he had a family or not.

My younger brother, Yasha, finished a secondary school in Nova-Ushytsya in 1930 and entered the Pedagogical College in Kamenets-Podolsk. Later he worked as a teacher in a village school in Varyninskiy district in the former Kamenets-Podolsk Region. He married a Jewish woman. Her name was Fira. He rarely visited us. In 1933 he joined the Red Army and served in the Pacific Navy. He was even awarded the Red Flag order. Yasha remained in Liepaya, in Latvia, where he had served in the Navy. He was a history teacher at the Pedagogical Institute. In 1963 he lived through a terrible tragedy. He had two daughters, Larissa and Mirrah. They both studied in Riga. On New Year's Eve they were victims of a plane crash, which occurred when the plane was landing. My nieces died along with many other people. Yasha moved to Israel in 1990. He lived there for four years. He died of a heart disease in 1994. I received a letter, which said that he had been buried in accordance with all Jewish traditions. His son, Misha, who is a colonel and engineer, lives in Israel.

I rented an apartment in Nova-Ushytsya in 1928. My landlord, a Jew, owned a hardware store. His family wasn't religious. They didn't go to the synagogue or pray, but they spoke Yiddish. I don't remember his name, but he was a nice man. However, once they caught me stealing their food. My bed was beside the table, where they had meals. I ate the food that I got from home. That was during the early 1930s, the famine in Ukraine 9.2. So, every evening my landlords had potatoes, either mashed potatoes or just boiled potatoes, with butter, a glass of sour milk and two eggs for supper. I had very little food. I was 12 years old, and I was always hungry. There was a basket with my landlord's potatoes beside my bed. So I decided to take two or three potatoes every day and hide them in my pockets. I told my landlord that I got them from my relatives. The landlady boiled these potatoes for me, and I had them for supper. But then she found out the truth. She began to scream, 'You, liar! You steal my potatoes and tell us that you got them from somebody else!?' She took away my plate. I got very cross with her and swore at her in Ukrainian.

The editor of a district newspaper lived in the same house. We were on good terms with him. He took me to his room, and I told him my story. He put a jar of honey and bagels on the table and invited me to join him for tea and tell him more about myself. When I finished he said, 'So, you are learning to be a thief? How can you? Okay, I'll speak to the landlady'. And so he did. My landlords changed their attitude towards me. They were afraid of the editor. He was a member of the Communist Party and embodied power to them. .

Nova-Ushytsya was a small Jewish district town. Jews had lived there from ancient times. There were no separate Jewish organizations, but there was the town council, in which Jews held leading positions. There were many Jewish families in this town. There were Jewish schools and a Ukrainian one, and a Jewish technical school preparing wood and metal turners. There was a synagogue in the town center. I went there sometimes, although I was a Komsomol 10 member. Komsomol members weren't allowed to go to religious institutions. There were visiting cantors, who sang at the synagogue at that time. They had beautiful voices. It was very ceremonious. I have very beautiful memories of this time. I really recall it with tears in my eyes.

I began to study at the Jewish school in the early 1930s, and we studied all subjects in Yiddish. The pupils were Jewish. My school friends were the butcher's son, Izia Roitman, Yasha and Dora. We spent a lot of time together. We went swimming in summer, or we went to a dance or to the cinema. Later Yasha left to study in Odessa, and Dora moved to Moscow. I met Yasha after the war. He was a deputy director in a technical school in Odessa. Dora visited me here in 1962. I didn't recognize her. When she knocked on the door, I opened it and called my wife telling her that she had a visitor. And then Dora said, 'No, Grisha, I've come to see you.' She was an aircraft mechanic and lived in Moscow. She was married and had two children.

I studied very well and finished school in 1932. I had the highest marks in all subjects except for physics, where I had a '4'. However, I couldn't afford to study in the nearest town with a higher educational institution, Kamenets-Podolsk, because we were very poor. My mother began to color clothes to earn some money. She knew all the processes and knew how to mix the colors. She was paid miserable money for her work.

I remember the famine in Ukraine in 1933. I saw people in our village who ate grass. In the spring we picked green apples, pears and cherries. We boiled and ate them. We survived thanks to the villagers that year. All people were starving. We literally ate sawdust: we made bread from 2-3 handfuls of flour and added the same quantity of sawdust. We had all kinds of stomach problems after eating this 'food'.

There was nobody to support me, so I had to work. There weren't many educated employees at that time, and I was offered a job as a controller in the bank department. The director of this bank department was a Jew. His last name was Shwarzman. He had a girl friend in another district. He often went to see her and borrowed money from the bank. I was young and immature. He often gave me some papers and told me to sign them, which I did. Once he took a huge amount of money from the bank and left. He didn't show up the following day, and neither the next day. I called the bank management in the district town, and they came to audit our department. They found the documents that I had signed, and they stated that I had taken the money. It was a total of 383 rubles, which was a huge amount for that time. I was summoned to the village council and arrested.

Nobody ever saw Shwarzman again. They probably never looked for him. I was thrown into a prison cell. There were two or three other prisoners. There was a stinking barrel that served as a toilet, and I was told to sit beside it because it was the place for newcomers. On my second day in prison a young investigation officer called me to his office. He told me that the investigation was over, and that I was to be sent to jail in Kamenets-Podolsk for embezzlement of state property. I stayed in that jail for a month. Then there was a court sitting. I was given the floor. I began to talk, but I never got a chance to finish. I was sentenced to three years of imprisonment and was sent to Zaporozhe-Kamenskoye. This happened at the end of 1933. There was a huge jail there. The state needed a workforce for its huge construction sites. All big socialist construction facilities were built by prisoners. We worked at the construction site of the metallurgical plant named after Dzerzhynskiy, and the chemical recovery plant. There were thousands of prisoners, both men and women. Most of them were in prison for hiding bread from the state and for picking up spikelets in the field. [Editor's note: In the 1930s the farmers were required to give all their crops to the state. They were not allowed to leave anything for themselves. People were starving in villages. Those who tried to hide some food were sent to prison.] Those were innocent prisoners, but there were also criminals in this jail.

I worked unloading iron ore. It was all frozen on railcars, and we had to break it with crowbars, etc. It was very hard work. In the evening we had to divide our rationed food. There were about 100 people in one barrack. There were crews, and foremen cut the bread for the crew members, and divided sugar and anchovy or salted fish into portions. When it was all divided into individual rations the foreman told one of us to turn his back to the food. Then he pointed onto a portion with his finger and asked, 'Whose?'. The answer was, 'Ivanov's, etc'. That way everybody got his share in the most democratic and honest manner. It was a common procedure. It was an expression of camp brotherhood. People lived in unbearable conditions, but they always tried to help and support each other. If somebody ignored these rules he was subject to severe punishment.

During the unloading I hurt my legs. My calves were literally putrefying, and there was no medication to stop it. Because of this illness I was transferred to work as a clerk. I issued work orders for all crews. It wasn't an easy task either to sit down the whole day and issue orders to prisoners for every single work activity. My illness was progressing, and I was released before time. So, instead of three years imprisonment I only spent one and a half years in jail. There were representatives of different nationalities in the camps from different parts of the USSR. There were no national conflicts or anti-Semitism.

There were no jobs available in Nnova-Ushytsya, my parents, who still lived there, had told me so in their letters. I stayed to work as a clerk for coal loading-unloading operations in Dneprodzerzhinsk. There was no anti-Semitism then, but there were people, who openly demonstrated their dislike of Jews, teasing them on their funny pronunciation of words or infringing upon their interests. I never faced it in this form.

People participated in the first socialist constructions with great enthusiasm. There were socialist contests, and so on. We often went to work after the meetings carrying flags and singing songs. I didn't become a Komsomol member at school. I didn't want to become a Komsomol member, and at that time it was not a mandatory requirement. I became a member in 1937, when I worked as a clerk at the construction site. My brothers were far away, and I tried to support my parents by sending them food parcels. I earned well and could afford to send parcels and buy clothes for my mother and father. I was the youngest son in the family and had to be close to my family.

I returned from Dneprodzerzhinsk to Nova-Ushytsya in 1937. I began to look for a job, and it took me a while before I met the manager of the district department of the bank. He hired me. I was trained for about a month and a half before I became a bank employee. I worked at the bank until I went to serve in the army in 1939. While working at the bank I was elected chairman of the banking and finance trade union committee and attended meetings and conferences in Kamenets-Podolsk. I was even a delegate to the Ukrainian trade union conference.

I became a bank employee and began to take better care of my appearance. I was 22 and I met a girl, the manager of a pharmacy. Her name was Antonina, and she wasn't a Jew. In the middle of the 1930s the issue of Jewish men only marrying Jewish women wasn't so strict. Besides, my parents were in Zemikhovo, and I didn't quite take their opinions into consideration. They didn't need to know anything if I didn't want them to. I joined the army in 1939. Antonina and I promised one another to love each other and never part. One year passed, and I received a letter from her saying that she had got married. I couldn't believe it and lost my faith in women.

I went into the army when I was 23. I served in Tank Brigade #22, deployed in Grodno, Belarus. Our training school was training tank men for the war with Finland [the Soviet-Finnish War] 11. I studied there for about a month and a half. There was no typist in the brigade headquarters. I typed very well and became a typist. I served there, typing and drawing maps. I read a lot. There was a very rich collection of books, and I improved my Russian, but I forgot Yiddish, the language of my childhood.

In 1940 we 'provided assistance' to the Lithuanian people by liberating them from the oppression of world capitalism. [Editor's note: In 1942 the Baltic countries were occupied by the Soviet troops and forced to join the USSR.] I'm saying this with a bit of irony because nobody was waiting for us there. Our army entered the town of Kaunas. There were many Jewish families there, and I became friends with a Jewish family. They were very nice people. I visited them on weekends, and they treated me to Jewish food. We spoke Yiddish, although their pronunciation was a little different. Their intonations and accent were different, influenced by a different language environment. We played cards and enjoyed ourselves.

The war began on 22nd June 1941. At that time I was at the Air Force headquarters of the 11th Army. My commanding officer was on duty on 22nd June. At some point somebody called him, and he said, 'Well, son, it has begun'. This was the beginning of the war. Our headquarter stuff was hiding in the woods and towns. The only weapons we had were pistols. We also had a manual Degtiaryov machine-gun. I was a sergeant, a communications operator of the headquarters. I was a courier and had to deliver documents and orders on the bike. Once I fell into a ditch.

Another time, on 29th July 1941, during the shooting in the town of Staraya Russa, I was wounded. I had 16 splinters in my back. I couldn't speak and could hardly breath. My comrades put me on the sanitary vehicle to take me to hospital. There were ever so many wounded people, both military and civil casualties. I was covered with sheets in the hospital. The doctors only approached those who screamed with pain. I couldn't produce a sound, but I had to give them a sign that I was alive. I started moving my leg. A nurse with a flashlight noticed my movements and told the doctor that I was alive. I was taken to a ward on the stretcher. There was an officer of the Red Army, swearing and cursing in such strong language; I could hardly believe my ears. I had never heard such cursing before. He was begging for help, but nobody approached him.

In the morning I was taken to the railway station and put on the train. The carriage was full of wounded people; the wounds were stinking and it was hard to breathe. The nurse helped me to get to the door of the carriage where I could take a breath of fresh air through a chink. She put my head on her knees, and I felt her tears falling on my head. She couldn't do anything to help. Everybody was begging for water. The carriage was closed, and it was impossible to get off. We reached Valday where the evacuation hospital was located. The doctors removed some splinters from my back, and I was taken to the hospital in the rear in Gorky region. I was strong, and after I got better I was sent to a reserve regiment in Gorky. I was appointed commanding officer of a rifle platoon. In May 1942 I was to go to the front, but I was sent to Rybinsk instead to take some retraining.

I met a wonderful Russian girl there, my future wife. Her name was Sophia Orlova. She was born in Rybinsk in 1921. She was the director of the civil acts registration office. We met at the cinema. I went to watch The Pig- Tender Girl and The Shepherd, and then I saw her. I asked for her ticket and took it to the box-office to exchange it for a seat next to mine. We didn't talk during the movie. I took her home and promised to meet her again. That happened on 7th May. I met her a few times after that, and on 11th August we got married. We had a civil ceremony at the registration office where she worked. We didn't have a wedding party. It was wartime, and everyone felt far from celebrating. Sophia's mother welcomed me heartily and treated me very nicely. There was no antipathy towards Jews in the family, and my wife always came to protect Jews whenever there was a hint of anti-Semitism. My parents wouldn't have been happy about having a Russian daughter-in-law, but I realized that there was only a slight chance of them being still alive. We already heard about the mass extermination of Jews in Belarus in July 1941, and I suspected that the same had happened in Ukraine.

On the day after I got married I went to the division headquarters at the front. I talked with my commander about hiring Sophia as a typist. They sent a clerk to pick her up in Rybinsk and an interesting incident happened then. The clerk went to Rybinsk via Moscow. He was going downstairs to the metro and saw my older brother, Yasha, going upstairs. We were so much alike that the clerk ran after him and addressed him as, 'Comrade senior lieutenant!' My brother turned to him and said, 'I don't know you'. Only at that moment did the clerk understand that he was wrong and said, 'I'm a clerk and work for your brother'. My brother was en route from the Pacific to the North Sea Navy, so along with my wife the clerk brought me news about my brother. My wife was at the front with me. In 1943 she got pregnant and was sent to hospital. They prescribed her some pills that led to a miscarriage. Besides, she got sepsis. She had a surgery and it took her a whole month to recover. We continued our service. Our army crossed the border with Prussia, and I was ordered to go to Alma-Ata to study military discipline and become a professional military.

Ukraine had been liberated by that time. I sent a request about my family to Nova-Ushytsya. I received a handwritten note from the chief of police. It was a piece of wrapping paper. It said that my parents, my sister and her family had perished in Nova-Ushytsya. My mother was 63 and my father 67 when they were shot. The Germans had organized a ghetto in Nova-Ushytsya. They kept all Jews, young and old, healthy and sick from all surrounding villages there. After the war they showed us the place where they were shot. It was a scary sight. There were common graves in the forest. My brother Yasha and I went there in 1959 and then again in 1961. We should have gone there again to honor their memory.

At the end of 1944 I was sent to Alma-Ata to study at the Kharkov higher flying training school, which was in evacuation in Kazakhstan. Sophia worked as a typist at the Kazakhstan telegraph agency. Later we were transferred to Lipetsk. That was an officer flying school with a two-year training school. We heard the news about the victory on 9th May 1945 en route from Alma-Ata to Lipetsk.

After the war I stayed in the army, but I couldn't make a great career there. In 1948 open anti-Semitism began in the army. They didn't promote Jews, and their favorite subject of conversation was that Jews hadn't fought [during WWII] but were hiding in Tashkent instead. After the Doctors' Plot 12 they said that Jews had killed Stalin. I had been a member of the Communist Party since December 1941, and I felt distrust towards me, although no one said anything publicly. There was no anti- Semitism in our everyday life, but the state policy was anti-Semitic.

In 1947 my daughter Tatiana was born in Lipetsk and my son, Misha, named after my older brother, followed in 1948. I served in Sakhalin, in the Far North, from 1949-1957. It was a hard and hungry time, but we were happy. We were young and far away from the commandment and enjoyed it. We lived in a huge barrack, in one of 30 rooms on the ground floor, with one common toilet. There were people of all nationalities. There were Georgians, Latvians and Ukrainians. There were two or three Jewish families, but nobody paid any attention to nationality. We shared everything we had. We had meals together, helped each other, celebrated holidays together, sang songs, went to the cinema and dancing. Of course, there was nothing Jewish left in me, we were all Soviet people.

In 1958 I was transferred to Lvov in Western Ukraine. We went there, and I received a small apartment. I got to like this town. However, this was a place with anti-Semitic and anti-Russian demonstrations. Nonetheless we made friends with people of different nationalities; all honest and nice people. My children grew up in this town. My son became a geologist, and my daughter a teacher. My children didn't care about my Jewish nationality. They know that their father is a Jew, but it doesn't matter to them. They don't judge people by their nationality and don't identify themselves as Jews. They have children. My daughter moved to Yalta in 1983. So, my grandson, Sasha, born in 1970, lives there. He is a construction engineer.

I retired in 1960. I worked as a drawer at a design institute called Ukrgiproavia Project for about ten years. We developed new designs for aircrafts. My wife worked as a typist in various institutions. Our pension is too small. My wife and I are both very ill, and we stay at home most of the time. Our son's daughter, Katia, often visits us. She was born in 1987. She listens to my stories and is always very interested. Perhaps, she will continue the Jewish line of our family. We went to a Jewish organization recently to ask them about the possibility for her to go to Israel, at least as a tourist. Perhaps, she would like to study there and perhaps stay to live there. I hope she will take her chances. I'm too old to go, I can hardly walk as far as the market, but maybe my grandchildren will be lucky enough to see this beautiful country. We have discussions about the political situation in Israel. We are very interested in everything that happens in this country.

We've never discussed the subject of emigration in our family. My wife and I always sympathized with the people that left, but we never wanted to move there and neither did our children.

In my thoughts I return to my childhood and begin to feel like a Jew again. There are a few Jewish organizations in our town. We get together to listen to Jewish music, recall Yiddish, the language of our childhood, and recollect our Jewish traditions. We have discussions about the political situation in Israel. We are very interested in everything that happens in this country. My wife enjoys going there with me.

Glossary

Ota Gubic
Karlovy Vary
Česká republika
Rozhovor pořídila: Barbora Pokreis
Období vzniku rozhovoru: srpen 2005

Rodina
Dětství
Za války
Po válce
Glosář

Rodina

Na starých rodičov z otcovej [Bernard Gubitsch] strany si nespomínam, pretože otec sa dvakrát ženil a už mal svoje roky, keď som sa narodil. Nikdy sa o tom ani nerozprávalo. Poznám len ich mená. Starý otec sa volal Moric Gubitsch a stara mama Anna Gubitsch, rodená Steiner. Otcovu prvú manželku som taktiež vôbec nepoznal, a druhá žena bola naša mamička.

Z matkinej strany už poznám starých rodičov. Mamička sa narodila v Medzibrode. To je dedinka na Slovensku, medzi Banskou Bystricou a Breznom nad Hronom. Narodila sa v roku 1893 a volala sa Aranyka, Zlatica Friedová. Jej rodičia boli Aneta Friedová a Emil Fried. V Banskej Bystrici vlastnili obchod so zmiešaným tovarom na Dolnej ulici dvadsaťosem. Obchod síce nebol veľký, ale veľmi prosperujúci, tak z toho žili pomerne na slušnej úrovni.  Pomocníkov nemali, pretože to všetko obstarávala teta Jozefína [Jozefína Friedová]. Žila so starými rodičmi na Dolnej ulici. Až v neskoršom veku, keď sa blížil fašizmus sa vydala do Banskej Štiavnice. Vojnu neprežila, rovnako ako ani jej manžel, Šafránek.

Friedovci neboli pobožní, boli neológovia, ostrí neológovia. Myslím si, že z väčšej časti asi držali kóšer. Nie som si úplne istý, ale svinina [bravčové mäso] sa asi nevarila, len hydina. Mali aj zvlášť riad na mäsité a mliečne pokrmy. Synagógou navštevovali len na veľké sviatky. Šábes a zapaľovanie sviečok? To určite nie, ale vedeli že šábes existuje. Hovorím, boli veľmi neologický, veď obchod mali otvorený aj v sobotu.

