We spent just three nights in Auschwitz and then they took us to Cracow-Plaszow. We were together with mom and aunt Agnes there. They told us in Cracow not to mention that we were mother and daughter, but to say we had a profession. We both said that we were sewing women. They selected mom for construction works and me to a warehouse, so I had no problems there, there were acceptable circumstances, but mom had to carry bricks. She got vitamin deficiency and blisters appeared on her legs. The great thing was that from the first moment we had no menstruation, otherwise it would had been awful – I don't know what they gave us. Everybody had his place in the barracks. I was on good terms with the Polish Jews, they loved me, so they helped me. There were no acquaintances from Vasarhely there, because I went together with the Jews from Regen. The Cracow-Plaszow camp was the former ghetto of Cracow. The camp was built on the territory of the Jewish cemetery, the Polish Jews remained there from the ghetto. This is the location of the movie Schindler's List [by Steven Spielberg].
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Zsuzsa Diamantstein
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When we arrived, I was together with mom then, and they separated us immediately from the men. We got off the train, and we went arm in arm with mom in front of the selecting committee. How should we know where would they send us? We arrived in the front of the selecting committee, and the selector – I don't know who he was because I wasn't attentive – signaled mom to go to the left and me to go to the right. But then I said in German 'Aber meine Mutter!' (But my mother!) and my mom said 'Aber meine Tochter!' (But my daughter!) and the selector pushed mom to the right side where I was and he said: 'Oh, you can still run.' We didn't understand what it meant, and I remained with mom...
Then they deported us. As far as I know, they completely emptied the ghetto from Regen with one train [Editor's note: 3,149 people were deported from the ghetto of Szaszregen on 4th June 1944].
We got into the ghetto of Regen... First they took us to the brickyard, and then they brought the people from the villages, because the Jews from Hargita county, Toplica and Udvarhely ended up there, as well. By the road that leads to the brickyard there were small rural houses, they removed the inhabitants from them and put us in them. The women were in the rooms, while the men in the loft, and we, the young people, in the hayloft. It took one month just to take people to the ghettos. In the meantime they took a few of us, young girls, I don't remember how many, they vaccinated and examined us because they took us to work in the officers' casino.
After the Germans invaded Hungary, this was in 19th March 1944 [11], we had to wear the yellow star. Terrible things happened after that. They removed us from the apartment, and they told us that if we moved together with others we could remain in the town. Our friends from Regen had a bigger flat, and we, together with another family, moved in with them.
My stepfather used to listen to radio London every evening. We learned for the first time about gas-chambers from there, but we didn't believe it. We thought it was just propaganda. When the Hungarian army came in [in 1940], the Hungarian Jews came in officer uniform. Many officers came to my parents, who were in the uniform adequate to their rank. Then slowly they were demobilized. Then began to take the men to forced labor.
I had a very good girlfriend there, she was a smart, capable girl, she was an excellent piano player. Her name was Miri Szabo, and she attended the music academy in Vasarhely, her teacher was Sari Trozner. She loved Miri very much, and when Sarika had tendovaginitis, Miri replaced her, despite all the Jewish laws which already existed then. Poor Miri perished in the gas-chamber.
When I finished school, I ended up in Regen, and my life somewhat fell apart. I don't have too pleasant memories from this period. I can't say I had a beautiful youth there. I got to a tailor shop, and the salary I got there was minimal. Not to mention that I hated, I hated it so much... An old Jewish woman was the owner, Sari Kraus, and the tailor shop was full of spinsters. They hated me because I was young, and because they knew I didn't really live from what I earned there, I didn't have to slave because I had parents, so it was terrible what I have gone through in that tailor shop. Not to mention that I hated sewing and I wasn't skillful at all, so it was a hard period for me, I cried a lot...
Romania
The reannexing [the so called ‘Hungarian era’] [8] came and my stepfather was soon laid off. There was a law [the numerus clausus in Hungary] [9] in the 1940s about I don't know exactly how many percent of the clerks could be Jewish. Instead of divide the sum between dad and himself, or at least giving something to dad, the general manager kept the whole sum for himself. Dad remained jobless. I think he worked in 1940, but in 1941 he became jobless. It was a terrible thing because we weren't rich, and my parents had no money. Dad did some book-keeping at home for a gas station owner then, who wasn't Jewish, and we managed to get by somehow.
At the end of the 1930s the Jewish youth still organized conventions, but slowly the atmosphere got worse. Anti-Semitism appeared in Romania, and the Iron Guard began to rule, and this left a mark on the Jewish social life and mood – we could already feel the war psychosis.
