Travel

Preisz Györgyné

Preisz Györgyné
Budapest, Magyarország
Az interjút készítette: Sárdi Dóra
Az interjúkészítés időpontja: 2001. október

Én nem nagyon tudok semmit az apai nagyapámról, mert az én apám hamar feljött  Pestre, ritkán jártak le, és akkor már ugye Románia volt az a rész.

Az unokabátyám, úgy gondolom, az édesapjától hallott mindenféle részleteket, és ezeket írta le. [Az apai nagyszülőkről szóló rész Farkas Vera unokabátyjának családtörténeti könyvéből való.

A könyv kéziratban van. – A szerk.] Az „1894-es képen nagyapámon fekete posztóból készült magyaros öltöny, testhez álló kiskabát fekete zsinórral, szépen kipucolt csizma van.

Csak a fején tartott széles karimájú kalapja jelzi faji [...] hovatartozását. [...] Nagyapa sötét körszakállt viselt.”

  • Életrajz

„Nagyapám Farkas Izsák fuvaros népes családjában született 1848. március 15-én” Géresen [Géres – Szatmár vm.-i kisközség. – A szerk.]. Családi szájhagyomány, hogy amikor dédapa egy-két nap múltán oda jutott, hogy az újszülöttet anyakönyveztesse, akkor már Szatmárra is eljutott a pesti nagy események híre [az 1848-as forradalomé]. Így aztán, amikor Farkas Izsák fuvaros előadta, hogy fiának a Wilhelm nevet szánta, a jegyző mérgesen lecsapta a tollát, hogy csak úgy percegett, s így kiáltott fel: „Mit Wilhelm! Vége a német világnak, a fiú neve Farkas Vilmos!” A család férfi tagjainak héber nevei között állandóan visszatér a Zev, ami Farkast jelent.

„A nagyapa nemigen járt iskolába. Ház körüli munkában meg a fuvarozásnál, a rakodáshoz, szállításhoz, lóápolásra, a kocsi rendben tartására szükség volt a gyerekekre. [...] Legénykorában nagyapa Szatmárnémetibe került, ahol elszegődött egy Swartz nevű zsidó gabonakereskedőhöz zsákoló munkásnak. [...] Az idők folyamán a gazdája megtette raktárnoknak. [...] Nagyapa feladatai közé tartozott az is, hogy aratókat kellett felfogadni, mivel a kereskedő alkalmilag földeket bérelt, illetve lábon álló gabonát is vásárlott oly módon, hogy betakarításáról ő gondoskodott.” [Szatmárnémeti: Szatmár vm.-i város, lakossága 1869-ben 18 400 fő volt. – A szerk.]

„Volt neki azonban egy nagyon nagy ambíciója: vágyott tanulni, írni-olvasni akart megtanulni. A tanulás, a könyv, számára gyerekkora óta misztikus rajongás tárgya volt, alighanem azért, mert Farkas Izsákéknál ritka vendég volt, csak ünnepekkor került az atyja kezébe egy szakadozott szegélyű imakönyv, olvasta a betűket, szavakat, anélkül, hogy azok jelentését értette volna. [...] Azért is ment be a városba, mert remélte, hogy vágyálmát megvalósíthatja.

Megtanult [a rabbitól] olvasni magyarul és héberül, írni szépen, gyöngybetűkkel. [...] Amikor a nap végén a gabonaraktárból hazatért, megmosdott, tisztába öltözött, a család vacsorához ült. Utána eligazította a családi ügyeket, aztán végre visszavonulhatott [...] kedves könyveihez.

Olvasás, a szentkönyvek bújása, ez volt az ő gyönyörűsége. [...] Az évek során beszerezte a héber nyelvű szent irodalom nagy részét. Újságot is olvasott, a „Szatmári Hírmondó”-t. A könyvespolcain volt egy-egy kötet Petőfi és Arany János, egy vékony kötet Kiss József, meg néhány Kincses kalendárium, Szatmári népszokások és hasonló kiadványok.”

„Amikor nagyapa megházasodott, gyermekei számából következtetve körülbelül 22 éves lehetett, és az ugyancsak szegény családból való Katz Vilmát vette el [szül. Csomaköz (Szatmár vm.-i kisközség), 1853 – A szerk.], aki akkor 17 éves volt. [...] Katz Vilma 11 gyereket hozott a világra. Kettő meghalt, kilencet – öt fiút, négy lányt – fölneveltek. [...] Mindegyik gyereknek ki volt osztva a munkája a ház körül. Asztalnál kevés szó esett. Aki beszél, könnyen éhes marad, a maradékot megeszik a többiek.

A nagyapa száját hangos szó sosem hagyta el, kezét nem emelte, elegendő volt, ha valamelyik rendetlenkedő gyerekre szemrehányóan ránézett. Nagymama annál jobban pörgette a szót. Keze is könnyen eljárt, bár ezért azt módjával.”

A nagypapa hirtelen halt meg, és „hirtelen kellett a temetésről gondoskodni. Kocsit küldtek a rabbiért, aki Szatmár másik végében lakott. Az azonban nélküle tért vissza. Mint Miklós jelentette, a rabbi úr, amikor megtudta, mi történt, [...] gyorsan elmondott egy halotti búcsúztató mondatot, majd elküldte a kocsit, mondván, hogy [...] a Farkas Vilmos temetésére ő gyalog megy. Felöltötte magára a fekete talárját, feltette fejébe a szögletes papi kalapját, fogta az imakönyvet, minden szükségest, s úgy ballagott végig balján az ugyancsak gyászöltözetű kántorral a városon. [...] Temetés után a testvérek felszámolták a házat, az ingóságokat elosztották, majd a pesti fiúk összecsomagolták anyjuk és Helén testvérük holmijait, és magukkal vitték őket Budapestre. [...] Katz Vilma nem sokkal élte túl a férjét. Meghalt 1922. január 26-án.”

„A kilenc gyerek közül négy került Pestre: Imre, Helén, Adolf és Miklós [Ő az interjúalany apja. – A szerk.]. Öten maradtak odaát [Erdélyben, ami az első világháború után Romániához került], közülük csak három nevét ismerem, az elsőszülött Gerzson, továbbá Eszti és Piri. [...] Úgy két-három évvel a millenniumi ünnepségek után, a gyereksor felvége már kirajzott a szülői házból. Az Eszti férjhez ment, a Piri úgyszintén. A Piri nem foglalkozott semmivel, a férje műszerész volt. Az elsőszülött Gerzson pedig akkor már tekintélyes szabómester volt. [...] Helén néni vénlány maradt. [...] Fiatalkorát a család szolgálatában élte le, Pesten is így folytatta. Mindenét testvéreire és azok gyerekeire áldozta föl. Élt-halt a családért. [...] A legkisebb gyerekét [Imrét] nagyapa rabbinak szerette volna nevelni. Talán az volt az egyetlen vágyálma, ami nem teljesült. [...] Imre az első világháború után valamilyen szállítmányozási cégnél talált munkát. Fakitermelés, az Államvasutaknak szállított.”

Adolf fakereskedő lett ugyanúgy. 1919-ben ő is valamit csinált mint mezőgazdasági akármi a Kommün alatt, el akarták fogni, és az apám irataival mint Farkas Miklós ment ki Bécsbe, mert a saját nevén nem tudott kimenni. Igen hamar megszedte magát, jómódú kereskedő lett, a lánya Svájcba járt intézetbe. 1938-ban, mikor bejöttek [a németek Ausztriába az Anschlusskor], még az utolsó vonattal sikerült neki visszajönnie. Visszajött, másnap kivett egy lakást valahol Budapesten, vett egy írógépet, a lányát leültette az írógéphez, és az első dolga az volt, hogy „Üzletemet áthelyeztem Budapestre”, és megindult az élet. És egy év alatt már tényleg jómódban volt. A felesége meghalt, ő pedig a második feleségével elkerült Svájcba, és ott halt meg. A lánya, Anna idősebb volt nálam. 15 éves körül voltam, mikor férjhez ment. A férjét Weisz Balázsnak hívták, és magyarosított Vitézre. Anna túlélte a háborút, visszajött, a fiát pedig a Helén néni megmentette. Ő most Izraelben van.

Mikor öt-hat éves voltam, akkor itt, Pesten fölültettek a szüleim egy vonatra – velünk utazott egy ismerős, de csak úgy, hogy ismerős volt –, és elküldtek Szatmárra [Szatmárnémetibe] az ottani rokonokhoz. Csak a Piri, az unokanővérem volt már akkor ott, és azoknál laktam. Két-három hetet voltam ott.

Az anyai nagypapát Strausz Jakabnak, a nagymamát Weisz Bettinek hívták. 1843-ban volt az esküvőjük. Kállósemjénben éltek, ez Szabolcs megyében, Nagykálló mellett van. Tipikus Szabolcs megyei magyar falu volt. Kis piszkos, koszos falu, fa kerítésekkel. Nem éltek külön [a zsidók], de eléggé volt zsidó élet, összejöttek a templomban. Nagyon szép volt a templom, és ott volt a főtéren. Az egyik oldalon volt ez az üzlet, ahol az Ella néninek [anya testvérének] az üzlete volt, a másik oldalán volt a templom, s a harmadik oldalán meg volt a keresztény templom. Elég sok zsidó volt, és a környező tanyákról jártak be. Mint például az én nagynéném és a férje.

A nagyapám kisgazdálkodó volt, két hold, négy hold, nem tudom. Nem voltak gazdag emberek. Dohánnyal foglalkozott és dinnyével. Emlékszem, egy nagy dohányszárító pajta volt az udvarban, hátul meg volt egy méhes. Kijárt a földre dolgozni. A fiai adták szerintem el [a terményt]. Alkalmazottai csak azok voltak, akik a háznál voltak, egy-két ember így alkalmilag. Egy olyan falusi házuk volt, ami mondjuk, annyira volt nagy, hogy sok volt a gyerek, és el kellett helyezkedni.

Iskolás koromban nyáron mindig ott töltöttünk pár hetet. Emlékszem, a nagymamának mindig fedett volt a feje, és a nagypapa mindig kalapban volt [lásd: haszid öltözék; kápedli]. Ott is természetes volt pénteken a gyertyagyújtás. A péntek esti vacsoránál a család mind ott volt. Szombaton pedig volt ilyen színes fonott gyertya [lásd: hávdálá; gyertyagyújtás], fönn volt a falon, és akkor szombaton délután avval ment ki az ünnep. És a szíjakat [azaz az imaszíjakat] azt kötözte a nagyapa mindig, arra is emlékszem. Meg arra, mikor pénteken egy nagy fateknőben egész hétre csinálták a kenyeret, meg ilyen pici kis kalácskákat a gyerekeknek, unokáknak. Túrósdekli [A delkli kelttészta. – A szerk.], az volt a fő ennivaló mindig szombaton. Volt egy kis konyhakert, meg lovak voltak, meg kocsi is volt, sőt volt külön egy kis ház a lovásznak meg a személyzetnek. Az udvarban középen egy nagy kút volt, és mellette volt egy eperfa, és alatta millió kacsa, úgyhogy ha egy eper leesett, akkor az összes kacsa odagágogott, és ott ették. Aztán mikor már tizenéves lettem, akkor Agárdon vett a papám egy nyaralót. Úgy nevezték, hogy ikerházak, mert két egyforma ház volt, az egyik volt a mienk, a másik pedig az Imre bácsiéké, apa testvéréé. Egymással, egy udvarban voltak. Picike kis szoba, veranda, egy kis konyha. Akkor már oda jártunk, úgyhogy mindig csak maximum két-három hétre jártunk ki a nagymamáékhoz.

Sajnos senki nem maradt meg Kállósemjénben, mindenkit elvittek, 1944-ben elpusztultak Auschwitzban. A nagymama állítólag már a vonaton, 70 éves biztosan volt már akkor. A nagypapám előbb meghalt, olyan 1940 körül.

Anyámnak kilenc testvére volt: négy fiú és öt lány. A legidősebb lány, Fanni Balkányban [Nagyközség Szabolcs-Ung vm.-ben, 1920-ban 5900 lakossal. – A szerk.] élt. Gizi néni férjhez ment. Szabó volt a férje, nem tudott itt elhelyezkedni, és kimentek Párizsba. A lánya, Anna férjhez ment, és a gyerekei Izraelben vannak. A fia, Laci a francia ellenállási mozgalomban vett részt, és mint ellenállót, azt hiszem, kivégezték. Hella férjhez ment Mórichoz, és Kállósemjénben nyitottak nekik a szüleik egy falusi mindenesboltot [Kállósemjén gyorsan növekvő nagyközség Szabolcs-Ung vm.-ben, 1920-ban 2900, 1935 körül már mintegy 4000 főnyi lakossal. – A szerk.]. A fűszertől kezdve, a szegtől a koporsóig minden volt benne. De úgy látszik, nem voltak jó kereskedők, mert nem tudtak belőle meggazdagodni. Volt egy fiuk, Tibor, aki zsákos lett. Aztán elvitték az egész családot 1944-ben. Aztán volt az Irma, és annak a férje, Sanyi. Ők magyarosították magukat Glückről valamilyen más névre.  Nekik volt négy gyerekük, három fiú és egy lány. Ők mind túlélték a háborút Pesten, és idősebb korukban kimentek Izraelbe, mert az egyik fiú ott volt. Anyám legfiatalabb testvére, Aranka nagyon szép lány volt. A férje gazdálkodó volt, Kállósemjén mellett volt a puszta, ott volt valami gazdatiszt. Ernő Nyíregyházán nősült. Ő tanult, és nem ügyvéd, mert annyira nem vitte, de valami hasonló volt. Két lánya volt, akik imádták apámat. Az egyik, az Éva nevű unokahúgom levelezett az apuval, és az apu mondta, hogy keresek neked egy férjet. Ez volt 1944-ben. És 1944-ben írt az Éva, és így írta alá, hogy „szeretettel csókol a jövő nagymamája”. Fél év múlva halott volt. Anyám másik három fiútestvére, az Artúr, a Lajos és a Misi, mind ott éltek a szüleikkel Kállósemjénben. Gazdálkodónak csúfolták magukat, de nem csináltak semmit tulajdonképpen. Aztán elvitték őket 1944-ben, mind meghaltak Auschwitzban.

Apám 1887-ben született. 1904-ben fölkerült Pestre, elment kereskedőtanoncnak, és aztán onnan küldték el iskolába, valami kereskedelmi tanfolyamot végzett el [lásd: kereskedelmi iskolák]. Textillel kezdte; a Király utcában valamilyen textilesnél volt, aztán máshova ment. Abban az időben, az 1900-as évek elején a munkaidő reggel 7-től este ½11-ig volt, kizsákmányolták őt. Az élete a háború előtti időben nem is annyira jellegzetesen zsidó élet volt, hanem inkább munkásélet. Belépett a Szociáldemokrata Pártba. Aztán a végén, amikor már mindenhonnan kirúgták a munkásmozgalmi meg a szakszervezeti dolgai miatt, akkor a Hangya Általános Fogyasztási Szövetkezetben helyezkedett el [lásd: Hangya Magyarországon]. Ott már inkább fűszer meg ilyenek voltak.

1915-ben bevonult a román harctérre, de nem tudom, melyik fronton volt, meg is sebesült. Bár az a sebesülés az ő egyik régi levele szerint az volt, hogy egyszer jött haza szabadságra, és akkor úgy volt, hogy ilyen vagonokban jöttek, és forró kályha, tüzes kályha volt, avval melegítettek, és mikor megállt a vonat, ő ráesett és megégette magát. Hát onnan volt a sebesülése, és amiatt kapott valamilyen sebesülési érmet.

1920-ban volt a szüleim esküvője Kállósemjénben, náluk, a házuk udvarán volt. Úgynevezett sádhenolt esküvője volt [lásd: házasságközvetítő, sádhen], úgy hozták össze anyámat apámmal, és aztán szép nagy szerelem lett belőle. 1922-ben jöttek föl Pestre.

Én itt, Budapesten születtem volna meg, ha az anyám nem ment volna le Kállósemjébe, hogy ott szüljön meg. Akkor az volt a szokás, hogy a gyerek hazament, és a bábaasszonynál szült. A zsidó nevem Deborah. Dvojrele, úgy hívott a nagyanyám.

Amikor én megszülettem, akkor a szüleim már a Keleti pályaudvar mellett, a Verseny utcában éltek egy másfél szobás kis lakásban. Régi munkásházak voltak azok. Anyukám otthon volt velem. Eleinte nem volt háztartási alkalmazottunk, aztán később volt egy kislány, valahonnan vidékről, mikor anyám elég beteg lett, már az én születésem után. 1923-ban már elég randa idők voltak, fehérterror,  és megrúgták az anyámat a vonaton. Lehet, hogy csak véletlen volt, nem tudom, lehet, hogy akarattal. S akkor elfertőződött a melle, amikor szoptatott engem, s akkor fölvágták. De úgy látszik, akkor szerezte a szívbajt, úgyhogy attól fogva egész életén keresztül mindig kínlódott a szívével.

Hatéves koromban elkerültünk Budára, és ott laktunk egy nagy városi házban, de az is csak egy másfél szobás kis lakás volt. Eleinte a szüleim elég rossz anyagi körülmények között éltek. Aztán később, amikor apámat osztályvezetővé vagy osztályvezető-helyettessé nevezték ki a Fenyves Áruházban [a mai Kálvin téri áruház – A szerk.], akkor úgy jobb módban voltunk. De nem volt nagypolgári életünk.

Ott volt mellettünk, a Fehérvári út mellett nagyon sokáig egy zsidó elemi iskola. Oda írattak be. Egy nagyon modern, szép iskola volt, vadonatúj tanítóval. Első nap megjelentünk az iskolában, tanító még nem volt, akkor nevezték ki. És abszolút modernül tanított bennünket. Különösebben zsidó tárgyak nem voltak. Gondolom, tanították a héber ábécét (de szégyen és gyalázat, nem tudok héberül). Tanultam németül is gyerekkoromban, még egy nevelőnőt is odafogadtak a szüleim mellém, jött velem sétálni, és próbált németül beszélni, de csak ő beszélt, én nem. Nem ragadt rám semmi.

Az iskolában volt egy nagy udvar, amit fölparcelláztak az osztályok között, és nekünk ott kellett növényeket ültetnünk. Szombaton nem volt tanítás, vasárnap viszont volt, én nagyon sokszor sírtam emiatt. Abban a bizonyos városi házban, azt hiszem, talán csak mi voltunk az egyetlen zsidó család, és a gyerekek mindig csúfoltak engem vasárnap, mikor jöttem az iskolából. Aztán később apám jött mindig értem, velem együtt jött haza. És csúfoltak mindig a gyerekek, hogy „ergerberger sósberger, minden zsidó gazember”. És akkor apám mondta, hogy ha ezt mondják, akkor te azt mondd nekik, hogy „zsidó vagyok, nem tagadom, amit szarok, neked adom”. És akkor nagy büszkén ezt mondtam. Hát akik az iskolában voltak, azokkal barátkoztam, volt egy-két barátnőm ott a házban, akik helyesek voltak, barátkoztunk, de később megszakadt velük a barátság. Korcsolyapálya volt télen, az udvar minden iskolában föl volt öntve akkoriban, oda jártunk korcsolyázni. Egy időben jártam teniszezni, az már később volt.

Az elemi iskola mellett a másik utcában egy udvarban volt egy kis templom, oda jártunk. Kevés zsidó volt azon a környéken. Meg volt egy zsidó templom a mostani Bocskai úton, később aztán már oda is jártunk. A nagyünnepeken az apám is eljárt a templomba. Azt hiszem, nem nagyon emlékezett a Szatmárból hozott tradíciókra, hanem anyámra való tekintettel próbált helytállni, péntek este beöltözött, táleszt is tett magára, közös vacsora volt, de apám, ha nem otthon volt, titokban megette a disznóhúst is. Szombaton dolgoznia kellett az apámnak [lásd: szombati munkavégzés tilalma]. Nagyünnepekkor, azt hiszem, hogy nem. Az anyám még sokáig meggyújtotta péntek este a gyertyát. A széderen összejött a család, rokonok – főleg anyám részéről, akik itt voltak, Pesten –, s akkor csináltak egy kis széderestet. Hogy ez nálunk volt-e vagy az Irma néninél, akiknél ott volt a négy gyerek, erre már nem emlékszem. De én voltam a legfiatalabb, és nekem kellett a manistanut [má nistánát] mondani.

Később elkerültünk a Peterdy utcába, oda kezdtem járni a polgáriba [lásd: polgári iskola], elvégeztem az első két osztályt. Az a lakás valamivel már nagyobb volt, de ott a Helén néni, az apám testvére is velünk lakott, az úgynevezett cselédszobában. Aztán fölépült a Tisza Kálmán téren három egyforma nagy modern ház [A Tisza Kálmán téren – ma: Köztársaság tér – 1934-ben elkészült OTI bérházcsoportról van szó, ahol korszerű, minden komforttal ellátott kislakásokat építtetett az Országos Társadalombiztosító Intézet. – A szerk.]. És ott – ez még 1936-ban volt – a pártok osztották föl a lakásokat. A fele részét kapták a jobboldali párt tagjai és családjaik, a másik felét a szocdemek és a szakszervezetek. Az apám akkor a Kereskedelmi Alkalmazottak Szövetségében végzett valami munkát, és akkor kapott ott egy lakást. Az se volt egy nagy lakás, de szép modern volt, központi fűtéses. Onnan kerültem a Tisza Kálmán téri polgáriba. Ott volt egy zsidó tanárnőm, a hittantanárnő, aki nagyon értelmes, okos nő volt, mert nem bemagoltatott velünk imákat, hanem megtanította a szavakat. Megpróbálta megtanítani a héber nyelvet. Hát az édes-kevéssé sikerült egy 12 éves gyereknek, de mindenesetre ő cionista volt, sokat beszélt Palesztináról.

A polgári után jártam egy kereskedelmi tanfolyamra. Arról volt szó, hogy átmegyek majd polgári után ötödik gimnáziumba, de ez elég nehéz is volt, meg akkor kezdődtek a zsidótörvények, és a család úgy döntött, hogy elmegyek egy egyéves gép-gyorsíró titkárképző tanfolyamra. Dobó Katicának hívták. És akkor jöttek már a komolyabb zűrök, jobban fizetett tisztviselőként már nemigen tudtam elhelyezkedni. Akkor a család úgy döntött, hogy tanuljak ki valami szakmát. Akkor kitanultam először a fűzőkészítést, de mikor felszabadultam, mindjárt átmentem felsőruhába, és ott dolgoztam, ameddig lehetett, egy belvárosi divatszalonban mint kézilány.

A Zrínyi gimnáziumnak volt egy történelemtanára, Szentirmaynak hívták. Maga köré szedte az akkori nemcsak zsidó, hanem haladó vagy liberális szellemű embereket, és egy csomó lány is járt oda. Minden héten összejöttünk, és irodalmi esteket tartott fiatalokkal. Úgy 14–16 éves korom között jártam el hozzá. Egy barátnőmmel mentünk hozzá. Egy fintora volt a történelemnek, hogy ez az abszolút liberális szellem 1944-ben csinált egy nagy pálfordulást, belépett a Nyilaspártba [lásd: Nyilaskeresztes Párt], és nyilas lett. Amikor elvittek minket, többen egy barakkban laktunk, esténként megpróbáltuk fejből visszaidézni azokat a verseket, amelyeket ott tanultunk. Volt egy kis füzetünk, abba írtuk fel. Volt, hogy csak egy sorra emlékeztünk, akkor azt írtuk le, és folytattuk, ha eszünkbe jutott több is belőle.

Édesapámat elvitték munkaszolgálatra. Először behívták, de egy-két nap után visszajött. Aztán utána nem vitték el, akkor együtt voltak a szüleim a csillagos házban. Szóval együtt vészelték át. Engem elvittek, mert az Erkel utcában volt egy kis családi divatáruüzlet, de akkor már nem lehetett zsidónak üzlete, hanem volt apámnak egy régi ügyfele, akit szintén Farkasnak hívtak, keresztény, és avval együtt csinálták ezt. Stróman, úgy hívták akkor. Az bújtatott, amikor már volt az, hogy elkezdték gyűjteni a zsidó lányokat, hogy elviszik. És akkor volt egy olyan fölkapott hír, hogy a lányokat elviszik, az asszonyokat nem. Volt egy nagy szerelmem, akkor gyorsan megesküdtünk. Zsidó fiú volt, de csak polgári esküvő volt. Kapott egy hét szabadságot – akkor munkaszolgálaton volt –, akkor elvitték. Az első férjemet Schwartz Lászlónak hívták, aztán Sólyom László lett belőle 1949-ben. 1921-ben született, pesti volt. Kitanulta a szabóságot, de nem ment vele semmire. Aztán a háború után orvos lett. Egy fantasztikus fejű ember volt, letette egy évvel rövidebb idő alatt az egyetemet, mint ahogy kellett, kitűnő eredménnyel. Pesten volt az Idegklinikán.

Vissza 1944-hez, akkor, nem sokkal az esküvőm után, elkezdték begyűjteni az asszonyokat, ugyanúgy, mint a lányokat. S akkor elmentem oda, a boltba, és a stróman  elbújtatott. Novemberben el kellett hagyni a csillagos házat, és én mondtam, hogy egy napra hazamegyek, segítek anyunak csomagolni, aztán majd jövök vissza. Pont akkor jöttek a nyilasok, és akkor már nem lehetett visszamenni. Akkor elkerültem, a szokásos út: téglagyár, Kópháza, Waldhausen, Günskirchen. Welsben [Az ausztriai Welsben munkatábor volt, amely a mauthauseni koncentrációs táborhoz tartozott. – A szerk.] szabadultam.

S így jöttem haza. Itthon hál’ istennek megtaláltam mindkét szülőmet. Ugyanabban a házban kaptak egy másik lakást, és ott voltak. A háború után apám próbálkozott újra saját üzlettel. Volt a Károly körúton egy kis női méteráru üzletkéje, akkora, mint a háború előtt is volt, de alkalmazottja nem volt. Alkalmilag délutánonként, ha ráértünk, anyámmal besegítettünk. 1950-ben volt az államosítás [lásd: államosítás Magyarországon], mindenkitől mindent elvettek. Akkor föladta, és utána ment a Corvin Áruházba eladónak.

Nekem volt egy úgynevezett társbérleti szobám közel a szüleimhez, a Népszínház utcában, de ott már nem laktunk együtt a férjemmel, Lászlóval, mert akkor már elváltunk. Elmúlt ez a kényszerszerelem, és 1945-ben, azt hiszem, elváltunk.

1947-ben mentem újból férjhez Gerő Andorhoz, akivel ott ismerkedtünk meg a deportálásban Kópházán. Az ő századát is odavitték. A háború előtt bőrdíszműves volt. Ő is zsidó volt, és vele is csak polgári esküvő volt. A háború után nagy kommunista lett, és a Városházára került, ott volt valami osztályvezető, de aztán volt valami zűrös dolga, úgyhogy elbocsátották. Akkor valami fizikai munkát végzett. 1957-ig éltünk együtt, és tőle van egy lányom, akit Juditnak hívnak. Ő elvégezte a  közgazdasági egyetemet estin úgy, hogy közben szülési szabadságon itthon volt. Két gyereke van, az egyik egyetemre jár, a másik főiskolára. Korán meghalt, keresztény férje volt.

A háború után egy rövid ideig varrtam otthon rokonoknak, ismerősöknek, mert pénzt kellett keresni. Aztán elkerültem a Gundelhez tisztviselőnek, onnan a VII. kerületi Vendéglátóhoz tisztviselőnek, és onnan mentem nyugdíjba.

Én harmadszorra is férjhez mentem, Preisz Györgyhöz, a mai napig vele élek. 1967-ben volt az esküvőnk. Nagyon jól élünk együtt, nagyobb hangsúly van a zsidóságunkon is. A férjem minden második héten megveszi az „Új Élet”-et meg más zsidó lapokat is, ünnepekre eljárunk a Dohány utcai zsinagógába.
 

Edith Landesmann

 Edith Landesmann, geb. Stiassny

Meine Familiengeschichte
Meine Kindheit
Während des Krieges
Neue Heimat
Nach dem Krieg
Von Wien nach Zürich
Rückkehr nach Wien

Meine Familiengeschichte

Meine Mutter Josefine Stiassny (geborene Wolf) wurde in Witkowitz (einer Industriestadt mit bekannten Kohlebergwerken an der tschechisch-polnischen Grenze) am 19. April 1894 geboren. Ihr Vater Moritz Wolf war Ingenieur bei den Werken, ihre Mutter stammte aus Polen und hieß mit Mädchennamen Marie Rosenberg. Die Familie kam Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts nach Brünn, und mein Großvater betrieb einen Kohlen- und Holzhandel. Wahrscheinlich mit gutem Erfolg, denn einige Jahre später gehörte ihm ein Teil von Königsfeld - einem Vorort von Brünn -  der „Wolfstal“ genannt wurde.

Mein Großvater hatte einen Bruder, der hat in Ungarisch-Hradisch seine letzten Jahre verbracht hat und dort Schames von der dortigen Synagoge war.
Meine Großmutter hatte einen Bruder in Brünn, der Rosenberg geheißen hat und einen wunderschönen weißen Bart hatte.

Mein Großvater war ein großer Monarchist und unterstützte die K. u. K. Monarchie bis zuletzt. Er kaufte noch Kriegsanleihen, als der Krieg schon verloren war, und verkaufte sogar zu diesem Zwecke das große Haus. Am  Ende des Krieges war er vollkommen  verarmt, und sie wohnten bis an ihr Lebensende als Untermieter in einem viel kleineren Haus nebenan.
Gestorben sind sie beide unterwegs in einem dieser Autobusse, wo man die Abgase in die Autobusse hereingeleitet hat – während dem Holocaust.

Meine Mutter hatte zwei Geschwister. Eine ältere Schwester Rosa, die später David Taub aus Zakopane (Polen) geheiratet hat. Sie war sehr musikalisch und spielte schön Klavier. Der jüngere Bruder Hermann spielte Violine oder Bratsche und meine Mutter auch Geige und Zither. So wurde oft im Hause Wolf zur Hausmusik eingeladen. Sie hatten einen Knecht, der im Betrieb mithalf, und eine Magd für den Haushalt. Meine Großmutter führte die Buchhaltung, was für diese Zeit recht ungewöhnlich war. So mussten die Mädchen bald lernen, den Haushalt zu führen. Sie hatten ein großes Haus und einen ganz großen Raum im oberen Stock, der Reitschule genannt wurde. Heute, hundert Jahre später, ist dieses Haus unter Denkmalschutz und in dem "Reitsaal" ist ein Theater. Die Adresse ist Königsfeld Palackeho 1.

Als die Kinder klein waren, trug sie der Knecht bei Schlechtwetter auf den Schultern in die Schule. Sie waren auch die einzigen Kinder, die Schuhe besaßen, das war ihnen peinlich, so zogen sie die Schuhe aus und stellten sie in ein Haustor.

Meine Mutter erzählte mir oft, wie sie mit den Arbeitern in den Wald fuhr und zusah, wie man die Bäume fällte, sie abschälte und zur Straße brachte. Sie kannte dadurch die Namen vieler Waldblumen und alle Pilze, ob sie essbar oder giftig waren.

Mein Vater Karel Stiassny wurde am 6.12.1892 in Brünn geboren. Sein Vater Isaak, Ignaz kam aus Kremsier, einer kleinen Stadt in Mähren, er war angeblich Fuhrwerker. Meine Großmutter Cecilie, geborene Hochwald, kam aus Boskowitz, damals eine große jüdische Gemeinde. Bei einem Besuch in Boskowitz vor einigen Jahren, konnte ich noch einige Grabsteine mit dem Namen Hochwald finden. Mein Großvater, den ich nie kannte, starb, als mein Vater 11 Jahre alt war. So blieb die Witwe mit sechs kleinen Kindern zurück. Sie starb 1928. Eine Tochter starb noch in derselben Woche, in der ihr Vater, also mein Großvater, beerdigt wurde. Nun war der Älteste - Fritz - 14 und die Jüngste -  Henriette - „Jetty“ 2 Jahre alt. Es war sicherlich schwer, die ganze Familie zu ernähren, wo doch damals Frauen keinen Beruf hatten. Die Großmutter vermietete Teile ihrer Wohnung und  kochte für fremde Leute.
Fritz heiratete schon mit 17 Jahren und übersiedelte nach Teplitz in Nordböhmen. Er war immer das schwarze Schaf der Familie, denn er war ein Spieler, und er war ewig in Geldnöten. Er hatte zwei Töchter: Else, die sechs Jahre älter war als ich und viele Sommer mit uns in Bilowitz verbrachte. Ihre Schwester Martha war in meinem Alter, doch ich sah sie nur einmal, im Sommer 1938. Sie wurde dann in einem KZ ermordet.
Die älteste Schwester meines Vaters war Pepi - oder Josefine - verheiratet mit Peppo Pavlitschek, einem  Nichtjuden, sie konnte dadurch den Holocaust überleben. Auch ihre Kinder Lilly und Fritzi haben überlebt, zwar unter widrigen Umständen, aber ich habe sie nach dem Krieg wieder gefunden.
Die nächste Schwester hieß Grete, sie heiratete Bruno Braun, Holzhändler in Brünn, der dann zufällig den Holzplatz meines Großvaters in Wolfstal erwarb. Ich habe dort mit meinen Cousinen Fritzi und Lilly oft gespielt. Das Ehepaar Braun hatte keine eigenen Kinder. Sie wurden im KZ ermordet.
Dann war da Alfred, der jüngste Bruder meines Vaters, für den er sich immer besonders verantwortlich fühlte. Schon in Brünn arbeitete er im Betrieb meines Vaters, wo er zum Textilfachmann ausgebildet wurde. Auch später in Palästina hat er wieder mit meinem Vater gearbeitet.
Die jüngste Schwester meines Vaters war Jetty, Henriette, meine Lieblingstante, denn obzwar sie keine Kinder hatte, verstand sie es doch, mit mir sehr schön zu spielen. Einmal fuhr ich zu ihr, um zu übernachten. Sie wohnten in einem Vorort von Brünn, und ich fuhr das erste Mal allein mit der Straßenbahn! Es war alles sehr schön, bis ich schlafen gehen sollte, da überfiel mich die Angst, und ich wollte sofort nach Hause! Ich weinte und sagte, ich müsste ganz schnell nach Hause, denn ich konnte das Geburtstagsgedicht für meine Mutter noch nicht auswendig! Der Geburtstag war erst in einem Monat!!! Auch Tante Jetty konnte überleben, denn auch ihr Mann war kein Jude. Sie musste den Stern tragen und wurde auch später nach Theresienstadt verschickt, aber in eine Abteilung für Mischehen.

Der Name Stiassny ist ein urtschechischer Name und bedeutet „glücklich“. Als Hitler die Tschechoslowakei besetzte, dachte mein Onkel, der Mann von Tante Jetty, wenn er beweisen kann, dass die Stiassnys schon 300 Jahre in Brünn ansässig waren, man sie nicht vertreiben würde! Er behauptete, dass sich nach den Kreuzzügen ein Ritter in eine aus Spanien 1492 geflüchtete Jüdin verliebte, und ihr zuliebe zum Judentum übergetreten ist.

Als ich im Jahre 1995 Prag besuchte, konnte man das erste Mal am Hradschin eine neue Abteilung besichtigen. Dort waren die Wappen der Kammerherren des 17. Jahrhunderts zu sehen. Wir fanden ein Wappen der Herren von Stiassny, und so wurde die Geschichte bestätigt. Trotzdem half es nicht gegen die Nürnberger Gesetze, und wir mussten das Land verlassen.

Mit 18 Jahren musste mein Vater zum K.u.K. Militär einrücken, und als er die normale Pflichtzeit hinter sich hatte, fing der erste Weltkrieg an, und er wurde gleich weiter verpflichtet. Er kam zu einem Tiroler Regiment, welches in Steyr stationiert war. Als er noch in seiner Zivilkleidung dort ankam, sah man aus seinen Papieren, dass er Jude ist, und fragte ihn deswegen, ob er gut rechnen kann. Als er bejahte, in der Hoffnung, dadurch vielleicht einen besseren Job zu bekommen , führte man ihn in den Pferdestall und befahl ihm zu zählen, wie viele Rossknödel in seinem Zivilhut Platz hätten!

Mein Vater konnte sich jedoch später gegen den Antisemitismus durchsetzen, er wurde auch mit dem Eisernen Kreuz ausgezeichnet. Bei Kriegsende war er für die Handkasse des Regimentes verantwortlich. Das hatte zur Folge, dass er erst viel später abrüsten konnte als alle anderen, denn er suchte in dem Wirrwarr der letzten Kriegstage jemanden, dem er die Kasse ordentlich übergeben konnte!

Meine Eltern lernten sich in dem damals neugegründeten Jüdischen Turnverein "Maccabi" kennen. Mein Vater war einer der Gründer und war auch Mutters Vorturner. Schnell freundete sich meine Mutter mit den Schwestern meines Vaters an, und es wurde eine Freundschaft, die bis zur Nazizeit andauerte, bis unsere ganze Familie auseinander getrieben wurde.

Es war für meinen Vater, sehr schwer Arbeit zu finden, obwohl er die Textilschule beendet hatte, und so verdiente er sich seinen Unterhalt durch Schönschreiben. Er hatte eine sehr schöne Handschrift und schrieb für Firmen Couverts. Bald jedoch wurde er in einer großen Textilfirma Hanak & Essler aufgenommen, wo er es im Laufe der Jahre bis zum Direktor brachte.

Meine Kindheit

Anfangs wohnten meine Eltern in einem Vorort von Brünn, nicht weit von der Fabrik Malomerize entfernt. Dort wurde auch mein Bruder Kurt am 21. Oktober 1922 geboren. Das Einkommen war noch ziemlich klein, und so eröffnete meine Mutter ein Geschäft mit Handarbeiten. Man konnte bei ihr handgestickte Ausstattungen für junge Bräute bestellen.

Vor meiner Geburt hatte meine Mutter zwei Fehlgeburten, doch als ich dann am 5.1.1926 zur Welt kam, suchte man eine Hilfe und fand "meine Mania". Als mein Vater sie abholen wollte, weigerte sie sich mitzukommen, denn sie wollte nur in einem jüdischen Haushalt dienen! Mein Vater überzeugte sie, dass er, trotzdem er nicht jüdisch aussehe, Jude sei. So kam sie mit. Mania war ein intelligentes Mädchen mit Matura. Für ein Mädchen vom Land sehr ungewöhnlich, und sie beeinflusste meine ersten Lebensjahre vielleicht mehr als meine Eltern.

Meine Mutter hatte nach meiner Geburt Angstträume. Sie sah immer graue Frauen, die sich über mein Bettchen beugten und mich wegnehmen wollten. Es war so arg, dass sie einen Psychiater aufsuchte, was zu jener Zeit noch nicht üblich war. Wir wohnten damals schon auf der Pragerstr. 64, wo wir eine schöne Drei-Zimmerwohnung hatten
Ich wuchs mehr mit Mania auf als mit meinen Eltern, denn Mutter hatte Angst, das erste Kind könnte unter der "Konkurrenz" leiden.
Als Mania heiratete, war ich "Kranzljungfrau", hatte ein Kleid mit Spitzerln und Mascherln, wie ich es mir wünschte, sehr gegen den Geschmack meiner Mutter, die das Einfache liebte. Ich war sehr unglücklich, dass ich meine Mania an Bohusch abtreten musste! Ich war sieben und ging in die erste Klasse. Für mein Alter war ich groß und stark, obwohl ich meiner Mutter immer Kummer bereitete, weil ich nicht gerne aß.

Noch vor Manias Hochzeit übersiedelten wir in die Stadtmitte - Blatna 1 - in eine sehr schöne Wohnung, die von einem Architekten eingerichtet wurde. Ich besuchte einen tschechischen Kindergarten. Mein Bruder ging in einen deutschen und kam eines Tages nach Hause mit der Bemerkung: "Ich will nicht mehr tschechisch sprechen, tschechisch sprechen nur die gewöhnlichen Leute!". Er ging dann auch in die deutsche Volksschule, und als wir übersiedelten, wurden wir beide in die jüdische Schule eingeschult, wo die Unterrichtssprache tschechisch war. In der Schule gab es nur jüdische Kinder, und auch die Lehrer waren größtenteils Juden. Wir hatten Samstag schulfrei und Sonntag Unterricht.
Ich hatte auch in der Schule viele Freundinnen, lernte Klavierspielen, sehr ungern, eine Zeit lang tanzte ich Ballett, aber ich war zu groß und zu dick für mein Alter. Natürlich gingen wir beide, Kurt und ich, in den jüdischen Turnverein Maccabi, den doch mein Vater mitgegründet hatte, und später auch in den Jugendbund Maccabi Hazair. Wir waren also fast ausschließlich in jüdischer Gesellschaft und hatten daher keine Probleme mit unserem Judentum. Außer Anna und einem Mädchen, das über uns im selben Haus wohnte, hatten wir keinen Kontakt zu Nichtjuden.

Die Sommer verbrachten wir, so lange ich noch nicht zur Schule ging, in Bilowize, einem Dorf zwei Bahnstationen von Brünn und nicht weit von Vaters Fabrik. Wir übersiedelten mit dem ganzen Hausrat, Kindermädchen und Hund schon im Mai, und kamen erst im Oktober nach Brünn zurück., Die Schulkinder - mit uns übersiedelten noch mindestens acht andere jüdische Familien in dasselbe Dorf, um dort den Sommer zu verbringen - fuhren täglich in Begleitung eines Erwachsenen nach Brünn in die Schule. Ich war die Kleinste und blieb mit den Dorfkindern zurück. Es war für uns ein Paradies! Im Dorf war ein Bach mit einem Wehr, an heißen Tagen konnten wir stundenlang im Wasser planschen. Die Eltern gingen kegeln, wir durften alle Neune wieder aufstellen. Wir machten auch schöne Ausflüge in die Umgebung mit der ganzen Gesellschaft, und wenn ich müde wurde, trug mich mein Vater auf den Schultern und sang. Er hatte einen guten Bariton und verdiente sich in seiner Jugend etwas Geld als Chorist und Statist am Theater. Da machte er auch die Bekanntschaft von Leo Slezak und Maria Jeritza, damals die bedeutendsten Opernstars. Ich liebte es wenn er sang: "Gold und Silber hab ich gern...." und  „Der Mann mit dem Koks ist da!“

Meine Cousine Else, die in Teplitz wohnte, kam meistens über den Sommer zu uns, und sie war eine gute Spielkameradin. Wir hatten von irgendwo Kostüme und spielten "Umziehen", manchmal auch Theater. Ich tanzte gerne und meinte, ich wäre eine Märchenfee. Da bekam ich den Namen Zizifee, und da ich die Kleinste war, wurde ich auch Nuninko genannt, Goldinko und viele andere Kosenamen. Ich brauchte lange Zeit um durchzusetzen, dass man mich nur bei meinem richtigen Namen rufe. Wir brieten Kartoffel auf dem Feld und sprangen dann über die Glut. Mein Schmerz war, ich konnte nicht barfuss über die Stoppelfelder laufen wie die Dorfkinder.

Als ich neun Jahre alt war, entschlossen sich meine Eltern, uns das erste Mal ins Ausland zu nehmen. Wir mieteten eine Pension in Portorosa an der adriatischen Küste Italiens. Schon die lange Bahnfahrt mit dem Nachtzug war ein Erlebnis! Wir hatten natürlich keinen Schlafwagen, wie es heute selbstverständlich wäre, wir schliefen auf den Bänken des 2. Klasse Abteils. In unserem Hotel gab es Tanznachmittage für Kinder. Wir lernten Walzer, Tango, Menuette und Rondo! Mir gefiel das sehr gut, doch mein Bruder litt! Oft mieteten mein Bruder und ich ein Ruderboot und fuhren weit hinaus aufs Meer. Meine Mutter, eine begeisterte Nichtschwimmerin, musste dann den Schwimmmeister bitten, uns zurückzuholen. Als ich dann in die Schule kam, fuhren wir nicht mehr nach Bilowitz, sondern jedes Jahr woanders hin, aber immer mit großer Gesellschaft und vielen Kindern. Ich erinnere mich an Radeshin. Wir wohnten direkt am See, in dem ich schwimmen lernte. Alle anderen Kinder konnten schon frei schwimmen, so machte ich "als ob" und während ich oben die Tempi machte, behielt ich einen Fuß am Boden. Einen anderen Sommer verbrachten wir in Dukovany- heute ist dort ein Atomkraftwerk - wir wurden vom Schlossherrn als zahlende Gäste eingeladen, natürlich wieder mit der ganzen Gesellschaft. Wir waren mindestens zehn Kinder in allen Altersklassen, ich wieder die Jüngste. Die Väter kamen immer nur zum Wochenende, da mussten wir ihnen auch alles erzählen, was sich in der Woche zugetragen hatte.

Im Jahre 1932 war in ganz Europa eine große Wirtschaftskrise. Viele Menschen wurden arbeitslos, und es herrschte große Not und Armut. G’tt sei Dank war unsere Familie nicht davon betroffen. Meine Mutter hatte jedoch Angst, das Gehalt meines Vaters könnte gekürzt werden, außerdem wollte sie wahrscheinlich nicht mehr nur im Haushalt tätig sein. Deswegen wollte sie ein Geschäft kaufen. Ich hoffte, sie würde ein Papierwarengeschäft kaufen, das hätte mir gefallen. Doch sie entschloss sich für ein exquisites Damenstoffgeschäft im Zentrum der Stadt.

Ich ging nun schon in die erste Klasse des jüdischen Gymnasiums, war eine gute Schülerin, hatte viele Freundinnen und sogar schon einige Verehrer, die mir meine Schultasche trugen. Am Nachmittag musste ich überlegen, ob ich mit meiner Freundin und den Puppenwagen spazieren gehen oder lieber mich mit den Buben im „Glacis“ treffen sollte. In dem Alter wusste ich oft nicht, was mit mir anzufangen, zum Beispiel habe ich mir eingebildet, da ich immer ein dunkler Typ war und mein Bruder blond und blauäugig, dass ich eigentlich ein Zigeunerkind war, welches meine Eltern in Bilowitz, unserem Sommersitz, wo immer Zigeuner in ihren Wägen waren, zu sich genommen hatten. Das war auch ein Grund, meiner Meinung nach, warum meine Mutter mich immer strenger bestrafte als meinen Bruder! Ich sperrte mich im Badezimmer ein und heulte jämmerlich! Ich war auch nicht gerne am Abend alleine zu Hause - ich fühlte mich sooo einsam!
Die Eltern waren beide sehr aktiv in vielen Vereinen: Maccabi, Loge, Wizo, Frauenverein, im Schulkomitee, und vielen anderen. So ist es kein Wunder, dass ich mir zu meinem 10. Geburtstag wünschte, einmal beide Eltern am Abend zu Hause zu haben.!

In die Schule ging ich zu Fuß, und es dauerte 20 Minuten, doch für den Heimweg brauchte ich zu einer Stunde. Erstens führte der Weg an einer Wand mit Bildern aus Filmen vorbei, und ich stand davor und malte mir den Inhalt des Filmes aus. Dann kam ich am elegantesten Hotel, dem Grand Hotel, vorbei, und ich schaute in die Halle und dachte, was müssen das für Menschen sein, die in so vornehmen Hotels wohnen. Der dritte Grund für mein langsames Gehen war die Angst vor dem Mittagessen. Ich hatte nie Hunger, und einen Widerwillen zu essen, doch ich musste alles, was auf den Teller kam, aufessen. Wenn ich nicht essen wollte, wurde ich in das Vorzimmer geschickt.

An unserem Mittagstisch nahmen oft viele Leute Teil. Alle wollten mit Papa verschiedenes besprechen, und so war es an einem Tag der Kassier von Maccabi, nächstens dann wieder jemand von der Loge, um das neue Programm zu besprechen, usw. An einem Tag der Woche konnte ich ein Kind aus meiner Klasse mitbringen, es war ein Waisenkind und hieß auch Edith.
Bevor ich in den Maccabi Hazair eintrat, fuhren wir immer mit den Eltern an den Sonntagen ins Grüne. Meistens fuhr die ganze Gesellschaft, Tanten, Onkeln, Freunde und deren Kinder. Wir hatten einen Rucksack gepackt, kaum saßen wir im Zug fing man an zu essen! Meistens hatten wir gebratene Gans oder Schnitzel eingepackt. Nach einigen Stationen stiegen wir aus, die Erwachsenen gingen direkt ins Restaurant und spielten Karten, die Kinder tollten herum. Im Sommer war meistens ein Schwimmbad in der Nähe, und wir schwammen bei jeder Temperatur.
Als ich dann in den Jugendbund eintrat, gingen wir eben mit unseren Freunden wandern. Kurt war natürlich auch im Maccabi Hazair, aber in einer älteren Gruppe. Die Eltern glaubten, er würde auf mich Acht geben, aber er hat mich vorgewarnt, ich darf niemandem erzählen, ich sei seine kleine Schwester.

So verging unsere Kindheit und Jugend, und wir Kinder merkten nicht wie sich der politische Himmel verdüsterte! Auch die Erwachsenen wollten es nicht wahrhaben, was auf uns aus Deutschland und später aus Österreich zukam. Meine Cousine Margit, die in Wien lebte, kam zu uns auf Besuch und erzählte, man male Hakenkreuze auf die Mauern und auf jüdische Geschäfte, doch bei uns meinte man das ist ja nur dort, bei den Deutschen, die Tschechen würden das nie zulassen.

In der Schule waren wir ein „Kleeblatt“: die Sonnenfeld Zwillinge und Ellen Allerhand, das meist umworbene Mädchen in unserer Klasse. Auch den Buben in den höheren Klassen gefiel sie sehr, und es gab eine Rivalität zwischen ihr und Ruth Austerlitz, die auch die beste Schülerin war. Heute sehe ich, dass wir vier die Privilegierten waren, da unsere Väter eine bedeutende Rolle in der jüdischen Gemeinde spielten. Karl Sonnenfeld, der Vater der Zwillinge, war Präsident der Gemeinde und mein Vater war in vielen Vereinen im Vorstand, auch im Elternrat der Schule.

Ich hatte also eine sehr behütete Jugend und spürte nichts von der Europaweiten Krise politisch und ökonomisch. Ich war sehr stolz, dass meine Mutter ein eigenes Geschäft hatte, und kam oft aus der Schule mit meinen Freundinnen vorbei. Dann durfte ich mir aus der Geldlade eine Krone nehmen und im Eisgeschäft auf der drüberen Seite ein Eis kaufen.  
Im Sommer fuhr ich auch nicht mehr mit den Eltern, Kurt durfte mit dem Jugendbund Maccabi Hazair in ein Pfadfinderlager, und ich fuhr mit anderen verwöhnten Kindern mit Jenda Mautner, einem Medizin Studenten, in ein Kinderheim. Den ersten Sommer waren wir in einem kleinen Ort Brumow, in einem Haus bei einem Sägewerk. Wir hatten viel Sportmöglichkeiten und ein volles Programm. Es gefiel mir sehr gut, und doch war ich neidig, dass Kurt in einem wirklichen Zeltlager war. Er fuhr auch nach Zilina, wo ein großes Maccabitreffen war. Dort ging er als Trommler gleich hinter der Maccabi Fahne, da war ich stolz, habe ihn aber auch beneidet.

Im Winter fuhren wir mit fast denselben Kindern nach Spindler-Mühle, einem Wintersportort im Norden Mährens. Ich konnte noch nicht Skifahren, das hat mir aber niemand geglaubt, da ich sonst eine gute Sportlerin war. Am Abend waren wir müde, aber wir spielten Gesellschaftsspiele und spürten nichts von der herannahenden Katastrophe. Es war das Jahr 1937, und wir befanden uns in dem später als Sudetengau bekannten Raum. Es lag noch ein schöner unbeschwerter Sommer vor uns, den wir in einem eleganten Kurort Luhacowiz verbrachten.

Während des Krieges

Im Jahre 1938 spitzte sich die politische Lage zu. Hitler besetzte Österreich. Mein Bruder Kurt war gerade 15, als Schuschnigg seine berühmte Rede endete mit den Worten: "Gott schütze Österreich". Es kamen damals die ersten Jugendzertifikate für Kinder zwischen 14 und 16 Jahren in die C.S.S.R. Aber die meisten Eltern wollte ihre Kinder nicht weglassen. Mein Vater war immer schon Zionist - er war auch Gründer des Maccabi in Brünn.

So entschlossen sich meine Eltern, meinen Bruder nach dem damaligen Palästina fahren zu lassen. Und so ging Kurt mit 15 Jahren auf Reisen. Die ganze Familie war bei uns versammelt, meine Mutter weinte, und mich schickte man zu Bett. Spät nachts begleiteten alle Kurt zum Bahnhof. Doch nach einiger Zeit hörte ich wieder Stimmen im Nebenraum. Alle waren wieder da. Am Bahnhof waren tausende Männer, die zum Militärdienst einberufen wurden.
Mein Bruder war also wieder zu Hause, denn man wusste nicht genau, wo die Grenzen waren. Erst einen Monat später konnte er mit dem Flugzeug (!!) bis Paris fliegen und ab Marseille mit dem Schiff nach Palästina fahren. Meine Eltern konnten für ihn zwei Jahre Schule bezahlen, und so kam er nach Ben-Schemen, einer Landwirtschaftsschule.

Meine Freundin Ruth und ich wurden in ein Dorf in der Nähe von Brünn geschickt, mit dem Dienstmädchen, dem Familiensilber, Fotos und anderen Andenken, um den Krieg dort abzuwarten! Aber G’tt sei Dank kam es nicht zum Krieg, und nach einer Woche kamen wir wieder zurück.
Die ganze Tschechoslowakei wurde am 15. März 1939 von den Deutschen besetzt.

Als Erstes wurde das Geschäft meiner Mutter arisiert, das heißt das Lehrmädchen übernahm die Geschäftsführung. Die Auslage wurde mit antisemitischen Parolen beschmiert: "Kauft nicht bei Juden", "Juden nach Palästina" u. s. w. Die "Ariseurin" verlangte von meiner Mutter, sie solle das Fenster abwaschen, doch meine Mutter sagte, die Aufschriften würden sie nicht stören! Das Mädchen lief immer ins "Deutsche Haus", wo das Hauptquartier der Gestapo war, um neue Instruktionen zu erhalten. Wir mussten täglich die ganze Losung an die Deutschen abliefern. Jeden Tag kamen neue Gesetze, die uns Juden zu Bürgern dritten Grades machten und später dann zu "Untermenschen".

Mein Vater war Direktor einer großen Textilfabrik und wurde sofort gekündigt. Die Leitung der Fabrik übernahm der frühere Schlosser. Nach einigen Tagen sah man, dass es so nicht funktioniert, und man rief meinen Vater wieder zurück. Da aber Juden nicht mehr die Straßenbahn benutzen durften, verlangte mein Vater eine Transportmöglichkeit. So kam es, dass täglich zwei SS-Männer mit ihrem "Kübelwagen" meinen Vater abholten und abends wieder zurückbrachten. Das war natürlich sehr riskant, denn man sperrte Juden ganz grundlos ein. Wir hatten ein großes Zimmer mit sechs Fenstern und weitem Ausblick, ich sehe meine Mutter gegen Abend von einem Fenster zum anderen gehen und Ausschau halten, ob mein Vater auch wieder nach Hause kommt! Von all diesen Aufregungen bekam meine Mutter einen Stimmbänderkrampf und verlor ihre Stimme. Es war eine sehr aufregende Zeit, und wir alle wurden sehr eingeschüchtert und verschreckt. Das war aber erst der Anfang, und G’tt sei Dank blieben mir und meiner Familie die weiteren Schrecken erspart! Denn schon im Mai kam ein Brief an einige Textilfabriken in Brünn, man suche einen Fachmann zwecks Errichtung eines Werkes in Palästina. Mein Vater meldete sich sofort, und nun begann die bange Zeit des Wartens! Inzwischen kamen immer neue Gesetze, und wir wurden immer mehr unserer bürgerlichen Rechte beraubt. Als es soweit war und wir alle nötigen Bestätigungen beieinander hatten, mussten wir alle Schmuck und Wertsachen an die Deutschen abgeben. Auf alles was wir ausführen wollten mussten wir 1oo Prozent Abgaben zahlen, außerdem eine Reichsfluchtsteuer, Judenvermögensabgabe, usw.  Geld durften wir sowieso keines mitnehmen, so kauften meine Eltern alles, was sie dachten in nächster Zukunft brauchen zu können.

Als alle unsere Sachen eingepackt waren, übersiedelten wir zu meiner Tante - der Schwester meiner Mutter - nach Königsfeld, einem Vorort von Brünn. Die Schule ging zu Ende. Es waren immer weniger Schüler da, denn wer konnte, reiste aus. Es war ein sehr heißer Sommer, aber wir durften weder in einen Park gehen, noch in eine Badeanstalt, auch war uns das Benützen von Straßenbahn und anderen Verkehrsmitteln verboten. So schlichen wir in der Umgebung der Stadt herum, und die Nervosität unserer Eltern übertrug sich auch auf uns. Der Vater von Ruth, der als Präsident der Kultusgemeinde als einer der Ersten verhaftet worden war, wurde entlassen. Er kam als gebrochener, total veränderter Mann zurück und durfte nie erzählen, was ihm zugestoßen war.

Endlich kam der Tag unserer Abreise. Die Schwestern meines Vaters begleiteten uns noch bis Prag, dort wohnten wir noch zwei drei Tage im Hotel Paris, dann kam der Abschied auch von den letzten Familienmitgliedern. Besonders in Erinnerung ist mir der Abschied von meinen Großeltern. Unser Verhältnis war immer sehr distanziert. Ich erinnere mich nicht, mit ihnen gespielt oder Zärtlichkeiten oder Geschenke bekommen zu haben. Wir gingen hin, weil wir die Mama begleiteten. Doch an dem Tag, als ich mit meiner Mutter mich verabschieden ging, weinte mein Großvater bitterlich und suchte in einer Schachtel nach einem Geschenk für Kurt. Er wusste, wir würden einander nie mehr wieder sehen!

Von Prag fuhren wir über Wien nach Triest. Wir kamen zur Grenze des so genannten Protektorats Böhmen und Mähren. Einige Zollbeamte in deutscher Uniform sahen meinen kleinen Ring, den ich von meinem Bruder als Andenken bekommen hatte. Juden mussten schon längst alle ihre Wertsachen abgeben, nur Eheringe konnte man behalten. Also musste mein Vater aussteigen, um eine Adresse anzugeben, zu der man den Ring schicken sollte. Der Zug setzte sich in Bewegung, und mein Vater war nicht zurückgekommen! Wir beide gerieten in Panik. Als der Zug schon in voller Fahrt war, kam mein Vater endlich zu uns. Es war ihm gelungen, noch in letzter Minute aufzuspringen. Als ich im Jahre 1947 nach Brünn kam und Erkundigungen einholte, was mit unserer Familie geschehen war, fand ich diesen Ring bei einem Bekannten meiner Tante! Die Menschen wurden ermordet, aber der Ring wurde an der gewünschten Adresse abgegeben.

Wir saßen also in unserem Erste Klasse Abteil und fuhren in sehr bedrückter Stimmung durch das Deutsche Reich. In Triest angekommen, erwartete uns dank der Verbindung meines Vaters in der zionistischen Bewegung, jemand vom Auswanderungsamt. Wir hatten jeder 10 Mark in der Tasche, nicht einmal genug für die Übernachtung! Man brachte uns in ein Auswanderer-Zentrum. Dort blieben wir über Nacht und bekamen etwas zu essen. Wir fühlten uns elend, doch wenn ich später hörte, was andere mitgemacht haben, waren wir wirklich Glückspilze!

Neue Heimat

Am nächsten Tag schifften wir uns ein und fuhren, wieder Erste Klasse, in unsere neue Heimat! Es war eine Luxusreise, die ich sehr genoss, meine Eltern weniger, denn sie wussten, dass der Krieg jeden Tag ausbrechen konnte, und hofften, dass wir Palästina noch erreichen könnten. Es gelang - wir  kamen eine Woche vor Kriegsausbruch an.

Zu unserer großen Überraschung erwarteten uns am Pier nicht nur mein Bruder, sondern auch eine Menge „Zöglinge“, die mein Vater als guter Zionist nach Palästina geschickt hatte. Einer von ihnen besaß eine Autowerkstatt, wo er sich ein  tolles Cabriolet eines Kunden ausgeliehen hatte, um uns nach Ramat-Gan zu führen. Zwischen Haifa und Ramat-Gan war eine lange Strecke nur Wüste. Es war Mitte August, und von Aircondition hat man nicht einmal noch geträumt! Wir fuhren also in der größten Mittagshitze direkt in die neue Fabrik „Argaman“.

So fing das Leben in unserer neuen Heimat an! Wir wohnten in Untermiete, bis wir eine passende Wohnung fanden. Die Not in Palästina war sehr groß, und die meisten Wohnungen wurden an zwei bis drei Familien vermietet. Meine Mutter jammerte: „Hätte ich nur nicht die ganzen Möbel mitgebracht!“. So mussten wir eine Dreizimmerwohnung mieten. Die Miete betrug 3,5 englische Pfund. Mein Vater verdiente 17, mein Schulgeld war 1 Pfund. Wir waren für damalige Verhältnisse sehr gut dran, und so kamen alle neuen Einwanderer, die inzwischen aus Brünn illegal einwanderten, erst mal zu uns, bis sie sich irgendwie einordnen konnten. Wir waren bis zu 17 Personen in der Wohnung, selbstverständlich mit Speis und Trank! Ich schlief in der Bettkiste, mein Bruder, der sehr unglücklich in Ben-Schemen war, auf einer Luftmatratze am Balkon. Natürlich war das Leben unter diesen Umständen nicht leicht. Meine Mutter arbeitete schwer, um mit dem Geld auszukommen und auch sonst kein Chaos aufkommen zu lassen! Aber wir empfanden das für selbstverständlich, jeder half jedem. Man schrieb mich in eine Histadruthschule ein, obwohl ich meinte, bis zu meinem 14. Geburtstag stehe es nicht mehr dafür, überhaupt mit der Schule anzufangen, wo ich doch die Sprache nicht kannte und nach 14 überhaupt nicht mehr in die Schule gehen wollte.

Binnen kürzester Zeit habe ich die Sprache erlernt und mich gut in die Klasse integriert. Da ich schon aus Brünn etwas Iwrith konnte, hatte ich bis nach den Sukkoth Feiertagen die Klasse eingeholt, auch sonst konnte ich mich, dank der Erziehung im Jugendbund Maccabi Hazair, leichter einfügen! Mein großes "Problem" war, ich musste in Kleidern zur Schule gehen, wo doch alle Kinder in khakifarbenen oder blauen Hosen und Hemden waren! Zu meinem ersten Geburtstag in Palästina wünschte ich mir also auch khaki Hosen und Hemd, obzwar ich wusste, dass es das Budget meiner Eltern belastete! Am Ende des Schuljahres bekam ich "Papadatschi", eine Art Malaria, und konnte das Schulabschlussfest nicht mitmachen - es war die 8. Klasse und somit das Ende der Pflichtschule. So hat der Klassenvorstand die ganze Klasse einfach zu mir nach Hause gebracht. Die Kinder saßen auf der Erde, und meine Mutter bot ihnen an, was gerade im Haus war. Nächsten Tag erzählte man in der Schule, ich wohnte in einem Museum, weil wir doch unsere europäischen Möbel mit hatten mit Nippessachen in der Vitrine. Eine kleine Episode am Rande: Ich wollte so wenig wie möglich "anders" sein, so nahm ich einen Iwrith Namen an, anstatt Edith Stiassny (das konnte sowieso niemand aussprechen) nannte ich mich Esther Meuschar (übersetzt von Stiassny). Meine Freundinnen wollten mich besuchen, als ihnen die Mama öffnete, fragten sie nach Esther. Meine Mutter sagte, so eine wohne nicht hier. Um genau zu sein, fragten die Kinder "Esther Meuschar?". "Die schon gar nicht!" war die Antwort. Ich hatte vergessen, meinen neuen Namen auch meinen Eltern mitzuteilen!
Es war eine schöne Zeit für mich, obwohl in Europa der Krieg wütete, und die Verfolgung und Ausrottung der Juden im Holocaust ihren Lauf nahm! Wir ahnten damals noch nichts von den Gräueln, die in Europa  vor sich gingen!

Meine Eltern wollten sehr, ich solle weiter ins Gymnasium gehen und später vielleicht studieren. Was heute selbstverständlich wäre, war damals die Ausnahme. Ich wusste, dass dies mit vielen finanziellen Opfern verbunden wäre, und ich wollte lieber etwas Nützliches lernen. Nach einem Jahr in einer komischen Privatschule, ging ich in eine Modeschule, wo ich über Modezeichnen (ich habe ganz gut Zeichnen und Malen können), Modeschmuck und Handarbeiten bis zum Kleidernähen und Zuschneiden alles lernte. Es machte mir Spaß! Ich ging weiter in die sozialistische Jugendbewegung, gemeinsam mit meiner Freundin Ruth Sonnenfeld, der es auch gelungen war, dem Inferno zu entrinnen. Sie hat bei uns gelebt, bis später auch ihre Zwillingsschwester Margit kam und Ruth mit ihr in das Kinderdorf Shfeah ging. Doch diese Freundschaft verbindet uns heute noch, obwohl sich unser Leben nach unserer Heirat in ganz verschiedene Richtungen entwickelt hat!
Im Jugendbund Gordonia wurden wir weiter zionistisch-sozialistisch indoktriniert, und so kam es selbstverständlich, als der Krieg immer näher an unsere Grenzen kam, es war die Schlacht um El-Alamein, dass unsere Jungens sich freiwillig zum englischen Militär meldeten. Später gründeten sie auch eine eigene Jüdische Brigade . Diese wurde von den Engländern "Two Shilling Trouble Makers" genannt, weil sie darauf bestanden, auf ihrem Emblem, welches dem englischen Shilling ähnlich sah, auch die Buchstaben Alef- Jud, die Initialen Eretz Israels, zu haben. Auch wir Mädchen wollten etwas zum Kriegseinsatz beitragen. Da wir aber zu jung waren, um zum Militär zu gehen, wollten wir wenigstens im Lande etwas Nützliches machen. So entschlossen wir uns, einen neuen Kibbuz zu gründen.

Meine Gruppe in der Gordonia ging im Sommer 1942 auf Sommerlager in die Kwutzah Ramat-David und wollte auch gleich dort zur Hachschara bleiben. Nach langen Debatten mit meinen Eltern durfte ich auf drei Wochen mitfahren. Von dort schrieb ich dann, dass ich mich entschlossen habe, mit zur Hachschara zu gehen, da ich auch weiter in einer Kwutzah leben wollte. Es war nicht nur das Bedürfnis, etwas für den Kriegseinsatz zu tun. Ich glaubte an das Ideal, das im Kibbuzleben verwirklicht wurde. Alle sollten nach ihren Kräften zum allgemeinen Wohl beitragen und alles für ihre Bedürfnisse Notwendige bekommen. Das Leben in der Kwutzah war mehr als "spartanisch", doch ich wollte aus Idealismus gerne alles auf mich nehmen! Als meine Eltern meinen Brief erhielten, kam meine Mutter per Taxi (das war damals ein unglaublicher Luxus), um mich und meine Freundin Ruth Ehrlich abzuholen! Meine Mutter fing an, meine spärlichen Sachen einzupacken, denn sie sagte, wenn ich da bliebe, wäre ich für sie gestorben, und ein Kind begrabe man nackt. Heute verstehe  ich meine Eltern und welches Leid ich ihnen angetan habe, doch damals war ich von meinem Ideal überzeugt! Im Nebenraum waren alle unsere Freunde versammelt und rieten uns, stark zu bleiben und nicht nachzugeben! Als meine Mutter sah, dass es nichts nütze, meine Sachen mitzu- nehmen, sagte sie, ich solle wenigstens auf 14 Tage nach Hause kommen, damit sie auf Urlaub gehen könne. Sie war, seit wir in Palästina waren, noch nie auf Urlaub, und so konnte ich ihr diese Bitte nicht abschlagen! Natürlich ging meine Mutter nicht auf Urlaub. Der Sommer ging zu Ende, und mein Vater drängte darauf, ich solle etwas tun. Entweder Lernen oder Arbeiten. Da ich mich weigerte, weil ich doch wieder in die Kwutzah zurückwollte, bekam ich meine letzte Ohrfeige von meinem Vater. Ich wurde nicht mehr seit meiner Kindheit geschlagen, und dann nur, weil ich nicht essen wollte und damit meine Mutter zum Wahnsinn gebracht habe! Ich ging also zu einer Schneiderin und bekam eine Arbeit. Als zwei Wochen vergingen, heckten meine Freundin und ich einen neuen Plan aus, wie wir doch zu unseren Kameraden kommen könnten.

Ich ging also wie immer morgens zu Arbeit, hatte aber mit meiner Freundin verabredet, sie zu Mittag, am Autobusbahnhof zu treffen. Als ich dort ankam, waren Ruth und noch einige unserer Kameraden dort und waren außer sich, denn am Bahnsteig standen meine Eltern! Sie hatten Ruth angerufen und gefragt, wann und wo wir uns treffen wollten, sie würden mir etwas nachbringen. Ruth sagte ihnen eine Stunde später, als wir verabredet waren, doch die Eltern ließen sich nicht täuschen und waren schon da, als ich ankam. Man versteckte mich hinter einem Stapel Orangenkisten. Meine Freunde und ich berieten, wie es weitergehen sollte.

Ruth und ich beschlossen mit einem arabischen Bus, erstmal in den Kibbuz unseres "Madrichs" [Führers] zu fahren. Dort wurden wir sehr schön aufgenommen, und als Mädchen mit Pioniergeist, die bereit waren für ihre Ideale zu kämpfen, gefeiert! Nach einigen Tagen fuhren wir dann in "unseren" Kibbuz, Ramat-David. Es war Herbst, und wir wohnten in Hütten aus Stroh, unsere Betten waren Strohballen, darauf strohgefüllte Säcke, außerdem hatten wir noch eine Orangenkiste für unsere spärlichen Privatsachen. Wir arbeiteten jeden Tag woanders. Mal im Apfelhain (da konnten wir sogar Äpfel essen!), mal in der Küche Geschirr waschen für 160 Personen! Aber das war nicht so arg, denn es gab nur einen Teller pro Person. Erst die Fleischspeise, Beilagen waren am Tisch,  meist ein Getreide, das Burgul hieß, Tomaten, Gurken u.s.w. Dann konnte man sich aus einer großen Schüssel Suppe nehmen - Kartoffel gab es damals in Palästina kaum. Wir hungerten also nicht, aber manchmal hätten wir gerne etwas Abwechslung gehabt! Wir waren 16 Jugendliche, die beschlossen hatten, unser Leben gemeinsam nach unseren Idealen zu leben. Abends saßen wir oft stundenlang zusammen, diskutierten, sangen romantische Lieder, oder hörten Vorträge im Speisesaal des Kibbuz.

Draußen in Europa wütete der Krieg. Millionen Menschen wurden umgebracht, aber davon ahnten wir noch nichts. Nach einigen Wochen kam Ruths Vater, um uns abzuholen. Ruth kehrte mit ihm nach Tel-Aviv zurück, aber ich blieb. Ich besaß nur die eine Hose und ein Hemd, in dem ich von zu Hause weggegangen war, aber jede Woche bekam jeder von uns frische Wäsche. Eine Garnitur für die Arbeit und eine für Schabbat und den Abend.

Eines Tages kam ein großer Wind und zerstörte unsere Sukkah. So wurden wir einfach in den aufgelassenen Hühnerstall übersiedelt. Der hatte ein schräges Dach, und an der anderen Seite sollte er Glasfenster haben. Leider waren alle Fenster zerbrochen. Es war Winter, nass und feucht. Wenn es regnete, tropfte es genau auf mein Bett. Ich hatte eine eitrige Angina nach der anderen. Immer, wenn mich mein Bruder  besuchen kam, (er war inzwischen Gafir [Hilfspolizist] und im nahe gelegenen Akko stationiert), war ich krank. Natürlich berichtete er es gleich zu Hause, und die armen Eltern waren noch unglücklicher. Aber ich hatte noch immer Spaß an meinem Pionierleben und das Bewusstsein, etwas Nützliches zu tun, gab mir Befriedigung. Wir waren nur 15 Jugendliche, und das war zu wenig, um einen Garin - einen Grundstock für eine neue Kwutzah - zu bilden. So gingen wir auf die Suche nach einer zu uns passenden Gruppe. Ein Junge und ich gingen auf "Brautschau"!
Wir fanden  eine Gruppe aus Deutschland. Außer mir, waren in meiner Gruppe lauter Sabres, aber es ging gut. Sie kamen, 14 an der Zahl, zu uns nach Ramat-David, und wir hofften, eine neue Siedlung am Golf von Akkaba zu starten. Das war aber nur eine Utopie. Ich wollte nicht nur "Frauenarbeit" machen im Kleidermagazin und bei den Kindern und ging in den Schafstall, wo gerade die jungen Lämmer zur Welt kamen. Ich lernte melken und Schafskäse machen, der dann an die Genossenschaft abgeliefert wurde. Es war eine verantwortliche Arbeit mit nur einem Fehler; ich musste um 4 Uhr Früh aufstehen! Das Gute war, ich konnte mir meine Arbeitszeit einteilen. So hatte ich Zeit zum Lesen, Spazieren u.s.w, außerdem waren wir in der Hagana engagiert, das war die illegale jüdische Armee, und nachdem ich zwei Kurse absolviert hatte,  wurde ich Befehlshaber einer Gruppe von zehn Mädchen. Wir übten mit alten italienischen Gewehren, Handgranaten und Pistolen. Juden war es unter Todesstrafe verboten, Waffen zu besitzen. Einmal erwischte mich fast ein Engländer, als ich mit dem Gewehr von den Übungen kam. Ich stellte die Waffe weg, lächelte ihn an, und nichts geschah! Nur mein Herz blieb für einen Augenblick stehen!

Am 5. Jänner 1942 war mein 16. Geburtstag. Ich war ganz allein auf dem Feld und sollte Rüben ausreißen, der ganze Emek Jezreel lag vor mir. Ich sang aus voller Lunge gegen den Wind, als ein Chaver angeritten kam und sagte, ich hätte Besuch. Ich war sehr verwundert, denn bis dahin kam mich außer meinem Bruder niemand besuchen. Ich stieg also auf das Maultier, kam zum Speisesaal und guckte hinein. Dort saß meine Mutter im Persianer Mantel mit Hut und Schleier!!

Ich war sehr gerührt. Ich machte mich so gut es ging zurecht, mit meinen geflickten Arbeitskleidern und zerzausten Haaren ging ich fröhlich hinein. Zu meiner Verwunderung hatte meine Mutter Tränen in den Augen! Ich wollte ihr unbedingt zeigen, wie gut es mir geht, reichte ihr ein Messer ganz für sie alleine und erbat mir zwei extra Teller und sogar als Nachtisch die Vegetarier Speise. Aber meine Mutter war nicht beeindruckt. Am Nachmittag fuhren wir in die nächste Stadt, Afulah. Das war auch ein Flop, da die Stadt nur aus einer Straße bestand. Also besprachen wir, uns am nächsten Tag in Haifa zu treffen. Ich machte Nachtdienst, damit ich den ganzen Tag mit meiner Mutter zusammen bleiben konnte und fuhr mit dem Milchwagen nach Haifa. Ich kam mir den ganzen Tag vor, wie Alice im Wunderland! Auf die Idee, nach Hause zurückzugehen, wäre ich nicht gekommen. Ich war trotz allem sehr glücklich, und auch heute bin ich froh, dieses Jahr im Kibbuz erlebt zu haben!
Es kam der wunderschöne Frühling. Das ganze Tal war ein großer Blumengarten. Wir machten viele Ausflüge, und so lernte ich einen großen Teil des Landes kennen und lieben. Doch in unserer Gruppe kriselte es. Langsam verließ einer nach dem anderen aus verschiedenen Gründen die Kwutzah.

Als der Sommer kam, fuhren die meisten auf Urlaub nach Hause, und ich wusste, die meisten würden auch dort bleiben. Auch mir ging es nicht besser, und als meine Eltern mir versprachen, ich könnte nach Jerusalem auf die Bezalel Schule  -eine Kunstakademie - gehen, war mein Traum des Kibbuzlebens aus. Aus dem Plan die Bezalel Schule zu besuchen, wurde nichts. Es war zu teuer, und wahrscheinlich hätte ich auch nicht genug Talent gehabt, so blieb ich in Ramat-Gan, ging wieder zu einer Schneiderin arbeiten. Es war vielleicht die traurigste Zeit in meinem Leben! Mein Ideal war weg, ich hatte keine Freunde und keine Gesellschaft und war irgendwie aus meinem Weg herausgeschleudert.

Ich übernahm meine Pflichten in der Hagana, denn der Krieg gegen die Nazis ging zu Ende, aber der Krieg gegen die Engländer spitzte sich zu. Denn nun hieß es für ein eigenes Land in Palästina zu kämpfen! Ich nahm wieder meine Freundschaft mit Ruth Ehrlich auf, und mein Bruder erbarmte sich meiner, damit ich nicht immer alleine zu Hause säße und stellte mir seinen neuen Freund vor. Er hieß Robert Meir Landesmann [geboren am 15.05.1920 in Wien]. Man nannte ihn Bobby. Er war mit einem illegalen Transport nach Palästina gekommen.
Unser erstes Treffen war an einem Samstag, anschließend an die wöchentlichen Militärübungen der Hagana. Ich sollte mich mit meinem Bruder und seinem neuen Freund beim Jarkon treffen. Der Jarkon war der einzige Fluss in unserer Gegend, man konnte dort Boote mieten und bis Tel-Aviv rudern. Es war eine beliebte Samstagsbeschäftigung, denn es gab nicht viele Möglichkeiten. Am Samstag, schon am Freitag Abend war alles gesperrt, auch gab es keine Autobusse, und Privatautos hatten nur ganz Wenige, jedenfalls niemand in unserem Bekanntenkreis.  Ich kam also zu unserem Treffpunkt am Jarkon in meiner Khakimontur und etwas schmutzig von den militärischen Übungen, aber die zwei Herren waren nicht da! Ich setzte mich in den Sand und wartete, und wartete... Nach einer geraumen Zeit kamen Kurt und Bobby . Sie waren schon ohne mich rudern gegangen! Ich war wütend! Am Nachhauseweg frotzelte mich der Neue auch noch, warum ich so komisch am Schabbat angezogen sei, und überhaupt, warum ich zu spät kam!! Ich besaß damals auch noch keine Uhr! Ich war also gar nicht begeistert von diesem städtischen Parasiten, der nicht das geringste für das Wohl des Landes und zum Ende des Krieges beitrug!
Einige Wochen später war ein Appell aller Hagana Offiziere. Wir standen stramm, und die Offiziere gingen an uns vorbei, und siehe da, einer davon war - Bobby! Er war doch nicht ein solcher Parasit, wie ich dachte!

Kurt lud seine Freunde immer am Freitag Abend ein, und ich sollte die Hausfrau spielen, da die Eltern meistens Freitag zu Freunden in Ramat-Gan gingen. Mutter bereitete Vanillekipferl, und ich sollte Tee oder Kakao kochen. Die Burschen saßen jeder in einer Ecke und prüften einander aus dem Lexikon. Bobby wusste am meisten, und das imponierte mir sehr! Später gefiel mir an ihm, dass er mich nicht nur als "Kumpel" behandelte, so wie es alle meine Freunde bis dahin machten, sondern als junge Dame! Das hatte bis jetzt niemand getan! Er half mir aus dem Autobus, er öffnete die Türe und ließ mich vorgehen u.s.w.
Oft gingen wir Samstag Nachmittag zu viert tanzen. Kurt, Bobby, Ruth und ich. Außer Volkstänze konnte ich aber keine Tänze, so lernte ich von Bobby Tango, Walzer u.s.w. Ich glaube, ich ging auch das erste Mal mit ihm ins Kino. Die Ruth lernte inzwischen ihren zukünftigen Mann kennen und verließ unseren Kreis.
Kurt hatte kurz nach Kriegsschluss, die Möglichkeit nach Leeds in England studieren zu gehen, und Bobby fuhr nach Abbadan zur Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, um gutes Geld zu verdienen, denn sein Wunsch war es, seine Eltern, die nach Brasilien emigrieren konnten, wieder zu sehen! So blieb ich wieder alleine ohne Gesellschaft. Meine alten Freunde aus der Jugendorganisation schlossen sich inzwischen der Kommunistischen Jugend an, denn in diesen schweren Zeiten sahen wir in den Russen, also in den Kommunisten, die Rettung vor den Nazis. Als dann im Jahre 1941 die zweite Front eröffnet wurde, um die Alliierten zu entlasten, waren die Russen als große Retter angesehen! So kam es, dass die meiste Jugend, die sowieso sozialistisch war, zum Kommunismus wechselte. Meine früheren Freunde nahmen Kontakt mit mir auf, und ich folgte ihnen in den Komsomol. Dort öffnete sich mir eine neue Welt. Ich traf mit Jugendlichen aus wirklichen Arbeiterfamilien zusammen und kam, als ich die kommunistische Zeitung verteilte, in die tiefsten "Slums" von Tel-Aviv, die ich nie gesehen hatte. Die meisten meiner neuen Freunde waren aus sefardischen Familien, aus Syrien und Marokko.

Das Jahr 1944 kam, die Amerikaner griffen endlich in das Kriegsgeschehen ein, und man sah einen Hoffnungsschimmer aufkommen. Und wirklich wendete sich das Kriegsgeschick nach der Landung in der Normandie, man hoffte wieder auf Frieden! In Palästina herrschte nicht wirklich Mangel an  Lebensmitteln, es gab zwar keinen Reis, keinen Kakao und keinen weißen Zucker, aber ohne diesen konnte man leben! Doch mit Ende des Krieges kamen auch die ersten Nachrichten aus Europa! Die ganzen Jahre hatten wir keinen Kontakt mit unseren Familienmitgliedern, die in Europa geblieben waren, und nun sickerten Nachrichten durch, die wir nicht glauben, nicht fassen konnten! Es war die Rede von Konzentrationslagern, von Transporten in Viehwaggons und von GAS!! Langsam kamen Listen von Überlebenden, die sich an das Rote Kreuz in Genf wandten und ihre Verwandten oder  Freunde suchten. Man hörte im Radio lange Namenslisten, und man las die Verzeichnisse des Roten Kreuzes, in der Hoffnung , einen bekannten Namen zu finden. Von den 40 Familien angehörigen, die wir in Europa hinterließen, war keiner dabei.

Am "D-day" Mai 1945, marschierte ich mit der Roten Fahne durch Tel Aviv und jubilierte mit tausenden Anderen, der Krieg in Europa war vorbei! Es war August, ich fuhr mit meinen Eltern nach Naharia auf Urlaub. Um meinen Urlaub noch zu verlängern, blieb ich als Stubenmädchen und Serviererin in der Pension und hatte dafür Kost und Quartier. Da kam die nächste schreckliche Nachricht. Die Atombombe auf  Hiroshima. Obwohl die Japaner auch unsere Feinde waren, konnte man sich eine solche Massenvernichtung gar nicht vorstellen.

Nach dem Krieg

Der Weltkrieg war aus, doch wir wussten, nun würden uns in Palästina neue Kämpfe erwarten. Ich arbeitete in einem Modesalon, war tätig in der Hagana und in der Kommunistischen Jugend, war 18 und hatte jede Menge Verehrer, von denen ich keinen ernst nahm. Ich hatte meine Zeit gut eingeteilt, ich lernte nach der Arbeit malen im Studio Avni und Englisch im British Institute. Am Abend ging ich immer mit einem andern aus. Eines Abends hing an unserer Tür ein Zettel: „Bin zurück und würde dich gerne sehen, Bobby!“. Ich rührte mich nicht mehr von zu Hause, damit ich IHN nicht verpasse - Telefon hatten wir noch lange nicht! Noch am selben Abend meldete er sich noch mal, und wir verabredeten uns. Kurt war noch in England, und Ruth war verlobt, so gingen wir zwei alleine aus - immer häufiger. Wir gingen viel tanzen und ins Kino, oft holte er mich aus dem Studio ab: "Lass das Malen, gehen wir ins Kino.". Deswegen ist aus mir keine wirkliche Künstlerin geworden! Dann lud er mich zum ersten Ball ein! War das eine Aufregung.
An meinem 20. Geburtstag fuhren wir im Bus nach Tel-Aviv, und mitten in dem Gedränge sagte Bobby: "Es passt mir nicht, dass du jeden Tag mit wem Anderen ausgehst, und auch dein kommunistischer Umgang gefällt mir nicht, denn ICH werde dich heiraten.“. Ich musste lachen und erzählte es dann meiner Mutter als Witz! Was der Landesmann sich doch einbildet! Die Mama sagte: „Mach gleich Schluss, er ist doch ein netter Kerl, und du sollst ihn nicht verletzen.“

Mein Vater war zu dieser Zeit in England bei Kurt und fuhr anschließend nach Brünn, um etwas über unsere Familie zu erfahren. In Manchester traf er die einzige überlebende Verwandte meiner Mutter. In Brünn kam er gerade zum Begräbnis von Ruth Sonnenfelds Mutter an, die zwar das Lager überlebt hatte, doch mit den veränderten Verhältnissen nicht zurecht kam. Es war ihr siebter Selbstmordversuch gewesen. Sie hatte sich nicht einmal daran erinnert, dass sie noch Zwillinge in Palästina hatte. Mein Vater fand zwei seiner Schwestern, die überlebten, weil sie mit Nichtjuden verheiratet waren, und hörte, dass meine Cousine Else den Krieg in Ungarn mit falschen arischen Papieren überlebt hatte. Sie gebar mitten im Krieg zwei Kinder, Judith und Thomas (weil er an Massaryks Geburtstag geboren wurde).

Inzwischen überdachte ich meine Gefühle zu Bobby und sah, dass es doch nicht bloße Freundschaft war. Wir entschlossen uns also die Rückkehr meines Vaters abzuwarten, um uns mit seiner Einwilligung zu verloben. Bobby sollte zu seinen Eltern nach Brasilien fahren, und nach seiner Rückkehr konnten wir eventuell heiraten. Mein Vater war gar nicht über unsere Pläne überrascht, er hatte größtes Vertrauen in Bobby und war bereit mich ihm anzuvertrauen! So feierten wir am 8. Juni 1946 im kleinen Familienkreis unsere Verlobung. Bobby hatte schon alle seine Papiere für seine Brasilienreise beieinander, da fiel ihm ein, dass er nicht bereit war, so lange von mir fern zu bleiben und meinte, wir sollten gleich heiraten und gemeinsam zu seinen Eltern fahren!.

Wir vereinbarten den 8. Oktober als Hochzeitsdatum. Mein Vater wollte unbedingt eine große Hochzeit. Wir hatten an die 200 Gäste. Die Chupah war in einem Orangenhain, und die Tische waren zu einem großen Mahl gedeckt, für damalige Verhältnisse einmalig. Am Morgen meines Hochzeitstages erwachte ich mit Halsweh und Fieber und behauptete, ich könne unmöglich heiraten!
Ich zog mein Brautkleid und Schleier an, und unter der Chupah hat sich dann auch Bobby verhaspelt und anstatt des traditionellen Spruches "harei at mekudeschet" sagte er "mechudeschet“ das heißt anstatt „und so bist Du mir geheiligt“, „und so bist du mir erneuert“, natürlich musste ich schrecklich lachen, und Bobby hat sich schnell verbessert. Zu der Zeit gab es oft "Ozer" das heißt Ausgehverbot für alle Juden. Wir  verließen also die Hochzeitsgesellschaft, um nach Tel-Aviv in das elegante Hotel Dan zu fahren . Im Zimmer war ein herrlicher Strauß roter Rosen für Frau Landesmann, und ich war sehr erstaunt, dass Bobbys Mutter auch da war!! Ich habe nicht realisiert, dass ICH nun Frau Landesmann war. Mir war elend, und am nächsten Tag brachte mich Bobby wieder zu meinen Eltern. Ich hatte fast 40 Grad  Fieber!

Als meine Grippe vorüber war, fingen wir an, meine Papiere für die Fahrt nach Brasilien vorzubereiten. Ich brauchte einen tschechischen Pass, den ich nur in Beirut bekommen konnte. Wir fuhren also per Taxi über die libanesische Grenze, wohnten in der Pension Paprika in Beirut. Nach einigen Tagen und viel Überredungskunst bekam ich einen tschechischen Pass und auch ein brasilianisches Visum. Zurück nach Palästina, Koffer packen. Am 2. November ging es per Schiff nach Marseille, wo ich auch meinen Bruder, der auf der Rückreise von England war, treffen sollte. Wir kamen spät abends an. Alles war dunkel und armselig. Wir hatten kein Hotel gebucht, nahmen ein Taxi und gingen auf Suche. Das war nicht einfach, denn die wenigen Hotels, die noch funktionierten, waren von den Besatzungsmächten beschlagnahmt! Nach langer Irrfahrt brachte uns der Taxler in eine obskure Gegend. Als wir unsere Koffer abluden, sagte der Portier, Gäste mit Gepäck nehme er gar nicht! Aber vielleicht auf der gegenüberliegenden Straßenseite. Dort wurden wir auch aufgenommen, es war inzwischen weit nach Mitternacht. Endlich im armseligen Zimmer, sagte Bobby: „Das ist ein Stundenhotel.“ Ich aber wusste nicht, was das bedeutet. Da ich sehr müde war, bat ich ihn, doch gleich für die ganze Nacht zu bezahlen, sonst würden die doch stündlich kommen, und Geld verlangen!  

Nächsten Morgen habe ich nach einem Badezimmer gefragt. Erstaunt schickte man mich quer über die Straße und zwei Ecken weiter! Da merkte ich, wie verwöhnt ich all die Zeit gewesen war!

Wir trafen Kurt, der ein schönes Hotelzimmer hatte, und es gab auch normales Essen für englische Pfund! Am Abend fuhren Bobby und ich nach Paris und vereinbarten auch dort einen Treffpunkt mit Kurt zum Mittagessen. Es war das erste Mal, dass ich wieder eine Dämmerung erlebte, denn in Israel geht die Sonne binnen einiger Minuten unter. Wir standen also am Zugfenster und beobachteten die herbstliche Dämmerung, es war sehr romantisch!

In Paris hatten wir - dank unserer englischen Pfunde - ein schönes Hotel und fanden auch ein Restaurant, wo man ohne Lebensmittelkarten essen konnte. Wir erlebten einen richtigen "Honeymoon" in Paris.

Nach einigen Tagen ging es weiter nach Rio. Es war eine wunderschöne Reise auf einem Luxusdampfer, die 16 Tage dauerte. In Rio erwarteten uns meine Schwiegereltern. Die "Murli" war gleich sehr lieb zu mir, doch der Papa war so ganz anders als mein Vater! Er schrie oft herum und mischte sich in alles in der Küche! Später sah ich, dass das alle Landesmänner tun! Ansonsten verwöhnte man mich, und ich wurde sogar bei dem reichen Teil der Familie eingeführt. Da gab es den Onkel Max, der Reiche, er war Miteigentümer eines Chainetores, "Logas Americanas“ und unterstützte die Eltern. Er lebte mit einer netten Portugiesin, Irene, hatte eine Tochter aus erster Ehe, Netty, eine Prinzessin, die mit goldenem Löffel im Mund zur Welt gekommen war. Im Hause von Max lebte auch seine ältere Schwester Arabella. Sie hatte noch vor dem ersten Weltkrieg einen deutschen Nichtjuden geheiratet und wurde deswegen von ihrem Vater verstoßen. Nach dem Tod ihres Mannes kam sie auch nach Brasilien. Sie führte Max den Haushalt, war also auch von ihm abhängig. Wegen ihrer herrischen Art hatten alle anderen Mitglieder der Familie vor ihr Angst, inklusive meiner Schwiegermutter. Dann gab es die älteste Schwester Valerie. Die war ein Kapitel für sich! Sie kam als erste nach Brasilien, gleich nach dem ersten Weltkrieg. Als Gouvernante bei einem Diplomaten. Später ließ sie ihre Brüder Max und Heinrich nachkommen. Diese Geschwister ließen sich taufen, da es für ihr weiteres Leben leichter war. Die in Europa lebenden Landesmanns blieben natürlich Juden. Arthur, mein Schwiegervater, lebte in Wien, Leopold, sein ältester Bruder, lebte in Bratislava. Als Hitler in Österreich einmarschierte, kam mein Schwiegervater sofort als Monarchist nach Dachau. Damals war es lebensrettend, im Ausland Familie zu haben. Max schickte die nötigen Papiere, und so kamen Bobbys Eltern nach Brasilien, auch Onkel Poldi (Leopold) mit Frau und Sohn. Eine ihrer Töchter wurden im KZ ermordet Die andere, Manzi, kam nach Palästina und später auch nach Sao Paulo, wo der Onkel eine ungarische Bücherei hatte. Das war also meine neue Familie, die ich kennen lernte, aber die mir immer fremd blieb. Lauter hoch intelligente, bisschen verrückte Individualisten.

Wir wohnten also bei den Schwiegereltern. Es ging uns gut. Bobby versuchte sich, eine Existenz zu schaffen, aber ich war nicht glücklich. Ich hatte Heimweh nach dem im Werden begriffenen Israel, nach meinen Eltern und nach meinen Freunden. Die Lage in Palästina spitzte sich zu. Es gab immer mehr Kämpfe gegen die Engländer. Und wieder kämpften die Juden ums Überleben. Diesmal um die Errichtung ihres eigenen Staates! Und ich saß in Brasilien!! Auch Erich, Bobbys Bruder, kam inzwischen nach Rio und bemühte sich seine Braut Lilly, aus Palästina nachkommen zu lassen.

Es wurde Mai 1947, und wir beschlossen, doch wieder nach Palästina zu gehen. Wir fuhren auf einem Frachtschiff, da man uns einredete, dass das noch komfortabler wäre! Es war ein Abenteuer! Wir waren  nur acht Passagiere. Wir aßen einen Ochsen von den Hörnern bis zum Schweif, es gab keinen Aufenthaltsraum oder irgendeine Abwechslung. Die Reise auf offener See dauert 21 Tage. Als wir endlich in Le Havre ankamen, merkten wir, dass wir auch zwei Särge mitführten: Jüdische Emigranten, die in Brasilien gestorben waren und in Frankreich beerdigt werden wollten.

Wir fuhren wieder nach Paris, dort hat sich die Lage etwas gebessert. Wir besuchten die bekannten schönen Plätze, das Folie Bergère, die Comedie Francaise, das Louvre, usw. Eines abends bekamen wir einen Anruf von Heini, dem Gatten meiner Cousine Else, der uns erzählte, dass sie mit ihren zwei Kindern in Teplitz leben und wir sie doch besuchen sollen. In Paris gab es zu der Zeit schon genügend Lebensmittel, aber nur am Schwarzmarkt, Heini bat uns, für seine Kinder Schokolade und Bananen mitzubringen, denn das hatten sie noch nie gesehen! Warum auch nicht. Wir verschafften uns Flugkarten und wurden von Heini mit einem klapprigen Auto vom Flughafen in Prag abgeholt.

Wir gingen kurz am Wenzelsplatz spazieren und wurden auch prompt angestänkert, weil wir deutsch sprachen. Es wurden in den Geschäften auch verschiedene Delikatessen angeboten, die ich schon jahrelang nicht mehr gesehen hatte, z.B. Hering in Aspik. Wir konnten welche kaufen, doch für Brot sollten wir Lebensmittelkarten abgeben, die wir natürlich nicht hatten. In Teplitz kamen wir in Elses Haus, einer schönen Villa, die bis 1939 einem Juden gehört hatte, dann von den Nazis beschlagnahmt worden war, und zu guter Letzt von Heini, der sich zur sowjetischen Front durchgekämpft hatte und als russischer Soldat zurückgekommen ist.

In Teplitz hatten sich wieder einige Juden niedergelassen, und alle besuchten uns, um Auskunft über Palästina zu bekommen. Denn sie wussten, dass sie in diesem Land nicht lange bleiben werden. Da wir nun schon in der Tschechoslowakei waren, fuhren wir auch nach Brünn, denn ich wusste, dass zwei meiner Tanten, die mit Nichtjuden verheiratet waren, den Krieg überlebt hatten. Mit Herzklopfen lief ich die Treppe zu meiner Lieblingstante hinauf, wir umarmten und küssten uns, weinten und lachten! Ich traf auch zwei meiner Mitschüler (aus einer Klasse von 32), die nach Brünn zurückgekommen waren. Die Stadt war sehr zerstört, viele leere Plätze, wo früher Häuser standen, und ich erinnerte mich immer wieder ....da wohnte...da lebte... Ich hatte eine Adresse eines Untermieters meiner Tante Rosa, der Schwester meiner Mutter, zu dem ich ging, um zu fragen, was mit meiner Familie geschehen war. Als ich seine Wohnung betrat, sah ich als erstes einen Teppich, den meine Mutter geknüpft hatte. Das Zimmer, in das er mich führte, war zur Gänze mit Möbel meiner Tante möbliert. Er bat mich, Platz zu nehmen und kam nach einer Weile mit einem fest verschlossenem Topf, den wir gemeinsam öffneten. Er hatte diesen Topf die ganzen Jahre unter den Kohlen versteckt gehabt, zusammen mit einer silbernen Zigarettendose, die bei uns immer auf dem Tisch gestanden war. Im Topf waren Liebesbriefe meines Großvaters an meine Großmutter und Gedichte, die er für sie geschrieben hatte. Leider habe ich diese nicht mitgenommen, da ich annahm, dass sich meine Mutter zu viel aufregen würde, und das wollte ich ihr ersparen. In der Zigarettendose waren verschiedene Schmuckstücke meiner Großmutter, Tanten und sogar mein kleiner Ring, der mir bei unserer Ausreise abgenommen worden war! Der Mann erzählte mir, dass er meinen Großeltern geholfen hatte einzupacken, als man sie angeblich in ein Altersheim verschickte. Sie wurden in Autobusse verfrachtet, die nirgends ankamen. Die Abgase wurden einfach in das Innere des Busses geleitet! Von den anderen Familienmitgliedern wusste er nur, dass sie verschickt wurden, wie alle Juden Brünns. Nur wenige kamen zurück. Es war ein trauriger Aufenthalt. Es gab damals einen Bus von Brünn nach Wien, und ich fragte Bobby, ob er nicht Wien wieder sehen möchte; er aber sagte, Wien sehe ihn nie wieder! (Wie wir uns irrten!)
Unsere Rückreise nach Paris traten wir in versiegelten Luxuswaggons quer durch das zerbombte und zerstörte Deutschland an. In Palästina kamen wir irgendwann im Juni an. Meine Eltern erwarteten uns am Pier, ich war glücklich, ich war wieder zu Hause!

Das war im Juni 1947. Der Kampf um die Selbständigkeit Israels war im vollem Gange, und natürlich nahmen Bobby und ich unsere Aktivität in der Hagana [der geheimen jüdischen Armee] wieder auf. Wir wohnten in Untermiete bei meinem Onkel Alfred, der im Krieg mit der "Patria" nach Palästina kam. Die Patria war ein illegales Einwanderer Schiff, dass schon im englischen Hoheitsgebiet von den Engländern aufgebracht und in den Hafen von Haifa dirigiert worden war, um von dort wieder in die Hölle Europas zurückgesandt zu werden! Das wäre natürlich ein Todesurteil für alle Passagiere gewesen, und so beschloss die Hagana, das Schiff in die Luft zu sprengen, denn als Schiffbrüchige müsste man sie aufnehmen! Leider kamen bei der Explosion , die zu stark ausgefallen war, viele Menschen ums Leben. Diejenigen, die sich retten konnten, wurden in das Lager in Athlit gebracht, wo sie ca. ein Jahr verbringen mussten. Mein Onkel war also unter den Überlebenden.  Er war ohne seiner Familie auf dem Schiff, denn seine Frau und sein 10-jähriger Sohn wollten die Strapazen einer illegalen Auswanderung nicht auf sich nehmen. Wie wir später erfuhren, wurden sie in Auschwitz ermordet!

Als ich das erste Mal eine Gruppe nach Auschwitz begleitet habe, ging ich in den tschechischen Pavillon. Da lag ein aufgeschlagenes Buch, und auf dieser Seite waren die Geschehnisse eines Tages registriert . Es waren an jenem Tag so und so viele Menschen angekommen, alle mit Namen registriert, darunter so viele Kinder; und da war auch der Name meines Cousins Wilhelm Stiassny, mit dem Vermerk, dass er noch am selben Tag in die Gaskammer geschickt wurde, denn er war erst 11 Jahre, zu klein um als Arbeitskraft am Leben zu bleiben.

Mein Onkel heiratete später eine jüngere Frau und wohnte in einem kleinen Häuschen in Ramat-Gan, wo auch wir eine Zeitlang wohnten. Bobby arbeitete in einem Versicherungsbüro, und ich hatte nur den Haushalt zu versorgen, was mich natürlich nicht sehr ausfüllte.
Im November war die Abstimmung in der UNO über die Errichtung eines jüdischen Staates in Palästina. Wir alle saßen an diesem Abend an den Radioapparaten und zählten mit klopfenden Herzen jede Stimme, die „JA“ sagte. Als das Resultat „positiv“ verkündet wurde, stürzten alle aus den Häusern. Man tanzte auf der Gasse, die Gastwirte schenkten gratis Getränke aus, und Mütter kamen mit Selbstgebackenem aus den Wohnungen, und alle jubelten!

Am nächsten Tag fing die Rekrutierung an. Wir wussten, ohne Kampf würde uns nichts geschenkt werden.  Ich arbeitete eine Zeit lang im Rekrutierungsbüro in Ramat-Gan. Bobby war „in charge“ für die noch geheime Kartei der Hagana in unserem Gebiet. Die Listen waren in Schuhschachteln in unserem Bett versteckt! Es meldeten sich alle jungen und nicht so jungen Burschen und Mädchen, und als dann der 15. Mai kam, der Tag der offiziellen  Deklaration des Judenstaates, hatten wir eine wirkliche Armee! Ich ging nahtlos zur regulären Armee , mit unserer Kartei unterm Arm, direkt ins Hauptquartier, das sich auch in Ramat-Gan befand. Am 14. Mai 1948 feierten wir Bobbys Geburtstag und die Geburt unseres Staates.

Am 15. morgens hörten wir Flugzeuggeräusch, wir liefen auf das Dach, um besser zu sehen. "Unsere Flieger!!!", dachten wir, aber es waren schon die Araber. Sie kamen im Tiefflug mit ratternden Maschinengewehren. Wir bekamen einige Einschüsse direkt hinter uns in die Wand! So fing also unser junger Staat an. Es waren viele ungleiche Kämpfe, denn die Engländer hinterließen ihre Munitionslager zum großen Teil den Arabern, wohingegen die Juden bis zum letzten Augenblick die Waffen auf illegalem Wegen kaufen mussten. Ich arbeitete also im Hauptquartier "Matkal" und musste herausfinden, who’s who in unserer neuen Armee, denn die meisten späteren Offiziere hatten in der Hagana zwei bis drei falsche Namen und Adressen. Langsam kam in dieses Chaos Ordnung. Wir bekamen Lohnbücher, wo Rang und Name eingetragen waren und sogar Gehalt. Ich saß im Büro, obwohl ich Büroarbeit haßte, mit allen hohen Offizieren und späteren Generalstabschefs gemeinsam. Auch Ben Gurions Büro war gleich nebenan.

In der Zwischenzeit merkte ich, dass ich schwanger bin! Wir haben uns sehr gefreut, und ich bemühte mich, eine Befreiung vom Militärdienst zu bekommen! Als ich aber mit meinem vorgesetzten Offizier sprach, lachte er nur und sagte, heute komme man nur weg vom Militär, wenn man mit dem Kopf unter dem Arm daher käme! Es tobten die schwersten Kämpfe, und es ging um die Existenz des neuen Staates. Ich blieb also bis zum achten Monat meiner Schwangerschaft, nahm 16 Kilo zu und war breiter als länger. Ich litt sehr unter Übelkeit, und die Küchengerüche waren fürchterlich! Drei bis vier Mal lief ich durch den langen Korridor bis zum Parkplatz und dort bis zu Ben-Gurions Auto. Der Fahrer war nicht glücklich! Wenn mir besonders schlecht war, trank ich in der Kantine einen Wermut. Meine Offiziere hatten schon den Verdacht, ich sei Alkoholikerin. Ende Februar fuhr ich kurz entschlossen nach Tel-Haschomer, wo das Personalbüro war, und erklärte dort, dass ich in meinem Zustand eine Schande für die junge Armee wäre. Irgendjemand hat das eingesehen. Es gab noch keine Entlassungsmodalitäten, und so gab ich nur meine Schuhe und den Stahlhelm ab, und war wieder Zivilperson. Noch im letzten Moment, denn 14 Tage drauf, am im Jahre 1949, kam Uriel zur Welt. Den Namen haben wir einem Gedicht der Dichterin Rahel entnommen: Hätte ich ein Kind, einen kleinen Sohn , würde ich ihn URI nennen, ich würde seine kleine Hand in meiner halten, durch den Garten gehen und ihn URI rufen....

Wie es sich gehört, haben wir am achten Tag den Brith gefeiert. Es kamen alle Offiziere des Hauptquartiers und sogar mein Bruder aus dem belagerten Jerusalem. Es gab keinen Zucker und kein Mehl, aber zu diesem Anlass bekam man Sonderrationen. Nach der Beschneidung brachte man mir das Kind, er hatte das Kapperl schief an, darauf einen Weinfleck und Schluckauf. Der kleine Mann hatte einen Schwips!! Nächsten Tag ging ich mit dem neuen Israeli nach Hause und zeigte ihm von unserem Hochsitz ganz Ramat-Gan. Wir wohnten im höchst gelegenen Haus von Ramat-Gan.

Erich, Bobbys Bruder, kam auch aus Brasilien zurück, da es ihm nicht gelungen war, eine Einreisegenehmigung für Lilly zu bekommen. Sie heirateten in Haifa und wohnten auch in Ramat-Gan. Meine Eltern übersiedelten inzwischen in ihr neues Haus, doch leider hatte mein Vater kurz darauf seinen ersten Herzinfarkt. Alle jungen Leute waren noch beim Militär, aber G’tt sei Dank ist bald darauf ein Waffenstillstand vereinbart worden, und man musste nicht jeden Tag neue Tote beweinen. Wir weinten buchstäblich mit jedem Nachbarn und Bekannten um einen Sohn, Bruder oder Vater. Es war eine traurige Zeit. 

Unsere Hausherrn kamen auch wieder aus dem Ausland zurück und beanspruchten die ganze Wohnung für sich. Sie waren auch nicht erfreut über unseren "Zuwachs", denn sie selber hatten keine Kinder. Wir fanden eine kleine Wohnung im selben Haus, in dem ich aufgewachsen war und in dem nun auch meine Cousine Else lebte. Sie gab mir viele Ratschläge, wie ich meinen Minihaushalt mit unserem Minieinkommen führen sollte, und wir wechselten uns auch beim Babysitten ab. Auch Bobby wurde vom Militär entlassen und arbeitete wieder bei der Versicherung als Schadensexperte. Mein Bruder arbeitete bei Argaman, derselben Textilfirma, wo auch mein Vater Direktor war. Wir hatten viele Freunde in unserm Alter und gingen oft tanzen. Am Nachmittag nahmen wir natürlich auch unser Baby mit, und zwischen den Tänzen stillte ich ihn in der Garderobe.
Doch Bobby war nicht zufrieden, er wollte mehr für sich und vor allem für seine kleine Familie! So entschloss er sich, nach Wien zu gehen, wo man angeblich schnell Geld machen konnte, um als reicher Mann wiederzukommen. Es war zu Pessach, als der erste Schnee in Israel fiel, das war eine Aufregung!

Von Wien nach Zürich

Als Bobby dann nach Wien fuhr, war es sehr traurig für mich. Nach einigen Monaten schrieb er, ich solle doch nachkommen. Es wird doch nicht so schnell mit dem Reichwerden gehen. Man brauchte eine Ausreisegenehmigung, und das dauerte Monate. So feierte ich Uris ersten Geburtstag alleine. Und gerade als  mein Bruder sich entschloss zu heiraten, da bekam ich endlich die lang erwartete Ausreisegenehmigung! Und so war ich nicht einmal bei seiner Hochzeit.

Am Abend vor unserer Abreise kam noch Tante Hedwig - die Schwester meiner Schwiegermutter und unser treuester Babysitter - zu mir und sagte: "Hoffentlich hast du auch eine Wohnung mit Bad in Wien.". Ich habe bis dahin noch nie gehört, dass es Wohnungen ohne Bad gäbe. Wir fuhren zeitlich in der Früh, und erst jetzt verstehe ich, was es für meine Eltern bedeutete, mich und im besonderen Uri, gehen zu lassen. Der Flug dauerte damals noch acht Stunden.
Wir hatten eine Wohnung im Palais Coburg, sehr feudal aber düster und verstaubt. Wien war noch sehr zerstört und armselig. Leute standen vor den Restaurants und lasen bewundert die Speisekarten. Doch hineingehen konnten es sich die wenigsten leisten. Viele suchten noch nach etwas Brauchbarem im Mistkübel, und man sah viele Kriegsverletzte ohne Arme oder Beine. Es gab auch noch Schwarzmarkt, aber das brauchten wir nicht, denn es gab das meiste schon normal zu kaufen. Ich kam aus einem Land, wo es auch Mangel an Vielem gab, und es war für mich ein Erlebnis, als ich das erste Mal zum Metzger ging und voller stolz ein halbes Kilo Fleisch verlangte! Der aber fragte :"Welche Art von Fleisch?". Was wusste ich! In Israel gab es nur Rind, und da nahm man, was einem zugewiesen wurde.

Bobby war viel unterwegs, denn er arbeitete für eine israelische Firma, für die er Maschinen einkaufen sollte, um einen neuen Betrieb zu errichten. Wenn also das Mädchen Sonntags Ausgang hatte, wusste ich nicht, wie man heizt, und so blieben Uri und ich die längste Zeit im Bett. Ich hatte keine Bekannten in Wien, so war ich sehr einsam. Uri fing an zu plaudern, und ich fürchtete, ich kann nur mehr "Baby talk". Wenn Bobby da war, war alles schön. Wir gingen viel ins Theater und in die Oper, die damals noch im Theater an der Wien spielte, denn das Opernhaus war noch in Trümmern, so wie auch viele andere Gebäude. Am Stephansplatz war ein großer Krater, wo heute das Haashaus steht. Uri sagte immer: "ohjeh paput Aba wird jichten!"

Wir hatten nicht die Absicht, lange in Wien zu leben, so suchten wir wieder nur eine zeitweilige Unterkunft. Und so kam es, dass wir alle paar Monate übersiedelten. Nun kam auch Bobbys Mutter zu Besuch, um ihren ersten Enkelsohn kennen zu lernen. Da es mir vor noch einem Winter in Europa grauste, fuhr ich mit Uri auch wieder nach Israel zu meinen Eltern. Auch die Omi - Bobbys Mutter - war dort, und wir hatten eine sehr schöne Zeit, leider ohne Bobby, der uns doch ernähren musste.
Im Jänner, gerade zu meinem Geburtstag, kam Gaby zur Welt, unsere kleine Nichte. In Brasilien vergrößerte sich die Familie auch. Erich - Roberts Bruder - und Lilly bekamen Eva. Und da wir so fleißig beim Vermehren waren, habe auch ich wieder gemerkt, dass wir ein Kind erwarteten.
Ich fühlte mich sehr wohl, und auch Bobby war sehr glücklich. Er kam uns einige Male besuchen, dann wurde er nach Zürich versetzt. Er arbeitete noch weiter für die israelische Firma Moshe Mayer, und so beschlossen wir, Uri, ich und mein Bauch (wir rechneten sehr mit einem Mädchen, und es sollte Ruthi heißen, wie alle meine Freundinnen), nach Zürich zu gehen.

Zürich war wunderbar, wir wohnten in Albisrieden, einem Vorort am Fuße des Ütlibergs und hatten eine schöne moderne Wohnung und liebe Nachbarn. Ich wollte so gerne mein Kind in der Schweiz zur Welt bringen, doch wieder bekam meine Mutter keine Ausreise. Bobby musste nach Brasilien, und alleine wollte ich nicht da bleiben. Also wieder Koffer packen und eine neue Epoche beginnen. Ich war schon im achten Monat, und die Fluglinie machte Schwierigkeiten, denn sie wollten keine Entbindung während eines Fluges riskieren! Der Flug Zürich-Rio dauerte damals 16 Stunden. Wir machten also Zwischenstation in Rom und Lissabon, und alles ging gut.

Zuerst wohnten wir bei den Schwiegereltern. Diesmal war ich nicht mehr so schockiert von den sozialen Verhältnissen wie das erste Mal, nur die Plage mit den Flöhen war sehr unangenehm.
Jeden Tag ging ich mit Uri auf den schönsten Strand der Welt, Ipanema. Dort lernte ich eine sehr nette Tschechin mit Tochter kennen. So hatte ich auch etwas Ansprache. Ich lud auch die Omi und ihre Freundinnen zum Kaffee ein, doch dazu kam es nicht. Mitten im Kuchenbacken meldete sich die "Ruthi", und Bobby brachte mich ins Spital. Um 9:45 war der kleine Bub da, die Omi lief dem Bobby schon entgegen, als er ihr den Uri brachte und rief: "Du hast einen Buben!". Bobby sagte, „Ich weiß.“ und zeigte auf Uri. "Nein, noch einen!!!", lachte die Omi ! Das war 1952.
Wir sind alle sehr schnell über diese Enttäuschung hinweggekommen, und wenigstens mussten wir nicht umlernen, wie man mit einem Mädchen umgeht! Am achten Tag war wieder die Beschneidung. Aber was für Unterschied! Mit Müh und Not hatten wir zehn Männer zusammen, um ein Minjan zu haben. Die Kuchen und Brötchen musste ich selber machen. Lilly konnte mir nicht helfen, denn Eva hatte die Masern, und Omi war zu aufgeregt.

Aber alles ging gut, und unser kleiner Michael war ein strammer fester Kerl. Die meiste Zeit lag er in seinem Körbchen am Balkon, nur in seine Windel gehüllt, denn es war sehr heiß.

Bobby hörte auf für die Firma Mayer zu arbeiten, denn er dachte, die Geschäfte die er für Herrn Mayer tätigte, könnte er auch für sich selber machen und besser verdienen. Aber das war verfehlt, ohne den guten Namen Mayer wollte niemand mit ihm verhandeln. So versuchte er, einen anderen Job zu landen, und durch einen glücklichen Zufall landete er bei der Panair do Brasil, der damaligen Fluggesellschaft Brasiliens. Die schickte ihn sofort wegen seiner österreichischen Abstammung als Repräsentant nach Wien, um dort ein Büro zu eröffnen. Wir packten also wieder mal die Koffer, sehr zum Leidwesen der Schwiegereltern, denn nachdem sie die ganzen Kriegsjahre ohne Kinder waren, gewöhnten sie sich nun, alle ihre Kinder und Enkelkinder um sich zu haben.

Es war Silvester, als ich mit den Kindern abflog. Es war so kalt, dass meinem kleinen Brasilianer die Speisereste auf der Wange anfroren. Meine Eltern waren überglücklich, uns drei da zu haben und luden alle ihre Freunde ein, um den neuen Enkel zu bewundern. Einige Zeit wohnte ich bei ihnen in ihrem neuen Haus, doch als wir sahen, dass ich länger in Israel bleiben würde, kauften sie mir sogar eine Wohnung, wo ich dann auch sehr glücklich war. Bobby kam nur auf Besuch, und leider entfremdeten sich die Kinder von ihm. Eines Morgens, als Uri den Bobby im Bett sah, fragte er "Und wer ist dieser Onkel?".

Es gelang mir diesmal, Uri in einem Kindergarten unterzubringen bei der "Doda Chaya", und er war sehr glücklich dort. Es war also alles sehr schön, bis darauf, dass Bobby uns sehr fehlte.

Rückkehr nach Wien

Im Sommer 1953 war es dann so weit: Wir konnten nach Wien kommen. Bobby arrangierte eine sehr schöne Wohnung mit Garten im 19. Bezirk (Amalgergasse). Wir hatten nun sehr viele Bekannte in Wien und jeden Samstag und Sonntag hatten wir eine Gästeinvasion.

Während wir in der Amalgergasse wohnten, ging Uri zu einer älteren Dame vis-a-vis zum Spielen. Es waren auch andere Kinder da, die Dame sprach französisch und wurde Madame genannt. Uri nannte sie Batam (ein Iwrith Name). In der Stadt ging Uri in einen Kindergarten, und ich war beschäftigt, ihn zu bringen und abzuholen. Wir hatten wieder ein Mädchen, das auch viele Jahre bei uns blieb und  alle unsere Übersiedlungen brav mitmachte. Bobby war auch weiter viel unterwegs, und die traurige Zeit für mich fing wieder an. Vormittags war ich mit Einkaufen und den Kindern beschäftigt. Der Haushalt nahm viel mehr Zeit in Anspruch als heutzutage. Man hatte noch keine Maschinen, auch die Wäsche musste mit der Hand gewaschen werden. Von Pampers konnte man nur träumen, und so bemühten sich alle Mütter, die Kinder so bald wie möglich auf den Topf zu trainieren. Oft war es so, dass das Kind nur auf den eigenen Topf ging, und so wanderten die Mütter überall hin mit dem Topf "in der Tasche".

An den Nachmittagen lernte ich französisch und besuchte Bastelkurse. Der Sommer kam, so beschlossen wir wieder mal ins Grüne zu ziehen und fanden eine schöne Wohnung in der Lannerstraße. Die Wohnung war groß, wir mussten zwar die Küche noch mit zwei Frauen teilen, die aber sehr nett waren, und alles ging gut. Meine Eltern kamen zu Besuch, und die Kinder freuten sich auch, Großeltern zu haben. Meine Eltern luden mich zu einem richtigen Urlaub in die Schweiz ein. Bobby blieb alleine mit den Kindern und dem Dienstmädchen, und ich wurde verwöhnt, wie noch nie in meinem Leben! Wir machten eine wunderbare Reise durch die Schweiz, stiegen in den besten Hotels ab und genossen alles. Es war gut so, denn es war das letzte Mal, dass ich mit meinem Vater zusammen war. Er starb im darauf folgenden Winter.