Starí rodičia bývali na Dolnej ulici dvadsaťosem. Ich byt bol rozdelený na dve časti – obytnú časť a obchod. Bola tam kuchyňa, z ktorej sa vchádzalo do jednej izbičky a vo dvore boli ešte dve izby. Jedna bola malá a druhá väčšia. Myslím si, že so starou mamou nežili veľmi dobre, pretože starý otec mal zvláštnu povahu. Bol v Amerike, ale  vrátil sa pretože sa mu tam nedarilo. No a potom sa oženil so starou mamou. Veľmi sme milovali babičku, aj ja [Otta Gubic, born Gubitsch] a aj brat [Ervín Gubic, born Gubitsch]. Starého otca z matkinej strany veľmi nie, pretože on bol trošku čudák. Nebol ani v rodine veľmi oblúbený, a nemal dobrú povesť ako starý otec. Viem že v tom ich obchode so zmiešaným tovarom mali obchodnú miestnosť, ktorá viedla do ulice. Medzi obchodnou miestnosťou a kuchyňou mali takú tmavú miestnosť, kde sa nalieval tvrdý alkohol a teta [Jozefína Friedová] sa veľmi hnevala na starého otca pretože tam priateľom nalieval zadarmo.

S bratom sme chodili do Banskej Bystrice pravidelne. Hlavne cez školské prázdniny a niekedy aj v zimných mesiacoch. V tom čase ešte neexistovalo priame spojenie Prievidza, sBanská Bystrica. Šlo sa do Hronského svätého Kríža, alebo do Kláštora pod Znievom a odtiaľ do Banskej Bystrice. Podľa toho aké bolo počasie. Pamätám si, z tých mladých rokov, ako sme boli zababušený proti marazu a len oči nám bolo vydieť. Iné to bolo v letných mesiacoch, pretože to detstvo [v Banskej Bystrici] bolo veľmi pekné, hlavne vďaka strýkovi Móricovi [Móric Fried]. Strýko mal dve dievčatá Noriku [Nora], na meno druhej si už nespomeniem. S nimi sme trávil prázdniny. Starí rodičia údajne zahynuli počas vojny.

Friedovci mali sedem detí, mamička bola myslím najstaršia. Po mamičke bol Móric Fried. On bol údajne druhý najväčší a najvýznamnejší vlnár na Slovensku - Móric Fried z Banskej Bystrice. Strýko Móric bol v Banskej Bystrici veľmi známy a údajne mal aj Tisovu výnimku 1. Potrebovali ho ako odborníka na vlnu. Podarilo sa mu udržať až do januára 1945, pretože v od roku 1944 už Nemci okupovali Slovensko 2. Napokon žiaľ zahynul počas vojny. Jeho manželka sa volala Helena, Eržinéni, Drechslerová, tiež pochádzala z Banskej Bystrice. Bývali na námestí. Mala nás s bratom veľmi rada.

Teta Jozefína Šafránková vynikala tým, že piekla takzvaný friedovský chlieb. V tom čase, v  Banskej Bystrici, veľmi známy. Polovica mesta chodila tento chlieb kupovať. Jozefína, v rodine sa jej hovorilo po maďarsky Jóžanéni, sa zaľúbila do výroby chleba a vydala sa za pekára v Banskej Štiavnici. Nemali deti, pretože sa vydávala v dosť pokročilom veku, možno že aj to bola príčina. Teta s manželom neprežili vojnu. Jej pamiatku nepoškvrním, keď poviem, že sa zamilovala viac do chleba, ako do pána Šafránka. Takže to bol jej koníček. A naozaj ten friedovský chlieb bol v Banskej Bystrici veľmi známy. Nie, že by som asistoval, len ma zaujímalo ako sa ten chlieb pečie. Tak som tam chodieval s ňou. Pamätám si, že v pekárni bol taký veľký kotol, muselo tam byť najmenej pädesiat možno až sto kíl cesta.

Strýko Emerich Fried zostal sám, ako starý mládenec. Hral výborne na husle a bol dušou kultúrneho života židovskej obce v Banskej Bystrici. Neprežil vojnu  Teta Elza Friedová sa tiež nevydala. Od malička sa zaoberala ručnými prácami a to viedlo k tomu, že si v Šahách otvorila obchod s ručnými prácami. Neviem čo sa sňou stalo počas vojny. Šahy obsadili Maďari 3, a neskôr ju zrjme deportovali.
Najmladší Jenő, [Eugen Fried] bola významná postava, pretože sa dostal ako zástupca Kominterny 4 do Francúzska. Už ako maturant v Banskej Bystrici v sedemnástich rokoch exceloval v tých politických otázkach. Bol neobyčajne vzdelaný človek, odmalička sedel na knihách. Bol veľmi talentovaný. Údajne ho zabili v Bruseli, 3. augusta 1943. On bol vo Francúzsku a keď prišli hitlerovci do Paríža, tak utiekol do Bruselu a tam ho asi tiež čapli.

Blanka Friedová bola tiež veľkou komunistkou, pretože jej brat Jenő bol odmalička veľký komunista a ona sa v ňom videla. Napokon pôsobila ako profesionálna komunistická funkcionárka v Prahe 5. Dodnes mi je ale záhadou, ako  prežila vojnu v Prahe. Nikdy o tom nerozprávala, ale myslím si že ju tie komunistické kruhy schovávali. Po vojne som ju vyhľadal a bola veľmi prekvapená. To bolo veľmi, veľmi záhadné stretnutie. Jej adresu som zistil od členov komunistickej strany. Išiel som na adresu, ktorú som dostal. Otvoril som bránu, viedla tam dlhá chodba. Zrazu šla postava o proti mne, tak som ju nechal trošku prejsť. Blanku som videl len pár krát na návšteve u starých rodičov, ale spoznal som ju. Nechal som ju prejsť, a už keď brala zatáčku zakričal som: „Blanka.“ Otočila sa: „Pre pána Boha, kto ste?“ Hovorím: „Tak sa dobre pozri!“ Neviem. Hovorím: „Otto“. „Ježiš-Mária, kde si sa tu zobral?! Ako si získal moju adresu!? Nikto ju nevie!“ Ešte v roku 1945 bola opatrná. Zomrela asi šesťdesiatpäťročná, zrejme na leukémiu, v Prahe. Normálne sa nikdy nevydala, ale tie posledné roky žila s istým pánom Šťastným. On bol jeden z funkcionárov komunistickej strany, zrejme preto si tak dobre rozumeli. Nemala žiadne deti. 

Dětství

V čase môjho detstva mohla mať Prievidza, moje rodné mesto, asi päťtisíc obyvateľov [v roku 1940 mala Prievidza 4578 obyvateľov, zdroj Lexikón obcí Slovenskej republiky, Štátny štatistický úrad, Bratislava 1942 – pozn. red.], z toho mohlo byť asi štyristo Židov, asi šesťdesiat rodín. V Prievidzi neexistovala židovská štvrť. Najviac Židov žilo na námestí a v jeho okolí. Napríklad Müllerovci, tam mali obchod so strižným tovarom [metrový textil], Freibergovci reštauráciu. Na rohi námestia mali obchod so zmiešaným tovarom, Gemainervci. Freiberg vlastnil hotel Slávia. Slávia bol hotel aj reštaurácia, kam chodili Židia v nedeľu hrať karty. Chodieval tam aj môj otec, ale on nehral, len kibicoval. Kibicovanie bolo o ňom v Prievidzi veľmi známe, pretože mu matka nedovolila, aby hral karty. Na to kibicovanie ho predsa len do kaviarne púštala. To bolo jeho nedeľné poobedňajšie zamestnanie. Židia v Prievidzi sa väčšinou živili obchodovaním.

Medzi najznámejšie rodiny patrili majitelia Carpathie [Carpathia: založená v roku 1875 rodinou Heuman. Podnik sa orientoval hlavne na spracovanie ovocia a marmelád. V rokoch 2. svetovej vojny bol vyhlásený za nenahraditeľné. Zameral sa na výrobu potravín pre armádu. Od roku 1994 prešiel pod značku MAGGI a od roku 2001 Nestlé Slovensko s.r.o – pozn. red.]. Carpathia existuje dodnes, ale obecne sa už nevie, že to bol kedysi židovský podnik. Majitelia bývali na tzv. Drevenom Ringu, v poschodovom dome. Boli to dvaja bratia, hovorilo sa im dolný Heumanovci a horný Heumanovci. Oni spravovali ten podnik. Z väčšej časti ho spravoval dolný Heuman, ako ten horný. Dolný mal dvoch synov. Fero [František] Heumann bol veľký dobrodruh. Dokonca bojoval v Španielskej občianskej vojne 6. Po vojne sa údajne vysťahoval do Kanady a začal hospodáriť. Vraj si ho našla nešťastná smrť, zavalil ho traktor. Či je to pravda neviem, ale hovorilo sa o tom v Prievidzi. Mladší, Richard, chodil s mojim bratom do gymnázia. Spolu maturovali v 1938-om roku. Dolný Heumanovci sa po vojne vysťahovali do Chile, ale už všetci pomreli. Oni prežili vojnu práve tým, že boli veľmi známy a skrývali sa v jednom bunkri na Kaniankoch [okres Prievidza], to je dedina v blízkosti Prievidze v povodí Maguri. Dostávali podporu od ľudí, ktorí boli ich zamestnanci, pretože oni boli veľmi slušní. V Carpathii bol len jeden štrajk, ktorý organizoval starší syn od horných Heumanovcov. On bol veľký komunista a zorganizoval štrajk proti vlastným rodičom.

K zámožnejším rodinám patrili aj Wernerovci. S ich synom Paľkom [Pavol] som sa kamarátili. Paľko sa vyznamenal tým, že nám nosil pravé kožené lopty – futbalové aj volejbalové, čo bol vtedy zázrak. Wernerovci mali dve deti, ako som už spomínal Paľka a dievča sa volalo Eva. Paľko bol môj ročník, 1922. Po vojne som sa s nimi nestretol, neviem či boli deportovaní, alebo čo sa s nimi stalo. Ďalej tu bola rodina veľkoobchodníka Bienenstocka. Samuel Kelerman vlastnil obchod s textilom. On bol neskorší predseda Židovskej náboženskej obce v Prievidzi. Mal dve deti. Edita bola veľmi pekná, mala atletickú postavu. Jej prípad bol veľmi odsudzujúci, pretože mala priateľa Jarda Machalu, syna veliteľa okresnej žandárskej stanice. On bol katolík a to bol v tom čase veľký, veľký hriech. No ale napriek tomu chodili spolu celé roky až potom v rámci akcie „Češi peši do Prahy“ 7 v 1938-om, musel Machala odísť. Nakoniec sa vydala za obchodníka so strižným tovarom. So synom Kelermanovcov, s Lackom [Ladislav], som bol najlepší kamarát. Lacko bol tiež športovo založený chlapec a zhodou okolností sa tiež vyučil v konkurenčnej kníhtlači, takže sme boli aj kolegovia, nielen kamaráti. No, ale neprežil vojnu.

K dôležitým postavám mesta patrili aj dvaja židovskýá fotografi – Adolf Kramer a Dezider Braun. Braun bol veľmi dobrým priateľom môjho staršieho brata. Kramer bol známy tým, že mal Lajku. Lajka už mala film, tak Kramer mohol denne všetko fotografovať. Prievidza mu môže poďakovať, že predvojnový život v meste sa zachoval na jeho fotografiách. Kramer bol masový fotograf, on fotografoval každodenný život. Braun sa držal len svojho remesla, chodili k nemu ľudia a on chodil na svadby a narodeniny.

V meste existovali dve náboženské obce. Väčšia bola neologiká 8 a tá menšia ortodoxná 9. Môj otec zohral úlohu v tom, aby sa tá ortodoxná obec zrušila. Napokon sa mu to nepodarilo. On bol stále taký rebel. Veľmi sa angažoval proti ortodoxom. Nemal ich rád, neviem, čo tam bolo. Orotdoxná obec nemala viac ako tridsať duší. Neologická obec bola omnoho väčšia a silnejšia. Dokonca môj otec tam istý čas pôsobil aj ako funkcionár. Mali sme jednu synagógu, kantorom bol Hellmann. Mal veľmi pekný tenor. Pri synagóge bol postavený barák a tam žil kantor a správca Frieder, ktorý mal na starosti náboženské veci. Dá sa povedať, že bol zároveň aj sekretárom náboženskej obce. On mal syna, ktorý sa stal rabínom a nekôr sa veľmi preslávil. Volala sa Armin Frieder 10. Počas vojny pracoval na tom, aby prestali deportácie 11. Mal napríklad veľmi dobré styky s ministrom školstva Jozefom Sivákom [Sivák Jozef (1886-1959): pedagóg, autor učebníc, politik minister školstva Slovenského štátu. Tejto funkcie sa vzdal r.1944 (nesúhlasil s pozvaním nemec.vojska) – pozn. red.], pretože Sivák bol tiež Prievidzčan.

Mám taký dojem, že u Bienenstockovcov bolo mikve, ale tam chodievali len ortodoxní. Myslím, že sme mali len jedného šachtera [rituálny mäsiar – pozn. red.]. Bol ním práve ten spomínaný Frieder. Pri kostle [synagóge] bol postavený dom, tam býval on aj rabín a tam sa aj podrezávalo. Bola tam miestnosť k tomu určená, takže ľudia nosili k nemu hydinu. Z našej rodiny som ju väčšinou nosil zarezávať ja. Samotný akt zarezávania bol veľmi, veľmi jednoduchý, ale zaujímavý. Chodil som tam dosť často, pretože z detského hľadiska to bola atrakcia. Miestnosť mala betónový podklad a v podlahe bol jarok, aby krv mohla odtekať.

Prvé autov meste si pamätám. Hovorili sme mu cililing. Bol to myslím Fiat, taký otvorený. Vlastnil ho pán Iring, hodinár. Hodinárstvo mal naproti nášmu domu v Piaristickej ulici. Presný rok vám nepoviem, ale mohlo to byť okol roku 1930 a možno aj skoršie. Spomínam si, že to bola veľká senzácia. Pán Iring bola veľmi zaujímavá postava. Mal zmysel pre novoty a bol určite aj jeden z prvých, ktorý mal fotoaparát mimo profesionálneho fotografa Kramera a Brauna. Prvé fotoaparáty sa mohli objaviť ešte pred rokom 1930. Zo zvedavosti a zo známosti nám dovolil pán Iring, aby sme si sadali do jeho auta a potom, už sme sa vozili u Heumanovcov. Oni mali tiež autá, ako majiteľia Carpathie, ale zrejme to boli podnikové autá, ale mali ich aj ako súkromné.

V Prievidzi sa najviac udržovala takzvaná bojnická cesta. Bojnice sú kúpele a tam viedla cesta medzi topoľami. Bola to asi tri kilometre rovná cesta od prievdzkej stanice, preto sa tomu hovorilo bojnická cesta. Ona bola udržiavaná, vykladaná bola tými mačacími kameňmi. Aj na námestí boli a potom už si pamätám, že sa postupne robili chodníčky. Piaristická ulica bola pomerne dosť skoro skultiovaná a námestie tiež, pretože na námestí sa každý deň konali trhy a každý mesiac jarmok. Na malých trhoch sa väčšinou predávala zelenina a ovocie, ale aj drobná hydina ako kačice a husy. Z rodiny tam chodievala len mamička a my deti sme ju doprevádzali. Častejšie ja, pretože brat bol knihomoľ. Stále sedel nad knihami. Mamička chodila nakupovať k pánovi Wertheimerovi [Ignác Wertheimer vlastnil obchod so zmiešaným tovarom a predaj liehovinových nápojov – pozn. red.]. Predajňu mal naproti Piaristickej ulici v takzvanom Carpathiackom dome.

Jarmoky sa konali každý mesiac na námestí. Predávalo sa tam všetko možné - oblečenie, pijatika, zelenina, ovocie. Bol tam aj jeden trhovník, ktorý sa len tým živil, že predával textil po trhoch, pretože nemal postavenú obchodnú miestnosť. Dobytok sa tam nepredával. Na to bol postavený bytúnok u Handlovky. Handlovka je riečka, ktorá sa vlievala na bojnickej ceste do rieky Nitra, ktorá tiekla od Klaku smerom na juh cez Prievidzu, Nováky a potom sa vlievala až do Dunaja. 

Všetky politické a spoločenské udalosti sa v Prievidzi odohrávali na námestí. Dokonca si spomínam na jednu komunistickú schôdzu, ktorú rozháňali žandári. Určite sa konali aj častejšie, ale len tú jednu si spomínam. Mohlo to byť okolo roku 1930, pretože som chodil ešte do obecnej školy.

Moji rodičia sa volali Bernard Gubitsch a Zlatica Gubitschová, rodená Friedová. Otecko pochádzal z Urmína [Urmín, od roku 1948 premenovaný na Mojmírovce, okres Nitra – pozn. red.]. Cez túto obec preteká rieka Nitra. Tam žili aj jeho rodičia. Viem, že otec tam mal nejaký dom, skôr to bola barabizňa, pretože stále chodili žiadosti z Urmína aby ho dali do poriadku. No ale u nás nikdy neboli také prostriedky, ktoré by mohli ten dom opraviť. Napokon neviem ako to dopadlo. Otecko sa vyučil za kníhtlačiara v Budapešti. Bol dvakrát ženatý. Jeho prvú manželku som vôbec nepoznal. Myslím, že otecko ovdovel a potom sa oženil s mojou mamičkou. Z prvého manželsta asi nemal deti, a keď aj mal, tak som ich nepoznal. Otecko bol výborný človek. Rozumel nám veľmi dobre, nebránil sa detským hrám, naopak mňa veľmi podporoval v mojej záľube v športe. Brata, Ervína obzvlášť podporovať nemuseli, pretože on večne sedel doma nad knihami, to nebola žiadna zvláštnosť. Otec mu dokonca založil aj malú knihovňu v obchode, no a navštevoval aj mestskú knižnicu. Po vojne mi knihovníčka povedala, že takého čitateľa v Prievidzi, akým bol môj brat, nebolo. Ja som čítal tiež, ale nie toľko ako Ervín.

Mamička pochádzala z Banskej Bystrice, z Friedovej rodiny. Matka ukončila dvojročnú obchodnú školu v Banskej Bystrici a pracovala v továrni na liehoviny, zrejme ako úradníčka. Ako sa zoznámili s otcom, to neviem.  Viem, že medzi nimi bol veľký vekový rozdiel. Kedže mamička nebola nikde inde len v Medzibrode a v Banskej Bystrici, asi sa zoznámili prostredníctvom dohadzovača, čo v tej dobe nebolo nič neobvyklého. Aj napriek devätnásť ročnému vekovému rozdielu to bolo pekné manželstvo. Nepamätám sa, že by u nás boli bývali nejaké rozbroje, len naozaj na pekné detstvo. Bolo to zrejme dané tým, že otec nebol žiadny milionár. Žili sme skromne, z toho papiernictva, kníhkupectva a z kníhtlačiarne. Otec zamestnával jedného učňa Emila [Emil Steiner], a aj to bol syn od jeho sestri [Zofia Steinerova]. Vyučil sa u otca, zostal ako tovariš a nakoniec sa vysťahoval do Palestíny.

Mamička bola veľmi príjemná, veľmi vzdelaná, verná, manželka. Starala sa o nás vzorne. Nemala iný záujem než rodinu. Pomáhala otcovi v obchode ako predavačka a vyjednávala s dodávateľmi. Prišiel obchodný zástupca, pamätám sa na pána Klapáča z Prahy, priniesol dve veľké bedne a tam boli vzorky. Mamička vyberala a objednávala tovar. Vykonávala všetkú administratívu v obchode.

