Travel

Olga Banyai
(nee Mermelstein)
Budapest
Hungary
Interviewer: Anna Legman
Date of Interview: June 2004

Mrs. Olga Banyai lives in an apartment overlooking the street on one of the floors of an old, VI.District apartment building. A couple years ago she had a serious brain hemorrhage, so she couldn't remember certain events, years and dates, and her memories were sometimes confused. Despite this, she recalled many stories and memories from her childhood and her ancestors. Because of the state of her health, today she can rarely get out of her apartment, but her family, her son and daughter, and grandchildren are at her side, mutually supporting each other.

Family background
Growing up
During the war
Post-war
Glossary

Family background

My great-great-grandfather on the maternal side was Mozes Herskovits. He was a Romanian. My father and mother were distant cousins, my maternal and paternal grandmothers were siblings. My great-great-grandmother was Lotti Reich, she was born in 1827, probably in Orgovany. But aside from this, the entire family lived in Romania, in Transylvania, spread all over: in Sziget [Maramarossziget], Palotamezo [Palotamezo was no longer included in the 1910 Hungarian census], Kolozsvar, Csenger. [Of this list, Csenger, a large town near the Romanian border was never a part of Romania.] My great-great- grandfather was a merchant, landowner and became poor because he vouched for somebody - signed some bill in someone's stead - and lost all his land. Then the children started popping up, he had four children. They lived in Bikszad. Bikszad was the nest. [Bikszad - a small town with a 160 room spa; became Romanian after Trianon.] One of my great-great-grandfather's grandchildren was my grandmother Julia, and another was my other grandmother, Netti.

My grandmother's father was a famous rabbi, they lived well-off in Csenger. They had - I believe - six children: four girls and two boys. But more of my ancestors were born in Bikszad, and were Hungarians. They were very cultured. My grandmothers were raised like that, I don't know exactly what school they finished, but they always said how cultured the boys were and the girls, too. But that was the [family] branch where the girls were schooled also. That's why my grandmothers were cultured.

My grandmothers' brother was Samuel Stern, who lived here in Damjanich street [Budapest]. He was my mother's Uncle, then there was Mozes in Erdely [Transylvania - in Hungarian]. There was also a rich landlord in Ersekujvar [Ersekujvar - city of 16,300 inhabitants in 1910, was annexed by Czechoslovakia after Trianon, now in Slovakia]. There were a few landlords among the relatives, I had a landlord great-grandfather, and there was a landlord great uncle, my mother's uncle. I believe, he didn't have a family, or children, but he was a very rich gentleman. They called him the landlord. We wrote about possibly getting some kind of compensation, and they wrote back that we can't, because he wasn't directly related, but was my mother's uncle.

Samuel Stern avoided the war, he was a teacher, his wife was a teacher, he had one son. He was a lawyer-attorney. They were very sweet folk. Their son was called, dr. Pal Somjen. He was a very nice, enchanting person, well- loved. It was always very good to go here with the children to Damjanich street. It was truly one of those places where they greet you with open arms. We met them quite often, we had a close relationship. Today the family has all died off. The daughter died, she was my age, but died of cancer at the age of forty-six. The last to die was Samuel's wife, Annus [from Anna]. Annus was a girl from Devecser, her parents were also killed. She was an only daughter. Her father was a doctor. She lived with her son- in-law, because her daughter died earlier than she did. One of the hands of the son-in-law's new wife was paralysed. She cooked with one arm, shopped and dressed, as well. The family was well-off, teachers and instructors were well-paid at that time. And there was Pali [diminutive of Pal - (Paul)] the lawyer, but he's no longer living. Eight, nine years ago, he died of cancer.

Mozes Stern, I don't know what he did. I only know that he had a very pretty daughter named Olga. There's an Olga in all branches of my family. I don't know what the daughter did, I never met her, I just heard about her from one of my cousins, and he showed me pictures of her. I know she lived in Erdely, probably in Kolozsvar. The family was spread all around Erdely.

As for my maternal grandfather, the Herskovitses weren't rich, nor poor, but even if they were poor, they wouldn't show it. If clothes were stained, they were cleaned and ironed, and everybody saw what orderly people they were. You never saw them dirty, or in rags! If someone is poor, it doesn't mean they have to let themselves go.

My maternal grandfather was Jakab Herskovits. He died about the same time his youngest daughter (my aunt) was born, in 1895. Since he was born in Csenger in 1860, he was about thirty-five years old. His heart gave out on him. For the sake of something different, he was a tavern owner. But in the family they always just talked about how, 'Imagine Grandma, blind with all those children!' All I know of Grandpa, was that once a year, when the new year came [Yahrzeit], he lit candles. I don't know more about him.

My maternal grandmother was a very clever lady. They were rich. In those days, the wealthy people didn't make their women work. They never talked about what happened, when Grandpa died. Obviously, they split the property up among the children. People then weren't so unsatisfied as they are today. They weren't so demanding. Then my maternal grandmother, poor woman, was taken to Auschwitz at the age of eighty-three.

My mother is Eszter Herskovits, born in Bikszad in 1894. My mother didn't have an education. Grandma was left alone with a lot of children, and went blind with the last one. I don't know how she raised the children, only that they all turned out to be people. Two became cantor teachers. Samuel Herskovits was from Vecses. Dezso Herskovits was from Dombovar, he had ten children.

Samuel was the oldest sibling. He lived in Vecses, had a family, five children. He had a son named Laci Halmos - he magyarized his name - who was a bank director at the Ertekforgalmi [Securities Trade] Bank. He was called up for work service [Forced labor]1 and died.

My mother's next sibling, Dezso, was a soldier in the First World War [Military in the Austro-Hungarian Empire]2. He had ten children. When his wife died, he was left with the ten children. He split the children up among relatives. He couldn't have worked [and raised the children] anyway. The ten children got used to independence. Many came up to Pest, and here in Pest they survived. Those who didn't come to Pest, all died in forced labor. Two of his children went into hiding, Klari in Pesterzsebet, Olga in Budapest. Both of Olga's children died in the war, they starved. After the war, she had two more children, who emigrated to Israel. Her son was killed in Israel on his twenty-first birthday, it was deemed a hero's death. Klari had a clothing shop downtown, but she always felt like an outsider in the family.

Dezso's son Jeno also hid out somewhere. After the war, things went well for him, he still had his business in Pest [Budapest], a women's clothing shop, they lived from that. He had two children. He had a car. He was going somewhere with his twelve-year old son and they hit a truck, and his son's carotid artery was cut. He died instantly. The little daughter survived. Jeno couldn't stand the pain of it, he died soon after.

Then there was my mother's next sibling, Pali. He didn't have children. And somehow, in the forced labor, he survived the war. Then he emigrated to New York. He had heart problems, they amputated his leg, he died from that.

There was Miksa, he had a son. A very pretty only child. He came over, so I could write to my siblings - because they were already in America - to help him get out [flee Hungary], because he didn't have anyone in America [to officially invite or sponsor him for a visa]. His father was in the hospital with cancer, and at that time he always asked when is his son going, already. I got a letter from my younger brother, that he'd arrange it, and he could go soon. But he wrote something, like he couldn't arrange it overnight. We should arrange everything here, he'll figure a way to get the son out sooner. I went in to see Miksa in the hospital, it was after an operation, and I knew it was metastatic, they couldn't save him. I read to him that his son could go to America, that they arranged everything, it's all fine. I lied to him, it was a complete lie. The poor guy, I really loved my cousin. [sic - It seems, that Miksa wasn't her mother's brother, but another relative.]

I don't know too much about my mother's other siblings, there was Aunt Hanna, Sara and Fani, all three died in Auschwitz.

My father's family was more 'pulled apart' than 'held together'. He wasn't in contact with his immediate family. As close as the Herskovits family was, the Mermelstein's were that distant.

My paternal grandfather was called Mano Mermelstein. I visited them once, they lived in Szolnok. They had two small houses, his daughter Zseni lived in one, my grandfather lived in the other. Zseni had a family already, three little girls, Manci [from Maria], Etus [from Etel - (Ethel)] and Ella. Her husband was a travelling salesman. Zseni died young from consumption, her oldest child was probably eight years old at the time. I knew their father, he travelled to Subcarpathia. He was left alone with the children. He was a traveller, a lot of Jews went house to house all over, with all kinds of things, with saccharine, I don't know, some little things. He was that kind of salesman on a small scale, not big. They weren't big businesses. Manci is still living. That's all I know about my father's side, whatever Manci told me.

My grandfather was a comb-maker. He made the combs, and sold them, too. He was able to support the family with his comb profession. They went from city to city. They sold things in the bigger cities: Munkacs, Ungvar, Beregszasz, Nagyszolos [Subcarpathia]3. They took my grandmother with them. They had a lot of children there, too. There was Marton - that was my father. There was Zseni, Olga, Tamara, Dora and Libi. I already told you about Zseni. Libi perished in the war, in Auschwitz. She had an eight-year old daughter. Olga left for Palestine already before the war, she's got a daughter and a grandson who live in America. I don't know anything about Tamara. Dora, who lived here in Pest, was deported but survived. Her husband and five-year old daughter were taken into the ghetto, in Wesselenyi street, into the temple ghetto [Budapest ghetto]. Her husband starved to death there, the little girl survived. A cousin of hers brought her out of the ghetto, when we were liberated. They took her away, soaked the clothes off of her because she had lice, she had sores and everything. They shaved her head, you know they could hardly get all the lice off of her. She stayed with them for a couple months, until her mother came back. Her mother survived. She was a very clever little girl. When her father was already weak, and they rationed out the bread slices, the little girl gave her own bread to her father.

Grandpa died, I believe, a couple years before the war, not in the war. My maternal grandma, Netti Stern died young, she was exhausted from all the travel. Her sister, Julia Stern, my maternal grandmother was taken to Auschwitz at age 83. It was probably better for those who died earlier.

My father, Marton Mermelstein was born in Tiszaujlak in 1897.

Grandpa, Mano wasn't religious. But my father was religious, he was the only religious person in the family. There were five siblings, but only he was religious. He studied [the Talmud and the Torah]. He always studied. His siblings didn't like him, because he always studied. His siblings had to work, my father had to study. He was the only son. That's how he later became a travelling salesman.

The Mermelstein's didn't suffer, they weren't killed in heaps, like the Herskovitses. Always the good ones - there's a saying: 'Always the good ones go away.' In my family, the good ones went away. The Herskovitses were all kind people. Generous, they gave to the poor. The whole family was so charitable. They even shared what little they had. They were all killed.

Growing up

I'm eighty-one years old, and I had a brain hemorrhage. My brain - I've got a paper about it - is officially faulty. I've got a Jewish name. My name is Braha, blessing. I'm the blessing. Mrs. Janos Banyai, Olga Mermelstein. I was born May 10, 1923 in Bikszad in Szatmar County. When I was an infant, they took me to Subcarpathia, to Huszt. [At her birth, Huszt (now Khust) was a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1910, the nearly 10,000 residents were 51 percent Ruthenian, 34 percent Hungarian and 15 percent German. Of those, 23 percent were part of the Jewish community. After Trianon it went to Czechoslovakia. In 1938, it was reannexed by Hungary, and in 1945 it became part of the Soviet Union. Now it belongs to the Ukraine.]

It was a very pretty small town, with quite a lot of Jews living there, but few returned after the war. People there somehow mingled together, it didn't count then who was Jewish, who was Christian. We got along well with the Christians, we were friends. They came over, we went over [to their houses]. We played dolls together. There wasn't any problem under the sun with the fact that we were Jews. There were Ruthenians, very decent people. We got along better with them, but my mother missed the Hungarian language. Huszt was a Jewish city - we learned Yiddish in school, all of us. We were somehow separate from the big family. From almost everyone. My parents were distant cousins. Our grandmothers were sisters. My mother went to visit at my father's house, and they fell in love with each other. My grandmother was very much against it, but then a wedding came out of it anyway. It wasn't a bad marriage, just the problem was that my father was religious, there were religious problems. My father was more religious than my mother. My mother was already a more modern thinker at that time. That was the problem, but there weren't any arguments. Once in a while, they'd quarrel. My father said, that's because my mother wasn't religious enough.

My father wasn't a soldier in the First World War. They dripped something in his ear [to avoid conscription], and he carried that with him his whole life, he had a bad ear. They ruined his ear so he wouldn't be a soldier. A Hungarian soldier. There he wouldn't have gotten kosher food, and he insisted upon it [eating kosher].

My parents were tent marketeers. Once a week there was a big market - Huszt was a small town, at that time about 25,000 residents. They put out a table, full of all kinds of things, and they came and bought candies, and whatever else they sold. I don't know, ...they sold fruits, whatever there was at the time. Then my father gave that up, and became a salesman. Then they called them travellers, he became a traveller. He went to the Czech cities with this type of window blinds, that's what he sold. And we could live from that. He sent fifty-five crowns [Czech currency] every week. My father wasn't home too much, he was always travelling. I saw him four times, when I was little, when I was six years old, when I ten years old, that was a harder period at home. When I was fourteen years old, I saw him for the last time. He was always on the road.

The last fifteen years he lived in one place, in Prague, he worked for a famous rabbi. I don't know what exactly he did. I only know that he lived there, that was his permanent address. We never went to see him. We weren't that well-off that we could travel. I did travel, and that's how I met my Transylvanian relatives during the war, because I had to get my citizenship [KEOKH - National Central Alien Control Office].

Relatives of mine lived in Szinervaralja, Remetemezo, Bikszad, Somkutpataka, Szatmarnemeti and Kolozsvar. It was a large family. [All of these cities named belonged to Romania after Trianon. Kolozsvar alone was in Romania before the treaty.] They were scattered all over, and then my mother said to go visit them. Aside from this, we also travelled when we were sick. There wasn't a hospital in our town, if I was sick, for example when they took out my appendix, then I travelled to Beregszasz [Berehove] and back.

My mother always wore an apron at home, and always had small change in the apron. If a beggar came, she always gave. We had our own beggars. I'm sure they had more money than we did. She gave anyway, she helped, and taught us by doing that. I was like that, too. I helped, and helped, and I don't regret it. I had lots of friends. They really loved me, I loved them, too. There was no difference, if they were Jewish or Christian. Or Gypsy either. The Gypsies [Roma] have really difficult, very disadvantaged lives.

We were Hungarian citizens until 1918, we always felt we were Hungarians. The villages, cities which I just listed, that was Hungary. I really loved Erdely, too. My mother told me so much about it, it was good to listen to her. The family was big, and everybody had some story.

Jakab Mermelstien is my older brother. And now for sixty years, he's 'Jack'. He was born in 1921 in Somkut, in Szatmar county. My parents were living there at the time. They wandered around quite a lot.

My younger brother, Ignac Mermelstein was born in Huszt in 1926. The mother tongues of all three of us are Hungarian and Yiddish, and naturally we also knew Ruthenian. We spoke Hungarian in Romania. Not many spoke Hungarian in Huszt, so we had to learn the Ruthenian language, too. All three of us went to a Ruthenian school. [Ruthenians: the name for an East Slavic people living in what was once Galicia and Subcarpathia, as well as Bukovina and who speak a Ukrainian dialect.]

I knew Hungarian, also, I learned a little German, Yiddish and German are very similar. I was happy with that for a couple years, and I developed further with English. I had to learn a little English, because if I went to [visit] my little brother's family in America, so I would have had to speak only English. They said that I spoke quite well, but now I don't know any English anymore.

My brothers went to a Jewish school. Jewish school lasted for half a day, either morning or afternoon. It was obligatory in our family, my father insisted on it. [probably a cheder]. Among my ancestors, there were cantors, teachers. The Jewish school was there in Huszt, the two boys went there. My father learned it, and he wanted the boys to learn Hebrew, too. They learned how to pray. I even know how to pray, I just don't understand a word of it.

My older brother finished grammar school, that was popular then. He didn't learn anything else. He was very talented, but since he was Jewish, they were careful not to support Jews. As a Jewish child, his drawings were out in the hall [on display], he was so talented. And he was very clever, he knew a lot about everything. At the age of fifteen, he took over the work from mother - he'd never studied how to sew - he sewed trousers beautifully, men's trousers. And then, at the age of fifteen, he became the family provider. We respected him and loved him, because he was so diligent. He saw that my mother was struggling with the three children, and we lived really far from the city, six kilometers away. You had to go by foot, and clothes had to be carried there, and the tailored work had to be brought back, and then my older brother took it over. My mother struggled a lot, but she didn't complain ever.

My older brother became a tailor. But a life artist, too. He could do something with anything. He made candy brittle in his childhood. He was still in grammar school, and he made candy brittle from sugar. He roasted it, then wrapped it and sold it. He had pocket money, and even my mother got some of it. When he was already older, then he made bead strings, and colored watch chains. It was the fashion then, the peasants wore them. He always figured something out. He was very talented.

The family was religious. Mainly, my father. He was somewhere between the Neolog 4and the Orthodox5. He went to the bath [mikveh] and to temple everyday, and only after that would he unpack his wares. He was very sensitive to cleanliness. He never went into the street without a hat. He had a regular coat, normal shirt [not characteristically Hassidic clothing] and he had a little beard like this.

The rest of us weren't really temple-goers. My mother went once or twice a year, for the high holidays. The boys also went. Girls didn't have to go to temple. We did have to study religion. And Hebrew, too. All through grammar school we studied religion. I learned to read it, I just don't know what it means anymore.

I remember childhood celebrations. We were poor, but on Fridays we always held a regular holiday dinner. On Friday, you had to properly cook. We made brioche, fresh bread, meat soup. That was the usual thing, we always did this. My mom had a feeling for it, she didn't work on Saturday, didn't warm anything on Saturday, she cooked the kinds of things that you didn't have to warm up. In my childhood, we cooked dried plums and dried apples, and every week there had to be brioche. We had to wake up early Saturday morning. We could hardly wait to get to eat the brioche. Here in my household, it wasn't possible [to keep kosher]. My husband, Janos Banyai was Dunantul [from the 'beyond-the-Danube' region], from Nagykanizsa. His parents kept the Sabbath, the kids didn't much anymore.

On Saturday the boys went to temple, my mother went to the neighbors to talk a bit. She'd take me, too. Later, I went to one of my girlfriends, and when the boys came home, then it was lunch. At the Jewish homes, chulent was the main lunch at noon on Saturday. But we didn't like chulent. My mother rarely made it. She made plenty of salads, tarhonya [a pasta] with beef or chicken, meat soup. She made apple compote, lit candles, and if my father was home, then there were very serious lunches and dinners, my father always prayed at them. It was so cosy and peaceful. It's completely different when the head of the family is home.

At Passover, we ate and there's a tradition in the seder that you're not allowed to eat bread. So before that you had to clean out everything, and everything in the world had to be moved. Clean beautifully, and change the dishes. We did this, and it was a good piece of work, a little different than the everyday [cleaning]. Once on seder night, my father gave me a piece of matzot to put away, as a reward. You get a gift for it. I hid it, but the rest... I don't know anymore what I got. But I was very proud, that I got to hide the piece of matzot. You had to keep it for a while.

Then there were the high holidays, when my mother also went to temple. The women wore white dresses. There was Purim, then there was the Day of Atonement [Yom Kippur], there was Sukkot, the tent holiday, these we all kept, and my mother always went to temple then. Then came the mourning day for the dead, we lit candles or a little lamp, my mother kept it for me so I wouldn't accidentally forget to remember her loved ones.

I was sick a lot. Not seriously sick, a little cold, a little fever, this, that, it was enough that I just didn't feel good. Since I was the only girl, I had to clean and watch my little brother. When I was sick, then my brothers did the cleaning. We lived in a dirt-floor house in Huszt. Every week I had to do a big cleaning. My mother took the work, the finished work, and brought things to cook. I stayed at home to clean. Every year we had to white-wash it inside and out. Every week we had to putty up [the cracks]. My mother was maniacally clean. I had to wash, too, I had to do a weekly washing. For the big washing, Mariska came, my mother's friend, and she did it.

I always had to take care of my little brother. Because my mother worked, and when she left home, went into the city, I had to look after my little brother. It was a very big burden on me. My older brother was in school, I was together with my little brother. The area around our house was a very dangerous place, there was a canal in front of the house. And that went to the Tisza River [the second largest river in Hungary]. We really had to be careful that children didn't fall in. My whole childhood was spent looking after my little brother. I hated my little brother because I was tied down and I really liked to play. And now we're best friends.

Once when I was little, my father laughed at me. When my little brother was born, I was three years old. My mother nursed the child, and I wanted to be nursed, too. Until then there had been two of us, and then the third child came. I was jealous of my brother. My mother nursed him, and I wanted to be nursed, too. I sat down on the ground and cried. My father was home, and he laughed at me. I grabbed a shoe and threw it at my father. He laughed at me. He was rarely at home, and he only beat me once, when I was six years old. I was his favorite. He didn't see me much, but I was his only daughter. So much love flowed toward me. He didn't like the boys, he was very strict with them, because he wanted them to study [religion], too. But the boys weren't very interested in religion, though they went to the Jewish school.

My father always sent some kind of gewgaw, something to wear, beads, jewelry, sometimes he sent oranges. So he always sent packages. Plus he sent home the fifty-five crowns and fifty filler. The postman brought that to me, I went to the post office every week.

I really loved to play. I had girlfriends. I really loved to play dolls, and to build houses out of mud, and furniture and everything. My mother, as a seamstress, had these little pieces of cloth, I took them, and had a good time playing with the peasant kids. At that time, they sewed dolls for children themselves. If you were clever, you sewed a doll for your girlfriend. Plus we made furniture and a dollhouse. It was great to be little then, despite the fact that you had to sweep, too. Everything was good then. It's the same now, if people would be a little more modest, they'd live a lot more happily.

I did very nice needlework. Once I didn't dare go home, because I got a five [the worst grade then] in needlework. At that time, a one was the best grade. I was crying when I told how I got a five in needlework. My mother bathed me, and tucked me in, nothing happened. I didn't know that it wasn't my fault, that I failed because she didn't give me money for needlework. But after that, I always had needlework.

I fell down a lot in my childhood. We had to go on stone streets, and tights were popular then. My tights always ripped, when I went to school. I went home, fell down again, my mother came home late, she'd done the shopping during the day, that night she washed them and patched them.[probably darned them, that is, 'patched' the hole in the cotton 'floret stockings' with a multi-string thread in a singular pattern.] The next day, I put them on again. Later I patched them, too. When I patched them, my mother, who wasn't big on praise, complimented me. 'That's my little girl', and I was very proud of that. It can be good to be poor too, if that's how it turns out. I didn't want anything else, we had everything. Our parents did all they could to dress us decently and send us to school.

I remember from those times that once my mother went to visit relatives in Erdely, and she took a sack of pastries. Her mother was alive then, and my aunt, too. My mother told us how happy they were. A sack of pastries were even cheaper then, in the 1930s. There in Subcarpathia, we didn't have anybody, we were wanderers.

We didn't really get to see my paternal grandparents, because we didn't have money for travel. Once we went, all three of us kids, to a wedding, and it was really good, because there was a big garden. And there was an oven, and since I was the guest, I got to sleep on the top of the oven. It was very interesting. I got clothes then, that was a rare thing, to get clothes for a wedding. And I was very happy. It was my aunt Libi's wedding. She ended up in Auschwitz, too. They lived in Munkacs [Mukaceve], they took them away from there. It was a proper wedding, she had on a pretty white dress. When I went out the gate of the temple, then they threw confetti. I loved it so much, I was about five or six. There was good food then, so we partied well. But my mother always said: you have to behave! Well we had to, you couldn't horse around there.

I always loved to work, and I always had work. I took on everything. My first job was at age fourteen, when I finished grammar school. When I finished, I went to a family and had to watch two twins. Their mother had lung problems. They were about eleven years old, I was fourteen. I had to watch them, it was just like when an older sister watches the younger ones. They gave me something to eat, they gave me clean clothes, they had no problems with me. I didn't have to clean, because I was a child myself. Though I was already cleaning at home, I started early, I didn't play much, I had to work a lot at home.

Then when I was already bigger, I started working on Fo street in a hat shop, in a first-class place. They were very satisfied with me. I was so happy. That was a good place. And I set aside my fillers [pennies], and went to study in the trade school. I learned millinery [hat making]. My mother asked me, what do you want to be? A seamstress or something else? I said, something else, and it sounded so good then. Women's milliner. And I became something else, though I surely would have been a good seamstress. Because I already had the background. I saw it at home.

I knew the Hungarian language, because my mother was a native speaker, but I couldn't write it, I just learned to speak it from my mother. Then they enrolled me in the Ruthenian school, and I finished eight classes in Ruthenian. Later in the trade school, we learned Hungarian. You had to study in Hungarian, you had to learn Hungarian, and that's when I learned Hungarian. Things went well, I didn't have a problem. At that time, if there was work, then there wasn't a problem.

Thank god, we didn't have conflicts in Huszt. Because for us it didn't matter who was Jewish and who wasn't. We were so lucky, my mother got along with everybody. They came, 'please sew these trousers. My child's pants have holes in the knees, please fix them.' Friday night, there was always brioche at our house. That's when the children got crescent brioche. My mother fixed the pants for the children, and well, they didn't even pay. And that's how it went.

I didn't feel that some stranger would hurt us, nobody, never. Nobody ever said, 'smelly Jew' to me. My poor mother, but she helped in those little ways a lot. For the peasants, and the poor.

What was hard, was that we were Hungarians. There were ladies, proper ladies, Christians, who would have liked to talk to my mother, but they couldn't speak Hungarian, just Ruthenian. The majority were Ruthenian. My mother didn't know Ruthenian. Or rather, she spoke Ruthenian very badly. That was difficult. Nothing else.

There were a lot of Jews in Huszt. The Jews in general were merchants, they did business. The ladies almost never worked. My mother worked, because my father was sick for a while, and she had to learn to sew, so we could live from something. The wealthier Jews acted so strangely with the poor. They felt different than them. And that's somehow why they didn't like them. I didn't like, for example, the 'Lipotvaros' ones, either. [A stereotype of wealthy Jews; Gyula Zeke wrote, Lipotvaros in the 1870's 'attracted the modern, big city functionaries, and this district (of Budapest) was home to the big capital institutions and Jewish upper middle classes'.]

There were three Mermelstein families in Huszt. I heard there were some in Munkacs and in Beregszasz, too. In one of the kibbutzes, there's a roll of names of those killed in the time of loss, and my father's name is on it. And there are a lot of Mermelsteins on the list. That's how I know they were in Munkacs, too. These were generally rich people. Lumber merchants, all kinds of merchants. Then you bought land, it was their business, spice shops, delicatessens. One of my classmates was even called Mermelstein, I was poor, she was rich. When I was studying at the trade school, she came in with a blue fox on her neck ['blue fox' - a high-quality gray arctic fox stole with bluish highlights, a truly expensive piece in Europe at the time] - because as I said, the hat shop was in a elegant quarter - and she said, 'Good Day' to me! [the most formal greeting for strangers] I didn't return her greeting. Why should she greet me with 'Good Day' when we went to school together for eight years? But I saw her, when she was very unfortunate.

During the war

When the Hungarians came in to Huszt [First Vienna Decision]6, the Jewish laws [anti-Jewish Laws]7 came. My mother was a big Hungarian. It was a Thursday. The Hungarians are coming, the Hungarians are coming! - said my mother. She was so happy that the Hungarians were coming, she'll have someone to talk to. There were a lot of Hungarians in Erdely. Much fewer in Huszt. She made the pickle on Thursday afternoon, then went down to city hall to welcome them. Well, she couldn't have been happy for long.

Then came the crying, when almost all three of the children had to leave at once! And it's good that we left, because we survived. If we'd stayed, then we surely wouldn't have survived. We had no work, nor anything to eat. The Hungarians came, they wanted to see the papers, that we were Hungarians. I left to visit the relatives, so we'd have the papers. I got the papers together. But meanwhile, I was there for a couple weeks with the relatives. They all jumped on me, that here's Olgica, Eszti's little girl, they'd never seen me before. Although I was born in Bikszad. I was Transylvanian, too.

I got the citizenship together, and it was quiet for a while. [But] When the time came, 1944, they killed the whole family together with their citizenship. They killed my father in 1941, they took him away in Prague, and we didn't know anything about him. Later, we found out he'd been taken to Theresienstadt 8. I just saw the museum, I was in Israel. They made a museum on a kibbutz, for just those who'd been taken to Theresienstadt, and there's a memorial plaque there for my father. My little brother found it.

And so my mother stayed there with three children. True, we were already pretty grown up [The three siblings were born in 1921, 1923 and 1926]. My little brother, Ignac was in grammar school when the Jewish laws came. They kicked him out of school, and he wasn't allowed to study. I wasn't allowed to work. My older brother, Jakab (he later became Jack) they called him up for 'work service' [forced labor] in Koszeg. They took away my mother's work, too. She worked in a dress shop as a home-worker seamstress. Those she worked for, they were also Jewish small businessmen, they had a business, but that also closed.

There were some who hung themselves. There was a very sweet spice merchant neighbor, who was already elderly, and when they said they were taking people in, without a word, he hung himself. He was a very smart man. Mister Zoli Szabo, he was called, I greatly respect him that he hung himself. It's better than the gas. He took the pleasure away from the Germans [sic - Nazis]. He was a very good neighbor. There were a lot of poor people living around there, and he gave them goods without getting paid, he wrote it up in a little notebook. And he'd say to the person, they can pay him next week or the week after, and he trusted them. That's how he stayed in business. Poor people always paid their debts. That was the old man whom I bought candy from when I was little, and he wrapped it in newspaper. He was a really decent man.

I was nineteen years old, when I had to get away from Huszt. Until the age of nineteen, I worked for a Jewish man who was a milliner. They shut down the business, sent three assistants away, and kept me. He took me to his apartment, hid me away in a dark room, and there, in that haze we worked for him. I don't know exactly... I recall it was about a year, but it could have been less. The point is that I was happy to be able to work.

Then times got really hard. Uncle Dezso came for the summer to my mother's, and my mother was there, too. Uncle Dezso sent a message, 'My Olgica, go up to Pest [Budapest], my daughter is there, she's very smart and very diligent, she'll help you find a position.' I came up to Pest. I brought my little brother with me, who was sixteen. We took a monthly room on Dob street, and stayed there for a month. Then we found a better one on Kossuth Lajos street, next to the old Uttoro Department Store. I couldn't stand my little brother. He always jumped up on moving trams. I sent him to Uncle Dezso, who was a cantor teacher in Dombovar. He accepted my brother right alongside his own ten children. There you could still study, nobody asked if you were Jewish or Christian. My uncle signed my brother up to be an electrician [trade school] And then for work they went to a Schwabian [ethnic German Hungarians]. They pretty soon... it came up what religion are you. My brother said, he didn't speak Hungarian so well, because they spoke Yiddish at home, that he's Jewish. Then the assistant kicked him, why did he say he was Jewish. They didn't kick him out because, in fact he was a hard-working kid, they let him work. My little brother learned to be an electrician there. At that time, they didn't give my mother work anymore, and my older brother was in work service.

On Uncle Dezso's advice, I looked up Olga, and told her, 'Hello, I'm Aunt Eszti's daughter.' Aunt Eszti was her aunt. 'I already heard about you, come on, my Olgica', she always called me that. 'I'll run a hot bath for you, but you are a big girl!' But she wasn't like that with just me, but with everybody. And when the war broke out, they took her husband away to forced labor with my later husband. Her husband and my husband were brothers, and they married two cousins, because Olga and I were cousins.

When I looked Olga up, my future husband was living there - Olga's brother- in-law. That's how we met. He was so happy when he first saw me. He could love you excessively. He loved me so much that he always wanted to be with me, and wanted to hear my voice. Now also, until his death, everything was very nice and very good.

In 1942 in Pest, I was already a milliner. Like everyone, I was looking for work. I had a pair of rags, that I tried to keep decent. I didn't do a lot of shopping. I had an oil-burner, that I made myself morning tea on, and there was a telephone. I didn't really use it. I wasn't a little girl anymore, I was already nineteen. They paid badly, I could barely pay rent. I wasn't in that first hat shop for long, just a short time. Then I found a position somewhere else, on the Vamhaz ringroad. There I had good work. I had to work a lot, but I made good money. The owners were husband and wife, the man was Jewish and the woman was German. I worked there until they called me in [to forced labor].

My younger brother lived with Uncle Dezso, but supported himself. Slowly, they too became poor. Those couple of years were very difficult. All at once they just shut every door in front of you. You couldn't work, you couldn't buy bread, buy milk, anything.

My mother wrote: If you can, go out to Teleki and buy some trousers for your older brother, and find something for his feet, too. I went out to Teleki - it was a kind of flea market - and bought him trousers. She also wrote: 'Don't let there be trouble with your brother, because in the work service you're only allowed to get one letter, and the others they don't hand over, so if you have something to tell him, or you can send him something, then write to me at home, and I'll pass it on to your brother. I had gotten a little money together in Pest. I was very lucky, I always had work. I earned twenty-eight pengo [Hungarian currency before the Forint] a week. I arranged it, and sent it.

Don't send me anything, mother wrote, because I've got everything. From what does she have everything? They kicked her out of her job, because she was Jewish. I couldn't imagine where she could have had everything from. And plus in the summer - this was in 1942 - my little brother, Ignac went home, and it turned out where from she has everything. She was at the neighbors', with her skirts rolled up, on her knees scrubbing. She became a maid.

My little brother saw that, he was a sensitive child anyway, and he cried so much because she was scrubbing floors. I said, what do you have to cry about? Be happy she's got work, and something to eat. Then he got himself past it, but it really broke his heart. Then mother disappeared. They took her to Auschwitz. She ended up in the crematorium, I know that, because I was in Auschwitz, and I met a classmate of mine, and she said she saw her with her own mother, and knew that where they were lining up to go was to the crematorium. That was the end.

Uncle Dezso's children, Miksa, Miksa Herskovits, then Jeno Herskovits, Lali and Jolan came up to Pest. They came when they guessed something: Those who don't come up, will die.

Olga, to whom I came, was left alone with her children, her husband ended up in the work service. She was ten years older than me, I was the little Olgi. She was a seamstress, a very good seamstress. She studied under Klara Rotschild [fashion designer, opened a salon in 1934, worked as a state employee after 1945, and was the artistic director of the Clara Salon]. She was an excellent seamstress, if she sewed herself a dress, she sewed one for me. We got along so well, and wore the same dresses. She had two little daughters, one was four years old in 1944, the other was two. Both of them perished. They hid in Pest. A bomb hit the house next door to the one in which they were hiding, and then they went into the house. They were there for a couple hours, then started out into the street. A Christian woman called out to Olga, said there's an alarm on, why is she walking in the street. She took them in. The woman's husband was very angry that she adopted them. We haven't got anything to eat, why did you bring this woman and her two kids here? She can't feed her kids! And she couldn't, and the girl starved to death. Gabi. The other girl, Zsuzsa died in the hospital, she had some sickness.

After the war, she and her husband moved to Mezohegyes, the man was a head accountant there, but in 1956 9 they kicked him out of his job. They picked themselves up, and left for Israel. After the war, they had two children, they were successful, clever, educated. One was six years old, the other eleven years old when they left for Israel. The boy died a hero's death on his twenty-first birthday. Olga was the big woman of the kibbutz, they always had lots of guests, because they really liked her, and she worked to the end of her life. She couldn't stay at home. Olgi sewed there in Israel, too. Sanyi worked poor guy, outside in the orange plant.

Here in Pest, they took people away later by a couple weeks. Altogether, they gathered up the Jews and took them away probably within a month.[Plight of Budapest Jews]10 It went very quickly. They had just kicked me out of my job. An Arrow Cross[soldier]11 came, and said I had a quarter of an hour to gather my most important belongings, and come with him. What for, where to? You'll see. I packed up, and he took me to Csepel [island in the Danube]. I worked in the Csepel brick factory for a while. There I met a girl, who became my best girlfriend, to the end of her life she was a very good friend of mine. We went through everything together. She was dr. Stefania Mandy, art historian [Stefania Mandy: poet, art historian, translator]. Stefka was already twenty-five years old, she was an art historian, she had already taught. Before they conscripted her for work service, she was already a real person. And a good friend can give you life, too. Not just me, a couple of us stayed alive only because we succeeded in gathering a couple people around us, with whom we didn't talk about, 'My, how hungry I am, a little poppyseed pastry would be great.' Stefania Mandy held lectures for us, she knew a lot, that we didn't. We were twenty years old, or still eighteen, youngsters. And that was what saved our lives.

They took us from Csepel to Budakalasz by boat. We were there for five days under the open sky. It rained the whole time. Earlier they'd taken our rings, watches. I was engaged already, the ring, the chain, they took it all. I was left with only the clothes I had on. Then they took us into a room. They said, if somebody has to go to the toilet, go then. We went in line to the toilet, and one of the girls hid fifty pengo in the toilet. Then they got us together and took us into another room. Constables12, 'feathered' constables ['kakastollas csendorok', named for the rooster feather on their helmet] came, and started to beat us. We were all girls. And they only beat us, because nobody talked, because the girl who hid the money wasn't among us.

Then they put us on a certain Auschwitz-bound boxcar. We were on a train for five days. There was no toilet, not to mention a place to sleep. We were locked up for days, no food, no water, nothing. In the morning, they gave us some kind of slop. There were some who went crazy there in the boxcar with the child in their arms, some who died, young. Then we arrived. There, the selection began. One right, one left. Whomever they found able- bodied, they took away to work. They cut our hair off, shaved us bald, took off our one article of clothing and gave us some rag. They gave me a black lace dress, and when it got really hot, the lace stuck to my neck, my body. I could laugh that I was 'all in lace' [the impression of the lace marked her skin].

We were very thirsty. We'd gotten off the boxcars, they'd bathed us, cut off our hair, gave us a lace dress, and we were still thirsty. Once they brought a bucket of water, everyone climbed into that bucket. I got a swallow of water too. I'll never forget it as long as I live, how delicious that water was, never! I never ate and drank things that tasted so good, that probably saved my life. I almost died of thirst, not just me, others too. We considered it a separate punishment.

We starved a lot, they beat us. They once hit me in the head so hard from behind with a big club, that my girlfriends just stared to see I was still alive. We were very hungry, I had bent over for a potato skin and that's why they beat my head in. I was okay, that was a personal bit of luck. Then I just watched from in line: they took pregnant mothers away, they never brought them back. They experimented with children. I went before Mengele four times. And all four times I stayed alive. There was a truck. Whomever didn't please him, whomever he thought wasn't able to work, they immediately put on the truck. And by the third selection, I was really thin.

I always collected them - didn't matter if they beat my head in - the potato peels. It was muddy, but I ate it. I had a little package set aside, I was really scared before every selection, I ate them quick. Poor Stefka, she spoke up for all of us, when they dished out the food. Once there was cabbage soup or potato soup, but there were no potatoes in it. Stefka, she said: 'There aren't any potatoes!' She got slapped so hard! We were really sorry for her. Next day, we stood in line again with our little mess-tins. The food server asks: are there enough potatoes? Steffi said, 'Enough'. She would have given her another slap.

Sometimes, at dawn they dragged us out in our one thin dress. They yelled and beat us. We drank puddles, I scratched the frozen garbage pile with a stick to make it easier to pick things up with my hands. He [the guard] gave me such a sudden beating. He said, 'Throw the stick away, do it with your hands!' I threw it away. A lot of people went crazy, and afterwards everybody stayed a little crazy. Me, too.

We got together to listen to Stefania Mandy. I liked her a lot, and I was very proud that I was close to her. She was very smart, a mature person. Klari Hoffman taught us French. So we had a little culture, and that helped a lot. French was so alien to me. I already knew Yiddish, Hungarian and German. But French was somehow very difficult. I never got anywhere with the French language. I wasn't really interested afterwards.

Many times I excused those who sat alone. People went crazy there, too. There were two sisters, one went insane. She looked at her sister helplessly, she couldn't do a thing. They were two girls from Mako. There were young parents who buried their children. I didn't consider myself unfortunate. We made a lot of plans. Who would eat what, who would cook what... One would like to eat this, the other would eat that. It was horrible when we talked about food.

Twelve of us slept in one bunk. If one wanted to turn over, all twelve had to turn over, like herrings, that's the way they put us. The toilet was far, and separate. We went to the toilet quite a lot, because we were very cold at night. The nights were very cold. I saw the crematorium, the smoke, and I always kept looking for my mother. We were very much mama's girls, truth be told. I always searched for my mother, after the war, even on the street, I always looked for a lady in a scarf.

Then they took us from Auschwitz to work in Liebau [This was a sub-camp of the Gross-Rosen concentration camp in the south Silesian town of Liebau (today Lubowka, Poland).] I was in Auschwitz for a couple months. We signed up for work and we got into a really good place, a factory. We were happy that we could work. The first time they gave us food, we got a real goulash. It was such great happiness - that after months we could finally eat something - it's impossible to explain. We said to each other, 'My God, how lucky we are, how great it will be here for us'. There was warm water, a bit rusty, but it was something. We got through about a half year there. How louse-infested we were, and hungry, and ragged! The more there were of us, the easier it was to bear the hunger, and beatings, and that driving pace - we had to work really hard. We bore it all. A lot of them fell out, a lot died. But among us [friends], hardly any died.

We worked in a weapons crate factory. We had to drill those... clips or whatever, with heavy drills. It was so heavy, that it caused an abscess on my neck. There was a sickroom, they put me there. Good God what happens, Mengele came there after us. I said, 'Well, he found me.' I was sure he was going to take me away. He didn't take me away. And that was some kind of holy miracle. I'm sure that was sent by God, because that just doesn't happen. That somebody is lying there sick, and he leaves them there. True it was close to the liberation, but that something like that happened? There aren't many of those kind of miracles.

The liberation was really good. I noticed it. I said, 'Quick, quick come here!' How many were there in the room then? About thirty of us. And everybody wanted to get in front of the other. They saw the French soldiers throw up their hats. There were French prisoners of war there, too. They came in. By that time, the Germans had all run away, not one was left. We greeted them so joyfully! You just can't describe it. I dreamed the liberation. I dreamed that it was spring, and the lilacs were flowering. And Jean, one of the soldiers, and more of them, are running around with lilacs, happily passing them out to everyone. And that's the way it was. The lilacs bloom in May. My dream came true. I think about that very many times. We were there for three more weeks. We had to clean ourselves up, find clothes, there weren't any anywhere. We searched for food. We almost died doing that. I stuffed myself with molasses - a kind of yellow sugar, half-done sugar. You eat more because you feel like, 'More, more!', and you stuff yourself. I ate it and I was so sick. Oh, not just me, the others, too.

Then soon I got better. Then we ate with discretion, a little less of it. I couldn't tell you what we ate. We didn't really pay so much attention to eating then - rather that we organize a way to get back home - that we sleep in humane conditions at all. We looked for an empty apartment. We found an empty German apartment. It was a nice, middle-class apartment, and they had canvas curtains on the windows. We took down a curtain, Kati could sew, and I could somewhat also. And we sewed dresses out of the curtain. We threw away those rags, which we had on. A woman came and asked what we're doing. We said we're sewing dresses. How could we take down the curtains, what will the owner say if they come home? We said, we only took one of the pair, if they're hurt about their curtain, we're a lot more hurt about our loss and sorrow. She grabbed a vase and threw it to the ground. We said, 'For you the [loss of the] curtain hurts, for us our loved ones and our youth hurts. Look at us, how we look. We don't have clothes, nothing.' Then the woman got scared and left. Then a Russian car came. The Russians arrived and gave us food. We trudged along. They escorted us. That's how we came home.

They escorted Stefka away. First her, she was the one who directed the group, and she was the one who got the big beatings many times instead of us, in Auschwitz. We were so sorry for her, she stood up so often for others. They'd killed her father, there was a lot of lamentation, her mother stayed alive. There was one other in our group, Kati Winkler, they also escorted her home, she lived on Suto street. And both of her parents stayed alive. They were at home in the ghetto. The other Kati's father and step-mother were killed, her mother had died before the war. They'd killed one of her brothers, and the poor thing lost her other brother too, he died of an illness. And everyone else's loved ones were also all killed, the other's were orphans just like me.

Post-war

We met occasionally after the war, and that was really good. Annually, and as the years went by, they passed away. One after the other, they died. They died young, quite young. Us three, Kati, Stefka and I lived a long time. Stefka was eighty-three years old when she died. Kati was younger, than me, by two years, I'm already eighty-one years old. I never would have believed that after all that suffering I would live to be eighty-one years old.

After the war, we were here in Pest with my friends in a rented apartment. Three friends took one apartment. My fiance hadn't come home, yet. I had a fiance during the war, who was in the work service, and they didn't take my picture away from him. 'I always think about you, my dear love, and even the greatest suffering will be easy. Budapest, 1944. June 28.' There were other love letters, I just can't find those. They took my mother's last picture away from me, I cried so. Well, we lived from one day to the next. I was lucky that I could adjust to people, and I could say what they wanted to hear.

And the Joint 13 gave us food and something to wear. I got a coat, a dress and food. My name was written on the list, I looked, maybe I might find somebody. I looked for my brothers. My older brother and younger one. Once I saw, 'Ignac Mermelstein, Prague'. I was so happy! I had no idea how he got there. Then he quickly arrived in Pest, and we met here in Bethlen square. Then we started looking for my older brother. We expected him to just come home. One after the other, quite a lot of young people came home, those who could take it.

One day my fiance and I, who was already home, went past the Dohany street Jewish temple and somebody starts yelling from across the street, 'Olga! Jack (then still Jakab) is in the Arena Street [Dozsa Gyorgy Street, today] school.' I didn't know from my joy, if I shouldn't start running there to see him sooner. I went there. 'Oh god, look at you,' and I started crying. He pushed me away. 'What are you crying for?', he said. 'Be happy that I'm alive. I been through Typhus. You know how they dropped dead from that? Like flies', he said. 'Be happy, that you can see me like this, that I could wake up and could come home. Because the others, they burned down the lager and burned them.

My younger brother was in Theresienstadt. My older brother in Koszeg, in forced labor. Then he was in Bergen-Belsen. The family was scattered, and you had to live with that. The greatest suffering wasn't even that we weren't together, it was when I found out that they'd cremated my mother in Auschwitz. I saw the crematorium, but I didn't want to believe that they were burning up women and children. For many years, they didn't talk about the children. They burned up a million and half children, innocent children! And old people, and nobody talked about that. The memory of a million and a half children. Under the open sky, completely free, as if the sky was free, and the stars, all the stars changed into children. And for long decades, everyday they have been constantly reading the names. I was there in Yad Vashem. Terrible, terrible.

I have a list. When they celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the death of our martyrs, then I made a note for my children and my grandchildren. 'On the 50th anniversary of the death of our martyrs, so that you don't for the old victims, ever!' And then here I started listing them - Eszter Herskovits, 49 years old, lived in Huszt, killed in Auschwitz. She was my mother. My father, Marton Mermelstein, 44 years old, he was taken away in Prague, they killed him in Theresienstadt in 1941. My grandmother, Julia Stern, was 83 years old, lived in Remetemezo, in Erdely, was killed in Auschwitz. My mother's siblings: there were seven of them, six of them were killed. Samuel Herskozits, was 65 years old, and his wife, she was 63 years old, they took them to Auschwitz, one of their sons, Laszlo, was 43 when he was taken to forced labor. I don't know where he died. And there was another son, Erno, he lived in Satoraljaujhely, he was likewise in forced labor, his wife, Elza was taken to Auschwitz at the age of 32. Their child was three when it went to Auschwitz. Dezso Herskovits, 62 years old, and his wife 58 years old, were taken away from Dombovar to Auschwitz. They had ten children, they were in Pest, of the ten, thank God only one was killed, Karoly, age 26. He was called up for the work service in Dombovar. Two among them went into hiding, two families. The others were conscripted into work service and stayed alive. Hanna, 58 years old, who lived in Kolozsvar went to Auschwitz with her two children, Frida, 32 years old, and Marton, 28 years old. Sara, 56 years old, was taken away in Szinervaralja. Aunt Fani, 52 years old, her husband, Lajos Samuel, 52 years old, and their two children, Eva and Jozsef were taken away in Remetemezo. So all my mother's siblings died except the youngest.

A couple things are missing from my father's side: my great aunt Libi, 49 years old, my father's sister, Auschwitz. Her daughter, Judit, eight years old, Auschwitz. Her husband, 57 years old, Auschwitz. Plus one little girl, Olga, nine years old, Auschwitz. Herman Stern, my father's uncle, died in Theresienstadt, they took him away in Ersekujvar.

On my husband's side, Janos Banyai's father, Adolf Brand, 62 years old, Auschwitz. His mother, Judit Kalman, 53 years old, Auschwitz. His grandmother, Mrs. Zsigmond Kalman, 83 years old, Auschwitz. His uncle, Zsigmond Brand, 64 years old, Auschwitz. Bela Brand, my husband's cousin was in forced labor, I don't know where. Bela Kalman, his mother's brother and his wife, 50 years old, Auschwitz. Their little daughter, Marika, ten years old, Auschwitz. Gabriella Banyai, my husband's sister's first daughter was six years old, she died here in hiding, and their smaller daughter died, too. I wrote here that the aforementioned were recorded by the Auschwitz survivor, seventy year old lady, stamped with the number 11506. That's what was left to me. Horrible. I knew them all.

My husband, Janos Banyai was from Nagykanizsa, born in 1916, died at the age of 87 last year. One year ago. Originally, he was a watchmaker, then he graduated from the Economics University, then he finished a steel-industry technical [school], he liked to study, he studied a lot. In the end, he was always a watchmaker. He was a technical manager too, but he loved watch making so much, that he gave up the manager position. He retired as a watchmaker, poor man. He was sick a lot, in the end he went blind, struggled a lot.

They were originally the Brands. In 1929, they wanted to emigrate to America because they already had relatives there. Big families were popular then. They were a big family, and a part of it emigrated. I think, two or three of them were in America, and they also got ready to immigrate. But for some reason, it didn't work out, I don't know why. Then they magyarized their name to Banyai. And since 1929, they were Banyais.

His parents had a little shop, it went really well. His great grandmother was called Lina Markovics. Mrs. Zsigmond Kalman nee Lina Markovics. My mother in law was called Judit Kalman. My father in law was Adolf Brand. My husband had an older brother who was called Sandor Banyai, his wife, Mrs. Sandor Banyai, was my cousin, Olga. My father-in-law and mother-in-law and her mother were killed in the war.

At my wedding in 1945, all of them laughed cheerfully. Though we should have cried at the wedding. We didn't cry because somebody always did something on purpose so there wouldn't be crying. I couldn't do anything to stop it, anyway. I was in a borrowed dress at my own wedding, I got it from my cousin's girlfriend. It wasn't ugly. She got a dark blue dress - there was an assistance program, and they loaned it to her. It was a Jewish wedding, we were married in the Dohany Street temple [synagogue]. There wasn't a white dress, nor a veil, just a dark-blue borrowed dress, and that was fine. I could buy new shoes, the shoes were my own. And beyond that, the two friends with me were my own. There was nothing to laugh at then, but we were cheerful, that we made it this far, that somebody among us was getting married. Who would have thought that we would somehow get home. Everyone just thought of death there, mainly when I saw the crematorium smoking.

So I was the first to rush to get a husband. My husband quickly moved in, as soon as he got back from the work service. Anyway, I was already engaged before [the war]. Then everything was fine, because we were free. And we expected an easier life. We thought that if we get free of Auschwitz, then everything will be okay. Three or four months went by, since we got home, and I suddenly gained so much weight for my wedding. There were no relatives at my wedding. But that circle of friends was there, who were in Auschwitz with me. So this is how we looked three months after the war. We could eat already and we could smile. We had something to be glad about. That at last, something good is starting, a new life.

Such loyal friendship can only be formed there [in Auschwitz]. I found a picture, where there weren't any relatives, just deportees, friends, who I made in Auschwitz. I keep in contact with the girls, who I was together with in Auschwitz. There were eight of us, and we loved each other so. We helped each other stay alive. That was good. We didn't withdraw in Auschwitz, a person found someone they could tell things to. All the bad things, difficult things... Aside from hauling bricks, it was good that we were there for each other, because we could talk a little to each other.

One of the girls' uncle was a hospital director here in Pest. My girlfriend said, if you are going to give birth, go to my uncle. You don't have to pay, he'll arrange to have the birth done for free. A year after the war, it was still a really difficult world. I don't know whether I could have paid or not, and it felt good that she said it. As if I was part of a family.

My children never had a grandmother, grandfather nor aunt. If there was one, they were far away, because they tried to get as far away from home as they could. Though everyone in the family were big Hungarians. My husband and I were equally unfortunate, that they exterminated our whole family, and because of that I was nervous, and he was also nervous. How can one live eighty years? And that's the miracle, if anything He was nervous, he was sick too, and still we raised two children. That is such a holy miracle. We suffered a lot.

Soon after my wedding, my siblings scattered across the planet, and we never saw each other. It didn't matter that we had stayed alive, I never saw them, the same as if they had been killed. It hurt many times. I saw them three times in sixty years. That was very painful, and the way we look at around eighty, we won't see each other again. But it's good that they call sometimes. It was my birthday not long ago, and they called me, both of them. It was really good to hear them speak, I was glad that I have somebody. I was happy to at least hear their voices. That's how I lived out my life, because my husband didn't want to emigrate. My older and younger brothers left with an empty sack in 1945. I got married then. They yelled, 'You coming?' I said, I couldn't go. They said, 'Then god bless you!' They would have taken me, too, but my husband didn't want to go. His only sibling was here. And he felt this was his home. We stayed.

My brothers felt that they had nothing to gain here. If a country was capable of exterminating its' own residents, I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of innocent people and children, then they had nothing to gain by staying. They had to find a new home, which would accept them! It was painful for them also, that they had to go away, leave their friends here and like I said, we were very close. Of course, they had no property, it wasn't difficult leaving that. What they had, they carried it off, it was nothing to cry about. In Auschwitz, there was something to cry about.

