A friends' reunion in Katalin Kallos Havas' apartment

This photo was taken in our apartment on Zola Street in Kolozsvar in the early 1990s, during a friends' reunion. We used to visit each other quite often. On the left is Andras Roth sitting with his wife, then me and Deleanu with Magda, his wife. On the right that's my husband, Miklos Kallos.

Andras Roth is a sociologist, he lectured at Babes-Bolyai University in Kolozsvar, and he was my husband's colleague. Deleanu was a historian at the same university. He was born in Ploiesti, in a Jewish family. He died, though. His wife is of Jewish origin too, she pulled through World War II in Budapest, and then she came back to Transylvania. She met Deleanu here.

I met my husband, Miklos Kallos, in Kolozsvar at the Dezsisz [Democratic Jewish Youth Union], right after I came home after the war. My husband was deported from Nagyvarad at the age of 17, along with his family, and he was the only survivor. He only spent three days in Auschwitz, then he was transferred to Buchenwald. He came to Kolozsvar because here he had all the friends he had made in the camp. He finished two grades in one year and graduated from high-school in Kolozsvar, based on the Voitec-law. He did a lot of reading and studying. In 1947 he was accepted to the Philosophy Department of Kolozsvar University, and in 1948 he was already a trainee at the university, even though he was only a 2nd-year student. He was by then working at a Jewish newspaper, the Uj Ut , a paper from Kolozsvar.

Our wedding was a regular civil one, without any religious ceremony. We got married in 1949. I got on my bike and went there from the factory because our wedding was scheduled for noon. We went to the registrar, we said our 'I do's and I went back to the factory. That's how it happened. One of the witnesses was Andor Bajor, and we invited him for lunch. I don't know who the other witness was, because we needed two witnesses.

My husband and Andor Bajor were class-mates at university. They were members of 'the coach and five', that's what they were called back then at Bolyai University. The others were Sandor Toth, Samu Benko and Tibor Szarvadi, of Szekler origin, who died later. He and his wife went for a trip in the Fogaras mountains, got lost and they perished there. Erno Gall was older, he was a different generation, but was good friends with my husband, since they both came from Nagyvarad.