Našu finančnú situáciu by som charakterizoval, česky povedané: „Z ruky, do huby“. Žiadny veľký majetok sme nemali. Naopak, náš podnik držala nad vodou Gazdovská banka a jej riaditeľ Štefan Vunder, ktorý bol otcovým priateľom. Neviem či sa poznali z prvej svetovej vojny ale viem, že tá Gazdovská banka držala ruku nad podnikom, pretože po vojne sme museli zaplatiť šesdesiattisíc korunovú [v novembri 1945 bola stanovená relácia koruny k zlatu na l Kčs = 0,0177734 g zlata – pozn. red.] dlžobu, ktorú tam otec narobil. Štrnásť dní, čo bola matka doma prišiel dopis z Gazdovskej banky: „Vážená pani Gubitschová, dozvedeli sme sa, že ste prežili vojnu a Váš pán manžel zanechal dlžobu šesdesiattisíc korún. Žiadame Vás, aby ste do štrnástich dní prišli a ako zákonná dedička, vyrovnali dlžobu.“ Našťastie po roku 1939, kníhtlačiareň Patria [Patria: v roku 1899 otvoril Gubitsch prvú tlačiareň v Prievidzi. V roku 1917 pribudla v meste tlačiareň majiteľa Kohna. V roku 1939, spojením oboch, vznikla tlačiareň Patria. Tlačiareň pôsobí aj v súčasnosti a má približne 140 zamestnancov – pozn. red.], spolkla firmu Bernarda Gubitscha a dlžoby prešli na ňu. Arizátori [Arizácia: prechod židovských obchodov, firiem, podnikov, atď., do vlastníctva inej osoby (arizátora) – pozn. red.] ju presťahovali, mali veľké oči a mysleli si že zbohatnú, ale nezbohatli. Presťahovali všetko, dva stroje na tlačenie formátu A4 a jeden rýchlolis na plagátovacie potreby.

Rodičia sa medzi sebou väčšinou rozprávali slovensky, ale padla aj maďarčina a nemčina, pretože Prievidza bola obklúčená nemeckými dedinami. Nemecké Pravno [nem. Deutsch Pravno, od roku 1946 premenovaná na Nitrianske Pravno], Tužina [nem. Tuschina], Gajdel [nem. Gajdell], to boli samé nemecké obce. Oteckovým materinským jazykom bola maďarčina, ale nikdy nás ju neučil. Ako otecko rozprával, tak som sa naučil i ja. Doposiaľ sa ešte dohovorím maďarsky. Matka s otcom sa obliekali skromne, veľmi skromne. Otec mal sviatočný oblek a normálny oblek. Aj my deti sme mali jeden bežný oblek, v ktorom sme chodili - nohavice, krátke nohavice a kabáty s takými veľkými gombíkmi a sviatočné oblečenie tmavej farby. Žiadne módne výstrednosti sa u nás nepestovali.

Elektrina a vodovod boli v Prievidzi zavedené asi okolo  roku 1927. My sme mali trojizbový byt. Miestnosti boli za sebou v jednom rade a pokračovalo to tlačiarenskou miestnosťou, špajzou, drevárňou a za tým bola už záhrada majiteľa domu Chikana, písalo sa to s „CH“, ale čítalo sa to Čikan. On mal dvoch synov. Z jedným z nich, s Mikulášom som sa kamarátil. Aj naši rodičia mali dobré vzťahy celé tie dlhé roky, čo sme tam bývali.

Ako som už spomínal, bývali sme v podnájme v Chikanskom dome. Prvé poschodie obývali majitelia, Chikanovci. V prízemí bola obchodná miestnosť a jeden trojizbový byt. Spáľňa rodičov viedla do ulice. Bola tam aj jedna veľmi tmavá miestnosť, tá viedla oknom do brány,  a takzvaná jedáleň, kde sme sa zdržiavali. Dnes sa tomu hovorí obývacia miestnosť.  Samozrejme, k bytu patrila aj kuchyňa so špajzou. Okná boli situované do Piarickej ulice a do dvora. My deti sme dosť dlho spávali s rodičmi, až potom, keď bola v obývačke diváň, tak tam spal brat a ja som spal v tej prostrednej izbe.

K domu patrila aj záhrada, ktorú obhospodárovali majitelia, Chikanovci. Mamička mala len také drevené krabice  a tam si pestovala kvety. Mali sme aj pomocnicu v domácnosti ale len do veľkej hospodárskej krízi v tridsitich rokoch. Spomínam si, že v kuchyni sme mali štvorcový stôl, ktorý sa cez deň používal ako jedálenský stôl a v noci tam spala naša slúžka. Na jej meno si už nespomínam. Variť nevarila, len upratovala a dávala na nás pozor.

Rodičia veľmi nevyhladávali spoločnosť. Len otec chodil v nedeľu popoludní, čo matka nerada videla, do kaviarne kibicovať, pretože ako som už spomínal  matka mu nedovolila hrať karty. Matka mala dobrú priateľku, manželku prievidzkého fotografa. Ona skončila veľmi nepekne, samovraždou. Príčiny nepoznám, ale bolo to v čase keď prišiel fašizmus. Myslím, že to bola skôr nervová záležitosť, nie politická.

Otec mal brata. Žil údajne v Amerike. Neviem o ňom nič bližšie, len na to si spomínam, že k Roš hašana [židovský Nový rok – pozn. red.], každý rok prišiel z Ameriky pozdrav. Inak spolu žiadny iný styk nemali, ani žiadne peniaze neprichádzali. Nič, len ten jeden pozdrav. Až niekedy po roku 1989 12 nás prišiel navštíviť jeho vnuk, Dany Gubitsch a hľadal náš rodokmeň a aj jeho mamičky, ktorá pochádzala z východného Slovenska. Poznal som aj akurát otcovu sestru Žofiu Steinerovú.  Žofia mala len jedného syna Emila, ktorý sa u nás vyučil a vysťahoval sa do Palestíny.

Narodil som sa 1. júna 1922 v Prievidzi. Pamätám si veľmi dobre na svoje detstvo, hlavne na čas strávený vo dvore fotoateliéra Adolfa Kramera. Uňho sa v tom čase učil fotograf Braun, ktorý ma mal veľmi rád a všade ma brával so sebou. Braun bol veľký rybár a chodili sme spolu chytať ryby, ale nikdy nemal lístok, takže keď sme uvideli žandárov tak sme utekali. Pri Prievidzi smerom na Bojnice tečie Nitra, tak tam sme chodili.

Navštevoval som židovskú ľudovú školu v Prievidzi na Drevenom Rynku. Prvá a druhá trieda bola spojená, vyučovalo sa v jednej miestnosti. V židovskej škole som absolvoval päť tried. Vyučovalo sa väčšinou doobeda, ale niektoré predmety sme mali aj poobede. Určite viem, že náboženstvo bolo dopoludnia. V sobotu a v nedeľu sa výuka nekonala. V sobotu sa chodilo do synagógy. Nebol som nejaký mimoriadny žiak, aj keď som mal jednotky, ale doma som sa veľa neučil ako môj brat, ktorý sedel nad knihami a nad učebnicami a poznal ich naspamäť. Ja som sa venoval radšej športu. Mojim obľúbeným predmetom bol tiež šport [telesná výchova].
Riaditeľom školy bol bol Ungar, on bol taký ľudový človek. Často nás vodil na výlety na tzv. „púšť“. Púšť bola asi dva a pol, tri kilometre smerom na Vtáčnik [Vtáčnik: pohorie oblasti Slovenské stredohorie. Na západe, severe a severovýchode ho ohraničuje Hornonitrianska kotlina, pohorie Žiar a Strážovské vrchy, na východe Kremnické vrchy a Žiarska kotlina, na juhu Tríbeč a Štiavnické vrchy – pozn. red.]. A tam pre nás u horára stále objednal kyslé mlieko, v tom boli také hrudky. To sa už dnes „nepestuje“. Horár mal vlastnú kravičku, teda aj vlastné mlieko a on nám ho pripravoval. Pamätám sa, platili sme päťdesiat halierov. Ja som si to kyslé mlieko tak obľúbil, že dodnes ma neprestalo baviť, ale žial, dnes sa už nevyrába. Bola to výborná pochúťka.
Chodil som do Makkabi 13 v Prievidzi a bol som aj veľmi dobrý volejbalista. Síce som malej postavy, ale ako nahrávač som bol vychýrený tým, že som vedel zalievať. Tak si ma vyberali smečiari ako nahrávača. Volejbal ma bavil aj na gymnáziu a držalo ma to až do neskoršieho veku. Ešte aj po vojne v Karlových Varoch som hral volejbal. To bol môj obľubený šport. Inak som športoval, korčuľoval som sa. Keď som bol starší, mal som aj bicyekl. Nie nejaký závodný, ale normálny štandardný bycikel.

Prievidzké Makkabi malo asi 20 – 25 členov. Zameriavalo sa tam hlavne na telovýchovu. Zvlášt sme tam chodili diečatá a zvlášť chlapci. Makkabi malo priestroy v židovskej základnej škole. Tam bola záhrada a aj volejbalový kurt, hrazda. Samostatnú telocvičňu sme nemali, prenajímali sa priestory prievidzkého gymnázia. Cvičenia sa konali dva – trikrát do týždňa vždy po večeroch. Nejaké väčšie športové úspechy asi družstvo nedoshovalo, len muži sa zúčastnili na makkabiáde v Žiline, niekedy v tridsiatich rokoch.

Gymnázium som absolval v Prievidzi. Riaditeľom bol pán Lenčo. Ja si spomínam len na profesora kreslenia, volal sa Vtáčnik, ktorý si ma v prvom štvrťroku zavolal a predviedol pred triedu a hovorí: „Pozrite sa tu Gubitsch, v živote z neho maliar nebude. Ale nikto z tých niekoľko sto žiakov, čo som doposiaľ učil, mi za prvý štvrťrok neodovzdal dvadsaťštyri výkresov! Maliar z neho nebude, ale je to velice obetavý a činorodý človek!“ K mojim obľúbencom v škole patril aj profesor Hromádko, učiteľ telocviku. Myslím, že to bolo vzájomné, pretože som spĺňal jeho prísne podmienky. On mal rôzne vnemotechnické pomôcky, napríklad pri upažovaní sme museli stáť rovno ako pravítko, ktoré aj používal. Vždy hovoril: „Snažte sa prostredníčkami rozbiť múry telocvične napravo a naľavo. Budete mať upaženie bez toho, aby ste sa dívali na ruky a budete ich mať upažené ako pravítko.“ Ja som to dodržiaval, tak ma považoval za vzor, preto som zvykol predcvičovať. Ako dieťa som bol šikovný na tie športy. Aktívne som hrával volejbal. Telocvikár Hromádko ma zaradil do družstva oktávy, aj keď ja som bol mladší. Tak toto sú také študentské spomienky. Gymnázium bolo pekné. Budova stojí dodnes. Krásna záhrada tam bola, a keď prišiel rok 1938, tak z toho urobil veľké cvičište pre brannú výchovu, pretože branná výchova sa zaviedla ako predmet do škôl. Čakalo sa, že Hitler napadne Československo a s nami sa rátalo ako s vojakmi 14.
Z gymnázia som absolvoval len štyri triedy a v roku 1936 som sa šiel učiť kníhtlačiarskemu remeslu. Bol som už vyučený úradník, preto mi ako bývalému gymnazistovi odpustili jeden rok učebnej doby. Učebná doba bola v tom čase štyri roky a gymnazistom sa rok odpúšťal. Úradne som bol vyučený 31. augusta 1939, no ale to už bol Slovenský štát 15 a na tovarišskú skúšku ma nepripustili.V roku 1942, kedy začali deportácie 11, presadili, neviem to presne ale mám taký pocit, že to bola komunistická intervencia, aby ma pripustili k tovarišským skúškam. Domov mi ale prišli dve pozvánky. Jedna na tovarišskú skúšku v Nitre a druhá do tábora Nováky 16. Otec mi telefonoval, pretože v 1942 som bol už na hachšare 17 v Budmericiach pri Trnave: „Tak čo budeš robiť?“  Povedal som: „Nerob si starosti otec, ja na tovarišskú skúšku pôjdem, pretože to je moja životná otázka, no a potom sa uvidí.“ 30. marca som teda absolvoval tovarišké skúšky. V nedeľu som prišiel do Nitry, prespal som u otcovej sestry [Žofia Steinerová] a v pondelok ráno som šiel do tlačiarne Štefana Husára v Nitre. Pamätám sa, že tovarišská skúška mala byť na dva dni, ale po praktickej časti v pondelok ma popoludní o štvrtej hodine prijal Husár a povedal mi: „No tak, od majstra tu mám správu, že ste praktickú skúšku zložil a mali by ste ešte robiť teoretickú časť v utorok, ale ja viem že ste vzdelaný chlapec“. Tak mi položil tri alebo štyri ľahké otázky, či viem kto bol Guttenberg a podobné veci okolo tlačiarne. Husár vedel aká je situácia, tak som nemusel prísť v utorok, a mohol som ísť už  v pondelok večer domov. Doma bolo veľké haló, pretože z Hašomer hacairu 18 sme sa mali ísť schovávať do Nízkych Tatier [Nízke Tatry: nachádzajú sa na Slovensku a je v nich vyhlásený národný park. Pohorie Nízke Tatry sa tiahne v dĺžke 80 km smerom zo západu na východ medzi údoliami riek Váh a Hron. Najvyššie vrchy sú Ďumbier (2043 m) a Chopok (2024 m) – pozn. red.], ale rodičia ma nechceli pustili do neznáma, že pekne pôjdem do nováckeho tábora.
V školských rokoch som mal veľmi dobrého priateľa Vladka [Vladimír] Kuhra. Vladko bol synom českého lesmajstra Kuhra. Mal ešte dve, alebo tri sestry. Dokonca aj s nimi som sa kamarátil. Vladko bol najlepší kamarát a potom ešte Lacko [Ladislav] Kelermen, syn predsedu Neologickej židovskej náboženskej obce v Prievidzi. Už aj v predbojnovom období sme pociťovali antisemitizmus, ešte dnes si pamätám na tie posmešky: „Žid smrad kolovrat, má na riti vinohrad! Vinohrad sa krúti, Žida hovno zrúti!“ Kresťanské deti to na nás pokrikovali na Drevenom Ringu. Tam sme hrávali fudbalové zápasy, Židia proti kresťanom. Raz sme vyhrali my raz oni, ale obyčajne to končilo tým, že na nás pokrikovali túto riekanku. Aj my sme pokrikovali: „Kresťan, katolík, vysral sa na kolík. Nejak vežu odrežú,...“ Neviem ako to už bolo ďalej.

Môj brat, Ervín Gubitsch, sa narodil v roku 1920 v Banskej Bystrici. Medzi nami bol dvojročný vekový rozdiel. Od malička sedel na knihách. Mali sme písací stôl so šuflíkmi, ktoré boli plné kníh. V neskoršíh rokoch potom aj v otcovom obchode bola menšia knižnica. Iné záujmy asi ani nemal. Mal jedného veľmi dobrého kamaráta Karolka [Karol] Handlera. Karol bol veľký komunista, neviem či nebol predseda konsomolu. Počas vojny bol ale veľmi nešikovný, pretože ho povolali na vojnu a vtedy sa z vojenčiny dalo za desať korún na deň vykúpiť. On spravil tú kardinálnu chybu, že sa vykúpil a prišiel do Prievidze. Samozrejme fašisti to zistili a prvým transportom ho odvliekli. Karolko bol veľmi nadaný novinár. Písal do A - Z, to bol bulvárny časopis. Viem že si chodil požičiavať knihy  a noviny k nám do obchodu. Tam čítal, pretože jeho otec bol sklenár. Mal síce sklenárstvo v Prievidzi na Piarickej ulici, ale bol veľmi nešikovný. Keď rezal sklo, tak viacej škody narobil ako osohu, kým sa mu podarilo zarámovať obraz. Takže neboli bohatý, patril k chudobnej časti prievidzkých remeselníkov.

Ervín navštevoval židovskú základnú školu v Prievidzi a Gymnázium v Banskej Bystrici, kde aj zmaturoval. Lenže v tom čase už bol viacmenej platný Numerus clausus [obmedzenie prijímať študentov na základe ekonomických alebo politických dôvodov – pozn. red.], takže už nemohol ísť študovať. Ervín tým veľmi trpel. Pamätám sa, že v roku 1938 po Mníchovskej schôdzke 19 sa hodil na diváň a začal revať: „Nič nebude! Nič nebude! Žiadne štúdia nebudú!“ Bol to pre neho taký nervový šok, z ktorého sa prakticky už nikdy nespamätal. I keď po vojne mohol študovať, aj som ho presviedčal, prišiel za mnou aj do Prahy. Mohol študovať, pretože som pomerne slušne zarábal a mal som aj byt, kde bolo možné dať aj druhú posteľ, ale nemal už silu. Po zvyšok života sa živil všeliakým, k jeho nadaniu a inteligencii, neadekvátnym spôsobom. Robil napríklad vrátnika v Bojnických kúpeľoch a prakticky aj vyhadzovača v reštauráciách. Oženil sa, jeho manželka bola tiež Židovka. Mala za sebou Osvienčim. Mal dve dievčatá, Katku [Katarína], vyštudovala právo. Myslím, že už je sudkyňou v Prievidzi a druhá dcéra, Marika [Mária] zostala robotníčkou. Myslím, že sa vyučila kuchárkou.

Rodičia boli neológovia, ale všetky sviatky sa dodržiavali. Na Roš hašana sa chodilo do synagógy a po sviatku sme mali slávnostnú veľkú večeru, ktorá pozostávala z predkrmu – nejaká miešanina chrenu. Ďalej sa podávala mäsová polievka s knedlíčkami a hlavné jedlo. Na stole samozrejme nesmela chýbať mrkva nakrájaná na kolieska, med a jabĺčka [na Roš hašana sa jedia tradičné jedlá, ktoré majú svoju symboliku. Napr. mrkva symbolizuje hojnosť, jablká namočené v mede, dobrý a sladký nadchádzajúci rok – pozn. red.]. Nedodržiavalo sa to úplne ortodoxne, ale len ten židovský zvyk. Rodičia držali pôst na Jom kipur [Deň zmierenia. Najslávnostnejšia udalosš v židovskom kalendáry – pozn. red.], ale ja som bol rebel tak som si dokonca kúpil bravčovú šunku a tajne sme ju jedli s kamarátom. Brat myslím, tiež držal pôst. Jemu to bolo jedno, on sedel doma len nad knihami a nemal chuť na jedlo.

Na Chanuku [Chanuka: sviatok svetiel, tiež pripomína povstanie Makabejcov a opätovné vysvätenie chrámu v Jeruzaleme – pozn. red.] sa zapaľovala menóra, ktorá sa dala do okna a myslím, že na druhý deň sa šlo do synagógy. Sviečky sme zapaľovali my s bratom a otec sa modlil. My sme sa veľmi nemodlili, i keď sme sa vedeli. Ešte aj dnes prečítam hebrejskú abecedu. V detstve sme sa hrali aj s trenderli [Denderli, trenderli: v jiddiš ’dreidl’. Štvorstranné otáčadlo. Počas sviatku chanuka sa s ním hrajú deti o peniaze, ktoré im darovali počas tohoto sviatku. Peniaze sa často nahrádzali inými komoditami, jako napríklad ovocím alebo cukrovinkami – pozn. red.] o oriešky a tak. Sukot [Sukot: Sviatok stanov. Po celý týždeň, kedy sviatok prebieha, panuje jedinečná sviatočná atmosféra, pričom najpodstatnejšie je prebývať v suke – pozn. red.] sme držali podľa predpisov. Na dvore sme mali každý rok postavený stánok. Vlastník domu nebol veľmi nábožensky založený, takže on nenamietal nič. Ani jeho manželka, ktorá pochádzala z veľmi kresťanskej prievidzkej rodiny nenamietala nič. Počas sviatku sme sa len v stánku stravovali.