They went to Czechoslovakia, they were there for a while. Then they went to France, my older brother stayed for five or six years. He learned French. Then he went to Canada, that's where he met his wife. They lived there for three years, while they got together enough money to travel. Then they went to California, to Los Angeles, and got themselves together very nicely. Sometimes my older brother worked twenty hours a day. In the beginning, they struggled a lot, because they weren't really accepted in America either.

My little brother went to Israel. Poor guy, they didn't accept him either, because they didn't know him. There was an aunt there, Olga, who'd never seen him, and didn't want to accept him. She only allowed him to put his belongings in her attic. That could only happen in the Mermelstein family. The Herskovitses welcomed me with so much love. Though they weren't close relatives.

My younger brother was very industrious. First he worked as an electrician, and once he even had an accident. I wrote him then to pack up and come here if he wants to live! He let me convince him. He came home, but just for a visit. Later, he retrained himself to be a tailor. Then he went to Los Angeles, too. In Los Angeles he had a business in the most elegant quarter. He had a salesman, too. One has three sons, the other has two sons.

This apartment, too. An old lady had to die so that I could get an apartment, because an old lady lived here. One of my husband's comrades from the work service said that unfortunately his mother never came back. The apartment is empty, I'll sell it to you. Then, in the end, it was only one room, because there were people already living in the other.

My husband's father and mother were killed. My husband's family was well- off, his parents had a spice business in Nagykanizsa. They pillaged that along with their small warehouse. The house and the business were left there, empty. They took everything. From the dulcimer to the expensive pictures, the goods and the shelves, too. Then they sold it after the war for 13,000 forints, a four-bedroom apartment and the business. A constable showed up, the neighbor. My husband was left with a double-cover gold watch, an earring, a gold ring and a chain which he gave to me. I really cherished it, because my previous necklace was taken by the constables, they ripped it off my neck.

From the 135 grams of gold my husband had left, we bought this room. Just this room, there was a share renter [share-renting]14 living in the other room. He was a country postman. He lived in the kitchen with his family, and kept rabbits in the prettiest of the rooms. They got along nicely. Then we came, and he had to put the rabbits out. We lived for thirteen years in a share-rent.

After the war, I finished a shorthand and stenography course. When I worked in a nursery, I finished an different course, and I became a social worker. Wherever you could find work, I worked there. In the nursery, I became the nursery director, because I was really hard-working. I tried terribly hard. Then I worked for thirty years in the Zrinyi Printing house as a stockpiler. So I was a paper stockpiler and I retired from there.

My husband was very often sick in the work service also, and when he got back home, he was always in the hospital, he'd been so destroyed. He couldn't face the loss of his parents, he really loved his parents. He couldn't face the fact that all his loved ones in Nagykanizsa had perished. Then he began studying. He worked and he studied, which really wore him down. Then somehow, we couldn't get along because of religion. He wanted to be an atheist, I wanted to stay Jewish, we argued quite a lot about that. He objected, for example, that we spoke Yiddish. It wasn't allowed. Although, he was Jewish, too. He was in a labor battalion, he suffered a lot. We didn't argue, we just debated. Because I was concerned about the child. Zsuzsi was seven years older than my son.

After the birth of my daughter, I fell into bad condition again. After the war, I gained weight, then I constantly lost it. And I was very weak. I worked, the family and job, it was hard getting to where I am today. I was here at home with my daughter until she was seven months old, then I had to go [to work]. I put her in a nursery, and she got blood poisoning there. I took her to a doctor, and said this child is sick, vomiting, doesn't want to eat, is crying. The doctor said to my colleague - the doctor was a close acquaintance of mine - that, this woman is crazy. She says this child is sick. I look at her, how beautiful. I told him, maybe she's beautiful, but this child is sick, I'd like to have her examined. He gave me a referral to the hospital. I took her in, and the child got worse day by day, so bad that she threw up everything they gave her. There were a lot of children there, and at that time a lot of them died. My daughter just didn't get better. They said I have to feed her one spoon of mother's milk every hour. They cut her leg here, her hand here, both of them, and on her thigh where there's a hole, a depression. So they were trying to feed her with blood, because she always vomited the mother's milk. She was in the hospital for three months before she finally got better. And how did she get better? That day she'd nearly died. Her eyes had rolled up. The doctor said, 'Sweet girl, you can see yourself'. I wanted to give her blood. The doctor said, 'You? You look like a consumptive.' I was in with her for twenty hours. I didn't want her to get stranger's blood. In the end, she got stranger's blood, and she's still bearing the consequences. She has liver problems, which she got from the stranger's blood. It was really hard for me to save her. I took her home, and I started crying, my husband consoled me. Don't cry, we'll have another child. Then seven years later, Gyurka [from Gyorgy - George] was born.

Zsuzsi only has her high school diploma, and two years in the conservatory. Plus she finished a librarian course.

In fall of 1956, Pali, my husband's cousin and I took our daughters to ballet [classes]. The girls were about ten or eleven, they were really good friends. The children danced, and we sat there and waited. All at once, we hear there's a big commotion. Across the street, there was a Stalin statue, it disappeared. [The Stalin statue on Dozsa Gyorgy street was pushed off it's pedestal on October 23, 1956, then it was dragged to Blaha Lujza square, and cut to pieces.] Pali says, oh-oh, let's go home, there's something really strange starting here. We grabbed the kids, they stopped the dance, and people scattered, everybody rushed home with their children. By the time we got home, there were a bunch of rascals in the tavern on the ground floor of our building. There was a rabble-rouser. He went into the tavern, and said, 'Whoever is Hungarian, is with us!' Oh-oh, I said, that's not a joke. Then later, when we were standing in line for bread, I heard them yelling, 'We're not afraid, just the Jews are afraid!' When they start selecting, 'us Hungarians aren't afraid, just the Jews are afraid', that's trouble.

I decided to submit our passports [submit the application for them], and we're going to America. My brothers were already living in America then. I wrote to my brothers, and they were very decent, they were helpful. They wrote that they're arranging things and maybe they can do something. Of course, it couldn't happen so fast, because it wasn't just us and my relatives applying. Very many Jews emigrated then. Things went really slowly. Then I spoke to my brothers on the telephone, I went over to Pali's house, and we talked from there. My little brother asked: Do you want to come? I said I really did.

He arranged it, sent the money, but we couldn't defect, because they caught us on the border. My son was three years old, I carried him on my back, he slept the whole way. He woke up on the border, and started screaming. My husband's brother came too, with two kids who were born after the war, they also came back. They were let out in 1957, because my brother-in-law wasn't obligated for military duty. My husband was, he was a soldier. Everybody [in the family] got out, who wanted to go. At least four or five from the family left, we couldn't leave. And my husband didn't really want to. But if his brother left, he would have gone, but it was already too late. So we were left behind. Yet, we were in the best position, the money was in our hands.

Then we became really lonely. We didn't want to leave illegally, and we applied for passports. They didn't give us passports, because my husband was obligated to military service. They let his brother out because he was never a soldier, he had weak eyes. So he left with his family easily. Though he wouldn't have gone, because his son would have stayed alive. His oldest boy was twenty-one when he died a hero's death in Israel. Then his father went after him, his heart couldn't stand it. He went to work, then died.

We were lonely, but we had very good neighbors and very good friends. Not just the Auschwitz ones, I made friends. I was very clever about making friends. I can tell from first sight if you can talk to this person. And then, if I hear a good word, that's enough for me. But if people look at you with disgust, or make comments, that's what I can't stand.

I had a lot, also. I had lot a in Pilisszentlaszlo for thirty years. That was the main vacation. I got a larger sum because of my parents deportation, and my brothers also sent their parts, and in 1969 I bought a lot for 12,000 forints. There was a piece of forest, it was a marvelously pretty place. Then the lots were cheaper, I bought it through OTP [National Savings Bank]. Then I bought a little wooden cottage for it. Likewise, for 12,000 forints, and ran in electricity, that already cost a lot more, but not right away, we got electricity ten or fifteen years later. It was something like 40,000 forints altogether, but I saved a lot, because I wanted it to be habitable. It was one space. Then I cleverly furnished it. We had furniture made from the left over wood, and sometimes there were four of us there. There were two beds, if Zsuzsa and her family came with, they slept on mattresses. We all fit inside. Once, my grandson and his father slept outside in a tent. They were nice summers. Modest, but it was great for me. The shower for example was out in the garden, because only a basin fit inside the room. We filled the basin from the shower, stuck it out in the garden, and the sun warmed it up. Later we ran water pipes in there, too.

I worked diligently, and if I got some extra money, then I didn't take it home, I put in savings, so that it would be good for something. That's how I got together the nice little Pilis [house].

My husband also went out to Pilis. We divorced, but not according to Jewish rites, just officially. We lived separately like this for forty years. But he ate at the same table as us. He lived his life here. He had a girlfriend, he went there at night. In our old age especially, we were fine, it didn't matter that we were living separately, because he was always at home. Then, last year, the poor man died at the age of eighty- eight. I was very sorry, and I miss him a lot. It makes no difference, we did live fifty-eight years together. Through good and bad. It would be good if he were still alive.

In 1973, Zsuzsi got married, they divorced a few years ago. She finished a gardening technical [school], but she really loves music. She sang in various choruses for a long time, and even went to the conservatory. My son is a journalist. He graduated from a printing school, worked as a printer, at the Zrinyi Publishers, no less, before he became a journalist - he finished Law School. He got married, then divorced. They're really good kids.

I've got osteoporosis, and I'm always scared I might break something somewhere and it won't heal up. And I see that I haven't got any strength. My grandson is very strong, he always takes my arm. He's a very generous, very decent child. He's my daughter's boy, Gabor. He was born in 1977, I retired in 1978 and I raised him. His mother was often sick, and never at home.

Gabor was twelve years old when I told him that he's Jewish. His father is Christian, his mother Jewish. You know, you're Jewish after your mother. 'I'm not Jewish', he said, 'I'm not anything!'. And he shrugged his shoulders. He was insulted that I told him that he was Jewish. It turned out why he denied it so. He was still little, going to elementary school, the kids Jew-bashed each other. He also jew-bashed. 'You're a Jew!, You're a Jew!'. He told me this later, that that's why he was so upset. After that the child went away to vacation at Szarvas [summer Jewish youth camp], in that Jewish social group. He really liked it. They did sports, swam, were free, there was good food, so it was good. He came home, he said how great he felt there, they learned a lot, swam around, and they said, they should sign-up if they want to go to Israel, to get to know Israel. I asked him, do you want to go? I'd really like to go, but I haven't got any money. I said, then I'll give you money. Go on! He went, and fell in love with Israel. Letters came. It's a wonderful country, how pretty. Everything's beautiful, everybody's nice, everybody's good, he found his place. When he came home, he started telling me about it. He has to learn the language, he has to go again because everybody was so friendly. Okay, sonny, if you want to go, arrange it. It wasn't expensive, so he went. He was there for two and a half years. He learned to read and write Hebrew. When he was gone for a half year, already the letters were coming, how great it is, we should come, too. I always wanted to live in Israel. I thought, I'll go too, I get my pension, I'll be fine. My daughter and I both went, and we rented an apartment.

I was in Israel until 1998 with my grandson, a half year, but I was already ill. And the doctor was far away, I couldn't even speak to him, because he was Russian. I had to go to the doctor's everyday, I didn't understand him, he didn't understand me. Then I thought, I'll come home to get myself healthy. I remained here nicely. I was in the hospital a lot in the last ten years. Nearly regularly, they took me into the hospital. I have a kind of sickness where I'm ill a lot since the stroke, and occasionally I get fits, and then they take me in. Then the kids also came home.

My daughter is in her fifty-eighth year. She retired, she gets a disability pension. My son is fifty years old. He always says I'm living until I'm a hundred and twenty. I asked, how many friends of yours have grandparents? Not a one. Now, see. I'm now already the last - plus Kati - of those I was in Auschwitz with. Kati is two years younger than me. But she's had it bad, because both her sibblings died.

The good Lord [sic] let my brothers through the war, and they didn't believe in anything. An that's how they raised there children, and yet their children became religious. One of them is constantly praying in Israel. The other is equally religious, lives in New York, has very pretty children.

Up to now unfortunately or thank god, people have gotten all mixed together, so already the Jew is mixed with the Christian. My daughter also married a Christian boy. But they never talk about it, that you're Jewish or you're Christian. They get along well, so much so, that my grandson is practicing the Jewish religion. I'm very glad that he's saving something from Judaism. Because I'm just half Jewish. I keep the traditions, but I don't go much of anywhere. But I'm pleased that the temple is full, that they don't forget the religion. My daughter's generation was really left out of these things. The young people, it seems to me as if they're returning to God again and again. My children mostly concern themselves with Judaism for my sake. If there's some program then maybe they go, but they don't feel what's Judaism and what's religion.

On Friday night, I light the candle, I have a kind of candelabra, and then I remember at least those ancestors that are already gone. I can't do more. I wasn't properly religious either. I don't know what the religion is. I believe in God, but I'm not religious. I light the chandelier - not a candle, a chandelier - every week, for the memory of my parents. I keep the holidays, the customs, all those kinds of things which my mother kept.

To tell you the truth, the political changes [in 1989]15 didn't shake me yet, nor delight me. I was already ill, I was old, and I hoped that it will be better than it was, better for the children than it was.

It doesn't make a difference which [political] system there is, just let people live, that's why they were born, so they can live. Well, let them live. And the poor people want to live, also. Let there be food for them everyday, and shoes on their feet. I know what poverty is. There were poor people in my time who had a lot of children and they had one pair of shoes. There were three or four kids, and they took turns going to school in them. They bought one big pair of shoes, that fit everybody, and then you go to school in them today, tomorrow you go in them, etc. That's the truth, because I lived with them. But that was after the war, the consequences of it. Things hadn't gotten back in place, yet. Nowadays they don't do things right. When everybody's got food, then people can start collecting, as much as they want, they won't take it with them to their graves anyway.

Glossary

Louiza Vecsler
Brasov
Romania
Interviewer: Andreea Laptes
Date of interview: February 2003

Louiza Vecsler is a 94-year-old woman, who lives with her daughter, Nadia, in a two-bedroom apartment. She is a tiny woman, with thin hair. She has problems with her legs now: she cannot stand for long. She usually lies down on a couch, with a magnifying glass at hand, which she uses to take a closer look at photos, documents and newspapers. Although the apartment is small, it shows that the family was well-situated: the furniture is rather antique and expensive. On the door one can still read her husband's name, Solomon Vecsler. There is a tiny light bulb lit on the wall: it's the 13th anniversary of her husband's death.

My family history
Growing up
During the War
After the War
Glossary

My family history

My paternal grandfather, Cassian Blumenfeld, lived in Botosani at the time I knew him, along with my paternal grandmother, Brucha Blumenfeld. I don't remember her maiden name. I don't know whether they were born there or not, or whether they had lived somewhere else before. They both spoke Yiddish, but they knew Romanian as well. My grandparents didn't dress traditionally: my grandfather didn't wear a kaftan, and my grandmother didn't wear a wig. They wore ordinary clothes, like everybody else. They were open-minded people and very kind. They were both religious: I think my grandfather went to the synagogue every day, because there was one close to them, but my grandmother didn't. They followed the kashrut, observed Sabbath and all the high holidays.

They lived in a house with two or three rooms, and a kitchen. They didn't have a garden, but they had electricity. Their house had no running water, and they heated it with wood. They were rather well-off. They had nice furniture and they could afford a woman to come and clean and broom the house, although my grandmother was a housewife. I don't know what my grandfather used to do for a living when he was young. I don't remember him ever going to work, and I never heard my mother or my father talk about his job. They got along well with their neighbors, both Jewish and Christian. I remember the Bibescus, who lived across the street. They had children. I don't know if my grandparents had close friends; if they did, I never met them.

My father had one younger brother, Adolf Blumenfeld, who lived in Botosani as well. He worked as a bailiff on an estate. He was married and had two children, Teodor and Rasela Blumenfeld. My father also had two younger sisters: Clara and Rasela, but I don't know when they were born. Both of them lived in Botosani and were housewives. Clara Blumenfeld married Itic Blumenfeld. Itic wasn't a relative, the same family name was just a coincidence. I don't know what Itic did for a living.

My maternal grandfather, Iancu Iosif Rosenblum, was born in 1862, but I don't know where. When I knew him, he lived in Botosani with my grandmother, Enta Rosenblum. I don't know her maiden name. My grandfather worked as a clerk in a mill, which burnt down one day. My grandmother was a housewife. They lived in a rented house with five rooms, had a small garden, and bred poultry. The owner, Mrs. Mimia, lived in the same house with them. She was Romanian, and a very kind person. I remember she had a sister, Cherez, who lived somewhere else. Sometimes, when I visited my grandparents, I accompanied Mrs. Mimia when she went to visit her sister: we picked hyacinths from her [Cherez's] garden. She was a good friend of my grandparents. They shared the courtyard with an Italian, who also owned the orchard. I don't remember his name, but I remember he had a daughter, Clara, and a boy, Luigi. Luigi was about my age, and we played together in the garden; we used to pick fruit in the orchard. There was another Jewish family that lived in the courtyard; the father was a coach driver, but I don't remember his name. When Mrs. Mimia died, someone else bought the house and my grandparents moved to the mill's courtyard, which had burnt down, into a house with three rooms and a kitchen. They moved from there as well because their daughter, Eva - my mother's younger sister - bought a house and brought them all to live with her. Fani, her other sister, also lived in the same house.

My grandparents were kind. My grandmother was extremely gentle; I used to be around her a lot. A woman came every morning and brought her sour milk, and my grandmother immediately made corn mush and we ate it with sour milk. She had a housekeeper, but she also did her chores around the house, and after that she called me to lunch. Whenever I slept over, I slept in the same bed as her, and she used to teach me prayers in Hebrew.

They didn't go to the synagogue every day and they didn't dress traditionally, but they were both religious people. They observed all the high holidays and Sabbath, and they followed the kashrut: all the food was cooked a day before, on Friday, and Luigi came to light the fire on Saturdays if it was too cold. Neither my maternal grandparents nor my paternal grandparents were politically involved.

My mother had one brother, Herman, and four sisters, all younger than her: Adela, Fani, Eva and Amalia. Herman lived in Bacau and then in Israel. He married Beti Grad when he was still in Bacau and had three children: Raul, Coca and Edit. Raul lives in Israel and has two children with Miriam: Hermi and Levi. Coca married Nicki Muck. I don't know the name of Edit's husband, but they have children.

Adela married Isidor Cohn and died in Suceava. She had a daughter, Magda Cohn, who married a man named Blumenfeld; now she lives in Israel and has three children: Misa and Felicia Blumenfeld, who live in Israel, and Bruno Blumenfeld, who lives in the US. Fani married Morit Herscovici and left for Israel, where she died in 1953. Eva married a lawyer, Carol Saler, who died in 1959. Eva worked as a secretary for a factory, and she was in charge of the relations with the bank and other administrative matters. She died in Botosani in 1963. Amalia was born in 1899 and married Rubin Sigler; they lived in Bacau and then in Botosani, where he died in 1965 and she in 1968.

My father, Moses Blumenfeld, was born in Botosani in 1878. He spoke Yiddish and Romanian. He worked as a bookkeeper for a mill - but not the one where my grandfather had worked. We had a good financial situation back then. After the anti-Jewish laws in Romania 1 had been passed, he worked as a salesman and then as a high school secretary. My father was a kind man, who tried to spend as much time at home as he could. I don't remember him ever slapping me, and, as a matter of fact, he rarely intervened in the fights we, the kids, had.

He married my mother, Pesa Rosenblum, in 1903. She was born in Botosani as well, in 1884. My mother knew Yiddish and Romanian. I'm not sure what kind of education she had, but she could read. I don't know if it was a shadkhan who brought them together, but I know that my parents had been neighbors before they got married. They married in the synagogue. My mother was a housewife, and she was pretty busy running the house, doing the shopping and taking care of my younger siblings. Although she had help in the house, there was still a lot to do. She was rather strict; she had to be because we, kids, often had squabbles. She intervened and sometimes took us by the ear and gave us a good talking-to.

Growing up

I had one elder sister, Ernestina, born in 1904, and two elder brothers: David, born in 1905, and Jenica, born in 1906. I was born in 1909, and after me followed: Sandu in 1911, Tobias in 1912, Sidonia in 1913, and Henrieta in 1918. The elder siblings usually looked after the younger ones, although I had a Christian nanny from Botosani when I was little, and at one point, one of my younger siblings, I don't remember who, had one as well. My mother and my maternal grandparents were around us a lot and watched over us, so we never went to kindergarten.

We lived in a house with four rooms, a kitchen in the basement and a hall that stretched throughout the house; the house also had a long wooden porch. We had nice furniture in the house. My parents slept in one room, and we, the children, in the other three. I remember I first shared a room with Reta [Henrieta], then with Tina [Ernestina]. We could afford a cook and a cleaning woman, who also slept in the house: the kitchen in the basement was big, and two beds fit there nicely. They weren't Jewish, but we all got along well.

There was also a summer-kitchen, a somewhat narrower room, with two beds and a table, where one could sleep in the summers, when it was warm outside. That's where we ate on rainy summer days; otherwise we ate outside. I remember there was some renovation at some point, and a new room was added and turned into a kind of drawing room: there was no bed, just hall furniture.

We had electricity because we lived across the street from the power station, but no running water. There was no sewerage, and every time the power station needed more water, it would close down the water in the whole street. We had a water tap in the garden, but we depended on the power station. We only raised poultry: my father had built a two-storied chicken- coop with a small ladder in the courtyard. We, the children, occasionally played with the hens, fed them grain, but the woman who helped around the house took care of them.

We had a garden and grew a lot of vegetables there, but in springtime my mother usually also went to the market to buy vegetables, when it was too early for the ones in our garden. Sometimes I accompanied her to the market. We had a few apple trees in the courtyard, and the apples were regularly stolen. I remember, one summer I only found a single green apple, which had remained there just because it was hidden under some leaves. My mother always bought apples from the market because she could never count on the ones in the garden. One time they stole an entire onion bed. When we wanted to pick the onions, it was too late: there wasn't a single onion left in the morning.

My mother also planted cucumbers for pickles. And one season, after a strong rain, there were so many cucumbers, that we filled two huge baskets. My mother didn't know what to do, she didn't have jars for all of them. There was a Jewish merchant living next door, Mr. Iossl, and my mother went to him and asked him, 'Do you want to buy cucumbers? I have fresh cucumbers'. 'Yes, bring them', he said. This merchant also lived across the street from the power station and close to the railway station, and all the workers came to him and bought merchandise on credit, and they paid for it when they got their salaries. Mr. Iossl had a big, five kilo empty khalva box, and everyone who bought something on credit wrote his name down on a piece of paper, what he bought and how much he would pay for it, and put the paper in that box. Mr. Iossl knew how to make his business work. And so, all our cucumbers were gone in an hour. I remember he had a lot of cereals, too.

Our family bought things from him as well, because his house was exactly next to ours. If we needed a liter of oil or a kilo of sugar, we would go to Mr. Iossl. We, the kids, loved to eat salad in summer, and it sometimes happened that the oil bottle was empty; then we would go to Mr. Iossl and ask him for some oil: he measured the oil, put down a note, and my mother paid for it when she got home. I used to knit and also did some chores around the house. One time I started starching everything that could be starched, including my father's handkerchiefs. I starched them, ironed them, and when my father came home, he said, 'What is this?!' They were stiff. I didn't know where my mother kept the starch in the house, so I had taken the one from Mr. Iossl.

We had a sour cherry tree in the garden and David, the eldest brother, climbed on a ladder onto the roof, and picked sour cherries. The rest of us, the small ones, couldn't go up, and we always asked him, 'David, give us some sour cherries!' And he did.

We also had a Christian gardener, Colibaba, who took care of the garden and planted flowers. He used to say, 'These flowers will last until the first snow!' We had mauve and white flowers - I don't know what they were - and also a bed of tulips. My father had put a table and two benches in the garden, so that we could eat outside if the weather was nice.

We had a bookcase in the house with all sorts of books; religious books and novels alike. My parents also read newspapers. We, kids, didn't go to the library because we had books at home, but our parents, who read novels themselves, never advised us what to read.

My elder brother, David, was a good mathematician, and he was also very fond of books. He used to read a lot of novels from the collection Biblioteca Pentru Toti - it was the first edition. [Editor's note: Biblioteca Pentru Toti - Everybody's Library was a Romanian publishing house, which published mainly classics.] He bought books and he was very careful about their condition. If he lent a book to you, God forbid you should return it torn or dog-eared! And because that happened, he worked out something. Each one of us had some money, so when he gave us a book, he said, 'See how much it costs? 1 lei. Give me 1 lei'. 'What for?', I used to ask. 'If you return the book to me as it is now, you will have the money back, if not, I will keep it.' He had so many books, my mother had to give him both wardrobe drawers to store his books because there was no more room for them. Then, when I and my brother Tobi were older, there was a magazine, Lectura, which was out once or twice a month. [Lectura - Passage was a literary magazine, which published literary works by different authors.] We bought it both, until my mother or father - I don't remember who exactly - caught us reading the same issue of the same magazine, and they got upset: 'Why are you reading the same magazine?' I knew Tobi bought the same magazine, and he also knew I did; but we wanted to be able to read from it whenever we wanted; we didn't want to share it. My parents threatened they would cut off our allowance.

My father was open to us, kids, I don't remember him ever slapping me. Once I had a fight with David, my father slapped him, and David ran out of the house crying. My younger sister, Sidonia, asked me, 'Why are you crying?', and I said, 'David hit me, and I fell on the piano and hurt myself!' Then Sidonia started crying because David was crying and because she thought he would get cataract in his eyes, like old Costache. He was a neighbor who had cataract. So, there was a whole row because of a slap David gave me and my father gave him back. My mother was kind, but sometimes she had to be harsh: she had eight kids to raise.

My parents observed all the high holidays, they followed the kashrut, but they didn't dress traditionally and they didn't go to the synagogue every day. On Friday evenings the cook baked challah, my mother lit the candles and my father said the blessings. I learnt from my parents to observe all high holidays and Sabbath. But I didn't often go to the synagogue, only on the high holidays. On Purim we always went for dinner to my maternal grandparents, and when Aunt Eva bought a house and brought the grandparents there, we went to hers.

My mother - who spent a lot of time in the kitchen - always heard us coming home because the kitchen was in the basement and one could hear every footstep from there. She had put a white carpet in the house, so she called out to us, that we leave our muddy shoes at the entrance where there was a mat. And on Purim - I especially liked Purim when masked people came over - we always had a lot of people coming over. Then, my mother used to put rugs and papers all over the white carpet, so that it wouldn't get dirty. The cook baked hamantashen, and sweets, shelakhmones, were handed out. Sandu was the one who usually dressed up: he took a coat and wore it inside out. He did the same on New Year's Eve: my father had a fur-lined coat made for him, white lamb fur it was, and he used to wear it inside out, cover his face with something and go awassailing.

On Sukkot everybody from my mother's and my father's family came over to us. We cooked a lot, and I still remember we had honey cake. We had a sukkah, but I don't remember if it was in our garden or in my maternal grandparents'. Somebody, I don't know who, came and built it, and we, kids, played in it. On the last day of Sukkot [on Simchat Torah] there was some sort of party with nuts, wine, syrup and apples in the synagogue; people took out the Torah, sang and danced, and had little pennons. We, kids, didn't go to the same synagogue where our father went to: my father went to the synagogue my mother's parents went to, and we, kids, went to the one closer to our home - it was the one my father's parents went to. But I did go with my father to the synagogue a few times, to the one he usually went to.

My family fasted on Yom Kippur. I remember Ernestina, my elder sister: when she fasted, we were still very young and she took care that we ate: there was food specially left for us, the small ones. I started fasting when I was 13-14 years old, too.

On Pesach all cutlery was taken out and cleaned, and the matzah wasn't brought into the house until all the cleaning had been done. If Pesach was on a Friday, matzah was brought in on Friday morning. We spent the seder night at home, and my father led it. Usually it was Ernestina who hid the afikoman, because she sat right next to my mother, and my father had to find it. If he didn't, he had to pay a reward. One of the younger boys asked the mah nishtanah.

On Chanukkah we went to the synagogue, and we lit the chanukkiyah at home. Every year, on Chanukkah, my father went to the bank and withdrew some money, which was the 'Chanukkah gelt' for us, the children. He always gave us new banknotes, not dirty or torn ones. I remember I was in high school, and a friend of mine, Ostfeld, had forgotten her rubbers somewhere and she couldn't find them anymore. She wanted to buy a new pair, but she didn't want her parents or her elder sister, who was a harsh person, to know about it: 'Ieti [the elder sister] will scold me and I'll never see money from my parents again!' And she asked me to lend her some money to buy a new pair of rubbers. And I said, 'No, I can't! I only have Chanukkah gelt and it is all new notes!' But I gave her the money in the end, she bought a new pair of rubbers and she gave me the money back some time after that.

In our parents' house, on Christmas, we, the children, used to gather in the summer kitchen: there was a stove, and we took a small fir-tree or just a branch, and trimmed it with colored paper and tinfoil. One night we played until the tree caught fire from the stove, and we put it out and ran into the house. On Easter, the neighbors came and brought us red Easter eggs, but my mother and grandmother also made eggs, boiled in onion leaves.

Our family got along well with the neighbors; they were both Romanians and Jews. There was a sergeant, Cojocaru, who rented a house and had two children, Jean and Tita, who were always out at play with us. Then there was a Christian barber, who also had a daughter, but she was rather spoiled and her mother didn't let her come out and play with the rest of the kids. Up the street lived the Ionescus. My mother was close to Mrs. Ionescu; they were good friends. They had a house and a garden, but a tiny kitchen, so on Easter and Christmas Mrs. Ionescu came to us and baked the sponge cakes in our kitchen. They had two children, Alexandru and Corina, who always played with us, either hide-and-seek, or with the ball.

The town I grew up in, Botosani, was a modern, cultural town, with paved roads and beautiful buildings. I still remember the Eminescu theater, which was later bombed. The town's population was about 30,000, and there was a big Jewish community: about 15,000 Jews. It was a well-organized community, with a lot of synagogues. I remember two of them: one was near our house, one near my grandparents' house. We had cheders, mikves, shochetim and all functionaries. I remember Rabbi Bernstein: one of his children was run over by a German truck. The driver came to him and apologized, saying it had just been an accident.

In the town there was no separate Jewish neighborhood or ghetto; Jews lived everywhere. In our street there were Jews and Christians and we got along very well; all the kids were playing together. I remember one Jew, who was a watchmaker, but a lot of them were merchants: many of the shops in the town center were Jewish. There was electricity and running water in Botosani, only on the outskirts there might have been some problems with that.

I went to a state elementary school, but then the war broke out and the school building was requisitioned. So the teacher, Vasiliu, who was a priest, held the classes in his house, and I went there. He had three daughters, who were also teachers. There were two Jewish schools in town, but I didn't go there, I don't know why. I got along well with everybody in elementary school, but I don't remember any classmates; it was a long time ago.

My elder sister Ernestina played the piano; I took some piano lessons as well, but I gave it up soon; I wasn't patient enough to sit in front of the piano and practice.

In high school I liked languages a lot. I had a very good French teacher, who didn't allow us to answer in Romanian, we had to speak French. When she entered the classroom, we had to stand up and say, 'Bonjour, madame!' When she called us to the blackboard, we had to answer, 'Je viens!'[I'm coming]. When she told us to write, we had to say: 'J'écris' [I write]. My mother sometimes helped me with my French homework. I never studied Hebrew and never had religious classes with a rabbi in school. Also, in high school, I had a physics teacher who mostly slept during classes, so one time I thought of cribbing when we had a term paper. I went to the back of the classroom, and randomly opened a textbook. But the teacher woke up, and when she saw that I had changed my place, came to me, found the textbook - which was opened at a totally different page than the one the paper was about - and took it. But when she corrected the papers she realized I hadn't cheated. So I got the mark I deserved; but she never gave marks higher than 6 or 7.

Personally, I never had problems in school because of being Jewish, and I got along well with all my teachers. I had Jewish and Christian colleagues alike, but I got along with everybody. However, I was first confronted indirectly with anti-Semitism in high school. There was a problem with a landowner's daughter, Ciolak was her name. She called somebody, not me, 'jidauca'. [Editor's note: jidauca in Romanian means 'Jewish woman' but it has a derogatory meaning.] I remember the headmistress, Mrs. Adam, reproved the girl, and when her father came to school, he reproved her as well.

I had a good Jewish friend, Ostfeld, whom I mentioned before. We went to the same school, and we took long walks, or we just sat in the garden if the weather was nice. We also went to the cinema or to the theater. We were a large group of friends in high school, boys and girls, and we knew the man who sold tickets to the cinema, and he always gave us the first row on the balcony. I didn't go to Jewish theaters because I couldn't understand the language.

When my brother David was in high school in Botosani, he only came home during Easter and summer holidays. When he was in the last year in high school, the school-leaving examination was introduced for the first time, and he had to go take it in Iasi. All boys from the high school went to Iasi, and everybody was worried. One day, when we, kids, were out in the street playing at the tree - there was a tree in front of the house - we saw Doctor Tauber, whose son was David's colleague, coming in a coach. We called out, 'Doctor Tauber is coming!'. He stopped in front of our house. He had a telegram saying: 'All boys from Botosani entered the oral examination.' So David had also passed. He had to go to university, but fights had already broken out in universities - the Cuzists 2 attacked Jewish students - and it was too dangerous in Iasi or in Bucharest. So he went to study in France with a larger group of boys.

Jenica was three years older than me, but I had outrun him in school. He had to repeat the 3rd grade and I caught up with him, I think. On one Saturday evening, we, children, were playing in the street. On the sidewalk there were lime trees in bloom, and Jenica climbed into a lime tree to pick lime flowers. And one kid said, 'Look, there is a really nice branch, but it's out of reach!', and Jenica said, 'I can reach it!'. But he fell on the sidewalk. By that time, our parents were getting ready to leave for the engagement of an aunt of Stefan Cazimir, when they heard screams. The children ran into the house shouting, 'Jenica fell down and hit his head!' Of course, my parents didn't go anywhere that evening.

The next day they took Jenica to the hospital: he didn't die immediately. My elder sister, Ernestina, watched over him in the hospital, and he was calling for me: 'I want the flapper who outran me in school!' He called me that because I had long hair, and I wore it in two plaits, and when we played horses, he used to pull my hair. Soon after the incident, one day, when I was at home, on my knees while Ernestina was combing my hair, my [maternal] grandfather came in, said nothing, but his eyes were red and tears ran down his cheeks. We understood: Jenica had died.

My other brothers and sisters each had their own interests, but I was closer to David, Tobias and Jenica, probably because of the age.

We lived across the street from the power station, and not far from us, there was a regiment. Whenever there was a military parade, on Heroes' Day, 10th May 3 or Epiphany, the regiment marched in front of our house. In school the teachers always took us to see the parade on 10th May. I remember one of those parades in particular: I fainted because of the heat and I woke up in a garden with my mother's sister, Amalia, by my side. She was in high school by then, she was ten years older than me; I was in elementary school. I remember, I asked her what had happened because I didn't remember a thing. She told me I had fainted.

My parents used to go on holiday on their own. When I was little, my father suffered from asthma, however he took care of himself: every year he went with my mother to a spa in Czechoslovakia, Karlsbad 4, I think. They always went during the summer, but I don't know if they went alone or not. We, the children, stayed at home and looked after each other, even if we had our little quarrels. Our grandparents also stopped by when our parents were away, so we weren't alone. But I never had a vacation with my parents.

I remember the flight of the Poles, who passed through Botosani as well. I don't remember being afraid back then. This happened around 1938, after I had finished my first year at the University of Medicine and Pharmaceutics in Iasi, and I had to have a period of practical training in a chemist's shop in Botosani. When I came home for the summer holidays, whomever I asked, they didn't have any openings; they said they would hire me if the people they already had left, but they couldn't promise anything. There was a Jewish pharmacist, Lerner, at the Military Hospital. My father knew him and the hospital's director, Colonel Apostoleanu. One day my father was walking down the street and he met this pharmacist. He told him that he had a daughter who had to have a period of practical training somewhere. The pharmacist told him, 'Send her to us, talk to Apostoleanu!'. So I talked with the colonel and he agreed, and I started working in the hospital. I learnt from him the first basic notions about pharmaceutics, notions I still remember today and I have always put to practice.

During the War

I was directly confronted with anti-Semitism when I finished university, I think I was in my last year, during the last period of practical training in 1941. We had a neighbor, a Jewish widow, who sold her house to a Romanian sergeant. This sergeant, who lived near us, was some kind of surgeon's assistant, and he sometimes came to the hospital to pick up some drugs. He used to say to me, 'Good morning, Miss! How are you? I saw your mother this morning and I told her I'm on my way to the hospital.' This lasted until just before the beginning of World War II. One day, I was on my way home - at that time I was already wearing the yellow star 5 - and a soldier stopped me in the street. A couple was also coming down the street, and they stopped to show their IDs as well. The man who had stopped me told them, 'Go ahead!', and they said, 'Ah, you're only checking the ones with the yellow star?' And he said, 'Yes, only them'. I was in my early twenties and wearing the star was compulsory. After he checked my ID, he let me go. It had rained heavily, there was mud everywhere. Then, when I was almost home and wanted to step on a dry rock, I heard a voice behind me: 'Step aside, you Jew [in Romanian: 'jidauca'], I will not step in mud with my new shoes because of you!' It was the sergeant who was our neighbor and who a month or two ago had said to me, 'Good morning, Miss!' After that I was forbidden to work.

Before World War II, I had worked as a pharmacist. The owners of the shop where I worked were Jews, and they lived upstairs. Their name was Rosenberg, and I got along very well with them. In 1942 all the merchandise in the shop was handed over to a Christian pharmacist, Mrs. Constantinescu. She wanted to keep me because she was from the countryside and she didn't know anybody in Botosani, except for her sister, who lived there. And it was something else, when the customers saw somebody familiar at the counter. People in Botosani knew me, and whoever came into the shop said: 'Thank God you are still here, you know what to give us'. There was a peasant from Cotusca [a small village near Botosani], whose wife was sick, and he always bought a 100 gram bottle of valerian tincture. He used to say, 'I wouldn't buy it from somewhere else, even if they gave me a kilo for free! This one is clean, carefully prepared and it cures!'

On one winter day, when it was already dark and there was a blizzard outside, the ex-owners upstairs asked me to sleep over because I lived far from the chemist's shop. I accepted, I had also joined them for dinner on several occasions. And in the morning, when I came down, a man from Social Insurance came into the shop, saw me and said, 'What is a Jew doing in a Romanian drug shop? You just got your shop, Mrs. Constantinescu; if you keep her, we will revoke your license!' I went upstairs, took my coat and left. [This happened around 1942.]

Then I worked for another Romanian pharmacist, Miss Popovici, for ten days. She had an anti-Semitic sister, who lived in Botosani, and who always told her, 'All you do is listen to Radio Free Europe 6, Radio London and fear that the Russians will get to Botosani! Don't worry, they won't get here!' [Editor's note: actually Radio Free Europe only began broadcasting in 1949.] And this sister always called me a Jew, but Miss Popovici didn't listen to her. After ten days, she received an official letter from the Pharmacists' Council stating that she had to let me go or they would revoke her license. And Miss Popovici went to them and told them, 'How come Gheorghiu can keep Jews, and I can't?' But she had to let me go.

There was another Romanian man, Gheorghiu, who was an accursed legionary 7 pharmacist. However, he also kept a Jew in his shop, but in the back, where no one could see him. His daughter was also a pharmacist, but she had just finished her studies and she didn't know a lot about running a chemist's shop. And he talked to Miss Popovici, although by that time I had already left her shop because he wanted me to go work in his daughter's shop. I didn't want to go, and I said so. Miss Popovici had paid me 1,000 lei per day, in ten days I made 10,000 lei and that was a lot. When I had worked for the Jewish pharmacist, I got 3,000 lei per month. Miss Popovici paid a lot because there was nobody to help her. So I told Gheorghiu that if he wanted me to work for his daughter, he should pay me 1,000 lei per day, like Miss Popovici. Of course he didn't want to; that was a lot of money. But he knew my father, and he came over to talk to him. My father told him, 'Mr. Gheorghiu, she is a grown-up woman, she does what she wants. If she won't do it, I cannot force her to!' And I didn't work for him. I preferred to knit a jacket - whoever needed something like that came to us - and get paid for that. I would have rather got 1,500 lei for a waistcoat, which took a long time to make, than work for Mr. Gheorghiu.

During the war a German officer stayed in our house. He lived in our living room; he wasn't very talkative, but he was polite. Over at Aunt Clara's, my father's sister, there was another German, and my father used to go over there because my aunt didn't know German very well. And my father told him that the Germans are getting on well, and he said, 'Yes, yes, the Germans are getting on well, but remember Russia is large and deep!'

After the first anti-Jewish laws were passed, my father couldn't work as a bookkeeper any more. He worked as a salesman. He had representations from different factories and he sold their products to wholesale dealers. This happened shortly after the war began; meanwhile Jews were also forbidden to travel by train and he had to give up his job and work in a high school. He was a secretary; that was where he retired from. All this time, my mother continued being a housewife. We lived on whatever work I could do at home.

David, my brother, also helped us. He was a technical manager at the textile plant in Prejmer and was living there. [Prejmer is a place in Brasov county which had a well-known textile factory.] There were only two managers: him and an administrative manager, so they needed him there. Once on New Year's Eve I went to Prejmer, it was soon after the rise of the Goga- Cuza government 8. The train was late, and it was dark when I arrived at the station in Prejmer. I knew that someone had to wait for me there. When I got off, I called out, 'Is there anyone here from the plant?' And a man answered, 'Yes, Miss, the engineer is waiting for you!' And then I heard another voice: 'No, you will take us to the village!' The voice belonged to a legionary who was at the train station with many others. They were some people from a village, but not workers. And the driver said, 'No, I'm just taking this young lady to the plant!' And they took revenge for that. They came to the plant and asked for light bulbs, and later I heard that they had a fight. My brother was also beaten by these legionaries.

Sandu was in Bessarabia 9, in the Romanian army, near Nistru, somewhere around Edineti, and he lived in somebody's house. That man had a little kid, who slept on the oven. Whenever the kid saw Sandu eating, he cried out, 'Give me! Give me! Give me!' And Sandu used to give him food. When Sandu came home, he always took more food, and said, 'I have to feed give- me-give-me-give-me!' After they let him go [from the army], he came to Botosani, where he had to work for the public service: change plates with street names and so on. After that he worked in the city hall, but they fired him from there as well by saying, 'What is a Jew doing in the city hall?' I don't remember what kind of work he did after that.

Before 1945, when the Russians came, Miss Popovici asked me to work for her again and I accepted. Then, the wife of a Jewish doctor - who had been deported to Transnistria 10 - came and asked for some drugs, and I gave her what she needed. And Miss Popovici's sister asked me who that was, and I told her. She said, 'I've never heard of her, I wouldn't have given her anything, accursed Jew!' And after that everything was packed because they were leaving for Bucharest the very next day. She showed off as a Jew- baiter, even though the merchandise she sold was a profit for them. Next day somebody was supposed to come and take all the merchandise to Bucharest, but the Russians came to Botosani, and everything was left behind. Soon after Miss Popovici moved to Bucharest. She came back some time later; she had a farm near Botosani where she retired because she was ill. After that, I worked for the pharmacist Mrs. Constantinescu, whom I had worked for before the war, with an officer: whatever I gained, I had to give him half. He was a relative of Mrs. Constantinescu's, who had taken refuge, and I was selling her merchandise, so I had to give him money.

After the War

I met my husband, Solomon Vecsler, after I had finished my studies. He worked as a pharmacist as well. He worked for an expropriated chemist's shop, but nobody said anything to its owners [at the time of the anti- Jewish-laws]. We met by chance: one of his colleagues set up a deposit with pharmaceutical supplies, and we met there. We married in 1945. I think it mattered to me that my husband was a Jew; I don't think I would have married a Romanian.

My husband's mother, Enta Vecsler, was a housewife. His father, Raphael Vecsler, worked in a bank, I think, but I never met him; he had died long before. My husband was a gentle man, and very obliging. He helped everybody in the chemist's shop. I remember there was a young pharmacist from Cluj [Napoca], who had been assigned to Botosani. My husband looked after her a lot, taught her how to prepare different things. Back then drugs were prepared in the chemist's shop, they weren't ready-made as they are now. And she had to take an exam in Bucharest I think, and her subject was on something she had worked on together with my husband. And she sent us a postcard to thank us: 'I was lucky to be in your shop, I passed the exam!'

After World War II, our house was nationalized [see Nationalization in Romania] 11, but we weren't forced to leave it. But we moved out because we were too close to the railway station, to the power station, to the military units; the neighborhood was too noisy and crowded, and we wanted to be closer to the rest of the family. The house where we formerly lived was inhabited by several people until my sister, Henrieta, who worked at the People's Council, managed to take the house out from the nationalization list; I don't know how she managed to do so. We registered the house in Sidonia's name, my other sister, because the rest of us had better jobs, compared to her: she worked half a shift as a secretary and half a shift as a librarian. We all thought it was fair to do so.

Sidonia, who lived in the same house we had rented, with the rest of us, rented out the house, but the rent was very small and the tenants always came to her to ask for money for restorations, and they cost a lot. Two rooms at the back of the house were rented to an elementary school: one was the library where Sidonia worked and the other was the pioneers' room. And when she saw how much the restorations cost, she said to the school principal: 'Keep the whole house and leave me alone, these restorations are confusing me!' She donated the house to the school and that was it. My elder sister, Tina, worked as a clerk in a men's underwear factory, whose owners were from Vienna. When everything was nationalized, she lost her job.

I had my first child, Raphael, in 1946. In the same year I started working in the same chemist's shop with my husband. A year before, the pharmacist I had worked for before World War II, Rosenberg, moved to Bucharest and we rented his shop. We lived upstairs, and had the shop downstairs. My husband woke up earlier and went into the shop, and I would look after Raphael a bit and then join him. We had our own chemist's shop until 1949, when all chemist's shops were nationalized. But there were too many pharmacists in Botosani and I had a husband who was a pharmacist, just like me, and a small child at home. They only hired one spouse. That was my husband, and I couldn't find a job anywhere. I only got a job in 1953 when someone came to me and told me, that there was an opening in Botosani, at Sanepid, in the chemistry department. [The Sanepid institution was established in 1950 and its main objective was the prophylaxis of infectious diseases, then extending to other fields of prophylactic interests, especially concerning the hygiene of public institutions or locations.] So I applied for it at the county, because back then Botosani belonged to Suceava county, and after a few months I was accepted and started working at Sanepid as a food chemist.

My daughter Nadia was born in 1949. We raised our children in the Jewish tradition: we observed Sabbath, said blessings on Friday evenings, observed Purim and Chanukkah and all the other high holidays. Of course, on Sabbath we, that is me and my husband, had to work, but we celebrated it at home. We followed the kashrut as much as we could, with separate pots for dairy and meat products. We only went to the synagogue on high holidays. There was no rabbi in Brasov when we moved here. The service was led by some of the elderly Jews, who had no functions in the community. We could go to the synagogue during communism, we had no problem, but if there was some kind of special event, like a high holiday, or an anniversary, when other important non-Jewish people were invited as well, like the mayor, we had to thank comrade Nicolae Ceausescu 12 for allowing us to have that gathering. [Editor's note: it is very unlikely that an important non-Jewish person would have gone to the synagogue during the communist era, especially because generally they were party members and religious practice was not well received. Also, Ceausescu was not mentioned by name, but there is a prayer after reading the Torah each Sabbath about the country and its rulers.]

I've never been a party member, and I've never been involved in politics, in any way. But it was compulsory to take part in social activities, like marches on 23rd August 13 or 1st May.

I never had problems at work because of being Jewish; I got along well with my colleagues. I remember the lab's director, the first of them, Mardare. He lived in a rented apartment, his neighbors were Jewish and they got along very well. That's how he met my son, who was playing with his neighbors' kid. And Mardare used to say openly: 'On [Jewish] holidays I don't want to see you in the lab!' The doctor who followed him, Naciu, was the same: I had time off on high holidays. But I had to work on Saturdays, of course, like everybody else. I worked at Sanepid until I retired. But I went on working after that as well, I got a full salary and half a pension. I needed the money because by then both my children where studying at university in Bucharest and it was hard to get by.

My father died in Botosani in 1954. My mother continued living in the same rented house until 1960, when she also died. They were both buried in the Jewish cemetery and the Kaddish was recited, of course, but I don't remember who did so; probably somebody from the community in Botosani.

When Nadia was about two years old, in 1951, we started proceedings to leave for Israel, me, my husband, my mother-in-law and our children. But only my mother-in-law got the permission to leave for Israel. She didn't leave, she was too old to take care of herself alone, with no family. That was the policy: many families were separated, parents left without their children or the other way around. I remember about one family, I don't know the name anymore: the parents left with one daughter, and the other had to stay here because she was over 18 when they filed for aliyah and she didn't get the approval. She had to stay here for many years, I don't know exactly how many.

And because we had filed for aliyah, and the proceedings lasted for many years, Nadia didn't win any prizes in elementary school, although her grades were very good. I remember I told her she wouldn't get a prize because of our situation on the way to the festivity because I knew that if I had told her at home she wouldn't have wanted to go anymore. And she didn't get any prizes until we gave up on emigration and withdrew the file when she was in the 8th grade and had to take the capacity examination.

We gave up because my husband received a note from Centrofarm, which was in Suceava by then, which said that if he didn't give up on emigration, he would be transferred to work in a village. [Centrofarm was a state pharmaceutical company, which operated all over the country.] They had probably been asked to do so. So we gave it up, and Nadia entered the high school examination on her first try. Our boy, Raphael, didn't make it on the first try just because our file was still valid. [He was older, so he took the exam earlier than Nadia.] After we gave it up, they both won prizes in high school.

I was glad to hear about the birth of Israel, but I was upset because of the wars since I had acquaintances who had already left. They weren't close friends, but a lot of pharmacists from Botosani left for Israel. Ieti, the sister of my friend Ostfeld, was married, had a son, and they both left for Israel. Ostfeld died young because of typhoid fever. She was almost cured when she had another fit and died.

My sister Ernestina emigrated to Australia in 1964; she married a Jew call Rufenstein who left from Botosani as well. I think he was an accountant and she was a translator, we kept in touch, wrote letters to each other, but I don't know many details about their lives there. Sandu left for Israel, Jerusalem, in 1984. His son, Sergiu, had already emigrated to the US, but he came home for a while. Sandu's wife, Fiameta, was ill, she had to have dyalisis, and Sergiu convinced them that dyalisis was easier done in Israel. So they left, and she died during a dyalisis in Jerusalem in 1985. Sandu had been an accountant at a spinning mill here, in Bucharest, but I don't think he had a permanent job in Israel. Now and then maybe, but he was already retired. I was sad when he left, he was the only one of us siblings whom I had left. But we kept in touch through letters, and I never had problems with that, or suspected that someone opened our letters. But there was only family talk in them, nothing interesting for someone else. Sandu died in Canada, after he went to the US for Sergiu's marriage. After the marriage, they went on a trip, and Sandu died in Toronto.

My children always knew what they wanted to do, I couldn't influence them. When Raphael finished the 5th or 6th grade, he had to choose between mathematics and humanities, and he chose the latter. Then, he studied journalism in Bucharest. Nadia was just as determined, and went to study mathematics in Bucharest. They had no problems at university because of being Jewish, as far as I know. In 1975 my husband and I moved to Brasov because of the children. In 1974 Raphael married Felicia Reinisch, who is also Jewish, in the synagogue in Bucharest, in the presence of Rabbi Moses. They moved to Brasov. They have two daughters: Manuela and Karina. Raphael works as a journalist at several newspapers in Brasov. Tradition is still very important to them. Manuela also married a Jew, Andrei Czizler, in 2002. They had a religious ceremony in the synagogue here, in Brasov. Nadia didn't want to be separated from her brother Raphael, so she came to Brasov as well. We lived with Nadia here, in an apartment with two rooms and a kitchen. Nadia didn't marry and she still lives with me. She works as a programmer.

My husband died in 1990 and was buried in a Jewish cemetery. There was a rabbi and a chazzan at the funeral, and someone from the community, not from the family, recited the Kaddish. None of my siblings are alive now; the only family I have are my children, my nieces and Magda Blumenfeld - the daughter of my mother's sister Adela - who sometimes calls or writes.

Things became better after the collapse of communism in 1989 [see Romanian Revolution of 1989] 14. I remember I was in the kitchen, and I heard something on the radio but I didn't understand. And then Nadia phoned, and said, 'Turn on the TV!' There were people who came into the headquarters of the national television station, announcing that the communist era was over, and broadcasting scenes showing fights in Timisoara. After that we had better heat, the electricity wasn't stopped from time to time [as it used to be during the communist era due to reasons of economy], I was no longer afraid to go out into the street, I didn't have to stand in queues for food. Beforehand, people got angry and sometimes started to talk against the regime, and you never knew who was listening. You could be arrested with them, taken as a witness, or accused for not intervening.

Things have changed in the community as well; I feel there are more activities. But I no longer go to the synagogue because I have problems with my legs. When I could, I did go, not every Saturday, but on the high holidays, like Purim and Chanukkah. Now I observe them at home with my daughter, who still goes to the synagogue on the high holidays. We lit the candles every Friday evening and say the blessings, but we don't follow the kashrut anymore, it's too difficult, and we don't do anything special on Sabbath. But we still cook hamantashen and send out shelakhmones. The community helps me with medication.

Glossary

Hana Gasic
Bosnia

My family background
My parents
Growing up in wartime
Post-war
Our religious life
My husband Miroslav

My family background

I am the daughter of Menahem and Flora Montiljo. I was born in Sarajevo on July 27, 1940. I have one brother, Rafael, who was born during the war on March 22, 1943.