Leider mussten wir diese schöne Wohnung aufgeben, denn die Eigentümerin wollte sie verkaufen, wir hatten aber nicht das Geld, außerdem dachten wir noch immer, dass unser Aufenthalt in Wien nur temporär sei. Nun war die Wohnungssuche viel schwieriger, denn den Wienern ging es schon besser, und nicht viele vermieteten ihre Wohnungen, und mit zwei kleinen Buben wollte uns auch niemand. Die Kinderliebe der Wiener hielt sich in Grenzen. Hätte ich zwei Bernhardiner, wäre es leichter gewesen, eine Wohnung zu finden, denn Hunde liebten sie. In meiner Verzweiflung klebte ich Zettel auf die Bäume im Türkenschanzpark. Es meldete sich jemand in der Huleschgasse, ich lief hin, und die Wohnung gefiel mir.

Um Missverständnissen auszuweichen, sagte ich immer gleich, dass ich zwei Buben habe und dass wir Juden sind. Beides wurde hier akzeptiert, und aus unserer Untermiete wurde fast eine Familiengemeinschaft. Herr Pollak war selber Jude, der Dank seiner Frau in Wien überleben konnte und beide wünschten sich Enkerln. So nahmen sie Uri und Micky auf. Auch hier teilten wir Küche und Bad, doch alles funktionierte tadellos.
Uri ging in einen jüdischen Kindergarten, der nicht weit von uns entfernt war.

Im Jänner 1954, gerade an meinem Geburtstag, starb mein Vater ganz plötzlich. Wir erfuhren davon erst drei Tage später, da man ein Telegramm ins Büro schickte und in Wien Feiertag war. Sofort bemühten wir uns, einen Flug nach Israel zu buchen, doch es gab nur zwei Flüge pro Woche. So kam ich erst eine Woche nach der Beerdigung bei meiner Mutter an. Sie erzählten mir: Mein Vater spielte noch am Nachmittag Bridge. Am Abend brachte Kurt die Eltern zu einer Versammlung nach Tel Aviv. Dort traf mein Vater viele Bekannte, plauderte und begrüßte alle. Als dann alle ihre Plätze einnahmen, sagte mein Vater: „Dort winkt mir eine schöne Frau zu.“ und legte den Kopf auf die Schulter seines Freundes, der vor ihm saß. Alle lachten, denn sie glaubten, er mache Spaß, doch meine Mutter sah sein graues Gesicht und rief nach einem Arzt. Man trug ihn mit dem Sessel hinaus - er war bereits tot.

Es war ein Tod, wie er sich ihn immer wünschte: nur nicht krank dahinsiechen. Doch er war erst 64 Jahre, mitten im Leben, und wir alle konnten es nicht fassen. Lange schaute ich zur gewohnten Zeit zur Tür und dachte, jetzt kommt er aus der Arbeit zum Essen. Meine Mutter war unter Schock, und wie auch zur Zeit, als Hitler in der Tschechei einmarschierte, so auch jetzt: Sie verlor die Stimme. Meine Kinder und auch Kurts Kinder halfen ihr, sich ein bisschen abzulenken. Auch Kurt und Gina hatten ein zweites Kind: Gady, der damals drei Monate alt war.

Da Bobby immer unterwegs war, entschlossen wir uns länger bei meiner Mutter zu bleiben und Uri in Ramat-Gan einzuschulen. Er integrierte sich sofort und war glücklich. Um meine Mutter ein bisschen abzulenken, dachten wir, ich würde ihr den Uri dort lassen bis zum Schulschluss und sie käme dann über den Sommer zu uns nach Wien. Uri war auch von der Idee begeistert, denn er liebte seine Safta sehr. Aber nur bei Tag, in der Nacht hatte er Angstträume und rief immer nach mir. So haben Bobby und ich beschlossen, dass auch ich bis zum Sommer in Israel bleiben sollte.

Israel hat sich in der Zeit seit dem Befreiungskrieg entwickelt. Die schweren Zeiten schienen vorbei zu sein. Es kamen viele neue Einwanderer, die man erst in Notquartieren untergebracht hat (Maabarot). Sie bekamen frei Kost und Quartier, also mehr, als die illegalen Einwanderer zur Mandatzeit, waren aber unzufrieden, denn sie sahen, dass es den Alteingesessenen besser ging. Es dauerte eine geraume Zeit, bis sich die "Neuen" einordneten, doch dann kamen wieder andere Neue.

Im  Sommer kam ich also zurück nach Wien. Meine Mutter kam mit uns und wohnte in unserer Nähe in einem möblierten Zimmer. Meine Mutter blieb, bis es ihr zu kalt wurde in Europa, dann fuhr sie zurück nach Ramat-Gan. Mein Bruder baute noch ein Stockwerk auf dem Haus meiner Eltern, denn das war so quasi der letzte Wunsch meines Vaters gewesen. So konnte meine Mutter in ihrem Heim bleiben und war doch nicht allein. Sie bekam nach vielen Verhandlungen eine kleine Pension von der Firma zugesprochen, doch das genügte kaum, so entschloss sie sich einen Teil ihrer Wohnung zu vermieten.

Wir hatten freie Flüge in der ganzen Welt, in den Luxushotels zahlten wir als Angehörige einer Fluglinie nur den halben Preis, so nutzten wir es aus und besuchten die halbe Welt noch bevor das Reisen so alltäglich wurde. Oft begleitete ich Bobby auf seinen Dienstreisen in die kommunistischen Länder.

Unser nächstes Domizil war der Margaretengürtel. Eine moderne Wohnung ganz nach meinem Geschmack, die aber nur teilweise möbliert war. So mussten wir sie einrichten. Wir meinten noch immer, dass wir nicht lange in Wien bleiben würden und kauften nur einfache billige Möbel. Zum Teil haben wir sie noch heute!

In dieser Zeit fuhr ich das zweite Mal wieder nach Brünn. Ich war sehr aufgeregt, meine Tanten, die Schwestern meines Vaters, und meine Cousinen wieder zu sehen. Auch einen alten Freund – Robert –  von dem wir erst spät erfahren hatten, dass er überlebt  hatte, (er hatte seinen Namen von Deutsch auf Dvorsky geändert) traf ich wieder. Robert ist als Kind mit uns aufgewachsen, denn sein Vater starb, als Robert acht Jahre war, und er war für mich wie ein Bruder! Von da an versuchte ich, den Kontakt mit dem kleinen Rest unserer Familie zu halten. Von Seiten meiner Mutter gab es bis auf eine Cousine zweiten Grades (sie lebt heute in Benidorm, Spanien, Margit Cohn, geborene Strauß), keine Überlebenden.

Bobby hatte viel Erfolg in  seinem Beruf, hatte ein schönes Büro im Kärntnerringhof, und wir hatten viele ausländische Gäste, die man in der Stadt ausführen musste und auch am Abend unterhalten sollte. Damals war das Fliegen noch eine elitäre Sache, und jeder Passagier war quasi ein privater Gast vom Herrn Direktor, also von Bobby. Wir nutzten auch unsere Freiflüge aus und besuchten die entferntesten Länder. Meistens im Winter, denn da war keine Saison für Bobby Wir waren in Kenia, in Äthiopien, in Japan und Bangkok zu einer Zeit, da die Meisten diese Länder nur aus Büchern kannten. Wegen Bobbys Stellung hatten wir fast immer erste Klasse Flüge, und in den Luxushotels zahlten wir die Hälfte. Nur hatte Bobby nicht so viel Freizeit, wie ich es gerne hätte!
Im Sommer fuhr ich meist nach Israel, um mit der Familie zu sein. Wir wohnten bei meiner Mutter und fuhren oft ans Meer baden. Es war mir immer noch schwer nach Wien zurückzufahren, aus der ewigen Sonne in das verregnete, düstere Wien. Die Hitze in Israel hat mir nichts ausgemacht, obwohl damals noch niemand Aircondition hatte. Heute kann man sich das Leben in Israel ohne Aircondition überall gar nicht vorstellen.

Als Micky in die 3. Klasse gehen sollte, übersiedelten wir schon wieder. Bobby hatte eine Reise nach Brasilien für eine österreichische Regierungsdelegation organisiert, und weil er das so gut tat, hat man ihn für einen Orden vorgeschlagen. Bobby aber sagte Herrn Pitterman, der damaliger Vizekanzler war, er brauche eher eine Wohnung als einen Orden! Und so kam es, dass wir eine Wohnung in einem Gemeindebau in der Döblinger Hauptstraße bekamen. Sie war klein, aber die erste Wohnung, die vor uns niemand bewohnt hatte und die wir uns selber möblieren konnten. Denn mittlerweile sahen wir, dass unser Aufenthalt in Wien doch von längerer Dauer sein wird!

Der Bruder meiner Freundin Ruth (Ruth Ehrlich mit der ich doch in der Kwutzah war) übersiedelte auch nach Wien mit seiner Frau, die auch Ruth hieß, und wollte eine Miederfabrik aufmachen. Sein Vater bat Bobby als Teilhaber einzutreten und die kommerzielle Seite zu führen, was Bobby auch tat. Während die Kinder in der Schule waren ging ich in die Fabrik, die wir "LA REINE" nannten, und lernte das Gewerbe. Es fiel mir nicht schwer, denn schließlich war ich Schneiderin von Beruf. Es machte mir Spaß, neue Modelle zu entwerfen und die Arbeiterinnen anzuleiten. Bald hatten wir über 30 Angestellte und mussten in ein größeres Lokal übersiedeln. Das Geschäft ging gut, und ich hatte viel zu tun. Ich bemühte mich aber immer vor den Kindern zu Hause zu sein, so dass sie gar nicht merkten, dass sie eine "arbeitende Mutter" hatten.

Micky war 8 und Uri 11 Jahre, als sie begannen, in die Jugendorganisation "Schomer Hazair" zu gehen. Jeden Samstag Nachmittag waren sie dort mit anderen jüdischen Kindern und schlossen dort Freundschaften, die bis heute andauern. Im Sommer fuhr Uri das erste Mal alleine nach England zu einer englischen Familie als zahlender Gast, um selbständig zu werden und um Englisch zu lernen. Micky ging in ein Lager mit seiner Gruppe nach Neuberg.
Außer der Schule lernten die Buben Ziehharmonika spielen, denn ich wollte nicht, sie sollten sich so mit dem Klavier plagen, wie ich es tat. Außerdem hätte ein Klavier in unserer kleinen Wohnung gar keinen Platz. Ich dachte eine Harmonika wäre eine gute Sache, sie könnten sie überall mitnehmen und immer die Gesellschaft damit unterhalten. Das geschah aber nie. Uri hatte auch Fechtunterricht, weil sein Vater sich das wünschte, und Micky ging in die Hakoah schwimmen.
Ich war weiter in unserer Miederfabrik tätig, die inzwischen auch expandierte, aber am Nachmittag war ich immer mit den Kindern. Auch Micky kam schon in das Gymnasium, und da er immer realistischer war als Uri, haben wir ihn in die "Sameschschule" (der Direktor hieß so) eingeschrieben. Sie hatte eine gute Reputation und war in unserer Nähe. Die Schüler waren teilweise aus der Döblinger Elite und zum Teil Kinder aus dem Karl-Marx Hof, einem Sozialbau. Micky wurde bald zum Katalysator zwischen beiden, denn er gehörte nirgends dazu. Bald wurde er auch Klassensprecher, dann wurde er zu einem Kurs geschickt, wo er lernte, die Schülerzeitung zu leiten. Nebenbei schwamm er fast täglich, und wir hänselten ihn, ob er nicht schon Schwimmflossen habe von dem vielen Wasser.

Im Herbst 1964 bekam Bobby den Auftrag, eine Zweigstelle der Panair do Brasil in Genf zu eröffnen. Er pendelte also nicht nur zwischen den Oststaaten, wo er Direktor war, und Wien, sondern auch zwischen Genf und Wien. Das war natürlich sehr anstrengend, so bekam er einen Assistenten und war mehr in Genf als in Wien. Nach einiger Zeit entschlossen wir uns, die ganze Familie nach Genf zu übersiedeln. Es sollte nur temporär sein, denn wenn das Büro in Genf liefe, sollte Bobby ein neues Büro in Tel-Aviv aufmachen! Die Wohnung überließen wir amerikanischen Freunden, die in Wien für eine zeit lang stationiert waren und gingen nach Genf.

Wir alle waren vom ersten Tag in Genf verliebt! Die Buben gingen in einen Intensivkurs für Französisch. Während der Weihnachtsferien waren sie mit dieser Schule in Gstaad und lernten dort nicht nur Französisch auch etwas Englisch, da die meisten Schüler Amerikaner waren. Danach gingen sie gleich in ganz normale Schulen in unserer Nähe. Es war das erste Mal, wo die zwei nicht etwas Außergewöhnliches waren, weil jeder woanders geboren war. In Genf war das normal, denn die Stadt war sehr international. Micky war wieder sehr schnell integriert und bekam sogar am Ende des Schuljahres den "Prix de cameraderie". Uri war in diesem Alter sehr verschlossen, und ich weiß gar nicht, wie er unseren Aufenthalt empfand. Da wir wussten, dass die Zeit in Genf nur begrenzt war und wir danach nach Israel übersiedeln werden, haben wir Uri schon in Straßburg in einer Orthschule, eine technische Fachschule, angemeldet. Diese Schule gab es auch in Israel, war aber für das nächste Jahr schon ausgebucht. So meinten wir, Uri wird mit seinen neu erworbenen Französischkenntnissen in Straßburg gut durchkommen, und für das nächste Jahr hatte er schon einen sicheren Platz in der "Singalovsky" Schule. Uri war schon von klein auf technisch sehr geschickt und interessiert. Micky hatte eine leichte Ausrede, er sagte, er sei der „Untam“ in der Familie, denn wir alle bastelten gerne, er aber hatte zwei linke Hände!

Unser Aufenthalt in Genf ging langsam zu Ende, und meine Mutter kam, um mit uns den Sommer zu verbringen und auch um mir später beim Packen für die Übersiedlung nach Israel zu helfen. Wir wollten noch einen Bnei-Brith Kongress in Scheweningen besuchen und dann den Rhein entlang mit einigen Freunden eine letzte Europareise machen. Doch alles kam anders.

Ein paar Kilometer nach Scheweningen platzte ein Reifen, und unser Auto überschlug sich sechs mal und kam auf der gegenüberliegenden Seite der Autobahn mit den Rädern in der Luft zum Stehen. Die Kinder, meine Mutter und Bobby wurden alle aus dem Auto hinausgeschleudert, nur ich blieb im Wagen. Ich hörte ein Geklirre von Glas und einen  schrecklichen Schrei. Wie ich später erfuhr, war es unsere Freundin, die hinter uns in einem anderen Wagen fuhr und alles mit ansehen musste. Sie dachte, wir seien alle tot.
Ich kroch aus dem Wagen und sah die Kinder mir entgegenlaufen. Dann sah ich meine Mutter in einer Blutlache liegen, sie hatte eine Platzwunde am Kopf, und es sah fürchterlich aus. Man fragte mich, ob man einen Priester holen solle, doch ich wollte natürlich einen Arzt. Man hatte schon die Ambulanz gerufen! Jemand fragte, ob ich meinen Mann sehen wollte. Meine Mutter, der ich immer das Blut aus den Augen wischte, war bei Bewusstsein und fragte: "Wo sind die Anderen?". Man führte mich zu Bobby, der die Böschung hinunter geschleudert worden und gegen einen Baum geprallt war. Er verlangte nur nach seiner Tasche mit den Dokumenten, so dachte ich, es kann nicht so arg sein. Im Spital, in das uns die Ambulanz brachte, stellte sich heraus, er hatte drei Wirbeln gebrochen, und es war eine Frage von einem Bruchteil eines Millimeters, ob er gelähmt sein würde! Die Mutter hatte eine schwere Gehirnerschütterung und viele Abschürfungen. Die Kinder G’tt sei Dank nur Abschürfungen und einen Schock. Ich kam mit ein Paar Kratzern davon. Die Freunde, die in zwei Autos hinter uns gefahren sind, blieben auch über Nacht mit mir in einem Hotel und nahmen dann die Kinder mit nach Wien, denn nächste Woche fing die Schule an. Ich blieb in dem Hotel in der Nähe des Spitals in Ammersford. Bobby hatte große Schmerzen und war einige Tage unter Morphium, bis man sah, dass er keine inneren Verletzungen hatte. Dann bekam er eine Gips von der Halswirbelsäule bis zur Lende, konnte sich also gar nicht bewegen. Ich verbrachte die ganzen Tage wie im Trance im Krankenhaus und ging von Bobby zur Mutter und wieder zu Bobby. Auch ich hatte einen Schock und konnte nichts essen.

Nach einigen Tagen flog ich nach Wien, um nach den Kindern zu sehen. Die waren inzwischen bei anderen Freunden, den Fischers, untergebracht. Micky kam nach längeren Verhandlungen mit dem Schuldirektor wieder in seine ursprüngliche Klasse, und Uri brachte ich nach Straßburg, wo wir ihn doch eingeschrieben hatten. Er sagt bis heute, es war sein unglücklichstes Jahr. Doch ich dachte, es würde für ihn sehr schön werden! So pendelte ich Monate lang zwischen Ammersford, Wien und Straßburg. Nach etwa zwei Monaten konnte ich die Mutter nach Wien nehmen. Schließlich gelang es mir, auch Bobby nach Wien zu bringen, denn in Holland ließ man ihn nur liegen, und er bekam keine andere Behandlung. Er kam auf einer Bahre direkt vom Flugzeug ins Böhler Krankenhaus, wo man ihn am nächsten Tag aufrichtete, und er begann das Gehen zu üben.

Nach weiteren zwei Monaten kam er in ein Rehabilitationszentrum, wo er fleißig an sich arbeitete, um wieder gesund zu werden. Nun fuhr ich alle paar Wochen nach Straßburg zu Uri, denn der fühlte sich sehr einsam und unglücklich. Es wurde Februar, und man nahm Bobby endlich den Gips ab. Er wollte sofort nach Brasilien fliegen, um dort seine Angelegenheiten mit der Firma zu regeln. Zwei Tage vor seiner Abfahrt, er ging noch mit zwei Krücken, kam ein Anruf, die Panair existiere nicht mehr. Sie wurde nach einem Putsch beschlagnahmt! Bobby flog trotzdem, um zu retten, was zu retten wäre.
Meine Mutter fuhr nach Israel zurück, denn sie war für einen Winter nicht gerüstet. Bobby war arbeitslos, Uri unglücklich in Straßburg, nur Micky war ein Lichtblick! Nicht nur, dass er alles Versäumte in kürzester Zeit aufgeholt hat, ist er wieder Vorzugsschüler geworden und war voll integriert in seiner Klasse.

Bobby versuchte bei allen Airlines, einen Job zu bekommen, doch es war nichts frei in seiner Stellung. Mit Hilfe unseres Freundes Fritz Wiesel bekam er einen Job in einer Bank, war aber dort sehr unglücklich, denn es war keine befriedigende Arbeit. Im Sommer kam Uri mit all seinen Sachen nach Hause, fest entschlossen nicht mehr in das Internat zurückzukehren. Als wir nach Genf übersiedelten, hatten wir auch unseren Anteil an der Miederfabrik verkauft, so war auch diese Einnahmequelle versiegt. Wir mussten also wieder einmal von vorne anfangen. Bobby gab die Hoffnung nicht auf, doch noch zu einer Fluglinie zu kommen, denn das war das Einzige, was er wirklich gut und gerne machte. Er war 45 Jahre alt, zu alt.

Dann kam eine große Chance. Austrian Airlines wollte ihm die Vertretung für die ganze Iberische Halbinsel geben! Wir waren glücklich. Doch dann überlegten wir. Uri war zwei Jahre vor der Matura, er konnte unmöglich in einer neuen Sprache maturieren. Micky hatte sich wieder so gut eingelebt, konnten wir ihn wieder herausreißen? Sie hatten den Schock der Übersiedlung und des Unfalles kaum überwunden, konnten wir ihnen einen neuen Schock zumuten? Bobby zerriss den schon unterschriebenen Vertrag, und wir beschlossen, diese Chance, die wir nie wahrgenommen haben, nie zu erwähnen. Es ist auch das erste Mal, dass ich darüber berichte. So suchten wir weiter. Und Bobby bekam noch einmal eine Chance: Er lernte den Direktor der Avianca kennen und redete ihm buchstäblich ein, eine Zweigstelle in Wien zu eröffnen. Er gab ihnen unglaubliche Bedingungen, nur gegen Spesen und Kommission für sie zu arbeiten! Wir suchten eine Wohnung, wo Bobby sein Büro haben konnte. Nun drehte sich das Schicksalsrad wieder zum Besseren!

Bobby nahm auch eine Sekretärin auf, die langsam zum Familienmitglied wurde. Da Bobby weiter seine guten Beziehungen in den Oststaaten hatte, war er bald wieder sehr erfolgreich, und alle waren zufrieden.

Uri ging in die Maturaschule, denn er hatte zwei Jahre Latein und Griechisch versäumt, und das war nicht aufzuholen. Er sollte auch zum österreichischen Militärdienst, aber wegen seines Gebrechens am Ohr wurde er befreit. Ich muss sagen zu unserer Erleichterung! Nach der Matura war es für ihn selbstverständlich auf die Technische Hochschule zu gehen, denn das war immer schon sein Hauptinteresse. Wir hatten meiner in Brünn lebenden Cousine eine Garconniere abgekauft, und sehr zu meinem Leidwesen riet Bobby Uri, selbständig zu werden und alleine zu wohnen. Micky bemühte sich in der 7. Klasse in das American Field Service aufgenommen zu werden, doch nach dem er alle Tests passierte, sagte man uns, er sei zu jung. Das war für ihn eine große Enttäuschung! Nach seiner Matura wusste er nicht so genau, was er wollte und suchte alle möglichen Beratungsstellen auf. Dann entschloss er sich für das Studium an der Welthandel. Er suchte auch um ein Fulbright-Stipendium an, das er nach einem Jahr auch bekam. Man sandte ihn an die Brandeis Universität. Uns war es nur recht, denn es ist eine jüdische Uni, und wir dachten ihn dort gut aufgehoben. Meine Söhne gingen also langsam ihre eigenen Wege, Uri war auf der Technischen Hochschule nicht glücklich. Wir rieten ihm, doch gleich etwas anderes zu wählen, am liebsten wäre es uns gewesen, er hätte die Hotelfachschule gemacht, denn er hatte immer einen guten Umgang mit Menschen, sprach Deutsch, Französisch und Englisch und hatte auch gute Manieren. Im Sommer arbeitete er als Tour-Guide und hatte großen Erfolg dabei! Nach zwei Jahren auf der Technik entschloss er sich für Medizin.
Beide Buben waren also quasi aus dem Haus.

Eines Tages  sah ich im Profil eine Annonce: "Wenn sie ihren Haushalt mit der linken Hand machen, brauchen wir ihre Rechte!". Bobby war anfangs dagegen, dass ich mich überhaupt melde, doch ich rief trotzdem an. Man sagte mir, es werden Englischkenntnisse verlangt und Erfahrung im Umgang mit Touristen. Da sagte ich, ich hätte es schon immer getan, aber ohne Entgelt, denn ich führte die Klienten meines Mannes durch die Stadt. Ich bekam den Job.
Ich konnte alle Sprachen benutzen, die ich gelernt habe, am Abend gab es oft Galaempfänge in den verschieden Palais, und das machte mir viel Spaß. Eines Tages fehlte eine Fremdenführerin, so schickte man mich. Ich sah, dass es ziemlich einfach war, denn man brauchte nur die elementarsten Kenntnisse. Natürlich bildete ich mich weiter, um nicht in Verlegenheit zu kommen, und bald schickte man mich auch ins Ausland als Reisebegleiterin. Das war für mich eine Herausforderung, denn ich musste mich immer gut vorbereiten, hatte die ganze Verantwortung für die Gäste, für die Verpflegung, für das Gepäck usw. Dieser Job gefiel mir sehr gut, denn es war sehr abwechslungsreich, ich musste immer was Neues lernen, musste gut aussehen, und so überdauerte ich die so genannte "Midlife Krise", in die viele meiner Freundinnen gerieten, nachdem ihre Kinder das Haus verlassen hatten. Wenn man immer "nur" Hausfrau und Mutter war, ist es schwer, plötzlich mit dem Gedanken fertig zu werden, dass man eigentlich nicht mehr unbedingt gebraucht wird! Bobby tolerierte meine Emsigkeit, und ich glaube, er war auch Stolz auf mich.

Es gelang uns auch, mit vielen Überredungen Bobbys Eltern nach Wien zu bringen, denn in Rio starben in kürzester Zeit alle von Opas Geschwistern, und sie waren plötzlich alleine dort. Erst fanden wir eine Wohnung für die Eltern, die wir möblierten und inzwischen untervermieteten, doch nach zwei Jahren, als sie nicht kamen, haben wir sie wieder aufgelöst. Als sie sich dann doch entschlossen zu kommen, war die beste Lösung, sie in ein Pensionisten Heim zu geben, denn beide waren 80 Jahre alt. Anfangs waren sie nicht sehr glücklich, denn es fehlten ihnen die Bekannten, die sie in Rio hatten, und auch der lange Winter deprimierte sie sehr. Wir jedoch waren sehr froh, wieder etwas Familie hier zu haben. Micky kam aus Amerika zurück und setzte sein Studium an der Universität mit Erfolg fort.
Jeden Freitagabend kamen die Eltern und die Buben, Micky wohnte wieder bei uns und spielte gerne mit dem Opa Schach. Irgendwann beschloss Micky, in eine Wohngemeinschaft zu ziehen. Ich war sehr unglücklich darüber. Jedes Mal, wenn eines meiner Kinder wegzog, war ich sehr traurig! Micky wohnte also in der Burggasse mit noch drei, vier anderen Jugendlichen, zahlte dort viel Miete, die er sich selbst verdiente, war aber plötzlich viel mehr zu Hause als früher! Ich fragte ihn wieso? Da sagte er uns: „Jetzt komme ich, weil ich es will, und nicht weil ich muss!“. Uri kam eines Tages nach Hause und erklärte, er habe nun das Mädchen gefunden, das er heiraten wolle! Es war Brigitte, auch Medizinstudentin aus gutem jüdischem Haus. Der Vater und Bruder Arzt, alles passte zueinander. Sie wollten nicht bis zum Ende des Studiums warten und beschlossen im Juni zu heiraten.

Wir bereiteten also eine schöne Feier. Wir waren mit Uris Wahl sehr zufrieden, und alles passte so gut zusammen! Nach der Trauung im Tempel gaben wir einen Empfang im alten Rathaus, danach fuhr das junge Paar in einem Fiaker – der Kutscher hieß Herr Glück – in das Lusthaus im Prater, wo wir ein typisches Wiener Essen für die Familie gaben. Brigittes Eltern gaben ihnen eine Wohnung, und wir halfen mit der Einrichtung. So fing alles gut an, doch es ging nicht so gut weiter. Nach einigen Jahren war die Liebe vorbei, und als Uri endlich mit seinem Studium fertig war, eröffneten sie uns, sie ließen sich scheiden! Ich war nicht überrascht aber traurig. Ich habe Brigitte sehr gerne gehabt, und wir beschlossen auch weiterhin in gutem Kontakt zu bleiben.

Auch Micky eröffnete uns, er habe seine Frau fürs Leben gefunden. Sie haben gemeinsam Brandeis besucht. Es war Ayesha, ein Mädchen aus Indien. Wir waren nicht begeistert, denn es war uns alles so fremd, und wir hatten Angst, wenn nach einiger Zeit die Liebe vergeht, die verschiedenen Lebensarten und Gewohnheiten einfach nicht passen werden. Ich bin sicher, auch Ayesha stand unter Druck von ihren Eltern, denn sie ist das einzige Kind, und die Eltern waren sicher nicht glücklich, sie an einen so Fremden und so weit weg von der Heimat ziehen zu lassen! Doch die Beiden überwunden alle Schwierigkeiten, und nach acht Jahren heirateten sie doch. Micky hatte inzwischen sein Studium in Oxford beendet und bekam sofort eine Stellung in Cambridge, wo er und Ayesha endlich zusammenziehen konnten. Die Trauung war am Magistrat in Cambridge. Wir lernten Ayeshas Familie kennen, und heute sind wir froh, dass die beiden ihren Kopf durchgesetzt haben!

Da nun beide Kinder erwachsen waren und eigentlich mein Anteil an ihrer Erziehung vollbracht war, wandte ich mich anderen Aufgaben zu. Im Sommer arbeitete ich weiter als Reiseleiterin, hatte guten Erfolg und auch viel Genugtuung. Doch was mache ich im Winter? So entschloss ich mich, auch etwas für die Allgemeinheit zu tun. Da mein Herz immer noch an Israel hang, wollte ich etwas für dieses Land tun. Und so wurde ich ein aktives Mitglied der WIZO. Erst wurde ich als Repräsentantin der WIZO in der U.N. gewählt, später war ich Vorsitzende und zuletzt auch Präsidentin. Diese Aktivitäten, obzwar sie zeitraubend und oft auch frustrierend waren, gaben mir doch ein Gefühl, nicht nur für mich und meine Familie da zu sein, sondern auch für diejenigen, die Hilfe brauchen. Ich traf mit wunderbaren Frauen zusammen, mit denen wir gemeinsam ein großes Werk schafften. Und wenn ich dann in Israel eines der drei Tagesheimstätten, die aus unseren Geldern finanziert wurden, besuchte, dann sah ich, dass sich die Mühe und der Ärger lohnten. Die Krönung meiner Tätigkeit war dann die Verleihung des „Rebecca Sieff Awards“ an mich. Ein Bäumchen auf meinen Namen wurde in unserem Heim in Modiin gepflanzt!

Das Einzige, das Bobby und mir zu unserer Zufriedenheit fehlte, waren Enkelkinder! Bobby sagte einmal zu mir, als wir aus der Synagoge gingen: „Der einzige Fluch, den es in hebräischer Sprache gibt, „Dein Name sei ausgelöscht“, scheint an uns war zu werden.“ Denn aus der großen Familie Landesmann gab es keine jüdischen Nachkommen!

Doch auch das wurde uns eines Tages gegeben! Wir haben nun drei wunderbare Enkerln: Raphael, David und Mimi. Wenn ich nun zurückblicke auf 75 Jahre meines Lebens kann ich zufrieden sein. In einer Zeit, wo andere so viel Leid und Qualen erleiden mussten, hatte ich eine glückliche Kindheit und eine beschützte Jugend. Auch mein späteres Leben als Frau und Mutter verlief G’tt sei Dank ohne große Turbulenzen. Ich wurde immer umgeben von liebevollen Menschen und habe eigentlich immer nur Gutes erfahren!

Emilia Ratz

Emilia Ratz
Vienna
Austria
Interviewer: Tanja Eckstein
Date of Interview: July 2004

Shortly after the beginning of our interview, Mrs. Emilia Ratz, called Mila by her friends, impresses me with her exceptional life-story and her humor, which overshadows the tragic of her experiences in the first moment. She has a strong personality and I’m almost convinced that she already had a great amount of self-confidence, courage of her own convictions and purposefulness when she saw the light of day. She shows great interest in politics, art and culture. There are also a lot of younger people that are drawn to her personality; her circle of friends consists of old and young alike.

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

 My family background 

My father’s whole family lived in Warsaw, in a house that belonged to my grandfather. My grandparents lived in the house facing the street while the other two families belonging to our family each had a two-bedroom apartment without bathroom in the annex forming the rear of the house. We had a bath-tub in the kitchen. During the day we used it as a table by putting a table-top on top of it. We had running water and electricity, but there was no garden. We didn’t have any pets either. We lived very modestly.

The house facing the street had three of four stories and in the rear there was a wing on both the left and the right side. The main house consisted of about 15 apartments, in which mostly Jewish families lived. The janitor, however, wasn’t Jewish.

My grandfather owned a soap factory which was housed in the cellar of the rear building. It consisted of three rooms: the office, the packing-table room and the boiler-room. There was a huge boiler in which the soap was produced as well as a machine for pressing and shaping the soap. By the way, my grandfather also manufactured toothpaste. It was called Milodont, after his daughter Mila. I think there was coconut oil, perfume and soapsuds in the boiler. There were up to four workers there; they were probably Jewish. My father didn’t have a shop of his own, he sold the products to shops and private people, and, before Christian holidays also to market stalls. The factory was closed on Jewish holidays.

My grandfather’s apartment was big – it consisted of three or four rooms – but I don’t remember it very clearly. What I do recall is the smell of the house, which was a mixture of velvet and spices.

I did know my grandfather Endler, but I don’t remember his first name. When I was a child the relations between grandparents and grandchildren were different from what they are today. I was just a small child of pre-school age and I don’t recall ever really talking to my grandfather. He was a respected authority.

The family mainly gathered at his place for meals on the high holidays. Anytime I saw my grandfather, he wore a black suit. He also always wore a kippah. In my memories, he was a tall and chubby man. He said the prayers and led the dinner. I remember a large table, at which all family members had their meals, and of course, there was also a cook. I don’t remember if there were any other servants. The children had to show good manners and the parents made sure that they behaved properly. After the meal, one was supposed to kiss my grandfather’s hand to express one’s gratitude.

On Sabbath my mother baked challot and lit the candles. My father, who was a heavy smoker, didn’t smoke on Sabbath. I remember that we had potato pancake on Chanukkah and hamantashen on Purim. I didn’t fast on Yom Kippur, but after people ended their fast there was always a lot of food; I don’t recall what exactly. On Sukkot we built huts [sukkah] in the yard and ate in there. There was a Chassidic family living in the house and they performed dances on all the holidays.

As for my grandmother Endler, I don’t remember her at all. Perhaps she just spoke Yiddish or perhaps she found it difficult to make friends, or perhaps she had already passed away – I really don’t know. I just know her from a photo. Unfortunately I can’t say anything about her and there’s no one left whom I could possibly ask.

There were two portraits in our apartment – one of my grandmother and one of my grandfather – and those are all I remember. I can’t recall anyone ever talking about them either. My grandfather died in the 1920s; I don’t know when my grandmother passed away.

My father was the oldest of my grandparent’s five children. His name was Israel Endler. My father’s siblings were Ignatz, who lived in South America, Adolf, Helena and a sister, who lived in a mental institution, and whose name I don’t remember.

The relationship between my father and his younger brother Adolf wasn’t particularly exemplary. They fought sometimes, but back then children weren’t involved in such kind affairs. Uncle Adolf was an office clerk in a company, or perhaps it was even a cartel. He was well off financially. I think they had fights because my father had inherited my grandfather’s soap factory. Allegedly it was my father who had got Uncle Adolf his good position in that office and thanks to him he had a good life, whereas my father was struggling quite a bit with the soap factory.

Uncle Adolf’s wife was named Felicia and they had a son, Mieczyslaw, born in 1921. He was the same age as I. He was a typical only child, spoiled and well off. Once he pushed me off a bicycle and caused me to hurt my knee. As a result I was sick for the whole summer and I still haven’t forgiven him for doing what he did. Maybe I’m exaggerating a bit, but he just wasn’t my type.

Uncle Adolf died after an appendix operation in 1938. Aunt Felicia didn’t survive the Warsaw Ghetto 1, whereas Mieczyslav managed to flee from the ghetto. He got hold of some ,Aryan papers’, went to Southern Russia with the Todt 2 organization and joined the Polish army in exile [see Anders’ Army] 3 there in 1943. He marched into Poland with the Polish army in 1945, became a journalist and worked for a newspaper. At the beginning of the 1950s he was sent to Sweden by the newspaper and never returned. Later his family followed him to Sweden. He is divorced now, and spends his time between Germany and Sweden. His two sons live in Sweden.

Uncle Ignatz was the black sheep of the family. He left his family in his young days and immigrated to South America. I only met him once, in 1939. I remember that he came by ship and had a cabin trunk. He brought my father twelve shirts, all with a soft collar. Today all men wear such shirts, but my father only wore shirts with a stiff collar throughout his life. He said thanks to his brother, but once Uncle Ignatz had left, he told me, ‘Well, Mila, now you can make yourself twelve blouses out of these because I will never wear them.’ I did make myself a blouse out of one of them, and it survived throughout the war.

To me Uncle Ignatz was the personification of ‘being rich’ – that cabin trunk for example, or those twelve shirts. My father probably had many shirts, too, but going on a journey and bringing twelve shirts as a gift is a different story altogether. And never in my life had I seen such a cabin trunk! To me that was all pretty exotic. I don’t know if he really was rich. He was very likeable and I still remember the ring he gave to me as a gift. It was the first ring I ever got; I was 17 at the time. It was made of gold and my name was engraved on it. Uncle Ignatz was killed in a plane crash, but I don’t remember when.

Aunt Helena was a housewife. Her husband owned a textile store in the heart of Warsaw, in the Jewish quarter, on Nalewki Street, which was a very long and famous street with many Jewish stores. This street is mentioned in all the books on Jewish life in Warsaw before the Holocaust by the way.

My aunt’s family was doing quite well. They had a daughter named Friederike, who was two or three years older than I, but I didn’t really get along with her. First, because she was stupid, second, because she was a very bad student; and third because we studied in the same grammar school and any time I had to leave my classroom because of disturbing the class I had to go through her classroom and she always told my mother, ‘Mila has been thrown out of class again!’

I was a good student though and had excellent grades in my graduation certificate. Friederike was raised by her parents exclusively to be a good match. She spent most of her time in front of the mirror. I was in a completely different phase: I also liked to be dressed well, even though I had to do so with limited means, but I was always very annoyed if people only noticed my appearance. I always wanted people to investigate my intellectual side. All this left Friederike unmoved; she preferred to look out for a good match. And indeed, she married a lawyer, who was much older than her. A 4th-year student fancied me back then, which means he was four or five years older than I. And I though: ‘he must be out of his mind, such an old man, what does he want from me!’ And I thought the same thing when Friederike married this lawyer, Mr. Stützer, in 1938. I wasn’t the only one who thought that way. In my class – we were just Jewish teenagers – no more than 20 to 30 per cent of the students wanted to get married immediately after graduation. Most students wanted to continue their studies at university.

Back then it was customary in Poland, or at least I think it was, to go to some kind of school for corporals if you were a university graduate. This was also true for Jews. Friederike’s husband also had to join the army in 1939 and he either died on the frontlines or in some camp in Russia. But his younger brother survived. When I visited a friend in London after the war, she told me that she was friends with a certain Stützer and that he was the brother of my cousin Friederike’s husband. Friederike died in the Warsaw Ghetto.

My father’s third sister, the one whose name I don’t know, apparently went insane. Or so they said in the family, I don’t know for sure. During World War I the Russians blew up a bridge in Warsaw and allegedly my aunt was nearby when it happened. From that moment on she stopped speaking and lived in a mental institution. She was there as long as I can remember. Back then they put all people like her behind bars. I visited this institution near Warsaw with my father numerous times: it was called Tworki and it still exists today. I never saw this aunt of mine because they didn’t let children into the institution. I didn’t interrogate my father about her either; I simply accepted the way things were.

This sister of my father had a single daughter, Rosa, who also lived in one of the apartments of my grandfather’s house. I liked to visit her and she even taught me French for a little while. In the family’s opinion a stain clung to her because she had a child, back then still a baby, from her non-Jewish boyfriend, who was quite a bit older. The family didn’t really approve of me visiting her, but I found her interesting. She probably had rather unconventional views for the time when it came to children. She respected my views and we talked about things my parents would have never talked to me about. Rosa and her child were killed during the Holocaust.

After my grandfather’s death, , the sense of community in the family disintegrated. Each family began to celebrate the holidays in their own apartments; I don’t recall any family celebrations where we were all together.

My maternal grandparents’ surname was Katz. I don’t remember this grandmother either. As a child I never visited Narewka, the village where my grandparents lived and where my mother and her siblings were born. I did know my grandfather because every year up until his death, he visited us for a few days in Warsaw. I didn’t have any close contact with him either though. He died when I was in elementary school. My father was most likely informed about my grandfather’s death by telephone and in the beginning he kept it secret from my mother; he had a very hard time to tell her that her father had died. When I came home from school that day I knocked on the door of our apartment as I always did, and I could hear my mother crying bitterly. On the stairs leading to our apartment there was always a box with charcoal and I sat down on it and was afraid to enter the apartment because never before had I heard my mother cry so bitterly. I must have been seven back then because I remember that my sister was still very small.

I visited Narewka for the first time in 1969. My husband had already received permission by the Polish authorities to immigrate to Austria with our children by then. I asked him to travel to this village with me because I knew I would never see the place if he didn’t come with me.
In 1888 Narewka had approximately 860 residents, 780 of which were Jews. In 1908 they built the Hajnowka-Wolkowysk railway line running through Narewka. This little village wasn’t destroyed in World War II. In the interwar period the village had industrial companies, a turpentine factory, Hackiel’s glassworks and a windmill.

Of course the Jewish life was wiped out in Narewka after World War II, I’m sure that not a single Jew remained in town. There was no synagogue and no Jewish cemetery giving evidence that Jews had lived there before the Holocaust.

My mother’s name was Marija, nee Katz. She was born in Narewka in 1896. She attended a grammar school and spoke German, Russian and Polish. Before World War I my mother worked for the Post Office. After she got married and had children she became a housewife. She occasionally helped out in the soap factory, but mostly she stayed at home.

My mother had two older sisters and many brothers of whom I only knew one. One of her sisters was Bertha, who was married to a man who owned a wine-merchant’s in Grodno [today Belarus]. They didn’t have children. The other sister was Sonja; she wasn’t married. The only brother I knew was Joel Katz. He was a businessman and owned a timber trade in Bialystok [today Poland]; he was married and had a son, Josef. They were all killed in the Holocaust. Sometimes my mother’s brothers and sisters came to visit us but I don’t recall that my parents ever visited them. My mother was certainly happy to live in such a big city as Warsaw. They were all killed during the Holocaust.

My father, Israel Endler, was born in Warsaw in 1890. His mother tongue was Polish. He had a commercial education and was a soap manufacturer. He was a businessman. He was away a lot; his company was small and he tried to sell his goods by traveling from village to village.

Growing up

I know that my father met my mother on a business trip. I assume that my mother was at her brother Joel’s in Bialystok when they met because I cannot image that my father would have even tried to sell his goods in such a small place as Narewka, but rather in bigger places such as Bialystok. I don’t know for sure though. They got acquainted before World War I and probably got married in 1919 or 1920 because I was born on 9th December 1921 in Warsaw.
My sister Halina was born in Warsaw in 1926.

When I was a child I had a nanny who even spoke German. Later we usually had peasant girls that helped my mother around the house. They had to put up with very modest conditions: they slept on a folding bed in the kitchen because our apartment only consisted of a living room, a bedroom, a kitchen and a small anteroom. Besides, the apartment was very dark because it was on the first floor.

I would assume that I slept in my parents’ bedroom when I was a child, but later I slept on a sofa in the living room and my sister stayed in my parents’ room. I did my homework at the dining table. There was a pretty wide windowsill in the living room and when it was warm I did my homework there. A very religious family lived opposite us. On weekdays there was no problem, but when I did my homework on the windowsill on Saturdays, my father used to say, ‘Why do you have to upset the people living opposite us?’

We spent our vacations with our mother somewhere near Vilnius, what is today Lithuania. She took us to the countryside where she was born. Sometimes we just went to small villages close to Warsaw or we hired a farmer and a cart and went on a summer holiday. It took about an hour to get there and the road was named ‘the line’. Along this ‘line’ there were a number of small villages, the last of which were a bit more We rented an apartment and our father came by train to join us on either Friday morning or before Sabbath and returned Saturday evening or Sunday morning. If we went away for longer, we took our own bed sheets and dishes with us. My mother cooked for us; sometimes a peasant girl helped her. We, children, usually spent our holiday playing. There were also lakes in the area, so we could also play in the water. My mother often joined us playing, otherwise she read the papers or books.

I attended a private elementary school for two years. I wasn’t extremely industrious but I had to do my homework; that was my duty. My parents must have been doing quite well at that time because otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to afford to send me to a private school. Afterwards they took me out of that school and I had to study in a public school, which was free, for four years. It was only when I entered grammar school that I went to a private school again. I could have attended a public grammar school, but due to anti-Semitism it wasn’t so easy for Jewish children to enter grammar school.

We had religious instruction at school and it was absolutely necessary to have a good mark because a bad mark in religious instruction – no matter if Jewish religion or any other – was regarded by the authorities as a sign for the person to belong to a communist organization. In addition it was difficult to enter university with a bad mark in religion.

At the grammar school I went to there were mainly Jewish teachers who would have had a hard time finding a job at a public school and who were very committed. I assume my parents sent me to this school on purpose because there was a strong anti-Semitism in Poland at the time, whereas I didn’t have to face anything of the like in this school. It wasn’t a Jewish school; all the students there were assimilated Jewish children who stood by their Jewishness and the fact that they were Polish citizen and regarded Poland as their homeland. There were even Jewish members in the Polish parliament back then. Hitler’s rise to power in the 1930s brought an end to that.

I had a cousin – I don’t remember from which side of the family – who went to school in Breslau. He was expelled from Germany in 1938 because he was a Polish Jew. Once he came to our place for lunch. He had very right-wing political views, but he told us in detail about the ‘Jewish Laws’ in Germany. I was hardly 16 at the time and loathed this cousin of mine. I said to my mother, ‘If you ever invite Henry – that’s what my cousin was called – for lunch again, let me know so that I can make sure I won’t be home then.’ Jozef Pilsudski 4 was a dictator, but he was well disposed towards Jews.

I did look Jewish enough, but it never happened that anyone abused me on the street; I never ever experienced anything the like. A gym teacher – she wasn’t Jewish - was said to be anti-Semitic. I met her again by accident after the war and she almost squashed me when she hugged me, out of joy that I had stayed alive. It has to be said though, that many Christians who were anti-Semitic before the Holocaust changed their minds after they realized what that meant. There was this familiar quote in Poland at the time: Away with Jewish men, Jewish women stay with us! Of course that was only because Jewish girls were very pretty. I took an interest in politics as early as 1935, at the age of 14. It was at the time when Polish fascism started to rise. I met leftwing students and developed a leftist attitude.

There was a drama theater at our school. I was a member and worked on plays under the direction of the teachers. We also created the sets ourselves. Each year a subject that we wanted to adapt for the stage was discussed and agreed on. I remember one of them, which was ‘My favorite book’. This way the reading matter for children was supposed to be influenced. We performed a fragment of a historical novel and a fragment of a thriller, and of course children were advised against the thriller. I was also part of a literary circle and very good at writing.

As a child I was interested in many different things. During my school years I also attended courses in biology and astronomy. I don’t mean to say that I was born an intellectual, but I was always a little bit more mature than many other children and I was interested in social issues from an early age on.

Theoretically, studying at the grammar school was very expensive. In practice it was different though because the teachers were very committed. So the families of the richer girls paid almost everything and most of the other children got a fairly good discount. However, after I finished the 10th grade and got my ‘small’ final exam [studies for the ‘small’ final exam lasted 10 instead of 12 years and it didn’t qualify students to enter university] my father said, ‘You have your small final exam. That will do. You aren’t crooked, you are quite pretty, you’re ready to get married.’ Well, I created an enormous scandal, and with success. I told my father, ‘I want to study and if you can’t afford to pay for it then I’ll give private classes and pay for it myself. If I can continue to live at home, I’ll make it.’ Had it been up to my father, things would have remained the way they were in the old times: my sister and I would have married a good match.

My mother silently rebelled against my father: she was a very smart woman and didn’t approve of what he had said, but she didn’t dare brew up a storm. However, she always succeeded in having it her way, also thinking of her other daughter, my younger sister, who was pretty lazy back then, but then again she was still a child. I had the feeling that my sister was the spoiled one. If I wanted to ask my father for money for something ‘unimportant’ – children didn’t get pocket money back then – I always sent my sister ahead because chances were higher that she would get some before I would.

Later my father allowed me to spend my summer vacations in a school camp that was neither kosher – the teachers weren’t religious – nor Zionist. On one of these occasions I met a student there, who had pitched his tent nearby, fell in love with me and wrote letters to me afterwards. I didn’t have the slightest idea that he was interested in me. I was hardly 17 years old, hadn’t finished school yet and a 20 or 22-year-old seemed an old man to me. My father learned through these letters that a Jewish man from a rich family was interested in his daughter. However, I told my mother, ‘If he phones, tell him I’m not at home.’ My father was outraged that I’d let the chance of such a good match slip through my fingers. That should give you somewhat of an idea what he thought of female emancipation.

I had friends from different classes of society and therefore I clearly saw the difference between my typical petit bourgeois home and other milieus. My father was conservative in every respect and therefore we almost always had different opinions. He was a typical small-scale businessman who wanted to support his family and make sure that his daughters behaved properly.

I met most of my friends at school, through drama classes and courses. We didn’t go to the cinema or coffee houses because we didn’t have enough money for that. Sometimes we met at the home of a more progressive friend, if his or her parents allowed it.

My father only owned the Talmud in Hebrew and some other religious books. I never saw him lying on the sofa and reading, like I do, but my mother did read novels and was more open-minded. I have an idea about how this came to happen: Sometime during World War I, before she got married, my mother probably worked somewhere. Back then women were also subject to work. I’m certain that she had a German friend back then because how else could she have known German if she didn’t? In that part of Poland it was rare to speak German. In Galicia 5 they only spoke Yiddish and German, but in the part where my mother lived, they spoke Russian and Polish. My mother owned and read many books in German, and I have been reading many books since my childhood, too.

If I look back at my parents’ cultural life and compare it to mine, I have to say that they had a very poor one. They rarely went to the theater and when they did they watched operettas or revues. They took me along to a revue twice.

All the Jews in our surrounding were kosher; there were many kosher stores. We lived on a very long street, one side of which was Jewish – apart from one non-Jew, Mr. Stanislaw, the janitor of our house – and the other was Christian. There was a Catholic church opposite our house; it was the only building in what later became the Warsaw Ghetto that survived the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising 6. The Great Synagogue was quite a bit away from our house, so my father and mother went to a prayer house close to our home, on the high holidays.

My father prayed daily, and on Friday afternoon, at the beginning of Sabbath, he stopped smoking. No lights were lit up any longer. He was deeply religious and followed all rules. There was no cooking on Saturday; the food was completely prepared beforehand. I remember the single time my father entered the kitchen. He had found a knife for meat among the cutlery for dairy products. My mother, in her despair, said that the nanny had probably mixed them up. My father immediately put the knife into a pot of earth. I had the impression that my mother was way less religious than my father. I can’t describe it exactly, it’s just that she was always very tolerant towards me. She never punished me either.

My father once overheard me talking on the phone about a sum of money, which I had collected for the International Brigades fighting in the Spanish Civil War 7. He was in the room next door and all of a sudden he asked, ‘What kind of money are you talking about? Where did you get that much money? I confessed upon which he said, ‘Why do you get involved there? It’s none of your business!’ He was definitely conservative, loyal to the regime and seriously believed that if you did what the government said, nothing bad could ever happen to you.

None of us was a Zionist. I never heard any conversations about emigrating to Palestine or anything the like. Maybe there were such talks among other adults, I don’t know. It was probably also a question of money because we were people who couldn’t afford to go abroad.

During the War

The war broke out on 1st September 1939 [see Invasion of Poland] 8. My friend and I went to the Technical University by tram to hand in our documents. I wanted to study chemistry; it was my dream to become a chemist. When we reached the center of town I noticed young boys crying out loud and distributing a special edition of a newspaper. I said to my friend that I would get off the tram to see what was printed in the paper. War was already in the air! When I read about the mobilization of men in the newspaper, I told my friend, ‘I’m not going to leave my documents with the university. It’s almost certain that there’s going to be a war.’ Six days later the Germans had advanced as far as Warsaw. Men and young people tried to flee. I wanted to leave too, because I had an idea that things could turn ugly. I was a hundred percent convinced that we had to flee. The Polish government said: ‘We are strong, we will fight and we will win!’ And in my ‘small brain’ – although back then I thought I was incredibly mature and knew everything – I secretly knew by then already that the war against the Germans would be lost. Three weeks later Warsaw fell into the hands of the Germans.

My father wouldn’t let me leave. It was a catastrophe. ‘You want to leave the family?’ he uttered indignantly. So I stayed. I was the only person to stand in line for water, because there was none left, and organize food because my sister was only twelve, my mother was chubby and not used to strenuous work and my father probably suffered from either heart or kidney disease because he was always sweating.

When the Germans marched into Warsaw I stood on the street with my fists clenched. They marched into town like heroes, dressed in black, with an arrogant expression on their faces, and with tanks. I ran home and had an argument with my parents. I wanted us to flee together. My father said, ‘What do you think you know? You’re just a child. That’s all exaggerated.’ And my mother said, ‘ You know, the Germans are a civilized people, just think of Schiller and Goethe!’ I realized that my attempts were hopeless. Two years before the war the economical situation had improved, people bought furniture and things like that and they clung to that. So I began to fight for my sister. And at that point my father burst out in a fit of rage: ‘What do you think you’re doing! You’re not even grown up yet!’

As a result of this I moved in with my friend Halina Altmann. Her parents were progressive. Her mother was in prison for her political convictions, or perhaps she had already been released at the time, I don’t remember exactly. They were all left wing and decided to flee. Halina escaped to Lwow [today Ukraine], where she studied at university. Her parents and her younger brother fled to Lutzk, a small village, which was under Russian rule back then, and which today belongs to Ukraine. Halina’s father happened to be on a business trip in Kiev when the Germans marched into Lutzk and killed her mother and brother. Halina and her father survived the Holocaust. I ‘terrorized’ my parents and said I’d only come back home if they would at least let me go. I hadn’t attained my majority yet but was only missing a few months.

Shortly after the Germans invaded Warsaw, I saw how they cut off a Jew’s beard at the market place. I said to my parents, ‘I know I don’t have a chance here. You don’t either but I can’t force you to come along.’ My father remained stubborn; for him it was out of the question to let me go. At that moment my mother said to my father, and it probably took her a lot of courage to do so, ‘You know, I can’t take responsibility for Mila [Emilia]’. Upon that my father agreed with her. He allowed me to go on the condition that I wouldn’t leave with all the ‘insane’ people, so he went to get a taxi for me. In that taxi he wanted me to go to my mother’s brother, Uncle Joel, in Bialystok, who would take care of me. My father put 100 zloty into my shoes, which made no sense at all because I couldn’t have done anything with that money.

I don’t have a single photograph of my parents or my sister because my father checked my backpack before I left and found an envelope with photos that I had put there. He took all photos out of the envelope, except the ones of me, and said, ‘If you want to put yourself in jeopardy, all right. But you won’t put the whole family in danger!’ That’s why I don’t have a single family photograph.

A woman and her baby were traveling with me; her husband was already on the Russian side. But we didn’t know then that a partition of Poland into German and Russian territory had taken place on 17th October 1939 as a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact 9. The taxi had barely made it 20 kilometers when the Germans confiscated it. In this chaos, the woman with the baby said she would return home. I asked her to tell my parents that she had lost sight of me. Thereupon I joined some strangers and we continued on our way on foot. I think it was about 300 kilometers to Bialystok [today Belarus]. It felt like being in a flock of sheep a bit: everyone’s going so I’m going, too. Sometimes farmers gave us a lift in their carts; there were hardly cars around then and the Germans had requisitioned the ones that existed.

I don’t know how many days we were on the road. Half starved and thirsty, we sometimes got milk from farmers. Money wasn’t an issue any more. If you had a bar of soap – and I had a few bars because my father had foreseen that correctly - you could exchange it for food. Soap became kind of a ‘currency’. We arrived at the demarcation line, and I, in my low cast of mind back then, thought the Soviets would be standing at the border waiting for me. By chance there was no German guard there and we made a beeline for the Soviet side. The Russian border guard took his carbine, pointed it at us and said, ‘Stoi! Get back!’

We tried to cross over three times and fortunately the Russians didn’t hand us over to the Germans; it was a neutral piece of land. Afterwards we decided – I being the youngest – to go into the village and try finding a farmer who would bring us across the green line. We found a farmer who belonged to a minority of very poor German people and took us along in his boot for a short distance. ‘Just for security reason’, as he assured us, he took all our jewelry, including my watch and my ring, the one that Uncle Ignatz from South America had given to me. This attempt to escape failed but we finally did manage to cross the border illegally. It was October, the nights were cold and I caught a cold. I had a coat that I forgot to put on - at the age of 17 you just don’t think about sickness very much.

When I arrived at my relative’s place in Bialystok, my uncle Joel’s wife opened the door, looked at me and was reluctant to let me. I was in a horrible state and she didn’t recognize me. She thought I was a beggar. I had a fever the next day but once I had recovered a bit, my uncle Joel took over my father’s role. He said that his dear sister Marija had always been incredibly tolerant, that it wouldn’t be good for the children and now he would show me what discipline was. ‘You stay here. Work is out of the question for you. We will find you a good match’, he said. When I had recovered I told him, ‘You know what? I’m a human being and you are not my father and besides I’ve almost reached my maturity age.’ He just replied, ‘You’re a kid.’ I didn’t want to start an argument with him so I just went to the center of town a few days later, where I found a refugee organization. They gave me a free ticket to Lwow, so I went to my uncle and announced, ‘I’m going to Lwow tomorrow!’ Of course this caused a similar scandal as the one I had had at home. But I didn’t let them stop me. I wanted to study and there was no possibility to do so in Bialystok. My uncle said, ‘But you don’t even know anyone there’. Upon which I just murmured, ‘For goodness sake, I’m not going into the desert!’

When I got off the train in Lwow in the evening I stood at the railway station like a poor orphan. I had never been to this city before. I knew that Lwow was a cultural center, but that was about it. A woman approached me, saying, ‘Girl, you must be a refugee!’ ‘Yes’, I replied. ‘Do you have a place to stay?’ ‘No.’ ‘You can stay at my place. I only have a small apartment but I’ll put a mattress into the bathtub and you can sleep there.’ My benefactress turned out to be a teacher. I told her, ‘You know, I want to study at the university here. I have no money but I’ll probably meet many friends at university.’ I knew many people from Warsaw, also older students. The next day I wrote to my uncle: ‘I have arrived.’

And, indeed, I met a lot of old acquaintances at the university. I was the youngest and everyone felt obliged to help me. It was the beginning of November and exams were over already. However, there was a student committee because this was an unusual year: there were a lot of people who wouldn’t have been allowed to enter university, both Jews and communists. And this committee had fought for us to be allowed to take special entrance exams.

What turned out to be a little bit more complicated was the matter of accommodation. There was a so-called ‘commander’, an older student, in the student hostel. Much to my disadvantage I had this coat with a Persian lamb collar that my mother had made for me for my final exams. Now this ‘commander’ concluded that someone who owns a coat with a Persian lamb collar simply must be rich. I had no money whatsoever though and couldn’t possibly afford an apartment. And so I lived illegally for two months, spending the night here and there. Some of the people, who accommodated me, gave me some food. I had to study a lot and finish my exams quickly. I had done my finals in June and now I had to sit exams in maths, chemistry and physics.

All my friends helped me with my studies so that I would pass the exams with good results, and indeed, I succeeded. My dream had come true: I could start my chemistry studies. With a trick I also got a space in the student hostel after two months. When I had finished my exams I was granted a scholarship but it was hardly enough to keep body and soul together. I worked besides my studies: I cleaned floors and knitted pullovers for a shop. The owner of the store had hidden some wool, and I knitted the pullovers from that wool, which was forbidden. The third job I had was also the most daring: I drew boards to illustrate the vocabulary for the language classes of the English Faculty, and it was daring because I had no talent when it came to drawing. Drawing bodies I could cope with somewhat but when it came to heads a friend of mine, who studied architecture, came to my place in the evenings to help me out.

Anti-Semitism was particularly horrible at universities. Polish nationalists achieved that Jews and non-Jews had to be in separate classrooms – we called that ‘bench ghetto’ – and they constantly instigated fights.

I experienced the reality of this ‘socialism’ for two years. I had already read The Communist Manifesto back in Warsaw and I believed that Soviet Russia was paradise. The materialistic side of things was left out of account – no one thought about things like that. Once I watched a historical Soviet film on the tsarist era, against imperialism, in which they also trampled on Polish flags. I was upset: after all I was a Polish patriot. Sometimes I approached the older ones students to draw their attention to certain things, which, in my opinion, weren’t politically correct. They always had some kind of excuse: ‘Yes, there are mistakes, but it’s the right principle’, they would say.

I met my future husband, Martin Ratz, while at university in Lwow. He also had to sit the entrance exams for university because he had been put into prison as a ‘hostile alien’ - the Austrians regarded him as a Pole and the Poles regarded him as an Austrian - by the Polish in Lwow following the invasion of the Germans in 1939. He was released by the Russians when they occupied Lwow.

There was a shop on the university grounds where you could buy drawing paper, ink and things like that and I continually met this handsome young guy in the dean’s office, where you got vouchers for the learning material. Well, that handsome young guy was Martin and he became my boyfriend.

Martin was born on 14th April 1921 in Vienna. He had a sister called Hedwig Charlotte, born in Vienna in 1924. His father’s name was Alexander and his mother was called Sophie. They came to Vienna from Brody, Galicia, but I don’t remember when. I assume his father was a businessman. He worked in a company in Vienna that sold pencils and the like Two years later the family moved to Cracow. I suppose my husband’s father had relatives and better job opportunities there. Unfortunately he died of a heart attack in 1931 or 32.

Sophie Ratz stayed in Cracow and devoted herself to the children. I don’t know how they made a living, perhaps they had some income from some property or perhaps their relatives supported them. When my husband was in grammar school, his mother decided to send him to her sister in Vienna, probably because – but this is only my supposition – he had the chance of getting better final exams there than in Cracow. Martin moved to his aunt’s in Vienna – she lived on Rechte Wienzeile – in 1937. In 1938, a year before his final exams, he was expelled from Austria for being a Polish Jew.

On 23rd June 1941 I was supposed to sit an extremely difficult exam in mechanics. I was in the fourth term. At 6am on Sunday, 22nd June [the beginning of the so-called Great Patriotic War] 10, a colleague of mine, who I knew from school, came to my place and said, ‘War has begun!’ We all thought she was out of her mind, but the very moment she said it, firing started. A few minutes later we understood that this was no mere training.

We were supposed to flee the next day, but then they said that the Germans had been repressed. The university director gathered everyone, told us not to panic and to go in for our exams. Martin was a ‘Jecke’ [term for a very responsible and law-abiding German Jew], followed the instructions and, the good boy he was, went in for his exam; I think that was on 28th June.

I volunteered for the army along with two other girls; we wanted to fight against Hitler. They didn’t want to accept us though because we didn’t have the proper training. So we just told them that we had had a class on the subject in school, where they had trained us to be nurses in the war. Thereupon we were accepted as assistant nurses. A military hospital had been set up in the building of the university, but there were no wounded people at that stage yet.

Martin had an uncle and aunt, who had a daughter living in Lwow. He went there after his exams to have some good food. So while the Germans were invading Lwow, he was sitting in his aunt’s house and eating; she had made scrambled egg for him. All of a sudden his uncle walked in and said, ‘What are you doing here?’ And Martin proudly announced, ‘I’ve passed my exam!’ His uncle murmured, ‘You’re crazy. The whole town is on the run. Go to the student hostel right now, get your things and leave!’ His family in Lwow didn’t survive the Holocaust.

I felt very mobilized and my two friends and I were very industrious: We dragged beds and mattresses and they sent me to the hospital to collect medicine. I went through a city that was being evacuated and saw nothing. I was so engrossed in my mission that I didn’t notice what was happening around me. Proudly I brought back the medicine, and in the evening – the city was quiet and you could only hear artillery far away – I said to my two friends, ‘You know, I feel the same way I did when they gave up Warsaw.’ There was a girl among us, later a war heroine, who died during the battle for Warsaw, at the end of the war. She was two years my senior and more pontifical than the pope. She swore at me for being a defeatist: how could I possibly say a thing like that. I told her, ‘You know what. We are all grown-up but we are not related. As to me, I’ll flee!’

We went up to the first floor, where the university administration was located, and no one was there – not the director, nor anyone else. They had simply forgotten about us.
I hadn’t come all the way from Warsaw on foot, leaving my family behind, just to fall into the hands of the Germans here.

We went to the student hostel and it was almost empty. Bombs were being dropped already and they were firing from the roof of a barracks opposite the university building. Those were probably Ukrainian nationalists, but we didn’t know that back then. In the short time before the Germans seized Lwow, the power had been in the hands of Ukrainian nationalists, and I’ll never forget how afraid I was of my fellow Ukrainian students. Maybe it’s a sin to say so, but this Ukrainian nationalism was terrible. However, many were enthusiastic about it because this nationalism had freed Ukraine. There was a rather large number of Ukrainians in Lwow. They collaborated with the Germans from the very beginning and were very strong anti-Semites.

One person from that group came up to me once, patted me on the shoulder and said, ‘Well Mila, now that we have the Germans here everything will be good and we’ll at last get some order.’ I was very upset and replied, ‘We’ll see about that.’ And I said to the others, ‘I’m leaving right now! And I’ll use the window, not the door because our Ukrainian colleagues could be waiting there to kill us.’ The window led onto a meadow, but hardly anyone from our small group of girls knew her way around in Lwow. Two girls were from Warsaw and one was from a little town, close to what was then the border with Ukraine, but none of us was from Lwow. We went on foot along with Russian troops that were already fleeing. It was nighttime and I had no idea what had happened to Martin. The very next day the Germans already occupied Lwow.

We walked throughout the night. In the morning we arrived in a little town by the name of Pszemyslany [today Ukraine]. We wanted to rest a little there. I knocked on the door of the first little house. The owner was a shoemaker and his family was incredibly poor. It was a kind of poverty I hadn’t known before. We almost behaved like occupiers; we needed a place to sleep. A few hours later we walked into town and saw a bus around where an enormous number of Soviet Party officials with bag and baggage had gathered. Each of us had a backpack with almost nothing in it. You were only allowed to board the bus, if your name was on a list. The bus was supposed to go to Kiev and under normal circumstances we would have had no chance to get onto that bus. But we were young and strong and violence saved us. We pushed our way forward to the bus. In the course of the journey we didn’t hear any explosions; all was quiet. But when we reached a town near Tarnopol [today Ukraine] a horrible bomb attack took place. The Ukrainians were firing at the Russian troops from the shelter of the woods.

When the situation had calmed down we set out on our way to Tarnopol, where the bus stopped for a break. In the spur of the moment I decided to stay in Tarnopol and wait for Martin. My heart told me, it was only here where I could possibly meet him because Tarnopol was the last Polish city before the former Polish border.

They were bombing quite a bit at nighttime. We spent the night on the floor in the city hall and in the morning we discussed what we should do. We were fairly weak already. And then I met my husband, who arrived a few hours later. Martin was wearing his winter coat from Vienna and had blue underpants wrapped around his neck, which were tied into a knot at the end of the trouser legs. In these trouser legs was sugar, which Martin had found next to bombed military vehicles. My husband and I stayed together from that moment on.

We escaped eastwards on board a freight train. We had no idea where we were, where the train stopped; we didn’t know anything. It was total chaos. We just wanted to get away from the Germans. We decided to head for Kiev when we learned that both Kiev and Odessa had already been encircled. Nonetheless we wanted to go to a big city with a university to continue our studies. I think we boarded ten different trains. We arrived in Dnepropetrowsk, a fairly big city, and planned to stay there. That very night the city was being bombed for the first time. We had no money and decided to work in a kolkhoz 11. The name of the village was Kotelnikowo [today Russia], later a location where pretty fierce fighting took place.

I gave myself an upset stomach by eating a fatty lamb soup; I had never eaten lamb before. Everyone thought I had typhoid. Martin decided to save me and drove me to a hospital because there was no doctor in the village. We went by cart to see a doctor and by the time we arrived there I was back to normal, a bit starved but healthy.

Since my husband had a good upbringing everything had to be done the proper way and so he sold his watch, the only valuable thing he had left. He probably would have got more for it on the black-market, but because he was such a civilized person, he sold it to a state-owned shop. He bought train tickets to Stalingrad with the money he got for it. We were the only people in the whole Soviet Union who boarded that train with tickets. Whenever I told my friends this little anecdote later, I always brought the house down.

My husband had a wound on his leg inflicted earlier by a scythe during work on a field. It got worse and he had to go to hospital in Stalingrad. Due to a false diagnosis he was put into quarantine. I stayed in a refugee camp in the meantime; theoretically you were only allowed to stay there for 24 hours.

Stalingrad was an industrial city. I came across ads by a university and made inquiries if there was a faculty of chemistry. We only had two choices: study or work. There were no people our age that didn’t work; they would have been sent to forced labor. Therefore we had to change faculties. I arranged for us - once Martin was released from hospital - to sit exams, get a place in the student hostel and study mechanical engineering, and that would be it.

We neither had money, nor a scholarship. In the beginning I studied and he worked. He had always been fond of cars and worked in a metalworking shop. During that time I sat two exams in Russian, which was one long torment.

My mother spoke Russian very well. She corresponded with her brother in Russian all the time and only spoke Russian with her friend. I remember this one incident very clearly – and this is a characteristic example for the pre-war period in Poland – when she came home with a tear-stained face after a meeting with her friend. Anti-Semitism was just one thing in Poland; the other was deep hatred of Russians and Bolsheviks. My mother and her friend had been to a coffeehouse and then on a tram, chatting away in Russian, whereupon one of the other passengers abused them of being Bolsheviks. My father said to her, ‘How many times do I have to tell you that they don’t love their neighbors in this country and that you shouldn’t speak Russian in public places.’

I couldn’t read these letters back then [Editor’s note: the interviewee is referring to the Cyrillic letters used in the Russian and Ukrainian language], and when I saw the Ukrainian language, which also consisted of such strange letters, I decided one can’t possibly study two such weird languages at the same time, so I decided to focus on Russian. In Lwow, lectures had still been held in Polish but when we came to Russia, the only language spoken was Russian. There were no textbooks so I put everything down in handwriting and also lent my notebooks to other students. In these notebooks you could have seen how my knowledge of the language improved. Unfortunately I have thrown away the one notebook that I took back to Poland with me after the war. My initial notes in there were still in Polish and then I changed to Russian. You could see how my Russian developed and that I gradually wrote more and more in Russian.

Mathematics wasn’t a problem for me, but when I went in for my exams I had to describe a high blast furnace. I did so by describing it partly with words, partly with gestures. To get a scholarship depended on how you did at the exam. If you had three ‘Excellent’ marks and ‘Good’ in all the other subjects, you got a scholarship. My professor, an elderly man, said to me, ‘I see that you know your subject very well but at some points I didn’t quite get what you meant.’

The scholarship wasn’t enough for both of us to survive on, so Martin went to look for a job and found one with a construction company. In October 1941 the Germans got awfully close and the company was about to be evacuated. Martin said that he had a wife, whereupon they demanded the marriage certificate, so we quickly got married on 21st October 1941, during our lunch-break. Our wedding clothes were patched up old clothes – I didn’t have proper shoes either – but that didn’t matter. The only bad thing was that I signed the part, which said that I agreed to take my husband’s name. I would have been allowed to keep my name because the documents I fought for in Lwow were in my maiden name. But to go to the military as a foreigner and have my passport changed to my husband’s name could have become dangerous. Fortunately things changed for the better, the evacuation didn’t take place and I just put my marriage certificate in a drawer.

In Stalingrad we suffered under the hardest winter and the most severe time of starving of the whole war. I remember that my colleagues gave me ten potatoes for my birthday on 9th December.

The biggest problem was shoes. I practically wore overshoes throughout the war, and made myself socks and a cap from remnants.

We were fairly blind to politics, but then again we were cut off from the outside world – there was no radio, only a public loudspeaker that broadcast the official news. We didn’t know anything about Europe, absolutely nothing! We were fighting to get a hold of newspapers only to use them to roll cigarettes and smoke Machorka [very strong tobacco] – both my husband and I were smokers then. We were always busy making money somehow so that we wouldn’t starve and be able to study. It was easier for men to get a job because of their physical advantage. If two wagonloads of salt arrived, I couldn’t possibly have gone to help out carry the sacks- I was too weak to carry a sack of salt.

There were two professors and the dean who looked after us. Everything was chaotic but at the same time there was a great solidarity among people. We received 300 grams of bread daily, but no fat, the oil you got back then was similar to lubricating oil. Two girls, who took evening classes at the university, worked in a bakery producing baked goods on a large scale, and they sometimes brought us a bit of extra bread. And the dean, who had noticed that my husband’s shoes were completely worn-out, discreetly got him another pair of shoes; they were also old but not that worn-out.

The pressure from above to finish our studies quickly was high because at the beginning of the war a lot of young people – intellectuals – had lost their lives. They had no idea about fighting in a war and fell in their first battle. And later it turned out that there weren’t any people to work in companies and therefore we had to hurry with our studies to fill these positions.

All student hostels were full of evacuated people. The Germans had advanced very close to the borders of Stalingrad, but they probably wanted to take the city at once and started to bomb. There was no bridge and the Volga is fairly wide at this point. There was only a single tram that went southwards towards the Caspian Sea. It was difficult to get supplies to the city.

After the German attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, the Volga-German Republic [see German ASSR] 12 was dissolved by a decree and the whole Volga-German population, out of fear it could collaborate with the Germans, was deported to Kazakhstan and Siberia. They had also sent ‘dangerous elements’ to Siberia back in Lwow in the winter of 1940. These ‘dangerous elements’ also included people like me, refugees. All that happened very quickly: soldiers came, arrested people and transported them to Siberia in cattle-trucks. Most of them died in the harsh conditions there.

We were sent to attend crash-courses, for example one for tractor-drivers, to bring in the harvest in the Volga-German Republic. We arrived in a country with painted houses; everything was completely different than in the rest Russia. It was a piece of Germany in the Soviet Union. A whole country without a single soul; it was very spooky. In the empty houses there were German sayings affixed to the walls, such as ‘Morgenstund’ hat Gold im Mund’[‘The early bird catches the worm’].

We were fairly poor craftsmen. Martin was good because he was a car fanatic and learned how to drive as early as in his childhood. The tractors were in miserable condition because the army had taken the good ones. The steering wheels were so wretched that you could hardly drive the tractors. We worked there for a few weeks but weren’t very successful. We were paid in crops for our work, but both Martin and my business skills were rather bad. Instead of selling the crops we tried to grind them with a chair-leg. Our hunger was so enormous; we simply ate anything.

In June 1942 all students in Stalingrad were mobilized and we had to build a defense line against the German troops. The supplies were pretty good at that stage. One day, early in the morning, bombing started. It wasn’t the Battle for Stalingrad, but they were the first fights. Two girls from my group that were very young started to cry because they hadn’t experienced war before.

The only railroad line leading southwards had been bombed terribly, but there was the harbor in the center of town. The only possibility to flee from Stalingrad was to cross the Volga in small boats. We, however, in our naivety – we were only 21 years old - thought we could build ourselves a raft.

Our destination was Dschimbek in Northern Kazakhstan, in the steppe, 200 kilometers from Stalingrad, and we reached it. In Northern Kazakhstan there are settlements every 50 kilometers. We mostly lived on fruit we stole. Our feet were sore because our shoes were completely worn-out. Allegedly Stalin had ordered the trucks that returned empty from the front to pick up refugees, but they ignored that. I sat down on the side of the road with a bottle of vodka and that had a better effect than Stalin’s order.

Dschimbek was an oriental city, a junction between North and South, and there – sometimes real life is more interesting than a film - I met a friend. I wanted to head further north because I thought the heat in the South would cause us difficulties. That’s why we came to Sverdlovsk [today Ekaterinburg], made enquiries about the university and learned that a professor was teaching there, who had been in Stalingrad with us. He was very concerned about us and even put us up in his place in the beginning.

There was a faculty of chemistry in Sverdlovsk, but we had already taken so many exams in mechanical engineering that we decided to stick with it. That was in fall 1942. We completed our period of practical training in a motorcycle factory in the small town of Irbit. We worked twelve hours a day, just like the laborers there. There were no real roads in this little town, just tracks like those we had in the poorest parts of Eastern Poland. We were accommodated by different families. We had hardly any food, or, to be more precise, we were starving.

Afterwards we returned to Sverdlovsk, took our exams and the next summer we were already given the subjects of our dissertations. We were supposed to finish our studies quickly in order to fill job positions. I completed my practical diploma training in a factory for aircraft equipment. I was satisfied with my work. Of course we were used, but at the same time we also learned a lot.

My husband always tried to make some extra money. I had an injury on my leg, which didn’t heal because we couldn’t get vitamins. We had practically finished our studies and were just missing our diploma examinations. But the prospect of going to work soon wasn’t exactly enticing. Students didn’t have much money and had little food but at least we had time and didn’t have to work twelve hours a day. I dawdled over my exams a bit. Most likely someone told on me because I was summoned to the administration of the university. Since female emancipation wasn’t exactly high on the list of priorities back then, I came up with the following argument: ‘It would make kind of a bad impression if I was an engineer already whereas my husband was still a student, wouldn’t it?’ I negotiated six more weeks for myself and we finished our studies on the same day.

I had decided that I wanted to wear ‘real’ shoes to my diploma examination and therefore Martin and I ate even less bread and sold the rest on the market so that I could get a new pair of shoes. Neither he nor I were good salesman. He left the job to me though, so I went to the market with two loaves of bread. I assume that some speculators had bribed the militia; in any case I was caught immediately. Luckily they also caught the wife of a ‘big wheel’, who was released again immediately and was kind enough to inform my husband on what had happened. Somehow he succeeded to rescue me from the clutches of the law, but the bread was gone of course, and so was the dream of my new shoes. In the end a Polish shoemaker made a pair of shoes for me, which I paid for in installments, but they were useless and I could only wear them once.

After I had passed my diploma examination, I was abused for being a Jew for the first time by a young man on the street in Sverdlovsk. I gave him a box on the ears. I was 23 years old and the crowd of people on the street, although not knowing what had happened, was on my side.

If you had a diploma, you were given a mandatory job assignment 13. That was in 1944, at the beginning of the offensive, and Moscow or Leningrad was out of the question as they were still evacuated. In Dschelabis, an industrial city in the Southern Urals, there was a pipe rolling mill and much to our horror we were assigned there. But we took advantage of the chaos everywhere and simply went to the factory in Sverdlovsk where we had done or diploma practice training. Again we worked twelve hours a day, and, I think, also every second Sunday. The food was poor: bread, bad oil and tea made of dried carrots. There was a variety of food available at the market, but we didn’t make enough money for that. The factory in which we worked had been evacuated as well and we lived in horrible barracks. Winters can get as cold as 30 degrees minus in Sverdlovsk and we didn’t have running water and only a Russian stove 14 to cook on and heat the place. Never before in my life had I seen such a thing! Once I bought some warm panties in a village store. They were red! They made it all the way back to Poland [after the war]; I didn’t own anything more exclusive. My sister-in-law, who had survived several camps in Poland, rolled up laughing when she saw my red panties.

I was a technician in a department that manufactured machinery equipment; my husband worked in a different department. And then - Russia already received help from the Americans at the time - the director of the factory learned that there were two casting machines sitting at the railway station and that nobody knew who they belonged to. I assume he pulled some strings; in any case he got those machines. There was a foundry in the factory but no one who spoke English. So my husband volunteered to translate the instructions that came with those two machines. From then on he was deputy head of his department.

In 1943, I think, a Polish organization and army was being formed. I wanted to volunteer for this army, but they didn’t take senior students. I asked the professor, who had already been my teacher at school in Warsaw and who liked me, for help, but the opposite happened! Although he was left wing he got very angry with me and said that they didn’t need soldiers like me. I’m sure all he wanted was save my life. Apart from the Polish army, the Polish-Soviet Society, which had its headquarters in Moscow, was founded. I worked as a social worker for this society in Russia.

Post-war

When the war was over we were working in Sverdlovsk. In 1946 we heard about an agreement according to which former Polish citizens were allowed to return to Poland.
Since I was sixth month pregnant and had worked for the Polish-Soviet Society, we, along with some Polish farmers who had been deported to Siberia, were among the first to return to Poland. They wanted us to be there in time for the harvest. We were transported to Poland in cattle-trucks, some of which had buckets that served as toilets. That was in April 1946; our destination was Warsaw.

After the end of the war in May 1945 we began to look for our relatives. We had no idea about what had happened in Europe. My letters remained unanswered. The last letters I received where from my father, written in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1941. Of course they had been censored. I couldn’t write about anything in particular either. I wrote about exams that I had passed and things like that. I couldn’t possibly have told him that I ate badly, and, besides, the situation really wasn’t that bad in Lwow.

An older student colleague of mine had arranged herself ‘Aryan papers’, was in the resistance and lived in Warsaw. She came across an ad in a newspaper in 1941 saying that my father was looking for me. She was very courageous and went to see him in the ghetto. She told him that he needn’t worry because she knew for sure that I had left Lwow before the Germans invaded it. My father was upset and said, ‘Yes, that’s the influence of the Bolsheviks.’ He still didn’t grasp what was happening.

My father probably lived in fairly good circumstances because he had his stock of soap, which was worth its weight in gold back then. Our apartment was situated in the ghetto, so he lived in his own place and was better off than people who had to move from their apartments to new apartments in the ghetto. Later other people moved in with my family. My mother, who wasn’t a very emancipated woman, wouldn’t have said, ‘Okay, I’ll go’. My father had already been in poor health when I still lived with them. But if the doctors ask me today, which illnesses there were in my family, I couldn’t possibly tell them; my parents were only 45 years old when I last saw them.

My husband received a letter from the city hall of Cracow stating that Mrs. Hedwig Charlotte Ratz lived in Cracow. First we thought it was a mistake because the address given in this letter wasn’t the same as the one where the family had lived before the war. The letter my husband wrote to his sister in Cracow remained unanswered. He wrote another one, and again there was no answer.

On the Russian-Polish border the Russian customs confiscated the only belongings we had: our books. They were mainly specialist books, which we had bought when we worked as engineers. ‘Books? Do you have any permission to bring them?’ the Russian customs officer asked. My husband had to carry two crates of books out of the train on his back. They were requisitioned.

Since the train had a rather long stop at the border – the Russians and the Poles had different railway lines and something had to be adjusted – my husband asked if he could phone Cracow. He found the following name registered in the directory: Ratz, Hedwig Charlotte. I couldn’t possibly say: No, we’ll go to Warsaw instead of Cracow. I probably didn’t have any family left in Warsaw anyway.

My husband’s sister had been to several concentration camps. I think she was in Plaszow, near Cracow, first. She was deported along with her mother who was killed in Plaszow. That was the camp where Amon Goeth 15 was commander and saved Oskar Schindler’s 16 Jews. One of my husband’s cousins was saved by Oskar Schindler and she can be seen in one of the last sequences of the film ‘Schindler’s List’ 17. This cousin and a friend of my husband’s, who were saved thanks to Schindler, helped him a lot after the war.

Hedy, as my husband’s sister was called, lived with her future husband, Heinrich Reissler, a Holocaust survivor, who came from a very Orthodox family. They shared a two-bedroom apartment with friends who had also survived.

Hedy and Heinrich immigrated to Palestine in 1946. We would have liked to put up Hedy because she was a typical war child, hadn’t been able to finish school and we believed that she still needed support in many respects. She grew up in Cracow, but she was only a child when she lived there and couldn’t really enjoy her teenage years. She never experienced this kind of world that was so important for my personal development. She is a typical example of how the war ruined the life of Jewish children. The aunt, with whom my husband had stayed when he was in grammar school, could flee from Vienna to Palestine in time, and that way Hedy at least had a relative in Palestine.

They reached Cyprus and Heinrich volunteered for and fought with the Haganah 18, while Hedy was interned on Cyprus. After they had arrived in Palestine, Heinrich became an engineer in Haifa, on the only railroad that exists in Israel. Hedy worked somewhere, but I forget what she did. Their daughter, Zofie, was born in 1957. It was a complicated pregnancy - Hedy had to lie down throughout the pregnancy - probably due to the many years that she had been locked up in concentration camps. Zofie has two wonderful children; her son is called Lior and her daughter Shiri. Lior and I communicate via email sometimes – he in his good English, I in my miserable English. Zofie is divorced. She works as a nurse. Hedy died in the year 2000. Heinrich is still alive and lives in Haifa, but he is very sick.

We first lived with Hedy in her apartment. I think the house belonged to her mother but Hedy sold it after the war for next to nothing. However, she succeeded in keeping a two-bedroom apartment for herself. And around ten people lived in this apartment then because my husband had many friends in Cracow. The first to leave were Hedy and Heinrich when they moved to Palestine in 1946.

My husband started to work in an enamel factory. Our son, Alexander, was born in Cracow on 11th June 1946. After giving birth, I had health problems, and so did my son. The food supplies were still very bad shortly after the war.

In 1947 I went to Warsaw. Everyone tried to talk me out of it, but I went nonetheless. The street where I used to live had been situated in the center of the Warsaw Ghetto, but all that was left was a wasteland. I had lived on that street for 17 years, but I almost got lost. The only thing that saved me was a church, which had stood opposite our house. That church had survived and I could use it as an aid to orientation. There was debris everywhere because during the Ghetto Uprising in 1943 all houses had been destroyed by flame-throwers. The houses that they later built there were built on a fundament of debris. And of course, there were no documents left.

When my son turned one, I started to work as chief engineer in a cannery. I was a young, 25-year-old woman and the rest of the employees were men. It was hard in the beginning. All the masters were older than me and not particularly happy that I, a young woman, should be their boss. When I started work there, the director of the factory said to me politely, ‘You’re a smart young woman. Why do you want to wrestle with all these …’ He used a pretty dirty word! About six weeks later I invited all my colleagues to a pub – I would never set foot into a pub like this today – for beer and vodka. After that they respected me. Not even three diplomas would have been able to do what that beer and vodka did.

This factory had been in Jewish ownership before the war. The family survived in Brazil. I didn’t walk around with a sign saying ‘I’m Jewish’, but my name is Jewish and Poles simply know when they are dealing with a Jew; they are very strong anti-Semites. They told me non-stop about how they had helped the Jewish owners of the factory with wrapping gold to send it to Brazil. They really got on my nerves! I would have preferred if they had told me that they had beaten them. This currying of favor really annoyed me. However, I wasn’t harassed for being a Jew. I think at that time they trusted Jews in Poland because they hadn’t collaborated with the Germans.

We considered the Kielce Pogrom 19 a ‘slip’. We thought it was ‘yesterday’s people’ who had done that. Cracow was a cultural center, a former capital of Poland. Many intellectuals lived there. In any case I wouldn’t say that there was a particular atmosphere for pogroms there. However, there was pressure from above, to assimilate, to adopt Polish surnames, but they only issued the documents in 1947 or 48. They summoned us to the militia and said we should change our name, Ratz, to something like Raczynski or Rakowski. Upon that my husband said, ‘The only thing left of my family is my name, and I won’t change it!’ Most Jews in Poland did change their Jewish surnames though.

Once a man called me on a business matter in Poland. First we talked business on the phone but then he started to tell me Jewish jokes. They weren’t bad and I did chuckle a bit, but I also told him, ‘You know, I’m not sure if you should tell someone whose father’s name was Israel, such an awful lot of such jokes in such a short time.’ He was completely shocked and uttered, ‘I’m really sorry. If your surname had been Rakoschka or Ratschenski or something like that, I would have guessed that you might be Jewish. But with a name like Ratz…!’

When I worked in Warsaw, I met an older former student colleague of mine and I knew that he had changed his surname. We were on the opposite sides of the negotiating table and he knew that I knew him, but still he shook my hand and introduced himself with his new Polish surname. It was doing my head in, so I also shook his hand and introduced myself by saying, ‘The name’s still Ratz.’

My husband was transferred to Warsaw in 1949 to work in a car factory. He was the head of a Polish group of engineers and they sent him to Italy for a half-year training at FIAT. Later my son Alexander and I also moved to Warsaw. My daughter, Margarete, was born in Warsaw on 19th May 1952. I got a position as an expert with the State Planning Commission. I would have preferred to work in a factory but they said they also needed good people with the Planning Commission, so I stayed there until they fired me in 1968.

After the Six-Day-War 20 in Israel, an anti-Semitic mood began to spread in Poland. It wasn’t public yet, but it was noticeable. A few people even dared to shout at meetings. But no one dared to say that the Jews should get out of Poland.

One day my boss summoned me to his office. He had always valued me highly but nonetheless he said that I couldn’t keep my position because my husband had a sister in Israel and they therefore couldn’t trust me any more. I would get an equivalent position though, he said. I didn’t, so I went to see the head boss because I thought he was an intelligent and politically correct person. In reality, he was a hopeless scaredy-cat though.

I finally got a job as technical advisor in a bank. There was probably some kind of instruction that wanted to make Jews feel that they weren’t welcome in Poland by paying those who had been fired from their previous jobs lower salaries. I can’t prove that though because at the place I worked, I still made good money in comparison to others. My husband had kept his position but as early as 1956, during the first anti-Semitic wave in Poland, he wanted to leave the country. Many people left back then. But then the situation became more relaxed and, at age 50, we had to admit, that we were wrong.

The authorities only issued Polish Jews documents for Israel. We didn’t want to go to Israel, and at the same we knew, from reading foreign newspapers, that no one in Vienna was exactly waiting for a 50-year-old engineer. But my husband chose Vienna nonetheless because German was his mother tongue and he said the most complicated thing that came with a move was the language barrier. He was certainly right there.

My husband was allowed to emigrate from Poland in 1969 but he could only take our children along; I, as ‘a person cleared for access to secret information’, wasn’t allowed to leave Poland. My son, who was 23 at the time, only had one more exam to pass for his diploma at the technical university, and my daughter, 17 at the time, was only missing one year for her final exams. She didn’t want to leave Warsaw at all. She wanted to stay with me. Besides she was in love for the first time. I had to sign a paper saying that I agreed that my husband left Poland for good.

We made enquiries at the Austrian Embassy in Warsaw about my husband’s Austrian citizenship. They told him that he would automatically get the Austrian citizenship once he was in Austria. When he arrived in Vienna though, it turned out that there had been a set date at which he would have needed to register. At that time, however, he was still in Poland. Then they told him in the city hall that he would get back his Austrian citizenship within three years. And so it was. Exactly three years later our family got the Austrian citizenship. I was in Vienna already at the time and this was very important to us.

Two weeks after he had settled in Vienna, my husband found a job as an engineer with a company that went bankrupt a year later. He was unemployed for half a year until he found a job with the German Festo company. Originally, that company manufactured equipment for timber processing and pneumatic systems; later it was pneumatic systems and steering for machines. My husband was responsible for the market in the GDR. He traveled to fairs, made good money and was valued by his company. When he got seriously ill they treated him very nicely.

After a great many rejections of my applications for the reuniting of my family, I finally got the permission to move to Vienna. That was in 1972. I was sick and exhausted after those two and a half years of waiting. I didn’t know anymore if I would make it out of Poland alive. My husband had told me beforehand that I should brush up my knowledge of German as well as my typing skills. I still knew Russian. I became a translator and worked freelance from home.

At the age of 50 it was difficult to make new friends. We didn’t have much time because we had to build a new life for ourselves. In Poland we had a large circle of friends and we could knock on their door anytime and would be welcome. I have friends like that in Paris, London, New York and God knows where, even in Israel. But they have become fewer and fewer for many of them have already died.

The first apartment we lived in had a stove that I couldn’t handle. I almost set the apartment on fire once. Then we found a co-operative apartment. I immediately fell in love with it. To me it is very important to live in a place I feel comfortable in.

My daughter didn’t have it easy in Vienna. She had reached puberty, missed her mother, had difficulties with the German language and therefore problems in school. Now she is an interpreter in the Polish and Russian language. Sometimes I help her out with technical translations for she is totally lost when it comes to technical things. She is divorced and has two daughters, Barbara and Julia, and a son, Nikolaus. My daughter isn’t religious and neither are her children.

My son didn’t stay in Vienna. Two weeks after his arrival he moved to Sweden. He’s an academically qualified engineer and holds the degree of a ‘Bachelor of Business Administration’. He lives in Goteborg, and is married to Tola, whose father was Jewish and died when she was a small girl. My son and his wife have three sons, Martin, Jakob and Benjamin. My son took a year off work and went to work for a Swedish firm in Danzig. He’s back in Goteborg by now though.

My oldest grandson, Martin, decided to have his circumcision at the age of 17 and became a Jew. His mother fulfilled his wishes and they also celebrated all the religious holidays at home. He was studying at Business University in Vienna for half a year, and Pesach was around that time. He wanted us to celebrate seder eve together. It was a catastrophe because none of us had any idea about it. He said he would take care of everything but then, at the last moment, he had to do something at university and was late. I had a Haggadah for children, and I was the ‘chief rabbi’. I don’t know if Martin still celebrates religious holidays; he’s very busy with the development of his company.

Martin lives in Stockholm. He started to work right after his diploma, with a Swedish company that sells know-how to language schools. Jakob studied medicine and did his doctorate in May. Benjamin, the youngest, did his final exams this spring and wants to study law.

My husband died of cancer in 1989 in Vienna. He was buried in the Israelite section of Vienna’s Zentralfriedhof.

People are surprised to hear that I don’t know a single word of Yiddish. I do understand a few words, but I’ve never used the language. There are no more Jews in Poland, but there’s a wonderful Yiddish theatre in Warsaw that has fantastic actors; they aren’t Jewish though. Because I know German, I understand almost everything in Yiddish.

Since there are no Jews anymore, Jewish culture has become somewhat of a new fashion. Take Cracow for instance: My daughter paid for my trip to Cracow because I very much wanted to go there. I didn’t go to the house where I used to live until 1949, but I knew from my son, who had been there before, that the janitor was still the same. They have restored the Jewish quarter and the synagogue there very nicely. Every year a festival of klezmer music takes place in Cracow. Unfortunately that’s in July and I always go to Sweden to visit my son’s family in July because there’s already a fall chill there in August.

I’ve never been religious; even back in Poland our friends were rather assimilated Jews. We never denied that we were Jews but we never practiced religion either. Sometimes I went to the temple in Vienna, when I was invited to a bar mitzvah or a concert, but I never prayed there.

When I went to Israel for the first time, I admired simply everything I saw there. I wasn’t superficially interested in the political side of things. Hedy and her family were there and my husband had a great many acquaintances in Israel. We saw a lot of places, including Eilat, which back then was still being constructed. I had a student colleague who was a building contractor and had an airplane and he flew us to Eilat. The country fascinated me and of course there were many discussions and some people tried to convince us to move to Israel. But I don’t know the language and since I’m a culturally orientated person, language is very important to me, and I would be somewhat of an illiterate person in Israel. There were quite a few interesting people, such as friends from my childhood, a director and a musician, with whom I was in touch.

I went to Israel for the third time in 1998. My friends, though they become less and less, decided to stay there; actually they don’t have a choice anymore. They are disappointed with the politics of the government. Some have children in America. A former student colleague of mine has a son in Israel who is a chemist and another one in America, who is a professor of economics. The son in Israel says, ‘ I was born here, my daughter was born here, this is my country.’ Many say that but still they aren’t happy with the whole politics and history of the country.

Today I live in Vienna and have lady-friends here: most of them are Jewish but there are also a few atheists. I go to the theater, exhibitions, concerts a lot and I also like hiking. My daughter lives in Vienna and so do my two granddaughters. I visit my son in Sweden every summer and usually stay for a month.

Glossary

1 Warsaw Ghetto

A separate residential district for Jews in Warsaw created over several months in 1940. On 16th November 1940 138,000 people were enclosed behind its walls. Over the following months the population of the ghetto increased as more people were relocated from the small towns surrounding the city. By March 1941 445,000 people were living in the ghetto. Subsequently, the number of the ghetto’s inhabitants began to fall sharply as a result of disease, hunger, deportation, persecution and liquidation. The ghetto was also systematically reduced in size. The internal administrative body was the Jewish Council (Judenrat). The Warsaw ghetto ceased to exist on 15th May 1943, when the Germans pronounced the failure of the uprising, staged by the Jewish soldiers, and razed the area to the ground.

2 Todt Organization

Named after its founder, Nazi minister for road construction Dr. Fritz Todt, this was an organization in Nazi Germany for large-scale construction work, especially the construction of strategic roads and defenses for the military. By 1944, it employed almost 1.4 million workers including thousands of concentration camp inmates and criminals.

3 Anders’ Army

The Polish Armed Forces in the USSR, subsequently the Polish Army in the East, known as Anders’ Army: an operations unit of the Polish Armed Forces formed pursuant to the Polish-Soviet Pact of 30 July 1941 and the military agreement of 14 July 1941. It comprised Polish citizens who had been deported into the heart of the USSR: soldiers imprisoned in 1939-41 and civilians amnestied in 1941 (some 1.25-1.6m people, including a recruitment base of 100,000-150,000). The commander-in-chief of the Polish Armed Forces in the USSR was General Wladyslaw Anders. The army never reached its full quota (in February 1942 it numbered 48,000, and in March 1942 around 66,000). In terms of operations it was answerable to the Supreme Command of the Red Army, and in terms of organization and personnel to the Supreme Commander, General Wladyslaw Sikorski and the Polish government in exile. In March-April 1942 part of the Army (with Stalin’s consent) was sent to Iran (33,000 soldiers and approx. 10,000 civilians). The final evacuation took place in August-September 1942 pursuant to Soviet-British agreements concluded in July 1942 (it was the aim of General Anders and the British powers to withdraw Polish forces from the USSR); some 114,000 people, including 25,000 civilians (over 13,000 children) left the Soviet Union. The units that had been evacuated were merged with the Polish Army in the Middle East to form the Polish Army in the East, commanded by Anders.

4 Pilsudski, Jozef (1867-1935)

Polish activist in the independence cause, politician, statesman, marshal. With regard to the cause of Polish independence he represented the pro-Austrian current, which believed that the Polish state would be reconstructed with the assistance of Austria-Hungary. When Poland regained its independence in January 1919, he was elected Head of State by the Legislative Sejm. In March 1920 he was nominated marshal, and until December 1922 he held the positions of Head of State and Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Army. After the murder of the president, Gabriel Narutowicz, he resigned from all his posts and withdrew from politics. He returned in 1926 in a political coup. He refused the presidency offered to him, and in the new government held the posts of war minister and general inspector of the armed forces. He was prime minister twice, from 1926-1928 and in 1930. He worked to create a system of national security by concluding bilateral non-aggression pacts with the USSR (1932) and Germany (1934). He sought opportunities to conclude firm alliances with France and Britain. In 1932 owing to his deteriorating health, Pilsudski resigned from his functions. He was buried in the Crypt of Honor in Wawel Cathedral in the Royal Castle in Cracow.

5 Galicia

Informal name for the lands of the former Polish Republic under Habsburg rule (1772–1918), derived from the official name bestowed on these lands by Austria: the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria. From 1815 the lands west of the river San (including Cracow) began by common consent to be called Western Galicia, and the remaining part (including Lwow), with its dominant Ukrainian population Eastern Galicia. Galicia was agricultural territory, an economically backward region. Its villages were poor and overcrowded (hence the term ‘Galician misery’), which, given the low level of industrial development (on the whole processing of agricultural and crude-oil based products) prompted mass economic emigration from the 1890s; mainly to the Americas. After 1918 the name Eastern Malopolska for Eastern Galicia was popularized in Poland, but Ukrainians called it Western Ukraine.

6 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (or April Uprising)

On 19th April 1943 the Germans undertook their third deportation campaign to transport the last inhabitants of the ghetto, approximately 60,000 people, to labor camps. An armed resistance broke out in the ghetto, led by the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB) and the Jewish Military Union (ZZW) – all in all several hundred armed fighters. The Germans attacked with 2,000 men, tanks and artillery. The insurrectionists were on the attack for the first few days, and subsequently carried out their defense from bunkers and ruins, supported by the civilian population of the ghetto, who contributed with passive resistance. The Germans razed the Warsaw ghetto to the ground on 15th May 1943. Around 13,000 Jews perished in the Uprising, and around 50,000 were deported to Treblinka extermination camp. About 100 of the resistance fighters managed to escape from the ghetto via the sewers.

7 Spanish Civil War (1936-39)

A civil war in Spain, which lasted from July 1936 to April 1939, between rebels known as Nacionales and the Spanish Republican government and its supporters. The leftist government of the Spanish Republic was besieged by nationalist forces headed by General Franco, who was backed by Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. Though it had Spanish nationalist ideals as the central cause, the war was closely watched around the world mainly as the first major military contest between left-wing forces and the increasingly powerful and heavily armed fascists. The number of people killed in the war has been long disputed ranging between 500,000 and a million.

8 Invasion of Poland

The German attack of Poland on 1st September 1939 is widely considered the date in the West for the start of World War II. After having gained both Austria and the Bohemian and Moravian parts of Czechoslovakia, Hitler was confident that he could acquire Poland without having to fight Britain and France. (To eliminate the possibility of the Soviet Union fighting if Poland were attacked, Hitler made a pact with the Soviet Union, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.) On the morning of 1st September 1939, German troops entered Poland. The German air attack hit so quickly that most of Poland’s air force was destroyed while still on the ground. To hinder Polish mobilization, the Germans bombed bridges and roads. Groups of marching soldiers were machine-gunned from the air, and they also aimed at civilians. On 1st September, the beginning of the attack, Great Britain and France sent Hitler an ultimatum - withdraw German forces from Poland or Great Britain and France would go to war against Germany. On 3rd September, with Germany’s forces penetrating deeper into Poland, Great Britain and France both declared war on Germany.

9 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact

Non-aggression pact between Germany and the Soviet Union, which became known under the name of Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Engaged in a border war with Japan in the Far East and fearing the German advance in the west, the Soviet government began secret negotiations for a non-aggression pact with Germany in 1939. In August 1939 it suddenly announced the conclusion of a Soviet-German agreement of friendship and non-aggression. The Pact contained a secret clause providing for the partition of Poland and for Soviet and German spheres of influence in Eastern Europe.

10 Great Patriotic War

On 22nd June 1941 at 5 o’clock in the morning Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union without declaring war. This was the beginning of the so-called Great Patriotic War. The German blitzkrieg, known as Operation Barbarossa, nearly succeeded in breaking the Soviet Union in the months that followed. Caught unprepared, the Soviet forces lost whole armies and vast quantities of equipment to the German onslaught in the first weeks of the war. By November 1941 the German army had seized the Ukrainian Republic, besieged Leningrad, the Soviet Union's second largest city, and threatened Moscow itself. The war ended for the Soviet Union on 9th May 1945.

11 Kolkhoz

In the Soviet Union the policy of gradual and voluntary collectivization of agriculture was adopted in 1927 to encourage food production while freeing labor and capital for industrial development. In 1929, with only 4% of farms in kolkhozes, Stalin ordered the confiscation of peasants' land, tools, and animals; the kolkhoz replaced the family farm.

12 German ASSR

established as Labour Commune of Volga Germans or Volga German AO within the Russian SFSR on 19th October 1918. Transformed into Volga German ASSR on 19th December 1924, abolished on 28th August 1941. The official state name was Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic of the Volga-Germans. The city of Engels is the former capital of the Volga-German Republic.

13 Mandatory job assignment in the USSR

Graduates of higher educational institutions had to complete a mandatory 2-year job assignment issued by the institution from which they graduated. After finishing this assignment young people were allowed to get employment at their discretion in any town or organization.

14 Russian stove

Big stone stove stoked with wood. They were usually built in a corner of the kitchen and served to heat the house and cook food. It had a bench that made a comfortable bed for children and adults in wintertime.

15 Goeth, Amon (1908-1946)

Born in Vienna, Austria, Amon Goeth joined the Austrian Nazi Party in 1930. In the same year he joined the SS. Goeth was a model officer, and his reward was a posting, in August 1942, with ‘Aktion Reinhard’, the SS operation to liquidate more than two million Polish Jews. At the trial at the Supreme National Tribunal of Poland, Cracow, in 1946, Goeth was found guilty, convicted of the murders of tens of thousands of people and hanged in the same year.

16 Schindler, Oskar (1908–1974)

one of the ‘Righteous Among the Nations’ who during the Nazi persecutions saved the lives of more than 1,200 Polish Jews. Schindler was born in Zwittau, Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia, and after the annexation of the Sudetenland by the Germans served as a member of Admiral Canaris’ anti-espionage service. He left the service after Germany’s conquest of Poland and established a factory in Cracow which was later converted into a munitions plant. Schindler took advantage of this plant to save Jews from the extermination camps. He arranged for his workers and those of three neighboring factories whose Jewish workers were about to be deported to be classified as prisoners doing essential work. He often had to bribe the SS and other functionaries to turn a blind eye. After the war, Schindler emigrated to Argentina where he bought a farm, but in 1956 returned to Frankfurt. In 1962 Schindler was honored by Israel as one of the ‘Righteous Among the Nations’ and in 1967 was awarded the peace prize of the International Buber Society in London. The following year the West German Government awarded him its highest civilian order, the ‘Verdienstkreuz Ersten Ranges’ and a small pension. Schindler, a Roman Catholic, died in Hildesheim and in accordance with his last wish, was buried in Jerusalem in the Latin cemetery on Mt. Zion.

17 Schindler’s List

Steven Spielberg’s 1992 film featuring the deeds of Oskar Schindler, who saved the lives of more than 1,200 Polish Jews during World War II. The film received awards for best film, best director and best script at the Golden Globes.

18 Haganah

(Hebrew: ‘Defense’), Zionist military organization representing the majority of the Jews in Palestine from 1920 to 1948. Although it was outlawed by the British Mandatory authorities and was poorly armed, it managed effectively to defend Jewish settlements. After the United Nations’ decision to partition Palestine (1947), the Haganah came into the open as the defense force of the Jewish state; it clashed openly with the British forces and successfully overcame the military forces of the Palestinian Arabs and their allies. By order of the provisional government of Israel (May 31, 1948) the Haganah as a private organization was dissolved and became the national army of the state.

19 Kielce Pogrom

On 4th July 1946 the alleged kidnapping of a Polish boy led to a pogrom in which 42 people were killed and over 40 wounded. The pogrom also prompted other anti-Jewish incidents in Kielce region. These events caused mass emigrations of Jews to Israel and other countries.

20 Six-Day-War

The first strikes of the Six-Day-War happened on 5th June 1967 by the Israeli Air Force. The entire war only lasted 132 hours and 30 minutes. The fighting on the Egyptian side only lasted four days, while fighting on the Jordanian side lasted three. Despite the short length of the war, this was one of the most dramatic and devastating wars ever fought between Israel and all of the Arab nations. This war resulted in a depression that lasted for many years after it ended. The Six-Day-War increased tension between the Arab nations and the Western World because of the change in mentalities and political orientations of the Arab nations.

Melitta Seiler

Melitta Seiler
Brasov
Romania
Reporter: Andreea Laptes
Data interviului: August 2003

Melitta Seiler este o femeie de 74 de ani, care trăieşte singură într-o garsonieră  într-o clădire care găzduieşte de asemenea o biserică creştină. Apartamentul ei, deşi mic, este curat, şi pe masă se poate vedea un macrame făcut chiar de ea, şi de care este foarte mândră. Este încă o cochetă, are grijă de felul în care arată, îşi vopseşte părul blond în mod regulat şi ţine legătura cu prietenii ei din comunitate, cu fiul ei Edward Friedel şi cu familia lui. Nepoatele ei sunt cea mai mare bucurie a vieţii ei.

Familia mea
Copilăria mea
Viața religioasă
Al Doilea Război Mondial
Deportarea în Transnistria
Viața mea după Război

Familia mea

Bunicii mei paterni erau polonezi şi trăiau în Zablotov [azi Ucraina], dar nu i-am cunoscut niciodată. Bunicul meu a fost recrutat în timpul Primului Război Mondial, şi tatăl meu, Iosif Seiler, mi-a spus că a murit cândva la sfârşitul războiului, trebuie să fi fost 1917 sau 1918. Îmi aduc aminte că am văzut o fotografie cu el îmbrăcat în uniformă militară poloneză, dar aceasta s-a pierdut când am fost deportaţi. Bunica mea s-a numit Melitta Seiler şi a murit curând după moartea soţului ei; eu am fost botezată după ea. Tata nu a ştiut niciodată, dar se zvonea că s-a sinucis pentru că nu a putut suporta moartea bunicului meu. Comunitatea evreiască din Zablotov era destul de religioasă, după cum spunea tatăl meu, iar el era doar un copil pe vremea aceea, şi moartea ei nu era un subiect de discutat cu copiii.

Ei au avut doi copii, pe tatăl meu, Iosif Seiler, care s-a născut în 1901, şi un alt fiu, născut în 1903; cred că se numea Avram sau Abraham. După moartea mamei lor, bunica lor i-a crescut. Tatăl meu avea 14 ani pe atunci. Nu ştiu dacă ea a avut sau nu vreun ajutor cât i-a crescut, poate că nu era aşa de bătrână, căci în timpurile acelea oamenii se căsătoreau destul de tineri. Au fugit la Viena pentru a scăpa de Primul Război Mondial; bunica lor se temea de cazaci. Cred că bunica s-a întors cu fratele mai mic al tatălui meu la Zablotov, iar el a rămas la Viena pentru un timp, ca să înveţe o meserie. Cred că bunica lor a murit în Zablotov.

Fratele tatălui meu a trăit în Zablotov, a fost căsătorit şi a avut trei copii: două fete şi un băiat. Nu ştiu ce ocupaţie avea, dar cred că avea o situaţie financiară destul de modestă, pentru că s-a căsătorit de tânăr. Pe una din fete o chema Esther, dar nu-mi aduc aminte numele celorlaltor copii. La doi, trei ani după începutul celui de-al Doilea Război Mondial, soţia lui a venit la Cernăuţi cu doi copii: o fată era bolnavă, şi tatăl meu a ajutat-o să intre într-un spital bun sub numele surorii mele. După aceea au trebuit să se întoarcă la Zablotov. Tatăl meu a ţinut legătura cât de mult a putut cu familia fratelui său. Au fost ucişi cu toţii, chiar la începutul războiului.

Îmi aduc aminte  foarte puţin despre bunicul din partea mamei, Michael Sternschein. Mama mea mi-a spus că tatăl ei a trăit undeva lângă Cernăuţi, şi că era destul de bine aşezat. Bunica mea – nu-mi aduc aminte numele ei mic – trăia în alt sat, şi era săracă, singurul copil al unei familii sărace, dar era foarte frumoasă. Bunicul s-a îndrăgostit de ea, şi cât timp i-a făcut curte a continuat să meargă în satul ei călare, doar pentru a o vedea. După ce s-au căsătorit, ea i-a dăruit şi copii frumoşi.  Bunicul meu şi-a iubit familia şi a adorat-o pe mama mea, deoarece era cea mai tânără dintre copiii lui, cu opt ani mai tânără decât cel mai mic fiu! Ea era doar un copil când ceilalţi erau deja căsătoriţi. Mama mea îmi spunea că el se trezea de obicei foarte devreme, se ducea la piaţă şi îi cumpăra fructe; obişnuia să i le pună lângă noptieră, pentru ca ea să le găsească atunci când se trezeşte. El a murit în 1931, când eu eram încă un copil. Îmi aduc aminte că mama îmi spunea că el a murit în acelaşi an în care s-a născut sora mea, Erika Esther Ellenburgen. Probabil că avea şaizeci şi ceva de ani, pentru că avea 42 de ani când s-a născut mama mea. A murit de pneumonie; a insistat să facă baie într-o dimineaţă rece de februarie, s-a îmbolnăvit şi a murit la scurt timp după aceea. Ştiu de la mama mea că era destul de religios, respecta Sabbath-ul foarte strict, şi nu lucra; bineînţeles că se ducea la sinagogă la fiecare sărbătoare mare, şi toată mâncarea în casa lui era kosher. Tatăl său sau bunicul său, nu ştiu exact, fusese ruv [rabin]. Nu ştiu ce meserie a avut el.

Bunicii mei nu se îmbrăcau tradiţional: bunica nu purta perucă, şi bunicul nu purta payes. Aveau propria lor casă, dar după ce a murit bunicul meu, bunica a venit să locuiască cu mama mea, Sara Hudi Seiler. Bunica era deja bolnavă de scleroză. Odată era în curte, şi eu şi sora mea ne jucam. Şi a spus „Melitta, adu-mi un pahar cu apă!”. Şi după ce i-am adus paharul, mi-a spus „Vrei să-mi dai otravă?”. La un timp după aceea, unchiul meu Max, Max Sternschein, fratele mai vârstnic al mamei mele, a luat-o pe bunica să locuiască la el. Bunica a murit la scurt timp după aceea, pe la şaizeci şi ceva de ani, pe când eu aveam trei sau patru ani. Îmi aduc aminte că eram în cameră cu mama când a murit bunica, şi mama a venit la mine, şi-a dat jos mărgelele roşii pe care le purta şi mi le-a pus în jurul gâtului. Purta deja doliu.

Bunicii mei materni au avut şase copii: cea mai în vârstă era Toni [Antonia] Bernhart, născută Sternschein, care s-a măritat cu un evreu numit Bernhart. Nu ştiu când s-a născut Toni, dar era mai în vârstă decât mama mea, i-a fost ca o mamă. A murit în Transnistria în anii 1940. A avut două fiice, Sally şi Neti Bernhart, care trăiesc în SUA acum, dar nu ştiu dacă sunt căsătorite. Apoi era Grete Knack, născută Sternschein, care s-a măritat cu un evreu german; era un comerciant de aur şi avea o situaţie destul de bună. Au trăit în Germania. Nu au avut copii. Mai erau de asemenea şi trei fraţi: Moritz Sternschein, care s-a căsătorit. A avut un fiu şi două fiice, dar el şi familia lui au murit în Transnistria în 1944. Bernhart Sternschein a fost şi el căsătorit, şi a avut două fiice, Marlene şi Antonia. Şi mai era Max Sternschein, care era fotograf în Cernăuţi. A avut un fiu, Vili Sternschein, şi o fiică, Ani. Ea s-a măritat şi s-a mutat în Basarabia. A fost ucisă împreună cu soţul ei, dar nu îmi aduc aminte cum îl chema.

Tatăl meu, Iosif Seiler, s-a născut în Nepolokovtsy [provincia Chernivtsi, Ucraina], într-un sat de lângă Cernăuţi, unde mama sa venise să-şi viziteze nişte rude, în 1901. Limba lui maternă era germana, şi a studiat într-o şcoală de chef d’hors d’oeuvre [şcoală pentru prepararea de aperitive] în Viena. A locuit acolo doi sau trei ani, şi după aceea s-a întors la Zablotov, dar nu se mai putea adapta vieţii dintr-un oraş mic, aşa că a venit să lucreze în Cernăuţi. A lucrat într-un restaurant, dar nu gătea, ştia doar multe reţete pentru aperitive deosebite, salate, gustări reci cu peşte şi aşa mai departe, şi superviza totul. Şi nu ştiu cum, dar o cunoştea pe sora mamei mele, Toni. Şi aşa i-a fost prezentat mamei mele, Sara Hudi Sternschein. Ea s-a născut în Cernăuţi în 1905, iar limba ei maternă era tot germana. Tatăl meu a plăcut-o foarte mult, pentru că era tânără şi foarte elegantă. Fusese în vizită în Germania, la sora ei Grete. Prima oară când a fost avea 16 ani, şi a stat un an. Grete a ajutat-o cu o operaţie la ochi de care mama mea avea nevoie: şi-a corectat strabismul la o clinică faimoasă din Dresden. Tatăl meu era un om foarte frumos, cu păr negru şi creţ, şi ochi de un albastru închis, şi avea gropiţe în obraji. Dar, din păcate, suferea de paradentoză, şi şi-a pierdut toţi dinţii încă din tinereţe.

Tatăl meu avea nevoie de paşaport pentru a sta în Cernăuţi, şi asta costa foarte mulţi bani, aşa că în cele din urmă a trebuit să se întoarcă la Zablotov. Dar familia mamei mele i-a umplut acesteia capul cu ce bărbat bun era el,  că era orfan dar că muncea din greu, şi aşa mai departe, aşa că într-un final mama s-a lăsat convinsă să se mărite cu el. Bunica mea maternă gătea leika – e un fel de prăjitură maronie şi pufoasă cu miere pe care evreii din Bucovina o făceau cu ocazia fiecărei nunţi sau sărbători importante. Bunicul meu a luat-o pe mama mea şi s-au dus la Zablotov, unde a avut loc logodna. Mama mea avea la ea nişte bijuterii de la sora ei Grete. I-a dat tatălui meu aceste bijuterii ca să le vândă, pentru a avea banii pentru paşaport. Dar i-a spus lui că nu se vor căsători până nu-şi va fi terminat stagiul militar, pe care a trebuit să-l facă în 1926 cred. Desigur că mama mea s-a răzgândit de câteva ori în această perioadă, dar în cele din urmă s-au căsătorit în Cernăuţi când el s-a întors din armată.

S-au căsătorit în sinagogă, şi s-a făcut şi o petrecere elegantă; tatăl meu era îmbrăcat într-un frac, iar mama avea o rochie foarte elegantă de mătase şi un voal, şi un buchet de nuntă foarte frumos, făcut din trandafiri albi şi liliac alb. Tatăl meu nu a avut niciodată cetăţenie română, dar a putut să stea în Cernăuţi deoarece mama era cetăţean român. A trebuit să plătească o taxă în fiecare an pentru paşaportul său, şi aşa a şi făcut până când a început Al Doilea Război Mondial.

Copilăria mea

Eu m-am născut în Cernăuţi, în 1929, iar sora mea, Erika, în 1931. Când m-am născut, tatăl meu spera la un băiat, dar am venit eu în loc. Şi când s-a născut Erika, el era sigur că o să fie un băiat de data aceea, şi-a pregătit chiar şi fracul! Dar a fost din nou fată. Cu toate acestea, ne-a iubit foarte mult, şi l-am iubit şi noi, era un om foarte bun.