He was a dedicated member of the Iron Guard, but he probably had nothing against the Jews, he probably had something with the regime. He was our teacher just for a short period, because he was removed, they relocated him, but I can't say anything wrong about him.
The little graduation means graduation of high school. Those four grades of high school meant much more than the eight grades today, they represented a higher degree. An anti-Semitism wave began then, and it was very hard for the Jews to enter the university. Usually we, Jewish girls, didn't study further [at a university], we rather learned a profession – we got to a tailor shop or a hairdresser salon or in other places – because our parents considered thus we will have better success in life. Mom sent me as apprentice in a tailor shop because she thought it was a very good profession, and I would see later I would go to my uncle to Vienna etc., etc.
When we came back from the deportation, I came through [Nagy]Varad, we got off the train there and they checked those who got off. There was a Jewish policeman. 'Who are you?', he asked. I said my name, Riegelhaupt. 'This is a German name!' There were other people from Vasarhely. ‘She was with us – they said – look, she has a tattoo!’ 'Everybody can have a tattoo! Do you speak Jewish?' 'No, I don't.' He ordered me out because he thought I was a ‘shady element’. The others I was with asked him not to do that... And I had to guffaw that I was put aside as a suspicious element! I’ve just came back from the concentration camp and I was a suspicious element! He came back to me after a while and asked me if I can speak Yiddish or Jewish? I said no. He asked me if I could pray.
It was mandatory to attend the religion class then. Everybody attended the class for their respective religion. Religion class was just line any other class in the school, held weekly. The Jewish religion class, that is the religion class of minorities, was held at the Jewish school. The rabbi taught us the religion class there.
In 1932 when I entered the Unirea high school – it was the part of the building that gave onto the Boulevard, a university is there at the moment – the high school was a very good school, with an outstanding lady principal, Doamna Georgescu [Mrs. Georgescu in Romanian] who was an extremely decent person. I finished there the four grades of high school. Towards the end, around 1936, there were so insecure years, it wasn't a warlike atmosphere, but anti-Semitism was already present. I can't say they made us feel it, we knew there were Iron Guard [7] girls, but otherwise we didn't feel it.
I was in the third form when I began to learn playing the piano. My piano teacher was Piroska Metz from the music academy [they called it in Hungarian playfully ‘Zenede’ (music factory) by then]. I liked auntie Piroska very much, although she was a very severe teacher, but I, who always had stage fright, I got used to playing in front of audience. She used to teach each pupil one quarter of an hour, but we had to stay there for the whole hour, until the other three pupils finished their lesson, so we played in front of each other, not to mention that we had some internal examination concerts. Then came a period when my parents had no money to pay the school fees, so another piano teacher, Eva Lorand took over, who used to come to our home. In the Zenede we had to pay quarterly, and that was a larger sum to spent for a fixed salary clerk. That's how I ended up with Eva Lorand, she wasn't cheaper, but we only had to pay monthly fees. The music school was the same as the normal school, with first grade, second grade and third grade. As far as I remember, I attended the Zenede for three years, and I studied another three years with Eva Lorand, but my habit of playing in front of an audience was gone, and I wasn't talented after all.
There was a Jewish Women's Association then, the WIZO. Naturally they supported Zionism, so they organized charity performances and balls in the Jewish community center. My parents used to attend them. My mother didn't go to other balls. My parents weren't members of such organizations.
They used to organize very nice festivities in the Jewish school. We held the most important performances in the Jewish community center, but during the year there were self-culture clubs in the school, which they held in the Jewish school: they used to read out poems and humorous things. Uncle Rado and another educator, Boske Rosenfeld, poor her didn't come back from the deportation [Editor’s mote: As we can learn from the interview with Eva Deutch, Ferenc Rado and Jeno Moskovits also died in deportation.], put together once a tale of Purim, and it was a nice performance. Children performed it: one of my classmates was Queen Esther, she was a very beautiful girl, called Eva Citrom (she didn't dare to come back from the deportation because she didn't behave very well there), one of my boy classmates was Haman, there was a Mordecai and another classmate was Ahasuerus. The tale was about Ahasuerus who wanted to get married and different girls were taken to him, a Bedouin, a Turkish and a Jewish girl and he chose the Jewish girl. I was one of the girls, I got from somebody a very elegant Turkish woman's dress, and everybody said he should have chosen me instead of the Jewish girl, because I had such a beautiful dress...