My father's parents, Mose and Hana Montiljo Hahasid ("the pious") had 11 children. This family was known as Montiljo Hahasid to distinguish them from the many other Montiljos that lived in Sarajevo, and to recognize them as a particularly religious family. My grandfather was born in the 1870s, worked as a textile merchant in Sarajevo, and died in 1941 before the outbreak of war. His wife, my Nona (Ladino for grandmother) Hana, lived a much longer life. During the war she hid with her son, Jozef, in Sarajevo. After the war she decided to live the rest of her days in Israel. She imagined that this would not be a long time, but she managed to live another twenty-three years, until 1970, when she died at the age of 96. Having left, she never returned to Yugoslavia. She went to Israel with two of her three surviving children, her sons, Jozef and Leon, my uncles.

My father was the only one of the brothers to remain behind in Yugoslavia. He had heard stories about life in Israel and he did not believe that he would be able to make a living there. A tailor, he thought he would have to work in a textile factory and be unable to work on creating pieces from beginning to end. So he decided to remain in Sarajevo. He visited my Nona and his brothers in 1957. I do not recollect his journey, or his return, nor do I recall him questioning his decision to remain behind as a result of it. Both of his brothers struggled in Israel, and because of that, my father probably did not regret his decision.

My mother, Flora Montiljo (nee Kohen), was born in Sarajevo on December 31, 1913. Her parents were Klara and Rafael Kohen. She had four sisters and a brother. My Nona Klara died when my mother was just thirteen, and after that, my mother's brother took over as the central figure in the family. My grandfather had a butcher shop in Sarajevo, and when he died my mother's brother took it over. I am not sure if it was strictly kosher, but it is unlikely that they sold pork and other non-kosher meat. Whether the meat was slaughtered by a shochet (ritual slaughter) and kashered (made kosher) as is proscribed, I cannot say. At that time, Sarajevo was heavily influenced by its Muslim population, and therefore it was difficult to find pork in the town.

My mother went to a school for women and learned how to embroider quite nicely. She liked doing this but her responsibilities to the family business kept her busy and she was unable to commit much time to it. Among other things, she was responsible for delivering meat. In two of the pictures in my album, my father is pictured playing Samuel the Porter, a character from a short story of the same name by Isak Samokovljia, a Jewish writer from Sarajevo. It is the story of a man who delivers fish to the Jewish families in Sarajevo. It is ironic that in some sense my mother played the same role in real life. Like to the fictional Samuel, my mother used to tell stories about the different families she delivered to. Many of their names were Jewish, but I do not know if their clientele was exclusively Jewish. She would tell me about which families tipped, which were too cheap or too poor to give a tip, which would give her cakes and sweets to take with her, and other things about the families.

When my grandfather died, my mother's brother became the head of the household. That is why my mother and her sisters were so disturbed when he was taken away at the beginning of the war, never to be heard from again. He liked to play cards with his friends and he did this frequently. One evening he had just returned home from playing cards at his friend's, when the friend whose house he had played at came to the door. He informed my uncle that he had been instructed to turn him in, but he assured my mother and her sisters that he would come back. Despite his assurances, my mother never heard from her brother again.

Before the war, her brother had married a Slovenian woman named Kristina, and had two daughters, Makica and Evica. They were all saved by Kristina's mother, a non-Jewish Slovenian woman, and lived in Sarajevo after the war.

Two of my mother's sisters were killed during the war. My mother never found a definitive record of where and when, but she was convinced that they had been killed at Djakovo or Nova Gradiska, two concentration camps (editor's note: run the Croatian Ustashe). Her other two sisters survived because they had married non-Jews before the war. He sister Ela married a Catholic man named Zvonko Gjebic. She converted and changed her name to Jela. Despite her name change, my mother and the rest of us always called her sister Aunt Ela. They lived in Uzice, Serbia, where Zvonko worked in the Foma ammunition factory. They had two children, Anton and Zorica, who live in Kragujevac, Serbia. My mother's other sister, Rivka, married a Jew before the war, and had a daughter, Rahela. But her husband died, and she got married again before the war, this time to a Muslim man named Karahasanovic. They had two children, Zlata and Ahmed. Mr. Karahasanovic died while cleaning his rifle during the war, and Ahmed, born in 1943, never saw his father.

My parents

Both of my parents came from traditional Sarajevo families, and like many of those families they were from modest financial backgrounds. When my mother's siblings married non-Jews, it was not as devastating as it might have been had they had more money. When you are poor, you take what you can get, and many non-Jews did not look for dowries.

My parents met in the Jewish community, either in La Benevolencija or Matatija, two social clubs. They socialized and courted for five or six years before they married. When they did marry, in 1939, they had both civil and Jewish ceremonies. My father worked as a tailor in a private clothing shop owned by Gavro Perkusic. After their marriage they bought a small home on Gornja Mandjija Street on the periphery of the city in an entirely Muslim neighborhood. It was a two-story house. Our family lived upstairs in an apartment with an entranceway, a kitchen, and one room where we all slept. My mother's sister, Rivka, lived downstairs with her children. After her husbands died she had difficulty supporting herself, and my parents let her live in our house and never asked her to pay rent.

Growing up in wartime 

During the war, my father's boss, Gavro Perkusic, protected both my father and us. When he heard that a raid was planned-usually to gather up Jews and Serbs-he would hide my father in his tailor shop until it passed. Several times my mother and my brother and I were rounded up and taken to detention centers and he was able to get us released. Except for those occasions, my mother, brother and I spent the war at home. Throughout the war my mother kept a rucksack packed with all of our important belongings and necessary things. Whenever we were rounded up, this was the one thing we took with us. During the war my mother was forced to sell her wedding gown for four kilos of flour and a chunk of soap.

The location of our street and the fact that it was primarily a poor Muslim neighborhood also protected us. We lived on a steep narrow street, which must have looked daunting to the policemen that were sent to round up the Jews in the area. Many times they would holler up the block asking if there were any Jews there, and the neighbors would reply that they had all been taken away. I am sure my mother's personality and role in the community also played a role in protecting us. My mother was one of the few literate women in the neighborhood. Like most Jewish women at the time in Sarajevo, my mother had a basic education and therefore could read and write. Most of the Muslim women in the area had not had an education and could not read and write. When these women needed such skills, they always came to my mother for help. Generally, she got along well with all of our neighbors and they with her. This is another factor that kept us from being captured during the war.

Post-war

When I was about 12 years old my parents renovated our apartment and made a small room for Rafo and me. Despite the fact that we were relatively poor, my parents' apartment had an English water closet with indoor plumbing downstairs, and a laundry room, another room with running water, things that most of our neighbors did not have. Later, shortly before I married, my parents added a bathroom to our apartment upstairs. From the laundry room one could reach the small garden in the back where my father liked to spend his free time.

In addition to Serbo-Croatian, my parents both spoke Ladino, as did my brother and I. As the years went on, the amount of Ladino lessened, but it was still prevalent in our conversations. My mother was always combining Serbo-Croatian words with Ladino. For instance, she used to say noc de Purim-noc being "evening" in Serbo-Croatian, de being "of" in Ladino, and Purim, of course, being the Jewish holiday.

We were the only Jewish family on our street. In school there were usually only one or two Jews in each grade. Buka Kamhi, another Jewish girl, was in my class throughout secondary school and we became best friends and remain best friends today even though she lives in England. Her father, Haim Kamhi, was a very educated and intelligent man, a Jew par excellance. He was one of the few people I knew after the war who maintained full commitment to Judaism, sincerely observing all the holidays and Shabbat. There were many who hid that they were observing Jewish traditions, and many who observed nothing, but Mr. Kamhi practiced openly and whole- heartedly. He was also the president of the Sarajevo Jewish community for many years.

After the war, in 1949, my father began work as a tailor in the National Theater, and worked there continuously until his retirement. In addition to this full-time job, he also had private clients and made all of our clothing. My father worked hard and always put money away for our summer holidays. Most of the people in our neighborhood did not go away, but every summer my father made sure that the four of us went to the seaside. There he taught my brother and me how to swim while my mother observed from the beach-she was not a swimmer.

My father was an outgoing man. He loved to sing, especially Ladino songs, and drink and eat with his friends. My mother was more reserved, a bit less social, and cautioned my father about his excesses. She rarely talked about her experiences during the war. All of my knowledge about it was extracted from her slowly over the years and from other relatives and friends. After the war my mother avoided wearing clothing with the color yellow. And for most of my life, I also did not wear it, even though it would truly suit a person of my complexion, with very light skin and dark hair. At one point I gradually added yellow to my wardrobe, but my mother never felt comfortable seeing me in it.

After the war both of my parents were very much involved in our local community and Jewish community life. My father even received several accommodations and awards for his efforts. His involvement was on the level of social action and community building; he did not venture into politics. During the war he and his boss both worked for the opposition movement, and had contact with an illegal print shop that was located on our street. After the war he lobbied for that house to be deemed a monument. The plaque that was eventually erected included a light bulb. My father was its self- appointed caretaker: whenever the light bulb burned out, he would see to it that the city replaced it.

In the Jewish community my father was on the religious committee and one of the few people who were regularly involved in religious events after the war. He attended the weekly Friday night service, whenever the weather permitted. Since we lived on a steep small street on the outskirts of town, if the weather was bad it was impossible for him to make it to the synagogue. My father was one of the 20 or so men who attended the Pesach seder every year. Although he was always present, he never led these services or religious events.

My mother was also an active member of both the Jewish community and our local community. After the war she did neighborhood improvement work, and continued helping those women who could not read or write and encouraging them to learn. In the Jewish community she would help prepare the food for the Seder and other community events, especially the lokumikus (light cookies made from eggs and flour) and enhaminados (extensively cooked hard boiled eggs).

Our religious life

After the war my family maintained some of its religious practices, perhaps more than the average Jew in Sarajevo at the time. My parents had a mezzuzah on the entrance to our apartment but inside there were no decorative Jewish ornaments. My brother was born during the war, and immediately afterwards, my father arranged with Rabbi Menahem Romano, the last rabbi in Sarajevo, for him to have a brit milah. My brother experienced complications from this brit milah, among them a stutter from the stress. The stutter was quite severe during puberty, but with therapy and time it subsided a bit. I only remember Rabbi Menahem Romano as an elderly man whom we children respected; I have no vivid memories of him.

My mother observed the Shabbat in those things that she did not do. Saturday was a normal work day in most ways, but my mother made sure not to travel, nor to undertake any unnecessary work in the house such as laundry, cleaning, and so on. My parents liked to go on walks on Saturdays, and even for coffee at the Hotel Europa in the center of Sarajevo. And when we had new clothing, we always had to save it to wear for the first time on a Saturday.

We all went to El Kal-the word we used for synagogue-on the High Holidays and on Pesach. As a child I remember not wanting to miss the shofar (ram's horn) blowing. These services always seemed to interest me, probably because they were a novelty that occurred only a few times a year. When we went, we children sat upstairs in the balcony with the women. Before Yom Kippur, my mother would take me with her to the old Jewish cemetery with buckets and rags to clean off my grandparents' graves. My mother also made sure to settle her disputes before Yom Kippur. Relatives and friends who my mother had argued with during the year were once again welcome in our home and in our conversations. During these holidays, we would usually eat lamb with chestnuts, depending on the chestnuts' availability and when they fell. My mother and father always fasted on Yom Kippur, but they never made my brother and me fast. When my father would come home from El Kal after Yom Kippur, the first thing we would eat were lokumikus and white coffee, a coffee consisting of more milk than coffee.

In general, the holidays always meant a better quality food and a special atmosphere. On Pesach my father would attend the Seder in the community. Twenty or so men who were involved in religious life participated, but few others would attend. We children and other spectators did not participate in this activity.

The Jewish community in Sarajevo erected a big succah every year. It was built in a nook in the community that appeared as though it had been specially designed for this purpose. The community always made sure that it was decorated with fruit and that it was covered with branches according to the tradition. I do not remember that anybody had one at home.

Shavuot was the holiday that we celebrated the least. My parents celebrated those holidays that were most closely tied to children, and maybe because of that we did not celebrate it. Or maybe because it is in May, at the end of the holiday season. Hanukah, Purim, and Tu B'shvat, or, as we called it, Hamishoshi (in Ladino it was also called Frutas), all met this child- oriented criterion and were joyously celebrated in our home. On Hanukah my mother would set up the hanukiah with oil and wicks. We children would light the candles and we would be given the honors based on whether we had been good students and children. My father would sing afterwards, but I do not know exactly what he sang. Each year we would get a new spinning top, both from the community and from my parents.

Hanukah gained popularity as a holiday, both in the Jewish community and in the wider Sarajevo community, in 1958 after the Sarajevo Theatre performed a production of "The Diary of Anne Frank." I believe that there was a scene concerning Hanukah in that production which sparked interest.

Purim was also eagerly celebrated in our family. For this holiday we would have a big family meal with extended family members, though after my uncles left for Israel the family was considerably smaller. My mother would prepare special pastelikus (little meat pies) which, unlike normal pasteles (meat pies), were prepared in small individual portions, as well as borekitus (pie made from filo dough with various fillings) and roskitus (cake with walnuts). Each year my father would make special little cloth bags for my brother and me, which we would wear around our necks and the adults would fill with money. Sometimes, we would even be able to collect money from relatives a few days after Purim.

Hamishosi was a holiday through which one could see my parents' exuberance for the Jewish festivities. Despite our rather modest financial situation, my parents always made sure to buy all the different kinds of fruits available in Sarajevo, no matter how exotic or expensive. The cornucopia included the normal apples and pears, grapes, but also oranges, which were quite rare at the time, dried carob, and fistikas, peanuts in shells, which my mother roasted at home.

After the war, children of my generation did not have bar or bat mitzvahs. The youth groups organized some sort of activities or presentations for Yom Haatzmaut (Israeli Independence Day), but I cannot recall the exact nature of those celebrations. Without fail, every year my parents attended the memorial services in Djakovo and Nova Gradiska. Although Jews came from all over the former Yugoslavia, the Sarajevo Jewish community was the true organizer of these memorial services. The women in the Sarajevo community prepared hundreds of lokumikus and enhaminados and brought slivovica (plum brandy) for everyone afterwards.

My husband Miroslav

My parents took us to the seaside each year and they sent us to the Jewish summer camps as well. When we were older they sent us on excursions. It was on one such excursion that I met my future husband, Miroslav Gasic. The excursion, run by the Ferijalni Savez travel organization, was to a youth campground near Dubrovnik. The next year Miroslav and I met again at a campground near Makarska. After that we lost touch until my brother started university in Belgrade. Since he and Miroslav both studied at the same faculty, I put them in touch and instructed my brother to do what he could to help push things along in our relationship. Rafo proved a good intermediary, and we were married in Sarajevo and honeymooned in Dubrovnik, this time in a hotel, not a campground.

My mother never got over my moving to Belgrade. After time she learned not to show her displeasure as much, but she never accepted the idea. Our neighbors in Sarajevo used to say that she would cry for long periods after my visits.

Miroslav graduated from the university and worked until his retirement at the Vinca Nuclear Institute near Belgrade. I worked as a secretary in the Federation of Jewish Communities of Yugoslavia in Belgrade for some time and then took a position as a lawyer at the Ministry of Education, where I still work. We have a son, Dejan, born on January 1, 1973, and a daughter, Tamara, born on September 23, 1974.

My father Menahem (Miki) Montiljo "Hasid" died on April 25, 1981 in the hospital in Sarajevo. His funeral was conducted by Rabbi Cadik Danon, who came from Belgrade to perform it. After the funeral my mother had us buy a grave next to my father's, as she knew that she would not be able to live long without her beloved Miki. My mother covered the mirrors in our apartment after my father's death and a month afterwards, she arranged a limud (learning session) for my father in the Jewish community. My mother, Flora Montiljo, died in October, 1981, and was buried next to my father.

Some things have a way of coming full circle. My father's family, the Montiljos, were known as Montiljo Hahasid, a term of respect bestowed on those Sephardic families who were especially religious. My parents clung to remnants of this during their lives, and now my children have rekindled this tradition. My daughter, Tamara, has chosen to live in Israel, and my son, Dejan, is an observant Jew living in Belgrade. Today, Dejan bears his grandfather's name, Menahem, and continues in the tradition of the Montiljo "Hasids."  

Henrich Zinger
Uzhgorod
Ukraine
Interviewer: Ella Levitskaya
Date of interview: April 2003

Henrich Zinger lives with his wife and daughter Elena in a private house not far from the center of Uzhgorod. The house is rather old, but well kept and clean. There are a few fruit trees near the house. In spring Elena plants flowers around the house. Henrich Zinger is a short, slim and lively man. He doesn't look his age. He likes walking and until lately he often went fishing to the Uzh River. Herman's wife and daughter stayed with us during the interview and listened to Herman's story with great interest. Henrich speaks with an explicit Hungarian accent. He expresses his thoughts very clearly and finds witty definitions. Of course, these reminiscences were hard for him, but when I suggested coming another time to continue he refused and finished his story. In 1997 Henrich gave an interview to the Spielberg Foundation.

My parents' families came from Subcarpathia 1. Subcarpathia belonged to Austro-Hungary before 1918. Hungarian was the state language and many residents of Subcarpathia can speak it. In 1918 Austro-Hungary gave the Subcarpathia region to the Czech Republic for the term of 20 years. At the time of Austro-Hungary there was no anti-Semitism, and when the Czechs came to power they encouraged Jews to take official posts and develop their businesses. Czechs were very cultured and loyal people and there was no anti-Semitism during their reign. In villages Jews and the indigenous population lived side by side and developed friendly relationships through generations.

The center of Subcarpathia was Uzhgorod [about 800 km from Kiev]. Before World War II it was a small and quiet town with a population of about 40,000 people. It was multinational: there were Hungarians, Czechs, hutsuls - Ukrainian ethnic people -, Jews, Russians and gypsies. Jews constituted one third of the population in Uzhgorod. There were no nationality conflicts. Jews were craftsmen and tradesmen, doctors, attorneys and teachers. Most of the Jewish families were poor. There was a big beautiful synagogue in Uzhgorod built by the French in the 19th century. After Subcarpathia joined the USSR in 1945 the synagogue underwent reconstruction. The Jewish symbols were removed and it became the building of the Philharmonic. There was a cheder and a Jewish school in town. Jews lived in the center of the town. Before 1918 there were mostly one-storied buildings in Uzhgorod. When the Czechs came to power in 1918 they began to build two and three-storied apartment houses in the central part of the town with spacious and comfortable apartments. There were stores on the ground floor. Subcarpathia came to prosper during the Czech rule.

My father's parents were born and lived in the village of Turi Remety in Subcarpathia, about twelve kilometers north of Uzhgorod. I visited this village only once in my childhood and cannot describe it. My paternal grandfather and grandmother were born there in the 1860s. They died long before I was born. My grandfather's name was Yacob. I don't know my grandmother's name.

My father, Kalman Zinger, was born in 1886. I only knew my father's younger sister, born in 1900. I don't know her first name, but her last name in marriage was Klein. Her daughter lives in Israel. My father also had two older brothers, but all I know about them is that they moved to the USA at the beginning of the 20th century. My father corresponded with them for some time, but then they stopped writing for unknown reasons. My father didn't tell me much about his family. They were very poor and lived from hand-to-mouth.

My father's family observed Jewish traditions. The family was religious. At that time all Jewish families were religious. My grandfather and his sons went to the synagogue and prayed at home. My father's family celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays and followed the kashrut. My father and his brothers studied at cheder. The children were raised religiously. When the children grew older they went to learn a profession. My father became an apprentice of a stonemason when he turned 13. This stonemason made gravestones. They didn't pay for my father's apprenticeship, my father worked for the stonemason for two years for free. If after finishing their training apprentices stayed to work for their master they got paid for their work.

My mother's family lived in the village of Velikiy Berezny. It was a big village, 40 kilometers north of Uzhgorod. It's a district town now. There were big fairs in the village. The population consisted of Hungarians, Ukrainians and Jews. There were many Jews like in any other village in Subcarpathia. The Jews spoke Yiddish, Hungarian and Ukrainian. The Jews lived side by side with their neighbors of other nationalities and had friendly and supportive relationships with their co-villagers. Nationality didn't matter at that time. There were earthen floors in most houses covered with weaved rugs. There was a synagogue in the center of the village and two cheders: a cheder for boys and a cheder for girls 2. Most of the Jews were craftsmen and tradesmen. All stores in the village were owned by Jews. Some Jews were farmers. All Jews were religious and went to the synagogue on Sabbath and all Jewish holidays. Many Jews attended the synagogue every day. There was a shochet in the village. All Jews followed the kashrut. When a cow was slaughtered Jews could only eat its front part. [Editor's note: This custom was followed in a number of communities, although Jewish law does not forbid eating certain parts of the rear part of a cow.] The rear part was sold to the villagers. Every family had separate utensils for meat and dairy products. They also had special crockery for Pesach.

My mother's father, Yacob Galegrter, and her mother, Zali Galegrter, were born in Velikiy Berezny in the 1860s. My grandmother's maiden name was Ginig. My grandfather was a craftsman and my grandmother was a housewife. My grandmother died in 1907 and my grandfather died in 1914, a few months after I was born. They were buried in the Jewish cemetery in Velikiy Berezny in accordance with Jewish traditions. My mother told me that there were several daughters in the family. I only knew my mother's older sister, but I don't remember her name. My mother, Hana, was born in 1886. My mother's family was religious like all Jewish families at that time. They observed all Jewish traditions.

My parents met with the help of a shadkhan, which was a common way of introducing young people back then. They got married in 1910. They had a traditional Jewish wedding with a rabbi and a chuppah in Velikiy Berezny. My grandmother had died before. The newly-weds settled down in my mother's parents' house where her older sister and her husband lived as well. Her husband was a shoemaker. The house was big and accommodated two families comfortably. My sister Helena was born in 1912. Her Jewish name was Chaya. I was born in 1914. I was named Henrich, my Jewish name was Chaim. My younger brother Leopold was born in 1918. His Jewish name was Leib.

Some time later my father bought a plot of land near my mother's parents' house and built a house with a thatched roof for our family. We lived there until 1944. The house wasn't big. It was built from air bricks made from the mixture of cut straw and clay placed in rectangular containers to dry in the sun. Many houses in Subcarpathia were built from air bricks. Our house was like many other houses in the village and had a room and a kitchen. There was a big stove in the kitchen. My mother cooked on it and in winter this stove was used for heating. The stove was stoked with wood. Wood was inexpensive since there were many woods in Subcarpathia and brushwood was free. There were fruit trees around the house, a big backyard, a kitchen garden and sheds for grain, a chicken-coop and a barn on the right side of the backyard. We didn't keep cattle, but my mother kept chickens. My father made gravestones and engravings on them. These gravestones were kept in the yard. He did this work from spring till fall and in late fall he started making frames for pictures and photographs. My father provided for the family and my mother was a housewife, which was customary in Jewish families. Married women were responsible for the house and raising children.

My parents were religious. They strictly observed the kashrut. There's a number of rules to be followed. There was a special tray with the sides made of twigs in each house. When a shochet slaughtered an animal and let the blood flow down this wasn't kosher meat as yet. He had to remove pellicles and fat, place this meat on the tray and salt it. The tray was put in slant to let the blood with salt flow down into a bowl. Then the meat had to be thoroughly washed to become kosher. Jewish customs and traditions are complex and were transmitted from one generation to the next.

My mother didn't wear a wig since it wasn't customary in the village, but she always wore a kerchief, even at home. We never saw her without a kerchief. She wore casual clothing like all other women in the village. She wore long-sleeved blouses and long dark skirts. She had a long silk dress to wear to the synagogue. This was her only fancy dress. My father wore a kippah at home and a wide-brimmed black hat to go out. On weekdays he wore his work clothes. He had a black woolen suit to wear to the synagogue.

On Friday evening our family got together. We said a prayer, which went like this 'Barukh ata adonay, elohenu melekh ha-olam, asher kidshanu be- mitzotav v-civanu lehadlik ner shel shabat, and my mother lit candles. She said a prayer over the candles with her hands covering her eyes. Then we said a prayer all together, said 'Shabat shalom!' and had dinner. My father blessed the kids. My mother cooked something special for this meal. On Friday morning she usually told me to take a chicken to the shochet. We didn't have chicken on weekdays. We couldn't afford it. From Friday evening till Saturday evening Jews didn't do any work. It wasn't even allowed to strike a match or stoke the stove. On Friday morning my mother cooked food for Sabbath. In winter our Ukrainian neighbor came to stoke the stove on Saturday. He also lit the lamp. There were kerosene lamps. On Saturday morning my father went to the synagogue. Women only went to the synagogue on Jewish holidays. When my brother and I grew older my father took us with him. After he came home from the synagogue he read a special section from the Torah to us. His dream was to have a seat of his own at the synagogue. He couldn't afford to pay for it. I hoped to earn money and pay for my father to have a seat at the synagogue when I grew up. I wanted all Jews in Velikiy Berezny to know that I bought it for my father, but unfortunately, this dream of mine would never come true. Life has its own ways.

We spoke Yiddish at home. We also spoke fluent Hungarian. When Czech became the state language in 1918 our parents had a problem learning it. They spoke Hungarian with their neighbors. We, children, picked it up soon. We also knew 'rusinskiy' - a dialect of the Ukrainian language spoken in Subcarpathia.

We celebrated Jewish holidays at home. On Pesach our neighbors came to our house to make matzah for several families. Women got together at the big table in the kitchen to sieve the flour, make dough and roll it, and my father baked matzah in the oven. I liked sitting beside him. They made a lot of matzah to last throughout the eight days of Pesach.

We went fishing to have fish on holidays. There was a small river in Velikiy Berezny. Fishing was different than it is now. We bought some powder to throw into the river. The fish became drugged and turned up on the surface with their stomach up and we picked it. The powder wasn't hazardous for people.

My mother did a major clean up before Pesach. We moved all furniture to clean every corner. We collected all breadcrumbs in a piece of paper. This chametz was burned in the stove. We kept special crockery for Pesach in the attic. My mother did the cooking in advance. There were lines to the shochet before Pesach: women sent their children to the shochet with chicken and geese. Then the skins were removed along with the fat from the poultry. The skin was cut into small pieces and the fat was melted in big cast iron pots. Food was only cooked in this fat. The children had a chore to crush some matzah in a mortar. This flour was sieved. My mother made chicken broth with pieces of matzah. We always had gefilte fish on Sabbath and Jewish holidays. My mother made pudding from crushed matzah mixed with eggs. She also made chicken necks stuffed with fried flour and onions. She baked honey cakes and strudels with jam and raisins. On the first day of Pesach we went to the synagogue in the morning and in the evening my father conducted the seder. Besides other traditional food there was a plate with bitter greeneries, horseradish and a boiled egg on it and a saucer with salty water. We dipped greeneries into salty water before eating it. We knew that in this way we honored our ancestors' exodus from Egyptian slavery. We drank special wine on Pesach, red and very sweet. There were silver glasses for every member of the family and one extra glass for Elijah the Prophet 3. Everybody had to drink four glasses of wine at seder. Children had water added to their wine. I asked my father the four traditional questions [the mah nishtanah] in Hebrew.

On Sukkot we made a sukkah in our yard. The roof was made from corn stems. We decorated the sukkah with ribbons and flowers, put a table inside and had meals in it throughout the holiday.

Before Rosh Hashanah the shofar played after the morning prayer for the whole month of Tishri and Elul at the synagogue. On the eve of the holiday Jews had to offer an apology to those they hurt even if the hurt was unintentional. On Rosh Hashanah my father put on a white shirt and went to the synagogue with my mother. It was mandatory to wear white clothes. When we grew up we also went to the synagogue with our parents. My father had a special prayer book for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. My mother cooked traditional Jewish food: chicken, chicken broth and gefilte fish. We ate apples dipping them in honey and my mother explained that we did this to express our hope for a year full of sweetness ahead.

The family, including children of over five years of age, fasted on Yom Kippur. The kapores ritual was conducted before Yom Kippur. My mother and sister took a white hen in their right hand and my father, my brother and I took a white rooster, said a prayer and waved them over our heads saying in Hebrew, 'May you be my atonement'. We went to the synagogue. Prayers were long on Yom Kippur and when we returned from the synagogue we sat down at the table. After the 24-hour fast all food seemed particularly delicious.

There were the joyful holidays of Chanukkah and Purim. On Chanukkah children received Chanukkah gelt and painted wooden spinning tops. We spent our Chanukkah money on sweets. We played with spinning tops with other children. There were four Hebrew letters, one on each side of the tops, which stood for the words: 'nes', 'gadol', 'haya, 'po', which means 'a great miracle was here'. Every letter had its price. The letter 'nun', which was the first letter in the word 'nes', was the most expensive. Whose spinning top fell on the letter 'nun' took all stakes: candy wrappings, buttons and colorful pieces of glass.

On Purim my mother made hamantashen. There was a custom to take gifts of food to relatives and acquaintances. It was called shelakhmones. All kinds of sweets were put on a tray, covered with a napkin, and children went to deliver the shelakhmones. In the morning of the first day of Purim my father read the Scroll of Esther to us. Purimshpilers disguised as characters from the Scroll of Esther came to perform in Jewish houses. They were usually children of ten to twelve years of age. They were given money or sweets for their performances. I didn't take part in such performances since I was a shy boy.

There were two cheders in Velikiy Berezny: one for boys and one for girls. Girls studied fewer subjects than boys, but they learned everything a Jewish woman should know: to pray and read in Hebrew. Girls went to cheder at the age of five or six - I can't remember exactly - and studied there for a year. Boys went to cheder at the age of three. We had a melamed teaching us, and his assistant helped him to take care of younger children's needs: he gave us food, took us to the toilet, etc. At the age of four we studied the alphabet and reading in Hebrew since we had previously learned words. We also studied Yiddish, learned to read and write, studied Jewish history, traditions and religion. After finishing cheder at the age of seven we went to a general school.

There was no Jewish school in Velikiy Berezny. We went to the eight- year Ukrainian school. My sister Helena and my brother Leopold also went to this school. Boys and girls studied together. There were many Jewish children in this school and there were also Ukrainian and Hungarian ones. There was no anti-Semitism. We used to fight or argue, but there were never any conflicts about nationality issues. I had Jewish and non-Jewish friends. I studied well at school. I was good at all subjects. When I turned 13 my parents arranged for a bar mitzvah and from then on I was considered to be of age. On Saturday during my bar mitzvah I was told to come to the Torah for the first time in my life. I recited a prayer. The first tallit in my life was put on me. In the evening my parents arranged a dinner party and invited our relatives and friends. I remember that my younger brother felt very jealous about it since I was treated as an adult.

I finished school at the age of 14. My parents offered to send me to study at a garment factory in Czechoslovakia. There was a Zionist organization that organized training for teenagers helping them to get a profession and then go to Palestine. The Zborovitz garment factory belonged to this organization. I don't remember in what town this factory was located. There were other children from Velikiy Berezny and from other towns of Subcarpathia in the factory. We lived in a big building, ten to twelve tenants in one room. There was a canteen downstairs where we had kosher food. We had festive meals on Sabbath and Jewish holidays. We celebrated Sabbath on Friday evening and on Saturday we had a day off. We observed Jewish traditions and laws. We were trained to operate equipment at the factory and studied Hebrew and Yiddish. I worked for two years at the factory. I enjoyed my life there very much. I returned from Czechoslovakia in 1930 and my father sent me for training with a tailor. I studied there for three years. Of course, the training itself didn't take that long, but apprentices used to help their master's wife about the house, too. They fetched water, looked after the children and did what they were told to do.

After finishing my training I began to work at my master's shop. I was a fabric-cutter. I lived with my parents and brother. My best friend was a barber in the village. He wasn't a Jew. He was a very nice person. We didn't care about nationality then. What mattered was whether a person was decent and honest.

My sister Helena got married in 1934. She had a traditional Jewish wedding with a rabbi and a chuppah in Velikiy Berezny. My father bought a house in Uzhgorod for the newly-weds. My younger brother finished school and I began to teach him to be a tailor.

In 1936 I was recruited to the Czech army. I served in an infantry unit in Czechoslovakia. We had military and sport training and studied theory. There were rooms in the barracks, eight to ten tenants in each room. There were beds, tables and chairs, bookshelves and wardrobes in each room. There was a library in our unit and we could read in our spare time. We celebrated the religious holidays of all religions: Jewish, Catholic and Christian, every confession had its holidays. On Jewish holidays Jewish soldiers were invited to the synagogue where festive dinners of traditional Jewish food were arranged for them. Local Jewish families often invited Jewish soldiers to their homes on Sabbath and Jewish holidays. Matzah was delivered for the Jews from the synagogue on Pesach and for Christians Easter bread was made at Easter. The soldiers were allowed to go to the synagogue or church.

We didn't follow the kashrut, but I managed to observe all other Jewish laws. Every morning I put on my tallit and recited a prayer, and on Sabbath and Jewish holidays I went to the synagogue. Religiosity was appreciated. My fellow comrades were of various nationalities. There was one other Jewish soldier. There were Czechs and Hungarians. We never had any conflicts related to our nationality. Officers had a friendly attitude toward young soldiers. There were no brutal attitudes, nothing like what is happening in the Ukrainian army nowadays. We were like a team staying close together.

I returned home in 1939. Subcarpathia belonged to Hungary since 1938. The Hungary of this time was different from the Hungary where my parents lived when they were young. This was a fascist Hungary. There was a war in Poland and the Germans were killing Polish Jews. There were many refugees from Poland. Hungary declared itself an ally of Hitler's Germany. The oppression of Jews in Hungary began. A number of anti-Jewish laws 4 were issued. Jews weren't allowed to own enterprises or stores. They had to give them voluntarily into non-Jewish ownership or they became property of the state. Then Hungarian passports were introduced. All Jews had to prove that they were born in Hungary or they were subject to deportation. I don't know where they were deported. Passports were issued in Budapest, the capital of Hungary. To go there was expensive. Jews had no right to hold official posts. Life became much more difficult.

In 1939 Germany began World War II. Hungary was an ally of Germany during the war. Mobilization to the Hungarian army began. In 1941 Germany attacked the USSR [this was the beginning of the so-called Great Patriotic War] 5 and I was mobilized to a forced labor battalion in the army. At the beginning we had German commanders that were later replaced by Hungarians. We were sent to excavate trenches along the Don River in the USSR [Don is a big river in Central Russia]. Hungarian officers were commanders of the Don front. They behaved brutally. We were ordered to do all kinds of hard work. We had no right to refuse and they shot people for disobedience. Our task was making trenches. All roads were covered with snow and we had to clean the snow for the army troops. Frosts were so severe in January - February 1942 that people froze to death within a few minutes if they fell down. We were given spades and if someone dropped his spade he died. There was a strong wind blowing and it was only possible to walk with a spade. I had a woolen mask that my sister had knitted to cover my head and face. There were only Jews recruited to labor battalions. There were about 1,000 Jews in our unit. I don't know how many survived, but I don't think there were many survivors. I believe, about 1%. Besides inhuman work conditions Jews were shot by Russians while they didn't have any weapons to defend themselves.

In February 1942 our battalion was attacked by the Soviet troops. The Hungarian military ran away. There were nine of us left and we were wandering about not knowing in what direction to go. We bumped into a house at the border of a forest with a kitchen where they cooked meals for Hungarian soldiers. We asked them if they wanted to hire us in exchange for food. We had to chop wood and peel potatoes. Soldiers got some black coffee and rum or cognac to cheer up before combat action. We also got some coffee or rum occasionally. Regretfully, we didn't stay there long. One night some drunken German officers broke into the room where we slept. They yelled, 'Wake up, communists!'. They thought that all Jews were communists for some reason. We couldn't understand what it was all about when we were told to get dressed, take our rucksacks with our belongings and go to the kitchen. When we came there the food stock supervisor began to yell at us, 'You, dirty Jews, communists, drank the cognac and rum that our soldiers need so much!' It was the Germans that drank it, but they blamed us. The officers began to beat us. I bowed down protecting my head and they kept hitting me on my rucksack. They wouldn't have been held responsible if they had killed us. When they got too tired they told us to go into the yard.

The snow around was so deep that we couldn't run away. We were lying in the snow. When we pulled ourselves together we moved on. We were looking for our fellow comrades. We couldn't speak Russian. I spoke Ruthenian, but this was the dialect of Ukrainian hutsul people, the language that we spoke in the village. We finally found our headquarters and were sent back to work. We did the hardest work, but we didn't have a choice. There was no escape from there. People got shot for attempting to run away. So, we would have been shot by the Hungarian, German or Russian military if we had tried to escape and were captured.

There was a frontline in the area where we were working. One night the Soviet troops passed to the offensive and we were ordered to retreat. The nine of us stayed together. We decided to hide in a village. This was the village of Oshurki, as the woman who gave us shelter told us. There were bombs falling all around. My fellow comrades followed the woman into the house, but I stayed outside. I saw a big basket near the front door and got inside. Within some time three German soldiers came to the yard, placed a mortar and started shooting. They were keeping the Russian troops to give their troops an opportunity to retreat. They were very close to where I was hiding. They didn't see me while I could see them through the basket. Then they finally ran away. It became quiet. I got very cold.

Some time after the Germans had left I heard the sound of skis. A Russian officer wearing a white camouflage suit and carrying his machine gun came down the hill to inspect the surroundings. He came into the house and I was still lying in the basket. The Russians were aware that the Hungarians had Jewish labor units. He asked how many of us there were and told us to hurry into the rear, since the army troops might come back, and showed us in what direction to go. It was 2 o'clock in the morning. We still didn't know where to go. We went through some villages. We got thirsty and hungry. Most houses were destroyed. We went into some houses to get warm and get some food. We came to houses like beggars, moving on and on. On the next day we bumped into our fellow comrades lying dead on the road. They had been shot from a plane. There were planes hanging over us, but I remembered from the time when I served in the Czech army that one had to pretend to be dead and walk on after the plane was gone. I don't know whether they were Hungarian or German planes flying over us, but they killed all that didn't follow this rule.

I don't know how many days we roamed about. We were hungry and looking for food. Once we found some pumpkins. We made a fire and fried these pumpkins. They were rotten, but we ate them anyway. Once we found a horse that had frozen to death. We cut pieces from it. We found shelter in abandoned houses. Once we were robbed by some Russians. They were civilians with a gun. They came at night and took away our shoes and clothes. They took my sheepskin vest. They gave us their old clothes.

Finally we bumped into some Russian military. They understood Ukrainian and I asked them whether they needed a tailor or if we could maybe do other work for them. They brought us their clothes and underwear to have them fixed. They gave us some food and when it was time for us to leave they gave us a bag of dried bread. We moved on having no idea where to go. We didn't know the country.

We fell ill with typhoid and some people showed us the way to a hospital. The hospital for patients with typhoid was housed in a school building. Every day dead bodies were taken out of there like logs. The patients were lying on dirty straw on the floor. There were lice that bit patients to death. I don't know where I got the energy, but I didn't sleep at night cleaning my clothes from lice. This probably saved me. There was no water or food. We melted snow to have water. We were so weak that we couldn't walk. We could only move on our fours. Two of my fellow comrades and I survived.

Then some Russian officers and civilians came. There were doctors among them. One doctor asked me where I came from. I replied that I was from Uzhgorod and he happened to come from Uzhgorod, too. He had moved there from the USSR in the 1920s. He asked me more questions and looked around in search of those that could be saved. Those that had a chance to live were taken to another premise. The rest of the patients perished. When we recovered we moved on. We got washed in a sauna and cleaned our clothes.

Then we were sent to Usman [a town in Russia, about 400 km southeast of Moscow], to a camp for prisoners-of-war. There were German, Italian, Romanian, Turkish and other soldiers. There were many military men that surrendered at the front. When we came there we were ordered to take off our clothes, then we were searched by a doctor and allowed to put on clothes again. This was a transit camp where prisoners were examined and sorted out before they were transported to another camp. I was always looking for work to do. I had needles and other sewing accessories. Only my scissors where taken away during the search, although it was my tool. I got a pair of scissors later. I said that I could fix clothes.

At the beginning my clients were inmates of the camp. I did work in exchange for food. Later I opened a shop. There was a storage facility with stocks of food for the army in the Russian military unit where I was. The Italians went there to steal food. They were starving. Those that were captured were shot immediately and I saw this more than once. Later a shoe shop was opened near my shop. The shoemaker was also an inmate of the camp. I stayed a rather long time in this camp. Newcomers arrived constantly to the camp. Once a train full of former SS military arrived. My friend Schwartz from our labor battalion was among them. He had been hiding with Germans in the house of a woman when they were captured. I took him to my shop.

From Usman we moved to Voronezh [Russia, about 500 km southwest of Moscow], where we were taken to the sauna. We had our clothes disinfected and got them back. We were feeling much stronger than before. There was another big camp there. Its inmates were German, Italian, Romanian and Hungarian. We lived in huge wooden barracks. We slept on two-tier plank beds along the wall. We had sufficient food there. They received American food supplies of lentil with chicken meat. America supplied food for prisoners-of-war under an international treaty. The camp in Voronezh was much better than the previous camp. We had sufficient food and a place to wash. There were Jews in the camp, but we didn't observe any Jewish traditions. We didn't eat pork, but this was the only thing we could do in that respect. This was a different world and we were separated from the reality we were used to. I opened a garment shop there, and it was a good shop.

We made uniforms for Russian officers, women's clothes and fixed clothes. There were very skilled German tailors working in the shop. I learned many things from them. I still have notebooks with my notes from this time and albums with patterns. My shop was located near the military unit headquarters, beyond the camp. The colonel, chief of headquarters, lived upstairs and the shoe and garment shops were downstairs. Schwartz and I lived there. I was a tailor and he was a shoemaker. I didn't have to live in the camp for long. I obtained an identity card with my photograph. Schwartz and I lived in the building of the headquarters and moved around. We got food for our work. There were bed bugs that disturbed us in our sleep. We wrapped wet cloth around the legs of our beds to keep bugs from getting onto the bed. However, they got onto the ceiling from where they fell on us. We survived. Every morning I came to the camp to select 20-25 inmates to work in the shop. They weren't going to escape - there was nowhere to go. The local residents thought they were fascists and wouldn't help them. They worked in the shop during the day and in the evening they returned to the camp.

I met my future wife when I was in this camp. There was a house across the street from the building of the headquarters where we lived. I often saw a girl in a window. There was a big family living in that house. Schwartz and I often watched them through the window. It was an episode of peaceful life for us, associated with home. There was a river and a pump nearby where people came for water. We went to swim in the river and often saw this girl, who came with her buckets to get water. Once I took the courage to talk with her. I was wearing a German uniform that Germans had given me for my work. Those Germans didn't know that I was a Jew since I spoke fluent German. I also spoke Russian. I talked with the girl and asked if I could see her in the evening. I longed for talking with someone. I was afraid that she would refuse since she didn't know who I was. She agreed and we met in the evening. I chose a spot where nobody could see us since inmates of the camp weren't allowed to be outside in the evening. We walked and talked. It was like a holiday for me.

We began to see each other more often. I brought her food that we received in the camp. Her name was Sophia Belinskaya. I didn't know who she was. She looked like a gypsy girl. Once she told me that her mother told her to stop seeing me. She thought I was a German and might kill her. We talked more and she told me that she was a Jew. I confessed that I was a Jew, too. Her mother didn't believe it was true. She said there were only German inmates in the camp. I began to come to her home in the evening when nobody could see me. Sophia lived in a big family. There were seven children and Sophia was the oldest. She was born in 1924. Sophia's mother was a housewife. Her father left their family. I tried to support their family as much as I could. We made gowns from white fabric in my shop. We received fabric in rolls. Every night I wrapped some fabric around my body and went to visit them. Sophia's mother sold this fabric at the market and bought food for the family. Once Sophia's mother invited me to lunch. I understood that she wanted to talk to me and find out whether I could speak Yiddish. By the end of my visit she knew that I spoke better Yiddish than she did. After that Sophia's mother wasn't afraid of me any more and I visited them every evening. My friend Schwartz also met a local girl from Voronezh.

In May 1945 we heard that the war was over: the inmates were telling this news to one another. On 9th May 1945 all inmates of the camp were lined up in front of the headquarters of the camp and announced that Germany had capitulated and that the war was over. We felt very happy. People in the streets hugged and kissed each other. I hoped to be able to go home soon. I had no information about my family. Sophia and I decided to get married but postponed it until we came to my home. We wanted to celebrate our wedding with my family. I asked Ptashynskiy, the chief of the camp who was Jewish, to get some information about the situation in Subcarpathia. He sent a request about my family and received a response saying that no member of my family was alive. They perished in Auschwitz where the Germans took them.

Before we were released from the camp we were asked where we wanted to live. I could have gone anywhere, but I only wanted to go back home, even though I knew that nobody was waiting for me there. I was in captivity from the beginning of 1942 till September 1946. In September I obtained the required permits to go home. In 1945, after World War II was over, Subcarpathia joined the USSR, but it didn't scare me away. I remembered that the Soviet army had liberated us from the fascists. I was still hoping that I would find at least some of my relatives when I came home. I left for home alone. I wanted to prepare everything for the arrival of my future wife.

I arrived in Velikiy Berezny where my neighbors confirmed that the Germans had taken my whole family to Auschwitz in 1944 and none of them returned. I went to Uzhgorod to obtain my documents, but I couldn't get any. Some other people lived in the house of my sister Helena. My sister and her family also perished in concentration camp. I stayed in the house of my distant relative and tried to have the house of my sister returned to me. An attorney, who was my cousin's acquaintance, agreed to help me in court. I finally obtained an identity certificate in Velikiy Berezny, on the basis of which I received a passport. The verdict of the court was positive and I got back the house.

I went to Voronezh to take Sophia to our home. We returned to Uzhgorod where Sophia and I got married. We didn't have a Jewish wedding. We had a civil registration ceremony at the district registry office. We still live in this house. When we started repairs of the house in the 1950s I found a gift from my sister. We needed to replace the rotten floors. She must have put an envelope with family photographs under the floor before being deported to the concentration camp with her family. We found this envelope and I was very happy to get it since I didn't have a single photograph of my close ones.

I began to work at a garment shop in the center of the town. My clients mainly wanted to alter their old clothes. I went to work and my wife was a housewife. Our first baby, our son Kalman, named after my father, was born in 1947. He was circumcised according to Jewish traditions. In 1949 our daughter Elena, named after my sister Helena, was born. Her Jewish name is Chaya.

I had to work a lot to provide for the family. This was a hard time. It was difficult to get food. Our shop grew bigger. I worked there for 25 years. I had a crew at the beginning. The procedure was such that I gave a cut to one seamstress and she had a suit or coat completed from beginning to end. I just checked her work. When the shop switched from individual to operational method I quit. I don't think it's good when one employee does only one operation and it takes eight people to have an item completed. I thought it had an impact on the quality of work. My management tried to keep me at work, but I didn't feel like working in this manner.

I went to another shop where an acquaintance of mine worked. They worked as I was used to: one person made an item from beginning to end. There was one fitting with a client, but if a cut was precise the client didn't even need to come to a fitting. There were many clients. Our work was so good that our clients even paid more to encourage us. They were happy with our work and came another time to have another item made for them. I retired when I was over 70. However, I continued working at home. I had many clients. It was impossible to buy good clothes in stores and people had to have their clothes made for them. I earned enough money and we were in no need of anything. I had very little free time that I tried to spend with my family. I took them to the park or to the cinema.

After I returned to Subcarpathia I noticed some demonstrations of anti- Semitism. During the war common hardships made people stick together. There were different values at the front. Shortly after the war life was so hard that people were busy with their own problems and didn't think about nationality issues, but some time later anti-Semitism started to appear. I think one of the reasons was that so many people came to Subcarpathia from the USSR. Many of them were anti-Semites. There was always anti-Semitism and there still is. One can hear, 'Jews, get out to your Israel' in public transport even nowadays. I cannot say that the state persecutes Jews now, but it did before. However, there are demonstrations of anti-Semitism in our everyday life. We are used to anti-Semitism, even though my family or I have never faced it in person. I had clients of many nationalities, but I never heard a rude word from them. They only thanked me for my work.

I didn't suffer during the time of the Doctors' Plot 6 at the beginning of 1953, but I was surprised that so many people sincerely believed this evident lie. Though I wasn't interested in politics. Only idle people discuss politics. In March that same year Stalin died. Those that cried for him were mainly people from the USSR. His death wasn't a calamity for me, but I did think about what was going to happen. I remember how at the Twentieth Party Congress 7 Khrushchev 8 spoke about Stalin's crimes. I never took any interest in politics, but many of my acquaintances were upset that Stalin turned out to be an oppressor of the people instead of being the father of the people like he was called by the propaganda. We hoped that life would change for the better after the Twentieth Party Congress, but there were no significant changes. We lived under various regimes in Subcarpathia. Working class people cannot be interested who has power in their country as long as this power gives them an opportunity to live, work and be able to provide for the family. Of course, I never wished to join the Party. They wouldn't even have admitted me since I had been a soldier of the German side and a prisoner-of-war in a camp. Anyway, I never even considered this.

In 1948 the state of Israel was established. I was happy that our people got their own state, but there was the Jewish state of Palestine that had existed for a long time before. [Editor's note: There was no Jewish state before 1948, Palestine was under British mandate.] Even before I was born, Jews moved there to work in this country. So for me it was like just changing the name of the country.

My wife and I tried to observe Jewish traditions and celebrate Jewish holidays. We followed the kashrut especially during the time when we could buy the food we needed for it without problems. My relative Roujeana, the daughter of my mother's cousin, and her family lived nearby and on Friday Roujeana and my wife cooked together for Sabbath since it's not allowed to cook or stoke a stove on Sabbath. On Friday evening our family got together for dinner. We prayed and my wife lit candles. However, I had to go to work on Saturday. During the Soviet regime Saturday was a working day. Whenever I could I would come home earlier from work. I was a crew leader and couldn't just leave my colleagues to go home. My wife and I spoke Russian at home, since she could hardly understand Yiddish. Her Yiddish wasn't important for me. All I cared about was that we understood each other.

We celebrated all Jewish holidays at home. The synagogue in Uzhgorod operated until the early 1950s. My wife and I went there together only on Jewish holidays. There was a special balcony for women at the synagogue. However, we had small children and my wife couldn't leave them to go to the synagogue on Saturday, so on Saturday I went to the synagogue alone. Later the synagogue was closed and reconstructed to become the building of the Philharmonic. A prayer house opened where only men could go.

My wife and I fasted on Yom Kippur. We still fast regardless of our age. We also celebrate Pesach. We have special crockery and utensils for Pesach. I conducted the seder on Pesach. When my son grew old enough I taught him the traditional questions in Hebrew that a son is supposed to ask his father during the seder. We celebrated all holidays and I told my children the history of all of them. My wife and I raised our children in accordance with Jewish laws. They identified themselves as Jews and never concealed their identity like others at hard times.

We didn't celebrate Soviet holidays; except for Victory Day 9 on 9th May none of them were of significance for us. When our children went to school my wife and I went to concerts at school arranged on Soviet holidays, but it was just another opportunity for us to spend time with our children. We also celebrated family birthdays. We invited friends and relatives. Almost all our friends were Jews. It just happened so, although I don't value a person by his nationality.

I like walking long distances. My wife and I often went for walks with our children. My favorite pastime was fishing. It is only in the last few years that I haven't gone fishing. My family always spent a week with my wife's relatives in Voronezh during summer vacation. Sophia's mother, her sisters and brothers were happy to see us. We spent the rest of our vacation in picturesque Subcarpathia. We rented an apartment and spent our time in the woods or at the river bank.

When our children grew up my wife went to work at the instrument manufacturing plant called Uzhgorodpribor. She worked there for 30 years. She started as an apprentice and finished her career as a crew leader. I provided well for the family, but my wife wanted to work to spend more time among people and, also, to get a pension.

Our children went to school. Our son was very fond of music and learned to play the violin. Later he gave up music. Our daughter also started playing the piano, but she also gave up. After school our son studied to become a photographer and then he began to work as a photographer. He married a nice Jewish girl from Uzhgorod. We made a chuppah for them at home and invited a rabbi. We also organized a wedding party at home. Their son Dmitrii was born in 1982. In 1996 our son and his family emigrated to Israel. His son went to study at school in Israel and then my son and his wife went to visit him there and decided to stay. My wife and I approved of his decision. My son and his wife were young and could start their life anew. Our son works as a driver in Israel. Our grandson finished school and serves in the army. When his service is over he will go to university.

Our daughter Elena went to work at the Uzhgorodpribor Plant where my wife worked. Elena married a Jewish man from Uzhgorod. Elena and her husband also had a Jewish wedding. Her last name in marriage is Goldman. In 1976 their son Edward was born. Our grandson finished school and went to Israel under a program for young people. He lives and works in Israel. He got married in Israel. I have an eight-year-old great-grandson. His name is Daniel. Unfortunately, Elena's marriage failed. Our daughter lives with us now. Elena worked at the plant for 22 years until it was shut down. Since then she has worked with Hesed. She used to deliver hot meals to old people and now she works as a visiting nurse.

Many of our friends and relatives moved to Israel in the 1970s. My wife and I sympathized with them and supported their plans, but we didn't intend to leave. I'm too old to work in Israel and I couldn't think of staying at home receiving a pension. I wanted to work and enjoyed working.

I was enthusiastic about perestroika 10, which began in the 1980s at the initiative of Mikhail Gorbachev 11. I was glad that people got an opportunity to start their business without obstacles and fear. Private businesses were allowed for the first time in the history of the USSR. Of course, private entrepreneurship existed before, but if a person got caught for working for himself he might have been arrested and imprisoned for it. Besides, anti-Semitism mitigated, both on the state and interpersonal level. Relationships with Israel improved at that time. Soviet people got an opportunity to travel abroad, visit their relatives and friends and invite them to their homes. Official Jewish organizations were established and people got an opportunity to read books by Jewish writers and attend Jewish concerts. In the past even the word 'Jew' wasn't officially used. If they talked about Jews that perished during World War II they called them 'Soviet people' and when they mentioned those that were at the front they said 'Russians, Ukrainians, Belarus and representatives of other nationalities of the Soviet Union'. Now they mention Jews, Heroes of the Soviet Union, scientists and use the word 'Jew' to identify the nation.