Locuiam într-un apartament închiriat într-o casă cu două nivele, şi aveam apă curentă şi electricitate. Cernăuţiul avea apă curentă şi electricitate, poate că lipseau doar în câteva sate. Bunica mea obişnuia să aibă o lampă cu ulei când eram foarte mică, asta îmi aduc aminte. Oricum, casa avea şi o mică grădină, aşa că eu şi sora mea ne puteam juca şi afară. Apartamentul avea un hol, două camere, un balcon, o bucătărie, o cămară şi o toaletă. Aveam în casă şi cutia pentru Keren Kayemet. Aveam cărţi în casă, câteva religioase, şi foarte multe romane, pentru că asta obişnuia să citească mama mea. Nu îmi aduc aminte autori, dar ştiu că citea cărţi bune, mai ales clasici, toate în germană; nu citea romane ieftine. Mergea regulat la biblioteca publică în Cernăuţi, îi plăceau cărţile foarte mult. Tatăl meu nu avea aşa mult timp pentru citit, pentru că lucra până târziu. Mama totdeauna avea două sau trei servitoare, cel puţin până s-a născut sora mea, după aceea a rămas doar o femeie care venea să facă curăţenie de două ori pe săptămână. Erau toate rusoaice rutence. Îmi aduc aminte că femeia venea să spele rufele; le fierbea şi le călca. Pe vremea aceea aveam un fier de călcat umplut cu cărbuni, ca să-l ţină încins. Rufele erau totdeauna apretate şi-mi aduc aminte că femeia ieşea pe balcon şi venea înapoi, pentru a aerisi cărbunii şi a-i ţine aprinşi.

Erau mai multe familii în acea casă, şi cred ca una singură era de evrei. Îmi aduc aminte de o familie, Bendela: erau români, şi vorbeau germana foarte frumos. Locuiau deasupra nostră, şi fiul lor obişnuia să lege o bomboană sau o bucată de ciocolată de o sfoară şi să o lase în jos la noi, copiii. Proprietăreasa, o femeie mai bătrână, nu-mi aduc aminte dacă era evreică sau nu, locuia la parter, cu cei trei fii ai săi. Unul dintre ei era avocat, şi o plăcea foarte mult pe mama, şi îi făcea curte. Mama avea de asemenea o prietenă din tinereţe, dar se vizitau rar. Mai era un vecin evreu, locuia lângă casa noastră, un avocat, şi purta totdeauna un joben. O plăcea pe mama foarte mult, şi pe noi, copiii, de asemenea. Oricând mă vedea pe balcon în drumul său către birou, obişnuia să mă întrebe în germană, în glumă, cu un accent comic, „Mellita, was mache die Mame zu Hause?” în loc să spună, Melitta, was macht die Mama zu Hause? [Melitta, ce face mama?], deşi vorbea germană perfect. Tatăl meu se poate să fi avut cunoştinţe, dar nu prieteni adevăraţi, nu avea timp pentru aşa ceva. Ţineam legătura cu rudele mamei mele, mai ales cu unchiul Max, care a avut propria sa casă în spatele Teatrului Naţional. Ne-a invitat de multe ori acolo.

Erika şi eu aveam voie să ne jucăm în grădină când am mai crescut puţin, dar mama mea nu ne-a lăsat niciodată să batem străzile singure. Sora mea era mereu curioasă şi independentă; îmi aduc aminte că obişnuia să mai iasă în stradă, şi odată era să o lovească o trăsură. Eu eram mai ascultătoare şi mai apropiată de mama mea.

Mama mea era o vecină foarte bună, dar nu avea timp pentru vizite: era ocupată cu noi, copiii, sau cu lucrul ei de mână. Asculta radioul – nu aveam televizor pe atunci – sau ne scotea pe noi la plimbare: de obicei în Volksgarden, parcul public din Cernăuţi, care era foarte mare, avea chiar şi teren de tenis, sau câteodată în parcul public al mitropoliei Cernăuţi. Săracul nostru tată, când era liber sâmbătă sau duminică, ne mai scotea şi el în Volksgarten. Stăteam pe unul dintre genunchii lui, Erika pe celălalt, şi obişnuiam să-l pieptănăm, să-i aranjăm părul, îi făceam tot felul de lucruri, lui şi hainelor lui. Dar ne lăsa să ne jucăm; era un om foarte bun şi iubitor. Şi nu era nici o excepţie:  în fiecare seară când venea de la muncă, intra în camera noastră, unde noi de cele mai multe ori deja dormeam. Mereu ne punea ceva dulce, bomboane sau ciocolată, pe noptiere. Primul lucru de dimineaţă, când ne trezeam, era să pipăim pe noptiere, cu ochii încă închişi, ştiam că trebuie să fie ceva! Prima întrebare când ne trezeam era „Tata, was hast du uns gebracht?”, adică, „Tată, ce ne-ai adus?”. Într-adevăr, era foarte bun.

Situaţia financiară a familiei era destul de bună până a început Al Doilea Război Mondial. Tata lucra din greu la un restaurant denumit Beer, după proprietarul său. Lucra până seara târziu ca să ne poată plăti hainele, şcoala şi vacanţele.

Tatăl meu nu a fost niciodată în vacanţă cu mama mea sau cu noi, din câte îmi aduc aminte, dar ne trimitea pe mama şi pe noi undeva lângă Cernăuţi pentru cel puţin şase săptămâni în fiecare vară. Mergeam la mănăstirea Putna [mănăstire pentru călugăriţe, localizată în judeţul Suceava, la 62 km nord de Suceava, construită în secolul XV]. Îmi aduc aminte că ne jucam acolo, că ne căţăram pe muntele de pe care şi-a trimis Ştefan Cel Mare săgeata pentru a găsi locul potrivit pentru a-şi construi mănăstirea [Nota editorului: Ştefan Cel Mare, domnitor al Moldovei în ultima parte a secolului XV, vestit pentru patriotismul său şi războaiele duse împotriva Imperiului Otoman]. Mai mergeam, de asemenea, într-un loc al cărui nume nu-l cunosc, lângă Ceremuş [râu lângă Cernăuţi, azi în Ucraina]. Nu era nimic modern, dar era foarte plăcut: stăteam într-o casă închiriată, şi mama nu trebuia să gătească şi tata ne trimitea pachete cu delicatese. Şi când ne întorceam, totdeauna avea un cadou pentru mama. Îmi aduc aminte că odată i-a dat un ceas foarte frumos.

În fiecare primăvară, înainte de Pesach, sau toamna, înainte de sărbători, mama comanda ceva elegant la croitorie pentru ea şi pentru noi. Avea gusturi, şi era o femeie foarte elegantă, foarte la curent cu moda. Când ieşea la plimbare, purta întotdeauna mănuşi şi o pălărie. Era pe atunci o rochie foarte la modă printre femei şi copii, un model tirolez, care cred că venea de la Viena: dirndl-ul; avea o rochie plisată şi mâneci plisate. Se purta cu un şorţ mic. Mama ne făcea unul în fiecare vară, şi ea avea unul de asemenea. De câte ori ieşeam în oraş, nimeni nu credea că este mama noastră, toţi credeau că este dădaca sau o soră mai tânără.

Obişnuiam să merg cu mama la piaţă. Mergea întotdeauna lunea, pentru că lunea era milchik [cuvânt în idiş pentru produse lactate]. Piaţa era un loc foarte pitoresc: ţărăncile erau îmbrăcate în costumele lor naţionale. Ţin minte că femeile din Bucovina, de prin împrejurimile Cernăuţiului, purtau hote foarte frumoase, costumele lor naţionale. Mama cumpăra o bucată mare de unt, învelită în frunză de brusture, şi brânză în formă de boţ, pentru că fusese ţinută în tifon. Mama cumpăra pasăre miercurea, şi o ducea la hakham; pe atunci nu aveam frigidere, aşa că pasărea trebuia curăţată bine şi gătită bine. [în localităţi mai mici, hakham-ul îşi asuma mai multe funcţii în comunitatea evreiască, era shochet, mohel, shammash, etc.] Hakham-ul tăia pasărea, o săra, şi apoi o punea în apă. Doar după aceea era gata de gătit. Iar joia, mama ne lua cu ea la piaţa de peşte. Pentru noi era ceva impresionant, pentru că peştii era aduşi vii. Înotau în nişte vane mari pline cu apă, iar mama alegea unul, şi spunea: ‚Pe ăsta îl vreau!’ Apoi negustorul scotea peştele, îi dădea în cap, şi-l dădea mamei, care îl ducea acasă, şi îl kosherea. Nu mai ţin minte exact ce făcea, dar ştiu că îl curăţa, îl săra şi îl spăla în mai multe ape. Era mult mai greu pe atunci să conduci o gospodărie, erau multe de făcut.

Familia noastră nu avea o băcănie favorită: era una pe strada noastră de la care cumpăram lucruri mărunte, dar atunci când aveam nevoie de ulei sau zahăr, tata făcea comandă la magazin şi ne era adus acasă totul.

Viața religioasă

Mama era destul de religioasă, gătea mâncare kosher şi făcea challah vinerea. Respecta Sabbath-ul, şi nu făcea focul, altcineva venea şi îl făcea. Tata era de asemenea un bun evreu, dar nu mergea la sinagogă decât de sărbătorile mari. Majoritatea timpului lucra. Dar îşi întreţinea familia, şi avea grijă ca mama şi noi copiii să avem cadouri drăguţe. De Channukah primeam întotdeauna cadouri, ca această rochie dirndl care ne plăcea aşa de mult. De Pesach, curăţenia era făcută cu o zi înainte, se căuta chametz, şi erau tacâmuri speciale pe care le ţineam într-un cufăr în pod. Mama obişnuia să arunce sau să dea de pomană toată mâncarea, ca făina de exemplu, care nu era cumpărată recent. Mama gătea pe o plită care era zidită în perete, iar de Pesach o curăţa, o freca, şi punea cărbuni încinşi peste, pentru ca să fie kosher. Mama cumpăra mereu o sută de ouă: ouăle fierte tari erau tocate şi amestecate cu ceapă tăiată mărunt, ulei şi piper. Acest aperitiv se servea cu matzah. Erau întotdeauna oaspeţi în casa noastră, sau eram noi invitaţi la unchii noştri, dar nu mai ţin minte dacă tata oficia de Seder. A fost prea demult.

Mergeam la templul mare de ocazii speciale, cum ar fi sărbătorile mari sau o nuntă, şi era întotdeauna plin, pentru asta trebuia să cumperi locuri dinainte de la comunitatea evreiască: femeile stăteau într-un rând, iar bărbaţii în celălalt. Părinţii aveau mereu grijă să cumpere locuri înaintea oricărei sărbători mari. Dar erau mai multe sinagogi în Cernăuţi, în afară de templul cel mare, şi sâmbăta mama ne lua pe noi fetele la cea care era mai aproape de casa noastră. Nu existau diferenţe între evreii ortodocşi şi cei neologi, am auzit de asta pentru prima oară când am venit în Braşov.

De Purim se făceau mai multe dulciuri: noi făceam tradiţionala leika. Făceam de asemenea şi fluden, care aici în Transilvania cred că se numeşte kimbla. Acest fluden era oarecum asemănător cu strudelul: era făcut dintr-un aluat care era întins foarte, foarte subţire pe feţele de masă din casă, subţire ca foiţa de ţigară, şi care era lăsat la uscat. Apoi era o umplutură din nucă măcinată, amestecată cu zahăr şi miere. Această umplutură era învelită în aluat ca un strudel, apoi pusă in tavă şi tăiată în bucăţi înainte de a fi pusă in cuptor. Se poate servi şi cu gem, mama a făcut-o la nunta mea, a fost ceva delicios! Bineînţeles că făceam shelakhmones, pe care le dădeam vecinilor; şi ei veneau cu daruri la noi, chiar dacă nu erau evrei, mulţi creştini ne cunoşteau sărbătorile şi le respectau. Primeam de obicei ouă de la ei când era Paştele ortodox. Îmi amintesc vag că de Purim, oameni mascaţi obişnuiau să vină în vizită. De obicei erau bine primiţi, oameniii nu se temeau să lase străini în casele lor atunci. Mama îmi spunea că măştile făceau haz de gazde, glumeau sau erau ironice, iar gazda trebuia să ghicească cine era în spatele măştii, dacă era cineva cunoscut. Nu-mi amintesc să fi venit în casa noastră, se poate să se fi întâmplat când mama nu era încă căsătorită. Dar era multă bucurie şi sărbătoare la noi în casă. Noi copiii nu ne costumam, dar ţin minte că erau baluri de Purim în oraş, şi că oamenii puteau să poarte măştile pe stradă.

Mama făcea şi kirhala, e un fel de biscuite: era un aluat cu multe ouă, cred, şi era tăiat în bucăţi înainte de a fi pus la cuptor. Se presăra cu zahăr, şi când era gata, marginile biscuitelui se ridicau, astfel încât arăta ca o corăbiuţă. Se topeau în gură, erau delicioase.

În ajunul Anului Nou evreiesc, se făceau mereu mari pregătiri, toată lumea mergea la sinagogă, iar apoi eram invitaţi la o petrecere a unui unchi sau a unei mătuşi, şi se mânca şi se bea mult. Amândoi părinţii mei posteau de Yom Kippur, şi eu am postit când am împlinit 13 ani. Dar când s-a întâmplat asta, noi eram deja în Transnistria, aşa că mâncarea era puţină oricum. De Sukkot sărbătoream, mergeam la sinagogă, iar lumea dansa cu Torah în curtea sinagogii, însă noi nu construiam o sukkah. [Lumea dansează cu Torah de Simchat Torah, care este ultima zi de Sukkot]

Oraşul în care am crescut, Cernăuţi, era un oraş mare, cultural, foarte cosmopolit. Erau şase sau şapte cinemauri, Teatrul Naţional, Teatrul Evreiesc, şi alte clădiri minunate, cum ar fi Dom Polski, adică Casa Poloneză; puteai găsi chiar şi muzică simfonică. Comunitatea evreiască din Cernăuţi era foarte mare şi foarte puternică, însă nu ştiu cifre exacte. Exista o sinagogă, foarte frumoasă; ţin minte că am fost acolo ultima oară când verişoara mea, Ani, fiica unchiului Max, s-a căsătorit înainte să înceapă al Doilea Război Mondial. Rabinul, nu ştiu cum îl chema, nu era foarte bătrân, dar era acelaşi care o căsătorise şi pe mama mea. După ce sinagoga a fost rasă de pe faţă pământului în timpul persecuţiei, înainte de război, rabinul a fost omorât. Erau mikves în Cernăuţi, dar noi nu mergeam.

Erau mai mulţi hakhamim în Cernăuţi, şi nici un evreu nu mânca pasăre sau vită dacă nu fusese măcelărită de hakham. Existau de asemenea şi mulţi funcţionari: hakhamim, shochetim, rabbis. [Nota editorului: în comunităţile evreieşti mai mici hakhamul îşi putea asuma funcţii diferite, printre ele, şi cea de shochet, în acest caz însă, intervievata a omis probabil să spună shochet.] Nu existau cartiere evreieşti în Cernăuţi, evreii trăiau răspândiţi în tot oraşul. Evreii aveau tot felul de meserii: croitori, ceasornicari, cizmari, băcani, doctori şi avocaţi, puteau fi orice înainte de 1939, când a început persecuţia sub guvernul Goga-Cuza. Şi mai era ceva: restaurante evreieşti, unele dintre ele cu mâncare kosher. Tata lucra la un restaurat de calitate, foarte central şi elegant, unde dădea reţete pentru bufete reci, şi mulţi oameni importanţi intrau să ia un aperitiv acolo. Proprietarul localului era un evreu numit Beer. Mai exista un bine cunoscut restaurant evreiesc, Friedmann. Încă îmi aduc aminte unde era. Daca m-aş da jos din tren în Cernăuţi acum, l-aş mai putea găsi, era „auf der Russichen Gasse”, pe strada rusească. Era un restaurant lacto-vegetarian, şi toată lumea din Cernăuţi, evrei sau nu, venea la Friedmann, avea minunate delicatese cu produse lactate. Era un loc de întâlnire la modă printre doamne, care veneau acolo, mâncau şi sporovăiau pentru două sau trei ore. Şi mama ne-a dus acolo de vreo două sau trei ori, şi mereu am luat turtă de mămăligă, care era foarte celebră. Era o mâncare făcută din mălai, cu o umplutură de brânză şi cu smântână lângă; era ceva nemaipomenit, vă spun! Erau şi alte reţete, şi toate kosher, nu se servea nimic cu carne.

Obişnuiam să mergem să privim paradele, ţin minte 10 Mai, Ziua Eroilor, când regele Carol II a venit la Cernăuţi cu fiul său, Mihai. Cred că noi eram eleve în clasa a treia, şi mama ne-a îmbrăcat frumos şi a venit cu noi; am stat în faţă, şi am văzut trecând caleaşca regală şi tot alaiul regal. Regele Carol purta un coif cu pene, şi Mihai purta o uniformă la fel de frumoasă ca a tatălui său.

Nu am avut Fraulein [guvernantă] când eram mică; mama a avut grijă de mine, cu ajutorul servitoarelor. Apoi am mers la şcoala primară pentru primele patru clase. Prima clasă de liceu am făcut-o la liceul Sfânta Maria, un liceu de maici. Fiecare liceu avea pe atunci o uniformă diferită, şi fiecare elev avea un număr. Jumătate din clasa noastră erau evreice, iar cealaltă jumătate erau românce şi poloneze. Aveam şi ore de religie, iar noi, evreicele, aveam un profesor de religie evreiască, anti-semitismul nu era o problemă pe atunci. Toate elevele plăteau o taxă, şi toate studiau aceeaşi materie în limba română, cu excepţia religiei, bineînţeles. Ţin minte că în liceu aveam păr des, frumos, castaniu-roşcat, pe care îl purtam în două cozi. În timpul pauzelor băieţii mă fugăreau şi mă trăgeau de cozi, spunând: „Melitta, du hast einen Wald im Kopf!”, adică „Melitta, ai o pădure în cap!’

Eram bună la matematic㸠dar îmi plăceau în mod deosebit literatura şi istoria; am citit mult despre pictori şi scriitori celebri, mi-a plăcut. Aveam prieteni la şcoală, dar nu şi în afara ei pentru că mama nu ne lăsa să mergem singure prin oraş. Nu-mi aduc aminte nume, a fost prea demult, dar prietenii mei erau şi evrei şi români.

Al Doilea Război Mondial

Nu am fost niciodată la cheder. Tata mi-a spus mai târziu că a intenţionat să ne trimită pe amândouă la un evreu în vârstă să învăţăm, dar a izbucnit războiul şi nu s-a mai putut. Am terminat primul an de liceu în iunie 1940, şi imediat după aceea au venit ruşii. A trebuit să repetăm anul, au adus profesori noi din Rusia şi fiecare şcoală a trebuit să studieze în limba rusă. Ruşii au impus şi clasele mixte, băieţi şi fete împreună. La început râdeam, făceam glume pe seama profesorilor, noi nu ştiam rusă iar profesorii nu ştiau germană, aşa că nu ne puteau înţelege. Dar nu am avut niciodată probleme serioase cu profesorii mei. Am continuat un an şi deja in 1941 puteam vorbi rusa.

Tata a cumpărat pentru noi fetele o pianină, şi o dată sau de două ori pe săptămână am avut lecţii de pian, timp de doi sau trei ani, până a început războiul. Mergeam la o doamnă mai în vârstă, o poloneză, şi puteam repeta acasă, pentru că aveam pianina.

Am mers la teatrul evreiesc doar o dată, când eram mică. A fost un mare eveniment, o foarte celebră artistă din teatrul idiş urma să joace şi să cânte, Sidi Tal. Mama ne-a dus s-o vedem. Tot ea ne-a dus şi la cinema; nu pierdeam nici un film cu Shirley Temple. După ce au venit ruşii, era obligatoriu să mergem cu şcoala să vedem piese ruseşti, în special de Lev Tostoi. Mi-au plăcut şi acestea.

Deportarea în Transnistria

În vara lui 1941 regimul român a fost reinstaurat, şi Antonescu a venit la putere. Vremurile erau foarte tulburi, şi ţin minte că în noiembrie ni s-a spus să împachetăm câteva lucruri într-o desagă şi să fim gata de plecare: trebuia să fim gata îmbrăcaţi când jandarmii români ar fi venit să ne bată la uşă şi să ne ia. Jandarmi au venit, şi am fost duşi într-o parte a Cernăuţiului, nu ştiu exact unde, care fusese declarată ghetou. Eram îngrămădiţi, nu mai ştiu câţi într-o singură cameră, şi a trebuit să stăm acolo pentru câteva zile; după aceea, au venit jandarmii cu baionete şi ne-au dus la gară: ne-au forţat să ne urcăm în vagoane de vite, eram atât de mulţi într-un singur vagon încât abia se putea respira. Şi acest convoi a mers de la Cernăuţi până la Atachi, punctul cel mai nordic al Basarabiei, chiar lângă malul Nistrului. A fost o călătorie de coşmar, iar când trenul s-a oprit, nu ne-au lăsat să coborâm imediat; dar când am coborât, a trebuit să călcăm în noroi, noroi gros care ne ajungea până la genunchi, pentru că fusese o inundaţie. Lângă şinele de cale ferată era un dâmb, şi ne-au obligat să-l urcăm, bărbaţi, femei, copii şi bătrâni laolaltă, cu tot ce aduseserăm cu noi. A fost teribil, oamenii bolnavi sau în vârstă cădeau în noroiul gros, alţii îi trăgeau afară. Toată lumea trebuia să ajungă în vârf cu cea ce aveau. Când am ajuns in vârf, ne-au ordonat să lăsăm tot ce împachetaserăm acolo, şi apoi ne-au fugărit din nou în josul dâmbului.

Apoi toată lumea a trebuit să urmeze un convoi imens care mergea pe malul Nistrului. Erau mii şi mii de oameni pe malul râului, pentru că mai multe convoaie ajunseseră, nu doar al nostru. Era noapte, întuneric, iar mugetul Nistrului era înspăimântător. Familiile erau despărţite, erau voci care strigau, urlau, se chemau unele pe celelalte. Ţipetele şi urletele erau groaznice în noaptea aceea rece şi întunecată de noiembrie. Toţi au trebuit să traverseze Nistrul cu barje acelea care transportă căruţe şi cai; doar că de data aceasta, erau oameni. Totul a mers foarte încet, şi familia mea a stat acolo toată noaptea, până când tatăl meu a dat ceva din ce reuşise să salveze, nu ştiu ce anume, cuiva şi am ajuns în sfârşit pe barjă. Se puteau auzi focuri de armă în noapte, ţipetele oamenilor care erau aruncaţi în râu, era groaznic.

Când am ajuns pe malul celălalt al Nistrului, eram deja în Transnistria. Eram într-o suburbie din Mohilev-Podolsk; era un loc cu case mici şi dărăpănate, care arătau şi miroseau toate ca nişte latrine. Erau atât de mulţi oameni care încercau să găsească un loc unde să se odihnească! Noi eram sfârşiţi, şi am stat în tăcere jos lângă un zid până dimineaţă. De dimineaţă, jandarmii ne-au spus, „Toată lumea trebuie să fie gata de plecare!” O femeie, care probabil ajunsese acolo cu câteva zile înaintea noastră, ne-a spus, „Oameni buni, dacă puteţi, ascundeţi-vă şi nu mergeţi cu acest convoi!” Era acolo un cuplu de evrei tineri, un pic mai tineri decât părinţii mei şi fără copii, care veniseră în acelaşi vagon cu noi. Când au auzit-o pe femeie, s-au îndreptat imediat spre ieşirea din clădire; sora mea a fugit după ei,  iar eu am fugit după sora mea. Când am ajuns în strada principală, m-am întors şi am văzut că părinţii mei nu erau în spatele meu, aşa că m-am dus înapoi. I-am găsit în convoi, înconjuraţi de jandarmi care strigau la oameni să se mişte. Erau mii şi mii de oameni in acel convoi, toată strada principală era plină de oameni. Mama a început să plângă, tata a început să strige, „Unde e fata mea?!”, dar sora mea dispăruse cu acea familie de evrei. Santinelele păzeau convoiul, majoritatea erau români, dar ţin minte că era şi un neamţ. Şi mama a început să plângă şi să se roage, în română şi în germană, că a pierdut un copil, că tot ce vroia era să-ţi găsească copilul. Nimeni nu s-a uitat la ea, dar mama nu s-a oprit din plâns. La un moment dat, o santinelă tânără, un soldat român, s-a oprit, s-a uitat la noi şi a spus: „Veniţi cu mine!” Am ieşit din convoi, şi ne-am îndreptat spre strada mică unde îi văzusem ultima oară pe acei evrei cu sora mea. N-am mers prea departe, erau prea mulţi oameni, dar am văzut-o pe femeie venind către noi cu Erika. Soldatul a văzut că am găsit fata, dar a fost un suflet bun, a spus, de parcă n-ar fi văzut nimic: „Mergeţi şi găsiţi fata, şi când o găsiţi, întoarceţi-vă!”; ăsta a fost marele nostru noroc, şi aşa am supravieţuit, pentru că putut sta în oraşul Mohilev-Podosk.

Convoiul a părăsit oraşul, şi noi am rămas în urmă, cu alţi câţiva oameni care au ştiut că e mai bine să rămâi în urmă. Mohilev-Podolsk nu era un lagăr de concentrare înconjurat de sârmă ghimpată, era un ghetou. În tot oraşul nu mai erau evrei ucraineni, fuseseră toţi masacraţi în Odessa şi alte locuri [în timpul ocupaţiei române a Odessei] Puţinii evrei care trăiau acolo fuseseră duşi peste Nistru. După ce convoiul a plecat şi părinţilor mei nu le-a mai fost frică să iasă, tata a început să caute un loc unde să stăm. Am găsit o ucraineancă care ne-a luat la ea; era foarte săracă, şi plină de păduchi, se scărpina tot timpul. Mama mea frumoasă şi curată, vă închipuiţi, era îngrozită. Am stat acolo doar pentru puţin timp, şi apoi am găsit alt loc. Era tot în ghetou, în suburbie, dar casa aparţinea unor ucraineni care erau mai înstăriţi, aveau o grădină, şi vaci. Părinţii au vorbit cu proprietarii, şi ne-au dat adăpost. Aveau o mică căsuţă lângă grajduri, cu o mică bucătărie, şi o singură cameră, clădită pe pământul gol. Totuşi, era curat, şi am rămas acolo.

Părinţii au plătit chiria cu puţinele bijuterii pe care mama le-a putut salva: le cususe într-un mic buzunar în port-jartier. Când ne-au scos din tren, nu au avut vreme să facă percheziţie corporală.  S-a spus că ucrainenii au fost mari anti-semiţi, dar nu a fost o regulă, aceşti oameni au fost foarte amabili să ne dea adăpost; mai mult, nici nu ne-au cerut o chirie mare, nu ne-au insultat, şi ne dădeau nişte lapte sau o roşie vara, pentru că muream de foame. Hoziaika, adică proprietara [în ucraineană] avea două fiice: erau un pic mai mari decât noi, dar ne-am împrietenit, nu se purtau urât cu noi; chiar ne jucam împreună câteodată.

Trăiam numai din mălai, şi mama făcea un gir, un fel de supă, dar din apă clocotită presărată cu mălai. [Nota editorului: înţelesul de bază al cuvântului akkadian ‚gir’ este sămânţă de roşcov]. Foarte rar puteam face mămăligă, şi sora mea, care era răsfăţată şi făcea mereu mofturi la mâncare, era mereu prima la masă, nu cumva să ia cineva o bucată mai mare. Uneori aveam pâine cazonă, din cauza căreia am făcut icter, şi eu şi sora mea. Asta ca să nu mai vorbesc de subnutriţia din cauza căreia eu şi sora mea am făcut furunculoză: eram pline de puroi, şi bietul meu tată ne spăla şi ne pansa rănile.

Am stat acolo timp de trei ani, din 1941 până în 1944, şi au fot vremuri grele. Trupe germane au trecut pe lângă casa noastră mică de mai multe ori, dar ştiam că veneau. Nu ştiu cum, dar ştirile despre ei mergeau întotdeauna repede; ne era atât de frică, ne ascundeam în bucătărioară şi nici măcar nu respiram tare, de teamă să nu ne audă nemţii. Îmi aduc aminte, în timpul iernii, eu şi sora mea ieşeam la poarta casei – casa acestor ucraineni ne părea un palat, deşi era doar o casă normală – şi vedeam căruţe, pline de cadavre puse unele peste altele ca scândurile, atât erau de slabe; nu ştiu unde erau duse.

Împrejurul Mohilevului erau lagăre de concentrare, înconjurate cu sârmă ghimpată. Viitorul meu soţ, doctorul Jacques Friedel, a fost în unul dintre ele, precum şi unul dintre fraţii mai mari ai mamei, Moritz Sternschein. El fusese în Germania, unde se căsătorise cu o evreică germană, şi fugiseră din Germania şi se întorseseră la Cernăuţi când a venit Hitler la putere. Dar a fost deportat într-unul din aceste lagăre împreună cu soţia şi cei trei copiii. Unchiul şi soţia lui au murit înainte de eliberare, iar copiii lor au fost aduşi la Mohilev. Părinţii mei i-au găsit, dar nu au supravieţuit, erau toţi bolnavi, cu burţile umflate. Oamenii mureau în timpul verii din cauza tifosului, şi iarna de frig şi de tifos exantematic. Purtau numai cârpe, erau subnutriţi, îi puteai vedea scotocind în gunoaie pentru o coajă de cartof. Condiţiile de trai erau dezastruoase; erau viermi şi păduchi peste tot. Noi nu am avut niciodată păduchi în toată acea perioadă, şi asta datorită mamei: ea era o femeie curată şi educată, şi în acea casă mică în care am trăit, punea un scaun în faţa patului, astfel încât oricine intra, se aşeza pe scaun şi nu pe pat. De asemenea ne peria părul cu un pieptene cu dinţii mici; noi fetele aveam un păr frumos şi mama nu ni l-a tăiat. Din câte ştiu eu, nu au existat execuţii în masă în Mohilev.

Timpul trecea, şi am fost eliberaţi de armata rusă în aprilie 1944. Ruşii au instalat un tun anti-aerian chiar în spatele grajdului, în grădina în care trăiam. Sunetul era groaznic! Tata a fost înrolat cu forţa în armata rusă pentru că nu s-a ascuns cum au făcut alţii, şi a mers cu frontul până la Stalingrad, după cum ne-a povestit după aceea. Aşa că după ce Mohilev a fost eliberat, şi s-au răspândit ştirile că şi Cernăuţiul era eliberat, mama s-a trezit singură, cu două fete şi fără tata. A trebuit să mergem pe jos până la Cernăuţi, doar când ajungeam într-o gară mai puteam să mergem cu trenul câteva mile. Convoaielor ruseşti nu le păsa prea mult, ne lăsau să călătorim cu trenurile de marfă. Am mers şi am călătorit timp de vreo două săptămâni, cred, şi când am ajuns acasă, toate trei eram pline de păduchi. Ne-am găsit apartamentul, era complet gol, cu excepţia unui pat de fier, unde am dormit toate. Nu ştiam, dar apartamentul fusese folosit de nişte ruşi, şi într-o noapte ne-am trezit cu câţiva dintre ei în cameră. Ne-a fost frică să nu ne violeze; eu aveam deja 15 ani, eram o fată frumoasă, mama era şi ea o femeie frumoasă, sora mea era cam slăbuţă, dar eram trei femei fără apărare. Eram îngrozite, dar au fost oameni cu inimă bună, ne-au lăsat în pace.

Viaţa a fost grea în acei doi ani, din 1944 până în 1946. Noi fetele am mers la şcoală şi am învăţat în rusă. Unchiul meu Max Sternschein, care nu fusese deportat, ne mai ajuta cu ce putea. Nişte permise de rezidenţă în Cernăuţi fuseseră emise de autorităţile române, contra unor sume imense de bani, şi cred că unchiul meu a făcut rost de bani cumva. El a avut noroc, pentru că unii evrei au fost deportaţi mai târziu, chiar dacă plătiseră o grămadă de bani să rămână. Când ruşii au venit, în 1940, Ani tocmai terminase liceul, îşi dăduse bacalaureatul. Şi ruşii au obligat pe toată lumea care terminase liceul să meargă în Basarabia să fie învăţători. Unchiul Max era disperat, dar nu a putut face nimic. Aşa că a măritat-o pe Ani în grabă cu un student la medicină, unul dintre pretendenţii ei, aşa încât să nu fie singură şi fără nici un fel de protecţie acolo.  Dar a venit frontul german, şi au fost masacraţi acolo, nu s-a mai auzit nimic de ei vreodată. El încă mai spera să audă veşti de la Ani, fiica lui. Unchiul Max a trimis oameni să o caute, iar mama întreba pe toată lumea care mergea în sau venea din Basarabia, şi răspunsul era mereu acelaşi: nici un evreu nu fusese lăsat în viaţă. I-a fost foarte greu unchiului Max să accepte acest lucru, îşi adora fiica.

În principal trăiam din ceea ce mama lua de la alţi oameni. De exemplu, cineva îi dădea o rochie pe care nu o mai purta, şi ea mergea la piaţă şi o vindea pentru câteva ruble, şi aceia erau banii noştri de pâine. Unchiul Bernhart, care fusese deportat, s-a întors cu soţia şi copilul; au mai avut un copil în Cernăuţi după ce s-au întors, şi puţin după aceea au plecat în Israel. Dar noi nu puteam merge nicăieri; îl aşteptam pe tata. Tata a reuşit să ne trimită un pachet cu haine, şi în 1946 s-a întors acasă.

Viața după Război

În acelaşi an am plecat la Braşov, era un fel de decret că evreii puteau pleca în România dacă aveau cetăţenie română; ţin minte că am împlinit 17 ani când am pus pentru prima oară piciorul în acest oraş. Nu noi aleseserăm acest oraş, am fost trimişi aici. Aveam deja experienţă cu ruşii din Cernăuţi, ştiam de ce erau în stare, aşa că nu am ezitat să venim in România. Am avut două exemple: prima oară când au venit, în 1940, erau nişte oameni bogaţi în Cernăuţi, unii dintre ei evrei, unii români. Au fost duşi în Siberia [aşa numitele gulaguri] şi nu s-a mai auzit nimic de ei vreodată. Apoi, când ne-am întors din Transnistria, în 1944, NKVD-ul bântuia pe străzi şi făcea raiduri în case noaptea, şi lua oameni la minele Doneţ. [Doneţ, sau Donbass, cum mai este numit, este locaţia unui important bazin carbonifer şi regiune industrială din Ucraina de est, în câmpia râurilor Doneţ şi  Dnieperului de Jos.]  Nu conta pentru ei dacă le spuneai că eşti evreu şi că tocmai te întorsesei din deportare; nu le păsa.

Într-o noapte, au venit în casa noastră, dar cum noi locuiam la etajul întâi, i-am auzit sunând la uşile vecinilor mai întâi. Mama ştia cine era, aşa că a fugit în picioarele goale şi în cămaşa de noapte în pivniţă. Ea s-a ascuns şi eu am deschis uşa. Purtam un halat de casă de mătase neagră, un cadou de la mătuşa mea, Grete, şi probabil arătam ca o tânără femeie, astfel încât NKVD-ul a vrut să mă ia. I-am spus că sunt elevă, dar nu m-a crezut, şi i-am arătat carnetul de elev şi în cele din urmă m-a lăsat în pace. N-o să uit niciodată acea spaimă! Erau oameni care efectiv săreau de la balcon când NKVD-ul venea la uşa lor, a fi făcut orice să nu fie duşi în Doneţ, aşa că ştiam destul de bine cine erau ruşii. Cu prima şansă care am avut-o să plecăm din Cernăuţi, am plecat.

Viaţa era grea aici în Braşov, pentru că trăiam în aceeaşi casă cu nişte români, şi eram atât de îngrămădiţi, eram mai multe familii în aceeaşi cameră. Împărţeam camera cu încă o familie, şi la în început dormeam pe jos, apoi am reuşit să construim un pătuţ şi am dormit acolo. După un an sau doi familia care trăia cu noi s-a mutat. Părinţii mei au continuat să stea acolo, dar noi fetele am plecat într-un final: eu m-am căsătorit, Erika a plecat la facultate la Bucureşti, unde a studiat limbile străine, rusa şi engleza. Părinţii mei nu au depăşit niciodată cu adevărat trauma de a fi fost deportaţi. Se gândeau doar la binele nostru, nu la al lor: vroiau ca noi să avem mâncare bună, haine, dar tata nu s-a gândit niciodată să cumpere un apartament, deşi atunci ar fi fost posibil, cu un împrumut. Tata era directorul unui laborator alimentar, şi mama era casnică.

Am vrut să emigrăm în Israel, eram o familie tânără; tata a depus dosarul, dar nu a primit aprobare, şi nu ştiu dacă a mai încercat încă o dată. Nu ştiu care au fost motivele pentru refuz. Unchiul Bernhart a plecat cu familia în Israel din Bucureşti în 1947, dar nu ştiu cum au reuşit. Unchiul Max a plecat la Buenos Aires cu soţia lui Suzie şi cu fiul Vili; au reuşit pentru că Suzie avea nişte rude acolo, şi au ajutat-o. Despre Vili nu ştiu decât că s-a căsătorit cu o evreică care era de asemenea din România, şi că a devenit şlefuitor de diamante.

Eu şi Erika am terminat liceul aici în Braşov. Eu am terminat zece clase de liceu la seral, şi după aceea, la 19 ani, mi-am găsit de lucru. Deşi eram destul de săraci, mama nu vroia ca noi să ne neglijăm educaţia. În primii doi sau trei ani după ce am ajuns în Braşov, am luat lecţii particulare de literatură şi limbă germană cu o profesoară. După aceea am învăţat engleza cu o profesoară, dna Rathaus. Era destul de scump, dar am luat lecţii cu ea timp de vreo opt ani, le-am întrerupt doar când eram aproape să nasc pe fiul meu.

După ce a terminat facultatea, Erika a fost profesoară de rusă aici, în Braşov, şi s-a căsătorit cu un evreu, Alfred [Freddie] Ellenburgen în 1959. Au avut o căsătorie bună, şi au un fiu, Marcel. Marcel s-a căsătorit cu o româncă, Iulia, şi acum trăiesc în Israel, unde au doi băieţi.

Am lucrat timp de trei ani la contabilitate, la T.A.P.L., care era organizaţia de stat care conducea restaurantele şi industria alimentară. Între timp, am făcut nişte cursuri de contabilitate, şi dl Rathaus, soţul profesoarei mele, care era farmacist, m-a ajutat să găsesc un post de contabilă la Centrofarm. [Centrofarm era compania farmaceutică de stat care avea filiale în toată ţara] Am lucrat acolo trei ani, până în 1955. Nu am avut probleme pentru că eram evreică în nici unul dintre aceste locuri.

Am fost norocoasă că mi-am făcut prieteni buni printre tinerii din comunitatea evreiască de aici. Erau Pişta Guth, Brauning, Loţi Gros, şi câţiva dintre colegii lor de liceu. Ne-au plăcut mult, pe mine şi pe sora mea, aşa că ne-au introdus în cercurile lor şi în Gordonia, o organizaţie sionistă. Erau foarte prietenoşi, ne invitau la petreceri de five o’clock şi aşa mai departe. La Gordonia era un doctor tânăr, Bernhart, care mă plăcea mult, mă curta, şi el mi-a făcut cunoştinţă cu un prieten de-al lui, doctorul Orosz. Şi doctorul Orosz mă curta, mergeam la plimbare, şi în timpul unei plimbări ne-am întâlnit cu doctorul Jacques Friedel, viitorul meu soţ. Jacques s-a născut în Câmpulung Moldovenesc, dar studiase medicina la Cluj, şi fusese repartizat la Braşov.

Ne-am căsătorit în octombrie 1953, în Braşov, la sinagoga neologă de aici. A fost o nuntă frumoasă, cu chuppah, au venit cei doi hakhamim din Braşov, am avut mulţi invitaţi, prieteni şi colegi de la serviciu, trei domnişoare de onoare, un cor, şi s-a cântat la orgă. Ţin minte că un bijutier, Weinberger, a venit să cânte pentru mine, avea o voce frumoasă. Am avut o rochie splendidă, şi un buchet Biedermeier, făcut din 35 de boboci de trandafir. Coroniţa era şi ea făcută din flori mici. Petrecerea a fost la un restaurant, am avut o formaţie, şi doar mâncare kosher, bineînţeles; a gătit mama, şi a făcut şi faimosul fluden din Bucovina.

Fiul meu, Edward Friedel, s-a născut în 1955. Soţul, fiul şi cu mine trăiam aici, unde locuiesc astăzi, într-o singură cameră, pe care am primit-o când Edward avea un an. După ceva timp, căsătoria cu soţul meu s-a destrămat, aşa că am divorţat în 1966, mi-am luat din nou numele de fată şi am început să lucrez la universitatea din Braşov, la facultatea de silvicultură, unde eram funcţionară. Am lucrat acolo 28 de ani, până m-am pensionat.

Nu am fost niciodată membră a partidului comunist, nimeni din familie n-a fost. Ne ţineam gurile închise, dar nu eram de acord, bineînţeles, cu ce se petrecea. Trebuia să participăm la toate manifestaţiile de 23 August sau 1 Mai, mai ales că eu lucram la universitate şi acolo era un accent mai puternic pe propagandă. Trebuia chiar să coasem slogane pe pancarte, cum ar fi „Trăiască comunismul!” ‚”Trăiască Ceauşescu!”

Fiul meu n-a avut probleme la şcoală pentru că era evreu, puteam merge la sinagogă şi respectam sărbătorile mari acasă. Dar nu am mai respectat kashrut, era prea greu. Şi soţul meu şi eu eram religioşi, aprindeam lumânări în fiecare vineri şi spuneam rugăciunea, curăţam casa de Pesach. Însă nu l-am costumat pe Edward de Purim. Edward a luat nişte lecţii de Talmud Torah cu cineva de la comunitate, nu mai ştiu cu cine. Nu a studiat cu tatăl lui, dar trebuia să ştie câteva lucruri pentru bar mitzvah.

Fiul meu Edward era un duşman convins al regimului comunist de când era în liceu, şi i-am spus să aibă grijă ce spune sau ce face, pentru că putea să aibă probleme serioase. Dar el insista că vrea să plece în Israel. Aşa că de vreme ce era în grija mea, i-am sus că trebuie să termine facultatea mai întâi, şi apoi dacă mai vrea să emigreze, eu nu o să-i stau în cale. A făcut aşa cum i-am spus, inclusiv serviciul militar. Eu am fost cea care a insistat să-l facă, am crezut că-l va face mai bărbat, pentru că a fost destul de răsfăţat în copilărie, dar a fost o greşeală din partea mea. Tatăl lui, care era doctor, i-ar fi putut da nişte hârtii că era bolnav şi ar fi putut evita serviciul militar, dar l-am ameninţat că îl denunţ – pe fostul meu soţ - dacă face aşa ceva. Aşa că Edward a terminat liceul, a fost pontonier şi santinelă la o închisoare în Brăila. Mi-a spus că erau o mulţime de bătăi, cu cuţite chiar, printre militari. Dar a reuşit, şi apoi a mers la facultatea de industria lemnului, în Braşov.
Tot acest timp, Edward a locuit cu mine. Dar condiţiile noastre de trai erau groaznice, nu aveam o toaletă a noastră sau un hol; aşa că m-am hotărât să fac ceva în privinţa asta, am luat aprobările necesare şi am început să construiesc o toaletă şi un hol. L-am trimis pe Edward să stea cu tatăl lui tot acest timp, era aşa o mizerie că nici nu puteam să gătesc ca lumea. În acea perioadă, Edward s-a încurcat cu o fată, o colegă de la universitate. Familia ei era înstărită, şi au ajuns să locuiască împreună în apartamentul ei. După ce Edward a terminat facultatea, a vrut să se căsătorească cu ea. Eu nu prea am fost de acord, pentru că era pe atât de vanitoasă pe cât era de frumoasă, dar eram de modă veche: dacă au trăit împreună, trebuie să se căsătorească, m-am gândit eu. Aşa că s-au căsătorit, şi au stat împreună doi sau trei ani. Între timp, ea s-a angajat la decanatul universităţii, unde întâlnea o grămadă de studenţi străini. Şi a sfârşit cu un grec, cu nouă ani mai tânăr ca ea, şi s-a terminat căsătoria. Edward a fost foarte afectat, a avut o cădere nervoasă. Era atât de rău, că a trebuit să-l internez în spital pentru două săptămâni, şi să-l hrănesc bine, ceea ce pe atunci era o adevărată problemă - pentru ca să-l pun pe picioare. [Nota editorului: mâncarea era puţină în ultimii ani ai regimului comunist; pâinea, laptele, carnea se dădeau cu cartelă] A stat şi la Pârâul Rece [staţiune şi sanatoriu în Transilvania] pentru două săptămâni, şi după aceea a fost din nou sănătos.

În 1986, a venit la mine la birou şi mi-a spus, „Mama, stai jos. Am decis să emigrez în Israel, şi ţine te rog minte ce mi-ai promis!” Aşa că oricât de greu mi-a fost să-mi las singurul copil să plece, am făcut-o. Tatăl lui nu a fost deloc de acord, dar Edward era hotărât, şi în şase luni, cred, a plecat. Nu am vrut să plec cu el, aveam prietenii mei aici, viaţa mea, şi el era abia la început.

S-a stabilit în Beer Sheva, şi în acelaşi an, a întâlnit-o pe Alice. Era o evreică sefardă, care lucra la o bancă. Toate economiile lui Edward erau 50 de dolari, şi s-a dus la bancă să vadă cum putea investi banii, şi aşa s-au întâlnit. S-au căsătorit anul următor, în 1987. Eu am crezut că e prea devreme, dar a avut mare noroc de data asta. Alice e o femeie frumoasă, deosebită şi generoasă, şi o mamă devotată pentru copiii lor: au două fiice, Orly, născută în 1988, şi Sigal, născută în 1989. I-am spus asta, că oricât de bună ar fi viaţa lor în rest, ar trebui să se considere bilionar, pentru că are copii aşa frumoşi şi sănătoşi, şi aşa o soţie bună. Edward lucrează ca inginer la o companie bună, deşi recent a trebuit să-şi găsească o nouă slujbă pentru că compania la care lucra a concediat oameni şi el a fost printre cei concediaţi. Însă a găsit foarte repede o altă slujbă, chiar ceva mai bun.

M-am bucurat să aud despre naşterea statului Israel, în ciuda tuturor obstacolelor şi politicilor ostile, împotriva evreilor, pe care le-am văzut de-a lungul anilor. Am fost în Israel de mai multe ori, chiar înainte de 1989. In 1975 am fost în vizită la nişte prieteni de-ai mei. Sunt o familie, doctorul Stern cu soţia, evrei din Braşov, care au plecat în Israel cu ceva timp în urmă, în 1954 cred. Dar mai întâi am fost în Netanya, să vizitez familia Kirschner, pe Karol şi Chaia. M-am împrietenit cu ei într-un mod foarte original. Eram în autobuz, în drum spre Poiana Braşov [Poiana Braşov este cea mai renumită staţiune de schi a României, localizată la 12 km de Braşov], şi am auzit un cuplu vorbind în engleză. Am intrat în vorbă cu ei, şi am aflat că sunt evrei din Israel. Originar veneau din republica cehă, dar fugiseră din ţară ca să scape de Hitler când erau încă tineri. Erau încă tineri când se întâmpla asta, douăzeci şi ceva de ani, şi au ajuns în India, unde au luptat în legiunea a noua ebraică, condusă de Moshe Dayan. M-au plăcut mult, m-au scos în oraş, şi când au plecat, m-au invitat în Israel. Aşa că am mers să-i vizitez pentru două săptămâni. După aceea am fost în vizită la doctorul Stern, care era în Beer Sheva. M-a impresionat tot ce am văzut la muzeul Israelului. Toţi prietenii mei m-au răsfăţat, am fost foarte impresionată că oamenilor nu le era frică să spună ce gândesc, să se întâlnească pe stradă, de nivelul de trai. Am mai mers o dată în Israel în 1983, înapoi la familia Stern. Apoi am mers să-i vizitez pe Edward şi Alice, care trăiau în apartamentul ei pe atunci; o dată am fost în 1997 şi a doua oară anul trecut. S-au mutat într-o vilă foarte frumoasă.

Ascultam radio Europa Liberă acasă, după ce am divorţat, deci din 1968 încolo, pentru că aveam mai mult timp liber. Puneam radioul lângă sobă şi îl dădeam încet, şi ascultam şi croşetam în acelaşi timp, mai ales noaptea; favoritul meu era Niculai Munteanu [era un bine cunoscut reporter român care lucra la Europa Liberă în Munchen, unde erau sediul Europei Libere, şi care făcea emisiuni despre politica românească.] Aşa am auzit ştirile despre Israel. [Nota editorului: războiul de şase zile şi războiul de Yom Kippur]

Tata a murit în 1989, era în timpul revoluţiei [revoluţia română din 1989], şi mama a murit la şase săptămâni după el, în 1990. Amândoi sunt înmormântaţi în cimitirul evreiesc. Din cauza timpurilor tulburi, nu am putut să aduc un rabin sau un chazzan la înmormântarea tatei, a fost doar un minyan şi cineva a spus kaddish, dar când a murit mama am sunat la Bucureşti şi au trimis un chazzan să spună rugăciunea. Ţin Yahrzeit, nu ştiu data după calendarul evreiesc, dar aprind lumânări de ziua lor şi în zilele în care au murit. Am ţinut doliu 14 luni după părinţii mei, un an pentru fiecare; chiar şi lenjeria era neagră – obicei din Bucovina. Am stat shivah opt zile după ce au murit, îngenuncheam într-un colţ pe pământul gol şi plângeam, şi după opt zile am chemat-o pe sora mea şi am înconjurat casa. Erika nu a stat shivah şi nici nu a ţinut doliu.

M-am bucurat când a izbucnit revoluţia din 1989, speram să vină timpuri mai bune; dar tata murea, şi mama la fel, aşa că a fost o perioadă neagră pentru mine. Am văzut toate evenimentele la televizor, pentru că nu am ieşit afară: se auzeau focuri de armă şi mi-a fost frică.

Nu sunt sigură că lucrurile s-au îmbunătăţit, însă cu siguranţă s-au schimbat. Bineînţeles, e o uşurare să poţi spune ce gândeşti, să nu stai la coadă pentru trei ouă cinci ore şi apoi să nu le iei, şi am avut noroc cu o lege anume, care recunoaşte că am fost deportaţi şi ne dă nişte avantaje: 12 călătorii gratuite cu trenul, abonament radio-TV gratis, bilete de autobuz gratis, ceva medicamente gratuite şi o mică pensie. Dar mizeria de pe străzi, lipsa de civilizaţie pe care o văd, anti-semitismul, astea sunt tot mai prezente.

Primesc o pensie de la germani, nu mare, dar ajută. Am fost implicată în comunitatea evreiască, îmi plăcea să fac vizite la birouri, să duc nişte prăjituri acolo, asta cel puţin până anul trecut, când am avut un violent atac de cord şi aproape am murit. Dar mă bucur că sunt în viaţă: am o familie minunată. Am făcut o grămadă de lucru de mână în ultimii ani, am făcut nişte goblenuri minunate. De asemenea mergeam la concerte, sau în excursii, dar acum trebuie să am mai mare grija de sănătatea mea.

Nádas István

Életrajz

Nádas István egy régi kétszobás lakásban lakik Budapest egyik zöldövezeti részében, Zuglóban. A lakásban mindenhol könyvek vannak – magyar és külföldi klasszikusok és új könyvek egyaránt –, még édesanyja kiskunhalasi kölcsönkönyvtárának több darabját is őrzi könyvei között. Nádas Istvánnak néhány szép régi bútora is van, amit még az édesanyjától örökölt, régi szekrény, könyvszekrény, üveges szekrény tele herendi porcelánnal. Egyedül él, de gyermekeit és unokáit rendszeresen látogatja. A családon és a bevásárláson kívül nem is nagyon jár máshová. Nehezen mozog, és mivel mindent magának kell elvégeznie, kevés ideje jut már olvasásra. Klasszikusokat már szinte nem is olvas, mert még az újsággal is sokszor lemarad, meséli.

Az édesanyám, Fleischl Aranka kiskunhalasi születésű, egy Fleischl Adolf nevű kárpitosmester, kicsi, szakállas, pajeszos zsidó volt az édesapja. Úgy tudom, hogy a nagyapám nem kiskunhalasi. A nagyapám akkor halt meg, amikor én születtem, ott, Kiskunhalason. A nagymamámat Schön Fáninak hívták, és 1921-ben halt meg. Ő kiskunhalasi származású. Igen népes volt a Schön rokonság, legalább 4-5 család volt, akikkel tartottuk a kapcsolatot. Kiskunhalason nagyon sok Schön nevű rokoncsalád volt, és nagyon szoros kapcsolat volt a rokonok között. De aztán közbejött a háború [a második világháború], elpusztultak, kivándoroltak, és ma már senkivel nincs kapcsolatom.

A nagyszüleim Kiskunhalason éltek, vallásosak voltak egyértelműen. A nagymama parókás volt. De minden bizonnyal magyarul beszéltek, mert az én édesanyám is csak magyarul beszélt. A nagymama otthon volt a családdal. Hat gyerekük volt: Hanika, Ilonka, Regina, Samu és Lipót és édesanyám. Az első három gyerek lány volt, a második kettő fiú, és a hatodik volt az édesanyám, aki az ötödik testvérnél 10 évvel volt fiatalabb. 1890-ben született az édesanyám. Addigra már volt egy unokaöccse, a legidősebb nővérének a gyereke. Szinte semmit nem tudok ma már a rokonságunkról. Elsősorban azért, mert lényegesen idősebbek voltak, mint én. Nagyon sok gyermektelen volt közöttük, nagyon sokan kivándoroltak közülük.

Az édesanyám első nővéréék, Hánikáék Szabadkán [Vajdaságban, ma Szerbia] telepedtek le, és velük 1918 után már nagyon nehéz volt a kapcsolattartás, és alig-alig találkoztak. Hánikának két fia volt. Én egyszer sem találkoztam se az ottani nagynénémmel, sem a két fiával. Az édesanyám mesélte, hogy időközönként átutazott Kiskunhalason az unokaöccsei közül egyik vagy másik [Az 1882-ben épült Pest–Szabadka vasútvonal érintette Kiskunhalast. – A szerk.], az már külföldnek számított nekik. Leszálltak és bementek az üzletébe, üdvözölték és egy pár szót váltottak. Ennyi volt a kapcsolat. Azt tudom, hogy az egyik Dél-Amerikába került ki, a másik, aki otthon maradt, nagyon korán, valamikor az 1920-as évek elején meghalt.

A második lánytestvére Fleischl Ilonka Makón ment férjhez Leipniknek hívták a férjét, de többet nem tudok róla, nem is ismertem. Hat gyerekük volt. A legidősebb volt Aranka, aztán volt Ilonka, Sára és Jolán. És volt még két fiú, Antal és a hatodiknak a neve nem jut eszembe. Az unokatestvéremmel, Leipnik Ilonkával igen szoros kapcsolatom volt a második világháború előtt. Budapesten élt, gyerekneveléssel foglalkozott, óvodája volt. Évente egyszer vagy kétszer eljött Kiskunhalasra. Az édesanyám, aki az üzlete miatt gyakran járt Pestre, ővele gyakran találkozott. Leipnik Ilonka férjhez ment egy Kostkiewicz – ez egy lengyel származású név – Ferenc nevű mérnökhöz az 1930-as években. Nem volt az Ilonka olyan nagyon fiatal, amikor férjhez ment, és a háború alatt nem tudom, mi történt a férjével, már nem élt, amikor a háború után újra tudtunk találkozni. Ilonkának nem volt gyereke. De a testvérének, Arankának volt két lánya, akiket majdnem anyaként kezelt az Ilonka, és akik igen sokat voltak Pesten. Sőt a nagyobbik lány 18 éves kora után föl is költözött, ott lakott nála. Az egyikük él, Izraelben van, a másik elpusztult 1944-ben Pesten. A háború után Ilonka a Nagykörúton a megállóban állt, amikor egy teherautó véletlenül fölfutott a járdára és elütötte, és rögtön meg is halt.

Az Ilonka nagynéném többi gyereke mind Makón maradt. Ezekkel csak egy-két találkozásom volt összesen. Akkoriban nem volt olyan nagy divat Kiskunhalasra eljönni, és ott hosszabb időt eltölteni. Az Ilonkáék ortodoxok voltak, de a fiatalok [a gyerekeik], akikkel én találkoztam, nem voltak ortodoxok.

Édesanyám harmadik nővére, Regina férjhez ment, a férjét Kanitzernek hívták. A férjről nem tudok semmit, nem is ismertem, Regina korán özveggyé lett. Budapesten éltek. Volt két fiuk és két lányuk. A legidősebb volt László. Az első világháború alatt az édesapám tisztiszolgája lett, és megvannak azok a tábori lapok, amiket a tisztiszolga írt az unokahúgának, azaz anyámnak, hogy a hadnagy úr ezt csinálta, meg azt csinálta – így ír a későbbi sógoráról. László később kikerült az olasz frontra, és ott meg is halt. A háború utolsó napjaiban veszett el. A testvére Peti Sándor néven jó nevű színész volt itt Budapesten. Az 1970-es évek végén, még az édesanyám halála előtt halt meg, akkor már 70 egynéhány éves volt [1973-ban halt meg. – A szerk.]. A harmadik testvér, Aranka Németországba, Hamburgba ment férjhez, és ott el is tűnt az 1930-as évek eseményei során. A negyedik testvér, Ilonka kiment Angliába, soha nem ment férjhez, ott házvezetőnőként élte le az életét. Az 1970-1980-as években – már akkor olyan 60 év körül járt – rákban halt meg.

Édesanyám két fivére közül az idősebbik, Fleischl Samu bútorkereskedő volt Kiskunhalason. A Samu bácsi második feleségét Ilonkának hívták, az első felesége nagyon korán meghalt. Két gyereke volt: Miklós és József. Miklós orvos volt, behívták munkaszolgálatra mint orvost, és nem jött haza. József egész életében könnyelmű volt, szórakozott. Nagyon érdekes élete volt. Az édesapjával dolgozott az üzletben. Az 1930-as évek vége felé váltóhamisítást követett el az apja nevén az üzletben, és ez elől Franciaországba menekült. Elvett egy nem egészen normális francia grófnőszerű valakit, birtokkal, kastéllyal, mindennel együtt, és azt hiszem, azt elkótyavetyélte. Elég fura ember volt, de nagyon aranyos, kedves, társasági ember, és szívesen vettük, mikor együtt tudtunk lenni. Gyermektelen volt, a lányomat, amikor férjhez ment, meghívta Franciaországba, és akkor egy pár hetet ott töltöttek a kastélyban. Az 1980-as években halt meg.

Az utolsó nagybátyám Fleischl Lipót kocsmáros volt Kiskunhalason, a feleségét Szerénának hívták. Lipót 1880 körül születhetett, mert állítólag az édesanyám 10 évvel az ő születése után született hatodikként 1890-ben. Lipótéknak volt egy kocsmájuk, egy kis parasztkocsma a város szélén, ragyogóan ment. Falusi, illetve már városi vasutasok, földművesek, napszámosok, fuvarosok jártak oda, jöttek-mentek. De nekik egy étterem kellett. A város közepén vettek egy házat és átalakították. Csináltak egy éttermet maguknak, az egész pénzüket beleölték, de nem vált be. Ezt már a városi közönségnek szánták, de nem volt közönség, belebuktak, és az 1930-as évek elején elköltöztek Szekszárdra, az egész család, úgyhogy onnan kezdve csak távolsági kapcsolat volt közöttünk. Azt tudom, hogy a háború alatt tűntek el a szülők, és akkor már Szekszárdon laktak.

Hat gyerekük volt. A legidősebb, László csak négy polgárit [lásd: polgári iskola] végzett. Egy ideig az édesanyám mellett is dolgozott a mi papírüzletünkben, de aztán ő is elköltözött Szekszárdra a szülőkkel, és ott újságbizományosok lettek. A szülők – Lipót és Szeréna – elpusztultak a háborúban, a László megmaradt. A háború után elvett egy asszonyt, akinek volt egy gyereke, tehát a László két gyereke közül az egyik nem a saját gyereke volt. A László kiment a gyerekkel és feleséggel együtt Franciaországba, Párizsba. Ott a Laci valamilyen nyomdában raktárosi beosztásban dolgozott, a felesége is elhelyezkedett valahol. A második gyerek Sándor Kiskunhalason gimnáziumot végzett, nagyon jó tanuló volt, utána kiment Franciaországba. Ott elvégezte a Sorbonne-t, és francia szakos tanár lett, és középiskolában oktatott francia nyelvet és irodalmat. Egyszer volt itthon, és akkor itt lakott nálam egy hetet. Aztán többet már nem is találkoztunk, mert meghalt. A Fleischl nagybátyám harmadik gyereke, Béla asztalossegéd volt, aztán ő is kiment Franciaországba az 1920–1930-as években. És a Béla részt vett a francia ellenállásban, és később nagyon szép pozíciót töltött be szakszervezeti vonalon, de nem szakmai, hanem inkább mozgalmi vagy politikai úton érte el ezt a pozíciót. A háború után itt volt a feleségével együtt, meglátogatták az édesanyámat, és akkor találkoztam vele. A negyedik gyerek, Károly, azt hiszem, a második világháború után kikerült Ausztráliába. Ott megnősült, voltak gyerekei. És a sorsnak a furcsasága, hogy látogatóba jött haza, és itt halt meg – ez már az 1970-es években volt. Itt is temették el a rákoskeresztúri temetőben a zsidó részen. Az ötödik testvér, József itt élt Magyarországon. Budapesten nyomdában dolgozott. Nem zsidó nő volt a felesége, és nagyon jól tartotta velünk a kapcsolatot. Született egy nem teljesen egészséges fia, aki megnősült, három gyereke lett, és fiatalon meghalt. Aztán pár évvel ezelőtt [az 1990-es évek végén] meghalt az unokabátyám is, 88 éves volt. A hatodik fiú, Antal ment a többiek után – ő is még a háború előtt elkerült Párizsba. Örökölte a kalandos rokonok vérét, egy anyagilag nagyon komoly karriert futott, vállalatoknak a vállalatvezetésével foglalkozott. Megnősült, de elvált. Ő sokat járt itthon, találkoztunk. Körülbelül 10 éve eltűnt, azóta nem tudok róla.

Édesanyám 14 éves koráig járt iskolába Kiskunhalason, 4 polgárija [lásd: polgári iskola] volt. Az akkori szokásoknak megfelelően elég korán, 17 éves korában férjhez adták egy Pressburger nevű zsidóhoz. Amennyit úgy erről hajlandó volt beszélni, kivettem, hogy nem szerelmi házasság volt. Lényegesen idősebb – nem tudom, hogy pontosan mennyivel idősebb – volt a férj, egy villanyszerelő. 1907-ben volt az esküvőjük és 1914-ben meghalt a férje. És az édesanyám két élő és egy holtan született gyerek után, 24 éves korában özvegy maradt. Pressburger Margitnak és Katalinnak hívták a két lányt. Katalin 1909-ben született meg, Margit, 1911-ben. Anyám özvegyi jogon megkapta az iparengedélyt, tehát tovább folytathatta alkalmazottakkal a villanyszerelő szakmát. De föladta, rájött, hogy becsapják. Nem értett semmihez, és akiket alkalmazott, azok becsapták.

Háború volt akkor, és kétgyerekes özvegyként trafikengedélyt [lásd: trafikjog] kapott – ez 1915-ben lehetett. És trafikban kezdett el dolgozni. Nemcsak dohányárut, hanem irodaszert, papírt, kozmetikumokat, szóval mindenfélét kezdtek akkor árulni a trafikokban. Meg tudta kapni az ottani filmszínháznak a kezelési jogát. Ő bérelte ki a helyiséget, ő szerezte a filmeket, ő csinálta a mozi üzemeltetését. A trafik mellett a filmszínházat is csinálta egy-két évig. Akkoriban kezdtek az újságokkal foglalkozni, ő elvállalta Kiskunhalason a központi elosztást. Hozzá érkeztek be a lapok, és az újságárusoknak is ő adta ki, meg az előfizetőknek is. Tartott egy-két embert, aki az újságokat az előfizetőknek kihordta. Még élt a nagymama, és ő segített a gyerekek körül. Az ő édesapja (a nagyapám) akkor halt meg, mikor én születtem, azaz 1920-ban, és egy évvel később halt meg a nagymama, amikor az idősebbik öcsém született.

Ott, Kiskunhalason ismerkedett meg édesanyám az édesapámmal. Édesapám az 52. gyalogezredhez került, és annak Kiskunhalas volt a törzshelye. És ő szivarozott, dohányzott, és bejárt az üzletbe s ott ismerkedtek meg. Az édesanyám csodálatosan szép nő volt, a kiskunhalasiak mondják, hogy Halas szépe volt. Hát mondani se kell, hogy megtetszett az édesapámnak. Nem tudom a házasságuk időpontját, de azt tudom, hogy még a háború befejezése előtt, azt hiszem, vagy 1917-ben, vagy 1918 elején házasodtak össze. Nem meséltek az esküvőről, de biztosan zsidó esküvő volt, de hogy hogyan bonyolódott le, nem tudom. Biztos, hogy nem volt valami nagyon nyilvános esküvő, előre meghirdetett.

Az édesapám dunántúli származású, Cecén született 1889-ben. A nagyapját, az én dédapámat Neuwirth Leopoldnak hívták, és az iratok szerint 1838-ban született Cecén, és 1862-ben házasodott. Édesapám apját Neuwirth Antalnak hívták, és az édesapám két éves volt, amikor meghalt. Falusi kereskedők voltak a nagyszülők. Az Antal is, ugyanúgy mint a dédnagyapa is, írja is az anyakönyv, hogy kiskereskedő volt. A valódi nagyanyámról semmit nem tudok. Steiermann-nak hívták a családot, az ő lánykori neve Steiermann Berta volt. A nagyanyám a szüléskor meghalt, tehát egyedül maradt az [apám] édesapja a gyerekkel. Két testvére volt az apai nagyapámnak, egy férfi és egy nő. A férfitestvér nevét Neuweltre elírták annak idején, úgyhogy végül Neuwelt Salamon néven élt. Gyerektelen volt, fogadott gyerekük volt egy lány, aki nagyon közeli rokonuk volt, akit Neuwelt Arankának hívtak. És volt egy nőtestvér, Neuwirth Netti, ő vállalta akkor magára a kisgyerek nevelésében a segítséget. Sajnos, ez se tartott így sokáig, mert amikor apám 2 éves volt, az édesapja is meghalt. Tehát 2 éves korában az édesapám teljesen árva lett, akkor ez a nagynénje vette magához. Nem fogadták örökbe, tehát végig a saját születési nevén élt az édesapám, de valami csodálatos, ahogy őt a továbbiakban fölnevelték. Ezek az én apámnak a későbbiekben már nagypapának és nagymamának nevezett nevelőszülei. Még az édesapámról hadd mondjam, hogy őt mindenki Lacinak hívta. Ennek az a magyarázata, hogy őt Lászlónak akarták hívni, de Cecén 1889-ben a zsidó hitközségnek csak német nyelvű anyakönyvvezetése volt, és a Lászlót nem Ladislavként, hanem Leopoldként írták be – ami Lipót magyarul, minden dokumentumban Lipót szerepelt. Tehát őt Neuwirth Leopoldként anyakönyvezték német nyelven, de mindenki Lacinak szólította.

A nagyanyám – akit én annak ismertem – egy nagyon egyszerű fehérnemű-varrónő volt, aki egy csendőrhöz ment férjhez; Gógh Tódornak hívták, és egy román származású görögkeleti férfi volt [lásd: vegyes házasság]. Ha igaz, magyarosított Góth Tivadarra. Úgy emlékszem, hogy Tivadarként anyakönyvezték mint halottat. Ő írni-olvasni nem tudó pásztorgyerek volt az erdélyi havasokban, akit behívtak katonának. Az 1860-as években születhetett, és olyan 21 éves korában lehetett katona, mert akkoriban, azt hiszem, 21 éves volt, amikor behívták katonának. A Monarchia hadseregében volt, és bezupált – katona lett a foglalkozása. A KuK-n belül a magyar hadseregnek volt a tagja, és a csendőrséghez került. A katonaságnál megtanult írni-olvasni magyarul. Megtanult magyarul, de érződött a kiejtésén az akcentus. Hogy ismerkedett meg a nagyanyámmal, erről fogalmam sincs. Cecéről fölhelyezték a nagyapámat mint csendőraltisztet Pestre, mert ő őrmester vagy törzsőrmester rendfokozattal volt. A nagyapám a Lánchídőrséghez került – a Lánchídon fizetni kellett –, ott kapott egy beosztást, és ennek fejében a Logodi utcában kapott egy kétszobás, nagyon kedves kis lakást. Volt egy utcai szoba, egy udvari szoba, egy cselédszoba, konyha, fürdőszoba, WC, szóval minden volt, víz is, gáz is. Az akkori körülmények között az 1920-as, 1930-as években egy modern, nagyon szép lakás volt. Ma is megvan a ház, és sétaképpen el szoktunk menni arra, hogy megnézzük.

Ez a szervezet, a Lánchídőrség a Pénzügyminisztériumhoz tartozó fegyveres testület volt. A nagyapám révén megtudták a Pénzügyminisztériumban, hogy a nagyanyám fehérnemű-varrónő, és rendkívül bedolgozta magát. Ővele csináltatták a szebbnél szebb ágyneműket meg asztalterítőket, abroszokat. Énnekem dicsekedett is, mint gyereknek, hogy „ez a méltóságos úr, meg az a méltóságos úr dolgoztatott velem Pénzügyminisztériumtól”.

Nagyon szép házaséletet éltek, a nagyapám imádta a feleségét, a nagyanyám is nagyon szerette a férjét. A nagyanyám gomblyukakat is slingelt, és a nagyapám, amikor nyugdíjba ment, mindenben segített, és gyönyörűen megtanulta ezt is. Egy nagy szenvedélye volt, hegedült. Borzalmas volt hallgatni, de olyan lelkesen próbált hegedülni, mindig mutatta nekünk, gyerekeknek a tudományát.

Mind a kettő tiszteletben tartotta a másiknak a vallását. Ez azt jelentette, hogy a nagyapám minden nagyünnepen ott volt a zsidó templomban a nagymamával. Karácsonykor meg a nagymama ment el nagypapával az éjféli misére a szerb, a keleti egyház karácsonyára meg újévkor az éjféli misére. Különben semmilyen vallási élet nem folyt otthon.

Szegényen, de nem nélkülözve éltek. Nagyon beosztották a pénzt, a nagymamám nagyon szorgalmas volt. A nagyapámnak talán tisztességes nyugdíja volt, a nagyságrendeket nem tudom. De nem igényeltek semmilyen különösebb segítséget, sőt minden évben nyáron, diákkoromban egy pár napot náluk tudtunk tölteni. S az egy nagy élmény volt nekünk, gyerekeknek, akik vidéki kisvárosban éltünk, hogy a nagyvárosban eltölthettünk egy pár napot, kimehettünk a Városmajorba (az akkor is már olyan volt, mint manapság, kicsit, mint a Városliget) meg a Horváth-kertbe, gyerekekkel találkozhattunk és labdázhattunk és focizhattunk. Horváth-kertnek az Attila út és a Krisztina körút közötti parkot hívták, és ott volt annak idején a budai színház, ami egy híres nyári színház volt, ahol Honthy Hannának óriási sikerei voltak valamikor az 1930-as években [Az 1915–1937 között működött Budai Nyári Színkörről van szó. Honthy Hanna (1893–1978), operettszínésznő, legendás, egyéni stílusú primadonna. – A szerk.]. És egyáltalán ott nézelődhettünk, kimehettünk az Állatkertbe meg a Városligetbe, a cirkuszba is elvittek minket.

A nyugdíjazásuk után drága volt a megélhetés, és valamikor az 1930-as évek végén Nagytéténybe, egy kis lakásba költöztek, és ott éltek. A nagyapám 1942-ben halt meg, én már akkor munkaszolgálatos voltam. A nagyanyám pedig 1945-ben tűnt el. Őróla sem tudok semmit.

Az édesapám az iskoláit már Pesten járta. Itt járt elemi iskolába, de azt, hogy melyik zsidó iskolába, azt már nem tudom. Középiskolába, a kereskedelmi akadémiába [lásd: kereskedelmi iskolák] járt a Markó utcába, ami egy érettségivel járó kereskedelmi iskola. Az volt az első ilyen szintű kereskedelmi oktatás. Az édesapám, amikor 1907-ben leérettségizett, bekerült a Pénzügyminisztériumba.. Pénzügyminisztériumi számellenőr volt a hivatali beosztása. Az, hogy az én édesapám a Pénzügyminisztériumba került, nagyanyám kapcsolatai révén lehetett. Közben még katonai szolgálatot is kellett letöltenie, karpaszományos volt [Karpaszományt azok az érettségivel rendelkező katonák viseltek, akiket behívtak tényleges katonai szolgálatra, és tartalékos tiszti kiképzésben részesültek. – A szerk.], és aztán 1914-ben behívták katonának. Négy évig volt katona az édesapám, többször megsebesült. Az 52. gyalogezredben szolgált, és annak Kiskunhalason volt a stábja. Oda jöttek vissza pihenőre, amikor leváltották egyszer-egyszer az egységüket, vagy sebesülés után oda kellett neki visszavonulni a törzshöz, és onnan került aztán újra bevetésre.

Az édesapám 1918-ban leszerelt, hazajött, nyugdíjaztatta magát a Pénzügyminisztériumban, és elhatározták az édesanyámmal, hogy a trafikot bővítik; ez azért is volt, mert aztán az édesanyámtól megvonták a trafikengedélyt. Valószínűleg az 1920-as évek elején lehetett mindjárt, ahogy erősen jobboldali [rendszer lett], és akkor a zsidóktól megvonták a trafikot [lásd: antiszemita közhangulat az 1920-as évek elején]. Amire én vissza tudok emlékezni – és emlékem 5-6 éves koromra van –, akkor már csak könyv- és papírkereskedés volt ebben a helyiségben. Az üzlet továbbra is az édesanyám nevén ment, sőt az első férje néven volt, özvegy Pressburger Ferencné cégtulajdonos. Kiskunhalason a városházánál, egy frekventáltabb helyen egy nagyon szép üzlethelyiség volt. És volt hozzá egy alkóvszerű bemélyedés, ahol a könyvtár volt, csináltattak hozzá egy galériát, az volt fönt a raktár. A könyveket maguk megvették. És be lehetett iratkozni a kölcsönkönyvtárba, és valamit kellett fizetni a kölcsönzésért – 30-40 fillért, 50-et, 20-at, már nem emlékszem. Nagyon jelentős, nem túloznék, ha azt mondanám, hogy 100-as nagyságrendű rendszeres olvasója volt a könyvtárnak. Minden rétegből kerültek ki olvasók. Az édesanyám úgy szervezte meg, hogy a legszerényebb igényűeket is kielégítette, és a ponyvaregényektől kezdve a legkomolyabb szépirodalmi művekig mindenféle volt. Amik a slágerek voltak: Jókai meg Mikszáth, teljes sorozatok. Külföldi klasszikusok is voltak, de mind magyar nyelven volt. A végén már több mint ezer könyv volt. (Vannak könyvek, amiket megmentettem.) A nyitva tartás hétfőtől szombatig egész nap volt és vasárnap délelőtt. A Laci nevű unokabátyám jó néhány évig dolgozott ott, aztán volt egy nézeteltérés közöttük, kilépett, és attól kezdve az édesanyám külsőst vett föl. Úgyhogy egyszerre három alkalmazott is dolgozott az édesanyám mellett: volt segéd, kifutó és eladó kislány. Aztán amikor a nővéreim már nagyobbak lettek, akkor ők. A fiatalabbik 17 éves korában férjhez ment, és akkor ő nem, de az idősebbik nővérem elég gyakran besegített az üzletbe.

Én megszülettem 1920-ban, 1921-ben az öcsém, aki ikerként született, és az ikertestvére fél éves korában elhunyt. És 1923-ban született a harmadik fiú. Tehát édesanyámnak öt [élő és két nagyon korán elhunyt] gyereke volt, de közöttünk elég nagy volt a [kor]különbség. Édesapám ott maradt Kiskunhalason, csodálatos kapcsolata alakult ki a két lánnyal. Nagyon sokszor hallottam tőlük, hogy kisapának szólították, és imádták, mert tényleg nagyon jó volt hozzájuk.

1927-ben édesapám meghalt. Betegen jött haza a háborúból, epehólyag-gyulladása volt. Állandó diétát tartott, keserűvizet ivott. És akkoriban már a sebészet olyan mértékben fejlődött, hogy az orvos barátja ajánlotta – mert édesapám mindig bombázta, hogy mondjon már valamit, mit lehetne csinálni, hogy végre ehessen töltött káposztát vagy sóletet –, hogy operálják meg, mert ilyen műtéteket csinálnak, és mindegyik sikerrel jár. Akkor följött, és Pesten a Bethesda kórházban megoperálták. Az operáció jól sikerült, a beteg meghalt. Rákoskeresztúron lett eltemetve a zsidó részen. (Az ő sírjába temettük el az édesanyámat, amikor 1980-ban meghalt.) Az édesanyám, emlékszem, hogy süvet ült, 8 napig, azt hiszem. [A süve 7 napig tart. – A szerk. Lásd: gyász.] Hogy teljesen betartotta-e vagy sem, azt nem tudom, de még előttem van: nem normál széken ült, hanem valami alacsonyabb párnázott valamin, lehet, hogy úgy kapta kölcsön. Én 7 éves voltam akkor, és attól kezdve egy évig [Csak 11 hónapig kell – A szerk.] minden áldott nap mentem, és kádist mondtam, megtanítottak engem a kádisra. Előtte csak akkor voltam templomban, amikor elvittek – nem emlékszem, hogy iskoláskorom előtt milyen gyakorisággal jártam. De kádist mondani csak este mentem, és az elemi iskolai hittantanárom vállalta, hogy helyettem a reggeli imánál elmondja a kádist. És attól kezdve, amikor már nagyobb voltam, mentem imára mázkirkor meg évfordulókor [lásd: jahrzeit].

37 évesen édesanyám öt gyerekkel özvegyen maradt. Nagyon szegények voltunk, de ő hallatlanul sokat dolgozott az üzletben. Pestre járt, bevásárolt, és az unokaöccse, a Laci ott volt még nálunk, és lassan kezdtek a nővéreim is fölnőni, ők is egy kicsit segítettek. Otthon mindig volt egy háztartásbeli, aki mindenes volt, még vasárnap is ott volt, neki kellett főzni, takarítani meg mosni. Az én gyerekkoromban mindig volt, amíg az édesanyám dolgozott. Már ezzel a fejjel, amin én is keresztülmentem, tudom, hogy milyen lehet öt gyerekkel egyedül. És a legtisztességesebb módon nevelt föl, mindenünk megvolt, amire szükségünk lehetett. Egy születésnap azt jelentette, hogy kapott valami kis ajándékot, egy tábla csokoládét – szóval nagyon szerényen éltünk, de mindenünk megvolt.

Az édesanyám, aki egy vallásos családból származott, 17 évesen férjhez ment egy olyan férfihoz, aki teljesen vallástalan zsidó volt. De az egész famíliájára ez volt a jellemző, többen ki is tértek abból a családból. Az édesanyám fiatal volt, őbenne még nem élt az a hagyomány, és gondolom, hogy az első időben okozott nála gondot [hogy a férje nem volt vallásos], de aztán elhagyta [a szigorú vallásosságot]. Az édesapám meg azon kívül, hogy héber hittanra járt, semmilyen vallási rítust, előírást nem tartott.

Az édesanyám péntek este két gyertyát gyújtott – két gyertyatartó volt. De kidust nem mondtunk. Otthon nem imádkoztunk. Édesanyám templomba már nem járt, már nem voltak a kóser étkezéssel [lásd: étkezési törvények] vagy a szombati munkavégzéssel gondjai [azaz egyáltalán nem tartotta a szombatot – lásd: szombati munkavégzés tilalma]. Minden évben vágtunk disznót otthon, Kiskunhalason. Nem tudom, hogy míg élt az édesapám, az alatt volt-e, arra már nem tudok emlékezni, de amióta az eszemet tudom, azóta volt disznóvágás. De szombaton csak sóletot ettünk otthon. Általában szombaton készítettük el, és azt ettünk, erre emlékszem. Csak a két nagyünnepet [a Ros Hásánát és a Jom Kipurt] tartottuk, de amíg Kiskunhalason voltam, péntek este sokszor eljártam templomba, de aztán elmaradt a templomba járás. A zsidó identitás megmaradt, de nem vallási okokból.

Volt bár micvóm, úgy tanított be ez a hittantanárom. Délelőtt az istentiszteleten fölhívtak a tórához, délután pedig uzsonna a lakáson, és a rabbitól kezdve mindenki ott volt. Három szoba a lakásban át volt alakítva. Az egyetlen dolog, amit ettek, szardíniát, kenyeret, csak azzal lehetett megkínálni, mert a többi nem volt kóser. Arra nem emlékszem, hogy oldottuk meg az evőeszközt, tányért, ilyen dolgokat. De ott voltak, eljöttek. Az édesanyámtól kaptam ajándékot, de hogy mit, azt már nem tudom.

Arra emlékszem, hogy a fő ünnepeket, a Ros Hásánát és a Jom Kipert [lásd: Jom Kipur] megtartották, akkor nem nyitott ki az édesanyám, de már a többi ünnepnapot nem. Jom Kiperkor böjtöltünk. Nem laktunk messze a templomtól, és arra a napra nem volt más program, mint a templom, az ünnep. Nem tudom, hogy az édesanyám olyan nagyon ragaszkodott-e ahhoz, hogy egész nap a templomban legyünk, de tudom, hogy 10 óra előtt nem értünk oda. Akkor is volt mázkir, és úgy mentünk, hogy addigra odaérjünk mindenképpen. Míg mi kicsik voltunk, mi csak délig böjtöltünk, és akkoriban, azt hiszem, hazavitt bennünket, megetetett és aztán visszament. A bár micvó után már egész nap kellett böjtölni, és én úgy emlékszem, hogy ezt szigorúan be is tartottam.

Édesanyámnak mindig gondja volt a mázkirral, hogy megy ő el a mázkirra azokon az ünnepnapokon, mikor nyitva volt az üzlet. Amikor már nagyobbak voltunk, és nem kellett iskolába menni, akkor én voltam bent meg a nővéreim. 1-2 órát, csak annyit, amíg elment, addig a lányok bent voltak az üzletben. Már elég nagyok voltak ahhoz, hogy az eladók mellett ők bent legyenek.

A háború előtt volt széder. Először a Lipót rokonomnál volt nagy szédereste, a gyerekek elég sokan voltak, és még tartották, s amikor ők elköltöztek Szekszárdra, akkor a Samuéknál voltunk mindig szédereste. Mindig a családfő vezette a szédert, tehát a Lipót bácsi vagy a Samu bácsi. De nagyon kedélyesen csinálták. Csak héberül olvasták [a Hagadát], és senki sem értette, mert nem tudtunk héberül. De azért tudtuk a történetet, mert az iskolában megtanultuk hittanórán. Nekem kellett valószínűleg mindig a mánistánut [lásd: má nistáná] elmondani, vagy legalábbis ameddig én voltam, aki már tudott imát mondani, de aztán lehet, hogy később már az öcsém volt, aki elmondta. Mi mindig csak a vacsoráig voltunk ott, arra emlékszem, a második felét már nem vártuk meg, mert kisebb gyerekek voltunk, és a Lipóték elég messze laktak tőlünk, kint a város szélén. Később mondták nekem, hogy szegény édesapám a nyakában hozott valamelyikünket, valószínűleg a legkisebb testvéremet, mert annak már olyan sok volt az út hazafelé, és álmos volt, és fölvette a nyakába, és úgy hozta haza. Macesz volt otthon, de nem tartottuk a kenyér tilalmát [lásd: Purim]. A macesz csak kísérő volt. Én például nagyon szeretem aprítani kávéba a maceszt. A Lipót bácsira nem emlékszem, hogy mennyire tartotta a maceszevést. Samu bácsinál tudom, hogy nem tartották. A Szerénke néni mintha tartotta volna. De azt tudom, hogy később már az éttermükben semmiféle kóser nem volt. Hogy az kóser volt-e, amit szédereste ott megettünk? Nem tudom.

Az édesanyám mindig díszített egy kis karácsonyfát, mert mindig volt alkalmazott, aki keresztény volt. Egy zongora volt az egyik szobában, a fa oda volt felállítva, és alatta voltak csomagok, és oda az alkalmazott is meg lett híva, és ő is kapott ajándékot. Sőt, ez őneki volt elsősorban. Meg mert a többi gyerek is ajándékot kap. Főleg amikor már középiskolások voltunk, eléggé izgalmat keltett a gyerekek között, hogy jön a karácsony, és mit kapunk. Tehát nem tudtuk mi függetleníteni magunkat a környezettől. De ez soha nem egyházi alapon volt. Nem volt semmi ilyesmi, még éneklés sem. És nem a Jézuska jött, hanem karácsony volt és ajándékozás.

A házunkat édesanyám első házassága idején vette, ez tégla alapon vályogfalakból volt. Nagyon szép, ötszobás, nyitott verandás lakás volt, és én ott éltem le az életemet 18 éves koromig. Aztán oda bevezettették még az édesapám halála után a vizet. Kialakítottak egy udvari nyomós kútról vezetett fürdőszobát úgy, hogy a tartály fönt volt a padláson, oda először kézzel (később motorral) fölpumpálták a tartályba a vizet, és onnan fürödtünk. De az nem iható víz volt, csak fürdésre és mosogatásra használtuk. Egy héten egyszer, általában a hét végén, valószínűleg szombat este fürdöttünk kádban, a többi napon lavórban mosakodtunk reggel, este. Gáz nem volt. Sparhertunk volt, széntüzeléses. Kályhafűtés volt.

Egyik nővérem sem végzett középiskolát. A háború alatt meg közvetlenül az első világháború után voltak ők abban a korban. Nem nagyon tudom, hogy a tinédzserkort hogyan töltötték el. Az idősebbik nővérem, Katalin kesztyűkészítést és szabás-varrást tanult. Egy nagyon jól menő női ruha, majdnem azt mondom, szalonja volt Kiskunhalason. Ez csak annyit jelentett persze, hogy külön szobában tudta fogadni a vevőket. Öt szoba volt otthon nálunk, tehát volt hely. A varrodát egy külön udvari szobában alakították ki. Volt egy szabásznője is és egy vagy két segítője. Ő maga kézzel nem dolgozott, ő volt a tulajdonos, tehát ő csak megbeszélt mindent. Rendkívül jó érzéke volt a divathoz, a szép vonalakhoz. Járatott divatlapot, és ő ajánlott, szabásmintákat szerzett be. Jól menő bolt volt, de azt magára költötte, szórakozásra, ruhákra, társaságba járásra. Biztos, hogy az édesanyámnak is segített valamelyest, ezt nem tudom, engem akkor ebbe nem avattak be.

A fiatalabbik testvéremnek, Margitnak semmilyen képzettsége nem volt. Négy polgárit [lásd: polgári iskola] végzett, és attól kezdve otthon volt az édesanyám segítségére. Sőt, azt hiszem, már ebben az időszakban az idősebbik testvéremnek, Katalinnak is a varrás mellett segítenie kellett otthon szabadidejében.

A kisebbik nővérem 17 éves korában férjhez ment Vámos Gyulához. Szegény édesanyám, gondolom, nem repesett, mert neki sem volt túlságosan sikeres a 17 éves kori házasság, de ez szerelmi házasság volt. Egy rendkívül aranyos ember volt a férje, orvos, édesanyám is nagyon-nagyon szerette. A szülei vallásos zsidók voltak, ő nem, de ünnepeken a zsidó templomban volt. Arra nem emlékszem, hogy [miután összeházasodtak] gyertyát gyújtottak-e, az már az én családomban sem volt.

A polgári esküvőn csak kettesben voltak, annak idején nem volt szokás a polgári esküvőre elmenni. A zsinagógai esküvőjükön ott voltam. Cilinderes esküvő volt, és iszonyú elegáns. A sógorom nagyon adott erre. A zsinagógai esküvőre mi is kaptunk új matrózruhát [inget] hosszú nadrággal; előttem van, hogy még egy matrózsapka is volt. És utána lovas kocsis nászmenet volt, felcicomázott lovas kocsik voltak. A többire már nem emlékszem, nyolc éves voltam akkor.

A Vámos Gyula Kiskunhalason praktizált, de nem nagyon ment neki, és akkor a szülei rábeszélték, hogy menjenek oda hozzájuk. Közel Jászberényhez van egy nagy falu, Jászfényszaru [Jászfényszaru dinamikusan fejlődő nagyközség volt, 1930-ban mintegy 7800 fő lakossal. – A szerk.]. A Margit nem dolgozott. 1931-ben született még Kiskunhalason Vámos Feri, az unokaöcsém, egy végtelenül aranyos, helyes gyerek. És 1933-ban volt talán, amikor ők oda költöztek Jászfényszarura. Nagyon jól bevált nekik az új hely. Nagyon kulturált körülmények között éltek. Akkor még csak privát orvosok voltak. Volt egy körzeti orvos, de ő nem az volt. Akkoriban lehetett olyan 5-6 ezer fő, a környéken is, jöttek a betegek, és ő is ment. Nagyon szerették. A sógoromat az ottani előkelőség teljesen befogadta. A főjegyző, a főorvos, mindenki a baráti köréhez tartozott. A nővéremet is nagyon szerették a társaságban.

Meghívtak bennünket, a három fiút. Minden nyáron 3-4 hetet ott töltöttünk, és az nekünk a paradicsom volt. Megfelelő, háromszobás lakás volt, és el tudtak helyezni bennünket, nagyon jól éreztük magunkat. Hasonló korú fiatalok voltak a községben, akik Jászberényben, Hatvanban jártak iskolába, és a nyári szünetben otthon voltak. Nagyon gyorsan történt a megbarátkozás. Nagy futballcsatákat vívtunk. Az volt a szokás ebben a faluban, hogy egy héten kétszer, szerda este és szombat este a cigányzenekar a községháza előtt térzenét adott, és a falu apraja-nagyja este oda kivonult, és ott volt egy korzó. Héttől tízig tartott. Ez egy olyan élmény volt nekem kimenni a hasonló korúakkal, fiúk, lányok ottan összejöttünk. És volt egy közeli tó a Zagyva folyó túlsó felén, ott olyan piknikeket rendeztünk. Szinte minden héten csináltak ott pikniket, és sütöttek nyárson. Ott már tánc is volt, kihívták a zenészt. Szóval nagyon éltünk. És még időnként mozielőadás is volt ottan. A kocsmában, ahol a bár is volt, ott vetítettek filmet is, az 1930-as évek magyar filmjeit. Egyszer-kétszer ott is voltunk moziban.

1940-ben ment férjhez a másik nővérem, Katalin. A férje Hajnal Dezső fogtechnikus volt Kiskunfélegyházán, és ő oda ment férjhez. Nem tudom, hogy ez a sógor honnan jött, egyáltalán zsidó fiú volt-e. Azt sem tudom, hogy volt-e egyházi esküvő. Én nem is voltam az esküvőjükön, akkor már Pesten dolgoztam. De egyébként nagyon jó viszonyban voltunk. Siófokra mentek nászútra, és megbeszélték, hogy egy hétvégén menjek le szombaton, és vasárnap estig legyek ott. Akkor voltam először a Balatonon, 20 éves koromban.

Kiskunhalason nem volt zsidó negyed. Azért azt nem mondanám, hogy szétszórtan éltek a zsidók, ha úgy észak és dél felé osztom a várost, akkor inkább a déli részben. Egy nagy közösség volt [A népszámlálási adatok szerint Kiskunhalason 1920-ban 742 fő, 1930-ban 669 fő tartozott az izraelita felekezethez. – A szerk.] Csak egy hitközség volt, a neve szerint ortodox, de valójában a zsidó lakosságnak egy jelentős része már nem volt az. Nagyon sok volt olyan, hogy gyertyát gyújtott szombat este meg péntek este, tehát bizonyos rituális funkciót betöltött.

Volt egy komplexum, ott volt a templom, illetve volt a rabbinak a lakása. Azután volt egy olyan rész, ahol a férfi tanító a családjával és egy sakter lakott. Azzal szemben volt – ez egy nagy udvar volt – az iskola, amelyikben három tanterem volt, két-két osztálynak és a hittannak. És amellett volt egy nagy terem, ott voltak az ünnepségek, tanácskozások, és télen ott voltak az istentiszteletek, ahova elmentünk. Voltak még további épületek hátul, és a végén lakott az a bácsi, aki bennünket hittanra tanított az elemiben. Aztán volt egy másik rész, ahol a kántor lakott. És még volt valaki, az is valami hitközségi alkalmazott volt, és annak a lakása. Volt zsidó pék is. Tudom, hogy például a sóletot ott melegítették a pékségben szombaton, de hogy az mennyire volt kóser, nem tudom.

Egy zsidó elemi iskola volt Kiskunhalason. Ez egy 4 osztályos elemi iskola, hogy két-két osztály tanult egy tanteremben, az első-második és harmadik-negyedik. Az első-másodikban egy nő volt a tanító, a harmadik-negyedikben egy férfi, és külön volt egy hittantanár, akivel a Mózes öt könyvét fordítottuk héberről magyarra. Voltak keresztény gyerekek is, de csak egy-kettő, akiket a szülei direkt oda hoztak a zsidó iskolába, mert olyan híre volt. A zsidó [elemi] iskolába jártam. Teljesen természetes volt, hogy én oda járjak. A zsidó iskolát a hitközség tartotta fönn. Naponta volt Biblia-tanítás, ez azt jelentette, hogy minden nap egy órát a bibliát fordítottuk le. Négy osztály volt, és már az első osztályosokkal is elkezdték, legalábbis az olvasást. A fordítást csak a második osztálytól, úgyhogy a negyedik osztályig, ha jól emlékszem, végigmentünk az egészen.

Én nem érzékeltem Kiskunhalason különösebb antiszemitizmust, de azért jeleket igen. Előfordult, hogy a gyerekek a zsidó gyereket le büdös zsidózták. De én zsidó iskolába jártam, és így nincsenek közvetlen tapasztalataim, hogy milyen lett volna egy olyan iskolában, ami vegyes lett volna.

Az elemiből lehetett menni gimnáziumba vagy polgáriba [lásd: polgári iskola]. A fiú polgári állami volt, és volt egy katolikus és egy református leány polgári, és volt egy gimnázium, a református gimnázium Kiskunhalason. Középiskolába a református gimnáziumba jártam. Ma már nem lehet ezt mondani, azt hiszem, hogy domináns a református közösség, de akkoriban az volt. A város vezetésében is érezhető volt, hogy reformátusok. [Ezt az érzést, hogy „Halas református város” a történelmi hagyomány táplálhatta, ugyanis a török idők utáni újratelepülés idején, a 16–17. század folyamán a város lakossága református hitre tért. Kiskunhalas lakossága 1910 és 1930 között mintegy 4500 fővel nőtt, 1930-ban nem egészen 28 900 fő lakott Kiskunhalason. Hitfelekezeti megoszlás szerint 1910-ben is, 1920-ban is és 1930-ban is többségben voltak a római katolikusok, arányuk 20 év alatt 57%-ról 64%-ra nőtt, míg a reformátusok aránya 39%-ról 32%-ra csökkent. (Az izraelita hitfelekezethez tartozók aránya 3%-ról 2%-ra csökkent 1910 és 1930 között.) A városhoz kiterjedt tanyavilág tartozott, a lakosok 52%-a lakott külterületen. A reformátusok többsége valószínűleg inkább belterületen élt, ezért érezhetett Nádas István a városvezetésben református dominanciát. – A szerk.] Ezt az iskolát egyébként 1700-valamikor alapították. [1664-ben alapították a gimnáziumot, amely kezdetben a debreceni kollégium része volt. – A szerk.]

Nem voltam jeles, de jó tanuló voltam, néhány tantárgyból, matematikából, fizikából a legjobb voltam az osztályban, és azért ez adott tekintélyt. Én nagyon jó sportoló voltam diákkoromban, és annak jelentős súlya volt az osztályban. Szertornában nem voltam erős, de elég jó magasugró voltam, atlétikában is jó közép voltam, de volt a kézilabda, a futball meg az asztalitenisz, és ezekben a legjobbak közé tartoztam. Asztaliteniszben 18 éves koromban Kiskunhalas-bajnokságot nyertünk egyik barátommal a városban. Soha nem éreztem az osztálytársaim részéről antiszemitizmust. Igaz, hogy vezetőszerű voltam, akire figyeltek a tanárok is. A középiskolában nekünk volt héber hittan. Volt egy idős zsidó bácsi, ott lakott a templom mellett az egyik hitközségi lakásban, hogy milyen beosztásban, nem tudom, és a középiskola alsó négy osztályában ő tartotta nekünk a hittanórát. De ötödiktől nyolcadikig a rabbi tartotta. Amikor a katolikusoknak és a reformátusoknak volt vallásóra, különváltunk. Ez az egy középiskola volt Kiskunhalason, és nagyon sok katolikus hallgató [diák] is volt, és az állandó lelkésznek volt egy különterme, ahol órákat tartott. Oda mentek a katolikusok. És a zsidó gyerekeknek is biztosítottak egy termet, és oda jött a tisztelendő úr – azért mondok tisztelendőt, mert őt úgy hívták ott [a református gimnáziumban] –, és nekünk is tartott hármunknak vagy négyünknek órát. Egy-egy osztályban hárman-négyen voltunk zsidó gyerekek. De volt olyan, hogy összevontan délután tartott két órát, és akkor több osztályból voltak ott gyerekek. Nem emlékszem, hogy mi hogy szólítottuk őt. Egy nagyon nagy tudású, dr. Dohány József volt a főrabbi, ő tanított bennünket. A tisztelendő úr – már a rabbi – elvárta tőlünk, hogy péntek este elmenjünk a templomba. És szombat délután tartott egy diák imát. Azt hiszem, hogy teljesen szabályosan azt az imát mondtuk el, amit a felnőttek. Volt egy előimádkozó mindig a diákok közül. Az egyikre emlékszem is, idősebb volt nálam, ő rabbi is lett később.

Négyen voltunk zsidó gyerekek az osztályban, és abból az elemi iskolai hittantanárom fia volt egyedül, akinek a szülei vallásosak voltak, a másik három gyereké, köztük az én szüleim, nem. Osztálytársak voltunk, és közel is laktunk, gyakran átjött hozzánk, de nem került sor arra, hogy együnk. Eszembe se jutott, hogy őt megpróbáljam megkínálni; nem mondom, egy gyümölccsel talán igen, de mással nem. A Feuerstein Dénes kiment Izraelbe még a háború előtt [akkor még: Palesztina], és nem is olyan régen kaptam a hírt, hogy meghalt. A másik zsidó a Práger Gyuri volt. Ő is még a háború előtt ment ki Izraelbe, aztán onnan továbbvándorolt Kanadába. A harmadik zsidó egy Wolf Géza nevű volt, ő elpusztult a háborúban. Egyikükkel sem voltam különösebb barátságban, csak osztálytársi kapcsolat volt köztünk.

Mi nagyon szubjektíven ítéltük meg a tanárainkat, volt, akit jónak tartottunk, volt, akit kevésbé, de általában szép eredményeket értünk el. Akik onnan egyetemre jelentkeztek, azok végeztek is aztán az egyetemen. Fenyítések voltak; a tornatanárunknál előfordult, hogy kisdiákokat pofon vágott, hogyha valamivel nem volt megelégedve, de tornatanároknál ez megengedett valami volt. Volt egy történelemtanárunk, annak volt egy rossz szokása, hogy még kis, alsós diák korban, ha valakivel nem volt megelégedve, odament és a fülét megdörzsölte, hogy jó piros lett. De nem emlékszem arra, hogy bántottak volna. És órákon semmiféle vallási megkülönböztetést nem éreztem, de nem is hallottam máskor sem, szóval ilyen nem volt. Volt olyan tanár, akiről tudtuk, hogy nem nagyon szimpatizál [a zsidókkal], de nem adta külső jelét.

1938-ban érettségiztem. A szegedi egyetemre jelentkeztem bölcsészkarra. Nem akartam én tanár lenni, orvos szerettem volna lenni, de azt mondták ismerősök, hogy a biológiai szakra jelentkezzem, és majd onnan aztán lehetséges átmenni, mert oda nagyobb az esély bekerülni, mint az orvosira. De oda sem sikerült. Az első zsidótörvény érvényben volt, szóval nem volt meglepetés, hogy nem vettek föl. De azért hadd mondjam meg, hogy egy évvel alattam járt egy zsidó fiú, azt 1939-ben fölvették, mert tiszta kitűnő volt.

Az Anti öcsémnek gimnáziumi érettségije volt, és utána az édesanyám mellett dolgozott az üzletben egészen a munkaszolgálatba történt behívásáig, 1942-ig. Laci öcsémnek is gimnáziumi érettségije volt, és az érettségi után átment Kiskunfélegyházára a sógoromhoz, aki ott volt fogtechnikus. Őtőle tanulta ki, és egészen a bevonulásáig ott dolgozott.

Nem tudom, hogy az 1920-as években, mikor a Katalin és a Margit nővéreim tizenévesek voltak, hova jártak a fiatalok. Később, az 1930-as években különböző egyházi szervezetek voltak, illetve ipartestületek. Volt például Kiskunhalason a református kör, a katolikusoknak volt ipartestülete, volt kereskedők egyesülete. Az is általános volt, de főleg zsidók jártak oda. A zsidó fiatalok oda jártak. Volt klubest, ahol kártyapartik voltak. Volt, ahol pingpongozni lehetett, és oda bejártunk; oda napközben is be lehetett menni pingpongozni.

Akkoriban, amennyire vissza tudok emlékezni, családi ötórai tea összejövetelek voltak, ahol 5-6 fiút meg lányt hívtak össze családnál, és tea meg sütemények mellett gramofon és tánc volt.

Az édesanyám első házasságának a rokonságában volt egy olyan építészcsalád, azok megnyerték a kiskunhalasi vasútállomási rámpának és raktárnak az építését és az ifjabb fiuk rendszeresen lejárt Kiskunhalasra, eljött hozzánk, és nagy barátságba kerültünk. Húsz évvel volt idősebb nálam vagy tizenöttel, már nem emlékszem. De a nővéreimnek nagyon kedves partnere volt, és jóban lettünk. És ez a fiú az 1930-as évek közepén, második felében egy műanyaggyártó üzemet hozott létre Budapesten, és mikor leérettségiztem, mondta, hogy jöjjek fel hozzá, majd ott elleszek, fogok is tanulni valamit. Élni kellett valahogy, és ezt elvállaltam. És fölkerültem az üzemébe, az Univerzit műgyantaüzembe, ami egy száz-egynéhány létszámú üzem volt, és ő egyből a raktárba rakott be. Ott kellemes kollégákkal dolgoztam együtt, ragyogó kapcsolatom volt velük, soha semmiféle konfliktusom nem volt. Nekem egy kicsivel több volt a fizetésem, mint aki oda általában bekerült, 20 fillért kaptam óránként, a műhelyben 12, 15, 16, 18 fillért fizettek óránként. Az első időben reggel 7-től este 6-ig, 11 órát, szombaton 7-től 3-ig dolgoztam. Az ebédidő fél óra volt, de levonták, tehát csak 10 és fél órát fizettek. [Nádas Istvánnak heti 12 órával kellett többet dolgoznia, mint amennyi a törvényes munkaidő volt. Az 1937:XXI. tc. ugyanis bevezette napi 8 órás (heti 48 órás) munkaidőt a minimálbérrel és a fizetett szabadság intézményével együtt. Addig az iparban a munkaidő napi 10 óra körül mozgott. A szabályozás természetesen csak az alkalmazottakra (tisztviselő, munkás, stb.) vonatkozott, a mezőgazdasági dolgozókra nem terjedt ki. – A szerk.]

Kisebb gyár voltunk. Gyógyszertárakba elég sok mindent szállítottunk, kozmetikai gyárakkal volt kapcsolatunk, elektromos cikkeket forgalmaztunk. Végig a raktárban dolgoztam, de statisztikai munkákat is végeztem. Volt úgy, hogy szóltak, Pista, segítsél, ki kell szállítani valamit. Volt két szállító-biciklis zsák, a zsák úgy volt kialakítva, hogy a csomagtartó is tartotta. Én is úgy vittem biciklivel, hogy a zsák a hátamon, mentem valakivel, segítettem neki.

Amikor fölkerültem Pestre, följött az édesanyám, hogy keressünk albérletet. Az édesanyám vállalta az elején, hogy fizeti az albérletet. Mikor jött föl, elvitte a szennyesemet, a tisztát meg hozta föl, ezt is lehetőleg a legolcsóbban igyekezett megoldani. Idővel aztán több lett a fizetésem, 1 pengő 20 volt az órabérem, úgyhogy aztán én fizettem az albérletet is.

Akinél albérletben voltam, az egy zsidó család volt. Reggelivel együtt adták ki a lakást, s adtak egy tippet, hogy a közelben volt egy kis házi kifőzde. Egy idős néni tartotta, linóleumos asztalokkal. Gyanús tisztaságú hely volt, de 70 fillérért kaptam vacsorát: egy leves meg egy húsétel volt. Tehát a reggelit ők adták, az ebédet mi vittük, hideget, lehetőleg a legolcsóbb valamiket, császárhúst, kolbászt, szalonnát, vacsorára meg ettem a 70 filléres meleg ételt.

Az albérletért 32 pengőt fizettünk reggelivel együtt. Egy nagyon szép szoba volt, de átjáró szoba, a mellettem lévő szobában is laktak, még két fiú, mert ezek abból éltek, legalábbis részben, hogy kiadtak szobákat. A férj a budai hitközség alkalmazottja volt, oda járt el, a mama meg otthon volt. A fiú gyógyszerész volt, már nem emlékszem, hogy hol, csak időnként jött föl, és nagyon összebarátkoztunk. Pár évvel idősebb volt, mint én, elvitt engem szombat este ide-oda.

Egyszer úgy kiköltekeztünk, hogy nem maradt pénzünk. A Móricz Zsigmond körtér mellett volt egy mulató, talán Broadway volt a neve, ott kiköltekeztünk. Ittunk, s próbálkoztak velünk abban a bárban mindenféle bárhölgyek, de arra aztán végképp nem volt pénz. És gyalog mentünk haza Zuglóba. Eltartott másfél órát. Velem előfordult az is, hogy hazamentem, csengetni kellett, és a házmester kinyitotta, kapupénzt kellett neki adni, de nem akartam neki adós maradni, megvártam a hajnalt, amíg kinyitották a kaput; elsétálgattam azt a fél órát vagy háromnegyed órát. Nyáron ötkor vagy hatkor nyitottak, ennek megvolt a rendje. 3-4 alkalommal fordultak elő ilyen kiruccanások, de hát nem is volt miből gyakrabban.

Az életemet nagyon befolyásolta az, hogy 1940-ben vagy 1941-ben a kollégák elvittek egy szociáldemokrata gyűlésre ott a kerületben. Hivatalos volt a Szociáldemokrata Párt, szóval nem egy titkos ülésre mentem. 30-40-en voltunk; egy kis földszintes helyiség volt, ez volt az ottani kerületi irodája vagy nem tudom, micsodája, és ott jöttek össze időnként a kerületiek. Nem emlékszem, hogy voltam-e még aztán. Addig én nem foglalkoztam politikával. Otthon az én édesanyám házában nem volt a politika kérdés; ha volt, akkor az akkori közhangulatnak megfelelően Mussolini volt a példakép – az antiszemitizmus akkor még nem merült föl –, hogy micsoda rendet tudott Olaszországban tenni. Majdnem csak annyit tudtunk, ami az újságban volt. Az újságok – ha jól emlékszem, a Magyar Nemzet konkrétan – akkor már eléggé egyirányúak voltak, legfeljebb a hangsúlyokban volt különbség.

1941-ben megkaptam a behívómat. Esztergom-táborba kellett bevonulnom. Behívót kaptam, hogy mikor kell jelentkeznem, mit kell vinnem magammal. Akkor kétéves munkaszolgálat volt, katonai rendszerben. Nem is tudom, hogy a behívómon volt-e egyáltalán az, hogy munkaszolgálat, vagy csak behívó volt, hogy jelentkezzen. Akkor még katonaruhában voltunk, de sárga karszalaggal, s mi is kaptunk szabályos fölszerelést. Csak néhány napig voltunk Esztergom-táborban. Fölhoztak bennünket Pestre, és itt dolgoztunk; a Hungária úton volt a vezérkar iskolája, és ott az építkezésnél segédkeztünk. De elvittek bennünket Tárnokra is vonattal havat lapátolni, mert befújta a hó a sínt, és úgy kellett kiszabadítani. Szóval, ami adódott.

Négy szakasz volt, és a négy szakasz egy zászlóaljnak volt a tanulószázada, és négy meglévő századnak képeztek ki bennünket, és aztán úgy vittek egy pár hónapos együttlét után a megfelelő századokhoz. Én a harmadik századhoz kerültem. 1942 márciusában kerültünk századokhoz. Akkor kerültem Vácra, ott volt a hadtáp a váci laktanyában, és ott különböző munkákat végeztünk. Kaptunk időnként pár nap szabadságot, hétvégi eltávozást. Ez elsősorban a budapestieknek volt kedvező, de ezek döntően budapestiek voltak. Én Kiskunhalasra mentem: hazamentem szombaton délután, és vasárnap este vissza kellett jönnöm. Egyszer annyira váratlanul mentem, hogy az édesanyám már útra készen volt, hogy megy át Kiskunfélegyházára a nővéremhez, mert megbeszélték. Én aztán rábeszéltem, mondtam, hogy engem ellát a nő [a háztartási alkalmazott], aki ott van, ha megígérte, csak menjen át, aztán másnap majd hazajön, és akkor még találkozunk.

Ez tartott egy pár hónapig, júniusban menetszázad lettünk, és fölvittek bennünket a Kárpátaljára, Turjaremetére – ott egy hadi utat kellett építeni a hegyen keresztül. Ez alapvetően majdnem egy sátortábornak tűnt, egy kirándulásnak. A földbe kellett ásnunk egy mélyedést, melyet fagallyakkal béleltünk ki, és arra kellett kerüljön a sátor. És úgy kellett megépíteni, hogy két-két ágy került mind a két oldalába, és négyen laktunk egy sátorban. Nekem nagyszerű társaim akadtak. Csupa baloldali beállítottságú fiúkkal kerültem össze. Sátortársam volt a Kende Pista, a Neumann Jóska, és még egy fiú volt, nem emlékszem a nevére, de azt tudom, hogy szabó volt a foglalkozása. A Kendéről tudok, ő később a közgazdasági egyetem tanszékvezető egyetemi tanára volt, a többiekről semmit nem tudok. A Kende meg a Neumann erősen befolyásolták a világnézetemet. A harmadik fiú csak helyeselt, ő nem volt egy képzett, de ez a két fiú nagyon képzett volt. A baloldali ifjúsági mozgalom szervezésében vettek részt. Nem tudom, azt hogy hívták akkor. Nem oktattak kifejezetten, csak kommentálták az eseményeket, én hallgattam, és kérdeztem őket. Vasárnap délután szabadnap volt, nem volt kerítés, jöhettünk-mehettünk szabadon. És a sátortársaim vittek az erdőbe – jó messzire bementünk –, és munkásmozgalmi dalokat énekeltünk.

Nem nagyon volt szökés, nem lehetett. Ha elkapták az embert, akkor kivégezték. Borzasztó nagy volt a rizikója a szökésnek. Amikor én le voltam tartóztatva, és Ungváron voltam fogva tartva, az alatt a két hét alatt egy gyerek levette a szalagot, és fölment Budapestre. Visszajött, és közben a munkácsi állomáson elkapták. Agyonlőtték. Jelen kellett lenni a kivégzésen az egész századnak – mi nem voltunk ott, mert éppen „üdültünk”.

Voltak vallásos zsidók a munkatáborban, és mindig a körülményektől függött, mennyire tartották az előírásokat. Csak egyénileg tudtak imádkozni. De volt olyan, aki tfilint hozott, és ha tudott, akkor imádkozott. [Kóser] étkezési lehetőség nem volt. Arra volt mód, hogy csomagokat kapjon, és ha vállalta, hogy annyi csomagot kap, hogy nem étkezik a tábori kosztból, akkor a sajátját ehette. De nem emlékszem arra, hogy valaki tudott volna csak ezzel élni.

1942. szeptember elején volt az új sorozás. És közölték velünk, hogy a század menetszázaddá alakul át, és kimegyünk Ukrajnába, de a törzs itt marad, és fogadja az újoncokat. A törzs azt jelenti, hogy itt marad a századparancsnok, a helyettese, az altiszt és egy vagy két honvédségi tizedes, és itt kell maradnia 20 munkaszolgálatosnak, akik oktató néven lettek a szakaszok vezetői a bevonulók között.

Húszat kellett kiválasztani, és volt tizenkilenc, és még nem döntötték el, ki a huszadik. Azokban a napokban azoknak, akik a menetszázadban voltak, adtak szabadságot. Elhatároztam én is, hogy kérek szabadságot. A parancsnokunk eléggé kiszámíthatatlan ember volt. Akkoriban én 21-22 éves, elég jó alakú gyerek voltam. Odamentem az irodába, és szóltam ott a fiúnak – mert mindig volt ott egy zsidó őr –, hogy szeretnék a százados úrtól szabadságot kérni. Kérdeztem, hogy itt van-e. Itt van, mindjárt kijön, várjak. Kijött, és akkor nagyon katonásan eléje vágódtam – mert ő borzasztóan adott az ilyesmire –, hogy szeretnék szabadságra menni. Végigmustrált engem, s azt mondta: „Na, ez a fiú meg fog felelni a huszadiknak.” Ilyenen múlik az ember élete.

Kaptunk 20 fős szakaszokat, azoknak mi voltunk a parancsnokai. És minden két vagy három ilyen hozzánk tartozó szakaszhoz tartozott egy keretlegény. Összesen öt vagy hat keretlegény volt meg egy altiszt. Bevonult jó néhány ismerős is, jött kiskunhalasi gyerek is, aki Budapesten élt. A szakaszommal nagyon jó kapcsolatot alakítottam ki: napközben ordítottam velük, hogy hallják, hogy milyen szigorú vagyok, de este a sátram körül, mert akkor nekünk már külön sátraink voltak, odajöttek beszélgetni. És mondtam nekik, hogy nekünk egyetlenegy feladatunk van, hogy túléljük valahogy, éspedig úgy, hogy amennyit muszáj dolgozni, annyit kell, de nem kell élkatonának lenni. Mindenki csináljon annyit, amennyit még elfogadnak, és mindenki próbáljon vigyázni magára.

November elején a századot fölvitték az erdőbe, és jön két fiú a szakaszomból, és egy kis vékony rudat hozott, amit egy kézzel könnyen el tud tartani, és valaki oda kiabál: „Mi az, ti a Neuwirth módszer szerint dolgoztok?” [Azaz csak annyit csinálnak, amennyit nagyon szükséges.] Ezt meghallotta a századparancsnok, behívta őket, hogy mi volt ez, hogy volt ez? Ezek hebegtek-habogtak, és akkor elkezdte az egyik keretlegény meg a parancsnok pofozni a gyereket. Akkor olyasmiket mondhattak, aminek alapján engem elkaptak. Mert akkor ott elhangzott, hogy biztos összeesküvés, meg ilyen marhaságokról is szó volt. Aztán elővették azokat a fiúkat, akikkel tényleg a legközelebbi kapcsolatban voltam, és akikkel aztán le is tartóztattak. A többieket állítólag nem vallatták, csak engem, mert én voltam a vezér. Szörnyű volt a vallatás. Gumibottal verték a talpat meg a tenyeret, és az volt az enyhébb. Amikor az ember nem tudott már mit csinálni, végül azt mondta, hogy igen. És mikor abbahagyták, akkor megint azt mondtam, hogy nem. Így játszottam egy darabig, és aztán abbahagyták. 3-4 napig tartott csak szerencsére ez a vallatás. De nem tudtak olyasmit találni, hogy egyből a haditörvényszék elé állítsanak.

Ezután Turjaremetéről bevittek Ungvárra a helyőrségi parancsnokságra, oda aztán kiszálltak a kémelhárítók, és bevittek egy iskolaépületbe, ahol a díszteremben legalább negyvenen lehettünk. Mi, négyen munkaszolgálatosok voltunk itt, a többiek mind ruszin ellenállók voltak. Ott komoly ellenállás volt a ruszin lakosság [Ruszinok vagy rutének:  Galíciában és Kárpátalján, valamint Bukovinában élő, ukrán nyelvjárást beszélő keleti szláv népcsoport elnevezése. – A szerk.] körében, és azok közé kerültünk. Ott sorban ültünk, és nem kellett csinálni az égvilágon semmit. Oda hozták úgy ülve az ebédet. A cuccunk a hátunk mögött volt, és ott kellett kiteríteni, és ott aludtunk. Fegyveres csendőrök cirkáltak egész nap, és tőlük kellett engedélyt kérni, és kikísért a vécére és vissza. Beszélni sem lehetett, rögtön ránk szóltak. De nem bántottak bennünket. A letartóztatásunktól számítva a 39. napon közölték velünk, hogy áttesznek bennünket a börtönbe. Az is szörnyű volt, tele volt bolhával, minden. A 42. napon szólítottak bennünket, hogy megyünk a fegyveres őrrel a helyőrségparancsnok elé. Addig, ha vittek bennünket, megbilincselve vittek – most bilincs nélkül, de már az ember nem mert jóra gondolni, csak rosszra, hogy most már nem akarnak kegyetlenkedni, mert úgyis vége mindennek. Csak egy dologra lehetett számítani, hogy kivégeznek. Szörnyű volt. De érdekes az emberi természet, hogy ma már mint egy anekdotát tudom elmesélni.