Pesach [Pesach: pripomína odchod izraelcov z egyptského zajatia a vyznačuje sa mnohými predpismy a zvykmi. Hlavný je zákaz konzumácie všetkého kvaseného – pozn. red.] sa tiež dodržiaval. Bolo veľké upratovanie. Zvyčajne upratovala matka, ale aj ja som pomáhal. Vytiahli sme pesachový riad a bežný sme odložili a kúpili sa macesy. Večer sa konal séder [Séder: termín vyjadrujúci domácu bohoslužbu a predpísaný rituál pre prvú noc sviatku Pesach – poz. red.], podávala sa polievka s macesovými knedlíkmy. Na stole bola octová voda, vajíčka, všetko to čo tam má byť. Bola pripravená aj čaša s vínom. Zo zvyku som musel klásť aj otázky [Ma ništana: štyri otázky tradične prednesené najmladším účastníkom sederu – pozn. red.], ale to bola len formalita. Vedel som, že sa to patrí, tak som nechcel otcovi odporovať.

S bratom sme mali bar micvu [„syn prikázania“, židovský chlapec, ktorý dosiahol trinásť rokov. Obrad, pri ktorom je chlapec prehlásený bar micvou, od tejto chvíle musí plniť všetky prikázania predpísané Tórou – pozn. red.]. Niečo si z toho ešte aj pamätám. Najprv som v synagóge musel odriekať pasáž z Tóry, síce som ovládal hebrejščinu, ale som sa to nenaučil naspamäť, tak s pomocou predriekača som to nejako povedal. Popoludní bola hostina. Pri príležitosti mojej bar micva som dostal nový oblek, taký námornícky s veľkými gombíkmi. S bratom sme sa hrali na schovávačku. V blízkosti bol kurník a ja som tam vyliezol a skočil dole. Celé nohavice som si roztrhal. To bolo veľké haló, myslím že som dostal aj na zadok. Prvý a posledný raz, čo si pamätám že som dostal na zadok. „Čo si myslíš, že kradneme!“ hovoril otec. „Vieš koľko to stálo peňazí?“ Na tú dobu to bol drahý oblek. Inak som nebol nábožensky založený. Bol som členom Hašomer Hacairu, čo bola ateistická organizácia a ja som sa podľa toho riadil.

Hašomer Hacair som navštevoval od svojich desiatich rokov. Otec to toleroval, ale skôr by som povedal, že sa to snažil nebrať na vedomie. Stretávali sme sa raz za týždeň a potom na letnom tábore. Jeden bol dokonca aj v Prievidzi, lenže to bolo nešťastie, že sa tam nevarilo kóšer. Tábor bol asi tri kilometre za Prievidzou. Rodičia sa vybrali na prechádzku a prišli ma pozrieť. Keď uvideli, kde sme, tak to bol môj posledný tábor. Až v roku 1938 sa mi podarilo  dostať do Považskej Bystrice na tábor, a aj to som šiel so súhlasom starej matky. Najprv som pricestoval do Banskej Bystrice na prázdniny a prehovoril som babku, aby ma pustila. Napokon otec na to aj tak prišiel a po týždni ma zobral domov.

Na týždenné stretávky hašomeru som ale chodil pravidelne. Učili sme sa hebrejštinu a chodili sme na výlety. Počas vojnového obdobia som krátky čas bol aj v Hachšare, ktorú otvorili v Prievidzi v roku 1939. Vtedy už som bol síce vyučený, ale nemohol som ísť k záverečným skúškam. Ako tovariš som nedostal žiadnu prácu a naša tlačiareň bola už viac – menej arizovaná, tak som odišiel na Hachšaru. Najprv do Heumanovskej tehelne, tam sa pracovalo buď priamo v tehelni alebo u rôznych obchodníkov. Bolo nás tam jedenásť, z toho jedno dievča. Binaciová z Prešova, alebo zo Sabinova. Veľmi sa mi páčila. V Prievidzi sme sa veľmi neučili, skôr sme pracovali v priemyselných podnikoch ako Carpathii. Na Hachšare v Letanovciach, tak tam sme sa učili poľnohospodárstvu, pretože to bol statok. Odtiaľ sme chodili aj na Nový Majer u Budmeríc a tam sme tiež vykonávali poľnohospodárske práce a pracovali sme v maštaliach. To bol židovský statok, ktorý mal výnimku od prezidenta Tisa. Bolo nás tam desať chlapcov a jedno dievča. Rachel Hoffmanová, zhodou okolností z Prievidze. Veľmi usilovné dievča. Pochádzala z chudobnej rodiny, žial neprežila vojnu.

V Hachšare sa často konali rôzne prednášky o sionizme 20 a židovstve. Pamätám si obzvlášť na prednášku doktora Oskara Neumanna 21, pretože poznámky z jeho prednášky mám dodnes. Poznal som len jedného človeka, ktorý sa vysťahoval do Palestíny a to bol môj bratranec Emil Steiner. Odišiel v roku 1939 v prvej vlne vysťahovalestva, ktorú organizoval Hechaluc 22.

V Budmericiach sme pracovali na Sonnenfeldovskom majetku. To bol poľnohospodársky statok, ja som pracoval konkrétne v sviniarni. Veľmi ma to zaujímalo, hlavne šlachtiteľská stanica, pretože tam sa krížili nemecký Edelschwein s anglickými matkami. To boli také dlhé svine, ktoré sa posielali do Prahy na pražské šunky. Sonnenfeld bol veľmi odmeraný židovský statkár, veľký pán, ani raz sa neprišiel pozrieť na ubikáciu, kde sme bývali. Ubytovanie bolo veľmi skromné, jedna izba a kuchyňka. V kuchyňke spala Rachel Hoffmanová a nás desať chlapcov spalo na pričniach v tej malej izbe.

Za války

V roku 1942, ako som už spomínal mi otec zavolal, že som dostal pozvánku na tovarišské skúšky a to ma vlastne zachránilo pred transportom, pretože medzitým ako som telefonoval s otcom, prišla eskorta a všetkých z hachšary odviekla. Po skúškach som prišiel domov a bola z toho veľká tragédia. Ja som nechcel nastúpiť do Novák, ale obaja rodičia sa rozplakali, čo som to za syna, lebo keď nepôjdem ja, zoberú ich.. Neplatilo nič, i keď som im hovoril, že je to len otázka času kedy zoberú aj ich. Najprv berú mladých chlapcov a potom prídu na rad aj oni. Nepomohlo to. Nnakoniec som súhlasil a povedal: „Tak dobre pôjdem do tábora.“ Ešte si pamätám aj na dátum, 31. marca 1942.

Pracovný tábor Nováky bol zriadený v roku 1941 na území vojenských skladov. Boli to tri objekty, medzi ktorými bolo asi asi desať barakov. Najvyšší povolený stav v Novákoch bol asi tisíc - tisícdvesto ľudí, vraj to presadil generál Čatloš 23, minister vnútra Slovenského štátu. Z Novák sa uskutočnili aj prvé transporty do Poľska. Z jedného tákehoto transportu do Poľska, v ktorom som mal byť aj ja, ale prievidžania v židovskej rade tábora ma v poslednej chvíli vytiahli z transportu a preradili na tretí objekt, pretože tam boli sústredení tí, čo pracovali. Prvý objekt bol koncentračný [sústreďovali sa tam ľudia na ďalšie deportácie – pozn. red.], pod druhý spadali hospodárske budovy a kuchyňa. 

Mal som kamaráta Alfréda Löwyho a Lacka [Ladislav] Kelermana, ktorí boli bratranci. Mamička Lacka a otec Alfrédka boli brat a sestra. Otec Lacka bol predsedom náboženskej obce v Prievidzi, tak mal nejaké styky. Keď som prišiel do tábora tak ma „vykradli“ z transportu do Poľska a odviezli, do toho tretieho objektu, a pridelili ma k Nándorovi Löwymu, otcovi Alfréda Löwyho. Nándora Löwyho pracoval v Novákoch ako závozník. Mal k dispozícii koňa a voz a stral sa o zásobovanie tábora. Zásobáreň bývalej Československej armády bola v Zemianskych Kostoľanoch, ale často sme chodili aj do Prievidze. Samozrejme, že ma využívali, musel som nosiť ilegálne do tábora rôzne balíčky a potraviny od príbuzných.

Nándor Löwy bol dlhé roky prievidzkým hasičom, čo bola veľká zvláštnosť, pretože Židia neboli veľmi hasičmi. V celej Prievidzi boli len dvaja v hasičskej jednotke. Klampiar, Nándor Löwy jeho konkurencia tiež klampiar Spitzer. Löwy sa stal závozníkom, čo bolo veľmi dobré, pretože mal rôzne známosti. Patril k nim aj Štefan Wunder, ktorý vlastnil veľkoobchod s potravinovým tovarom a bol jedným zo zásbovateľov tábora.  Najmenej raz za týždeň sme boli v Prievidzi u Wundera a niekedy aj u Kardoša, druhého veľkoobchodníka, ale on sa nechcel veľmi angažovať, mal strach. Wunder bol veľmi kresťansky orientovaný, bol aj funkcionárom v katolíckej organizácii, Orol. Návšteva Wundera vyzerala asi takto: v predu bol obchod a vzadu boli obchodné miestnosti a sklad. My sme prichádzali zo zadu a viac menej pololegálne sme nakladali tovar. Väčšina vecí prechádzala účtovaním, ale vždy sme nakladali aj veci, ktoré sa na čierno pašovali. Pamätám sa, raz sa nám podarilo priniesť do tábora celú bedničku sardiniek. To bolo také obzvláštnenie jedálnička, inak stravovanie bolo veľmi skromné. Občas sme dostali aj nejaké to mäso aj to pololegálne sa privážali tie telatá. Považujem za jeden z tých zázrakov, ktoré sa stali, že sa nám to vždy prepieklo.

Ako závozník som zažil aj jednu veľmi, veľmi nepríjemnú udalosť. Löwyovci mali tri deti – Alfréda, Paľka [Pavol] a ešte jedno dievčatko. Paľko a Alfréd sa zachránil, ale to dievčatko odviekli do Poľska. Ich matka ma nemohla ani vidieť, pretože hneď začala revať „Ty si tuna a moje dieťa je preč!“ Nezniesla kamarátov svojej dcéry, s tým sa nedalo nič robiť. Tak som sa snažil nechodiť jej  na oči, čo bolo ťažké, pretože som jej manželovi robil závozníka.

V Novákoch sa sformovala ilegálna komunistická organizáciu. Dalo by sa povedať, že ju viedli bratia Hagarovci [František Hagar a Jozef Hagar – pozn. red.]. Tí utiekli a vytvorili na Vtáčniku poloilegálnu organizáciu, pretože ju prenasledovali len tak naoko, pred Nemcami. V skutočnosti to bola dosť veľká organizácia. Podporovali ju ľudia z okolitých obcí, nosili sa im aj potraviny. Aj ja som chodil z tábora ilegálne na Vtáčnik. Cez tábor tiekol potôčik hore až na Vtáčnik a okolo potôčika sme v noci chodili hore. Pod ostnatým drôtom sme urobili dieru a v noci sme vynášali potraviny. K táboru prišli spojky a im sme predávali balíky. Okolo tábora bola dosť veľa zelene, vysoké stromy a tam sme im to predávali. Samozrjeme niektorí väzni nám to vyčítali, ale my sme im to vysvetľovali, že mi v tábore ešte niečo máme, ale oni nemajú nič, takže je našou povinnosťou pomôcť im. Na Vtáčniku pôsobila aj Hornonitrianska partizánska brigáda bratia Hagarovci, František Mišeje. Ja som robil spojku medzi táborom a partizánmi. Pamätám sa ako keby to bolo dnes. V máji 1943 som šiel s tábora okolo riečky hore až na Vtáčnik, vyviedli ma až úplne hore. Bol krásny deň a ukázali mi tábor, bolo vidieť všetky tri objekty tábora. Strechy boli z térového papiera a slniečko ich krásne osvetľovalo. Bol to pohľad za všetky peniaze. V noci som prišiel do tábora a priniesol som správu, že druhú zimu neprežijeme v tábore, pretože v roku 1944 bude povstanie 2.

Vedenie tábora o našich nočných výletoch vedelo. V 1942-m sme chodili popod ostnatý drôt a po Stalingrade 24 v roku 1943 sme si už obstarali klúč od brány. Pretože po Stalingrade tieklo do topánok aj gardistom 25 a už neboli tak prísni a tvrdí. Zvlášť jeden gardista sa angažoval, nie verejne ale skryto, aj kľúče nám dal. „Ale musíte len v noci vychádzať, nie cez deň!“ V strojárskej dielni sme si vyrobili kľúč a dostali sme sa normálne von. V roku 1943, pri treťom tábore bola vytvorená židovská stráž, tak sme už nemuseli chodiť pod plotom a na čierno.Veliteľom Nováckeho tábora bol Polhora, ktorý po vojne utiekol. Chytili ho v Rakúsku a odsúdili ho. Jozef Polhora, fešák v gardistickej uniforme. Po Stalingrade ho vymenili, pretože sa aj gardistické hliadky menili na žandárske. To bola tá alibistická politika Slovenskej fašistickej vlády. Žandári nám šli často na ruku, nevšímali si, keď sme šli z tábora, už to bolo lepšie.

Tábor bol prakticky oslobodený Slovenským národným povstaním, 28. augusta 1944 a tým skončila aj novácka éra. Časť bývalých väzňov nás nastúpilo do Nováckej jednotky. Vedúcim jednotky sa stal prievidzký profesor Imrich Müller. Po vojne nemal dobrý osud, pretože v päťdesiatich rokoch bol prenasledovaný. V prvých dňoch povstania mnoho z nás padlo pri Baťovanoch. Neviem, či to bol vplyv antiseminizmu, alebo nás Židov považovali za najobetavejších vojakov, ale ocitli sme sa v prvej línii. Ja som tam našťastie nebol, pretože som ešte mal prácu v tábore. Keďže sme nemali vojenskú prípravu preradili nás do vojenského prípravného tábora v Hiadly [obec Hiadel]. Po páde povstania sme sa pridali k Jegorovovej brigáde, žili sme v zrube nad Pohronským Bukovcom. V zrube nás bolo desať, dvaja ruský parašutisti Nikolaj Galkin a Jevgenij Jonuv. Jonuv bol Čuvaš a  Galkin bol pôvodne Sibíran, ale považovali sme ho za Rusa. Boli tam aj dvaja Francúzi, Janko Brada z Banskej Bystrice, zhodou okolností môj kamarát. Bývali v Banskej Bystrici v štvrti zvanej Hušťák, priamo na Hrone. Vlastnili obchod so železom, Braunovci. Až po vojne si zmenili meno na Brada. Janko Brada prežil, bol som s ním po vojne a myslím že sa vysťahoval do Izreala.

Z Bukovca nám nosili sedliaci a sedliačky chlieb, slaninu, vajíčka a maslo. Oni nás praktricky živili. Chodili sme ale aj na prepady. Pamätám sa na jeden prepad, kedy to bolo veľmi nahnuté. Dostali sme hlášku, že okolo desiatej večer pôjde kolónia Nemcov z Brezna na Banskú Bystricu. Tak sme ich prepadli. Došlo k prestrelke, ale Nemci si vyžiadali svetlicami pomoc z Banskej Bystrice a museli sme ustúpiť. Mne sa podarilo ujsť po hrebeni. Niekedy vo februári, myslím že 28. februára 1945 sme prišli do Mýta pod Ďumbierom. Dozvedeli sme sa, že toto územie už je oslobodené. Ubytovali nás jednotlivo po domoch. Zažil som aj jeden dobrodružný príbeh. Pridelili ma na povalu k jednej starej žene. Na povale bola slama a seno, kedže som bol na smrť unavený rýchlo som zaspal. Keď som sa prebudil nadomnou stál sedliak s vidlami. Veľmi mi do smiechu nebolo, ale napokon všetko dobre dopadlo. Z Mýta pod Ďumbierom sme šli pešo do Popradu a tam našu bojovú jednotku rozpustili. Tým pre mňa skončilo povstanie. V Poprade som nastúpil do tlačiarní, radovali sa, že prišiel sadzač. Moja prvá práca bola sadzať mobolizačnú vyhlášku. V Poprade som bol len mesiaca, pretože hneď ako som sa dozvedel, že matka prežila vybral som sa do Prievidze.

Brat bol ročník 1920, takže v roku 1939 musel narukovať do takzvanej „kóšer roty“, ktorá pôsobila na východnom Slovensku. Brat sa dostal do tábora, ktorého veliteľom sa stal bývalí prievidzký starosta Anton Adamic, invalid z prvej svetovej vojny. Keď prišiel brat do tábora a uvidel na zozname meno Gubitsch Ervín nechal nastúpiť celý tábor chlapcov a zakričal: „Gubitsch vystúpi! Pozrite sa, to je syn najslušnejšej židovskej rodiny v Prievidzi.“ Starosta Adamic ho urobil kantínskym, nebol deportovaný a tým pádom sa zachránil. Minister  národnej obrany Ferdinant Čatloš sa ujal židovskej pracovnej roty 26. Napriek tomu že sa ich snažili likvidovať, tak sa hovorí, že on zachránil rotu pred deportáciou. Odmietol ich deportovať, argumentoval tým, že sú to vojaci. Po absolvovaní vojenčiny ich previedli buď do Nováckého tábora, alebo do pracovného tábora v Seredi 27.

V roku 1942 sa brat dostal do nováckeho tábora. Zaradili ho ako syna kníhtlačiara do kartonážnej dielne a práve v kartonážnej dielni sa stala zaujímavá udalosť. V ´43-ťom roku, po Stalingradskej bitke prišla z Bratislavy, z ministerstva vnútra delegácia. Delegácia sa skladala z členov ministerstva vnútra, vedúci delegácie sa volal Pečúch [Július Pečúch]. Prišli asi čuchať, čo si myslia Židia o riešení židovskej otázky. Pečúch prišiel k bratovi a spýtal sa: „Čo bude s nami po vojne?“ Brat akurát pracoval na kartonážnom stroji, ktorý spracovával papundekel [lepenka]. Neodpovedal mu, ale nakreslil na ten papudekel srp [kosák] a kladivo. Pečúch sa ho znova opýtal: „No a čo urobíte s nami?“ Brat odpovedal: „Obesia vás!“ Tak z toho bol veľký poprask v tábore, každý si myslel, že zoberú brata a obesia jeho, ale nestalo sa nič. On mal sklony vydávať sa za hrdinu. Brat zostal v tomto zmysle hrdinom nováckeho tábora. To už bolo v roku 1943, po Stalingrade. Po oslobodení tábora sa pridal tiež k partizánskej jednotke a po vojne sa vrátil domov. Neboli sme spolu v jednotke, nevedeli sme o sebe, až po vojne.