In 1997 I went to Israel to visit my son and his family, my grandson and see my great-grandson. I toured Israel. It's such a wonderful country! It's a pity there is no peace. I was pleased to see how much Israelis love their country and how patriotic young people are there. My daughter also went to Israel to visit her family. Perhaps it would be better for Elena to live with her son and grandson in Israel, but she is a loving daughter and understands that my wife and I are in great need of her.

In 1991, after the fall of the USSR, Ukraine became independent. Since then Jewish life began to revive. Many Jews dropped their Jewish traditions in the past. There were often fewer than ten people, which is necessary to have a minyan, at prayer houses and we had to go home without praying. Now many of those that didn't even identify themselves as Jews before go to the synagogue with their children and identify themselves as Jews. I go to the synagogue every Saturday. I'm glad that many young people identify themselves as Jews. Many young people attend the synagogue. There's also a Jewish school in Uzhgorod.

In 1999 Hesed was established in Uzhgorod. It's very important for older people and for children. There are many clubs at Hesed where young people learn Jewish traditions, customs, Yiddish and Ivrit, foreign languages and get computer education. There is a choir and dance club for children and adults. We celebrate Sabbath and Jewish holidays at Hesed. Beside spiritual development and communication Hesed supports and provides assistance to old people. They deliver food packages, medications and hot meals to their homes. This is great assistance to people in this hard time.

Glossary

Tsylia Aguf
Kiev
Ukraine
Interviewer: Elena Zaslavskaya
Date of interview: November 2002

Tsylia Aguf is a nice charming lady. She is very sociable and active. She participates in a number of programs of Hesed. She has many friends and acquaintances. Most of them are of Jewish nationality. She must have been very pretty when she was young. She has pleasant memories about many of her admirers. She loves her children and grandchildren. She has a clean home, furnished with furniture from the 1960s. She has many books.

My family background
Growing up
During the war
Post-war
Glossary

My family background

My grandparents on my father's side died long before I was born. All I know is that my grandfather, Ovsey Pekar, was born in the small town of Korostyshev [30 km from Zhytomir] in the 1870s. There were about 4,000 Jews in town. There were a few synagogues. There were also Ukrainian inhabitants. There were no nationality conflicts. Jews and Ukrainians supported each other. My grandfather owned a small food and haberdashery store. He spent a lot of time at work. He provided well for his family. They lived in a solid wooden house. My grandfather was religious. He went to the synagogue on Saturdays and celebrated all holidays.

My grandmother, Tsyvia Pekar, was born in Korostyshev in the early 1870s. She got married when she was young. She was a housewife. She was moderately religious, celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays. She didn't attend the synagogue. During rush hours she helped her husband in the store. My grandmother was killed by bandits in 1919 1. My father told me that they stunned her at the gate of her house, trying to remove her jewelry. My grandmother defended herself, and they began to hit her on the head. She died of the injuries. My grandfather couldn't bear the pain of the loss of her and died from an infarction ten days later.

My grandparents had five children: two sons and three daughters. They all left their parents' home when they were in their teens. They grew up as atheists and didn't observe any traditions.

My father's sister, Rachel Pekar, was born in Korostyshev in the early 1900s. She finished a Jewish grammar school there. After 1917 she lived in the town of Gostomel [20 km from Kiev]. There were only a few Jewish families in Gostomel. Rachel was a laborer at the Factory of Musical Instruments. She remained single. She perished in 1941 when the Germans occupied Gostomel.

My father's brother, Ilia Pekar, was born in Korostyshev in the middle of the 1900s. He finished cheder, Jewish grammar school and an accounting school in Kiev. He worked as an accountant in an office in Kiev. He was married but had no children. He died of cancer in the late 1930s and was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Kiev.

My father's second sister, Sarah Pekar, was born in Korostyshev in the late 1900s. She got married and moved to Zhytomir [150 km from Kiev]. There were many wealthy Jews in town at the time. There were a few synagogues, a Jewish hospital and Jewish stores. Jews were craftsmen and merchants. There were a few Jewish schools and a yeshivah in Zhytomir. Sarah's husband was a shoemaker. They both died in Zhytomir in the late 1930s. Sarah's daughter, Tsylia, lives in the US. I correspond with her.

My father's youngest sister, Rosa Pekar, was born in the early 1910s. She was born blind. She was short and pretty. She had wide-open blue eyes, and one couldn't tell that she was blind. She finished Russian secondary school in Korostyshev and graduated from the Pedagogical Institute in Kiev. She studied at the Postgraduate Philosophy Faculty. She read special books for blind people. Rosa lived in the hostel of Kiev University. She had a room of her own, which was unusual for the time. She kept her room very tidy. When she studied at the university, they provided a woman to read for her. After finishing her postgraduate course she became a lecturer of philosophy at the university. She had admirers, regardless of her blindness. Rosa perished in Babi Yar 2 in 1941. Our distant non-Jewish acquaintance took Rosa there by her hand. She bought her a loaf of bread and butter for the road and accompanied her without knowing that Rosa was destined to die there. She told us later how she died.

My father, Moisey Pekar, was born in Korostyshev in 1900. He finished cheder and a Jewish secondary school. He studied Hebrew and Yiddish. After the Revolution of 1917 the Soviet power expropriated my grandfather's store, and my father had to work to provide for his brother and sister. He finished an accounting school and left for Teterev, a small town near Kiev, located in a beautiful pine-wood. He got an accounting job at the logging facility owned by my mother's father. He met my mother while working in Teterev. My father was a very decent and honest man. He read many books in Russian and Yiddish. My grandfather on my mother's side, Khaim-Duvid Polischuk, was born in Radomyshl in 1879. Radomyshl was a small town in Kiev province [60 km from Kiev]. At the end of the 19th century there were about 7,000 Jews in town. There were several synagogues, Jewish shops and hospitals, Jewish schools for boys and girls and a yeshivah. Most of the Jewish families were wealthy. Jews were craftsmen and merchants. There were also Ukrainian inhabitants. The Jews and the Ukrainians got along well.

My grandfather finished cheder and a Jewish school in Radomyshl. He was a timber dealer. He was a very religious man. He prayed, observed all Jewish traditions and celebrated holidays.

Before the Revolution of 1917 my grandfather and his family moved to Teterev where he built a house. He started his own logging and timber business there. He believed that the woods near Teterev were better than in Radomyshl and that his trade would be more successful.

There was no Jewish community in Teterev and there was no synagogue. There were very few Jewish families in town, and my grandfather gathered a minyan, ten Jewish men, at his home. There were a few Jewish men from the surrounding villages besides those from Teterev. My grandfather had his tallit and tefillin on and said his prayer swaying to and fro. Other Jewish men followed him. On weekdays my grandfather wore his customary clothes. He didn't wear a hat. He only put a cap on to say a prayer.

Ukrainians liked my grandfather. They asked his advice in family disputes and educational issues like where to get a teacher for a child. Those who were illiterate often asked my grandfather to read letters for them and my grandfather always supported them. He was a very kind and wise man. In 1918- 1919, during the many pogroms 3 in the Jewish neighborhoods of Ukrainian towns, Ukrainian men guarded my grandfather's home and rescued him from bandits more than once.

My grandmother on my mother's side, Tatiana Pekar, nee Taibn, was born to a wealthy Jewish family in Stavishche, Kiev province, in 1880. The Jewish community numbered almost 4,000 Jews. There were several- synagogues and Jewish schools in town. Jews were mainly craftsmen and merchants.

My grandmother had teachers who taught her at home. She studied arithmetic, Yiddish and Hebrew. She could read and write in Yiddish and had a good conduct of Russian and Ukrainian. She was religious. She celebrated Jewish holidays, lit candles on Saturdays and celebrated Sabbath. She didn't wear a shawl or a wig. My grandmother and grandfather were very much in love with one another. He tenderly called his wife Feygl ['my little bird' in Yiddish]. He often asked conductors of passing trains to bring her olives or sweets from Kiev. On their way back they gave these things to my grandfather, and he generously tipped them. Any caprice of my grandmother was a must for my grandfather.

After the Revolution of 1917 my grandfather became the supervisor of a timber agency. He wasn't very enthusiastic about the revolutionary ideas of fraternity and equality of all people. He didn't become an atheist, either. My grandmother, on the other hand, was inspired by Lenin's idea of universal wealth that was about to come. She read Lenin's books in Russian.

My grandparents had seven daughters and a son. My mother's sister, Frania Polischuk, was born in Radomyshl in the middle of the 1890s. She finished a Russian grammar school in Kiev. She didn't work. She was very sickly and died in Kiev in the 1930s. She was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Kiev.

The next sister, Ida Grinberg [nee Polischuk], was born in Radomyshl in the late 1890s. She finished a Russian grammar school and a pedagogical school in Kiev. She was a teacher of natural sciences. She married Grigoriy Grinberg, a Jewish man, and they had three children: Sarah, Yasha and Milia. She divorced her husband and married a non-Jewish man, a former officer of the tsarist army. My grandfather disavowed Ida when he heard that she had married a non-Jew. Ida's marriage didn't last - her husband died. I remember Ida coming home after her non-Jewish husband passed away, approaching her father's bed, kneeling down and asking his forgiveness. My grandfather forgave her. Ida lived in Makarov, near Kiev, where she worked as a teacher at a secondary school in the last years of her life. She died in Makarov in the late 1930s.

My mother's other sisters, Rachel and Eidia Polischuk, were twins. They were born in Radomyshl in the middle of the 1900s. They finished a Russian grammar school and graduated from the Medical Institute in Kiev. During the war they were in evacuation in Kuibyshev where they got married. They stayed in Kuibyshev after the war and worked as doctors. They died in Kuibyshev in the middle of the 1970s. They were buried in the cemetery in Kuibyshev.

The next sister, Genia Verba [nee Polischuk], was born in Radomyshl in the early 1900s. She finished a Russian grammar school in Kiev. She got fond of revolutionary ideas and became the secretary of the district committee of the Communist Party in the small town of Monastyrishche [80 km from Kiev]. There were a few Jewish families in Monastyrishche, but there was no synagogue in town. Genia married Falik Verba, a devoted communist and party activist. They moved to Tbilisi [Georgia] in the middle of the 1930s. Genia died in the middle of the 1950s. She didn't have any children. I don't know where she was buried.

The youngest sister, Khinia Godik [nee Polischuk], was born in Radomyshl in the early 1900s. She finished a Russian grammar school in Kiev and graduated from the Medical Institute in Kharkov. She became a pharmacist. She married Boris Godik, a Jewish man. He perished during the Great Patriotic War 4. During the war Khinia was in evacuation in Ufa [2,500 km from Kiev], where she stayed after the war. She died there in the 1970s. She was buried in the town cemetery.

My mother's brother, Dmitriy Polischuk, went to cheder and then finished a Russian grammar school in Kiev. He graduated from the Medical Institute in Kiev. During the Great Patriotic War he was a doctor in hospitals. At the end of the war he held the rank of a colonel of medical services, and as of 1946 he was the director of the hospital in Novograd-Volynskiy. In the 1960s he got a job assignment in Ufa where he died in the 1970s. I don't know where he was buried. His son, Tsalia Polischuk, a student of the Kiev Medical University, perished near Leningrad during the Great Patriotic War.

My mother's sisters and brother and their families tried to observe Jewish traditions. They weren't deeply religious and didn't go to the synagogue, but they never forgot that they were Jewish. They had matzah on Pesach, didn't eat pork and didn't mix meat and dairy products, although they didn't follow the kashrut laws [strictly].

My mother, Esphir Pekar [nee Polischuk], was born in Radomyshl in 1900. She came from a wealthy family and she got an opportunity to finish Russian grammar school in Kiev. She told me that she was a pretty girl. When she was 10-12 years old, she collected money for a charity for children's homes with the son of the director of the grammar school. They had a poster with an appeal to contribute money for children's homes and collected contributions on trains. This boy was my mother's first love.

My mother didn't continue her education. In 1920 she met one of her father's employees. They liked each other, but they came from different social layers. He was a clerk, and she was the daughter of a business owner. That stood in the way of their marriage. They were meeting secretly. When my grandfather understood that my father had serious intentions he gave his consent to their marriage.

My parents got married in Teterev in 1920. They had a rich traditional Jewish wedding with a chuppah and klezmer musicians. After the wedding the young couple moved to Kiev where my mother's older sisters lived and worked. They rented an apartment in the center of the city. My father got a job as an accountant in an office, and my mother became a housewife.

Growing up

I was born in Kiev in 1921, and my sister, Maria, was born in 1923. My parents lived in Kiev for five years. They didn't quite like living in a big city. My mother's father also wanted them to move to Teterev. We moved there in 1925. My father got a job as a forester. My grandfather built a spacious house for us with eight rooms and nice furniture. There was a children's room, a living room and a study for my father in the house. We had big rubber plants in the living room. Our house and my grandfather's house were close to each other. My first impression of Teterev were geese. There were so many of them walking across the town and hissing at people.

My grandfather was a deeply religious man, and he cared about traditions a lot. He didn't want Jews to forget their identity and follow the slogans of the Bolsheviks about the elimination of religion. Jewish men used to come to my grandfather's house for Sabbath prayer. If there were less than ten men, my grandfather asked my father to attend their prayer, although my father was a convinced atheist. My father used to sit there reading his newspaper while the others were saying their prayer.

Once I got into the room during a prayer and tied together the tassels of the tallitim. The men didn't notice anything. Only when the prayer was over and it was time for them to go home did they find out that they were tied together. My grandfather was terribly angry with me - for the first and last time in my life.

I have no memories about Sabbath. I think we didn't have a festive dinner on Sabbath. Praying was the most important for my grandfather.

I remember how we prepared to celebrate Pesach. At first we did a general clean up of the house making sure that there were no breadcrumbs left in the house. Then flour was delivered to the house, and we began to make matzah. Jews from all the neighboring settlements came to make matzah at my grandfather's house. My grandmother and other women made the dough for the matzah. To eliminate any doubt about the kashrut of the matzah a baker came from Kiev. He rolled out the dough and put it into the oven. We didn't eat bread for a whole week during Pesach.

Before Pesach we took special fancy dishes and kitchen utensils from the attic and put our casual utensils in the attic. If there weren't enough utensils everyday ones were taken to a pit with boiling water in the yard. There was a hot stone in the pit to keep the water hot. Forks and spoons were tied together with a rope before they were put into the pit. Forks and spoons and other utensils were put into the pit to be kosher for the use on Pesach. My mother's sisters, her brother and their families came to the first seder from Kiev. During the seder we were leaning against pillows according to the tradition like free people, not slaves. [Editor's note: all these ritual are written down in the Haggadah.] My grandfather, who sat at the head of the table wearing a tuxedo, conducted the seder and said prayers.

My duty was to ask the four questions about the traditions of this holiday during seder. I knew them by heart, and when the time came I recited them in Yiddish. There was a saucer with some matzah covered with a white napkin on the table. I was supposed to hide it. The one who found it had to give me ransom. I liked all these processes. I hid the saucer with matzah somewhere safe and enjoyed watching the others searching for it. Someone found it and I received a little money [Editor's note: this tradition generally goes inversely: an adult hides the matzah, called afikoman, and if a child finds it he gets some present.] After the official seder ceremony, when people at the table recalled the history of the exodus of the Jews from Egypt, and ate a bit of meat, bitter greeneries, and a piece of boiled egg, the feast began. There was Gefilte fish, sweet and sour stew and dishes made of matzah flour on the table. I was so small that that's all I remember about it.

I also have some memories of the celebration of Chanukkah in our house. I remember my grandmother and mother lighting the Chanukkah candles, saying short Chanukkah prayers and singing special songs. It was also good to receive some money on Chanukkah. I could buy something for this money. Once I bought sweaters for my sister and me. My grandmother always made pancakes with geese fat on Chanukkah.

On Yom Kippur the whole family fasted and remembered the deceased relatives. My grandmother and grandfather went to the cemetery to recite the Kaddish.

During the week we had bean soup with meat, baked potatoes and boiled beans, marinated beetroots and red borsch and sauerkraut. We mostly had chicken that we took to a shochet, who lived nearby, to have it slaughtered. We also ate rabbits. [Editor's note: rabbits are not kosher meat, but this food was customary for the family.] Chicken meat had to be soaked in water for two hours and kept in salt for another two hours to get rid of all the blood. After this the meat became kosher and could be cooked.

In winter we sometimes had a slice of pork fat - it was considered to be very good for us. Pork fat was kept separate from all the other food to follow the kashrut rules. There was also a special plate for slices of fat. Pork fat was supposed to give you much energy and helped us to keep ourselves warm in cold weather. A small slice of pork was quite sufficient to stay healthier.

There was no kindergarten in Teterev. My mother taught me to read and write before I went to school. We also learned poems by heart. My mother knew many poems by Russian and Ukrainian poets. My mother was also fond of singing and often sang a sad song about Beilis 5 in Russian. I can still remember the lyrics. In 1928 my younger sister, Asia, was born, and I became her baby sitter.

I was my grandparents' favorite. They spoiled me a lot. I always got the best presents like an expensive sweater, pants or a toy, on holidays and the most money on Chanukkah. I had many toys and many dolls. I never had to clean the house. My grandfather told me to ask my younger sister Manya to do it. I was cuddled and didn't have set chores about the house. Manya dusted rugs in the hallway. However, I was a good girl and tried to do many things myself. My grandfather tenderly called me 'goat', probably because I was rather restless. I loved to jump up and kiss him on the bald patch of his beard.

I went to primary school in Teterev in 1928. There were two classrooms in our school, one for the 1st and 3rd forms and another one for the 2nd and 4th forms. We had two teachers: Alexei Romanovich and Ludmila Mikhailovna. They were married. I didn't like them, because they punished me. Once I got hungry during the class and decided to eat an apple. They made me eat my apple in front of the class to punish me for the violation of discipline. I could never forget that. There were actually no Jews in Teterev. I was the only Jewish pupil in my class. But I didn't face any anti-Semitism.

The 1930s were very difficult. [The interviewee refers to the Ukrainian famine.] 6 We had to stand in lines near the only small store in Teterev for hours and hours hoping to get some bread. Sometimes we managed to buy grain wastes to make bread ourselves. Our main food was potato peels. In spring 1932 my mother got a job as a guard of carrot fields in the neighboring collective farm. She used to bring a few carrots home. Carrots supported us a little bit.

I was rather spoiled and refused junk food. I got swollen up from hunger. In summer 1933 my mother's sister, Genia, came to visit us. She didn't have any children. When she saw my condition she took me with her. I went to the primary school in Monastyrishche. I believe, I was the only Jew in my class, but I got along well with the other children and didn't face any anti-Semitism. My aunt bought me homemade riazhanka [yogurt] at the market every day. It was a luxury for the time, but my aunt had a good income and could afford it. Once thieves broke into our house. They stole two herrings that my aunt received in her party food package. My most horrific memory from that time was a jellied meat dish made from the flesh of a child. My aunt took me to a party meeting where some people brought this dish to. It turned out that a woman from a village had slaughtered her stepson and cooked the meat. I remember how horrified I was. Of course things like this were criminal, but people went crazy from starvation. She did it when she was not quite herself, and she was taken to a mental hospital after.

There was a road leading to the cemetery in Monastyrishche not far from our house. Every day villagers took their deceased relatives, who had starved to death, to the cemetery. I used to go for walks in Monastyrishche by myself. Once I was followed by a man with a knife. I hardly managed to hide behind my aunt's gate. I ran fast and that rescued me from that man. Very often people were losing their mind from hunger. After this incident my aunt took me back to Teterev as it became dangerous to stay in Monastyrishche.

In 1933 the Bolsheviks took away the house built by my grandfather. We moved to Zhytomir where my father's sister Sarah lived. After we moved we didn't celebrate any Jewish traditions. We studied in Jewish schools, and our mother was more concerned about providing for us than traditions. The only difference between Jewish and other schools at that time was the language of teaching. We studied the same subjects and this school was similar to any other Ukrainian or Russian school. Our father fell ill with encephalitis. He was paralyzed and our mother had to take care of the family. I became responsible for all the housekeeping. My sister Manya looked after our house. My mother worked as a cashier at a barber's in Zhytomir, and later she went to work at a lemonade factory. She washed bottles there. She got a very low salary for it. To help my mother provide for the family, I also went to work at the factory part time, filling bottles with lemonade.

My mother's sisters came to visit us in 1935. They decided that it would be better for the children to be in a children's home. But when they told my mother about their idea her face got distorted at the thought. My mother fell ill and had to go to hospital. She recovered from her shock, but her face remained distorted. The children stayed with the family.

I enjoyed studying at school. I was an easy-going and sociable girl. I became a pioneer and then a Komsomol 7 member. All children joined the Komsomol league, and I just followed the common procedure. I didn't take part in any public activities. I liked dancing and acting. I had many non- Jewish friends. We spent a lot of time together. Once they took me to the night service at a Christian church. It was a beautiful service, but I got tired of standing for such long hours. I didn't feel remorse for going to a church. It didn't even occur to me that I was doing something wrong. I was a pretty girl and played main parts in our school performances. I enjoyed acting very much.

The period of the Stalinist repression [the Great Terror] 8 didn't affect our family. We didn't discuss this subject in the family. My mother and father were very ill and there was nobody else to discuss it with. I only remember how my grandmother's lips trembled when she pronounced the name of Stalin. She hated him, but she never explained the reasons to us, and we were too young to ask.

In 1937 my father died in a hospital in Kiev where he was brought to by my mother's sisters. My father was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Kiev. It was a huge loss to me, although we knew that he was severely ill and death was only a matter of time. After my father died a Jewish man began to court my mother. I don't remember his name. If it hadn't been for me my mother would have married him. I couldn't imagine another man to take my father's place. I cried a few nights in a row, and my mother didn't dare to start living with him.

I often went to dancing parties. My mother was concerned about me and always chaperoned me there. Young men that wanted to invite me to dance had to ask her permission. It was okay with me. I felt protected, and when I didn't like a young man, I could always refer to my mother's presence. I had admirers. I remember a Korean man, Venia Kim, kissing me for the first time. A studio was shooting a film in Teterev. There were a few Korean actors there. One of them asked me whether he could escort me home. He kissed me good-bye and I felt so ashamed. At home I took different cups of tableware. I covered my eyes with them until I forgot about the incident. Venia Kim wrote me letters for a long time.

I finished school in 1937 and entered the Faculty of Philosophy at the Kiev Pedagogical Institute. I actually wanted to become an actress, but my father said once that one had to be exceptionally talented to become an actor. He didn't believe I was particularly gifted, and I couldn't do anything against his will. He had great influence on me.

I lived in a hostel in Kiev. There were four of us in a room. We got along very well. We didn't have enough food and scrubbed our pockets for a few kopecks to buy half a loaf of bread. When we got a stipend we bought khalva [oriental sweet mass]. We couldn't afford to buy tea. Sometimes in summer we bought a watermelon. We locked our room so nobody would come in and eat the watermelon. I fainted from hunger in class several times. I gave Russian lessons to earn some money. I received 80 rubles, which was hardly enough to buy bread.

I was the Komsomol leader of my group at the Institute and later I became a member of the Komsomol bureau of the Institute. One summer I was awarded a trip to Alushta [resort at the South coast of the Crimea]. I traveled by train for the first time in my life. I have the brightest memory of the beach divided into two parts: one for men and another one for women. It had nothing to do with religious rules. There were people of different nationalities. It was because holiday makers were nude on the beach and that's why there were separate beaches for men and women. My acquaintances tried to convince me to drop any prejudices and take off my clothes, but I couldn't - this was the way I was brought up. We could lie in the sun and bathe nude, but I didn't dare. I wore a black swimming suit.

I had many admirers at the Institute. I didn't have a problem of meeting young people, but I didn't quite know who I needed. I met my future husband at a party at the Institute. His name was Mark Aguf, and he was a Jew. He was a student at the Faculty of Architecture at the Kiev Art Institute. He fell in love with me.

During the war

In June 1941 I went to work as a pioneer leader at a pioneer camp in Vorzel, a small town near Kiev. I was there when the Great Patriotic War began on 22nd June 1941. I went back to Kiev. My husband-to-be insisted that I evacuated with him and his parents. I went with them without saying good-bye to my family and friends. I didn't have any luggage with me either. The train we took belonged to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. My husband's father was a party official and got train tickets for the whole family. He joined the Territorial Army to defend Kiev. It was a comfortable train. It didn't stop or wasn't kept longer than necessary at stations, and we reached Kustanay in Northern Kazakhstan [2,500 km from Kiev] very soon. Kustanay was a small town populated with Kazakh people. There were no Jewish families in the town. Mark and I got married there. We had a civil ceremony and obtained our marriage certificate at a registry office.

My husband was born to a Jewish family in Kharkov in 1919. His father, Michael Aguf, was born in Lugansk, Eastern Ukraine, in 1888. His mother died when Michael was 3 years old. His father married another woman. He didn't get along with her. When my husband's father was young he got inspired by revolutionary ideas and joined the Communist Party. Before the Revolution of 1917, when he was 18, he was arrested on charge of undermining the tsarist regime and revolutionary activities. He was in jail for four years and then he was sent to exile in Siberia 9. After the revolution the Bolsheviks released him and he made a party career. In 1918 he began to work at the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party located in Kharkov at that time. He married Elena Eskina, a Jewish woman, and their twin sons, Mark and Boris, were born in Kharkov in 1919.

My husband's mother was born in the small Jewish town of Stavishche, near Kiev, in the 1870s. There were about 1,500 Jewish families in this town. There were several synagogues and a Jewish school. Elena finished a Russian grammar school in Kiev and a high school for girls. She was a very intelligent woman. She didn't observe any Jewish traditions and didn't speak Yiddish.

In the middle of the 1920s Michael Aguf got a high official party position in Kiev. He was a very educated and intelligent man and soon became the secretary of the Union of Ukrainian Writers. His wife was an editor with a magazine. When they moved to Kiev they got a luxurious apartment in the building that belonged to the Union of Ukrainian Writers. There were polished parquet floors, expensive furniture and carpets in the apartment. They had a huge collection of books by Soviet and foreign writers. They didn't have any Jewish books and didn't observe any Jewish traditions. They spoke Russian.

My husband's twin brother, Boris Aguf, finished a Russian secondary school in Kiev. He studied at the Pedagogical Institute, went in for sports and wrote poems. He took part in the Finnish campaign in 1939 10. In 1941 he went to the front and perished. Any mentioning of his name caused pain to his relatives.

My husband finished a Russian secondary school in Kiev and entered the Faculty of Architecture at the Kiev Art Institute. By the time I met him he was a 4th year student.

The day after we got married he went to the military registry office to ask them to cancel his release from the service in the army that he had as a 5th year student of a higher educational institution. Within a week's time he went to the front. I was pregnant. I was very upset because I thought that it was untimely to have a baby. I carried heavy loads to terminate my pregnancy, but it didn't work. I gave birth to a strong healthy girl in Kustanay in 1942. I named her Victoria.

Our first winter in Kustanay was very cold and hard. We got a room in a wooden house where I lived with my husband's parents. Our landlords were Kazakh. They treated us very nicely and liked to play with my daughter. I didn't face any anti-Semitism during evacuation. In spring 1942 we received a cow from a local collective farm. We had to give milk to the collective farm, but we were allowed to keep some of it for our family. We also got a plot of land. There were stones on our land, but we cleaned it up and planted potatoes. Besides, we got a smaller plot of land 5 kilometers from our house where we were allowed to plant watermelons and pumpkins.

I got a job at the local newspaper, Stalin's Way. This newspaper was published six days a week and was very popular. It was published on a demy printing paper because there was no other paper in Kustanay. The newspaper published propaganda articles about the accomplishments of the Soviet people, and local news. I was a proof-reader and edited articles before they were published. I enjoyed this work. I worked with the newspaper until it was time for us to go back to Kiev in 1944. My mother-in-law looked after my daughter. We worked at night to have the newspaper published in the morning. During the day I could work on our field. On winter nights I was scared to walk in the darkness across the deserted town. I wore boots that some of our neighbors had given to me: one boot with a sharp tip and another one with a rounded one.

At the end of 1942 my father-in-law arrived. He had to leave Kiev on foot before the Germans entered the city. He walked 5 kilometers and then caught a train. He found a job in Kustanay. He became deputy manager for logistics supplies. This agency was responsible for food and good supplies to the town. My husband was at the Leningrad and, later, at the Northwestern fronts. He had the rank of First Sergeant. He was a courier at the headquarters. Once he had to deliver a report. When he left the tent of the headquarters a shell hit and destroyed it, killing everybody inside. My husband survived. He sent us letters with his poems and small paintings.

At the beginning of 1944 my father-in-law obtained a special permit required to return to Kiev. [Until the middle of 1944 Kiev was still closed for those who wanted to return from evacuation.] Postwar Kiev made a hard impression on me. I cried bitterly when I came to Kreschatik, its main thoroughfare, and saw it ruined.

A writer lived in the apartment that had belonged to my husband's parents before the war, and it seemed impossible to get him move out. We received a small room near the center of the town. There was a big stove and almost no furniture. Our neighbors gave us some old folding beds and chairs. The water piping was ruined and we had to fetch water from a well in another yard. We had no electricity and lit a kerosene lamp when it got dark. We made soup with semolina - that was our only food. We received bread by cards but had to stand in lines for many hours.

Another thing I remember from this time is the public execution of German captives in the main square of the city. Gallows were erected in the square. The condemned Germans were taken to the square on trucks. The soldiers that carried out the execution put a rope around the necks of the captives and the truck moved on. I had nightmares about this incident for a long time afterwards.

When we returned to Kiev I began to look for a job. I couldn't find any. I was openly told that I didn't have a chance to get a job with my Jewish name, Tsylia. Then, quite incidentally, I got a position as a human resource inspector in an office. This office hired workers to restore Kreschatik. I liked the job. We also received food packages. My colleagues treated me very nicely. Once they even came to help me chop wood. In the summer they once left a huge watermelon in my office for me. They also talked with our management, and I began to receive more food in my food packages: more bread, cereal and flour. Once a group of 10-12 German prisoners of war were sent to our office. I had to make a list of their names. I remembered German from school and went to the yard to write down their names. There were only Germans in the yard. They encircled me so tightly that I could feel their breathing. I got so scared that I almost fainted. Fortunately, one of our employees was coming across the yard. He took me by my hand and led me out of the circle. The Germans did all kinds of construction activities in our office, but I was never again sent to contact them.

My husband returned from the front in 1945. He was shell-shocked, and I took him to all kinds of doctors until he finally got better.

My mother, her sisters, my two sisters and my mother's parents were in evacuation in Kuibyshev during the Great Patriotic War. I have no information about their life there because I had left without even saying goodbye to them. Throughout the war we didn't hear from them and didn't know whether they were alive. Only after I returned to Kiev in 1945, did we receive a letter from my mother. It arrived at the hostel where I had lived before the war. My acquaintances, whom I met by chance, gave it to me. The letter said that they were alive, that everything was all right with them but that they weren't going to return to Kiev. My mother, my sisters and my grandparents stayed in Kuibyshev after the war.

Post-war

I went to complete my studies at the Pedagogical Institute in Kiev in 1945, and my husband was in his 5th year at the Kiev Art Institute. I graduated from the Institute in 1947 and got a job in the Russian secondary school in the center of the city. I liked my job. I got along well with my colleagues, and the children's parents were satisfied with my work. My husband graduated from the Art Institute and became an architect with Kievproject, one of the leading design institutes in Kiev.

In 1948 the state of Israel was established. All of a sudden I had the feeling of getting a home and being protected. Those were the scary years of the campaign against cosmopolitans 11 or, to be more precise, of the height of state anti-Semitism. My husband's father began to have problems at his work with the Union of Ukrainian writers. He was accused of lack of love for his motherland and patriotism, although nobody could tell what this 'patriotism' was to be like. Such accusations were only made about Jews. We watched him very closely fearing that he might commit suicide. His ideals and belief in the fair communist society were scattered. At the beginning of 1953 Stalin died, and the process against my father-in-law stopped. On the occasion of Stalin's death I took my pupils to the meeting ground beside the school building. I was crying so heavily that I had to leave the meeting. I felt like something irremediable had happened.

My grandmother died of pneumonia in Kuibyshev in the late 1950s, and my grandfather passed away in 1960. They were buried in the town cemetery - there was no Jewish cemetery in Kuibyshev. I didn't go to the funeral. My mother and sisters notified me in a letter. I don't know if my grandparents observed traditions after the war. My mother and sisters didn't write anything about it in their letters.

Our son, Boris, was born in 1956. We didn't raise our children Jewish. Firstly because we weren't religious and secondly because religion was persecuted by the Soviet authorities. Our children studied in Russian schools. However, they always identified themselves as Jews. They knew about the tragedy of Babi Yar. We learnt about it right after we returned to Kiev from evacuation.

We lived in one room in a communal apartment with my in-laws for 14 years. We had guests on Soviet holidays and at birthday parties. They were Jewish guests for the most part. We discussed the situation in Israel and the status of Jews in the Soviet Union. We never celebrated Jewish holidays.

Our family received a two-bedroom apartment in Kreschatik in 1966. The same year my husband's father died, and his mother passed away in 1976. They were buried in the Jewish cemetery in Kiev. I was grieving over them. They were like mother and father to me. They cared for me a lot.

Our daughter, Victoria, finished a secondary school in 1968 and tried to enter the Kiev Polytechnical Institute. She passed her entrance exams but wasn't admitted. We realized that her Jewish nationality was the reason for their refusal to admit her. Victoria got a job at the Arsenal plant [a big military plant in Kiev that specialized in the production of optical devices]. After working at the plant for several years, she entered the Moscow Aviation Institute, where she studied by correspondence. She graduated as an optical tools specialist. She began to work at the design office of the same plant.

In the 1970s, when large numbers of Jews were leaving the country, my husband and I firmly decided to stay. We both enjoyed work. My husband wrote books on architecture and defended his thesis. Our daughter wanted to move, though. It was her dream to travel to Cyprus and Greece, and moving to Israel seemed to bring her a step closer to have her dream come true. Well, she got married in 1974 and a year later her son Michael was born, so she dropped the idea of moving to Israel. Victoria married a Jew named Zaretskiy, but she divorced him in 1976. I retired in 1975 to help my daughter look after her son. My grandson, Michael, graduated from the Kiev Medical Institute and works as a medical expert at the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Our son, Boris, followed into his father's footsteps. After finishing school in 1974 he entered the Faculty of Architecture at the Kiev Art Institute and graduated from it with success. He married a very nice, though non-Jewish, girl. They have a daughter, Elena. She is a 4th year student at the Kiev Art Academy. They don't observe any Jewish traditions.

My mother died in Kuibyshev in 1971. She was a receptionist at the local polyclinic. I went to her funeral.

My sister, Manya, finished a secondary school in Kuibyshev and graduated from the Medical Institute in Novosibirsk. She got married and had a daughter, Tatiana. She was a doctor at a hospital in Novosibirsk. Manya's husband died in a train accident in the 1970s. Manya and her daughter moved to Israel in the 1990s. We correspond with them.

My younger sister, Asia, got married when she was 16. She had a daughter, Ludmila. Asia finished the Medical School in Kuibyshev and worked as a medical nurse at the local hospital. She is retired and lives in Kuibyshev now. She is divorced. Her husband left Asia for another woman.

My husband died in 1986. He was an outstanding architect and wrote many books on architecture. He died when he was working on his doctor's thesis. I married my old acquaintance, Leon Rubashevskiy, in 1992. His wife had died and he felt very lonely. We decided to live together. My second husband died in 2001. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Kiev.

In the early 1990s the USSR disintegrated. The Communist Party was dissolved. Neither my husband nor I were members of the Communist Party. We despised party activists because we believed that no talented person could get involved with party activities. I was very enthusiastic about the changes. It brought freedom of speech. One could speak his mind without fearing to be arrested for telling an anecdote that might be out of place. Even though the standards of living sank in the 1990s and prices went up, I wouldn't like the Soviet power to return.

However, I felt sorry about the disintegration of the Soviet Union. It's annoying that we are considered to be citizens of different countries when going to Russia to visit friends. Take the crossing of the border, for instance, where customs officers check your luggage looking for pieces of sausage or pork fat because there is a ban on taking food products out of Ukraine. That's something we are not used to, and I find it humiliating. I don't travel, but my children and friends face this problem.

I was very enthusiastic about the restoration of Jewish life in the 1990s. I take part in many activities. I worked as volunteer with Hesed for a long time. I'm one of the most active members of the intellectual club in Hesed and attend the Sholem Aleichem 12 Association in Kiev. Besides, I like to attend concerts and performances. I read Jewish newspapers published in Ukraine. I'm not leaving my country for Israel or any other place. My children and grandchildren want to stay here, and I cannot and do not want to live in another country.

Glossary

Lazar Gurfinkel
Chernovtsy
Ukraine
Interviewer: Ella Levitskaya
Date of interview: November 2002

Lazar Gurfinkel is a short man with thick gray hair. His wife and son moved to the USA in 1997, and he lives alone in a three-bedroom apartment in the center of Chernovtsy now. A nurse from Hesed comes to his home to help him with house chores. She cleans his rooms, does the shopping and cooks for him. Lazar feels lonely, though. He was glad to give us an interview. He told us about several generations of his family, sometimes in amazing detail. He has good manners and a soft voice. Lazar has a clear memory and a sound mind. He is very glad that people show an interest in Jewish life before the Holocaust and in the history of Jewish families. To him it means that people go back to their roots, something that had been suppressed in the USSR before.

My family background
Growing up
Our religious life
My school years
During the war
Post-war
Married life
Glossary

My family background

My father's parents lived in Khotin, which belongs to Western Ukraine now and was formerly part of Moldavia [Bessarabia] 1 which again was part of Romania between 1918 and 1940. My grandfather, Leizer Gurfinkel, was born in Khotin in the 1840s. He died after a stroke in 1913. My grandmother, Beile-Enta Gurfinkel, was also born in Khotin. She was born in the same year as my grandfather. She fell seriously ill when she was a child. Jews in town believed that her parents gave her the second name of Enta to swindle death, which was to come for Beile. However strange it may sound, my grandmother did recover from the disease that all doctors had diagnosed as incurable.

Khotin was a small district town with Russian, Ukrainian, Moldavian, Romanian and Jewish inhabitants. Jews, about 13,000 people, constituted almost half of the population. There were about seven synagogues and two Jewish elementary schools in Khotin. There were no pogroms in Khotin. People respected each other's traditions and religions. There were no pogroms in Khotin. Jews were craftsmen and merchants. There were tailors, shoemakers, carpenters, fur and leather specialists. There were several richer Jews that owned big stores. There were also lawyers, doctors and pharmacists among the Jews.

There were also poor people, mostly widows with children, who had lost their breadwinner, or sick people, who couldn't go to work. The Jewish community in Khotin supported poor families. On Fridays poor women and children went begging in the main streets of the town, where the Jewish middle class resided. They got one or two lei in each house. Giving alms on Friday was a tradition. People were willing to help poor people buy a challah, fish and other food for Sabbath. Poor Jews usually went begging on the first half of the day and managed to visit 50-60 houses. But of course, they kept having problems. They needed money to buy clothes, wood for winter and other things. There were about 7 synagogues and two Jewish primary schools in Khotin.

Jews resided in the main streets of Khotin. It was better regarding their businesses to live in the central part of town, where they had more customers. They usually lived in one-storied wooden or stone houses with shops occupying the part of the house that faced the street. The rest of the house served as a living quarter for the family. Non-Jews resided in the outskirts of town, where land wasn't so expensive, and they had bigger plots of land with gardens and orchards. There were many gardens in town.

On Mondays there was a market in Khotin. Farmers from the surrounding villages sold their dairy products, eggs, fruit and vegetables, meat and chickens. There was a yard where they sold pigs, cows and horses. Jewish store owners used to display some of their goods in front of their stores on market days. They had more customers on these days because the farmers usually sold their products before the afternoon and went to buy essential goods in the shops: matches, kerosene, salt and so on,. etc. They also bought warm winter boots and clothes. Jews were selling shirts, boots, threads and buttons at the market.

There was a shochet at the market who slaughtered chickens and ducks that Jews bought for a holiday or Sabbath. To buy kosher meat Jews went to the meat factory where cattle was slaughtered in accordance with the rules of kashrut. Jewish butchers bought cattle at the market and cut the meat. Jewish butcher stores had to meet the requirements concerning kashrut. Butchers had no right to sell pork because in that case all other meat on sale in the store became non-kosher. Therefore, they only had Jewish customers because farmers usually bought pork at the market.

My grandfather was a religious man. He didn't work. He spent his time praying and reading religious books. He went to the synagogue every day and observed all Jewish traditions. My grandfather was a very kind, nice and reserved man. He loved his wife and was very attached to her. They spoke Yiddish at home, but they also knew Russian and Moldavian. My grandmother was moderately religious. Friday evening the family celebrated the coming of Sabbath, and my grandmother said a prayer over the candles. They followed the kashrut. My grandmother wore the trousers in the family. The breadwinner who provides for the family is also the head of the family. She was very smart in business. She went to purchase golden jewelry in Turkey to sell it in town. She stored it at home and sold it to her neighbors and other clients.

They lived in a big one-storied stone house in the old central part of Khotin. My father showed me the house, but I didn't go inside because another family lived there. They were a well-to-do family. There was only a small backyard with a shed and a toilet: a wooden booth with a cesspool. Land in the central part of town was very expensive, and people didn't have orchards or flower beds. My grandmother planted flowers on the boundaries of the house.

My grandparents had four sons and four daughters. My father was the youngest in the family. The oldest was Aron, then came Isaac and Samuel. After Samuel three daughters were born: Lisa, Fania and Shesia. There was another daughter after Shesia whom I didn't know and then came my father. My father Michael - his Jewish name was Michel - was born in 1878.

My grandfather was a religious man. He went to the synagogue every day and observed all Jewish traditions. My grandmother was moderately religious. On Friday the family celebrated Shabbat and my grandmother said a prayer over the candles. They followed the kashrut. My grandmother wore the trousers in the family. Breadwinner that provides for the family is the head of the family. She was very smart in business. She went to purchase golden jewelry in Turkey to sell them in the town. She stored it at home and sold to her neighbors and other clients. My grandfather was a very kind, nice and reserved man. His wife provided for him and his main pastime was praying and reading religious books. My grandfather loved his wife and was very attached to her. They spoke Yiddish at home, but they knew Russian and Moldavian. They lived in a big one-storied stone house in the old central part of Khotin. They were a well-to-do family. There was only a small backyard with a shed and a toilet: a wooden booth with a cesspit. Land in the central part of the town was very expensive and people didn't have orchards or flower beds. My grandmother planted flowers on the perimeter of the house.

My father and his brothers studied in cheder. Their sisters studied at home with teachers from cheder. They studied Yiddish, Hebrew, the Torah and Talmud, mathematics, literature and French. After the boys finished cheder they continued their education at the Romanian lower secondary school.

Isaac was a doctor. He graduated from the Medical Faculty of Novorossiysk University in Odessa. He took a course of advanced training in surgery in Berlin. After finishing it he became the chief surgeon at the regional hospital in Kishinev. When Bessarabia joined Romania in 1918, Isaac stayed in Kishinev but lost his position as chief surgeon. Jews weren't allowed to hold high official posts. He became a private doctor. Isaac had three daughters from his first wife. After his wife died in the 1920s, he married a colleague of his, and they had a daughter. Isaac was religious and observed Jewish traditions. He died of pneumonia in 1932. My father patronized his daughters and helped the widow.

Aron and Samuel became pharmacists Two other brothers became pharmacists and lived in Russia. In 1918 the area where they lived joined the USSR, and their family lost track of them. The Soviet authorities were suspicious of families that had relatives abroad. Even questionnaires or application forms had an item line asking, 'Do you have relatives abroad?' A positive answer might have become an obstacle for getting employment, admission to a higher educational institution, etc. During the period of the Stalinist repression [the so-called Great Terror] 2 a person that admitted having relatives abroad might have been accused of espionage and arrested. I know that Samuel lived and worked in Yampol, a small city in Vinnitsa region. He perished in the ghetto there along with his family at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War 3. Aron owned a pharmacy in Oriol, a regional town near Moscow. It was nationalized after the Revolution of 1917 4. He moved to Moscow because he was afraid of other sanctions against him, and the family didn't hear from him after that.

My father's older sister, Lisa, got married before the Revolution of 1917 and moved to New York, USA, with her husband. The two other sisters, Fania and Shesia, moved to Odessa. They got married and had children. Fania graduated from the Odessa Medical Institute and became a doctor. Shesia didn't work. After the Revolution of 1917 we didn't have any information about them. After the war we got to know that my father's sisters evacuated to Pyatigorsk at the beginning of the war and perished in 1942 when the town was occupied by the Germans.

After finishing grammar school my father finished a course for pharmacist assistants in Kazan. He wanted to get higher education, but it was difficult for a Jew to enter university [because of the five percent restriction] 5. My father's older brother, Isaac, helped him to get into Moscow University. The Association of Noble Families of Kishinev issued a request to the rector's office of Moscow University to admit Michael Gurfinkel, pointing out that his brother had contributed a lot to the Russian Empire. This document was signed by the marshal of the nobility in the province and a gentleman of the monarch's chamber. My father went to Moscow with this paper and obtained a permit to take entrance exams.

He was admitted and studied at the Pharmaceutical Faculty for five years. He was very hard up and if it hadn't been for charity meals at a students' canteen sponsored by Morozov, a Russian merchant, he wouldn't have been able to complete his studies. My father couldn't find a job in Khotin after graduating. There were only two pharmacies in town and no vacancies. He found a job at a private pharmacy in Tambov, a Russian provincial town. Later he worked in Fastov, near Kiev, for several years. When the owner of one of the pharmacies in Khotin died, his widow inherited the pharmacy. She had no special education and was looking for a manager. My father's sisters wrote to my father and told him to come to Khotin. He arrived and became the manager of that pharmacy.

My mother's parents lived in Kamenets-Podolsk. Her father, Yankel Akkerman, was born in Kamenets-Podolsk in the 1840s. Her mother Pesia Akkerman [nee Lukacher], was a few years younger than my grandfather. My grandmother's parents also lived in Kamenets-Podolsk. My mother, Sarah Gurfinkel [nee Akkerman], was born in 1881. She was their only child. She was named Sarah after her father's mother but called Sopha at home. My grandmother died of typhoid in 1884 when my mother was 3. My grandfather didn't remarry.

My grandfather's sister, Feiga, lived in Khotin with her family. She raised my mother while my grandfather provided for her. Feiga was a widow and had two children of her own. She married her deceased husband's brother, and they had two more children. . Feiga owned a small fabric store. She bought fabrics at the fabric warehouse to sell them in her store. She provided well for the family. She was moderately religious. They celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays. They spoke Yiddish and Russian in the family. Feiga didn't have a housemaid. Her husband replaced her in the store when she needed to cook for the family. She was tall, thin and strong. She was an intelligent businesswoman. I met her several times and it was always interesting to talk to her. She died in the ghetto in 1942 at the age of 98.

My grandfather rented fields from a landlord and leased smaller plots to farmers. After the harvest he received his share of crops. During the harvest season he stayed in villages, and on the weekends he came to stay with Feiga. He led the same life after my mother got married. My grandfather died in 1925. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Kamenets- Podolsk, near the spot where my grandmother was buried.

There was no grammar school for girls in Khotin. My mother and Feiga's children studied at home with a teacher who came to teach them Hebrew, Yiddish and the Torah. Another teacher came to teach them the educational program of elementary school. At the age of 10 my mother went to grammar school in Kamenets-Podolsk, not far from Khotin. She lived in the hostel on weekdays and went to Khotin on weekends. My mother spoke fluent Russian and read a lot of Russian books. When she was younger she went on trips to Kiev and Odessa.

After finishing grammar school my mother returned to Khotin. She didn't continue her studies and didn't work. She was a young lady preparing to get married. My mother was a friend of my father's sister Fania. Fania introduced her to my father sometime in 1911. My mother was very beautiful. My father and mother liked one another and got married shortly afterwards in 1912. They had a civil ceremony in the town hall and a traditional Jewish wedding with a chuppah. They rented a big hall for ceremonies in Khotin and had the chuppah and the wedding party in that hall. After their wedding my parents spent their honeymoon in Italy.

When they returned they stayed with Feiga for some time, but then they moved in with my father's parents. The owner of the pharmacy where my father was working moved to live with her son and sold the pharmacy and her house to my father. The pharmacy and the house where in the same building, so my parents had their own dwelling. In the beginning my father managed in the pharmacy alone, but then his work-load increased. At that time prescribed medication had to be prepared within two hours, and my father hired a young assistant to help him.

Growing up

My older brother, Moisey, was born in 1913, and my sister Pesia, named after my mother's mother, followed in 1916. She was called Polia at home. I was born in 1924. I was named Leizer after my grandfather on my father's side who died in 1913. In Hebrew my name is Eliezer, which means 'God is help'.

In 1925 my grandfather Yankel, my mother's father, died. He was buried at the Jewish cemetery in Kamenets-Podolskiy, near where my grandmother was buried. In 1918 my parents moved into another house. My father bought a big house in one of the main streets - a better location for his business - and he moved his pharmacy into it, too.

Romanian was the state language in Bessarabia from 1918, but Jews mostly spoke Yiddish or Russian. We spoke Russian at home. Sometimes my parents spoke Yiddish when they didn't want us to understand what they were discussing. We had a Ukrainian nanny. She was kind to me, and I was attached to her. I learned Ukrainian from her and Russian from my parents. I actually spoke a mixture of these two languages. I learned Yiddish when I was about 5 years old from the children I was playing with. We lived in a Jewish neighborhood, and all our neighbors were Jewish. I couldn't read or write in Yiddish, but I spoke it fluently.

We lived in that house until World War II. There was a backyard, a shed and a well in the yard. The pharmacy occupied three rooms, the biggest of which served as the sales area. Powders were prepared in another room, and tinctures and decoctions were made in the third room. There were also storerooms for pharmaceutical utensils. Our family was lodging in four rooms: a living room, a dining room, my parents' bedroom and a children's room. There were also a kitchen, a verandah and a few storerooms in the house. When I was small I slept in my parents' bedroom. Later, me and Mmy brother and sister shared the children's room. There were two beds, a wardrobe, a sink, a table, two chairs and a bookcase in the room. We dined and received guests in the dining room. There was a table, six chairs, a cupboard and a sofa in the room. Our living room was beautifully furnished. There were four windows, carpets and curtains on the windows. There were pictures on the walls, ancient vases and a crystal chandelier.

My father's mother lived with her older son Isaac, but later she moved in with my father. She was old and weak and couldn't cook herself or walk outside. After Isaac's wife died he found it difficult to look after her, and he wrote to my father asking him whether he could take care of their mother. My grandmother arrived shortly afterwards. She had a housemaid whose task was to look after her. My grandmother died in 1938 when she was over 90 years old.

My nanny died when I was about 6 years old. We also had a housemaid and a cook. They were Ukrainian. The housemaid was responsible for cleaning the rooms. She had to clean seven rooms every day. In winter she had to stoke the stove and clean it. The cook did the shopping and cooking every day because there were no fridges to store food. There was a built-in boiler in the stove for heating water. My mother didn't work - she had housekeeping responsibilities.

Our religious life

My parents didn't follow the kashrut. We ate all kinds of products, including traditional Jewish food. When my brother was a student in Bucharest he had meals at a restaurant, and when he came home on vacation he always demanded pork chop, the food he was used to. The cook made pork chops for him, and we took advantage of the chance to have pork, too. We didn't observe Sabbath, but we celebrated the major Jewish holidays: Pesach, Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah, Chanukkah, Purim and Sukkot. My parents weren't deeply religious people, but they paid a tribute to religion.

Before my brother was to have his bar mitzvah my father hired a teacher to teach my brother Jewish traditions and religion. He taught him Hebrew, prayers and other things. My father hired a teacher for me when I was 10 years old. He taught me Hebrew but translated things into Yiddish for me to understand. I studied the Pentateuch Torah and the Talmud. When I turned 13 my father took me to the synagogue in a cabriolet. I had my bar mitzvah ritual. I said a prayer, and my father treated all community members with traditional vodka, wine and honey cookies. I got tefillin and came of age. My mother arranged a party for me at home. We invited many guests: our family, my parents' friends and my friends.

My father went to the synagogue on all big Jewish holidays and on the death anniversaries [Jahrzeit] of his parents to say prayers for them. He took me with him after I turned 7. While my brother was still in Khotin we went there together. My father had a seat at the synagogue. This synagogue had a special meaning to our family. My father's grandfather on his mother's side had funded its construction, and it was called after my great-grandfather, Avrum Shai Yoffe. My father also made contributions to charity and the maintenance of the synagogue. He had a seat of honor in the eastern part of the synagogue as the grandson of the man who had constructed the synagogue. The Holy Ark, where the Torah scrolls are kept, and the place where the cantor sings or says prayers are traditionally located in the eastern part of a synagogue. All believers must face the East during praying because our religious capital Jerusalem is in the East. There were benches along the eastern wall of the synagogue for the citizens who had contributed their lives to the Jewish community and the synagogue. On Saturdays, when my father wasn't at the synagogue, somebody else took his seat, but it was his on Jewish holidays when he attended the synagogue. I usually sat beside him. My mother attended a different synagogue, the one that her deceased father had attended. She went there on holidays.

My mother knew all the traditions. She kept fancy dishes and utensils for Pesach in a special box. She made traditional food on Pesach. Our cook helped her with the cooking. We didn't have any bread in the house during Pesach but ate matzah instead. All Jewish bakeries in Khotin sold matzah. Before Pesach the rabbi went to all the Jewish bakeries to issue a certificate confirming that they had cleaned the bakery of all the bread and bread crumbs. They made matzah flour for sale, too. We had gefilte fish, chicken broth and boiled chicken on Pesach. My mother also made chicken cutlets, stuffed chicken neck and pudding of matzah and eggs. There were also delicious pancakes from matzah meal that we ate with jam or honey. My father conducted the seder very ceremoniously. He had several prayer books. I also had a few of those books. I still have one that my parents gave me before the war. During seder I asked my father the traditional 'four questions' [the mah nishtanah]. Each member of the family drank a glass of wine. We opened the front door. It was a tradition that any traveler that didn't get home could enter the house and join the family for seder. There was also an extra glass of wine for Elijah the Prophet. It was believed that he visited every family at seder.