Bemegyünk, sorba kellett állnunk s várnunk, és ott volt egy Szántó Endre nevű társunk, háttal a falnak egy sarokban állt mozdulatlanul. Ő volt a század anyagbeszerzője, naponta ment le az erdőből, és ott bent a faluban, Turjaremetén is járt a zsidók között, hogy most mit lehet tenni ezzel a szerencsétlen négy gyerekkel [a négy letartóztatott munkaszolgálatossal]. És megismerkedett egy zsidó kereskedővel és annak a lányával. Ehhez a kereskedő céghez bejártak katonatisztek is, és viszonylag jó viszony alakult ki az egyik tiszttel – a magyar kémelhárításnak volt a tisztje –, és kérdezték, hogy hogyan lehetne bennünket kihozni. Ő azt mondta, hogy megfelelő anyagi ellenszolgáltatásért el tudja intézni, hogy bennünket kihozzanak. Kapjon 20 ezer pengőt. A Szántó Bandiék kinyomozták a hozzátartozókat, és keresték őket, hogy szedjék össze ezt a pénzt, és akkor ő elintézi, de ha nem, akkor el lehet képzelni az akkori időket ismerve, hogy a legkegyetlenebb eljárásnak leszünk kitéve, mert akkor ő [a tiszt] azt fogja mondani, hogy ez kémkedés volt. A Szántó Bandiék érintkezésbe léptek a Margit nővéremmel, ő volt Pesten, és ő az ismerőse révén kapcsolatot tudott szerezni a Vázsonyi Vilmossal [Nem tudni, kire gondol, hiszen Vázsonyi Vilmos (1868–1926) ügyvéd, politikus, országgyűlési képviselő, 1917–1918-ban igazságügy-miniszter ekkor már nem élt. – A szerk.]. Az egy liberális politikus, országgyűlési képviselő és egy nagyon jó nevű ügyvéd volt, és elmondták neki az én történetemet. Akkor a Nagybaczoni Nagy Vilmos volt a honvédelmi miniszter , és a Vázsonyi azt mondta, hogy ő ezzel a Nagybaczoni Nagy Vilmoshoz fordul közvetlenül. És írtak egy beadványt. A Nagybaczoni Nagy Vilmos amint ezt az anyagot kézhez kapta, azonnal intézkedett a vezérkari főnöknél, hogy tessék ezt az ügyet kinyomozni. A kémelhárítók budapesti központjának a nyomozói utaztak le a nővéremmel együtt Ungvárra a pénzzel, ők adták a pénzt, minden bankjegynek a sorszáma föl volt írva, és az adott időpontban ők már ott ültek az étteremnek egy másik sarkában, amikor a találkozóra sor került [a nővér és a kémelhárító tiszt között]. És a tettenéréskor letartóztatták. Miután a Szántó Bandi szervezte ezt, gyanús volt, hogy ő is kenőpénzt fogadott el, és őt is letartóztatták. És még két hónap volt aztán, mire őt kiengedték.

Minket tehát fogadott a helyőrség parancsnoka, majdnem egy dicshimnuszt mondott el, hogy érdemtelenül bennünket börtönbe zártak, és ezért már eljárt, hogy mi azonnali hatállyal két hét szabadságra mehetünk. December 23-án kiengedtek minket, vonatra ültünk még aznap, és 24-én este már haza is értünk.

Két hét [szabadság] után már nem is Turjaremetére mentem vissza, mert bevonták onnan a századot Galántára. A parancsnokok ott Galántán nem fogadtak túl nagy szívélyességgel. Addigra megszüntették már a rajvezető funkciót, ott már csak keretlegények voltak, és engem is beosztottak egy rajba. Ott is árkot ástunk, egy víztárolónak az árokásását csináltuk. Ez januárban nem volt nagy gyönyörűség a csákánnyal. 1943. március tájékán Galántáról Vácra vezényeltek bennünket. Új parancsnoknak kaptunk egy Papp Béla nevű építészt. Mikor jött, sorba állítottak bennünket, és szigorú hangon mondta, hogy ő itt megmutatja, hogy rendet csinál. Szigorú, de hihetetlenül rendes ember volt. Ellenőrizte, hogy ki, hogy kapja meg a leveleit, csomagjait, milyen a koszt, milyen az étkezés, minden rendben folyik-e.

A régi századírnokokat márciusban leszerelték, idősebbek voltak, mint én – 1943-ban még volt, akiket leszereltek. És két új századírnokot neveztek ki. Én jó viszonyba kerültem a régi századírnokokkal, különösen az egyik nagyon rendes volt velem a húsz között, amikor voltunk. És tudom, hogy ez a volt századírnok ajánlott be, hogy ő ismer engem. Én lettem a századírnok. És egy dr. Bálint György nevű jogász fiatalember lett a másik századírnok. Leveleket írtunk. Eleinte főleg a Gyuri írt, én akkor kezdtem el még tanulni, végül egész jól ment. Amikor ő nem volt ott, azokon a szombat-vasárnapokon én csináltam meg, ami fölmerült: napiparancsot, beosztásokat megírni, kihirdetni, a postát átnézni, válaszolni.

Minden héten a század fele eltávozást kapott szombat délutántól vasárnap estig. Hétfőn reggel kellett visszajönni. Ezt a főhadnagy csinálta. Abszolút a mi javunkat akarta, minden vonatkozásban a segíteni akarás jellemezte a főhadnagyot, addig a mértékig, ameddig jogában állt. Ez máshol is volt, csak nem ilyen mértékben. Miután döntően budapestiek voltak ebben a században, alig volt egy-két olyan fiú – köztük voltam én –, akinek nem volt elsődleges célja Budapestre menni. És a Bálint Gyurival megbeszéltük, hogy én vállalok minden hétvégi ügyeletet. A Papp főhadnagy ezt úgy revanzsálta nekem, hogy két hónaponként egy hétre vagy tíz napra hazamehettem Kiskunhalasra.

1943 őszén ismerkedtem meg a feleségemmel. Az orvos sógoromék részt vettek egy bár micvón Jászfényszarun egy családnál, akik az én feleségemnek a nagybátyjáék voltak. És a beszélgetés során kiderült, hogy én Vácon vagyok, és rajtam keresztül üzentek, hogy adjam át én az ő rokonuknak az üdvözletét [akik Vácott laktak]. Én nem gondoltam, hogy odamegyek, hanem volt egy barátom, aki már jóban volt az ő baráti körükkel, és őt kértem meg, hogy a nevemben adja át azt az üzenetet. S azzal jött vissza, hogy ők szeretnének engem személyesen is megismerni. Így kerültem oda, és jól sikerült ez a bemutatkozás, elfogadott engem Magda, a jövendő feleségem. Jól éreztem magamat, szinte minden délutánomat, estémet ott töltöttem beszélgetéssel, sétálgatással. Én csak esténként tudtam kimenni hozzájuk. Amikor a szolgálat lement, 5 órakor fogtam magam és kimentem hozzájuk. Nekem állandó kimaradási engedélyem volt mint századírnoknak, másnap reggelig. De csak estig vettem igénybe. Este 9-10 óra felé a háziak miatt is, meg magam miatt is, mert nekem is kellett aludni, mindig eljöttem.

Weisz Magda volt a feleségem lánykori neve. A szülei Weisz Miksa és Weisz Miksáné voltak. Az anyukája vezetékneve is Weisz volt, Weisz Rózsa, született Vácott 1884-ben. Hárman voltak testvérek Magdáék: volt egy nővére, Weisz Klára, aki most is él, és egy fiútestvére, Weisz Pál. A fiú érettségizett. A nővére, azt hiszem, 6 vagy 7 gimnáziumi osztályt végzett, de nem érettségizett le, hanem kitanulta a fűző- és harisnyakötő szakmát, ez akkoriban nagy divat volt, és azzal foglalkozott. Iparengedéllyel csinálta, amíg nem deportálták őket. De amikor én megismertem őket, alig volt már praxisa, egy-egy ismerős jött, hogy varrjon neki, és akkor azt megcsinálta. A papa nagyon jómódú ember volt háromféle kereskedéssel. Volt egy fűszerüzlete, egy kocsmája, és azonkívül gabonakereskedéssel is foglalkoztak. Később sem szűkölködtek semmiben, de nem volt már vagyon. Amikor még megvolt ez a nagy üzlet, az üzletben kellett segítenie a Magdának, meg a gabona átvételnél-eladásnál, ott kellett lenni a mérlegelésnél, szóval nagyon befogták őt. Valamikor 1941-ben vagy 1942-ben elvették az üzletet, akkor a papája mindent eladott, és bent a városban vettek egy nagyon szép, háromszobás házat, és én már ott ismertem meg őket. [Az 1942:XV. tc. rendelkezett a zsidók erdő- és mezőgazdasági ingatlanaira vonatkozóan. Eszerint a továbbiakban zsidó nem szerezhetett mező- vagy erdőgazdasági ingatlant, meglévő ingatlanaikat pedig át kellett adniuk. Átadásra kötelezték a zsidók kis- és nagyközségek területén lévő nem lakáscélú ingatlanait is. – A szerk.] És már nem kezdett semmibe a papa, idős emberek voltak már. 1940-ben volt 56 éves a mama, a papa lehetett akkor már 60 éves.

Ők tartották még a hagyományokat, de nem voltak vallásosak. Ők már megújították maguknak a vallásosságot, anyósom fejkendőt nem hordott, parókát sem, neki a saját haja volt, de kóser háztartást vezettek, szombatonként templomban voltak. Az apósom már egy kicsit könnyebben vette. Hétköznap nem járt templomba, csak péntek este, szombat délelőtt meg az ünnepeken. Csak magyarul beszéltek.

Már úgy 1944 elején beszélgettünk arról a jövendőbeli feleségemmel, hogy mi lesz. Akkor már szerettük egymást. Beszélgettünk, hogy mit tudjuk mi, hogy miként lesz, nem kéne-e összeházasodni, ameddig itt vagyok. A szülők eleinte ellenálltak, mondták, hogy várjuk meg, míg a háború véget nem ér. De megint közbeszólt a sors. Bennünket, akik már akkor öregnek számítottunk, mert fiatalok vonultak be, a helyi parancsnokság utasítására Pestre kellett vezényelni. Abban maradtunk, hogyha el tudom intézni, hogy haza tudok jönni, akkor elmegyünk az anyakönyvvezetőhöz. És másik alkalommal pedig az egyházi esküvőt is megtartjuk.

Én Vácott voltam 1944 tavaszáig. Aztán fölkerültünk Pestre, bekerültünk egy olyan menetszázadba, amelyiket egyelőre Budapesten tartottak, és 10 fős szakaszokra elosztva német légvédelmi ütegekhez osztottak be lőszerszállításra. Akkor [1944. március 19-e után, lásd: Magyarország német megszállása] kezdődtek az erős bombázások Budapesten, és mi akkor már a német légvédelmi parancsnokság legfőbb irányítása alatt dolgoztunk. Nem volt már honvéd, azoknak harcolniuk kellett. Mi nagyon jók voltunk erre a célra. Volt egy Hoffner László nevű rendkívül talpraesett gyerek, ez egy gyárosnak volt a fia, és olyan kapcsolatot tudott kialakítani a légvédelmi parancsnoksággal, hogy elintézte, hogy ebben a században, akik a légvédelmi tüzérek mellett dolgoznak, állandó kimaradási és eltávozási engedélyt kapjanak. Nem mindenütt volt olyan a hangulat – aztán később kiderült –, mint a mi ütegüknél, volt olyan század, ahol nagyon durván bántak velük. De engedély ott is volt.

Minden szakasznak megvolt a helye, és minden nap oda kellett menni. A budafoki dombon volt egy lőállás, oda osztottak be bennünket. És nekünk minden reggel ott kellett jelentkezni. A Csanády utcában volt egy iskola, azt kiürítették, és a mi századunk lakott benne. És onnan mindenki úgy ment Budafokra, ahogy tudott. Ki volt számolva, hogy nekünk hánykor kell kelni, indulni, és milyen járművekkel. Arra emlékszem, hogy arra mindig volt idő, hogy a mostani Móricz Zsigmond körtéren volt egy kocsma, és ott egy kupica pálinkát megittunk reggelenként. Délután öt órakor elengedtek minket, eljöttünk, és attól kezdve szabadok voltunk, mindenki oda ment, ahova akart. Nem kellett bemenni a laktanyába.

Minden egyes 10 fős csapathoz egy honvédet, egy tizedest is beosztottak, mert vigyázni kellett ránk, de közülünk is kiválasztottak egy valakit, a Stark Gyulát, ő lett a szakasz parancsnoka. Ez a Stark Gyula tökéletesen beszélt németül, a Pénzügyminisztériumban főosztályvezető lett a háború után. Egy fiatal osztrák főhadnagy volt az ütegparancsnokunk, és kimegyünk oda Budafokra, és ez a bunkó tizedes sorba állított bennünket, és tiszteleg és kezd magyarul beszélni. Néz rá az osztrák, és mondja németül, hogy nincs itt egy zsidó vezető? De igen, ő az – mondja a Stark Gyula –, és lejelentett. Kérdezősködik az osztrák, hogy kik, mik vagyunk, és a Stark Gyula tökéletes németséggel válaszol. Attól fogva a honvédot küldte mindig a francba a főhadnagy, csak a Gyuszival volt. És nemcsak a főhadnagy, hanem az egész társaság hihetetlen bajtársi viszonyban kezelt bennünket, azt hiszem, az egész szakasz osztrák volt. Így ment ez egészen 1944. június végéig. [A munkaszolgálatosok a honvédelem alá tartoztak, s mint katonák járhattak szabadon, természetesen sárga csillaggal – emiatt volt is konfliktus a nácik és a magyar hatóságok között. – A szerk.]

Május végén Vácon gettóba vitték a zsidókat, többek között a feleségem családját is. Vácott volt két zsidó templom viszonylag közel egymáshoz, egy neológ és egy ortodox, és annak a környékén lévő házakba gyűjtötték őket. Az eltávozási engedély vidéki utazásra is jogosított, így én naponta mentem le Vácra – délután mentem, és a hajnali első vonattal utaztam vissza Pestre. Egy kis lakásban úgy laktunk, hogy két szobájuk volt őnekik, az egyikben a szülők és a lánytestvér, és a másikban, mikor ketten akartunk lenni, mi voltunk. [A fiútestvér munkaszolgálaton volt, Ukrajnában eltűnt.] Ez egy háznak egy része, és voltak még mások. Egy nagyon kis lakás volt. Egy alkalommal belekerültem egy razziába. Május-június körül lehetett, 6 óra felé érkeztem Vácra. Őrült rumlit látok, mindenütt katona állt. Abszolút nyugodtan megyek kifelé, és ott volt a helyőrségparancsnok, aki engem személyesen ismert, mert mint írnok, gyakran kellett bemennem a városba, és vinni ilyen-olyan jelentést. Meglát engem, és azonnal szól, hogy hozzák ide. Jött két katona és odavezetett. Hát hogy kerülök én oda? Elővettem a nyílt parancsot, és mutatom neki, hogy szabad mozgási engedélyem van. Hát azt a meglepett arcot látni kellett volna! Azt hitte, hogy most egy dezertőrt talált.

1944. május 19-én megvolt a polgári esküvő – az apósom elintézte az anyakönyvvezetőnél, hogy miután 6 órára tudok megérkezni, akkor legyen. A következő vasárnap pedig az egyházi esküvő, hüpe alatt, ott a ház udvarán [lásd: házasság, esküvői szertartás]. Szóval szabályosan megesküdtünk. Volt rabbi is, kántor is. A rabbi előre mondta a szöveget, és én utánamondtam – ha előre mondták a szöveget héberül, akkor azt tudtam, mert értettem. Én tudtam héberül olvasni jól. Hogyha pontozott héber írás volt, azt tudtam, csak a másikat nem tudtam olvasni.

Majdnem azonos napon indították el a mi századunkat – megszüntették a beosztásunkat, és elindítottak bennünket Ukrajnába, ahova nem jutottunk el, csak Galíciába – és a feleségeinket [a koncentrációs táborba], mert június utolsó napján indultak ők, úgy emlékszem, mi pedig július elsején. Én csak azt tudtam, hogy én megyek el, úgy tudtam elköszönni, én nem tudtam, hogy őket is deportálják. Pesten tudtam meg, mert minekünk két vagy három napunk maradt még Pesten, mielőtt indultunk.

Elindultunk Ukrajnába, és ott volt a front Lengyelországban. Bennünket nem vittek ki közvetlenül a tűzvonalba, minekünk mindig védelmi vonalat kellett volna építeni, csak nem volt rá idő, sosem tudtuk befejezni, az oroszok mindig áttörtek a fronton. Az egyik ilyen kiküldetés során – ez júniusban lehetett talán – a szakasszal bennünket elég messzire kiküldtek a hegyekbe, voltunk vagy harmincan. És napközben kapták a parancsot, hogy azonnal csomagolni és indulni kell. Minket nem tudtak már értesíteni, mert mi csak estére tértünk volna vissza. Láttuk ugyan a hegyoldalról, hogy a hadsereg vonul vissza. És mire este visszamentünk, a hátizsákomat már félig kifosztották. Akkor hozzácsapódtunk egy másik századhoz. A Kárpátok vonulatára vezetett egy nagyon ideiglenes út, azt úgy hívták, hogy Légió Hágó. Ez nem is volt térképen jelölve, tulajdonképpen csak egy köves erdei út volt, ahol a ruszinok kocsival, lóval fel tudtak menni. Bennünket, munkaszolgálatosokat naponta küldtek le, a lóvontatású kocsikat kellett tolni föl a hegyre. A lovak húztak mindent, mi csak besegítettünk, meg loptuk a kocsiról, amit csak lehetett. Benyúltunk a kosárba, és ha olyasmi akadt a kezünkbe, marmelád például vagy cipó, vagy pótkávé meg kenyér.

Én a századommal már többet nem találkoztam, hanem összetalálkoztam a Légió Hágónál egy magyar hadnaggyal, aki egy román parasztokból álló munkásszázadot parancsnokolt. Látta, hogy le vagyok rongyolódva, és kiderült, hogy ismerte az édesanyámat, az üzletünket, és odavett maga mellé századírnoknak. Ez egy életmentő dolog volt, mert például már szinte nem volt talpa a cipőmnek, és ő rendbe tudta hozatni. És ezekkel voltam, amikor [Laci] öcsémmel a Kárpátokban összetalálkoztam. Ez már október 15-e [lásd: nyilas hatalomátvétel] után volt, és nem tudtuk eldönteni, hogy most mit csináljunk, én menjek-e hozzájuk, vagy ő jöjjön át hozzám. És úgy döntöttünk, hogy maradjunk mind a ketten, mert így nagyobb esélyünk van arra, hogy külön-külön talán túléljük. Én eljutottam ezzel a román századdal egészen valahova Eger környékére, ahol kiszúrtak engem, hogy mit keresek a román századnál. Áttettek egy munkásszázadba, amelyikkel később aztán Hegyeshalomba vezényeltek, és 1944 novemberétől 1945 márciusáig Hegyeshalomban az állomáson lőszert pakoltunk. A közvetlen parancsnokságunk még magyar volt., de már a németek mondták meg, hogy mit kell csinálni. A vasútállomás melletti épületekben laktunk, most már nem emlékszem pontosan, milyen körülmények között. Ott már ez nem volt, hogy ki lehetett menni este.

Március végén a század parancsot kapott, hogy indulás Hegyeshalomból Nyugatra. Voltak ottan barátaim Jánoshalmáról, köztük kiskunhalasiak is, akik már előzőleg készültek arra, hogy lelépnek – romos házak voltak ott, mert agyonbombázták a vasútállomást a németek [Ahogy a szovjet hadsereg nyomult előre, a németek kiürítették a területeket, és a fölperzselt föld taktikáját alkalmazva valószínűleg a hegyeshalmi vasútállomást is igyekeztek megsemmisíteni. – A szerk.], és ők kialakítottak maguknak egy bunkerszerű valamit, élelmiszereket gyűjtöttek. És hívtak engem is, de én akkor tífuszos voltam, és éppen lábadozni kezdtem, amikor ez az indulási parancs volt. És nem tudtam elmenni velük. Ők mind elpusztultak Hegyeshalomban, úgy látszik, hogy fölfedezték és kicsinálták őket. Amikor elindultunk Bécsbe, a századparancsnok mellett már egy német SS tiszt volt, aki dirigált. Nagyon rendes volt az SS-es, semmi durvaság nem volt részéről, ő gondoskodott arról, hogy élelmet kapjunk, szállást. Ez egy szabályos visszavonulási menet volt. Egész Bécsig mentünk. Azért vittek minket, hogy fogunk ott dolgozni. Nekünk a Práterben kellett még árkokat ásni, csak nem sok maradt Bécsből.

Egy iskolában helyeztek el bennünket, amelyikben zsidó civilek voltak, nők, férfiak – magyar deportáltak. Hogy hogy kerültek oda, nem tudom, de volt ott egy idős kiskunhalasi zsidó néni is.

És 1945 áprilisában húsvét napján arra ébredünk, hogy nem látunk senkit. Kimásztunk az utcára. És emlékszem, azt hittem, hogy magyar katonák vonultak be gyalogosan, khaki színű egyenruhájuk volt, de persze nem magyarok voltak, hanem az oroszok. Nem lehetett Hegyeshalom felé menni, mert az le volt zárva, Sopron felé kellett menni. Bécsből Sopronba mentünk gyalog; összeálltunk négyen, fiúk meg az ismerős kiskunhalasi néni. Az első éjszaka bementünk egy házba, és találtunk egy nagy csomagszállító triciklit, ami kerékpáros, és előtte van a csomagtartó. A kiskunhalasi nénit fölültettük az ülésre, a csomagokat rádobtuk a triciklire előre, mi toltuk. Könnyű volt, a néninek nem kellett menni – nagy kövér néni volt –, mi pedig nem kellett a cuccot cipeljük, amit összeszedtünk. Mindig találtunk valamit, nem haltunk éhen. És eljutottunk Sopronba, onnan meg vonattal jöttünk haza. Két hétig tartott az út Sopronból Pestre, mert szinte minden állomáson leállítottak bennünket, félretoltak, és katonai szerelvények jöttek, át kellett pakolni a lőszert egyik helyről a másikra, vagy raktárból kivenni vagy berakni. Már mindenütt oroszok voltak.

Megérkeztem Budapestre valamikor áprilisban. Különböző helyeken kellett jelentkeznem, már az állomáson irányítottak bennünket, segélyezési meg egyéb kérdésekben kaptunk felvilágosítást. A hivatalos dolgokkal egy-két nap alatt végeztem Pesten. Kellett menni különböző hivatalos helyekre – ilyen volt a Joint is, ahol nagyon szigorúan leellenőriztek bennünket, hogy azok vagyunk-e, akik. Mi öten jöttünk, tehát tudtuk egymást igazolni, és kaptunk valamilyen papírokat. Rögtön megpróbáltam tájékozódni. Az édesanyámról nem tudtam semmit, a feleségemről nem tudtam semmit, három testvéremről és a családtagjaikról nem tudtam semmit. A Laci öcsémről már tudtam, hogy él, nem is tudom, hogyan, és Kiskunfélegyházán van már a sógorommal. Nagyon rövid ideig volt munkaszolgálatos, mert akkoriban hívták be, nem is volt kívül az országon mint munkaszolgálatos. Ők ott a Kárpátokon mentek tovább az oroszok felé, a parancsnokuk így döntött, és elkapták őket. De gyakorlatilag nem volt fogságban, mert szabadon engedték, egy másik útvonalon visszajöhettek Magyarországra, és 1944 végén már Kiskunhalason volt. De otthon nem talált senkit, viszont a sógorom már akkor otthon volt, és együtt kinyitották a fogtechnikai laboratóriumot Kiskunfélegyházán.

Pár nappal később leutaztam előbb Kiskunfélegyházára, és utána mentem Kiskunhalasra, mikor az öcsém tájékoztatott, hogy otthon mi van. Nagyon szomorú kép volt, a házban nagyon sok mindent tönkretettek, elvittek. Nem az oroszok, mert az oroszok csak tönkretették, hanem beköltöztek a házba, és nem nagyon vigyáztak ott semmire. Például a könyvtárunkat úgy, ahogy volt, ledobálták a pincébe, időközben föld került rá, úgyhogy több hétig bányásztam ki a könyveket, és laponként próbáltam rendet csinálni. Úgyse nagyon volt más dolgom. Meg a bútorokat megpróbáltam összeszedni, hogy egy szobám legyen, ahol lakni tudok. Két szobában lakott az édesanyám volt segédje, akiknek édesanyám, miután egyedül maradt az ötszobás lakásban, kiadott albérletbe egy szoba-konyha részt; azok továbbra is ott laktak. Némileg ők megvédték, de az oroszok nem zabráltak, mert nem volt mit. Akkor kerestem embereket, akik hajlandóak voltak egy kicsit rendbe hozni. Már nem is tudom, hogyan tudtam ezt anyagilag lerendezni – nem olyan nagy összegekről volt szó –, de egy kicsit kipofoztuk a lakást. Az édesanyám 1945 júniusában jött haza, akkor már egy vagy két szoba elfogadható volt.

Rendszeresen lehetett élelmet szerezni – kaptunk jegyet, és teljesen ingyen kaptunk a Jointnál enni, mindenütt megszervezték a Jointot, Kiskunhalason is volt helyi szervezete. És nem is dolgoztam egészen addig, amíg az édesanyám június végén haza nem érkezett, akkor kezdtünk el aktívan dolgozni.

Az édesanyámat Kiskunhalasról vitték el 1944 nyarán. Az egész közösséget Ausztriába vitték, egy osztrák faluba, nem emlékszem már, hova. Családostól együtt maradtak végig. Velük nem történtek szörnyűségek. Azért nekik is dolgozniuk kellett időnként, pedig akkor már 54-55 éves volt. Mezőgazdasági munkát végeztek az édesanyámék, meg útépítésnél dolgoztak. Házakban laktak, üres iskolahelyiségekben vagy valami ilyesmi. Mindenről gondoskodtak, minden bizonnyal saját anyagbeszerzésük volt, tehát élelmezési gondjuk nem volt. Őrök voltak, de mintha nem katonai ruhában lévők lettek volna, akik az ő munkájukat irányították. Tehát semmi olyan szörnyűség, ami megragadt volna bennem, [amikor mesélt erről] nem történt velük. Senki nem pusztult el, még az öregek is élve jöttek haza, és aztán otthon bizony elég gyorsan meghaltak, de mindenki hazajött. [Életüket részben talán egy Scharführer tévedése mentette meg, amely viszont győri zsidók ezreinek életébe került. Úgy volt, hogy „a győri zsidók is haszonélvezői lesznek az Eichmann és Kasztner között létrejött megegyezésnek, melynek értelmében 30 000 zsidót – 15 000-et Budapestről és 15 000-et vidékről – »félretettek« volna az ausztriai Strasshofban, s további sorsuk az »emberéleteket áruért« misszió kimenetelétől függően alakul. A szerelvényekért felelős Scharführer azonban az őket szállító vonatot megszokásból Kassára irányította, ahonnan nem Ausztriába, hanem Auschwitzba kerültek.” Nádas István édesanyja és sorstársai minden valószínűség szerint Strasshofba kerültek, ugyanis a dél-magyarországi csendőrkerületekben összeállított transzportok némelyikét Strasshofba irányították az ún. Kasztner–Eichmann megegyezés értelmében. Strasshof egy Bécs melletti tábor volt, ahol kelet-ausztriai ipari és mezőgazdasági üzemekben dolgoztatták az oda irányított mintegy húszezer embert. A munkaadókon és munkavezetőkön múlott, hogy milyen bánásmódban részesültek. Mintegy háromnegyed részük – köztük idősek és gyermekek is – túlélte a deportálást. (R. L. Braham: A népirtás politikája. A holokauszt Magyarországon, ford. Szentmiklósi Tamás, Új Mandátum Könyvkiadó, Budapest, 2003.) – A szerk.]

Kati nővéremet Kiskunfélegyházáról deportálták, Auschwitzba került, ott összetalálkoztak a feleségemmel. Nem ismerték egymást, de valahogy megtudták egymásról, hogy ki kicsoda, és így aztán mint sógornők nagy örömmel üdvözölték egymást. Aztán szétkerültek, és a nővérem 1945. április elején Theresienstadtban halt meg tífuszban.  Az édesanyám is valamilyen módon Ausztriából Theresienstadtba került, és tulajdonképpen ő Theresienstadtból jött haza 1945 júniusában. Tehát ő is ott volt, és nem tudtak egymásról a nővéremmel. De az édesanyám csak egy egész rövid időt töltött ott. [A vidéki zsidóságot 1944 május közepe és 1944 júliusa között deportálták. Túlnyomó részük Auschwitzba került. Akiket nem szelektáltak ki rögtön és gázosítottak el, vagyis akiket munkára fogható munkaerőnek tekintettek, azokat – ahogy igény mutatkozott a gyárakban, táborokban stb. munkaerőre – továbbküldték a birodalom belseje felé. Amikor a szovjet előrenyomulás miatt a németek elkezdték kiüríteni a táborokat, az összeomlás előtti utolsó hetekben már minden rendszer nélkül küldözgették tovább a foglyokat, így került az életben maradt auschwitzi foglyok egy része – többek között – Theresienstadtba is. – A szerk.]

A másik nővéremet, Margitot Budapestről vitték el. Ő Jászfényszarun volt férjnél. A sógoromat behívták munkaszolgálatra, és akkor valamilyen jövedelemről kellett gondoskodni, és a budapesti barátai révén tudott munkalehetőséget kapni, és följött a kisfiával Pestre, és itt dolgozott. Barátok biztosítottak neki szobát, ott lakott. És 1944 őszén a KISOK pálya elől gyűjtötték össze őt abba a halálmenetbe, amiben a Radnóti Miklós meg a Szerb Antal is benne volt. Több ezer ember pusztult el akkor. A kisfiát elhelyezte valahol, ahol azt hitte, hogy biztonságban lesz. És nem tudunk róla semmit. Ha Kiskunhalasra mentek volna, akkor életben maradtak volna, mert a kisgyerektől kezdve mindenki azok közül visszajött. De nem Kiskunhalasra ment, hanem Pestre, és az egész családja, férje, kisfia elpusztult.

A másik öcsém, Anti 1942-ben vonult be. Borban volt munkaszolgálatos, és hazafelé jövet valahol az SS mészárlást hajtott végre, és ott halt meg, de még azt se tudjuk, hogy hol. Azt tudjuk, hogy 1945 elején, amikor a bori visszavonulása volt a német hadseregnek. Anti nőtlenként halt meg.

Az égvilágon semmit nem tudtam a feleségemről, és júliusban Kiskunhalason kaptam egy értesítést, hogy már ott van Pesten, megérkezett. A nővére is jött vele, ők együtt vészelték át az egész időt. Amikor deportálták az egész családot, a két lányt leválasztották a szülőkről Auschwitzban. Őket a munkára képesek közé vitték, és talán egy hónapig is ott voltak [Auschwitzban], utána Bergen-Belsenbe vitték őket. És onnan elvitték aztán őket, két városnévre emlékszem: Rochwitz [Valószínűleg a szászországi Flossenbürgben lévő koncentrációs tábor egyik melléktáboráról, Rochlitzról van szó. – A szerk.] és Graslitz [Cseh–Morva Protektorátus; ma Kraslice határváros, Csehország], és itt gyárakban dolgoztak. Például fegyvergyárakban dolgoztak, azt mesélte, hogy töltényeket töltöttek. Megszöktek 1945 márciusában, és majdnem egy hónapig Csehországban bujkáltak paraszttanyákon. Nem tudom, hogyan sikerült megszökniük; annak idején biztos, hogy elmesélte, de ez nem maradt meg bennem. Utána amerikai fogságba kerültek, és Marienbadban voltak, és elég sokáig tartott, mire elengedték őket. Nagyon jól bántak velük, mindent megkaptak, de az utazási engedélyeket, a lehetőséget nem teremtették meg. És ő csak júliusban érkezett haza.

Mikor édesanyám hazaérkezett, először próbáltunk még nyomozni a testvérem után, de semmit nem lehetett kideríteni. Aztán utánaérdeklődtünk, és lehetőségünk volt arra, hogy visszaszerezzük az üzlethelyiséget. Édesanyámnak a városközpontban volt üzlete, de elvették 1941-ben vagy 1942-ben. Akkor engedélyezték, hogy otthon a lakásban legyen. Három utcára néző szobánk volt, és a kapu mellettiben átütötték az ablakot, egy ajtót nyitottak, és abban a helyiségben berendezte a kis üzletét, ami maradt neki – főleg a kölcsönkönyvtárt üzemeltette, és abból egy kis pénzhez jutott. Árut ő már akkor nemigen kapott, ami még volt, azt eladogatta.

Visszaigényeltük a régi üzlethelyiséget a városközpontban, és nekikezdtünk megszervezni az üzletet. Júliusban érkezett haza a feleségem, és lejöttek Kiskunhalasra. Mi az édesanyámmal akkor már elkezdtük az üzlet fölépítését. Persze megpróbáltuk az ő régi nagykereskedői hálózatát fölkeresni, és vagy megtaláltuk, vagy nem, és érdeklődni, hogy hogyan lehet beindítani az árubeszerzést. Könyv- és papírkereskedés volt az édesanyámé. Könyv gyakorlatilag akkor még nem volt, tehát új könyv, hanem a könyvtára, amit rendbe hoztam, azt be tudtuk indítani, mondjuk, a kétharmad része megmaradt a könyveknek. Érdekes módon maradt egy csomó irka, és azt az irkát 1945 telén az oroszoknak adtuk el, és annyi fát hoztak nekünk, ami egész télre elegendő volt, és lerakták az udvarba. A feleségem volt otthon, és a háztartást vezette. Nagyszerű háziasszony volt, a kacsatöméstől a kenyérsütésig mindenhez értett. És ő látta el az otthoni dolgokat, mi pedig az üzletben dolgoztunk.

Én jártam föl hetenként kétszer-háromszor Pestre, vagon tetején vagy marhavagonokban vagy ahol tudtam. Olyan kevés vonat volt, nem volt se mozdony, se szén, semmi se volt.  Ezek kifejezetten árubeszerző utak voltak, hátizsákban vittem le az árut, az írószereket, papírárut, ami az üzletben kellett. Az unokanővéremnél, Neuwelt Arankánál  tudtam ilyenkor lakni. A férje meghalt szegénynek, akkor már egyedül élt a lakásban. Mentem hátizsákkal, és vittem a tojást meg a babot meg a zsírt. Pénzért ott nem lehetett semmit kapni, cserekereskedelem volt [lásd: feketézés, cserekereskedelem]. Olyannyira, hogy egyszer éjjel 12-kor érkezett be a vonat, mit csináljak én reggelig, és ott a Keletinél volt egy nagy szálló, bementem oda. Ott volt egy portás, mondom, szeretném reggelig eltölteni az időt. Tudok-e fizetni? Mondom, hogy „Nem”. „Mi van?” – kérdezi. Végül 10 tojásért ott tudtam tölteni az éjszakát, és volt ágynemű, és le tudtam feküdni. Fűtve nem volt. Ez már télen volt, és hideg volt, de mégis volt egy lógó villanykörte a szobában, és az égett.

Ez ment egészen 1946 nyaráig. Nem jött létre harmonikus kapcsolat a feleségem és az édesanyám között. Édesanyám egészséges volt, ereje teljében. A feleségem pedig önálló életet szeretett volna, sehogy sem tetszett neki, hogy az édesanyám naponta megbeszélte, hogy most ezt légy szíves, csináld meg vacsorára, ebédre, ezt vegyél, ő adta a pénzt hozzá. Szóval bántotta, hogy őt dirigálja az édesanyám.

1946 áprilisában született meg a Péter. Otthon, a lakásban, Kiskunhalason. Általában kaptuk a dolgokat a babának. Sok mindent kaptunk barátoktól, ismerősöktől, akiknek volt. Abban az időben ez teljesen bevett szokás volt, hogy aki tudott, segített. A Péter fiam körül lett metélve [lásd: körülmetélés] szabályosan még Kiskunhalason. A feleségem ragaszkodott hozzá, sőt az édesanyám is. Ez nem volt vita tárgya. A világ legtermészetesebb dolga volt számukra és nekem is.

Elhatároztuk, hogy elköltözünk. Az édesanyám szemmel láthatóan el volt keseredve. Közben a Laci öcsém, aki Kiskunfélegyházán dolgozott, vállalta, hogy hazajön, és segít az édesanyámnak. Úgyhogy csak egy váltás történt, hogy ő otthagyta a sógoromat, és hazajött segíteni. Ő csinálta azután ezeket az utazásokat és az árubeszerzést. De a hőskor az az év volt, amit én csináltam, mert azért mindig jobban konszolidálódott a helyzet, a vonatindulások, és azért nem vagon tetején utaztunk télen-nyáron.

Amikor egy kicsit jobban összeszedték magukat, akkor az öcsém be tudott rendezni egy fogtechnikai laboratóriumot. Akkor az öcsém már csak annyit tett, hogy hetenként kétszer följárt Pestre, és az árubeszerzésben segített. Sokszor már nem is kellett neki vinnie, hanem már postán lehetett csomagban elküldeni. Az édesanyámnak akkor már volt egy kisegítője az üzletben. Az édesanyám tudta csinálni ezt az üzletet. Mikor 1948-1949-ben voltak az államosítások, akkor megszüntették, de alkalmazták őt ugyanabban az üzletben alkalmazottként [lásd: államosítás Magyarországon]. Tehát az üzletet elvették, az árukészletet megvették. És már mint nyugdíjas 5-6 évet dolgozott, mikor azt mondta, hogy most már nem megy tovább. Az 1950-es években még tudom, hogy dolgozott, de talán már nem végig, 65-66 éves koráig. Utána már a könyvtár maradványával foglalkozott, az megvolt, hazavitte, és otthon maszek módon kiadott könyveket, és a nyugdíját ebből pótolta. Az édesapám után özvegyi nyugdíjat kapott, és azt hiszem, a saját munkaviszonya után is kapott valami kiegészítést.

Laci öcsém 1951-ben vagy 1952-ben nősülhetett meg, erre most már nem emlékszem. A feleségének Hajós Györgyi a lánykori neve. Ő kaposvári, de itt volt Budapesten, mert a szülei elpusztultak, és valamilyen hozzátartozónál volt egész fiatal lányként. Zsidó esküvőjük volt Pesten. Úgy emlékszem, mintha a Dohány utcai zsinagógában lett volna. Biztos, hogy kicsi esküvő volt, az akkori körülmények nem nagyon kedveztek, de volt egyházi esküvő is. Mikor ők megesküdtek, egy időre a Györgyi lement Kiskunhalasra, ott volt Kiskunhalason pár hónapig, és éppúgy, mint az én feleségem, ő sem tudott olyan jól kijönni az édesanyámmal – a Györgyi is, és az én feleségem is szeretett volna a ház asszonya lenni, de ők csak másodhegedűsök voltak az édesanyám mellett. Ő adta a lakást, ő gondoskodott a jövedelem jelentős részéről, ő mondott meg mindent. Aztán elhatározták ők is, hogy följönnek Pestre. A Györgyi a szabadalmi hivatalban dolgozott. Nagyon szép karriert futott be a szakmájában, nagyon megbecsült volt, még ma is igénybe veszik, pedig már 73-74 éves. Laci öcsém itt, Budapesten is fogtechnikusi állásban volt. Ők nem is magyarosították a nevüket, az ő pozíciójában ez nem volt szükséges. Két gyerekük született, egy fiú, Ferenc és egy lány, Kati, nagyon szépen éltek. A fiuk gépészmérnök lett, a lányuk elvégzett valami humán főiskolát, aztán férjhez ment. Gyerekei születtek mind a kettőnek.

Amikor a Laci és a felesége följöttek Pestre, egyedül maradt az édesanyám. Otthon lakott egészen 1964-ig, amikor 74 éves volt, és akkor már többször mondta, hogy nem tud már ott egyedül lenni, mindenki kihal körülötte, a régi ismerősök, rokonok, akikkel tudta tartani a kapcsolatot. Föl szeretne jönni Pestre. Sikerült a Kolumbusz utcában egy nagyon szép kis szoba-hallos öröklakást megvenni, úgyhogy a kiskunhalasi ötszobás lakását eladta. Egyébként ami az édesanyámra jellemző volt, egész életében ott élt Kiskunhalason, és én költöztettem föl, én mentem le, és egy teherautóval el tudott hozni mindent, amit el akart hozni. A gépkocsivezető mellett ültünk mi ketten, egy könnycsepp nem jött ki a szemén. Erős volt, az élet megedzette, annyit kellett küszködnie. Egy kis kertes házban volt a lakása, nagyon szerette a lakását, nagyon jól érezte itt magát, és egészen 90 éves koráig élt. Miután én itt voltam, én voltam az, aki amit kellett, naponta beszereztem, reggelenként én gyújtottam be nála, meg kávét vittem az ágyba. Az öcsém is járt hozzá, de ő nem lakott ilyen közel.

1946 nyarán 4-5 hónapos volt a Péter, amikor elmentünk Vácra. Bőröndünk nem volt, úgyhogy zsákba volt becsomagolva a holmink, és az volt föltéve a vonatba. A sógornőm, Klári, aki már ott volt, egy kicsit elő tudott készíteni, tudott találni egy udvari szoba-konyhás lakást. Volt egy szekrény, egy ágy, talán asztal, szék is volt persze, meg sparhelt. Ez talán pár hónapig tartott, mert az ő lakásukban – a Weisz szülők háza volt ez, ahonnan a gettóba bementek – voltak albérlők, és beadtuk az igényünket, hogy mi szeretnénk oda beköltözni. Háromszobás, gyönyörű nagy, komfortos lakás volt ez, még egy udvari szoba-konyhás lakás is tartozott hozzá, aminek az előszobáját leválasztották, az előszobát konyhának használták. Egy asszony lakott ott, úgy emlékszem, két gyerekkel. És sikerült két szoba, konyha, fürdőszoba, spejz részét a lakásnak megkapnunk.

Én próbálkoztam mindjárt a régi gyárban, ahol dolgoztam, de nem indult meg még akkor a munka. Egy ismerős mondta, hogy neki van egy ismerőse, ugyancsak zsidó férfi, aki útjavításokkal foglalkozik, hogy az odavenne magához segédmunkásnak. Odamentem, és talán egy hónapig jártam oda. Aszfaltot cipeltem, köveket, meg amit ott kellett. Nem tudom, mennyit kerestem, filléreket. De megéltünk, akkor még sok segélyt kaptunk a különböző zsidó szervezetektől. És az alatt az idő alatt sikerült összeismerkedni a feleségemnek egy régi ismerősével, aki megindította az ecetgyárát, és szüksége volt egy olyanra, aki a jobbkeze lehetett volna, és fölvett. Itt már tisztviselő voltam. Énnekem kellett a munkásokra felügyelni, én fogadtam a vevőket, és én voltam ott, amikor kiadták nekik az ecetet, és vittem be az irodába, ahol kiállították a számlát. Ez egy idős, gyermektelen házaspár volt, nagyon rendesek voltak hozzám. Körülbelül egy évet dolgoztam itt, amikor megkeresett a régi gyár vezetője, hogy szüksége lenne Budapesten az Univerzit műanyag-feldolgozó üzemben egy olyan emberre, aki neki bizalmasa, és hogy jöjjek oda. Nem kifejezett munkakörre, és jelentősen jobb fizetéssel.

Természetesen a gazdámnak a sajnálkozása mellett eljöttem, és attól kezdve bejártam Pestre Vácról naponta. Különböző szállítókkal meg vevőkkel kapcsolatos kérdésekben kellett kidolgozni azt, hogy milyen anyagra van szüksége, tehát statisztikai munkát is végeztem. Ott nem dolgoztam még egy fél évig sem, 1947 végén mondja nekem a főnök, hogy a könyvelőnő szülni fog, és azt szeretné, ha én venném át a könyvelést. Azt mondtam, én még életemben nem csináltam ilyet. Nem baj, meg fogom tanulni, van úgyis egy hites könyvvizsgálója, aki felügyeli ezt. Rögtön be kellett iratkoznom egy féléves alapfokú könyvelési tanfolyamra. 1948 tavaszán, amikor az 1947-es mérleget kellett csinálni, abban már teljesen részt tudtam venni, és a hites könyvvizsgáló az általam összeállított mérleget, eredménykimutatást leellenőrizte és elfogadta, hogy jó. Rögtön ezt követően egy középfokú tanfolyamra is elmentem.

Eljutottunk odáig, hogy az 1948. évi mérleget 1949 tavaszán már teljesen egyedül csináltam. És következett 1949. július 1., amikor államosították a céget, és létrehoztak egy műanyag-feldolgozó nemzeti vállalatot, amelyikben a mienk volt talán a legnagyobb, de több mint tíz kis műanyag-feldolgozó vállalatot vontak össze. A mi cégünk önmagában több mint 100 fős volt, és ezzel a kiegészítéssel majdnem 300 főre nőtt föl a létszámunk. Nálunk volt egy szerszámkészítő műhely is, ahol a formákat csinálták, és annak a vezetője egy erősen munkásmozgalmi ember volt, rendkívül értelmes, intelligens tanult munkásember. Nem tudom, hogy volt-e érettségije, de négy polgárija mindenképpen. Nagyon jó viszonyban voltam vele, és őt nevezték ki ennek a nemzeti vállalatnak az igazgatójának. Neki kellett megneveznie a helyetteseit, és engem nevezett meg, hogy én legyek ennek a nemzeti vállalatnak a főkönyvelője. És engem 29 éves koromban kineveztek a vállalat főkönyvelőjévé. Szörnyű munka volt tízegynéhány vállalatnak az összevonását megcsinálni. Éjjel-nappal dolgoztam, azt hittem, hogy beleőrülök. A végén összehoztuk, megvolt az egységes vállalat, és ezzel dolgoztam 1949. júliustól 1951 közepéig.

Közben följöttünk Budapestre 1950. november 1-jén. 1950 áprilisában született a kislányom, Marika. Megyek egyszer haza délután, és nyüzsgés van nálunk, egy fehér köpenyes nőtől kérdem, mi van itt? Bemutatkozik, hogy ő egy szülésznő, és ma este szülni fog a felesége. Azt mondta a feleségem, hogy ő nem megy be a kórházba, mert nem hagyja a Pétert egyedül. Volt egy falusi kis szobalány a segítsége, és ő azt nem hagyja egyedül, hogy otthon született a Péter is, és ő otthon fog szülni. Az orvos is azt mondta, hogy nyugodtan. Nem lakott messze, ha bármi van, csak szóljanak, mondta a szülésznőnek. És tényleg, teljesen simán megszületett a második gyermek. Nagyon jó testvérek a Péter és a húga, Marika.

A feleségem soha nem volt állásban [lásd: foglalkoztatott nők aránya 1960-ban és foglalkoztatott nők aránya 1970-ben]. Volt, amikor egy-egy nagyobb munkához, nagytakarításhoz igénybe vett segítséget, de általában nem. A hétvégi takarítás az én feladatom volt, így vezettük be. Eleinte szenet, fát kellett fölhordani a pincéből, ez az én feladatom volt, a nehezebb élelmiszereket, krumplit, hagymát együtt mentünk venni, megvettünk 10 kilót, 20 kilót egyben. Ilyenben segítettem, de a többit ő intézte.

1951 közepén az én „kedves jóakaróim”, az akkori párttitkár, a szakszervezeti titkár és az igazgató együttesen engem javasoltak tartalékos tiszti kiképzésre. Ez egy kitüntetés volt, csupa olyanok kerültek be, akiket legalábbis a rendszer hívének tartottak. Akkor már a Nehézipari Minisztérium Színesfém Főosztályához tartoztunk. Párt meg hadsereg, nem lehetett nemet mondani, és a minisztériumban sem mondhatták, hogy nem engedjük el. Kineveztek helyettem egy helyettest. Ha három hónapig nem jövök vissza, azt véglegesítik. Egy hónapig voltunk laktanyában, két hónapig a Börzsönyben táborban, és tartalékos légvédelmi tiszti kiképzést kaptunk. Ott bennünket osztályoztak, hogy milyen volt a lőgyakorlatunk, milyen volt a terepgyakorlatunk, milyen csapatmunkát tudtunk végezni, ez, az, amaz, és én is a legjobbak közé tartoztam. Amikor jött a leszerelés három hónap után, akkor voltunk nyolcan vagy tízen, akikre azt mondták, hogy további politikai kiképzésben részesülnek. Mivel három hónap után nem tértem vissza, véglegesítették a helyettest. Letelt a négy hónap, és én megjelentem a minisztériumban, hogy leszereltem. Hogy mi legyen énvelem? Egyelőre menjek ki a kőbányai műanyaggyárba, mert annak a főkönyvelőjét épp akkor hívták be ugyancsak tartalékos tiszti kiképzésre, helyettesítsem azt. Ez egy nagyon jó dolog volt, mert ugyan ott nem sokat csináltam, de nagyon sokat tanultam. Igyekeztem mindent egy jól begyakorolt vállalattól megtanulni, hogy hogyan is működik, amit én aztán később nagyon jól fel tudtam használni. Szóval három hónap után ő visszatért, és én megint ott voltam a piacon állás nélkül.

És akkor az alumíniumiparban a Könnyűfémipari Beruházási Vállalatnál volt egy üresedés haláleset miatt, és engem ajánlottak be. Oda kellett egy főkönyvelőt helyettesítő számviteli főosztályvezető. Ez volt 1951 őszén. Egy olyan vállalatot vettem át, amelyiknél 6 hónapig nem volt ilyen vezető, és nekem kellett ott rendet csinálnom. Ez a munkakör tartott egészen 1952 közepéig, amikor is közölték, hogy a vállalatot fölszámolják, mert már nincs szükség rá. Bennünket kihelyeztek az addig a cég által bonyolított beruházásokhoz. 

A vállalat egyik beruházása volt a Magyaróvári Timföld és Műkorundgyár [A műkorund bauxit fölhasználásával készült ipari csiszolóanyag. – A szerk.], és engem áthelyeztek oda budapesti székhellyel, hogy onnan intézzük a magyaróvári [Nyilván Mosonmagyaróvárról volt szó. Moson és Magyaróvár már 1939-ben egyesültek. – A szerk.] beruházást. A beruházási részleg teljesen külön részleg volt a vállalaton belül, és annak a pénzügyi vezetője lettem én. Nagyon jó állásom volt viszonylag jó fizetéssel, mire 1952 végén közölték velem, hogy megszüntetik ezt a budapesti kirendeltséget, le kell menni [Moson]Magyaróvárra. Kedden reggel kellett lemennem [Moson]Magyaróvárra, és péntek este visszajönnöm, szombat-vasárnap otthon és a hétfőt mindig Budapesten, mert a beruházási bankban és a minisztériumban egy héten egyszer muszáj volt egyeztetni a dolgokat. Kaptam különélési díjat meg szállásköltségdíjat és a fizetésemet és külön prémiumot. Úgyhogy elfogadtam, mert olyan fizetést tudtam hozni, amit a feleségem is elfogadott. A különélési díjból meg a szállásköltségből úgy meg tudtam élni, hogy gyakorlatilag a fizetésemet és a prémiumomat odaadtam a feleségemnek. Megérte, kicsit anyagilag össze tudtuk szedni magunkat, bútorokat jobban elrendezni, mert ramatyul nézett ki addig a lakásunk. Többre nem futotta persze, de az is valami.

1953-ban Nádasra magyarosítottam a nevemet. Az én beosztásomban nagyon zavaró volt németesen írva, hogy Neuwirth, nem tudták kimondani a nevemet, és fölvetődött a feleségemmel, hogy magyarosítsam a nevemet. Ha bemondtam a nevemet valahol, hogy Neuwirth, elkezdték fonetikusan írni, és akkor mindig helyesbíteni kellett. Egész egyszerűen kínos volt, hogy folyton helyesbítenem kellett. Ha ez nem lett volna, akkor valószínűleg nem magyarosítunk, mert például az öcsém nem magyarosított, az ő pozíciójában ez nem volt szükséges. A gyerekei még ma is Neuwirth néven élnek, és semmi bajuk nincsen ezzel. Kérvényt kellett beadni három javasolt névvel, és abból egyet hagytak jóvá. Németh, Nádas és Nótás volt a három név. Azért akartam, hogy N-nel kezdődjön, mert volt monogramom valamiben, egy ingben, akkor az emiatt maradjon meg. És egy dolog volt fontos, hogy ne i-vel végződjön, nem szerettem az ilyen nagyon magyaros nevet.

A [moson]magyaróvári állás tartott egészen 1957-ig. Közbejött még a forradalom [lásd: 1956-os forradalom], amit Budapesten töltöttem el, mert ugyan lent voltam október 23-án [Moson]Magyaróváron, ott értesültünk az eseményekről. [A rendszerváltásig sokan kódoltan csak úgy említették az 1956-os forradalmat, mint „eseményeket” vagy „sajnálatos eseményeket”. – A szerk.] Október 25-én indult onnan vonat, és az egyik kollégámmal följöttünk Pestre. Aztán itt is maradtunk, és november nem tudom, hányadikán utaztunk aztán vissza, amikor már kicsit konszolidálódott a helyzet. A forradalomról rossz emlékeim vannak. Lövöldözések voltak. Leköltöztünk az alagsorba, a légópincébe, amikor a lövöldözések voltak. A feleségem nem nagyon akarta, hogy én mászkáljak az utcán. Tudtuk, hogy hol lehet kenyérhez jutni, és inkább a nők mentek el, és hozták a kenyeret vagy amit be kellett szerezni. Ez 3-4 nap volt. Főleg október 23-a és november 4-e között az utcán lehetett látni katonatiszteket, akik régi egyenruhában masíroztak, és fiatal suhancokat lehetett hallani zsidózni az utcán. De például a házban nem éreztem ilyesmit [antiszemitizmust]. Nem volt, pedig tudtam, hogy vannak olyanok, akik nem kedvelnek, de nem volt semmilyen jele.

Egészen az utóbbi időkig énnekem az volt érzésem, hogy 1956 ellenforradalom volt. Tehát nem a lakosság döntő többségének, hanem kizárólag a szocialista rendszer elleni erőknek a megmozdulása volt. Nekem ez volt akkor a véleményem. Ma már azt sugallja minden, hogy az egész nép akarta tulajdonképpen ezt az egész változást. Én nem érzékeltem ezt akkor. Minden, a rádiónak a megtámadása október 23-án éjjel, az egy kifejezetten egy jobboldali szervezett akció volt. Az egész 23-i felvonulás, ami folytatódott később, az egyáltalán nem államellenes akció volt, hanem csak az észlelt hibáknak a megszüntetését akarták. Az egész rendszer fennállása alatt állandóan ez folyt, például közöttünk, vezetők között, amikor együtt voltunk, állandóan a hibákat kerestük. És láttuk a hibákat; például x esetben kitárgyaltuk, hogy a nyugati tábor gazdasági ereje sokszorosan felülmúlja a szocialista tábor gazdasági erejét, és a fegyverkezés nekünk tízszer annyiba kerül, mint az amerikaiaknak, hogy az egyensúlyt tartsuk. Biztos, hogy ez nem mehet tovább. Mi örültünk volna annak, hogyha olyan helyzet alakulhatott volna ki, hogy békésen tud a két rendszer egymás mellett létezni, de ez nem ment. A termelőeszközök társadalmi tulajdona kiderült, hogy nem életképes. Az állam nem tud gazdálkodni, magántulajdonban lévő vállalkozásokkal lehet igazán gazdaságosan termelni. De ez egy olyan tabu volt, amiről még csak beszélni sem lehetett.

1957 októberében közölték, hogy megalakul az Alumíniumipari Kereskedelmi Vállalat, és ahhoz kell főkönyvelő. Én akkor már [Moson]Magyaróváron voltam, és tudtam, hogy az a kolléga, akivel én nagyon jó viszonyban voltam, amikor az iparba kerültem, az lett a minisztériumban a számviteli főosztály vezetője. Fölhívtam és mondtam neki, hogy boldog lennék, ha engem [Moson]Magyaróvárról fölhelyeznétek Pestre. Azt mondja, de jó hogy szóltam, boldogan, mert akkor nem ismeretlennel kezdenek. Úgyhogy engem fölhelyeztek október 1-jén Budapestre, én lettem az Alumíniumipari Kereskedelmi Vállalat főkönyvelője, és a nyugdíjazásomig ezt a beosztást töltöttem be. Akkor főkönyvelőnek hívták, később lett aztán gazdasági igazgatóhelyettes a neve.

1970-ben nyugdíjba ment a kereskedelmi igazgató, és azt mondták a minisztériumban az igazgatónak, hogy kettőnk között fölosztjuk a kereskedelmi igazgató munkakörét, és akkor nem kell senkit oda fölvenni. Tehát maradtunk ketten. 1972 júniusában nyugdíjba ment az igazgató. Szólt a vezérigazgató, hogy őnekik nincsen semmilyen jelöltjük, ők azt szeretnék, ha én ideiglenesen vállalnám az igazgatói beosztást. Jó, mondom, vállalom. Nem volt szó időről, csak hogy ideiglenesen. Kaptam a minisztertől egy papírt – a magasabb vezetői állásokra miniszteri kinevezés volt –, hogy ideiglenesen megbíznak. Megmarad a gazdasági igazgatóhelyettesi pozícióm, de ideiglenesen megbíznak az igazgatói teendők ellátásával. Anyagiakról nem volt szó, ezt diszkréten elhallgatták. Mentem föl a vezérigazgatóhoz, hogy mi van, ha én szabadságon vagyok vagy beteg vagyok vagy vidéken, valakinek kell a helyettesemnek lenni. „Te nevezzél ki magadnak, akiket gondolsz, közöld velünk, hogy ezek a helyetteseid.” Egy kollégával nagyon jó viszonyban voltam, nagyon megbíztam benne, ő lett a helyettesem. Tehát nem főosztályvezető, hanem irodavezető címmel. És így a nyugdíjazásomig egyedül láttam el a vállalatvezetői funkciót. Mindenért én voltam a felelős. Nem volt könnyű dolog, de nagyon izgalmas volt.

1980-ban elmentem nyugdíjba. Azt mondtam a vezérigazgatónak: „Én elmegyek nyugdíjba, de hajlandó vagyok mint nyugdíjas a gazdasági igazgatóhelyettesi teendőket ellátni. De legyen valaki gazdasági igazgatóhelyettes, akit te a későbbiekben kinevezel. Én ellátom az ő nevében, és őneki csak alá kell írni, és én megfelelő díjazást kapok, és akkor mindenki jól jár.” És végül elfogadták ezt a megoldást, úgyhogy én elmentem nyugdíjba, és megszűnt a következő napon a pozícióm. És dolgoztam egészen 1995-ig, 75 éves koromig. 4 órát dolgoztam, tisztességesen megfizették azt nekem. Én magam szabtam meg az időpontját; úgy mentem, hogy előtte kimentem úszni, utána elmentem az irodába, 10 órára ott voltam. Ott voltam 2 óráig, 3-ig, közben megebédeltem és akkor mentem haza. Akkor született a kislányom második gyereke, és attól kezdve én minden délután a gyerekekkel voltam, tudtam őket sétáltatni, és ő egy kicsit szabad volt.

Amikor odakerültem az Univerzit vállalathoz 1947-ben, jött a szakszervezeti titkár, hogy lépjek be a szakszervezetbe – a Vegyipari Szakszervezethez tartoztunk. 1949-ben léptem be a kommunista pártba. Mikor kineveztek főkönyvelőnek az új nemzeti vállalatnál, a párttitkár azt az igényét jelentette be, hogy elvárja tőlem, hogy párttag legyek. És miután a véleményünk megegyezett, ez nem okozott számomra gondot. Nem emlékszem rá, hogy ezt milyen módon bonyolították le, de biztos az előírásnak teljesen megfelelően csinálták. Ez tartott 1956-ig. Én akkor [Moson]Magyaróváron voltam, de ottan már nem vettek vissza, mert akkor újraszervezték a pártot. Ők sem hívtak, de én sem mentem. Mind a két fél hallgatólagosan tudomásul vette, hogy én most már nem vagyok tagja a pártnak. 1957 őszén aztán fölhelyeztek Pestre. Itt fölkértek, hogy jelentkezzek, de akkor meg a kerületi pártbizottság nem tartott igényt rám, mondván, hogy túl magas az értelmiségiek aránya, és nem értelmiségiekkel akarják feltölteni a pártot. Ez tartott 1969-ig, amikor jött a kérés, hogy lépjek be a pártba. És miután nekem megint csak nem volt világnézetem ellen, beléptem újra az MSZMP-be. És egészen 1990-ig a vállalati MSZMP tagja voltam, még mint nyugdíjas is.

Fiatalabb korban eljártunk moziba. Amióta a televízió van, én nem emlékszem, hogy mi közösen moziba mentünk volna. Énnekem 1964-ben volt az első televízióm, a római olimpia idején [Rómában 1960-ban rendeztek olimpiai játékokat, 1964-ben Tokióban volt az olimpia. – A szerk.], emlékszem erre, hogy akkor nagyon örültünk neki Péterrel együtt. Péter akkor már 18 éves volt, őt rendkívül érdekelte a sport, a mai napig is és engem is.

Sosem volt nekem két hétnél több szabadságom egyszerre, mert időközönként kivettem a többit. Mikor még az édesanyám Kiskunhalason élt, minden nyarunkat, a szabadságunknak egy jelentős részét, a gyerekek pedig majdnem minden vakációt Kiskunhalason töltöttek. Az első közös nyaralásunk 1959-ben volt a családdal Káptalanfüreden, az inotai alumíniumkohó üdülőjében. A következő, amire emlékszem, 1961, amikor Balatonfüreden voltunk. A pécsi uránbányának volt ott egy üdülője, ott volt kéthetes üdülésünk, és utána közös üdülésünk volt kétszer vagy háromszor még, Keszthelyen, Harkányban. Ezek a vállalatok mind hozzánk tartoztak, és ott tudtam elintézni, hogy kapjunk közös családi beutalót.

Én nagyon keveset mentem Nyugatra. Csak hivatalos ügyben voltam, Franciaországban, Tuniszban és az NSZK-ban. Franciaországban voltam talán kétszer, mert ott jelentős nyersanyagszállítónk volt az alumíniumipar részére, ugyanez volt Tuniszban is, és tulajdonképpen az NSZK-ban is ilyen ügyben voltam. Én általában nem vettem részt a tárgyalásokban, mert nem voltam szakember, azt rábíztam a szakemberekre. De volt, amikor az igazgatónak kellett aláírnia egy szerződést, ilyen esetekben aztán én mentem ki. Csehszlovákiában, az NDK-ban és Romániában többször voltam hivatalos úton. Magánúton egyetlen egyszer sem. A húszéves házassági évfordulónkon Opatijába [Horvátországba] mentünk el egy egyhetes társas útra. Ez volt az egyetlen külföldi utunk, de a szocialista országokba sem mentünk magánúton.

Hétvégén általában pihenés volt, legföljebb rokoni vagy baráti találkozás. Az öcsémékhez mentünk, vagy ők jöttek. De ebből sem csináltunk túl gyakori találkozásokat. Itt a közvetlen szomszédom, egy idősebb házaspár, és az a férfi is itt lakott a közelben, akinek a gyárában dolgoztam, az Univerzit gyárban. Nagyon jó viszonyban voltunk, és a felesége is nagyon jóban volt az én feleségemmel meg ezzel a szomszédasszonnyal. A két férfi meg nagyon szeretett kártyázni, én is. Amikor együtt voltunk, hármasban egy-két órát ultiztunk, míg az asszonyok trécseltek. A feleségem halálával megszűnt ez a társaság. Énnekem olyan nagyon nagy kedvem nem volt a kártyához, hogy azért én találkozzam velük, a korkülönbség is olyan volt, hogy inkább a gyerekeimmel meg az unokáimmal voltam a hétvégeken csak.

A zsidó ünnepeket megünnepeltük, a feleségem elment templomba, én úgy emlékszem, én is elmentem még ővele Kol Nidrére [Jom Kipur előestéjén] meg Ros Hásáná este, ő még napközben is ment [Jom Kipurkor]. Én napközben nem, én bementem dolgozni, de ő elment. Amikor a fiam meg a lányom kicsik voltak, a Thököly úti imaházba azért elmentünk a feleségemmel együtt, és őket is elvittük. Karácsonyt is ünnepeltünk. Nem egyházilag, csak karácsonyfa volt és ajándékozás. Mindig vettünk a gyerekek miatt egy kis karácsonyfát, és ott volt alatta az ajándék.

Péter közgazdasági egyetemet végzett, jelenleg is a szakmájában dolgozik, közgazdász. Az első felesége évfolyamtársa volt az egyetemen. A fiuk, Gábor 1971-ben született. Albérletben laktak, és várták a Gábor születését, és mi lent nyaraltunk Harkányban a feleségemmel. Egyszer csak távirat érkezett: „Gépkocsinyeremény-könyves Skodát nyertünk, Péter.” Kaptak nászajándékul egy 5000 forintos gépkocsibetétkönyvet, s kihúzták, és Skodát nyertek. Akkor elég jelentős összeg volt, és az új autóból meg még valamennyit kellett fizetni, vettek egy új társasházban egy 1 plusz 2 félszobás lakást, és a lakást eladótól átvették az OTP kölcsönt. Egy ilyen hirdetéssel, hogy „lakást eladok, gépkocsit beszámítok” – ilyenek voltak akkor. A gépkocsi ritka dolog volt, nagyon nehéz volt hozzájutni, és akitől vették a lakást, az be se költözött még az új lakásba, eladta a gépkocsiért. Tehát így megszerezték a lakást.

Péter később elvált, és még kétszer nősült meg. Sem az első, sem a második felesége nem volt zsidó. Mi eljutottunk odáig, hogy nem szólunk bele, hogy zsidók lesznek-e a gyerekeink házastársai. A mi időnkben ez még számított, az én gyerekeimnél már nem, és nem is zsidók a párjaik. A második felesége egy református pap lánya volt. Egy fiúgyermekük született, a Bálint. A harmadik felesége félzsidó volt – tőle nincs gyerek. A két első házasságnál föl sem vetődött a két fiúnál, Gábornál és Bálintnál, hogy brit mílá legyen.

Gábor unokám vendéglátó-ipari szakközépiskolát végzett, és elvégezte a szállodaipari főiskolát. A szállodaiparban dolgozik vezető állásban. Gábort rendkívüli módon érdekelték a zsidósággal kapcsolatos kérdések, amikor beszélgettünk. Amikor megnősült, nem akart egyházi esküvőt. A felesége szülei ragaszkodtak katolikus szertartás szerinti egyházi esküvőhöz, és azzal a feltétellel ment bele, hogy rendben van, de az egyházi esküvő utáni vacsorán ő meg fogja mutatni, hogyan van egy zsidó házasság. Ennek az volt az előzménye, hogy nekem vannak rokonaim Izraelben, és azok meghívták a Gábort az érettségi után, hogy pár hetet ott töltsön. És őt rendkívül megfogta, amit ott látott. Volt esküvőn is. És akarta, hogy ő ezt megmutatja. Az esküvő utáni vacsorán a fiam, Péter, Gábor öccse, Bálint, Miklós, a lányom kisfia és én tartottuk a hüpét, és ők aláálltak. És elmondta, mit miért csinálnak, miért fordulnak körbe, miért tapossák el az üveget. Két gyermekük van azóta, egy fiú meg egy lány.

Bálint is vendéglátó-ipari szakközépiskolát végzett, de egy pillanatig nem óhajtott a vendéglátóiparban dolgozni. Vonzódik a színművészeti terület iránt, és sikerült neki összeköttetést szerezni rendezőkkel, akik különböző filmeknél, színházaknál kisebb belső munkára szívesen alkalmazzák.

Marika lányom érettségi után nem tanult tovább egyetemen, de tovább képezte magát. Jelenleg egy részvénytársaság igazgatója. 1977-ben ment férjhez. Két gyerekük van, Miklós és Ágnes. Marika férje keresztény volt, de már meghalt, és ugyancsak nem vetődött fel a brit mílá a Miklósnál.

Ágnes unokám gimnáziumot végzett, majd ugyanott érettségi után elvégzett még két évet, és egészségügyi szakképesítést szerzett. Férjhez ment, és egy gyermekük van. Miklós unokám jövőre végez a közgazdasági egyetemen. Nagyon céltudatos. Tanul, képezi magát. Miklós zsidó barátokra talált a Bálint-házban [Bálint Zsidó Közösségi Ház], a Hóra-tánccsoportban is táncolt, nagyon jól érzi ott magát. Szóval ez nálunk nem vallási alapú. Zsidó kislány a barátnője, akivel együtt jár, és nagyon örülök neki, hogy így van.

1978-ban halt meg a feleségem. Rákoskeresztúron a zsidó temetőben van temetve. Azóta egyedül élek. Az 1990-es évek közepe táján a házban az egyik lakó – nagy párttag volt – kérdezte, hogy miért nem vagyok párttag [az MSZP-ben]. „Senki sem hív.” Azt mondja, dehogynem, jöjjek. És akkor ő elvitt, és azóta az MSZP-nek tagja vagyok újra, az értekezleteken részt veszek. Sőt, a kerületi alapszervben fölkértek, hogy vállaljam el, hogy én leszek az egyik hivatalos küldöttje a pártnak a választáson. Így ha nem is aktívan, de azért részt veszek a pártban.

1995 óta már nem dolgozom, itt a háznál végzek különböző munkákat, a házzal kapcsolatos dolgokban segítek a mindenkori közös képviselőnek, én csináltam mindeddig az éves elszámolásokat, mérleget, eredménykimutatást, hátralékokat.

Katalin Andai

Katalin Andai
Budapest
Hungary
Interviewer: Dora Sardi and Eszter Andor

Family background
Growing up
During the war
Post-war

Family background

I know much more about my grandparents on my father’s side (whom I didn’t really know), because I had relatives who told me stories. There is an anecdote in the family about my grandfather, Ignac Deutsch. He was the son of Lipot Deutsch’s first wife, and when his father got married for a second time, he didn’t feel like staying at home with his stepmother. Because he was apprenticed as a butcher, (in those days journey-workmen used to go traveling), my grandfather wandered up and down the Austro-Hungarian Empire for two years.  Then he decided to pay a visit to the parental house. He appeared all of a sudden. His second wife was cooking potatoes in the oven, and was just taking them out. The prodigal son stopped at the door, and said that he had come home. The second wife became very angry. Her son was goggling at the potatoes. But she grabbed a potato of the pan, and squeezed the potato into the stepson’s hand. I don’t know the consequences, but I don’t think he felt like staying there. Then my grandfather, realizing this was not the kind of woman he wanted to spend much time with, left, and settled down in Felpec. He didn’t continue in the butcher’s trade there, instead he started a pub. My grandfather died young. He had some land as well, and his widow raised the children in such a way that almost every one became qualified. Jozsef graduated technical college, Sandor became a mechanic, Bela was an architect with a university degree, and Janos was a doctor of law. And my father had two years of university as well.

I knew my grandmother, Mari Perl, because she lived almost a hundred years. She was born in 1841. She might have had basic schooling because she could read, and she did read, mostly the prayer book. Just like a country woman. I was shocked by the fact that if she couldn’t eat something she said it would be good for Mari. And the servant ate the food she left. There was nobody else but the servant, a farm laborer’s wife who helped out if needed. But she raised her daughters to know how to run a house, and they could cook and bake, and they made all kinds of decorated fancy-cakes and sweets when their suitors came calling. My grandmother was a hard, energetic woman, but she had to be like that [in order to get on with housekeeping, the children, and the land]. But she read the prayer book night and day, and knew every prayer by memory. I can’t remember her ever reading anything else. I remember that she didn’t have glasses, she read the prayer book with a magnifying glass; I can still see her reading with the magnifying glass, but I could only see Hebrew letters there. I don’t think she was interested in anything else. Come to think of it, though, she was interested in gossip.

My grandfather had a street room, from which a so-called sitting-room opened. My cousins [the daughters of uncle Gyula] saw their suitors there. The sitting room had also a double glass-door, which opened onto the veranda. This was a big porch, L-shaped, onto which the kitchen opened from the longer side. There were two kitchens: a summer kitchen and a winter kitchen. The summer kitchen was closer to the porch, and I never saw anything going on in the winter kitchen, because I was there only in summer. In the back of the kitchen there were other rooms; those which had windows onto the porch were rather dark. And at the very end of the porch there was the outhouse. There was no water in the house, but there was a wash stand in every room with a washing dish and a pitcher, and a servant always made sure that there was fresh water in the pitcher. My grandmother had wonderful furniture. It was beautifully carved, and the year was on every piece, eighteen hundred and I-don’t-know, forty or something. If you stepped off the porch, there was a yard, and two tiny flower-gardens (enclosed with wire-fencing) opened from there, one to the street, the other one to the yard. And at the back of the yard there was the pigsty.

My grandmother’s family observed their religion in a very particular way: they observed what was more comfortable to observe. The housekeeping was not kosher. They ate pork. We were always invited there [to the house of my grandmother on my father’s side] for Seder Eve, and all the brothers were there. The high holidays were observed by everybody in their own homes. The Seder was led by my oldest uncle, and for a time it was I who asked the Four Questions. There was no synagogue in Felpec, only a prayer house. At festival times, the Jews gathered together there. There were a few Jewish families in neighboring Tet, and they visited each other.

My mother’s whole family lived in Oberland [today in Slovakia]. I don’t know anything about them, they all died, nobody survived. My grandparents lived in Kassa [today: Kosice]. Grandfather was a sportsman, he was tall and neat. He swam splendidly. He had a little moustache. They were not orthodox (nobody was in our family), no, they weren’t religious at all. They didn’t observe Sabbath nor were they kosher. They didn’t go to synagogue, not even at festivals. Grandfather came from a large family. He said that when he was seven years old, his parents told him: “Well, we have kept you for a long enough time, from now on you shall keep yourself; so off you go!” And he went to work at a near-by shop. He was completely uneducated, but he educated himself. He was a very curious man, he read a great deal; he spoke Hungarian, German, Slovakian impeccably. He also wrote in these languages. He had a beautiful handwriting – he wrote with Gothic letters. I think the family’s mother-tongue was German. My opinion is that they spoke German more easily than Hungarian. They talked to me in Hungarian, but not to my mother. My mother knew German like a native speaker, and she wrote letters in German. My grandfather always wrote to her in German.

My mother’s father tried all kind of things. He had a pawn-shop, then a hotel, then he was a book-keeper. I think he went bankrupt. When I was born he had a private house, and it seems that they sold it, because when I went there in the summer they only had a flat that opened onto a yard. The toilet was inside. There was a wash stand in the kitchen. [This was] in a one-story house; the sun shone into the yard, and there was an oleander in a pail. Grandmother didn’t work, she raised her three daughters and kept the house. When I was born they had a servant, and moreover she was Slovak, or as they used to say, a Tot. Later [in the 1930s] they had no servants. Grandmother wasn’t a happy person, she was always nervous. She was afraid of everything, and she always saw the dark side. She couldn’t really show her feelings; she probably loved me as a grandchild, but I didn’t really feel it. She could cook splendidly, and the house was pristine all the time. I went there for the last time when I was 15 years old, never after that. My grandparents poisoned themselves in the ghetto of Kassa, so they were not deported. My grandfather was over 80 when he killed himself in the ghetto.

My mother had two sisters. Olga was older than my mother by three or four years. They attended university in Budapest ,which was a big deal at that time. Olga studied as a teacher – I don’t know what kind of teacher – and she told her parents that she didn’t want to occupy a teacher’s post because she had fallen in love with a student, and wanted to marry him. The problem was that the person in question was Christian and the son of a jailer. Well, it caused a lot of trouble, but she married him, and he got a job in Resicabanya [today: Resita], close to Temesvar [today: Timisoara, a town in Transylvania, Romania]. There he got a job in an iron factory and they moved there. They had a single daughter, and when she was 4 years old it came to light that she had diabetes. The insulin was invented around that time, and they brought her insulin from Vienna. She had to use insulin for the rest of her life. We became estranged somehow, I don’t know anything more about them.

Her sister Isabella, or Bella, was sent to university in Budapest, too. She hated university as well. Bella was a very strange woman. She was married off to a bartender. She wasn’t so young any more, though she was very pretty, and she was happy to get married at all. Her husband was a Jew from the country who had a high school education in commerce; he had a bar at the corner of Thokoly Road and Muranyi Street here in Budapest. They had a good financial situation. Bella didn’t work as she didn’t like to be among people. She went to the cinema alone and read. She couldn’t even cook, her mother-in-law cooked while she was alive. They never had any children. They both survived the war. Her husband wasn’t taken to forced labor service, but he was a member of the skeleton staff in the army, and they kept his rank of officer, because in the Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919 he had gained distinctions. I didn’t like them because they made us feel acutely that they were in a much better financial situation than we were.

Originally in my father’s family there were eight brothers and sisters, seven boys and one girl. She died early on, and one of the boys also died when he was 20 years old; he got tuberculosis. My father’s eldest brother was Jozsef Erdos, who was 17 years older than my father. My father was 10 years old when they magyarized their name from Deutsch to Erdos. Only the brothers magyarized their names, their father and my grandfather didn’t. Jozsef was a skilled mechanic, and he began as a mechanic in the Rock’s engineering works, then he became a car mechanic and opened a car repair shop in Budapest. They were rather wealthy. He died peacefully in the 1930s, while his wife became ill and died during the siege. He had three children. His eldest child, Rozsi, got married in Vienna; her husband was a wine-merchant. The second child, Miklos, worked with his father, then he took over the shop. His wife came here from Denmark. She spoke Hungarian, though perfectly, with an accent. Miklos didn’t have to go into the forced labor service, because German and Hungarian soldiers repaired their cars in his shop, so he enjoyed immunity. When the Russians finally took the city, on the first day, Miklos said, “I haven’t been out in the street for two month and I’m going to see what’s going on!” He walked outside and nobody ever saw him again. The youngest child was Laszlo. He also worked in the shop. He was a very quiet boy and  he died in the forced labor service.

The next was Sandor Erdos. He remained in western Hungary, where they came from. He had a rolling mill in his home town, and mills in Kapuvar and Hodmezovasarhely as well. His wife, Ilonka Topf, was a post-office employee when Sandor met her. She was an immensely intelligent woman, and that is why he married her. She was the head of the post office, actually. Then of course she left it. The family chronicle says that her husband took her advice in everything. It was she who told her husband what steps to take, and he discussed everything with her: what to buy, what to sell, everything. They lived in Bosarkany and were rather rich. When I was 10 years old, they even had running water, which was a rare thing in villages. Their mill produced a good income for the family, and from this, they enjoyed electric lighting, a radio, a telephone, a green-house with plants, and even a tennis court.

When I was about 12-13 Sandor already had a car with a driver, and his son had one as well, though he drove it himself.  There was a lot of showing-off there, and he rubbed shoulders with the gentry and mixed with them. The family chronicle tells that during the Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919 the man in charge was Tibor Szamuely, who gathered in all the capitalists and shot them dead.  He called Sandor in . It looked like he would be hung or shot. Szamuely asked him who and what he was. Szamuely said, “Are you a Jew?” “Yes, I am,” he replied. Thereupon he spat on him and kicked him out. Sandor and his family used to live in Budapest every winter. They rented a four or six-roomed flat in Vigszinhaz Street. In villages there’s no life in winter, while here they lived their lives, went to the theatre, moved in society. And they also cultivated the family. We were invited for lunch many times – but very charitably and condescendingly. They were not so religious, but were more so than my mother’s branch of the family. If I remember well they lit candles on Friday evenings, and bought a temple season-ticket for the high holidays. During the war the family was hiding in Budapest, and Sandor died a few months before the end of the war. He was very sick and old at that time.

Sandor had four children, three girls and a boy. One of his girls died of tuberculosis when she was 32 years old. It was very common in those times. His son, Istvan was the head of the mill company. He was a very intelligent, educated, witty man of the world, elegant, handsome and, I hae to say, devlish. He took as his wife the daughter of the head of the Jewish community of Eger, who had just come out of the Swiss finishing-school. Those were horribly rich people. He took that girl as his wife, without love, just because she was so wealthy. They had two daughters. Their marriage was terrible. They survived the war as well, because Istvan had a Christian lover, and she saved everybody. She was an immensely decent woman. After the war he divorced and married this woman.

One of Sandor’s daughters married a wine wholesaler in Vienna, and they had a son. Her husband and son died in forced labor service; she ended her life in the Jewish home for the aged in Vienna. His other daughter, Rozsi, lived in Budapest with her husband, who was the president of the Butcher’s Association of Budapest. Rozsi was a rich lady and they lived a high life. She went to the swimming pool; she swam and cultivated sports. They had a house of their own. We went there only when we were invited on birthdays and things like that.

Rozsi had a terrible death. She was shot by the Arrow-Cross in the Maros street hospital [the Hungarian fascists raided this Jewish hospital and killed patients, doctors and nurses alike] together with her 16-year-old daughter in 1944. Her husband had committed suicide a little earlier and she went to this hospital under a false name to be safe there. Their little boy Ivan survived the war.And her husband committed suicide in 1944. Her son survived, became an interpreter, and is still alive today.

Another of my father’s brothers was Bela, an engineer at the railway. He ran away in a hurry in 1919 after the collapse of the Hungarian Soviet Republic (it lasted but four months), because the workers had elected him some sort of party steward, and as a Jew he had the feeling that the Horthy government wouldn’t be very grateful (a so-called White Terror swept through Hungary after the ill-starred and aborted Hungarian Soviet Republic).   He lived in Vienna and ran a housing-estate management office, and undertook the management of many housing-estates. He died there peacefully [in 1936]. He had two sons whom I saw for the last time when I was 10 years old.

Then there was Gyula.  He never graduated high school but remained at home in Felpec, and ran the family farm. Not alone, of course; he had farm-laborers. He was entirely a man of the land. He cultivated all kind of things: vegetables, wheat, cereals. He had horses and pigs, too. Later his brother called him to manage the mill. Gyula was two meters tall and blond, and had a gigantic mustache.  He looked anything but Jewish. He became a real farmer, but he was a nice man. He played the cimbalom (a musical instrument similar to a hammered dulcimer played throughout Hungary) in the evenings, when he had time. He married  a girl from a family of country traders. His wife worked around the house, with the animals in the garden, and managed the employees. They had two daughters. One of them, Piroska, got married to a veterinarian in Vep, in Vas county. And everything, including the fact that I got some education, I owe to them. Her husband was an amazingly educated and curious man. He made himself a radio with his own two hands. I adored him and was amazed by him. It was he who put books into my hands, saying “You should read this for this or that reason.” He warned me not to be such a committed socialist, because this ideology had its drawbacks as well. They both were killed. Some people said that maybe Piroska would have survived Mengele, because she was healthy (Editor’s Note: Dr Josef Mengele is reported to have stood at the railroad siding at Birkenau and divided those who were to be sent immediately to the gas and those who were to work, or be experimented on for medical reasons.  Historians agree that Mengele could not have made these decisions on the more than 450,000 Jews who came through Birkenau; apparently others made those decisions as well).  But she died because she held the child of the woman next to her, in order to help her because the woman couldn’t walk any more; they sent her immediately into the gas.

The other daughter of uncle Gyula, Ilonka, used to work in Kapuvar as a typist in the mill’s office. Ilonka’s husband was killed in the forced labor service, but she came home from the deportation. She got married again to a drayman, and in 1956 they moved lock, stock and barrel to England; they carried everything with them, even the last coal-shovel, because they had a horse, car and truck. Gyula, the non-Jewish looking Hungarian farmer, along with his wife, was also killed in Auschwitz.

The next one, Janos, became a highly respected lawyer in Gyor, a lawyer and military officer. Uncle Janos and his family were very strict with us. When they invited us to Gyor after Seder, we went to synagogue on each of the eight days of Pesach. Maybe they were kosher too, but I wouldn't swear to it. I know they had Pesach dishes, though. On such occasions they put away the others and took those ones out. Janos and his wife were burnt in Auschwitz. Their son died in forced labor service, only their daughter survived, but her husband died as well in the forced labor service. When she came home from the deportation she moved to Budapest, got married quickly, and they left for Slovakia, and from there quickly onward to Israel, together with their son.

Then came my father, Lajos. He was the youngest. My father loved his brothers. He kept track of his brothers,’ sister-in-laws’ and nieces’ birthdays. So we met those who lived in Budapest on the holidays, and on birthdays, and they sometimes invited us for dinner. As a matter of fact, all of my father’s brothers were richer than we were, and they supported my father very well. We used to receive flour thick and fast from the one who had a mill.

My father graduated high-school, and I think he studied law for two years, but he got bored with it. And after that, when he was 21-years-old, he got into the postal service and became a postal official. He was the deputy chief cashier in the control cash-desk of a large post office. This was a position of trust and great responsibility, because they dealt with very large amounts of money. Kalman Mikszath Jr., son of the great Kalman Mikszath [one of the most important prose-writers of 19th century Hungarian literature] was his classmate, and he got into the postal service with his patronage, which was an unbelievable thing: for a Jew to be a postal officer.

As a worker at the post office, he was a government official with every benefit that entailed. He got a photo identity card, we could travel gratis by train, and we could receive something like twenty parcels a year, gratis. In those times the postal service had a private health-fund with private surgery, and it had a private hospital with very good doctors. And there was another interesting thing. Siofok started to be a health-resort at the time when I was ten years old, so this would have been in 1928. Only in the summer was there life in Siofok, so they decided to place a post office there during the summer, and three or life four reliable post-officers were sent there to manage the office. It included free hotel accommodation, free meals, free beach ticket, plus their salary. There was, I think, something extra beside their salary; so my mother and I went there and stayed there the whole summer. It was not a bad thing. On top of this, my father, as a government official, had some other “little” advantages such as the fact that he was creditable: we used to buy absolutely everything with easy repayments. Daddy would get his salary, pay everything, we wouldn’t have any more money, and then everything started again from the beginning. But we got everything on credit and easy repayments, because the postal job was such a good guarantee. Still, we lived simply.

My mother was born in 1894. She attended the upper school for girls in Kassa, and she prayed fervently that she could study as well, but they [her parents] told her, “No way, you are beautiful, you must get married.” The other two sisters weren’t ugly either, but my mother was the most beautiful. They didn’t allow her to be educated. She attended the teachers’ training school run by the nuns in Kassa. My mother got married to father in 1914 when she was 20 years old, and they moved to Budapest. I think the marriage was an arranged one. During the war, my father was a traveling postman. This is what they called those who came and went by train – and he settled for a long time in Marosvasarhely [today: Tirgu Mures, Romania]. I was almost born there. In the end I was born in Kassa in 1918. There was war and lack of food, so my mother went home to give birth at her parents’ place. Then we became a very strange family, because when my mother was 45 years old she gave birth to another child. I was already 21 years old, and my only sister was born then. When my mother became sick, my sister went to school from my place, and also, to the university for a while, until she went to study in Cuba.

My mother never wanted to teach, she didn’t like it, and her family forced upon her the teachers’ training school. She was always busy at home. But from time to time she found something to do. For instance, she got through the examination as a tailor, then she sewed over-garments; she also had a few employees. And then she did something else. Sometime at the end of the 1930s it suddenly came into vogue that when the spring came, straw hats were dyed and women wore these. Mother observed this very early on.  At first she crocheted it by herself, then she gave the work out to others. But by July it went out of fashion. And then the whole thing ended. About ten years later she was knitting gloves, scarf, panties and everything of mohair. At that time I was also knitting, no, I spun rabbit hair on the spinning wheel.

I observed very soon that my father’s family looked awry at my mother because she didn’t fit in. They were all conservatives, with an old fashioned Jewish mentality; my mother had progressive mentality; in 1926 she had her hair shingled – which was a terrible deed – and she smoked. No woman dared to do this in my father’s family. Her dressing, her behavior… She was fashionable. Besides, she was younger than them. They were envious of her and didn’t love her. My mother didn’t really come with us on holidays to grandmother’s place. But there were occasions when mother did meet the relatives, too. For example, my richest uncle, Sandor, when he rented a flat in Budapest, had to be visited. She went once or twice to my other uncle, these were visits for birthdays or holidays. I went [to pay a visit to our relatives] with my father more often, and I understood that that’s how it was.

Growing up

We lived on Klauzal Square in Budapest until I was 16 years old. It was a very strange little, two-room flat. I liked the fact that it was on the top floor. So it was horribly hot in summer with a slate roof above us. And that flat had a strange room, which was the attic, but it was on the same level as our flat. We kept there the lumber and the winter apples. In one room there were the two parental beds, and at the end of them there was the couch, crosswise, where I slept. There were these two wardrobes you can see in my flat now, a little square table, nothing else could fit in. The other room was definitely a dining-room, with dining-room furniture. And this bookcase, which I still have, was also in the dining-room. There was a rather large vestibule, where we used to have lunch in the summer. A very decent sized kitchen opened from there, and from there a decent sized larder. There was a folding-bed, which she opened in the evening. We were on good terms with almost everybody in the house. There were only a few people among the neighbors who were not Jews.

I was two years old when my mother announced publicly that she would engage an honest, hardworking servant, and a girl named Boris applied. Boris served at my parents’ for at least 40 years. She came in 1920 and she survived my father. My father was careful with the fact that the lower somebody was in status, the more polite he was with them. If there was a problem between Boris and me, he always took her side. Boris lived in the kitchen. She was almost a family member. She cooked, cleaned and did the shopping; and she quarreled, because she was a shrewish old maid. My father, when he employed her, reported it to the National Institute of Social Insurance, which wasn’t obligatory nor in vogue at that time, so that she got a nice pension. She went back to Csepel during the war, then she came back to us.

I learned to read, in secret, when I was three and a half years old. I didn’t tell anybody. There were all kinds of things at our house. The newspapers and periodicals which weren’t taken by customers, came back to the post office, so my father brought home heaps of good reading material. I was upset because I didn’t know what to do with all this, so when we went out walking, I used to ask my parents which letter was which, and I started to put the pieces together. My father brought the sensationalist tabloid newspaper called Est [Evening], and I read it from the first letter to the last. When I was four and a half years old, I told them I could read. “All right”, they said, not believeing me.

“But it’s true, I can read. Shall I prove it to you?” “Show us,” they said. “This is Est.” I said, to which they replied: “All right, you know that this is Est.” “Yes?” I said, and I looked through it and read out: “Lover hacked to pieces with hatchet.” My parents looked at each other, “ahem,” they said, “aha”. Thereupon they hid the Est. Then I read the phonebook.  My father felt pity for me and said, “Don’t struggle with that, I’ll bring you books to read”. And he brought me the Greek myths called Olympus by Jozsef Gereb. And I started to read like a madman, and I still read today.

My father brought home everything from the Orvosi Hetilap [Medical Weekly] to the Kerteszek Lapja [Gardeners’ Paper]. There was the literary periodical, Mult es Jovo [Past and Future, a Jewish periodical], Egyenloseg [Equality, a Jewish weekly], Nyugat [West, a modern literary periodical that has since taken on near-mythical status]. The morning’s paper was the Pesti Naplo, after lunch the Est, and in the afternoon there was the Magyarorszag. He brought that home, too. My mother read everything from horticultural papers to medical ones, but my father didn’t. He mostly read the Jewish ones. My father read only in Hungarian – he wasn’t a very talented linguist  and loved classical things very much, such as Ancient Greek and Latin. He knew Ancient Greek from school. But he read Hungarian and German classics as well. Unfortunately, when it came to light in 1925 that a little tubercular center remained from my mother’s pneumonia, he had to sell his hundred volumes of Jokai [one of the most famous Hungarian romantic prose-writers]. My mother read everything, even in German. Dr. Norbert Langer had a rental library on Andrassy Street, we were registered there and we rented books from there. My father also bought books but not as many as he would have liked.

For my father the company of the family was completely enough. My mother had her own circle of friends,  from which she kept me out. I don’t know where they met each other. She was very independent. My mother had a very strange girlfriend from Kassa, who wasn’t a Jew, her name was Gitta Kolacskovszky. She was an ugly little old maid with very unusual and modern opinions. She was very free with her speech. She spoke calmly about topics, which one didn’t really speak about then. My father was very angry with her, and he said it was she who encouraged [my mother] to smoke. My father had a very best friend until the end of his life [who was a Jew], with whom I think he was a classmate at school. They attended law school together, then they both went to the Postal Service, but Odon quit soon and went to a wholesale store that belonged to one of his relatives, because it was a better move for him, financially. These two men quarreled all the time but they couldn’t live without each other.

I used to spend summer holidays at my maternal grandparent’s house in Felpec every year from the age of 7-8 until I was 14-15 years old. My parents brought me there at the beginning of the summer then they brought me back. In Felpec I used to sit mostly in the attic amongst centipedes, in the dust, in terrible heat and, through my father, I read the publications sent there during WWI – Erdekes Ujsag and company, Nyugat – and the books of good Hungarian writers in cheap editions. I was better informed about the cultural and military affairs of WWI as a 7-8-year-old child than about the things around me, because my grandparents didn’t buy the current papers. I was also interested in animals. I went out many times in the yard and watched the chickens and hens. I had no friends my age in Felpec. Then once or twice my father remained at home because he didn’t have a holiday, and my mother and I went to Kassa to grandmother’s house. But it was mostly Felpec. From the age of 10, maybe for one or two years, we spent our whole summer in Siofok.

My uncle Janos, who was a lawyer in Gyor, invited us there as well. My niece, who was two years younger than me was there in Gyor, and she used to have a big circle of friends, so there was always something going on. There was the theatre, there were excursions, and everything. Besides my uncle had a country-house in a village near Gyor. The river Marcal flowed there, and we used to go swimming. There we didn’t really have  a group of friends, but we didn’t get bored. We had a subscription to the periodical for children called Az en ujsagom  [My paper] which always had competitions; we always prepared ourselves fanatically for those. So we were rather busy. There was one thing missing: there were no animals.

My uncle Gyula, who ran the farm in Felpec, moved to Kapuvar after his mother’s death. They told him to stop digging the ground, as he would get a good job in the family milling business [which was my uncle Sandor’s], and asked him to move there. And then I spent my summer holidays in Kapuvar until I was 18 years old. We didn’t go abroad with my parents, but when I was 17 years old my uncle Bela, who lived in Vienna, invited me and I spent two weeks there. Well, that was amazing, I was charmed by it.

I attended Jewish primary school since from the age of 8. They taught me everything there. [I went there] because it was close to us, and by the 2nd grade there was no need for anyone to go along with me so I walked to school by myself to Wesselenyi Street. I liked reading and writing; I didn’t like mathematics, nor the rest. We had a teacher who taught everything. She was the wife of Kalman Wirth, the head of the [Jewish] high-school for girls. I couldn’t stand her. First of all, she was very ugly; secondly, she was prepossessed towards rich children, thirdly, she didn’t like me either. I was an energetic child and my handwriting was awful. These were my two bad features. And during classes it happened many times that I was bored to death because I already knew what she was teaching. I did terrible things: I crawled on all fours between the desks and pinched other girls’ legs, I poured a saucer of water down her neck in drawing classes. Well, this didn’t make me popular. But there were a few among my classmates with whom I was on good terms. Mostly with those with whom we came and went together, because they lived close to us. I’m still on good terms with them.

I wanted to go to high-school. When I finished primary school my parents told me that I was a poor child and that I had to go to the school of commerce in order to start earning a living. I raged and fell into a frenzy, saying that I didn’t want to work in an office; I didn’t want to be a typist. I loved to study. And I won.  I started going to the Jewish high school for girls, which was in Munkacsy Street at that time. [The building] was quite dilapidated, but we loved being there. I remember that there were fewer classrooms than classes. So one of the classes was always in the synagogue. We liked that a lot, because if we sat down, the desks were at eye level, and then you couldn’t see us behind them, and we did what we liked because the teacher couldn’t see us.

I felt great at high-school. I felt that I was in the right place. Our headmaster, Jeno Zsoldos, was a great scientist, though very serious and severe. [He noticed me on the very first day] and from that time on he kept his eye on me – Hungarian, orthography, penmanship – I liked these very much. Zsoldos was our mentor, we are indebted to him for everything: for our erudition, and for the fact that we can speak and write Hungarian correctly. He taught Hungarian and Latin. He was a handsome young man when we started, and at his funeral two people from our class were present. In those times the Rakosi regime (Miklos Rakosi was the first Communist leader of Hungary; he is known for his brutal and oppressive regime, the constant shortages of consumer goods, show trials and unaccounted for disappearances) was raging, and God forbid that anybody in a good position should give away that they had attended a denominational school. So there were only two of us at his funeral. Samuel Hajdu was the teacher of religion. We read and translated Hebrew texts, and learned the grammar of biblical Hebrew.

The school-fee was rather high and there were not many who could really attend this school; only the good pupils, who were exempted from school-fees; apart from them only the children of the Jewish elite went to that school. In those days it wasn’t so usual to send girls to high-school. As a matter of fact, I am very proud that I attended that school.

When I was in the 3rd grade [a modern school building] was built in Abonyi Street. There was a tennis court, one could do gymnastics and play tennis outdoors too. There was also a physics room, chemistry room and a drawing room. It was comfortable, nice, and modern for its time. I don’t know how many of us there were at Munkacsy Street, but in the new building in Abonyi Street, there were almost seven hundred [girls]. We learned to cook, in a kosher way, of course. There was fried chicken and red cabbage and meat soup. I remember that.

This was a twin building (the boys were on one side, the girls on the other). On every floor there was a door in the same place, which was locked with a key, and we knew that the boys were behind it. But there were dancing lessons in the afternoon, where boys could come. I had classmates who had boyfriends from the parallel class. But I didn’t. As for me, when I went to Kapuvar, there was a boy, and our fling lasted from when I was 14 years old until I was 18, but only in the summer. Then when I was 18 years old I got bored of it and wrote him a letter to break it off.

At [one of] my classmate’s place, who lived a very social life, there were boys, and there were always brilliant people. Her elder sister was a student of the Academy of Music, and she had a very interesting group of friends. And because we lived close to each other, I was hanging around almost every day. I mixed [in the high-school] with the same people I went to primary school with, but there were others as well. In the high-school there was no separation between wealthy and less wealthy [like in the primary school], but we knew where the lines were drawn. I didn’t rub shoulders with the rich kids, they had their own circle. I felt sympathy for them, but they lived far away from us, in Uj-Lipotvaros.

After high-school graduation I wanted to go to the Conservatory, but I could only have been a private student, because I would have altered the allowed percentage of Jewish students. After two years I quit because I realized that I just wasn’t talented enough. That was when I got into the traveling choir. Its leader was a musical genius, Sandor Venecianer, from that well-known Italian Jewish family which gave many scientists and artists to the country. He was also a keen leftist and we sang the leftist works for a choir of leftist artists. I was a soloist there. I found a boyfriend in that choir, and he talked to me about socialism, too. I was very keen.

Through this I joined the Nature-Lovers’ Tourist Association, which was a leftist organization that had a tourist establishment in Horany. They delivered lectures about Hungarian literature, world literature, everything. There was always someone lecturing on his own specialist subject. There were very good experts. Then we went on trips and sang together. There was a camp every weekend, and whoever had time got on the ferry and went there. It was very good. I was very happy there, and I felt very great, until the beginning of the dark times [the anti-Jewish laws of 1938]. Then we spread all over. Here there were Jews and non-Jews as well, but we never talked about that. Here everybody was a very committed socialist.

I met my first husband, Gyorgy Tibor, at the Conservatory. He had already graduated at that time as a violinist. We got married in secret in 1943, because my parents wouldn’t agree, because he didn’t make a living; he was in forced labor service. Even his father didn’t know, because he wanted his son to be a world-renowned violin soloist, and an early marriage would tie him down immediately to weekdays. But it came to light, and then we rented a room. I gave Latin lessons, and earned a lot; I had about 20 pupils, while my husband was playing the violin in the Orchestra of Budapest. As a Jew he couldn’t be a regular member, he could only work on a per diem basis, but he managed it well. He was busy almost every day.

During the war

[In 1944 when Jews were moved to yellow-star houses] Rozsa Street 48 became a Jewish house (I lived with my parents in Rozsa Street 50). We had to move into a terrible flat overlooking the courtyard, and from there I had to go out to the KISOSZ-ground, and from there to the brick factory. Wallenberg came there, and we got a Swedish free pass [so I could get out]. We founded the Swedish protected houses in St. Istvan Park in November 1944. I ran home to get my parents to come there. We even managed to get my husband out of the forced labor service in November 1944. He was in terrible condition, and I told him, “Now you lie down, and don’t move even if the walls fall in, because you are very sick.” One of our relatives enticed my mother away to the next street telling her that that protected house would be better. My husband and I remained in St. Istvan Park until the end. Of course Arrow-Cross men came into the house, but we got our own Arrow-cCoss man, and he protected us. The janitor was a very clever old man, he said he had an acquaintance, a barber, who had joined the Hungarian Nazis. If everybody gave 20 pengos each day (there were six hundred of us) and we put it all together, then he would move here and wouldn’t let us be taken. And that’s how it was. Gyorgy moved there. Every evening the 20 pengos were gathered and he drank it away immediately in the midst of great singing. The morning after we could hardly bring him to life to stand outside (and send away the other Arrow-Cross men). Then when the Russians came in the janitor from the house opposite told them that there was an Arrow-Cross man here. Thereupon we surrounded the Arrow-Cross man and said that he was a false Arrow-Cross man, that we were indebted to him for our lives, and that we wouldn’t let anybody touch him. The Arrow-Cross man remained.

My husband Gyorgy Tibor applied for a post in the Opera straight after the war and they admitted him immediately into the orchestra. There was no salary, but everybody got some of the food, which the Opera could acquire. He became concert master in the Operetta Theatre, later in the Radio Orchestra. An acquaintance of ours went back to his own flat, and the flat [in which he had been during the war] remained empty, so we moved in. It was a two-room flat overlooking the courtyard and it was very dark. It had central heating, which of course, didn’t work. There was a kitchen and a bathroom. We stayed there until I heard that a flat had become empty in the 6th district, which my heart always drew me back to, and though it was a basement, the sun shone in. From there I moved here in 1952. We got this flat in such a way that the janitor was a tailor and my husband had used him to remodel and repair his clothes. He told him that the owner of this flat had died. This was a triple co-tenancy. Two rooms were ours, with a common kitchen, and a common bathroom, for twenty years. Then we divided off a part of it, and there were two rooms left, and I kept it even after the death of my husband so that my sister would have a place to live when she came home from Cuba. She never lived here for a moment, and then I remained stuck in it.

With my first husband, Gyorgy, our circle of friends consisted of colleagues, musicians. And in 1956 most of our friends left, then we divorced (in 1957), and there didn’t really remain any friends who would have stayed with him. In 1960, I think, he left for Germany. I visited him with my second husband.

Post-war

After the war, I got into a completely different group [through my husband] and then I started to be interested in musical scores. My husband brought home to me the music of the latest piece (at that time he already worked at the Operetta Theatre) and I had to write out the parts for each musicians. This is how I started. Then the Office of the Protection of Copyright admitted me; and there I learned to decode all kinds of manuscripts, to work out the composer’s writings, to correct the mistakes that cropped up. Later I worked at the music printing house, then at the music publishing-house. It was very good, I liked it very much, and they paid well, too.

I met my second husband, Erno Andai,  in the Office of the Protection of Copyright, where he worked in 1957. He was born in 1900 in Budapest. He graduated from all kind of schools, and even studied two years of theology. I was his fourth wife, but I was his first Jewish wife. He had changed his faith, but changed it back for my sake, because I didn’t want to get married to a Christian. We paid the religious community tax but we didn’t go to synagogue. When the circle of friends of the Jewish high-school was founded, then I contributed every month and we had many meetings. My husband is buried in the Jewish cemetery.

He was hiding during the Holocaust. He slept each night in a different place. His girlfriends were always hiding him. He lived seven years in such a way that he didn’t know at midday where would he sleep that night. He also graduated from the College of Dramatic Art, and he was a successful dramatist – they performed thirty of his plays in the National Theatre. But after the liberation they didn’t want to take him into the Writers’ Association, saying that he served the upper classes. And that was that. He refused to write anything else. Then his friends took him into the Office of the Protection of Copyright, where he worked until he got his pension. We didn’t really have a social life; I had no time outside of work.

We were glad about the forming of Israel, that the Jews would have a country of their own. We were very happy. The war in 1967 was terrible. My mouth was dry with fear. And when the news of victory came, that was wonderful. I was there in 1983, I spent the whole month of September there, but I didn’t want to stay there because of the climate.

I had a girlfriend called Edit Laufer in the Jewish high-school for girls, we had come there together from primary school. When we were preparing for the final examination she moved to our flat, and we studied day and night, like madmen. We woke up at dawn at half past four, we went out [and studied], sometimes in the fresh air, on the bench, by the statue of Anonymus in the Liget, or sometimes at home in the outside corridor. The interesting thing was that after many years Edit Laufer finally came home for a visit from Israel, and everybody was excited. The meeting was in Gerbaud Coffee house, and we went there but couldn't talk to each other. We looked at each other politely, but we had no common subject to talk about. Too much time had passed. It was so disheartening. We, who had been on such good terms, there were loads of photos of us, sitting amongst the books, mother took photos of us.

Eva Duskova

Eva Duskova
Prague
Czech Republic
Interviewer: Zuzana Strouhova
Date of interview: August - September 2005

Mrs. Eva Duskova lives in Prague with her husband Milan Dusek, with whom she has two children. She is a very friendly and hospitable lady, who looks at life with dispassion and humor. Despite her Jewish origins and anti-communist sentiments, she has been lucky in life and survived Terezin 1, Auschwitz and Lenzing, and during the Communist regime was able to work in her field, which wasn’t common. She spent her entire productive life working as a librarian at various academic institutions in Prague. Despite the fact that she is of retirement age and has undergone hip surgery, she still works – she is the head of the library at the Terezin Initiative 2 Institute. She is a practicing Jew, but not Orthodox.

My family background
Growing up
During the war
Post-war
Jewish history in Litomysl
My religious identity
Married life
Glossary

My family background

My grandpa on my father’s side was named Julius Frey. He was immensely understanding, and gave me what he could, that is in a spiritual sense. Instead of fairy-tales he would tell me Bible stories, in a very interesting fashion. I was capable of sitting and listening to him for hours on end. He was born on 1st April 1866 in Dolni Kounice, near Brno. He graduated from high school, but where exactly I don’t know. His mother tongue was Czech together with German, because he came from Brno. In and around Brno, German was spoken a lot. He spoke only Czech with me, but you could tell that his foundations were German. But he wasn’t a German, though he had a German name. This is because Josef II 3 gave Jews various rights, and in exchange they had to take various German names. And I’ve heard that the name Frey or Frei perhaps meant free, that he wasn’t of some, let’s say, subservient standing.

I have no idea when he left Dolni Kounice to go work, no one ever told me that. Neither did I ever ask about it, of course. He worked for the railway, as a stationmaster, and probably for no one else. He worked in various places, amongst them also in Pardubice, where my father, Viktor Frey, was born, in Dobrovice near Mlada Boleslav and for sure somewhere else as well, but I don’t remember any more. Their housekeeper Marie told me it all, but I can’t remember. Then with my grandma Hermina, nee Breitenfeldova, he moved to Litomysl to retire. Because my grandma was originally from Litomysl, and at that time her mother and brother still lived there. Her family owned a quite prominent apartment building there, a corner building in Renaissance style across from City Hall, so in the middle of the square. Their living room was located where at one time Jirasek’s Father German President lived. [German President (1780–1895): a seminary school teacher, familiar from ‘A Philosophical History’ by Alois Jirasek.] What’s more, it was the only room in the entire building that had a cross-vaulted ceiling. Several generations of my grandmother’s ancestors lived in that building. But at that time my mother’s sister Marie [Sgallova, nee Fingerova] was also getting married, and my mother’s father, Rudolf Finger, had a two-family house built for them, a villa. And that’s where my mother and her sister lived, both of them with their families.

As I’ve said, my grandma and grandpa had a housekeeper, she was named Marie Kucerova. You see, my grandmother had a serious case of diabetes, and so wasn’t able to take care of things very much. The housekeeper, she was my savior of sorts, because after the war she took care of me, and told me a lot about my father, who had died in a concentration camp. [The interviewee’s father actually died in Terezin ghetto.] My parent’s family also had a servant. Apparently we had had several of them, but I remember only Anca. She had this little room at our place. My mother took care of me, the servants mostly took care of housecleaning and the laundry. My mother also cooked.

Whether my grandfather on my father’s side was in the army, I can’t say, because I remember my grandpa on my father’s side only in a railway uniform. That is, I remember photos of him in a railway uniform. But at least as far as I can remember, no one talked about the war there. But I have this feeling that he was in World War I. My mother’s father was in it for sure. My grandpa died during World War II, on 28th April 1943 in Terezin, where he had been taken on the Litomysl transport on 2nd December 1942. He died of old age and due to his prostate, which was of course badly medically treated.

My grandfather was one of six siblings. There were, I think, five brothers and one sister, Anna. She never married, and stayed in Dolni Kounice near Brno in that family cottage of theirs. It was this little cottage that had one fancy room – this big, perhaps somewhat better-furnished room – then one small room and a scullery. It wasn’t a very big place, though they did have a beautiful apricot orchard. And there in those cramped quarters my grandpa’s parents raised six children. I don’t know any more than that about my grandpa’s parents, only that Grandpa’s father reputedly made a living by lending money.

I never asked about Anna Frey’s education or about her work, and as far as I can remember, no one ever talked about it. She lived alone in Dolni Kounice, childless. During the year she would go and visit Grandma and Grandpa and we used to go stay with her during summer vacation. It was our favorite place for holidays. Because we wouldn’t have all fit in there, we used to stay in a nearby hotel. Anna was this typical old maid, but was very kind. In that fancy room she had a musical picture, which she would play for me when I was very good. What was on it, I don’t know, it was simply some picture, apparently you would wind it up and then it would play.

I also remember that we used to go swimming in a nearby river, and that I used to play there with the local children, Saturday or not. [Editor’s note: Jewish religious law forbids during Saturday, the Sabbath, a fundamental 39 activities that are included in the Talmud, and other activities that stem from them. Among them belongs also swimming.] And because my father already owned a car in those days, he would sometimes load us up and take us to Brno. Anna died in Terezin, but I can’t tell you off the top of my head when, one could find that out in the Terezin Memorial Book.

My grandpa’s youngest brother was Josef, who lived in Vienna – it’s not far from Brno, evidently he went there to find work and then stayed there. His son Michael, by the way, lives in Sweden to this day. I don’t know when Josef was born, and there’s no way I’ll find out now. But I do remember that he died on my grandpa’s birthday, 1st April. But I also don’t know the year, evidently at the beginning of the war or right before it began. What sort of work he had in Vienna, that I don’t know, I never met him. Josef was married, I don’t know his wife’s name, I only know that she was born in Auschwitz, apparently it used to be quite a decent little town in Poland. They had two sons together, one, who’s since died, was around the same age as my mother, Marketa Fingerova – she was born in 1909 – and was named Eli, evidently as in Elias. The younger one, who was born in 1922, is named Michael and lives in Sweden. He got there in a very interesting fashion. My grandfather’s brother Josef somehow got mixed up in politics and when the Schuschnigg 4 affair in Vienna took place, which was some sort of political revolution, he somehow paid the price for that. But those are just childhood memories, after the war no one could tell me about it any longer.

Josef soon became a widower. He was left alone with two sons, and in the end committed suicide. His older son Eli emigrated, evidently to Palestine. They sent the younger one, who was 15 at the time, to Litomysl to stay with his grandfather and grandmother. The family then simply decided, that to secure his life and livelihood, they’ll send him to the Palestine, to be with his brother. However he didn’t meet up with his brother during the entire time of the war – even though they were both looking for each other, they didn’t find each other. Even though they were both in the same army, the English army, and both of them fought at Tobruk 5. It wasn’t until the war ended, that Michl – that’s how we called Michael – came to some army office on army business, but where it was I don’t know, and there he saw his brother. It wasn’t until then that they first met. Michael then met his wife-to-be at some railway station; her parents had saved her by sending her to Sweden. How it exactly continued I don’t know. I think that they both returned to Palestine, apparently to her family. But then they had two children there and one of the children somehow couldn’t stand the climate, so due to the fact that she was already used to living in Sweden, they moved there. There Michl worked at a newspaper, but I think that it’s more likely that he did some sort of better type of work. I think in administration.

Another of Grandpa’s brothers, Arnold, also lived in Vienna. Him I remember from Terezin, he and his wife were very kind to me there. What he did in Vienna, I don’t know, but I think that he didn’t make it that far there. Back then he went to Terezin on the Vienna transport along with his wife. I don’t know anything at all about her, not even her name, only that she was very kind. I really didn’t get to know them until when they were going to visit my father at the hospital, when my father’s life was ending. I think that she was Austrian, because they spoke only German with her. I don’t even know if they had any children. His wife saved a bit of bread and some coffee grounds or something like that, and out of that they made me for my birthday – well, not a cake, but this sweet snack. Which made me very happy! So he was my favorite.

Then there was one more brother, who lived in Prague. But what his name was, I don’t know. We didn’t see the Prague relatives much, only once in a while, when we were in Prague, we’d visit them. Whether they had ever been to Litomysl, that I don’t know. I think that he was a merchant and that he had a daughter or perhaps two daughters, who had emigrated to somewhere in Scotland. But I don’t know their names, I know nothing of their fates. They were probably in Terezin as well, but I really don’t know anything about them. And I think that my grandpa had one more brother, but I don’t know anything at all about him.

My grandmother on my father’s side was named Hermina, nee Breitenfeldova. She was born on 12th September 1875 in Litomysl. She died on 15th December 1943 in Auschwitz, where she went on the December transport. My grandma was very kind, but was a bit of a lackluster type of person. I’ve got the impression that I get it from her. And as opposed to my grandpa, she didn’t know how to tell stories and fairy-tales. I don’t know what sort of education she had, and as far as work goes, she was probably a housewife. Later, though, she ran Uncle Karel’s, her unmarried brother’s, textile store in Litomysl for him. You see, Uncle Karel was a bohemian, a singer, and devoted himself more to singing than to business. So my father’s mother was basically a businesswoman, though a bad businesswoman. She gave things to people on credit and never wanted them to pay it off. She’d say, ‘You’ll give it to me when you have it.’ Well, I think that for the most part they never did give it to her.

That textile store, as I’ve said, belonged to her brother Karel, but he didn’t devote himself to it very much. It wasn’t proper for a child from a good family to devote himself to professional singing. So at least for appearances’ sake, he was a businessman – those were the mores of those days – but in reality he was a member and evidently a soloist in the Vlastimil choir, which performed at the Litomysl Theater and likely also elsewhere, but that I don’t know. Uncle Karel died when I was eight, so still before the war, in 1938. He also sang the role of the jail warden in Dalibor [opera by Bedrich Smetana], when the National Theater performed Dalibor in Litomysl. So one could say that he was a good singer, supposedly he was.

As far as Judaism goes, our family, especially on my father’s side, was religiously inclined, believers. Perhaps not Orthodox [see Orthodox communities] 6, the way it’s now propagated here [in Prague], which I don’t really like. For the most part they were assimilated Jews, who though practiced their religion.

My grandpa was very religious and so were his siblings. For example, his sister Anna, the one that lived in Kounice near Brno, was very particular about observing holidays and all of these things, and was even very proud of the fact that our family came from the Kohanim lineage. [Editor’s note: priests, members of the Levi tribe, descendants of Aaron and his sons, who were entrusted with the performance of holy rituals in the Tent of Meeting and the Temple, Hebrew Kohen, Kohanim.] Once she said to me, ‘Eva dear, remember that you’re a princess.’ That’s the only thing I remember her telling me. My father’s brother was also very devout. Because he didn’t have his own family, he celebrated the holidays with us. My grandpa’s family was in general quite religiously inclined, at his parents’ place, the ones in Kounice near Brno, they as far as I know kept kosher and apparently also had two sets of dishes [see Kashrut in eating habits] 7. But otherwise they didn’t visibly, by how they dressed, differ from the non-Jewish population, even they, though religious, were very assimilated. What’s more, the kippah wasn’t perhaps even worn back then yet, to be sure though, a hat, that was of course worn at all times.

My grandma and grandpa never picked their friends only from among Jews. What’s more, my very religious grandfather played tarot every Saturday afternoon with the catechist Mr. Letfus. Certainly one didn’t try to convince the other of anything. You know the joke: The priest says to the rabbi, ‘When will you finally try a bit of pork?’ And he says, ‘At your wedding.’

My mother’s family, on the other hand, practiced Judaism only half-heartedly. I’d say that my grandma and grandpa on my mother’s side attended the synagogue for social reasons; at their place we never celebrated holidays. As far as I know, they didn’t even ever light candles for Sabbath. We never ever discussed God with them, either. And I think that my grandma’s brother Karel wasn’t very religiously inclined either. But in his case I can’t really say one way or the other. My mother, herself, was less religious than my father.  For example she would easily let me write on Saturday [Jewish religious law forbids during Saturday, the Sabbath, a fundamental 39 activities that are included in the Talmud, and other activities that stem from them. Among them belongs also writing, for example]. She took part in all religious rituals more from a sense of moral responsibility, and not so much out of belief. Her sister Marie and her husband also attended the synagogue more for social reasons, so as not to demean themselves socially. I even remember that my uncle, Otto Sgall, once got very upset when they called him to the Torah. Apparently he didn’t want or know how to read the Torah, and didn’t want to demean himself, because he as a factory owner felt himself to be a part of the upper crust. He was, you see, the owner of a wholesale textile business.

My grandfather on my mother’s side was named Rudolf Finger. He was born on 26th February 1877 in Kozolupy in the Pilsen region. His mother tongue was German, because he was from around Pilsen. There they used to speak German. But likely they considered themselves to be Czechs. I’ve got this impression that during the 1929 or 1930 census [the 1930 census] he identified himself as being of Czech nationality. With me he always spoke Czech. He was the only one about whom I know for certain that he fought in World War I, but I have no clue as to where or when, or any other details. As opposed to my father’s father, who was a bureaucrat body and soul, my grandfather was body and soul a businessman. He was a trained merchant, kitchen goods and hardware, and he made a living as storekeeper – he had a hardware store. For a time he lived in Ceska Lipa, where my mother and her siblings were born. Probably back then there was some business opportunity there. Not long after, though, they moved back to Litomysl. I don’t know whether they didn’t do well in Ceska Lipa, or why, but for some reason they simply weren’t happy there. In any case they moved long before he retired, because he still had the store in Litomysl up to the beginning of the war, before they confiscated it. When World War II broke out, grandma and grandpa went on the September [1943] transport to Terezin, at least I think so. Well, and they both ended up in Auschwitz on 7th March 1944.

Grandpa Rudolf had several siblings. I know that there was some Aunt Emily and definitely someone else, but they lived all the way over in the Pilsen region, which was quite far.