In the school, in elementary school and middle school, we learned in Romanian, but at religion class we learnt in Hebrew. We learned the Hebrew letters from the prayer-book, and the religious things usually from the Bible – we learned everything from uncle Rado during the religion classes.
I finished elementary school in the Jewish school, which was on Horea street, today it's school number 4. The Jewish school had six grades, and I finished four of them. Usually those who wanted to continue their studies finished four classes, and they entered a local middle school or a high school. Those who couldn't afford this finished the six grades, but it wasn't mandatory to do so, only four grades had to be finished then. It was a wonderful school.
My father was a clerk, he had a fixed salary, they lived well, but they didn't live in great style, but we lived well at middle-class standards.
There was a Jewish club in Vasarhely, and a Hungarian casino, as well. My grandfather and my stepfather used to go to the Hungarian casino together. The Hungarian casino was in the Apollo Palace building then.
My mother used to go to the synagogue each Saturday, she lit candles on Friday evening, and she didn't cook on Saturday. We observed the high holidays, on Yom Kippur my stepfather also went to the synagogue and we followed the meal traditions, as well. We weren't kosher, but my mother cooked very delicious meals, and she held a light kitchen, not a Jewish one, it was rather a more modern, lighter one, and we ate lots of fruits.
The main square of Vasarhely was full of Jewish stores. There was Vamos' big textile store, he was a very decent merchant, we loved his store very much because one could buy things there on installments, especially the families with fixed incomes.
My mother took care of the household, because we had only one kitchen. So we moved in there. We had a housemaid, my grandparents had another one, and then – because the apartment was big, and we were many there – both maids remained to help out mom. One of them used to do the work in the kitchen, while the other one used to clean up the place. It wasn't like today, when they only come once a week, they brushed the parquet daily and there was a serious cleaning. Not to mention that washday was a big deal then. The washwoman came, and they rubbed [the clothes] in two rounds, they boiled, starched and blued them. At that time there was no colorful table-linen, no colorful bed-linen, so the bed-linen and the table-linen was white. To make them white as snow, they put a liquid in the last wash water, it was called starch blue, which didn't stain the clothes, but gave them a nice, white color. The water became blue, and thereby the white clothes became china white.
After mom married, the grandparents moved to Kolozsvar, because their daughter Ilonka lived there, and with the help of their son, Erno, they built a very nice house there. So they left the flat to us. It was a very nice flat with three big rooms, kitchen and bathroom. Heating was a big problem, they used wood for heating with stove, and it was difficult to heat the flat. We lived on the second floor, we had to bring up the wood from the cellar. But we had a maid servant, a household employee, and she used to take the wood from the cellar to the second floor, where we lived. They always ordered the wood during fall, and since there was a cellar, they used to store the wood there. They cut up the wood, there was a specialized company, for example a family who was doing this, they had a sawing-machine and they went wherever they were requested to. There was plumbing in the building, bathrooms with flushing closet – we lived in civilized conditions.
They held the [wedding] ceremony at home, and considering that it was mom's second marriage they didn't make a big fuss about it. I remember that the chuppah was under the gate and the marriage took place there. I was in the first grade then, and they took me away from home during the ceremony.
When my stepfather married mom, my parents, together with the Riemer grandparents, moved to the Albina building, opposite to the Romanian Orthodox church. The bank was there, but there were flats as well, not too many, though. Usually the clerks of the Albina bank used to live in the flats, but they also rented them to others, and the Riemer grandparents lived in one of those flats.
My stepfather wasn't religious at all. They were assimilated Jews, they had the Jewish consciousness, but they weren't religious.
My stepfather, Karoly Riemer, graduated the Business Academy from Vienna. He was sent to the front as an ensign, and he was taken prisoner in as early as 1915. He came home from Russian captivity in 1922. He was taken to many places, but in the end he ended up in Tashkent [Uzbekistan]. He played very well the violin, and when they were allowed to move freely in captivity, except from letting them go home, they formed an orchestra. There were only a few people who played the violin and they began to play at the circus first. They began to play in restaurants, at weddings, Jewish weddings, to Mongolian yurtas in the steppe, they played everywhere. They evolved quite nicely, they even held classic concerts after they formed a quartet. Later he entered the music academy of Tashkent as a violin teacher. They were four, I believe they were all Jews, but I don't know precisely, anyway this lasted for 7 years. Mom was already married when my stepfather came home to Vasarhely, I was born just then.