On Chanukkah our father gave us some change and a spinning top [dreidel]. I also remember Tu bi-Shevat. We had various fruit growing in Israel: dates, figs and raisins. We could buy them in stores and had them on the table.

We had guests for Purim. Poorer Jews, adults and children, gave performances in the houses of wealthier people and received money for them. These performances were short, because Purimshpilers had to make the rounds of as many families as possible to earn more money. It's obligatory to partake a festive meal on the day of Purim. It is customary to eat food with seeds, for example, hamantashen with poppy seed filling. One should drink more wine than one is accustomed to. It's correct to invite guests, especially the needy. The conversation should be focused on words from the Torah.

On Yom Kippur and before Rosh Hashanah we fasted for 24 hours including children over 5 years of age. After going to the synagogue [on the day of Yom Kippur], when the first evening star appeared in the sky, the family sat down for a festive dinner.

My school years

Neither my brother nor I went to cheder or a Jewish school. There were two Jewish schools in Khotin: a private one and a state-funded one. According to the Rumanian constitution the children of ethnic minorities could study at a national school. In the state-funded school pupils studied in Yiddish and Romanian. The other school was a Talmud-Torah, a religious school where children studied the Torah and Hebrew. It was funded by the Jewish community and Jewish organizations. According to the Romanian constitution the children of ethnic minorities could study at a national school. We studied at the Romanian elementary school. My father wanted us to continue our education and believed that we would be better off if we started our studies in Romanian. Our primary education was free of charge, but when we went to grammar school our parents paid a set amount for each year. Students wore uniforms. Poor people couldn't afford to pay for their education, but for the middle class it was affordable. My brother and sister went to a lyceum after elementary school. After that they entered the Pharmaceutical Faculty of Bucharest University. They both wanted to follow into my father's footsteps.

I went to the state elementary school when I turned 7. I faced anti- Semitism from the first days of school. There were only two Jewish pupils among the 40 of us in class. There were Romanian, Russian and Ukrainian pupils. They called me 'zhyd, zhydiura' [kike]. Sometimes I fought with them, sometimes I kept silent. Our teachers didn't encourage anti-Semitism and didn't demonstrate any. After finishing elementary school I went to the Romanian grammar school.

In 1933 Hitler came to power in Germany. Romania was a military and political ally of France and England that won in World War I. Under the Versailles Peace Treaty Romania received Bessarabia and Bukovina at that time. We believed that Romania wouldn't enter a treaty with Germany. We were hoping that France and England wouldn't allow Germany to occupy Romania, but it happened otherwise. There were fascist organizations in Romania. Two parties the Iron Guard 6 and the Cuzists 7, openly declared that they were against Jews. They were saying that Jews were robbing the Romanians and took hold of all key positions in trade and economy. But they weren't in power. The Liberal Party was in power, and it was loyal to Jews. There was no oppression of Jews. Only officers' schools and seminaries didn't admit Jews.

In 1937 my brother graduated from university and came back home. He began to work at my father's pharmacy. My father was the manager of the pharmacy, and my brother joined two other pharmacists to do everyday work.

My father died in 1939. He died within two days. He had intestinal obstruction that caused peritonitis. My father was buried according to Jewish traditions.. After the funeral my brother and I went to the synagogue every day to recite the Kaddish for a whole year. My brother went to the cemetery twice or three times a week. Somebody reported to the rabbi that my brother was a frequent visitor at the cemetery. The rabbi explained to my brother that it was against Jewish rules to come to the cemetery so often. He told him that a deceased relative needed to have his peace. My brother became the manager of the pharmacy. The pharmacy generated a good income, and my mother didn't have to worry about how to support the family.

We read about the situation in the USSR in a daily Russian newspaper issued by Russian emigrants. What we read there made us feel scared: continuous trials over 'enemies of the people', former revolutionaries and communists [during the so-called Great Terror]. The middle class had a very negative view of the situation in the USSR.

We heard on the radio that Bessarabia was to become a part of the USSR a day before the Soviet army units came to town. They entered it in the fall of 1940. Almost all Romanians had left their homes the night before. We had nowhere to go. On the first days of the Soviet power we were told about equal rights, freedom and the brotherhood of all people. Later we found out that people were arrested for no reason and put to prisons without a trial. Many wealthier people perished in prisons in the first days of the Soviet regime. Then the authorities turned to the middle class. They took away our pharmacy. We were afraid of further actions on their part, but they left us alone.

My sister was a student in Bucharest, but when she got to know that the Soviet army occupied Bessarabia she came home. My brother and sister couldn't find a job. They moved to Chernovtsy due to the unstable situation in Khotin. My brother became the manager of the regional veterinary storage facility. My sister found a job as the manager of the railroad pharmacy. My sister and brother spoke fluent Russian and had no problem with their work. I went to the 10th grade of a Soviet secondary school at the time.

My mother and I stayed in our house. All the best apartments in town were given to Soviet and party bosses. The Soviet and party authorities selected houses to their liking and forced their owners to move out. People were afraid of the tyranny and didn't resist especially because of all the previous arrests of innocent people and the pressure on wealthier citizens. Then there was another boss, the deputy chairman of the town council, who wanted our house. The Soviet authorities suggested to my mother that we kept one room for ourselves and gave the rest of the house to the family of this man. My mother refused, and the authorities just took all our belongings outside the house and sealed the apartment. The director of the pharmacy allowed us to take books and bed sheets to the storeroom but asked us to do it secretly. We stayed overnight in the house of my father's friend ( a doctor) and left for Chernovtsy in the morning.

My brother arranged a meeting with the regional prosecutor for us. The prosecutor told us that unless our house had been nationalized what had happened was a gross violation of the law. He asked us to wait at the reception. It took him a few minutes to solve our problem. When he came back he told us to go to Khotin and get our house back. We did as he had told us and got it back. The same manager of the housing department that had forced us to move out of our house brought us our keys and apologized. My mother and I arrived in an empty house. All our belongings had been taken outside the house. My brother and sister saved some money for us to hire loaders to take our belongings back into the house. The authorities left us in peace - they didn't dare to disobey orders that they received from higher authorities.

At the beginning of May 1941 my sister and her fiancé, Boris Leikin, came to visit us. Boris was Jewish. He was the secretary of the party organization of the railroad in Chernovtsy. My sister met him at work. She was beautiful and smart, and they took to liking one another and decided to get married. On 1st May 1941 my sister took him to Khotin, and after a few days they registered their marriage.

During the war

In June 1941 I passed all my exams successfully and obtained my certificate of secondary education. Three days later the war began. On the night of 22nd June my mother and I were woken up by an explosion, followed by many more. I saw a plane flying so low that I could see black crosses with a white stripe. Then a vehicle stopped near our fence. The military in it began to shoot at the plane from anti-aircraft weapons. This happened at 5 o'clock in the morning. We went outside. A military told us to stay calm and that it was just another military training. I went into the street and saw wounded soldiers on a vehicle.

By 9 o'clock the director of the pharmacy told us that the war had begun. I had a radio. I switched it to the Moscow frequency, but there were no announcements. I switched to short waves and heard an announcement in Russian, but I could hear that it wasn't the mother tongue of the speaker. He said, 'Farmers, don't burn your fields or take away your cattle. Such actions will be viewed as sabotage against the German army and punished according to the war laws'. Then another program announced that Adolf Hitler would be on air at 10 o'clock in the morning. I could understand German and listened to his speech. He explained that he decided to attack the Soviet Union and that it was a pre-emptive step, as the Soviet Union had plans to attack Germany. That was all he said.

We were hoping that the Soviet army would be strong enough to hold back the German troops, but after a few days we saw them retreating. My sister and her husband evacuated to Samarkand region in Uzbekistan. He became the secretary of the party organization of a mine near Samarkand. My sister became a lab assistant in the chemical laboratory at the sugar factory. My brother came to us from Chernovtsy.

On 6th July the Romanians occupied Khotin. The three of us failed to evacuate. After a week or two the Romanian police ordered the Jewish population to come to the central square at 8 o'clock the following morning to be deported to a different area. They threatened to shoot all Jews that stayed in their apartments after noon. We packed our winter clothes and valuables, because we understood that we wouldn't come back home for a while. The doctor, my father's friend, a Polish man, lived nearby, and my mother asked him whether we could leave some of our belongings with him. We left some valuables and family photographs, and he kept them for us.

We were taken to the ghetto in Mohilev-Podolsk [250 km from Khotin]. We were convoyed by gendarmes. The Romanian police obliged farmers from the surrounding villages to provide horse-driven carts, and older or sick Jews and children climbed onto them. My mother's sister, Feiga, was with us. She was an elderly woman. We were on the way for about two weeks. We exchanged the few clothes that we had and my mother's jewelry for food. Local farmers came to the side of the road with the products they wanted to sell.

The territory of the ghetto was fenced with barbed wire. There was one gate guarded by Ukrainian police. The ghetto was in an old Jewish neighborhood, and the newly arrived Jews were accommodated in the existing houses. There were about 12,000 Jews from Khotin alone, and there were many from other locations, too. The Romanian authorities decided where to send people. There were ghettos and camps all over Vinnitsa region. Two or three families lived in one room. People were sleeping on the floor and didn't have any sanitary facilities. Many inmates were dying from diseases and starvation. Feiga died there, too. During the first winter there was no heating, and it was a severe winter. We were only allowed to fetch water from the well at set hours. Carpenters, construction men and tailors , etc. had a right to leave the ghetto to go to work. They had a special pass.

The local Ukrainian farmers knew that the inmates of the ghetto had no food. They brought milk, apples and homemade bread to the ghetto to sell it three times more expensive than the market price. A pile of potatoes or a bottle of milk cost a golden ring or a nice jacket. We lived on my mother's golden jewelry for a year. Then we had good luck. There was a vacancy at the pharmacy of the town hospital. My brother spoke fluent Romanian and Russian and had a diploma from a Romanian university. He was employed and received a salary for his work. He was also allowed to leave the ghetto. In the evening he bought milk, vegetables, apples and butter at a low price at the market, and we didn't starve.

There was a Jewish self-government in the ghetto. The Germans called it (Judenrat 8. The Romanians authorized a Jewish attorney to select representatives for this Judenrat. The Judenrat was responsible for sending people to work on the roads and bridges. The Romanians needed roads for transportation purposes and involved many workers to have all the repairs done. I worked in the ghetto team. Other inmates were sent to other locations where they worked to exhaustion and were then shot. Basically, members of the Judenrat were trying to take care of their families and relatives.

In 1943 the Romanians got concerned about the development of the situation and became less strict with the rules. Romanian Jews began to send parcels with food and medication through the Red Cross charity organization. Once a month the Jewish community council gave us cereals and mamaliga. The Swiss Red Cross obtained permission to take orphaned children from the ghetto to Jewish communities in Romania. Later, when Israel was established, these children were moved there.

The Jews didn't celebrate any holidays in the ghetto. Religious Jews prayed in expectation of death, but it only scared the others. They got together for a minyan and prayed droningly for days in a row. It sent shivers down your spine.

We were liberated at the end of March 1944. We met the Soviet army units with joy. At least they didn't shoot us. We arrived in Khotin with another family. Half of the town had been burned down. My brother thought it would be easier for him to find a job in Chernovtsy and left. He was offered a job at the veterinary department of the town administration. The authorities promised to give him an apartment in Chernovtsy, and he came to Khotin to take us to Chernovtsy with him. We liked the town. It was clean and homely. People spoke Yiddish in the streets, and there were synagogues and a Jewish theater. We rented an apartment while waiting for my brother to receive the apartment that he had been promised.

My brother and I were registered at the military registry office. It was obligatory. My brother got the rank of an officer and obtained the status of a reservist. I went to serve at a reserve regiment in the Ural. I had a two-month training and then our units were sent to the front. I became a gun-layer of 82mm mortar in a mortar unit. Officers didn't demonstrate any anti-Semitism, but soldiers were prejudiced towards me. When I came to the unit the first time I was asked how I happened to be at the front when all Jews were 'fighting' in Tashkent [Editor's note: Tashkent is a town in Middle Asia; it was the place where many people evacuated to during World War II, including many Jewish families. Many people thought that the entire Jewish population was in evacuation rather than at the front, and anti- Semites spoke about it in mocking tone.] I replied that I got there exactly as they did.

We went across Latvia, Lithuania and then to Eastern Prussia. I knew German and became an interpreter in the counterintelligence unit in Konigsberg. I interpreted at the interrogations of German prisoners of war. After the unit left Germany I was transferred to another division. When the war was over our division was sent to the Far East and from there to the People's Republic of Mongolia. In August 1945 we were sent to the front in the war with Japan 9. I stayed there for three months. I participated in combat action in Manchuria which was occupied by Japanese troops. Manchuria is a mountainous area. It was difficult to fight with the Japanese troops hiding in the hills. The war with Japan was short. After the capitulation of Japan we were sent to Zabaikaliye where I completed my service term. In summer 1946 I demobilized and returned to my mother in Chernovtsy.

Post-war

In 1946 Jews, Romanians and Moldavians living in the USSR were allowed to move to Romania. The Soviet power allowed the population living in the areas that had joined the USSR in 1940 to move out. The border was open, and there was a minimum of formalities for departure. My brother decided to leave the country. My sister, who had divorced her husband in evacuation and came to live with us, decided to go with him.

I was in the army when they made the decision to move. My mother decided to stay and wait for me to come. I was the youngest and my mother's favorite, and she didn't want to leave me there alone. When I came to Chernovtsy I went to the visa department to obtain a permit to move to Romania. I explained that my brother and sister were there and that my mother and I wished to reunite with them, but the authorities refused. I went to their office several times until they told me that if I didn't leave them alone I would move, but to Siberia rather than Romania. So my mother and me stayed in Chernovtsy. Life was very hard: we were starving. There was a system of coupons to get food and everything was a big mess. Anti-Semitism was getting stronger.

I decided to continue my studies and entered the Medical Institute in Chernovtsy. I was admitted without exams because I had been at the front. I didn't face any anti-Semitism at the Institute. Most of my fellow students were demobilized soldiers, and they didn't assess people by their nationality. Besides, they had met Jews at the front. Many Jews served as doctors. Anti-Semitism was getting stronger and stronger in the town from 1948, during the campaign against 'cosmopolitans' 10, and Jewish workers of science and culture were accused of Zionism, espionage and disruption of the basics of the Soviet regime. The Jewish school and theater were closed. Many Jewish workers in the fields of science and art were fired. Many Jews were arrested on charges of espionage or Jewish bourgeois nationalism. Fortunately, there were no close friends or relatives of mine among them.

My friends and I were enthusiastic about the formation of Israel in 1948. We viewed it as a home for Jews. My fellow student, an invalid of the Great Patriotic War and officer of the Soviet Union, a communist, wrote a letter to the Central Committee of the Soviet Union saying that since the Soviet Union voted in the UN for the formation of Israel, veterans of war wanted to go to Israel to defend it from Arabs. They replied: 'We find it unnecessary...'. He moved to Israel in the 1970s when a number of Jews departed. I didn't think about going there at that time.

I graduated in 1951. I wasn't a Komsomol 11 or a party member, I just didn't feel any need joining any of them. There were many vacancies in Ukraine, but Jewish doctors were sent to distant areas in Russia, to the Ural and Siberia. I got an assignment to a district town near Leningrad. I finished a course of training in Leningrad and became a radiologist at a district hospital. There were many patients: invalids of war and wounded people - survivors from the blockade of Leningrad 12.

My mother was living alone. She got no pension because she hadn't worked. She received a small rental payment for the lease of our house in Khotin to a pharmacy, and I sent her part of my salary.

In 1953 the Doctors' Plot 13 began. The chief doctor of the hospital I worked in was an anti-Semite. There were four Jews among the twelve doctors in our hospital. He couldn't fire us and couldn't express his feelings, but he didn't keep his hatred to himself. However, the director of the hospital was a very decent man. We had a meeting to discuss the article 'Killers in white gowns' published in the Pravda [main communist newspaper], and he told us not to believe what was written there and go on working. He also expressed hope that this tendency wouldn't reach our distant location. He told us to put all details in patients' record books to have evidence of our professional approach to work. We didn't have any problems with our patients.

In March 1953 Stalin died. I didn't sympathize with the man, who was the leader of the Soviet power, which caused so much suffering to the people. I was only concerned about what was going to happen in the future.

My job assignment was to last three years, and then I was planning to go back home. But there was a lack of doctors, and I had to work there for another five years. I had to write a letter to the chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR explaining to him that I had to go back to Chernovtsy because my old mother was ill and I had to take care of her, and that I was a veteran of the Great Patriotic War. The Supreme Soviet sent a letter to the hospital to approve my request to quit my job.

I returned to Chernovtsy in 1956. There was anti-Semitism, and it was difficult to find a job. I was offered a job as a radiologist in a district town near Chernovtsy. I worked there and went to see my mother at weekends. I got a good salary and my life was improving, but my mother was growing older and had problems living alone. I began to look for a job in Chernovtsy. I found one at the town children's hospital. The chief doctor of this hospital obtained an employment approval for me from the regional health care department. I worked at the children's hospital for over 30 years. I retired in 1987.

I stopped observing Jewish traditions when when I joined the army. On Soviet holidays I went to parades with my colleagues. It was a mandatory requirement, and there were punishments for not attending such political events. Generally speaking I was an atheist, but I didn't get involved in any political activities. My mother didn't observe all Jewish traditions after the war either. She only said a prayer over the candles every Friday night. She didn't go to the synagogue. She prayed at home. My mother had prayer books. On the death anniversaries [Jahrzeit] of our relatives she read prayers in their memory.

My colleague at the children's hospital had a relative. This colleague of mine was also a radiologist and a Jew. His relative again graduated from Chernovtsy University and was an assistant at the Geo-Chemical Faculty. My colleague introduced me to her and her family. It was my future wife, Fania Aizinger, a Jew. She was born in Chernovtsy in 1930. She was reasonable and kind. She wasn't a striking beauty, but she was good-looking.

My sister worked as a pharmacist. She didn't remarry. My brother worked at the factory that manufactured medication in Bucharest. He was the manager of a scientific research laboratory. He was married and his wife was a housewife. My brother and sister didn't have any children. My sister died in 1993, and my brother died in 1996.

Married life

I went to visit my sister and brother in Bucharest in 1958. My brother and sister advised me to get married. I returned to Chernovtsy and proposed to Fania. We had a civil ceremony in 1959 and a small dinner party at home. My mother baked a cake and made dumplings with buckwheat. I bought a bottle of wine. There were about ten guests at our party.

Our son was born in 1960. We named him Michael after my father. My wife went to work, and my mother looked after our son. After some time I realized that my wife and I were very different people, but we stayed together for the sake of our son. My mother died in 1966 at the age of 85. We buried her in the Jewish cemetery in Chernovtsy.

After the Twentieth Party Congress 14 anti-Semitism began to decline. Khrushchev 15 denounced the Doctors' Plot. But then there was a political tendency to employ Ukrainians that was called national workforce. Jews were having problems finding a job. Although all my ancestors were buried in this land, somebody would tell me that I wasn't 'local'. I wasn't afraid to argue when I heard such statements. I knew I had nothing to lose.

When Jews began to move abroad in the 1970s we couldn't leave. My wife's brother was working in the censorship office of the KGB department and he was considered to belong to the officials who had access to sensitive information. He would have had problems if his own sister had moved abroad becoming a 'traitor'. He would have lost his job. He was married and had a child and we closed this issue for ourselves. That was the only reason. I've always felt that I'm a son of my people. I sympathized with the people who were moving to their motherland. I wish I were with my people. Regretfully, I couldn't go there. I wish I could visit Israel and hope I will be able to go there.

Michael finished secondary school with a medal. My wife worked at the Chernovtsy University as an assistant at the Geo-Chemical Department. This helped when my son entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics. Upon graduation he began to work as an engineer at the Electronmach Plant, a military plant. I wanted him to get married and have a family, but my wife was afraid that he would become more distant from her if he married and talked him out of marriage. Five years ago my wife and son moved to the USA. I didn't want to go with them. I believed it was time for my son to start his own life without our influence. Fania died of an infarction last year. My son works as an engineer for some company. He writes letters and sends me photographs. He is still single. He is planning to visit me some time. I live alone. I retired in 1987. I had worked at the children's hospital for over 30 years.

In the recent decade Jewish life in Ukraine changed. I believe there are many aspects in this process. We've got in touch with freedom. We can speak our mind without being afraid that we could be arrested. I'm not afraid to speak openly of the past and discuss social or material issues. Jews have recovered their national identity. We can say openly that we are Jews and we don't have to change our names to 'better sounding' ones. Many people have a difficult life receiving miserable pensions though, whereas people could manage with their pensions during the Soviet power. Nonetheless there's more freedom.

I attend Jewish concerts and performances. I'm also involved in public activities. As a war veteran I often visit Jewish secondary schools. I'm invited to meetings with pupils on all significant phases of the Great Patriotic War, such as the victory in Stalingrad, Moscow, Victory Day and the liberation of Ukraine. I talk with children, tell them about the war and about the ghetto where I almost starved to death. I'm a live witness of the Holocaust. I just do what I can.

Glossary

Melitta Seiler
Brasov
Romania
Interviewer: Andreea Laptes
Date of interview: August 2003

Melitta Seiler is a 74-year-old woman, who lives alone in a one-bedroom apartment in a building that also houses a Christian church. Her apartment, although small, is clean, and on the table you can see one of the macrames she has done herself, and of which she is very proud. Despite the fact that she has suffered a heart attack in 2002 and that she has to take care of her health, she is still a very active woman. She is still a coquette, takes care of her looks, dyes her hair blond regularly and keeps in touch with her friends from the community and with her son, Edward Friedel's family. Her granddaughters are the greatest joy of her life.

My family history
Growing up
During the War
After the War
Glossary

My family history

My paternal grandparents were Polish and lived in Zablotov [today Ukraine], but I never met them. My grandfather was drafted during World War I, and my father, Iosif Seiler, told me he died some time at the end of the war, it must have been in 1917 or 1918. I remember I once saw a photo of him dressed up in the Polish soldier uniform, but it was lost when we were deported. My grandmother was named Melitta Seiler and she died very soon after her husband's death; I was named after her. My father never knew for sure, but rumor had it that she killed herself because she couldn't take my grandfather's death. The Jewish community in Zablotov was rather religious, according to my father, and he was just a child at the time, and her death was not a topic to be discussed with the children.

They had two children, my father, Iosif Seiler, who was born in 1901, and another son, born in 1903; I think his name was Avram or Abraham. After their mother's death, their grandmother raised them. My father was 14 years old by then. I don't know if she had any help in raising them or not, maybe she wasn't very old, in those times people got married young. They fled to Vienna to escape World War I; their grandmother was afraid of the Russian Cossacks 1. I think his grandmother returned with his younger brother to Zablotov, and he remained in Vienna for a while, to learn a job. The grandmother died in Zablotov, I think.

My father's brother lived in Zablotov, he was married and he had three children: two daughters and one son. I don't know what he did for a living, but I think their financial state was rather modest, because they married young. One daughter was called Esther, but I don't remember the names of the others. Two or three years before World War II started, his wife, I don't remember her name, came to Cernauti with two children: one girl was sick, and my father helped her to get into a good hospital under my sister's name. After that they had to go back to Zablotov. My father kept in touch as much as he could with his brother's family. They were all murdered, right at the beginning of the war.

I remember very little about my maternal grandfather, Michael Sternschein. My mother told me that her father lived somewhere near Cernauti, and that he was rather well off. My grandmother - I don't remember her first name - lived in another village, and she was poor, the only child of a poor family, but she was very beautiful. My grandfather fell in love with her, and he kept going on horseback to her village, just to see her, during his courtship. After they married, she gave him beautiful children as well. My grandfather loved his family, and he adored my mother, because she was the youngest of all his children, eight years younger than his youngest son! She was just a child when all the others were already married. My mother told me that he used to get up early, go to the market and buy her fruits; he used to put them by her nightstand, so that she would find them when she woke up. He died in 1931, when I was still a child. I remember my mother said that he died the same year my sister, Erika Esther Ellenburgen, was born. He must have been in his sixties, because he was about 42 years old when my mother was born. He died of pneumonia, he insisted on taking a bath one chilly February morning, fell ill and died soon after that. I know from my mother that he was rather religious, he observed Sabbath very strictly, he didn't work; of course he went to the synagogue on all the high holidays, and all the food in his house was kosher. His father or his grandfather, I don't know exactly, had been a ruv [rabbi]. I don't know what he did for a living.

My grandparents were not dressed traditionally: my grandmother didn't wear a wig, and my grandfather didn't wear payes. They had their own house, but after my grandfather died, my grandmother came to live with my mother, Sara Hudi Seiler. Grandmother was already ill with sclerosis. One time she was in the courtyard, and my sister and I were playing. And she said, 'Melitta, bring me a glass of water!' And when I came back with the glass, she said to me, 'What do you want to give me, poison?' After that, Uncle Max, Max Sternschein, my mother's elder brother, took my grandmother to live with him. His children were already grown up, and he had servants; it was easier for him than it was for my mother. My grandmother died shortly after that, in her sixties, when I was three or four years old. I remember, I was in the room with my mother, and when grandmother died, my mother came to me, took off a string of red beads she was wearing and put them around my neck. She was already in mourning.

My maternal grandparents had six children: the eldest was Toni [Antonia] Bernhart, nee Sternschein, who married a Jew named Bernhart. I don't know when Toni was born, but she was older than my mother, she had been like a mother to her. She died in Transnistria 2 in the 1940s. She had two daughters, Sally and Neti Bernhart, who live in the USA now, but I don't know if they are married. Then there was Grete Knack, nee Sternschein, who married a German Jew; he was a gold merchant and he was rather well off. They lived in Germany. They had no children. There were also three brothers: Moritz Sternschein, who was married. He had one son and two daughters, but he and his family died in Transnistria in 1944. Bernhart Sternschein was also married, and he had two daughters, Marlene and Antonia. And there was Max Sternschein, who was a photographer in Cernauti. He had one son, Vili Sternschein, and one daughter, Ani. She married and fled to Bessarabia 3. She was murdered there with her husband, but I don't know his name.

My father, Iosif Seiler, was born in Nepolokovtsy [Chernivtsi province, Ukraine], in a village near Cernauti, where his mother came to visit some of her relatives, in 1901. His mother tongue was German, and he studied in a school for chef d'hors d'oeuvre [school for preparing appetizers] in Vienna. He stayed there two or three years, and then he went back to Zablotov, but he no longer fit in that small town, so he came to work in Cernauti. He worked in a restaurant, but he didn't cook, he just knew a lot of recipes for fancy appetizers, salads, cold buffets with fish and so on, and supervised everything. And I don't know how, but he knew my mother's sister, Toni. And thus he was introduced to my mother, Sara Hudi Sternschein. She was born in Cernauti in 1905, and her mother tongue was also German. My father liked her very much, she was young, very elegant; she had been to Germany twice to her sister Grete's. The first time she went she was 16, and she stayed for one year. Grete helped her with an eye surgery my mother needed: she had her strabismus corrected at a famous clinic in Dresden. My father was a very handsome man, with black curly hair and dark blue eyes, and dimples. But unfortunately he suffered from paradentosis and lost his teeth when he was still young.

My father needed a passport to stay in Cernauti, and that cost a lot of money, so eventually he had to go back to Zablotov. But my mother's family made her head swim with what a good man he was, that he was an orphan but very hard working, and so on, so my mother eventually gave in and accepted to marry him. My maternal grandmother baked leika - it is some kind of brownish sponge cake with honey that Jews in Bukovina made for every wedding or high holiday. My grandfather took my mother and they went to Zablotov, where the engagement took place. My mother had some jewels with her, jewels she had from her sister Grete. She gave these jewels to my father to sell, so that he would have money to pay for his passport. But she told him that there would be no marriage until he did his military service, which he had to do in 1926, I think. Of course my mother changed her mind several times in this period, but they eventually got married in Cernauti when he came back from the army.

They got married in the synagogue, and then there was an elegant party; my father was dressed up in a tuxedo, and my mother had a very elegant silk dress and a veil, and a wonderful wedding bouquet made up of white roses and white lilac. However, my father never had Romanian citizenship, but he was allowed to stay in Cernauti because my mother was a Romanian citizen. He had to pay a tax every year for his passport, and he did so until World War II broke out.

Growing up

I was born in Cernauti in 1929, and my sister, Erika, in 1931. When I was born, my father hoped it would be a boy, but I came instead. And when Erika was born, he was sure it would be a boy that time, he even prepared his tuxedo! But again it was a girl. For all that, he loved us very much, and we loved him, he was a very good man.

We lived in a rented apartment that was in a two-storied house, and we had running water and electricity. Cernauti had electricity and running water, only in some villages they might have been missing. My grandmother used to have an oil lamp when I was very little, I remember that. Anyway, the house also had a small garden, so my sister and I could play outside as well. The apartment had a hallway, two rooms, a balcony, a kitchen, a pantry and a toilet. We had the box for Keren Kayemet 4 in the house. We had books in the house, some religious ones and many novels because that's what my mother used to read. I don't remember authors, but I know she read good books, classics mainly, all in German; she didn't read cheap novels. She went to the public library in Cernauti regularly, she was very fond of books. My father didn't have so much time for reading, because he was working late. My mother always had two or three servants, at least before my sister was born, after that there was only a woman who came to clean twice a week. They were all Ruthenian Russians. I remember the woman came to do the laundry; she boiled it and then steamed it. Back then we used a pressing iron that was filled with embers, which made the iron hot. The laundry was always starched, and I know the woman went out on the balcony and then back inside, to air the embers and keep them burning.

There were several families living in that house, and I think only one was Jewish. I remember one family, the Bendelas: they were Romanian, and they spoke German beautifully. They lived upstairs, and their son used to tie a candy or a piece of chocolate on a string and lower it down to us, the kids. The owner of the house, an elderly woman, I don't remember if she was Jewish or not, lived downstairs, with her three sons. One of them was a lawyer, who liked my mother very much and used to court her. My mother also had a friend from her youth, but they visited rarely. There was another Jewish neighbor, he lived next to our house, he was a lawyer, and he always wore one of those bowler hats. He liked my mother very much, and us children as well. Whenever he saw me on the balcony on his way to the office, he used to call out in German, as a joke, with a funny accent, 'Melitta, was mache die Mame zu Hause?' instead of saying, Melitta, was macht die Mama zu Hause? [Melitta, what is mother doing?], although he spoke German perfectly. My father might have had acquaintances, but not real friends, he didn't have time for that. We kept in touch with my mother's relatives, especially Uncle Max, who had his own house behind the National Theater. He invited us over often.

Erika and I were allowed to play in the garden when we were a bit older, but my mother never let us wander the streets alone. My sister was always curious and independent; I remember she used to go out into the street, and one time a coach almost ran her over. I was more obedient and closer to my mother.

My mother was a good neighbor, but she didn't have time for visiting: she was busy with us, children, or with her needlework. She listened to the radio - we had no TV back then - or she used to take us out for a walk: usually in Volksgarten, the public park in Cernauti, which was very large, it even had tennis courts, or sometimes in the public park of the metropolitan seat in Cernauti. Our poor father, when he was free on Saturdays or Sundays, took us kids out to Volksgarten as well. I sat on one of his knees, my sister Erika on the other, and we used to comb him, fix his hair, we did all sorts of things to him and his clothes. But he let us have fun; he was a very kind and loving man. And there was no exception, every evening when he came home from work, he came to our room, where we were fast asleep most of the times. He always put something sweet, like candies or chocolate, on our nightstands. First thing in the morning, when we woke up, we would feel up the nightstand, with our eyes still closed, we knew there had to be something! The first question when we woke up was, 'Tata, was hast du uns gebracht?', that is, 'Father, what have you brought us?' He was indeed very kind.

The financial situation of the family was rather good until World War II broke out. My father worked very hard at a restaurant called Beer, after his owner. He worked very late, to pay for our clothes, school and vacations.

My father never went on a vacation with my mother or with us, as far as I remember, but he sent my mother and us somewhere near Cernauti for at least six weeks every summer. We went to Putna monastery [nunnery, located in Suceava county, 62 km north west of Suceava, built in the 15th century]. I remember playing there, and climbing the mountain from where Stefan the Great sent out his arrow to find the right spot for building his monastery. [Editor's note: Stefan the Great, ruler of Moldavia in the late 15th century, famous for his patriotism and wars against the Ottoman Empire.] We also went to some place, I don't remember the name, near Ceremus [river near Cernauti, today in Ukraine]. It was nothing fashionable, but it was very nice: we stayed in a rented house, and my mother didn't have to cook; my father sent us packages with fine delicacies. And when we came back, he always had a present for my mother. I remember one time he gave her a beautiful watch.

Every spring, before Pesach, or fall, before the holidays, my mother had something elegant ordered at the tailor's for her and for us. She had good taste, and she was a very elegant woman, very up-to-date with the fashion. When she went for a walk, she always wore gloves and a hat. Back then, there was a dress in fashion for young women and children, which came from Vienna I think, a Tyrolean model: the dirndl; it had a pleated skirt and pleated sleeves. It was worn with a small apron. My mother used to make one for us every summer, and she had one as well. When we went out, nobody thought she was our mother, everybody thought she was the nanny or an elder sister.

I used to accompany my mother when she went to the market. She always went on Monday, because Monday was the milchik [Yiddish for dairy products] day. The market place was very picturesque; the peasant women were dressed in their national costumes. I remember the women from Bukovina, from the outskirts of Cernauti, who wore their beautiful hota, their national costume. My mother bought a large piece of butter, wrapped in a bur leaf, and cheese in the shape of a pellet, because it had been kept in gauze. My mother bought poultry on Wednesday, and she took it to the hakham; back then we had no refrigerators, so it had to be well cleaned and well cooked. [In smaller places the hakham assumed several functions in the Jewish community, he acted as shochet, mohel, shammash, etc.] The hakham cut the bird, salted it, put it in water. Only after that it was ready to be cooked. And on Thursday, mother took us to the fish market. It was very impressive for us, because the fish was brought alive. They were swimming in some large tubs filled with water, and mum chose one, and said, 'I want this one!' Then the merchant got the fish out, hit it, and gave it to my mother, who took it home, and made the fish kosher. I don't remember exactly what she was doing, but I know she cleaned it, salted it and washed it several times. Running a household was more difficult back then, there was a lot to do.

My family didn't have a favorite shop; there was one in our street we bought small things from; but I remember, when we needed oil or sugar, father ordered it at the shop and it was delivered to us at home.

My mother was rather religious, she cooked kosher food and baked challah on Fridays; she observed Sabbath, she didn't light the fire on Sabbath, somebody else came to do it. My father was a good Jew as well, but he only went to the synagogue on the high holidays. He was working most of the times. But he provided for his family, and he took care that we had nice presents, my mother and us, the children. On Chanukkah, we always received presents, like this dirndl dress we liked so much. On Pesach, the cleaning was done the day before, there was the searching for chametz, and there was special tableware we kept in a trunk in the attic. My mother used to throw out or give away all food, like flour, which she hadn't bought recently. She cooked on a kitchen range that was built into a wall and on Pesach she cleaned it, rubbed it, and put hot embers all over it, so that it was kosher. My mother always bought one hundred eggs: the hard-boiled eggs were minced together with small cut onion, oil and pepper. This appetizer was served with matzah. There were guests over at our house, or we were invited to my uncles, but I don't remember my father leading the seder. It was too long ago.

We went to the big temple on special occasions, like the high holidays or a wedding, and it was always full, you had to buy seats for this beforehand from the Jewish community: women sat on one side, and men on the other. My parents were always careful to buy seats before any high holiday. But there were several synagogues in Cernauti, apart from the big temple, and on Saturdays my mother took us girls to the one closest to our home. There was no difference made between Neolog 5 or Orthodox Jews, I first heard about it when I came to Brasov.

There were several sweets made on Purim: we cooked the traditional leika. We also did fluden, I think here in Transylvania it is called kimbla. This fluden was somewhat similar to strudel; it was made up of dough that was spread very, very thin on tablecloths in the house, thin as cigarette paper, and left to dry. Then there was a filling of ground nut kernels, mixed with sugar and honey. This filling was wrapped in the dough like a strudel, put in the griddle and cut into pieces before putting it in the oven. It can be served with jam as well, my mother did that when I got married, it was delicious! But it's very hard to make, I never made it. Of course we baked shelakhmones, and we gave them to neighbors; they came to us as well with gifts, even if they weren't Jewish, many Christians knew our holidays and respected them. We usually received eggs from them when it was the Orthodox Easter. I remember vaguely, that on Purim, it was customary for masked people to come to visit. Generally they were well received, people weren't afraid of letting strangers into their house back then. Mother used to tell me that the masks made fun of the hosts, cracked some jokes or were ironic, and the host had to guess who was behind the mask, if it was someone known. I don't remember them coming into our house, it may have happened when my mother wasn't married yet. But there was a lot of joy and celebrating in our house. We kids didn't dress up though, but I remember that there were Purim balls in town, and people were allowed to wear masks in the street.

My mother also baked kirhala, that is some sort of cookie: it was a dough with many eggs, I think, and it was cut into pieces before putting it in the oven. There was sugar sprinkled over them, and when it was done, the sides of the cookie would rise, so the cookie looked like a small ship. They melted in one's mouth, they were delicious.

On Jewish New Year's Eve there were always big preparations, everybody went to the big synagogue, and then we were invited to a party to one aunt or uncle, and there was a lot of food and drinking. Both my parents fasted on Yom Kippur, and so did I when I turned 13. But at that time, we were already in Transnistria, so food was scarce anyway. On Sukkot we went to the synagogue and celebrated, people danced with the Torah in the synagogue's courtyard, but we didn't build a sukkah ourselves. [People dance with the Torah on Simchat Torah, which is the last day of Sukkot.]

The town I grew up in, Cernauti, was large, cultural, very cosmopolitan. There were six or seven cinemas, the National Theater, the Jewish Theater, and other wonderful buildings, like Dom Polski, that is the Polish House; one could even find symphonic music. The Jewish community in Cernauti was very large and powerful; however, I don't know exact numbers. There was the synagogue, very beautiful; I remember I was there for the last time when my cousin, Ani, Uncle Max's daughter, married there before World War II started. The rabbi, I don't know his name, wasn't very old, and he was the same who had married my mother. After the synagogue was razed to the ground during the persecution, before the war, the rabbi was murdered. There were mikves in Cernauti, but we didn't go.

There were several hakhamim in Cernauti, and no Jew ate poultry or veal if it hadn't been butchered by the hakham. There were also many functionaries: hakhamim, shochetim, rabbis. [Editor's note: in smaller Jewish communities the hakham could assume various functions, among them, that of a shochet, however in this case the interviewee probably missed to say shochet.] There were no Jewish neighborhoods in Cernauti, Jews lived scattered across the town. Jews had all sorts of jobs: tailors, watch menders, shoemakers, shopkeepers, doctors and lawyers, they could be anything before 1939, when the persecution under the Goga-Cuza government 6 began. And there was something else: Jewish restaurants, some of them with kosher food. My father worked for a quality restaurant, very central and fancy, where he made up the recipes for cold buffets, and important people came in to have an appetizer. The owner of the place was a Jew named Beer. And there was also a well-known Jewish restaurant, the Friedmann's. I still remember where it was. If I got off the train in Cernauti now, I could still find it, it was 'auf der Russischen Gasse', on the Russian street. It was a lacto-vegetarian restaurant, and everybody in Cernauti, Jewish or not, came to Friedmann's, he had wonderful delicacies with dairy products. It was a fashionable meeting place for ladies, who came there, ate and chatted for two or three hours. My mother also took us there a few times, and we always had maize cake, which was very popular. It was a dish made of corn flour, with a cream cheese filling, and sour cream on the side; it was awesome, I can tell you! There were also other recipes, and all kosher, nothing with meat was served.

We used to go and watch parades, I remember 10th May, the Heroes' Day 7, when King Carol II 8 came to Cernauti with his son, Michael 9. We were pupils in the third grade, I think, and my mother dressed up and came with us; we stayed in the front, and we saw the royal coach and all the royal retinue pass by. King Carol wore a feathered helmet, and Michael wore a beautiful uniform as well as his father.

I didn't have a Fraulein [governess] when I was little; my mother took care of me, with the help of the servants. Then I went to the state elementary school for the first four grades. I did the first grade of high school in the Holy Virgin high school, a nuns' high school. Each high school had a different uniform back then, and each pupil had a number. Half of our class was made up of Jews, and the other half of Romanians and Poles. We had religion classes, and we, Jewish girls, had a teacher of Jewish religion, and anti-Semitism was never an issue back then. All students paid a tax; and they all studied the same subjects in Romanian, except for religion, of course. I remember in high school I had thick, beautiful, chestnut-red hair, and I wore it in two plaits. During the breaks the boys were chasing me and pulling my plaits, saying, 'Melitta, du hast einen Wald im Kopf!', that is, 'Melitta, you have a forest in your head!'

I was good at mathematics, but I especially liked literature and history; I read a lot about famous painters and writers, I enjoyed it. I had friends in school, but not outside of it because my mother didn't let me wander in the town all alone. I don't remember names, it was a long time ago, but my friends were Jewish and Romanian alike.

I never went to cheder. Father told me later that he intended to send us both to an old Jew to learn, but the war broke out and he couldn't do that anymore. I finished my first year of high school in June 1940, and immediately after that the Russians came. We had to repeat the year, they brought new teachers from Russia and every school had to study in Russian. They also imposed mixed classes, boys and girls together. At first we laughed, made fun of the teachers, we didn't know Russian and the teachers didn't know German, so they couldn't understand us. But I never got into serious trouble with my teachers. We went on for a year and I could already speak Russian in 1941.

Father also bought a cottage piano for us girls, and once or twice a week we took piano lessons for two or three years, before the war started. We would go to an elderly Polish lady to learn, and could practice at home, because we had the cottage piano at home.

I went to the Jewish theater only once, when I was little. It was a big event, a very famous artist from the Yiddish theater was going to perform and sing as well, Sidi Tal. My mother took us girls to see her. She also took us to the cinema; we never missed a movie with Shirley Temple. After the Russians came, it was compulsory to go with the school to see Russian plays, Lev Tolstoy especially. I enjoyed them, too.

During the War

In the summer of 1941 the Romanian regime was reestablished, and Antonescu 10 came to power. The times were very troubled, and I remember in November we were told to pack a few things in a bundle and to be ready to go: we were supposed to be already dressed when the Romanian gendarmes would knock on our doors to take us away. The gendarmes came, and we were taken to some part of Cernauti, I don't know exactly to which, that was declared a ghetto. We were crowded, I don't know how many in one room, and we had to stay there for some days; after that, gendarmes with bayonets came and took us to the train station: they forced us to get on cattle wagons, we were so many in one wagon that one could hardly breathe. And this convoy went from Cernauti to Atachi, which was the northernmost point of Bessarabia, right near the bank of the Dnestr. It was a frightful journey and when the train stopped, they wouldn't let us get off right away, but when we did, we had to step in mud, thick mud that went up to our knees, because it was after a flood. Near the railroad there was a hillock, and they forced us to climb it, men, women and children and old people altogether, with everything we had brought. It was terrible, sick or old people fell in the thick mud, others pulled them out. Everybody had to make it to the top with their belongings. When we were on top, they ordered us to leave everything we had packed there, and then they chased us down the hillock again.

Then everybody had to follow a huge convoy that went to the bank of the Dnestr. There were thousands and thousands of people on the bank of the river, because several convoys had arrived, not just ours. It was night, it was dark, and the roaring of the Dnestr was frightening. Families were separated, voices cried out, yelled, called each other. The screams and the cries were terrible in that dark cold November night. Everybody had to cross the Dnestr on those ferries that carry carts and horses; only this time there were people instead. It went very slowly, and my family was there all night until my father gave something he had saved, I don't know what, to somebody and we were finally on the ferry. You could hear shots being fired in the night, the screams of people being thrown in the river; it was terrible.

When we reached the other bank of Dnestr, we were already in Transnistria. We were in a suburb of Mohilev-Podolsk 11; it was a place with small shattered houses, and all looked and smelled like water closets. There were so many people trying to find a spot to rest! We were exhausted, and we just sat quietly near a wall until morning. In the morning the gendarmes told us, 'Everybody must be ready to leave!' A woman, who had probably come there some days before, told us, 'Good people, if you can, hide and don't go with this convoy!' There was a young couple of Jews, a bit younger than my parents and with no children, who had come with us, in the same wagon. When they heard the woman, they immediately set out to leave the building; my sister ran after them, and I after my sister. When we reached the main street, I turned around and saw that my parents weren't behind me, so I went back. I found them in the convoy, surrounded by gendarmes who screamed at people to move.

There were thousands and thousands of people in that convoy, the entire main street was full of people. My mother started to cry, my father cried out, 'Where's my daughter?!'; but my sister had disappeared with that Jewish family. The sentinels guarded the convoy, they were mostly Romanian, but I remember there was a German one as well. And my mother started to cry and plead, in German and Romanian, that she had lost a child, that all she wanted was to find her baby. Nobody looked at her, but she didn't stop crying. At one point, a young sentinel, a Romanian soldier, stopped, looked at us and said: 'Come with me!' We got out of the convoy, and set out for the small street where I last saw the couple of Jews with my sister. We didn't go very far, there were too many people, but we saw the woman coming towards us with my sister Erika. The soldier saw we found the girl, but he was a good soul, he said, as if he hadn't seen anything, 'Go find the girl, and when you do, come back.' That was our great luck, and that is why we survived, because we could stay in the city of Mohilev-Podolsk.

The convoy left the city, and we stayed behind, with some other people who knew it was better to stay. Mohilev-Podolsk was not a concentration camp surrounded by barbed wire, it was a ghetto. In the whole city there were no more Ukrainian Jews, they had all been slaughtered in Odessa and other places [during the Romanian occupation of Odessa] 12. The few Jews living there had been brought from over the Dnestr. After the convoy left and my parents weren't afraid to come out, my father started to look for a place to live. We found a Ukrainian woman who took us in; she was very poor, and full of lice, she was scratching herself all the time. My clean, beautiful mother was appalled, you can imagine. We stayed there only for a little while, and then we found another place. It was also in the ghetto, in the suburb, but the house belonged to some Ukrainians who were well off, they had a garden, and cows. My parents spoke with the owners, and they took us in. They had a little house near the stables, with a small kitchen, and one room, built on the bare ground. However, it was clean, and that's where we stayed.

My parents paid the rent with a few jewels my mother had been able to save: she had sown them in a small pocket in her suspenders. When they took us out of the train, they had no time to do any bodily search. It's said that the Ukrainians were anti-Semites, but it is not a rule, these people were kind for taking us in; moreover, they didn't ask for a high rent, they didn't insult us, and they gave us some milk or a tomato during summer, because we were starving. The hoziaika, that is the owner [in Ukrainian], had two daughters: they were a little bit older than us, but we made friends, they didn't treat us badly; we even played together sometimes.

We lived only on maize flour, and my mother made a gir, some sort of soup, just boiled water sprinkled with maize flour. [Editor's note: The basic meaning of the Akkadian word 'gir' is a grain of carob seed.] Very rarely we could make maize mush, and my sister, who was always spoiled and fastidious about food, was always the first at the table, to make sure that nobody got a bigger piece. We sometimes had army bread, which gave my sister and I jaundice. Not to mention the subnutrition that gave my sister and I furunculous: we were full of puss, and my poor father washed us and dressed our wounds.

We lived there for three years, from 1941 to 1944, and the times were hard. German troops passed our small house several times, but we knew they were coming. I don't know how, but the news about them always spread fast; we were so afraid, we would hide in the small kitchen, and we didn't even breathe hard, for fear the Germans might hear us. I remember, during the winter, my sister and I went to the gate of the house - the house these Ukrainians had seemed a palace to us, although it was just a normal house - we saw carts, full of corpses piled up like boards, they were that thin; I don't know where they took them.

All around Mohilev there were concentration camps, surrounded by barbed wire. My future husband, doctor Jacques Friedel, was in one of them, and so was my mother's elder brother, Moritz Sternschein. He had been to Germany, where he married a German Jewish woman, and they fled Germany and came back to Cernauti when Hitler came to power. But he was deported to one of these camps with his wife and his three children. My uncle and his wife died before the liberation, and when the front came, their children were brought to Mohilev. My parents found them, but they didn't survive, they were all sick, with their bellies swollen. People died during summer because of typhoid fever, and during winter because of the cold and typhus. They wore only rags, they were underfed, you could see them ransacking garbage for a potato peel. The living conditions were disastrous; there were worms and lice everywhere. We never had lice, all that time, and that thanks to my mother: she was a clean, educated woman, and in the small house where we lived, she put a chair in front of the bed, so whoever would come in, would sit on the chair and not on the bed. She also brushed our hair with a small- toothed comb; we, girls, had beautiful hair and my mother didn't cut it. As far as I know there were no mass executions in Mohilev.

Time passed, and we were liberated by the Russian front in April 1944. The Russians installed an anti-aircraft cannon right behind the stable, in the courtyard where we lived. The sound of it was terrible! My father was drafted by force in the Russian army because he didn't hide like others did, and he went with the front to Stalingrad, as he later told us. So after Mohilev was liberated, and the news spread that Cernauti was liberated as well, my mother found herself alone, with two girls and without my father. We had to go back to Cernauti on foot, only when we reached a railway station could we travel by train for a few miles. The Russian convoys didn't care very much, they let us travel in goods trains. We walked and traveled for two weeks, I think, and when we got back home, all three of us had our hair full of lice. We found our apartment; it was completely empty, except for an iron bed, where we all slept. We didn't know, but that apartment was used by some Russians, and one night we just woke up with some of them in the room. We were so afraid that they would rape us; I was already 15 years old, and a beautiful girl, my mother was also a beautiful woman, my sister was rather skinny, but still, we were three defenseless women. We were terrified, but they were good-hearted people, they left us alone.

After the War

Life was very hard during those two years, from 1944 to 1946. We girls went to school and we studied in Russian. My uncle Max Sternschein, who wasn't deported, helped us with what he could. Some permits for Jews to stay in Cernauti were issued by the Romanian authorities, for huge sums of money, and I think my uncle raised that money somehow. And he was lucky, because some Jews were deported later, even if they had paid a large sum of money to stay behind. When the Russians came, in 1940, Ani had just finished high school, she had passed her graduation exam. And Russians imposed that everybody who had graduated from high school was to go to Bessarabia to teach there. Uncle Max was desperate, but he couldn't do anything. So he married Ani in a hurry with a medicine student, one of her pretenders, so that she wouldn't be all alone and with no protection there. But the German front came, and they were massacred there, they weren't heard of again. He was still hoping to hear from Ani, his daughter. Uncle Max sent people to look for them, my mother kept asking everybody who went to or was coming from Bessarabia, and the answer was always the same: no Jews were left alive. Uncle Max had a very hard time accepting this, he adored his daughter.

Mainly we would live on what my mother took from some people. For example, somebody gave her a dress they didn't use anymore, and she went to the market and sold it for a few rubles, and that was our money for bread. Uncle Bernhart, who had been deported, came back with his wife and child; they had another daughter in Cernauti, after they returned, and soon after that they left for Israel. But we couldn't go anywhere; we were waiting for my father. My father managed to send us a package with clothes, and in 1946 he came home.

In the same year we left for Brasov, there was some sort of decree that Jews could go to Romania if they had Romanian citizenship; I remember I turned 17 the day we set foot in this town. We didn't choose the town, we were sent here. We had already experienced the Russians back in Cernauti, we knew what they were capable of, so we didn't hesitate about moving to Romania. We had two examples: the first time they came, in 1940, there were some rich people in Cernauti, some of them Jews, some of them Romanians. They were taken to Siberia [to the so-called Gulag camps] 13, and they were never heard of again. Then, when we came back from Transnistria, in 1944, the NKVD 14 roamed the streets and made raids in houses during the night, taking people to forced labor to the Donets mines. [Editor's note: Donets, or Donbass, as it is also called, is the site of a major coalfield and an industrial region in Eastern Ukraine in the plain of the Rivers Donets and lower Dnieper.] It made no difference to them if you told them that you were a Jew and that you had just come back from deportation; they didn't care.

One night, they came to our house, but as we lived on the first floor, we heard them ringing the bells of the neighbors first. My mother knew who it was, so she immediately ran bare-foot and in her nightgown to the cellar. She hid and I had to open he door. And I was wearing a black silk dressing gown, a gift from my aunt, Grete, and I probably looked like a young woman, so the NKVD wanted to take me away. I told him I was still a pupil; he didn't believe me, but I showed him my notebook and he finally let me go. That fright I will never forget! There were people who were actually jumping off their balconies when the NKVD came to their door, they would do anything not to be taken to Donets, so we had a pretty good idea about who the Russians were. The first chance we got to leave Cernauti, we did.

Life was very hard here in Brasov, because we had to live in a house with some Romanians, and we were so crowded, we had to live several families in one room. We had to share the room with one more family, and we slept on the floor at first, then we managed to build a cot and we slept there. After a year or two the family that lived with us left. My parents continued to stay there, but we girls eventually left: I got married, and Erika went to university in Bucharest, were she studied languages, Russian and English. My parents were never really over the trauma of being deported. All they thought about was our welfare, and not theirs: they wanted us to have good food, clothes, but my father never thought of buying an apartment, although it would have been possible back then, with a loan. Father worked as the manager of a food laboratory, and mother was a housewife.

We wanted to emigrate to Israel, we were a young family; my father filed for it, but he didn't get the approval, and I don't know if he tried again. I don't know the reasons for the rejection. Uncle Bernhart left with his family from Bucharest to Israel in 1947, but I don't know how they did it. Uncle Max left for Buenos Aires with his wife Suzie and his son Vili; they managed to do so because Suzie had some relatives there, and they helped her. Uncle Max died some time in the late 1950s I think. About Vili I only know that he married a Jewish woman who was from Romania as well, and that he became a diamond polisher.