Matka prežila, ale otec zomrel v horách v jej náručí. Skrývali sa v chate nad Horným Jelencom. Otec mal cukrovku a omrzli mu nohy, dostal gangrénu... Pochovaný je nad Horným Jelencom, nechceli nám povoliť exhumáciu. Úrady žiadal za vydanie povolenia päťdesiattisíc korún a ja som nemal ani päťtisíc, nie ešte päťdesiattisíc korún. Tak sme si povedali s bratom: „Obaja sme boli partizáni, otec zostane ležať v horách!“

Po válce

Mama zostala žiť v Prievidzi, v roku 1946 bola už na tom po zdravotnej stránke veľmi zle a v júni aj zomrela. Pochovali sme ju v Prievidzi na židovskom cintoríne, ktorý bohužial už zlikvidovali. Židovský cintorín bol na ceste smerom na Handlovú. Keď som tam bol naposledy, tak tam stál ešte dom smútku, ale hroby už boli zlikvidované. Pochovával ju niekto z prievidzkej náboženskej obce, pretože po vojne sa židovská obec obnovila. Vrátilo sa nás asi štyridsať, ale potom sa všetci vysťahovali do Palestíny. Už ani neviem prečo som sa tiež nevysťahoval. Nemali sme ani prostriedky a tam sa sťahovali skôr ľudia, ktorí mali poschovávané prostriedky, alebo mali zlato, ktoré speňažili. My sme mali schované akurát doklady.

V Prievidzi nám pridelili malú izbietku s kuchyňou. Nastúpil som do tlačiarne Patria ako sadzač. Mal som taký detský sen, ako sadzač som chcel študovať tipografiu v Lipsku, pretože Lipsko bolo najväčšiou tipografickou veľmocou v Európe. Vedel som, že je to len sen a nemôžem sa tam dostať, tak som prijal miesto v Prahe. V 1945-tom som sa teda na korbe nákladného auta Carpathie vybral do Prahy. Heumanovci, majitelia marmeládky mi dali adresu, kam mám ísť. Kupodivu som tam trafil veľmi jednoducho. Dostali sme izbu v Prahe III. Na ulici Liliová. Bývali sme tam traja. Ja, syn Heumanovcov a ešte jedna žena. Heuman  sa potom vysťahoval, tak som zostal sám. Zamestnanie som mal blízko, len som prešiel cez dvor a už som bol v tlačiarni. Bolo to premňa výhodné, bral som 4500 korún [v novembri 1945 bola stanovená relácia koruny k zlatu na l Kčs = 0,0177734 g zlata – pozn. red.]. Bol som slobodný, do Národného divadla som to mal päť minút, do Stavovského divadla, na Vltavu som to mal tiež päť minút a na Betlehemské námestie som sa díval z okna, takže pre mňa to boli  krásne roky 1945 a 1946.

V roku 1947 som prišiel na liečenie do Karlových Varov a spoznal som tu svoju manželku, ktorá sem chodila na návštevy ku svojej kamarátke. Slovo dalo slovo a na Mikuláša 1947 sme sa vzali. Pridelili nám jednoizbový byt. Zamestnal som sa v tlačiarni. Nemal som problémy kvôli svôjmu židovskému pôvodu. Som komunikatívny človek, nemal som problém zaradiť sa do kolektívu. Športoval som hrával som stolný tenis. Podnik mal oddiel stolného tenisu, hneď ma prijali aj do družstva. Hrali sme aj krajský preboj. Už ani neviem ako ma vtiahli do funkcie krajského tajomníka. To bolo vo februári 1948 28. Komunistická strana pred februárom 1948 vytvorila tzv. funkciu ujezdných [obvodný] tajomníkov. Každý okres bol rozdelený na obvody. Bol to ohromný ťah Komunistickej strany, pretože sa dostala blízko k ľuďom. Ja som mal na starosti asi päť organizácií. Schôdze sa konali aspoň raz týždenne, niekedy aj dvakrát. Vo februári som sa zúčastnil aj tých februárových udalostí.

Nastúpil som do funkcie sekretára Okresného výboru KSČ. V tejto funkcii som bol päť rokov a potom som robil na Krajskom výbore ako referent kultúry. To je smutná kapitola môjho života, aj keď mám čisté ruky. Nemám ani štipku krvy za nechtami, ani ma neprenasledovali po revolúcii, pretože som sa choval normálne. Môžem sa s kľudným svedoním pozrieť na tých päť rokov, ale na druhej strane predsa to len nebol žiaden med byť sekretárom komunistiskej strany. Bolo tu dosť takých všelijakých komunistov, takže to bolo dosť ťažké. Mal som aj veľa nepriateľov. Napokon som musel odísť so svojej funkcie a robil už len sadzača v tlačiarni, odkiaľ som šiel aj do dôchodku.

Prežil som demokraciu ako spoločenské zriadenie, mal som za sebou partizánske hnutie a ilegálnu prácu komunistickú. Pre mňa to bolo samozrejmé, že som po vojne zostal komunistom. V pädesiatych rokoch ma vyrazili. Neprijal som to veľmi dobre, preto som sa snažil, aby ma prijali späť, čo sa mi napokon aj podarilo, ale potom 29 ma znovu vyrazili. Bol som pre nich príliš veľký demokrat.

Svoju manželku [Terézia Gubičová, rod. Schweitová] som povrchne poznal už z Hašomer Hacairu. Znova sme sa stretli tu v Karlových Varoch. Ja som prišiel do Varov na liečenie a zapáčilo sa mi tu. Dostal som tu prácu a pridelili mi aj byt. Manželka pochádzala z Levoče, ale po vojne stratila domov tak prišla za kamarátkou do Kraslíc. Zamestnala sa v závode Amati, ktorý vyrábal hudobné nástroje. Do Varov chodila k svojej kamarátke. Slovo dalo slovo a na Mikuláša 1947 sme mali svadbu. Svadba bola židovská, veľmi skromná. Zúčastnili sa na nej len manželkiny svedkovia a môj svedok Janko [Jan] Porges. Traja svedkovia a my. To bolo všetko. Manželka po svadbe najprv pracovala na okresnom výbore a po roku dostala miesto na základnej škole. Učila na prvom stupni.

Narodili sa nám dve deti. V roku 1949 dcéra Tatiana a v 1950-tom syn Igor. Obe naše deti pracujú ako učitelia. Tatianna sa vydala za pána Koskuba, ale rozviedli sa. Nebolo to podarené manželstvo. Narodila sa im dcéra Lenka. Tatiana a Lenka žijú so mnou v jednom byte. Igor sa oženil s dievčaťom z Kutnej Hory. Má dcéru Danielu a syna Štefana. Daniela pracuje v Karlových Varoch jako kúpeľná sestra a Štefan študuje v Plzni archeológiu.  Igor je riaditeľom základnej školy v Nejdeku. Igor je typ človeka, ktorý nevyhľadáva žiadne konflikty, skôr naopoak snaží sa všetko riešiť chladnou hlavou. Tatiana tiež. Moje deti nikdy nemali žiadne konflikty ani v škole, ani teraz.

S manželkou sme mali predplatné do karlovarského divadla. Chodili sme aj na rôzne zábavy. Manželka moc veľká tanečnica nebola, ale ja som rád tancoval. Bol som aj veľký športovec, preto som aj deti viedol k športu. Dcéra napokon vyštudovala aj telovýchovu, ale učí aj češtinu. S manželkou sme nedodržiavali žiadne židovské tradície. Naše deti vedia, že sú Židia, ale o židovstve nevedia nič. Mali sme Vianoce, ale len tak symbolicky. Na veľké sviatky zvyknem chodiť do modlitebne, pretože sa musí zísť desať ľudí na modlenie, minjan [minjan: modlitebné minimum desiatich mužov vo veku nad trinásť rokov – pozn. red.], a keď sa nezídu, tak ma volajú.

Bol som rád, že vznikol štát Izrael a Židia z celého sveta budú mať domovinu. Ja som sa cítil národnostne Slovákom. Židovstvo bolo na druhom mieste. Mal som priateľov z katolícko kresťanských kruhov, takže o kresťanstve som toho vedel pomerne dosť. Samozrejme, cítil som sa byť Židom, v mladosti som to aj pestoval, však som bol aj v Hašomer Hacair, ale v dospelosti ma to prestalo baviť. Vytvoril som si jedno heslo: „Jednej vojny mám dosť, nechcem prežívať druhú!“ Nikdy som nebol v Izraeli. Vo svojom voľnom čase sa zaoberám históriou, píšem svoje spomienky, úprimne povedané, rád by som ich vydal.  

Glosář:

Ota Gubic
Karlovy Vary
Czech Republic
Interviewer: Barbora Pokreis
Date of interview: August 2005

Mr. Otto Gubic lives among his family in Karlovy Vary. He spends his free time collecting photographs and archival documents that are directly related to prewar, but also postwar life in his beloved home town of Prievidza. He gladly provided to us his collection of photographs and documents that thoroughly map not only the life of his family, but also of the entire Jewish community in prewar times. After the war, he started a new life in Karlovy Vary, where he became an active member of the Communist Party, from which he was repeatedly expelled though, due to his Jewish background. Due to his past, Mr. Gubic spoke about life in Communist Czechoslovakia only very reluctantly and marginally.

My family background
Jewish life in Prievidza
My parents
Growing up
Our religious life
During the war
Post-war
Married life
Glossary

My family background

I don't remember my paternal grandparents, because my father [Bernard Gubitsch] was married twice, and was already older when I was born. No one talked about them either. I know only their names. My grandfather was named Moric [Moritz] Gubitsch, and my grandmother Anna Gubitsch, née Steiner. I didn't know my father's first wife either, and his second wife was our mother.

I do know my maternal grandparents. My mother was born in Medzibrod. That's a hamlet in Slovakia, between Banska Bystrica and Brezno nad Hronom. She was born in 1893, and was named Aranyka, Zlatica Friedova. Her parents were Aneta Friedova and Emil Fried. They owned a general store in Banska Bystrica, at 28 Dolna Street. The store wasn't large, but was prosperous, so they had a relatively decent standard of living. They didn't have any assistants, because that was all taken care of by Aunt Jozefina [Friedova]. She lived with my grandparents on Dolna Street. Up until her later years, when Fascism was approaching and she got married and moved to Banska Stiavnica. She didn't survive the war, the same as her husband, Safranek.

The Frieds weren't devout, they were Neologs, keen Neologs 1. I think that for the most part they kept kosher. I'm not completely sure, but they probably didn't eat pork, only poultry. They also had separate dishes for meat and dairy foods. They attended synagogue only during the High Holidays. The Sabbath, and the lighting of candles? Certainly not that, but they knew that the Sabbath existed. As I say, they were very Neolog, after all, the store was open on Saturday as well.

My grandparents lived at 28 Dolna Street. Their apartment was divided into two parts - living quarters and the store. There was a kitchen, from which you entered one room, and in the courtyard there were two more rooms. One was small and the other larger. I don't think that my grandparents got along very well, because my grandfather had a peculiar nature. He'd been in America, but returned because he hadn't been successful there. Well, and then he married my grandmother. We loved our grandma very much, both my brother [Ervin Gubic, born Gubitsch] and I [Ota Gubic, born Gubitsch]. Our maternal grandfather not so much, because he was a bit of a codger. He wasn't very well-liked in the family either, and his reputation as a grandfather wasn't very good. I know that in that general store of theirs, they had a storefront room that faced the street. Between the storefront room and the kitchen, they had this dark room where they served liquor, and our aunt [Jozefina Safrankova, nee Friedova] used to get very angry at our grandfather because he used to serve his friends for free.

My brother and I used to go to Banska Bystrica regularly. Mainly during summer vacation, and sometimes during the winter as well. In those days there wasn't yet a direct connection between Prievidza and Banska Bystrica. You would go to Hronsky Svaty Kriz, or to Klastor pod Znievom, and from there to Banska Bystrica. Depending on what the weather was like. I remember when we were young, how we'd be all bundled up against the cold, and you could see only our eyes. During the summer months it was different, because our childhood [in Banska Bystrica] was very nice, mainly thanks to Uncle Moric [Fried]. Our uncle had two girls, Norika [Nora], and I don't remember the name of the second one any more. We used to spend summer vacation with them. As far as I know, our grandparents died during the war.

The Frieds had seven children, I think my mother was the oldest. Next after our mother was Moric Fried. He was apparently the second biggest and most important person in the wool industry in Slovakia - Moric Fried from Banska Bystrica. Uncle Moric was very well-known in Banska Bystrica, and it's said that he also had an exception from Tiso 2. They needed him as an expert on wool. He managed to hold on until January 1945, because in 1944 the Germans had already occupied Slovakia 3. Unfortunately, in the end he died during the war. His wife was named Helena, Erzineni, Drechslerova, and was also from Banska Bystrica. They lived on the main square. She liked me and my brother very much.

Aunt Jozefina Safrankova excelled in baking so-called Fried bread. Very popular in Banska Bystrica in those days. Half the city used to go buy that bread. Jozefina, who was called by the Hungarian name of Jozaneni in the family, fell in love with bread-making and married a baker in Banska Stiavnica. They had no children, because she got married at a quite advanced age, perhaps that was also the cause. My aunt and her husband didn't survive the war. I won't do her memory an injustice when I say that she loved bread more than Mr. Safranek. So that was her hobby. And that Fried bread was very popular in Banska Bystrica. Not that I used to help out, but I was only interested in how the bread was baked. So I used to go there with her. I remember that there was this big cauldron in the bakery which must have held at least 50 and maybe even 100 kilos of dough.

Uncle Emerich Fried ended up alone, a bachelor. He was an excellent violin player, and was the heart and soul of the Banska Bystrica Jewish community's cultural life. He didn't survive the war. Aunt Elza Friedova never got married either. Since she was little she did handiwork, and it led to her opening a handiwork store in Sahy. I don't know what happened to her during the war. The Hungarians occupied Sahy 4, and later they apparently deported her.

They youngest, Jeno [Eugen Fried] was a prominent figure, because he ended up in France as a representative of the Comintern 5. Already as a high school graduate in Banska Bystrica, at the age of 17, he excelled in these political matters. He was an exceptionally educated person, and read a lot from the time he was very young. He was very talented. They allegedly killed him in Brussels on 3rd August 1943. He was in France, and when the Nazis came to Paris, he escaped to Brussels, and that's where they probably caught him as well.

Blanka Friedova was also a fervent Communist, because her brother Jeno had been a fervent Communist since he'd been young, and she looked up to him. She eventually worked as a professional Communist functionary in Prague 6. But to this day it's a mystery to me how she survived the war in Prague. She never talked about it, but I think that she was hidden by the Communists.

After the war, I searched her out, and she was very surprised. That was a very, very mysterious meeting. I found out her address from some Communist Party members. I went to the address I'd been given. I opened the gate, behind which was a long hallway. Suddenly a figure approached me, so I let it walk past me a bit. I had seen Blanka only a couple of times while visiting my grandparents, but I recognized her. I let her walk by, and when she was already walking around the corner, I yelled out, 'Blanka.' She turned around: 'For God's sake, who are you?' I said, 'Have a good look!' 'I don't know.' 'Otto,' I said. 'Jesus Mary, where did you come from!? How did you get my address!? No one knows it!' In 1945 she was still being careful.

She died at around the age of 65, apparently of leukemia, in Prague. She never actually got married, but during those last years she lived with a certain Mr. Stastny. He was a Communist Party official, that's likely why they got along so well. She didn't have any children.

Jewish life in Prievidza

During my childhood, Prievidza, my home town, might have had a population of about 5000, of that about 400 could have been Jews, about 60 families. [In 1940 Prievidza had a population of 4578; Source: The Lexicon of Towns in the Slovak Republic, State Statistical Office, Bratislava 1942] Prievidza didn't have a Jewish quarter. The largest number of Jews lived on and around the town square. The Müllers, for example, had a textile store there, the Freibergs a restaurant. The Gemainers had a general store on one corner of the town square. Freiberg owned the Slavia Hotel. Slavia was a hotel as well as a restaurant, where Jews used to go on Sunday to play cards. My father used to go there too, but he didn't play, but only kibitzed. He was a very notorious kibitzer in Prievidza, because my mother didn't allow him to play cards. But she would at least let him go to the café to kibitz. That was his Sunday afternoon pastime. In Prievidza Jews mostly made a living as businessmen.

Among the most well-known families were the owners of Carpathia. [Carpathia: founded in 1875 by the Heuman family. The company focused primarily on the processing of fruit and jams. During World War II it was proclaimed to be irreplaceable. It focused itself on producing food for the army. From 1994 it has belonged to the MAGGI brand, and since 2001 to Nestlé Slovensko s.r.o.] Carpathia exists to this day, but it's not generally known that at one time it used to be a Jewish company. The owners used to lived on the so-called Wooden Ring, in a multi-story building. They were two brothers, they used to call them the Lower Heumans and the Upper Heumans. They managed the company. The lower Heuman used to manage it more than the upper one. The lower one had two sons. Fero [Frantisek] Heuman was a major adventurer. He even fought in the Spanish Civil War 7. After the war he apparently moved to Canada and took up farming. It's rumored that he died tragically, he was run over by a tractor. I don't know whether it's true or not, but that's what they used to say in Prievidza. The younger, Richard, attended high school with my brother. They graduated together in 1938. The Lower Heumans moved to Chile after the war, but they're all dead now. They survived the war precisely because they were very well-known and hid in a bunker in Kanianky [Prievidza district], which is a village close to Prievidza in the Maguri basin. They were supported by their former employees, because they were very decent people. There was only one strike in Carpathia, which was organized by the Upper Heumans' older son. He was a fervent Communist, and organized a strike against his own parents.

Another family that belonged among the more affluent were the Werners. Their son Palko [Pavol] was a friend of mine. Palko distinguished himself by bringing us genuine leather balls - soccer as well as volleyball, which back then was a miracle. The Werners had two children, Palko, as I've already mentioned, and a girl named Eva. Palko was born the same year as I, 1922. I didn't see them after the war, I don't know if they were deported or what happened to them. Then there was also the family of Bienenstock, a wholesaler. Samuel Kelerman owned a textile store. Later he was the president of the Prievidza Jewish religious community. He had two children. Edita was very pretty, and had an athletic figure. People condemned her, because her boyfriend was Jarda Machala, the son of the commander of the local police station. He was a Catholic, and in those days that was a big, big sin. But despite that they went out together for years, until as part of the 'Czechs walk to Prague' campaign 8 in 1938, Machala had to leave. In the end she married a textile merchant. The Kelermans' son, Lacko [Ladislav] was my best friend. Lacko was also into sports, and by coincidence also apprenticed at a competing book printer's, so we were not only friends, but also colleagues. But he didn't survive the war.

Two Jewish photographers - Adolf Kramer and Dezider Braun - belonged among the town's important figures. Braun was a very good friend of my older brother's. Kramer was known for having a Leica. Leicas already used film, so Kramer could photograph everything daily. Prievidza can thank him that the town's pre-war life was preserved in his photographs. Kramer was a documentarian, and photographed daily life. Braun just kept to his craft, people used to come to him, and he used to go to weddings and birthdays.