My grandmother on my mother’s side was named Irma Fingerova, nee Ledererova. She was born on 23rd May 1884 and died together with my grandpa in Auschwitz on that day of 7th March 1944. She was likely born in Litomysl, because that branch of the family had deep roots there. On the distaff side. Her mother tongue was Czech; there everyone spoke Czech, even though they of course all knew German. She lived in Litomysl the entire time, except for those several years in Ceska Lipa, which she spent there with her husband and where my mother was born.

My grandma had been educated at a convent, even though she was of course also Jewish. She lost her father early on, you see, and my great-grandmother had to take care of her and another five children together with her childless sister. So they put Irma, as the oldest daughter, into a convent to be brought up. I don’t know where, I only know that there she learned various beautiful handiworks and homemaking. She knitted, embroidered, crocheted, made lacework and I don’t know what else. Whether or not they tried to instill something of Christianity in her, I have no clue, I wasn’t interested in that back then. By the way, this grandma of mine was very, very intelligent and she had been seeing some doctor. But back then she wasn’t allowed to marry him, because his mother wouldn’t allow him to marry my grandmother: for my grandma was from a quite poor family and didn’t get anything as a dowry. So she basically married my grandfather by virtue of necessity.

My grandfather was very strict and authoritarian, I think that something of the soldier remained in him, and my grandmother basically bore with him. She was among other things also an amazing psychologist. I remember one time, when sometime at the beginning of the war the parents of my cousin Milan Sgall had to go take care of some visa or other matters, apparently to Prague. Basically, when Milan had his birthday on 5th May, they weren’t there. Grandma Irma resolved the situation by taking him to a store and buying him something, some gift, but what I don’t know any more. So that I wouldn’t feel sorry for myself, she bought me some trifle as well. However my grandpa was very frugal and took my grandma to task for buying me something when it wasn’t my birthday. I think that this accurately portrays the mentality of those two people.

As I’ve said, Grandma Irma came from a family of six children, of which she was the oldest. She had two brothers, Jan and Karel, and three sisters, Zdenka [affectionate for Zdena], Terezie and Olga. All of them died in Auschwitz, you could find out the dates in the Terezin Memorial Book.

Uncle Jenik – that’s what they called him, my mother’s brother Jan was Jenda and Grandma’s brother Jan was Jenik – was an invalid from World War I. He and his wife Ruzena had a clothing store in Litomysl. They were however childless. But I don’t remember them very much, although in Litomysl we lived along the same arcade, and visited each other. Maybe we even went on holidays together, for there were good, strong relations in that family.

Aunt Zdenka was married, but childless. They used to say something about that her husband – Dezso Adler, a Hungarian – was infected, so they couldn’t have children.

The youngest son was Uncle Karel, they used to call him Karilek. He lived with his sister Olga – she was the youngest sister – in Zamberk, where they had some sort of textile factory. They actually lived on the same piece of property in adjacent buildings. Uncle Karel was married and had a son, Frantisek, who was much younger than I. They called him Ata. Well, and Olga had three daughters – Vlasta, Vera and Eva. Vlasta ended up in Auschwitz with her little boy, Petricek. And Vera and Eva survived, what’s more, in a very curious fashion.

Back then Vera was married, but I don’t know any more to who. Eva was single, but met a boy by the name of Freda, or Alfred. They all went to Terezin together. In Terezin Eva married that Freda and became pregnant. Vera’s husband left for Auschwitz and likely also died there. Vera followed him but never saw him again. Freda and Eva also later went to Auschwitz, she wanted to be with him. But when she got there, Mengele could see that she was pregnant and immediately sent her to the other side of the chimney, if you know this terminology, or into the gas. Eva was physically very strong, so she avoided the ‘chimney’ and by complete chance got together with Vera, who was already there.

Then they were transferred – they were five girls in all – to the Merzdorf labor camp. [Editor’s note: in Polish Marciszow, a town in Lower Silesia. During World War II one of the branches of the Gross Rosen concentration camp was located there. The camp was liberated on 8th May 1945.] Right before she had her little boy, Tomik – on 20th March 1945 – Mengele came to Merzdorf and asked her, ‘Why didn’t you admit that you were pregnant?’ And she answered, ‘I didn’t know it.’ But, of course, she knew. Apparently several children were born in Merzdorf, and none of them survived – except for that Tomik. When he was born, each of those five girls tore off a piece of her dress and they wrapped him in it. He was born somewhere in a bathroom or pigsty, something like that, I don’t exactly know any more.

When the war ended, the Germans left and the Red Army arrived there. The girls, however, were afraid of them, so she took the little boy and walked all day, until in the evening she came to some farm, to some abandoned building. Apparently on the ground floor there was nothing, and upstairs on the first floor there was a baby carriage with baby clothing. Well, that wasn’t even a coincidence; that was more like a miracle. So they immediately dressed the little boy and set off again with the carriage in the direction of home. When they got all the way to Zamberk, the communists were already in power there, and they didn’t even want to let them back into their original apartment house, instead they moved them into this little bungalow. By coincidence Eva’s husband Freda had also returned, along with his brother Egon, who was single, and their mother. Vera already knew that her husband wasn’t going to return, she and Egon fell in love with each other, and got married.

They had horrible problems with the communists, it was quite tense. They cut off their water, they cut off their telephone and apparently also decided that as the child had actually been born in Germany [when Tomik was born, Merzdorf was part of the German Reich], that he was a German citizen, so it was necessary to expel him [see Forced displacement of Germans] 8. It cost them a lot of effort before they got him out of that somehow. In the meantime, in 1947, Eva had another son, Petr. Well, in the end they finally decided that they wanted to go somewhere as far as possible from our country. They emigrated first, to Australia, while their grandmother, Anna Jelinkova, lived for a time with us. Then she left to be with them. By the way, both girls, Eva and Vera, were already pregnant when they left for Australia, and each one of them then had one more child in Australia. Except for Freda, they all live in Australia to this day, close to Melbourne. At least I hope so, I haven’t had any news from them for a long time now. And Tomik did a PhD in science, and started a family in Australia.

My grandma’s last sister was Terezie, they used to call her Terusza. Terusza was married twice, as the first time she was widowed. But I know nothing about her husbands. From her first marriage she had a daughter, Lily, and from the second a son, Arne. All of them stayed in Auschwitz.

My mother and father lived from childhood in the same arcade, or better on the same side of the arcade which in Litomysl they call an ‘underchamber.’ My mother and my father met when my mother was five and my father 13. My mother used to go play in the store next door with a little girl who had a brother, who was friends with my father. She was Anicka Jezkova, he Frantisek. The Jezeks had a bakery and my mother played with Anicka, who was hunchbacked, on the rolling-boards. Well, and those young guys, young men, right, already 13 years old, came by, and wanted to play at being soldiers on the rolling-boards. No one dared to be nasty to Anicka, the poor hunchbacked thing, and so my father got to know my mother with the words: ‘Get down from that rolling-board, you little fucker.’ My mother probably wasn’t far from replying, because she was always very offhand. But I’ve never heard from anyone what her answer was. By the way, my father grew up to be a very refined man.

In 1928, I think, my grandpa and father went to Vienna to celebrate seder with that uncle Josef. And because both families had for a long time, for whole generations, been close, they also invited my mother and her father. Well, and in the middle of the celebration, or maybe at its end, I don’t know exactly, my father ceremoniously stood up and asked my mother’s father for my mother’s hand. I think that my mother was taken aback, but that she had absolutely no objections to it.

What I, however, can’t understand, is that their wedding was at the district government office in Litomysl, so only a civil one, which likely didn’t so much bother my mother, because she wasn’t as religiously inclined as my father. Why they were married like this, that’s something I always wanted to ask, but never got around to, which I regret to this day. They were married in May 1929, and my mother didn’t even have a white dress. They had a big betrothal, but an utterly small wedding. And after the wedding my father’s mother apparently said, ‘And now you’re ours, and you’re going to come over for lunch.’ So, even the wedding banquet was at my father’s parents’. Maybe because the betrothal was so ‘festive,’ the wedding was supposed to be only an official confirmation. But that I really don’t know.

Growing up

As far as disposition goes, my father was always very democratic. My mother had to take care of me daily from morning to evening, so she had to be stricter, right? She didn’t hesitate to give me a slap now and again, while my father was more dear to me, because he sometimes came home only for the weekend. And then he would very much devote himself to me. I only got one slap from him, and that only when I was already very unruly and tore his shirt on him.

My father liked to take pictures – I’ve inherited that from him – my mother, I think, didn’t concern herself with photography. I also think that I, the same as they, like to travel. Otherwise I always admired my father’s wise, serene disposition, while my mother was rather more hot-tempered, which I didn’t like, I had a hard time with it. Otherwise they were both very sociable, went to the movies, theaters, to concerts and generally out into society. And society used to come to our place. We had a lot of visits. My mother was a good cook, so although usually we lived modestly, when visitors came, she would always provide a feast as it should be. They never made any distinction whether someone was a Jew or not, that’s not how it was. My father had, I think, mainly intellectual friends, for example a chief judge, or dentist, lawyer. My mother adapted, and I think with relish. My grandma and grandpa, who lived in that house on the square, also visited us often. It wasn’t all that far from us. Litomysl isn’t a big town, and at that time had about five thousand people. [Editor’s note: according to the Czech Statistics Office, the population of Litomysl during the 1921 census was 8,737, and in 1930 it was 8,638.] And perhaps even more often we’d go to their place.

My father was named Viktor Frey. He was born on 10th April 1901 in Pardubice, and died on 23rd June 1944 in Terezin. He had two university degrees: he was an engineer and had a PhD in Technical Sciences. He graduated from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering in Prague. His mother tongue was Czech. I think that my father sympathized with the Social Democrats, with the rightist part. He wasn’t a member, but had a very strong social conscience. And he was a member of an association of engineers and architects called the SIA. Otherwise, as far as I know, he wasn’t a member of any other organizations or clubs, and neither was anyone else in the family.

My father lived wherever they transferred his father, who, as I’ve said, worked for the railway. That housekeeper was already with my father’s parents during his childhood, and she used to also tell me how it was when he was growing up, but I don’t remember anything concretely. He was physically quite awkward, so he probably didn’t play soccer, I don’t know. Well, but he for sure used to play with his friend on the baker’s rolling-boards. Otherwise he then devoted himself to his studies and science. I think that he graduated from high school in Litomysl.

He was never in the army, and this was due to health reasons: he had flat feet. After graduating from university, he at first worked as an assistant at a technical school [Czech Technical University in Prague], because he had done very well and graduated very early. But when he decided to get married, he tried to find some better-paying position. And so he transferred to Skoda 9 in Pilsen. There he worked as a mechanical engineer. Apparently he had some sort of project that he wanted to patent, and they wanted to buy it from him. But my father didn’t want to sell it to them, so they got angry at him and fired him, whereupon my father looked for work for about six weeks. After six weeks someone found him a job in a steel works by the name of Isteg, in Most – apparently it doesn’t exist any more. There he represented the steel works for the entire country, except for Prague, for which there was a separate representative.

At his work my father had the use of a company car, so we made plentiful use of it and used to go on various trips. Not only to Brno, but also to Zamberk and so on, we varied it a lot. Or we’d go on various hiking trips in the immediate region with my father’s friends. On those occasions we’d always go to this special pub and there my parents would order beer and Olomouc ‘stinky’ cheese. But of course we also went and visited historical landmarks. We also traveled abroad, to Crikvenica, Yugoslavia [the town of Crikvenica is located in Croatia today]. That was in 1936. I remember that I learned to swim there – what’s more I was by the sea for the first time – and that I got tonsillitis there. And that I wanted to make clothes for my dolls and my mother had only a pair of manicure scissors with her. After the war I started devoting myself to scouting and camping, so I went on trips as an adult as well. But as a child I was never at any summer camp.

My father worked at Isteg until the annexation of the Sudetenland 10. But because my father didn’t want me to have to breathe the bad air in Most, we moved to be with our family in Litomysl. [Editor’s note: Most used to be a town with a high concentration of heavy industry and therefore with a bad environment.] So he then commuted to Most, alternatively he communicated with them by phone, due to the fact that he actually worked all over the entire country. We lived in Litomysl up until the transport to Terezin. When the war began, my father, because he was of Jewish origin, had to work as only a laborer. But back then one of his friends, who had a chopping-machine factory, gave him a job. So back then he officially worked there as a laborer, but in reality he designed those chopping-machines for him. In time the president of the Jewish community in Litomysl died, and they named, or elected, that I don’t know exactly, my father as the president of the Litomysl community. And he stayed there until the deportation.

My name is Eva Duskova, nee Freyova, and I was born in Pilsen on 22nd March 1930. Date of death still unknown. I have no siblings; I had only that one cousin Milan, who lived in the same house as I. But the fact that I was an only child was actually lucky for me, because [otherwise] I wouldn’t have escaped the gas. Because in Auschwitz there was this rule, that whoever is older than 16 or at least 16 and at most 45, can volunteer for heavy labor. And the younger and older ones have to go into the gas chambers.

For the first four years I lived in Pilsen, but then we moved to Litomysl. I can say that I lived there with both parents, because my father only commuted to Most. In Litomysl I finished the first four grades, but then I couldn’t attend school any more [because of the Anti-Jewish laws in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia] 14. I returned to it only after the war. I remember my first day of school. I went to the first grade with my girlfriend Anita Frankova, nee Fisherova. We had known each other since the age of four, because our parents were friends. What’s more, we were actually very distantly related. To be specific, Anita’s grandpa and my great-grandmother’s sister were married. In fact back then we insisted on sitting next to each other in school. And in the end we did. Of course, right the next day we were separated for misbehaving. We were simply talking to each other. What the teacher was saying wasn’t as interesting. But I very much looked forward to school, I was hungry for knowledge. The first day Anita and I were accompanied by our fathers. I know that the gentlemen in the back behind the desks stood beside each other, and I think that they were quite amused. I think that our fathers took it as this personal prerogative. Whether there were mothers too, that I don’t remember. Very early on I went to school unaccompanied, because it was a short ways off, without any sort of danger along the way.

Anita and I were in the same class for three years, I guess. Then the Fischers moved to Prague, because they had this feeling that they’d somehow be more hidden in Prague, or protected, while we stayed in Litomysl. That was probably in 1938. Already back then they apparently had a certain feeling of danger, but why, that I didn’t ask them. It didn’t interest me back then. I only know that people said that they had the feeling that in Prague they won’t stick out so much. But then in Prague Anita’s father soon had a heart attack, I think, or something, and died – still before the war.

During the war

The deportation of Litomysl Jews took place on 3rd December 1942, first to Pardubice, and on 5th December from Pardubice to Terezin. However, as my father was the president of the Jewish community, they had to somehow shut it all down there, and so he and his immediate family, i.e. my mother and I, stayed in Litomysl for another three days. We didn’t leave for Pardubice until 6th December, and from Pardubice for Terezin on 6th December with people from Pardubice. Otherwise Litomysl left with people from the countryside around Pardubice.

As I’ve said, Father died in Terezin. My father was quite a heavy smoker, and so didn’t have a very resistant constitution. In Terezin he got into technical services, and when there was a so-called ‘Kasernensperre,’ meaning leaving the barracks was forbidden, he could walk outside, about the ghetto, and used those service rounds to visit his father and me. For at that time I was often ill, tonsillitis and so on, and his father was actually also nearing his end. Back then my father neglected the fact that he had the flu, and when Grandpa died, he himself took to his bed with the flu. But there was no medicine and his organism wasn’t resistant enough. Then he got pleurisy and after fourteen months he died of rapid tuberculosis.

My father had a three years younger brother, Frantisek, who worked as a customs inspector at the Frydek-Mistek station. During the war, however, my uncle moved to Litomysl. He devoted himself to me very much, among other things he taught me to ride a bicycle, and so we would ride together around the surrounding villages, as far as was allowed [the given limitation applied only to Jews]. But no one else rode with us. I had a bike from the age of eight. Back then we perhaps even took some longer routes, but on my own I didn’t go that far. I rode on a bike for a long time, but more in Litomysl, in Prague not at all. Always when I arrived in Litomysl in the summer, in the morning I helped Mother, after lunch Mother took a nap and I set out by bicycle to the swimming pool. I bathed, dried myself off and rode back again. Litomysl doesn’t have a public transport system, there people rode bikes a lot.

In Prague only my children ride bikes, only they had bikes here anyways. My son Petr rides his bike to this day, with his children too. Before he used to go on trips, even longer ones, with his wife. My daughter Hana doesn’t ride anymore these days, and neither do I, due to a leg injury.

My uncle was single, but it was said that he was platonically in love with my mother, and perhaps said that he would get married only if he found a girl like my mother. But that couldn’t happen any more, because my uncle apparently left on the first transport from Terezin to Auschwitz and there he probably remained.

My mother was named Marketa Fingerova. She was born in Ceska Lipa on 27th April 1909 and died in Litomysl on 10th October 1992. So she lived to the age of 83, which actually isn’t that much, because our family was long-lived. Her mother tongue was Czech.

Apparently they however moved from Ceska Lipa to Litomysl very early on, because they were already there when my mother started attending school. She then lived for some time with my father in Pilsen, before they moved back to Litomysl, so that I wouldn’t grow up in such bad environmental conditions as those in Most.

My mother went to ‘family’ school, where she studied, as one would say, women’s work: cooking, sewing, baking, and basic household economics. Today, such schools have a three-year program, I think. I even have this feeling that at one time they were four-year programs with a diploma. But my mother had a one-year course. Back then it wasn’t a complete high school education. She finished ‘kvarta’ [fourth of eight years of school] and then went to that family school. And then she went to the Sudetenland, to Teplice-Sanov, to study German. There she lived with some family. She never had a job anywhere, she was a housewife.

During the war she was also in Terezin, our whole family went there on that day of 6th December 1942. Because my father was the president of the Jewish community, we were somehow automatically protected during the course of his life in Terezin. But when on 23rd June 1944 he died, we immediately left on the earliest transport, the October one, to Auschwitz. We left Terezin on 12th October, and arrived in Auschwitz on 14th October. I remember that we were walking in rows of five and that coming towards us came walking – one of the lucky chances in my life – some German soldier, who told my mother to give him that wedding ring that she had on her finger. So she gave it to him, and in exchange he advised us, ‘Remember, that you’re older than 16 and less than 45, and volunteer for heavy labor.’ My mother had my father’s winter coat with her, so she threw it on me, and when we went in front of Mengele, I looked somewhat huskier. [Editor’s note: What the interviewee means is that Mengele selected them himself. This is a frequent statement, although they did not know anything about Mengele at the time, and it is not even sure that it was him.] At that time I was only 14. However I do know two sisters who then went with us to the work camp, the younger one was twelve at the time and she also managed it.

We were in Auschwitz for fourteen days. On 28th October we had the feeling that we’d be going into the gas chamber, but we were lucky and we went on to Austria, to a branch of Mauthausen that was named Lenzing [a women’s sub-camp of Mauthausen that provided workers for the textile industry] in Upper Austria. And there we stayed until liberation. However when exactly we were liberated, that’s an example of how memories differ. I was and still am convinced that we were liberated on 6th May 1945 by the American army. My friends, two sisters with whom we had gone there at the same time back then, are convinced that we were liberated on 4th May. But I’m convinced I’m right. And so are they.

What impressions do I have from wartime? I remember that during the [September 1938] mobilization 15, my father’s brother, my Uncle Frantisek, returned very downhearted when they called the mobilization off. Then I remember my father saying – at that time he was already president of the Jewish community – that I’m not allowed to play with the local girls. By the way, in Litomysl there was this one family, a working-class family, he was I think a carpenter or something like that, and very much a social democrat, a very honorable person. Every time he met him, my father, though he had two academic degrees, bowed deeply to him. And this family – very simple, but of very precious character – used to send my classmate, Bozenka, to our house to play with me. Her parents simply told her, ‘If you were friends with Eva before, you have to be friends with her again.’ And she really did come over to our place, up until we left. After the war we met up again in high school in the same class, and we’re friends to this day. When I go to Litomysl, we visit each other.

Some of the other children shunned me. I remember that we weren’t allowed to go to the swimming pool, and so we would go to the outskirts of town to this little brook and there we would bathe. It bothered me very much that I couldn’t go to school. Various restrictions, like what we could buy, that I basically didn’t even notice, because our mother was very capable and rustled up all sorts of things. In various illicit ways, and we also knew a lot of people that lived out in the countryside. Even wearing a star [see Yellow star – Jewish star in Protectorate] 16 didn’t leave any sort of impression on me, we later associated only amongst each other, so it didn’t really occur to me. On the other hand it bothered me that we had to hand over radios. That we also had to hand over some jewelry, that didn’t really affect me, and I think that my mother gave it all to friends for safekeeping. She couldn’t give it to our housekeeper, because up until out transport she lived with my grandma and grandpa in one apartment. However, when the door closed on my grandma, she took what she could from that apartment and hid it, and after the war she gradually handed it over to us.

I also remember, that when there was the Heydrichiade 17, I was alone at home with my mother, my father was probably somewhere at work. These two gentlemen rang at the door and were showing us pictures of a bicycle, briefcases and I don’t know what else. And I said, ‘Look mommy, my daddy has this briefcase.’ My mother got terribly angry at me, and said that I was making things up. [Editor’s note: after their successful attack on Reinhard Heydrich, the assassins got rid of evidence. The Gestapo then began an investigation, in which they also used photos of the evidence.]

Otherwise, I think that I was a fairly good child. I remember perhaps one exception, when I wanted to hit my four and a half years younger cousin Milan with an axe. He wasn’t doing anything to me at the time, there was simply this axe here, and he was standing there...well, I simply saw it there, and so I felt this need to use it. And I couldn’t understand why my father was angry at me. I was six at the time.

I also remember that Anita [Frankova] and I met up in Terezin. We were both in one room in the so-called ‘Mädchenheim’ [German for ‘girls’ home’]. Back then my parents arranged for me to get into it. When we arrived in Terezin, we were at first in a so-called ‘schloiska.’ [Editor’s note: schloiska, from the German ‘Schleuse’: first building into which arrivals were herded and where they were stripped of all valuables.] That was for about three days. Then they moved us, men and women with children separately, but there were quite harsh conditions there.

Well, Anita was already in that Mädchenheim, so we lived there together, up until Anita and her mother were sent to Auschwitz in December 1943. I went there with my mother almost a year later. After the war we found out from some ‘guaranteed’ sources, from someone, who reputedly saw with his own eyes, that Anita and her mother went into the gas, but it wasn’t true. Back then they went from Auschwitz to somewhere in Belarus, but where, I can’t exactly remember. And there they were liberated in a quite interesting fashion by the Red Army. Actually, before the Red Army arrived, the Germans tried to shoot them all, and Anita and her mother somehow fainted. Or something like that. So the Germans thought that they were finished. But they still hit Anita’s mother in the head with a rifle butt. Well, and then the Soviet army liberated them, only that they mixed them up with German prisoners and transferred them to a Gulag 18 camp. Well, you know, the Red Army.

Sometime right before Christmas Anita sent a message from her aunt’s in Prague, because they had let her and, I think, a couple of other children out of that Gulag earlier and for the time being left her mother there. I only know that at Christmastime in 1945 Anita was already at our place in Litomysl for the holidays. She then returned to Prague to go to high school. Her mother returned from the Soviet Union about a half year after her. But in 1950 Anita’s mother suddenly began to have headaches and after some time she died. They then found that when they had been beating her in the head with that rifle butt, a skull fragment had gotten into her brain and then did its stuff.

 

Post-war

But because my mother was the worst case in that camp, we didn’t leave for home right away. They found something in my lungs, even though open tuberculosis it wasn’t. But my mother had had a heart attack there, weighed 29 kilos and was a so-called ‘musulman’ – those are these completely emaciated skeletons with bulging eyes and whiskers all over their faces. The Americans immediately started taking care of her, put her in some infirmary there and more or less put her back together again. So that’s why we couldn’t take the first transport home. For the time being they put me in a former Hitlerjugend 11 camp, on the shores of Lake Attersee [in the Austrian Alps], which was very pleasant, and I walked those five kilometers to the infirmary each day to see my mother. American soldiers would come to visit them there as well, and once some Englishman came by as well. My mother, when she was a bit better off – she really was already very badly off, a 36-year-old person – so after, when she was somewhat healthier, some soldier came by to see her, and my mother said, ‘Hey, you’re from England. I’m sure that my brother is in the army there.’ He asked her what his name was, my mother told him his name, and he said, ‘Yeah, Honza [a familiar version of Jan], I know him well, he’s with the RAF.’ [Editor’s note: Royal Air Force (RAF) – part of the British armed forces. During the years 1940 – 1945 around 3,500 Czech and Slovak pilots served in the RAF.]

By me we were returning home on 19th June, but those friends of mine, the two sisters, again claim some other date. But it’s possible that they went on some earlier transport. Well, be it as it may, I think that we then arrived in Prague on 21st June. There we all went for a medical checkup. They immediately took my mother to the hospital in Podoli, back then it was still a general hospital, not a gynecological clinic. And they took me there with her. I don’t know how long she was there, but once again they more or less put her into shape and still during summer vacation she returned to Litomysl, where she began searching for the furniture and things from our house.

Grandma’s and Grandpa’s housekeeper Marie took charge of me. She took me to her sister and niece in Dobrovice, near Mlada Boleslav. And there they truly tried to take complete care of me and fatten me up. I kept in touch with her up until her death, that was, I think, at the end of the 1960s, beginning of the 1970s. She died in Strancice, near Ricany. She had, when Grandpa and Grandma left for Terezin, or maybe a little before that, met some man of suitable years, some Tomic, who was from Strancice, at the approximate age of 50 she married him. She moved in with him, borrowed furnishings that were in our apartment, and then after the war gradually returned them to us.

Until 1951 my mother lived from her pension – and we lived very modestly, because it was a pension mainly from the time that my father worked as a laborer. It really wasn’t a lot of money. In 1951 she had to find a job, but already back then due to her political background she couldn’t do anything other than manual labor. She worked mainly in the Litomysl dairy, where she washed out large milk cans. She also worked at the post office, where she did some manual work, and also, I think, at a mill and then at Logarex, that was a factory that made various rulers. [Editor’s note: The Logarex plant was founded in 1950 and manufactured computational and drafting instruments. In 1958 the plant became part of the company Koh-i-noor  Hardtmuth Czech Republic. Today the plant manufactures school and office supplies.] The problem was, that as soon as she settled in somewhere, they immediately threw her out again, and she had to look for a new job.

So that political background...it was like this...during World War I, my great-grandmother, my mother’s mother’s mother, together with her son-in-law had a shoe factory, army boots I think, or something like that. And there was this one youth employed as an apprentice there, who didn’t devote himself to work very much, and observed so-called Blue Mondays, meaning that on Monday he simply didn’t come to work. Whether they then threw him out or not, I’m not sure, but apparently they probably did.

In short he held a grudge against our entire family. And I also think that he was a big anti-Semite, because when my mother returned, he met her on the square and greeted her in this fashion: ‘Mrs. Freyova, that’s horrible, so many Yids stayed there, and you and your hags had to return.’ For in Terezin my mother apparently somehow got some cigarettes from someplace and bribed someone, so her grandmother and that grandmother’s sister wouldn’t have to go on the transport. My great-grandmother had six children, all of them stayed in Auschwitz, only she and her sister returned and then lived with us. That was a thorn in the eye for that ‘comrade,’ who later became the Communist Party chairman in Litomysl, and tried however he could to make life unpleasant for us.

Our family and my mother’s sister’s family lived together in one house, I think that it was a nice house. Because as soon as the Germans arrived and occupied Litomysl, we had to move in with my father’s parents, and upstairs in that house the Germans set up an NSDAP [Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei] office and downstairs a ‘Kindergarten,’ or nursery school. After February 1948 12 this chairman of the Communist Party in Litomysl came upon an original idea. That we’re going to have to move out and that he’s going to put the Communist Party secretariat on the first floor, and a nursery school on the ground floor. Or an absolute analogy, right? Back then we tried as we might to defend ourselves. One of my friends worked at the district government office – back then Litomysl was still a district – and kept an eye open for us. As soon as they were notified that we’d have to move out, she told us about it even before we got the notification. My mother went to see a different friend, a lawyer, and she immediately wrote up an appeal for us. We appealed for so long, that we eventually appealed all the way up to Zapotocky 13. And with him we were finally successful, so we were able to stay there.

Well, but because there were two three-room apartments with a front hall, quite large rooms, they then wanted to move us out, based on the fact that it was too big for us. For in those days it was permitted to own only three rooms, but I don’t remember their exact area. Back then it was established by some sort of decree. My mother resolved it by selling half of the house, the upper half, to a friend of hers. At that time they were looking for an apartment, so they bought it and immediately moved in. The lady is two years younger than our mother, and is still alive. At least I hope that I can say that, for sure she was still alive last week. So now this old lady lives upstairs there with her daughter, and in our apartment no one permanently. We go there only once in a while. None of my relatives are alive any more, but I have lots of classmates from elementary school and from high school.

That Communist Party chairman in Litomysl reacted very badly to the selling of that half of the house. Every little while my mother had to look for a job, we for example couldn’t even go with a tour group to Dresden and I couldn’t go with the [Communist] Youth Association to Romania. In this way he interfered with our lives until the year 1968, when he tried being progressive. Shortly thereafter he died. Then my mother had a better job: she started working as a gatekeeper at that dairy. But I’ve got the impression that soon after that she retired. As a pensioner she then worked as a tour guide at a historical chateau and Smetana’s room, and finally at the Maticka Gallery – Josef Maticka was a painter in the naive style. It’s very interesting naive art. He wasn’t born in Litomysl, but married a woman from Litomysl, a Jewess by the way. His best paintings are from the time of the war, when he had some sort of premonition of something evil. Before that though, he was a pronounced Communist, which a lot of people were in those days. There’s a gallery in Litomysl named after him, and that’s where my mother worked.

My mother had a brother, Jan, who was two or three years older, and a sister, Marie, who was two years younger. They used to call her Micy [pronounced Mitzi], because she was born in Teplice [Teplice-M(arie)ice-Micy].

Her brother Jan was born in 1906. For a long time he was single and lived in Prostejov, where he had a children’s wear shop. As far as his religious inclinations are concerned, they were very lukewarm. I almost doubt that he would have observed something, and quite certainly he didn’t keep kosher. For a long time he lived with a local actress, prominent during those times, Tana Hodanova [1892–1982], but they weren’t married. That name probably doesn’t mean anything to you, but in its day, it was a very prominent name. My uncle, being very foresighted, realized that staying here during the war wasn’t a road to good fortune, so he wanted to emigrate with Tana Hodanova. But Tana refused, because her world was theater, the Ostrava stage. And so they broke up.

My uncle left for England alone, and started up some sort of textile repair business or something like that, and then had some sort of clothing store there. And he met a much younger girl from Opava, Erika Lichtwitzova, and married her. Her father had a liquor factory in Opava – it was named Lichtwitz Liker. After the war it became a can factory, Seliko. [Editor’s note: The company Emanuel LICHTWITZ – Manufacturer of Liqueurs was founded in 1861 in Opava and in 1863 was recorded in the commercial registry under the name ‘Em. LICHTWITZ.’ After nationalization during the years 1948-1949 the plant was subsumed into national property. Gradually, from 1953 to 1958, its liquor manufacture declined and eventually halted. Its production was replaced by the manufacture of tin cans. The company went through several phases of organizational changes, currently as SELIKO a.s.]

Erika made it to England at the beginning of the war, or even before, that I don’t know exactly. She was also Jewish, so she left for England, as Jews were doing back then. They both returned to Prague from England. On 20th September 1947 they had a son, who they named Tomas Jan Vaclav. But when he was half a year old, right after February 1948, they immediately returned with him back to England. And there he was left with only the name John. Erika is still alive, but then again she was much younger then my uncle, by 13 years. She lives in London and their son John lives right in the next building over.

My mother’s sister Marie was born on 8th August 1911 and then lived in Litomysl up until deportation. She married Otto Sgall, who was 19 years older than she. They had a son, Milan, who was born on 5th May 1934. None of these three survived the war. They left on the Litomysl transport to Terezin and then went on the so-called September transport to Auschwitz, which means that they were all killed on 7th-8th September 1944 in Auschwitz.

As I’ve said, after the war I was also again able to go to school, to high school. That was the school year 1945/46. Back then I was accepted into ‘kvarta’ on a probationary basis – event though I already belonged into ‘kvinta’ [fifth year of school], where they, for understandable reasons, didn’t take me – with the condition that by the end of the school year I had to pass exams in all the subjects in junior high school. Whereas I know that for example here in Prague one of my girlfriends only had to do exams in Czech and math, while I did them in natural sciences, chemistry, and I don’t know what else. In the beginning it was very tough, but then I got used to the work. I used to study late into the night, the kvarta subjects, plus all of the other stuff.

After the war, only three of us children returned to Litomysl, what’s more, of various ages, so the school offered us this possibility, but we had to prepare ourselves on our own. First this one student who had just graduated tutored me for the exams, and then one professor from a technical school, and one lady professor, perhaps also from a technical school. They would come to see me and stuffed my head with knowledge. Because before I had only gone up to the fourth grade of elementary school, and I had studied a bit privately and a tiny bit also in Terezin, secretly, but I knew virtually nothing. The last three quarters of a year that we had been in that Lenzing, I knew only painful, hard work. So I had a completely, but completely blank brain. I didn’t remember anything at all, whatever I learned in the evening, by morning I had forgotten it. But I made such an effort to pass those exams that I succeeded. At first I had all fours and fives [Es and Fs], but in the end I graduated near the top of the class. But I wouldn’t say that I caught up with everything, even though for those exams it was enough.

I very much loved going to school. Summer holidays always took too long for me, I couldn’t wait until I could go to school again. I liked studying, in elementary school, I think, I liked everything – perhaps less counting and more grammar. And I had a hard time coping with drawing. And in high school I loved all the humanities, while the natural sciences remained somewhat foreign to me. Though I must say that even so they interested me and I liked studying them.

After graduating I went on to study Library Science at the Faculty of Philosophy. I had wanted to take psychology, but halfway through my last year of high school I learned that I’d have to combine it with pure philosophy, and back then pure philosophy meant above all Marxism. Well, and so I rejected that notion and applied for Languages – not very cleverly though, because I applied for English-German. For in 1950 it was absolutely out of the question that I’d be accepted, when I didn’t have a Party background. So I was very lucky that back then they wrote me: ‘You have been accepted into Library Science.’ And so I studied Library Science.

We had several people that had written entrance exams in completely different subject areas. For example, my current colleague, not only from the same year, but also the same profession, wrote her entrance exams in art history. And was also notified: ‘You have been accepted into Library Science.’ Because no one was interested in Library Science! Anita Frankova, for example, applied for History and was accepted into Archival Science. She was in the same year. Back then it wasn’t possible to transfer to a different department, when they had already accepted you into the Faculty of Philosophy, even though I think someone perhaps managed it, but on the other hand they could accept you into a completely different department than the one you wrote entrance exams for.

Back then I said to myself that better Library Science than nothing. But then I began to like it, and I do to this day. Besides, already in elementary school I had liked reading, my favorite author was Foglar. [Foglar, Jaroslav (1907-1999): Czech writer of young people’s literature.] I was reputedly a poor eater, and when my mother walked by a bookstore with me, I said, ‘Mommy, I’m hungry.’ And she apparently said, ‘Come on, I’ll take you over there across the way to the butcher shop and buy you something.’ And I said, ‘No, I’m hungry for reading.’

At home we of course also had a library. My father was a big collector of literature, and had a lot of technical literature. He liked fairy tales and things that were put out in those days by ELK, the European Literary Club. Which were these contemporary Czech and international classics. My mother also undoubtedly read similar literature. I don’t know if they also had any religious literature at home; I only remember that Grandpa used to take his prayer book out of his night table. As far as magazines go, my father subscribed to the weekly Pestry Tyden, we even had it bound. [Editor’s note: The introductory issue of the magazine Pestry Tyden (Colorful Week) was published in 1926. It was a weekly aimed at the intellectual upper class. Editors were Adolf Hoffmeister, Jaromir John, and up to the magazine’s very end in 1945, Neubert.]

Litomysl also had a city library, but whether they used to go there, I don’t know. I myself was only there once. That was after the war, already as a high school student, when I needed some compulsory literature. I saw that dark room, all the books wrapped in blue wrapping paper, the librarian was a very interesting figure: very ugly, with jutting teeth, a black smock, sleeve protectors. Well, I was glad to leave there. And said to myself: ‘To the library, never again.’

As far as foreign languages go, I’m capable of communicating in German. But I never studied German, because I was born in Pilsen and therefore grew up in a bilingual environment. At the age of eight, Uncle Sgall started teaching me English, which I then also had in high school, but as an option, and then also at university. So I can also get by in English. In high school we also had Latin. From ‘kvarta’ onwards I had Russian, in which I also tutored others, and then passed my exams in. But I’ve forgotten it, because I haven’t used it for a long time. That I very much regret.

By the way, at the prison camp, in Lenzing, I was together with some Hungarian women, and so that I’d exercise my brain a bit, I learned Hungarian as well. I listened and asked them what this or that sentence or word meant. So back then I also understood that language fairly well, but now, except for a couple of words, I don’t understand a thing. From ‘kvinta’ onwards I had French, in which, I think, I also passed my final exams, but because I haven’t used it for so long, I know it passively, but unfortunately not actively. After the final state exams I applied to a school of languages to study modern Hebrew, or Ivrit, because I didn’t know much of that from my childhood. That questionable Rabbi Samuel Freilich, who taught us Hebrew back in Litomysl in elementary school, didn’t teach us much. More often it was our father or grandfather that taught us something.

Besides languages, I also devoted myself to sports quite a bit, but back then there weren’t any sports clubs. Before the war I used to go to Sokol 19. But I never participated in any rally. I skied, skated, sledded, swam and so on. In Litomysl people used to go skating on a pond not far from Anita Frankova’s house. So we used to go skating together. I never skied in the mountains; my parents didn’t ski, so we never went. But in Litomysl there was this hill that they used to call Fejtak, or Fejt Hill. Back then it seemed awfully huge to me, but today I maybe wouldn’t even notice it. What’s more, it may not even be there any more, various changes have been made there. And it was on this hill that children in Litomysl used to go skiing. But my only interest was reading, and that’s stayed with me to this day. Even today I’m usually never bored, buy I try to find a little bit of spare time for a bit of reading.

They made Library Science studies into a single major with no minor subject for us, so we graduated in two years, in 1952. During my studies I did my work experience at the National Museum, in the archival documents section, where I used to go work for free in the hopes that I’d get a job there. I found the work there quite fascinating. They then asked our faculty for me, because it was work placement time. But at our faculty they told them that the museum is a very reactionary environment and that I’m not politically somehow yet a completely lost cause, so that they have to put me someplace where I’ll have a chance to become politically elevated. And they placed me at the Army Medical Library in Hradec Kralove. So I wrote them to introduce myself, and they wrote me back that three people had gotten the same placement, and that I was the least suitable as far as political background was concerned, so that they wouldn’t accept me. Back then in the 1950s everything was possible, even that three people get placed into the same position.

Someone told me that he had heard that there was some library in Dejvice [a quarter of Prague]. So I left for Dejvice, and there I went from faculty to faculty – there was Agriculture and Chemistry there – and everywhere they told me that they had no free position. I also went to the UDA, which was the Central Army Building, but there I had absolutely no luck due to my political background. And then in one of those places they told me that perhaps someplace in Podbaba, in some research institute, that there was some library.

So I went to Podbaba, found that there’s a Water Management Research Institute there, and so I went to see the political officer, some Josef Fiala. He was an incredible primitive. Without having a single reference about me, when he found out that I had been in a concentration camp, he said to himself, ‘Aha, she’s got to be politically aware, we’ll put her in the library. There they don’t have a very good political background, so she’ll educate them there.’ So they put me there and we of course immediately understood each other, and right away I was one of them, and I and the woman who was the manager are friends to this day.

But I was there for only a short while, not quite a year, because we found out that the library was supposed to get a new manager. And my manager, because she knew that I could have political problems with him, said to me, ‘Eva, you’d better get out of here as soon as you can.’ And at that time, completely by coincidence, it was all this series of coincidences, this one engineer came by, who told me that they were starting up a new library at the Academy of Sciences, across the street – back then it was a laboratory for water management and then it was turned into the Hydrodynamics Institute – and if I don’t know of someone. And my manager said, ‘Don’t hesitate for even an instant, and take it yourself.’ So I took it myself. By the way, when I was leaving for my new workplace, I received the following political evaluation: ‘Comrade Freyova, despite having been in a concentration camp, addresses her female comrades as Miss.’ According to that political officer, as soon as someone had been in a concentration camp, they had to be a Communist. He was simply incredibly dumb.

So in 1953 I transferred to the Hydrodynamics Institute, they had a very good director there, and he had a splendid assistant. The assistant interviewed me, told me that everything was in order, but finally he paused, and to ‘politically verify’ me, he said, ‘Please, Miss, there’s one more thing, but I don’t know how to say it. You see, we don’t have a [Communist] Youth Association here. And if you’re going to require it, we’ll have to start one because of you.’ And I replied, ‘Please, anything but that.’ I think that I was extremely lucky. So at the academy I started up a library, and I was there until 1988, until the last day of November 1988, when I retired. I was in charge of the entire library, so I performed acquisitions, processing, lending, statistics, purchasing plus inter-library loans.

After I retired I had various part-time jobs, for example at the National Library. I did bibliography at the Current Events Institute, and then in 1996 I founded my beloved library: the library at the Terezin Initiative Institute. That’s why I’ve got such good access to the Terezin Memorial Book. At first Mr. Miroslav Karny, who took a leading role in the Terezin Initiative right after November [1989], was looking for someone to work at the museum in Terezin. I wasn’t in the mood for commuting there daily, so I refused. But then, when his struggle for the creation of the Terezin Initiative Foundation 20 succeeded – today it’s the Terezin Initiative Institute – they also wanted to have a library there, and he thought of me once again. I didn’t have anything to do at the time, so I jumped into it with enthusiasm.

I really got into Library Science, I was captivated mainly by the system. Moreover, back then at the Hydrodynamic Institute the content also captivated me. My father was a technical person, I was even familiar with some authors that my father had talked about, so it was something that near and dear to me. And at the Terezin Initiative, it’s near and dear to me as a Jewess who herself was in Terezin.

As far as religion is concerned, I practice to this day, and this I see as being thanks to my grandfather and father, that they influenced me in such a way that it remained in me. As I’ve said, the teachings of that rabbi didn’t give any of us much to go on. He was originally from [Subcarpathian] Ruthenia 21, his name was Samuel Freilich, and he spoke with this bad Czech. We had lessons about once a week. I used to go there with my only Jewish classmate, Anita Frankova. What’s more, in the end it came out that Samuel Freilich was a big swindler. Before the transports, or perhaps even at the beginning of the war, he had asked some of the rich members of the community for money, telling them that he’d arrange emigration for them, and then disappeared. After the war he appeared at our place, right before lunch, and my mother asked him, ‘So, what did you do with that money?’ Well, he made all sorts of excuses, and then he claimed that he’d been interned at Ebensee [one of the most well-known sub-camps of Mauthausen]. Hearing this, my mother said, ‘Well, that’s interesting, but we returned home with the men from Ebensee.’ And he immediately said his goodbyes. I never heard of him again.

Jewish history in Litomysl

Before the war a little over one hundred Jews lived in Litomysl – after the war fifteen of them returned – so it was unthinkable for ten men to gather at the synagogue on Friday evening [for a minyan – a minimum of ten men above the age of 13 necessary for a public prayer to be held]. So we attended the synagogue only on the high holidays, for Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Simchat Torah. Back then Litomysl had a population of 5,000, now it’s got 10,000, and has always been very cultural. From at least the 19th century it was for one a student town and for another a town of writers, musicians and painters. Smetana [Bedrich (1824-1884): Czech composer, conductor, piano virtuoso and teacher], Jirasek [Alois (1851-1930): Czech novelist and playwright, writer of historical fairy tales] and Nemcova 22 lived here. I wrote about her in the Litomysl memorial journal. For it was there that she first published her first collection of writings with the local publisher Antonin August. She would always go and spend some time in Litomysl; she lived there in three different places.

There was never a Jewish quarter in Litomysl, only a synagogue and beside it the house of the shammash. There were no Jewish schools or mikves there. Currently the Jewish cemetery is in a state of absolute devastation. That’s because it’s not so old as to interest the Jewish Museum and the employees of the Jewish community, so it’s all paid for from local sources. But I’m afraid that the possibilities are very limited. The devastation continues. Even though now a local teacher and her students have begun taking care of it. My great-grandmother on my father’s side is definitely buried at the Litomysl cemetery. Maybe Uncle Karel too, her son. The rest of my relatives’ ashes were scattered. As far as the synagogue goes, the Communists demolished it in the 1960s. I initiated and saw through an effort to have a memorial plaque installed in the place it used to stand. It has an inscription that the Nazis devastated it and the Communists demolished it. Their excuse at the time was that they wanted to build a housing development. Which they did, but it would not have stood in their way at all. Back then my mother tried to convince them to at least turn it into some cultural display. But there was a concerted effort to be rid of it all.

Jews in Litomysl were mainly merchants. They did business with various articles, but mainly with textiles, I think. There was a very prominent factory owner, Hugo Popper, a well-known footwear manufacturer. It was very high-quality footwear, mainly for export. By the way, if you know Helga Hoskova [Helga Hoskova-Weissova], the painter, who created a memorial plaque that’s on the Park Hotel in Holesovice, from where the first Prague transports left, he was her uncle. She also made the memorial plaque for the Litomysl synagogue.

My religious identity

As a young girl I liked the high holidays, the way the entire family and the entire Litomysl community would go to synagogue. It was all so festive and we children horsed around frightfully. And we were admonished, even by hand. My grandfather, father and my father’s brother sat on the left in the first row and I was allowed to come and sit with those three gentlemen. That I also liked a lot. In our synagogue it was normal for women to sit separately from the men, but I simply scampered down and sat myself down beside them. No one threw me out [Editor’s note: in Orthodox synagogues, the women and men must sit separately]. Whether they would have thrown other children out, that I don’t know, but I don’t think anything would have happened to them either. What’s more, it wasn’t only once, if anything I sat there quite regularly. Besides that, I remember that when there was a maskir, or prayer for the dead – in that moment all who still have both parents and their siblings, basically their closest relatives, must leave the synagogue – I would leave the synagogue with both my parents, but I didn’t know the reason why. But I knew that if both of my parents had to leave the synagogue as well, that for sure there was nothing indecent going on in there. Because whatever wasn’t for children was indecent, at least that’s how I understood it back then.

Otherwise on Friday evenings we always gathered at my grandfather’s, at my father’s father’s, where the eve of the Sabbath was celebrated within our immediate family. Everything always took place in that room with the vaulted ceiling. But I don’t remember my mother lighting Sabbath candles, for example. Grandpa said blessings before we ate, even though I’m not sure whether he said similar blessings before meals other than the Sabbath one. We didn’t eat kosher, and likely no one in Litomysl did, as that possibility didn’t even exist. My grandfather, when he was young, kept kosher, but then he came down with some stomach problems – what kind, I don’t know – and the doctor recommended that he eat ham. Well, and chicken ham didn’t exist back then. But he was wise, and I think that he handled it very well back then. We didn’t even separate meat and dairy products. On the other hand, when I was at my grandfather’s on Saturday, I wasn’t even allowed to write. But when I was at home, then yes. My grandfather was stricter in this respect, and on Saturday he didn’t even travel. [On Saturday, the Sabbath, Jewish religious laws forbid 39 fundamental work activities that are described in the Talmud, and other activities that are related to them. Among them are for example also writing and traveling.] But as the representative of the Most Steelworks, my father had to travel even on Saturday.

We also celebrated Passover, seder supper, at my grandfather’s. Of course we read from the Haggadah and I was allowed to say the mah nishtanah. Because I wasn’t very good in Hebrew, by father transcribed it onto a piece of paper in Latin script and put it into the Haggadah. I would read it, but felt very embarrassed, because I had the feeling that I was cheating if I didn’t read it from the original. Today I’d know how to pray from the original, at least that what my grandpa and father taught me. They both devoted themselves to me a great deal, mainly my grandfather, he really quite vehemently, because my father had little time, being always on the road.

Our family never observed Christian holidays, we for example never had a Christmas tree. It never really bothered me, and I didn’t even try to somehow conceal it from my classmates. I was taught to proudly acknowledge it. But I think that it didn’t interest my classmates at all anyways, whether I got presents at Christmas or for Chanukkah, and neither were any of them interested in how and why Chanukkah is celebrated, for example.

When I was little, all those prohibitions and commandments bothered me a lot. My parents always left me with my grandpa and grandma, with my father’s parents, and Grandma was always afraid for me and wouldn’t let me out to play with other children. On the other hand, even though Grandpa forbade me to write and draw, he did tell me various Bible stories, which captivated me. Later I read the whole Bible, both the Old and New Testament. And occasionally, when I come upon something, I write about religion in the Jewish Almanac. But not so much anymore now; now I devote myself more, how would I say it, to the formal aspects of the community’s life. Because, as you surely know, there’s a lot of quarreling going on there. I’m a supporter of the anti-Sidon side, and I identify myself as such. [Editor’s note: Karol Efraim Sidon, the Chief Rabbi of the Czech Republic and Prague, is an advocate of conservative Judaism.] It’s got nothing to do with religion, though, it’s more about a certain relationship with the community. I’m convinced that the other side – we always say on our side and on the other side – that by me the other side, though it very demonstratively performs religious rites, is mainly concerned with financial and other gains. Well, basically financial.

Today I myself don’t observe prohibitions connected with Saturday, neither do I light candles. In a mixed marriage that’s not possible and our lifestyle in general doesn’t allow it. I only go to the community during certain holidays, and during the Long Day [Yom Kippur] I fast. But I began to take Judaism as more of a philosophy of life and the things that weren’t possible to observe, basically the formalities, I dispensed with. That’s also why the current Orthodox tendency of the Prague community is foreign to me. According to me, the things that they are promoting are only these formalities, things through which a person removes himself from normal society. That he puts himself ‘on show.’ That I don’t like, that sort of, let’s say, demonstration.

As an adult I was at the synagogue on Friday evening, and it seemed to me to be foreign, impersonal, so I said to myself that I have no need of it. But because as a child I was used to going to the synagogue on the high holidays, somehow I attended the whole time, even during Communist times. Because I’m a librarian, I also had official errands to run, so I combined it with some official errand. And no one knew anything. Probably I was lucky. And just as lucky was my husband, Milan Dusek, who played the organ at St. Margaret’s, also every Sunday and every holiday. Their political officer lived across the street from the entrance to St. Margaret’s, and she used to say, ‘I know everything about everyone.’ But about my husband she knew nothing. I never felt any repression due to my faith during Communist times. Only once, during some interrogation, or perhaps a political background interview, I don’t know any more, they asked how it is with me and religion, to which I replied that I don’t have it all figured out yet.

I never came across any anti-Semitism in my life, neither in school, nor at work. My mother did, with that chairman of the National Committee, but not me personally. I never had the need to hide my Jewish origin, but neither did I feel the need to demonstrate it. At work they of course knew it about me. By the way, we had a group of four of us women there, and all of us were religiously inclined, each to a different kind. And we discussed it, in absolute agreement. One was a Protestant, another Czechoslovak [Czechoslovak Hussite Church] and one was a Catholic. What connected us was the common opinion regarding whether one should be a believer or atheist, you know, during totalitarian times. I think that regarding faith, all four of us were tolerant, and still are to this day.

I grew out of Judaism, or more I grew up in it. That doubt whether I should accept it never came upon me, I don’t think that I ever thought about anything like that. I simply took it as a given. And I never asked anyone whether I should believe or not, not even during times of Communism, which promoted atheism. I believed, but never advertised the fact. People even asked me, how it’s possible that I didn’t stop believing after the Holocaust. But I know that that’s how it had to be, so I go on believing. It’s hard to put into words what in Judaism speaks to me the most. I like that my opinion and my feelings are shared by another, here larger, here smaller group of people. And above all they’re emotional bonds – to tradition and Jewish ideals.

Married life

My husband is named Milan Dusek. He’s not a Jew, but a Catholic. He was born on 26th May 1931. He grew up in Usti nad Orlici, but his mother left for Vysoke Myto to give birth to him – there was no maternity ward in Usti. He had, but actually didn’t have siblings. Because his father Emil was married for a second time. He first married in 1894. He had six children with his first wife. But she was chronically ill in some way; no one knows exactly what was wrong with her. They thought that maybe it was multiple sclerosis. Then when he became a widower, it became apparent that none of those basically already adult children wanted to take care of him. And so he found a housekeeper. And he decided to take her as his wife.

She was named Justina Zimprichova. There was an age difference of 28 years between them. She was actually a German, who came from around Usti nad Orlici, from the Sudetenland. But she identified herself as being of Czech nationality. So my father had six half-siblings from his father’s first marriage, and none from the second. I don’t know anything about them, they didn’t associate and I don’t think that any of them are still alive. His oldest brother, if I’m not mistaken, was about three-quarters of a year older than my husband’s mother. And they apparently were very jealous of her. They just didn’t want to have anything to do with them [their father and his second wife].

My husband graduated from the Prague Conservatory, but for political reasons he only got in on the third attempt. So before that he absolved several working-class professions, he worked in some shop that manufactured shingles and so on, various things.

After graduation he taught music in Vysoke Myto for some time, but in the end he returned to the conservatory. There he primarily taught piano, improvisation and theory. But his original profession is that of an organist, he himself played in the Brevnov Monastery during totalitarian times. He also taught music at DAMU [Faculty of Drama of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague]. There, by the way, he taught mainly the year in which were Dejdar [Martin (b. 1965)], Hrzanova [Barbora (b. 1964)], Jancarik, he’s in Brno, and Hanus [Miroslav (b. 1963)], he plays at the Theater in Dlouha. I think that in the second year they rehearsed this one-act play from F.F. Samberk [Frantisek Ferdinand (1838-1904)], ‘Nuthouse On The First Floor.’ They modernized it and played it at Disk [DAMU student theater]. Then when they graduated, the guys went into the army. But when they returned, they decided that they’d rehearse it again. But they didn’t have any materials any more, and so my husband had to put everything together from recordings. And so he put it together, prepared it and accompanied them. They played it – and virtually still do – in various theaters. He then worked on other plays with them as well. Even now, when Dejdar and Hrzanova have some time, for both of them are very busy, they take the play to Brno to the Radost Theater. But the play hasn’t been put on for a long time now.

So, both of us studied in Prague, my husband lived in a dorm during his studies, from 1951 to 1956. I lived in a private apartment. But we didn’t meet until later, on 14th December 1959. In a train. There used to be a shuttle train from Litomysl to Chocen – and it still runs to this day. At one time there was an effort to route an express train through Litomysl, but the town council was against it. So it didn’t happen. Luckily. At that time my husband was taking the train from Usti to Prague, and I from Litomysl. And in Chocen I sat down in the compartment where my husband was sitting.

Later we agreed that usually both of us simply sat down in the compartment, read something and didn’t talk to anyone. But back then I asked him whether there was a free spot, he said yes, and right away we began to talk. I had a leather coat on, which I had bought in Bulgaria, and because of which I had had political profile issues. And because of it my husband thought that I worked for the StB [Statni Tajna Bezpecnost] 23 and it irritated him greatly. But they way it had been with that coat, was that I had traded it for some things, but the political officers thought that I had bought it and asked me how I had come by so much money. I had a high school classmate who had married a man in Bulgaria, and she confirmed that she had given me the coat. So we began to discuss our jobs. I told him what I did, and then I asked him what he did. He answered that he taught. My question as to whether in elementary school provoked him. He told me that no, that he teaches at a conservatory.

Well, and then we started discussing music. I myself had taken piano lessons for a long time, but back then they told me that despite being talented, I’ll never get very far in it. I used to go see this one teacher, her name was Emilie Votroubkova. She would stand above me, whack me across the fingers and address me in the third person. She would say, ‘I’m convinced, that when I die, she won’t come to my funeral.’ After the war I even had a recital. But it ended up very infamously. After the war I also took accordion lessons, which I had insisted on, and when there was a public performance, my teacher told me, ‘Take my advice, and take your notes with you.’ But I answered, ‘No way, I’ve got it perfectly memorized.’ I got through the toughest part, and that was the end. But I was never one for public performances. I didn’t like showing off in public. As opposed to Anita Frankova, who would sing whenever anyone asked her to. I also sang in a choir, the school choir.

I told my future husband that I like Janacek [Leos Janacek (1854-1928): Czech composer, teacher, prominent folklorist and leading exponent of modern music], he said that he liked Mozart. So we found that we absolutely could not agree. We arrived in Prague, walked out to the streetcar stop, and standing there and waiting for the streetcar was a former pupil of my husband’s – my husband at one time taught music at a technical school in Vysoke Myto – who was also a colleague of mine. Because he was a technician and worked at our Institute. Both of us walked up to him and each of us wanted to introduce him to the other. And he says, ‘I know both of you.’ In the meantime the streetcar was approaching, I and that Mr. Peterka got on the streetcar, and my husband says, ‘Mr. Peterka, what’s your phone number?’ And he says, ‘Such and such, but Miss Freyova’s number is so and so.’ In the streetcar I then questioned him, ‘Mr. Peterka, please, who’s that impossible man?’ And he says to me, ‘Well, excuse me, he’s actually an excellent person.’ My husband called me the next day and I began to investigate what it was that was so excellent about him. And I’m still investigating to this day.

We were married on 28th January 1961. I had applied at an apartment co-op, and at that time we began to have a realistic hope of getting an apartment. That quickened our decision. Our first child, our daughter Hana, was born on 15th January 1962. Our son Petr is younger: he was born on 25th November 1967.

Our daughter is married for the second time, because her husband, Jan Sevcik, was killed in a car accident a year after their wedding. She married him in 1985. In 1987 she met her second husband, Petr Janis, and married him in 1988. She has one daughter from her second marriage, Tereza who is 16 now. Hana graduated from DAMU, Department of Theater and Cultural Organization and Administration. In other words, production. Now she works as a public relations officer for various companies.

Our son Petr is also married, he was married ten years ago, so in 1995. He married Lucie Blahetova. They have two daughters together, Katerina and Barbora. Katerina was born on 1st October 2000. The other is going to be two on 9th October, so she was born in 2003. Petr has a technical diploma in Mechanical Engineering, which he did after his army service. Originally he had been a licensed auto mechanic. Now he’s studying at a university in Brno, Department of Special Education. He does distance studies, as part of his profession – he’s a criminologist – and it was a condition of his staying in his job.

As far my children are concerned, I’d say that my daughter has very Jewish sentiments. She says that the fact that she’s a half-breed enlarges her capability for tolerance. She considers herself to be Jewish, doesn’t practice, is in fact an atheist, but sees it as the fact that she has Jewish blood. My son Petr doesn’t think about it as much, he only said that he’d like to join the Jewish community, which he managed, but I didn’t ask him why, because he’s very introverted. I have no idea what made him do it. He’s not circumcised and neither does he practice in any way.

But both children were brought up to believe, and that in both directions, because my husband is also religiously inclined. Our children saw it, we never hid it from them, and they knew that it had to be combined somehow. They knew the differences and saw that we tolerate each other, so they tolerated it without any problems whatsoever. We celebrated Jewish and Christian holidays equally. The whole family still goes to the community with me: during Chanukkah or at Purim and Passover. They themselves don’t observe holidays. Now during the high holidays I go either alone or with my husband, because our children simply don’t have the time for it. But when they were small, they also went. When I was married I also began to celebrate Christmas. We used to celebrate it here at home, we’d put up a tree and so on. Today we celebrate it at our daughters’ place. I take it as a social occasion, and an opportunity for the family to get together.

As far as spare time goes, at one time I used to enthusiastically attend plays and concerts. Today very little, because I’m somewhat handicapped. I had a broken leg and also had my first lumbar vertebrae broken twice – once last year and again this year. So now I’m a little more tired. I used to go with my girlfriends, because my husband doesn’t go out anywhere. He’s got his music library at home and doesn’t want to be disturbed while listening to it. He says that he can’t stand the various shuffling of feet and coughing at public performances. The last few years I also rarely go to the movies, but when we where younger we used to go. There used to be a movie theater in Litomysl, and at one time even two, I think. I was there even before the war, at that time they were showing ‘Snow White.’

I also used to go to student balls a lot, they were on an excellent level. Today dances are formally the same as back then, but not content-wise. Here in Prague, last year, I attended dances with my granddaughter, it was a group of people – I don’t want to call it a society – who didn’t know each other at all, while we, there in that small town, all knew each other. They were only student dances, and so we were a uniform society and one could say a good society. As far as I can remember, we used to go to dances once a week, but how long they lasted, I don’t know any more. In Prague I then used to go to balls with a group of friends, because my husband doesn’t dance. He did participate in dances, and several times in fact, but only as a piano player. He’s a complete anti-talent when it comes to dancing.

So I spend my free time with my girlfriends. I’ve retained some friendships from long-ago times as well. For example, last week I visited one girlfriend who I know from when we were still of preschool age – that’s a long-term friendship. I’m also still friends with that classmate of mine that I used to play with during the war, and with girls from high school. These days we have reunions every year. Originally they were every five years, then every three years, and now every year. Once in a while we write each other. We also used to go on trips together, but not any more. We of course used to do it as scouts when we were single. We used to go camping, on trips into the countryside and so on. Not only around Litomysl. In 1949 we were in the Svatojanska Valley in Slovakia. There are girls and boy scouts. The way it worked was that the boys built the camp and were there for the first 14 days. We would then take their place and then take the camp apart. I liked going there, there were girls that I felt close to, the spirit of scouting was close to my heart, basically it was a good gang. I began going there in 1947 during summer vacation. In 1949, after summer vacation, the Scouts were unfortunately disbanded [see Czech Scout Movement] 24.

I never differentiated whether my friends were Jews or not. It wasn’t even possible; there were only nineteen of us children there, and of my age only, Anita Frankova. I’m good friends with her to this day. Even though we don’t have time to meet up, we only promise each other.

My relationship with the Communist regime was unambiguous and supported by many facts. But I had never been interrogated due to my relatives in the West. They probably checked our correspondence, but of course we wrote very carefully. We also tried to listen to Radio Free Europe 25 and so on, but it was very difficult, because it was jammed a lot in Prague. Outside of Prague it was easier. And once in a while I also got to a samizdat [see Samizdat literature in Czechoslovakia] 26.

Luckily at work we were this good group, there weren’t any Communists there. Though in 1968 [see Prague Spring] 27 the director of our institute emigrated, I had and still have – I hope that he’s still alive – a very good friendly relationship with him. I even went to visit him in England in 1992. However, I also was friendly with the new director.

But in 1974 they put a radical end to all that: a new ‘comrade’ director came, and hard times were upon us. For example, he suspected, or perhaps someone informed him, that the library is actually gathering all information, that therefore we know everything. He asked me into his office and wanted me to inform on people. I refused. And from that time on I had the lowest salary and the lowest bonuses. But he didn’t have any way of getting rid of me, because I was protected by ‘255,’ that is, by statute 255/46 regarding privileges of people that had returned from concentration camps. So he couldn’t fire me.

In 1981, however, when Solidarity 28 came along, he tried to go at it using that route. One day in the year 1981 when I came home from work, I found an official notice in my mailbox that said: ‘Come the next day at such and such a time to Bartolomejska Street No. 4. According to statute XY.’ I said to myself, ‘Omigod, what could have I done?’ And I went to the local VB [Public Security, today the Police] and asked them what statute that was. And they told me that it concerned the theft of socialist state property. I said to myself, ‘But I couldn’t have stolen anything. I don’t know of anything.’ The next day I went to Bartolomejska Street, went to the reception and said, ‘Excuse me, there’s probably a mistake here, because it’s supposed to be such and such statute, and I’m not aware of having stolen anything.’ The concierge answered me, ‘Well, maybe you stole something while you were drunk.’ To which I said, ‘Excuse me, but the last time I was drunk I was three years old.’ And he jumped up and said, ‘What? Do you know what could have come of it!’ I said that luckily nothing came of it.

So he led me upstairs and there was someone sitting there who was asking me questions from one angle, then another. After some time my patience wore thin and I said, ‘Excuse me, tell me what you actually want from me. You’re wasting your time here, while you should be working, I’m wasting my time, while I’m supposed to be working.’ Well, then he finally asked whether I supposedly don’t have some connection to Solidarity. Whether I’m not receiving any literature from them. And whether I’m in contact with people abroad. To this I said, ‘Yes, I am. Because I have a lot of relatives there, who emigrated there before Hitler.’ The ones who emigrated after 1968, those I somehow forgot about.

Well, so we talked like this for a while, he asked whether by any chance I don’t write those relatives that there are things here that I don’t like. I took exception and asked what it was that I could possibly write them. Well, it went on like this for a while longer, and then he said, ‘All right, you can go home.’ And I said, ‘I’m not going home until you give me an official confirmation that I’ve been here, because I need it for work.’ He answered: “I’m sorry, but I can’t leave you here by yourself.’ And I said, ‘Well, I’m sorry too, but I’m simply not leaving here without that confirmation.’ And so he said to me, ‘Stay where you’re sitting, and don’t move even a bit,’ pressed some button under the table and in a while came back, brought me the confirmation, and I went home.

So, even this didn’t work out for the director. And when I realized that despite my relatively minimal income, it would be more advantageous for me to retire on 1st December 1988, I left on my own. Even though, due to that ‘Article 255,’ I had already been of retirement age since 1982. And then the year 1989 [see Velvet Revolution] 29 arrived. At that time, though, I was mainly occupied with babysitting my oldest granddaughter, Tereza. I used to take her up to Petrin [Hill] in her baby carriage, and watched the masses of people walking about and demonstrating. But I also went; I was on Wenceslaus Square and also on Letna.

Otherwise I was allowed to travel even during Communist times. My mother and I had been to England to visit relatives. And then in 1992. Nowadays we don’t travel much, we used to spend summer vacations partly alone and partly with our children and their families. Once in a while we babysat Tereza. We took care of those little girls [the interviewee’s granddaughters] only once in a while. This year we were in Litomysl with them for the first time.

Before 1950 my mother had a great desire to emigrate. I insisted that I wanted to graduate from high school in Litomysl. Then in 1968 I had a desire to emigrate, and I was already married and my husband didn’t want to leave. I wanted to leave, maybe for Canada, where I had lots of relatives. I have no relatives in Israel, though I do have a few friends there, emigrants. When I arrived in Israel I was very glad to see them and I felt good with them. I’m convinced that Israel should have been created and that the people that live there are happy and feel at home there. But I don’t think that I would feel at home there. I’m used to a Christian environment.

I’ve been to Israel four times. The first time was back then with President Havel 30 in April of 1990. That was his first trip to Israel, when he took some of us with him, I think that there were 90 of us, but I wouldn’t bet my life on it. At that time there was some sort of program, a ballet or concert and as part of it Havel and Knazko 31 made speeches. Knazko unpleasantly surprised me, because at that time Havel spoke for Czechoslovakia, but Knazko for Slovakia. Even back then you could see the effort to separate. They then led us to the University of Jerusalem, where there was some exhibition about the Holocaust. And we were at Yad Vashem 32. In May of that same year I was there to attend a congress of the International Council of Jewish Women. The third time, I was there with a tour group through a travel agency, that was for about a week, a typical travel agency tour, a large group, by bus. That time I went there with Anita Frankova. The fourth time I was there, it was once again for a congress of the International Council of Jewish Women.

During that official trip I lived with relatives of a girlfriend of mine, and they took us to visit various historical sites and during the two congresses they also always took us on some trip: each time to Yad Vashem, and then one time to see the bedouin in the Negev Desert.

My first impression upon visiting Israel was that I’m walking along in the Bible. And that impression always followed me. I was especially captivated by Jerusalem’s Old Town, Jaffa Gate, basically the entire city. I was of course also at the Wailing Wall. The first time a larger group of us went there, and then I was there again with some friends. But I liked the other cities that I visited during that bus tour as well. For example Jaffa or Tel Aviv and Bethlehem. We were also at Masada, on the Mount of Olives, or in Nazareth, there I liked it a lot. For me it was interesting to visit both Jewish and Christian historical sites.

My experiences down below, by the Dead Sea and in Eilat, were more negative. I had been very curious about the Dead Sea, but I had some scrapes, something not normally noticeable, but I couldn’t go into that salty water. That made me very sad. So I’d never want to go to the Dead Sea again. And I didn’t like Eilat either, because it’s a big city and it’s really just a shopping mall by the sea. I did like the seaquarium there. And otherwise I was absolutely not impressed by a diamond cutting shop, because that was also very commercially oriented. And I didn’t like the tour guide, because she tried to make as much out of it for herself, and didn’t take care of us. I had a certain misunderstanding with her, we didn’t get along at all. No, I didn’t do anything rotten to her, it was more that I pointed out her inaccuracies. And that was already at the airport in Prague. And she put up a fight.

I can’t say that I was looking forward to anything in particular before my first visit to Israel. I was curious about everything. And everything surprised me.

Glossary

1 Terezin/Theresienstadt

A ghetto in the Czech Republic, run by the SS. Jews were transferred from there to various extermination camps. It was used to camouflage the extermination of European Jews by the Nazis, who presented Theresienstadt as a ‘model Jewish settlement’. Czech gendarmes served as ghetto guards, and with their help the Jews were able to maintain contact with the outside world. Although education was prohibited, regular classes were held, clandestinely. Thanks to the large number of artists, writers, and scholars in the ghetto, there was an intensive program of cultural activities. At the end of 1943, when word spread of what was happening in the Nazi camps, the Germans decided to allow an International Red Cross investigation committee to visit Theresienstadt. In preparation, more prisoners were deported to Auschwitz, in order to reduce congestion in the ghetto. Dummy stores, a cafe, a bank, kindergartens, a school, and flower gardens were put up to deceive the committee.

2 Terezin Initiative

In the year 1991 the former prisoners of various concentration camps met and decided to found the Terezin Initiative (TI), whose goal is to commemorate the fate of Protectorate (Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia) Jews, to commemorate the dead and document the history of the Terezin ghetto. Within the framework of this mission TI performs informative, documentary, educational and editorial activities. It also financially supports field trips to the Terezin Ghetto Museum for Czech schools.

3 Joseph II (1741-1790)

Holy Roman Emperor, king of Bohemia and Hungary (1780-1790), a representative figure of enlightened absolutism. He carried out a complex program of political, economic, social and cultural reforms. His main aims were religious toleration, unrestricted trade and education, and a reduction in the power of the Church. These views were reflected in his policy toward Jews. His ,Judenreformen’ (Jewish reforms) and the ,Toleranzpatent’ (Edict of Tolerance) granted Jews several important rights that they had been deprived of before: they were allowed to settle in royal free cities, rent land, engage in crafts and commerce, become members of guilds, etc. Joseph had several laws which didn’t help Jewish interests: he prohibited the use of Hebrew and Yiddish in business and public records, he abolished rabbinical jurisdiction and introduced liability for military service. A special decree ordered all the Jews to select a German family name for themselves. Joseph’s reign introduced some civic improvement into the life of the Jews in the Empire, and also supported cultural and linguistic assimilation. As a result, controversy arose between liberal-minded and orthodox Jews, which is considered the root cause of the schism between the Orthodox and the Neolog Jewry.

4 Von Schuschnigg, Kurt (1897-1977)

Austrian politician. During the years 1934-1938 Austrian Chancellor. Continued in Dollfuss politics. On 11th March 1938 Schuschnigg received an ultimatum from Hitler, to also accept Nazi politicians into his party, which he refused. The same day, Hitler ordered the Wehrmacht to enter Austrian territory. After the annexation of Austria, on 13th March 1938, Schuschnigg was jailed. After the war he lived in the USA from 1945-67. (Sources: Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary, Academia, Praha 1982, pg. 261; www.dws.ozone.pl)

5 Tobruk

harbor town in Libya on the Mediterranean Sea. During WWII heavy battles for Tobruk took place, in which together with the British Army Czech soldiers also participated. On 22nd January 1941 it was occupied by the British Army. On 21st June 1942, after a siege of several months, if was occupied by the Wehrmacht led by Field Marshal Rommel. On 12th-13th November it was again conquered by the British Army. (Source: Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary, Academia, Praha 1982, pg. 261)

6 Orthodox communities

The traditionalist Jewish communities founded their own Orthodox organizations after the Universal Meeting in 1868-1869. They organized their life according to Judaist principles and opposed to assimilative aspirations. The community leaders were the rabbis. The statute of their communities was sanctioned by the king in 1871. In the western part of Hungary the communities of the German and Slovakian immigrants’ descendants were formed according to the Western Orthodox principles. At the same time in the East, among the Jews of Galician origins the ‘eastern’ type of Orthodoxy was formed; there the Hassidism prevailed. In time the Western Orthodoxy also spread over to the eastern part of Hungary. 294 Orthodox mother-communities and 1,001 subsidiary communities were registered all over Hungary, mainly in Transylvania and in the north-eastern part of the country, in 1896. In 1930 30.4 % of Hungarian Jews belonged to 136 mother-communities and 300 subsidiary communities. This number increased to 535 Orthodox communities in 1944, including 242,059 believers (46 %).

7 Kashrut in eating habits

kashrut means ritual behavior. A term indicating the religious validity of some object or article according to Jewish law, mainly in the case of foodstuffs. Biblical law dictates which living creatures are allowed to be eaten. The use of blood is strictly forbidden. The method of slaughter is prescribed, the so-called shechitah. The main rule of kashrut is the prohibition of eating dairy and meat products at the same time, even when they weren’t cooked together. The time interval between eating foods differs. On the territory of Slovakia six hours must pass between the eating of a meat and dairy product. In the opposite case, when a dairy product is eaten first and then a meat product, the time interval is different. In some Jewish communities it is sufficient to wash out one’s mouth with water. The longest time interval was three hours – for example in Orthodox communities in Southwestern Slovakia.

8 Forced displacement of Germans

one of the terms used to designate the mass deportations of German occupants from Czechoslovakia which took place after WWII, during the years 1945-1946. Despite the fact that anti-German sentiments were common in Czech society after WWII, the origin of the idea of resolving post-war relations between Czechs and Sudeten Germans with mass deportations are attributed to President Edvard Benes, who gradually gained the Allies’ support for his intent. The deportation of Germans from Czechoslovakia, together with deportations related to a change in Poland’s borders (about 5 million Germans) was the largest post-war transfer of population in Europe. During the years 1945-46 more than 3 million people had to leave Czechoslovakia; 250,000 Germans with limited citizenship rights were allowed to stay. (Source:http://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vys%C3%ADdlen%C3%AD_N%C4%9Bmc%C5%AF_z_%C4%8Ceskoslovenska)

9 Skoda Company

Car factory, the foundations of which were laid in 1895 by the mechanics V. Laurin and V. Klement with the production of Slavia bicycles. Just before the end of the 19th century they began manufacturing motor cycles and, in 1905, they started manufacturing automobiles. The name Skoda was introduced in 1925. Having survived economic difficulties, the company made a name for itself on the international market even within the constraints of the Socialist economy. In 1991 Skoda became a joint stock company in association with Volkswagen.

10 Sudetenland

Highly industrialized north-west frontier region that was transferred from the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the new state of Czechoslovakia in 1919. Together with the land a German-speaking minority of 3 million people was annexed, which became a constant source of tension both between the states of Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia, and within Czechoslovakia. In 1935 a Nazi-type party, the Sudeten German Party financed by the German government, was set up. Following the Munich Agreement in 1938 German troops occupied the Sudetenland. In 1945 Czechoslovakia regained the territory and pogroms started against the German and Hungarian minority. The Potsdam Agreement authorized Czechoslovakia to expel the entire German and Hungarian minority from the country.

11 Hitlerjugend

The youth organization of the German Nazi Party (NSDAP). In 1936 all other German youth organizations were abolished and the Hitlerjugend was the only legal state youth organization. From 1939 all young Germans between 10 and 18 were obliged to join the Hitlerjugend, which organized after-school activities and political education. Boys over 14 were also given pre-military training and girls over 14 were trained for motherhood and domestic duties. After reaching the age of 18, young people either joined the army or went to work.

12 February 1948

Communist take-over in Czechoslovakia. The ‘people’s democracy’ became one of the Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe. The state apparatus was centralized under the leadership of the Czechoslovak Communist Party (KSC). In the economy private ownership was banned and submitted to central planning. The state took control of the educational system, too. Political opposition and dissident elements were persecuted.

13 Zapotocky, Antonin (1884-1957)

From 1921 a member of the Czechoslovak Communist Party (KSC), from1940-1945 imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg concentration camp. 1945-1950 president of the Central Union Committee (URO), 1950-1953 member of the National Assembly (NS), 1948-1953 Prime Minister. From 21st March 1953 president of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic.

14 Anti-Jewish laws in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia

In March 1939, there lived in the Protectorate 92,199 inhabitants classified according to the so-called Nuremberg Laws as Jews. On 21st June 1939, Konstantin von Neurath, the Reichs protector, passed the so-called Edict Regarding Jewish Property, which put restrictions on Jewish property. On 24th April 1940, a government edict was passed which eliminated Jews from economic activity. Similarly like previous legal changes it was based on the Nuremburg Law definitions and limited the legal standing of Jews. According to the law, Jews couldn’t perform any functions (honorary or paid) in the courts or public service and couldn’t participate at all in politics, be members of Jewish organizations and other organizations of social, cultural and economic nature. They were completely barred from performing any independent occupation, couldn’t work as lawyers, doctors, veterinarians, notaries, defence attorneys and so on. Jewish residents could participate in public life only in the realm of religious Jewish organizations. Jews were forbidden to enter certain streets, squares, parks and other public places. From September 1939 they were forbidden from being outside their home after 8pm. Beginning in November 1939 they couldn’t leave, even temporarily, their place of residence without special permission. Residents of Jewish extraction were barred from visiting theatres and cinemas, restaurants and cafés, swimming pools, libraries and other entertainment and sports centres. On public transport they were limited to standing room in the last car, in trains they weren’t allowed to use dining or sleeping cars and could ride only in the lowest class, again only in the last car. They weren’t allowed entry into waiting rooms and other station facilities. The Nazis limited shopping hours for Jews to twice two hours and later only two hours per day. They confiscated radio equipment and limited their choice of groceries. Jews weren’t allowed to keep animals at home. Jewish children were prevented from visiting German, and, from August 1940, also Czech public and private schools. In March 1941 even so-called re-education courses organized by the Jewish Religious Community were forbidden, and from June 1942 also education in Jewish schools. To eliminate Jews from society it was important that they be easily identifiable. Beginning in March 1940, citizenship cards of Jews were marked by the letter ‘J’ (for Jude – Jew). From 1st September 1941 Jews older than six could only go out in public if they wore a yellow six-pointed star with ‘Jude’ written on it on their clothing.

15 September 1938 mobilization

The ascent of the Nazis to power in Germany in 1933 represented a fundamental turning point in the foreign political situation of Czechoslovakia. The growing tension of the second half of the 1930s finally culminated in 1938, when the growing aggressiveness of neighboring Germany led first to the adoption of emergency measures from May 20th to June 22nd, and finally to the proclamation of a general mobilization on 23rd September 1938. At the end of September 1938, however, Czechoslovakia’s defense system, for years laboriously built up, collapsed. Czechoslovakia’s main ally, France, forced them to submit to Germany, and made no secret of the fact that they did not intend to provide military assistance. The support of the Soviet Union, otherwise in itself quite problematic, was contingent upon the support of France. Other countries, i.e. Hungary and Poland, were only waiting for the opportunity to gain something for themselves. (Source: http://www.military.cz/opevneni/mobilizace.html)

16 Yellow star – Jewish star in Protectorate

On 1st September 1941 an edict was issued according to which all Jews having reached the age of six were forbidden to appear in public without the Jewish star. The Jewish star is represented by a hand-sized, six-pointed yellow star outlined in black, with the word Jude in black letters. It had to be worn in a visible place on the left side of the article of clothing. This edict came into force on 19th September 1941. It was another step aimed at eliminating Jews from society. The idea’s author was Reinhard Heydrich himself.

17 Heydrichiade

Period of harsh reprisals against the Czech resistance movement and against the Czech nation under the German occupation (1939–45). It started in September 1941 with the appointment of R. Heydrich as Reichsprotektor of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, who declared martial law and executed the representatives of the local resistance. The Heydrichiade came to its peak after Heydrich’s assassination in May 1942. After his death, martial law was introduced until early July 1942, in the framework of which Czech patriots were executed and deported to concentration camps, and the towns of Lidice and Lezaky were annihilated. Sometimes the term Heydrichiade is used to refer to the period of martial law after Heydrich’s assassination.

18 Gulag

The Soviet system of forced labor camps in the remote regions of Siberia and the Far North, which was first established in 1919. However, it was not until the early 1930s that there was a significant number of inmates in the camps. By 1934 the Gulag, or the Main Directorate for Corrective Labor Camps, then under the Cheka's successor organization the NKVD, had several million inmates. The prisoners included murderers, thieves, and other common criminals, along with political and religious dissenters. The Gulag camps made significant contributions to the Soviet economy during the rule of Stalin. Conditions in the camps were extremely harsh. After Stalin died in 1953, the population of the camps was reduced significantly, and conditions for the inmates improved somewhat.

19 Sokol

One of the best-known Czech sports organizations. It was founded in 1862 as the first physical educational organization in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Besides regular training of all age groups, units organized sports competitions, colorful gymnastics rallies, cultural events including drama, literature and music, excursions and youth camps. Although its main goal had always been the promotion of national health and sports, Sokol also played a key role in the national resistance to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Nazi occupation and the communist regime. Sokol flourished between the two World Wars; its membership grew to over a million. Important statesmen, including the first two presidents of interwar Czechoslovakia, Tomas Masaryk and Edvard Benes, were members of Sokol. Sokol was banned three times: during World War I, during the Nazi occupation and finally by the communists after 1948, but branches of the organization continued to exist abroad. Sokol was restored in 1990.

20 Terezin Initiative Foundation (Nadace Terezinska iniciativa)

Founded in 1993 by the International Association of Former Prisoners of the Terezin/Theresienstadt Ghetto, it is a special institute devoted to the scientific research on the history of Terezin and of the ‘Final Solution of the Jewish Question’ in the Czech lands. At the end of 1998 it was renamed to Terezin Initiative Institute (Institut Terezinske iniciativy).

21 Subcarpathian Ruthenia

is found in the region where the Carpathian Mountains meet the Central Dnieper Lowlands. Its larger towns are Beregovo, Mukacevo and Hust. Up until the First World War the region belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, but in the year 1919, according to the St. Germain peace treaty, was made a part of Czechoslovakia. Exact statistics regarding ethnic and linguistic composition of the population aren’t available. Between the two World Wars Ruthenia’s inhabitants included Hungarians, Ruthenians, Russians, Ukrainians, Czechs and Slovaks, plus numerous Jewish and Gypsy communities. The first Viennese Arbitration (1938) gave Hungary that part of Ruthenia inhabited by Hungarians. The remainder of the region gained autonomy within  Czechoslovakia, and was occupied by Hungarian troops. In 1944 the Soviet Army and local resistance units took power in Ruthenia. According to an agreement dated June 29, 1945, Czechoslovakia ceded the region to the Soviet Union. Up until 1991 it was a part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. After Ukraine declared its independence, it became one of the country’s administrative regions.

22 Nemcova, Bozena (1820–1862)

born Barbora Panklova in Vienna into the family of Johann Pankl, a nobleman’s coachman. She was significantly influenced by her upbringing at the hands of her grandmother Magdalena Novotna during the years 1825-29. In 1837 she was married to financial official Josef Nemec. She contributed to a number of magazines. She was inspired by traditional folk stories to write seven collections of folk tales and legends and ten collections of Slovak fairy-tales and legends, which are generally a gripping fictional adaptation of fairy-tale themes. Through her works Nemcova has to her credit the bringing together of the Czech and Slovak nations and their cultures. She is the author of travelogues and ethnographic sketches, realistic stories of the countryside (Crazy Bara, Mountain Village, Karla, The Teacher, At The Chateau and The Village Below) and the supreme novel Granny. Thanks to her rich folkloristic work and particularly her work Granny, Bozena Nemcova has taken her place among Czech national icons.

23 Statni Tajna Bezpecnost

Czech intelligence and security service founded in 1948.

24 Czech Scout Movement

The first Czech scout group was founded in 1911. In 1919 a number of separate scout organizations fused to form the Junak Association, into which all scout organizations of the Czechoslovak Republic were merged in 1938. In 1940 the movement was liquidated by a decree of the State Secretary. After WWII the movement revived briefly until it was finally dissolved in 1950. The Junak Association emerged again in 1968 and was liquidated in 1970. It was reestablished after the Velvet Revolution of 1989.

25 Radio Free Europe

Radio station launched in 1949 at the instigation of the US government with headquarters in West Germany. The radio broadcast uncensored news and features, produced by Central and Eastern European émigrés, from Munich to countries of the Soviet block. The radio station was jammed behind the Iron Curtain, team members were constantly harassed and several people were killed in terrorist attacks by the KGB. Radio Free Europe played a role in supporting dissident groups, inner resistance and will of freedom in the Eastern and Central European communist countries and thus it contributed to the downfall of the totalitarian regimes of the Soviet block. The headquarters of the radio have been in Prague since 1994.

26 Samizdat literature in Czechoslovakia

Samizdat literature: The secret publication and distribution of government-banned literature in the former Soviet block. Typically, it was typewritten on thin paper (to facilitate the production of as many carbon copies as possible) and circulated by hand, initially to a group of trusted friends, who then made further typewritten copies and distributed them clandestinely. Material circulated in this way included fiction, poetry, memoirs, historical works, political treatises, petitions, religious tracts, and journals. The penalty for those accused of being involved in samizdat activities varied according to the political climate, from harassment to detention or severe terms of imprisonment. In Czechoslovakia, there was a boom in Samizdat literature after 1948 and, in particular, after 1968, with the establishment of a number of Samizdat editions supervised by writers, literary critics and publicists: Petlice (editor L. Vaculik), Expedice (editor J. Lopatka), as well as, among others, Ceska expedice (Czech Expedition), Popelnice (Garbage Can) and Prazska imaginace (Prague Imagination).

27 Prague Spring

A period of democratic reforms in Czechoslovakia, from January to August 1968. Reformatory politicians were secretly elected to leading functions of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSC). Josef Smrkovsky became president of the National Assembly, and Oldrich Cernik became the Prime Minister. Connected with the reformist efforts was also an important figure on the Czechoslovak political scene, Alexander Dubcek, General Secretary of the KSC Central Committee (UV KSC). In April 1968 the UV KSC adopted the party’s Action Program, which was meant to show the new path to socialism. It promised fundamental economic and political reforms. On 21st March 1968, at a meeting of representatives of the USSR, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, East Germany and Czechoslovakia in Dresden, Germany, the Czechoslovaks were notified that the course of events in their country was not to the liking of the remaining conference participants, and that they should implement appropriate measures. In July 1968 a meeting in Warsaw took place, where the reformist efforts in Czechoslovakia were designated as “counter-revolutionary.” The invasion of the USSR and Warsaw Pact armed forces on the night of 20th August 1968, and the signing of the so-called Moscow Protocol ended the process of democratization, and the Normalization period began.

28 Solidarity (NSZZ Solidarnosc)

a social and political movement in Poland that opposed the authority of the PZPR. In its institutional form – the Independent Self-Governing Trade Union Solidarity (NSZZ Solidarnosc) – it emerged in August and September 1980 as a product of the turbulent national strikes. In that period trade union organization were being formed in all national enterprises and institutions; in all some 9–10 million people joined NSZZ Solidarnosc. Solidarity formulated a program of introducing fundamental changes to the system in Poland, and sought the fulfillment of its postulates by exerting various forms of pressure on the authorities: pickets in industrial enterprises and public buildings, street demonstrations, negotiations and propaganda. It was outlawed in 1982 following the introduction of Martial Law (on 13 December 1981), and until 1989 remained an underground organization, adopting the strategy of gradually building an alternative society and over time creating social institutions that would be independent of the PZPR (the long march). Solidarity was the most important opposition group that influenced the changes in the Polish political system in 1989.

29 Velvet Revolution

Also known as November Events, this term is used for the period between 17th November and 29th December 1989, which resulted in the downfall of the Czechoslovak communist regime. A non-violent political revolution in Czechoslovakia that meant the transition from Communist dictatorship to democracy. The Velvet Revolution began with a police attack against Prague students on 17th November 1989. That same month the citizen’s democratic movement Civic Forum (OF) in Czech and Public Against Violence (VPN) in Slovakia were formed. On 10th December a government of National Reconciliation was established, which started to realize democratic reforms. On 29th December Vaclav Havel was elected president. In June 1990 the first democratic elections since 1948 took place.

30 Havel, Vaclav (1936- )

Czech dramatist, poet and politician. Havel was an active figure in the liberalization movement leading to the Prague Spring, and after the Soviet-led intervention in 1968 he became a spokesman of the civil right movement called Charter 77. He was arrested for political reasons in 1977 and 1979. He became President of the Czech and Slovak Republic in 1989 and was President of the Czech Republic after the secession of Slovakia until January 2003.

31 Knazko, Milan (1945- )

Slovak actor, politician and director of TV JOJ. In October 1989 Knazko was the first and only person in the CSSR to return the title Meritorious Artist due to his disagreement with the politics of the regime at the time. In November 1989 he entered the political events of the time. He was an adviser to President Vaclav Havel and simultaneously a member of the CSFR’s Federal Assembly. From June 1990 to 28th August 1990 he was Minister of International Relations of the Slovak Republic and from 1992–1993 deputy premier of the government of the Slovak Republic and Slovak Foreign Minister. From March 1993 to October 1998 he was a member of the Slovak Republic’s National Assembly and for four years from the year 1998 held the post of Minister of Culture of the Slovak Republic. (Source: http://sk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milan_K%C5%88a%C5%BEko)

32 Yad Vashem

This museum, founded in 1953 in Jerusalem, honors both Holocaust martyrs and ‘the Righteous Among the Nations’, non-Jewish rescuers who have been recognized for their ‘compassion, courage and morality’.

Eva Dušková

Eva Dušková
roz. Freyová
Praha
Česká republika
Rozhovor pořídila: Zuzana Strouhová
Období vzniku rozhovoru: srpen - září 2005

Paní Eva Dušková, rozená Freyová, žije se svým mužem Milanem Duškem, se kterým má dvě děti, v Praze. Je to velice přátelská, pohostinná paní, která se na život dívá s nadhledem a humorem. Navzdory svému židovskému původu a protikomunistickému smýšlení, ji v životě provázelo štěstí a přežila Terezín, Osvětim i Lenzing a během komunistického režimu mohla pracovat ve svém oboru, což nebývalo běžné. Celý produktivní život pracovala jako knihovnice na pražských akademických pracovištích. Přestože je v důchodu a po operaci kyčle, stále pracuje – vede knihovnu Institutu Terezínské iniciativy. Je věřící Židovka, nicméně ne ortodoxní. 

Rodina
Za války
Po válce
Vzpomínky na dětství
Zaměstnání
Náboženský život
Život od 60. let
Glosář

Rodina

Dědeček z tatínkovy strany se jmenoval Julius Frey. Byl nesmírně chápající, dával mi, co mohl, tedy po té duševní stránce. Místo pohádek mi vykládal biblickou dějepravu, takovým velmi zajímavým způsobem. Dovedla jsem u něj sedět hodiny a poslouchat ho. Narodil se 1. dubna 1866 v Dolních Kounicích u Brna. Vystudoval reálku, ale kde přesně, to nevím. Jeho mateřským jazykem byla čeština spolu s němčinou a to proto, že pocházel od Brna. V Brně a kolem Brna se hodně mluvilo německy. Se mnou mluvil jenom česky, ale bylo vidět, že ten základ měl německý. Ale Němec to nebyl, ačkoliv má německé jméno. Josef II. 1 dal totiž Židům různé svobody a za to museli přijmout různá německá jména. A slyšela jsem, že snad to jméno Frey nebo Frei znamená svobodný, čili že nebyl v nějakém, řekněme, poddaném postavení.

Kdy z Dolních Kounic odešel do zaměstnání netuším, to se ke mně nikdy nedoneslo. Ani jsem se o to samozřejmě nikdy nezajímala. Zaměstnaný byl u dráhy, jako přednosta, nikde jinde asi ne. Pracoval na různých místech, mezi nimi také v Pardubicích, kde se narodil můj tatínek Viktor Frey, v Dobrovicích u Mladé Boleslavi a určitě ještě někde jinde, ale to už si nepamatuji. Jejich hospodyně Marie mně to sice vykládala, ale já jsem si to nezapamatovala. Pak se s babičkou Hermínou, za svobodna Breitenfeldovou, přestěhoval na penzi do Litomyšle. Babička totiž z Litomyšle pocházela a měla tam v té době ještě maminku a bratra. Její rodina tam vlastnila dosti význačný dům, rohový renesanční dům naproti radnici, čili uprostřed náměstí. Jejich obývací pokoj byl v místě, kde kdysi bydlel Jiráskův páter German President [German President (1780 – 1895): profesor piaristických škol, známý z „Filosofské historie“ Aloise Jiráska - pozn.red.]. Navíc to byla v celém domě jediná místnost, kde bylo klenutí, křížová klenba. V tom domě žilo několik generací předků mé babičky. Ale v té době se také vdávala maminčina sestra Marie a maminčin otec Rudolf Finger jim dal postavit dům pro dvě rodiny, takovou vilu. A tam bydlela maminka a její sestra, obě s rodinami.

Jak jsem říkala, dědeček s babičkou měli hospodyni, jmenovala se Marie Kučerová. Babička totiž měla silnou cukrovku, takže toho mnoho nezastala. Ta hospodyně, to byla taková moje zachránkyně, protože po válce se mě ujala a o otci, který zahynul v koncentračním táboře, mi hodně vyprávěla. Služebná byla i v rodině mých rodičů. Bylo jich u nás zřejmě několik, ale já si pamatuji pouze na Anču. Ta měla u nás takový pokojíček. O mě se starala maminka, služebné měly na starost spíše úklid a praní prádla. Maminka i vařila.

Jestli byl dědeček z tatínkovy strany v armádě, to Vám neřeknu, protože dědečka z tatínkovy strany si pamatuji pouze v železničářské uniformě. Tedy pamatuji si na fotografie v železničářské uniformě. Ale o válce se tam, alespoň co si pamatuji, nemluvilo. Ale zdá se mi, že v první světové válce byl. Maminčin tatínek tam byl zcela jistě. Ve druhé světové válce dědeček zemřel a to 28. dubna 1943 v Terezíně 2, kam odjel s litomyšlským transportem 2. prosince 1942. Zemřel na stáří a prostatu, samozřejmě špatně léčenou.

Dědeček pocházel ze šesti sourozenců. Bylo to, tuším, pět bratrů a jedna sestra, Anna. Ta se nevdala, zůstala v Dolních Kounicích u Brna v té jejich rodné chaloupce. Byl to takový domeček, kde byl jeden parádní pokoj – takový veliký, snad poněkud lépe zařízený – pak jeden malý pokoj a černá kuchyň. Žádná větší usedlost to nebyla, měli jen krásnou, meruňkovou zahradu. A tam v těch stísněných prostorech vychovali dědečkovi rodiče šest dětí. Nic víc o dědečkových rodičích nevím, jen, že dědečkův tatínek se prý živil půjčováním peněz. O vzdělání té Anny Freyové, ani o její zaměstnání, jsem se nikdy nezajímala a co si pamatuji, nikdy nikde se o tom nemluvilo. Žila sama v oněch Dolních Kounicích, děti neměla. Občas v průběhu roku jezdívala k dědečkovi a babičce a my jsme za ní jezdívali na prázdniny. To bylo takové nejoblíbenější místo našich výletů. Protože bychom se tam všichni nevešli, tak jsme bydlívali v blízkém hotelu. Anna byla taková typická stará panna, ale velice hodná. V tom parádním pokoji měla hrací obraz, který mně, když jsem byla moc hodná, pustila. Co na něm bylo, to nevím, byl to prostě nějaký obraz, zřejmě se to natáhlo a ono to hrálo. Také si pamatuji, že jsme se chodívali koupat do blízké řeky a že jsem si tam hrávala s místními dětmi, sobota nesobota [religiózne židovské zákony zakazujú počas soboty, šabatu, základných 39 pracovných činností, ktoré sú zahrnuté do Talmudu, a ostatné činnosti, ktoré sú od nich odvodené. Medzi ne patrí napríklad aj plávanie – pozn. red.]. A protože tatínek měl v té době už auto, tak nás někdy naložil a vzal do Brna. Anna zahynula v Terezíně, ale kdy, to Vám zpaměti neřeknu, to by se dalo zjistit v Terezínské pamětní knize.

Nejmladším dědečkovým bratrem byl Josef, ten žil ve Vídni – z Brna je to kousek, zřejmě tam odešel za prací a už tam zůstal. Jeho syn Michael, mimochodem, žije dosud ve Švédsku. Kdy se Josef narodil, nevím, a už se toho nedopídím. Ale pamatuji si, že zemřel na dědečkovy narozeniny, 1. dubna. Ale rok už taky nevím, zřejmě na začátku války nebo těsně před jejím začátkem. Jakou práci ve Vídni měl, to nevím, já jsem ho nikdy neviděla. Josef byl ženatý, jméno jeho ženy neznám, jen vím, že se narodila v Osvětimi, to prý bývalo docela slušné městečko v Polsku. Měli spolu dva syny, jeden, který již umřel, byl asi tak ve věku mé maminky Markéty Fingerové – ta byla rozená 1909 -  a jmenoval se Eli. Zřejmě jako Elias. Ten mladší, který je ročník 1922, se jmenuje Michael a žije ve Švédsku. Tam se dostal velice zajímavou cestou. Dědečkův bratr Josef se nějak zamíchal do politiky a když byla Schuschnigg aféra 3 ve Vídni, což byl nějaký politický převrat, tak on na to nějak doplatil. Ale to jsou pouze dětské vzpomínky,  po válce už mně o tom nemohl nikdo nic říct. Josef brzy ovdověl, zůstal sám se dvěma syny a nakonec spáchal sebevraždu. Jeho starší syn, Eli, emigroval, zřejmě do Palestiny. Toho mladšího, tehdy patnáctiletého, dali do Litomyšle k dědečkovi a babičce. Rodina se pak zkrátka rozhodla, že aby mu zajistila život a existenci, tak ho pošle do Palestiny za bratrem. Jenže on se po celou dobu války s bratrem nesetkal - přestože se vzájemně hledali, nenašli se. Přestože byli oba ve stejné armádě, anglické armádě a oba bojovali u Tobruku 4. Teprve když byl konec války, přišel tenhleten Michl – tak jsme Michaelovi říkali - služebně do nějaké vojenské kanceláře, ale kde to bylo, nevím, a tam uviděl svého bratra. Teprve tehdy se setkali. Michael pak někde na nádraží potkal svou budoucí ženou, která také pocházela z Vídně a kterou rodiče zachránili tím, že ji poslali do Švédska. Jak to bylo přesně dál, nevím, myslím, že se oba vrátili do Palestiny, zřejmě za její rodinou. Ale potom tam měli dvě děti a to jedno dítě nějak nesnášelo tamější klima, takže vzhledem k tomu, že už byla zvyklá žít ve Švédsku, přestěhovali se tam. Michl tam byl zaměstnaný u novin, ale myslím, že tam dělal spíš nějakou podřadnější práci. Myslím nějakou administrativní.

Ve Vídni žil ještě další dědečkův bratr, Arnold. Na něj si pamatuji z Terezína, on i jeho žena tam na mě byli velice hodní. Co ve Vídni dělal, nevím, ale myslím, že to tam nijak daleko nepřivedl. Do Terezína šel tenkrát s vídeňským transportem i se svou manželkou. O ní nevím vůbec nic, ani její jméno, jen že byla moc hodná. Já jsem je poznala prakticky, až když chodili navštěvovat do nemocnice tatínka. Když už tatínek končil svůj život.  Myslím, že  to byla Rakušanka, protože se s ní mluvilo pouze německy. Ani nevím, jestli měli nějaké děti. Jeho manželka ušetřila nějaký kousek chleba a ještě nějaký lógr nebo něco takového a udělali mně z toho k narozeninám – no, ne dort, ale takový zákusek. Což mě velice potěšilo. Takže to byl můj favorit.

Pak tu byl ještě jeden bratr, ten žil v Praze. Ale jak ten se jmenoval, to nevím. My jsme se s těmi pražskými moc nestýkali, jen občas, když jsme byli v Praze, jsme je byli navštívit. Jestli oni byli někdy v Litomyšli, to nevím. Myslím, že to byl obchodník a že měl dceru nebo snad dvě dcery, které emigrovaly někam do Skotska. Ale neznám jejich jména, z jejich osudu neznám nic. Asi byl i v Terezíně, ale o něm opravdu nic nevím. A myslím, že dědeček měl ještě jednoho bratra, ale o něm nevím vůbec nic.

Babička z otcovy strany se jmenovala Hermína,  rozená Breitenfeldová. Narodila se 12. září 1875 v Litomyšli. Zahynula 15. prosince 1943 v Osvětimi, kam jela prosincovým transportem. Babička byla moc hodná, ale byla takový trochu nevýrazný typ. Mám dojem, že jsem po ní. A na rozdíl od dědečka neuměla vykládat pohádky. Jaké vzdělání měla, to nevím, a co se zaměstnání týká, asi byla v domácnosti. Potom však vedla svému svobodnému bratrovi, strýčkovi Karlovi, obchod s látkami v Litomyšli, v onom domě. Strýček Karel byl totiž bohém, zpěvák, a věnoval se spíše zpívání než obchodu. Takže tatínkova maminka byla v podstatě obchodnice, i když špatná obchodnice. Lidem dávala na dluh a nikdy to nechtěla splácet. Prý: „Dáte mně to, až budete mít.“ No, myslím, že většinou už nedávali.

Ten obchod s látkami, jak jsem říkala, patřil jejímu bratrovi Karlovi, ale ten se mu moc nevěnoval. Neslušelo se, aby se dítě z dobré rodiny věnovalo profesnímu zpívání. Takže alespoň navenek byl obchodníkem - to byly takové móresy tehdejší doby - ale ve skutečnosti byl členem a zřejmě sólistou pěveckého sboru Vlastimil, které hrálo v litomyšlském divadle a zřejmě i jinde, ale to nevím. Strýček Karel zemřel, když mně bylo osm let, tj. ještě před válkou, ve třicátém osmém. Také zpíval v Daliborovi roli žalářníka, když v Litomyšli Národní divadlo Dalibora provozovalo. Dá se tedy asi říci, že musel být dobrý zpěvák, prý ano. 

Co se židovství týče, naše rodina, hlavně z otcovy strany, byla nábožensky založená, věřící. Ne snad ortodoxní, jak se to teď tady [v Praze] propaguje k mé, jaksi, nelibosti. Většinou šlo o Židy asimilované, kteří ale svou víru praktikovali.

Můj dědeček byl velmi nábožensky založený a jeho sourozenci také. Například jeho sestra Anna, ta, co bydlela v Kounicích u Brna, velice dbala na dodržování svátků a všech těchto věcí a dokonce byla velice pyšná na to, že náš rod pocházel z rodu kohanim [kněží, členové kmene Levi, potomci Árona a jeho synů, kteří byli pověřeni provádením posvátných ritů ve stanu úmluvy a Chrámu, hebrejsky kohen, kohanim – pozn. red.]. Jednou mně řekla: „Evičko, pamatuj si, že ty jsi princezna.“ To je jediné, co si pamatuji, že mi řekla. Silně věřící byl i otcův bratr. Vzhledem k tomu, že sám neměl rodinu, tak svátky slavil s námi. Dědečkova rodina byla vůbec dosti nábožensky zaměřena, u jeho rodičů, v těch Kounicích u Brna, se, pokud vím, ještě držela košer strava a zřejmě měli i dvojí nádobí 5. Ale nijak viditelně oblečením se od nežidovského obyvatelstva neodlišovali, i oni, byť nábožensky cítící, byli velmi asimilováni. Navíc kipa se snad tehdy ještě ani nenosila. Ovšem klobouk, ten on nosil na hlavě samozřejmě stále.

Dědeček s babičkou si nikdy nevybírali přátele jen mezi Židy. Navíc můj velmi zbožný dědeček každou sobotu odpoledne hrál taroky s panem katechetou Letfusem. Rozhodně se nijak nesnažil jeden druhého přesvědčovat. To znáte ten vtip: Pan farář se ptá pana rabína: „Kdy si konečně ochutnáte kousek vepřového?“ A on řekne: „Na Vaší svatbě.“

Naopak v maminčině rodině se židovství praktikovalo jen vlažně. Řekla bych, že dědeček i babička z maminčiny strany chodili do synagogy ze společenských důvodů, u nich jsme svátky nikdy neslavili. Pokud vím, ani nikdy nezapalovali šabatové svíčky. O Bohu jsme se tam také nikdy nebavili. A myslím, že ani babiččin bratr Karel nebyl nijak nábožensky založený. Tam ale nemohu říci ani tak, ani onak. Sama maminka byla nábožensky vlažnější než tatínek. Například mě klidně nechala psát v sobotu [religiózne židovské zákony zakazujú počas soboty, šabatu, základných 39 pracovných činností, ktoré sú zahrnuté do Talmudu, a ostatné činnosti, ktoré sú od nich odvodené. Medzi ne patrí napríklad aj písanie – pozn. red.]. Všech náboženských obřadů se zúčastňovala spíše z pocitů morální povinnosti a ne zas až tak z přesvědčení. Její sestra Marie s manželem chodili do synagogy taky spíše ze společenských důvodů, aby si společensky nezadali. Dokonce si pamatuji, že se můj strýc, Otto Sgall, jednou velmi rozčílil, když ho volali k Tóře. Zřejmě nechtěl nebo neuměl Tóru číst a nechtěl si zadat, protože on se jako pan továrník cítil společensky velmi na výši. On byl totiž majitelem velkoobchodu s textilem.

Dědeček z maminčiny strany se jmenoval Rudolf Finger. Narodil se 26. února 1877 v Kozolupech na Plzeňsku. Jeho mateřským jazykem byla němčina, protože byl od Plzně. Tam bylo zvykem mluvit německy. Ale pravděpodobně se považovali za Čechy. Mám dojem, že při sčítání lidu v roce dvacet devět nebo třicet [sčítaní lidu v roce 1930 – pozn. red.], se hlásil k české národnosti. Se mnou mluvil česky vždycky. On byl jediný, o kterém bezpečně vím, že bojoval v první světové válce, ale netuším kde nebo kdy, ani nic bližšího. Dědeček byl na rozdíl od tatínkova tatínka, který byl úředník tělem a duší, obchodník tělem a duší. Byl to vyučený obchodník s kuchyňským a železářským zbožím a živil se jako obchodník – měl železářství. Nějakou dobu žil v České Lípě, kde se narodila maminka a její sourozenci. Asi se mu tam tenkrát naskytla nějaká možnost obchodu. Zanedlouho se však stěhovali zpět do Litomyšle. Nevím, jestli se jim v České Lípě dobře nevedlo, nebo proč, prostě tam nějakým způsobem nebyli spokojení. Stěhovali se rozhodně ještě dlouho před penzí, protože ten obchod v Litomyšli měl ještě do začátku války, než mu ho zabrali. Když vypukla druhá světová válka, šel dědeček i s babičkou zářijovým transportem (1943) do Terezína, alespoň myslím. No a oba skončili 7. března 1944 v Osvětimi.

Dědeček Rudolf měl několik sourozenců. Vím, že existovala nějaká teta Emily a určitě ještě někdo, ale oni žili až tam někde na Plzeňsku, což bylo dost daleko.

Babička z matčiny strany se jmenovala Irma Fingerová, rozená Ledererová. Narodila se 23. května 1884 a zahynula společně s dědečkem v Osvětimi onoho 7. března 1944. Narodila se zřejmě v Litomyšli, protože ta větev byla jaksi v Litomyšli hloubkově zarostlá. Po přeslici. Jejím rodným jazykem byla čeština, tam zase všichni mluvili česky, i když německy samozřejmě všichni uměli. Celou dobu žila v Litomyšli, kromě těch několika let v České Lípě, které tam strávila se svým mužem a kde se narodila má matka. Babička byla na vychování v klášteře, ačkoli byla samozřejmě také Židovka. Brzy totiž ztratila otce a o ni a o dalších pět dětí se musela starat moje prababička se svou bezdětnou sestrou. Irmu tedy daly jako nejstarší dceru do kláštera na vychování. Nevím kam, jen vím, že se tam naučila různé krásné ruční práce a vedení domácnosti. Pletla, vyšívala, háčkovala, síťovala a nevím, co ještě. Jestli se jí tam nesnažily vštípit i něco z křesťanství, to netuším, mě to tenkrát totiž nezajímalo. Mimochodem tahle moje babička byla velmi, velmi inteligentní a měla známost s nějakým lékařem. Ale tenkrát si ho nesměla vzít, protože jeho matka nedovolila, aby se s babičkou oženil. Babička byla totiž z celkem chudého prostředí a nedostala žádné věno. Proto si dědečka v podstatě vzala jako z nouze ctnost.

Dědeček byl velmi přísný a autoritativní, myslím že v něm zůstalo něco z vojáka a babička to prostě snášela. Také byla mimo jiné nesmírný psycholog. Pamatuji se na jednu epizodu, kdy nějak na začátku války si museli rodiče toho mého bratránka Milánka Sgalla odjet vyřídit nějaké vízové nebo jaké záležitosti, zřejmě do Prahy. Prostě, když měl Milánek 5. května narozeniny, nebyli tam. Babička Irma to vyřešila tak, že s ním šla do obchodu a něco mu koupila, nějaký dárek, ale jaký, to už nevím. Ale aby mi to nebylo líto, tak mně nějakou maličkost taky koupila. Jenže dědeček byl velice šetrný a babičce vyčinil, proč mi něco kupovala, když nemám narozeniny. Myslím, že to vystihuje mentalitu těch dvou lidí.

Jak jsem říkala, babička Irma pocházela ze šesti dětí, z nichž ona byla nejstarší. Měla dva bratry, Jana a Karla, a tři sestry Zdenku, Terezii a Olgu. Všichni zemřeli v Osvětimi, data by se dala zjistit v Terezínské pamětní knize.

Strýček Jeník – tak se mu říkalo, maminčin bratr Jan byl Jenda a babiččin bratr Jan byl zase Jeník. Byl to invalida z první světové války. V Litomyšli měl spolu se svou ženou Růženou obchod s konfekcí. Byli však bezdětní. Moc si však na ně nepamatuji, ačkoliv jsme bydleli v Litomyšli na stejném podloubí, neboli na podsíni, a chodívali jsme se navštěvovat. Možná jsme i jezdili na společné výlety, v té rodině totiž byly dobré, pevné vztahy.

Teta Zdeňka byla vdaná, ale bezdětná. Říkalo se cosi o tom, že její manžel – Maďar Dezső Adler - byl nakažen, takže nemohli mít děti.

Nejmladším bratrem byl strýc Karel, říkalo se mu Karílek. Ten bydlel se svou sestrou Olgou – ta zase byla nejmladší sestrou -  v Žamberku, kde měli nějakou výrobu textilu. Bydleli tam vlastně na jednom pozemku ve vedlejších domech. Strýc Karel byl ženatý a měl syna Františka, který byl mnohem mladší než já. Tomu se říkalo Áťa. No a Olga měla tři dcery - Vlastu, Věru a Evu. Vlasta skončila se svým chlapečkem Petříčkem v Osvětimi. A Věra a Eva přežily, a to velmi kuriózním způsobem.

Věra byla tehdy vdaná, ale nevím už za koho. Eva byla svobodná, ale seznámila se s chlapcem jménem Freda, neboli Alfréd. Ti všichni šli společně do Terezína. V Terezíně si Eva toho Fredu vzala a přišla do jiného stavu. Věřin manžel odjel do Osvětimi a zřejmě tam zahynul. Věra šla za  ním, ale již ho nikdy neviděla. Do Osvětimi šel později i Freda a Eva, ta chtěla být s ním. No, ale když tam přišla, tak na ní Mengele poznal, že je gravidní a okamžitě ji poslal na druhou stranu komína, jestli znáte tenhleten termín, neboli do plynu. Eva byla velice fyzicky zdatná, tak ten „komín“ přeskočila a čirou náhodou se dostala dohromady s Věrou, která tam již byla. Potom byly převezeny – bylo jich pět děvčat - do pracovního tábora Merzdorf [poľsky Marciszów, obec v Dolnom Sliezku. Počas 2. svetovej vojny sa v Merzdorfe nachádzala jedna z pobočiek koncentračného tábora Gross Rosen. Tábor bol oslobodený 8. mája 1945 – pozn. red.]. Těsně předtím, než se jí narodil chlapeček, Tomík – to bylo 20. března 1945 - přišel do Merzdorfu Mengele a zeptal se jí: „Proč ses nepřiznala, že jsi gravidní?“ A ona na to: „Já jsem to nevěděla“. No, ale pochopitelně, že to věděla. V Merzdorfu se prý narodilo několik dětí a žádné z nich nepřežilo - kromě tohoto Tomíka. Když se narodil, tak si každá z těch pěti děvčat utrhla kus ze svých šatů a do toho ho zabalily. Narodil se někde v umývárně nebo ve chlévě, něco takového, to už nevím přesně. Když byl konec války, tak Němci odešli a přišla tam Rudá armáda. Ovšem ta děvčata z nich měla strach, tak toho chlapečka sebrala a šla celý den pěšky, až večer přišla k nějakému statku, k nějakému opuštěnému stavení. Tam prý nebylo dole vůbec nic a nahoře v prvním patře byl dětský kočárek s dětskou výbavičkou. No, to snad ani nebyla náhoda, to byl spíš zázrak. Takže chlapečka do toho okamžitě oblékly a s kočárkem odjely pěšky zase směrem k domovu. Když se dostaly až do Žamberka, tak tam už nastoupili k moci komunisté a nechtěli je ani pustit do jejich původního domu, místo toho je nastěhovali do takového malého přízemního domečku. Shodou okolností se vrátil také ten Evin muž, Freda, a jeho bratr Egon, který byl svobodný, a spolu s nimi i jejich matka. Věra už věděla, že se její muž nevrátí, s tím Egonem se do sebe zamilovali a vzali se. Ale s těmi komunisty měli hrozné problémy, bylo to dost napínavé. Odřezali jim vodu, odřezali jim telefon a ještě se prý rozhodli, že když se dítě vlastně narodilo v Německu [v čase narodenia Tomíka patril Merzdorf k nemeckej ríši – pozn. red.], čili je to německý státní občan, takže je nutno ho odsunout 6. Dalo jim mnoho práce, než se z toho nějak dostali. Mezi tím se Evě v sedmačtyřicátém narodil ještě syn Petr. No, nakonec se rozhodli, že chtějí odejít někam co nejdál od naší republiky. Nejprve emigrovali oni, do Austrálie, zatímco babička těch mládenců, Anna Jelínková, bydlela nějaký čas u nás. Potom odjela za nimi. Mimochodem, obě děvčata, Eva i Věra, odjížděly do Austrálie už gravidní a v Austrálii se potom každé narodilo ještě jedno dítě. Kromě Fredy dodnes všichni v Austrálii žijí, blízko Melbourne. Alespoň doufám, už dlouho jsem od nich neslyšela žádnou zprávu. A z Tomíka se stal doktor přírodních věd a založil v Austrálii rodinu.

Poslední babiččinou sestrou byla Terezie, té se říkalo Teruša. Teruša byla dvakrát vdaná, přičemž poprvé ovdověla. O jejích manželích ale nevím nic. Z prvního manželství měla dceru Lily a z druhého manželství syna Arne. Všichni zůstali v Osvětimi.

Moje maminka s tatínkem bydleli od dětství na stejném podloubí, či lépe na stejné straně podloubí, kterému se v Litomyšli říká podsíň. Moje maminka se seznámila s mým tatínkem, když mamince bylo pět a tatínkovi třináct. Maminka si chodila hrát do sousedního krámu s holčičkou, která měla bratra, s nímž kamarádil můj tatínek. Ona byla Anička Ježková, on František. Ti Ježkovi měli pekařství a maminka si s tou Aničkou, která byla hrbatá, hrály na pekařských válech. No a přišli tam ti mládenci, mladí muži, že, už třináctiletí, a chtěli zaujmout palebné postavení na těchž válech. Na tu Aničku, hrbatou chudinku, si nikdo netroufl, a tak se můj tatínek seznámil s mojí maminkou slovy: „Jedeš, ty parchante, z toho válu dolů“. Maminka asi nebyla daleko odpovědi, protože byla vždycky velmi pohotová. Ale její odpověď už jsem od nikoho nikdy neslyšela. Mimochodem z mého tatínka vyrostl velice noblesní pán.

V roce 1928, tuším, jel dědeček s tatínkem slavit seder k tomu strýčkovi Josefovi do Vídně. A protože obě rodiny byly už dávno, po celé generace, spřátelené,  tak tam pozvali i maminku a jejího tatínka. No a když bylo uprostřed té oslavy, nebo snad na jejím konci, nevím přesně, tak tatínek obřadně vstal a požádal maminčina tatínka o maminčinu ruku. Myslím, že maminka byla zaskočená, ale že proti tomu vůbec nic nenamítala.

Co ale nemohu pochopit je, že měli svatbu na okresním úřadě v Litomyšli, tedy pouze civilní. Což by mamince ani vadit nemuselo, protože ona nebyla tak nábožensky založená, ale tatínkovi.  Proč se takto brali, na to jsem se vždycky chtěla zeptat, ale nikdy jsem se k tomu nedostala, což je mně dodnes líto. Brali se v květnu 1929 a maminka neměla na sobě ani bílé šaty. Zásnuby měli velké, zato svatbu naprosto malou. A po svatbě jí prý tatínkova maminka řekla: „A teď jsi naše a půjdeš k nám na oběd.“ Takže i svatební hostinu udělali u tatínkových rodičů. Ale možná proto, že ty zásnuby byly takové „slavné“, tak ta svatba měla být již jen úředním stvrzením. Ale to opravdu nevím.