Erika and I finished school here in Brasov. I finished the ten grades of high school in evening classes, and after that, at 19, I got a job. Although we were rather poor, my mother didn't want us to neglect our education. In the first two or three years after arriving in Brasov, we had private lessons of German literature and grammar with a teacher. After that we studied English with a teacher, Mrs. Rathaus. It was rather expensive, but I took those classes for about eight years, I only interrupted them when I was about to give birth to my son.

After she graduated, Erika became a Russian teacher here, in Brasov, and married a Jew, Alfred [Freddie] Ellenburgen in 1959. They had a good marriage, and they have a son, Marcel. Marcel married a Romanian, Iulia, and they live in Israel now, where he has two little boys.

I worked for three years in the bookkeeping department of T.A.P.L., which was the state organization that managed restaurants and the food industry. In the meantime, I took some accounting courses, and Mr. Rathaus, my teacher's husband, who was a pharmacist, helped me get a position as an accountant at Centrofarm. [Centrofarm was a state pharmaceutical company, which operated all over the country.] I worked there for three years, until 1955. I had no problems because of being Jewish in neither of these work places.

I was lucky that I made good friends with the young people from the Jewish community here. They were Pista Guth, Brauning, Loti Gros, and some other high school colleagues of theirs. They liked my sister and me a lot, so they introduced us in their circles and in Gordonia 15, a Zionist organization. They were very friendly, invited us to small five o'clock tea parties and so on. At Gordonia there was a young doctor, Bernhart, who liked me a lot, courted me, and he introduced me to a friend of his, doctor Orosz. He was a Hungarian, not a Jew, but he had many Jewish friends. Doctor Orosz courted me as well, we went out for walks, and during one of these walks we met doctor Jacques Friedel, my future husband. Jacques was born in Campulung Moldovenesc, but he studied medicine in Cluj-Napoca, and he was assigned to Brasov.

We got married in October 1953, in Brasov, in the Neolog synagogue here. It was a beautiful wedding, with a chuppah, the two hakhams from Brasov attended, I had many guests, friends and colleagues from work, three maids of honor, a choir, and the organ played. I remember a jeweler, Weinberger, who came to sing in my honor, he had a beautiful voice. I had a gorgeous dress, and a Biedermeier bouquet, made up of 35 rose buds. The coronet was also made up of small flowers. The party was in a restaurant, there was a band, and only kosher food, of course; my mother cooked, and she even made that famous fluden from Bukovina.

My son, Edward Friedel, was born in 1955. My husband, my son and I lived here, where I live today, in one room, which we received when Edward was one year old. Some time after that, my marriage with my husband fell apart, so we divorced in 1966, I took my maiden name again and I started working at the University of Brasov, the Faculty of Forestry, where I worked as a clerk. I worked there for 28 years, until I retired.

I was never a member of the Communist Party, nobody from the family was. We kept our mouth shut, but we didn't agree, of course, with what was going on. We had to participate in all the manifestations on 23rd August 16 or 1st May, especially because I worked in a university and the accent on propaganda was stronger here. We even had to sow the slogans on the placards, like 'Long live communism' 'Long live Ceausescu 17!'

My son had no problems in school because he was Jewish, we could go to the synagogue and we observed the high holidays at home. But we didn't follow the kashrut; it was too hard. Both my husband and I were religious, I lit candles every Friday and said the blessings, I cleaned the house on Pesach. However, we didn't dress up Edward for Purim. Edward also took some classes of Talmud Torah with somebody from the community, I don't remember with whom. He didn't study with his father, but he had to know a few things for his bar mitzvah.

My son, Edward, was a sincere enemy of the communist regime since he was in high school, and I told him to be careful about what he said or did, because he could get into serious trouble. But he still insisted that he wanted to go to Israel. And, since he was in my care, I told him that he would have to graduate from university first, and after that, if he still wanted to emigrate, I wouldn't stand in his way. He did as I told him, including the military service. I was the one who insisted on that as well, I thought it would make him more of a man, because in his childhood he was rather spoiled, but it was a mistake on my behalf. His father, as a doctor, could have given him some papers saying that he was sick and he would have dodged the military service, but I threatened to denounce him - my ex- husband - if he did so. So after Edward graduated from high school, he was a pontoneer and a sentinel at a prison in Braila. He told me that there were a lot of fights, with knives even, among some militaries. But he managed, and after that he went to the Faculty of Wood Industry here, in Brasov.

All this time, Edward lived with me. But our living conditions were terrible because we didn't have a private toilet or a hallway; so I decided to do something about it, got the necessary approvals and started to build a toilet and a hallway. I sent Edward to live with his father all this time; the mess was so big I couldn't even cook properly. In that time, Edward got involved with a girl, she was a colleague of his from university. Her family was rather well-off, and they ended up living together in her apartment. After Edward graduated, he wanted to marry her. I didn't exactly approve, because she was as vain as she was beautiful, but I was old fashioned: they lived together, they have to get married, I thought. So they did, and they stayed together for two or three years. Meanwhile, she got a job in the dean's office at the university, where she met a lot of foreign students. She ended up with a Greek one, nine years younger than she was, and the marriage ended. Edward was very affected by all this; he had a nervous breakdown. He was in such a bad shape, I had to commit him to a hospital for two weeks, and feed him very well - which back then was a real problem - to heal him. [Editor's note: food was scarce during the last years of the communist regime; bread, milk, meat were given on food stamps.] He also stayed at Paraul Rece [resort and sanatorium in Transylvania] for two weeks, and after that he was okay again.

In 1986, he came to my office, and he said, 'Mama, sit down. I decided to emigrate to Israel, and please remember what you promised!' So as hard as it was to let my only child go away, I did. His father didn't approve at all, but Edward's mind was all made up, and within six months, I think, he was gone. I didn't want to join him, I had my friends here, my life, and he was just getting started.

He settled in Beer Sheva, and in the same year, he met Alice. She was a Sephardi Jew; she worked in a bank. Edward's savings were 50 dollars, and he went to the bank to see how he could invest the money, and that's how they met. They married the following year, in 1987. I thought it was too soon, but he was really lucky this time. Alice is a beautiful, special and generous woman, and a devoted mother to their children: they have two daughters, Orly was born in 1988, and Sigal born in 1989. I told him that, no matter how good their life was, he should think of himself as a billionaire, for having such healthy and beautiful children, and such a good wife. Edward works as a wood engineer at a good company, although he had to find a new job recently because the company he worked for fired people and he was among them. But he quickly found another job, an even better one.

I was happy to hear about the birth of the State of Israel, in spite of all the obstacles and hostile policies towards Jews I'd seen during those years. I've been to Israel several times, even before 1989. In 1975 I went to visit some friends of mine. There was one family, doctor Stern and his wife, Jews from Brasov, who had left for Israel some time ago, in 1954, I think. But first I went to Netanya, to visit the Kirschners, Karol and Chaia. I made friends with them in a very original manner. I was in the bus, on my way to Poiana Brasov [Poiana Brasov is Romania's premier ski resort located 12 km far from Brasov], and I heard a couple speak in English. I talked to them, and I found out that they were Jews who lived in Israel. They originally came from the Czech Republic, but they fled the country to escape Hitler when they were still very young. They were young, in their twenties, when that happened, and they ended up in India, were they both fought in the 9th Hebrew legion, led by Moshe Dayan 18. They liked me very much, they took me out, and when they left, they invited me to Israel. So I went to visit them for two weeks. After that I visited doctor Stern, who was in Beer Sheva. I was very impressed with everything I saw in the Israeli museum. All my friends spoiled me, and I was very touched that people weren't afraid of speaking their mind, of meeting in the street, of the living conditions. I went to Israel in 1983 as well, back to the Sterns. Then I went to visit Edward and Alice, who were living in her apartment back then; one time was in 1997 and the other last year. They have moved into a beautiful villa.

I used to listen to Radio Free Europe 19 at home after I got divorced, so from 1968 on, because I had more free time; I set the radio by the stove and at a low level, and I listened and knitted at the same time, especially during the night; my favorite was Niculai Munteanu. [He was a well-known Romanian editor who worked for Radio Free Europe in its headquarters in Munich, and did broadcasts about Romanian politics.] That's where I heard the news about the wars in Israel. [Editor's note: the Six-Day-War 20 and the Yom Kippur War 21]

My father died in 1989, it was during the revolution [the Romanian Revolution of 1989] 22, and my mother died six weeks after him, in 1990. They were both buried in the Jewish cemetery. Because of the troubled times, I couldn't bring a rabbi or a chazzan for my father's funeral, there was just a minyan and somebody recited the Kaddish, but when mother died, I phoned Bucharest and they sent a chazzan to recite the prayer. I keep the Yahrzeit, I don't know the date after the Jewish calendar, but I light a candle on their birthdays and on the days they died. I was in mourning for 14 months after my parents, one year for each of them; even my underwear was black - that was the custom in Bukovina. I sat shivah for eight days after they died, I kneeled in a corner on the bare ground and cried, and after eight days I called my sister and we went round the house. Erika didn't sit shivah and she didn't go in mourning either.

I was happy when the Revolution of 1989 broke out, I hoped for better times, but my father was dying, my mother as well, so it was a black period for me. I saw all the events on TV, because I didn't go outside: I could hear shots and I was afraid.

I'm not sure things got better, but they have certainly changed. Of course, it's a relief to be allowed to say what you think, not to stay in a queue for three eggs for five hours and then not get them, and I was lucky with a certain law, which acknowledges that we were deported and gives us some advantages: 12 free train tickets, free radio-TV subscription, free bus tickets, and some free medicine, plus a small pension. But the dirt in the streets, the lack of civilization I see, and the anti-Semitism are all more often seen.

I receive a pension from the Germans, not very big, but it helps. I was involved in the Jewish community, I liked to pay visits to the community's office, or take some cookies there, at least until last year, when I had a severe heart attack and almost died. But I'm happy to be alive; I have a beautiful family. I did a lot of needlework in the last years, I have made beautiful gobelin tapestries. I also went to concerts or hiking, but now I have to take better care of my health.

Glossary

Martin Glas
Prague
Czech Republic
Interviewer: Lenka Koprivová
Date of interview: August - November 2006

Mr. Martin Glas spent part of his childhood in Terezin 1. As he says, he himself didn't experience anything terrible, but despite this, he describes those years as the most horrible in his life. He is not only thankful for having survived the war, but also feels a deep responsibility towards his friends that didn't have such luck. Thus, when I approached him as to whether he wouldn't tell me something about his life, he didn't have to be asked twice and began a long, long story... He was an excellent interview subject. Not only was his approach that he must convey as much as possible, but thanks to his having an excellent memory, he also enriched the story with minute details. And because he is an immensely perceptive person, who what's more isn't afraid of talking about his feelings, a very human story came to be...

Remembering my childhood
My family background
My pre-war childhood
Terezin
"Heim 236"
My friend Benno Pulgram
Living together with my family at Terezin
Liberation
My time at the convalescence home
Our post-war life
My wife
Glossary

Remembering my childhood

I have to admit that fate has been kind to me. Not only because seventy years ago it allowed me to be born, when at that time my mother had tuberculosis and doctors weren't pleased to see her expecting another child. But mainly because I survived the concentration camp. And finally, also because it made a part of my mental facilities: the feeling that I'm glad to be in this world, that I always need to be looking forward to something, and that I grew up with the notion, as it were, that the meaning of life is to endeavor that as many people as possible around me be glad that I exist, and that our paths in life had crossed.

My life was divided, more or less by force, into several phases. I was born into a German-speaking family from Prague, so my mother tongue was German. When I was supposed to begin attending school, my parents decided that I'd attend a Czech school, because we weren't Germans and wouldn't continue in increasing the number of German-speaking inhabitants of Prague. We then spoke Czech at home as well. While my father did know Czech spelling and grammar, he had a problem with pronunciation. My mother, on the other hand, learned the language through everyday conversation on the street, and had perfect pronunciation, but made errors in writing until the end of her life.

Back then, when I started Grade 1 and didn't know a single world of English, the head teacher, Mr. Korda, had to translate every word into German for me. At the end of my first year I could already read and write Czech; by the end of Grade 2 I'd forgotten how to speak German, but understood everything a child of around six understands. Then, after the war, I wasn't able to speak any German for a long time; I had a mental block.

That was the first turning point. The second, and perhaps even more fundamental one, were the years spent in Terezin during the war. I didn't go any further, because I had the luck that my mother worked in agriculture, and so protected me against the transports. Despite this, I consider what I lived through there to be the most horrible things in my life, even though I admit that in comparison with other people, actually nothing that terrible happened to me. I constantly have to think about my friends, about the little children I saw in Terezin, who never returned. My father didn't return either...

My family had the luck to be allowed to live in Terezin together for some time. But then first my brother and then my father left, until my mother and I were left alone together. We talked with each other a lot, which of course also continued after the war, which is also why I know quite a bit about my family.

My family background

My father's father was named Rudolf Glas. He was born sometime around 1860 in Prague, but his official home residency was in Hermanuv Mestec. Home residency was a hereditary institution, and when it was cancelled after World War II, we received a document in the mail that my father's home residency had also been in Hermanuv Mestec. Hermanuv Mestec had most likely had a large Jewish ghetto; they've recently reopened the synagogue there, I went there to have a look, but didn't find any names at the local cemetery that would seem to have a connection with our family.

So while my grandfather was from Bohemia, I have no clue whether he spoke Czech, perhaps as a child. Later he spoke German, and most likely probably also Italian. He worked as a bank clerk, and moved to Terst [Trieste] because of work. There he got married and had a son, my father. Sometime around 1905 he returned to Vienna with his family, and soon after that he and his wife were divorced. He then raised my father alone, and was very afraid for him, so he didn't let him attend gym class, which is why my father didn't know how to swim. Right up until World War II, my grandpa lived almost right in the center of Vienna, a little ways away from Beethoven Square.

In 1942 he arrived in Terezin. I remember him as an old person, lying on a bed, and they brought me over to him and said, 'This is your grandpa.' My mother used to tell me that he apparently wasn't quite right in the head anymore, because he would say to my father: 'Julio,' as my father's name was Julian, 'go down to the corner for me and get me a glass of red.' About four years ago, I was in Vienna and was looking for the street where my father lived with Grandpa. Today, probably the same as back then, there's a wine shop on the corner. Maybe that explains why Grandpa used to ask Father for a glass of red. My father liked to joke around, and so it's possible that Grandpa also liked humor, and in this way wanted to remind my father of the time of his youth in Vienna. But my mother took it that Grandpa wasn't in his right mind anymore, after all, how could someone want something like that in Terezin? My grandfather actually had a very sad life. He died in Terezin in 1942, and I was at his funeral ceremony.

Grandpa Glas had two brothers. One of them worked at the train station in Jihlava as an engineer, and in 1916, when my father went to visit him as a soldier on vacation, he met my mother. This engineer uncle of mine died before the war, then in Terezin his two grandsons, Pavel and Tomas Glas, were in the same 'Heim' ['Kinderheim,' or children's home] with me. My grandpa's other brother was probably younger. I remember him from Terezin as a relatively chipper person; he wasn't too tall, wore a mustache and limped. Before the war he'd been a lawyer, and this is why my father entered law school, so he could take over his practice. But that never happened. That brother of my grandpa's left me a leather cigar case, which I've got to this day, and when - quite rarely - I smoke a cigar, I use it.

My grandmother on my father's side was named Riesa. Her father was named von Reiss, and when he was a little boy, they moved from Hungary to the Italian part of the Austrian monarchy. In Terst he became a rich shipbuilder, but apparently when he was older he became poorer, and lived alone in a large palace with just his Italian wife. They had several children together, and one of the daughters, Bianca, my grandma's sister, married a man named Hercole Gasperini. Apparently they were a very-funny looking couple. While my [great] aunt was statuesque, portly, Hercules was, on the contrary, tiny, petite, and obediently pranced about my aunt - but apparently at home he 'terrorized' the family. When my aunt talked, she was apparently always waving her arms and yelling: 'Mama Mia!' - she was very noisy.

My mother also told me that my grandma had a little niece, who every evening and every morning, when she prayed, ended her prayer with the words: 'E viva la patria a e viva le duce' ['Long live the nation and long live the leader']. You see, this was already when Mussolini 2 was in power, so perhaps in 1932. Grandma Riesa was raised in a convent, and it's even possible that she was christened.

My father [Julian Glas] was born in Terst in 1896. Before the war broke out, this fact was very important for us. Because he was born on Italian territory, though of a no longer existing monarchy, the Americans included him in the Italian quota for moving away, and we had a certain chance to emigrate. Why we didn't succeed in emigrating, that'll come later. From the age of five, when he moved to Vienna with his parents, my father didn't speak Italian, so I think that he quickly forgot the language, but a love for Italian cuisine stayed with him throughout his entire life, especially spaghetti, which we had at home very often.

After moving to Vienna, my grandma and grandpa got divorced. Because my grandpa caught her in flagrante with a certain Mr. Hoffmann, the owner of a real estate agency, who she then married. Because Mr. Hoffmann was an Aryan, this marriage saved her life. But her son didn't survive the war, and my mother told me how Grandma collapsed when she found out that her Julio, her only child, was no longer alive.

My father attended a classical academic high school for eight years, always with straight A's. He was oriented towards the humanities and wrote poems, but didn't publish them. He sang in a choir, later in Terezin as well, and apparently played the mandolin. On the other hand, he didn't know sports at all - my grandpa was so afraid for him that he didn't allow him to attend gym class. I remember that in water my father used to do all sorts of hijinks, somersaults, but didn't know how to swim - as opposed to my mother, who was an excellent swimmer.

During World War I my father fought on the Eastern Front. He fell into captivity, from which he managed to escape, and on 28th October 1918 he arrived in Vienna - right on the day that Czechoslovakia proclaimed its independence, and the old monarchy was falling apart. Because they were counting on him to take over my uncle's law practice, he began studying law at the university in Vienna. I personally think that that type of work wasn't right for him. Because my father was too upright and honest, which is why I can't imagine him defending all sorts of scoundrels, or on the contrary sullying an honest person. One way or the other, after four semesters my father ended his studies, went into finance, and became a managing clerk at a bank. Not long after, he married my mother, so this is the right place to also say something about her and her origins.

Grandpa Carl Fischer, my mother's father, was born in 1861 in Mlada Boleslav. Grandpa's forebears lived in the ghetto there even after Joseph II 3 allowed Jews to leave the ghetto gates. This branch of our family isn't purely Jewish, because my great-grandfather came about as a result of a Jewish girl being raped by some German soldier. The girl brought a boy into the world, but after giving birth jumped into some water out of desperation and drowned. My great-grandpa was brought up by her sister.

My mother also told me that in the Fischer family it was a custom for cousins to marry. This rule was meant to keep property in the family, but it had very serious consequences in the risk of genetic damage and various illnesses. Grandpa Fischer broke with this tradition when he married Charlotta Kollek, my grandmother, who was from far-away Zdanice na Morave. The marriage was arranged by a so-called shadkhan, or matchmaker. Grandpa Fischer died when I was two, and so all I remember is once visiting, and him sitting by the radio, cutting pieces off a pear and giving them to me.

The Kollek family was relatively wealthy, my great-grandfather supposedly had a leasehold farm and a sugar refinery, and also owned a store. But during World War I he put everything into government loans, and lost his property. He may not even have lived to see the war's end. But his wife, my great-grandmother lived long enough that I also knew her as a small boy in Jihlava. When at the age of 85 she broke her arm, upon examining her, the doctor apparently proclaimed that she was as healthy as a young woman. In my reminiscences she plays the role of the 'kind great-grandma' who gave me candy, even though in reality she was said to be selfish and wouldn't give anyone anything. When in 1938 the Germans arrived in Austria 4, she lost her zest for life and soon upon that died.

Grandma Fischer I remember very well. I used to see her when we'd go to Jihlava to our summer house, and at one time as a small boy I lived with her. She never got a proper education, perhaps only for one year did she have a home tutor with her other siblings, which is why she didn't know how to read and write properly. During the occupation 5 she moved to Prague, and would often come over to visit us. Then she arrived in Terezin, where she stayed until the end. After the war she immigrated to Australia where her two daughters were, and where she died in about 1965.

My mother had three sisters and one brother. The oldest of the sisters, Berta, had two children. She did amateur theater and in 1938 had already immigrated to Australia, where she married a second time. Her sister Heda married a Brno lawyer named Felix Loria, and lived with him and her two children in Brno. Felix Loria was a drawing-room Communist, and when in 1933 Georgi Dimitrov 6 was accused of setting fire to the Reichstag 7, this uncle was supposed to defend him. But because he was a Jew, the Germans didn't let him go to Leipzig. The family immigrated to England and then to Australia, where Uncle Loria started some sort of factory. That's actually a paradox, a Communist, but despite that a factory owner. Be that as it may, his business burned down anyways. After the war he apparently sent my mother a letter of recommendation for Klement Gottwald 8, but she didn't want anything to do with Gottwald, and so burned the letter.

My mother's brother was named Emil. During World War I he lost his left arm, for which he received a medal. Actually, it helped him during the second war, because, though a Jew, he was despite that a war hero, and so in Terezin wasn't allowed to be put on a transport, and stayed there the whole time. Otherwise, with one arm he wouldn't have had any chance of survival. He had a legal education, and before the war he owned a bookshop in Jihlava, after the war he immigrated to Israel, where he died in 1972. My mother used to keep in touch with his two daughters, but I didn't.

Finally, the last, youngest sister was named Greta. For a long time she lived in Jihlava with her parents, then got married and divorced and before the war managed to immigrate to England with her son. If her son Fredy, who was born in 1928, is still alive, I have no clue. He was a tailor - cutter and apparently was a master in his field. Out of all these relatives, I only met Uncle Emil and his two daughters personally. I've never seen any of the others.

Because Grandpa worked as a chief clerk for a sawmill in Dreveny Mlyn near Jihlava, the family was definitely among the more well-off. From today's perspective it's strange, but during the time of my mother's childhood, it wasn't the custom to indulge children. Going for ice cream - that didn't exist. As a child, my mother liked sweet buns. She loved them, but never got them. Which is why when my brother and I were little, she wanted to buy them for us, but we for our part weren't interested in any sweet buns.

My mother's name was Gertruda. She was born in Jihlava in 1896. From birth she had eye problems, one eye was askew and blind, and she saw very poorly out of the other one. She was, however, very intelligent, and not only had she graduated from lyceum, just that being exceptional in a girl's case in those days, but she even absolved four semesters of chemistry at university in Vienna. She told me that during her studies, she much rather spent money on culture instead of food, and got to know and associated with many young, later well-known artists, one name that will speak for all is Josef Schildkraut [(1896-1964): Academy Award-winning Austrian stage and film actor], whom I've seen in the American film 'The Rains Came' [1939]. My mother later got tuberculosis, apparently due to wartime malnutrition.

My parents met in 1916, when my father was a soldier and visiting his uncle in Jihlava while on leave. They were married in 1920, and moved to Prague, because my father's bank opened a branch office there. My father progressed in his career, and worked his way up to the position of managing clerk. My mother was at home, and didn't work, even when she was offered a position in some chemical factory. She would have apparently earned even more than my father, which he, being an old-school type, couldn't allow. And so my mother, out of love for my father, stayed at home and became a 'kitchen- maid' - as she used to say.

Life in a sublet, where they lived in the beginning, must have been misery for her. It was somewhere in Strasnice with some widow, who managed to create unbearable conditions for my parents. At my mother she used to yell: 'Smelly Jewess from a Jewish street!', despite she herself being Jewish, and as opposed to my mother, who had a bit of that Aryan blood in her, also looking Jewish. My mother could no longer stand it there, and when she could, she used to go around to post offices and libraries so that she'd be around her as little as possible.

Once a lawyer came to visit my parents and told them that if they agreed to pay higher rent, the widow wouldn't harangue them anymore. My father refused, and proclaimed that not only would they not pay more rent, but that they'd in fact pay less rent! The case went to court, my parents won, and then paid less rent.

My pre-war childhood

My brother was born in 1924, by which time my parents already had their own apartment. He was named Hanusz, Jan. In they family they called him 'Budi' - I was actually the one that gave him that name, when to a question from our friends 'Und was macht der Bruder?' ['And what does your brother do?'] I answered 'Budi ule det,' my brother goes to school. As a small child Honza [Jan] was apparently physically very weak, but had the potential to develop intellectually, he remembered a lot of things, was curious. The doctor was supposed to have told my mother that my brother was weak because everything went towards his intelligence, and nothing towards his physical growth. That he'd learn everything quickly, but at the expense of being small and weak. Which is why he forbade her to read, sing, tell or show him anything.

I think that it was in 1928 when my mother fell ill with tuberculosis. I was born in 1931, but the doctors didn't want to let her have me. They had serious concerns about her, and argued that the child that had already been born had to be protected. My mother made the rounds of various doctors for so long until the last one told her something interesting: There exists a certain chance that thanks to giving birth she'll get well. And that's really what happened. In Terezin she then worked in the fields, spent a lot of time out in the fresh air, and when at the end of the war Dr. Provizor looked at her, he said that her lungs had once again begun to function.

Back when my mother had tuberculosis and my brother was little, we had a maid. Later, when I'd also been born, we had a nanny. She was German, a Christian, from Sumava. Actually, thanks to her I have 'Kinderstube' [Kindergarten], she was excellent with children. Her sister worked as a chambermaid for some countess, and sometimes also helped out at our place. It was comical, because being used to the countess, she also sometimes asked my mother if she would want help with her toilet. My mother would say no, that she knows how to dress herself.

After the war this young lady had the International Red Cross look for us. But my mother burned the letter, as she didn't want to have anything to do with Germans. I think that later she regretted it, they were decent people after all, who hadn't done anything to us. What later happened to them, I don't know. They were most likely displaced 9. Of the Germans we knew, none of them remained in Prague, nor in Jihlava.

Actually, after the war the only witness of times long past was Ruzena, the maid that had worked for my parents before I was born. Sometime around 1928 she got married and left. In 1965 my mother ran into her in Strasnice, and they both immediately recognized each other, though they hadn't seen each other for 40 years. My mother had aged, and so had she. Mrs. Ruzena asked how the Mister was. Well, he didn't return. She asked what little Hans was doing, my brother Honza. He was also in the concentration camp, but returned. She didn't know me, so didn't ask about me. Then she and Ruzena never saw each other again. My mother then went to Jihlava, her home town, a couple of times, but said that she didn't even recognize some old granny there. Practically all the Germans had been displaced, and the Jews hadn't returned. Nobody anywhere, nothing anywhere.

My childhood is divided into a German and a Czech period. During my early days I was raised in German, and didn't learn Czech until I started Grade 1. Then I on the other hand almost forgot German. This change, the switch to another language, was a major dividing line for me. This is why I've got the German and Czech periods sharply separated in my memory. I don't know German fairy tales, or more likely don't remember them. Once I was at a fairy tale at a German theater.

Compared to my brother, who was exceptionally talented, I was considered to be the dumber one. I guess I thought more slowly, mainly I thought differently, in a different manner. I was very sensitive, perceptive, and pondered a lot. I wasn't into just any type of humor.

For example, I used to very much look forward to my birthday. When I got some presents, I left them wrapped up, and just luxuriated in looking at them. When I for example got a nightshirt, for the next four years it was still 'das Neue' ['the new one']. I also out of principle didn't take my toys apart. I guess I was peculiar in this, too, because most children break their toys to find out what make them tick. This I never did. I wanted to have everything nice and neat, I never took anything apart, I always took care of everything. And even when I got something to eat, I didn't want to eat it, I didn't even unwrap it, it seemed a shame to me. I really was sort of peculiar. I liked the color blue, plus toys that other children would pull along behind them, I wanted to have push versions of, so that I could see them, and my mother always had a lot of work to do before she found such a toy for me. I had a scooter, then a tricycle, and then I also wanted a pedal car, but that I didn't get, because by then we weren't doing so well anymore.

My mother never wanted us to fight. It wouldn't even have occurred to me, because he was seven years older than I. A friend of my mother's from Jihlava used to come visit us regularly, and would bring us chocolate figurines with filling, Mother would divide them up equally among us, and if there was an odd one out, Mother would carefully break it in half, so that we wouldn't have any reason to feel envious. For my part, I never envied my brother; maybe he later envied me my education. He himself only graduated from junior high school, after that he wasn't allowed to attend school 10. After the war he managed to take a one-year business course, and that was it. As he emphasized at my graduation, I was the first Glas in a long time to attend university.

It's said that Honza never put up with anything. When someone did something to him, he would apparently beat him severely. He may have been small and weak, but was very agile. I, on the other hand, never fought. And my father probably never did either, but he probably wanted to make it up with me, and so he promised me from five to twenty crowns [in 1929 the Czechoslovak crown (Kc) was decreed by law to be equal to 44.58 mg of gold], if I gave someone a couple of whacks in self defense. I never got them, because it went against my grain to fight. Not in Terezin, there it was about standing your ground, but otherwise I never fought.

When I was born, in 1931, we were living in an apartment that had been built by the Solo match company. My parents knew its president, Mr. Heller. After the war I knew him as well, he returned from emigration in England. The apartment was on 6 Cechova Street, Prague 12, Vinohrady. Today it's Prague 2 - Vinohrady. We moved out in 1937. Our neighbors, the Stremchas, moved into our apartment, and apparently I used to call their little girl, who was named Jirina, Ii, because at that time I didn't know Czech yet. Recently I searched this lady out, she still lives in our apartment. So I once again got to see the room where I was born, and saw the garden where our parents apparently planted a Sparmannia. Today it's a huge tree, a witness to my happy childhood and our family life.

Some family named the Reiners had a little shop beside our building. I remember that one time Mr. Reiner had his leg in a cast, because he'd broken it when he was jumping, as was the custom up till then, onto a streetcar while it was moving. But this was already a modern motorized car with folding steps, onto which it wasn't possible to jump up anymore. Later I saw them when they arrived in Terezin with a little girl; that was five years later. Probably they never returned.

I remember one more resident of that neighborhood: on nearby Krkonosska Street lived an old, tall, bald and fat coalman. He had a little shop there, would sit on a bench in front of it, and when my mother and I would walk by him, to Rieger Gardens for example, he would always nod his head at me and say: 'Yes, yes, young man.' So I used to call him Coalman Yes. Back then I didn't yet know what that word meant in Czech.

I've got a very good memory. Always, when I experienced something peculiar, something unusual, I didn't have a problem remembering it. When I was little, I was in some doctor's office where we used to go in Podoli, under a viaduct, and where they would put bandages soaked in plaster on my feet - making me casts for shoe inserts for my flat feet. My mother was amazed how I could remember it, because I was two or three years old. Well, and I remembered it precisely because it was this peculiar experience. That building is still there, and apparently there's still some sort of doctor's office there.

One Jewish holiday we celebrated was Chanukkah. Dad would put on a hat, open the prayer book and read something from it. He knew how to read Hebrew, but whether he also understood it, that I don't know. He probably read the text aloud, but I don't know exactly. We, my brother and I, would just stare off into space, because we didn't understand it. The only thing on our minds was how much longer before we got presents.

We also observed Passover, which is like Easter. I believed in the Easter bunny and always found some presents behind the window, and so would shout, 'Thank you, bunny!' in German.

I don't remember Yom Kippur or other Jewish holidays. I can't say that we were brought up in any particularly Jewish fashion. I know some stories from the Old Testament, but we never used to go to synagogue with our parents, for example. From 1939 onwards I was a Roman Catholic, because to make emigration easier we had ourselves christened, and then we celebrated Christmas; at that time I was eight. My last Christmas in Prague was in 1942. Now, in my old age, I've got time to think, and so I think that Judaism is much more beneficial to a person than Christianity. Because Jews are still waiting for their Messiah. And it's better for people to be able to look forward to someone who has yet to come!

In 1935 our family was granted Czechoslovak citizenship, as up to then we'd been Austrians. My father was attending Czech lessons, he knew Czech spelling and grammar and also his intonation was correct, just pronunciation gave him a bit of trouble, he never learned to say the trilled R properly. My mother didn't take lessons, she learned Czech just like that, on her own, on the street. She had problems with grammar, but on the other hand had excellent pronunciation, she even knew that trilled R. Neither of my parents knew Czech culture well, they were brought up in German culture. The books we had at home were in German, just my brother had some Czech ones as well.

In about July 1937 we moved to an apartment building on Tolstého Street, which the Securitas insurance company had built as a capital investment. That was already during the times when the atmosphere was 'thickening,' and when I was supposed to start attending school that September. My parents registered me in a Czech school 'to not increase the number of people who speak German.' I attended a Czech public boys' school in Vrsovice on Kodanska Street.

Thanks to our homeroom teacher Korda, I became a Czech. Always when we were going over something, he stood beside me and translated every word into German for me. At first I didn't understand my classmates at all, and so that 'I wouldn't be afraid,' for perhaps 14 days my mother sat in the desk next to me - to this day I can see her there in my mind. At the end of Grade 1 I already knew Czech, and along with the other children, how to read and write.

Once, when I was walking home from school, my mother went to meet me and saw me crying. Because I was supposed to perform at a school concert. My teacher wanted to make me happy, but I however didn't want to be seen. So my mother arranged it in such a way that she contributed something to the poor, and I was freed of the obligation to perform.

In Grade 3 my teacher was Vaclav Mejstrik, who, as I recently found out, also taught Zdenek Sverak [Czech playwright, scriptwriter and actor, born in 1936], and became the inspiration for the character of the teacher Hnizda in the film 'Obecná skola.' He used to teach me math, and he'd hit everyone that didn't know something with a ruler. I didn't like it because I knew that corporal punishment was no longer allowed.

We didn't know too many of our new neighbors, but I was friends with Fanda Mlejnek, the superintendent's son. Fanda had several older siblings, who'd all died before he'd been born. I couldn't understand it, how could they have died as children? I also knew Fanda's younger sister, who also died. I was at her funeral, she had this little coffin, and I was thinking to myself, how can a little kid die?

When I returned from Terezin, Fanda came over one day to welcome me back. I remembered him, but that which had been before Terezin seemed to me like from a past life. Fanda was glad to see me, but I stood there and didn't know what to do, for me he was someone from a past life. My mother then reproached me for ignoring him. It also bothered me, that I had behaved like that toward him, which is why about four years ago I went to apologize to him. He, of course, didn't remember anything. But on the other hand, he remembered how my father used to teach his mother German. I also remember very well that when I was about seven, by then I already knew Czech, I helped her wash the stairs, from the attic all the way down to the cellar, and talked to her about family and about life.

The 1930s meant big economic problems 11. Compared to other people we were probably well off, we weren't in actual need, even though we definitely weren't rich. I remember that various beggars used to come by our place. Once some mother came leading her child by the hand, and the child was naked. My mother called me over, took off my pants and gave them to the beggar woman. She then went and bought me another pair of pants. My parents had a deep social conscience, but I think that perhaps that was the case with Jews in general.

In 1935, the bank where my father worked went bankrupt. My father found himself out of work. With difficulty he managed to find work as an accounting inspector for the Omnia company. Then he was often on business trips and thus away from home. From that time on, we weren't as well off as before. When I began attending school, my mother bemoaned the fact that while my brother had always gotten ham with his lunch for school, I only got bread with butter and an apple. She felt sorry for the fact that she couldn't also provide it to me. I actually didn't care one way or the other.

It's hard to say what my father was really like. I experienced him under normal conditions only when I was very small. Then the war came, and Terezin. When my father left on the transport to Terezin, I was a little over 13. I remember how once he came home from a business trip, and I then laid on his stomach and along with him repeated 'Käsbrot, Käsbrot' ['Slice of bread with cheese'].

I think that I was almost never out on a proper outing with my parents. I was either too small, or later, during the occupation, we weren't allowed into the forest and outside of Prague. But I do remember one outing very well. At that time we were still allowed into the forest, so our whole family was there. My father didn't bring any games with him, but for lunch we had two hard-boiled eggs, one with a light-colored shell and the other with a dark one. So my father took a napkin, drew a board on it like for checkers or chess, broke pieces off the eggshells for figures, and we played checkers.

One more outing has stuck in my mind, this one was just me, my father and my brother. I might have been around nine, because at the age of ten I was already not allowed into the forest, and when I was eleven I went to Terezin. On this outing I wanted to pick some dandelions or something like that for my mother. My father and brother were telling me that the flowers would wilt, for me to throw them away, why bring my mother wilted flowers. I didn't listen to them and brought them to my mother anyways. She was delighted, because she knew I'd done it of my own accord; she put them in water and the flowers revived. Suddenly she had a fresh bunch of flowers at home. It's possible that at that time Jews weren't allowed to buy them. Actually, we weren't allowed to do anything, absolutely nothing. Just drink water, breathe and eat food from a small ration 12.

Even when we were in Terezin, my father tried to devote himself to me. Every Sunday afternoon he'd pick me up from the 'Heim,' and we'd walk to the Dresden barracks to watch a soccer match. Or he'd go for a walk around Terezin with me. Terezin is tiny, and we weren't allowed outside the fortifications, so they were always walks along the same, intimately familiar places, but I used to greatly look forward to those afternoons with Father.

When we were still living in Prague, I very much liked going to the puppet theater that was run by the Methodist-Baptist church on Kodanska Street in Vrsovice, not far from us. They had large puppets and I liked it there very much. The minister always stood by the door and showed people where they should sit. I had to sit in the back, because I was big, and my mother would sit with me. These theater performances actually represented my one and only regular cultural experience, which however didn't last long, as later we were forbidden from attending theaters as well. The same went for the cinema. As a substitute, in 1940 my father made me a puppet theater with two curtains and lighting, and even wrote some plays for me. I was thrilled by it, but then when we left for Terezin, we left the puppet theater in the apartment - where it ended up I never found out.

And which of the restrictions whose goal was to make life impossible for us Jews affected me the most? Maybe for some school-age readers this may seem incredible, but the thing that had the worst impact on me was that I wasn't allowed to attend school. However - if children would have kept on playing with me, it wouldn't have been so terrible. But I ended up alone. I couldn't go out into the street, because there my former friends yelled: 'Smelly Jew!' at me, and that I didn't care for. When the guys turned their backs on me, some girls let me play with them for another few days. Suddenly they lost interest, girls are simply like that. But back then I got very upset at them, because suddenly I was completely alone.

Before the war I managed to finish only three grades of public school 13. My father did teach me something at home, but it was irregularly and he didn't have the patience for it. In Prague there was a school for Jewish children in the Old Town, but that was too far for me. Already back then we weren't allowed to ride the streetcar, and I wouldn't have managed to walk there every day. And so I sat at home and read.

My first book, at the age of eight, was 'Klapzubova jedenactka' ['Klapzub's Eleven'], I read it at least ten times, and to this day I know some passages off by heart. We didn't have a lot of Czech books at home, which is why I secretly read 'rodokaps' [Czech abbreviation for a line of pocket adventure novels (roman do kapsy), which later came to mean any cheap adventure literature]. My father pretended he didn't know about it, but my mother then told me that he'd known about it all right, but what was the poor guy supposed to do with me. I became an enthusiastic reader of the genre. When after the war a 'rodokaps' that I had read before my departure for Terezin came into my hands, three years later, actually, I realized that it was unreadable. It's strange, because I hadn't actually had any opportunities to refine my tastes.

An interesting chapter was the possibility of our emigration. We could have saved ourselves, because in the fall of 1938 my mother was in England visiting her sister, Aunt Heda, who had emigrated there with her family in the spring of that year. When she was crossing the border, a border official started a conversation with her, my mother knew English fairly well. He told her to not return home, that it would end up badly here. But she said that she had her family in Prague. So he told her to go, get her family and return to England, that we could live there. She objected, that we weren't rich and that we didn't have anything to live on. He told her that she could work in England. And really, later she realized that she had gotten a work permit in her passport. At home she showed the permit to my father, but he said: 'I'm not going to let my wife support me, that's out of the question. England and France won't abandon us.'

After the occupation, when my father realized that England and France had abandoned us after all, he himself tried to find a way out. At the American consulate he found out that thanks to his being born in Terst, the Americans had included him in the Italian quota. We could have moved out of the country immediately, but we didn't have enough money for the security deposit. If we did know someone in America, they were people that had just managed to gain a foothold there, and weren't willing to commit a large amount of money for us. Which is why my father wrote a letter to the mayor of New York, LaGuardia, originally an Italian Jew, in which he asked him to help us. LaGuardia even answered him, but wrote that he couldn't help us, for us to not be upset with him, but that it could ruin his chances in the next elections. [LaGuardia, Fiorello Henry (born Fiorello Enrico LaGuardia; (1882-1947): mayor of New York for three terms from 1934 to 1945.]

So we stayed here. As long as there was hope that we'd succeed in emigrating, so until the war broke out, we were preparing for it. My father was attending pedicurist lessons, once he even gave me a pedicure as practice. For mother, he did it several times. He bought this beautiful leather briefcase, where he had his tools and some bottles with various tinctures. The briefcase still exists, my children used it for paints, and I still use the clippers for cutting my nails. My mother attended courses at a confectioner's. At that time she was baking a lot at home, to practice.

Because of the eventual emigration, we had ourselves christened in 1939. The point wasn't for us to rid ourselves of our Jewish identity, but we were led to it by the fact that abroad they liked it more when Christians immigrated, and not Jews. We wanted to increase our chances of being accepted somewhere.

For me it represented one additional advantage: at a time when I was no longer allowed to attend school and had no duties, I joined a church group at the Church of St. Ignatz on Charles Square, and every morning I'd go there as an altar boy for the morning mass. Then the friars would give me breakfast, coffee with milk with a skin on it, I absolutely hated the skin, and a piece of dry bread. At that time we weren't that badly off yet, and though we no longer had butter, we did still have margarine, so I didn't like dry bread too much. I ate breakfast not out of hunger, but from a feeling that it wasn't polite to return it. Then, in Terezin, I remembered the skin and the dry bread, too, with misty eyes. Until they forbade us from riding in the last streetcar wagon, I had at least some duty. Then I lost that one, too - Charles Square became too distant for me.

In 1939 we moved from the apartment on Tolsteho Street a bit further on, into a building on Bulharska Street, number 17. My parents wisely chose a two-room apartment with a kitchenette. They removed the partition that was there, and so this double bachelor apartment was created. Then when the Germans were going around Prague and picking apartments for themselves, ours didn't seem attractive to them, and this is why we were able to stay in it until the transport.

Already living in that building was the family of Mr. Auerbach, my father's former colleague from the Omnia company. The Auerbachs had two sons who had left before we moved in there, on Nicholas Winton's 14 transport to England. The Auerbachs then arrived in Terezin and were also in the same wagon as my father in the transport to Auschwitz. After the war the young Auerbachs came to ask my mother whether she didn't know what had happened to their parents. She probably told them that they'd left Terezin on a transport.

Terezin

My brother's last school education was Grade 8, he wasn't allowed to school after that. I don't know how, but he then got brigade work with some farmer in eastern Bohemia. He actually could have stayed there for the whole war, because no one knew that he was a Jew. He got normal ration coupons like everyone else, he even got tobacco coupons. But when Jews had to register with the Gestapo, our parents were suddenly afraid that someone could inform on them, that they've got one more son. So they persuaded the police commissar to register my brother after the fact. My brother then registered in Prague, and then left with us for Terezin.

One evening someone rang at our door, and brought a summons to the transport. It was about a week or 14 days before our departure, because Mother then managed to hide some of our things with friends. I know that she hid a piece of family jewelry that she'd gotten from my father's father. Reputedly at the beginning of the 19th century, an ancestor of his had had it made for his daughter. It's said that since then there hadn't been another daughter. After the war we got it back, and my son and I have already agreed that when my granddaughter is grown up, she'll get it. I don't know what else Mother hid. I hid a bag of marbles, a game called 'fifteen' and a wooden 'hedgehog in a cage' brainteaser, which I got back after the war and still have to this day.

We were supposed to report to the Gestapo in Stresovice on 16th April 1942, for which we got permission to ride the streetcar. We had hand bags with us, the large ones were probably carted off by truck, as we would scarcely have been able to carry the permitted 50 kilos. I had a transport number, my parents were constantly repeating it to me, that I have to remember it, EZ 24, by brother EZ 22, my mother EZ 23 and my father EZ 21. The abbreviation meant 'traveling individually.' As I found out only after the war, my real number was ST 34. Back then about twenty other people left for Terezin with us.

My parents didn't explain much of anything to me, I knew only that we were going to Terezin, and they asked me what book I wanted to take with me. It was 'Záhada hlavolamu' ['The Mystery of the Brainteaser'] by J. Foglar.

Along with my parents, I believed that by my birthday in June I'd be back home. This faith, that by the summer, by Christmas, and again by the summer and so on it would be over, this conviction buoyed us the whole time in Terezin. Whether this was also the case in Auschwitz and further on, I don't know. We survived on faith in the future. After the war I brought this trait with me back from Terezin, I need to constantly be looking forward to something, perhaps I was born with this trait. I always say that the only thing I don't look forward to is the dentist.

At the Gestapo, a Gestapo officer stole our jewels and a watch from us while checking the list. Then we got lunch and in the afternoon, a jail paddy-wagon, a so-called 'Green Anton,' drove us to Hybernské, today Masaryk Station, and then we left on a normal passenger train under the watch of several civilians - probably from the Gestapo - to Bohusovice. At that time there wasn't yet a spur line from Bohusovice to Terezin, and so we then walked to Terezin, the luggage and old people were probably carted there on trucks.

In Terezin I was actually better off than in Prague, because there I had friends. Even though I was of course hungry, was afraid of the transports, and experienced and saw various bad and very sad things, but nothing actually happened to me; I returned. I like living, that I learned in Terezin. I'm glad to be in this world. That's probably the most valuable thing I brought back with me from Terezin. Once I told my friend from Terezin, Petr Seidemann: 'Terezin was a good school of life.' And he said: 'It was, but a little too dangerous.' He's right. Terezin gave me the fact that I'm able to value life - and that's priceless. The fact that I think about Terezin like this, and that I think about it at all, is I guess given by my tendency for 'eytsenizing' [from the Yiddish eytsn, to advise]. In Terezin, they called me Eytsener, or in Jewish Wiseguy. It's only now, in retirement, when I go to Terezin for seminars and so on, do I have time to think about things again and again.

At first we lived in the shloiska in the Magdeburg barracks, then I was with my brother and father in the Sudeten barracks, and I arrived, the same as my mother, in the Hamburg barracks. Our entire family used to regularly meet at my mother's place in the Hamburg barracks. Then everyone was moved out of the barracks, and she lived in some house, perhaps on Crete. She worked in agriculture, which had several advantages. For one, her tuberculosis improved. Being out in the fresh air was very beneficial to her, and her lungs began to function again. Then it was also good that she could eat some vegetables in the field from time to time, and so help herself and us. It wasn't all the time, not everything could be eaten raw, but for example when it was tomato season, Mother ate her fill of tomatoes and then left her ration for us. By the way, after the war she never ate another tomato.

What was probably the most important, people working in agriculture were protected, they didn't have to go into the transports. Up to the age of sixteen their children were protected too. Which is why I also stayed in Terezin until the end.

My brother became a coachman, so he lived with the other coachmen, at first in a barn across from the stables, and then in this little room in a nearby house. Our family then would meet night after night there at his place. To this day, my nephew has a cabinet that he had there, in his washroom.

"Heim 236"

In the Hamburg barracks we lived in 'Heim 236,' which was on the second floor. Here I spent a long part of my stay in Terezin, which is why I'll describe it more closely for you. At the end of the same hallway as ours was also 'Heim 233,' where the younger boys lived, around six or seven years old. That's also where Aki Hermann came to us from, his father was a Hebrew teacher. Aki Hermann survived, after the war he was in a convalescence home and then left for America, I think. This 'Heim' was the first room, so on the facade you can see two windows.

Across from 'Heim 233' was a toilet, but it was always 'flooded,' so we preferred to use the toilets quite far away, in the center of the barracks. That it was far from us is something I found out for myself, when at night I had to go No. 2; I had to absolve that long trip, and when I returned and had barely put my leg up on my bunk I had to go again, so I began running, but didn't get there in time and had it in my pants. How the smaller boys managed to make it, I don't know. The practically permanent stress that a small child in Terezin had to endure led to the fact that I peed myself every night. I was terribly ashamed of it, an eleven, twelve-year-old boy!

Then there were four windows of the hall where mothers with little children lived, about four or five years old. Then there was our 'Kinderheim 236.' It was one room that had a door on one of the shorter sides and across from it two windows.

In the beginning, in 'Heim 236,' we slept on mattresses on the floor. Small children on one, older ones on two. The women that minded us slept with us, behind a partition of blankets. One day a minder came up to me and asked me whether I wouldn't give up one mattress, because additional children had arrived and there weren't enough mattresses, that after all I was big now. I was eleven, and for my age was quite big, so I gave up the mattress. After that sleeping wasn't very comfortable, because the mattress ended where my back ended, and so the edge of the mattress pressed into my back. Some time later, the minder came again, that more children had arrived and that there weren't any mattresses for them, whether I wouldn't give up the other mattress, too, since I was after all a big boy now. So then I slept just on a blanket on the ground.

One night I'm sleeping like this, and suddenly was wakened by someone tugging on my arm. I looked about in the nighttime shadows, and saw that the boy lying next to me was pointing at something. And there I saw a smaller boy, how, apparently in his sleep, he'd kneeled, pulled down his pajamas or sweatpants and was peeing behind the head of the boy lying next to him. Then he pulled his pants up again, laid down and slept contentedly on. At that moment I had the feeling that I'd just grown up.

Between the windows there were these small, square cabinets for the most essential things, like things for washing, a food dish with cutlery and so on. I don't even know anymore if everyone had his own cabinet. Our clothes were somewhere else, today I don't even know where. In front of the cabinets there was a little bit of space left, where there were four tables pushed together and chairs and a blackboard, and that's where we studied.

Then, when we didn't all fit on mattresses on the floor anymore, they put two-story bunk beds with ladders along both longer sides of our 'Heim,' but I managed to climb up on my bed without using the ladder. On the left side of the windows, the bunks began with Jindra Brössler's bed. He used to quite often sit there and stare into space, and we'd then cluster around him and plead with him: 'Brézl, move your stomach,' and he'd puff up his stomach in an amazing fashion. Brézl then disappeared from the 'Heim.'

Sometime around 1958, a young man began coming to the newsroom of the Prague Central TV Studio as a part-time cameraman, and his face reminded me of Jindra Brössler, whom I'd however last seen fifteen years earlier. For a long time I didn't dare approach him, until finally I got up the nerve and asked him whether he hadn't by chance been in Terezin during the war. He said yes. And in 'Heim 236?' That, too. So I asked him: 'How is it that you're alive, I thought that when you weren't with us in the convalescence home, that you'd gone on a transport to Auschwitz, and I thought you were long dead.' It came out that he'd left the 'Heim' for his mother's room because he'd been sick, and at the beginning of 1945 left on a transport to Switzerland in exchange for senior SS officers. He didn't remember his stay in the 'Heim,' his nickname Brézl nor being able to puff up his stomach. But he told me that their stay in Switzerland hadn't been any special treat; not long ago I found out that the Swiss had been expecting important, prominent Jews, and then just ordinary Jews arrived.

Jindra became a TV cameraman in Brno, and in 1968 emigrated to West Germany, and up until recently was working as head cameraman for the ZDF news department. He occasionally comes to Prague, and so I can always again remind myself of my amazement when I experienced his resurrection.

On the other side by the window, up above, were the beds of two brothers, Ivan and Petr Hochberg. They left and didn't return. Their father returned after the war, remarried and had another son. When the Jewish Museum held a drive, for people to bring in photos of their friends and relatives, his wife brought in an album where those boys were with their mother, and left without saying anything. That's why nothing else is known about them.

Below them was Harry Knöpfelmacher's bed, who we used to call Knoflicek ['Little Button']. He was about three years younger than I, so he might have been eight. He had a round face with freckles, and curly hair, the same as his mother. Knoflicek slept under a flowered duvet. Every morning his mother used to come to wake him up, and we used to shout at him: 'Knoflicek, wake up, your mommy's here!'

Up above, beside the Hochberger brothers, was Jirka [Jiri] Oppenheimer's bed; instead of 'r' he use to say 'f.' Jifi! A little further on were the beds of my distant cousins Pavel and Tomas Glas, who stayed in Terezin up until the end, after the war they might have emigrated to Israel, but I've never heard of them again. Up above was also my spot, and at the end of that row was the bed of Tomy Katz, the son of the head of our 'Heim,' Mrs. Katz.

At first I'd been sleeping in the opposite row of bunks, but then I moved. Because beside me was Wolfgang Sorauer, who was apparently in the throes of puberty, and was constantly rolling over onto me, which I, of course, didn't like, and so complained to my mother. My mother realized what was up, talked to Mrs. Katz, who transferred me over to the other side. Wolfi was one of the few boys that returned, but after returning from the convalescence home I never heard of him again.

In the 'Heim' we were tormented by fleas and bedbugs. Bedbugs may have been bigger and so drank more blood, and when you squashed them they stank, but they were easier to catch, because they just crawled, while fleas jumped. We learned to find, catch and reliably kill fleas - you gripped them between your nails and tore them in half - otherwise there was the danger of them jumping away and continuing to bite. And so a regular part of our everyday schedule, like morning hygiene - with ear inspections, whether they're not dirty - breakfast and so on, was the compulsory catching of fleas at 7:20am. One boy once caught a record 28 fleas!

Then when bedbugs multiplied excessively, they moved us out, sealed all the cracks and filled the room with gas. When the gassing ended, and the 'Heim' aired out, we went inside again and I went to my bed and without thinking stuck my hand between the edge board and the mattress, and scooped up a handful of dried-up bedbugs. I don't even dare guess how many of them they had to sweep out of the whole 'Heim.'

Teaching was forbidden in Terezin, but children studied in secret. As far as I know, no one learned to read and write there. He who arrived illiterate, and returned at all, then again illiterate. For one, the collective of children changed a lot, then there were no teaching aids, and there weren't enough experienced teachers.