There were two religious communities in the town. The Neolog one was larger, and the Orthodox 9 one was smaller. My father played a part in trying to have the Orthodox community dissolved. In the end he didn't succeed. He was always somewhat of a rebel. He was very anti-Orthodox. He didn't like them, I don't know what it was. The Orthodox community didn't have more than 30 members. The Neolog community was much larger and stronger. My father even held a position in it for some time. We had one synagogue, whose cantor was Hellmann. He had a very nice tenor. There was a building beside the synagogue where the cantor lived with Frieder the trustee, who took care of religious matters. You could say he was at the same time the religious community's secretary. He had a son who became a rabbi and later became very famous. He was named Armin Frieder 10. During the war he worked on having the deportations stopped 11. He for example had very good relations with the education minister, Jozef Sivak, because Sivak was also from Prievidza. [Sivak, Jozef (1886 - 1959): teacher, author of textbooks, politician, education minister under the Slovak State. He gave up this function in 1944 (he didn't agree with the invitation of the German Army).]

I've got this impression that there was a mikveh at the Bienenstocks' but only the Orthodox used to go there. I think that we had only one shachter [ritual butcher]. This was the aforementioned Frieder. By the church [synagogue] there was a building where he and the rabbi lived, and that's also where they used to slaughter animals. There was a room there dedicated for that purpose, so people used to bring him poultry. In our family I was usually the one that would bring them to be slaughtered. The act of slaughtering was very, very simple, but interesting. I used to go there quite often, because from a child's perspective it was an attraction. The room had a concrete floor, and in the corner there was a gutter so the blood could drain off.

I remember the first car in town. We used to call it 'ring-a-ding.' I think it was a Fiat, an open one. Its owner was Mr. Iring, a watchmaker. His watchmaker's was across from our building on Piaristicka Street. I can't tell you the exact year, but it might have been around 1930, and maybe even earlier. I remember that it was a big sensation. Mr. Iring was a very interesting figure. He liked novelties, and he was certainly one of the first who had a camera, besides Kramer and Braun, the professional photographers. The first cameras might have appeared before 1930. Because we were curious and knew him, Mr. Iring would allow us to sit in his car, and later we would ride around at the Heumans'. They, as the owners of Carpathia, also had cars, but apparently they were company cars, though they also had them as personal ones.

The best-kept road in Prievidza was the so-called Bojnice road. Bojnice is a spa, and a poplar-lined road led there. It was a straight road, about three kilometers long, which led from Prievidza Station, which is why it was called the Bojnice road. It was kept up, paved with cobblestones. They were also used on the town square, and then I remember that sidewalks were gradually made. Piaristicka Street was fixed up quite early on, and the town square as well, because every day there were markets held on the square, and each month a fair. The small markets mostly sold fruit and vegetables, but also smaller poultry like ducks and geese. From our family only our mother used to go, and we children would accompany her. More often I, because my brother was a bookworm. He was always sitting and reading. My mother used to go shopping to Mr. Werther's [Ignac Werther owned a general goods and liquor store]. His store was across Piaristicka Street in the so- called Carpathia building.

Fairs were held each month on the square. All sorts of things were sold there - clothing, alcohol, vegetables, fruit. There was also one merchant there who made a living only by selling textiles in markets, because he didn't have a store. Cattle wasn't sold there. There was a building for that purpose built by the Handlovka. The Handlovka is a stream that merged along the Bojnice road with the Nitra River, which flowed southward from Klak through Prievidza, Novaky, and then flowed into the Danube.

All political and social events in Prievidza took place in the square. I even remember one Communist meeting that was broken up by the police. They definitely took place more often, but I remember only this one. It might have been around 1930, because I was still in public school.

My parents

My parents were named Bernard Gubitsch and Zlatica Gubitschova, née Friedova. My father was from Urmin [in 1948 renamed to Mojmirovce, Nitra district]. The Nitra River runs through this town. His parents lived there as well. I know that my father had some sort of house there, more of a hovel, because there were always requests coming from Urmin for them to fix it up. But we never had the kind of money needed to fix up that house. I don't know how it finally ended up. My father apprenticed as a printer in Budapest. He was married twice. I never met his first wife. I think that my father was a widower, and then he married my mother. He probably didn't have any children from his first marriage, and if he did, I never met them. My father was an excellent person. He understood us very well, and didn't resist childhood games; on the contrary, he very much supported me in my enthusiasm for sports. They didn't have to support my brother Ervin in any particular fashion, because he was always sitting at home surrounded by books, that was nothing unusual. Our father even set up a small library for him in the store, and he also visited the town library. After the war the librarian told me that there had never been a reader like my brother in Prievidza. I also read, but not as much as Ervin.

My mother was from Banska Bystrica, from the Fried family. My mother finished a two-year mercantile academy in Banska Bystrica, and then worked in a distillery, likely as a clerk. I don't know how she and my father met. I do know that there was a very large age difference between them. As my mother had never been anywhere else besides Mezibrod and Banska Bystrica, they probably met through a matchmaker, which back then was nothing unusual. Even despite the 19-year age difference, it was a nice marriage. I don't remember there being any conflicts in our family, really just a nice childhood. This was probably given by the fact that my father was no millionaire. We lived modestly, from the stationery store, bookstore and printers'. My father employed one apprentice, Emil [Emil Steiner], and even he was the son of his sister [Zofia Steinerova]. He apprenticed at my father's, stayed on as a journeyman, and in the end immigrated to Palestine.

My mother was very pleasant, very educated, a faithful wife. She took exemplary care of us. She had no interests other than the family. She helped Father in the store and negotiated with suppliers. A sales representative would come, I remember Mr. Klapac from Prague, who would bring two large crates with samples. My mother picked our and ordered goods. She took care of all the administrative work in the store.

I would characterize our financial situation as 'from hand to mouth.' We didn't own very much. Quite the opposite, our business was kept above water by the Gazdovska Bank and its manager, Stefan Vunder, who was a friend of my father's. I don't know if they met during World War I, but I do know that the Gazdovska Bank kept a protective hand over our company, because after the war we had to pay a debt of 60,000 crowns that our father had run up there. [In November 1945 the value of the crown was set to 1 Kcs = 0.0177734 g of gold.]

After my mother had been home for fourteen days, a letter arrived from the Gazdovska Bank: 'Dear Mrs. Gubitschova, we've found out that you survived the war, and your husband left a debt of 60,000 crowns. We request that you come within 14 days, and as the lawful heiress, pay the debt.' Luckily, after 1939 the Patria printing company swallowed up Bernard Gubitsch's company, and the debts were transferred to it. [Patria: in 1899 Gubitsch opened the first printer's in Prievidza. In 1917 a printer's belonging to Kohn opened. In 1939 the Patria printing house was created by the merging of the two. The printing house is currently still operating, and has around 140 employees.] The Aryanizers moved it, they were greedy and thought they'd get rich, but they didn't get rich. [Aryanization: the transfer of Jewish stores, companies, businesses etc. into the ownership of another person (the Aryanizer).] They moved everything, two A4 format [European paper format roughly equivalent to US letter] printing machines, and one flatbed press for poster making.

My parents usually spoke Slovak to each other, but would occasionally also speak Hungarian and German, because Prievidza was surrounded by German villages. The German Pravno [renamed in 1946 to Nitrianske Pravno], Tuzin [Germ. Tuschin], Gajdel [Germ. Gajdell]; those were all German communities. My father's native tongue was Hungarian, but he never taught it to us. I learned to speak it like my father spoke it. I can still get by in Hungarian. My mother and father dressed modestly, very modestly. My father had a Sunday suit and a normal suit. We children had one normal suit that we wore - pants, short pants and coats with these big buttons and dark- colored Sunday clothes. We didn't follow any modern trends.

Electricity and running water were brought in to Prievidza probably around 1927. We had a three-room apartment. The rooms were in a row, one behind the other, and it continued on with the printing room, larder, woodshed, and behind that was the yard belonging to the building owner, Chikan. He had two sons. I was friends with one of them, with Mikulas. Our parents also had good relations all those long years that we lived there.

The building also had a garden that the owners, the Chikans, took care of. My mother had only these wooden boxes where she grew flowers. We also had a household helper, but only up to the Great Depression of the 1930s 12. I remember that we had a square table in the kitchen, which during the day was used as a dining table, and at night our maid slept there. I don't remember her name any more. She didn't cook, but only cleaned and kept an eye on us.

Our parents didn't socialize very much. Just our father, which our mother didn't like, used to go to the café to kibitz, because as I've already mentioned, our mother didn't allow him to play cards. My mother had a good friend, the wife of the Prievidza photographer. She came to a bad end, suicide. I don't know the cause, but it was at the time when Fascism arrived. I think it was more of a matter of nerves, and not politics.

Our father had a brother. He apparently lived in America. I don't know anything more about him, all I remember is that each year at Rosh Hashanah, a greeting card would arrive from America. Otherwise they didn't keep in touch, and neither was any money ever sent. Nothing, just that one greeting. Until sometime after 1989 13, his grandson, Danny Gubitsch, came to visit us, and was researching his family tree and also his mother's, who was from eastern Slovakia. I also knew Father's sister, Zofia Steinerova. Zofia had only one son, Emil, who apprenticed with us and moved to Palestine.

Growing up

I was born on 1st June 1922 in Prievidza. I remember my childhood very well, mainly the time I spent in the courtyard of Adolf Kramer's photo studio. At that time, Braun, the photographer, was studying with him; he liked children a lot, and used to take me everywhere with him. Braun was a fervent fisherman, and we used to go fishing together, but he never had a license, so when we saw the police we would run. The Nitra flows near Prievidza in the direction of Bojnice, so we used to go there.

I used to attend the Jewish school in Prievidza at Dreveny Rynek. Grades 1 and 2 were combined, and classes took place in one room. I absolved five grades in the Jewish school. Classes were mostly held up until lunch, but some subjects were also in the afternoon. For sure I know that religion was in the morning. There was no school on Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday people went to synagogue. I wasn't some sort of exceptional student, even when I had A's, but I didn't study much at home the way my brother did, who always had his head in books and textbooks, and knew them by heart. I was more into sports. My favorite subject was also sport [physical education].

The school principal was Ungar, who had this common touch. He would often take us on trips to the so-called 'wilderness.' The wilderness was about two and a half, three kilometers in the direction of Vtacnik [Vtacnik: a mountain range in the Central Slovak Mountains. On the west, north and northeast it is bordered by the High Tatra Basin, the Ziar mountain range and the Strazov Hills, on the east the Kremnica Hills and the Ziar Basin, and on the south Tribec and the Stiavnica Hills]. There he'd always order sour milk for us from the game warden, it used to have these lumps in it. That's not something very popular these days. The warden had his own cow, so also his own milk, and he used to make it for us. I remember that we used to pay 50 halers. I got to like that sour milk so much, that it hasn't stopped being a favorite of mine to this day, but unfortunately today it's no longer made. It was an excellent treat.

I used to attend Maccabi 14 in Prievidza, and was also a very good volleyball player. I may be of small stature, but as a setter I was notorious for being able to attack. So the spikers picked me out as their setter. I liked volleyball in high school as well, and it stayed with me until later years. After the war, in Karlovy Vary, I was still playing volleyball. It was my favorite sport. Otherwise I was active, I used to skate. When I was older I also had a bicycle. Not some sort of racing model, but a normal, standard bike.

The Prievidza Maccabi had about 20 to 25 members. They were focused mainly on physical education. Boys and girls used to attend separately. The Maccabi had some space at the Jewish elementary school. There was a yard there, as well as a volleyball court, and a horizontal bar. We didn't have our own gym, we used to rent space at the Prievidza high school. We used to practice twice or three times a week, always in the evening. The team probably didn't achieve any larger sports success, just the men participated in the Maccabiade in Zilina, sometime in the 1930s.

I attended high school in Prievidza. The principal was Mr. Lenco. I remember our art teacher, named Vtacnik, who called me up in front of the class in the first quarter year, and said, 'Look at Gubitsch, he'll never ever be a painter. But none of the several hundred students that I've taught up to now has ever turned in 42 drawings in the first quarter! He'll never be a painter, but he's a very self-sacrificing and industrious person!'

One of my favorites at school was also Professor Hromadko, the gym teacher. I think it was mutual, because I met his strict requirements. He had all sorts of technical aids, for example when doing arm raises we had to stand as straight as a yardstick, which he also used. He would always say, 'Try to break the gym walls with your middle fingers. You'll do arm raises without looking at your arms, and you'll have them stretched out like a yardstick.' I followed this, so he considered me to be an example, which is why I got used to demonstrating things. As a child I was good at sports. I played volleyball a lot. Hromadko the gym teacher put me on the senior team even though I was younger.

So these are those memories of school days. The high school was nice. The building stands to this day. There was a beautiful garden there, and when the year 1938 came, they made it into a large military training ground, because military training was instituted as a school subject. It was expected that Hitler would attach Czechoslovakia, and they were counting on us as soldiers 15.

I did only four grades of high school, and in 1936 I left to learn the printing trade. I was already a clerk by trade, so as a former high school student they gave me a one-year credit for my apprenticeship period. In those days the apprenticeship took four years, and high school students were credited with one year. Officially I finished on 31st August 1939, but that was already the time of the Slovak State 16, and they didn't let me take my journeyman's exam. In 1942, when the deportations began, someone pushed through that I was able to take my journeyman's exams. I don't know exactly, but I have this feeling that it was intervention by the Communists. But I got two invitations in the mail. One for the journeyman's exam in Nitra, and the second to the Novaky camp 17.

My father phoned me, because in 1942 I was already on hakhsharah 18 in Budmerice by Trnava, 'So what are you going to do?' I said, 'Don't worry dad, I'll go to the journeyman's exam, because that's the most important thing in my life, and then we'll see.' So, on March 30th I absolved my journeyman's exam. On Sunday I arrived in Nitra, slept over at my father's sister's [Zofia Steinerova], and on Monday morning I went to Stefan Husar's printing plant in Nitra. I remember that the journeyman's exam was supposed to last two days, but after the practical part on Monday, at 4pm, Husar called me in and said, 'All right, I've got a message here from the master that you've passed the practical portion, and you still have to do the theoretical part on Tuesday, but I know that you're an educated boy.' So he asked me three or four easy questions, if I knew who Guttenberg was and similar things to do with printing. Husar knew what the situation was, so I didn't have to come on Tuesday, and could already go home on Monday evening.

At home there was a big commotion, because we from Hashomer Hatzair 19 were supposed to go into hiding in the Low Tatras, but my parents didn't want to let me go into parts unknown, that we'd go to the Novaky camp all nice and proper. [Low Tatras: found in Slovakia, and contain a renowned national park. The Low Tatra mountain range runs for 80 km from west to east between the Vah and Hron river valleys. The highest peaks are Dumbier (2043 m) and Chopok (2024 m).]

During my school years I had a very good friend, Vladko [Vladimir] Kuhra. Vladko was the son of the Czech forest warden Kuhra. He had two or three sisters. I was friends with them too. Vladko was my best friend, and then also Lacko [Ladislav] Kelermen, the son of the president of the Neolog Jewish religious community in Prievidza. Already in prewar times we felt anti-Semitism, to this day I still remember the insulting sayings that Christian children used to yell at us at Dreveny [Wooden] Ring. That's where we used to play soccer matches, Jews against the Christians. Once we'd win, once they'd win, but usually it would end with them yelling insults at us. We also used to yell things like 'Christian, Catholic, crapped on a stick....' I don't know how it continued.

My brother, Ervin Gubitsch, was born in 1920 in Banska Bystrica. There was a two year age difference between us. He buried himself in books from the time he was little. We had a writing desk with drawers that were full of books. In later years there was also a smaller library in our father's store. I don't think he was interested in much else. He had one very good friend, Karolko [Karol] Handler. Karol was a fervent Communist, he may even have been the chairman of the Komsomol 20. But during the war he bungled things, because he was drafted, and back then you could buy your way out of the army for ten crowns a day. He made the cardinal mistake of buying his way out and coming to Prievidza. The fascists of course found out about it, and dragged him off on the first transport.

Karolko was a very talented journalist. He wrote for A-Z, which was a tabloid magazine. I know that he used to come to our store to borrow books and magazines. He used to read there because his father was a glass cutter. He had a glazier's in Prievidza in Piaricka Street, but was very clumsy. When he was cutting glass, before he managed to frame a picture he wasted more than he produced. So they weren't wealthy, he belonged to the poorer of Prievidza tradesmen.

Ervin attended Jewish elementary school in Prievidza and high school in Banska Bystrica, where he also graduated. However at that time the Numerus Clausus [limitations on accepting students on the basis of economic or political reasons] was already more or less in effect, so he could no longer study. Ervin suffered very much because of this. I remember that in 1938, after the Munich meeting 21 he threw himself on the couch and began shouting, 'There won't be anything! There won't be anything! There won't be any school!' It was a huge shock to his psyche that he practically never recovered from.

Even when after the war he could have studied, I also tried to convince him, he also came to Prague to see me. He could have gone to school, because I was making decent money and also had an apartment, where we could have put another bed, but he didn't have the strength any longer. For the rest of his life he made a living in all sorts of ways unsuited to his talent and intelligence. He for example worked as a gatekeeper at the Bojnice spa, and practically also a bouncer in restaurants. He got married, his wife was also Jewish. She had gone through Auschwitz. He had two daughters, Katka [Katarina], who graduated from law. I think that she's already a judge in Prievidza, and his second daughter, Marika [Maria] remained a worker. I think that she studied cooking.

Our religious life

Our parents were Neolog, but we observed all holidays. For Rosh Hashanah we would go to synagogue, and after the holiday we would have a big festive supper, which started with an appetizer - some sort of horseradish mixture. Then soup with meat and dumplings and the main course. On the table there of course also had to be round carrots slices, honey and apples. [Traditionally at Rosh Hashanah foods that have a symbolic value are eaten. For example, carrots symbolize plenty, apples soaked in honey that the next year will be good and sweet.] We didn't observe it in a completely Orthodox fashion, but just those Jewish customs. My parents fasted at Yom Kippur, but I was a rebel, so I even bought some ham and ate it secretly with a friend. My brother fasted, I think. It was all the same to him, he just sat at home buried in books and had no appetite for food.

For Chanukkah we'd light the menorah, which would be put in the window, and I think that the next day we'd go to the synagogue. My brother and I would light the candles, and our father would pray. We didn't pray very much, even though we knew how. Even today I still know the Hebrew alphabet. As children we also played with dreidels for nuts and things. We observed Sukkot according to custom. Every year we had a booth [sukkah] set up in the courtyard. The building owner wasn't religious, so he didn't object. Neither did his wife, who was from a very Christian family from Prievidza, have any objections. During the holiday we ate only in the booth.

We also observed Passover. There'd be a major housecleaning. Usually our mother cleaned, but I also helped. We'd pull out the Passover dishes and put away the normal ones, and buy matzot. In the evening we'd have seder, and have soup with matzah dumplings. On the table there would be water with vinegar, eggs, everything that should be there. A goblet with wine would also be ready. By custom I also had to ask questions, but that was only a formality. I knew that it belonged, so I didn't want to resist my father. [Mah nishtanah: the so-called four questions. Traditionally recited by the youngest participant of the seder during the Passover holiday, when reading from the Haggadah begins.]

My brother and I had a bar mitzvah. I still remember something of it. First I had to recite a passage from the Torah at the synagogue, and though I knew Hebrew I didn't learn it by heart, so I recited it after a fashion with the help of a prompter. In the afternoon there was a feast. On the occasion of my bar mitzvah, I got a new outfit, this sailor's outfit with big buttons. My brother and I played hide and seek. There was a chicken coop nearby, and I climbed up on it and jumped off. I ripped my pants apart. That caused a big commotion, I think I even got a spanking. The first and last time I remember getting a spanking. 'What do you think, that we steal?' said my father. 'Do you know how much money it cost?' For the times it was an expensive outfit. Otherwise, I wasn't religiously inclined. I was a member of Hashomer Hatzair, which was an atheist organization, and I behaved accordingly.