Co se povahy týká, můj tatínek byl velmi demokratický. Maminka, ta mě měla denně od rána do večera na starosti, takže ta musela být přísnější, že. Sem tam nějakou fackou nešetřila. Kdežto tatínek mně byl vzácnější, protože přijížděl domů někdy jen na víkend. A to se mně pak velice věnoval. Od něj jsem dostala jen jednu jedinou facku, a to když jsem byla už velice rozjívená a roztrhala jsem na něm košili.

Tatínek rád fotografoval – to jsem zdědila po něm - maminka se fotografování, myslím, nevěnovala. Taky myslím, že, stejně jako oni, ráda cestuji. Jinak jsem vždy obdivovala tatínkovu moudrou vyrovnanou povahu, zatímco maminka byla spíše výbušnější, což si mi nelíbilo, to jsem tíže nesla. Jinak oba byli velice společenští, chodívali do kina, do divadel, na koncerty a vůbec prostě do společnosti. A společnost chodila k nám. Mívali jsme hodně návštěv. Maminka byla dobrá kuchařka, takže ačkoliv jsme normálně žili skromně, když přišla návštěva, vždycky je pohostila, jak se sluší a patří. Nikdy nerozlišovali jestli je ten člověk Žid nebo není, takhle se to naprosto nebralo. Tatínek měl, myslím, hlavně intelektuální známé. Třeba přednostu soudu, nebo zubního lékaře, advokáta. Maminka se přizpůsobila a myslím, že s chutí. Často nás též navštěvovali dědeček s babičkou, kteří bydleli v onom domě na náměstí. To nebylo od nás nijak daleko, Litomyšl není velké město a v té době mělo asi pět tisíc obyvatel [podle Českého statistického úřadu, byl počet obyvatel Litomyšle při ščítání lidu v roce 1921 – 8,737 a v roce 1930 – 8,638 – pozn. red.]. A ještě častěji jsme možná my chodili k nim.

Můj tatínek se jmenoval Viktor Frey. Narodil se 10. dubna 1901 v Pardubicích a zemřel 23. června 1944 v Terezíně. Měl dva akademické tituly, byl to inženýr a doktor technických věd. Vystudoval v Praze strojní fakultu. Jeho rodným jazykem byla čeština. Myslím, že tatínek sympatizoval se sociálními demokraty, s tou pravou částí. Nebyl členem, ale měl velmi silné sociální cítění. A byl členem spolku inženýrů architektů, takzvané SIA. Jinak žádných organizací nebo klubů, pokud vím, členem nebyl a ani nikdo jiný z rodiny.

Otec žil tam, kam překládali jeho tatínka, který, jak jsem říkala, pracoval na dráze. Ona hospodyně byla u tatínkových rodičů už v jeho dětství a vyprávěla mně i o tom, jak vyrůstal, ale já si nic konkrétního nepamatuji. Fyzicky byl dost neobratný, takže fotbal asi nehrával, nevím. No, určitě si ale hrával se svým kamarádem na pekařském válu. Jinak pak se věnoval studiu a vědě. Střední školu vystudoval, myslím, již v Litomyšli. Byla to reálka.

V armádě nikdy nebyl a to ze zdravotních důvodů: měl totiž ploché nohy. Po absolutoriu vysoké školy pracoval nejprve jako asistent na technice [České vysoké učení technické v Praze – pozn. red.], protože vystudoval nějak velice dobře a velice brzy. Ale když se rozhodl, že se ožení,  snažil se najít si nějaké lépe placené místo. A přešel do Škodovky v Plzni 7. Tam pracoval jako strojní inženýr. Měl prý nějaký projekt, který chtěl patentovat, a oni to od něj chtěli koupit. Jenže tatínek jim to prodat nechtěl, oni se na něj rozzlobili a dali mu výpověď. Načež tatínek asi šest neděl hledal místo. Po šesti nedělích mu někdo dohodil místo v mostecké ocelárně jménem Isteg - ta už prý teď neexistuje. Tam měl zastoupení ocelárny po celé republice, kromě Prahy, pro ni měli zvláštního zástupce.

Tatínek měl v práci možnost služebního auta, takže jsme toho hojně využívali a jezdívali jsme na různé výlety. Nejen do Brna, ale i do Žamberka a tak, dost jsme to střídali. Nebo jsme chodili na různé pěší výlety do blízkého okolí se společností – s otcovými přáteli. To jsme šli vždycky do speciální hospody a tam si rodiče dali pivo a olomoucké syrečky. Ale na památky jsme šli samozřejmě taky. Byli jsme i v cizině, v jugoslávské Crikvenici [město Crikvenica se nachází v Chorvatsku – pozn. red.]. To bylo v třicátém šestém. Pamatuji si, že jsem se tam naučila plavat – navíc jsem byla poprvé u moře - a že jsem tam dostala angínu.  A že jsem si chtěla šít na panenky a maminka měla s sebou pouze nůžky na manikúru. Po válce jsem se pak dala na skauting a táboření, takže na výlety jsem jezdila i v dospělosti. Jako dítě jsem ale na žádném táboře nebyla.

V Istegu pracoval tatínek až do záboru Sudet 8. Ale protože tatínek nechtěl, abych v Mostě dýchala špatný vzduch [Most bývalo město se silnou koncentrací těžkého průmyslu a tedy se špatným životním prostředím - pozn.red.], přestěhovali jsme se k rodině do Litomyšle. Takže pak do Mostu dojížděl, eventuálně byl s nimi v telefonickém styku vzhledem k tomu, že vlastně pracoval po celé republice. V Litomyšli jsme bydleli až do transportu do Terezína. Když začala válka, musel tatínek, protože byl židovského původu, dělat jenom pomocného dělníka. Ale tenkrát ho zaměstnal jeho přítel, který měl továrnu na sekací stroje. Oficiálně tam tenkrát tedy pracoval jako dělník, ale ve skutečnosti mu dělal na ty jeho sekací stroje návrhy. V průběhu času zemřel v Litomyšli předseda Židovské obce a tatínka jmenovali, nebo zvolili, to přesně nevím, předsedou litomyšlské obce. A tam byl až do deportace.

Za války

Konkrétně proběhla deportace litomyšlských Židů 3. prosince 1942, nejprve do Pardubic a 5. prosince z Pardubic do Terezína. Ale jelikož byl tatínek předsedou židovské obce, tak to tam musel všechno jaksi zlikvidovat, a proto zůstal se svou nejbližší rodinou, tj. s maminkou a se mnou v Litomyšli o tři dny déle. Do Pardubic jsme odjížděli až 6. prosince a z Pardubic do Terezína 9. prosince s lidmi z Pardubic město. Jinak Litomyšl odjížděla s Pardubicemi venkov.

Jak jsem říkala, tatínek v Terezíně zemřel. Můj otec byl dost silný kuřák, a proto neměl dost odolný organismus. V Terezíně se dostal k technickým službám, a když byla takzvaná kasernensperre, neboli zakázaný východ z kasáren, on mohl chodit venku po ghettu a využíval ty služební pochůzky, aby chodil za svým tatínkem a za mnou. Já totiž tehdy bývala často nemocná, angíny a tak, a jeho tatínek už vlastně také končil svůj život. Můj tatínek tenkrát přechodil chřipku a když dědeček zemřel, on sám ulehl s chřipkou. Ale nebyly žádné léky a jeho organismus nebyl dost odolný. Potom dostal zánět pohrudnice a po čtrnácti měsících skončil na rychlou tuberkulózu.

Můj otec měl o tři roky mladšího bratra Františka, který pracoval jako celní deklarant ve stanici Frýdek-Místek. Během války se ale strýček přestěhoval do Litomyšle. Velice se mně věnoval, naučil mě mimo jiné jezdit na kole, a tak jsme spolu jezdili po nejbližších vesnicích, kam až se smělo [dané omezení se vztahovalo pouze na Židy - pozn.red.]. Nikdo jiný s námi ale nejezdil. Kolo jsem měla již od osmi let. Tenkrát jsme možná jezdívali i na nějaké delší trasy, ale sama jsem tak daleko už nejezdila. Na kole jsem jezdívala velmi dlouho, ale spíš v Litomyšli, po Praze vůbec ne. Vždycky, když jsem přijela v létě do Litomyšle, tak jsem dopoledne pomáhala mamince, po obědě si šla maminka lehnout a já jsem si na kole vyjela na plovárnu.Vykoupala jsem se, osušila se a jela jsem zase zpátky. Litomyšl nemá městskou hromadnou dopravu, tam lidé jezdívají na kole dost. V Praze jezdívali na kolech jen moje děti, jen ony tu ostatně kola měly. Syn Petr dodnes i s dětmi na kole jezdí. A s manželkou předtím jezdíval i na delší trasy. Dcera Hana dnes již nejezdí a já také ne, kvůli poškozené noze.

Strýček byl svobodný, ale proslýchalo se, že byl platonicky zamilovaný do mé maminky a snad se dal slyšet, že by se oženil jedině tehdy, kdyby našel takovou dívku, jaká byla moje maminka. K tomu však již nemohlo dojít, protože strýček šel zřejmě prvním transportem z Terezína do Osvětimi a tam asi zůstal.

Má matka se jmenovala Markéta Fingerová. Narodila se v České Lípě 27. dubna 1909 a zemřela v Litomyšli 10. října 1992. Takže se dožila 83 let, což však zas není tak moc, protože naše rodina bývala dlouhověká. Její rodný jazyk byla čeština.

Zřejmě velice brzy se však stěhovali z České Lípy do Litomyšle, protože do školy už maminka chodila tam. S tatínkem pak nějakou dobu žila v Plzni, než se přestěhovali zpět do Litomyšle, abych nevyrůstala v tak špatném životním prostředí, jaké v Mostě bylo.

Maminka měla rodinou školu, kde se učila takříkajíc ženská povolání, vařit, šít, péct. A takové základní ekonomické vedení domácnosti. Dnes jsou, myslím, takové školy tříleté. Mám dokonce pocit, že jeden čas byly i čtyřleté s maturitou. Maminka ale měla jednoroční kurz. Nebylo to tenkrát úplné střední vzdělání. Měla kvartu a potom šla na tu rodinou školu. A pak se šla učit do Sudet, do Teplic-Šanova, němčinu. Tam byla v nějaké rodině. Do zaměstnání nikdy nechodila, byla v domácnosti.

Během války byla také v Terezíně, tam jsme šli celá rodina onoho 6. prosince 1942. Protože byl můj tatínek předseda Židovské obce, tak jsme byli po dobu jeho života v Terezíně chráněni, tak nějak automaticky. Když ale 23. června 1944 zemřel, šly jsem hned jedním z nejbližších transportů, tím říjnovým, do Osvětimi. Z Terezína jsme odjížděly 12. října a do Osvětimi jsme se dostaly 14. října. Pamatuji si, že jsme šly seřazeny v pětistupech a že proti nám šel - jedna ze šťastných náhod mého života - nějaký německý voják, který řekl mamince, ať mu dá ten snubní prstýnek, co měla na ruce. Tak mu ho dala a on nám za to poradil: „Pamatujte si, že je Vám víc než šestnáct a míň než čtyřicet pět a hlaste se na těžkou práci.“ Maminka měla s sebou po tatínkovi zimní kabát, takhle ho hodila přes mě a když jsme šly před Mengelem, tak jsem vypadala poněkud mohutnější. Mně v té době bylo teprve čtrnáct let. Ovšem znám dvě sestry, které pak jely s námi do pracovního tábora, té mladší bylo tenkrát dvanáct let a také se jí to povedlo.

V Osvětimi jsme pobyly čtrnáct dnů. 28. října jsme měly dojem, že půjdeme do plynové komory, ale měly jsme štěstí a šly jsme pracovním transportem dál do Rakouska, do pobočky Mauthausenu, to se jmenovalo Lenzing [ženský poboční tábor Mauthausenu, poskytoval pracovní síly pro textilní průmysl – pozn. red.] v Horním Rakousku. A tam jsme byly až do osvobození. Ovšem kdy přesně jsme byli osvobozeni, to je příklad toho, jak se paměti rozcházejí. Já jsem byla a jsem dosud přesvědčena, že jsme byli osvobozeni 6. května 1945 americkou armádou. Moje známé, dvě sestry, se kterými jsme tam tenkrát současně šly, jsou přesvědčeny, že jsme byli osvobozeni 4. května. Ale já si za svým stojím. A ony také.

Ale protože moje maminka byla nejhorší případ v tom lágru, nejely jsme hned domů. Já jsem totiž měla nějaký nález na plicích, i když otevřená tuberkulóza to nebyla. Maminka tam však absolvovala infarkt, vážila 29 kilo a byla takzvaný musulman - to jsou takové úplně vychrtlé kostry s vyvalenýma očima a vousy po celém obličeji. Američané se jí okamžitě ujali, dali ji tam na nějakou marodku a tam jí dali jakžtakž do pořádku. Proto jsme nemohly jet prvním transportem domů. Mě dali zatím do bývalého tábora Hitlerjugend 9, na břehu jezera Attersee [jazero v rakúskych Alpách – pozn. red.], což bylo velmi příjemné, a já jsem těch pět kilometrů za maminkou na tu marodku každý den chodívala. Navštěvovali je tam i američtí vojáci a jednou se tam přichomýtnul i nějaký Angličan. Maminka, když už na tom byla trošku lépe - ona na tom skutečně byla už velmi špatně, šestatřicetiletý člověk - takže potom, když se dala trošičku do pořádku, tak k ní přišel nějaký ten voják a maminka říká: „Jé, tak Vy jste z Anglie. Tam určitě bude v armádě můj bratr.“ On se zeptal, jak se jmenuje, maminka mu řekla jméno a on říká: „Jó, Honza [Honza je domácke pomenovanie Jan-a – pozn. red.], toho já dobře znám, ten je u RAF [Royal Air Force – kráľovské letectvo – súčasť britských vojenských síl. V rokoch 1940 - 1945 pôsobilo v RAF okolo 3 500 českých a slovenských letcov – pozn. red.].“

Po válce

Podle mě jsme se domů vracely 19. června, ale ty moje známé, ty dvě sestry, opět říkají nějaké jiné datum. Ale je možné, že ony jely nějakým předchozím transportem. No, ať to bylo, jak to bylo, já si myslím, že 21. června jsme se pak dostaly do Prahy. Tam jsem šly všechny na lékařskou prohlídku. Maminku okamžitě odlifrovali do podolského sanatoria, tehdy to bylo ještě všeobecné sanatorium, ne gynekologie. A mě tam vzali s ní. Nevím, jak dlouho tam byla, ale zase ji tam dali jakžtakž do pořádku a ještě v průběhu prázdnin se vrátila do Litomyšle, kde začala shánět nábytek a věci z našeho domu. Mne si vzala na starost babiččina a dědečkova hospodyně Marie. Odvezla mě k své sestře a ke své neteři do Dobrovic u Mladé Boleslavi. A tam se mně skutečně snažily dát veškerou péči a vykrmit mě. Stýkala jsem se s ní až do její smrti, to bylo, myslím, koncem šedesátých, začátkem sedmdesátých let. Zemřela ve Stránčicích u Říčan. Ona se totiž, když dědeček s babičkou odjeli do Terezína, nebo možná o něco málo předtím, seznámila s pánem přiměřeného věku, jakýmsi Tomičem, právě ze Stránčic a ve svých přibližně padesáti letech se za něj provdala. Odstěhovala se k němu, z našeho bytu si půjčila zařízení, které tam bylo, a po válce nám ho pak postupně dávala.

Maminka žila do roku 1951 z penze – to jsme žily velmi skromně, protože to byla penze hlavně z doby, kdy tatínek dělal pomocného dělníka. To skutečně moc peněz nebylo. V roce 51 musela být zaměstnána, ale tehdy už z kádrových důvodů nesměla dělat jiné než dělnické profese. Pracovala především v litomyšlské mlékárně, kde vymývala velké konve. Byla i na poště, kde dělala nějakou pomocnou práci, a také, myslím, ve mlýně a potom v Logarexu [závod Logarex byl založen v roce 1950 a jeho výrobní programem se staly výpočetní a rýsovací pomůcky.  V roce 1958 se závod stal součástí podniku Koh-i-noor Hardtmuth České Budějovice. Dnes je závod zaměřen na výrobu školních a kancelářských potřeb – pozn. red.], to byla továrna na výrobu různých pravítek. Problém byl v tom, že jakmile se někde usadila, tak ji okamžitě zase vyhodili a musela si hledat nějaké nové místo.

Totiž ty kádrové důvody… to bylo tak… moje prababička, maminčiny maminky maminka měla za první světové války se svým zetěm výrobu obuvi, myslím vojenské, nebo něco takového. A tam byl zaměstnaný jeden mládenec jako učeň, který se práci příliš nevěnoval a držel tzv. modré pondělky, tj. v pondělí jednoduše nechodil do práce. Jestli ho potom vyhodili nebo ne, tím si nejsem jistá, ale zřejmě asi ano. Prostě on na celou naši rodinu zanevřel. A také myslím, že to byl velký antisemita, protože když se maminka vrátila, tak ji potkal na náměstí a oslovil ji takto: „Paní Freyová, to je strašný, takových židáků tam zůstalo a zrovna Vy s těma Vašema bábama jste se musely vrátit.“ Maminka totiž v Terezíně zřejmě nějakým způsobem někde sehnala cigarety a někoho podplatila, aby její babička a sestra té babičky nemusely jít do transportu. Moje prababička měla šest dětí, všechny zůstaly v Osvětimi, jen ona se sestrou se vrátily a žily potom u nás. To bylo trnem v oku tomuto soudruhovi, z kterého se stal později předseda KSČ v Litomyšli a snažil se nám znepříjemňovat život, jak mohl. Naše rodina a rodina maminčiny sestry jsme bydleli v jednom domě, myslím, že to byl pěkný dům. Protože jakmile přišli Němci a obsadili Litomyšl, tak jsme se museli odstěhovat k tatínkovým rodičům a Němci v tom domě nahoře udělali úřadovnu NSDAP [Die Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei – pozn. red.] a dole Kindergarten, čili mateřskou školku. Po únoru 1948 10 tenhleten pan předseda KSČ v Litomyšli, přišel na originální nápad.  Prý, že se budeme muset vystěhovat a on že v prvním patře udělá sekretariát KSČ a v přízemí mateřskou školku. Neboli naprostá analogie, že. My jsme se tenkrát velmi bránily. Jedna moje kamarádka byla zaměstnána na okresním úřadě - tehdy byla Litomyšl ještě okres - a ta nám to ohlídala. Jakmile tam přišlo vyrozumění, že se musíme vystěhovat, tak ještě než jsme ho dostali my, dala nám o tom vědět. Maminka zašla za jinou kamarádkou, advokátkou, a ta nám rovnou udělala odvolání. Odvolávali jsme se tak dlouho, až jsme se nakonec odvolali až k Zápotockému 11. A u něj jsme konečně pochodili, takže jsme tam mohli zůstat. No, ale protože to byly dva třípokojové byty s halou, dosti velké místnosti, tak nás pak zase chtěli vystěhovat na základě toho, že je to nadměrné. V té době totiž bylo možné vlastnit pouze tři pokoje, ale jejich přesnou plochu si už nepamatuji. To tenkrát určoval nějaký dekret. Maminka to vyřešila tak, že půlku domu, tu horní půlku, prodala své kamarádce. Oni právě tehdy sháněli nějaký byt, takže to koupili a hned se tam nastěhovali. Ta paní je o dva roky mladší než naše maminka a stále ještě žije. Tedy doufám, že to mohu říct, rozhodně ještě minulý týden žila. Tam nahoře teď tedy žije tahle stará paní se svou dcerou a v našem bytě už nastálo nikdo. My tam jezdíme jen příležitostně. Nikdo z příbuzenstva již nežije, ale mám tam spoustu spolužaček z obecné školy a z gymnázia.

Ten předseda KSČ v Litomyšli na prodej oné půlky domu reagoval velmi nedobře. Maminka si musela co chvilku hledat místo, nesměly jsme třeba ani jet se zájezdem do Drážďan a já jsem nesměla se svazem mládeže do Rumunska. Takhle nám zasahoval do života až do roku 1968, kdy se snažil být progresivní. Krátce poté zemřel. To pak už maminka dělala lepší práci, v té mlékárně začala dělat vrátnou. Ale mně se zdá, že pak šla již brzy do důchodu. V důchodu potom dělala průvodkyni po zámku a po Smetanově světničce a nakonec pracovala v Matičkově galerii. Josef Matička, byl malíř-naivista. To je velmi zajímavé naivní umění. On se v Litomyšli nenarodil, ale vzal si ženu z Litomyšle, mimochodem Židovku. Jeho nejlepší obrazy jsou z doby války, kdy měl nějakou předtuchu zlého. Předtím to byl ovšem výrazný komunista, což bylo mnoho lidí v té době. Po něm je v Litomyšli pojmenovaná jedna galerie a v té maminka pracovala.

Maminka měla o dva nebo o tři roky staršího bratra Jana a o dva roky mladší sestru Marii. Té se říkalo Micy, protože se narodila v Teplicích [Teplice-M(arie)ice-Micy] .

Bratr Jan se narodil v roce 1906, byl dlouho svobodný a žil v Prostějově, kde měl dětskou konfekci. Co se týče jeho náboženského zaměření, tak bylo velmi vlažné. Skoro pochybuji, že by něco slavil a košer zcela jistě nedodržoval. Dlouho žil s tamější významnou herečkou té doby, Taňou Hodanovou [Táňa Hodanová (1892 – 1982): česká herečka – pozn. red.], ale nebyli sezdaní. To jméno už Vám asi nic neříká, ale svého času to bylo velmi význačné jméno. Strýček, protože byl velmi prozíravý, poznal, že mu tady ve válce pšenka nepokvete, tak chtěl i s Taňou Hodanovou emigrovat. Ale Taňa to odmítla, protože její svět bylo divadlo, ostravská scéna. A tak se rozešli. Strýček tedy odešel do Anglie sám a pořídil si tam nějaký podnik na opravu látek nebo něco takového a pak tam měl také nějakou konfekci. A seznámil se tam s mnohem mladší dívkou z Opavy, Erikou Lichtwitzovou, a vzali se. Její otec měl v Opavě továrnu na likéry – jmenovalo se to Lichtwitz likér. Potom po válce se z toho stala továrna na konzervy, Seliko [firma Emanuel LICHTWITZ - výrobce rosolky a likérů byla založena v r. 1861 v Opavě a v r. 1863 byla zapsána do obchodního rejstříku pod názvem "Em. LICHTWITZ". Po znárodnění v létech 1948-1949 byl závod začleněn do národního majetku. Postupně od r. 1953 do r. 1958 docházelo k útlumu a posléze ke zrušení výroby lihovin. Výroba byla nahrazována konzervárenskou výrobou. Společnost prošla několika etapami organizačních změn, v současnosti  SELIKO a.s. – pozn. red.]. Erika se do Anglie dostala na začátku války, nebo ještě před ní, to přesně nevím. Ona totiž byla také Židovka, tak odjela do Anglie, jak to tenkrát Židé dělali. Oba dva se po válce z té Anglie vrátili zpátky do Prahy a 20. září 1947 se jim narodil syn, kterého pojmenovali Tomáš Jan Václav. Ale když mu bylo půl roku, hned po únoru 1948, se oba i s ním okamžitě vrátili zpátky do Anglie. A tam mu zůstalo jenom jméno John. Erika stále ještě žije, vždyť také byla o mnoho mladší než strýček, o 13 let. Žije v Londýně a jejich syn John bydlí hned ve vedlejším domě.

Maminčina sestra Marie se narodila 8. srpna 1911 a pak žila až do deportace v Litomyšli. Vdala se za Otto Sgalla, který byl o devatenáct let starší než ona. Měli spolu syna Milana, který se narodil 5. května 1934. Nikdo z těch tří válku nepřežil. Odjeli litomyšlským transportem do Terezína a pak šli  takzvaným zářijovým transportem do Osvětimi. Což znamenalo, že všichni byli usmrceni ze sedmého na osmého září 1944 v Osvětimi.

Vzpomínky na dětství

Já se jmenuji Eva Dušková, za svobodna Freyová, a narodila jsem se v Plzni 22. března 1930. Datum úmrtí dosud neznámo. Žádné sourozence nemám, měla jsem jenom toho bratránka Milánka, se kterým jsme žili v jednom domě. Ale to, že jsem byla jedináček, bylo vlastně štěstí, protože bych se asi neuchránila plynu. V Osvětimi totiž bylo pravidlo, že komu je víc než šestnáct let, nebo minimálně  šestnáct a maximálně čtyřicet pět, tak se může hlásit na těžkou práci. A mladší a starší musí jít do plynu.

První čtyři roky jsem žila v Plzni, ale pak jsme se přestěhovali do Litomyšle. Mohu říct, že jsem tam žila s oběma rodiči, protože tatínek do Mostu jenom dojížděl. V Litomyšli jsem vychodila první čtyři třídy, ale pak už jsem do školy chodit nesměla 12. Tam jsem se vrátila až po válce. Pamatuji se na svůj první den ve škole. Do první třídy jsem šla se svou kamarádkou Anitou Frankovou, za svobodna Fisherovou. Znala jsem se s ní již od čtyř let, protože naši rodiče se přátelili. Navíc jsme vlastně byly velmi vzdálené příbuzné. Konkrétně bratr Anitina dědečka a sestra mé prababičky byli manželé. Dokonce jsme tehdy trvaly na tom, abychom ve škole seděly vedle sebe. A nakonec jsme seděly. Ovšem hned druhý den jsme byly rozsazené pro neposlušnost. My jsme si prostě pouze povídaly. Co říká pan učitel, nebylo tak zajímavé. Ale já jsem se do školy velice těšila, byla jsem lačná po vědomostech. Mě i Anitu první den do školy doprovázeli tatínkové. Vím, že tam pánové vzadu za lavicemi stáli vedle sebe a myslím, že se dobře bavili. Myslím, že to naši tatínkové brali jako takovou svou osobní výsadu. Že by tam byly i maminky, to si nepamatuji. Velmi brzy jsem do školy chodila bez doprovodu, protože to byl malý kousek, bez jakéhokoliv dopravního nebezpečí.

Do jedné třídy jsme s Anitou chodily, tuším, tři roky. Potom se Fischerovi odstěhovali do Prahy, protože měli pocit, že budou v Praze jaksi skrytější, nebo chráněnější, kdežto my jsme zůstali v Litomyšli. To bylo asi v osmatřicátém roce. Už tenkrát měli zjevně pocit určitého ohrožení, ale proč, to jsem se jich neptala. Mě to tenkrát nezajímalo. Jen vím, že se říkalo, že měli pocit, že v Praze jaksi nebudou tak na očích. Leč v Praze potom Anitin tatínek dostal vbrzku, tuším, infarkt či co a zemřel. Ještě před válkou.

Jaké dojmy z válečného období mám? Pamatuji si, že když byla mobilizace 13, tak se tatínkův bratr, můj strýček František, vrátil velice skleslý, když tu mobilizaci odvolali.  Potom si pamatuji, jak mi tatínek říkal – to už byl předsedou Židovské obce - že si nesmím hrát s místními holčičkami. V Litomyšli byla mimochodem jedna rodina, dělnická rodina, on byl tuším cestář nebo něco takového a velmi uvědomělý sociální demokrat, velmi čestný člověk. Můj tatínek, přestože měl dva akademické tituly, tak kdykoliv ho potkal, hluboce smekl. A tahle rodina – velmi prostí, ale velmi charakterově vzácní lidé - k nám domů posílali mou spolužačku, Boženku, aby si se mnou hrála. Její rodiče jí prostě řekli: „Když ses kamarádila s Evou předtím, tak teď se s ní musíš kamarádit zase.“ A ona k nám skutečně chodila, dokud jsme neodjeli. Po válce jsme se sešly opět v gymnáziu ve stejné třídě a kamarádíme spolu dosud. Když jedu do Litomyšle, navštěvujeme se.

Některé ostatní děti se ode mne odkláněly. Pamatuji si, že jsme nesměli chodit na koupaliště 12, a tak jsme chodili za město do takového potůčku a tam jsme se koupali. Nesmírně mi vadilo, že jsem nesměla chodit do školy. Různých omezení, třeba co do zásobování, toho jsem si v podstatě ani nevšimla, protože naše maminka byla velmi schopná a sehnala kde co. Různě pod rukou a také jsme měli spoustu známých na venkově. Ani nošení hvězdy 12 na mě nezanechalo žádný dojem, my jsme se potom stýkali už jen sami mezi sebou, takže mi to ani nepřišlo. Naopak mi vadilo, když jsme museli odevzdat rádiové přístroje. Že jsme museli odevzdávat i nějaké šperky, to se mě celkem nedotklo a myslím, že maminka to všechno dala schovat k přátelům. Hospodyni to dát nemohla, protože ta až do našeho transportu žila s dědečkem a babičkou v jednom bytě. Ovšem když dědeček a babička za sebou zavřeli dveře, tak co mohla, tak z toho bytu vybrala a uschovala a po válce nám to postupně vydávala. Také si vzpomínám, že když byla heydrichiáda 14, tak jsem byla s maminkou sama doma, tatínek byl asi někde v práci. Zazvonili nějací dva pánové a ukazovali nám obrázky kola, aktovky a já nevím čeho ještě. A já jsem říkala: „Jé podívej, maminko, tuhletu aktovku má můj tatínek [atentátnici sa po úspešnom útoku na Reinharda Heydricha zbavili dôkazov. Gestapo následne zahájilo vyšetrovanie, ku ktorému použili aj fotografie dôkazového materiálu – pozn. red.]. Maminka se na mě strašně rozzlobila a říkala, že si vymýšlím.

Jinak si myslím, že jsem byla celkem hodné dítě. Vzpomínám si snad na jedinou výjimku, kdy jsem chtěla svého o čtyři roky mladšího bratránka Milana praštit sekyrkou. Nic mně tenkrát nedělal, prostě tady byla sekyrka, tady stál on… no prostě jsem ji tam viděla, a tak jsem cítila potřebu ji použít. A nemohla jsem pochopit, proč se na mě jeho otec zlobí. Bylo mi šest.

Také si vzpomínám, že jsme se v Terezíně sešly s Anitou [Frankovou]. Byly jsme obě v jedné místnosti v takzvaném Mädchenheimu. Rodiče se tenkrát postarali o to, abych se tam dostala. Když jsme přišli do Terezína, byli jsme nejprve v takzvané šlojske [šlojska: první budova, do které byli příchozí nahnáni a vníž přišli o veškeré cennosti – pozn. red.]. To bylo asi tak tři dny. Pak nás  přemístili muže zvlášť a ženy s dětmi zvlášť, ale tam byly dost nevlídné podmínky. No a v tom Mädchenheimu už byla Anita, takže tam jsme bydlely společně, dokud Anitu s maminkou neposlali v prosinci 1943 do Osvětimi. Já s maminkou jsem tam šla až téměř o rok později. Z jakýchsi „zaručených“ zdrojů, kdosi, kdo to prý viděl na vlastní oči, jsme se po válce dozvěděly, že Anita šla i s matkou do plynu, ale byla to falešná zvěst. Ony šly tenkrát z Osvětimi někam do Běloruska, ale kam, to si přesně nevzpomenu. A tam je osvobodila dosti zajímavým způsobem Rudá armáda. Totiž předtím než Rudá armáda přišla, tak se je Němci snažili všechny postřílet a Anita i její maminka z toho nějak omdlely. Či něco takového. Takže Němci si mysleli, že už jsou vyřízené. Anitinu maminku ale ještě uhodili několikrát pažbou pušky do hlavy. No a potom je osvobodila Sovětská armáda, jenže spletla si je se německými zajatkyněmi a odvelela je do gulagu 15. To víte, Rudá armáda.

Nějak těsně před Vánoci se Anita ozvala z Prahy od své tety, protože jí a ještě, myslím, pár dalších dětí pustili z toho gulagu dřív a maminku tam ještě nechali. Jen vím že o Vánocích pětačtyřicet už byla Anita u nás v Litomyšli na prázdninách. Pak se vrátila do Prahy do gymnázia. Její maminka se ze Sovětského svazu vrátila asi půl roku po ní. V padesátém roce ale najednou Anitinu maminku začala bolet hlava a po nějaké době zemřela. Zjistilo se, že přitom, když jí tou pažbou pušky tloukli do hlavy, tak se střepina z lebky dostala do mozku a tam potom zapracovala.

I já jsem po válce, jak jsem říkala, mohla opět chodit do školy, do reálného gymnázia. To byl školní rok 1945/46. Tehdy jsem byla podmínečně přijatá do kvarty – i když už jsem patřila do kvinty, kam mě však z pochopitelných důvodů nevzali - s tím, že do konce školního roku musím udělat zkoušky ze všech předmětů za celé nižší gymnázium. Přičemž vím, že třeba tady v Praze musela jedna moje kamarádka dělat zkoušky pouze z češtiny a matematiky, zatímco já jsem je dělala i z přírodopisu, chemie a já nevím, z čeho ještě. Ze začátku to sice bylo velice tvrdé, ale pak jsem si na tu práci zvykla. Učívala jsem se dlouho do noci, látku kvarty a ještě to všechno ostatní. Do Litomyšle jsme se po válce vrátily jen tři děti a navíc různého věku, takže škola nabídla tuto možnost, ale připravit jsme se musely samy. Na zkoušky mě učila za prvé jedna studentka, která zrovna absolvovala oktávu, a potom jeden profesor z průmyslové školy a jedna profesorka snad také z průmyslové školy. Ti za mnou chodili a vtloukali mně vědomosti do hlavy. Já jsem totiž předtím měla pouze čtvrtou obecnou a trochu jsem se něco učila soukromě a něco maloučko také v Terezíně, jaksi potají, ale prakticky jsem neznala nic. Posledního tři čtvrtě roku, co jsme byli v tom Lenzingu, jsem znala pouze úmornou tvrdou práci. Takže jsem měla úplně, úplně vygumovaný mozek. Vůbec nic jsem si nepamatovala, co jsem se večer naučila, to jsem ráno neznala. Ale měla jsem takovou snahu ty zkoušky udělat, že se mně to povedlo. Zezačátku jsem měla samé čtyřky a pětky, ale na konci jsem maturovala jako jedna z nejlepších. Ale neřekla bych, že jsem to všechno dohnala, i když na ty zkoušky to stačilo.

Do školy jsem však chodila nesmírně ráda. Prázdniny mně vždycky trvaly příliš dlouho, nemohla jsem se dočkat, až zas do školy půjdu. Ráda jsem se učila, na obecné škole jsem měla ráda, myslím, všechno. Méně snad počty a více mluvnici, tehdy se říkalo mluvnice. A těžko jsem se vypořádávala s kreslením. A na gymnáziu jsem milovala všechny humanitní obory, zatímco ty přírodovědné mi zůstávaly poněkud cizí. I když musím říct, že i tak mě zajímaly a bavilo mě se to učit.

Po maturitě jsem šla studovat na filosofii knihovnictví. Chtěla jsem sice studovat psychologii, ale v pololetí v oktávě jsem se dozvěděla, že bych ji musela kombinovat pouze s čistou filosofií a tehdy znamenala čistá filosofie především marxismus. No, tak jsem to sama v sobě odmítla a přihlásila jsem se na řeči. Ovšem velmi nešikovně, protože jsem se přihlásila na anglistiku-germanistiku. V tom padesátém roce bylo totiž absolutně vyloučeno, že bych byla přijata, když jsem neměla partajní zázemí. Takže jsem měla velké štěstí, že mně tenkrát napsali: „Jste přijata na obor knihovnictví.“ A tak jsem vystudovala knihovnictví. K nám na knihovnictví se dostalo několik lidí, kteří dělali přijímací zkoušky na úplně jiné obory. Například moje současná kolegyně, nejen ročníková, ale i profesní, dělala přijímací zkoušky na dějiny umění A také dostala vyjádření: „Jste přijata na obor knihovnictví.“ On totiž o to knihovnictví neměl nikdo zájem. Anita Franková například se hlásila na historii a přijali ji na archivnictví. Studovala ve stejném ročníku. Tenkrát nebylo možné přejít na jiný obor, když už Vás na filosofickou fakultu přijali, přestože se to, myslím někomu povedlo, ale zase Vás mohli přijmout na úplně jiný obor, než na jaký jste dělala přijímací zkoušky. Já jsem si tenkrát říkala, že lepší knihovnictví než nic. Ale potom mě to chytilo a dělám to dodnes. Kromě toho, já jsem už na obecné škole ráda četla, mým oblíbeným autorem byl Foglar [Jaroslav Foglar-Jestřáb (1907-1999): českého spisovatele pro mládež – pozn. red.]. Prý jsem špatně jedla a když se mnou šla jednou maminka okolo knihkupectví, řekla jsem: „Maminko, já mám hlad.“ Ona prý na to: „Pojď, půjdu s tebou nahoru tamhle naproti do řeznictví a tam ti něco koupím.“ A já: „Ne, já mám hlad na čtení.“

I doma jsme samozřejmě měli knihovnu. Můj tatínek velice shromažďoval literaturu a měl spoustu literatury technické. Měl rád pohádky a tehdejší produkci ELK, tj. Evropského literárního klubu. Což byla taková česká a světová soudobá klasika. I maminka určitě četla podobný druh literatury. Jestli měli doma i nějakou náboženskou literaturu, to nevím, jen si pamatuji, že si dědeček svou modlitební knihu vytahoval ze svého nočního stolku. Z časopisů měl tatínek doma týdeník Pestrý týden [v roce 1926 vyšlo nulté číslo časopisu Pestrý týden. Byl to týdeník pro intelektuální vyšší třídu obyvatelstva. Šéfredaktorem byli Adolf Hoffmeister, Jaromír John, a do samého konce časopisu, v roce 1945, Neubert – pozn. red.], ten jsme měli dokonce i svázaný. V Litomyšli byla i městská knihovna, ale jestli tam chodili, to nevím. Já sama jsem tam byla jen jednou. To bylo po válce, už jako studentka gymnázia, když jsem potřebovala nějakou povinnou literaturu. Viděla jsem tu temnou místnost, všechny knihy zabalené v modrém balícím papíru, pan knihovník velmi zajímavá figurka, velmi ošklivý, vyceněné zuby. Černý pracovní plášť, klotové rukávce. No, byla jsem ráda, že jsem tam odtud odešla. A řekla jsem si: „Už nikdy více do knihovny.“

Co se cizích jazyků týče, jsem schopná komunikovat v němčině. Německy jsem se ale nikdy neučila, protože jsem se narodila v Plzni a vyrůstala jsem tedy v dvojjazyčném prostředí. V osmi letech mě strýc Otto Sgall začal učit angličtinu, kterou jsem pak měla i na gymnáziu, ale nepovinnou, a pak i na vysoké škole. Takže anglicky se také domluvím. Na gymnáziu jsme měli samozřejmě i latinu. Od kvarty jsem měla ruštinu, kterou jsem navíc ještě vyučovala a udělala jsem si z ní zkoušku. Ale zapomněla jsem ji, protože jsem ji  dlouho nepoužívala. To je mi velmi líto. Mimochodem, v lágru, v tom Lenzingu, jsem byla společně s Maďarkami a abych si trochu cvičila mozek, tak jsem se učila i maďarsky. Poslouchala jsem a  ptala jsem se jich, co znamená ta která věta nebo slovo. Tenkrát jsem tedy docela dobře rozuměla i tomuto jazyku, ale teď až na pár slov neznám nic. Od kvinty jsem měla francouzštinu, ze které jsem, tuším, i maturovala, ale protože jsem ji také dlouho nepoužívala, tak pasivně ji sice znám, ale aktivně už bohužel ne. Po státnici jsem se přihlásila do jazykové školy na současnou hebrejštinu, neboli ivrit, protože z dětství jsem toho moc neuměla. Ten pochybný rabín Samuel Freilich, který nás učil hebrejsky ještě v Litomyšli na obecné škole, nás toho moc nenaučil. To spíš nás něco naučil dědeček nebo tatínek.

Kromě jazyků jsem i dost sportovala, ale sportovní kroužky tenkrát nebyly. Před válkou jsem chodívala do Sokola 16. Na žádném sletě jsem ale nebyla. Lyžovala jsem, bruslila, sáňkovala, plavala a tak. Bruslit se u nás v Litomyšli chodívalo na rybník nedaleko domu, kde bydlívala Anita Franková. Takže bruslit jsme chodily spolu. Na horách jsem nelyžovala nikdy, rodiče sami nelyžovali, takže jsme nikde nebyli. Ale v Litomyšli byl kopec, kterému se říkalo Fejťák, neboli Fejtkův kopec. Tenkrát mi připadal strašně veliký, ale dnes bych si ho možná ani nevšimla. Navíc tam možná už ani není, dělali tam různé úpravy. A na tento kopec litomyšlské děti chodívaly lyžovat. Jediným mým zájmem ale byla četba a to mě zůstalo až do současnosti. Dlouhou chvíli ani dnes většinou nemám, ale snažím se utrhnout nějakou chvilku pro kousek čtení.

Zaměstnání

Studium knihovnictví nám udělali jednooborové, takže nás odpromovali po dvou letech, v padesátém druhém roce. Při studiu jsem praktikovala v Národním muzeu, v oddělení starých tisků, kam jsem chodila praktikovat zadarmo v naději, že se tam dostanu, ta práce tam mě dost zaujala. Oni si potom o mě zažádali na fakultu, protože to bylo období umístěnek. Jenže na fakultě jim řekli, že tam v muzeu je velmi reakční prostředí a já že nejsem jaksi politicky ještě úplně ztracený případ, čili že mě musí dát někam, kde se spíš politicky pozvednu. A dali mi umístěnku do Vojenské lékařské knihovny v Hradci Králové. Tak jsem tam napsala a přihlásila jsem se a oni mi odpověděli, že stejnou umístěnku dostali tři lidé a já že jsem po kádrové stránce nejméně vyhovující, takže mě nepřijmou. Tenkrát v padesátých letech bylo všechno možné, i to, že na jedno místo dostanou umístěnku tři.

Kdosi mně řekl, že slyšel, že je nějaká knihovna někde v Dejvicích. Tak jsem odjela do Dejvic a tam jsem šla od fakulty k fakultě – tam byly Zemědělská a Chemická - a všude mně řekli, že tam místo nemají. Šla jsem taky do ÚDA, což byl Ústřední dům armády, jenže tam jsem už vůbec kádrově neuspěla. A pak mi na jednom z těch míst řekli, že snad někde v Podbabě, v nějakém výzkumném ústavu, je nějaká knihovna. Tak jsem odjela do Podbaby, zjistila jsem, že je tam Výzkumný ústav vodohospodářský a tak jsem šla za kádrovým referentem, nějakým Josefem Fialou. To byl nesmírný primitiv. Aniž by o mně měl jakékoliv reference, když zjistil, že jsem byla v koncentračním táboře, tak si řekl: „Á, tak ta bude uvědomělá, tu dáme do knihovny. Tam není zrovna  kádrově dobré prostředí, takže ona je tam povzdělá.“ Tak mě tam dali a já jsem se s nimi samozřejmě okamžitě domluvila, a hned jsem byla jejich a s tou vedoucí jsem dodnes spřátelená. Ale byla jsem tam jen velice krátkou dobu, necelý rok, neboť jsme se dozvěděli, že do té knihovny má přijít nějaký nový vedoucí. A moje vedoucí, protože věděla, že bych s ním mohla mít kádrové problémy, mi říká: „Evo, koukej odsud zmizet, jak nejdřív můžeš.“ A tehdy zrovna, čirou náhodou, to byl prostě shluk náhod, tam přišel jeden inženýr, který říkal, že se zakládá knihovna v Akademii věd, naproti přes ulici - tehdy to byla laboratoř pro vodní hospodářství a potom z toho vznikl Ústav pro hydrodynamiku - jestli o někom nevím. A ta moje vedoucí na to reagovala: „Neváhej ani okamžik a hned to vezmi sama.“ Tak jsem to vzala sama. Mimochodem, při odchodu na nové pracoviště jsem dostala takovýhle kádrový posudek: „Soudružka Freyová přesto, že byla v koncentráku, říká soudružkám slečno.“ Podle onoho kádrového referenta, jakmile je někdo v koncentračním táboře, musí být komunista. Byl prostě nesmírně hloupý.

Takže jsem v roce 1953 přešla do Ústavu pro hydrodynamiku, tam byl velice dobrý ředitel a měl skvělého tajemníka. Ten tajemník mě vyzpovídal, řekl, že všechno je v pořádku, ale nakonec se zarazil a aby si mě „prokádroval“, říká: „Prosím Vás, slečno, já bych měl ještě něco, ale nevím, jak bych Vám to řekl. Totiž my tady nemáme svaz mládeže. A jestli budete chtít, tak ho budeme muset kvůli Vám založit.“ A já na to: „Prosím Vás, jen to ne.“ Myslím, že jsem měla životní štěstí. V Ústavu jsem tedy založila knihovnu a byla jsem tam až do roku, 1988, do posledního listopadu 1988, kdy jsem šla do důchodu. Měla jsem tam na starosti celou knihovnu, čili jsem dělala akvizici, zpracování, půjčování, statistiku, nákup a ještě meziknihovní výpůjční službu.

V důchodu jsem pak dělala různé brigády, například v Národní knihovně. V Ústavu soudobých dějin jsem dělala bibliografii a pak jsem v roce 1996 založila svoji milovanou knihovnu. Jde o knihovnu v Institutu Terezínské iniciativy 17. Proto mám tak dobrý přístup k Terezínské pamětní knize. Nejdříve pan Miroslav Kárný, který se hned po listopadu ujal jedné z vedoucích rolí v Terezínské iniciativě, sháněl někoho do muzea v Terezíně. Já jsem neměla chuť tam denně dojíždět, tak jsem mu to odmítla. Ale potom, když probojoval to, že se založila Nadace Terezínská iniciativa - dnes je to Institut Terezínské iniciativy - tak tam také chtěli knihovnu a opět si na mě vzpomněl. Já jsem zrovna neměla co dělat, tak jsem se toho s chutí chopila.

Knihovnictví mě opravdu chytilo, uchvátil mě hlavně ten systém. Navíc tehdy v Ústavu pro hydrodynamiku mě to zaujalo i obsahem. Můj tatínek byl technik, já jsem znala i nějaké autory, o nichž tatínek povídal, takže jsem k tomu měla blízko. A v Terezínské iniciativě k tomu mám zase blízko jako Židovka, která sama v Terezíně byla.

Náboženský život

Co se náboženství týče, dodnes praktikuji a zásluhu vidím hlavně v mém dědečkovi a tatínkovi, že na mě zapůsobili tak, že to ve mně zůstalo. Jak jsem říkala, výuka onoho rabína nám nikomu moc nedala. On byl původem z Podkarpatské Rusi 18, jmenoval se Samuel Freilich a mluvil takovou nedobrou češtinou. Z jeho výuky si pamatuji jen to, že nám říkal, že staří bohani měli za kamny pušky. Což znamenalo, že pohani měli za pecí či kde bůžky. Výuka probíhala asi jednou týdně. Chodívala jsem tam se svou jedinou židovskou spolužačkou, Anitou Frankovou. Navíc dodatečně se ukázalo, že Samuel Freilich byl velký podvodník. Před transporty, nebo snad už na začátku války, si totiž od některých bohatých členů obce vyžádal peníze z tím, že jim opatří vystěhování, a zmizel. Po válce se u nás objevil, takhle před obědem, a maminka mu říká: „Tak co jste udělal s těmi penězi?“ No, on se všelijak vytáčel a pak tvrdil, že byl internován v Ebensee [jeden z nejznámějších pobočných táborů Mauthausenu – pozn. red]. Na to maminka prohlásila: „No, to je zajímavý, ale my jsme se s těmi muži z Ebensee vracely domů.“ A on se okamžitě rozloučil. Už jsem o něm neslyšela.

V Litomyšli žilo před válkou něco málo přes sto Židů - po válce se jich tam vrátilo patnáct – takže nebylo myslitelné, aby se v pátek večer sešel počet deseti mužů v synagoze [minjan – modlitebné minimum desiatich mužov, vo veku nad trinásť rokov, potrebných k verejnej modlitbe – pozn. red.]. Do synagogy jsme tedy chodili pouze na Vysoké svátky, na Roš Hašana, Jom Kippur a na Simchat Tora. Litomyšl mělo tenkrát pět tisíc obyvatel, teď má deset tisíc a vždycky byla velmi kulturní. Už nejméně od devatenáctého století to za prvé bylo město studentů a za druhé spisovatelů, hudebníků a malířů. Žili tu Smetana [Bedřich Smetana (1824-1884): český skladatel, dirigent, klavírní virtuos a pedagog], Jirásek [Alois Jirásek (1851-1930): český romanopisec a dramatik, tvůrce historických povídek – pozn. red.] a Němcová 19. O té jsem psala do litomyšlského sborníku. Ona tam totiž vydala první vydání svých sebraných spisů u tehdejšího vydavatele Antonína Augusty. Vždycky do Litomyšle na nějaký čas jela, bydlela tam na třech místech.

V Litomyšli žádná židovská čtvrť nikdy nebyla, jen synagoga a vedle ní byl domeček šámese [v překladu „zřízenec“, označení pro placeného obecního pracovníka, zvláště takového, který má na starosti celkovou údržbu synagógy – pozn. red.]. Židovské školy ani mikve [rituální koupel – pozn. red.] tam nebyly. Židovský hřbitov je v současné době naprosto zdevastovaný. On totiž není zase tak starý, aby zaujal Židovské muzeum a pracovníky Židovské obce, takže je vše financováno z místních zdrojů. Ale obávám se, že možnosti jsou velmi omezené. Stále dál a dál se devastuje. I když teď se o něj začala starat místní paní učitelka se svými žáky. Na litomyšlském hřbitově je pohřbena určitě prababička z tatínkovy strany. Možná i strýček Karel, její syn. Ostatní příbuzní jsou rozprášeni. Co se synagogy týče, tu v šedesátých letech komunisti zbourali. Já jsem iniciovala a prosadila, aby vyrobili pamětní desku na místě, kde stávala. Je tam nápis o tom, že nacisté ji zdevastovali a komunisté zbourali. Jako záminku si tenkrát vzali to, že tam chtějí postavit sídliště. Což učinili, ale ona by jim v tom byla vůbec nebránila. Moje maminka se tehdy snažila o to, aby z toho udělali alespoň nějaký kulturní stánek. Jenže tam byla vyslovená snaha se toho všeho zbavit.

Židé v Litomyšli bývali většinou obchodníci. Obchodovali s různým artiklem, ale hlavně, myslím, s textilem. Byl tam velmi význačný továrník Hugo Popper, známý výrobce obuvi. To byla tenkrát velmi, velmi kvalitní obuv hlavně na export. Mimochodem, jestli znáte Helgu Hoškovou [Helga Hošková-Weissová], akademickou malířku, která udělala na holešovickém Parkhotelu, odkud šly první pražské transporty, pamětní desku, tak to byl její strýček. Udělala také pamětní desku té litomyšlské synagogy.

Jako malé holce se mi o Vysokých svátcích líbilo, jak šla celá rodina a celá litomyšlská obec do synagogy. Bylo to celé tak sváteční a my děti jsme tam strašně vyváděly. A byly jsme napomínány, i ručně. Můj dědeček, tatínek a tatínkův bratr seděli vlevo v první řadě a já jsem si k těm třem pánům směla přijít přisednout. To se mně také moc líbilo. U nás v synagoze běžně sedávaly ženy odděleně od mužů, ale já jsem prostě vlétla dolů a usadila jsem se vedle nich. Nikdo mě nevyhazoval [v ortodoxných synagógach musia sedieť ženy a muži oddelene – pozn. red.]. Jestli by jiné děti nevyhodili, to si neuvědomuji, ale myslím, že ani jim by se bylo nic nestalo. Navíc to nebylo jen jednou, spíše jsem tam sedávala dost pravidelně. Kromě toho si pamatuji, že když byl mazkir, neboli modlitba za mrtvé – tehdy musí všichni, kdo ještě mají oba rodiče a sourozence, prostě ty nejbližší příbuzné, opustit synagogu – odcházela jsem i s oběma rodiči ze synagogy, ale neznala jsem důvod. Ale věděla jsem, že když musí opustit synagogu i moji rodiče, tak se tam určitě neděje nic sprostého. Protože co nebylo pro děti, tak to bylo sprosté, alespoň tak jsem to tenkrát vnímala.

Jinak v pátek večer jsme se vždycky sešli u dědečka, u tatínkova otce, kde se předvečer soboty slavil pouze v rámci rodiny. Vše vždy probíhalo v té místnosti s klenbou. Ale nepamatuji se, že by matka třeba zapalovala šabatové svíčky. Dědeček pronášel požehnání před jídlem, i když si nejsem jistá, zda podobná požehnání říkal i před jiným než šabatovým jídlem. Košer jsme nejedli, a to v Litomyšli zřejmě nikdo, protože ta možnost ani nebyla. Můj dědeček, když byl mladý, tak košer dodržoval, ale potom dostal nějaké žaludeční potíže - jaké, to nevím - a lékař mu doporučil, aby jedl šunku. No a kuřecí tenkrát ještě nebyla. Ale on byl moudrý a myslím, že se s tím velice dobře vyrovnal. Ani jsme nerozdělovali masité a mléčné. Na druhou stranu, když jsem byla v sobotu u dědečka, tak jsem si nesměla ani psát. Ale když jsem byla doma, tak ano. Dědeček byl v tomto ohledu přísnější a v sobotu ani necestoval [religiózne židovské zákony zakazujú počas soboty, šabatu, základných 39 pracovných činností, ktoré sú zahrnuté do Talmudu, a ostatné činnosti, ktoré sú od nich odvodené. Medzi ne patrí napríklad aj písanie a cestovanie – pozn. red.]. Můj tatínek ale musel cestovat i o sobotě coby zástupce mostecké ocelárny.

Pesach, sederovou večeři, jsme také slavili u dědečka. Četla se samozřejmě Hagada [kniha zaznamenávající řád domáci bohoslužby při sederu. Hagada je v podstatě převyprávěním příběhu o východu z Egypta podle biblického podání – pozn. red.] a já jsem směla říkat Maništane [Ma ništana, čtyři otázky tradičně přednesené nejmladším účastníkem sederu – pozn. red.]. Protože já jsem nevládla příliš dobře hebrejštinou, tak mně to tatínek přepsal latinkou na kus papíru a vložil mi to do Hagady. Já jsem to přečetla , ale strašně jsem se styděla, protože jsem měla pocit, že podvádím, když to nečtu v originále. Dnes bych se tedy v originále modlit uměla, tedy alespoň to, co mě dědeček a tatínek naučili. Oba se mně velice věnovali, hlavně dědeček, ten opravdu vehementně, protože tatínek měl málo času, jak byl věčně na cestách.

Křesťanské svátky se v naší rodině neslavily nikdy, nikdy jsme například neměli vánoční stromeček. Mně to nikdy nevadilo a ani před spolužáky jsem se nesnažila to nějak zamlčovat. Mě naučili, abych se k tomu hrdě hlásila. Ale myslím, že mé spolužáky to stejně vůbec nezajímalo, jestli mám dárky na Vánoce nebo na Chanuka a ani nikoho z nich nezajímalo, jak  a proč se třeba Chanuka slaví. 

Ty různé zákazy a příkazy mně jako malé moc vadily. Rodiče mě vždycky uskladnili právě u dědečka a u babičky, u tatínkových rodičů, a babička měla o mě strašný strach a nechtěla mě pustit ven hrát si s dětmi. Na druhou stranu, dědeček mně sice zakazoval psát a kreslit si, ale zato mi vykládal různé biblické příběhy, které mě zaujaly. Bibli jsem později přečetla celou, Starý i Nový Zákon. A občas, když na něco narazím, se náboženství věnuji v Židovské ročence. Teď už ale příliš ne, teď se věnuji spíše, jak bych tak řekla, formálním stránkám života Obce. Protože, jak jistě víte, je to tam velmi rozhádané. Já jsem zastáncem té strany protisidonovské [Karol Efraim Sidon vrchní zemský a pražský rabín je zástancem konzervativního judaismu – pozn. red.] a hlásím se k tomu. S náboženstvím to však nemá nic společného, jde spíše o určitý vztah k obci. Já jsem přesvědčená, že ta druhá strana - my říkáme vždycky na naší straně a na druhé straně – tak že ta druhá strana podle mě sice velice demonstruje náboženské obřady, ale že jim jde hlavně o finanční a jiné zisky. No, v podstatě finanční.

Já sama dnes např. zákazy spojené se sobotou nedodržuji, ani svíčky nezapaluji, to už není ve smíšeném manželství možné a vůbec celý styl života to prostě nedovoluje. Jen chodívám během určitých svátků na obec a na Dlouhý den [Jom kippur, nejslávnostnější událost v židovském kalendáři – pozn. red.] se postím. Ale židovství jsem začala brát spíš jako životní filozofii a věci, které nebylo možné dodržovat, prostě ty formální záležitosti, jsem odbourala. Proto mně též není blízké dnešní ortodoxní směřování pražské obce. Podle mě jsou to, co oni prosazují, jen takové formality, věci, jimiž se člověk vyčleňuje z normální společnosti. Že se nějak staví „na odiv“. To nemám ráda, žádnou takovou, řekněme, demonstraci. Jako dospělá jsem jednou byla v pátek večer v synagoze a přišlo mi to tam takové cizí, neosobní, tak jsem si řekla, že to tedy nemám zapotřebí. Ale protože jsem byla jako dítě zvyklá chodit o Vysokých svátcích do synagogy, tak jsem tam chodila jaksi celou dobu, i dobu komunismu. Protože jsem knihovnice, měla jsem také úřední pochůzky, takže jsem to spojila s nějakou tou úřední pochůzkou. A nikdo nic nevěděl. Asi jsem měla štěstí. A zrovna takové štěstí měl můj muž, Milan Dušek, který jako varhaník hrál u svaté Markéty, také každou neděli a každý svátek. Naproti vchodu do svaté Markéty bydlela jejich kádrová referentka a ta říkala: „Vím o každém všechno.“ O mém muži ale nevěděla nic. Žádné represe ohledně své víry jsem za komunismu nepociťovala. Jen jednou se mě při nějakém výslechu, nebo to snad byl kádrový pohovor, to už nevím, ptali, jak jsem na tom s náboženstvím, na což jsem odpověděla, že to nemám ujasněné.

V životě jsem nenarazila ani na žádný antisemitismus, ani ve škole, ani v práci. To spíš maminka u toho předsedy národního výboru, ale já osobně nikdy. Já nikdy neměla potřebu svůj židovský původ skrývat, ale ani jsem neměla snahu to demonstrovat. V práci to o mně samozřejmě věděli. Mimochodem, my jsme tam měli společnost čtyř žen a všechny jsme byly nábožensky zaměřené, každá jaksi jiného druhu. A bavily jsme se o tom, v naprosté shodě. Jedna byla evangelička, jedna byla československá [Církev československá husitská] a jedna byla katolička. Spojovala nás shoda názoru na téma věřit či být ateista, to víte, za totality. Myslím, že ohledně víry jsme byly všechny čtyři tolerantní a zůstaly jsme doposud.

Já jsem ze židovství vyrostla, či spíše jsem vyrostla v něm. Nikdy u mě nenastala ona pochybnost, zda je přijmu za své, myslím, že jsem nic takového nikdy nezvažovala. Prostě jsem to brala jako daný fakt. A nikoho jsem se nikdy neptala, jestli v něco věřit mám nebo nemám, ani za komunismu, který propagoval atheismus. Věřila jsem, ale nikde jsem to neinzerovala. Ptali se mě dokonce lidé, jak je možné, že jsem po holocaustu nepřestala věřit. Ale já vím, že to tak mělo být, a proto věřím dál. Je těžké formulovat, co mě na židovství nejvíce oslovuje. Líbí se mi, že se mnou můj názor a moje pocity sdílí ještě další, tu větší, tu menší skupina lidí. A především jsou to citová pouta -  k tradici a židovským myšlenkám.

Život od 60. let

Můj manžel se jmenuje Milan Dušek. Není to Žid, ale katolík. Narodil se 26. května 1931. Vyrůstal v Ústí nad Orlicí, ale narodit se jel do Vysokého Mýta – v Ústí nebyla porodnice. Sourozence měl a vlastně neměl. Jeho otec Emil byl totiž podruhé ženatý. Poprvé se oženil v roce 1894. Se svou první ženou měl šest dětí. Ale ona byla nějak dlouhodobě nemocná, co jí bylo, to se nějak přesně neví. Soudili, že možná roztroušená skleróza. Když potom ovdověl, tak se ukázalo, že se žádný z těchto v podstatě již dospělých pěti dětí o něj nechce starat. A tak si našel hospodyni. A on se rozhodl, že si ji vezme za ženu. Jmenovala se Justina Zimprichová. Mezi nimi byl osmadvacet let rozdíl. Byla to vlastně Němka, pocházela z okolí Ústí nad Orlicí, ze Sudet. Ale hlásila se k české národnosti. Z prvního manželství měl tedy manžel šest nevlastních sourozenců a z druhého manželství už žádného. O těch jeho nevlastních nic nevím, oni se nestýkali a myslím, že už nikdo z nich ani nežije. Jeho nejstarší bratr, jestli se nemýlím, byl asi o tři čtvrtě roku starší než manželova matka. A oni na ni prý velice žárlili. Prostě nechtěli mít s nimi nic společného.

Manžel vystudoval pražskou konzervatoř, ale z kádrových důvodů se tam dostal až napotřetí. Předtím tedy prošel několika dělnickými profesemi, dělal taškáře v nějaké dílně na výrobu tašek a tak, ledacos.

Po absolutoriu učil nějakou dobu hudební výchovu ve Vysokém Mýtě, ale nakonec se vrátil na konzervatoř. Učil tam především klavír, improvizaci a teorii. Ale jeho původní povolání jsou varhany, sám za totality hrál v břevnovském klášteře. Učil také hudební výchovu na DAMU [Divadelní fakulta Akademie múzických umění v Praze].  Tam, mimochodem, učil hlavně ročník, kde byl Dejdar [Martin Dejdar (1965)], Hrzánová [Barbora Hrzánová (1964)], Jančařík, ten je v Brně, a Hanuš [Miroslav Hanuš (1963)], ten je v Divadle v Dlouhé. Tuším, že v druhém ročníku nastudovali divadlo, takovou aktovku od F.F.Šamberka [František Ferdinand Šamberk (1838-1904)] „Blázinec v prvním poschodí“. Zmodernizovali to a hráli v Disku. Když pak absolvovali, tak kluci šli na vojnu. Ale když se vrátili, rozhodli se, že to znovu nastudují. Jenže už nebyl žádný materiál, a tak musel můj muž podle nahrávek všechno zpracovat. A tak to zpracoval, připravil a doprovázel je. Hráli to – a prakticky dosud hrají - v různých divadlech. Pak s nimi nastudoval ještě i jiné hry. I teď, když mají sem tam někdy Dejdar s Hrzánovou čas, oni jsou totiž oba velmi zaneprázdnění, jezdí s tou hrou do Brna do divadla Radost. Ale už dlouho se ta hra nehrála.

Oba jsme tedy studovali v Praze, manžel žil během studií v koleji, od padesátého prvního do padesátého šestého roku. Já jsem bydlela v soukromí. Ale seznámili jsme se až později, 14. prosince 1959. A to ve vlaku. Z Litomyšle do Chocně jezdívala lokálka – a je to tak dosud. Kdysi byla snaha udělat rychlíkový průtah přes Litomyšl, ale místní radní se tomu vzepřeli. Takže se to nestalo. V podstatě naštěstí. Manžel jel tehdy z Ústí do Prahy a já z Litomyšle. A tenkrát jsem v Chocni přisedla do kupé, kde manžel seděl.

Později jsme se shodli na tom, že obvykle jsme se každý prostě posadili do kupé, sedli jsme, četli jsme a s nikým jsme se nebavili. Ale tehdy jsem se ho já zeptala, jestli je tam volné místo, on řekl, že ano, a hned jsme se dali do řeči. Já jsem měla na sobě kožený kabát, který jsem si koupila v Bulharsku a kvůli kterému jsem měla kádrové popotahování. A můj manžel si kvůli němu myslel, že jsem estébačka 20 a velmi ho to iritovalo. Ale ono to tenkrát s tím kabátem bylo tak, že jsem ho v tom Bulharsku vyměnila za některé věci, ale kádrováci si mysleli, že jsem ho koupila a ptali se, jak jsem přišla k tolika penězům. Já jsem měla v Bulharsku provdanou spolužačku z gymnázia a ta mi dosvědčila, že mi ten kabát dala. Takže jsme se začali bavit o povolání. Já jsem mu řekla svoje a pak jsem se ptala, čím je on. Na to odpověděl, že učí. Moje otázka, zda na základní škole, ho popudila. Řekl mi, že ne, že učí na konzervatoři.

No a pak jsme se začali bavit o hudbě. Já sama jsem velmi dlouho chodila na klavír, ale tenkrát mi dali najevo, že jsem sice nadaná, ale že to nikdy daleko nepřivedu. Chodívala jsem k jedné paní učitelce, jmenovala se Emilie Votroubková. Ta nade mnou stála, bouchala mě přes prsty a onikala mi.  A říkala: „Já jsem přesvědčená, že já až umřu, tak ona mně na pohřeb nepůjde.“ Po válce jsem měla dokonce koncert. Ale ten dopadl velmi neslavně. Já jsem totiž po válce chodila ještě na pianovou harmoniku, to jsem si vymohla, no a když bylo veřejné vystoupení, tak mi pan učitel řekl: „Radím ti, vezmi si s sebou noty.“ Ale já jsem odpověděla: „Vyloučeno, já to umím perfektně zpaměti.“ Dostala jsem se přes nejtěžší místo a konec. Ale já jsem nikdy nebyla na veřejná vystoupení. Já jsem se nerada předváděla na veřejnosti. Na rozdíl od Anity Frankové. Která kdykoliv na požádání zazpívala. I já jsem zpívávala ve sboru, ve školním sboru.

Svému budoucímu manželovi jsem řekla, že mám ráda Janáčka [Leoš Janáček (1854-1928): český skladatel, pedagog, významný folklorista a čelní představitel moderní hudby – pozn. red.] on řekl, že má rád Mozarta [Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791): rakúsky skladatel. Jeden z nejvýznamnějších osobností světové hudby – pozn. red.]. Zjistili jsme, že se tedy absolutně neshodneme. Dojeli jsme do Prahy, vyšli jsme na stanici tramvaje a tam stál a čekal na tramvaj manželův bývalý žák - manžel jeden čas učil ve Vysokém Mýtě na průmyslovce hudební výchovu – ale zároveň můj spolupracovník. Protože to byl technik a pracoval v našem Ústavu. Oba jsme k němu šli a oba jsme s ním chtěli toho druhého seznámit. A on říká: „Já Vás oba znám.“ Načež se nám blížila tramvaj, já jsem s tím panem Peterkou nastoupila do tramvaje a manžel říká: „Pane Peterko, jaké máte číslo telefonu?“ A on na to: „To a to, ale slečna Freyová má linku tu a tu.“ V té tramvaji jsem pak vyzvídala: „Pane Peterko, prosím Vás, co to je za nemožného chlapa?“ A on mě na to povídá: „No dovolte, to je náhodou výborný člověk.“ Manžel mně druhý den zavolal a já jsem začala zkoumat, co je na něm výborného. A zkoumám to doposud.

Brali jsme se 28. ledna 1961. Já jsem byla přihlášená do bytového družstva a tehdy začala být reálná naděje, že dostaneme byt. To uspíšilo naše rozhodnutí. První dítě, dcera Hana, se nám narodila 15. ledna 1962. Syn Petr je mladší, ten se narodil 25. listopadu 1967.

Dcera je podruhé vdaná, protože její první muž, Jan Ševčík, se rok po svatbě zabil v autě. Brala si ho v roce 1985. V roce 1987 se seznámila se svým druhým manželem, Petrem Janišem, a v roce 1988 si ho vzala. Z druhého manželství má jednu dceru, dnes šestnáctiletou Terezku. Hana vystudovala DAMU, obor organizace a řízení divadel a kultury. Neboli produkci. Teď  pracuje jako tisková mluvčí v různých podnicích.

Syn Petr je také ženatý, ten se ženil před deseti lety, tj. v roce 1995. Vzal si Lucii Blahetovou. Mají spolu dvě dcery, Kateřinu a Barboru. Kateřina se narodila 1. října 2000. Té druhé budou 9. října dva roky, takže se narodila v roce 2003. Petr má strojní průmyslovku, kterou si ale udělal až po vojně. Původně se totiž vyučil automechanikem. Teď studuje na vysoké škole v Brně, obor speciální výchova. Studuje tam dálkově, v rámci profese – on je totiž kriminalista – a měl to jako podmínku, aby mohl zůstat. 

Co se mých dětí týká, řekla bych, že dcera má velmi židovské cítění. Říká, že to, že je míšenka, jí rozšiřuje její schopnost tolerance. Bere sama sebe jako Židovku, nepraktikuje, dokonce je ateistka, ale vnímá to tak, že má v sobě židovskou krev. Syn Petr o tom tolik nepřemýšlí, jenom řekl, že chce vstoupit do Židovské obce, což se mu podařilo, ale po důvodu jsem se ho neptala, protože on je velice uzavřený. Vůbec nevím, co ho k tomu vedlo. Obřezaný není a ani nijak víru nepraktikuje.

K víře však byly obě děti vychovávané, a to oboustranně. I manžel je totiž nábožensky založený. Děti to viděly, my jsme to před nimi nikdy netajili, a věděly, že se to prostě musí nějak spojit. Znaly rozdíly a viděly, že my se navzájem tolerujeme, čili to tolerovaly absolutně bez problému. U nás se slavily jak židovské, tak křesťanské svátky. Celá rodina se mnou doposud chodí na obec. O Chanuka nebo o Purim a Pesach. Sami svátky neslaví. O Vysokých svátcích teď už chodím sama nebo s manželem, protože děti na to prostě nemají čas. Ale když byly malí, tak chodily také. Vánoce jsem i já začala slavit, až když jsem se vdala. To jsme slavili tady u nás doma, strojili jsme stromeček a tak dále. Dnes je slavíme u dcery. Já to beru jako společenskou záležitost a příležitost, aby se mohla rodina sejít.

Co se volného času týče, kdysi jsem chodila velice pilně do divadla a na koncerty. Dnes již málo, protože jsem poněkud handicapovaná. Měla jsem zlomený krček a ještě dvě zlomeniny prvního bederního obratle – jedno loni a druhé letos. Takže teď jsem trochu unavenější. Chodívala jsem se svými kamarádkami, protože manžel nechodí nikam. Ten má doma svoji fonotéku a nechce být při tom rušen. Říká, že nesnáší na veřejných produkcích různé šoupání nohama a pokašlávání. Do kina v posledních letech chodívám také velmi málo, ale jako mladší jsme do kina chodili. V Litomyšli bylo jedno a jeden čas, myslím, i dvě. Byla jsem tam i před válkou, to tenkrát dávali Sněhurku.

Také jsem hodně chodívala na studentské plesy, ty měly výbornou úroveň. Taneční jsou dnes formálně stejné jako tenkrát, ale obsahově ne. Já jsem tady v Praze chodila loni do tanečních s vnučkou, to byla sešlost lidí - nechci říct společnost lidí - kteří se naprosto neznali, kdežto my jsme se tam na tom malém městě všichni znali. Byly to pouze studentské taneční, a tak jsme tam byli jednolitá společnost a dá se říci dobrá společnost. Pokud si pamatuji, do tanečních jsme chodívali jednou týdně, ale jak dlouho trvaly, to už nevím. V Praze jsem pak chodívala na plesy se společností přátel. Manžel totiž netančí. Taneční sice absolvoval a několikrát, ale pouze jako klavírista. Na tanec je absolutní antitalent.

Takže volný čas často trávím s přítelkyněmi. Nějaká přátelství mně zůstala i z dávných dob. Například minulý týden jsem byla na návštěvě u jedné kamarádky ještě z předškolního věku – to je takové dlouhodobé přátelství. Stále se přátelím i s tou spolužačkou, která si se mnou chodila ve válce hrát, a s děvčaty z gymnázia. V současné době míváme srazy každý rok. Původně to tedy bylo každých pět let, potom každé tři roky a nyní tedy každý rok. Občas si píšeme. Jezdívaly jsme spolu společně i na výlety, ale teď již ne. Dělávaly jsme to samozřejmě za svobodna ve skautingu. To jsme jezdily na tábory, výlety a tak. Nejen v okolí Litomyšle. V devětačtyřicátém jsme byly ve Svatojánské dolině na Slovensku. Skauti jsou dívčí a klukovské. My jsme vždycky jezdily tak, že kluci tábor vybudovali a byli tam prvních čtrnáct dní. My jsme je potom vystřídaly a tábor jsme zbouraly. Chodila jsem tam ráda, byla tam děvčata, která mně byla blízká, skautská myšlenka mně byla blízká, prostě tam byla dobrá společnost. Začala jsem tam chodit v sedmačtyřicátém o prázdninách. V roce čtyřicet devět po prázdninách byl bohužel skaut zrušen.

Ani já jsem nikdy nerozlišovala, jestli jsou mými přáteli Židé nebo ne. To ani nebylo možné, nás tam bylo jen dvanáct dětí. A v mém věku jedině Anita Franková. S tou jsem dodnes v dobrých přátelských vztazích. I když nemáme čas se sejít, jen si to slibujeme.

Můj vztah ke komunistickému režimu byl jednoznačný a podložený mnoha fakty. Ale na výslechu jsem kvůli svým příbuzným na Západě nikdy nebyla. Naši korespondenci asi kontrolovali, ale my jsme samozřejmě psali velmi opatrně. Snažili jsme se poslouchat i Svobodnou Evropu a tak, ale bylo to velmi obtížné, protože v Praze to bylo velice rušené. Mimo Prahu to bylo snazší. A občas jsem se dostala i k samizdatu 21.

V práci jsme naštěstí byli taková dobrá skupina, nebyl tam žádný komunista. V roce 1968 22 sice emigroval ředitel Ústavu, se kterým jsem byla a dosud jsem – doufám, že ještě žije – ve velmi dobrých přátelských vztazích a dokonce jsem ho byla i v roce 1992 navštívit v Anglii, ale i s novým ředitelem jsme byli spřáteleni.

V roce sedmdesát čtyři tomu ale udělali rázný konec, nastoupil „soudruh“ ředitel a bylo zle. Například tušil, nebo mu to snad někdo donesl, že v knihovně se vlastně shromažďují všechny informace, že tedy tam všechno víme. Pozval si mě a chtěl, abych mu donášela. Já jsem to odmítla. A od té doby jsem měla nejnižší plat a nejnižší odměny. Ale neměl možnost mě dostat pryč, protože jsem byla chráněna dvěstěpětapadesátkou, neboli paragrafem 255/46 o výhodách lidí, kteří se vrátili z koncentračních táborů. Takže výpověď mi dát nemohl. Ale v roce 1981, když  v Polsku přišla ke slovu Solidarita 23, zkoušel to navléknout na toto kopyto. Jednoho dne roku 1981 jsem doma při návratu z práce našla ve schránce úřední lístek, kde bylo napsáno: „Dostavte se druhý den v tolik a v tolik hodin dopoledne do Bartolomějské číslo 4. Podle paragrafu XY.“  Říkala jsem si: „Propánakrále, co jsem mohla udělat?“ A šla jsem na místní VB [Verejní Bezpečnost, dnes Policie – pozn. red.] a ptala jsem se jich, co je to za paragraf. A oni mi řekli, že jde o rozkrádání majetku v socialistickém vlastnictví. Já jsem si  říkala: „Vždyť já jsem nemohla nikde nic ukrást. Nejsem si ničeho vědoma.“ Druhý den jsem šla tedy do té Bartolomějské, přišla jsem do vrátnice a říkala jsem: „Prosím Vás, tady asi bude omyl, protože to má být ten a ten paragraf a já si nejsem vědoma, že bych byla něco ukradla.“ Ten vrátný odpověděl: „No, třeba jste něco ukradla v opilosti.“ Na to jsem mu řekla: „Prosím Vás, já jsem byla naposledy opilá, když mně byly tři roky.“ A on vylítl a řekl: „No dovolte. Víte, co z toho mohlo být!“ Já říkám, že naštěstí z toho nebylo nic. Tak mě zavedl nahoru a tam někdo seděl a dával mně otázky tu z té strany, tu z oné strany. Po nějaké době mě přešla trpělivost a říkám: „Prosím Vás, řekněte mi, co ode mě vlastně chcete.  Vy tady ztrácíte svůj pracovní čas, já ztrácím svůj pracovní čas.“ No, tak pak z něj vyšlo, jestli prý nemám spojení se Solidaritou. Jestli od ní nedostávám nějakou literaturu. A jestli jsem ve styku se zahraničím. Na to jsem řekla: „Ano jsem. Protože tam mám hodně příbuzných, kteří tam emigrovali před Hitlerem.“ Na ty, kteří emigrovali po šedesátém osmém, na ty jsem jaksi pozapomněla. No a takhle jsme se chvíli bavili, on se ptal, jestli jsem těm příbuzným náhodou nepíši, že se mi tady něco nelíbí. Na to jsem namítla, co bych jim ale měla psát.  No a takhle to trvalo ještě chvíli a pak řekl: „No tak můžete jít domů.“ A já na to: „Nepůjdu domů, dokud od Vás nedostanu úřední potvrzení, že jsem tady byla, protože to potřebuji do práce.“ Ten člověk odpověděl: „To je mi líto, ale já Vás tady nemůžu nechat samotnou.“  A já říkám: „Tak mně je to taky líto, ale já odsud prostě bez toho potvrzení nepůjdu.“ A tak mi řekl: „Zůstaňte sedět, ani se nehněte“, zmačknul nějaký knoflík pod stolem a za chvíli přišel, přinesl mi potvrzení a já jsem šla domů.

Takže ani to se novému panu řediteli nepovedlo. Až když jsem zjistila, že i přes své poměrně minimální příjmy pro mě bude nejvýhodnější jít k prvnímu prosinci 1988 do důchodu, tak jsem odešla sama. I když vzhledem k té dvěstěpětapadesátce jsem byla v důchodovém věku už v roce1982. A  pak přišel rok 1989 24. V té době jsem ale byla hlavně zaměstnaná hlídáním své nejstarší vnučky Terezky. Vozila jsem ji v kočárku na Petřín a sledovala davy lidí, kteří chodí a demonstrují. Ale sama jsem samozřejmě také chodila, byla jsem na Václavském náměstí i na Letné.

Jinak cestovat jsem mohla již za komunismu. Moje maminka i já jsme byly v Anglii u příbuzných. A potom i v dvaadevadesátém. V současné době nikam moc nejezdíme, prázdniny jsme trávívali částečně sami a částečně s dětmi a jejich rodinami. Občas jsme hlídali Terezku. Ty malé holčičky jsme v podstatě hlídali jenom příležitostně. Letos poprvé jsme s nimi byli v Litomyšli.

Před rokem padesát měla maminka velkou chuť emigrovat. Já jsem trvala na tom, že chci maturovat na litomyšlském gymnáziu. Pak v šedesátém osmém jsem měla chuť emigrovat já, ale to už jsem byla vdaná a manžel odjet nechtěl. Chtěla jsem jet třeba do Kanady, kde jsem měla spoustu příbuzných. V Izraeli žádné příbuzné nemám, i když nějaké známé, emigranty, ano. A s nimi jsem se tam, když jsem do Izraele přijela, velice ráda sešla a bylo mně s nimi dobře. Jsem přesvědčená, že Izrael vzniknout měl a že lidé, kteří tam žijí, jsou tam šťastní a cítí se tam doma. Ale já bych se tam, myslím, doma necítila. Já jsem zvyklá na křesťanské prostředí.

V Izraeli jsem byla čtyřikrát. Poprvé jsem tam byla tehdy s prezidentem Havlem 25 v dubnu devadesátého roku. To byla ta jeho první cesta do Izraele, kdy nás vzal některé sebou, myslím, že nás bylo devadesát, ale ruku do ohně bych za to nestrčila. Tenkrát tam byl nějaký program, balet či koncert a v rámci toho měl Havel a Kňažko 26 projev. Kňažko mě velmi nepříjemně překvapil, protože Havel tehdy mluvil za Československo, ale Kňažko za Slovensko. Už tehdy tam byla vidět snaha se oddělit. Pak nás zavedli na jeruzalémskou univerzitu, kde byla nějaká výstava holocaustu. A byli jsme v Yad Vashem. V květnu téhož roku jsem tam byla na kongresu International Council of Jewish Women. Potřetí jsem tam byla s cestovní kanceláří na poznávacím zájezdu, to bylo asi na týden,  takový běžný zájezd s cestovní kanceláří, velká skupina, autobus. Jela jsem tam tenkrát ještě s Anitou Frankovou. Počtvrté jsem tam byla znovu na kongresu International Council of Jewish Women.

Při té oficiální cestě jsem bydlela u příbuzných mé kamarádky a ti nás vzali na návštěvu různých památek a při těch dvou kongresech nás také vždycky zavezli na nějaký výlet. Pokaždé do Yad Vashem a pak ještě jednou do Negevské pouště k beduínům.

Můj první dojem z návštěvy Izraele byl, že šlapu v Bibli. A ten dojem mě provázel stále. Zvláště mě zaujalo jeruzalémské Staré město, Jaffa Gate, prostě celé to město. Byla jsem samozřejmě i u Zdi nářků. Nejprve nás tam jelo víc a pak jsem tam byla ještě se známými znovu.  Líbila se mi ale i další města, které jsem navštívila na poznávacím zájezdu. Třeba Jaffa nebo Tel Aviv a Betlehem. Byli jsme i na Masadě, na Olivetské hoře nebo v Nazaretu, tam se mně hodně líbilo. Pro mě bylo zajímavé navštěvovat jak židovské, tak křesťanské památky. Spíše negativní zážitky jsem měla tam dole, u Mrtvého moře a v Eilatu. Na Mrtvé moře jsem byla totiž velmi zvědavá, ale měla jsem nějaké oděrky, v normálním prostředí nepostřehnutelné, ale do té slané vody jsem nemohla. To mě velice trápilo. K Mrtvému moři bych proto už nikdy nechtěla. A Eilat se mně taky nelíbil, protože to je velkoměsto a je to vlastně obchod s mořem. Líbilo se mně tam to podmořské akvárium, to ano. A jinak mě naprosto nenadchla brusírna diamantů, protože to bylo také velmi komerčně zaměřeno. A nelíbila se mi průvodkyně z té cestovní kanceláře, protože se z toho jaksi snažila vyzískat co nejvíc pro sebe a o nás se nestarala. Měla jsem s ní určité nedorozumění, vůbec jsme se neshodly. Ne, žádnou lumpárnu jsem jí nevyvedla, spíš jsem jí vytýkala její nepřesnosti. A to již na letišti v Praze. A ona se k tomu stavěla vzdorně.

Nemohu říci, že bych se před svou první návštěvou Izraele na něco obzvlášť těšila. Byla jsem zvědavá na všechno. A všechno mě překvapilo.

Glosář:

1 Joseph II (1741-1790)

Holy Roman Emperor, king of Bohemia and Hungary (1780-1790), a representative figure of enlightened absolutism. He carried out a complex program of political, economic, social and cultural reforms. His main aims were religious toleration, unrestricted trade and education, and a reduction in the power of the Church. These views were reflected in his policy toward Jews. His ,Judenreformen’ (Jewish reforms) and the ,Toleranzpatent’ (Edict of Tolerance) granted Jews several important rights that they had been deprived of before: they were allowed to settle in royal free cities, rent land, engage in crafts and commerce, become members of guilds, etc. Joseph had several laws which didn’t help Jewish interests: he prohibited the use of Hebrew and Yiddish in business and public records, he abolished rabbinical jurisdiction and introduced liability for military service. A special decree ordered all the Jews to select a German family name for themselves. Joseph’s reign introduced some civic improvement into the life of the Jews in the Empire, and also supported cultural and linguistic assimilation. As a result, controversy arose between liberal-minded and orthodox Jews, which is considered the root cause of the schism between the Orthodox and the Neolog Jewry.

2 Terezin/Theresienstadt

A ghetto in the Czech Republic, run by the SS. Jews were transferred from there to various extermination camps. It was used to camouflage the extermination of European Jews by the Nazis, who presented Theresienstadt as a ‘model Jewish settlement’. Czech gendarmes served as ghetto guards, and with their help the Jews were able to maintain contact with the outside world. Although education was prohibited, regular classes were held, clandestinely. Thanks to the large number of artists, writers, and scholars in the ghetto, there was an intensive program of cultural activities. At the end of 1943, when word spread of what was happening in the Nazi camps, the Germans decided to allow an International Red Cross investigation committee to visit Theresienstadt. In preparation, more prisoners were deported to Auschwitz, in order to reduce congestion in the ghetto. Dummy stores, a cafe, a bank, kindergartens, a school, and flower gardens were put up to deceive the committee.

3 Schuschnigg Kurt von (1897-1977)

rakúsky politik. V rokoch 1934-38 rakúsky spolkový kancelár. Pokračoval v Dollfusovej politike. 11. marca 1938 dostal Schuschnigg od Hitlera ultimátum, aby do strany prijal aj nacistických politikov, čo odmietol. V ten istý deň vydal Hitler rozkaz Wehrmachtu o vstupe na územie Rakúska. Po anšluse Rakúska, 13. marca 1938 bol Schuschnigg veznený. Po vojne žil v rokoch 1945-67 v USA.
Ilustrovaný encyklopedický slovník, Academia, Praha 1982, str. 261
www.dws.ozone.pl

4 Tobruk

prístavné mesto v Lýbii pri Stredozemnom mori. Počas 2. svetovej vojny sa viedli o Tobrúk ťažké boje, ktorých sa spolu s britskou armádou zúčastnili i československí vojaci. 22.1.1941 obsadený britským vojskom. 21.6.1942dobytí po niekoľkomesačnom obliehaní Wehrmachtom na čele s maršálom Rommelom. 12.-13.11.1942 znovu dobytí britským vojskom.
Ilustrovaný encyklopedický slovník, Academia, Praha 1982, str. 599

5 Kashrut in eating habits

kashrut means ritual behavior. A term indicating the religious validity of some object or article according to Jewish law, mainly in the case of foodstuffs. Biblical law dictates which living creatures are allowed to be eaten. The use of blood is strictly forbidden. The method of slaughter is prescribed, the so-called shechitah. The main rule of kashrut is the prohibition of eating dairy and meat products at the same time, even when they weren’t cooked together.

6 Nucené vysídlení Němců

je jedním z označení pro masové deportace německého obyvatelstva z Československa, k němuž došlo po 2. světové válce v letech 1945-1946. Přestože protiněmecké nálady byly po druhé světové válce v české společnosti běžné, bývá autorství myšlenky řešit poválečné vztahy mezi Čechy a sudetskými Němci masovou deportací připisováno presidentu Edvardu Benešovi, který pro svůj záměr postupně získal podporu Spojenců. Deportace Němců z Československa byly spolu s deportacemi souvisejícími se změnou hranic Polska (asi 5 milionů Němců) největším poválečným přemístěním obyvatelstva v Evropě. V letech 1945-6 musely Československo opustit více než 3 miliony lidí; zůstat mohlo 250 000 Němců s omezenými občanskými právy.
http://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vys%C3%ADdlen%C3%AD_N%C4%9Bmc%C5%AF_z_%C4%8Ceskoslovenska

7 Skoda Company

Car factory, the foundations of which were laid in 1895 by the mechanics V. Laurin and V. Klement with the production of Slavia bicycles. Just before the end of the 19th century they began manufacturing motor cycles and, in 1905, they started manufacturing automobiles. The name Skoda was introduced in 1925. Having survived economic difficulties, the company made a name for itself on the international market even within the constraints of the Socialist economy. In 1991 Skoda became a joint stock company in association with Volkswagen.

8 Sudetenland

Highly industrialized north-west frontier region that was transferred from the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the new state of Czechoslovakia in 1919. Together with the land a German-speaking minority of 3 million people was annexed, which became a constant source of tension both between the states of Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia, and within Czechoslovakia. In 1935 a nazi-type party, the Sudeten German Party financed by the German government, was set up. Following the Munich Agreement in 1938 German troops occupied the Sudetenland. In 1945 Czechoslovakia regained the territory and pogroms started against the German and Hungarian minority. The Potsdam Agreement authorized Czechoslovakia to expel the entire German and Hungarian minority from the country.

9 Hitlerjugend

The youth organization of the German Nazi Party (NSDAP). In 1936 all other German youth organizations were abolished and the Hitlerjugend was the only legal state youth organization. From 1939 all young Germans between 10 and 18 were obliged to join the Hitlerjugend, which organized after-school activities and political education. Boys over 14 were also given pre-military training and girls over 14 were trained for motherhood and domestic duties. After reaching the age of 18, young people either joined the army or went to work.

10 February 1948

Communist take-over in Czechoslovakia. The 'people’s domocracy' became one of the Soviet satelites in Eastern Europe. The state aparatus was centralized under the leadership of the Czechoslovak Communist Party (KSC). In the economy private ovnership was banned and submitted to central planning. The state took control of the educational system, too. Political opposition and dissident elements were persecuted.

11 Zapotocky, Antonin (1884-1957)

From 1921 a member of the Czechoslovak Communist Party (KSC), from1940-1945 imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg concentration camp. 1945-1950 president of the Central Union Committee (URO), 1950-1953 member of the National Assembly (NS), 1948-1953 Prime Minister. From 21st March 1953 president of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic.

12 Anti-Jewish laws in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia

In March 1939, there lived in the Protectorate 92,199 inhabitants classified according to the so-called Nuremberg Laws as Jews. On 21st June 1939, Konstantin von Neurath, the Reichs protector, passed the so-called Edict Regarding Jewish Property, which put restrictions on Jewish property. On 24th April 1940, a government edict was passed which eliminated Jews from economic activity. Similarly like previous legal changes it was based on the Nuremburg Law definitions and limited the legal standing of Jews. According to the law, Jews couldn’t perform any functions (honorary or paid) in the courts or public service and couldn’t participate at all in politics, be members of Jewish organizations and other organizations of social, cultural and economic nature. They were completely barred from performing any independent occupation, couldn’t work as lawyers, doctors, veterinarians, notaries, defence attorneys and so on. Jewish residents could participate in public life only in the realm of religious Jewish organizations. Jews were forbidden to enter certain streets, squares, parks and other public places. From September 1939 they were forbidden from being outside their home after 8pm. Beginning in November 1939 they couldn’t leave, even temporarily, their place of residence without special permission. Residents of Jewish extraction were barred from visiting theatres and cinemas, restaurants and cafés, swimming pools, libraries and other entertainment and sports centres. On public transport they were limited to standing room in the last car, in trains they weren’t allowed to use dining or sleeping cars and could ride only in the lowest class, again only in the last car. They weren’t allowed entry into waiting rooms and other station facilities. The Nazis limited shopping hours for Jews to twice two hours and later only two hours per day. They confiscated radio equipment and limited their choice of groceries. Jews weren’t allowed to keep animals at home. Jewish children were prevented from visiting German, and, from August 1940, also Czech public and private schools. In March 1941 even so-called re-education courses organized by the Jewish Religious Community were forbidden, and from June 1942 also education in Jewish schools. To eliminate Jews from society it was important that they be easily identifiable. Beginning in March 1940, citizenship cards of Jews were marked by the letter ‘J’ (for Jude – Jew). From 1st September 1941 Jews older than six could only go out in public if they wore a yellow six-pointed star with ‘Jude’ written on it on their clothing.
13 Mobilizace v září 1938: Nástup nacistů k moci v Německu v roce 1933, představoval zásadní přelom v zahraničně-politickém postavení Československa. Rostoucí napětí druhé poloviny 30. let nakonec vyvrcholilo v roce 1938, kdy vzrůstající agresivita sousedního Německa vedla nejprve k přijetí mimořádných opatření v době 20. května do 22. června a nakonec k vyhlášení všeobecné mobilizace 23. září 1938. Po léta pracně budovaný bezpečnostní systém Československa se ovšem na přelomu září 1938 zhroutil. Hlavní spojenec Francie nás nutil k podrobení se Německu a netajil se tím, že vojenskou pomoc nehodlá poskytnout. Pomoc Sovětského svazu, sama ostatně dost problematická, byla podmíněna postojem Francie. Další státy tj. Maďarsko a Polsko, jen čekaly, kdy budou moci získat také něco pro sebe. http://www.military.cz/opevneni/mobilizace.html
14 Heydrichiade: Period of harsh reprisals against the Czech resistance movement and against the Czech nation under the German occupation (1939–45). It started in September 1941 with the appointment of R. Heydrich as Reichsprotektor of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, who declared martial law and executed the representatives of the local resistance. The Heydrichiade came to its peak after Heydrich’s assassination in May 1942. After his death, martial law was introduced until early July 1942, in the framework of which Czech patriots were executed and deported to concentration camps, and the towns of Lidice and Lezaky were annihilated. Sometimes the term Heydrichiade is used to refer to the period of martial law after Heydrich’s assassination.

15 Gulag

The Soviet system of forced labor camps in the remote regions of Siberia and the Far North, which was first established in 1919. However, it was not until the early 1930s that there was a significant number of inmates in the camps. By 1934 the Gulag, or the Main Directorate for Corrective Labor Camps, then under the Cheka's successor organization the NKVD, had several million inmates. The prisoners included murderers, thieves, and other common criminals, along with political and religious dissenters. The Gulag camps made significant contributions to the Soviet economy during the rule of Stalin. Conditions in the camps were extremely harsh. After Stalin died in 1953, the population of the camps was reduced significantly, and conditions for the inmates improved somewhat.
16 Sokol: One of the best-known Czech sports organizations. It was founded in 1862 as the first physical educational organization in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Besides regular training of all age groups, units organized sports competitions, colorful gymnastics rallies, cultural events including drama, literature and music, excursions and youth camps. Although its main goal had always been the promotion of national health and sports, Sokol also played a key role in the national resistance to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Nazi occupation and the communist regime. Sokol flourished between the two World Wars; its membership grew to over a million. Important statesmen, including the first two presidents of interwar Czechoslovakia, Tomas Masaryk and Edvard Benes, were members of Sokol. Sokol was banned three times: during World War I, during the Nazi occupation and finally by the communists after 1948, but branches of the organization continued to exist abroad. Sokol was restored in 1990.

17 Terezin Initiative Foundation (Nadace Terezinska iniciativa)

Founded in 1993 by the International Association of Former Prisoners of the Terezin/Theresienstadt Ghetto, it is a special institute devoted to the scientific research on the history of Terezin and of the ‘Final Solution of the Jewish Question’ in the Czech lands. At the end of 1998 it was renamed to Terezin Initiative Institute (Institut Terezinske iniciativy).

18 Subcarpathian Ruthenia

is found in the region where the Carpathian Mountains meet the Central Dnieper Lowlands. Its larger towns are Beregovo, Mukacevo and Hust. Up until the First World War the region belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, but in the year 1919, according to the St. Germain peace treaty, was made a part of Czechoslovakia. Exact statistics regarding ethnic and linguistic composition of the population aren’t available. Between the two World Wars Ruthenia’s inhabitants included Hungarians, Ruthenians, Russians, Ukrainians, Czechs and Slovaks, plus numerous Jewish and Gypsy communities. The first Viennese Arbitration (1938) gave Hungary that part of Ruthenia inhabited by Hungarians. The remainder of the region gained autonomy within  Czechoslovakia, and was occupied by Hungarian troops. In 1944 the Soviet Army and local resistance units took power in Ruthenia. According to an agreement dated June 29, 1945, Czechoslovakia ceded the region to the Soviet Union. Up until 1991 it was a part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. After Ukraine declared its independence, it became one of the country’s administrative regions.
19 Nemcova Bozena (1820 –1862): whose maiden name was Barbora Panklova, was born in Vienna into the family of Johann Pankl, a nobleman’s coachman. Was significantly influenced during the years 1825-29 by her upbringing at the hands of her grandmother Magdalena Novotna. In 1837 she was married to financial official Josef Nemec. She contributed to a number of magazines. She was inspired by the stories of common folk to write seven collections of folk tales and legends and ten collections of Slovak fairy tales and legends, which are generally a gripping fictional adaptation of fairy-tale themes. Through her works Nemcova has to her credit the bringing together of the Czech and Slovak nations and their cultures. She is the author of travelogues and ethnographic sketches, realistic stories of the countryside (Crazy Bara, Mountain Village, Karla, The Teacher, At The Chateau And The Village Below) and the supreme novel Granny. Thanks to her rich folkloristic work and particularly her work Granny, Bozena Nemcova has taken her place among Czech national icons.

20 Statni Tajna Bezpecnost

Czech intelligence and security service founded in 1948.

21 Samizdat literature in Czechoslovakia

The secret publication and distribution of government-banned literature in the former Soviet block. Typically, it was typewritten on thin paper (to facilitate the production of as many carbon copies as possible) and circulated by hand, initially to a group of trusted friends, who then made further typewritten copies and distributed them clandestinely. Material circulated in this way included fiction, poetry, memoirs, historical works, political treatises, petitions, religious tracts, and journals. The penalty for those accused of being involved in samizdat activities varied according to the political climate, from harassment to detention or severe terms of imprisonment. In Czechoslovakia, there was a boom in Samizdat literature after 1948 and, in particular, after 1968, with the establishment of a number of Samizdat editions supervised by writers, literary critics and publicists: Petlice (editor L. Vaculik), Expedice (editor J. Lopatka), as well as, among others, Ceska expedice (Czech Expedition), Popelnice (Garbage Can) and Prazska imaginace (Prague Imagination).

22 Prague Spring

A period of democratic reforms in Czechoslovakia, from January to August 1968. Reformatory politicians were secretly elected to leading functions of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSC). Josef Smrkovsky became president of the National Assembly, and Oldrich Cernik became the Prime Minister. Connected with the reformist efforts was also an important figure on the Czechoslovak political scene, Alexander Dubcek, General Secretary of the KSC Central Committee (UV KSC). In April 1968 the UV KSC adopted the party’s Action Program, which was meant to show the new path to socialism. It promised fundamental economic and political reforms. On 21st March 1968, at a meeting of representatives of the USSR, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, East Germany and Czechoslovakia in Dresden, Germany, the Czechoslovaks were notified that the course of events in their country was not to the liking of the remaining conference participants, and that they should implement appropriate measures. In July 1968 a meeting in Warsaw took place, where the reformist efforts in Czechoslovakia were designated as “counter-revolutionary.” The invasion of the USSR and Warsaw Pact armed forces on the night of 20th August 1968, and the signing of the so-called Moscow Protocol ended the process of democratization, and the Normalization period began.

23 Events of 1989 in Poland

In 1989 the communist regime in Poland finally collapsed and the process of forming a multiparty, pluralistic, democratic political system and introducing a capitalist economy began. Communist policy and the deepening economic crisis since the early 1980s had caused increasing social discontent and weariness and the radicalization of moods among Solidarity activists (Solidarity: a trade union that developed into a political party and played a key role in overthrowing communism). On 13th December 1981 the PZPR had introduced martial law (lifted on 22nd June 1983). Growing economic difficulties, social moods and the strength of the opposition persuaded the national authorities to begin gradually liberalizing the political system. Changes in the USSR also influenced the policy of the PZPR. A series of strikes in April-May and August 1988, and demonstrations in many towns and cities forced the authorities to seek a compromise with the opposition. After a few months of meetings and consultations the Round Table negotiations took place (6th Feb.-5th April 1989) with the participation of Solidarity activists (Lech Walesa) and the democratic opposition (Bronislaw Geremek, Jacek Kuron, Tadeusz Mazowiecki). The resolutions it passed signaled the end of the PZPR’s monopoly on power and cleared the way for the overthrow of the system. In parliamentary elections (4th June 1989) the PZPR and its subordinate political groups suffered defeat. In fall 1989 a program of fundamental economic, social and ownership transformations was drawn up and in January 1990 the PZPR dissolved.

24 Velvet Revolution

Also known as November Events, this term is used for the period between 17th November and 29th December 1989, which resulted in the downfall of the Czechoslovak communist regime. A non-violent political revolution in Czechoslovakia that meant the transition from Communist dictatorship to democracy. The Velvet Revolution began with a police attack against Prague students on 17th November 1989. That same month the citizen’s democratic movement Civic Forum (OF) in Czech and Public Against Violence (VPN) in Slovakia were formed. On 10th December a government of National Reconciliation was established, which started to realize democratic reforms. On 29th December Vaclav Havel was elected president. In June 1990 the first democratic elections since 1948 took place.

25 Havel, Vaclav (1936- )

Czech dramatist, poet and politician. Havel was an active figure in the liberalization movement leading to the Prague Spring, and after the Soviet-led intervention in 1968 he became a spokesman of the civil right movement called Charter 77. He was arrested for political reasons in 1977 and 1979. He became President of the Czech and Slovak Republic in 1989 and was President of the Czech Republic after the secession of Slovakia until January 2003.
26 Milan Kňažko (1945- ): slovenský herec, politik a riaditeľ televízie JOJ. V októbri 1989 ako jediný v ČSSR vrátil titul zaslúžilý umelec pre nesúhlas s politikou vtedajšieho režimu. V novembri 1989 vstúpil do politického diania. Bol poradcom prezidenta Václava Havla a zároveň poslancom Snemovne ľudu Federálneho zhromaždenia ČSFR. Od júna 1990 do 28. augusta 1990 bol ministrom medzinárodných vzťahov SR a v rokoch 1992 - 1993 podpredsedom vlády SR a ministrom zahraničných vecí SR. Od marca 1993 do októbra 1998 bol poslancom NR SR a od roku 1998 zastával štyri roky post ministra kultúry SR. http://sk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milan_K%C5%88a%C5%BEko

Henryk Prajs

Henryk Prajs
Gora Kalwaria
Poland
Interviewer: Aleksandra Bankowska
Date of interview: January 2005

Mr. Henryk Prajs is a cheerful and friendly person. He participates in the activities of various veterans organizations and is also a member of the Social and Cultural Society of Polish Jews seniors club in Warsaw. We met at his house in Gora Kalwaria near Warsaw, where he lives by himself. He feels very closely bound up with his town. Mr. Prajs is a very talkative person, although often wandering off subject and into digressions. During our conversations he stressed his Polish identity and his liberal views time and again. He asked me to stop recording a couple of times, not wanting to disclose certain information publicly.

My family history
Growing up
In the army
During the war
In hiding
After the war
Recent years

My family history

My grandparents came to Gora Kalwaria 1 from the Kielce region [town ca. 180 km south of Warsaw]. I know for sure since 1850 my father's side of the family lived in Gora Kalwaria, on Pilsudskiego Street, and they had their own little house there. It's no longer there, the Germans pulled it down. My paternal grandfather was called Majer Bejer Prajs. He worked as a middleman, ordering dairy products - cream, milk - and delivering them to Warsaw, for Jews only, as it was all kosher. I remember him as a brisk elderly man with a short gray beard and a 'krymkowka,' a Crimean cap [a round black cap with a small visor]. I have his death certificate, he died in 1930. My grandmother was called Golda, but I never knew her, I think she died before I was born.

They had many children. My father's brothers were called Nusyn and Mojsze. Nusyn didn't have a proper job or profession. Sometimes he worked picking apples, give a hand somewhere, and so on. There were lots of people like him among the Jewish poor. Mojsze had a horse cab; he made his living driving people places. He used to drive the judge to the court for example, he had his regulars. He had two children, Josla and Golda. Every one of them had a daughter called Golda; they were given that name after Grandma. He lived with his family in Gora Kalwaria, in a wooden house, just like us, nothing fancy whatsoever, definitely in poverty.

Father's sisters were called Kaila, Malka, and Chana. Kaila's husband, Herszek Bogman, was a shoemaker. They had children, too, but I don't remember them all, it was a lot of people. There was Hudeska, Glika, and a boy called Mosze.

Father's younger sister was called Malka. Her husband was Dawid Szyniawer. He was a Torah scribe; it's called a soyfer [sofer]. You know, he wrote the Jewish [Hebrew] letters from right to left, on a parchment. It has to be officially approved calfskin, very thin; they only write on that, it's forbidden to use anything else. Malka had many children, that is: Mojsze, Szulim, Eta, Mendel, Josel, Ele, and Gedale. I do remember all of them because they lived nearby and were either my age or older.

Aunt Chana had a small notions shop. Her husband's last name was Szoskiel, but I don't remember his first name, Duwid perhaps? She had two children, a daughter called Golda and a son, Ele.

I didn't know my maternal grandparents. They were seldom spoken of at our home; it wasn't considered an important subject. Mom's family was called Frydman. They lived in the country not far from Gora Kalwaria, they had an estate [sic] in Coniew. Not a big one it was, a garden and a little house. They moved to Gora Kalwaria before the war, in 1937 or 1938, and didn't live there anymore. We didn't see each other much at the time, as I was in the army. I can tell you they were truly religious Jews.

Mom had many brothers and sisters as well. Her eldest sister was called Frajda, then came Mom, after her Szulim, after Szulim came Chana, after Chana came Glika, and after Glika Iciek, and after Iciek came Fajga, and after Fajga came Sura.

Frajda had a husband, she lived in Piaseczno [town 15 km north of Gora Kalwaria] and so I can't tell anything about her because I don't know. Szulim had a family in Gora Kalwaria. His wife was called Czarna, they had four children: Herszel, Josek, Gina, and Rachel. Szulim was a tailor, he used to make the so-called 'tandeta,' shoddy clothes. They were called 'tandeciarze,' second-rate tailors, you know, because they made the worst quality, the cheapest clothes. While in pre-war times you had to pay a tailor 25 zlotys for a suit, just for the tailoring, a 'tandeciarz' would bill you 23 for the whole suit: fabric, tailoring, the whole nine yards. The poor from the villages as well as the towns would buy it. He [Szulim] made those shoddy clothes and sold them at the market. The fair was held once a week, on Tuesdays I think.

Mom's sister Chana was a housewife, her husband's name was Mosze Warym. They had a restaurant in Gora Kalwaria at the main square, on the corner of Pilsudskiego and Pijarska streets. I think they had three children, Motek, Gedale, and yet another Gina.

Glika didn't have any children, she was a spinster. She worked as a seamstress. She only made underwear, men's and ladies' shirts. Iciek had a shop in Warsaw on 4 Sowia Street, with dairy products. He was doing very well. I don't remember his wife's name. He had three children. One of them was Gina, nicknamed Genia, but I don't remember the rest, they were little children.

Sura was a spinster as well, she never got married. She was a seamstress. There was also Fajga, a seamstress as well, she only made men's trousers. Fajga died two weeks before the expulsion of Jews [from Gora Kalwaria] in 1941. She was still buried in Gora Kalwaria. She passed away peacefully, so to speak. She was buried according to the Jewish rite. It's weird, we actually envied her that she died naturally and didn't live to witness the catastrophe. I know more or less where we buried her, but the tombstone is gone.

How is one buried according to the Jewish rite? A person dies, you have to bury his the very same day, you don't wait to check if it's some coma or not. Basically there's a regular grave you know, and the Jewish coffin consists of seven boards, two boards a side, 20-30 centimeters wide, joined without any nails, because the world is open, and the coffin must not be closed, or nailed. The corpse is put on the naked ground and it's all covered with three boards. That's the ritual burial. And you say prayers at a funeral.

My parents were born between 1890 and 1892. My father was called Jankiel and my mother Estera. They met each other, as it used to be back then, through a matchmaker. Mom was a very attractive woman, of medium height, with a round face and very pretty eyes. I have Mom's eyes. She didn't wear a wig, she had nice hair. And Father was tall, blond, very unlike a Jew. He had a finger missing. He had cut it off himself so that they wouldn't draft him to the tsarist army. He could only write in Yiddish and not in Polish. In Russian, he was just able to sign his name, just like Mom. [Editor's note: Prior to WWI that part of Poland was under the Russian rule, meaning the official language was Russian.]

Mom was a seamstress. Father traded orchards, I mean he leased them from the farmers, utilized them, watched over them, sprayed them, and sold the fruits. Often he would buy ripe fruits and sell them. Sometimes he traded chickens or geese. He was a small time merchant; he didn't have his own stall. We always lacked money. I come from a poor family, very honest people, very hard-working, but they were not rich.

We only spoke Yiddish at home. My parents dressed the European way, observed the [religious] rules, the food was kosher. My father didn't go to the synagogue very often, not on every Saturday, and Mom only once a year, on Yom Kippur. There were two synagogues in Gora Kalwaria. One belonged to the kahal, the Jewish community, a progressive one, and the other belonged to the tzaddik [Rabbi Avraham Mordechai Alter, or Imrei Emes, 4th rebbe of the Ger dynasty, the last of the dynasty to live in Poland]. My parents used to go to the progressive synagogue.

I was born on 30th December 1916 as Froim Fiszel. I had a sister and a brother. My sister's name was Golda, after Grandma. She was older than me, she was born in 1914. She was a pretty young girl, dark haired. She was a very good student, one of the best in her class. She finished seven grades of the Polish elementary school. When she was 16 or 17 she went to Warsaw and became a bookkeeper in a small soap factory on 12 Radzyminska Street in the Praga district. They paid her rather well, 120-130 zlotys per month. It was not too much, but you could get on. Bread was very cheap back then, 25, 35, 50 groszes [1 Polish zloty = 100 Polish groszes], a bun two groszes, five groszes.

It was a small workshop in the backyard plus a shop, six or seven people were employed there, they made and sold various soaps and washing articles. My sister lived with the factory's owners, the Hirszhorns, they were Jews. I was in Warsaw once or twice before the war, and stayed with my sister there, once as I was on furloughed from the army.

My brother Dawid was born in 1919. He completed six grades, he was a good student, too. He was a handsome, tall man, he had a slight squint though, he had good sight, but his left eye would always wander a bit to the side. After finishing school he learned saddle making. A saddler makes saddles, harnesses, horse-collars. We were both members of the youth organization 'Frayhayt' of the Right Poalei Zion 2 party. My brother hadn't been in the army, his year had not yet been drafted [when the war broke out].

We lived in Gora Kalwaria. The town was founded by the Poznan bishop Stefan Wierzbowski to symbolize Jerusalem. [Editor's note: the urban design and toponymy of Gora Kalwaria, or Calvary Hill, was intended by its founder to recall the Jerusalem of Jesus's times; it was even called New Jerusalem at first]. That's why dissenters [non-Catholics] couldn't live there. The ban wasn't canceled until Napoleonic times and the Congressional Kingdom [Editor's note: actually earlier, in 1797; the Congressional Kingdom, or the Kingdom of Poland, was created after Napoleon's fall, in 1815].

The Jews started to settle in Gora Kalwaria in 1802. In the 1930s there were already 3,000 Jews and 3,500 Poles. It was a very primitive town at the time. No waterworks whatsoever, just some wells far apart, you needed to walk some couple hundred meters to fetch water. It was only Mayor Dziejko [in the 1930s] who ordered pumps to be installed on every street and so you could take water from just next to your house. Electricity was introduced in Gora Kalwaria in the 1920s, but the poor households didn't have it until shortly before the war. Luckily, we had electric lighting, because Mom was a seamstress and needed it to work. Everyone has fond memories of Mayor Dziejko, as he was a good host. He did much for the town, and with some help of Jewish money, too. When Jews came to see the tzaddik, they had to pay the mayor a zloty each. The money was then used for the town's needs.

The tzaddiks came to Gora Kalwaria from Przysucha and Kock. [Yitzchak Meir (Icik Majer), the founder of the Alter dynasty, was a disciple of tzaddiks Simcha Binem (Bunim) of Przysucha and Menachem Mendel of Kock (Kotzker Rebbe).] Since their arrival the inflow of Jews increased, most of them Orthodox. The Gora tzaddik [Yiddish: Gerer Rebbe] didn't have many followers in Gora itself, though.

The Gora Jews recognized the tzaddik from Kozienice rather than the one from Gora Kalwaria. [Editor's note: there were no tzaddiks in Kozienice between the two world wars; Mr. Prajs refers to the tradition of the Maggid of Kozienice, or Israel Yitzchak Hofstein (Hapstein), 1733-1814.] His followers were mostly outsiders. They came from all over Poland, from every city except maybe for the Poznan district, from all of eastern and southern Poland: Cracow, Rzeszow, Lodz, Warsaw, Lublin, all the small towns [surrounding the big cities]. They came to him on High Holidays. On New Year - or Rosh Hashanah in Hebrew, on Yom Kippur, and on Shavuot - or Pentecost, I'd say 2,000 Jews would come to Gora Kalwaria. They rented rooms from the local Jews. My Mom, for example, used to rent them a room to earn an extra zloty or two.

The tzaddik was well-known. I saw him a few times. Just an ordinary bearded Jew. I've never been one of his followers. In my opinion he was no sage, just a man who knew the Torah really well. Surely, there had to be something about him, since he had so many followers and everyone thought of him as a miracle-worker. Even the Poles respected him. There was a telling moment, when Cardinal Kakowski [Aleksander Kakowski, 1862-1938, archbishop of Warsaw, cardinal, politician] came to Gora Kalwaria in 1933 or 1934. They built a triumphal arch and everyone welcomed him, including the Jews with the rabbi. But the tzaddik did not come to greet the cardinal, and received him in his house instead. They exchanged gifts.

Growing up

We lived by my grandfather Majer's at Pilsudskiego Street. The house was made of wood and quite poor. The whole family was squeezed into one room. It was a big room, perhaps ten by six meters. There was everything in it: Mom's workbench, and a place to sleep, and the eating table, and we also did our homework there, but only after Mom had finished her work. Beds stood in the corner, the sewing machine by the window; the window had four or six panes and was next to the door, and to the left stood a chest to store this and that. The beds were behind a screen. The kitchen stove was made of bricks and a pipe connected it to the chimney. It was always very tidy, Mom kept things in order. The clients complimented her, as they came to see her.

There were three Polish and three Jewish families in our yard. We got on with each other very well, like a family. There was no anti-Semitism, none at all. Our Polish neighbors were called Wozniak, Rytko, and Jarosz, and the Jewish ones Bielawski and Kielman. When Mrs. Wozniak baked the holiday cakes, she used to come to my Mom and share them with her: 'Here, Estera, it's for your kids.' When we, on the other hand, got our matzot, Mom would bring it to Mrs. Wozniak and Zosia Jarosz just the same: 'Na, Zosia, take the matzah, take it.' I used to come to Wozniak's as if it was my house. And Mom taught Zosia how to sew.

My friends were mostly Poles: Mietek and Wladek Zetek, Janek Bialek, Wojciechowski, Wozniak, Stasiek Rytko, Maniek Jarosz, we all grew up together. We spent time together in the yard, played soccer, dodge-ball, and so on. We pretended we were soldiers. I was a bit older and so I was in charge, we made sabers out of tin scraps 'aaand maaarch, hut two three four, hut two three four!'

We celebrated all the Jewish holidays: Pesach, Rosh Hashanah. During Pesach everything in the house had to be kosher, there could be nothing containing leavened bread. Father always went to the synagogue and Mom prepared the breakfast. When he returned, we ate. The breakfast was a bit better than usually, just as the holiday supper; we had fish, broth, and such.

We sang various religious songs, according to the psalms appropriate for the time of year. On Rosh Hashanah the prayers in the synagogue lasted till well after midnight, at which time someone blew the shofar, or horn. This is to remind of Moses addressing the Jewish tribes as he received the Ten Commandments. On Yom Kippur one fasts all day. And Chanukkah and Purim were no different from any ordinary day. In the poor families there was nothing at all, just the prayers. If one was a strong believer, he would go to the synagogue in the evening to listen to the Esther's prayer [The Book of Esther, or Megillat Esther, is read aloud during Purim], because it [Purim] was a celebration of Esther's miracle. But it was no holiday.

On Fridays we simply had a supper after work. Saturdays I either worked or went to the organization [Mr. Prajs was at first a member of the Bund's children organization, Skif, and after that - of Frayhayt]. I didn't observe Sabbath too rigorously, and later not at all. It made my Mom sad, but I was progressive, not a bit religious, I didn't even pray anymore. I didn't feel the need to. And I dined at Mrs. Wozniakowa's [the neighbor], oh yes. I didn't observe the kashrut even in my early youth. Mom never knew it, God forbid, never, no one knew, it was unthinkable! They would separate my dishes right away, wouldn't use them at all. That's the rule, the Jewish rite.

What did Mom use to cook? I like fish Jewish style above all. Nothing else, really. Mom prepared fish thus: she skinned it, chopped some onion, added an egg, some salt and pepper, and mixed it all. Then she stuffed the skin with it, and cooked it for two hours.

What other dishes did Jews eat? Well, chulent. Chulent is very heavy, stodgy, nothing interesting really. You had to have an earthen pot. You filled it with potatoes, barley, some fat - oil or such, and a fair bit of meat, a beef shoulder for example. It was then covered, wrapped, and put into the stove for the whole night. It roasted till morning, and then was brought home and eaten after the prayers.

Rich Jews would put another pot inside the bigger one, not necessarily earthenware but made for example of metal, and fill it with some fancy tidbits, some delicacies. It also had to be covered so that the dishes couldn't mix. It was called kugel. It was a sort of pudding, a dessert, something like that. You only eat kugel on Saturdays after the prayers. You mustn't eat before that.

I know Jewish religion and I'm proud I do. Our parents sent me and my brother to a cheder. There were no illiterates among the Jews, because children had to be sent to school as soon as they were five, no matter what. A cheder could be organized in any Jewish house. Any Jew could teach in it, if he knew anything of the Jewish religion, didn't have to be some pundit. A dozen or so boys would gather, aged five to 12-13.

My teacher was called Majer Mesyng. The cheder was in his house on Kilinskiego Street. The building does no longer exist, it was demolished after the war. He taught us the Jewish [Hebrew] alphabet, how to write the names Abraham, Jacob, Isaac, David, showed us the east, west, north, and south, told us that Israel was located in Asia, and what Africa was. I attended it for five years, from age five to ten. I know Mishnah, Gemara, and I can still speak Hebrew and Yiddish.

My parents were not rich enough to throw any bar mitzvah party. When I turned 13, I went to the synagogue with my father and had to read aloud some passages from the Torah. You have to say those prayers in a special way, putting accents in all the right places. I did great. Father was proud of me. We went home, Mom prepared a festive dinner, I got 5 zlotys for saying the prayers so well, and that was it. My brother's bar mitzvah was exactly the same. Well, only he didn't read from the Torah as well as I did.