In the Hamburg barracks, we were taught by Dr. Ebersohn. At first we addressed him as Mr. Ebersohn, but Mrs. Katzová, the 'Heim' leader, told us once that we should address him as Mr. Doctor, because he had studied, after all. That was a new bit of information for me: people study not so that they'd know something, but to have a title. I have him to thank for learning to write numerals. That's something I hadn't known from public school up to then. He also showed us a map of the Mediterranean Sea, which was a novelty for me. I had known that the Mediterranean Sea existed, but I'd never held an atlas in my hands; in Grade 3 I had no reason to look at maps.

In the Hamburg barracks we, the children, had a library from our own resources - the way it worked was each one of us made his books available, and in exchange he could borrow the books of others. I don't remember anymore where it was, nor how exactly it was organized. Its opening hours are written in an issue of our magazine. But then everything fell apart when the young man who served as librarian left on a transport. We then took the books back. However, I'd contributed 'Záhada hlavolamu,' and then ended up with some piece of trash.

After being moved to L 417, I was put into 'sekunda' [second of eight years of high school. Equivalent to Grade 7], but was missing Grades 4 to 6. So when our teacher Irena Seidlerová, for example, teaching us what specific weight was, today it's specific gravity, I didn't understand what, for me, was such an abstract notion. For me, everything in Terezin was concrete, even though I probably didn't know either of those words back then.

In the afternoon we were off, and when it wasn't raining, we used to play on the barracks grounds and later soccer up on the fortifications. Sometimes there were organized games up on the fortifications, then we'd play for example dodge-ball, sometimes even with the girls. When the weather was bad and we couldn't go out, we'd play button soccer in the 'Heim,' with a team of 11 buttons we even had a league. Everyone played with everyone. The guys scrounged up an ordinary piece of board somewhere, and we marked the goalposts with nails. One guy even had a watch, so we could time it, two times 20 minutes. We set up the buttons on the board like soccer players. We cut large ladies' buttons in half, those were goalkeepers, who you were allowed to put in the way of a shot, but not to then hold them. Some player would then be moved by flicking, and then was left lying where he ended up. The ball was a button from a fly, back then zippers weren't used yet. When the button was laid down on its flat side, it slid along, on the curved one while being shot by a winger - that was a button filed down on one side - the ball was centered into the space in front of the net.

During the day, in the aisle between the bunks in 'Heim 236,' one of our caretakers, Hanka Sachslová, took care of the children that didn't know how to read and write yet, so she would tell or read something to them, or sang songs with them. But they couldn't be too loud, so that they wouldn't interfere with our studies. During the evening, there were various amusements. Sometimes Hanka's sister Eva read 'Huckleberry Finn' to us, or we'd put on various skits.

Once Mr. Katz, Tomy's dad, rehearsed scenes from R. Kipling's 'Jungle Book' with several boys - it was a quite an 'epic' performance, with a curtain, hanging from a broom laid across both rows of bunks, lighting, makeup and 'costumes.' The performance began quite ingloriously, during the opening of the curtain it fell down along with the broom, but then everything continued successfully and for most of the boys it was most likely the first 'real' theater performance that they'd seen. In the end, for me, too.

I saw Mr. Katz once after the war on Jecná Street in Prague, but I didn't muster the courage to say anything to him, because I knew that neither his wife nor his son had returned. What's more, he was with some woman I didn't know, so I was embarrassed to dredge up old memories.

Mostly, however, those of us that knew how to read, read something exciting, and then improvised it for the other boys, without rehearsals, decorations or costumes, with just the most basic of props. The younger boys were grateful to us, because what else did they have to do in the evening? It was too late to be allowed out, and they didn't know how to read.

Once we 'staged' like this a story about a town where fires were starting under mysterious circumstances. There was this one detective there, who calculated that the fires were originating from one place. He then set out for that place, and found a man polishing a lens in a tower. With it he was concentrating the sun's rays on buildings insured by an insurance company that he was taking revenge on for some wrong they had once done him. The lens was represented by a tin sink.

Once we even 'put on' Don Quixote according to a children's version of the book. I don't remember the performance much, just that I was the innkeeper who knighted Don Quixote. In the book, the innkeeper read grain prices as the knighting ritual, and because I didn't know how in the time of M. Cervantes they weighed and paid for grain, I sang: 'Four kilos of oats for four crowns fifty.' Well, the other guys didn't know it either, which is why they didn't mind.

We had other caretakers in 'Heim 236,' but basically most of all we liked Hanka Sachslová, mainly the younger boys, because she paid the most attention to them. When a few years ago, we met up in Terezin during some event, Hanka's husband was there, too, and Hanka was introducing me to friends of hers as her ward. Everyone was laughing, because I'm an old man now, so some ward, but in Terezin that age difference really meant a lot. In 1943 I was 12, and she was 17; for me she was an adult woman and I was a little kid.

Hanka didn't remember me, but then she remembered me in connection with one embarrassing matter. This was in 1943, when she was still with us and we were preparing for Mother's Day. So I wanted to express to her something akin to recognition that she was taking care of us like a mother. But it had to be something I could manage to make on my own, without anyone's help, preferably out of paper. And so out of a piece of paper I cut out two headpieces of a cradle, and between them glued paper folded like an accordion, so it was this crib that you could unfold and rock. I gave it to her, and she blushed horribly and ran away. I couldn't understand why. It wasn't until we met years ago that she revealed to me why: she thought it was a reference to the fact that in Terezin she was going out with one young man. But back then that didn't occur to me at all.

Hanka also remembered my distant cousin Pavlík Kraus, who was with her in the transport to Auschwitz, but never returned. His mother and mine were cousins, and of that entire family, I think only Pavlík's brother Harry returned.

Hanka's younger sister Eva sometimes used to come read to us in the evening, when her sister was off. She'd sit on a chair in the aisle between the bunks, 35 boys around her. So it's no wonder that she didn't remember me when I met up with her after the war. Neither did she remember that she used to read Huckleberry Finn to us, but she did know that it was her favorite book. The Sachsl sisters left with their mother, they'd already lost their father before the war, in December 1943 on a transport to Auschwitz-Birkenau. They then went to work in the Christianstadt camp [subsidiary camp Gross-Rosen, in Polish Rogoznica], and from there they went on a death march in the winter of 1945 to Cheb, they then ended up in Bergen-Belsen 15, where they caught typhoid fever, had high fevers, hallucinated and almost didn't make it.

Of all the caretakers, we most obeyed Marta Kacjevová, who was about 18 back then. She looked like an older boy, slim, with curly hair, and she said that once she'd been shaved bald. We worshipped her, despite the fact that when someone didn't listen, a cuff to the head would come flying in his direction right away, no questions asked. Marta left in the fall of 1943 and didn't return...

I also remember our caretaker Milena Pirnerová, perhaps a relative of the painter Maxmilian Pirner. There's one peculiar scene connected with her. Back then, water was carried to 'Heim 236' in two pails. Most often Milena Pirnerová used to send me and my friend Jirka Silberstein for water, and this by calling out: 'Silberstein and Glas for water!' And so back then it occurred to me that Jirka and I could play a scene on this theme. It took place there, where those pails really stood, by the door, and Milena would play along with us. The scene began with her usual calling out: 'Silberstein and Glas for water!' Jirka and I would at first explain to her that we're not that strong to be always going for water, and would try to convince her that someone else should also go with the pails, and then we'd just mouth off. Despite the fact that I'd never been to the theater before, I had some 'drama experience' as a reader of books, and so the scene ended as it began, that is, with Milena calling out: 'Silberstein and Glas for water!' Neither Jirka nor Milena returned.

Another time, in the infirmary, I experienced a heart-rending scene. A small, five-year-old girl was there with us, who her granny used to come visit. She was a real granny, because she had a kerchief on her head and the little girl used to call her Onubaba. One time her granny came to see her and was weeping terribly, she covered the little girl in kisses from head to toe and back again, the girl was laughing and kept calling out Onubaba, Onubaba. They then had to lead the granny off, and we later found out that her grandma was in the transport and had come to say goodbye to her granddaughter, because she suspected that she'd never see her again.

Sometimes Sister Ilse would be on duty, who would play the guitar for us and sing in German. Otherwise I just remembered that she had long hair coiled in a bun. I recalled her when I was in Germany several years ago for forums about Terezin, and one man brought me a brochure about her with her portrait drawn in pen.

Then I was in Terezin at a concert of one female Norwegian Jewish singer, who was singing her songs. Finally, at the Czech exhibition in Auschwitz, I found a remembrance of her with her portrait. She was named Ilse Weber, and was a Sudeten German 16 Jew, a poet, who left on a transport to Auschwitz, and along with her child, went into the gas. Her son might still be alive.

In Terezin we also studied Ivrit, which is modern Hebrew, and also the Hebrew alphabet, but not systematically. We did group exercises using Hebrew commands, but those then evaporated from my head. We practiced the Hatikvah 17, the Jewish hymn, and I also remember the song 'My Homeland is Palestine.' I knew that I was of Jewish origin, I was, after all, imprisoned in Terezin because of it, but from the time I know Czech, I feel myself to be a Czech, and ever since then the Czech lands have always been my native land.

When after the war I then married my wife, who wasn't Jewish, for a long time I had this strange notion that my Jewish ancestors were looking at me accusingly, that I'd betrayed them. In the end I came to terms with it in some fashion, and I say that I'm a Czech Jew, a European, and that in Terezin I learned to be proud of being a human being. I also say that here in Central Europe it's nonsense to talk about any sort of racial purity, after all, nations traveled back and forth, so races and nations mixed together.

When I go to talk with students, I say that everyone is born as a human being, but if he'll really be one, that that's not something that his mommy and daddy can arrange, that's something that depends only on him. And right away I add that I don't know how to define 'human being,' except perhaps anthropologically. It's especially difficult in recent times, when you can't even preclude the existence of child criminals and even [child] murderers and soldiers. Because of my experiences in Terezin, I'm very hung up on protecting children. So it's then horrible when children do each other harm.

Terezin cured me of much foolishness. In Terezin we sometimes had sweet cream-filled buns for lunch. Leavened buns, from flour, water, yeast and powdered eggs. It was neither paper nor wood, so it was edible. They were served with a cream made from fine flour mixed into melta [a coffee substitute made from chicory and rye], a bit of sugar and a bit of margarine. It was cold, it had lumps inside, but it was sweet, so it was good.

I tenaciously wished to once be able to eat a proper portion of it. I looked forward to being able to eat it once the war would be over. After the war, I, of course, didn't even think of such buns, but back then my mother arranged for me to get three or four portions of it, she exchanged it for tomatoes. How I was looking forward to having it! I ate the first portion, and was delighted. Then the second portion, by then I already knew what it tasted like. Then I had the third portion, by then I wasn't that thrilled by it, and by the fourth I was sick of it, because I'd had too much. Plus I realized that it wasn't worth it, because it really wasn't that good. This experience was priceless. Since that time, I've never wished for something I can't have, and before I wanted something, I thoroughly thought it over, whether it's worth it.

In this sense, Terezin was useful in many ways. I learned many things, which were painful, but not all that terribly so. For example: Terezin also had a Scout 18 movement, secret of course. That was in the first half of 1944, when I was no longer living in the 'Heim,' but in the 'school' in L 417. The guys elected an advisor from amongst themselves, who was supposed to lead the others. But then some kid appeared who began agitating against the current advisor. He ran off at the mouth for so long, that I'd be better and so on, until the guys recalled the previous advisor and I became the leader.

I was leader for some time, but then that guy started talking again, that I was doing it wrong. And so the guys recalled me and elected him. What people won't do to get a certain position. I'd figured it out, plus I soon moved out of that home anyways. It was a good education. Without great pain I found out how things went in life, and also that I wasn't any sort of manager. Neither did I seek out management positions later in life, and I was glad that no one forced me into them.

I learned all sorts of things in Terezin. That food is sacred is something I learned in Terezin. That loving someone is sacred. That you shouldn't cause anyone pain. Even unwittingly, that's the saddest thing, when you don't want to, and you cause someone pain. In Terezin, and then after the war, my mother explained to me that not just anyone could offend me, only a person of my own standing. To which I've added, why should a person of my standing want to offend me, unless by mistake, but that doesn't count.

In 'Heim 236' I met Petr Seidemann, and we then became friends 'for life and in death' as they write in boys' books. He was the same age as I, was from Prague, was an only child, and as opposed to me, was a Czech Jew with Czech as his mother tongue. I knew both his parents, mainly his Mom. After the war, they both moved to Venezuela. We still write each other, I went to [South] America to visit him, and he on the other hand sometimes comes to Prague.

In Terezin we published a magazine together, which we called 'Domov' ['Home']. To this day, we still don't understand how with such scant knowledge we could have published a magazine at all, and made it look like it did. We were very inspired by 'Mlady Hlasatel,' where a comics serial about the 'Rychlé Sípy' [Fast Arrows] boys' club was published. Back then we didn't know other Terezin children's magazines from various 'Heims,' and neither did we know that they existed. None of the adults interfered with the magazine, just once someone arranged a meeting for us with a former writer for Prager Tagblatt 19, who gave us a few pieces of advice. We took work on the magazine very seriously, we imagined that we were addressing our readers. That a large part of our readers didn't actually know how to read is something we somehow didn't realize.

Because I understood German, I could read German books and watch German plays. I for example read the book 'Baumwolle' ['Cotton'] by Anton Zischka, an educational book, actually the first of that kind that I'd read, and which greatly captivated me. Of the plays, I for example remember the dramatization of Erich Kästner's book 'Emil and the Detectives,' which I'd read in the Czech translation still back in Prague. The play was put on by a group of German Jewish children, it had singing, and for example Emil sang: 'Ich bin Emil aus Neustadt, Emil aus Neustadt, Emil aus Neustadt, bestohlen war ich von diesem Kerl, von diesem Kerl, von diesem Kerl.' It was only after the war that I found out that it was a melody from the operetta 'Beautiful Helena' by J. Offenbach. I'm King Menelaus, King Menelaus, King Menelaus...

Another German theater performance that captivated me was one where Mrs. Zobelová, a colleague of my father's in Terezin, played a clown. She'd apparently made herself a clown costume and played very convincingly, probably also because she was hunchbacked and so looked like a dwarf. When my father was leaving Terezin, it was Mrs. Zobelová that he asked to help us if we needed something. As far as I remember, she kept her promise. She was from a mixed marriage, had a daughter in Germany and apparently returned to her after the war.

A big help for prisoners in Terezin were food parcels sent by their friends or relatives. We also used to get some, our neighbor from where we last lived, on Bulhlarská Street, used to send them. But probably only in the beginning, at least I don't remember it later anymore. It was harder and harder to send someone something. Quantities were limited, you had to send the person in question a correspondence stamp from the ghetto. The package had to contain something that would keep, there was no point in sending bread or margarine. They'd send sugar, barley, grits, there was no rice, and dried milk was impossible to find. You also didn't know if they didn't check the parcels. Our neighbor didn't have a lot of money, and getting food coupons was a problem. It really wasn't that easy to send someone something.

At one time in Terezin, there was a disease called encephalitis. Not the one from ticks, but some epidemic where apparently one of the symptoms was that a person saw double. Father had it, too. We boys from 'Heim 236' wished very much that the lady that was by the window where they handed out food and kept an eye on the food cards, would also have encephalitis and would thus see two stubs instead of one, and so would yell 'Zweimal!' into the window, and we'd thus get two portions. But she never got it. Children in Terezin were still children, and our ideas were still childlike.

In January 1944 they moved us to 'Heim No. 2' in the school at L 417. This was a building with several 'Heims,' ours had the youngest boys. We had different caretakers, and there was also a different schedule. I remember only one of the caretakers, Irena Seidlerova. She was strict with us. During one reunion of former Terezin children several years ago, she proclaimed that in 'Heim 236' in the Hamburg barracks they'd spoiled us, that they even used to bring us food, but that wasn't true, we used to go for food ourselves, to the barracks kitchen in the middle tract.

My friend Benno Pulgram

Connected to Irena Seidlerová is a peculiar story regarding my friend Benno Pulgram. About eight years ago, my wife, who works at the Old New Synagogue, came home and told me that that day a Czech-speaking man had been making the rounds at the Jewish community, asking about children from the Hamburg barracks. My wife told him my name, but he didn't recognize it, but he gave her his business card. When on it I read Vaclav A. Simecek, Toronto, it didn't mean anything to me, just that it isn't after all a Jewish name. But then I looked at the next line down, and there, written by hand, was BENNO PULGRAM. Right away I jumped up, that was a friend of mine from 'Heim 236,' who I thought was long since dead, because after the war he hadn't been in the convalescence home.

I remembered him well, because when he came to our 'Heim' in the fall of 1943, we older ones looked him over, and it seemed to us that for a half -gram [the Czech word for half is 'pul'], Pulgram, he seemed quite large, and so we began calling him Celygram [Wholegram]. And that he seemed kind of weird to us, because he was in Terezin all by himself.

So I sent him a letter to Canada, with the salutation Hi Benno Wholegram! Then in the spring he came to Prague, I went to meet him at the main train station, and carried a sign saying BENNO PULGRAM in my hand. Suddenly I saw a smaller man coming towards me and waving, still with slicked-down hair as I remembered him from that time more than 50 years ago, even through the hair was a bit thinner.

As Benno told me, he had been from Brno, from a mixed marriage, and he had been in Terezin with his little sister, who died after the war. His father was a Jew, and had come to Terezin sometime earlier. The children, with a stopover in Prague, came somewhat later, so their father was no longer in Terezin when they arrived. Benno came to our 'Heim' when we were still in the Hamburg barracks, and then together we were moved to the school.

Benno and his sister were scheduled for the last transport to leave Terezin, my father was on it, too. Now Irena Seidlerová arrives on the scene: Both of the children were already standing in the courtyard of the Hamburg barracks, and were checked off for boarding the transport, with a sign hanging from their necks, even though as half-breeds they weren't supposed to be in the transport. At that moment along came Irena, took them by the hand and led them away. She locked them up in some janitor's closet with rags, pails and brooms; for a while Benno and his sister listened to the commotion out in the courtyard and then fell asleep. The next morning they woke up, and the courtyard was empty.

Irena most likely then arranged for them to get into some building on the edge of Terezin, where upstairs there were girls and downstairs boys. They couldn't go back to school, because it was assumed that they'd departed. They stayed in hiding like this until the end of the war.

Their mother had absolutely no news of them. As soon as the war ended, she and her partner, Mr. Simecek, took a car, put a bed sheet with a red cross on it, and drove to Terezin. Terezin was under quarantine at the time, but apparently the impression that they were from the Red Cross helped them get inside. Benno doesn't know how, but their mother managed to find them, undressed them, put them on the floor of the car so that they wouldn't be found out at the checkpoints, and drove them back to Brno.

Living together with my family at Terezin

In May 1944 our entire family moved into one room together. My father was a staff member, and so as patronage got one room for the family in a building that is no longer standing. Today most buildings in Terezin have two or three stories, but this one had only a ground floor. It was located in a side street that was perpendicular to Langestrasse, abutted to the stables, and its gates were designated L 409. Behind the gates there were actually two houses, but there was only one common designation. You went inside from the courtyard, where there was a so-called block kitchen and a mess window. This kitchen and window served people who lived scattered about outside the barracks, otherwise the barracks had their own mess halls inside. I remember how in the courtyard there'd always be people standing in line, and they would eat the food they got right there on the spot. Or they'd take it home to prepare it somehow, because in the courtyard there were no benches or even chairs that you could sit on.

From the courtyard you went in through a hallway, at whose end was the door of our room. The room had two windows facing the street, and was divided in two by a wooden partition, ending about a half meter from the ceiling. My brother and I had beds in the smaller part, and in the larger was my mother's and father's bed, a kitchen table with a marble top, and a stove which could be used to heat food.

Today our building is no longer standing, after the war it was one of the few that was demolished. When I lead tours through Terezin, I go to at least show people where it stood. I at least have a key from its door, which is no longer, and its lock, which is no longer, which I always carry on me.

And one more thing often reminds me of it. After the war, my mother took the marble slab that was on the table to Prague. At first she had it on the table in the kitchen, then she put it out on the balcony, and finally I had a plaque for a gravestone made out of it; the names of my mother and brother are on it, and I also had them add my father, even though he's not buried there, and has no grave, and his ashes are just scattered somewhere. Now the name of my sister-in-law, recently deceased, is going to be added to it, too, and in time my wife and I as well.

My parents argued terribly in Terezin - about food. We all lost weight in Terezin, but my mother used to say that especially Father had. His clothes were hanging off him, and so she tried to give him more food. Which is why he was always angry. He said that it was out of the question. My mother worked hard in the garden, while my father didn't work manually, he sat in an office, and for that reason, too, it was unacceptable for him to eat Mother's portion. But my mother put one over him. When she was putting food on the plates, she gave herself more and him less. Father was already automatically switching the plates, because he thought that Mother was, as always, putting more food on his plate. By switching them, he actually ended up with more food. When we then remained alone in Terezin, my mother told me that Father had never found out the truth.

Once my brother came home with a few grits in his pocket, because he'd been transporting a sack that had been torn. Maybe he helped it along a tad. The grits spilled out, and Mother crawled around on the floor and gathered up each individual grit. Food was truly precious. When my brother used to come home after work, my mother would regularly say to him: 'Honza dear, don't go anywhere, lie down so you don't get hungry!' That's because he'd often pick up a heel of bread - of course for him, anything less than half a loaf was the heel - heft it in his hand, and ask: 'Mom, can I eat this heel?' Well, and that would for example be his ration for half the week.

The Terezin Council of Elders is sometimes criticized for not putting up resistance upon finding out what was happening in the East. That they continued to dispatch transports, that they didn't rebel, didn't resist the Germans. But I can put myself in their shoes, I'm able to imagine their fear for their lives. They lost them anyways, yes. But how could have they known that in advance? That's something you know after the fact. I'm sure that up to the end, they said, believed, hoped, that if they won't be an irritation, they'll survive.

In my opinion, the possibility of some uprising was completely illusory. It would have been heroic, but in that situation, when Jews didn't have weapons at their disposal, but on the contrary, at their backs had Germans from the Sudetenland, from Litomerice... I also heard my former colleague, a Jew, who's of the opinion that Jews shouldn't have boarded the transports at all, because the Germans didn't have that many soldiers and policemen to catch them all. And it didn't at all occur to him where they would have lived? If they would've returned to their original homes, in a while they would've rounded them up again. Pitch a tent somewhere? In the countryside? In a forest? Plus what would have those people lived on, where would they have gotten money from? Where would they get food coupons from? Every month they issued different ones. And identification, this was checked often. Or clothes. Let's say that an adult person could take his own clothing with him. But for a child that's constantly growing.

But also you had to count on the fact that Czechs inform on people. Alas. Not all of them, there were also those that hid Jews and rebels, but there weren't enough of those. Would it be possible to hide 170,000 Jews like this? When the Germans caught someone who was for example in the resistance or was hiding some partisan, did they execute him?

Of course, we witnessed the so-called 'beautifications' of Terezin. I remember that there were tents containing war production in the Terezin town square, which was for the greater part of my stay there. When Terezin was being beautified, they removed the tents, the fence, too, and put in a lawn and planted flowers. I also remember there being a café in Terezin, where you could get melta, and where some sketches, cabarets, took place.

In the corner of the square was a music pavilion, which interested me the most. Two bands used to play in it, one of them played swing. Up till then I didn't know swing, we weren't allowed to have a radio, and the second one played symphonic music. That was more familiar to me, that I knew from earlier. The local orchestra was roughly the size of a chamber orchestra, and played all sorts of things. I really liked the drummer, who not only played on the tympani and beat a small and big drum, but also had a harmonica and a triangle and some sort of gong and chimes... He was constantly playing something, and I liked that a lot, just like the music itself.

They would, for example, play the 'Ghetto March.' Later, after the war, I found out that it had actually been Julius Fucíks's 'Florentine March.' Why they renamed it the 'Ghetto March' I don't know, but perhaps they didn't want the name of Julius Fucík to be heard. [Fucík, Julius (1903 - 1943): a Czech writer, journalist, politician, literary and theater critic and translator. Executed by the Nazis in 1943.] Because that was not only the name of the Terezin bandleader, but also of a Communist journalist, his nephew.

My father and brother were members of the Terezin mixed choir. My father had already been singing in a choir before the war, and now he continued in it. They met about twice a week. I used to like going to their performances, I saw 'The Bartered Bride' about three times, and 'The Kiss' perhaps even five times. In 'The Bartered Bride' I really liked the comedians with the trumpet and drum. They also put on Verdi's 'Requiem,' and I admired Rafael Schächter, who, when he was playing the piano and didn't have his hands free, conducted with his head. I'd never seen anything like it before - actually, I'd never seen any sort of concert before, all I probably knew were the organ and choir from church.

Culture was a significant part of life in Terezin. That was precisely what distinguished life in Terezin from other concentration camps: people tried, in quotation marks, to continue in their prior lives. Family life may have been seriously disturbed, because families mostly didn't live together, but despite that, they tried to get together as much as possible. Especially culture was for us a reminder of times when we'd still lived a normal life.

Another manifestation of the desire for a normal life were visits. I know that my parents often met with the Auerbachs, who they knew from before the war. Mr. Auerbach also worked on staff, he and his wife had gone on the same transport as my father. Because food was scarce and there wasn't anything to offer guests, everyone always brought something along with him. The desire to lead a normal life in Terezin was admirable. There, it was still possible. People were still trying to remain human.

My brother was going out with one girl in Terezin, and the story of their relationship is a very sad one. I think her name was Lixi, her last name I don't know. She was a bit younger than my brother, and had a hump. She had beautiful long hair, was very kind and her parents even arranged a wedding for them. It, of course, wasn't officially valid, weddings from Terezin weren't officially recognized. Lixi then left on a transport. I think that as a hunchback, she immediately went into the gas. Whether my brother told his future wife about that, that I don't know.

In Terezin we tried to celebrate holidays. We celebrated birthdays, but there wasn't too much gift-giving, there wasn't anything to give. So I for example made gifts. Once I gave my mother, probably for Christmas, a New Year's card. On it was Libuse's prophecy with a picture of the Prague Castle. I didn't have any example to work from, I remembered the panorama only vaguely, and so I drew some towers against the sky. And underneath: 'Behold, I see a great city, whose fame will touch the stars.' My mother likely didn't even know it, because she'd never studied Czech history, but I don't think it mattered. The main thing was that she had something from me. I'm also delighted when my granddaughter draws something for me. That's the thing that's nice about it, when a person feels that no one gave a child advice, that it expressed itself on its own.

As far as religious holidays go, Chanukkah is a family holiday, but how could have one celebrated family holidays in Terezin? I remember Passover. In 1943, Rabbi Feder 20 came to our 'Heim' to perform a service. During Passover you're supposed to eat root vegetables. But where to find those in April, in Terezin? Under different circumstances, they'd be grown in a greenhouse, but there were no greenhouses in Terezin. And if there were, then for Germans, not for us. So I remember that Rabbi Feder brought us these skinny little parsnips and skinny little carrots. And all the while he sang: 'Elbeneybe, elbeneybe, elbeneybe, zuzi chad'kad'kad'oo...' What it means, I don't know. I'd never heard it before nor ever again after that. I guess it was important for me somehow, I don't know how, I don't know why.

There were about 35 of us boys there. Those of us that had a cap put a cap on their heads, others used a handkerchief or their hand. I'd been christened, but I didn't say that I won't celebrate Passover, after all, it was still the same God. For Jews, for Christians, and for Muslims. My mother told me many times, that I returned from Terezin as a child with an old man's head. Probably she was right.

Our whole family lived together from May until September 1944, when my brother left. At the end of October of that same year my father also left. He left on the last transport from Terezin, on 28th October 1944, and apparently died on 30th or 31st October 1944. The entire staff, who went into the gas without any selection, left on the last wagon of that transport. The Germans probably wanted to get rid of witnesses, even though everything was finally exposed anyways. Three weeks later, the gas chambers were blown up, so my father was one of the last people to die in this way. For the next 30 years, up until she died, my mother was a widow.

My mother and I remained, alone, but Grandma Fischer used to come visit us regularly. Almost every day, my mother and I would say to each other that when the war ends, my father and brother will return and we'll all be together again. In those peculiar circumstances in which my mother and I lived alone, without my father and brother, a very singular relationship developed between my mother and me, one which I very much like to recall.

My mother would leave for work early in the morning, when I was still asleep, and when she returned home late in the afternoon, I'd be tired and asleep again. So I began saying that we lived like those two that don't like each other - how I came by this comparison I don't know, because I didn't know any such couple. Neither for a long time after the war was I able to comprehend how people who don't like each other could live together, or even how a father and mother could get divorced and abandon their family!

After some time my mother began having some female health problems. I didn't understand it, but I knew that she was bleeding. Dr. Klein then operated on her, and so she needed to eat well. By coincidence, at that time they were issuing marmalade in the commissary, and Miss Porges allowed me to scrape out the already scraped-out marmalade barrels for myself. So I lowered myself to the bottom of both barrels, and scraped them out right down to the wood, so thoroughly that I eked out a full pot of marmalade from them. I was miserable from that work, because I was all sticky from marmalade, but my mother indulged herself, and was constantly telling me that I'd saved her life. I was embarrassed, because you don't say that to little boys. My mother used to say that even long after the war. Back then I actually wasn't at all little any more, even though I wasn't an adult yet either. As I mentioned earlier, my mother also used to say, after the war, that I'd returned as a child with an old man's head.

Being embarrassed for an adult was always especially awkward for me. Once I experienced greater embarrassment than ever before, which was when my mother and grandmother told me to go get a haircut. The barber was across the street, but because in the morning I'd out of habit wet my hair before combing it, because back then I had a 'mattress' on my head which was hard to comb when it was dry, the barber told me that he couldn't cut wet hair. So I came back 'empty-handed.' Just my grandma was home, who was upset, and because just then it was tomato season and my mother always brought some home, Grandma stuck three tomatoes in my hands, to give to the barber.

So I set out once more, and as soon as I arrived, I clumsily gave him the three tomatoes, because I'd never 'bribed' anyone before. I immediately saw something unbelievable: the barber 'broke' in half as if he'd cracked, sat me down with deep bows into a barber's chair and began fawning over me, cutting, dusting, it's a wonder he didn't shave my smooth child's face, and finally he also sprayed me with something, and then bowing accompanied me to the door, where he once again bowed deeply, as if I was some sort of princeling. What three tomatoes could accomplish in Terezin - apparently at that time he'd seen them again for the first time in a long time. I was terribly embarrassed for him, and will never forget this experience.

I then moved into the larger part of our room, as they'd put Mrs. Hellerová and Mrs. Tumová into the smaller one. Mrs. Hellerová was the aunt of the last Jewish elder, Mr. Vogel, an engineer, who died a few years ago, she herself has been long dead. Initially Mr. Vogel had been head of the Terezin plumbers, Petr Seidemann apprenticed with him. I remember that once in the Magdeburg barracks a plank fell into the latrine and got stuck there, and so they lowered Mr. Vogel on a rope into that pipe to bring up the plank. Then he had to go wash right away, because he was very dirty and stank terribly. Otherwise, Mrs. Hellerová played solitaire, Napoleon's Square. I don't remember the rules precisely anymore, but she always laid out the cards while saying that this year the war would finally be over. I'd look on, and occasionally give her a bit of advice. Sometimes it worked out, sometimes not.

Starting 16th June 1944, when I turned thirteen, I had to start working, because back then compulsory labor started at thirteen, and I've still got my time book from back then. At first I worked in the food commissary, where Mrs. Baschová was in charge, and when she left on a transport, Miss Porges took her place. She was completely new there, so I and one older 'colleague,' Mrs. Neumannová, taught her what and how things were done in the commissary.

Liberation

My last workplace in Terezin were the ramparts, where I worked with other boys and girls. Our main activity was pulling up a pail of water hanging by a rope from a pulley, which we would fill in a stream that ran between the ramparts, in times of danger the space between the ramparts was supposed to be flooded with water from the Ohra River, but that never took place. We then poured the water into watering cans and watered the gardens with it. I was still in the gardens when we were liberated.

That long-awaited day came on 8th May 1945. It was already almost evening, I was standing by the road that passed by Terezin, and was watching the cars with German soldiers that were running away. Someone threw a hand grenade in our direction from one of them, but luckily nothing happened and the grenade didn't explode. The Germans were gone, about a half-hour's silence ensued, which was interrupted by the arrival of the Red Army.

Terezin was being liberated by a mixed army, cars, tanks, which had a tough time turning a 90 degree turn, galloping by us came a soldier on a brewery mare. The mare slipped on the cobblestones, but regained her balance and galloped on. Can you imagine what we were feeling? Finally the day we'd wished for since the beginning of our suffering had arrived. I stood there with the others, and we were roaring like wild animals in the jungle. I until midnight, the others greeted the liberators with hollering and celebrated the end of the Terezin ghetto perhaps until morning!

What came next? One day this, the next day that... Terezin was liberated, but despite that we couldn't leave it -in the ghetto a typhus epidemic was raging, brought by prisoners from the death marches 21. A quarantine was declared, and doctors, mainly from the Red Army, had their hands full quelling the danger. I remember an army ambulance, quite decrepit with age, that was constantly criss-crossing Terezin. A doctor or medic with a glass eye used to ride in it. But despite these unpleasant things, I remember this time as being full of euphoria from new-found freedom. On the square in front of the former barracks - a remnant of the beautification - Jewish electrical technicians had stationed a radio truck, which played dance music and broadcast radio news. Back then people were posting obituaries that 'after twelve years, the Great German Reich had finally died, to the great delight of those left behind' in Terezin, too.

Even though almost 60 years have passed since the Terezin ghetto ended, I meet up with it in one way or another very often, especially from the time I started going to schools to talk about Terezin, and Czech Television broadcast a documentary called 'A Magazine Named Domov.' Thus, after long years I met with friends from 'Heim 236' who I had thought were long dead. Recently I met a cousin of my friend Jirka Lagus from 'Heim 236.' I showed her our magazine, Domov, where I'd drawn him picking fleas out in the hallway in front of the 'Heim.'

Even though nothing all that bad really happened to me - I survived, experiences from Terezin keep coming back to me time and time again. I constantly have to think about friends that didn't have that kind of luck, who never returned. I feel that I owe them something. I constantly think of those little children who were carried by their unsuspecting mothers along with them into the gas chambers. On various occasions thoughts about the suffering and destruction of so many human lives awaken in me again, and so it seems to me that for me, the Holocaust won't end until I die. A psychiatrist told me that it's a guilt complex. I guess so. I feel a great responsibility for my actions to those who died, I know that I can disappoint them.

Shortly after the war, my mother also told me about how she'd met Kurzawy, a Sudeten German, who'd been the head of agriculture in Terezin. I don't think he ever hurt anyone, just addressed them familiarly and good- heartedly expressed his superiority. He used to see my mother daily, so he knew her well, and when he saw her that time, he deftly took of his hat, bowed, and in German said: 'I kiss your hand, your ladyship!' Times had changed...

My time at the convalescence home

Exactly a month after the liberation, June 8th, Czech Jewish children left Terezin for convalescence homes, set up for them in the former chateaus of Baron Ringhofer in Kamenice and Stirin by Prague. There, I one day got a letter addressed in handwriting that I knew very well - it was my brother's. First my mother wrote, that she's terribly happy, that our little Honza had returned, and all that remained was for Father to return, and we'll all be together again. Then my brother wrote, I saved the letter, but to this day I know what it said off by heart:

'My dear brother! Today I returned from Kaufering and went to have a look at our house, and by utter chance I found Mom there. Eat lots of dumplings, so that I won't recognize you when Mom and I come to visit you! Alas, I don't know anything about Dad.'

I don't remember the regime in the convalescence home much anymore. I know that we had to wash dishes, I have this one peculiar memory of this. I had this one friend there, Alfred Holzer was his name. He was a bit older than I, and his father had been the Terezin fire chief. When they had drills, I'd go watch them, and so I knew Mr. Holzer. Once he and I were washing dishes together in Kamenice. He put a plate on the tips of his fingers, spun it around like this, and the one that fell and didn't break got a gold, or silver medal. If it broke, bad luck, it got nothing. Once he broke a whole pile of plates like this right when a caretaker walked in. We said that he'd accidentally dropped them. Alfred later graduated from medicine, and after 1968 he emigrated. In 1993 the guys from Grade 9 had a met up, and I also took part in their reunion. Fredy was among them, already laughing at me from a distance. I told him this anecdote, and he was recording it with a movie camera, he didn't remember doing it at all.

At first, boys and girls from Terezin were in Kamenice together. But then the management began to have qualms regarding that sort of coexistence, so we boys moved to Stirin. I remember one girl, I don't remember her name anymore, and I really have no idea anymore what possessed her, but she began provoking me and wanted to fight me. I didn't even like fighting with boys, much less girls. In Terezin I used to brawl, that's true, but I had to brawl to preserve some sort of right to exist, otherwise everyone would have dared to come at me. But I'd never fought with girls. And when this one came and started provoking me, I still remember to this day thinking about where I should slug her. Not the stomach, not below the belt, that's not allowed, for sure not the head. So where? In the breasts, that's inappropriate. So I hit her with all my might in the shoulder and walked away. And with this I got her to then leave me alone.

From Stirin, I remember the fishpond, which was right by the chateau. There, some Max from the Lieder-Kolben family taught me to swim. He was a swell guy, probably around 17, later I never saw him again.

If I'm not overly mistaken, I was in the convalescence home until 15th August 1945. In the morning they said that I was going home, so I went. The others still stayed there, I was supposed to go because I was supposed to start school in September, and was supposed to devote the coming time to 'civilize' myself in some fashion. I surprised Mother, she had no idea that I was going to appear that day. It was right around noon, and my mother was all flustered because she didn't know what to feed me. Finally she pan- fried some cooked potatoes in some butter for me, and I remember to this day how I was sitting at the table and saying: 'Mom, these potatoes are so good...'

Our post-war life

My mother was unhappy, because she thought that I'd be eating well in that convalescence home. But there wasn't much food there, and we used to make fun and say that they were saving up for World War III. We didn't have much food, and neither was it particularly tasty, I remember us once ostentatiously eating paper, saying we were hungry. But that was more of a provocation. So I finally properly ate my fill with my mother at home, and in the afternoon I went with my friends to the cinema, which was around the corner, to see the movie 'San Demetrio [London].'

My mother was also very much influenced by her war experiences. She used to say that the only language that she really knew well, German, she hated. Which is, of course, nonsense, how can someone hate a language? A language can't be responsible for something. She was brought up in German, studied in German and didn't learn Czech until before the occupation, and never properly. She also used to say that Germans should be castrated. I understood it, it was an expression of her desperation.

My mother actually never enjoyed her life. She saw World War I, then had tuberculosis, then there were worries as to what my father would do when he lost his job, well, and then suddenly the occupation was here, war... Even before it broke out here, there was news about what was happening in Germany, in Vienna, Crystal Night 22. And finally my mother lived as a widow. Later, when German friends of mine used to come visit, who'd certainly done nothing wrong, because they'd been little children at the time, she behaved very coldly towards them. I'd explain to them that they shouldn't be upset at her, that she simply couldn't deal with it.

After the war we didn't return to our apartment. Right at the end of the war, some people that had been bombed out moved into it. My mother was issued this tiny little apartment, one small room plus another one with a kitchenette, about 16 square meters all told. The kitchenette had only a sink and a hotplate, in the other part of the room there was a table plus room for a bed that she had brought over from Terezin. My brother and I lived in the larger room. Then my brother got married and moved out. Then I got married and moved out, so Mother remained there alone.

When the Benes Decrees 23 began being enforced, we were terribly afraid that they would also deport us, as Germans. Everyone who'd registered themselves as being of German nationality before the war were, according to the Benes Decrees, supposed to be deported, and whether or not they'd been imprisoned in a concentration camp wasn't taken into account. Only those that proved they'd been anti-Fascists. But where could a Jew who'd been locked up in a concentration camp find that sort of proof? Those decrees didn't take this into account. My mother didn't know what nationality our father had registered us as in 1930. In the end it came out that as Jews, and so we were allowed to stay here.

What would have moving to Germany meant for us? After all, we weren't Germans. For a long time, neither I nor my mother wanted to speak German! For Jews who'd returned from the concentration camps, it must have been horrible, living among those that hated them, and they on the other hand hated Germans. You can't live like that. I didn't return to the German language until 1956, when I met some Germans from East Germany. Then in 1964 I was on business in East Germany, during Christmas market time, and I heard little children nattering daddy, mommy, buy me.... and at night my childhood years with my father and mother returned to me, it was quite horrible...

My brother left Terezin for Auschwitz, and from there onwards to Kaufering, a branch camp of Dachau 24. There was a secret airplane factory there, but my brother worked for the funeral commando, he stood in waist-deep water and buried corpses. He caught tuberculosis from this. He actually only talked about what he'd experienced immediately after his return, with our mother. His experiences were so terrifying that he never wanted to return to them. After the war he always had a big complex that he hadn't gotten a proper education. Yet he was very talented and would definitely have had the abilities for it. But he didn't get the opportunity.

Before the war he managed to only finish kvarta [equivalent of Grade 9], and after the war he took a one-year business course. Then he had to start working, because I had an orphan's pension, my mother a widow's, but who would have supported him? Maybe that after the war he wasn't even inclined to further studies, the most important things he learned in that one-year course, and his head was probably too pumped dry for anything more.

As a 30 percent invalid, he was quite badly off. I remember once going swimming with him in the Vltava River. He had a very hard time swimming across, even though it was quite narrow. Though after the war he did do canoe racing and skiing, it apparently didn't agree with him. He got a job with Kovospol, a foreign trade company.

Actually, after the war my brother became the head of the family. He used to fill out various questionnaires and forms, that's something I couldn't do. So it was he, my brother, who decided that we wouldn't emigrate, that we'd stay here. My mother's two sisters lived in Australia, and Grandma moved there, too. But I wouldn't be able to get used to any other country, my home is here. My mother and brother were also of the same opinion.

In September 1945 I started attending academic high school in Prague, in the Vinohrady quarter. I started in tercie [Grade 8], and luckily they postponed my entrance exam until the end of the year, because how would I, with three grades of elementary school, have passed exams on material from first and second year of high school? It wasn't only a boys' high school, there were girls that attended it as well, however, not in our class. Up until oktava [Grade 12] I would only meet girls in the hallway, it was only then that three girls joined our class.

In Grade 8 there was a boy in our class who was a hunchback. But it wasn't only his back that was deformed, but also his soul. That's the worst, because then people are nasty, they're actually crippled twice. Once during Russian class I was called up to the blackboard, he stuck out his foot and I tripped. I never fought, but I had returned from Terezin with the notion that one couldn't put up with this type of thing, so I went back and gave him such a whack that his little head bounced off his hump. For Russian we had this one Russian lady, we called her 'baryshnia,' and she started at me, aren't I ashamed of hitting a cripple. And I told her with eyes ablaze, that in that case he shouldn't have stuck out his foot. I guess I was quite inflexible, I'd brought back knowledge and experiences with me from Terezin that to a significant degree determined my behavior, which, however, for people without similar experiences was incomprehensible.

After the war we were no longer members of the Jewish community. My mother did consider converting back to Judaism, but the ceremony that she would have had to undergo, for them to take her back, discouraged her from it. While when I was becoming a member of the community, they weren't interested in whether I'd been christened or not. The wanted to know my mother's origin. The reason my mother wanted to return was that she wanted to be together with Father. But I used to tell her that she'd meet up with him one way or the other. I think that what a person has in his heart is more important than what religion he formally belongs to.

When I was in my graduating year, I wanted to study production at FAMU [Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague]. I knew, however, that this subject wasn't taught at FAMU. Despite that, when there was a presentation on what subjects it was possible to study there, I went to have a look at it. And so I hear: camera, dramaturgy, production! I woke up and went to the lecturer to ask about the details. Not only he, but no one knew what exactly was going to be taught. I was the first who applied for that year, and they accepted me.

My other classmates were recruited from the ranks of those that had unsuccessfully applied for other subjects. I must say, that my high school classmates' company didn't overly suit me. Especially with my experiences from Terezin, they seemed to me to be overly trite. Luckily, before I started attending, my mother had warned me that I'm not suited for that sort of society. And so later, when I didn't like it there, I couldn't really complain.

In 1953 I began participating in the Stavar [Builder] folklore ensemble belonging to the Faculty of Civil Engineering. My friends, classmates, brought me into the ensemble. It had started up the year before I arrived, in 1952, during the time Gottwald was in power, and still before the Slansky trial 25. It was this socialist ensemble, our hymn was the song 'Come along nation, loyal nation, with President Gottwald...,' but I didn't sing it. Up until about 1958, ensembles like this were very much in fashion, then they gradually declined, and around 1961 or 1962 our ensemble broke up.

The ensemble had several components, a vocal group, a dance group, an orchestra and a variety show group, which is where I was. The choir was the biggest, the orchestra and dance group were relatively small. When we were traveling to go perform somewhere, there were as many as a hundred of us. I did puppet theater there, and other various such tomfoolery for the amusement of others.

I enjoyed imitating various sound effects. I had actually always liked doing that, once in Terezin I sounded the all-clear for an air raid alert like that. Our courtyard had a mess window, and if someone came for their food and the air-raid siren announced the start of an alert, they had to wait there until the all-clear was sounded. Once, on a lark, I sounded the all-clear myself. Right then there was one old lady who'd come for her lunch resting at our neighbors', and when she heard my siren, she thought that the alert was over, and left. Luckily there was a guard at the gate, so he didn't let her go any further. Now, when I'm showing friends around Terezin, I take them to that courtyard, where the kitchen of course no longer exists, and 'our' house is also demolished, and I sound the end of an air raid like back then.

My wife

In the ensemble I met my future wife, Hana Mazánková, who sang in the choir. My wife always looked very young. When we met in 1953, she was 23, and I was 22. But I thought that she was around 13 or 14. I didn't talk to her at all, I thought she was a kid. Then once we were on an outing with the ensemble. We were divided up into groups, and I led one of the groups. We got a map, I had my own compass from home, so I was explaining something about it, and my future wife says: 'I know that.' And from where? 'From army training.' How can you have army training in high school? So that's how I found out that she's not a high school student, but that she's in 3rd year of university and is a year older than I.

Maybe she wouldn't have even married me, because at first she refused me. I'd bought a ticket for some folklore concert. I offered it to her, and she said no. But when a girlfriend of hers heard that, she rebuked her, my wife returned and said yes. I'd already made up my mind, that if no, then no. I took it as a fact and wasn't going to plead with her. I don't think I'd ever fight because of a woman, I guess I wouldn't be up to it. To me it's not dignified. I'd either have remained a bachelor, or I'd have found someone else, even thought that's not likely, I don't know if I would have had the courage to ask out another girl.

My wife didn't have anything to do with Jews, except for marrying one. And also that she had a Jewish girlfriend during childhood. When they wanted to go for a walk together, that friend of hers would lend her a star 26, she had two of them, and off they'd go. After the war, her friend didn't return.

Hana attended family school, then took a one-year Alumnus of Labor Courses, which was instead of graduation. Then she started attending the University of Political and Economic Sciences, which was then dissolved, and so she transferred to the Faculty of Philosophy, where she graduated.

She got a work placement at some physical education school in Nymburk, where she was supposed to teach Marxism-Leninism. She refused that, worked as a secretary, and then went to the Pioneer House and worked in the mass- media department. Later they let her go during a reorganization, that though she was a party member, she'd become obdurately anti-Party. So she got a secretarial job in Chemapol, a company that exported chemical products. She wasn't there long either, she then worked for the House of Culture in Branik in Prague 4, but after 1969 27 there were purges, like everywhere, and she had to leave and started working at the Regional Cultural Center for Prague West. There she stayed until 1990.

Our wedding, which was at the Old Town Hall, was quite a big embarrassment, because the ensemble arranged a little surprise for us, and plenty of them participated. After the usual ceremony at the town hall, they strung up a clothesline, hung various things on it, and I had to take them down. All the while, I was sticking the clothespins in my pocket, like I'd been used to doing when I used to gather the laundry for my mother, and everyone laughed at that. There were foreigners standing around and filming everything, and one foreigner called out to me, for me to kiss the bride, which I didn't want to do, but in the end did it. We delayed the other weddings by perhaps as much as half an hour.

Normally, however, I wasn't used to making fun of serious things. I can't stand practical jokes and black humor. Once in the ensemble, a friend borrowed some money from me, and returned it to me all in 10 haler coins. He thought that that was a good joke, but I'm not into things like that, because people are capable of even killing for money. And that's not a joking matter. Like food isn't a joking matter. One colleague of mine thought it a good joke to stick a brick or some slippers into my bag along with my food. I told him that next time I'd kill him, that food is sacred and you don't treat it that way. Terezin taught me that.

After the wedding, my wife and I went on vacation. We were pulling along a wagon with our suitcases, and I heard some locals saying: 'What's this? Are they brother and sister? Or father and daughter?' It didn't at all occur to them that we might be husband and wife. And when we were in Rujan, my wife and son and I went to borrow a beach basket. At that time I was 44, my wife was 45, and our son 12, but the old sea dog that lent us the basket thought that they were my children.

Once, when my wife was taking the streetcar home late at night, the conductor apparently asked her whether she wouldn't catch hell for coming home so late. Or when I was doing military training, and she was with her parents in a restaurant for lunch, the waiter asked her parents whether they didn't want a children's portion for her - at that time she was 30. Which is why my wife has always gotten along very well with children, for them she was actually their peer.

After school, I started working at the Prague Central Television Studio. I'd already been working there during summer holidays. Then I transferred over to the news offices. There I spent six years, and always experienced something new. For example, when Gagarin 28 was in Prague, I was preparing a live broadcast from the airport. Gagarin flew into space in 1961, so this anecdote took place sometime shortly thereafter. I was the first to arrive at the airport, and the last to leave, because I wanted to be sure that everything was in order, even though by myself I probably wouldn't have saved anything.

Yuri Gagarin was this pleasant young man. When people broke through the cordons and ran towards the plane, he was completely taken aback by it. Everything was being filmed by a camera driving in front of him. He probably wasn't used to something like that, and even in our neck of the woods, spontaneous crowds of people like that were unheard-of. So we weren't properly prepared for them. The technicians weren't able to chase them all away from the camera, which occasionally tipped over, so parts fell out of it. The picture disappeared, and on TV nothing could be seen. I was in the broadcast van, and couldn't do anything, well, it really was quite hectic back then. Then Gagarin went to the Castle, where he was given some state award. I was there, too, but luckily that was already a calmer affair.

In 1961 they transferred me into the development and building of CST [Czecho-slovak Television], where I then worked as a consultant on projects for the new TV center in Kavci Hory. I was regularly and frequently required to travel to Bratislava to consult on projects. Sometimes I lived in Bratislava like a pauper, because when a hotel wasn't available, they'd put me up with someone. I lived in a servant's room, which, however, wasn't available until 10pm, so I had to wander around the city. Most of the time I couldn't go to the cinema, there weren't any movies, so what to do? It was very depressing. Some guys were smacking their lips, that they'd pick up all sorts of women, they envied me, but I was homesick.

I actually like home best of all. For me, home is an irreplaceable part of life. My wife likes going to restaurants, but not I. I don't think you should make a show of food. For me food is a matter of survival, not entertainment. On business trips I perhaps went to some restaurants, but even so, many times I preferred to make it myself in my room somewhere, and just ate something cold. My brother once told me: 'Well, I know, we only go to restaurants when we have to.'

The concentration camp may have affected my brother differently, but even worse. He told me how once he went to see the movie 'Some Like It Hot.' It's this comedy and gangster movie, and the film's opening scene is from real life. One gang kills another gang on St. Valentine's day in a garage, and then what happens after that is that a couple of men accidentally saw it, and the gangsters try to catch them. My brother told me that with this scene, the film was over for him, that he couldn't watch it any further. To shoot people in a garage... What he'd gone through in Auschwitz and Kaufering returned to him again.

My brother worked in Kovospol, in foreign trade. In 1958 they wanted to fire him, that he had relatives abroad. That was sort of an echo of the events in Hungary 29. But back then that was the last quarter where that had to be approved by the National Committee. The National Committee didn't agree, because my brother was a 30% concentration camp invalid, so they had to leave him there, but transferred to a different position. First to the transport department, then the accounting department. As I later found out, because he was capable, he still unofficially managed foreign trade from the accounting department, but wasn't allowed to travel anywhere, and actually wasn't anything. Then they thought of him again in 1962, when they were starting to introduce computer technology, so they pulled him out of the accounting department. Back then, computers were punch-card machines.

Then he had his first heart attack; in 1964 my son was born, and when he was coming up to our place to have a look at him, he had serious problems. They diagnosed him with angina pectoris. In 1968 he had a second heart attack and went on disability pension, which was lucky for him, because in the purges after the help of the brotherly armies 30 he would definitely have been thrown out, he was on the plant's board. In 1976 he had a third heart attack, of which he died. They knew that he had tuberculosis, but during the autopsy they found out that he had it on his kidneys, and that his adrenal glands were infected, that he suffered from Addison's disease.

My brother actually didn't get much out of life, he didn't have a normal life. Except for the two years when he worked in foreign trade and could travel. His wife was also Jewish. She was named Hana Kirschnerová, was from Prague, and managed to stay in Terezin until the end. How, that I don't know. After getting married, our wives had the same names, so when my wife would call her, she'd say: 'Hana Glasová here, Hana Glasová please.' My sister-in-law is also no longer alive.

In 1951 they had their first son, Petr, then a second son, Tomas. Both of them are engineers, and live in Prague. Petr has two children, a daughter and a son. Tomas also has two children from his first marriage, and another two stepchildren and one of his own from his second one. My brother never spoke with them about the concentration camp, what they know, I told them.

When my brother worked in that foreign trade company, he was in the Party 31 for some time, then when he went on disability no one was really interested whether he was or wasn't. I was never in the Party. They probably would have pressured me when I worked in news, because when someone was in a management position, he had to be a party member. But before the pressure started, they'd transferred me to construction at Kavci Hory, and there they didn't care about me, because I was no longer a manager. I had them record in my cadre materials that I wasn't interested in a management position, so whoever was above me could remain calm, he knew that I wasn't interested in his position, and I was also left in peace.