I attended Hashomer Hatzair from the age of ten. My father tolerated it, but I'd say more that he tried to ignore it. We used to meet once a week, and then at summer camp. One was even in Prievidza, but as luck would have it, they didn't cook kosher there. The camp was about three kilometers out of Prievidza. My parents went out for a walk and came to see me. When they saw where we were, that was my last time at camp. It wasn't until 1938 that I managed to get to a camp in Povazska Bystrica, and that was only with my grandma's agreement. First I arrived in Banska Bystrica for summer holidays, and talked my grandmother into letting me go. Finally my father found out about it anyways, and after a week took me back home.

But I attended the weekly Hashomer meeting regularly. We studied Hebrew and went on outings. During wartime I was also in hakhsharah for a short time, which they had opened in Prievidza in 1939. At that time I had already finished my schooling, but couldn't take my final exams. As a journeyman I didn't get any work, and our printing shop was already more or less Aryanized, so I left for hakhsharah. First to the Heumans' brick factory, where we worked either directly in the factory or with various merchants. There were eleven of us, of which one was a girl. Bianiciova, from Presov or Sabinov. I liked her a lot. We didn't study much in Prievidza, but mostly worked in companies like Carpathia. On hakhsharah in Letanovce we studied agriculture, because it was a farm. From there we would also go to Novy Majer by Budmerice, where we also did farm work and worked in the stables. It was a Jewish farm that had an exception from President Tiso. We were ten boys and one girl. Rachel Hoffmanova, by coincidence from Prievidza. A very hard-working girl. She was from a poor family, and unfortunately didn't survive the war.

In hakhsharah there were often various lectures on Zionism 22 and Judaism. I especially remember a lecture by Dr. Oskar Neumann 23, because I have notes from his lecture to this day. I knew only one person who moved to the Palestine, which was my cousin Emil Steiner. He left in 1939 in the first wave of emigrants, which was organized by Hechalutz 24.

In Budmerice we worked on property belonging to the Sonnenfelds. It was a farm, and I worked in the pig barn. I found it very interesting, especially the breeding station, because they were cross-breeding the German Edelschwein breed with English sows. They were these long pigs that would be sent to Prague for Prague ham. Sonnenfeld was a very curt Jewish farmer, a big-shot, not even once did he come to see our living accommodations. Our accommodations were very modest, one room and a kitchen. Rachel Hoffmannova slept in the kitchen, and the ten of us boys slept on plank bunks in that little room.

During the war

As I've already mentioned, in 1942 my father called that I'd been invited for my journeyman's exams, and that's actually what saved me from the transport, because while I was on the phone with my father, an escort arrived and dragged off everyone from the hakhsharahh. After my exams I came home, and it was a big tragedy. I didn't want to go to Novaky, but both my parents started weeping, what sort of son was I, because if I don't go, they'll take them. Nothing could convince them, even when I told them that it was only a question of time before they came for them too. First they'd take the young boys, and then their turn would come. It didn't help. Finally I agreed and said, 'All right, I'll go to the camp.' I still remember the date, 31st March 1942.

The Novaky labor camp was set up in 1941 on property where there were army warehouses. There were three sections, between which there were about ten houses. The highest number of people allowed in Novaky was about 1000 - 1200 people; it's believed that it was at the behest of General Catlos 25, the interior minister of the Slovak State. The first transports to Poland went from Novaky. I was also supposed to be on one such transport to Poland, but people from Prievidza on the camp's Jewish council 26 pulled me off at the last moment, and transferred me to the third section, because those that worked were gathered there. The first building was concentrational [they concentrated people for further deportation there], the second contained the farm buildings and the kitchen.

I had two friends, Alfred Löwy and Lacko [Ladislav] Kelerman, who were cousins. Lacko's mother and Alfred's father were brother and sister. Lacko's father was the president of the Prievidza religious community, so he had some connections. When I arrived at the camp, they 'stole' me off the transport to Poland and took me away to that third section, and assigned me to Nandor Löwy, Alfred Löwy's father. Nandor Löwy worked in Novaky as a delivery man. He had a horse and wagon at his disposition, and took care of supplying the camp. The supply warehouse of the former Czechoslovak army was in Zemianske Kostolany, but we also often went to Prievidza. They of course made use of me, I had to illegally carry into the camp all sorts of packages and food from relatives.

For long years Nandor Löwy had been a fireman in Prievidza, which was very unusual, because Jews weren't firemen too often. All of Prievidza had only two people in the fire crew. The tinsmith Nandor Löwy, and his competition, Spitzer, also a tinsmith. Löwy became the delivery man, which was very good, because he had various connections. One of them was also Stefan Wunder, who owned a grocery wholesale business and was one of the camp's suppliers. At least once a week we'd be in Prievidza at Wunder's, and sometimes also to see Kardos, another wholesaler, but he was afraid and didn't want to be too involved. Wunder was very Christian, he even had some position in Orol, a Catholic organization.

Visits to Wunder looked something like this: in the front there was a store, and in the back there were offices and a warehouse. We used to come to the back, and more or less semi-legally loaded up goods. Most things went through accounting, but we always also loaded up things that were being smuggled in. I remember that once we managed to bring a whole case of sardines into the camp. That enriched our menu, otherwise the food was very scant. Occasionally we also got some meat, semi-legally as well, calves were brought in. I consider it to be one of those miracles that happened that it always came off.

As a delivery boy I also experienced one very, very unpleasant event. The Löwys had three children - Alfred, Palko [Pavol] plus a girl. Palko and Alfred survived, but the girl was dragged off to Poland. Their mother couldn't stand the sight of me, because she would immediately start shrieking 'You're here and my baby is gone!' She couldn't stand her daughter's friends, nothing could be done about it. So I tried to keep out of her way, it was hard, because I was her husband's assistant.

An illegal Communist organization was formed in Novaky. You could say that it was led by the Hagar brothers [Frantisek Hagar and Jozef Hagar]. They escaped and formed a semi-illegal organization in Vtacnik, semi-illegal because it was persecuted only for the sake of appearances, in front of the Germans. In reality it was a quite large organization. It was supported by people from the surrounding towns, who would also bring them food.

I also used to go from the camp illegally to Vtacnik. A small stream ran all the way down from Vtacnik to the camp, and at night we used to follow the stream up there. We dug a hole under the barbed wire, and at night we'd carry out food. People would come to meet us, and we'd give them the packages. There was a lot of vegetation around the camp, high trees, and that's where we would give it to them. Of course, some prisoners held it against us, but we would explain to them that we still had something in the camp, while they didn't have anything, so it was our duty to help them.

The Upper Nitra Partisan Brigade, with the Hagar brothers and Frantisek Miseje, was active in Vtacnik. I was the connection between the camp and the partisans. I remember it as if it were yesterday. In May of 1943 I went from the camp along the creek all the way to Vtacnik, they led me all the way to the top. It was a beautiful day, and they showed me the camp, you could see all three parts of the camp. The roofs were made of tar paper, and were beautifully lit by the sun. It was a sight to see. At night I returned to the camp and brought them the news that we wouldn't survive another winter in the camp, because there was going to be an uprising in 1944.

The camp's leadership knew about our nighttime outings. In 1942 we used to go underneath the barbed wire, and after Stalingrad 27 in 1943 we got ourselves a key to the front gate. Because after Stalingrad even the Guardists 28 were growing nervous, and weren't that strict and tough anymore. One Guardist got especially involved, not publicly but in secret, and gave us keys. 'But you can only leave at night, not during the day!' We made a key in the machine shop, and normally got out. In 1943, a Jewish guard was instituted at the third camp, so we didn't have to go under the fence and on the sly anymore.

The commander of the Novaky camp was Polhora, who escaped after the war. They caught him in Austria and convicted him. Jozef Polhora, a handsome guy in a Guardist uniform. After Stalingrad they replaced him, because the Guardist sentries were being replaced by ones from the police. Those were the Slovak fascist government's pass-the-buck politics. The police often did what we wanted and looked the other way when we left he camp, by then it was better.

They camp was basically liberated by the Slovak National Rebellion on 28th August 1944, and thus the Novaky era ended as well. Part of the former prisoners joined the Novaky unit. Imrich Müller, a professor from Prievidza, became the unit's commander. His fate after the war wasn't good, because he was persecuted during the 1950s. During the first days of the rebellion, many of us fell by Batovany. I don't know if it was anti- Semitism or whether they considered us Jews to be the most self-sacrificing soldiers, but we ended up in the front line. Luckily, I wasn't there, because I still had work in the camp. Because we didn't have military training, they transferred us to the army training camp in Hiadel.

After the fall of the uprising, we joined Yegorov's brigade, and lived in a log cabin above Pohronsky Bukovec. There were ten of us in the cabin, including two Russian parachutists, Nikolai Galkin and Yevgenii Yonuv. Yonuv was Chuvashian, and Galkin was originally a Siberian, but we considered him to be a Russian. There were two Frenchmen there, and also Janko Brada from Banska Bystrica, who was by coincidence a friend of mine. They used to live in Banska Bystrica in a neighborhood named Hustak, right by the Hron River. The Brauns owned a hardware store. It wasn't until after the war that they changed their name to Brada. Janko Brada survived, I was with him after the war, and I think he moved to Israel.

The farmers from Bukovec and their wives used to bring us bread, bacon, eggs and butter. They basically fed us. But we also used to go on ambushes. I remember one ambush, when things got pretty scary. We got a message that around 10pm a German column would be going from Brezno to Banska Bystrica. So we attacked them. Some shooting took place, but the Germans called for support from Banska Bystrica by using flares, and we had to retreat. I managed to escape along a ridge.

Sometime in February, I think on 28th February 1945, we arrived in Myto pod Dumbierom. We'd learned that this territory had already been liberated. We were put up individually in people's homes. I also had one adventure. They put me up in one old lady's attic. There was hay and straw in the attic, and as I was deathly tired, I quickly fell asleep. When I woke up, there was a farmer holding a pitchfork standing above me. I didn't much feel like laughing, but in the end everything ended up fine. We proceeded on foot from Myto pod Dumbierom to Poprad, and there they dissolved our unit. That was the end of the uprising for me.

In Poprad I started working at a printer's, they were happy that a typesetter had arrived. My first task was to typeset a mobilization proclamation. I was in Poprad for only a month, because as soon as I found out that my mother had survived, I set off for Prievidza.

My brother was born in 1920, so in 1939 he had to join the so-called 'kosher company' that was located in eastern Slovakia. My brother ended up in a camp whose commander became the former mayor of Prievidza, Anton Adamic, an invalid from World War II. When my brother arrived in the camp, and he saw the name Ervin Gubitsch on the list, he had all the boys in the camp stand in formation and shouted, 'Gubitsch, front and center! Look here, this is the son of the most decent Jewish family in Prievidza.' Mayor Adamic put him in charge of the canteen, so he wasn't deported and thus survived. The minister of national defense, Ferdinand Catlos, took charge of the work company 29. Despite the fact that he tried to liquidate them, it's said that he saved the company from deportation. He refused to deport them, and argued that they were soldiers. After the army, they either transferred them to the Novaky camp, or to the Sered work camp 30.

My brother arrived at the Novaky camp in 1942. As he was the son of a book printer, they assigned him to the cartonnage workshop, and it was in the cartonnage shop that an interesting incident took place. In 1943, after the Battle of Stalingrad, a delegation from the Ministry of the Interior came from Bratislava. The delegation was composed of members of the Ministry of the Interior, and the head of the delegation was named Pecuch [Julius Pecuch]. They probably came to sniff out what Jews thought about the solution to the Jewish question. Pecuch came up to my brother, and asked, 'What will happen to us after the war?' At that moment my brother was working on a machine that was processing cardboard. He didn't answer him, but drew a hammer and sickle on the cardboard. Pecuch asked him again, 'Well, and what will you do with us?' My brother answered him, 'You'll hang!'

Well, that caused a big uproar in the camp, everyone thought that they'd grab my brother and hang him, but nothing happened. He had a tendency to act the hero. In that sense my brother became the hero of the Novaky camp. That was already in 1943, after Stalingrad. After the camp's liberation, he also joined a partisan unit, and returned home after the war. We weren't in the same unit, and didn't know anything about each other until after the war.

Our mother survived, but our father died in her arms in the mountains. They were hiding in a cabin up above Horny [Upper] Jelenec. My father had diabetes, and his feet got frostbitten, he got gangrene... He's buried above Horny Jelenec; they didn't want to allow us to have him exhumed. The officials were asking fifty thousand crowns to issue the permit, and I didn't have even five thousand, much less fifty thousand. So my brother and I said to each other: 'We were both partisans, so our father will remain in the mountains!'

Post-war

Our mother continued living in Prievidza; in 1946 her health was already very poor and in June she died. We buried her in Prievidza at the Jewish cemetery, which unfortunately has since been destroyed. The Jewish cemetery was on the way to Handlova. When I was there last, the house of mourning was still there, but the graves had already been destroyed. She was buried by someone from the Prievidza religious community, because after the war the Jewish community was renewed. About forty of us returned, but then everyone moved to Palestine. I don't even know anymore why I didn't move away as well. We didn't have any resources, and it was more people that had some funds hidden away that were moving there, or they had gold that they sold. All we had hidden away were documents.

In Prievidza they allocated us a tiny little room with a kitchen. I started working at the Patria printing house as a typesetter. I had this childhood dream, as a typesetter I wanted to study typography in Leipzig, because Leipzig was the biggest typographic power in Europe. I knew that it was only a dream and that I couldn't get over there, so I accepted a position in Prague. So in 1945 I set out for Prague in the back of a truck belonging to Carpathia. The Heumans, the owners of the jam factory, had given me an address to go to. Surprisingly, I found it very easily.

I got a room on Liliova Street. There were three of us living there. I, the Heuman's son, and some woman. Heuman then moved away, so I remained alone. I was close to work, all I had to do was cross the courtyard, and I was in the print shop. It was a good thing for me, I was being paid 4500 crowns [in November 1945, the crown's value was set at 1 Kcs = 0.0177734 g of gold]. I was single, I was five minutes away from the National Theater and the Estates Theater, the Vltava River was also five minutes away, and my window looked out over Bethlehem Square, so for me the years 1945 and 1946 were beautiful.

In 1947 I arrived in Karlovy Vary for some treatments, and here I met my wife, who used to come here to visit a girlfriend. One thing led to another, and on St. Nicholas Day in 1947 we were married. They allocated us a one-room apartment. I got a job in a printing shop. I didn't have any problems due to my being Jewish. I'm a communicative person, and didn't have any problems fitting in. I used to play table tennis. The company had a table tennis league, and they immediately accepted me onto the team. We even played in the regional championships. I don't even know anymore how they convinced me to become the regional secretary. That was in February 1948 31. Before February 1948, the Communist Party created the position of so-called district secretaries. Each region was divided up into districts. It was a major coup for the Communist Party, because they got close to the people. I was in charge of about five organizations. Meetings were held at least once a week, sometimes even twice. In February, I also took part in those February events.

I started working as the secretary of the regional committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. I held this position for five years, and then was a cultural officer at the Regional Committee. This is a sad chapter of my life, even though my hands are clean. I don't have even a smidgen of blood behind my fingernails, neither was I persecuted after the revolution, because I acted normally. I can look back at those five years with a clear conscience, but on the other hand, it was after all no smooth ride being a secretary of the Communist Party. There were enough of all sorts of Communists here, so it was quite difficult. I also had a lot of enemies. Finally I had to leave my position and then worked only as a typesetter, from where I went into retirement.

I lived through democracy as a social order, I had the partisan movement behind me as well as illegal Communist work. For me it was a matter of fact that after the war I remained a Communist. In the 1950s they threw me out. I didn't accept it very easily, so I tried to get them to take me back, which I finally succeeded in doing, but then 32 they threw me out again. I was too much of a democrat for their tastes.

Married life

I had already superficially gotten to know my wife [Terezia Gubicova, née Schweitova] in Hashomer Hatzair. We then met again in Karlovy Vary. I had come to Karlovy Vary for treatments, and liked it here. I got work here, and they also allocated me an apartment. My wife was from Levoc, but after the war she lost her home, so she came to Kraslice to see a girlfriend of hers. She got a job in the Amati factory, which manufactured musical instruments. She used to come to Karlovy Vary to see a friend. One thing led to another, and on St. Nicholas Day in 1947 we got married. The wedding was Jewish, and very modest. The only participants were my wife's witnesses and my witness, Janko [Jan] Porges. Three witnesses, and us. That was all. After our wedding, my wife at first worked for the regional committee, and after a year got a job at an elementary school. She taught Grade One.

We had two children. In 1949 our daughter Tatiana was born, and in 1950 our son Igor. Both our children work as teachers. Tatiana married Mr. Koskuba, but they got divorced. It wasn't a good marriage. They had a daughter, Lenka. Tatiana and Lenka live in the same apartment with me. Igor married a girl from Kutna Hora. He's got a daughter, Daniela, and a son, Stefan. Daniela works in Karlovy Vary as a spa nurse, and Stefan is studying archeology in Pilsen. Igor is the principal of an elementary school in Nejdek. Igor is the type of person who doesn't look for any conflicts, but on the contrary tries to resolve everything with a cool head. Tatiana as well. My children never had any conflicts, neither in school nor now.

My wife and I had season tickets to the Karlovy Vary theater. We also used to attend various social events. My wife wasn't a big dancer, but I liked dancing. I was also big on sports, which is why I encouraged my children to play sports. My daughter eventually graduated from physical education, but also teaches Czech. My wife and I didn't observe any Jewish traditions. Our children know that they're Jews, but don't know anything about Judaism. We had Christmas, but only symbolically. I'm used to going to the prayer hall for the High Holidays, because ten people have to gather for prayers, for a minyan, and when there aren't enough, they call me.

I was glad when the state of Israel was created, and that Jews from the whole world over will have a home. I felt myself to be a Slovak by nationality. Jewishness was in second place. I had friends from Catholic Christian circles, so I knew a fair bit about Christianity. I of course felt myself to be a Jew, in my youth I also practiced it, after all I was in Hashomer Hatzair, but in adulthood I no longer cared for it. I had this one slogan: 'One war was enough for me, I don't want to live through another!' I've never been to Israel. In my spare time, I concern myself with history, write my memoirs; to tell the truth, I'd like to publish them.

Glossary

Rifka Vostrel
Zagreb
Croatia
Interviewer: Silvia Heim
Date of interview: February 2003

A friendly, tiny elderly woman welcomes me in her room.

From the very first moment it is clear that Rifka Vostrel is a very open and approachable person.

We connect immediately and the interview takes place in a very pleasant atmosphere.

Rifka is very fluent in her stories, and her spirits are wide awake as she speaks and recalls her past.

I am very pleased and honored that I have had the chance to meet Rifka to learn so much about our history through her stories.

• My family background
• Growing up
• During the War
• Post-war
• Glossary

• My family background

Both my paternal and maternal grandparents are from Sarajevo, Bosnia. Unfortunately, I don't know much about my great-grandparents, but I believe they also came from Sarajevo. The families were large on both sides. My father told me that my grandmother, his mother, had sixteen children, but only six of them were still alive when World War II started, and then they too perished, were killed in the Holocaust.