I went to a Polish elementary school at the age of seven. From 7am to 1 or 2pm I was at school, and after that I went to the cheder. At school they taught us Polish, math, geography, music, and from fourth grade on we also had German classes. Jews and Poles studied together, but the Jews were fewer. There were I think 36 people in my class, and only three of them Jewish: me - they called me Heniek at school, not Froim - Uszer, and Josel Mesing. I already knew Polish, because there were Poles in my yard, but it was definitely the school that taught me the proper grammar and basically to speak correct Polish. I was very popular at the school, I liked the teachers, I liked to study and had good marks, except for math, but otherwise I had A's and B's.

From among the teachers I'd mention Mrs. Karniewska, who taught German. She was my Mom's client. She often asked me to fetch something, or do something for her. No other favors, though. I remember celebrating 3rd May 3 at the school. Students from all the schools would gather in the morning and sing 'Long live May, the 3rd of May, it's like the paradise for all the Poles.' We would have an assembly in the evening. The firemen, the soldiers, and the students would parade through the town. I always took part in those celebrations.

When I was 12 or 13 my friends and I joined the Skif 4. Skif stands for Sotsyalkinderfarband, or the Socialist Youth Union, a children's organization connected with the Bund party 5. Bund was a social democratic party, struggling for the emancipation and equality of Jews. While still a 'skifist' I was the Gora Kalwaria delegate at the funeral of Bejnysz Michalewicz [a.k.a. Jozef Izbicki, 1876-1928, a Bund activist since 1905, pedagogue, journalist, co-founder of TsIShO (Central Jewish School Organization)], a Bund leader, on Okopowa Street in Warsaw. It was a huge funeral. Naturally, there were Bund delegates there, giving speeches: [Wiktor] Alter, [Jakub] Pat, I guess [Henryk] Ehrlich 6 as well, to name a few. There were lots of people from all over Poland. At some point we all left Skif. They wanted Jewish emancipation [instead of building a Jewish state], and that's not possible. Only two of us stayed: Krupka and one more person.

I preferred to join a Jewish [here: Zionist] organization, because I believed it necessary to build our own state. That's why I joined the Right Poalei Zion as a scout. I was still a kid, I was 14. It was a social democratic labor party, they wanted to liberate Palestine to create our own state in which the social democratic parties would flourish. There were maybe 50 of us [Frayhayt members] in Gora Kalwaria. We rented a room on Pilsudskiego Street. It was about 10 meters long and 7 wide. There was a library and everything else was there. The room was paid for from the membership fees. All the pre-war organizations were funded from membership fees, unless someone rich from abroad donated 100 zlotys, it was an awful lot of money before the war.

We often had our meetings there, always on a Saturday or Sunday, on free days. There were talks, excursions. The talks were basically about the culture, the world, what was going on, how things in India or China were, in Warsaw, or in the rest of the world. Basically the economic life, wars, and so on. If I knew something, I prepared a short speech. Do I recall any such speech? We fought for freedom, democracy, or the unions in other words, for equal rights, and against exploitation. You had to quote a paper, Robotnik [The Worker, a Warsaw newspaper of the Polish Socialist Party] or some Jewish paper. There were many different of those, the Bund published Folks-Shtime [Editor's note: probably Folks-Tsaytung, People's Journal, a newspaper published by the Bund; Folks-Shtime, People's Voice was published after WW II], there was Haynt 7, and later the orthodox Jews started to publish their paper, and the Zionists published some, you quoted one of them and basically gave a speech.

We didn't go on excursions, where would we go, we didn't have the money. But we did take walks into the woods on Saturday mornings in May. It was called Kepa, nowadays a pasture a few kilometers from Gora Kalwaria. There was also the so-called Klajnowski Forest, or Karolin, or we would simply take a walk to the river Wisla, if the weather was nice. There was always a lecturer on such trips and he gave his speech.

The chairman of the Gora Kalwaria branch of Poalei Zion was Mojsze Skrzypek. He was also our lecturer. We had those, well in Yiddish it's called 'kestelgesprekh,' talks. Questions were posed anonymously and the speaker would answer them. He spoke about literature for instance. Everything in Yiddish of course, I don't know if maybe ten people in Gora Kalwaria spoke Hebrew. Mojsze Skrzypek was an intelligent guy. I don't remember what he did for a living, perhaps he worked in some office, there was the Zajdemans soap factory, a bank, maybe he was a bookkeeper there, I don't know. Chaskiel Goldsztajn, Mendel Cukier, Chane Gotlib were my friends from the organization. I remember them all, I can still see their faces.

I didn't have much free time. You went to pick currants or give someone a hand to earn some money. When it was warm, we would go swimming in our free time, usually Saturdays. But I also read a lot. Historical novels, most of all. I remember books about Lokietek [Wladislaus I the Elbow-high], Kazimierz Wielki [Casimir III the Great], Zygmunt Stary [Sigismund I the Old; all three were Polish kings]. I do also remember some Jewish authors: Peretz 8, Sholem Aleichem 9, An-ski 10, Asch 11, Bergelson 12. I seldom bought books, didn't have the money. I was sometimes given books as a school prize. Mostly I borrowed them from a library.

There were three libraries in Gora Kalwaria. There was the Peretz's library, where the Jewish youth would meet up, no matter, left- or right- wing. That was the first one. As for the other two, the Bundists had their own library, and so did the Zionists. They only had the writings in accordance with their programs, as each party believed in different things. The Bundists were generally freethinkers, so they didn't even consider religious books, only contemporary literature, that's what they supported. I used to go to the library at the Zionists' place, to Poalei Zion. They had some literature, but it was no big library.

I read various newspapers, both Jewish and Polish. The Polish would be 'Kurier Codzienny' [full name 'Kurier Codzienny 5 groszy,' The Daily Herald 5 groszes, a pro-government paper published from 1932 to 1936], Oblicze dnia [The Day's Visage, a socialist weekly published in 1936], sometimes I even leafed through ABC [a weekly published by the nationalist Oboz Wielkiej Polski, Camp of Great Poland, from 1926 to 1939], an anti-Semitic magazine. When did you actually buy a paper? On Saturdays. Newspapers were pretty expensive, Haynt cost 1.20 zlotys, Moment 13 - 1.50, while other papers 40, 50 groszes. We read Haynt at home. My father was a member of a Jewish craftsmen organization called Handverker [Central Union of the Jewish Craftsmen of the Republic of Poland] 14 and they all read Haynt. They even got elected to the Sejm [the Parliament; the union formed part of the National Minorities Bloc that won 17% of the votes in the 1928 election]. Generally my father was apolitical, though.

Ever since 1933, when Hitler came to power 15, people grew more and more certain a war was coming. Everyone who had the chance to do so, fled to Israel [Editor's note: until 1948 Palestine]. Apart from that, the ones who fled were patriots, they wanted to build their own country, and did the right thing; emancipation is one thing, but having your country goes a long way. Many of my friends left before the war, Mojszele Rawski was one of them. At first before leaving they were Hahalutzim 16. They formed teams and took up the toughest tasks, trying to prepare for Israel, to build their country. They knew beginnings are always tough, so they learned to farm, to work in a sawmill, they learned the trade of masonry, all the worst drudgeries.

There were two kibbutzim in Gora Kalwaria. One belonged to the right-wing Zionists [the General Zionists party] 17, or Grinbaum's 18 democratic Zionists in other words. It was located in a house on the corner of Polna and Dominikanska streets. The whole upper floor was theirs. They had many talented people among them - there was a painter for example, she painted landscapes. The other kibbutz was on Ksiedza Sajny Street, the one leading down to the river. I don't remember what group they were.

My organization, Right Poalei Zion, didn't have a kibbutz in Gora Kalwaria. If one of us wanted to join a kibbutz, he had to go to the eastern regions of the country. Lots of folks were preparing for that, but I doubt if all of them actually left. It was hard to just leave your father, your mother, your brother, and go. I didn't take part in kibbutzim activities. Neither did I think about leaving for Israel.

Immediately after finishing elementary school I started to learn tailoring. My first master was Izrael Cybula, and I worked for him in the workshop on 15 Pilsudskiego Street for two years without a pay, in exchange for training. After that I had an exam in Jaszeniec near Warka. They had sort of a crafts corporation there, the so-called guild. I passed my apprentice exam, received a certificate, and was allowed to practice as a tailor. An apprentice can make a suit or a pair of trousers by himself. A trainee is being trained, but an apprentice should be able to do it himself. And a master can train others, he should know all the tricks of his trade.

Later I worked for various tailors, both Jewish and Polish, I worked for Cybula a month or two, when he had a job for me, I worked for Ryszard Gorecki, Jasinski, Jaworski, Pelc, in many different workshops. I didn't make much, 15-20 zlotys a week, it varied, because sometimes there was no job for me.

I was a member of the Tailors' Union. There were both Jews and Poles in it. I was the secretary of the Gora Kalwaria branch, and the voivodship [district] secretary had his office in Warsaw, on Leszno Street. The union [branch] had its own place, the size of this room maybe. And that was it. A stool in the middle and nothing else. So what can I say about such a union. When necessary, we organized some lectures and such. We couldn't call a strike, there was unemployment, well not as high as nowadays. You were happy to get a job at some shoemaker's, tailor's, cobbler's.

The union was funded from membership fees as well, there was no state funding. The municipality wouldn't give us anything. They gave some support to the unemployed a couple of times a year, about 5 zlotys, and the Poles would get 90 per cent, while the Jews maybe 5 per cent.

Jews before the war were mainly craftsmen, tailors, shoemakers, cobblers, saddlers, hat makers, all such professions, mainly services. How many truly wealthy Jews were there in Gora Kalwaria? Poloniecki, Rapaport, Wajnsztok, Mardyks, Doctor Rozenberg, ten at most. They mainly traded in grain, had their own houses, could have as much as 2,000, 3,000, 10,000 zlotys. Around 40 per cent of the Jewish population were from the middle class, and 50 per cent were poor. [Editor's note: the ten wealthy Jews accounted for much less than the remaining 10%]. I was one of the, well, not the very poor, but the poor. Before I started to work as an apprentice, we were living pretty much hand to mouth.

It was the poor who suffered most during the anti-Semitic riots 19. Because each wealthy Jew had some Polish friends, who would say, 'You can beat up all the Jews you want, but stay away from my Moszek.' It was no different in Gora Kalwaria. At the St. Anthony Day's fair [13th June] people placed their stalls and began to sell. Those from Falanga 20 came by, smashed the stalls, beat up some Jewish men and women. A tumult began, the police came, but it was already done. That's how things were in 1936, 1937, I don't know about later as I was in the army. They often started such riots. They were not pogroms, but brawls, beatings.

The Falangists came from Warka, Karczew, Otwock [towns in the dozen or so kilometer radius from Gora Kalwaria]. There was an Endeks 21 organization in Gora Kalwaria as well, but they used to go rumble somewhere else, not in our town. Mayor Dziejko and Police Chief Boleslaw Janica wouldn't allow it. There were fewer of such unrests thanks to them. Once, as they came to rumble, Janica told the Jews, 'Listen, people, you defend yourselves, and I'll handle the rest.' And so a self-defense was formed, no matter, Zionists, Communists, or Bundists but simply the Jewish youth, particularly the workers, coachmen, all the tough ones. They formed the self-defense and stood up to the attackers.

Janica and Dziejko were objective people, they'd say: 'Alright, he's a Jew, and let him be one - that doesn't bother me.' While in other towns no Jews were allowed into the city council, he, Dziejko had two Jewish councilors. I remember the last Jewish councilors were Szyje Kaufman and Aron Poznanski.

In the army

I was drafted at the age of 21. It was a regular draft, all the boys born in 1916 were drafted in November 1937. I served in the Jan Hipolit Kozietulski 3rd Mazovian Chevaux-Leger [Light Cavalry] Regiment in Suwalki. There were only three regiments of elite cavalry [the Chevaux-Legers] in Poland, the other two were the Jozef Pilsudski Regiment, stationed in Warsaw, and the Dwernicki Regiment in Stargard Gdanski. I was assigned to the regiment because I was an absolutely unblemished and loyal citizen, and I was not a member of any anti-Pilsudski 22 organizations. My commander was Colonel Edward Milewski, and my officer in charge - Borys Zaryn.

How was the army? Well, I was a tailor suddenly turned cavalryman. And I had always been afraid of horses. Well, I had seen them, pulling a coach for example, but that's different. I mounted a horse for the first time then, but I did learn to ride, and how! A recruit was trained for a few months and then given a rifle. I managed to figure it all out somehow.

In 1938 I was assigned to a non-commissioned officer school, as I had completed seven years of school. It wasn't very common, many of the recruits were illiterate. I used to write letters for everyone. They began with 'Praised be Jesus Christ' and ended with 'Waiting for your reply, now and for ever, amen.' I ranked high in the [NCOs] school, because I was able. I ranked second out of 85 in the knowledge of Poland course, the first place was taken by a Mastalerz from Warsaw. I was promoted to corporal. I was doing well in the army, I can't say I was favored but they treated me fair, no complaints.

In the Polish army before the war every unit had a few Germans, some Jews, a couple of Belarussians and Ukrainians. [Poland between the world wars was a country with ethnic and national minorities accounting for 1/3 of the population] The Ukrainians - we called them Ruthenians - were very good soldiers, first of all very physically fit, and the best riders. At a Saturday or Sunday muster the officers would call, 'Of Jewish persuasion, step forward, of Lutheran persuasion, step forward, of Orthodox persuasion, step forward!' and if you wanted to pray, you went your way.

My friend in the army was Eliezer Geller [1918-1943, a Gordonia (a Zionist organization) activist, soldier of the Warsaw ZOB (see below), he fought in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and later went into hiding; he was probably killed in Auschwitz]. He came from Opoczno in the Mazovia region. He was my age. We often times went to the synagogue together, spoke with each other.

He was a very intelligent boy, very handsome, a blond. He was a left-wing Zionist, like me. I don't know what his profession was, but I think he'd finish a gymnasium, completed more than seven years of school. They didn't take him to the non-commissioned officer school, though, I don't know why, maybe he just didn't want to go. He was in the second squadron and I was in the forth, so I never saw him from September [1939] on. He was later in Warsaw, I don't know by what miracle he ended up there. I was certain all the time he died in the Warsaw Uprising 23.

Military service lasted two years and mine was to finish in 1939, so instead of going home I went to war. I fought in the September campaign 24. On 14th September I was wounded in a battle with the Germans at Olszewo [near Bransk and Lapy, in the Bialystok district]. There's still a memorial room there with a photo of me, among other things, and a description of the battle. I was messed up by a shrapnel, had a couple of wounds. I was unfit to fight on, so I was assigned to the regimental train [service column].

During the war

On 17th September the Russians marched in 25 and took us all prisoners. We were interned in a place called Negroloc, some 40 kilometers further east from Minsk, Belarus. They didn't treat us bad. We had to work and if we fulfilled the ordered quota, it was alright. The food was also acceptable. Every Saturday we had a bath, they called it 'bania.' We weren't given any clothes for change. In December [1939] there was a prisoners exchange, the Russians returned the Germans and the Poles. I was in that group and so got back to Gora Kalwaria. [Editor's note: An exchange of the prisoners-of-war - privates and NCOs. The Poles originating from the German-occupied parts of Poland were sent to the German authorities and later released; similarly with the ones from the Soviet-occupied regions.]

Everyone thought I'd been killed because there had been no news from me since September. And so it started, the occupation, the Gehenna [misery, hell]. I was told that when the Germans entered Gora Kalwaria the first Jew they saw was Pinio Rawski, leaving the synagogue at the very moment. And they shot him. I was also told about a Jewish boy called Mojsze Cybula - his father was the master Cybula I used to work for - who took a tiny crumble of bread when the Germans ordered the boys to work and they shot him for that, too. So I said to myself, 'My God, as a human being, not mentioning the nationality, I promise myself that if I survive the war, I'll put a symbol, so that the people will know what has happened here.' That was my obligation.

Right in the beginning the Germans confiscated all the front shops [with their display facing the street]. Jews were not allowed to trade at all. The ghetto in Gora Kalwaria was created in May 1940 26. Things were already very bad at the time. They evicted the Jews from the outskirts of Gora Kalwaria, the ghetto was right in the center of the town: the Pilsudskiego and Senatorska streets, and a short section of Pijarska Street. We all had to squeeze in somehow.

My family was not evicted, because it was already ghetto where we lived on Pilsudskiego Street. Leaving the ghetto was forbidden on the death penalty. Mom and I continued to sew, we had clients coming, some Poles, they commissioned clothes and we could make some money, just to get by. Plus we still had some supplies, we were always selling something. Yes, but what kind of life it was?! Vegetation, we couldn't afford anything, just the potatoes all the time, potato soup, there was nothing else.

When the relocation to the ghetto started [in May 1940], the head of the Jewish community in Gora, Josef Lubliner, came to my Polish neighbor Rytko, and left him the Torah and all the sacred books. Rytko, as the decent man that he was, kept them safe throughout the war. When I came back after the war, he gave the books to me as his neighbor. I later sent them to Israel, to my Uncle Mosze. I simply put them in a parcel, went to Professor Tyloch [Witold Tyloch, 1927-1990, Hebrew philologist and Bible scholar, a Warsaw University professor] to get a certificate they were not items of historical value, and sent them by post; legally, absolutely. I should think it was in the 1960s. The Torah is now in Israel, in Netanya.

In 1940 a group of ZOB 27 fighters came to Gora Kalwaria [Editor's note: ZOB did not yet exist at the time]: Lajbl Frydman, Horowic, and a woman. Frydman was a Bund member, Horowic was from Poalei Zion, and as for the woman, I don't know. They wanted to organize a combat team consisting of those who had served in the army to fight in self-defense. We only admitted the people we trusted. The 25 of us gathered at Aron Nusbaum's. We didn't have any weapons but the spirit was there, that we will defend ourselves. But nothing happened.

On 25th February 1941 they deported the Jews from Gora Kalwaria to the ghetto in Warsaw. My sister was already there, she hadn't come back to Gora Kalwaria with the outbreak of the war. Mom didn't even think of escaping, and me neither, I wanted to go to the ghetto with my family. The neighbors would come over and say, 'Listen, run away, go, you don't look like a Jew, maybe you'll make it.' I heard there were Jews in Magnuszew [town 25 km from Gora Kalwaria] - there was this sort of grapevine during the occupation - and that there are no deportations there. And so I basically ran away in the evening, after a talk with Mom. I don't know what happened to my family. I lost contact with them on that day. They were gone without a trace. Only my brother came to me later on. Lots of people left the ghetto then, everyone tried not to surrender.

It's twenty-something kilometers from Gora Kalwaria to Magnuszew, wintertime, so I stepped in a yard once in a while, knocked on the door, I asked, ' Hello sir, open, please, I'm a Jew, I ran away, please, help me.' If it was a good man - he'd let me in, if not - he'd say 'Go away, go away!' The Jews stayed in Magnuszew until May or June 1942. [The Magnuszew ghetto was liquidated in October 1942]. I didn't know anyone there. I basically worked as a tailor, people came in, gave me something to sew, I did it, and it was enough to get by.

Two months before the deportations they created a ghetto, put everyone in, and later moved them to Kozienice [town ca. 20 km from Gora Kalwaria, 80 km from Warsaw]. In Kozienice they selected young men and took them to Chmielew [village 5 km from Magnuszew] to dig irrigation ditches. There was a labor camp for Jews. I was one of those transported there.

We stayed there until December [1942], and later came the deportation and we went back to Magnuszew. I already had many friends there at the time, among those whom I tailored for. On our way back from Chmielew a Polish friend, Janek Cwyl, pulled me out of the column while the policemen weren't paying attention. He took me with him, he saved me.

In hiding

Somehow I managed to get through to Gora Kalwaria. I went to my neighbor, Mrs. Wasilewska. She immediately started to plan what to do. We went to Osieck [town 15 km of Gora Kalwaria] together, to a parish priest, Kuropek was his name I think. He issued a birth certificate for me. Later I got myself a kenkarta 28, in the name Feliks Zoladek. You had to do it with the help of friends and friends of friends. Because the priest gave me the certificate, but not the kenkarta, naturally. A friend took the certificate, went to one of those doing funny business [people who fabricated false IDs], and had them make me a kenkarta, that's how it was done. It wasn't legal.

I lived in the country, staying with different farmers and tailoring for them. One told some other he knew a tailor, and so I kept going from one person to another. Some of them knew I was a Jew, they figured it out, but well, I did survive. I stayed in one village, returned to another, kept in hiding for some time, had to run away on another occasion, one was always looking for a safe house.

I've been exceptionally lucky. They told me: 'Heniek, you don't look like a Jew at all.' I also spoke correct Polish, more or less, I mean I had the right accent, because as for the grammar a peasant wouldn't notice. I could quite safely assume I wouldn't be recognized by anyone. Plus I was a soldier, I was brave. That's why I took risks, I probably wouldn't otherwise, just like many others. You can't imagine, you could be killed any time, and not just you, but also the person harboring you. [Editor's note: On 15th October 1941 the death penalty for hiding a Jew was introduced in the General Government.]

I saw my brother [Dawid] in 1943, I don't remember if it was January or December. He came to see me in that village, Ostrowie [3 km from Magnuszew], he knew I stayed there with a farmer. I spoke with him but couldn't do anything, I couldn't! The farmer came to wake him up at 5am and told him he had to run. And so he did. He was hiding, too, he went from one farm to another, they gave him some work to do, he made horse-collars. Somewhere near Machcin some farmers gave him away, they brought him to the Germans. And the Germans killed him in the cemetery in Gora Kalwaria.

My longest single stay was in the village Podwierzbie near Zelechow [Podlez community, Garwolin district] with a Mrs. Pokorska. She was an acquaintance or a cousin of Mrs. Wasilewska [Mr. Prajs' neighbor]. Many decent people lived there generally, the Pyz family for example, the Polak family, the Marciniaks. Even the head of the village protected me. And as for the villagers, some did and some did not believe that I was a Pole. Not once did they later tell me, after the end of the war: 'It made us think, you lived here, it's a poor house, and nobody came to see you, you didn't leave for Christmas; we eyed you, a nice looking boy.' They didn't know what to think.

I went to the dances once, but later decided not to go anymore, because I was afraid. I went to the church once, too, but was afraid someone would recognize me as well. But nobody gave me away, simply Godsend. I went to that church after the war and ordered a thanksgiving mess for all the villagers.

I'm not surprised people didn't want to hide Jews. Everyone was afraid, who would risk his family's lives? You can accuse the ones who kept a Jew, exploited him financially, and later gave him away or killed him. They're murderers. But you absolutely can't blame an average Pole, I don't know if anyone would be more decent, if any Jew would be more decent.

Some Germans came to Mrs. Pokorska one day. I spoke with a Gestapo man face to face. He asked me, 'Weser das Mantel ist?' [incorrect German: 'whose coat is it?'], and I answered, 'It's not mine,' and he went, 'Du verstehst Deutsch?' [German: 'you understand German?'] It was getting bad, so I changed the subject and said, 'Sir, just take a look, everything's falling apart here, the roof, perhaps you could write a paper to the Kreishauptmann [German: district administrator]...'

That shocked the Gestapo man, he came from Silesia, he understood Polish. He saw my face didn't belong there. And she [Mrs. Pokorska] said I was her son, he asked her like a dozen times, and me as well, if I was her son. I said 'mom,' and she said 'son,' and again, 'mom, son.' I had a birth certificate in her son's name, Stanislaw Pokorski, so I said, 'I got the certificate, but I don't have the money to go to Garwolin and have me an ID made.' He didn't even want to take a look at the ID. And so I made it somehow.

He could have just said: 'Take off your pants,' and what, the whole family would have been doomed, all the children, the mother, everyone. She was very kind. But what cunning one's got to have, and what nerve, to stay calm and not to panic. These are terrible things, these are not the things to talk about, because a dog or a cat were worth more than a human being, just because the latter was of Jewish descent.

I had to hide once, and from whom, from ours [Poles]. The frontline was already near, it had almost reached the Wisla river. NSZ 29 or WiN 30, I don't even know, sentenced me to death. I had met them by chance, as a tailor. I'd sewn for them, they'd got to like me, we'd spent all the time together. I used to refashion what they'd stolen somewhere. One of them didn't agree with the sentence, hadn't said a word to them, but later told me: 'Heniek, be careful, hide, mister, 'cause it's so and so.' So NSZ's history has a not-so-exquisite [sic] chapter - their attitude towards the Jewish nation. When the Red Army took over the area, they [the NSZ soldiers] killed two or three Jews. They all came to me later and apologized, a couple of times. So I don't really want to get back to the subject, I've forgiven them and that's it.

After the war

That village, Podwierzbie, was on the right bank of the river, so they liberated it six months earlier than the left bank. It was in the summer, in July. [Editor's note: In the summer of 1944 the Red Army stopped on the east bank of the Wisla river. At that time the Warsaw Uprising was taking place, and its commanders counted on Soviet support. The uprising ended on 2nd October with Polish defeat. The Soviet army resumed its offensive only in January 1945.]

I took a walk and was standing on a levee as I saw the first 'razviedka' [Russian: reconnaissance patrol] of the Red Army. I was overwhelmed. They asked me, 'Who are you?', and I got scared, but soon enough answered, since I spoke Russian a bit, because I'd been interned in the Soviet Union in 1939: 'Ya Yevrey, ya Yevrey, zdes spratalsya, Yevrey' [Russian: 'I'm a Jew, I've been hiding here.']. And the one in charge was of Jewish descent. He immediately came over to me, overjoyed, and started to talk to me in Yiddish. He said, 'Listen, you'll go to the martial commandant and he'll take care of you.' And so I did, and they took me to work for them.

I was a hired hand, not in the army, but on their boarding. They reached Wisla in the summer and stopped, the offensive didn't start before January. I tailored for them, and later had no obligations, so I stayed in the village, another six months or so, as a free man at last. Everyone in the village knew about me, and they'd say, 'Well, Heniek, you've made it.' And the girls were crazy about me!

I fell in love with a girl there, but I'd already had an obligation. The story is characteristic and even a bit funny. During the war Mrs. Wasilewska told me, 'Heniek, listen, I'll help you out, but remember, when the war's over, you'll marry one of my daughters.' I said, 'Mrs. Wasilewska, if I only make it through the war, why not, I like them, they're all pretty girls after all.' So I came back to Gora Kalwaria and indeed married the youngest one before long.

I'm proud I was the first one to commemorate the fallen. I took out the wicket from the synagogue fence and put it in the Jewish cemetery. It still has the bullet marks made when the Germans shot Pinio Rawski. I hired a guy I knew named Cieplak to put a fence around the cemetery. There were four or five mazevot left. The Germans and the Poles took the rest. [The mazevot from the Jewish cemetery in Gora Kalwaria were used by the Germans as road pavement. Some of the tombstones were stolen by the Poles.]

It was a total mess. I started to put things in order at the cemetery. People reported some tombstones to me, so I collected them, transported to the cemetery and put them upright. These are pre-war mazevot, but they're not standing on their previous spots. Many of these people I knew personally, could be 80 per cent: Szternfeld, Rozenblum, Skrzypek, Mesing, I just didn't recall their burial places exactly, I hadn't attended every funeral.

The tzaddiks' tomb is real. Two of them are buried there, the founder of the dynasty, Chidusz ha-Rem, or Arie Lejb, and his grandson Sfas Emes [Chidushei ha-Rim, or Yitzchak Meir Alter, 1785-1866, the founder of the Ger dynasty; Sfas Emes, or Yehudah Arieh Leib Alter, 1847-1905, Yitzchak Meir's grandson, 3rd Rebbe of the dynasty]. The ohel was demolished during the war, but they didn't get inside, so it's the actual burial place. The new ohel was put up a few years ago by the Hasidim from Israel or America, from the Gora Kalwaria [Ger] communities. They visit the tzaddik's tomb very often.

Only one member of my family survived the war, Uncle Mosze. My calculations show I've lost 36 members of my immediate family, meaning the aunts and their children. Uncle Mosze miraculously survived somewhere in the Sandomierz region. He stayed with a farmer just like me, or so they say. I never asked him. His wife was killed. After the war he remarried in Lodz. He settled with his second wife in Gora Kalwaria. In 1950 they moved to Israel together. They had a son, Dawid. Uncle Mosze became a farmer in Israel, he had some land, an orchard, he kept geese. He died in May 1972.

After the war I lived in a state owned house on the corner of Dominikanska and Polna streets. It had been a German property and the owners were gone. I received an apartment there from the municipality. When I got married, I lived there with my wife. It wasn't until 1960 that I built my own house.

We got married in 1949. My wife was called Czeslawa Maria Wasilewska. She was eight years younger than me. We were an exemplary couple, we lived together for 41 years. She was Catholic and it didn't bother me one bit. We only have one daughter, Malgonia [from Malgorzata], my wife couldn't have any more children. I never kept it secret I was a Jew, but she didn't see that Jewishness in the house. We celebrated the Catholic holidays.

My wife's parents were called Jan and Helena. My father-in-law served in the tsarist army for five years. My wife had four siblings. They lived in Gora Kalwaria. They were farmers, had some land nearby.

Back before the marriage I changed my name to Henryk at the district administration in Grojec. Why shouldn't I have a Polish first name while I'm a Pole, well yes, of Jewish descent, but still a Pole. I never felt, however, the urge to erase my nationality. It's not a shame, and it's not a distinction either, that's who I was born, that's who I am, that's who I will be.

You mustn't forget your nationality, it's no shame. Every human being has a right to live, and it doesn't make any difference if someone is black, or a Gypsy [Roma], or a German. Even against the Germans I don't hold any grudge anymore. A German named Kulc harbored me for three months, could I have any grudge against him, could I refuse to shake hands with him? I would do anything to help that man, because he helped me knowing I was a Jew. There's no place for chauvinism, nationalism, or racism in my mind.

Immediately after the war I worked on my own, and later in a tailor's co- operative. I earned pathetically little there, 2,000 zlotys. After seven years of that I started my own tailoring business. Later I completed a technical high school and took up horticulture. My father used to sell orchards, so I knew something about it, my father-in-law and my brothers-in- law were farmers and gardeners, so I thought I'd learn, and so I did. I planted some trees, and they fruited wonderfully, I had beautiful fruits. I built a house. My wife worked in a shop at first and later in the community cooperative, selling coal, and finally as a deputy manager of a restaurant in Gora Kalwaria. She then retired. She died, my poor thing, in 1990.

We have three grandchildren, Mateusz, Ola [Aleksandra], and Jula. We've worked hard, we've made our way, I've been respected and still am. I had a good life. My house is cultured, open, if a Jew comes knocking, I'll let him in, if a priest, I'll let him in as well. Our parish priest is a great friend of mine, we speak like father and son, he respects me and vice versa.

I had the Pokorski family come to Gora Kalwaria and as my grandfather had a small patch of land in Coniew near Gora Kalwaria, I made it over to them. I arranged for them to receive the Righteous Medal 31 from Yad Vashem 32. They're dead now.

I think only about 30 Jews from Gora Kalwaria survived the war. They returned but fled soon. They moved mainly to Israel, but also to the Scandinavian countries: Sweden, Denmark, Holland. They welcomed Jews. The situation in Poland was not very good for the Jews at first, there was the Kielce pogrom 33 right in 1946, and later the events of 1968 34.

Why, it's horrible that a supposedly socialist country makes up some myths about a fifth column and so on [In his speech on 12th June 1968 Wladyslaw Gomulka, head of the Polish Communist party, accused the persons of Jewish descent of pro-Israeli bias and stigmatized that attitude as a betrayal of the state, using the phrase 'the fifth column'; the term 'fifth column,' coined during the Spanish Civil War, was also being used to refer to the German saboteurs during the Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia and Poland]. And yet everyone, Jews and non-Jews, was working, creating, helping to build. How could one order the people of Jewish descent to leave the country? Is that the way it should be? So one shouldn't blame those who left. I never had the intention to leave.

I do have a grudge against the ones I knew in the Gora Kalwaria municipality. They had me come over to the office and declare if I was objective, if I was a good Pole. I told them, 'What's that supposed to mean, what do I declare? You know me very well, I have fought in the Polish army, I've been wounded, I've paid with blood, what do you want from me?' I didn't even say good bye, turned my back on them and left. I think it was sheer stupidity, what is this 'good Pole,' I live here, I'm a citizen, they know me, if they have anything against me, there are penalties, judges. Are all the Poles good?

Recent years

As I've served in the army, after the war I was a member of the ZBoWiD, Union of Fighters for Freedom and Democracy 35. In the 1990s ZBoWiD was transformed into the Veterans Union and the Disabled Soldiers Union. I'm a member of the latter now, of the Piaseczno branch. I've recently received a medal, the Disabled Soldiers Union gold medal, for taking part in the Olszewo battle, where I was wounded.

I've been a member of the TSKZ 36 for 50 years now I think, ever since its creation. I go to the seniors club in Warsaw once or twice a week when the weather is fine. Very rarely in the wintertime. I have my friends there: Kawka, Janowski, Wajnryb, Mrs. Szymanska, Mrs. Kaczmarska, all of them elder people, some are even older than me. We tell each other tall tales, what comes, our life stories, we talk of our youth and the later years.

I've been to Israel twice, in 1965 and 1990. Nothing special about the trip, I asked for a visa and got it, they refused the first time but later changed their mind. Jerusalem was still divided in 1965, so I couldn't get to Bethlehem, to the tomb [Rachel's tomb just outside Bethlehem], the Wailing Wall was also on the other side, but you could more or less see it. I don't know if a million Jews lived there at the time, maybe a million and a half, not more. The immigration increased after the 1967 war 37.

What's with the anti-Semitism in Poland, against whom, as the Jews are gone?! They make up their own Jews. Whenever I talk to such people, I say, 'Okay, well, come on, show me a Jewish shop here, show me people speaking the Jewish language, well, let's go, I want to see, if you say Jews rule the country, show me those Jewish rulers. You idiot, they call everyone who's objective a Jew.' I have a friend, and because we like each other a lot, they say he's a Jew.

It's like that: there are those anti-Semitic hooligans on the one hand, you know - oh, a Jew! and that's it, and on the other hand there are the prewar intellectuals, the Endeks, whole families, the Giertychs, Dmowski, it's a strong group, anti-Semitic since always and that's the bottom-line, no way to persuade them. You have to be liberal and objective, you have to think reasonably. That's how I raised my daughter, that's how she raises my grandchildren.

The center of Gora Kalwaria, the streets Dominikanska, Pijarska, were inhabited by Jews. Poles lived mostly on the outskirts. There was a whole block of tzaddik houses on Pijarska Street. Nowadays there's a shop of the community cooperative in the tzaddik's house. There's also the Alter Synagogue. The Jews don't own it officially, but you can get inside. It stands empty. It's both Jewish and non-Jewish, half Jewish and half non- Jewish. The Hasidim 38 coming from Israel visit the cemetery, the synagogue, and the tzaddik's house.

A man called Karpman and I have the keys to the cemetery. If there's anything to be done in the cemetery, we hire a person and it's fixed. The fence was funded by the Nissenbaum Foundation. Excursion groups come here, plenty of them, to visit their grandparents, great-grandparents, because many Israelis have Polish origins. They often come over to see me, ask me to give them some information, and I speak with them with pleasure. But I don't take care about them that much anymore, I don't have the strength. It's great anyway, that my head still works, that I still have the memory.

Glossary

1 Gora Kalwaria

Located near Warsaw, and known in Yiddish as Ger, Gora Kalwaria was the seat of the well-known dynasty of the tzaddiks. The adherents of the tzaddik of Ger were one of the most numerous and influential Hasidic groups in the Polish lands. The dynasty was founded by Meir Rotemberg Alter (1789-1866). The tzaddiks of Ger on the one hand stressed the importance of religious studies and promoted Orthodox religiosity. On the other hand they were active in the political sphere. Today tzaddiks from Ger live in Israel and the US.

2 Poalei Zion (the Jewish Social-Democratic Workers' Party Workers of Zion)

In Yiddish 'Yidishe Socialistish-Demokratishe Arbeiter Partei Poale Syon.' A political party formed in 1905 in the Kingdom of Poland, and operating throughout the Polish state from 1918. The party's main aim was to create an independent socialist Jewish state in Palestine. In the short term, Poalei Zion postulated cultural and national autonomy for the Jews in Poland, and improved labor and living conditions of Jewish hired laborers. In 1920, during a conference in Vienna, the party split, forming the Right Poalei Zion (the Jewish Socialist Workers' Party Workers of Zion), which became part of the Socialist Workers' International and the World Zionist Organization, and the Left Poalei Zion (the Jewish Social-Democratic Workers' Party Workers of Zion), the radical minority, which sympathized with the Bolsheviks. The Left Poalei Zion placed more emphasis on socialist postulates. Key activists: I. Schiper (Right PZ), L. Holenderski, I. Lew (Left PZ); paper: Arbeiter Welt. Both fractions had their own youth organizations: Right PZ: Dror and Freiheit; Left PZ - Jugnt. Left PZ was weaker than Right PZ; only towards the end of the 1930s did it start to form coalitions with other socialist and Zionist parties. In 1937 Left PZ joined the World Zionist Organization. During WWII both fractions were active in underground politics and the resistance movement in the ghettos, in particular the youth organizations. After 1945 both parties joined the Central Jewish Committee in Poland. In 1947 they reunited to form the strongest legally active Jewish party in Poland (with 20,000 members). In 1950 Poalei Zion was dissolved by the communist authorities.

3 3rd May Constitution

Constitutional treaty from 1791, adopted during the four-year Sejm by the patriotic party as a result of a compromise with the royalist party. The constitution was an attempt to redress the internal relations in Poland after the first partition (1772). It created the basis of the structure of modern Poland as a constitutional monarchy. In the first article the constitution guaranteed freedom of conscience and religion, although Catholicism remained the ruling religion. Members of other religions were assured 'governmental care.' The constitution instituted the division of powers, restricted the privileges of the nobility, granted far-ranging rights to townspeople and assured governmental protection to peasants. Four years later, in 1795, Poland finally lost its independence and was fully divided up between its three powerful neighbors: Russia, Prussia and Austria.

4 Skif (Socjalistiszer Kinder Farband, Yid

: Socialist Children Union): A children organization of the Bund party. It was founded in the 1920s on the initiative of Cukunft (Bund's youth organization) activists. The organization aimed at educating the future party members. Children were looked after by parents committees. In the 1930s SKIF had a couple thousand members in more than 100 places in Poland. Dayrooms, trips, and summer camps were organized for the children. SKIF existed also in the Warsaw ghetto during the war. It was reactivated after the war, but was of marginal importance. SKIF was dissolved in 1949, together with most of the Jewish political and social organizations.

5 Bund

The short name of the General Jewish Union of Working People in Lithuania, Poland and Russia, Bund means Union in Yiddish. The Bund was a social democratic organization representing Jewish craftsmen from the Western areas of the Russian Empire. It was founded in Vilnius in 1897. In 1906 it joined the autonomous fraction of the Russian Social Democratic Working Party and took up a Menshevist position. After the Revolution of 1917 the organization split: one part was anti-Soviet power, while the other remained in the Bolsheviks' Russian Communist Party. In 1921 the Bund dissolved itself in the USSR, but continued to exist in other countries.

6 Bund leaders in prewar times

the most eminent Bund activists of that period were Wiktor Alter, Henryk Erlich, Jakub Pat, Szmul Zygielbojm, and Maurycy Orzech. They led the Bund's social organizations, published the party press, were members of the local self-government bodies. Wiktor Alter (1890-1943), member of the Socialist International executive committee, Warsaw councilor, trade unions and cooperative movement activist, journalist, editor of the magazine 'Mysl Socjalistyczna' ('Socialist Thought'). He was shot in a Soviet prison. Henryk Erlich (1882-1943), lawyer, Warsaw councilor, member of the Jewish Community Council, editor of the magazines 'Glos Bundu' ('The Bund Voice') and 'Folks Cajtung' ('People's Journal'), member of the Socialist International executive committee. Arrested by the Soviet authorities, he committed suicide in prison. Jakub Pat (1890-1966), contributor to 'Folks Tsaytung', TsIShO (Central Jewish School Organization) activist, author of language and literature handbooks for the Jewish schools, he also wrote reportages and short stories. From 1939 he was still an active Bund member while on emigration in the USA. Maurycy Orzech (1891-1943), publisher and co-founder of many newspapers and magazines ('Folks Tsaytung', 'Arbeter Shtime' ['The Workers' Voice'], 'Glos Bundu' among others), Warsaw councilor, member of the Jewish Community Council and the National Trade Unions Council. At the outbreak of the war he was in Lithuania, after being expelled on the Germans' demand he lived in Warsaw. He was active in the Jewish Social Self- Help and the Anti-Fascist Bloc. He died in 1943, probably during a failed attempt to escape to Romania. Szmul Zygielbojm (1895-1943), secretary- general of the Jewish Section of the Central Trade Unions Board, Warsaw and Lodz councilor, publisher of the 'Arbeter Fragen' ['Workers Affairs'] magazine. A member of the National Council of the Polish government-in- exile in London. He committed suicide on 13th May 1943 at the news of the fall of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, protesting against the Allied passiveness towards the Holocaust.

7 Haynt

Literally 'Today,' it was one of the most popular Yiddish dailies published in Poland. It came out in Warsaw from 1908-1939, and had a Zionist orientation addressing a mass of readers. In the 1930s it attained a print run of 45,000 copies.

8 Peretz, Isaac Leib (1852-1915)

Author and poet writing in Yiddish, one of the fathers and central figures of modern Yiddish literature, researcher of Jewish folklore. Born in Zamosc, he had both a religious and a secular education (he took courses in bookkeeping and studied law in Warsaw). Initially he wrote in Polish and Hebrew. His debut [in Yiddish] is considered to be the poem Monish, (1888, Di yidishe Folksbibliotek). From 1890 he lived in Warsaw. Peretz was an advocate of Yiddishism, and attended a conference on the subject of the Yiddish language in Jewish culture held in Czernowitz (1908). His most widely read works are his novellas, which he wrote at first in the positivist style and later in the modernist vein. In his work he often used folk motifs from the culture of Eastern European Jews (Khasidish, 1908). His best known works include Hurban beit tzaddik (The Ruin of the Tzaddik's House, 1903), Di Goldene Keyt (The Golden Chain, 1906). During World War I he was involved in bringing help to the victims of war. He died of a heart attack.

9 Sholem Aleichem (pen name of Shalom Rabinovich (1859-1916)

Yiddish author and humorist, a prolific writer of novels, stories, feuilletons, critical reviews, and poem in Yiddish, Hebrew and Russian. He also contributed regularly to Yiddish dailies and weeklies. In his writings he described the life of Jews in Russia, creating a gallery of bright characters. His creative work is an alloy of humor and lyricism, accurate psychological and details of everyday life. He founded a literary Yiddish annual called Di Yidishe Folksbibliotek (The Popular Jewish Library), with which he wanted to raise the despised Yiddish literature from its mean status and at the same time to fight authors of trash literature, who dragged Yiddish literature to the lowest popular level. The first volume was a turning point in the history of modern Yiddish literature. Sholem Aleichem died in New York in 1916. His popularity increased beyond the Yiddish-speaking public after his death. Some of his writings have been translated into most European languages and his plays and dramatic versions of his stories have been performed in many countries. The dramatic version of Tevye the Dairyman became an international hit as a musical (Fiddler on the Roof) in the 1960s.

10 An-ski, Szymon (pen name of Szlojme Zajnwel Rapaport) (1863-1920)

Writer, ethnographer, socialist activist. Born in a village near Vitebsk. In his youth he was an advocate of haskalah, but later joined the radical movement Narodnaya Vola. Under threat of arrest he left Russia in 1892 but returned there in 1905. From 1911-14 he led an ethnographic expedition researching the folklore of the Jews of Podolye and Volhynia. During the war he organized committees bringing aid to Jewish victims of the conflict and pogroms. In 1918 he became involved in organizing cultural life in Vilnius, as a co-founder of the Union of Jewish Writers and Journalists and the Jewish Ethnographic Society. Two years before his death he moved to Warsaw. He is the author of the Bund party's anthem, 'Di shvue' (Yid. oath). The participation of the Bund in the Revolution of 1905 influenced An-ski's decision to write in Yiddish. In his later work he used elements of Jewish legends collected during his ethnographic expedition and his experiences from WWI. His most famous work is The Dybbuk (which to this day remains one of the most popular Yiddish works for the stage). An-ski's entire literary and scientific oeuvre was published in Warsaw in 1920-25 as a 15-volume edition.

11 Asch, Sholem (1880-1957)

Polish born American novelist and dramatist, who wrote in Yiddish, Hebrew, English and German. He was born in Kutno, into an Orthodox family and received a traditional religious education; in other fields he was self-taught. In 1914 he immigrated to the USA. Towards the end of his life he lived in Israel. He died in London. His literary debut came in 1900 with his story 'Moyshele.' His best known plays include 'Got fun Nekomeh' (The God of Vengeance, 1906), 'Kiddush ha-Shem' (1919), and the comedies 'Yihus' (Origin, 1909), and 'Motke the Thief' (1916). He also wrote a trilogy reflecting his opinion that Christianity should be regarded as the logical continuation of Judaism: 'Der Man fun Netseres' (1943; The Nazarene), The Apostle (1943), and Mary (1949).

12 Bergelson, Dovid (1884-1952)

Yiddish writer, arrested and shot dead together with several other Yiddish writers, rehabilitated posthumously.

13 Der Moment

Daily newspaper published in Warsaw from 1910-39 by Yidishe Folkspartei in Poyln. It was one of the most widely read Jewish daily papers in Poland, published in Yiddish with a circulation of 100,000 copies.

14 Central Union of the Jewish Craftsmen of the Republic of Poland

a social organization founded in 1921. One of the co-founders and its president until 1930 was Adam Czerniakow, the head of the Warsaw Judenrat during the war. The Union's goals were: defending its members' interests in the Crafts Chambers, Apprentice Departments, and the guilds, organizing cooperative movement and loan funds, legal counseling. The Union had its headquarters in Warsaw, 493 local branches, and 94,000 members. It published 'Handwerker un Industri - Tsaytung' from 1925 to 1927 and 'Handwerker Tsaytung' from 1927 to 1938. The Union was part of the National Minorities Bloc in the 1928 elections.

15 Hitler's rise to power

In the German parliamentary elections in January 1933, the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) won one- third of the votes. On 30th January 1933 the German president swore in Adolf Hitler, the party's leader, as chancellor. On 27th February 1933 the building of the Reichstag (the parliament) in Berlin was burned down. The government laid the blame with the Bulgarian communists, and a show trial was staged. This served as the pretext for ushering in a state of emergency and holding a re-election. It was won by the NSDAP, which gained 44% of the votes, and following the cancellation of the communists' votes it commanded over half of the mandates. The new Reichstag passed an extraordinary resolution granting the government special legislative powers and waiving the constitution for 4 years. This enabled the implementation of a series of moves that laid the foundations of the totalitarian state: all parties other than the NSDAP were dissolved, key state offices were filled by party luminaries, and the political police and the apparatus of terror swiftly developed.

16 Hahalutz

Hebrew for pioneer, it stands for a Zionist organization that prepared young people for emigration to Palestine. It was founded at the beginning of the 20th century in Russia and began operating in Poland in 1905, later also spread to the USA and other countries. Between the two wars its aim was to unite all the Zionist youth organizations. Members of Hahalutz were sent on hakhshara, where they received vocational training. Emphasis was placed chiefly on volunteer work, the ability to live and work in harsh conditions, and military training. The organization had its own agricultural farms in Poland. On completing hakhshara young people received British certificates entitling them to immigrate to Palestine. Around 26,000 young people left Poland under this scheme in 1925-26. In 1939 Hahalutz had some 100,000 members throughout Europe. In World War II it operated as a conspiratorial organization. It was very active in culture and education after the war. The Polish arm was disbanded in 1949.

17 : Zionist Organization in Poland (also General Zionists, General Zionist Organization)

The strongest Zionist federation in prewar Poland, connected with the World Zionist Organization. Its primary goal was the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine, by means of waking and strengthening the national identity of the Jews, promoting the emigration to Palestine, and colonizing it. The organization also fought for national and cultural autonomy of the Polish Jews, i.e. the creation of a Jewish self-government and introducing Hebrew education. The Kingdom of Poland Autonomous Bureau of the General Zionists existed since 1906. At first it was headed by Joszua Heszel, followed by Meir Klumel and, since 1920, Icchak Grünbaum. The General Zionists took part in all the local and national elections. In 1928 the party split into factions: Et Liwnot, Al ha- Miszmar, and the Revisionists. The groups grew more and more hostile towards each other. The General Zionists influenced most of the Jewish mass organizations, particularly the economic and the social and cultural ones. After World War II the General Zionists tradition was referred to by the Polish Jewish party Ichud. It was dissolved in January 1950.

18 Grinbaum, Icchak (1879-1970)

Barrister, politician and Zionist activist. Born in Warsaw, he studied medicine and law. In 1905 he attended the 7th Zionist Congress as a delegate. Co-founder of Tarbut. He was the leader of a radical faction of the Zionist Organization in Poland, and deputy to the Polish Sejm (Parliament) from 1919-1932. In 1933 he immigrated to Palestine. Grinbaum was a member of the governing bodies of the Jewish Agency (until 1951). During World War II he founded the Committee to Save the Polish Jews, and acting through diplomatic channels strove to have immigration restrictions on refugees in allied countries lifted. In 1948-49 he was a minister in Israel's Provisional Government.

19 Anti-Semitism in Poland in the 1930s

From 1935-39 the activities of Polish anti-Semitic propaganda intensified. The Sejm introduced barriers to ritual slaughter, restrictions of Jews' access to education and certain professions. Nationalistic factions postulated the removal of Jews from political, social and cultural life, and agitated for economic boycotts to persuade all the country's Jews to emigrate. Nationalist activists took up posts outside Jewish shops and stalls, attempting to prevent Poles from patronizing them. Such campaigns were often combined with damage and looting of shops and beatings, sometimes with fatal consequences. From June 1935 until 1937 there were over a dozen pogroms, the most publicized of which was the pogrom in Przytyk in 1936. The Catholic Church also contributed to the rise of anti-Semitism.

20 ONR

A Polish nationalist organization with extreme anti-Semitic views. Founded in April 1934, its members were drawn from the Nationalist Democratic Party. It supported fascism, its program advocated the full assimilation of Slavic minorities in Poland, and forced Jews to leave the country by curbing their civic rights and implementing an economic boycott that would prevent them from making a living. The ONR exploited calls for an economic boycott during the severe economic crisis of the 1930s to drum up support among the masses and develop opposition to Pilsudski's government. The ONR drew most of its support from young urban people and students. Following a series of anti-Semitic attacks, the ONR was dissolved by the government (July 1940), but the group continued its activities illegally with the support of extremist nationalist groups.

21 Endeks

Name formed from the initials of a right-wing party active in Poland during the inter-war period (ND - 'en-de'). Narodowa Demokracja [National Democracy] was founded by Roman Dmowski. Its members and supporters, known as 'Endeks,' often held anti-Semitic views.

22 Pilsudski, Jozef (1867-1935)

Polish activist in the independence cause, politician, statesman, marshal. With regard to the cause of Polish independence he represented the pro-Austrian current, which believed that the Polish state would be reconstructed with the assistance of Austria- Hungary. When Poland regained its independence in January 1919, he was elected Head of State by the Legislative Sejm. In March 1920 he was nominated marshal, and until December 1922 he held the positions of Head of State and Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Army. After the murder of the president, Gabriel Narutowicz, he resigned from all his posts and withdrew from politics. He returned in 1926 in a political coup. He refused the presidency offered to him, and in the new government held the posts of war minister and general inspector of the armed forces. He was prime minister twice, from 1926-1928 and in 1930. He worked to create a system of national security by concluding bilateral non-aggression pacts with the USSR (1932) and Germany (1934). He sought opportunities to conclude firm alliances with France and Britain. In 1932, owing to his deteriorating health, Pilsudski resigned from his functions. He was buried in the Crypt of Honor in the Wawel Cathedral of the Royal Castle in Cracow.

23 Warsaw Uprising 1944

The term refers to the Polish uprising between 1st August and 2nd October 1944, an armed uprising orchestrated by the underground Home Army and supported by the civilian population of Warsaw. It was justified by political motives: the calculation that if the domestic arm of the Polish government in exile took possession of the city, the USSR would be forced to recognize Polish sovereignty. The Allies rebuffed requests for support for the campaign. The Polish underground state failed to achieve its aim. Losses were vast: around 20,000 insurrectionists and 200,000 civilians were killed and 70% of the city destroyed.

24 September Campaign 1939

Armed struggle in defense of Poland's independence from 1st September to 6th October 1939 against German and, from 17th September, also Soviet aggression; the start of World War II. The German plan of aggression ('Fall Weiss') assumed all-out, lightning warfare (Blitzkrieg). The Polish plan of defense planned engagement of battle in the border region (a length of some 1,600 km), and then organization of resistance further inside the country along subsequent lines of defense (chiefly along the Narew, Vistula and San) until an allied (French and British) offensive on the western front. Poland's armed forces, commanded by the Supreme Commander, Marshal Edward Rydz-Smigly, numbered some 1 m soldiers. Poland defended itself in isolation; on 3rd September Britain and France declared war on Germany, yet did not undertake offensive action on a larger scale. Following a battle on the border the main Polish line of defense was broken, and the Polish forces retreated in battles on the Vistula and the San. On 8th September, the German army reached Warsaw, and on 12th September Lvov. From 14th-16th September the Germans closed their ring on the Bug. On 9th September Polish divisions commanded by General Tadeusz Kutrzeba went into battle with the Germans on the Bzura, but after initial successes were surrounded and largely smashed (by 22nd September), although some of the troops managed to get to Warsaw. Defense was continued by isolated centers of resistance, where the civilian population cooperated with the army in defense. On 17th September Soviet forces numbering more than 800,000 men crossed Poland's eastern border, broke through the defense of the Polish forces and advanced nearly as far as the Narew-Bug-Vistula- San line. In the night of 17th-18th September the president of Poland, the government and the Supreme Commander crossed the Polish-Romanian border and were interned. Lvov capitulated on 22nd September (surrendered to Soviet units), Warsaw on 28th September, Modlin on 29th September, and Hel on 2nd October.

25 Annexation of Eastern Poland

According to a secret clause in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact defining Soviet and German territorial spheres of influence in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union occupied Eastern Poland in September 1939. In early November the newly annexed lands were divided up between the Ukrainian and the Belarusian Soviet Republics.

26 Ghetto in Gora Kalwaria

It was created in February 1940. About 3,500 Jews were kept in it, inhabitants of Gora Kalwaria, Gostynin, and the surrounding villages, as well as expellees from Lodz, Aleksandrow, Pabianice, Sierpc, Wloclawek, and Kalisz. On 25th February 1941 the Jews from the Gora Kalwaria ghetto were deported to the Warsaw ghetto. They shared the same fate, were murdered in 1942 and 1943 in Treblinka death camp.

27 ZOB (Jewish Fighting Organization)

An armed organization formed in the Warsaw ghetto; it took on its final form (uniting Zionist, He-Halutz and Bund youth organizations) in October 1942. ZOB also functioned in other towns and cities in occupied Poland. It offered military training, issued appeals, procured arms for its soldiers, planned the defense of the Warsaw ghetto, and ultimately led the fighting in the ghetto on two occasions, the uprisings in January and April 1943.

28 Kenkarta

(German: Kennkarte - ID card) confirmed the identity and place of residence of its holder. It bore a photograph, a thumbprint, and the address and signature of its holder. It was the only document of its type issued to Poles during the Nazi occupation.

29 National Armed Forces (NSZ)

A conspiratorial military organization founded in Poland in 1942. The main goal of the NSZ was to fight for the independence of Poland and new western borders along the Oder-Neisse line. The NSZ's program stressed nationalism, rejected fascism and communism, and propounded the creation of a Catholic Polish State. The NSZ program was strongly anti-Semitic. In October 1943 the NSZ had some 72,500 members. The NSZ was preparing for an armed uprising, assuming that the Red Army would occupy all the Polish lands. It provided support for military intelligence, conducted supply campaigns, freed prisoners, and engaged in armed combat with divisions of the People's Army and Soviet partisans. NSZ divisions (approx. 2,000 soldiers) took part in the Warsaw Uprising. In November 1944 a part of the NSZ was transformed into the National Military Union (NZW), which was active underground in late 1945/early 1946 (scores of divisions numbering 2,000-4,000 soldiers), fighting the NKVD, UB (Security Bureau) task forces, and divisions of the UPA. In 1947 most of its cells were smashed, although some groups remained underground until the mid-1950s.

30 'Wolnosc i Niezawislosc' ('Freedom and Independence')

A conspiratorial organization founded in September 1945 by Colonel Jan Rzepecki after the dissolving of the Armed Forces Delegate's Office at Home (command of the underground army). WiN was to be a social and political movement defending the rights of the Polish citizens and Poland's independence. It demanded that free national elections be called and the freedom of press and of association be restituted. In 1946 WiN subjugated to the Polish government-in-exile in London and declared fighting the communist terror machine its primary goal. WiN operated throughout Poland. At the end of 1945 it had 30,000 members. The communist authorities were fighting it fiercely, arrestments were gradually diminishing the organization. WiN conducted various activities: intelligence and counter- intelligence (collecting information on the army, the UB [Security Office, the secret police], and so on), information and propaganda, self-defense (including liberating political prisoners), guerrilla warfare. Captured WiN members were sentenced in political show trials. Since 1948 WiN was totally infiltrated by the UB and eventually dissolved in 1952.

31 Righteous Among the Nations

A medal and honorary title awarded to people who during the Holocaust selflessly and for humanitarian reasons helped Jews. It was instituted in 1953. Awarded by a special commission headed by a justice of the Israeli Supreme Court, which works in the Yad Vashem National Remembrance Institute in Jerusalem. During the ceremony the persons recognized receive a diploma and a medal with the inscription "Whoever saves one life, saves the entire world" and plant a tree in the Avenue of the Righteous on the Remembrance Hill in Jerusalem, which is marked with plaques bearing their names. Since 1985 the Righteous receive honorary citizenship of Israel. So far over 20,000 people have been distinguished with the title, including almost 6,000 Poles.

32 Yad Vashem

This museum, founded in 1953 in Jerusalem, honors both Holocaust martyrs and 'the Righteous Among the Nations', non-Jewish rescuers who have been recognized for their 'compassion, courage and morality'.

33 Kielce Pogrom

On 4th July 1946 the alleged kidnapping of a Polish boy led to a pogrom in which 42 people were killed and over 40 wounded. The pogrom also prompted other anti-Jewish incidents in Kielce region. These events caused mass emigrations of Jews to Israel and other countries.

34 Anti-Zionist campaign in Poland

From 1962-1967 a campaign got underway to sack Jews employed in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the army and the central administration. The background to this anti-Semitic campaign was the involvement of the Socialist Bloc countries on the Arab side in the Middle East conflict, in connection with which Moscow ordered purges in state institutions. On 19th June 1967 at a trade union congress the then First Secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party [PZPR], Wladyslaw Gomulka, accused the Jews of a lack of loyalty to the state and of publicly demonstrating their enthusiasm for Israel's victory in the Six- Day-War. This address marked the start of purges among journalists and creative professions. Poland also severed diplomatic relations with Israel. On 8th March 1968 there was a protest at Warsaw University. The Ministry of Internal Affairs responded by launching a press campaign and organizing mass demonstrations in factories and workplaces during which 'Zionists' and 'trouble-makers' were indicted and anti-Semitic and anti-intelligentsia slogans shouted. After the events of March, purges were also staged in all state institutions, from factories to universities, on criteria of nationality and race. 'Family liability' was also introduced (e.g. with respect to people whose spouses were Jewish). Jews were forced to emigrate. From 1968-1971 15,000-30,000 people left Poland. They were stripped of their citizenship and right of return.

35 Union of Fighters for Freedom and Democracy (ZBWD, Zwiazek Bojownikow o Wolnosc i Demokracje)

Combatant organization founded in 1949 as the result of the forced union of 11 combatant organizations functioning since 1945. Until 1989 it remained politically and organizationally subordinate to the PZPR. In 1990 ZBoWiD was reborn as the Union of Combatants of the Polish Republic and Former Political Prisoners (Zwiazek Kombatantow RP i Bylych Wiezniow Politycznych). ZBoWiD brought together some Polish World War II veterans, prisoners from Nazi camps, soldiers of the Polish Armed Forces (WP, Wojsko Polskie), and officers of the Security Office (UB, Urzad Bezpieczenstwa) and Civil Militia (MO, Milicja Obywatelska), as well as widows and orphans of others killed in action or murdered. For political reasons, many combatants were not accepted into ZBoWiD, including some AK (Home Army) soldiers (especially before 1956). It had several hundred thousand members (1970 approx. 330,000; 1986 almost 800,000).

36 Social and Cultural Society of Polish Jews (TSKZ)

Founded in 1950 when the Central Committee of Polish Jews merged with the Jewish Society of Culture. From 1950-1991 it was the sole body representing Jews in Poland. Its statutory aim was to develop, preserve and propagate Jewish culture. During the socialist period this aim was subordinated to communist ideology. Post-1989 most young activists gravitated towards other Jewish organizations. However, the SCSPJ continues to organize a range of cultural events and has its own magazine - The Jewish Word. It is primarily an organization of older people, who, however, have been involved with it for years.

37 Six-Day-War

(Hebrew: Milhemet Sheshet Hayamim), also known as the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, Six Days War, or June War, was fought between Israel and its Arab neighbors Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. It began when Israel launched a preemptive war on its Arab neighbors; by its end Israel controlled the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights. The results of the war affect the geopolitics of the region to this day.

38 Hasid

Follower of the Hasidic movement, a Jewish mystic movement founded in the 18th century that reacted against Talmudic learning and maintained that God's presence was in all of one's surroundings and that one should serve God in one's every deed and word. The movement provided spiritual hope and uplifted the common people. There were large branches of Hasidic movements and schools throughout Eastern Europe before World War II, each following the teachings of famous scholars and thinkers. Most had their own customs, rituals and life styles. Today there are substantial Hasidic communities in New York, London, Israel and Antwerp.

Gizela Fudem

Gizela Fudem
Wroclaw
Poland
Interviewer: Jakub Rajchman
Date of interview: December 2004

Mrs. Gizela Fudem has been blessed with incredible memory. During our three meetings in her house in Wroclaw she not only described her closer and more distant family with great details, but she was also able to convey the atmosphere of pre-war Jewish Tarnow with its colorfulness and variety. Mrs. Fudem remembers in details holiday customs of her childhood home. Since 1947 she's been a wife to Mr. Leon Fudem, who is five years older than she is. Mr. Fudem is Jewish as well. That's a fairly uncommon social situation in Poland in 2005. Today, both of them old and ill, they often talk about their only daughter who lives in the USA. Mrs. Fudem has told her Holocaust story several times to newspapers and to Polish and international organizations. In our conversation she goes back to her childhood which is deeply emotional to her. A few weeks after the interview Mrs. Fudem's husband, Mr. Leon Fudem, passed away.

My family background
My parents
Growing up
My school years
The Jewish history in Tarnow
During the war
My escape from the ghetto
From Plaszow to Auschwitz
Bergen-Belsen
After the liberation
Married life
My daughter Barbara
Post-war events
Glossary

My family background

My name is Gizela Fudem, my maiden name is Grunberg. I was born on 24th November 1924 in Tarnow. I lived in Tarnow before the war and for the first two years of the war. When it comes to my siblings, I had a brother - Mojzesz - four years younger than me, and a sister - Tauba - older than me, also by four years. I come from a religious family, even very religious, my father was a pious Jew with a beard, and never tolerated anything that wasn't kosher.

My father's family came from the Kielce region, from the town of Stopnica [50 km from Tarnow]. I remember both Grandpa and Grandma. Grandma's name was Bajla or Bela Rywka, and Grandpa was Szmul. And my father was Josef, Josef Nechemiasz. Grandpa was killed during World War II, and Grandma died during that war, because she was sick. My grandparents were religious, Grandma used to wear a wig, and Grandpa - a hat that Jews used to wear in the Russian partition 1, in the shape of a little black saucepan with a visor.

Stopnica was a small town, and I used to go there with Dad to visit the grandparents. Grandpa was well off. He had a store with some iron articles, like nails, scythes, some tools, chains, whatever you'd buy in a small town, which farmers from the area would come to. My grandparents had their own small house, they lived right behind that store, there was even an entrance from the house to the store, and there was a big yard neighboring with some concrete plant. I used to play there as a child, used to go inside concrete tunnels. I remember that.

My grandparents lived near the marketplace. And I even remember - once we went there during a Polish folk holiday, and there was the atmosphere of a bit of a peril, because farmers didn't like Jews, they would buy from them whatever they needed, but you never knew, we were afraid of some incidents. [Editor's note: anti-Semitic incidents often took place during national holidays.] So the shutters were closed in that store, and I remember we were listening to whether it was peaceful outside or not.

One of my cousins, Sala [nickname for Sara Lea], often came to the grandparents. She also lived near the marketplace, but on the opposite side. And she used to come there to help out, clean up at her grandma's, since she lived nearby, she used to help them. Her father, Uncle Lajbisz, older brother of my father's, was a small merchant, and there were also a few small children. Uncle had six children altogether, but because Aunt Chaja died early, some of those kids were of the second mother - Perel. And they were so-so off, not too rich, but they weren't that badly off either.

When it comes to my mother's family, I don't remember Grandma very well, but I remember Grandpa better. Grandma Debora came from Debice area near Tarnow. She died when I was four years old. She was about 46 then. Grandpa came from Dabrowa near Tarnow. His name was Chaim. Grandpa was two years older than Grandma. It was an arranged marriage, of course, they were both from traditional families. After the death of Grandma, who died at a young age, Grandpa Chaim remained in Tarnow. I remember, he had a long white beard and I think he used to wear a kapote. But you could talk to Grandpa in Polish, he was a bit more secular than that other Grandfather in Stopnica.

During the times of my early childhood, I remember, he had a wine bottling plant. He owned a house on one of the more beautiful streets in Tarnow, on the corner of Folwarczna and Goldhammera Streets. It was a big house, two- storey, I think. It was quite elegant, with additions, there was a fish market, and in the yard there was a carpenter's workshop, and near that a little house for the caretaker, and there was the wine bottling plant.

There's a story in our family that when I was young, when I was going to school, I used to drop by at Grandpa's and the workers there would let me drink some wine from a barrel with a rubber hose. Later I couldn't eat my dinner.

But later, I remember it well, I guess Grandpa wasn't doing so well, because he gave up on the bottle plant, and he had a kind of an inn or a tavern with a store. That store had an exit onto the street and an entrance to the apartment, because he lived on the first floor and took half of that floor. There were a few rooms there.

Grandpa had all sorts of ideas, he kept remodeling his house. To the left from the entrance there was Grandpa's apartment. And to the right there was a room rented out to the Jewish community. There was another room with a ping-pong table - I don't know who that belonged to. And on the second floor there were apartments. Grandpa was alone for many years, but he got married again just before the war. I don't remember that woman's name, I remember only she was from a small town, and she was about 50 years old, but she was still unmarried. I know that Mother didn't like her, and thought Grandpa should not be getting married again.

My parents

My Mother, Sara Lea Grunberg [nee Muschel], was the eldest of six children. She had two sisters and three brothers. These are their names in order: Bronia, Bala, Berisch [German spelling kept due to Austrian influences], Rafael, Mozes. The middle sister - Aunt Bronia - married a very religious Jew and she lived in Cracow.

The youngest sister, however, was a sort of a black sheep in the family. Her name was Bala. They used to call her Bajla in Jewish. She was a bit of a communist and Grandpa had all sorts of problems with her, because before each 1st May the police would come to arrest her. [Editor's note: 1st May - workers' holiday, illegal in interwar Poland, was a chance for socialist and communist demonstrations unaccepted by the government.] At least for that one day, so that she wouldn't demonstrate or whatever, and Grandpa had bring out the wine for all of them and ask them not to take her. And she, knowing about it, would go into hiding, so he had problems with her. But I don't know if Grandpa was as determined as my father, who didn't let us talk about Bala in his presence because of what she did later.

She was to get married, in an arranged marriage to a man whose last name was, as I remember, Hermeles, and she ran away on their wedding day, right after the ceremony. And she broke off this marriage, even though he was a very decent man, that one she married, but he completely didn't suit her. Because he was very religious and quiet, and she was a crazy girl, always on the move. And that communism of hers, that didn't suit him either. Grandpa forced her to get married, he though she'd settle down, but on the day of her wedding she sent the gifts back and ran away.

Then she moved out and lived somewhere in Warsaw, then somewhere in Sosnowiec, she became a nurse. All in all she was a bit of a wayward daughter, different from the rest of the family. They practically disowned her. And when she came by to our apartment in the first year of the war, she was careful to come when Dad wasn't there. I was always very impressed by her, because she had such an exciting life.

And later she married again, this time out of her own will and volition. And it so happened that I met her second husband during the war, in Auschwitz, through the fence in the adjoining camp. She was dead by then. That's how it was with them. When they were on the way to Auschwitz, and they knew they were going to Auschwitz, they decided to poison themselves on the train.

They had a son, Jurek, a few years old, six, maybe seven years old. And they couldn't decide whether to give him the poison or not, and when they finally gave it to him, it was already too late. And she, carrying him in her arms, most likely dead already, was sent to a gas chamber. And her husband was spared, but he was sick a lot, and died exactly one day before Auschwitz was liberated, he didn't survive the war.

But back then, in the camp, he found us - I was there with my sister Tauba - through the fence and helped us a lot. I most likely owe him my life. Because my sister and I, we were to be transported to a different camp - to Stutthof 2 - and none of those people survived. He got us out of that transport; I'll tell about that later. That uncle, by marriage, my aunt's husband.

And, as I mentioned before, there were three brothers of my mom's: Berisch, Rafael and Mozes. The oldest one - Berisch - also lived in the same area, near Grandpa's, but in his own separate house and he was very religious. He was selling fish, and he had that fish market in Grandpa's house. I remember, it so happened that when the war broke out 3 and he escaped to Russia, his wife, my Aunt Roza, stayed behind with six little children, and during the first few months of the war, she was trying to find some fish to sell, to make a living. And I was sent to help her, which I didn't like at all, because I was afraid to hold a live fish in my hands.

The other two sons used to help Grandpa with his business, and later they became independent and had their own plant, also a wine and vodka plant. They had clients all over Poland and they were traveling with samples as canvassers. They stayed near Grandpa until the end, until they escaped to Russia, when the war broke out. And Grandpa stayed here, in Tarnow.

My father's name was Josef Nechemiasz, he was born in Stopnica. He was very religious. He used to go and pray with other Hasidim 4 to one of the shtiblach. That tzaddik, he came from Kolaczyce [40 km from Tarnow]. They used to call him Koleszycer. Mom was even upset at those friends of Dad's, that when she met him he wasn't that superstitious, yes, he was very religious, traditional, and that was always most important, but there was nothing bordering on the absurd, that he didn't do. And later Dad, according to my Mom, started spending time with such a crowd that was just too holy, and they had this influence on him.

Mom was upset, because they indeed kept coming up with ridiculous things, and Dad would follow them. For example, on Saturdays, you were not supposed to comb your hair! I also didn't like them. One of them - I remember - used to come to our home. He had a long beard. He was such a horrible Hasid. He used to pinch my arm whenever he came over. And I really didn't like him because of that. Whenever he came by, I would run away.

Dad did various things in life. He didn't have a lot of spare time, he was always busy, because we weren't all that well off. When it didn't work out with the winery, then he had a kosher dairy with a partner. He had it in a basement of some house a couple blocks away. It was a dairy with a bit of wholesale and a bit of retail. He would deliver milk and butter to stores, but also sold them in retail. I was sent there from time to time, I remember. So that, whenever my dad went out to have lunch or had to go somewhere, somebody stayed at the store to sell that milk.

During summer he also sold skim milk, used to make paint and then paint apartments. I remember something like round barrels to make butter and cheese. I remember, there was a year when there was lots of that cheese. Because Dad had an agreement with manors in the area, in the radius of from approximately a dozen to several dozens of kilometers. And they brought milk from them, and the agreements usually said that they had to take all the milk whenever cows were on the fresh feed, even if there was too much milk. Because the agreement was for everything, everything that was delivered throughout the year. And I remember the time when there was too much cheese and there was no market for it. And they had to take that cheese out of the city and bury it in holes in the ground, since you couldn't just throw it out, it would go bad, so you couldn't really do anything with it.

And only in the last year before the war Dad signed an agreement with someone who made components for the production of calolite near Cracow. That was something like plastic nowadays. And it was made out of that milk, first processed in a special way. That milk after processing looked like cooked rice and that was delivered in barrels to Cracow. They wouldn't make any money on this, but it was still better than losing everything. And they used that calolite to make belt buckles, cabinet hardware, it was a bit transparent. So I remember that it was a rather poor business.

However, a year or two before the war Dad gave up on the dairy, as I mentioned earlier. He took a course in making dairy and cheese, it had a weird name, he had to pass a test. And he opened a big dairy on Folwarczna Street, with a few other milkmen, such that used to deliver milk to homes, in cans, with a horse and a horse carriage and they delivered that milk to homes. And somehow Dad contacted them. And since he was the only one who was literate [that is, he could write and keep books] among them, they made him their manager. They were simple people, but they had their clientele that they delivered milk to, and their manors that they bought milk from.

They rented a big place on Folwarczna Street, and made it into a dairy, and that was the only big kosher dairy in Tarnow, where they converted probably more than 1,000 liters of milk into cheese, butter and other products. There were four big rooms with modern machinery. They were selling it to stores and restaurants and some smaller grocery stores that had milk and cheese. And they also delivered to some small cake shops. And you could buy directly from them as well. It wasn't a great business, but it wasn't too bad either, you could make a living.

Dad kept the books. He was the one who had a permit, and it was very difficult in that time to get a permit for this type of a shop 5. And I remember, there was a competitive company, but not kosher, in Tarnow, and it was called I think 'U Zoski' ['At Zoska's']. Only these two dairies had a permit issued by the local government, and the owner or the manager had to have taken that course that my Father took. I think there were five of them, those partners that had their clientele. They kept on delivering milk to private homes and in shifts helped out at work, or their wives helped, because you had to spin milk, make cheese, butter, and also buttermilk was for sale there.

Father had made a name for himself, he was very much respected and liked, and even sometimes, when there was an argument between Jews, and they didn't want to take it to court, but solve it between themselves, then Dad was the arbiter. And also they knew he knew how to do book-keeping, so he was well trusted. He had no money, but he was respected.

However, he had no time, and I remember that we, the children were always waiting for Purim, which was a holiday, because on Purim Dad was at home, at least in the afternoon we could play checkers with him, or talk to him, he had time for us. Any other time he was always very busy, and used to go to all those prayers, he had to make it to the morning and the evening one - that took time and split the day, so that he was home only late in the evening. He was tired by then and didn't spend time with us. So the kids were always waiting for some holiday, one which wasn't that rigorous, so we could get a hold of Dad.

During Sabbath Dad didn't work, but he prayed a lot instead. And he always went to the shtibl late in the afternoon on Friday, depending on when the stars began to shine. Very often after that prayer he would bring a guest along for a supper. Usually without consulting anyone, but it was a kind of 'anojrech' [an ojrech, Hebrew oreach, orchim using the Ashkenazi pronunciation, for guest] or guest. It was usually a young man who had no family or he studied somewhere, went to some yeshivah or somewhere, and he was invited over on Saturday. I remember once Mom was very upset because Dad hadn't warned her he would bring such a guest over on a certain day. But, in fact - there were five of us - so five or six didn't make a big difference, but she always liked to have been warned ahead.

My mom was a tall blonde. She was really the same height as Dad. And she didn't use to wear a wig, but right after the wedding she wore a kind of a braid fastened to short hair so that everyone would be happy. So that you could say she had a wig, but so that it wasn't a wig. She had pretty blond hair, Dad was dark-haired, Mom was a blonde, so she wore that wig for two, three years, but I don't remember that, I just heard stories. From the time I remember Mom, she had her own hair, which was a big concession in those circles, but she always wore something on her head, or whenever she was outside, she wore a hat or a scarf. I don't think she wore it at home, because I remember her hair, always cut short and somehow tucked, so that there was no suspicion whether it was her own hair or not, and so that nobody made a fuss about it.

Mom was extremely clean and she took great care of the house, and all the time we had to sweep and polish those floors, and when it comes to things like that, she could do it on Saturdays, but of course in such a way that Dad wouldn't find out. Because when it comes to this, Sabbath was more important. So she was a bit more lay.

Mom spoke Polish every day and was more fluent in it than Dad. Dad would make some grammatical mistakes sometimes, but Mom never. She was from slightly different circles and she read, maybe not very serious literature, but she read from time to time, she had some books in Polish. She borrowed them from someone; there was an aunt who used to read, so they exchanged books or something.

We would bring Polish books from a library. Both my sister and I belonged to a library. I belonged to a library called TSL, I think that stood for Towarzystwo Szkol Ludowych [Rural Schools Association]. I used to borrow books there, I know I had to fight for it, because I had to pay a fee there - I think 1 zloty a month - and we didn't really have money. So Mom sometimes read those books, and if Dad knew we had something new, some book, he always had a look at it, because he was curious what we were reading. But he didn't read much himself. And Mom could read Jewish [Yiddish], and sometimes she also read a book in Yiddish.

Mom didn't work, but helped Dad. Mainly at the store, especially at the beginning, that is in that dairy in the basement where there was only one partner. Mom spent a lot of time there, and other than that she did the shopping, cooked at home, took care of us. So she was busy, she didn't have time to chit-chat. On Saturdays sometimes she would go to her aunt Fryma, the wife of Majer Muschel [German spelling kept due to Austrian influences], who was the younger brother of Grandfather. That aunt was more or less her age, not much older. They lived on the Plac Rybny [literally: Fish Square]. She used to go visit there, sometimes she brought us along.

What else did she do? I know that, for example, she used to help my sister to go on ice, that is, skating, which was just unthinkable. Mom didn't skate herself, just helped my sister hide from Dad. Dad would have never agreed to it, because it was completely not kosher - some strange people, and they danced, music was playing and they were dressed in such a way - it was out of the question. Everything was kept a secret from Dad. The skates my sister hid at some friend's, and whenever she was to go skating, she went there first to pick them up, and Mom was making sure it all went well.

When it comes to education, Mom went to some school, I think to a business school. But I don't know what it was called. I know that inside the wardrobe's door there was a photograph of Mom in such tall laced shoes up to her knee, they must have been in style back then, and in a pleated skirt and a very pretty pleated blouse. Mom said that it was taken when she was taking some course.

Mom married very young, when she was 19. Shortly after that my sister Tosia was born [Polish diminutive of Tauba]. After my sister was born, my Mom was very sick. They sent her to Karlovy Vary, it was called Karlsbad in German 6, she was there twice. My sister was also sick a lot as a small child, so Mom didn't really have time to finish her education.

Mom spoke German. During World War I her family escaped from Tarnow to Vienna and most likely Mom brushed up her German there. She was self- taught, but she spoke nicely and with a Viennese accent, which we found out during the war. When there were Germans there, then Mom, whenever a German would come to the apartment, then Mom spoke with them. She was the eldest of her siblings - she was born in 1901, so she took care of her younger sister Brajndla [Bronia] there in Vienna.

My sister and I liked it when Mom told us stories about Vienna, since they spent about two years there before they came back. She told us about the 'Riesenrad.' [Riesenrad, a tourist attraction in Vienna, a giant Ferris Wheel, giving tourists an opportunity to admire the city from the height of 65 meters]. It was a huge hoop, a vertical carousel, and she used to go on that carousel and took her sister along.

The fact that my parents knew German came up at some other time as well. I remember I found in the lower drawer of the wardrobe a pack of letters tied with a ribbon, and I saw they were in Hebrew and some in German. Those were the letters my parents wrote to each other back when they were engaged.

Growing up

At home, I remember, before the war we had a servant, a maid, Polish. There was one for many years, my Mom took her in as a young girl; she was maybe a teenager. First she worked for a Polish neighbor that lived above us, and she kept pestering her, didn't treat her well at all. Mom found her in the basement once, where the caretaker lived. She hid there, because that neighbor from above had thrown her out. So Mom took her in and taught her, so that she never mixed up treyf with kosher.

She came from somewhere near Zakliczyn, from Wesolowo [23 kilometers from Tarnow]. And she was with us for many years. She learned everything and became so enlightened and elegantly dressed, that, for example, when my friends came over, those who didn't visit often, they thought from far away that it was my Mom. Maryna - that was her name - came to us when she was about 14, and left when she was, I think, 27.

She left finally, because she had a brother who was a priest, who kept telling her to leave and he took her in. First she had to learn how to cook normally, because for us she made Jewish dishes, and she had to learn how to make pork chops. So she had to take a course, and then she was his housekeeper, he got a parish somewhere there, and she went there.

As children we were so attached to Marynia [Polish diminutive for Maryna], that when we woke up we weren't calling for Mom, but for Marynia. She was from a very poor family, she had a lot of siblings, sometimes her father would come from the village to pick something up in Tarnow, and so we even met him. And when she was to go home for Christmas, we baked her special cookies with a hole in them, so that she could hang them on a Christmas tree. And after her we had another girl, Wisia, also Polish. She stayed until the war, but we didn't get as attached to her.

I think I remember all holidays at home. Especially Pesach. We used to call it Easter. I remember my daughter was very surprised when I called Pesach that, because she always thought that Easter means a real Polish Easter. But she didn't know that this is what we called it in our area. We did general cleaning then, where we had to turn everything inside out, wash and scrub everything. There was a full set of pots and plates and cups, all dishes and utensils, which all year long stood packed partially in the room behind the mirror and partially on the attic. And we couldn't use it all year long, except on this Easter Holiday.

The cups were very pretty, I remember, completely different than the ones we used every day. And before we took and placed all that, we had to scrub all the cupboards. We lined the cupboards with clean paper so that it didn't touch anything and there was paper even on the windowsill, so that there wouldn't be any crumbs. And the rest of the food which was at home, you couldn't use it; it was called 'humyc' [chametz]. There was a ceremony to sell the chametz to someone [non-Jewish] and then buy it back from him after the holidays. And there was a caretaker who would buy all this chametz, because he wasn't a Jew. He bought everything from the entire building, and didn't even see it, because the chametz stayed at our homes, but he would get 50 groszy for that later. Of course he bought it and then sold it back so that during the holidays we had nothing that wasn't just for the holidays.

I also remember that as a child I couldn't understand why after that general cleaning Dad was walking around with a little brush that some housewives use to smear egg yolks on a cake [a goose feather], and was looking for bun or bread crumbs. Mom used to wink at him and show him where [to look] and Dad would find some. He would find something in a few places, and I couldn't understand how, after all this cleaning, he could still find something. But it was Mother who left it, because that was the custom, that she'd put it somewhere and immediately tell him where, under this closet or in that corner, or somewhere else, that this chametz is there, and Dad had a special paper dustpan, and used this brush to sweep everything onto the dustpan, and later we would burn all of it.

But matzah was baked at some trusted baker's, so that it was 100 percent safe [kosher]. And despite that, Dad never ate matzah. Dad had some other matzot, made of rye flour. They were called something like 'shmile matzah.' [Editor's note: Shemurah Matzah, usually a handmade matzah, baked under special supervision of a rabbi throughout the entire process. Among other things all dishes used to make it must be washed and dried exactly every 18 minutes, the time after which, according to the Halakhah law, fermentation begins.] They were baked in a special way. A few Hasidim would get together and bake them. I thought those matzot weren't tasty. So Dad ate those matzot of his, but ours weren't non-kosher, we could put them on the table next to the other ones. He also never ate crumbled matzah and put it into the chicken soup or something. You couldn't soak it [the matzah].

At Pesach children had to take a nap during the day, which, I remember, I hated, because I never liked sleeping during the day. But we had to, so that we wouldn't doze off later, because we had to stay up till late at night and sit at the table. So I used to cheat, pretending that I was taking a nap, because I didn't like it very much. Later, during the seder supper, the table was moved next to the bed, since we had to eat that supper resting on an elbow, as if lying down.

Later there were those questions - 'kashes' [a type of a Talmud question asked to a rabbi; questions asked during Pesach were very rarely called kashes, they were rather called: The Four Questions or mah nishtanah]. First I would answer, but later just my brother. [Editor's note: The Four Questions are traditionally being asked, and not answered by the youngest child at the Pesach table.]

All dishes had to be as God ordered. There was egg smoked on fire, there was a bit of horseradish, and various other dishes. There were also special plates with dents, and in each dent there was an appropriate dish. Dad used to hide the matzah, and we would search for that matzah, and whoever found it would get something. That matzah was called afikoman. So Dad would hide it under a pillow or something. He'd hide it, so that we, the kids could find it. When I was a bit older I would let my brother find it. Besides, whatever we would get as a reward, we'd get anyway, because for the Easter holiday, for Pesach, we usually got either new shoes, or new stockings which we needed anyway. We had to have something new for that holiday. That was the rule.

Father made sure the seder night was the way it was supposed to be. He wore a white gown, over his clothes, tied in the waist, and when he was saying the Eliash prayer, we would open the door so that Eliash could come in, because he was to come in and drink from the chalice. And there was a special chalice for Eliash.

At Purim we used to dress up, and in the last years that I remember, we kept dressing my brother Mojzesz [Polish form of Mozes] up as a girl. I don't know where, but we would find at home long strips of fabric, and we'd make something like braids out of them. We'd put those braids on him, tie a scarf on his head, his face was indeed like a girl's, so round. But all in all, the entire thing was not just about those games, but about bringing sweet gifts, on a plate covered with a napkin to people. We had a whole list of people to take it to, and we usually used to get some from them, too. The entire deal with the gifts was that on two beds - Mom and Dad's - put together and covered with a clean tablecloth or a sheet, we would put all those sweets and various cookies, fruits, chocolates, that were a set. And later we would take it and portion it.

We also had gifts for non-Jews, but it would be a bottle of wine, some more elegant chocolate or something. Because they knew we had such holidays, so we used to bring them gifts. It was always to remind them about us, or sometimes you just wanted to please someone. We would make these portions for all friends and family. There was lots of it, we would put all the sweets on a deeper plate, cover it nicely with a clean napkin and tie this napkin underneath, under the plate somehow, and we would go around with it. And my brother Moniu [Polish diminutive of Mozes] or myself would take it.

Aside from that we used to read Megillat Ester, and my brother had a rattler which, when you were spinning it, it rattled. And whenever Dad said the word Haman, he would rattle it. Brother also had a dreidel, that's how we called it, it was a lead cube with a leg, and it had something like handles on both sides. You'd hold the upper part, and if you knew how to handle it, and turned it, it would spin for a while, a little spinning top.

I also remember it was the only day in the year that Dad would play domino or some checkers or lottery with us. [Editor's note: such plays were being played traditionally for Chanukkah, not for Purim.] And we were on cloud nine, because we really loved it when Dad played with us, because otherwise he never had time. Aside from all that there were also meat dumplings for dinner, and sweet triangular buns with blueberry jam. There was a custom called hamantashen. We didn't even use to call it hamantashen, but I knew that name.

For all these holidays we didn't use to go to a synagogue, but to that unfortunate shtibl where Dad always used to go. It was very ugly. There was a balcony upstairs where women went. And men were downstairs. I remember that Dad used to take us there for Yom Kippur, and maybe for Rosh Hashanah.

For all other holidays and on Saturdays we had our prayer books and we had to pray at home. And with time, I simply started to cheat. I could read it, because I learned to, but I didn't understand it, and I can't say that I was passionate about it, I didn't really care. But for some period of time, before I started to rebel, I used to say a few prayers that I had marked in my prayer book. And we had to say it every Saturday morning, when Dad was in the prayer house, and when he came back he always asked, and that was the worst, because I didn't want to lie. So, to somehow get out of it, I kind of said a part of it, and when he asked whether I had already said my prayer, I would answer: yes. And it wasn't a lie entirely, because I had taken a look at it somewhat.

At Yom Kippur you had to fast, and of course my parents fasted and we fasted; my brother until the war was too young to fast and only during the war he managed to fast one time. Because when he died he wasn't 14 years old yet, and he started when he was 13, so he fasted only once. But we fasted, and of course Dad and Mom fasted. Children, when they were younger, fasted for only half a day, and then ate normally, but kids had this ambition to fast all day, and then they bragged about it. Later, in the evening, we had a very ceremonious and filling supper. We had neighbors so fanatically religious that, this neighbor and maybe his wife too, not only fasted, but they wouldn't even swallow saliva, when they had some, they would spit it out. So that it wasn't that they were drinking something.

For Chanukkah there was this oil candlestick. It was a menorah and it had little cups into which oil was poured, a wick was made out of cotton and put in there. There were more wicks every day. And the candlestick stood in the window. And I remember I knocked it over once and I spilled oil on my dress and the stain never went away. It wouldn't wash away. Mom was upset. But Chanukkah was a lighter holiday; I remember we used to always get something, but not money, rather some things, maybe some clothing or something.

For summer holidays we used to go to Ciezkowice or to Muszyna [Ciezkowice - 26km from Tarnow, health resort Muszyna - 75km from Tarnow], all in the Malopolska region. We used to go with our parents and Aunt Bronia who was Mother's younger sister, younger by two years. That's the aunt who lived in Cracow. She went to America, too, before the war, but came back. She had a son more or less my age, maybe half a year younger. I remember that in one of those towns I went into deep water and was drowning. And they had to rescue me, so they pulled me by the hair. It was such a summer resort. We used to bring feather quilts, pots, and some huge luggage.

Dad usually didn't go with us; if it was some place closer he would drop by on Saturday and Sunday. Because on Sundays the store had to be closed as well. Other than that he didn't use to go with us. I don't even know where he ate then, maybe somewhere at Mom's family, in Tarnow. And we used to rent an entire house from some farmers, and they lived in some shack or moved out somewhere. And once, if I'm not mistaken, Marynia came with us, to help, because we had to cook there. All that was a few good years before the war.

And later our parents didn't go anywhere, but we went to camps. It was a camp from the school, Beit Yaakov 7, which I attended with my sister. They were very cheap because they rented some cottages from farmers and we slept on the floor on hay mattresses. And there was a kitchen, kosher, of course. We brought a cook with us, used to go on trips, I even remember there was one trip to Poronin [104km from Tarnow]. I went to such a camp twice, that is the first time they took me out of pity, because I had an older sister, but I was too young for it. I don't remember any special program on Jewish traditions on those camps.

I know that we had a really nice supervisor and all girls were in love with her. They were happy when she even looked at them. She came from Cracow. I almost loved her; her name was Rajza Klingier. The classes in Beit Yaakov cost money, but not a lot. There were only girls there. We were learning how to read and write in Yiddish, there were also classes on Jewish history and something on religion. We used to go there three times a week with Tosia [Polish diminutive of Tauba].

My school years

I went to a normal school - public, Polish. And there were Polish and Jewish kids there. It so happened that we lived almost opposite of the school building, but there were two schools there. And there was the Slowacki School and the Krolowa Jadwiga School. I went to Krolowa Jadwiga, and that wasn't quite in front, but you had to go around the building.

I started attending school when I wasn't quite six years old yet, because my sister was already going there and a few years earlier my cousin, who had the same last name as I, graduated from that school. Later she lived in Lodz, but at that time she still lived in Stopnica, and there was a six- grade school there and in order to do the 7th grade she came to Tarnow. And since the cousin had a good reputation, and so did my sister, I asked them to let me in earlier. I was first going there when kids were playing in the school yard, and I was waving my arms too, when they were doing some exercises. So I wasn't even 13 when I graduated, and later I went to a one- year business school.

Most of the teachers in the public school were Polish. Only religion was taught by a Jew, Mrs. Taubeles. Because we went to religion separately - all Jews from both schools. And religion for non-Jews was taught by a priest. I didn't really experience anti-Semitism, there; maybe sometimes there'd be something slightly unpleasant. There were teachers who would nag at some of us sometimes, but it usually went together with the fact that a girl was a worse student, or came from some neglected home, and then she was also teased about being Jewish. There weren't any antagonisms between girls. Usually no big friendships either. It's just that we were about 30 Jews there, so naturally all my friends were Jewish.

On the other hand, however, in the class that I went to starting in the 5th grade, there was a girl - Polish, who saved my life during the war. We weren't really friends, but it so happened that I bumped into her and told her I wanted to get out of the ghetto. And she helped me out; I spent a few weeks at her place on the Aryan side. Her name was Gabriela, but everyone called her Ela. But I'll get to that later. I didn't go to that school on Saturdays, but they just had gym, music then, on purpose, because we were more or less half and half of Jews and non-Jews. It didn't matter much, and I was always a very good student, so nobody demanded that I went to school on Saturdays. After I graduated from this school, as I said earlier, I went to a business school.

That business school, it was, I think, called merchant training or something like that. It was founded a year or two earlier, some time in 1935. Jewish teachers founded this organization and this school was private and not in my neighborhood. It was one-year at the time [when Mrs. Fudem studied there], and later it was supposed to become a two-year school. And I started going there, because I couldn't go to the business school my sister went to.

My sister graduated with a three-year degree after seven years of studying, so it was almost like high school. But they weren't accepting students who couldn't come on Saturdays. You had to go [to school] on Saturdays. My sister managed to finish it, because she had a friend, non-Jewish, who used to come to her after school on Saturdays. She'd drop by at our place on the way home. This friend used to leave her notebooks, some notes. Sometimes she would come on Sunday and would show my sister what she needed to do to catch up. And it was so that on Saturdays they had important classes in that school. And later they turned it into a four-year school with the high school final examinations, and there was no mercy, you had to attend on Saturdays, so it wasn't for me, since Father would never agree to it.

Out of all classes, in both schools I always liked mathematics best; it was called arithmetic at that time. And I also liked Polish, but I didn't like history much. I don't remember why I didn't like history, probably because of the teacher. But I don't remember who taught it, they were usually women.

Out of the teachers I remember one lady - a Christian - Miss Witekowna. She later got married and her name was Mrs. Prazuchowa. I was in the first grade, and I remember, I could read and write a bit, so in the first and second grade Miss Witekowna, who liked or favored me, let me come to her home and she used to lend me books to read. I used to go with her to her home after school, she lived quite far, in another neighborhood, and she used to lend me books. And later, after I read it, she would ask me what it was about; she was checking whether I had really read it. And she was very kind. She lived somewhere close to Ogrod Strzelecki. Later I belonged to a library, but those first books, I remember, I had from her.

That business school I went to was such a school that was really preparing for an accountant's assistant. So my sister, when I finished that school, she was already working and I did something like my apprenticeship in that company, when I wasn't quite 14 yet. That was my first job. It was a textile company. The owners were two partners, my sister was an accountant there. It wasn't any serious bookkeeping, since it wasn't a big company. But they let me come there for a while, I was at the cash desk, I would write some receipts - the cashier will pay, and so on... I even remember that they, those owners, started during that time, I think in Bielsko [140km from Tarnow] a small workshop with looms, where they started manufacturing some fabrics on a small scale, and I did some calculations of those fabrics for them, and they were very happy with me.

Later I started working as an accountant in some other company, and, I think, one of these partners, because there were also two partners there, was related to one of those for whom my sister worked. The new company's name was Guter and Melinger, and they manufactured and sold ready-to-wear clothes, both wholesale and retail. There were a lot of stores and workshops with ready-to-wear clothes in Tarnow. Where I worked, one of the owners was a cutter and he would cut fabric that was later given some home- workers to sew. They would sew at home and bring those suits, and every week I had to clear accounts with them. Later they were sending those suits [to clients]. I remember there were clients even close to the eastern border.

Regardless of that, you could also buy something right there, except the entrance wasn't at the front, but from the back yard, so not too many clients from the street were getting there. But there was a boy, I don't know on what conditions he worked, probably on commission - a kind of a tout. Whenever he saw someone walking by a ready-to-wear clothes store, he would tell them there was another store, somewhat cheaper, because it was actually cheaper at our store.

At this Guter and Melinger I did real bookkeeping, checks and balances, that's what it was called. I had to clear accounts with those home-workers, who used to come on Fridays, and had their payday, and I paid them, and filled out some forms. I also took care of the correspondence.

I worked there until the beginning of the war. And even a few days after it broke out, because I remember one incident, it was already war and there was an alarm, the siren was announcing that everyone should seek shelter, because there were some airplanes somewhere. And I was running, I remember, home from that store. It wasn't far, but I was so scared and agitated by it, because I thought that for as long as the siren was on nothing would happen to me, but when it stopped, they could start bombing.

The Jewish history in Tarnow

When it comes to Tarnow, before the war there were probably about 50 percent of Jews among the inhabitants, so about 30 thousand, because it was a city with a population of 50 and later 60 thousand. Where we lived, on Szpitalna Street, it wasn't a strictly Jewish neighborhood, but most houses were occupied by Jews. We lived in a two-storey house, and a few years earlier occupants of those houses were mixed. But just before the war only Jews lived there. And there were mostly Jews in that neighborhood.

Another, even more strictly Jewish neighborhood was near the market. There was a fish market, where my relatives lived, and there were only Jews there. But there weren't very many Jews in the area where my business school was - on Matejki Street, and where that friend of mine, who let me stay with her later, lived - on Parkowa Street. It was the area of Ogrod Strzelecki, and there was a seminary there. That was the neighborhood where fewer Jews lived. But on the main street that went through that area - Krakowska Street, there were some Jewish stores there.

We didn't know any rabbi personally, but I had a friend who was a rabbi's daughter. Her name was Horowitz. And she had two younger brothers; I remember they used to wear velvet hats, even as kids they were dressed like that. And I remember that during the war someone took a picture of them, when the final persecutions started. The photograph was shown in a Nazi newspaper - 'Völkischer Beobachter' [a daily newspaper bought by Adolf Hitler and the NDASP in 1932, published till the collapse of the Third Reich, used as a tool of Nazi and anti-Semitic propaganda]. On the first page there was the picture of those two boys - with blue eyes, they were very pretty kids - with a caption, reading 'growing generation of villains.' It matched them perfectly, such pretty kids...

I remember there was a mikveh in Tarnow. Dad always used to go there on Fridays. I know also, that women had to take a ritual bath there before the wedding. It was a big bathhouse on the Plac Boznic [literally: Synagogue Square]. Later it was used as a point of getting to the ghetto 8 or from the ghetto, because its one side was out of the ghetto, but the other side had an entrance inside the ghetto. The mikveh was on the Plac Boznic. And I had a relative, who lived on the Aryan side, and whose parents lived in the ghetto. He worked on the railway. And he was getting to the ghetto in such a way that he would enter from the Aryan side in that uniform, a coat with railway buttons, and once inside he would put the coat inside out, put some hat on, hide the other one, and would exit on the Jewish side.

We used to buy meat at the kosher butcher, of course, in the Jewish store - there was no doubt about that. But it happened sometimes that we'd buy something live, like for Rosh Hashanah. We had to have a sacrificial hen. We would say a prayer and spin the hen above the head. And then we'd take the hen to the butcher, and there was this shochet that would kill it. And I really hated it when they were spinning that hen over the head. Because it was flailing her wings and I was afraid it would do something to me.

When it comes to Tarnow, I don't remember any anti-Semitic incidents. Both groups - Jewish and Christian - lived separately, and aside from trade or meetings of the intelligentisa, there were no other contacts. We kept in touch with some non-Jewish neighbors. We had one neighbor above us, who every Sunday morning, before she went to church, came by, kneeled in the middle of the kitchen, and asked whether she looked good, whether her stockings fit her well, if she had put her skirt on correctly. That was Mrs. Dankowa. We had a good relationship with her. On the ground floor there were neighbors who had boys my age, and they always invited us over for Christmas and for Easter, that real Easter. And we used to get a chocolate egg or something like that.

During the war

I remember news about the changing situation in Germany, when Hitler was coming to power 9. They used to even say that a year before the war they started throwing Jews of Polish descent out of Germany 10. Those who had once emigrated from Poland, either themselves or their ancestors. And it was this big operation, they were evicted, and sent away, and it happened at times that on the border entire transports were stopped. They had to be received and placed.

Out of such a transport I had a friend for some time. She didn't speak Polish and she was so unhappy. I don't remember who recommended her to me, but I decided to teach her Polish. I remember she couldn't understand why we need seven cases if she's got four and she can say everything. Her name was Hania Sznur. I remember that others from those transports were going from one house to another and kids were making fun of them, because they spoke in broken Polish. One would say: 'Jestem biedna emigranta' [broken Polish for: 'I'm a poor emigrant']. Of other international affairs I remember there were talks about Anschluss 11 and about the dangers of fascism.

In our family we never talked about emigration. In my childhood there were some discussions about something else, when we weren't too well off, Father's brother, the one from Lodz, Uncle Baruch wanted to help us and there was a suggestion that we move to Grandpa's to Stopnica. My mom wouldn't hear about that and we were crying, my sister and I, that they talk about moving. But later everybody forgot about it.

We had the first bomb in Tarnow even before the war broke out. It was placed, or thrown, at the train station. There were horse carriages in front of the station, and I remember perfectly well that after the explosion the horses, scared, ran trotting across the town, white, covered with dust, because the building collapsed there. On the same day we saw our teacher to the station, because she decided to go home to Cracow. And that bomb exploded when the train from Krynica [Krynica, a mountain health resort, 70km from Tarnow] arrived, about an hour later. Tarnow was a fairly large railroad junction, since all trains to Krynica, Nowy Sacz, Cracow, Lwow, were going through Tarnow. And then [when the bomb exploded] we all knew that it's a sign of the war. Later, I remember, there was also an air raid.

I remember, I was woken up by horrible thunder, I looked up, and the lamp was rocking above my head, swinging really, it was such a tremor. We lived on Szpitalna Street [literally: Hospital Street], there were two hospitals on that street, one public, and a few hundred meters further a Jewish hospital. The bomb landed there, it didn't hit the hospital, but exploded right in front of it. Later there was a huge hole in the street, and then we knew the war was here for serious.

I remember when the German army was marching in and tanks were entering the city. There was a smell of some weird gasoline, I remember. Everyone was scared, of course nobody knew how it would turn out; they were saying it wouldn't last long, that it would change, that England and France would help us.

So I still worked during that time for two, three weeks. But they [the employers] started liquidating the store and later I just stayed at home. It became so 'war-like' that my sister wasn't working anywhere either. It looked like we wouldn't have money to survive because that dairy that I mentioned earlier, which existed for only two years, was damaged when the central prayer house in Tarnow was blown up. [Editor's note: The New Synagogue on the corner of Nowa and Folwarczna Streets was opened on the birthday of Franz Joseph, that is on 18th August 1908. This explains its other names - Jubilee or even Franz Joseph' Synagogue. It was set on fire in November 1939 and was blown up the same month. In September 1993 the former location of the synagogue was commemorated with a plaque.] I remember that Germans kept trying to blow it up, they were struggling for two days or so before they finally blew it up. Because it was a huge synagogue, with a large dome.

I remember that when a train I was on was getting closer to Tarnow, when I was coming back from somewhere, I could see it shining from a distance of many, many kilometers. It was covered with some copper or something, it was shining like gold. And they were putting explosives under it with no success at first, but when they managed to blow it up in the end, whole big blocks were flying around. And it was a narrow street [Folwarczna], and the dairy was just across, and got damaged and we were practically left with no means for survival.

So Dad organized himself some job, as an accountant, I don't remember what company it was. And my sister and I began working in a fruit preserve plant, which the Germans opened in the basement of the house taken away from my Grandfather. His wine bottling plant stopped operating before the war, he only had his store upstairs, but those basements in this nice big house downtown [corner of Folwarczna and Goldhammera Streets] were adapted mainly for the production of wine and that's where that plant was.

They were producing some marmalades and juices, and my sister and I worked the night shift there for two, three months, we peeled apples and pumpkins with a special tool, a spoon with sharp edges, we were cutting out scoops, these little round balls. And they made compote, stewed fruit, that instead of little cubes had these balls [of fruit]. My sister and I would come home early in the morning, and I know that the parents were still asleep at home. That was in fall and winter [1939], so it was still dark and we didn't want to wake them up. At the end of the porch in front of our house there was a box for coal and we used to sit on this box and wait until the light was switched on, which meant that Father had gotten up. When the light was on, we knocked quietly, so that we wouldn't wake up Mother and our brother, and Dad would let us in. That went on for maybe two, three months, at the turn of 1939/1940, and then that ended too.

In 1940 we all sat at home, we had no work, neither us nor Dad. Then Mom agreed that we should take a cutting and sewing course. This course was taught by the wife of a doctor, an assimilated Jew. I think she was an amateur, but she had her clientele, and became a dressmaker, because her husband was somewhere in the army, I think, and with that army was running away across the border to Hungary. And she stayed alone and she opened a dressmaking shop. And she accepted apprentices, there were six of us, and taught us cutting and sewing, and also was taking advantage of the fact that we would finish by hand things she made for her customers. She had her clientele, German women used to come there, too.

Back then, in 1940, we could still get around somehow. But it was getting very unpleasant, every couple of days a new announcement appeared saying what [Jews] cannot do and what they have to give up. We weren't allowed to have furs, tea, etc., and everything was punishable by death. The posts were in Polish and German. And men were also not allowed to wear beards, we had a horrible and painful moment when the barber came to our home to shave my Dad's beard off so that he could go outside, because if not, then the Germans would catch him and tear the beard off. Whoever was at home, we all cried, together with Dad.

Grandpa, of course, also shaved his beard off; I don't know what it was like at his place then. But I remember that my grandpa was without a beard, we joked at home then that he looked like an old highlander. Because he was very tall, huge. Dad's beard wasn't very long, but still had to be shaved. And they didn't use a razor, but something nasty, it was called 'razol,' some chemical agent. First it was cut with scissors, and then treated with that 'razol,' it was a lesser sin if treated with 'razol,' I don't know why...

I remember as if it was today that situation in the room, I know where each one of us stood, when they were cutting that beard off. Dad in general limited our outings, because we kept hearing that they caught somebody, tore out the beard of someone else, took that person away and nobody knows what happened to him. During that time my sister and I were learning German, and Dad used to send either me or my sister to go on that corner where the announcement post was with the newest announcement on what was forbidden. And I had to read it very carefully and repeat, and later Dad would ask questions, and if I didn't know how to answer one, he would get very upset, so I was almost learning by heart what was forbidden.

Back then we were still alone in our apartment, but at the end of 1940 or at the beginning of 1941, they started evicting Jews from certain areas, and also an entire transport of Jews came, I think from Plock. And the Jewish community had to place them somewhere. And because we had two rooms, they took one room away from us and put a family of five there. And the five of us were to stay in the one room, but Mom didn't want to leave the furniture there, so there was no space in our room, because all the furniture from the other room was put into ours.

It was really crowded, and those people were completely different. The girls were going out with boys and they were not the kind of people we would associate with. We did all we could to get rid of that family. It took a couple of months, but we managed to do it, and we had our other room back again.

That was already 1942 and then the first big action [liquidation of Jews] took place during which a lot of people died. We managed to survive because Germans would search by last name, and if they found someone, they would take everyone that lived there. And we weren't on that list. During that first action a lot of people were taken away, many shot on the spot, in apartments or in the yards. And many were taken to the Polish cemetery and shot there. The rest was taken somewhere not too far, to some river, it was the Biala River, I think, and shot there. It was the first mass execution.

Before the first action [June 1942] the ghetto wasn't closed yet, and our house remained in the ghetto. But after that action the ghetto got smaller and was surrounded by a partition and the house we lived in was outside the ghetto. So then we had to move. First to Grandpa's, for a week, maybe two. Later even Grandpa's house was outside the ghetto, and we moved into the area of that destroyed synagogue. There we lived above a bakery, also in a two-storey house and we were two big families there in a two-bedroom apartment. The other family, the Franks, we hadn't known earlier, only met them then, in the ghetto. It was a couple with two sons.

Our grandpa lived separately, he was with his second wife then. They had to move out of their house, and moved into a small room not far from us. Everything was not far once they closed everything. Two of Grandpa's sisters moved in with him, the twins: Brajndla and Sara Lea. They were displaced from Dabrowa.

When we were living in the ghetto, despite all the hardships, there were no excuses when it came to keeping everything kosher. Of course, as much as we could. Food still had to be kosher, Mom never broke those rules. We weren't hungry, at least at the beginning. In order to get food, we had to sell things, whatever was left. We didn't have those more expensive things, because furs, etc. were taken away immediately, but we could still find something from some reserves, some jewelry maybe, I don't remember.

The food was quite basic and there was no fish or anything like that. We used to make fish out of eggs then. We would soak a bun in water, hard-boil an egg, mix everything with onion, make balls, and then cook them in a vegetable sauce, just like you make for fish dishes. And it was supposed to taste like fish balls. Sometimes we could smuggle something from outside the ghetto, we used to bring flour, sugar from work, and Grandpa's sisters who lived with him traded it somewhere.

We survived the second action [in September1942], because we all went into hiding. My sister and I hid in one of the basements in our house. I remember that after the last people entered that hiding place, someone on the outside bricked up the entrance. And we managed to save ourselves, and it so happened that Mom and my brother were somewhere else, in some hiding place on Starodabrowska Street, and Dad was somewhere else yet. Dad used to work somewhere, but I don't remember now where it was.

But I remember the Yom Kippur holiday in the ghetto, in 1942. I rebelled then completely and I decided not to fast, which wasn't easy, because we had very modest reserves and hardly anything to eat. Mom did whatever she could to produce something. So she made a kind of potato cake, out of potato flour. It was a big piece, uncut and untouched, so it wasn't easy, but I decided to break the fast and took a bite, and I was as hungry as I would have been if I hadn't eaten anything, or maybe even more. But I proved to myself I didn't die on the spot, because I used to think that if I ate something on Yom Kippur, that meant I would die immediately. Logically I knew it wouldn't happen, but I wanted to prove it to myself. And I did it in great secrecy, no one of my family ever found out that I let myself do it, that on that last Yom Kippur with my parents I didn't fast.

During the third action [in November 1942] I lost my family, only my sister survived. It was in the fall of 1942. On the day of the action my sister went to work, I had escaped from the ghetto a week earlier and stayed at that school friend's of mine I mentioned earlier, Gabriela, her maiden name was Niedojadlo. My sister told me later how it happened. It turned out that our parents were hiding in the same basement as I had with my sister during the previous action, but someone informed on them. It was someone who was taken away. He was at the train station and said he would tell where the Jews were. He was a Jew as well. He thought he would save himself.

There was even this one incident where a son, who was in the Jewish police 12, informed on his own mother, he said where she was hiding. He went to that shelter where his mother was hiding and said, 'Don't be afraid, come out, don't be afraid. Come out, don't be afraid, you'll be fine.' And that mother came out. And later they were teasing him when he was leading people to work 13, someone from the first row would call this text: 'Come out, don't be afraid', and someone else called: 'You'll be fine' and they'd repeat it, and he would turn back, but could never catch the one who was teasing him.

My escape from the ghetto

I knew that there would be another action, I don't know from where, but most of us knew, they were talking about it, predicting, sometimes not exactly, sometimes it was earlier than they were saying it would be, and sometimes a few days later, but we knew it would happen. When they started talking that an action is about to happen, I left the ghetto on Sunday and on the next day they took my parents and my brother. I remember I said good bye to the parents, and my brother was crying very bitterly, asking me to take him with me, but it was out of the question for several reasons. Besides, Dad didn't approve of me leaving, but he said that since I decided to do so, when it's a matter of life and death, he cannot say no. But he thought I should share everyone's destiny, I shouldn't be looking for another fate.

After all the good bye's I got in touch with that friend of mine, Gabriela. I saw her a couple of times when they took us to work outside the ghetto. Because my sister and I worked at a German company, Madritsch, where we sewed. And that friend lived on Lwowska Street, which was the ghetto's border, and where that shop I worked in was. And that girl came by to see me at work a few times, and even offered to hide me in case I needed it, but first she had to make sure her mother agreed. They were very nice people, her mother agreed.

That Saturday I got in touch with that friend on the other side of the fence. I called some kid and told him he'd get money from me if he went to the store where my friend worked. She came and we decided she would come the next day, on Sunday - we worked half a day on Sundays as well - that she would come there, to Lwowska Street, to my work and she would get me out. I didn't have any right to be there that Sunday, because during the second action I didn't get a stamp, my sister did and I didn't, so I lost the right to leaving. But since those people who let us work knew me by sight, and they didn't know yet who was allowed to leave and who wasn't, I came out and stayed there. I stayed in the washroom upstairs and stood there for a few hours until it turned dark outside.

And that friend picked me up from there. With great trouble, because the gate was locked, she lied to the gatekeeper, told him some story so that he'd let her in, and she was very afraid later how we were going to leave. She came and said [to the gatekeeper] that she needed to use the bathroom, all of a sudden, in a house where the gate was locked. And the gatekeeper didn't know what she wanted, let her in, but told her to go downstairs, quickly.

However, she knew I was upstairs and ran upstairs. She found me and said 'Jesus, Maria, what am I going to do now? He saw me, he opened the gate.' I prepared some money. She went first, and he wanted to lock the gate behind her, but then he saw that one had come in, but two were leaving! He didn't know what was going on. And I pushed the money into his hand and ran off immediately, she held my arm and we left - in the evening, without an armband 14 on. And that's how I got to her place.

This is how I managed to escape. But I didn't have the proper papers and I couldn't go anywhere and leave there. I got myself some sort of an ID, but it wasn't a 'Kennkarte' 15 which was needed in order to move around freely. I needed money for that, but I couldn't afford it at the time. So I obtained a false 'Ausweis' using her first and last name, and with these papers I couldn't stay at her place officially, so I had to hide.

A week after my escape the third action took place in the ghetto. My sister was at work and when she came back, our parents and our brother were gone; they had taken them in the meantime. I stayed at that friend's for the next few weeks. But my sister was in despair and wanted me to come back, because she couldn't live alone in the empty apartment. And when it turned out that I couldn't go anywhere, I decided to go back to the ghetto. I kept telling myself that if I go back and manage to get myself a false 'Kennkarte,' I'll still leave the ghetto. And so I just went back to the ghetto, a brother of my friend took me back in; I went into the ghetto along with the people coming back from work.

My parents and my brother died in Belzec 16. I know it because Gabriela's brothers worked at the train station, and I heard while I was at her place, that they had to take cars with Jews to Belzec and the Germans ordered them to wait there and after some time gave them empty cars back.

When I went back to the ghetto I didn't have permission to work, and with the greatest effort I managed to go back to the same company. I worked there with my sister for one more year, until the end of the summer of 1943. We lived in a house near the ghetto's border, on Lwowska Street, we got the entire house, we were six to eight girls living in one room. The ghetto was divided into two parts - for those who worked and those who didn't, and we lived in that first part, until the ghetto liquidation at the turn of summer and fall 1943. [Editor's note: the complete liquidation of the ghetto took place in November 1943.]

From Plaszow to Auschwitz

Later it turned out it wasn't a total liquidation, but they moved most of the people. First they kept us at a bus station for two days in a row. We had to kneel. On the first day they took people to the camp in Plaszow 17 and on the second day the rest of the people went straight to Auschwitz and nobody survived there. My grandfather and those aunts were taken on the second day. My sister and I ended up in Plaszow. I think we were moved on Thursday and the others on Friday. But they all died. My sister and I got to Plaszow and stayed there for a year.

In Plaszow we worked for the same company, which moved there. Because the entire management of that company was from Cracow. We worked shifts there and the day shift was almost entirely from Cracow, those who had been in Plaszow earlier. We were on the night shift almost all the time for quite some time. And during the day they would catch us and take blood. They would catch and take blood for soldiers. And it didn't bother them that it was Jewish blood.

We lived in barracks, 100, maybe 200 people in each, I don't remember exactly. The food at Madritsch's wasn't too bad because he organized some extra bread. And it wasn't that clay that we used to get, but for his employees they were bringing food somewhere from the outside and we used to get a quarter of a loaf of bread for exceeding the norm. So all of us together, these ones that sewed better, sewed as much as we could, taking work from the ones that sewed slower. For example I sewed more and if I got half a loaf, twice the quarter for being over that norm, then we all shared among everyone.

That's how I managed until August 1944 when they moved us to Auschwitz. A few months earlier came a transport of Hungarian women who had already been to Auschwitz, and from Auschwitz they brought them to Plaszow, I don't know on what conditions. They were shaved and wore some gray dresses and looked out of this world. Later along with that transport they took some people from Plaszow to Auschwitz and they called us 'a Hungarian transport' because there were a lot of them there. There were more of them than us.

In Auschwitz they shaved our heads, took away our clothing and put us in such barracks where there were maybe 100 people. Precisely, it was in Birkenau 18. For some time I got lucky and worked as a cleaner for the camp officers, I would take things to wash, clean up, sweep floors, things like that. But later we worked physically, and then I was barely alive. They made us dig a new river bed for the Vistula River, and that was the worst time.

In Birkenau we stuck together, my sister and I with three more friends we knew from Plaszow. Up until the moment of one transport from Auschwitz, out of which nobody survived, because everyone died in Stutthof. We were all sent to this transport, but my sister and I were saved by our uncle. But those friends went. I remember we were standing on the square, ready to leave. But we managed to get in touch with that uncle on the other side of the fence; he was our neighbor through the fence. He was the second husband of my aunt Bela, Mom's sister, he had recognized us earlier, as soon as we arrived at Auschwitz. We managed to let him know we are in that transport, and he quickly took our tattoo numbers. And almost at the last moment one of those camp officers came, she walked along the row and called out those numbers. We came forward, she checked whether the numbers were right and then said, 'Disappear.' And she told us which way we should go and we went back to the camp, which was almost empty and stayed there for a few more months, until the end of December 1944.

Bergen-Belsen

On 30th December 1944 my sister and I were taken to Bergen-Belsen 19 in one of the last mass transports. It was such a transport that the one after us went on foot. It was winter and they gave us paper bags we were to put on. We tied them around the neck so that we didn't get cold and also, if someone had something, they would put it in [the bags, to provide insulation from the cold], hay or something, and we went like that for maybe three days.

The cars were locked and there were small iron furnaces in them, and Germans who guarded us used to heat some food up on them, and sometimes even, if it was a good German, he would let us use one. It was New Year's Eve while we were on the train, and we could hear some sounds of celebration when we were going through Germany. And they unloaded us at Bergen-Belsen and later led us quite a long distance on foot.

They put us in barracks where the conditions were very primitive and there were way too many of us in each one. And there, after a fairly short time, starvation began. There was no work, unless someone got lucky and got something to do in the kitchen or the peeling room. I got lucky. I worked in the peeling room for some time. On top of that I had a friend whom I knew from Auschwitz, who worked in the kitchen, and she used to steal some salt from there. You could get anything for salt, salt was at the price of gold. So sometimes I would look after that salt of hers, because otherwise it would have gotten stolen [by prisoners]. They used to steal from one another.

When I worked in the peeling room, once I smuggled out one sliced potato, it was very dangerous. Or a piece of turnip, I would slice it and put in the sleeves because they used to check under the armpits. They never checked in elbows, so I could fasten a small slice there somehow, to bring it to my sister, since there was already great hunger everywhere. When you went through the search and you were caught, it was enough for them to beat you up badly, and you wouldn't be able to get up.

There were some prisoners that used to steal soup, and later you could trade that soup. Sometimes I got a pot of soup to trade, and if there were 30 portions out of it, I made, lets say, 32, thanks to which my sister and I had soup. You could exchange such a portion for a piece of margarine or a so-called 'Blutwurst' [blood sausage].

There was also a transport from some work camp, not from a death camp, and they still had some aspirations that they needed thread. So we made thread, pulled it out of a blanket and wound it onto a piece of paper and sold it. I learned to wind it so well that it looked as if made in a factory. And I would trade this thread for a piece of turnip for example, that's how we did business.

My sister during that time was literally fading away before my eyes. She was three and a half years older than me, but everyone said about her: 'your younger sister.' They thought she's much younger than me, while I was 20 and she was almost 24. But she looked 15, she was looking really bad. I came down with typhus at the camp, but managed to get better, but when she got sick, she was getting worse and worse every day.

During that time there was absolutely no more bread. However, after we got liberated we found entire barracks filled from top to bottom with moldy bread, because they weren't giving us bread and it went bad. Anyway, they hadn't given us bread for entire weeks, since January, February. For the last two, three months we were only getting brewed turnip, with nothing else, not even salt, just like that, half raw.

It was in these conditions that my sister came down with typhus. I remember, she was placed in a so-called 'rewir' [Polish, literally: territory - here hospital ward]. It was like a hospital, so a place where theoretically you could die in peace, but it wasn't quite like that. Two, three women were put in one bed, and full of lice. The lice were so huge that, literally, in my blanket there was a louse on every thread, on every spot. Those blankets literally walked by themselves.

It was in the last period of the war, I would go to see my sister, try to organize something, bring her something, save her. And then the English came, and liberated us. They were a bit late, say, if they had come a week earlier, there would have been a chance. I had a friend whose sister was also in the same state and she rescued her, but really at the last moment. But my sister was like a skeleton then and it was too late for everything. They freed us on 15th April and she died on 23rd April.

We knew what was about to happen a few days before the liberation. People were talking, and Germans were taking off, there were fewer of them, every once in a while some were leaving. We knew the front was getting closer. And when the English came, they said through the speakers not to worry, that we're free. I remember I wasn't even joyful, I had no idea how to be happy. I couldn't believe it was really the end, I wasn't really conscious of anything.

After the liberation

After the liberation they deloused and fed us, and after a while they began moving us to a different place. It was about two, three kilometers from the camp. There were barracks in which Hungarians working for the Germans used to live. They had been sent away and we got an entire town of barracks. Tens of two-storey houses forming these squares. There were also one-storey houses for diners, theaters and administration. Initially they turned most buildings into hospitals. And then more or less it turned into a DP camp, a camp for displaced persons [Editor's note: Prisoners of Nazi concentration camps and other people moved against their will by the German administration during and after the war, were called Displaced Persons and placed in special camps from which they were moving to target places (country of origin, emigration)].

There were also transports of Poles from forced labor camps. At first there was some plan to move us, and they packed some people onto trucks and sent us to the Belgian border; I was among them. First they took us to Diepholz [today Germany, 120km from Hamburg], then from Diepholz to Linge [today Germany, 60km from Cologne], and they kept moving us every few weeks, and then finally they decided to take us back to Bergen-Belsen.

In the meantime they created a camp high school, and I went to such a high school. The teachers taught whatever they knew, so not all subjects were offered. I remember there was no biology. But there was chemistry, because there was a chemist, there was something like physics, there wasn't much of it. During that time refugees from Poland started coming. There were those who survived the war in Russia, or somewhere with Aryan papers, in any case entire transports were coming, and, among others, my future husband, Leon, got there from Russia. He was in Poland and when it turned out he couldn't find anybody, because everyone was killed, he got on a transport to Bergen- Belsen and we met then.

For some time I worked for the English administration of the camp, they created a search office there. They created files and people from all over the world were searching for each other. They were looking for us and we were looking all over the world, so there were many of the staff there, and I typed, because I knew German and English. I remember also I used to type names of the sought-after on cinematic film that was shown in movie theatres before a movie, to help with the search. A few people got found thanks to this.

We didn't have to work and go to school in the camp. It was voluntary. They just fed us, we had these coupons, and there were diners, where we were getting food rations. And when I started working they paid us with cigarettes and chocolate. And you could exchange it somewhere. But at the end, right before we left, there was the first big exchange of that German money which was worth nothing, they would cut off some zeroes and print new money. Then I received my last pay in the search office in marks [German currency], not some cigarettes or something.

The camp was closed and there were gates through which we could normally go out to freedom, but once or twice there were some incidents and they locked those gates as punishment. Once somewhere in the area a cow or a calf got stolen, and they suspected, probably rightly so, that it was stolen by someone from the camp. There were also some demonstrations, when there was that episode with the ship 'Exodus.' We went then to demonstrate to Hamburg, which is where the ship was. [Editor's note: In July 1947 British war ships intercepted on the Palestinian coast the 'Exodus 1947' ship with 4,500 Jewish refugees on board. They were forced to turn back and go to the Marseille harbor in France. Then they had to go to Hamburg in Germany where the police forced them to leave the ship.]

Married life

I married my husband in Bergen. It was on 11th September 1947. We got married in the office, and I remember that my husband didn't understand German and didn't say anything. At some point I had to give him a sign so that he'd said 'Ja' [German for 'yes']. Some family members can't forgive us until this day that it wasn't a real Jewish wedding. But nobody was thinking about that back then.

Bergen was a town a few kilometers away from the camp. And that was the only contact with Germans we had then. We had everything else in the camp. There were also some trading contacts. We used to get coffee, which was unattainable to Germans. Germans drink a lot of coffee, and they were selling up, some of them completely, for coffee. I remember I bought an old sewing machine in Hamburg that I still have even today.

We stayed at the camp until 1948, and then decided to go back to Poland. Everyone was advising us against it. But I wanted to study more, and I thought it would only be possible in Poland. Besides, I was very much attached to the language and couldn't really imagine living anywhere else.

In Poland first we went to Wroclaw, because I already knew then that two younger brothers of my mother, Rafael and Mozes, had survived. They stayed in Russia during the war, and later came to Wroclaw. And we came with a box in which I had all my belongings, and that old Singer sewing machine, and I had an ax which I brought as well. I remember Mom's Brothers laughed at me when they saw the box, because they thought I brought some treasures from Germany, but in reality there were just my shabby things in there.

Later I went to Lodz to look for the rest of the family. And I got there exactly when my cousin Sara Lea [daughter of Baruch, Gizela Fudem's father's brother] and her husband were ready to leave for Israel. I managed to see her then. I decided to stay in Wroclaw then. It was still 1948, and after some two months of being in Poland I took university entry exams, humanities then, because I thought I'd study English, and I thought I'd like that. But later it turned out I preferred science and moved to the polytechnic where I got a degree in civic engineering, a bachelor's and a master's degree. In the meantime I began working at the construction mechanics faculty, I worked there as an assistant for nine years. And later I moved to a design office, where I worked until my retirement.

My daughter Barbara

Our only daughter was born in 1955. Her name is Barbara and she currently lives in the USA. She graduated from a university here, she took biochemistry, and she emigrated in 1981. She couldn't find herself a place for herself here. Besides, all her friends scattered around the world and she couldn't really find herself here. Since I had relatives in America, she decided to go there.

I remember, when she was little, she was a strong Polish patriot; when we started talking about maybe moving to Israel, she was close to committing suicide. It was absolutely unacceptable for her. She went to America with me when she was eleven, and for the first time she heard people talk badly about Poland. Because those were emigrants who escaped after the Kielce Pogrom 20. And she was very upset about it. Once, it so happened, that when they started talking, she ran away from someone's apartment, at night, and I was looking for her all over New York, a strange city. And she opened up a bit after that.

She always knew she was a Jew, we never hid anything from her, but she had little contact with Judaist practices, because we observed no traditions. But all her friends were non-Jewish, so she had a Christmas tree at home, which she never mentioned in the USA in order not to upset her cousin who was very conservative, and practically it was no problem for her. But when she went to the USA for the second time as a 17-year-old girl, she saw what it looked like and later, when she came back, she decided that if she has a family, her children would know something about Judaism. So she really missed it that she had gotten nothing [that is, that as a child she was not taught Jewish traditions].

Now, having two children, whenever she doesn't forget, she burns candles Friday nights, just for the kids. She celebrates some of the holidays, for example Purim. For Pesach she was a couple of times invited over by my pious family, so she knows what it's supposed to look like, and her children know they are Jewish. Her husband is Jewish, but from Belarus. He emigrated a year or two before she did. With his entire family, he has his parents, sister and aunt there. They aren't pious, he didn't really know anything about those things, and she kept teaching him, but until this day he mixes everything up.

Post-war events

Here in Wroclaw since the beginning we've had contact with Jewish circles connected with TSKZ 21. We also used to go to the Jewish theater on Swidnicka Street 22, back when Ida Kaminska 23 used to perform there. The only contact I have with the Jewish community is when I pick up matzah for Pesach. I also have an ID from the Association of the Repressed. And sometimes we went to celebrate the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising 24, because my husband comes from Warsaw. The group of those who go there keeps getting smaller and smaller.

I never tried to hide the fact that I'm Jewish. All my Polish co-workers always knew. I even taught them the Hebrew alphabet, I don't know if they still remember, but I taught them to sign their names. I couldn't stand to hide it. When during the war I spent a few weeks on the Aryan side, this false situation, when I couldn't say what I wanted, was very hard for me to stand. That's why later I never hid it again.

After the war I encountered anti-Semitism for the first time in 1956 25. I was working at Gazoprojekt, that was a design office, for a few months during that time. Then that thaw began. I overheard accidentally - because I don't think they did it on purpose to upset me - an extremely anti- Semitic conversation about Jews, that the persecutions are good, that maybe they'll finally go to work now, they should do some work, and so on... I was really shocked because I saw nothing of the sort during my studies.

I remember also in 1968 I didn't feel great, and it must have been obvious, because one of the co-workers came up to me, he bumped into me somewhere on the stairwell, patted my shoulder - 'Don't worry about it' - he said - 'First it was the AK 26, now it's the Jews, people have to have something to complain about.' And in 1968 27, because I was never in any party and never had any position, I didn't suffer either. Those who had something to loose, suffered. And I didn't. But I remember that witch-hunt on television and in the newspapers, and the fact that more and more of those few friends that I had suffered in some ways and decided to leave. And the disappointment when we understood that we don't really have much to look for here. Then this other side takes over, because when I'm among Jews from out of Poland, I feel very Polish, but when I'm among Polish non-Jews, I feel very Jewish. And there's nothing I can do about it, and I felt it very strongly during that time. It was a sea of hurt.

We considered emigration to Israel twice. First time in 1956, I was in Israel then, my daughter was still tiny. There was already this wave then and people began to talk about it. It was then when all my friends were leaving, so I went there to look around. And actually, if I had decided to do so then, I still had relatives there who would have helped, but my husband had no relatives and had a job here. He was independent and didn't want to go, start everything from scratch, and depend on someone else. And in 1968, when we considered it for the second time, my daughter didn't want to hear of it.

Martial Law 28, I was very upset about it. Because there was so much hope and openness, that when everything all of a sudden changed for the worse, I thought that it's something that could never go back to normal, that it would never come back. I remember how disappointed I was about 'Polityka' [a weekly magazine on social and political issues], because we used to read 'Polityka' earlier. And then it wasn't published for some time, and later there was some purge and a few authors that I used to enjoy reading disappeared from 'Polityka.' And then I realized what it means, such a purge.

I remember that 'Polityka' was saving me during that worst witch-hunt, since it was fairly decent. And now, after the change of the system we live, if I were younger, I'd say, better. If I were getting younger, not older. And I think that a lot of those people who complain and say that it's worse now, it's just because they have gotten old.

Today I live from day to day, and we go out less and less with my husband. We keep in touch with our daughter and grandchildren in the USA, and with some of friends from our youth, like for example that friend, Polish - Gabriela, who lives in Zakopane nowadays and she calls sometimes. My granddaughter's middle name is Gabriela in her honor.

A few years ago a publisher associated with the former camp in Bergen- Belsen was interested in my story from the time of the Holocaust, they even interviewed me. But now I could tell my whole life story for the first time, and I'm very happy about it.

Glossary

1 Partitions of Poland (1772-1795)

Three divisions of the Polish lands, in 1772, 1793 and 1795 by the neighboring powers: Russia, Austria and Prussia. Under the first partition Russia occupied the lands east of the Dzwina, Drua and Dnieper, a total of 92,000 km2 and a population of 1.3 million. Austria took the southern part of the Cracow and Sandomierz provinces, the Oswiecim and Zator principalities, the Ruthenian province (except for the Chelm lands) and part of the Belz province, a total of 83,000 km2 and a population of 2.6 million. Prussia annexed Warmia, the Pomerania, Malbork and Chelmno provinces (except for Gdansk and Torun) and the lands along the Notec river and Goplo lake, altogether 36,000 km2 and 580,000 souls. The second partition was carried out by Prussia and Russia. Prussia occupied the Poznan, Kalisz, Gniezno, Sieradz, Leczyca, Inowroclaw, Brzesc Kujawski and Plock provinces, the Dobrzyn lands, parts of the Rawa and Masovia provinces, and Torun and Gdansk, a total of 58,000 km2 and over a million inhabitants. Russia took the Ukrainian and Belarus lands east of the Druja-Pinsk-Zbrucz line, altogether 280,000 km2 and 3 million inhabitants. Under the third partition Russia obtained the rest of the Lithuanian, Belarus and Ukrainian lands east of the Bug and the Nemirov- Grodno line, a total area of 120,000 km2 and 1.2 million inhabitants. The Prussians took the remainder of Podlasie and Mazovia, Warsaw, and parts of Samogitia and Malopolska, 55,000 km2 and a population of 1 million. Austria annexed Cracow and the part of Malopolska between the Pilica, Vistula and Bug, and part of Podlasie and Masovia, a total surface area of 47,000 km2 and a population of 1.2 million.

2 Stutthof (Pol

Sztutowo): German concentration camp 36 km east of Gdansk. The Germans also created a series of satellite camps in the vicinity: Stolp, Heiligenbeil, Gerdauen, Jesau, Schippenbeil, Seerappen, Praust, Burggraben, Thorn and Elbing. The Stutthof camp operated from 2nd September 1939 until 9th May 1945. The first group of prisoners (several hundred people) were Jews from Gdansk. Until 1943 small groups of Jews from Warsaw, Bialystok and other places were sent there. In early 1944 some 20,000 Auschwitz survivors were relocated to Stutthof. In spring 1944 the camp was extended significantly and was made into a death camp; subsequent transports comprised groups of Jews from Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary and Lodz in Poland. Towards the end of 1944 around 12,000 prisoners were taken from Stutthof to camps in Germany - Dachau, Buchenwald, Neuengamme and Flossenburg. In January 1945 the evacuation of Stutthof and its satellite camps began. In that period some 29,000 prisoners passed through the camp (including 26,000 women), 26,000 of whom died during the evacuation. Of the 52,000 or so people who were taken to Stutthof and its satellites, around 3,000 survived.

3 German Invasion of Poland

The German attack of Poland on 1st September 1939 is widely considered the date in the West for the start of World War II. After having gained both Austria and the Bohemian and Moravian parts of Czechoslovakia, Hitler was confident that he could acquire Poland without having to fight Britain and France. (To eliminate the possibility of the Soviet Union fighting if Poland were attacked, Hitler made a pact with the Soviet Union, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.) On the morning of 1st September 1939, German troops entered Poland. The German air attack hit so quickly that most of Poland's air force was destroyed while still on the ground. To hinder Polish mobilization, the Germans bombed bridges and roads. Groups of marching soldiers were machine-gunned from the air, and they also aimed at civilians. On 1st September, the beginning of the attack, Great Britain and France sent Hitler an ultimatum - withdraw German forces from Poland or Great Britain and France would go to war against Germany. On 3rd September, with Germany's forces penetrating deeper into Poland, Great Britain and France both declared war on Germany.

4 Hasid

Follower of the Hasidic movement, a Jewish mystic movement founded in the 18th century that reacted against Talmudic learning and maintained that God's presence was in all of one's surroundings and that one should serve God in one's every deed and word. The movement provided spiritual hope and uplifted the common people. There were large branches of Hasidic movements and schools throughout Eastern Europe before World War II, each following the teachings of famous scholars and thinkers. Most had their own customs, rituals and life styles. Today there are substantial Hasidic communities in New York, London, Israel and Antwerp.

5 Anti-Semitism in Poland in the 1930s

From 1935-39 the activities of Polish anti-Semitic propaganda intensified. The Sejm introduced barriers to ritual slaughter, restrictions of Jews' access to education and certain professions. Nationalistic factions postulated the removal of Jews from political, social and cultural life, and agitated for economic boycotts to persuade all the country's Jews to emigrate. Nationalist activists took up posts outside Jewish shops and stalls, attempting to prevent Poles from patronizing them. Such campaigns were often combined with damage and looting of shops and beatings, sometimes with fatal consequences. From June 1935 until 1937 there were over a dozen pogroms, the most publicized of which was the pogrom in Przytyk in 1936. The Catholic Church also contributed to the rise of anti-Semitism.

6 Karlsbad (Czech name

Karlovy Vary): The most famous Bohemian spa, named after Bohemian King Charles (Karel) IV, who allegedly found the springs during a hunting expedition in 1358. It was one of the most popular resorts among the royalty and aristocracy in Europe for centuries.

7 Beit Yaakov (Hebrew

House of Jacob, Yiddish: Bajs Jakow): a school organization for religious education of Jewish girls. The first school of this type was founded in 1917 in Cracow by Sara Szenirer. The idea of creating female religious schools was supported by orthodox activists of the Agudat Israel party; a network of schools was started. In the 1930s over 110 Beit Yaakov institutions with almost 31,000 students were operating in Poland. A seminar for teachers started operating in Cracow in 1927, and a business high school in Warsaw in 1935. The institution also used to publish its own magazine, 'Bajs Jakov.' The program of Baj Yakov schools included learning the basics of the Hebrew language, general information on the Pentateuch, the learning of psalms and prayers meant for women, lectures on liturgy, holidays, rules of Jewish ethics. With time lay subjects (Polish language, Polish literature and history, geography) were also added to the schools' program, thanks to which they attained the status of public schools.

8 Tarnow Ghetto

The population of Tarnow was 52,000 in 1939, out of which 48 percent were Jews. In March 1941 they were forced to move into a designated area, which was turned into a ghetto in February 1942. Later Jews were also brought in from the surrounding towns and villages, as well as from the Czech lands and Germany; altogether some 40,000 people were deported there. From the summer of 1942 until September 1943 there were continuous deportations to the death camp in Belzec. In September 1943 the ghetto was liquidated; 2,000 people were sent to the camp in Plaszow, and 8,000 to Auschwitz. A few hundred workers employed in the town managed to survive there until 1944.

9 Hitler's rise to power

In the German parliamentary elections in January 1933, the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) won one- third of the votes. On 30th January 1933 the German president swore in Adolf Hitler, the party's leader, as chancellor. On 27th February 1933 the building of the Reichstag (the parliament) in Berlin was burned down. The government laid the blame with the Bulgarian communists, and a show trial was staged. This served as the pretext for ushering in a state of emergency and holding a re-election. It was won by the NSDAP, which gained 44% of the votes, and following the cancellation of the communists' votes it commanded over half of the mandates. The new Reichstag passed an extraordinary resolution granting the government special legislative powers and waiving the constitution for 4 years. This enabled the implementation of a series of moves that laid the foundations of the totalitarian state: all parties other than the NSDAP were dissolved, key state offices were filled by party luminaries, and the political police and the apparatus of terror swiftly developed.

10 Eviction of Polish Jews from Germany

From October 1938 until the spring of 1939 there was a camp in Zbaszyn for Polish Jews resettled from the Third Reich. The German government, anticipating the act passed by the Polish Sejm (Parliament) depriving people who had been out of the country for more than five years of their citizenship, deported over 20,000 Polish Jews, some 6,000 of whom were sent to Zbaszyn. As the Polish border police did not want to let them into Poland, these people were trapped in the strip of no-man's land, without shelter, water or food. After a few days they were resettled to a temporary camp on the Polish side, where they spent several months. Jewish communities in Poland organized aid for the victims; families took in relatives, and Joint also provided assistance.

11 Anschluss

The German term "Anschluss" (literally: connection) refers to the inclusion of Austria in a "Greater Germany" in 1938. In February 1938, Austrian Chancellor Schuschnigg had been invited to visit Hitler at his mountain retreat at Berchtesgaden. A two-hour tirade against Schuschnigg and his government followed, ending with an ultimatum, which Schuschnigg signed. On his return to Vienna, Schuschnigg proved both courageous and foolhardy. He decided to reaffirm Austria's independence, and scheduled a plebiscite for Sunday, 13th March, to determine whether Austrians wanted a "free, independent, social, Christian and united Austria." Hitler' protégé, Seyss-Inquart, presented Schuschnigg with another ultimatum: Postpone the plebiscite or face a German invasion. On 11th March Schuschnigg gave in and canceled the plebiscite. On 12th March 1938 Hitler announced the annexation of Austria. When German troops crossed into Austria, they were welcomed with flowers and Nazi flags. Hitler arrived later that day to a rapturous reception in his hometown of Linz. Less well disposed Austrians soon learned what the "Anschluss" held in store for them. Known Socialists and Communists were stripped to the waist and flogged. Jews were forced to scrub streets and public latrines. Schuschnigg ended up in a concentration camp and was only freed in 1945 by American troops.

12 Jewish police

Carrying out their will the German authorities appointed a Jewish police in the ghettos. Besides maintaining order in general in the territory of the ghetto the Jewish police was also responsible for guarding the ghetto gates. During liquidation campaigns most of them collaborated with the Nazis; in the Warsaw ghetto each policeman had to supply at least five people to the Umschlagplatz every day. The reason for joining the Jewish police, first of all, was based on the false promises of the Germans that policemen and their families would be saved. In the Warsaw ghetto the Jewish police was headed by Jakub Szerynski; during the 'Grossaktion' (the main liquidation campaign in the summer of 1942), the Jewish Fighting Organization issued a death warrant on him, and he was to be executed on 20th August 1942 by Izrael Kanal. The attack failed, Szerynski was only wounded, and in January 1943 he committed suicide.

13 Placowka

Lit. 'station' (Polish), the place of work of Jews employed outside the ghetto. Jewish workers used to work for example on the railroad, in private German companies, in businesses and institutions, SS, police and Wehrmacht, and also in city administration. Jewish workers lived in the ghetto and every day were leaving for many hours to work outside the ghetto. They were paid for their work with a modest meal, sometimes a small amount of money. 'Placowki' existed since the beginning of the occupation; their number grew in the spring of 1942. During liquidation actions in the ghettos their employees were often protected, at least for some time, from deportation to a death camp.

14 Armbands

From the beginning of the occupation, the German authorities issued all kinds of decrees discriminating against the civilian population, in particular the Jews. On 1st December 1939 the Germans ordered all Jews over the age of 12 to wear a distinguishing emblem. In Warsaw it was a white armband with a blue star of David, to be worn on the right sleeve of the outer garment. In some towns Jews were forced to sew yellow stars onto their clothes. Not wearing the armband was punishable - initially with a beating, later with a fine or imprisonment, and from 15th October 1941 with the death penalty (decree issued by Governor Hans Frank).

15 Kenkarta

(German: Kennkarte - ID card) confirmed the identity and place of residence of its holder. It bore a photograph, a thumbprint, and the address and signature of its holder. It was the only document of its type issued to Poles during the Nazi occupation.

16 Belzec

Village in Lublin region of Poland (Tomaszow district). In 1940 the Germans created a forced labor camp there for 2,500 Jews and Roma. In November 1941 it was transformed into an extermination camp (SS Sonderkommando Belzec or Dienststelle Belzec der Waffen SS) under the 'Reinhard-Aktion,' in which the Germans murdered around 600,000 people (chiefly in gas chambers), including approximately 550,000 Polish Jews (approx. 300,000 from the province of Galicia) and Jews from the USSR, Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Holland, Germany, Norway and Hungary; many Poles from surrounding towns and villages and from Lwow also died here, mostly for helping Jews. In November 1942 the Nazis began liquidating the camp. In the spring of 1943 the camp was demolished and the corpses of the gassed victims exhumed from their mass graves and burned. The last 600 Jews employed in this work were then sent to the Sobibor camp, where they died in the gas chambers.

17 Plaszow Camp

Located near Cracow, it was originally a forced labor camp and subsequently became a concentration camp. The construction of the camp began in summer 1940. In 1941 the camp was extended and the first Jews were deported there. The site chosen comprised two Jewish cemeteries. There were about 2,000 prisoners there before the liquidation of the Podgorze (Cracow) ghetto on 13th and 14th March 1943 and the transportation of the remaining Jews to Plaszow camp. Afterwards, the camp population rose to 8,000. By the second half of 1943 its population had risen to 12,000, and by May-June 1944 the number of permanent prisoners had increased to 24,000 (with an unknown number of temporary prisoners), including 6,000-8,000 Jews from Hungary. Until the middle of 1943 all the prisoners in the Plaszow forced labor camp were Jews. In July 1943, a separate section was fenced off for Polish prisoners who were sent to the camp for breaking the laws of the German occupational government. The conditions of life in the camp were made unbearable by the SS commander Amon Goeth, who became the commandant of Plaszow in February 1943. He held the position until September 1944 when he was arrested by the SS for stealing from the camp warehouses. As the Russian forces advanced further and further westward, the Germans began the systematic evacuation of the slave labor camps in their path. From the camp in Plaszow, many hundreds were sent to Auschwitz, others westward to Mauthausen and Flossenburg. On 18th January 1945 the camp was evacuated in the form of death marches, during which thousands of prisoners died from starvation or disease, or were shot if they were too weak to walk. The last prisoners were transferred to Germany on 16th January 1945. More than 150,000 civilians were held prisoner in Plaszow.

18 Birkenau (Pol

: Brzezinka): Also known as Auschwitz II. Set up in October 1941 following a decision by Heinrich Himmler in the village of Brzezinka (Ger.: Birkenau) close to Auschwitz, as a prisoner-of-war camp. It retained this title until March 1944, although it was never used as a POW camp. It comprised sectors of wooden sheds for different types of prisoners (women, men, Jewish families from Terezin, Roma, etc.), and continued to be expanded until the end of 1943. From the beginning of 1942 it was an extermination camp. The Birkenau camp covered a total area of 140 ha and comprised some 300 sheds variously used as living quarters, ancillary quarters and crematoria. Birkenau, Auschwitz I and scores of satellite camps made up the largest center for extermination of the Jews. The majority of the Jews deported here were sent straight to the gas chambers to be put to death immediately, without registration. There were 400,000 prisoners registered there for longer periods, half of whom were Jews. The second-largest group of prisoners were Poles (140,000). Prisoners died en mass as a result of slave labor, starvation, the inhuman living conditions, beatings, torture and executions. The bodies of those murdered were initially buried and later burned in the crematoria and on pyres in specially dug pits. Due to the efforts made by the SS to erase the evidence of their crimes and their destruction of the majority of the documentation on the prisoners, and also to the fact that the Soviet forces seized the remaining documentation, it is impossible to establish the exact number of victims of Auschwitz-Birkenau. On the basis of the fragmentary documentation available, it can be assumed that in total approx. 1.5 million prisoners were murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau, some 90% of who were Jews.

19 Bergen-Belsen

Concentration camp located in northern Germany. Bergen- Belsen was established in April 1943 as a detention camp for prisoners who were to be exchanged with Germans imprisoned in Allied countries. Bergen- Belsen was liberated by the British army on 15th April, 1945. The soldiers were shocked at what they found, including 60,000 prisoners in the camp, many on the brink of death, and thousands of unburied bodies lying about. (Source: Rozett R. - Spector S.: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Facts on File, G.G. The Jerusalem Publishing House Ltd. 2000, pg. 139 -141)

20 Kielce Pogrom

On 4th July 1946 the alleged kidnapping of a Polish boy led to a pogrom in which 42 people were killed and over 40 wounded. The pogrom also prompted other anti-Jewish incidents in Kielce region. These events caused mass emigrations of Jews to Israel and other countries.

21 Social and Cultural Society of Polish Jews (TSKZ)

Founded in 1950 when the Central Committee of Polish Jews merged with the Jewish Society of Culture. From 1950-1991 it was the sole body representing Jews in Poland. Its statutory aim was to develop, preserve and propagate Jewish culture. During the socialist period this aim was subordinated to communist ideology. Post-1989 most young activists gravitated towards other Jewish organizations. However, the SCSPJ continues to organize a range of cultural events and has its own magazine - The Jewish Word. It is primarily an organization of older people, who, however, have been involved with it for years.

22 Ester Rachel Kaminska Public Jewish Theater

Created in 1950 through the merging of the Jewish Theater from Lodz and the Lower Silesian Jewish Theater from Wroclaw. The seat of the management of the theater was first located in Wroclaw and then moved to Lodz. Ida Kaminska, Ester Rachel Kaminska's daughter, exceptional actress and the only female director in Jewish interwar theater, was the artistic director from 1955. The literary director of the theater was Dawid Sfard. In 1955 the seat of the theater was moved to Warsaw. Ida Kaminski was the director of the theater until 1968 when, due to increasing anti-Semitic policies of the government, she left for Vienna (from Vienna she went to Tel Aviv and later to New York). Most of the best actors left with her. After Kaminska's departure, the theater was directed by Juliusz Berger and, since 1969, by Szymon Szurmiej. The theater performed its plays all over the country and, since 1956, also abroad. The theater still stages plays by Jewish writers (for example Sholem Aleichem, An-ski). It is the only public theater, which puts on performances in Yiddish.

23 Kaminska, Ida (1899-1980)

Jewish actress and theater director. She made her debut in 1916 on the stage of the Warsaw theater founded by her parents. From 1921-28 she and her husband, Martin Sigmund Turkow, were the directors of the Varshaver Yidisher Kunsteater. From 1933 to 1939 she ran her own theater group in Warsaw. During World War II she was in Lvov, and was evacuated to Kyrgizia (Frunze). On her return to Poland in 1947 she became director of the Jewish theaters in Lodz, Wroclaw and Warsaw (1955-68 the E.R. Kaminska Theater). In 1967 she traveled to the US with her theater and was very successful there. Following the events of March 1968 she resigned from her post as theater director and immigrated to the US, where she lived until her death. Her best known roles include the leading roles in Mirele Efros (Gordin), Hedda Gabler (Ibsen) and Mother Courage and Her Children (Brecht), and her role in the film The Shop on Main Street (Kadár and Klos, 1965). Ida Kaminska also wrote her memoirs, entitled My Life, My Theatre (1973).

24 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (or April Uprising)

On 19th April 1943 the Germans undertook their third deportation campaign to transport the last inhabitants of the ghetto, approximately 60,000 people, to labor camps. An armed resistance broke out in the ghetto, led by the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB) and the Jewish Military Union (ZZW) - all in all several hundred armed fighters. The Germans attacked with 2,000 men, tanks and artillery. The insurrectionists were on the attack for the first few days, and subsequently carried out their defense from bunkers and ruins, supported by the civilian population of the ghetto, who contributed with passive resistance. The Germans razed the Warsaw ghetto to the ground on 15th May 1943. Around 13,000 Jews perished in the Uprising, and around 50,000 were deported to Treblinka extermination camp. About 100 of the resistance fighters managed to escape from the ghetto via the sewers.

25 Polish October 1956

The culmination of the political, social and economic transformations that brought about the collapse of the dictatorial regime after the death of Stalin (1953). From 1954 the political system in Poland gradually thawed (censorship was scaled down, for instance, and political prisoners were slowly released - in April and May 1956 some 35,000 people were let out of prison). But the economic situation was deteriorating and the social and political crisis mounting. On 28th June a strike and demonstration on the streets of Poznan escalated into an armed revolt, which was suppressed by police and army units. From 19th to 21st October 1956 a political breakthrough occurred, the 8th Plenum of the PZPR Central Committee met under social pressure (rallies in factories and universities), and there was the threat of intervention by Soviet troops. Gomulka was appointed First Secretary of the PZPR Central Committee, and won the support of many groups, including a rally numbering hundreds of thousands of people in Warsaw on 24th October. From 15th to 18th November the terms on which Soviet troops were stationed in Poland were agreed, a proportion of Poland's debt was annulled, the resettlement of Poles back from the USSR was resumed, and by the end of 1956 a large number of people found guilty in political trials were rehabilitated. There were changes at the top in the Polish Army: Marshal Rokossowski and the Soviet generals went back to the USSR, and changes also to the civilian authorities and the programs of political factions. In November 1956 permission was granted for the creation of workers' councils in state enterprises, and the management of the economy was improved somewhat. In subsequent months, however, the process of partial democratization was halted, and supporters of continuing change ('revisionists') were censured.

26 Home Army (Armia Krajowa - AK)

Conspiratorial military organization, part of the Polish armed forces operating within Polish territory (within pre-1st September 1939 borders) during World War II. Created on 14th February 1942, subordinate to the Supreme Commander and the Polish Government in Exile. Its mission was to regain Poland's sovereignty through armed combat and inciting to a national uprising. In 1943 the AK had over 300,000 members. AK units organized diversion, sabotage, revenge and partisan campaigns. Its military intelligence was highly successful. On 19th January 1945 the AK was disbanded on the order of its commander, but some of its members continued their independence activities throughout 1945- 47. In 1944-45 tens of thousands of AK soldiers were exiled and interned in the USSR, in places such as Ryazan, Borovichi and Ostashkov. Soldiers of the AK continued to suffer repression in Poland until 1956; many were sentenced to death or long-term imprisonment on trumped-up charges. Right after the war, official propaganda accused the Home Army of murdering Jews who were hiding in the forests. There is no doubt that certain AK units as well as some individuals tied to AK were in fact guilty of such acts. The scale of this phenomenon is very difficult to determine, and has been the object of debates among historians.

27 Gomulka Campaign

A campaign to sack Jews employed in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the army and the central administration. The trigger of this anti-Semitic campaign was the involvement of the Socialist Bloc countries on the Arab side in the Middle East conflict, in connection with which Moscow ordered purges in state institutions. On 19th June 1967, at a trade union congress, the then First Secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party [PZPR], Wladyslaw Gomulka, accused the Jews of lack of loyalty to the state and of publicly demonstrating their enthusiasm for Israel's victory in the Six-Day-War. This marked the start of purges among journalists and people of other creative professions. Poland also severed diplomatic relations with Israel. On 8th March 1968 there was a protest at Warsaw University. The Ministry of Internal Affairs responded by launching a press campaign and organizing mass demonstrations in factories and workplaces during which 'Zionists' and 'trouble-makers' were indicted and anti-Semitic and anti-intelligentsia slogans shouted. Following the events of March, purges were also staged in all state institutions, from factories to universities, on criteria of nationality and race. 'Family liability' was also introduced (e.g. with respect to people whose spouses were Jewish). Jews were forced to emigrate. From 1968-1971 15,000-30,000 people left Poland. They were stripped of their citizenship and right of return.

28 Martial law in Poland in 1981

Extraordinary legal measures introduced by a State Council decree on 13th December 1981 in an attempt to defend the communist system and destroy the democratic opposition. The martial law decree suspended the activity of associations and trades unions, including Solidarity, introduced a curfew, imposed travel restrictions, gave the authorities the right to arrest opposition activists, search private premises, and conduct body searches, ban public gatherings. A special, non- constitutional state authority body was established, the Military Board of National Salvation (WRON), which oversaw the implementation of the martial law regulations, headed by General Wojciech Jaruzelski, the armed forces supreme commander. Over 5,900 persons were arrested during the martial law, chiefly Solidarity activists. Local Solidarity branches organized protest strikes. The Wujek coal mine, occupied by striking miners, was stormed by police assault squads, leading to the death of nine miners. The martial law regulations were gradually being eased, by December 1982, for instance, all interned opposition activists were released. On 31st December 1982, the martial law was suspended, and on 21st July 1983, it was revoked.

Larisa Gorelova

City: St. Petersburg
Country: Russia
Interviewer: Alexandra Ulman
Date of interview: November 2002

In front of me is a woman with lively dark eyes; she is not very tall. 

Even after retirement she continues to lead an active life: she often goes to the theater, to classical concerts at the Philharmonic and to art exhibitions. 

Almost every minute of her life is scheduled, so it wasn't easy to make an appointment with her. 

A very important part in Larisa Borisovna's reminiscences is occupied by the analysis of her father's fate, who spent most of his life in prison; she has a great desire to tell his story rather than her own, as she thinks, she's led a rather common life. 

  • My family background

My name is Larisa Borisovna Gorelova. I was born in 1927 in Leningrad [today St. Petersburg]. My father's parents lived in Minsk, in Belarus. I lived in that town since my birth and until the Great Patriotic War 1. Prewar Minsk was a large city and the capital of the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic, a cultural and industrial center. The Belarusian Academy of Sciences and the Minsk State University were located in Minsk. Broad, spacious avenues in the center of the city were built up with new modern buildings, though there were wooden buildings on the outskirts of the city. During the Great Patriotic War Minsk was almost totally destroyed and after the war it was, one might say, constructed anew. I saw it when I visited the town on a business-trip many years later.

My paternal grandfather, Leib Oliker, was a tinsmith. He died when my father was six months old, in 1901. That's all I know about my paternal grandfather. My paternal grandmother, whose name I don't remember, had to raise three small children; she was hired by people to do hard work: she did the washing and cleaned their apartments. She did all she could do alone to raise her children: her elder son, whose name I can't remember, Peisakh-Elya and Ber, my father. Grandmother's elder son volunteered for the Red Army during the Civil War 2 and perished as a hero, defending Minsk. Her second son, Peisakh-Elya, was arrested in April 1920 by the Belopolsk gendarmerie and exiled to a Gulag camp 3. Upon his return he lived with his mother in Minsk. He must have perished in a ghetto during the Great Patriotic War. My father, Ber Leibovich Oliker, was the youngest, the third son of Grandmother and Grandfather Oliker. I know nothing else about my paternal grandparents, since I communicated very little with my father - he spent many years in the camps and later left my mother, besides, it wasn't our custom to ask about the past.

During the Civil War [1918-1920] Grandmother assisted the underground Komsomol 4 organization, of which her sons were members. I know that she kept and delivered prohibited literature and organized meetings for underground organization members in her apartment. Owing to that in the 1930s she obtained a personal pension upon the solicitation of the Central Komsomol Committee of Belarus. Grandmother was religious only until the Soviet Power came into force in 1917. She died in a ghetto in Belarus during the Great Patriotic War, but our family doesn't know the exact date.

My mother's father, Alter-Girsh Bunin, was born in 1876 in the town of Slutsk, which is located 100 kilometers to the south of Minsk in Belarus, in the Jewish pale 5 and studied in cheder. He wasn't an Orthodox Jew, didn't observe Sabbath, only celebrated Jewish holidays such as Chanukkah, Rosh Hashanah and Pesach, for which national meals were cooked at home. After Grandmother's death in 1931 the family forgot all Jewish holidays and celebrated only secular holidays, as all Soviet people did. Grandfather dressed as the petty bourgeoisie did, who his family belonged to: he wore a jacket and shirts with ties. He always had a small full beard. Grandfather was a very fair, kind and diligent man with a sense of self-esteem. Even neighbors came to him to settle some disputes of theirs.

My grandmother, Gita Bunina [nee Shapiro] was born in 1878 in Storobino in Belarus. She finished cheder 6, as a grown-up girl of 15 years of age, but later, by the 1900s she was already a mother of a big family and a housewife. She was a very merry and kind woman. She welcomed all distant and close relatives in her home. Her home was very hospitable, relatives came, friends visited, all of Grandmother's sisters, cousins, nephews came to stay, friends of her adolescent daughters came; guests were always seated at the table, even if they were unexpected, and were treated to the best food. The daughters' friends came, sang songs, danced, recited poems.

On big Jewish holidays, like Rosh Hashanah, Pesach and Purim Grandmother collected various delicious things at home and took them to poor families in Slutsk. She was a very beautiful, kind, loving and faithful mother and wife. She dressed like the petty bourgeoisie, not like Jews: she put on dresses, blouses and skirts. Grandmother didn't wear a wig, she had long hair and she braided it into a beautiful braid and placed it on the back of her head. She died in 1931 in Minsk during an operation on her kidneys at a rather young age - she was 53. She was buried in Minsk at the Jewish cemetery. When the Fascists occupied Minsk, her grave was destroyed, so she has been commemorated at Grandfather's, her husband's, grave, who died in 1949 in Leningrad. When Mother's sisters, Grandfather's daughters, put up a monument on his grave at the Jewish Preobrazhensky cemetery, Grandmother's name was included on the gravestone near Grandfather's.

The first child of my maternal grandparents was a boy, but he died in infancy. After that Grandmother gave birth to eight girls: Liber-Esther, Lyubov in her passport 7; Beilya, Berta in everyday life - my mother; Maria; Hanna, Anna in everyday life; Reizl, Rosa in everyday life; Matlya, Matilda in everyday life; Eshka, Esphir in everyday life; and Pasha, who was born 21 years after the first daughter was born. As they grew up, the Bunin sisters became assistants to their parents on the land and at home. They strove for education and read a lot at that time already; they learnt poems by heart and helped each other. The girls were accustomed to labor since their childhood; they got up early in the morning and went to work in the field. They almost had no toys, toys were considered luxury. Dresses and coats were bought cheap and durable, so that they would be worn by the younger daughters. Only Grandfather had a separate bed, all his daughters slept in twos and Grandmother slept with the youngest daughter. Various artistic troupes came to Slutsk from different towns, but the family very seldom went to the circus and theater, they were always busy with the household.

Grandfather Alter had a house, an old wooden one, rather stocky, but a house of his own. When he married my grandmother, he rented some land and was engaged in vegetable growing. They had, though not always, a horse, a cow and geese. In 1912 he bought out the land, about two hectares and continued to do vegetable gardening together with his daughters. All their family worked on the land and an average income was ensured. Their own land gave them food and saved them from starvation. They didn't have food in abundance, but they had enough: the staple food was bread, potatoes, vegetables, curdled milk, a piece of meat. They also had butter, eggs, chicken, white bread and sausage for holidays.

My grandparents' family belonged to the class of the petty bourgeoisie. Their family had no money, only debts. But the neighbors for some reason despised my grandparents, believing them to be rich. They didn't let them live quietly and composed denunciations against them. As a result Grandfather was expelled from the kolkhoz 8 and he kept his own household: cattle, geese, chicken and a vegetable garden. Since he was deprived of his right to vote, one of his daughters was expelled from the Party, of which she was a devoted member, and another one was expelled from university.

Grandfather was the favorite of the whole family and of his eight daughters; he spent a lot of strength and energy on their education. Berta, my mother, was the first to enter a gymnasium [high school]. Grandfather didn't agree to it at first, he thought that there wasn't enough funds for the education of all his daughters, and that it was unfair to give education only to one. However, Grandmother insisted and all their daughters obtained education at a gymnasium and at schools after the Revolution 9; later all obtained university education. Grandfather understood the benefit of education and was pleased with his daughters' success at gymnasium and when they graduated from university.

During the Soviet time, in 1929, Grandfather was dispossessed as a kulak 10 He worked in a kolkhoz and was dismissed from it as a kulak. After his wife died in 1931, he moved to his daughter Maria in Minsk, he stayed in evacuation in Kyrgyzstan with her and moved to Leningrad later. He died in 1949 and was buried at the Jewish Preobrazhensky cemetery in Leningrad, the memory of him is the most respectful and blessed.

My grandparents' elder daughter, Liber-Esther, Lyubov by passport, was born in 1900. When she grew up, she left for Warsaw [today Poland], where she nursed one of her aunt's children, I don't know exactly which aunt's. Then she came back and studied at the History Faculty of the Belarusian University and graduated from it in 1929. She married Georgy Zaitsev, a Jew, born in 1902. He studied at the Belarusian University and, as an undergraduate, was sent to the Institute of Red Professorate in Moscow to study at the Faculty of Economics and graduated from it in 1931. Lyubov went to Moscow together with him.

After graduation Georgy was assigned to party work in the Caucasus. At first he was a political department head, then he was transferred to the position of First Secretary at the district committee of the Communist Party in a small town. In 1937 he was arrested and in 1938 executed by shooting 11. At that time arrests of people, who held high party positions, were very frequent. Usually they were groundlessly accused of anti-Soviet activity. In 1937 Lyubov was also arrested; she worked as a teacher of Russian at that time. They had two sons, born in 1929 and 1934. When she was being driven in the mountains in an open truck to the prison, she managed to tear off a piece of her shirt and write a note, asking to help her children. That note fell into good hands and was sent to the right address in the town, where they lived. Kind people took her children to her sisters in Leningrad. She was in prison until 1939, but the court wasn't able to accuse her of anything, so she was released as there had been no crime committed.

She took her children from Leningrad and remained in the Caucasus before the war. When the war broke out and the Germans approached the Caucasus, she tried to get to the railroad on some cart, in order to get to Russia. The husband of one of her sisters, Boris, helped her. He brought her to the train and sent her to evacuation to Kyrgyzstan, where all our family lived already. After the war Lyubov worked as a teacher of Russian. She died in 1965. She was buried at the Jewish cemetery.

The elder son of Lyubov and Georgy Zaitsev, Vitaly, lived with his mother in the Caucasus. He entered the Ulyanov-Lenin 12 Electrical Engineering Institute in Leningrad, graduated from it and worked as an engineer for many years. Now he is retired. He met his wife-to-be, Maya Shapiro, a Jewess, in a line for tickets to the Philharmonic society in Leningrad. They have two children: son Sergey, who lives at present in the USA and daughter Galina, who lives in Petersburg.

The name of Lyubov and Georgy Zaitsev younger son is Sigrid. When his parents were repressed in the Caucasus, Lyubov's sister, Rosa, took him in and brought him to Kyrgyzstan, where she was assigned to work 13 after graduation from the First Medical Institute. He lived there with Rosa and her husband until his mother Lyubov was released from prison. Later he returned to the Caucasus with his mother and stayed with her during evacuation. He graduated from the Leningrad Electrical Engineering Institute. At present he lives in Moscow with his second wife. He has four sons, two from his first marriage and two from his second marriage. He still works at the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Mechanics and Electrical Engineering as an engineer.

The second daughter was my mother, Beilya Bunina. The third daughter of my grandparents, Maria, born in 1905, entered the Law Faculty of the Belarusian University after the gymnasium and worked as a lawyer in Minsk before the Great Patriotic War. Later she was in evacuation in Kyrgyzstan. After the war she worked as a legal consultant in Glavleningradstroy, General Municipal Construction Administration, until her retirement. Maya [Maria] died in 1980 and was buried at the Jewish cemetery [in Leningrad]. Her husband, Meyer Bogin, a Jew, worked as an engineer and was repressed in 1937: he was accused of 'anti-Soviet activity,' as was the custom in those days, and executed by shooting in 1938. Their son, Artyom, born in 1932, an engineer, worked in Giprocement, the Scientific Research Institute of Cement Industry. He died in 1993 and was buried near his mother at the Jewish cemetery. Artyom had two children: Victor, a Mining Institute graduate and Tatiana, a Librarian Institute graduate.

The fourth daughter of my grandparents, Hanna, was born in 1907. She finished school and later the Faculty of Biology of the Minsk University in 1930. In the same year she married Solomon Kaplan, who graduated from the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute. He worked as an engineer all his life at various civil plants. He stayed in Leningrad during the blockade 14 and survived. He died in 1984 and was buried in Leningrad at the Jewish cemetery. They had two children. Galina was a German language interpreter, who also knew several other languages; she is now retired. Their son Ilya was born in 1945 after the war. He still works at the plant formerly named after Sverdlov. His wife Natalia is an engineer. They have two daughters, both graduated from the Polytechnic Institute and both married their fellow- students and both live in the USA. Both have children. Hanna worked as a librarian; she died in 2000 in St. Petersburg. She was buried at the Jewish cemetery.

The fifth daughter of my grandparents, Reizl, born in 1909, was the most beautiful in the family. She united all sisters around herself. After finishing school she graduated from the Medical Institute. She got married while at university. Her husband, David, perished during the siege of Leningrad. After graduation from the institute she was assigned to Kyrgyzstan, got married for the second time, to Nikolai Amurov. All family got together at their place during the Great Patriotic War. After the war Reizl worked as a doctor at the Railroad hospital, divorced Amurov and got married for the third time, to Boris Bely, also a doctor, but a veterinarian, with whom she lived for 25 years. He also survived the war; it caught him in Tallinn, in Estonia. He left for Russia on a ship and finished the war in Germany. Bely died in 1971. They had no children, and Reizl was a patroness of all her nephews and nieces. There were twelve of us. She died in 1989 in Leningrad and was buried at the Jewish cemetery.

The sixth daughter of my grandparents, Matlya, was born in 1912. After school she studied at the Librarian Institute, completed three years and quit the institute because of an illness. She worked as an elementary school teacher and a librarian. She married Boris Epstein, a Jew, a communication engineer. Boris was a Soviet Army officer, a communication engineer, during the Great Patriotic War and stayed in Leningrad during the siege, but left for business: he laid the line along Ladoga Lake, where the Life Road 15 lay; he also laid the communication line under Volga during the Stalingrad battle 16, and he finished the war in Germany. After the war he worked for a long time at the Scientific Research Institute of Communication. He made a lot of inventions and managed the development of communication equipment. He died in 2002 at the age of 90. Matilda died in 1987 and was buried at the Jewish cemetery in Leningrad. Their son, Yevgeny, born in 1935, works as a chief engineer at the river register for the North-Western Shipping Company. His daughter Yelena, an economist, works at the Navy Administration as an accountant.

The seventh daughter of my grandparents, Eshka, was born in 1915. She went to school after the Revolution of 1917, studied at a Jewish school and lived in Slutsk. After finishing school, she left for Leningrad, entered the Leningrad Institute of Fine Mechanics and Optics and graduated from it in 1938. She didn't manage to defend her diploma, as she was assigned to work in Kazan, when the Great Patriotic War broke out. After the war she returned to Leningrad and defended her diploma in 1945. She worked as a teacher in navy schools at the places of her husband's work; she taught engineering sciences. She worked at the Anti-aircraft school, the Navy school in Kronstadt [Kronstadt is a town on Kotlin island in the Finnish gulf, 10 km from the western coastal line of Leningrad] until her retirement age.

Her husband, Naum Fruman, born in 1915, was her fellow-student, but as an undergraduate, he was taken to the Navy Academy, from where he graduated as a navy officer in the field of shooting directing equipment. Right after graduation from the academy he was assigned to work in Tallinn. When the Great Patriotic War broke out, they managed to leave Estonia for Kronstadt with the last ship. Their ship was bombed en route and they were picked up by a Soviet ship which headed for the island. Thus they reached Kronstadt. After that Naum worked at the Artillery Administration during the war and was transferred after the war to Kronstadt as a chief engineer for the Repair plant, where he worked until the Doctors' Plot 17 started in 1953. In 1953 he was slandered in connection with the Doctors' Plot, demobilized and fired from the Kronstadt plant. He came to Leningrad and couldn't find a job for a rather long time. His classmates helped him find a position as principal designer in the 'Azimuth' company. He died in 1999.

Eshka and Naum's elder daughter, Galina, was born in 1939. She graduated from university and worked all her life as an engineer in the 'Azimuth' company. Her husband Roman Karpelson stayed in Leningrad with his parents during the war. His parents died during the siege and he was raised in a children's home. Roman graduated from the Mining Institute and worked as a geologist for a long time. They have two children. Their elder son Vadim is an engineer, he lives in Israel now. Their younger son Alexander graduated from university and is now the 'Kodak' company manager in St. Petersburg; he deals with photo and other type of printing. Eshka's son Leonid, born in 1948, graduated from the Bonch-Bruevich Electrical Engineering Institute and worked as an engineer in Petersburg. Now he lives in Boston in the USA. Eshka lives in St. Petersburg, she is 87 years old.

The youngest, eighth daughter of my grandparents, Pasha, was born in 1921. Her mother died, when Pasha was ten years old. Since then she lived with her elder sisters, who considered her their daughter. At first she lived with Berta, my mother, in Minsk and went to school there. Later, when she was a 7th grade pupil, she left for Leningrad, to her sisters' place, where she finished school and entered the Medical Institute. She managed to finish three years before the Great Patriotic War. In evacuation in Kyrgyzstan she finished the Kyrgyz Medical Institute at the end of the war and managed to serve in the army in Ukraine. During the war she married Yakov Umansky, who was killed at the frontline in 1944.

After the war she lived with her sister Berta in Brest where she married Ikheil Manevich, born in 1917. He graduated from the Medical Institute before the war and found himself at the frontline right after. He was a medical officer during the war and finished the war in Berlin. After the war, in 1947 he came to Brest, met Pasha, married her and they both left for Germany. In 1948 their elder son Gennady was born, who graduated from the Pulp and Paper Industry Institute in Leningrad and worked as an engineer in the field of pulp and paper combine construction. At present he lives in Germany. Their daughter, Faina, was born in 1952. She married Ilya Vikstein, who passed away in 1978. Faina and Gennady left for Germany at the beginning of the 1990s with their children, where Faina died in 1993. Pasha worked as a pediatrician for many years and died in 1997.

  • My parents

My mother, Beilya [Berta] Bunina, was born in 1902 in the town of Slutsk in Belarus. She was the second daughter in the family and helped her parents with the household and in the vegetable garden. She was Grandmother's right hand and helped to look after the younger children. She read a lot and was well-educated. She was the first to pave the way to education before the Revolution, as she decided to study in a gymnasium, not in cheder. Grandmother, unlike Grandfather, understood the necessity of her daughters' education, supported my mother and Mother finished a gymnasium in Slutsk. After that she moved to Minsk and entered the Minsk Public University, the Faculty of Economics, and graduated in 1925. She married my father, Ber Oliker, who had graduated from the Medical Institute in Minsk and worked as a surgeon. I don't know exactly how my parents met, but I know that they didn't celebrate their wedding, they just registered their marriage; it was a custom to do so in big cities. Mother found a job as an economist-planner at Gosplan [state economic planning institution] of Belarus. In 1927 I was born and in 1935 my brother Ernst was born.

My father, Ber Oliker, was born in 1901 in the town of Rogachev in Belarus. He was the youngest in his family and at the age of 13 became an apprentice at a private tailor shop. Difficult working conditions very soon destroyed his health and he had to leave the shop and become an apprentice at a private textiles store. In 1917, as a 16-year-old young man, he began to participate in the Revolutionary movement in Minsk. In 1918 during the Civil War, when Minsk was occupied by the Germans, he got acquainted with the members of an underground Bolshevik 18 committee. Thus he got to know the Party Charter of the Bolshevik Party and he was explained the objectives and tasks of the Bolshevik Party. Soon he began to receive minor assignments from the underground committee; in particular, he was assigned to conduct the work among the working youth regarding international education in accordance with the Bolshevik Party Charter.

After Minsk was liberated from the German occupation, in December 1918 he was selected to the organizational three 19 according to the convocation of the First Meeting of Working Youth for the purpose of organization and registration of the Komsomol organization in Minsk. He was elected member of the First Committee of the Minsk Komsomol Organization, among others, at the first organizational meeting of the working youth in December 1918. He joined the Red Army forces among one of the first Komsomol members, was enlisted to the Fourth Komsomol Company of the Minsk Guard regiment and fought against the White Guard 20 members to defend our native Minsk.

During the White-Polish occupation 21 of Belarus and Minsk, Father, among other Komsomol members, was left in Minsk to conduct underground work. They assisted the underground Party Committee in setting up the underground Komsomol organization and very often, risking their lives, performed important tasks of the underground Party Committee. The underground Party Committee and the underground Komsomol leaders were arrested by the White- Polish gendarmerie. After the arrest of the first underground Komsomol Committee, Father was elected Chairman of the Minsk underground Komsomol Committee.

At the beginning of April 1920 the White-Polish gendarmerie arrested him and other members of the underground Komsomol Committee. He was interrogated, tortured and tormented in the torture cell. Five of his front teeth were knocked out. As a result of torture he had to undergo two operations later, lost his hearing in his right ear and remained disabled for the rest of his life. He was court-martialed as the leader of the underground Komsomol Committee, and the court was supposed to pass a death sentence, but owing to the violent attack of the Red Army the court didn't manage to complete the trial. Father was awarded the Order of the Labor Red Standard of the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic for his active work during the Civil War against the White-Poles. He was the delegate of the III Congress of the Workers' and Peasants' Young League, where Vladimir Ilyich Lenin gave his famous historical speech about the tasks of the Young Communist League. After the Civil War Father finished the workers' faculty 22, after that he graduated from the Medical Institute and he became a surgeon and later the Deputy People's Commissar of Public Health of Belarus.

We had an intellectual Soviet family: my parents had university education and worked in their professional field; Father was a public party activist - unfortunately I was too small at that time to take interest in it, and later my father didn't tell me about it, so I can't give you more details - religion was out of the question 23. We lived in a small apartment in downtown Minsk. Father had a big library: mostly they were medical books, the Communist Party history, Russian classics, but it was all lost in the Great Patriotic War, because we left the city without any of our belongings.

In fall 1935 an exchange of documents was commenced in the Communist Party, connected with the beginning purge. Mass arrests and expulsions from the Party began. The incidence of these arrests couldn't but put Father on his guard, as he recalled that in 1932 Stalin's letter was published in the 'Proletarian Revolution' magazine about the Party's history falsification. In connection with Stalin's letter all historical books about the Party's history, which had been published before, were called into question. There was no literature in Belarus at that time about the history of the Party and Komsomol, there was only one book about the history of the Komsomol, and my father was one of its authors. Father knew that in case of absence of any other literature the book about the history of the Belarusian Komsomol would be the only target and he wasn't mistaken. On 29th April 1936 Father was arrested and forwarded to the Minsk prison. After that, within 15 months the investigation was carried out. As a result, he was dispatched to the Moscow court in Lefortovo [a district of Moscow], where within twelve minutes his sentence was announced to him - ten years of prison plus five years of deprivation of rights. Father expected that he would be sentenced to death and was even glad that he got a different verdict. From that moment years of wandering in prisons and exiles began.

Father's first prison was the Vologda prison. His second halting point was the Solovetsky monastery. Father stayed for two years in Solovetsky monastery without any work, without communication, without walks. He was allowed only to use the prison library. He read mainly medical literature. Once he was very much carried away with the 'History of Surgery' and he crossed his legs and leaned his elbow on his knee. The guard, who watched him through the crack in the door, entered the cell, hit him and sent him to the punishment cell. This continued until 1939.

In June 1939 some doctors, who worked in the sanitary department of the prison, were mobilized and it was decided to replace them with the imprisoned doctors. Thus Father was engaged in medical practice. In fall 1939 all prisoners were removed from the Solovetsky prison. After the Solovetsky islands he spent his camp life in Karelia, in Archangelsk region and Vorkuta region [north of Russia]. During the Great Patriotic War he worked as a doctor in the town of Medvezhegorsk, constantly asking to be let to the frontline, but, of course, his request wasn't satisfied. He lived like that until 1947. While in prison, he got acquainted with and started to live with a different woman, so he never returned to my mother.

In 1947, after ten years of imprisonment, he was released on probation. He understood perfectly that it wasn't for long, that he would be arrested again. He worked in Kyrgyzstan as a doctor until 1950. In 1950, 14 years after his first arrest and three years after his release, he was arrested for the second time by the bodies of the State Security Committee 24 in Kyrgyzstan and dispatched to the Krasnoyarsk territory, where after long waiting he was appointed as doctor to a village in Yenisey. After two years of exile, in 1952, Father was fired in connection with the beginning of the Doctors' Plot in Moscow and for three months he was waiting for his third arrest. Later the State Security Committee in Kyrgyzstan dispatched him to the Far North to Taymyr National District, where he worked until Stalin's death in 1953.

In December 1954 Father obtained a passport and felt himself to be a free man. He made up his mind to take the most extreme measures and began to write letters to the Communist Party Central Committee and to the Administration of the State Security Committee about his unfair imprisonment. In April 1956, two months after the Twentieth Party Congress 25, Father was rehabilitated 26 by the resolution of the Supreme Court of the USSR. He was allowed to move to Kyrgyzstan from the Far North, where he was rehabilitated in the Party and assigned to work in Minsk, Belarus, upon his own request. He worked in Minsk until 1967, at the Scientific Research Institute of Sanitary Hygiene as a doctor-research officer and wrote and published several scientific works. He died in Minsk in 1978.

When perestroika 27 started, in 1989 during the period of complete rehabilitation of the Gulag prisoners, the Military Board of the Supreme Court of the USSR informed me with a letter that my father had been groundlessly accused of having been a member of the counterrevolutionary trotskist 28 terrorist group in Minsk since 1935. Father didn't plead guilty during the preliminary investigation and in the judicial sitting.

  • Growing up in wartime

From this story one can see that I've seen little of my father, first he was mostly engaged with his public party work after his main work as a surgeon, and he came home very late. I was placed in a kindergarten early, because my parents had to work and they didn't hire any nannies or maids. Later I went to a Soviet high school, and in summer I stayed at children's summer camps 29 in the suburbs of Minsk. We also spent Mother's vacation in Leningrad, at her sisters' place.

I don't remember my childhood very well, my strongest impression was when I was nine, Father was put into prison and I became the daughter of an 'enemy of the people' 30. I still remember the feeling when everybody turned away from me, all neighbors, my classmates, my teachers. The mass repressions hadn't started yet at that time, and all actions of the authorities were accepted by the nation unconditionally. I have no friends left from my childhood; I made real friends only after the Great Patriotic War, as a student in Leningrad.

At the end of April 1936 my father was arrested based on a denunciation. After that Mother, having become a wife of an 'enemy of the people,' was left without a job with two children. However, with difficulty, afraid of persecutions, she managed to find a job as an economist at the bread-baking plant and worked there as an economist-planner until the Great Patriotic War broke out.

On the day the war was announced, 22nd June 1941, my younger brother Ernst stayed near Minsk at the summer camp of his kindergarten. Mother went to visit him, but being intimidated by repressions and persecutions, was afraid to bring him to the city. Only two days after the war had been announced, when we had to escape from Minsk, we left without my brother. He remained at the summer camp for several days, but the kindergarten director managed to load the kids onto some passing train and take them to Volga, where Mother's sister found him and later brought him to Kyrgyzstan, where we stayed in evacuation. My mother and I didn't spend a night at home since the war had been announced; we stayed every day in the bomb-shelter.

On 24th June when the town was on fire and many people left the bomb- shelter for the forest, Mother, Grandfather, Aunt Maria with her son and I also decided to leave with everybody. We walked for ten days under the bombs, accompanied by the planes' droning. We weren't let into any village, because the Germans spread leaflets, which said that those who give shelter to Jews would be shot. So we slept in ditches at night, covering ourselves with old coats. We didn't have any belongings. Soon we reached Mogilev, 200 kilometers east of Minsk, which was already empty, full of military people, since the Germans were approaching. The officers gave us food and showed us where the railroad station was, which still had a train with refugees. We managed to get onto the last train, leaving Mogilev. At first we were bombed on our way, but later we passed peaceful territory and soon came to the village of Zavoronezh in Tambov region and settled in an empty village house. We wrote letters to all our relatives in Leningrad, Kyrgyzstan and in the Caucasus, saying that we were alive and needed assistance.

By that time, in the summer of 1941 Mother's sister Rosa and her husband worked in Kyrgyzstan after graduation from the First Medical Institute. They immediately sent us some money and an invitation to come to their place, Bishkek station. Since Grandfather was old and sick, we were afraid to take him with us in such hot weather, so I went together with Mother and left Grandfather in that house in Zavoronezh. After long transfers on different trains we came to Bishkek, to Aunt Rosa and her second husband, Nikolai Amurov. Mother immediately found a job as an economist at the railroad, but from the very first minute understood that she couldn't allow herself to be intimidated as the wife of an 'enemy of the people,' so she wrote in the questionnaire that she had been a widow since 1936. Mother worked as an economist-planner during the evacuation at the Railroad Administration in Kyrgyzstan.

In October 1941 all our relatives from Leningrad came to visit us in Kyrgyzstan: Aunt Maria, Aunt Hanna and Aunt Pasha. Eshka had her preliminary diploma practical work in Kazan, so she and her daughter joined us later. All husbands of my mother's sisters served in the army and stayed in besieged Leningrad during the blockade. Only Aunt Hanna's husband, Solomon Kaplan, was a civil engineer and worked at a plant during the blockade.

There were eighteen people in the two-room apartment of my aunt Rosa: the eight Bunin sisters, their eight children, Grandfather, who came later, and a distant relative of one of my aunts, who kept our household. We lived in harmony like that during the whole war, helping each other. All children went to school. That's all I remember about wartime.

Starting from 1944, at the end of the war, my aunts began to receive invitations from their husbands and returned to Leningrad. In 1945 Mother was assigned to work in liberated areas, in the town of Brest [today Belarus], where she worked as head of the planning department of railroad restaurants until her retirement age in 1959.

My brother Ernst lived with our mother while he was a schoolboy. In 1952 he moved to Leningrad, where I lived, and entered the Cinematographic Engineers Institute. After graduation he worked at the Leningrad 'Sevkabel' plant as an engineer, and at the Scientific Research Institute of Radio Equipment, where he still works.

In August 1944 I received an invitation from my uncle, came to Leningrad and in September entered the Ulyanov-Lenin Electrical Engineering Institute. That same year, after the siege of Leningrad was lifted, educational institutions started to work again and there were quite a lot of applicants. However, I passed easily. There were no expressions of anti- Semitism, the Great Patriotic War was on and people were united against the Germans, everybody forgot about the Jews both at common and political levels.

I witnessed the end of the Great Patriotic War in May 1945 in Leningrad. I was a witness to the return of Klodt's horses - the famous sculptures on Anichkov Bridge on Nevsky Prospekt, the main street in Leningrad. People, who survived the siege, very much despised those, who had been evacuated, regardless of where the person had escaped from the Germans, and where he/she came back from after the victory 31; it was considered that all who returned were those who had fled from the siege. In stores and everywhere people spoke contemptuously about the evacuated. I lived on Mayakovskogo Street in downtown Leningrad and there was a store nearby, on Nekrasova Street, where people bought food with their ration cards 32. My relatives lived in Kronstadt and I lived in Leningrad, alone in their own separate apartment. All events of my student life took place on Mayakovskogo Street.

  • Post-war

As a student I spent my holidays at my mother's place in Brest. I met my husband-to-be, Grigory Gorelov, a Jew, there. He lived there with his parents. They were doctors and as well as my mother, had been assigned to work in a liberated district, in Brest. They were a very nice family of intellectuals. I don't remember anything else about my husband's parents. No one introduced us to each other on purpose; we met by accident at a dancing pavilion and liked each other at once. We spent those holidays together as well as all following ones. We had a very good time together, we were students. Our relations were difficult owing to the fact that we lived in different cities. But we wrote letters to each other very often.

In 1949 my husband graduated from the Polytechnic Institute in Minsk and I graduated from the Electrical Engineering Institute in Leningrad. He came to Leningrad for his preliminary diploma practical work and in June 1949 we got married. I thought that we were just good friends, that is why his proposal to marry him caught me unawares. However, I agreed immediately. On that day we both went to work, and while we talked, he, as if among other things, made me a proposal. I took up his intonation and on our way to work we dropped by the ZAGS [Civilian Registry Office Department] and wrote an application. We didn't have any celebration, we simply registered our marriage. I was dressed very commonly, ordinarily, and my friend, the only guest at our registration, was dressed very beautifully, that is why the ZAGS official addressed her all the time, as if she were the bride. It was very funny, and I remembered it for the rest of my life. In the evening of that day we went to the theater together to watch the Moscow Arts Academic Theater performance.

After the defense of his diploma Grigory got an assignment to work in Leningrad at the Sverdlov plant. We lived here until 1951, when he was enlisted to the Red Army Forces, since the Navy required personnel. In 1951 our daughter Alla was born. In 1953 we moved to Tallinn, where my husband served as a navy officer at that time. My husband worked at the navy plant in Tallinn up to 1957, and in 1957 he was transferred to work in the Polish People's Republic, the town of Svinemuende, the USSR navy base. I joined him with my daughter a little later. We lived there until 1960. In 1958 I temporarily moved to Brest to give birth to our son, Yevgeny. I didn't want a foreign country to be written in his birth certificate, as we lived in the Soviet Union.

In 1960, before my husband was demobilized, I returned to my mother in Leningrad, who moved there in 1959 from Brest after she had retired. I found a job at the Scientific Research Institute of Radio Equipment, where I worked for 23 years until my retirement. There were never any conflicts at my work place because of my Jewish identity. At the end of 1960 my husband was demobilized under the Order of Khrushchev 33 about the reduction of the Army. He returned to Leningrad, got an apartment here, found a job as an engineer at the Design Institute and worked there until his death in 1995; he was buried at the Jewish cemetery in St. Petersburg. My mother lived with us. She died in 1986 and was buried at the Jewish cemetery as well.

In the course of the Doctors' Plot and the 'campaign against cosmopolitans' 34 all doctors in our family suffered a lot, as the attitude to them at work changed, there was no elementary respect. This happened both to managers and colleagues; all the rest suffered too, there were a lot of doctors in our family, but no one was fired. Stalin's death in a sense liberated all of the Bunin sisters.

I didn't like Stalin from the moment I understood what had been done to my father. My mother and all the elder Bunins, my aunts, understood perfectly, what kind of oriental-despotic state we happened to live in. After the husbands of the three elder Bunin sisters were arrested in 1937, all their illusions immediately changed into precise understanding of what really happened in Stalin's time. Everything they dreamed about in their youth, everything they strove for, a real life of equal rights, lost its true sense. When Stalin died, someone of the younger sisters tried to cry, but the elder sister Reizl [Rosa] said, 'It won't get any worse, such a despot should have died long ago.'

On 10th March 1953, the day of Stalin's funeral, I worked at the central plant laboratory of the 'Novator' plant located on Obvodny Canal. No one worked on that day, everybody listened to the funeral broadcast and watched, who cried more. A colleague of mine and I had not a single tear in our eyes, so we had to turn away to the window. I wet my finger with my own saliva in order to imitate tears on my cheeks. My friend saw it and began to laugh, but managed to hold it back. Suddenly the USSR anthem started to play and some optimistic program began, conducted by, I think, Molotov 35, who said that Stalin was dead, but life went on.

After the war all of my mother's sisters got together in Leningrad and lived a very friendly life. They were all united by blood, by their age, by their common childhood, by their views upon life, by business and common friends. They very often gathered in each other's houses for birthday celebrations, for secular holidays, sometimes without any reason. For some time one of the sisters even arranged family gatherings each Saturday at her place, so that everybody would see each other more often, not only on holidays. It was a joint lunch and everybody came with their families, just to communicate. The sisters went to the theater together, read the same books and the 'Novy Mir,' 'Znamya,' 'Druzhba narodov' magazines, popular periodicals at that time, exchanged them between themselves. They were interested in everything that happened around them. As they grew old, they even spent vacations together at their summer houses 36. For me it was a real clan, where I felt calm and certain that if anything bad happened to me, I would be protected by them. The same applied to all other nephews and nieces.

I was always surrounded by friends and admirers, but my best friends were always my friends from the institute, with whom I still keep in touch; at the age of 60, they are all women of Jewish blood and we are all very close.

When I raised my children, no Jewish traditions were observed in our family, besides, neither me, nor my husband knew about them, we were raised in such a time. My children knew that they were Jews and they were never ashamed of it, though sometimes they faced anti-Semitism at school demonstrated by their class-mates.

My daughter Alla came to Leningrad from Poland earlier in order to go to school, both to the ordinary and music school, so she lived with her grandmother, my mother. She went to the music school, she had a talent. After finishing the music school she entered a school attached to the Conservatory and finished it. By that time she had already married Alexander Baboshkin, in 1970, and they had a son, Andrey. Several years later, she entered a university and graduated from the Department of Choir Conductors. She still works as a ballet concertmaster.

When Alla married Alexander, he was a student. He graduated from the VTUZ 37 attached to the Leningrad Metal Plant and he still works as a teacher in that institute. He is a candidate of science 38 and is now working on his doctoral thesis. My elder grandson, Andrey, born in 1973, graduated from VTUZ, just like his father and at present works as a sales manager, selling Volvo cars. He has a wife, Lena Krylova, and a son, Vitaly, who is now four months old. My second granddaughter, Natasha [Natalya], born in 1983, finished a school with profound study of English and now is a student of the Cultural College, the Faculty of Tourism Organization.

My son Yevgeny graduated from the Faculty of Philology of the Hertzen Pedagogical Institute, served in the army and began to work as a school teacher. When his son Vassily was born, they were short on finances and Zhenya [Yevgeny] started to work as a street-car driver, having finished special courses. He still works as a driver. His wife, Olga Belyayeva, also graduated from the Faculty of Philology of the Pedagogical Institute and has been working as a teacher of the Russian language and Russian literature at school for many years. My grandson Vasya [Vassily] is an 11th grade student in a high school.

A lot of my relatives went to live abroad after the break-up of the Soviet Union, fortunately, there was nothing to be afraid of in the 1990s 39, so our relations weren't interrupted, we keep in touch - but, of course, only by post or rare phone calls, I've never been abroad. Since I can't afford it, and I never paid close attention to the political events in Israel. Today I lead a pretty active life, but a secular one: I don't celebrate Jewish holidays or attend the synagogue. I get some help and presents on holidays from 'Hesed' 40 and I am grateful for it.

  • Glossary

1 Great Patriotic War

On 22nd June 1941 at 5 o'clock in the morning Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union without declaring war. This was the beginning of the so-called Great Patriotic War. The German blitzkrieg, known as Operation Barbarossa, nearly succeeded in breaking the Soviet Union in the months that followed. Caught unprepared, the Soviet forces lost whole armies and vast quantities of equipment to the German onslaught in the first weeks of the war. By November 1941 the German army had seized the Ukrainian Republic, besieged Leningrad, the Soviet Union's second largest city, and threatened Moscow itself. The war ended for the Soviet Union on 9th May 1945.

2 Civil War (1918-1920)

The Civil War between the Reds (the Bolsheviks) and the Whites (the anti-Bolsheviks), which broke out in early 1918, ravaged Russia until 1920. The Whites represented all shades of anti- communist groups - Russian army units from World War I, led by anti- Bolshevik officers, by anti-Bolshevik volunteers and some Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries. Several of their leaders favored setting up a military dictatorship, but few were outspoken tsarists. Atrocities were committed throughout the Civil War by both sides. The Civil War ended with Bolshevik military victory, thanks to the lack of cooperation among the various White commanders and to the reorganization of the Red forces after Trotsky became commissar for war. It was won, however, only at the price of immense sacrifice; by 1920 Russia was ruined and devastated. In 1920 industrial production was reduced to 14% and agriculture to 50% as compared to 1913.

3 Gulag

The Soviet system of forced labor camps in the remote regions of Siberia and the Far North, which was first established in 1919. However, it was not until the early 1930s that there was a significant number of inmates in the camps. By 1934 the Gulag, or the Main Directorate for Corrective Labor Camps, then under the Cheka's successor organization the NKVD, had several million inmates. The prisoners included murderers, thieves, and other common criminals, along with political and religious dissenters. The Gulag camps made significant contributions to the Soviet economy during the rule of Stalin. Conditions in the camps were extremely harsh. After Stalin died in 1953, the population of the camps was reduced significantly, and conditions for the inmates improved somewhat.

4 Komsomol

Communist youth political organization created in 1918. The task of the Komsomol was to spread of the ideas of communism and involve the worker and peasant youth in building the Soviet Union. The Komsomol also aimed at giving a communist upbringing by involving the worker youth in the political struggle, supplemented by theoretical education. The Komsomol was more popular than the Communist Party because with its aim of education people could accept uninitiated young proletarians, whereas party members had to have at least a minimal political qualification.

5 Jewish Pale of Settlement

Certain provinces in the Russian Empire were designated for permanent Jewish residence and the Jewish population was only allowed to live in these areas. The Pale was first established by a decree by Catherine II in 1791. The regulation was in force until the Russian Revolution of 1917, although the limits of the Pale were modified several times. The Pale stretched from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, and 94% of the total Jewish population of Russia, almost 5 million people, lived there. The overwhelming majority of the Jews lived in the towns and shtetls of the Pale. Certain privileged groups of Jews, such as certain merchants, university graduates and craftsmen working in certain branches, were granted to live outside the borders of the Pale of Settlement permanently.

6 Cheder for girls

Model cheders were set up in Russia where girls studied reading and writing.

7 Common name

Russified or Russian first names used by Jews in everyday life and adopted in official documents. The Russification of first names was one of the manifestations of the assimilation of Russian Jews at the turn of the 19th and 20th century. In some cases only the spelling and pronunciation of Jewish names was russified (e.g. Isaac instead of Yitskhak; Boris instead of Borukh), while in other cases traditional Jewish names were replaced by similarly sounding Russian names (e.g. Eugenia instead of Ghita; Yury instead of Yuda). When state anti-Semitism intensified in the USSR at the end of the 1940s, most Jewish parents stopped giving their children traditional Jewish names to avoid discrimination.

8 Kolkhoz

In the Soviet Union the policy of gradual and voluntary collectivization of agriculture was adopted in 1927 to encourage food production while freeing labor and capital for industrial development. In 1929, with only 4% of farms in kolkhozes, Stalin ordered the confiscation of peasants' land, tools, and animals; the kolkhoz replaced the family farm.

9 Russian Revolution of 1917

Revolution in which the tsarist regime was overthrown in the Russian Empire and, under Lenin, was replaced by the Bolshevik rule. The two phases of the Revolution were: February Revolution, which came about due to food and fuel shortages during World War I, and during which the tsar abdicated and a provisional government took over. The second phase took place in the form of a coup led by Lenin in October/November (October Revolution) and saw the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks.

10 Kulaks

In the Soviet Union the majority of wealthy peasants that refused to join collective farms and give their grain and property to Soviet power were called kulaks, declared enemies of the people and exterminated in the 1930s.

11 Great Terror (1934-1938)

During the Great Terror, or Great Purges, which included the notorious show trials of Stalin's former Bolshevik opponents in 1936-1938 and reached its peak in 1937 and 1938, millions of innocent Soviet citizens were sent off to labor camps or killed in prison. The major targets of the Great Terror were communists. Over half of the people who were arrested were members of the party at the time of their arrest. The armed forces, the Communist Party, and the government in general were purged of all allegedly dissident persons; the victims were generally sentenced to death or to long terms of hard labor. Much of the purge was carried out in secret, and only a few cases were tried in public 'show trials'. By the time the terror subsided in 1939, Stalin had managed to bring both the Party and the public to a state of complete submission to his rule. Soviet society was so atomized and the people so fearful of reprisals that mass arrests were no longer necessary. Stalin ruled as absolute dictator of the Soviet Union until his death in March 1953.

12 Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (Ulyanov) (1879, Simbirsk, now Ulyanovsk - 1924, Gorki near Moscow) - the founder of Bolshevism, leader of the October Revolution of 1917 in Russia; initiator and first Head of the Soviet state

The maternal grandfather of Lenin (Ulyanov), doctor Blank, was a Jew, who converted to Christianity. Lenin was an absolute opponent of anti-Semitism in any of its expressions, which could be seen from his political decisions, articles and speeches. There were many persons of Jewish origin among his associates and personal friends. However, the political ideology, developed by him, did not consider Jews as a separate nation and regarded their assimilation as an inevitable and progressive event. After Lenin died, these views served as basis for elimination of traditional Jewish culture in the USSR.

13 Mandatory job assignment in the USSR

Graduates of higher educational institutions had to complete a mandatory 2-year job assignment issued by the institution from which they graduated. After finishing this assignment young people were allowed to get employment at their discretion in any town or organization.

14 Blockade of Leningrad

On September 8, 1941 the Germans fully encircled Leningrad and its siege began. It lasted until January 27, 1944. The blockade meant incredible hardships and privations for the population of the town. Hundreds of thousands died from hunger, cold and diseases during the almost 900 days of the blockade.

15 'Road of Life' - during the Great Patriotic War the only transport road across Ladoga Lake (in the navigation periods - across water, across ice in winter), which connected the besieged Leningrad with the country within the period between September 1941 and March 1943

16 Stalingrad Battle

17th July 1942 - 2nd February 1943. The South- Western and Don Fronts stopped the advance of German armies in the vicinity of Stalingrad. On 19th and 20th November 1942 the Soviet troops undertook an offensive and encircled 22 German divisions (330,000 people) and eliminated them. On 31st January 1943 the remains of the 6th German army headed by General Field Marshal Paulus surrendered (91,000 people). The victory in the Stalingrad battle was of huge political, strategic and international significance.

17 Doctors' Plot

The Doctors' Plot was an alleged conspiracy of a group of Moscow doctors to murder leading government and party officials. In January 1953, the Soviet press reported that nine doctors, six of whom were Jewish, had been arrested and confessed their guilt. As Stalin died in March 1953, the trial never took place. The official paper of the Party, the Pravda, later announced that the charges against the doctors were false and their confessions obtained by torture. This case was one of the worst anti-Semitic incidents during Stalin's reign. In his secret speech at the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956 Khrushchev stated that Stalin wanted to use the Plot to purge the top Soviet leadership.

18 Bolsheviks

Members of the movement led by Lenin. The name 'Bolshevik' was coined in 1903 and denoted the group that emerged in elections to the key bodies in the Social Democratic Party (SDPRR) considering itself in the majority (Rus. bolshynstvo) within the party. It dubbed its opponents the minority (Rus. menshynstvo, the Mensheviks). Until 1906 the two groups formed one party. The Bolsheviks first gained popularity and support in society during the 1905-07 Revolution. During the February Revolution in 1917 the Bolsheviks were initially in the opposition to the Menshevik and SR ('Sotsialrevolyutsionyery', Socialist Revolutionaries) delegates who controlled the Soviets (councils). When Lenin returned from emigration (16 April) they proclaimed his program of action (the April theses) and under the slogan 'All power to the Soviets' began to Bolshevize the Soviets and prepare for a proletariat revolution. Agitation proceeded on a vast scale, especially in the army. The Bolsheviks set about creating their own armed forces, the Red Guard. Having overthrown the Provisional Government, they created a government with the support of the II Congress of Soviets (the October Revolution), to which they admitted some left-wing SRs in order to gain the support of the peasantry. In 1952 the Bolshevik party was renamed the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

19 Organizational Three

the Soviet political system was being developed within the conditions of the Civil War (1918-1920), thus its institutions were of emergency, non- constitution character for a long time. Such 'threes' meant to be bodies of non-judicial punishment of 'Revolution enemies,' were formed in provinces, districts, towns, as part of local Emergency Commissions (EC) aimed at control over counter-revolution, sabotage, and banditry. They passed a lot of death sentences without any judicial or legislative proceedings, based on the 'class feeling.' This practice of mass repressions and non-judicial punishment remained during all years of Stalin's power. Besides, the top local power was called the 'three,' as it consisted of the chairman of the Communist Party Committee, the local Soviet chairman and the head of the local body of the EC/GPU/OGPU/NKVD. They headed the local Party-economic active group, controlled all the information, directed to the superior authorities, and were absolute hosts of all local life.

20 Whites (White Army)

Counter-revolutionary armed forces that fought against the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War. The White forces were very heterogeneous: They included monarchists and liberals - supporters of the Constituent Assembly and the tsar. Nationalist and anti-Semitic attitude was very common among rank-and-file members of the white movement, and expressed in both their propaganda material and in the organization of pogroms against Jews. White Army slogans were patriotic. The Whites were united by hatred towards the Bolsheviks and the desire to restore a 'one and inseparable' Russia. The main forces of the White Army were defeated by the Red Army at the end of 1920.

21 White-Polish occupation

the Polish army occupied significant parts of Ukraine and Poland during the initial period of the Soviet-Polish war of 1920. Polish soldiers were noted for their cruel attitude to the Jewish population. They performed pogroms, robberies and mass rapes of women. The Soviet propaganda called them 'white Poles.' The Red Army launched a counter-offensive and reached Warsaw suburbs, but suffered a defeat on the banks of the Vistula River. According to the Riga Peace Treaty of 1921 the territory of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus were affiliated to Poland. That border existed until September 1939, when as a result of Molotov- Ribbentrop pact, regions with prevalence of Ukrainian and Belarusian population were annexed to the Soviet Union.

22 Rabfak (Rabochiy Fakultet - Workers' Faculty in Russian)

Established by the Soviet power usually at colleges or universities, these were educational institutions for young people without secondary education. Many of them worked beside studying. Graduates of Rabfaks had an opportunity to enter university without exams.

23 Struggle against religion

The 1930s was a time of anti-religion struggle in the USSR. In those years it was not safe to go to synagogue or to church. Places of worship, statues of saints, etc. were removed; rabbis, Orthodox and Roman Catholic priests disappeared behind KGB walls.

24 KGB

The KGB or Committee for State Security was the main Soviet external security and intelligence agency, as well as the main secret police agency from 1954 to 1991.

25 Twentieth Party Congress

At the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956 Khrushchev publicly debunked the cult of Stalin and lifted the veil of secrecy from what had happened in the USSR during Stalin's leadership.

26 Rehabilitation in the Soviet Union

Many people who had been arrested, disappeared or killed during the Stalinist era were rehabilitated after the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956, where Khrushchev publicly debunked the cult of Stalin and lifted the veil of secrecy from what had happened in the USSR during Stalin's leadership. It was only after the official rehabilitation that people learnt for the first time what had happened to their relatives as information on arrested people had not been disclosed before.

27 Perestroika (Russian for restructuring)

Soviet economic and social policy of the late 1980s, associated with the name of Soviet politician Mikhail Gorbachev. The term designated the attempts to transform the stagnant, inefficient command economy of the Soviet Union into a decentralized, market-oriented economy. Industrial managers and local government and party officials were granted greater autonomy, and open elections were introduced in an attempt to democratize the Communist Party organization. By 1991, perestroika was declining and was soon eclipsed by the dissolution of the USSR.

28 Trotsky, Lev Davidovich (born Bronshtein) (1879-1940)

Russian revolutionary, one of the leaders of the October Revolution of 1917, an outstanding figure of the communist movement and a theorist of Marxism. Trotsky participated in the social-democratic movement from 1894 and supported the idea of the unification of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks from 1906. In 1905 he developed the idea of the 'permanent revolution'. He was one of the leaders of the October Revolution and a founder of the Red Army. He widely applied repressive measures to support the discipline and 'bring everything into revolutionary order' at the front and the home front. The intense struggle with Stalin for the leadership ended with Trotsky's defeat. In 1924 his views were declared petty-bourgeois deviation. In 1927 he was expelled from the Communist Party, and exiled to Kazakhstan, and in 1929 abroad. He lived in Turkey, Norway and then Mexico. He excoriated Stalin's regime as a bureaucratic degeneration of the proletarian power. He was murdered in Mexico by an agent of Soviet special services on Stalin's order.

29 All-Union pioneer organization

a communist organization for teenagers between 10 and 15 years old (cf: boy-/ girlscouts in the US). The organization aimed at educating the young generation in accordance with the communist ideals, preparing pioneers to become members of the Komsomol and later the Communist Party. In the Soviet Union, all teenagers were pioneers.

30 Enemy of the people

Soviet official term; euphemism used for real or assumed political opposition.

31 Victory Day in Russia (9th May)

National holiday to commemorate the defeat of Nazi Germany and the end of World War II and honor the Soviets who died in the war.

32 Card system

The food card system regulating the distribution of food and industrial products was introduced in the USSR in 1929 due to extreme deficit of consumer goods and food. The system was cancelled in 1931. In 1941, food cards were reintroduced to keep records, distribute and regulate food supplies to the population. The card system covered main food products such as bread, meat, oil, sugar, salt, cereals, etc. The rations varied depending on which social group one belonged to, and what kind of work one did. Workers in the heavy industry and defense enterprises received a daily ration of 800 g (miners - 1 kg) of bread per person; workers in other industries 600 g. Non-manual workers received 400 or 500 g based on the significance of their enterprise, and children 400 g. However, the card system only covered industrial workers and residents of towns while villagers never had any provisions of this kind. The card system was abolished in 1947.

33 Khrushchev, Nikita (1894-1971)

Soviet communist leader. After Stalin's death in 1953, he became first secretary of the Central Committee, in effect the head of the Communist Party of the USSR. In 1956, during the 20th Party Congress, Khrushchev took an unprecedented step and denounced Stalin and his methods. He was deposed as premier and party head in October 1964. In 1966 he was dropped from the Party's Central Committee.

34 Campaign against 'cosmopolitans'

The campaign against 'cosmopolitans', i.e. Jews, was initiated in articles in the central organs of the Communist Party in 1949. The campaign was directed primarily at the Jewish intelligentsia and it was the first public attack on Soviet Jews as Jews. 'Cosmopolitans' writers were accused of hating the Russian people, of supporting Zionism, etc. Many Yiddish writers as well as the leaders of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee were arrested in November 1948 on charges that they maintained ties with Zionism and with American 'imperialism'. They were executed secretly in 1952. The anti-Semitic Doctors' Plot was launched in January 1953. A wave of anti-Semitism spread through the USSR. Jews were removed from their positions, and rumors of an imminent mass deportation of Jews to the eastern part of the USSR began to spread. Stalin's death in March 1953 put an end to the campaign against 'cosmopolitans'.

35 Molotov, V

P. (1890-1986): Statesman and member of the Communist Party leadership. From 1939, Minister of Foreign Affairs. On 22nd June 1941 he announced the German attack on the USSR on the radio. He and Eden also worked out the percentages agreement after the war, about Soviet and western spheres of influence in the new Europe.

36 Dacha

country house, consisting of small huts and little plots of lands. The Soviet authorities came to the decision to allow this activity to the Soviet people to support themselves. The majority of urban citizens grow vegetables and fruit in their small gardens to make preserves for winter.

37 VTUZ plant

system of higher education, the core of which was harmonious connection of education with production. The VTUZ was a specialized higher educational institution, which trained specialists based on orders made out by enterprises.

38 Soviet/Russian doctorate degrees

Graduate school in the Soviet Union (aspirantura, or ordinatura for medical students), which usually took about 3 years and resulted in a dissertation. Students who passed were awarded a 'kandidat nauk' (lit. candidate of sciences) degree. If a person wanted to proceed with his or her research, the next step would be to apply for a doctorate degree (doktarontura). To be awarded a doctorate degree, the person had to be involved in the academia, publish consistently, and write an original dissertation. In the end he/she would be awarded a 'doctor nauk' (lit. doctor of sciences) degree.

39 Keep in touch with relatives abroad

The authorities could arrest an individual corresponding with his/her relatives abroad and charge him/her with espionage, send them to concentration camp or even sentence them to death.

40 Hesed

Meaning care and mercy in Hebrew, Hesed stands for the charity organization founded by Amos Avgar in the early 20th century. Supported by Claims Conference and Joint Hesed helps for Jews in need to have a decent life despite hard economic conditions and encourages development of their self-identity. Hesed provides a number of services aimed at supporting the needs of all, and particularly elderly members of the society. The major social services include: work in the center facilities (information, advertisement of the center activities, foreign ties and free lease of medical equipment); services at homes (care and help at home, food products delivery, delivery of hot meals, minor repairs); work in the community (clubs, meals together, day-time polyclinic, medical and legal consultations); service for volunteers (training programs). The Hesed centers have inspired a real revolution in the Jewish life in the Former Soviet Union countries. People have seen and sensed the rebirth of the Jewish traditions of humanism. Currently over eighty Hesed centers exist in the FSU countries. Their activities cover the Jewish population of over eight hundred settlements.

Dezso Deutsch

Dezso Deutsch
Budapest
Hungary
Interviewer: Dora Sardi and Eszter Andor

My family background
Growing up
School years
During the war
Post-war

My family background

My paternal grandparents were born in Hungary around the 1850s. My grandfather’s name was David Deutsch. I do not know my grandmother’s name;  I never met  her. She died young, in childbirth. Grandfather David died in 1936 at home, in Bakonytamasi, where he . He had been living there all along. One of my father’s grandfathers fought in Kossuth’s army [in the 1848 Hungarian War of Independence]. That Which means that, beside having a strong Jewish identity, he believed and considered himself a Hungarian.

I do not have real living memories of my father’s brothers and sisters. It is because I did not visited them very often. I know about one of his sisters of his, who . This sister helped her father run their store. She wagsot married, and her son and daughters who managed to survive the war, tnow hey all live abroad. My father had a brother, too, who moved to Ujpest and had a shoe store. He did not survive the Holocaust, either. Many of my relatives live abroad.

My mother’s parents lived in Tet, near Gyor. Tet was quite a big village. There was a  rabbi;, who lived there, there was everything a Jewish community needed. T, there was an Orthodox and a Neolog branch, too. There was a shochet, as well. The proper religious Jews devoted their lives completely to their being Jewish, to business and to the family.

Grandfather’s name was Bernat Sauer, grandmother’s Lina. She must have been born in the 1860s. My grandparents had a store which was then called the haberdasher’s. They traded with all kinds of clothing and sold fabrics too. The store was on the Main Street, near the Main Square, in the city. It was named the Sauer Haberdashery. They had a big family house. I do not know how many rooms exactly, but four is for sure. They needed it too as the family was a big one. And the store was in the same building only it opened onto the street.

They [my grandparents] occupied themselves with two things: business and synagogue. They had their own seats in the synagogue. Grandfather had some kind of position in the Jewish community, I am not sure what it was exactly but he was a member of some committee and  probably even  the president of that board. Grandfather would go to synagogue twice a day. He prayed with the prayer shawl and leined [the reading of the Torah] tefilin [phylacteries]. Almost like an Orthodox of the strictest kind. He wore ordinary dark gray suits [not a caftan]. He had  little payot, which he tucked behind his ears. He did not have a beard but his head was always covered – he wore a hat even when at home. Grandmother naturally wore a wig and in the house she wore a kerchief on her head. Grandmother partly ran the house, partly worked in the store. But as a matter of course, there was a house maid as well.

It was mostly at summertime that we would visit them, but not too much of that either. I was not too enthusiastic about the [maternal] grandparents and was not very keen on visiting them anyhow. We, the young generation had a little more modern way of  life and thinking, in the school too, and we were raised without being compelled to wear caps, and I had a moderate hairstyle too. I was about 13 or 14 and had a hairstyle when I went to visit my grandparents and the first thing they did was to have my hair cut saying that one could not appear before the rabbi like that. And there they would see to it that we wore something [hat or kipa] on our heads all the time.

My mother had five brothers and sisters, two of them my mother’s elders. There was Kari  [Karoly], then Aunt Riza, Aunt Sari, Naci, Uncle Dezso and my mother. My mother as well as the other children received the same [strictly Jewish] education. We were really and truly religious yet everyone of us spoke Hungarian but of course we all had an excellent command of Yiddish as well, and sometimes we switched over to that language.

The young ones worked for the [family] business for a while, then each went on their way. Some  moved  to Paks, others to other places. Some opened a store of their own. Each had some kind of a store but none of them dealt with foods. Sari had a leather goods store. All of them got married. Aunt Sari had two children, both of them girls, Aunt Lisa had two as well, one of them, Shmule lives in Israel: he emigrated as a young lad in 1939 and took part in the wars of  liberation too. He established a family in Israel. Dezso had three children – two girls and one boy, the latter died during the war.  He [Uncle Dezso] also had some kind of a store. Uncle Naci became director to a store that belonged to a big mining company, he sold [mining] tools and accessories. I do not know where it was: he became a little estranged from the family. He too had a family, wife and children as well. Karoly had married already before the war and they all died, they were all taken to Auschwitz along with the grandparents. Karoly alone came back home and here he remarried, established a new family then went to Israel and died.

My father’s name was Mor Deutsch. He was born in 1882 in Bakonytamasi  but of course he did not live there. My mother, Iren Sauer, was born in Tet in 1887. My father actually completed his elementary studies only, then, I think, he went to Vienna where he worked and learnt the language. First he married a very religious woman from Papa. It was an arranged marriage. Unfortunately she died in childbirth, but the child, Zoltan, survived. My father remarried, there was a young lady recommended to him – as was the custom of those days – and he married her. The little boy was less then a year old when he came into the custody of my mother. To me Zoltan was as if he had been my own brother and as far as I remember I only came to know later that he was not full kin to us. Later he came to live in Celldomolk where he opened a small store which in time grew bigger and bigger.

Growing up

[In Celldomolk] the majority of the Jews settled in the core of the town but not in separation. There was no ghetto, but the Jews lived close to each other, not in one single street, but in a few streets within one neighborhood. Our next door neighbor on the right was Christian as well as the one on the left side. But we had a good relationship. The Jews mostly made friends with Jews but we maintained good connections with the others as well, partly on account of the business. In Celldomolk there was an Orthodox and a Neolog community. The two communities were not on good terms with each other at all. They spectacularly neglected each other. The two schools fought and eventually the Orthodox community took over the school where pupils from Neolog families could come as well, however there were Neolog families who sent their children to some other school. Nevertheless, friendly private connections did exist between Orthodox and Neolog people.

Our store was in the center of Celldomolk, and I think it was the best store in Celldomolk. It offered everything except for food, that is, fabrics, haberdashery, shoes. It belonged mostly to the family as we were four of us brothers and two sisters and my mother was an excellent business woman. She also worked there part time but there were employees too. Generally eight or nine people were employed, mostly Jews.

In the store there was everything on stock: carpets, fabrics, silk. The store was in a one-storey house but it was a long building. It consisted of several departments. There was the textile department, the department of accessories, then shoe department. Later, after having finished school, I became the director of the shoe department. My father bought the goods mostly in Budapest, but there were wholesalers in Papa, or in Szombathely. Partly he himself traveled, and later we also went up to Budapest to get stuff, partly the big firms had their agents who toured the country with the collection and one could order from them.

My parents worked very hard. A holiday was out of the question for them and we were there to help them. There was nothing like going on holidays like people do today, only at times of religious celebrations would they close the store. The family never had their lunch together except for religious festivals. No such thing as lunchtime existed at work: we would go and get our meals one after another in the flat at the rear end of the house. Evening dinners were more like family gatherings because by that time the store was already closed. In those days business was very important for Jewish families. When opening hours were regulated by law, the store was open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. But in the wintertime, when Sabbath was over,  my father would go and open the store even on Saturdays. That’s when the new week came in early and he would go and open the store at around 5 for an extra hour or so. There was a steady system of credits. We had lots of customers who worked for monthly salaries and came regularly to us and were indebted to us and many would purchase goods on credit. There were some who would pay only a part of their debts, and accounts had to be kept for them. At the same time we ourselves purchased goods on credit. This was a widely accepted custom.

My mother did not have to struggle too much with household chores as she herself worked in the store. She would not go out shopping too often. At the time of weekly fairs we had so many customers, it would have been impossible for my mother to go to the market.  It was always the housemaid who went [to market]. She was the one who cooked, she knew what to buy. But she went to kosher places only – she was not allowed to go anyplace else. But our customers often brought us presents, like fruits or vegetables. It was an absolute necessity for us to have a housemaid who was capable enough and would keep an eye on everything because most of the time my mother was busy with the store. And that stood for my grandparents too. Because  my grandmother was also busy with the store. Women had their very important, decisive role in the business. The housemaid was a real family member for us. She would help with everything, she learnt how to keep kosher and was verily like a grandmother. She lived with us – there was a place fixed for her next to the kitchen but she never ate with us – she had her meals in the kitchen. 

My mother also had a beautiful wig. Every day someone came to comb it. They put the wig on for her and so she was ready to start the day. Ladies wore only long sleeves even in summer and the tops were long too, as well as their skirts, but they looked very attractive all the time. My mother’s deepest concern was to raise us in the manner that we become good Jews, but she accepted that times were changing and she considered, for example, that maybe it was not so very necessary for us, boys to wear caps all the time, though it is also true that  in spite of our conduct  which was a bit closer to modern ways, we still remained very much Orthodox. We did not really digress from religion, just handled certain things in a different way. In fact the Jewry of the time had two main concerns: the great fair and the religious holidays. Those were the events we were always preparing for. Of course we young people frequented cafes, we were allowed to go to the dancing school when I was 18-19-20 years old. I and my brothers and sisters were absolutely Orthodox, but not that old fashioned. Well, my mother was not so happy about it, but what could she do? A typical reaction of hers was when I received my call up to the army, in her first shock she asked:  “yeah, but what about your meals?”

My parents were not particularly educated, and we did not have too much money, so we did not buy too many books. They would rather read books on Jewish matters if  they read books at all.  
We subscribed to the paper Egyenloseg [Equality] and to the Pesti Naplo [Pest Diary] which was the best paper of its time, a daily. Then there was the Miriam [prayer book for women], which was in Hungarian. My mother, however, read Hebrew beautifully too, only she did not understand what she was reading, so she would rather read the ladies’ prayer book in Hungarian.

During the first world war my father served  in the Italian front from 1917 to 1918. He came back when the war was over. He received a decoration  and I remember that he brought his pistol home, which he kept hidden somewhere. And at home he was a Jew and a Hungarian at the same time. And as being a member of the Alliance of Front Warriors decorated with an award of war merit,  he was convinced he would never suffer any harm from the Hungarians,  then see what happened.

Where I was born that was a smaller house and the store was in a separate building. Then later we had a pretty big house with a big yard and the store in the front and the family lived in the rear tract. We had four rooms which we needed too because I had two sisters and three brothers. My eldest brother was Zoltan. He, just like everyone of us, worked in the store, then in 1937 or 38 he became self-employed and moved to Dobrogkoz. That’s where he married and he went on working there. He had one child. He always observed his religion very strictly. Then there was Jeno. He was born in 1911. He too started working in the store and never left. Then he got married and two children were born to them. The elder must have been about three and a half when he was deported to Auschwitz, the other one less then six months old. Jeno was drafted into forced labor and died a few weeks before the end of the war in Mauthausen. Nandor was with him all along. The next brother is Nandor. He too worked in the family store, got married, was deported and his wife and little daughter perished. He alone came back from Mauthausen. Then I came in 1918, then my sister, Rozsi who was born in 1921. That time it was the custom that children had to help in the store. But she finished her studies too. She was a beautiful, intelligent girl. Unfortunately in 1943 she got married. My father strongly objected. not because of the boy but he said “You have four brothers and if one of them is unable to attend the wedding ceremony, you should not get married.” But she did and that was her bad luck. She too was deported and when her hairs were shaved the doctor noticed that she was pregnant and immediately she was sent to the gas, though she had been selected for work because she was strong and healthy, she could have survived the camp. My youngest sister, Margit,  was born in 1928. She was 12 when I left, a beautiful one, still in school. She was 16 when she was deported. She was also killed.

School years

I went to the Jewish elementary school which was a school of six grades. It was run by the Orthodox community. Here everybody was Jewish and as far as I remember there were Orthodox students wearing payot, but that was the only difference between them and us, we were all equally religious. We did not wear payot. Everybody spoke Hungarian, but the schoolteacher spoke Jewish [Yiddish] occasionally. We understood both.

When I finished elementary school I wanted to go to middle school. At first my mother strongly objected and said I did not need it and why should I go to a totally secular school. Eventually I went to the middle school in Celldomolk which was said to be a very good school. My mother consented to it on condition that I was not going to do any writing on Saturdays. The director was a decent man so it was I alone in the whole school who got the permission to be exempted from  writing. [On Sundays]. I would not even bring my schoolbag to school  – everything I needed I packed on Fridays, I left them in my desk and on Saturdays I would just be sitting and listening all day. In the school there were some Jews, they were Neolog, not religious. I had Christian classmates, but neither from them nor from the part of the teachers ever came anything [anti-Semitic remarks] because there was this director, a very strict and firm person but very nice and honest at the same time. My favorite subjects were arithmetic and geometric. I was the best student in my class. I also liked German, because I knew Yiddish so I was good at it too. I did not have to attend religious education. When the class started I would just go home, when it ended, I walked  back. During my school years I played football, I was member of a team. Later we played these games, mostly table tennis, and teams were set up by Catholic, Lutheran and Jewish societies.

From my first grade on I attended another school too, where I studied Jewish subjects. It was not a proper yeshiva, it was a kind of pre-yeshiva. It was run by the Orthodox community and we were about the ten of us students there. We studied Humesh [the five books of  Moses], Rashi [commentaries to the Talmud written by Rashi], Gemore  [Gemara, part of the Talmud which interprets and explains the Mishna which preceded it], as well as Tosefot [critical and analytical glossaries attached to the Mishna and the Gemara]. The classes had their special choreography. There  was a copy of the Talmud and we would read out from it, then the bocher [yeshiva student] explained it, then we discussed it  and gave the explanation of the different stories and we were supposed to understand the different points of view of the sages. We translated everything into Yiddish. Then sometimes we discussed the same thing in Hungarian. The discussion was in Hungarian. There was no homework but a so-called review or report on Sundays. It was conducted by the rabbi and he asked questions on the subjects we had covered  the previous week  It was not a proper exam but rather a discussion of the material we had studied the previous week. He would ask questions and he would add his own explanation to the given question. I liked going to this place but it was quite stressful because I would come home from school, have my lunch and by two o’clock I had to be there. I generally studied until six and I had to do my homework in the evening [for the middle school.]

Friday evenings and festival nights in general were decisive in the life of the family. [On Fridays] we would go to the synagogue with my brothers and sisters. Women would stay at home because they prepared the dinner with the help of the housemaid, of course, who was naturally a Gentile. She would serve the Friday meal and she would fetch the Saturday dish from the baker’s. [After worship] there came the Friday dinner. According to the tradition  my father blessed the boys one after the other, every week, which was such an uplifting feeling. [For dinner] we often had  stuffed fish, also soup and chicken stew. After dinner there was zmirot [psalms], singing. Then on Saturday mornings we would go to the synagogue. Then we would have lunch. 

Of course all Jewish tradition was strictly observed in the family. I have a very vivid memory of an event. One Saturday morning I was out in the yard when someone knocked on the door and one of our regular customers stood in the door with her sobbing daughter. As it turned out the daughter was to have her wedding the next day and her shoes which they had bought in our store were too small for her. So the mother said, “Please, Mr Dezso, I know that this is a holiday for you, but please, do me a favor and let me exchange these shoes. I am not even going in, you just hand it out”. Well, I did not have the heart to refuse her, I went in and brought a pair one size bigger which meant I did not have to touch money at all or anything, and just when I was handing over the shoes my father came. He saw me coming out of the store with a parcel in my hand, on a Saturday, and the lady started to explain that she was responsible, she was the one who asked me to do it and the like. My father did not say a word, he just simply went into the house. But when the customers were gone, he started to shout at the top of his voice. He actually hollered and declared that as long as he lived and the store belonged to him, nobody in that house would ever be allowed to work on Saturdays. In short he was always aware of what was the most important thing at a given moment: business, synagogue, family.

All holidays were strictly observed. The store was closed, we celebrated the holiday and went to worship. The most distinguished holiday was Pesach because that is one of our most important holidays starting with the Seder night. On Seder night we went to the synagogue, then we held the Seder which could go on until as late as half past eleven. There was a rich Seder plate, with  naturally charoses [a mixture of ground nuts, apple, wine and cinnamon] on it, along with bitter herbs and eggs and there was salty water on the table. It was my father who held the Seder, he explained everything. I, as the youngest boy read the Haggadah out. Everything [all utensils] were kept apart for Seder. In this period nothing was used from what we used normally, everything had been carried up to the attic. On the day before there was the process of doing hometz [the removal of all leavened products from the house] which lasted for one day. I did not take part in that, it was done by my mother and the maid. Whenever we were given any new clothing as children, it came for Pesach.

Then there was Succoth. Outside the entrance to the house we had a kind of fenced arbor. In the summertime one could sit there then in the afternoon my father and his friends played cards there. Then at the time of the Succoth it was very easy to prepare the tent, and everyone would eat there during the holidays. We had of course lulav [palm tree branch], and etrog [a kind of lime fruit]  in the house and we would be sitting out under the tent and read the Kohelet [Ecclesiastes; one of the five scrolls] and other things. My father would explain things and we also told what we were taught about those things at school. At Chanukah candles were lit in the synagogue, every day, as it came, one after the other. My mother would light them at home too and she told the blessing on it each evening, along with the girls. We, children would play, played with the spinning top. At Purim it sometimes happened that some kind of a role-play was staged in the school. They would animate the story of Esther, they would put on costumes, learned the roles and perform  the play. We would prepare presents, some cookies. Everyone would bake some, send it to their friends and close acquaintances and of course would get a lot in turn. There were some students with us who lived in the countryside but wanted to go to some Jewish school and so they came to live in Celldomolk and “eat days” [i.e. they would go and have their lunch with different Jewish families each day]. My mother regularly received such students then at each holiday we would be given huge parcels from the parents of these children.

During the war

I finished the middle school in 1938. Then I started to work in the store. At first [my duty was] selling goods, keeping the place tidy, then later on I did the purchase along with my father. We had a separate shoe department which was not a common thing those days and I became assigned to direct that department. My father would never stay behind the counter. There was a strict counter-system those days. My father would stay in the customers’ area while I stood behind the counter. I worked in the store until 1940.

In the middle of 1940 I received my call up letter from the army. I registered as a regular soldier and did not know that that could be the beginning of something. We were taken to Koszeg where after two sessions of training we were rounded up and told that we weren’t trustworthy enough to defend the country so we would serve as laborers. An indeed this was the first forced labor division, so we became the first Jewish forced laborers. We worked in Koszeg for a while, then at road constructions, trenching and unloading train carriages. There was also some agricultural work. It was all quite hard but we were all young and strong. From time to time we were allowed to send a postcard home but were not given any leave. From places all over the country Jews who were liable to military service had been directed to Koszeg, so two divisions were set up. We were told that we were expected to follow absolute discipline and the slightest breach of discipline would be sanctioned. There came 1942, the two years almost passed [the duration of compulsory military service] when in the summer of that year we were instructed to write a postcard home and say that we wanted them to send us all the necessary clothing for march as well as for cold weather because we were not entitled to be given any clothing any more. They packed us into a train and that was when a very typical scene occurred. The trains that carried the soldiers of the Hungarian Army to the front were finely decorated with flowers. When we arrived at the railway station a train beautifully prepared like that was standing there. When our commander caught sight of it, he ordered that all flowers should immediately be removed because we were only Jews and not Hungarians defending their country.

We traveled almost one week by that train. Food was not distributed too often and when we stopped we were already on the territory of Ukraine. Then came the march on foot. We were informed that we were going to cover more than 1,000 km in cavalry march – which meant 30 km per day and there would not be any rest only after having walked 15 km – so we’d better throw away all luggage that was not absolutely necessary, like canned food, and so on. The march lasted for more than a month and not once did we sleep under a roof. During the march we were given food too, I won’t say that it was sufficient and delicious but some kind of catering it surely was. And the weather was not that bad, as it was the summer period. Then we arrived at the river Don where we got accommodated in nasty tents and the trench digging and tank trap setting started. It was an absolutely senseless work to do and in the meanwhile fall, then the merciless wintertime and the frontline was approaching. Until fall we had been having a relatively nice commander who had no ill intentions. But when it dawned on him that the front was rapidly approaching and it would be impossible to defend ourselves, he asked for a leave and never came back. He was replaced by another one who was ruthless and a sadist and we were falling like flies.

I got hit in November and to my great luck I was taken to a hospital where the Hungarian soldiers got treatment, but the Jews were just thrown into the basement without beds or anything. The doctor would come down once a day but did nothing  -- Jews were not supposed to get medicament or bandage. We were given some kind of food and when I was already recovering I started to help those around me. One day the First Lieutenant Surgeon came downstairs to visit and he was accompanied by a girl. After the doctor had left she hurried up to me and asked “Mr. Deutsch, don’t you recognize me? I used to be a regular customer of your store in Cell[domolk], see these shoes, I bought them in your store. I am not in the position to help but I will try to keep an eye on you.” Days were passing and all of a sudden she comes and whispers in my ears that the next day everyone capable of walking would be sent back to the front, because the hospital was too crowded and I’d better figure out something. So the next day the First Lieutenant duly came and told us that we should be on our way. I told him I had just been written to my unit and asked for my clothes that I left behind when I was taken to the hospital and if I were to get back right now, I would just outright miss my baggage, and it was minus 30 degrees Celsius there and I was sure to freeze to death right away. He was a decent guy so he took me off the list and said that I should go by the next transport. And a few days later he even managed to organize me as a help-all in the basement, along with another guy. We had to bring the food, carry out the dead, look after  everybody and the like. So I got access to the kitchen where I was sometimes given an extra portion and that way I could share my regular portion with the other people downstairs.

That was going on like that for a while and one morning we woke up to realize that the hospital was empty. Food and all equipment lying around, the whole building deserted. While the Russians attacked, the Hungarians fled and no one cared about us, we were just left behind. For a few days we did not really know what had happened, then the Russians came and told that we were prisoners of war. For a short period of time we stayed on, then we were transported to camps. We went by train as far as the Eastern borders of Russia. It was already summertime by the time we arrived at our destination, the summer of 1943. Here I stayed for five years. Our job was the felling of trees. It was extremely cold, the rule was that we went to work only when the  temperature was above minus 40 degrees Celsius. If it fell under 40 degrees we would be given a day off. Boarding was all right and all those who reached these camps  starting off from the road construction in Hungary, all of us survived. Here one did not have to die any more.

Post-war

In 1947 those who were not fit for work because of their health were sent home – regardless of their being Jewish or German or Italian or Hungarian – we were all put together, but in the barracks people were separated according to their nationalities. The Jews however were not accommodated separately, we lived where the Hungarians lived. I’ll never forgive them for treating us the same way [as the non-Jewish Hungarians] and that we were not sent home earlier. In 1947 we were given a postcard so we had the chance to write back home ( it was the first time after five years that I was allowed to write home) that we were alive and well. And as I did not know whom to write and of course one had heard many things of what happened to the Jews, I wrote the postcard and addressed it to the Mayor’s office in Celldomolk. My brother got my card and knew that he could expect me home. Then in the spring of 1948 we too were released and sent home –  that year there was a big release campaign .

I went to Celldomolk straight away as I got home from captivity. My brother had already been home for almost three years, he got married and had a child too. I went home – in our house there lived my brother, his wife and their six-month-old little daughter. My brother told me what happened to whom. It was horrible. I helped my brother in the store but that time stores already started to become nationalized so I was given a job in Szombathely in a textile emporium where I dealt with the distribution of products. This store fulfilled the demands of  the whole Vas county. I got promoted to a relatively high position. I joined the party but then those days that was kind of natural, although I never became a very busy party member.

Of course one had to work on Saturdays too but I always remembered that it was a holiday. And I went to the synagogue on the high holidays. I took a day off  so that I could attend the service. It was quite obvious to everybody but I would never talk about it in particular. It was maybe the day before Yom Kippur when the secretary of the party comes up to me and asks whether I am taking a day off in order to go to the synagogue. I told him that it was so. So he says “you’d better not go, it is not really appreciated.” So I answered that at Yom Kippur there is a ceremony when we remember our deceased. During the war my grandparents, two brothers, two sisters, my parents and cousins got killed. He stopped bothering me, I think he got the message. I attended the synagogue anyhow, not much for prayers but I was seeking connection with my fellow Jews. There was a common room above the prayer hall –  the synagogue itself was too big for us – where we played cards and chatted, I went there quite frequently. I kept connection with the Jews all along.

It was in Szekesfehervar during a business trip that I got acquainted with Klari, my wife, who lived with her father. Her mum had been killed in Auschwitz, but she and her father had come home. Her father Andor had an upholstery while Klari worked as a shop assistant. When we decided to get married I applied to be transferred to Szekesfehervar. By that time I was already the second person at  the company, but Klari would not leave her father on his own and no place else could we have such a nice and spacious home as in Szekesfehervar. So I got transferred to a local textile center as a  distributor and  purchaser.

We had a civil wedding, but afterwards we went to the Szekesfehervar rabbinate, accompanied by a very few people only, and the rabbi also married us. In the mid-fifties this was not a common thing to do but to us it meant a lot. We regularly attended the synagogue and we were active members of the Jewish community. The Jewish community had about 30 members. That time it was not trendy to be Jewish and there were lots of mixed marriages. At the time of holidays we were always present in the prayer house – there was no proper synagogue functioning here either – and we would organize meetings as well. 

In 1956 nothing extraordinary happened in Szekesfehervar. A few people demonstrated, but nothing could be felt of what was going on in Budapest and in some other places in the country. In 1956 I was already married and had a job. We had my wife’s dad to look after so I was not in the position of thinking about emigrating to Israel. But when there were the wars in Israel I was deeply concerned. Of course I was not in the position to help, but I kept my fingers crossed for Israel. It was very comforting for me to know that Jews were able to protect themselves against others, that they had arms and they were able to fight and win. It was good to know after all that had happened in the second world war. It is not just that it gives you the feeling of security that a there is a Jewish state. I also appreciate that country very much and I would be really happy if there were real peace over there. Although I was not able to emigrate because whenever we were about to go and visit my relatives, my wife fell ill. We decided several times to go, but in the end we never went. It was only after her death that I managed to get there in 1998. It is a fascinating country.
Since we moved to Budapest I went more often to the synagogue. At first I attended the synagogue in Dohany street then the one at the Rabbinical Seminary. Since my wife died I am in the synagogue each Friday and I pray. I spend my afternoons at the Shalom Club where we play cards with my friends. I keep connections nearly exclusively with Jews. I have my doctor in the Jewish hospital. It’s among them that I feel secure.

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