At work I was reliable, but as far as private life goes, completely useless for my colleagues. I purposely made myself into as unsociable a person as I could, and thus achieved the fact that no one invited me anywhere. I was left in peace and that was the most important thing for me. I also realized that as a Jew, I had to be very careful to not mix myself up in any funny business.

But once it happened that they started investigating me, without telling me what it was about. When I asked, they said: 'But you know very well why.' Well, those two colleagues behaved like the Gestapo towards me. It wasn't until a long time had passed that during the meeting of one commission it was explained to me that a colleague and I hadn't written in some form, that while we'd been shooting a reportage about Christmas in a mountain chalet, we'd been given accommodations and food for free. Then they themselves realized that we didn't have anywhere to write it, because the form didn't have a place for it. Nevertheless, my colleague lost his job anyways. Not I, because they knew that I was honest.

In 1960 they caught Eichmann 32 in Argentina. A colleague of mine at the time, also a Jew, the foreign editor Vladimír Tosek, lent me a book about Eichmann's kidnapping. I read it, and because I myself didn't remember Eichmann much, I wanted to see if my mother knew the name. There was a lot written about Eichmann in the papers, but my mother didn't read papers, didn't have a TV, and on the radio listened only to music broadcasts from Vienna, so she didn't know anything about what was going on with him. I came over to her and asked: 'Mom, does the name Eichmann mean anything to you?' She turned deathly pale, and just whispered, almost inaudibly: 'That's transports, that's transports.'

I realized that whenever Eichmann appeared in Terezin, that meant that there'd be more transports. That was his responsibility. His office was grandly named the Office for Jewish Emigration. When they were gassing Jews, that was supposed to be that emigration. I then felt terribly sorry that I had tried my mother like that, even so many years after the war, it was still an absolutely living memory for her.

Once my mother and I were in Terezin, and saw a movie being shot there, 'Daleká Cesta.' We knew that it was only a movie shoot, my mother knew it, too, but when a gendarme walked by, an actor that was playing a gendarme, my mother turned pale and asked him: 'You're a gendarme?' He had a gendarme's uniform, so for her he was a gendarme.

When I used to go for trips about the Czech countryside, many times I conversed with my father, but never heard an answer. I needed advice. Then later, I sometimes got it mixed up, and spoke to God. Despite the fact that I don't believe in him. I guess there I was also talking to my father, or to myself. Because with decent people, what's God is their conscience. Precisely that a person talks to himself, and things about what he's done. Whether it's right or not. Whether it's allowed or not. American gangsters had no problem having someone murdered, and then sent a wreath to his funeral and crossed themselves in church. I don't think it had anything to do with God. And German soldiers had 'GOTT MIT UNS' ['GOD WITH US'] written on their belts. In World War I, they had the slogan 'GOTT STRAFE ENGLAND' ['MAY GOD PUNISH ENGLAND']. Why should God punish England? They'd commandeered him. And what if Jews, Christians, Protestants, Muslims also commandeered God? And all the while, it's the same God. And which one of them had the right of first refusal?

I think that talking to God is a private matter, no one needs a middleman for that, if he wants he'll talk to him himself. When a person goes on a date, he also doesn't need an advisor or interpreter. Years ago, I was in Susice, and suddenly in a shop window, I saw an engraving showing Abraham sacrificing Isaac. I had a son, I had Terezin behind me, and so I thought to myself, that God can't after all want anyone to sacrifice his son as a mark of his obedience. That's something that people thought up. I can't imagine it. After Terezin, thoughts like that send a shiver up your spine.

My mother was lucky to not be there for my brother's death. He died three years after her, at the age of 52. His last words to me were: 'When will I see you again?' I said I was going to Germany on business, and that when I return I'll call him. Of course, I never did call him again. My brother died in this strange fashion. He was supposed to take the radio to get repaired. It was hot, he wasn't feeling well, and he wanted to first got to Pruhonice, where he always felt well. But because he had the radio in his car, he said he'd go to the repair depot first. On the way, somewhere in Vrsovice, he ran into a former lady colleague from Kovospol. So he picked her up, and she invited him up to her place for a coffee. And he died in her apartment of a heart attack.

That lady didn't know what to do, she didn't know his home number, and it was only sometime in the evening, when they were, of course, already looking for him at home, she remembered the phone book, called and told them what had happened. When I returned, my wife told me what had happened to us. And I then cried like a little boy. I realized that I was the last of our Glas family, a witness of Terezin...

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

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

Alica Gazikova
Bratislava
Slovak Republic
Interviewer: Martin Korcok and Barbora Pokreis
Date of interview: September - October 2005

Mrs. Alica Gazikova is a very obliging and punctilious lady. Her life story is interesting also in the fact that it reveals Jewish life in five Czech- Slovak towns and cities (Pezinok, Bratislava, Zvolen, Banska Bystrica and Brno). Mrs. Gazikova's husband, Albert Gazik, actively participated in the functioning of the Jewish religious community in Bratislava up until his death in 1995.

My family background
My parents
Growing up
Our religious life
My school years
During the war
Post-war
My husband
Our daughters
Glossary

My family background

I can't remember my great-grandparents on my father's side, as even his parents died in the years 1934 and 1935, when I was six years old. My father's parents were named the Adlers and came from Pezinok. My grandfather, Ignac Adler, had a house in the center of town. A part of this house was also his general goods store. The house was very large, for the Adler family was also large: they had nine children. Because they had so many children, my grandma [Anna Adler, nee Berger] was a housewife. Back then women didn't go to work. The first floor of the house had five huge rooms. Besides my grandfather's family there were also two other families living there. On the ground floor there were four rooms for commercial purposes. The house was truly spacious and beautiful. But I remember these things only from recollections of my father, Arnold Adler. That house is currently around 400 years old, and is designated as being of historical importance. It has a very unusual facade. It's been renovated, but unfortunately no longer belongs to our family.

After World War I, as they say, still during the time of the First [Czechoslovak] Republic 1, my father's parents moved from Pezinok to Bratislava. It was on the cusp of the years 1918/1919. One of their daughters, Vilma Sebestyen [nee Adler], whose husband was a veterinarian, moved into their empty apartment. Besides them, a family by the name of Reisner also lived there, who rented the commercial spaces on the ground floor. They had a fabric business. A very poor Jewish family, the Lampls, also lived there. Mrs. Lampl sewed bedding and underwear, and Mr. Lampl made the rounds in surrounding villages and bought up animal skins. An older family, the Friedmanns, also lived there. Old Mr. Friedmann taught children religion.

My grandparents likely moved from Pezinok because my grandmother couldn't get over the fact that during World War I two of her sons [Jozef and Eduard Adler] had died at the front as soldiers. At which front they fell, I unfortunately don't know. That was the first thing, and the second thing was that approximately in the year that they moved there was large-scale looting in the town and their store was looted. So they bought a building in Bratislava, on Lodna Street No. 2, and as they say, they retired there. The building on Lodna Street stands to this day. The commercial space they left behind then fell to my father.

I almost don't remember my grandparents at all, as I've said, I was around six when they died. But for sure they weren't hyper-religious, and my parents weren't that religious either. I'm assuming that their mother tongue was German. Pezinok, otherwise in German Bosing, in Hungarian Bazin, had by my estimate about a 30 percent German population, which by and large concerned itself with cultivation of vineyards. Before World War II, Pezinok also had a very strong Jewish community. But there were also very many poor Jews. The poorer ones were, I'd guess, the more religious. There was also a class of richer ones. So I can say that we belonged to the richer ones.

Jews in Pezinok concerned themselves mainly with business. I'd say that we had the largest store, actually my father and his partner did. It was a store with general goods, that is, with groceries, and was named Adler & Diamant. Besides this retail store we also had a so-called wholesale business. That means that we supplied those groceries to smaller shopkeepers in surrounding towns and villages, and besides this we also had a mill right in the town. Back then they called it an automatic mill. An automatic mill means that it ran on electricity and not water. You know, back then mills were usually run by a water wheel.

My dear father, Arnold Adler, was born on 24th May 1895 in Pezinok, and had eight siblings. The two oldest brothers, Jozef and Eduard, died in World War I. Another of my father's sisters was Aunt Ema Adler, married Weider. She lived in Zilina and had two daughters, Olga and Ilus. Olga married a man by the name of Frankl and had one son, Alex, who was born around 1930. They all moved to England before the Holocaust. Ema's second daughter, Ilus, wasn't married. She lived with her mother in Zilina. In the year 1944 they deported them and they died in Poland.

Another of my father's sisters was named Tereza [Terezia], so Tereza Adler, married name Reichenberg. Her husband was named Bela, and they lived in Dioszeg what is today Sladkovicovo. They had two children. Their son was named Jeno. In 1939, together with his uncle Oskar, another of my father's brothers, he moved to Israel, at that time Palestine. There he married Edith and they have a son, Micki. He was born in 1944. Tereza's daughter was named Grete. Grete married a man named Klein. They had two children. They all died in concentration camps, their parents Tereza and Bela Reichenberg as well.

My father's sister Vilma had a husband named David Sebestyen, who was a veterinarian in Pezinok. Later they lived in Bratislava, and right before the deportations, in Zilina. They had two children. Lilly married Stefan Frankl. Her husband comes from Zilina. Lilly and her husband survived the war and in 1946 they had a daughter, Zuzka [Zuzana], who after graduating from high school moved to England. There she married a Czech by the name of Nesvadba. Lilly died in around the year 1988 in Zilina. Vilma's son was named Pavel. During the war they caught him together with his parents at the Zilina train station. From there they deported them somewhere. None of them survived the war.

Another of my father's brothers was named Richard Adler. His wife was named Malvina, nee Quittova. They had one daughter, Bozsi. When the Hitler era began, they sent her as a young girl to England, where she survived the war. She married a man by the name of Roubicek, by origin a Czech Jew. After the war they returned to Prague and had a son, Franta. After the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia, in the year 1948 [see February 1948] 2, they returned to England. After the death of Roubicek, her husband, Bozsi married a widower by the name of Seelig in Israel. She currently lives partly in Israel and partly with her son in England. Bozsi's parents, Richard and Malvina, died during the Holocaust.

Another of my father's brothers was Rudolf Adler. He was born around the year 1898. During World War II he lived in Sladkovicovo and Nove Zamky. During this time he married a widow by the name of Ella, nee Reichard or Reinhard. Ella had a son, Tomas, from her first marriage. Together with the little boy she died in a concentration camp. Rudolf, or Rudi, got married for a second time in Zilina, around 1947, to Erna. Erna was from Poland and came to Zilina because of her brother-in-law, Pista [Stefan] Braun. Rudi died in 1973 and Erna in 1988 or 1989.

The last of my father's brothers was named Oskar Adler. Before World War II he lived for a long time in Germany. After the year 1933, when Hitler seized power, he came to Bratislava. In 1939 he left for Israel with his nephew, Jeno Reichenberg, where he lived up until his death. He married Ruth, who moved there still before the war with her aunt. They had no children.

My mother came from the Baumhorn family. My grandfather was named Bertalan Baumhorn, and was from Zilina, from a well-known family of bakers. He was born on 26th October 1867. People in the town still remember the family to this day. My grandmother was named Paula Baumhorn, nee Neudorfer. She was born on 11th June 1873. I'm not sure where exactly she was from, I think from Kezmarok. They settled in Zilina. My grandfather died on 22nd October 1904 at the age of 37, he was still very young. My grandmother became a widow with three children. As she didn't have a house of her own, she had to sell her husband's store. She put the money in the bank and lived off the interest. But my grandfather's family helped her a lot. So you could say that she and the three children lived modestly, but decently.

My grandmother was a person whom I loved perhaps most of all. And I can say, though it's unusual, that I put her in first place. No, the first place during my childhood years belongs to my father, then my grandmother, and only then my mother after her. Because my grandmother was fantastic. For the times she was a very wise, progressive and modern woman. I remember how she would discuss politics with my father. She had a fantastic rapport with children. She was simply fantastic. For example, I never wanted to eat soup, and she knew how to go at it with me. She would say, you don't have to eat, just taste it, and so she slowly taught me to eat everything. I was picky, but she changed me in this way that was acceptable to me.

Because we lived in Pezinok and my grandmother in Zilina, we couldn't visit each other often. But I think it was in 1934, when she moved to Bratislava, to live with her son Pavel, who was still unmarried at the time. During that time I visited her often. I spent my summer vacation with her, and she would teach me how to make preserves. She was simply an exceptional homemaker and very punctilious. She was everything to me.

My mother lived with my grandma in Zilina until she married my father and moved to Pezinok. My mother was born on 29th June 1899. As I've already mentioned, she had two siblings. Her sister was named Erzsi [Alzbeta Baumhorn]. She was born around the year 1895 and died very young, at the age of seventeen, of tuberculosis. She got it from some infected boy.

My mother's brother was named Pavel Baumhorn. He was born on 2nd October 1902 in Zilina. In 1937 he married Eva, nee Schwarz, from Pezinok. They lived in Bratislava and had a daughter named Viera. But they called her Junta. She was born in 1938. My mother's brother inherited half of a carbon dioxide factory in Bratislava from some uncle. He then ran the office in that factory. In 1944 they sent the entire family, together with my grandma, who lived with them, to the Auschwitz concentration camp. When they were conducting the selection, with women and children to one side, my grandmother took the child and thus saved the bride. That bride is still alive today: she's 88 years old and lives in Bratislava. My uncle's death was later described to us by one of his fellow prisoners. Before the war he weighed about 100 kilos, well, and in the concentration camp he shrank down to 50. He died during the transfers from one camp to another in a freight train. Besides Aunt Eva, who was born on 6th December 1917, they all died.

My father was born in Pezinok. He graduated from a two-year business school, likely in Bratislava, as there was no school like that in Pezinok before World War I. My father attended German schools, as his mother tongue was German, but he also spoke Hungarian and Slovak. Well, and my mother, though she lived in Zilina, attended Hungarian schools. I and my brother [Juraj Adler] spoke Slovak with our parents, but what language we spoke with my father's parents, that I don't remember any more.

My parents

My parents met each other in Pezinok. My mother's uncle, Mr. Neudorfer, worked in a brick factory in Pezinok, which in those days was a classy business. He had a beautiful company apartment there, and my mother would go visit him. That's where she met my father. They were married on 29th June 1922 in Zilina, as that's where my mother was from. I'm assuming that it was in the synagogue courtyard, but I don't know for sure, as my mother wasn't at all religious. In Zilina there was a large modern Neolog 3 community. Pezinok had an Orthodox 4 one. So my grandmother's family from Zilina didn't keep kosher. Because my mother moved to Pezinok, where there was an Orthodox community, she had to adapt. So we therefore kept kosher at home.

My father owned a store, several warehouses and a mill, together with his partner, Mr. Moric Diamant. They worked from morning till evening. Besides this, one day a week my father would make the rounds in surrounding towns like for example Svaty Jur, Raca, then still Racisdorff, and take orders from smaller merchants. Then they would deliver it all to them. Besides this they also had a small truck, a 1 1/2 ton Chevrolet, with which they would distribute the ordered goods. They of course employed a driver, and also an assistant driver. My mother and Mr. Diamond's wife, Frida, worked in the store itself. They were, as they say, the ladies behind the counter. They served customers, everything was still hand-wrapped back then, there weren't any packaged foods. Flour also had to be weighed. They were in that store from morning till evening. Besides them there was also one journeyman in the store. They also employed people at the mill. I don't know exactly how many of them there were. But they didn't pick workers only from among Jews.

Mr. Diamant also had a brother in Pezinok. He actually came to live there because of his brother. The Diamant brothers were from a very numerous family. They came from a village near Topolcany named Oponice. Here they made friends with my father and agreed among themselves that they'd reopen the store that my father's father had left him. Diamant had some money, my father had no money but an empty store. So they went into business together. They divided the responsibilities, and there was 100 percent trust between them.

Mr. Moric Diamant had a very unusual relationship with my father. They weren't related, they were only friends. We shared everything with the Diamants. The store was shared, the house was shared. Everything was shared, like for example coal, wood... Everyone took what groceries they needed from the store. Simply put, perhaps not even the best family lived like we did. We had everything half and half. The Diamants had three children: two daughters, Gerta and Liana, and a son, Zigmund.

My father, if I'm to be objective, as far as is possible, was the most fantastic person. I loved him terribly. He was very just. He had not even a speck of animosity in him. He was very tolerant and kind-hearted. I can't tell you anything specific about his political opinions. I do know, though, that my father was the only one of the siblings who didn't serve in the army. Because he took care of supplying the army, he was exempted from army service. I didn't like my mother as much. What I can say about her is that that she was a very good homemaker. She loved that store, it was everything to her. Simply put, she was completely absorbed by that store. Our household was very well-run and everything was in the utmost order. Nothing was wasted. And the only thing that I felt was that she liked my brother more than me. She didn't even hide it very much.

Growing up

My brother was named Juraj Adler and was born on 14th June 1923, in Bratislava. Five years later, on 4th February 1928, I, Alica Gazikova, nee Adlerova, was born. I was also born in Bratislava, on Telocvicna Street, at that time Zochova, but only because Pezinok had no maternity hospital and my mother didn't want to give birth at home. It was a small, private maternity clinic.

We lived in Pezinok, where my parents bought a house together with the Diamants. It stood across from a church and at one time there had been a restaurant in it. My parents renovated it a bit. We had a four and a half room apartment. Huge rooms. The dining room had Jugendstil furniture. Jugendstil, that's Art Nouveau. There was also a piano in the dining room. Then there was our parents' bedroom, that was the second room. The third room was our children's bedroom. We children together with a young lady, our governess, lived and slept in the largest, the children's room, which had at least 7 x 5 meters, two windows and two large double doors. One set led into the hallway and the second into our parents' bedroom. The furniture was white with black trim. Also Jugendstil. The most beautiful was the stove, a so-called American one, with little slate windows at the front and sides. Heating with them was very complicated, so that's why our parents exchanged it for a normal cast-iron one. So much for romance. When the lights went out, and only the little slate windows were shining, our governess would tell us a tale, or about some event in her life. It was amazing to see that stove, or actually oven. It was very valuable. More than one nouveau-rich type would have liked to have such a thing in his multi-million crown house. The fourth room had a radio and an armchair. Then there was a huge kitchen, and one more small room where the cook slept. Besides the cook we also had a governess who slept with us in the children's room.

We had several governesses. The last one was from Opava. She graduated from a school, the kind that today nursery-school teachers attend. She was even from a very good family. Her father was a judge. His wife died, however, so she was a half-orphan. She was German, but not a Fascist. She was named Mitzi, but I don't know her surname. She took care of us, the children, and our upbringing. She slept with us, took us for walks, taught me handicrafts and so on. We had a good relationship with her. Then we also had a cook that cooked and cleaned. There was a certain rivalry between them. Because the young lady, she thought herself to be a little better, and the cook as something a little less.

We also went through several cooks, so that's why I don't remember them all that well any more. But I'll tell you the truth, that with us, as they say, they had it good. My mother was very generous to them. For example at Christmas, they would go home, and would always get a large bundle. Normally my mother would buy for them, if they were single, things for their trousseau: clothes, dishcloths and so on. So they had it very good with us. They could eat as much as they wanted and weren't limited in any way. In this respect there was no problem at our place. But they didn't eat with us. When they finished their work during the week, they could go out, and on Sunday they had time off.

Our religious life

We observed holidays in our family. But what for example my father very much regretted was that the store wasn't closed on Saturday. Normally, one would, as they say, 'fool' God, and that in a manner that the store was for all appearances closed, but things would be sold underneath the gate. And when the persecutions during the time of the Slovak State 5 arrived, he regretted that very much, because one way or another he lost everything anyways. My parents of course attended the synagogue. Father went on Friday evening, Saturday morning and on holidays. But normally during the day my father didn't cover his head. Jews have a custom that women attend the synagogue only on the high holidays. So my mother went only on those occasions. Sabbath was never observed much in our family. Only in that beforehand barkhes were baked, and our father, upon returning from the synagogue, would recite the Kiddush. For Saturday we would also prepare chulent, which would be taken across the street to the baker's, and on Saturday we would pick it up. Otherwise, my brother and I attended a public school, where there were classes on Saturday as well. That day we would go to school as usual, but we had an exception, we didn't have to write and draw.

I myself liked Passover the best, that was a holiday for me. It's a spring holiday, so I would usually also get new clothes. During this holiday you also have to change dishes. During this holiday you aren't allowed to eat leavened foods and bread is replaced by matzot. In the evening the entire family sits down at the seder table, which is set according to strict rules and those present speak about the significance of the Passover holiday. Back then schnorrers [beggar, the Yiddish term shnoder means 'to contribute'] from Poland would also come by, but they wouldn't sit down at our table. We weren't kosher enough for them: although we did have two separate cupboards in the kitchen, one for dairy products and the second for meat. We bought kosher meat, but even so we weren't kosher enough for them. Most of the time they would go into the store, and there my mother would wrap something up for them. I of course didn't participate in the housecleaning before the holiday. For Yom Kippur we of course fasted. Our parents were in the synagogue the whole day and we as children would also attend.

There was only one Orthodox synagogue in town. During the holidays you definitely had to pay for a place in it. That was like it is now. There was also a religious tax. That was set according to one's earnings. They knew people's income and it was according to that. We, of course, belonged to the richer ones. So we also paid a higher tax. But you understand, you have to take into consideration, that I really can't remember how much it was. Our rabbi was named Dr. Jozef Schill. He had a PhD. in theology. Otherwise his name is also engraved in the Jewish Museum [Editor's note: one of the rooms in the Museum of Jewish Culture in Bratislava serves as a Holocaust memorial room. One of its walls has a list of names of all rabbis from the territory of today's Slovak Republic that were murdered during the Shoah]. Now, he was religious to the point of bigotry. He was exceptionally, exceptionally religious and very poor. They had six children. One very handicapped child, it had the so-called English disease [English disease, or rickets: caused by a deficiency of Vitamin D, is a disease specific to childhood. Food intake can be a factor in its occurrence - insufficient intake of Vitamin D and also calcium and phosphorus]. Back then it was simply a disease caused by a lack of proper food and unhealthy living conditions. I think that he had three daughters and three sons.

One of his daughters was self-taught. She even prepared my brother for his bar mitzvah, which was unusual, for a woman to do this. She knew both spoken and written Hebrew. She taught me as well, but languages. At first German grammar, back then still in Schwabisch [Old German, or Suetterlin] script. To this day I can still write in Schwabisch. Last of all, she was also teaching herself English. One day a week she would come over to our place and give me English lessons. So those were my foundations of English. As well, one day a week I would have German with her. For that I would for a change go to her place. In this fashion she earned a few extra crowns.

I remember my brother's bar mitzvah very well. It was a grand event, a little humorous as well, Juro's [Juraj] bar mitzvah was. If I remember correctly, it was on 14th June in the year 1936, at least the closest Saturday to that date. As far as the religious aspects of this event was concerned, that was prepared by the daughter of the rabbi, Dr. Jozef Schill. I was eight years old at the time, but I remember everything. Of course this event couldn't take place in just any old way, the only son of Mr. Adler, not the poorest Jew in town, was having his bar mitzvah! In order for everything to be as it should, our entire huge apartment was repainted. The windowsills were painted, the apartment was renovated and furniture purchased. I know that we also bought new curtains and a modern writing desk. We used to call the living room the 'Radio-Zimmer' [German for 'radio-room'] in those days because it had a radio. Paradoxically, the living room was the smallest room.

So I'll return to the bar mitzvah. Now came the dilemma as to who to invite to this magnificent celebration. In the end they emptied out our huge children's room. In it were nothing but tables and chairs for about thirty or more people. The selection was very difficult, in the end it was announced in the synagogue that everyone's invited. The large shelves in the pantry were filled with cakes, barkhes and so on. On the evening before the big day the back then still numerous family got together for a celebratory supper. The culmination of the evening was a swan made of parfait, that's what today's ice cream was called. They brought it in a box packed with ice all the way from Bratislava, from some fancy restaurant. I can't remember its name. In any event it doesn't exist any more today. I didn't have anything of that delicacy, they sent me to bed early and in the morning it was all gone. Not everyone who came touched their food, because for some we weren't kosher enough. The next day my mother sent to those, who were mostly the devout poor, an envelope with money. The rabbi Dr. Jozef Schill also came. And for this reason he didn't even touch a glass of water.

In connection with this event there was suddenly a problem with Juro's clothing. Up to this time he had never had long pants. And because a bar mitzvah is supposed to show a man who has the obligation to uphold religious customs, his clothing was also supposed to be appropriate, that is, covering his body. Up to then in the winter he had mainly worn knee breeches together with stockings. But this also wasn't appropriate, because it was sports clothing, not suited to the occasion. In the end he had a dark-blue suit, but with short pants after all. God probably didn't care one way or the other, and the rabbi looked the other way.

We had good relations with the people in town. In the house that we lived in also lived the Diamant family. Besides this, in the back in our courtyard there was this tiny little apartment. Poorer Jews used to live in it. On one side of our house we had no neighbors, and on the other we did, they were old maids, teachers. All of them were German, but in those days that wasn't a problem. But there was no time for big friendships, because my parents were fully occupied. The closest family relations that my parents kept up was with the Sebestyen family, who lived in my grandparents' original house, as I've described. That was my mother's sister-in-law, my father's sister. Then my mother and her brother, Pavel, who had moved to Bratislava, were in touch. My father also had in those days two unmarried brothers, Rudolf and Oskar, who used to come visit us. So the family would meet up.

Our vacations were very limited, as my parents didn't have time for vacations. In those days it wasn't really the custom. When we did go, it was usually only with my mother. I remember only one vacation, when we were in Luhacovice [the spa town of Luhacovice lies in the southeastern part of the Czech Republic]. Back then people didn't go on vacation much.

My school years

My brother and I never attended nursery school. We had an educated governess. We'd go to the park with her, and when I grew up a bit, she taught me handicrafts. I began attending a Slovak public school. I started school in the year 1934. Now that was a big dilemma. In that single school building there was one German class and three Slovak classes. By this I mean first grade classes, and because I had a German governess, I spoke better German than Slovak. But in those days Fascism had already begun, so my parents immediately refused it and put me into a Slovak classroom. I don't want to boast, but I was a good student and I loved all subjects equally. We had an excellent teacher, Mrs. Maria Bencurikova. In the second grade Mrs. Bencurikova left to become a nun, and after the second grade we got this one teacher. He was actually a Czech by origin, or a Moravian, and knew how to draw beautifully. He was named Komanec. He was a fantastic teacher. I remember that he drew something very nice for me in my diary, which I no longer have.

When I was already attending school, my mother signed me up for piano lessons. My mother brought to the marriage one large piece of furniture, and that was a Viennese Bosendorf piano. I'm not familiar with the brands of those days, but it was really a first-class brand. The piano stood in our dining room. It was a large, black grand piano, its top decorated with golden lines and moreover decorated with beautiful mother of pearl. When the lid was lifted, inside there were wooden parts like for example a music stand and also flat candleholders that slid out, made out of beautiful white sanded, not painted, wood. At one time my mother's sister had played on the piano, and my mother a little as well. I rarely saw her play though, and for many years her fingers didn't even touch the piano.

But since there was a piano, and a daughter, me that is, it was necessary for it to once again be played. A piano tuner was called in, as I later learned, it was never possible to properly tune the piano, so even back then there used to be lemons. They took me to see Miss Edita Mikulikova, a piano teacher. Pezinok had no music school. Miss Mikulikova was an old maid. She lived with her mother, and her father had at one time been the mayor of Pezinok. She wore horrible hats and always had a bow tied under her chin. She had quite a few students. I don't even know whether besides her there was anyone else in Pezinok that taught piano. They bought me Bayer, that was beginner's music for piano. Then followed Cerny I and Cerny II and I began to learn. Back then it wasn't the custom to take off your shoes, there [at Miss Mikulikova's] you had to take off your shoes or galoshes, as the kids would have brought in tons of mud. Her mother, Mrs. Mikulikova, had the biggest joy not from the students' success, but when she could slander a student that had just left. The furniture was terribly old-fashioned, but covered in white sheets, mainly the upholstered parts, so that the sun wouldn't fade them. When a fly buzzed by, Miss Mikulikova would jump up, leave the piano be until she caught the fly and then stuck it into a flower pot. Apparently flies make good fertilizer.

OK, I've gotten a bit off track. I plinked, I plunked, but besides taking piano lessons, it was also necessary to practice. During the summer and fall everything was fine. My musical successes weren't above average, but beginnings were the same with everyone, so I didn't really stick out much in any negative fashion. As much as our piano stood in the dining room, which wasn't heated, and heating it just because of my playing the piano would have been exceptionally unprofitable, my musical career was put to an end. Miss Mikulikova was so angry at me, that when after the termination of our teacher-student relationship I met her on the street and said 'hello ma'am,' she didn't answer and sailed off in front of me with her chin in the air. That's how I ended up. And how did the piano end up? In the year 1952, when we were moving from Pezinok to Bratislava into a small two and a half room apartment at 47 Cervene Armady Street, before that and later Grossling Street, the piano wasn't moved, as it would not have fit into the small apartment here in Bratislava. My parents sold the piano for 4,500 crowns. A year later there was a drastic currency reform 6. Currency was exchanged at a ratio of 1:50, only regular savings deposits were changed at 1:5. So out of 4,500 crowns for the piano we ended up with, if I'm counting correctly, 90 crowns.

Anti-Jewish laws [see Jewish Codex] 7 began to appear when I had finished the fifth grade of elementary school. I went into the first year of council school, that was still normal. It was the year 1940 and then I commenced my second year of council school, and two weeks after the beginning of the school year they threw us out of there. In one word they told us that students of Jewish origin weren't allowed to attend. What did we do after that? The parents in Pezinok simply got together and found a teacher in Bratislava who commuted daily. He taught all the Jewish children from first up to eighth grade. Once every three months we then went to Zochova Street in Bratislava, where there was a Jewish school. There we wrote exams. This is how I studied for two years: seventh and eighth grade. What came after that, that's a different story.

During the war

In 1942 I got into a Protestant boarding school in Modra. That was already illegal. After I finished the eighth grade I was 14 years old. My parents arranged for me to be accepted into that Protestant boarding school. They accepted more of us Jewish girls, under the condition that we become Protestants. Since I wasn't, they quickly christened me and I spent two years in that boarding school, where they treated us well. There were about 20 of us Jewish girls there. That is, some of us left and there were also those that arrived. It was all organized by the local Protestant minister in those days, Mr. Julius Derer. He was the administrator of the boarding school. We attended school normally. The residence was on the upper floors, and the school was below on the ground floor. We of course couldn't move about outside of the boarding school. We couldn't show ourselves very much and communicate with the outside world. Not even any visits. We were hidden away there, but within the confines of the boarding school we moved about, were fed, studied. And we even got a report card.

For the two years I was at the boarding school, my parents stayed in Pezinok. My father had an exception, which protected him. [Editor's note: during the time of the Slovak State, there was a so-called Presidential Exception 8 and the Economically Important Jew exception; those were given to Jews performing work activities that weren't easily replaced. The father of the interviewee fell under the second of the aforementioned exceptions.] And you could say that we also had a decent Aryanizer [Aryanization - the transfer of Jewish stores, firms, companies, etc., into the ownership of another person (Aryanizer)]. What I can tell you about the Aryanizer is that he was named Jozko Slimak. His wife was a teacher. The strange thing was that she had some sort of Jewish origin, which no one knew about. Despite this, he was the decent one and she was quite devious. Well, she constantly wanted money and more money. But Mr. Slimak behaved decently. As an Aryanizer he had a quite difficult position in that every Aryanizer was allowed to take one of the former owners as an adviser, that is, one Jew. Here though there were two, because my father and Mr. Diamant were partners. Mr. Slimak didn't want to do either my father or Mr. Diamant any harm, and juggling between those two wasn't that easy. But how he managed to hold on to both of them, I don't know.

When I left the boarding school in 1944, my mother was very farsighted. She arranged a hiding place for our entire family in Pezinok with Mr. and Mrs. Zaruba. First we were hidden away in a room. One day they summoned Mr. Zaruba, the reason being that he and his wife live alone, childless, and have a two and a half room house. They needed to place a German officer with them. He didn't protest, so the German officer was moved into the room that we had been hiding in, and he moved us into the cellar. He was so generous that he didn't throw us out. So the German officer lived above us and we below him in the cellar. On the one hand, it was very secure, in that it would never have occurred to anyone that there could be Jews hiding where a German officer is. You can imagine that it was all very complicated and in the end he was fantastic that he didn't throw us our and hid us until the last moment: until the end of the war. Then we started to have bad luck. That's a story all in itself. A week before the liberation of Pezinok we had to leave there and in the end we found a safe haven in Pezinska Baba. One day there were still Germans there, and the next day the Red Army arrived, who liberated us.

Post-war

The fact that we had to abandon our hiding place a week before the liberation is a very complicated affair. The parents of Mr. Zaruba, with whom we were hidden away, lived in a neighboring village. And they were also hiding Jews, by coincidence our partners, the Diamants. We didn't know that they were there, and they didn't know about us. The son didn't know that his parents were hiding someone, and the parents didn't know that their son was hiding someone. His parents had a store in that village, a pub, fields and cows. Once, by coincidence, a German woman from Pezinok came to them for milk and saw the Diamants. She right away went and turned them in. The parents and children were hidden there. As soon as she informed on them, they came for them. One little girl was on the toilet at the time and the parents didn't say, "You know, we've also got a daughter." And that little girl was brought here by another of old Mr. Zaruba's sons. The man that was hiding us expected though, that when they discovered that there's a little girl missing, they'd go looking for her at his place. During the night Zaruba had to eliminate all signs of our hiding place. We had to leave. Mr. Zaruba loaded us into a car and drove us up to Pezinska Baba. There, there was this one cabin-dweller, Mr. Ossko. We knew him, as he used to shop in our store in Pezinok. He let us stay with him up until the liberation. They took the Diamants together with their son to Terezin 9. That was already near the end of the war, so they were in Terezin for only a very short time. They all survived. Their little girl Lianka and son Zigmund to this day live in Israel.

Zigo [Zigmund] Diamant was a very good friend of mine. We were friends from childhood and were better friends than when two girls or two boys are friends. He lived in the same house and we had a huge garden, and he was this 'thinker-upper'. He was always thinking something up. Even though his parents were quite religious, Zigo was modern. He liked hiking and camping. He could draw very well. After World War II he went to Banska Stiavnice to study at a school specializing in the timber industry. In 1949, after he graduated, their entire family emigrated to Israel. There he got a university education. In Tel Aviv he had an office with another friend, originally I think from Austria. They were interior architects and mostly did the interior design of buildings. For example they also worked on the Tel Aviv airport. Today he lives in Natania, near the sea.

The way we ended up at the Zarubas' place was that his parents had a store in Kocisdorf, today Vinosady. My father and Mr. Diamant supplied their store with goods. So somehow in this fashion we ended up with them. The Diamants ended up with his parents in a similar fashion. Everything happened independently, so that one didn't know about the other. I can even say that not even my mother's brother, not even her family, knew where we were. For the fact that they hid us, that family has also been registered among the Righteous Among The Nations. [Editor's note: the title Righteous Among The Nations is granted by Yad Vashem to people of non-Jewish origins that during World War II saved or helped save Jews.] Mrs. Zarubova was at that time only a year older than me. She still lives in Pezinok. We still communicate with each other, phone each other, visit. They saved us in very dramatic circumstances.

It's hard to say how many members of the Jewish community survived the war. My estimate is about ten percent. In 1949, well, that's only what I think, a wave of emigrations began. Whether the government gave people that wanted to leave problems, I don't know. I only know that when someone wanted to go to America, he needed a letter of invitation from there. That means that his family or friends that already lived there guaranteed that they'd take care of him financially and so on; basically that the person that's arriving won't become a burden on the state and won't ask for any government support. My best friend was named Magda Sproncova, now Gross. She lives in Israel, in Haifa. I keep in touch with her via letters and the phone. I also went to visit her, and by coincidence she had married a Pezinokian, who she maybe didn't even know before. He left for Israel with his parents already in 1939. She went there in 1949, first she was in a kibbutz for a year and then her parents and brother also arrived and he lives there to this day. Their parents have already died, but her brother lives there.

Luckily my parents survived the war, and my brother as well. At that time I was 17. We returned to our original apartment, where only a couple of things remained. Everything had been stolen, and I'll tell you, we started anew. My first concern was school. There was a commerce school in Pezinok, so I immediately registered. My classmates were already in second year, so I tried to as quickly as possible to learn what I had missed. I managed it, and in September 1945 I wrote the entrance exams and was accepted into second year. In those days commerce school had two years.

My parents once again began to do business in the store, together with their partner, Mr. Diamant. It was more or less distribution, for example of flour and sugar. We had warehouse space and so began to supply smaller stores with goods, flour, sugar and so on. They rented vehicles and that's how the goods were distributed. Later they nationalized it [see Nationalization in Czechoslovakia] 10 and in its place opened a Mototechna. [Editor's note: state-owned company with headquarters in Prague, founded in 1949; buys, sells and repairs motor vehicles and accessories.] My father then worked in it. His partner, Mr. Diamant, with whom he as they say cooperated, left with his family in 1949 for Israel. My brother got a job in Bratislava at the Gestadtner firm. Maybe it was a German company, or maybe a Jewish one, I don't know. They concerned themselves with copy machines and copy technology. My mother was a housewife.

My parents also intended to move to Israel. When my father's partner left in 1949, I know that we already had made a list of our clothing. At that time Pezinok fell under Trnava, there was some government office there, and I know that they even certified that list of clothing there. To this day I don't know why we didn't leave for Israel. It's hard to say whether I regretted it at the time. I began to regret it much later, really. Not until 1990, when I was in Israel for the first time, and met up with that girlfriend of mine, Magda. It was quite a bit later.

In 1952 we moved from Pezinok to Bratislava. We lived on Grosslingova Street. Later it was renamed to Ceskoslovenske Armady Street [Czechoslovak Army Street], and today it's once again Grosslingova. My father worked for Mototechna. Mototechna had a store in the Royko Passage, where they sold bicycles, sewing machines, and he worked there as the manager. My mother was at home, but here and there helped my father out in the store, because she enjoyed it.

My husband

I met my husband-to-be [Albert Gazik, born Gansel] by complete chance. At that time I was working at the Ministry of Food Industries on Vajanske Nabrezi, now the Tatrabanka bank is located there. He came there to see some colleague of mine on a work-related matter, she wasn't there and I was filling in for her, and that's how we met. My husband was of Jewish origin, but I don't know if that was a deciding factor in our relationship. Well, maybe there was some sympathy due to that. We had our wedding in Bratislava in an Orthodox synagogue on Heydukova Street on 9th September 1954. At that time there was still this one rabbi here, by the name of Izidor Katz. He later left to go abroad somewhere. The way it was in those days was that you first had to have a civil wedding, which was at the Town Hall, and then on the same day in the synagogue, the clerical wedding. Our wedding reception was at the Carlton Hotel. There weren't a lot of guests, 21 I think.

My husband's father was named Armin Herman Gansel and his mother Zaneta Ganselova, nee Reif. He also had a brother, named Jozef. Their family lived in Banska Bystrica. During the war Bystrica was the center of the uprising. My husband and his brother joined as soldiers of the Czechoslovak Army. They weren't partisans, but soldiers. As soldiers they captured them during the night in one cabin, I think that the place was named Kozi Chrbat. It was a cabin in the mountains. Someone betrayed them to the Germans, and they attacked them during the night, captured them and took them away into captivity. They were somewhere in Germany. My husband's brother was two or three years younger and wasn't as physically strong. He didn't survive captivity. My husband was very strong. My husband's parents survived the war hidden in the mountains somewhere, under very dramatic conditions, as it was horribly cold and they bore it very badly.

In my husband's family Jewish traditions were kept up quite a bit, as my husband's parents were from devout families. My father-in-law came from around Komarno and my husband's mother was from Topolciany. Before the war Topolciany had a very strong, devout Jewish community. After the war, though, they abandoned keeping kosher, but they observed all the holidays.

After our wedding, in 1954, my husband and I settled in Zvolen, as my husband was from Banska Bystrica and at that time worked in Zvolen. I found a job at the Central Slovakia Poultry company in Zvolen, and I was there for thirteen years, and for thirteen years we lived in Zvolen. I worked in the same place the whole time. It was a relatively prosperous company. It had plants outside of Zvolen as well. We served as the company directorate, and at one time I was the sales manager and then supply manager. I never became a member of the Communist Party [of Czechoslovakia (KSC)] 11. I was only in the ROH 12. My husband had to be in the Party, but not due to his convictions. His father was according to the views of the time a wholesaler, so my husband had to compensate for it somehow. Otherwise he would have had big problems finding work.

In the year 1956 my husband and I changed our name. Before, my husband had been named Gansel, and he changed it to Gazik. I became Gazikova. At that time I was expecting our first daughter, and that's how we decided. It was, as they say, in fashion. But I always said at work, but also everywhere else as well, that I'm of Jewish origin. I never hid it in any way. According to me that's the worst that can be, because in the end, they would have found out about it anyways. I always had good friends and they didn't make any exceptions, neither at work nor anywhere else. During that period, mainly in Zvolen, I didn't perceive anything. That's why I said in Zvolen, because you know, in a small town people aren't as rotten as in a big city.

In Zvolen in those days there was a small Jewish community. They were mainly older people. My husband and I used to go visit them. We associated with them, but otherwise, I can tell you, there were five families there. Older than we were, even then. Maybe only one younger couple and that was all. So basically one can't talk about some sort of Jewish community functioning in Zvolen after the war. In this environment we didn't observe holidays, only among ourselves in the family, but officially it wasn't possible. You know, at that time you had to also go to work. The community didn't even gather for holidays like Yom Kippur. Close to Zvolen lies Banska Bystrica, where there was a Jewish community, and a prayer hall. My husband's parents were also there, but we didn't go visit them for the holidays much either. My parents in Bratislava didn't keep kosher, but they did attend the synagogue and also observed the holidays.

My older daughter Eva was born exactly two years after our wedding [1956]. She was born in Bratislava. I went to Bratislava to give birth, because my parents lived there and I was with them for two months after giving birth, with the little one. Then we returned to Zvolen. My second daughter wasn't born until seven years later [1963] in Zvolen. I was on maternity leave for three and a half months both during the first and the second child. Back then that's how it was. Maternity leave was four and a half months. Of that one month could be taken before and three and a half after giving birth. In those days the job situation in Zvolen was so bad that no one dared extend it. So when one and then the other was three and a half months old, I went to work and left the child with a lady who was a complete stranger. I didn't have any family in Zvolen, so I had to find someone to take care of the children. But they took good care of them for me. Everything was fine.

My parents and brother, who lived in Bratislava, tried hard to get me to move there. But first my husband had to find work in the city. By coincidence one of his former colleagues roped him in to work with him in Bratislava. At that time they were putting together the head office of the Prior department stores. That colleague was a deputy, and he also promised him an apartment. Though a co-op one, the kind they were building in those days. That company, that is, those department stores, had four co-op apartments at their disposal. So an apartment had also been secured, as well as work. In 1967 we moved from Zvolen to Bratislava. My husband worked at the head office until he retired. As a pensioner he then worked in the administration of the Jewish Religious Community in Bratislava at 18 Kozej Street. For example he took care of kosher meat and its distribution. He issued documents when someone died and so on. He worked there until his death in the year 1995.

I have to say though, that life in Zvolen was quite good, though boring. Very quickly I found friends there. We would always spice things up a bit by going to Sliac. [Editor's note: the spa town of Sliac is in central Slovakia, in the Zvolen district. In 1970 it had 3286 inhabitants.] It was only a couple of kilometers away. We had beautiful walks with the children in Sliac. Then, in the Hotel Palac, there was a so-called 'tea at five,' though it was at 4 o'clock, and children could eat there too. So my husband and I would dance a bit there. My husband loved to dance very much. Later they built a chalet there. They had haluszky with bryndza [haluszky are somewhat similar to potato gnocchi, and are usually served with bryndza, a creamy sheep cheese] and the children chased each other about there. It was simply a beautiful place. During summer vacation we would go on holidays around Czechoslovakia. They were those advantageous ROH recreational activities. So we were for example for cultural recreation in Prague, all ROH. We were in the Krkonose Mountains, we were in Marianske Lazne [Marienbad] 13 around two or three times. In fact even for our honeymoon in 1954 we went on a ROH trip to Marianske Lazne.

My husband and I used to attend the theater. He had many friends. You know, I wasn't, as they say, the coffee-shop type. For example, later, when we were already living in Bratislava, my husband would meet every Sunday morning with friends at the Hotel Devin. We didn't choose our friends from only Jewish circles. We had both those, and others. Religion didn't matter. We had friends from work, from childhood. It was a mixed group.

During totalitarian times we didn't go abroad much. The first time I went abroad was to Balaton, around the year 1958. I was the ROH treasurer and as a bonus I got a holiday at Balaton. Once we were with our friends, that was probably in 1966, in Vienna, but for only about three days. The car we drove belonged to our friends. At that time we didn't have a car. They had this Skoda and they were these terribly meticulous people. They had everything planned out in advance. They also planned that trip to Austria, to Vienna. In the evening we went for a walk around Vienna and suddenly we came up to one display window that measured at least three meters. It was 10pm and the display window was full, full of gold, I don't know, rings, chains, and so on. When I got home, I pinched myself, whether I had been dreaming, or if it was true that such a thing existed. Because here, in those days, if a jewelers' got even one little pendant, people queued up. That's how it was, it's ridiculous, but it's true.

As I've mentioned, by husband's parents lived in Banska Bystrica. Around 1952 or 1953, I can't tell you exactly, there was this campaign, that they moved richer people, or people that had once been business owners, out of their own apartments or houses. During 48 hours they had to abandon their own house. This also happened to my in-laws. They had to abandon their own house and they moved them to Spania Dolina. Into horrible, horrible conditions. I can't be described. Into this one horrible house. A wet, moldy one. It had a kitchen and one room. But they had to live on something, so my father-in-law, that was during the time I was getting married, so in 1954, did shift work in the Harmanec paper mill. He didn't have a demanding job. He was in some electrical room and recorded from some gauges how much electricity was being used. But he had to do shift work, at night as well, and so on. What was also horrible, my husband's mother took the death of her son very hard, the one that hadn't returned from captivity. She had serious psychological problems because of it. My husband's mother died on 4th February 1967. They buried her in Banska Bystrica in an Orthodox cemetery.

In Banska Bystrica, a few months after the death of his wife, my husband's father met a former, very rich, resident of Bystrica, who before the war had owned a big distillery. He was named Lowy and he convinced him, which we didn't find out until later, to go to Brno, that there's a Jewish old age home there. He told him how fantastic it was there. That he'd even have kosher food. That he could even bring his own furniture. In Brno he'd be able to live a religious life, because there was a decent Jewish community there. Imagine that my father-in-law moved away without saying one word to us. In the meantime we had been looking for an apartment in Bratislava for him, because he wanted to be independent. Some one-room apartment, however with central heating. Well, you know, in those days it wasn't that easy. Back then you couldn't find an apartment just like that, like today. My father-in-law, without telling us anything, packed up his household and went to that old-age home in Brno.

It's true that there were many people similar to him living there. A certain Mr. Klimo lived there. Then some rich guy from Liptovsky Mikulas, who before the war had had a fur factory there. There were many well-known furriers in Liptovsky Mikulas, among non-Jews as well. So that old-age home in Brno was a gathering place for, as they say, high society. So he packed himself up and went to Brno. Then, when he was already there, my husband went to help him. But he arranged it all himself. So we began to go to Brno. We would drive there every third, fourth Sunday. We'd pick up my father-in-law and go out, for example to a restaurant. He was quite mobile, and also would come here, to Bratislava. Regularly for winter holidays, he was always here for two weeks. But you know, people slowly died off and the old-age home was transferred to the state. It wasn't even kosher any more, but at least they upgraded it a bit. They installed an elevator, which until then hadn't been there.

My father-in-law still felt great about being there. You see, he had at one time been a businessman. He'd had a textile and fancy goods store in Banska Bystrica. In Brno it was as if he'd returned into his past. He performed services for the old-age home residents. More or less in the fashion that in the morning he would sit down in the hall, and the residents would come to him, 'Please Mr. Gansel...' - that was his name - "...please Mr. Gansel, I need a postcard for someone's name day. And I need some toothpaste..." He'd write it all down and go into town and return with the things he'd written down. Then after lunch, at one o'clock, he'd sit down again and distribute it all. When there was a larger amount to be bought, he borrowed a car that delivered food to them from one larger old-age home. The load would be brought with that car and he'd be completely ecstatic that he was a businessman again. Always when he came to visit us, he'd show us his orders and was proud of it.

In Brno my father-in-law made a close connection with the Jewish religious community. He went there every Friday and Saturday, to the synagogue. When he died, in 1975, the official part of his funeral was in Brno: a very nice, very well done funeral, that my husband and I attended with the children as well. During the night the funeral service then drove him to Banska Bystrica and the next day they buried him in Bystrica, in the Orthodox cemetery beside his wife, with us in attendance.

Observance of holidays went without saying with my parents. My father attended the synagogue regularly. My mother also attended the synagogue; she had her own place there. After my husband, the children and I moved to Bratislava, we also attended the synagogue with my parents during the holidays. In those days Bratislava had a quite large Jewish community, because they were all moving here from the surrounding villages. So we of course attended. But my brother was quite distant from religion, already from childhood. He wasn't very religiously inclined. Despite this he married a Jewess. For a long time she couldn't get pregnant, but after thirteen years she finally succeeded. And then they had two nice and healthy sons. My brother died on 15th October 1989 in Bratislava.

We moved to Bratislava in August of 1967, and by the beginning of October I already had a job. I began in the Detva manufacturing co-op. [Editor's note: in the year 1948 Detva was socialized into the Folk Art Manufacturing Center. In 1953 it was transferred to the Slovak Union of Manufacturing Co- ops as a Folk Art Manufacturing Co-op. In 1973 Detva had 806 workers.] I was there the whole time, practically until retirement. While already of retirement age I transferred to another co-op, Univerzal. [Editor's note: the Univerzal manufacturing co-op was located in Bratislava. Its activities were in the sphere of electro-technical and metallurgical industry.] Here I also worked in supply. Finally I became the caretaker of my own grandson, Daniel. I took care of him for two and a quarter years.

Our daughters

Both of our daughters did very well at school. There were no problems with them. Both of them were straight-A students. The older one, Eva, began to take accordion lessons while still in Zvolen, but as they say, she didn't become a virtuoso, which she later regretted. Both had a talent for languages. After elementary school Eva attended high school and then graduated from medicine with honors. The second daughter, Viera, also went to high school and then studied economics at university. She became an engineer. She graduated at the age of 22, because in those days economics was a four year program. After university she devoted herself to the English language. For three months she studied in America. She then left to study for seven months in Melbourne, Australia and did two months of work experience with one renowned American company located in Sydney. That was far from all. For a certain time the University of Pittsburgh had a distance study program in Bratislava. Professors from Pittsburgh would come every second week to Slovakia to lecture, in English of course. She finished this school and was awarded an MBA degree. The graduation ceremonies took place at the City Hall in Bratislava.

Eva got married a year before she finished her university studies, in 1980. Her husband comes from a Jewish family. They were married in a synagogue in Brno. The synagogue was completely crammed full, I don't know how everyone found out about it. The wedding didn't take place in Brno due to the fact that my future son-in-law was from there, but because at that time there was no rabbi in Bratislava. There was this one here, by coincidence also Katz, who before had been in Dunajska Streda. Not that I didn't like him. But he de facto wasn't a rabbi, he only let himself be called that. I think that he was a shochet. In Brno Mr. Neufeld was the cantor. He also did the wedding and together with his two sons sang at the wedding. He was from Banska Bystrica, the same as my husband. They sang beautifully. What more, which is strange, the synagogue wasn't full of Jews, but non-Jews came to have a look. For around twenty years there hadn't been a Jewish wedding there, and everyone was curious. In those days there weren't too many religious activities going on in Bratislava.

When my daughters left home I didn't feel sad, nor did I regret it in some way. They weren't going out of the country, not even out of the city. Eva and her husband have two children: a daughter, Dagmar, and a son, Daniel. Viera didn't get married. She's a single mother. Not long ago she had a daughter, Valeria, and now she's on maternity leave. Both of my daughters were brought up in a Jewish family, so also in a Jewish spirit. I don't know what the younger one is doing now, but the older one, along with her family, is a member of the Jewish religious community. She even has some sort of function in the community, but I don't know what. She attends the synagogue, and even my son-in-law is from a relatively devout family. He isn't so much, but his father was very devout. My grandson Daniel is momentarily studying in Israel.

Viera and I see each other almost daily, she lives relatively close by. I see the older one, Eva, about once, twice a week. She's very busy in her work. But we call each other almost every day. What sort of a relationship do I have with my grandchildren? Well, they like me, but do what they want. In the end, they have their own lives, and I can't burden them, something like that.

How did I experience the radical political changes in 1968 [see Prague Spring] 14? The year 1968 affected everyone, even if not directly our family, but the atmosphere and so on. Of course a person was devastated by it, because already before 1968 t here had been a certain loosening-up in the air, at least it seemed that way. But in 1989 [see Velvet Revolution] 15 my husband and I regretted that we aren't younger. We can't enjoy ourselves as much, traveling for example. My husband would for example liked to have gone into business. You know, he had it in him. Maybe he was also saddened by the fact that he saw that none of our children have it in them. He would have very much liked to be in business.

The first trip after the regime changed was in April of 1990 to Israel. It was a four-day trip, there and back. At that time President Havel 16 was there. Two planes went. We didn't go with Havel, but in the other one. I traveled with my husband, our son-in-law and our younger daughter. I was enthralled by Israel. I hadn't imagined that it's that built-up. People are self-confident there. They don't have to be afraid that someone's going to discriminate against them due to their Jewish origins. Every country of course has its pluses and minuses. It depends on what eyes you look at it with. A minus is for example their relationship with the Arabs. That's not normal, and I don't know if it's at all possible to resolve.

Glossary