My paternal grandfather's name was Avram Altarac. He was born in the 1860s and a plumber by profession. He did all kinds of installation work and also owned a little shop on Bascscarssija 1 Street, where he worked alone. It's a long street, very famous in Sarajevo and known as a market place; all kinds of craftsmen used to have shops there.

My grandfather was one of those craftsmen and sold all kinds of products made of sheet metal in his shop. It was my grandfather who passed on the trade to his family. On my father's side everybody was a craftsman. They were plumbers, traders or innkeepers, and my father was a barber. The women in the family were mostly housewives.

Jews in Sarajevo were mostly known as tradesmen and craftsmen. There were no Jewish quarters, but there was a Jewish school called Maldar. Life in Sarajevo was very active and the relations between people were very good. National minorities were friends and socialized, but marriages between them were very rare and mostly not approved by the families.

My grandfather was married to Belja Altarac, nee Atijas, born in the 1860s. They had a nice Jewish wedding. Everybody used to call my grandmother Bea. She was a housewife and took care of their six children; one of them was my father. My grandparents were around eighty years old when in 1941 they were taken along with other family members to a death camp and killed. For neither of them, I know exactly where and when they were killed.

My paternal grandparents were religious. They kept the Jewish traditions. They celebrated every holiday, and that's how my father learnt how to pray and read in Hebrew. Grandfather often attended services. They observed Sabbath and the kashrut as best they could.

We visited them very often, especially during the holidays. I'll never forget when my grandfather recited the Kiddush. I remember it so vividly because he never drank; he was an outstanding non-drinker. Between themselves my grandparents used to speak Ladino.

There were no mixed marriages in the family for a long time. It couldn't have happened that someone of their family was married to a non-Jew at the time. Later, it did happen. My father's cousin, Erna Altarac, was the first one to marry a non-Jew. He was a Russian emigrant and the family wasn't very happy about it.

There was another cousin, who married an Orthodox Serb, and she wasn't very welcome in her family home afterwards either. My sister and me struggled and fought for our right to freely choose our husbands and not be married off to someone. It wasn't an intentional revolt against our parents; it just happened that we fell in love with non-Jews.

The environment and surrounding had an impact on most of the Sephardi Jews from Bosnia. My grandfather was wearing pes [Muslim covering for the head], a little bit modified, while my grandmother was wearing tukada [covering for the head that only Sephardi women wore]. I remember that these tukadas were different for married and non-married women.

My grandparents' house was in the old part of Sarajevo city. They lived in a very modest house with a little courtyard. They didn't have much money and thus took care of the housekeeping themselves, without the help of servants or maids. After we moved to Split we didn't see them very often, only during the holidays when we visited them and when the whole family got together.

My grandparents' eldest son was Mose Altarac. He worked as an innkeeper and was married to Estera. They had two children: Jozsi and Blanka. Jozsi was the only one of them to survive the Holocaust; he later died in Israel. Blanka and her parents were killed in World War II.

My father's second- oldest brother was Izrael Altarac. He worked as a tradesman. He was married to Hana and they had two children: Avram and Moric. Moric was my uncle's child from his first marriage and was killed during World War II.

Avram, mostly called Avramcic [little Avram] is still alive. He lives in Israel, has two daughters and five grandchildren. Isidor Altarac, my father's third brother, worked as a tradesman. His wife's maiden name was Flora Finci. She died after World War II.

They had two daughters: Simha and Belja. Simha is still alive and lives in Sarajevo. She has two daughters who live in Israel. I think she has a grandchild or maybe even more than one. Unfortunately, Belja didn't survive the war; she and her father were killed.

Estera Altarac was one of my father's sisters. She was married to a certain Mr. Pardo. They had two daughters: Flora and Rena. All of them were taken away and killed somewhere during the war. My second aunt was called Regina Altarac. She was married to Mr. Gaon. They didn't have children.

Aunt Regina had more luck than the others. She was interned in Vela Luka on the Island of Korchula. She was allowed to move without a permission by the Italian authorities, and from her stories we found out that the situation wasn't too bad there. They didn't have much food, but they were never hungry.

My father used to tell me that he had two more sisters, Sara and Rikica, after whom I was named, but they died before the war and I don't know anything about them.

My maternal grandparents also came from Sarajevo. I don't remember much of my grandfather, but I do remember my 'nona' [grandmother], that's how I and my sister Lea, who was named after her, used to call her. My nona Lea Atijas, nee Abinun, was married to Avram Naftali Atijas, my grandfather, who died young of tuberculosis.

My grandmother Lea was a housewife. Hers is a sad story: she was very young when she became a widow, never remarried, and supported her children on her own. She was very poor. In order to support her children she had to work in other people's houses. Once, my sister Lea asked her, 'How come you are illiterate?', and she said, 'Every time I wanted to go to school, a holiday would approach!'

Apart from being humorous, she was very diligent and known to be very good at her job. She made all kinds of noodles and taught other women how to make them. She used to say, 'Do it like this...', as she was cutting the noodles. That's how she practically supported her family.

I remember how nona Lea saved her life by running away: From Sarajevo to Mostar she traveled under the false name of Aisha Muslich, dressed in Muslim clothes. How terrible this must have been for a 60-year-old woman! While sitting in the train, waiting for the ticket-collector to come and check the tickets, she forgot her new name. What now? Ustasha 2 men will come, look at her ticket, ask her name and she won't know it!

While she was sitting there, she felt like she knew the man right opposite her from somewhere. And yes, he indeed was a Jew, and he looked at her as if he knew her, too. Full of fear, she gave him permission to read her pass and remind her of her new name. 'Aisha Muslich, Aisha Muslich, Aisha Muslich', she repeated silently to herself in order not to forget her new name.

In Mostar, a Muslim woman waited for her and took her to her uncle who was already there. My grandmother took off her Muslim clothes and became Saveta Kojo, a Serb. Under that name she joined us in Split. Soon after her came my uncle with his family, but Italians interned them to the Island of Brac and then to the Island of Rab 3.

My nona Lea lived to the age of 96. She died in 1978, long after my mother, my father and my uncle. Unfortunately, there was nobody to take care of her after my mother's death in 1968. In the end she could hardly move, was completely blind and had to be put in a Jewish old-age home.

My grandparents had three children: Naftali Buki Atijas - he was the first- born son and it was a Sephardi custom to call all first-born sons Buki, whereas first-born daughters were called Bukica. Naftali was a tailor. He even had his own shop, in which my mother worked when she lived in Sarajevo.

During World War II he was in Mostar, Split and on the Island of Rab. Luckily, he survived. He died after the war. My mother Rosa, or Rahela in Yiddish, was born in 1908. Regina Atijas, my mother's sister, was married to Moric Moshe Albahari. He was a prisoner-of-war. She was a milliner. During the war she and her son Albert, also called Albi, were with us.

My father was called Leon Altarac; officially Juda. He worked as a barber in Sarajevo. When we moved to Split in 1934, he worked with a master in a famous barber's shop for a long time. Later he became a nonkulo [attendant in a synagogue]. His duty was to take care of the synagogue, the arrangement of the 'sfarim' [prayer books] and tefillin. When he became a nonculo, we moved to the apartment of the Jewish Community which was in the same building where the temple was.

• Growing up

My parents had two children: I was born on 12th October 1929 in Sarajevo and my sister Lea, or Lilika, was born on 10th April 1939 in Split. She is the only one in our family who wasn't born in Sarajevo. My mother was a dressmaker by profession, but she worked as a housewife. And of course she also took care of my sister and me.

Our mother raised us in a traditional way. We observed the holidays, but not in a religious way. Every holiday was celebrated: For Pesach we had the seder and ate all the traditional food. There was always fish on Friday evenings.

My parents didn't demand of us to go to the synagogue or to pray; maybe that's a pity because therefore we don't know much about the traditions. Neither my mother nor my father influenced our opinions. They gave us the opportunity to choose and decide for ourselves how much we wanted to know about Judaism.

At home we spoke Croatian, but sometimes, when our parents didn't want us to understand something, they spoke Ladino, and they did especially so with Grandmother Lea. She lived with us and was a great help to my mother.

My sister and me had no duties or obligations except school. Most of the day we spent playing with our friends. Because we lived in the building of the Jewish community, we had the opportunity to participate in and attend all the cultural, religious and sports events. 'Jarden' was a Jewish Cultural Association, where all the Jews gathered. We went there very often. We liked it very much and most of our friends were from this group.

• During the War

Before and during World War II we lived in Split. Looking back, I have to admit that Italians were relatively gentle to us, Jews, especially in comparison to the Ustashas and the Germans [see Italian occupation of Yugoslavia] 4. The Jews of Split didn't have to wear a yellow star, but they were restricted in their personal lives.

Some of the shops had a sign stating: 'E vietato gli regresso agli Ebrei' [It is forbidden for Jews to enter]. But nobody stuck to it, on the contrary, there were many good people who wanted to help us and indeed did help us. Unfortunately, I didn't go to school because it was forbidden for Jews [see anti-Jewish laws in Croatia] 5, but I finished the 2nd grade of high school [today the 6th grade of elementary school] privately, in a school that was organized by the Jewish Community of Split.

It was in June 1942 when a group of young fascists came to Split. At that time Split was under Italian occupation, but these were local fascists. I remember it like it happened yesterday. I was thirteen years old. I was swimming and playing with my friends on the beach, when I realized it was time to leave in order to be home in time for Sabbath.

On my way home, when I reached the center of the old city, I saw many people standing and staring at something. It was the place where today's synagogue is located and where the old one used to be. We lived in the same building.

All of a sudden I heard my friend Ines' voice: 'Rikica, Rikica, come quickly, something is happening!' In a shock, I looked to the windows of my apartment and saw angry and wild fascists throwing out everything they could find. Ines grabbed my hand and took me to her place. She wasn't Jewish but she lived in the same street, in a building right opposite mine.

I still remember how scared I was, and that her mother tried to calm me down. The hardest thing was when Ines' brother came home and told us that my father had been wounded and taken away by the fascists. Luckily, it turned out that wasn't the truth.

Until late into the night robbery and animal-like behavior was taking place. Everything was burnt and destroyed in front of the citizens in the center of the old city. I tried to fall asleep, but couldn't. Around 4am I looked out of my window, and what did I see: my father in a nearby apartment.

With his finger on his lips he indicated me to be quiet. Somehow, with gestures, he explained to me that my mother and Lea were in a safe place. That was when I finally calmed down and managed to fall asleep. We were left without anything, but at least our lives had been spared. Next day we met at the National Square, the same place where our possessions had been burnt and destroyed the night before.

After some time we found an apartment with the help of friends. My family stayed in Split in that modest home, and I went to Vela Luka. My aunt Regina and her son Albert were there. She lived there like all the other refugees. The Jews were interned there by the Italians and lived in the homes of the locals.

I stayed with my aunt for a few days and then returned to Split to my family. In 1942 I became a member of a Zionist cell. I was very young and angry with the world and everything that was happening so I desperately wanted to do something to stop it.

After I joined the Zionist cell, my Jewish friend, who was also a member, introduced me to Bosa. Bosa was a strong, happy and very friendly girl. She told me stories about the partisans, illegal work in order to help the partisans, Comrade Tito 6 and the Communist Party.

I was hoping to become one of them, but unfortunately she didn't accept me, but told me to become a member of the SKOJ 7 instead. At first I was sad, but later I found out what a great honor it was for a young girl like me to become a member of the SKOJ.

In 1943 after the Italian capitulation 8, my whole family and I joined the partisans. The Jews who stayed in Split and didn't want to leave were killed by the Ustashas and the Germans. Because I was in the youth organization and doing illegal work, I knew that something would happen. In the youth organization we were very well organized.

We were divided into groups of several girls each. From time to time we used to meet, but every time in a different apartment. There we read literature that was printed on unoccupied territory ['Omladinski borac' - 'Youth Fighter'], exchanged experiences about books and which books should be read - we mostly read Soviet literature - and finally addressed concrete problems.

Once, I was obligated to distribute flyers - I don't recall what they were about, but I remember, in one house that I went to, the door was open. It was rude of me to just enter, walk in and leave the flyer on a small wardrobe. Who knows if it was or wasn't a pleasant surprise for the family.

There is one more incident I remember. I had a meeting with a girl from my group in her apartment. Fifty meters before her house, a comrade, who had seen that the officials had got into her apartment, stopped me and told me that they were searching her home.

She didn't know I was going to that particular apartment, but seeing me in the neighborhood she had thought of it and prevented me of getting into a dangerous situation. If I remember correctly, the friend I was going to see was even imprisoned for a short while.

When I came home I said to my parents, 'I'm leaving. I'm going to join the partisans and that's it!' They didn't say a word; they were speechless. I collected my things and went to my friend Hana Montiljo's house, to take her with me. When I came to her home, her mother asked me, 'Where is your family?' I replied, 'They can't go.

They have my little sister Lea and nona with them, it's too hard for them.' She told me, 'Go back home and take them with you!' When I came back home, they were still speechless, so I just told them, 'Get ready, we don't have much time!' They started to pack. My dear nona took some kind of a bundle and put a few of her belongings inside. My father also took some things and packed them in a makeshift suitcase.

We went from Split to the village of Zrnovnica on foot along with a large number of people. It was a mix of people, not only Jews but also others who were afraid of the Ustashas and the Germans. There were also Italian soldiers; since Italy had capitulated, it was better for them to be with us than to be caught by the Germans.

At one point, in Dubrava, I separated from my parents and joined a partisan group. We were passing through the passage called 'Hot Stone' in order to get to Dugopolje. I remember that I even got a small gun which, of course, I didn't know how to use. We were sneaking into Dugopolje in order to find out who was there, whether it was the Ustashas or the Germans; we didn't know.

We managed to move freely in Dugopolje because nobody was there. In Dugopolje the partisans started to form new groups, and I very much wanted to be included. In the end they didn't want children to join because we were too young, and so they sent a group of us back to Dubrava. Dubrava was a reception shelter where all the refugees were gathered and organized to be sent to different places.

When I came back, my parents weren't there anymore. They had been evacuated to the village of Srinjine. I just went to visit them and held a lecture for the youth when they opened a youth house there. I told them about my illegal work in Split. Afterwards I came back to Dubrava where I carried out the duties of a political youth worker.

After some time we had to leave Dubrava because it was the time of the 6th offensive. I was evacuated to one side, my parents and Lea to the other. I, along with my group, went from Dubrava to Jesenice where the boats, which we called trabakuli, were waiting for us [trabacullo is an Italian expression for fishing boat].

They took us to the Island of Brac [one of the Italian internment camps] 9 first and after three months we were transferred to the Island of Vis [another Italian internment camp]. On Brac I was a member of the Kotar Committee for United Youth and took care of the pioneers. The Germans were following us so we had to leave Vis and were evacuated to Italy. All this time I had no idea where my family was.

In Italy many people were waiting for us; actually it was a partisan refugee camp in Bari. There I met a familiar face and she told me that my parents were in Carbonara camp, also in Italy. I wrote them a letter and told them that I was in Bari and that I didn't know where I was going to go. I was following the refugee groups.

As soon as they received the letter my parents joined me in Bari. They came with my aunt Regina and her son Albert, who had met up with my parents in Lastovo when they took a break on their way to Italy.

My sister recalls a story our father used to tell her when she was younger. It was about the communists in their boat. When they were on their way to Italy, riding in those trabakuli, in which there were many wounded people, firing started. Nobody knew why 'our people' [the partisans] would shoot at other partisans.

Later, we found out that we had the old password and that's why they thought we were enemies. The trabakuli had left the port before the password was changed. Later, our father practically saved the captain's life: He went to court and testified as a witness at the trial that nobody had known about the change of passwords.

The most interesting part is that the moment the firing started all the communists began to pray to their God. In that moment you give up everything and everybody, just to stay alive and rescue yourself. The shooting didn't last long, luckily, and everything turned out fine in the end.

When my family was finally reunited, we continued on our way to El-Shatt in Egypt. As my father had told us, El-Shatt had 27,042 refugees, out of which 0.9 percent were Jews. There were refugees from all over Croatia there. There were some from Belgrade and Sarajevo.

All the refugees who wanted to leave Italian territory went to Egypt, America or Brazil. We didn't have enough money to leave for America so we went to Egypt instead. Looking back, it was good that we couldn't afford it; if we had left, our lives would have been completely different. Life in the camp in El-Shatt was very well organized. Every camper had his/her own duty. I was responsible for taking care of the shelters. I was also very active in the youth organization.

My father worked as a barber and was a member of a religious section; he was responsible for all the Jews who were there. He made sure they were buried in the proper religious way. Unfortunately, many children died because they weren't used to the hot climate. We lived in a kind of commune. The sound of a bell announced breakfast, tea, lunch and supper time.

We were never hungry there. We had so much food that sometimes we didn't even go to eat with everybody but stayed in our tent and my mother prepared the meals for us. We received clothes from the Red Cross, but skilful hands made dresses and skirts from nightdresses.

In El-Shatt I finished my 3rd grade of high school. Every Sabbath my father held a service in one part of our tent. We celebrated every holiday there. That's how we lived in El-Shatt for 14 months.

We found out that the war was over in the night of 9th May 1945. We all came out of our tents and celebrated the end of the war. We were very excited and impatient to return to Yugoslavia. The return was organized in groups. We came back in July 1945. A new life, and lifestyle, reconstruction, hope and enthusiasm in a free homeland was about to start.

• Post-war

After the war, in 1948, we returned to Split, but I went to Zagreb to work in the Central Youth Committee. Because I was still very young, my parents felt that they should be close to me. My father moved to Zagreb in 1949 whereas my mom, Lea and my grandmother only came in 1950.

At first, my father worked in a Jewish old-age home, which was housed in today's Community Center. He was working as a caretaker and later, when the old-age home was moved from the community building to another building, he became an employee with the Jewish community.

After Dr. Gruner, who was a cantor, died, my father took over his duties. He became a 'non professional' cantor because he wasn't educated in schools. On the contrary, everything he knew he had learnt in his parents' home. In the community, every holiday was celebrated and it was my father who led the ceremonies.

Sometimes even rabbis from abroad came and celebrated holidays with us. Since we are Sephardim my father read the prayers in Ladino. He didn't only lead the holiday celebrations but did everything else that was required, such as burials and the like.

When Rabbi Menahem Romano from Sarajevo died, he used to go there and help out in the community. Unfortunately, my parents died very young. My mother died when she was only 60 years old and my father at the age of 69. They were buried in the Jewish cemetery in Zagreb.

Jewish life after the war was very active. It's not true that communism forbade us to attend services or celebrate holidays. Many people came to the community to socialize.

I got married to Eduard Vostrel in the late 1940s. I don't want to talk about my husband's life before our wedding. He isn't Jewish. He worked in politics and in diplomatic services, and because of that we lived in many places in the world: in Chicago, USA, where he was a consul for four years, in Stockholm and in Goteborg, Sweden, for another four years each.

We have two sons: Rajko and Emil. Rajko was born in Zagreb in 1950. He works as a professor, and has a daughter, Iskra. Emil was born in Belgrade in 1954. He studied law and has a son, Vjekoslav.

My sister worked as chemical technician and is retired by now. She is divorced, but has a son named Srecko, born in 1963, and also a grandson, Tomislav.

Jewish religion and religions in general don't have an impact on our daily lives. My sister and I are both atheists. We are aware of our roots and are very proud of them, but don't practice religion. Our children and grandchildren know that they have Jewish mothers and grandmothers, but how they live is their own choice. We told them the truth about their origin and they can do with that whatever they want to!

• Glossary: