The march was approaching our street. They knocked on every Jewish house’s door, so that we go to the brick factory. And they didn’t come into my house. Me and my mother too, we packed in what we could in a rucksack. When they passed by, I shouted after one of the guards: ‘A Jewish family lives here too, and you didn’t ring here!’ He comes back very angrily: ‘What’s your name?’ I tell him ‘Mrs. Andor Almasi’. He takes a look on the list: ‘Don’t play jokes with me, you’re not on the list.’ And the march goes away, and we stay there with mammy in despair, as, well, there were quite a lot of Jewish families around us, they are all gone, and we were left there… Well, I thought: ‘So they want to hang us up here, or what the hell?’ I could hardly wait that the captain arrived home, and I told him what happened. ‘It’s alright, it’s alright! You stay home. I told you I would take you over the frontier. The border to Romania is just a few kilometers far, and you and mammy have the chance to escape.’ But I didn’t want to hear a word on this. I said: ‘I have nobody over there. Where would mammy lay down in the evening?’ Because I was concerned all the time with mammy… But he kept on repeating: ‘I would like if, I really would like that…’ I implored him on bended knees to call for a soldier or policeman, and take me in, because I couldn’t leave for the brick factory by myself, with mammy, wearing that big [yellow] star [7]. He says: ‘If you insist so much, I can’t resist it.’ So he sent his orderly, then two soldiers came, two rotters, seventeen-eighteen years old kids – these were the most dangerous – and ‘Now go…!’ That’s how we got to the brick factory.
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Displaying 46891 - 46920 of 50826 results
Bella Steinmetz
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They announced that everybody should bring food enough for three days. Rumors were circulating a week before [putting people into ghettos], but officially I think they announced a few days before. I haven’t seen any posters. The town was small, with about 40-45 thousand inhabitants, it was enough for one to learn it, and that person started [to spread the news]. We called the Arany Janos street the Jewish street, because many poor Jewish families lived there. One was delivering bread from the bakery. Some were shoemakers or cobblers, or did woodwork at home. The other, let’s say was a tailor apprentice, and was an outworker. But lately Jews weren’t employed usually, because it wasn’t allowed. The Jewish merchants were forced to accept Christian partners, so that the business would be at least 60 percent Christian without them contributing even with a penny. They wouldn’t waste laws on us, only a decree was needed for this, there was no need for a law.
The ceremony was held in the yard. We still had a rabbi, even a shochet, but I don’t recall the rabbi’s name. I was so angry that I was hopping mad. I had agreed with them previously to set up the wedding canopy not outside, but in the office, because I had been married before. I knew anyway that I didn’t have any relatives, nor did my husband, so I didn’t need at all a public or a fuss. They said ‘Alright, no problem.’ My brother lived in Brasso, but they came, they stayed in a hotel, because I had one room in that big house. I said: ‘Don’t come to pick me up, I will walk to the synagogue by myself.’ I was ambling alone very sadly, I walked all the way crying. You have never seen such a sad bride in your life like I was. I remembered my first marriage, and this one was so miserable, without a family… The fact that my mother didn't escort me, nobody escorted me... I was very sad... Not even Hitler could take away the memories. Until this present day. I was walking, and then I saw that the canopy was set up in the yard, and the crowd – there was a lattice fence – was standing there and waiting for me. I got so angry! The person I talked to knew that I had been married. But he didn’t ask me if my husband had been married before. So I fell angrily upon this fellow, that ‘We agreed to set it up inside, so why did you do this? Do you think I need all this circus?’ My tears started to fall. He said: ‘Excuse me, dear Madam – he spoke a bad Hungarian, he was from Regat –, but you didn’t tell me that the bridegroom was still a boy!’ That’s how he expressed it. My husband was a single, he was 44, me 36. I got angry. I said: ‘So what?’ So he informed me that a person who wasn’t under the chupa, the canopy, must be in the open air.
I got married to my second husband in 1947. First we got married at the local council, that was the civil marriage, then we had a religious one too. It was a typical Jewish wedding, under a wedding canopy. It started at noon, at half past twelve. It lasted maximum half an hour, and it was quite close, in that large synagogue, which wasn’t finished, in the Brailei street.
Flora lived in Marosvasarhely. My sister-in-law and her husband were industrious people. They were both quite aged, 50 years old, when they left for Israel, and they died there. I met accidentally a cousin of my husband, Sarolta Steinmetz, after we got married. She got married in Nagyvarad, and we went on our honeymoon to Nagyvarad. She was the little one among his siblings, and she was called Pirinko, Piri. She wasn’t deported, because she was in Temesvar. The state of Israel wasn't established yet, it means they left before 1948. She went there right before ‘closing-time’ by ship, because there weren’t flights yet. With seventy kilos, a baby in her body, and she already had one. Her husband was a very wealthy man, I know he was engaged in trade there. I keep the contact with Piri, she was the one who always helped me financially, under the communism and after that, after my husband died. I was left with 500 thousand lei revenue, and she supported me. She lives now in Tel Aviv, she is 87. I’m in contact with her even today. I spoke to her last week.
,
After WW2
See text in interview
Albert survived, because he was taken to Kassa for work service. He had luck, because there was a stupid guy at the office, who had no idea about accounting, about management. Once he announced: ‘Is there anyone among you who knows a little office work, accounting?’ My husband presented himself. He says: ‘Yes, I do.’ He took him in and asked him: ‘Well, can you fix this?’ When my husband saw it, he realized that was a child’s play, and he said: ‘Well, I will try. I might be able to arrange this.’ Of course, he says, he could have fixed it in one hour, because it was so simple. ‘But I kept on prolonging it, and after two days I said: ‘Well – I have no idea about his rank – it’s done, take a look, it’s fixed now.’ ‘You were really skilful. You stay here, you will get separate meals, and you will get a decent bed.’ That’s how my husband survived, otherwise he was a thin little man. Briefly, he wouldn’t have survived even a transportation to a concentration camp, not mentioning that there… So he was in Kassa until the end, he was set free there. He was provided with bacon. The sergeant was very grateful to him for having saved him, because they came to check what he had done at the work service, how much food he took over, and it was extremely hard for him to calculate these. That’s how my husband escaped.
Both [Steinmetz] siblings came home from misery, and my husband’s sister got married here in Marosvasarhely. My husband visited her every weekend, because only the two of them survived from the eight siblings. In those times he worked in Szatmar, and there was a flight from Szatmar to Kolozsvar, so he visited his sister every week. So my girlfriend had this idea, that he wasn’t married, I was a widow, and she introduced us to each other. However, as she knew well, that I would refuse people to arrange for me, she visited me Sunday morning, and said: ‘Come out, stop that cooking! Come, let’s take a walk!’ The promenade in the morning was fashionable. It wasn’t for us though, because we weren’t elegant… But she agreed with her brother that ‘You too, come out, and we will meet on the esplanade.’ And my husband escorted me until the door already. He took his leave from me so hardly… And he asks me if I would let him to visit me. ‘Well – I answered – you are welcome.’ I got married [again] in 1947. I came home in 1945, and I took more than two years getting persuaded, I was afraid to marry him. I told myself, he was 41-42 years old, and he wasn’t married before, either he wants a cook, either he is impotent. So I started to wonder, what the hell… I was a married woman for 14 years. The poor man courted me, he came from Szatmar to Kolozsvar every week by plane, from there he came here. Finally I told him: ‘You know what, we have nothing to loose, we get married, if the marriage is working, fine, if not, one of us steps out.’ I didn’t have any children, nor did he. That’s how we got married.
My brother and I had different societies. He played bridge, and adored the cinema. I played rummy, and I preferred the theatre company to a good movie.
When I got married in 1947, he came with his wife already, they stayed in a hotel for one night, then went back. He moved back when the wood association was established. His name was known, he got employed immediately. This happened one or two years after. This association was established very soon, his name was well-known, he was in too, and a few other former producers came too, Christians, Hungarians, so they established together the wood association. They restored the factory as they could, so they formed a wood trust here, and it was due to my brother too that this could have been established. That was in the Hangya building. The Hangya didn’t exist anymore, because this was Romania again. But he wasn’t a party member, nor later, nor him or my husband. He got married, and was a clerk here. They made him a chief clerk, because they knew he was an expert, they asked him his opinion.
He got married in 1946, and he was placed in Brasso. So he lived in Brasso.
After my brother came home, he lived in one room, me in the other. He got married in 1946, that was his second marriage. He married a Jewish woman. I got married for the second time in ’47, he a few months earlier. He got married quite stealthily, I don’t know why. Bozsi wasn’t deported, because she was in Gyulafehervar [today Alba Iulia]. So all I got, a few valuable things, I inherited from them. They met each other as she came here. She was a dental technician, and she worked here, a common acquaintance introduced her to my brother.
In the meantime I became 33-34 years old. I was still a young, athletic-looking woman, I came home healthy, despite all the misery, so I endured it more easily. I was working, I could buy a pair of stockings, then I got a package from abroad, from aunt Sari, the sister of my dad. It arrived to the militia, because she didn’t know the name Almasi, and she sent it to the name Bella Bacher! The militia, I don’t know how, but found out that Bella Bacher was searched. Many Jews worked there. So everything is a matter of chance. I still have a terry towel. I used it as a bath sheet for a long time. I was very happy with the package. It had second-hand things too. She didn’t know if I was fat [or not], perhaps she didn’t even know how old I was, only approximately. She left before the war, I was about 4-5 years old.
I had an employment, but I couldn’t get accustomed to loneliness. There were many young widower, and hundreds of widows. I had company, we fooled each other, we were together every evening, but that didn’t offer any solution for me. These were all young Jewish people, who came back. Everybody had a place to stay. One had a better, the other had a worse one. I lived under difficult circumstances, because I let out instantly three rooms, I kept two, hoping that the good Lord would bring home my brother, so he would have a room of his own. I had nothing. Thus I lived under the hardest conditions, but a young person endures it more easily, and this was a common tragedy.
. I got a job. A good old acquaintance came home, his merchandise was walled up, and he found it, so he opened a store in the yard, he became a merchant. I became the cashier, he trusted me. I was so desperate, and I was so rootless. I got back part of my jewels, but I wasn’t interested in this.
After all they had done to us, there were some among the Hungarians who didn’t feel ashamed to reveal that they were happy. Everybody gained from it [from the deportation], that’s the truth. For example a few Romanian families were left here, they didn’t go away [Editor’s note: in 1940, after Northern-Transylvania became an area under the jurisdiction of Hungary]. People treated them so badly. The hospital was on Szent Gyorgy square. When the Hungarian army was retreating, they wanted to take with them the radiographs, they wanted to bring to the motherland all the movable values. And a Romanian doctor tells them in a perfect Hungarian (as he took his diploma in Pest): ‘I won’t let you take it, we have patients here!’ He put up resistance, and he didn’t let them take out even a chair. They kicked him out. In 1940, we were still home, so we saw this. When the war ended, he was kicked out from his flat too, because he had a nice, marvelous apartment, he built it next to the hospital. [Editor’s note: This could have happened due to the nationalization [10] in the communist regime.] He had a good salary, so he could have a house built of it. Not mentioning that he came from a wealthy family. They put him out in a room, somewhere near the Russian market.
I came only after two weeks to see my house. I regretted it however, because I got so upset. Two families were staying in my apartment, because I had five rooms: a family, husband and wife, in the other family there were three children, the eldest was seventeen years old, then a fifteen and a twelve years old. I was shouting on them, like a jackal, when I entered the house: ‘Who are you? What are you doing in my house?’ Imagine that you go home now, and you find strangers in your room, and everything is unfamiliar. And I could see there was nothing. I didn’t even have a glass. One of them was very impertinent. He had broken through the wall between two rooms, so he made a kitchen-and-room apartment. I gave him three days to remake it as it used to be. He will whitewash it and disappear in three days, upon this he will show a clean pair of heels. I left there the other. He had three children. He apologized. He says: ‘Well, we came in…’ I don’t know from where he was, Csik [region] maybe, a Hungarian teacher. They had come here to Marosvasarhely. I don’t know in fact how they had got precisely in my apartment. They had wanted to move to the town, and there had been many [empty] Jewish apartments. Everybody was happy, because a lot of apartments became available. The merchant was happy, because competition ceased. There were nice apartments, and one could ‘zabral’ [scrounge]. We learnt this from the Russians, it means to steal, to filch, to loot.
I didn’t come to see my house for two weeks. I couldn’t come, I had no energy. And when I arrived in the street, it was then that I realized, what did I come home for in fact?! Who is waiting for me, and why did I come home!? I burst out sobbing… I was walking on the right side, and I was looking at my house, which was on the left side. I stopped in front of my house, on the other side – I was looking at it, an unknown curtain at the window – and I was sobbing aloud. The window was open, because it was summer. The owner looked out [on the side where I was staying], and tells me: ‘Oh dear, it’s not true after all what people say about you? It’s not true, is it?’ I looked at him, I said: ‘No. Why don’t you ask me where is my mother? Why don’t you ask me where is my husband?’ Hearing this he closed the window! I fell down, so that he would come out, that he would stand by me, that he would take me inside. He didn’t even bring me a glass of water, though he could see how I looked like! This was the neighbor who lived opposite, and whom my husband gave so many good advices. It was a couple, they didn’t have children. They were drudging, they did sewing, they were rich. He was such a neighbor! Oh, I didn’t care anymore. They behaved badly. I didn’t come in my house’s vicinity for two weeks.
Then life begun… I restarted life very hardly. Two tenants lived in my house… Part of my furniture was lost: the furniture of the drawing room, of my husband’s office, of the living-room, the piano, everything that could be taken easily. The big, heavy pieces were left, they didn’t take those. I found my furniture from the dining-room in the stable of a person, it was very beautiful. Back then it was a very modern dining-room, with antique chairs, it seems someone needed only the chairs. The furniture didn’t have any value like this, because they couldn’t make such chairs in those times. Furthermore I didn’t get back any glass. The neighbors didn’t rejoice much at the returned people. This doesn’t mean that there weren’t many straight people, because I slept on the pillow of a Christian until I got married, from 1945 until 1947. I had a neighbor, Nora Scitea, a Romanian woman, she gave me a pillow. The wife spoke Hungarian perfectly, the husband just a little. He wasn’t in a too high position. In the Hungarian era [2] they moved, but only to the frontier, it was 15 km far from here. It turned out only after the war that they were so close. The captain who was lodged at my place had implored me that ‘I will pass you through the frontier.’ If I knew Scita was so close, she would have given me accommodation or a piece of bread. They moved back. The husband treated mainly thieves at the police. But then he fell sick and died.
I don’t know, maybe after one year, there was a Jewish boy who first courted me, he wanted to marry me, he implored me each day, he filled my head with this. Once he finds me crying, and I say: ‘Leave me alone! I don’t want to get married, you see, I have nothing to eat tomorrow. This captain told me he had given my jewels to these people, I could do something if I had those.’ ‘Well then – he says –, come with me.’ It was dark already, it was about eight o’clock. I tell him: ‘What do you intend to do, dressed in civil clothes?’ We visited that girl’s father, and he said: ‘Mister, I’m here officially. Either you give me the jewels, silver objects of Mrs. Almasi, either you come with me to the police.’ And he shows his badge, as every ‘szekus’ [Editor’s note: member of the Securitate, that is the Romanian secret police] had a certificate. It [the badge] was a brooch of course, he was a cunning fellow. The lawyer was in a blue funk when the boy did this. He went at once to his big cash desk, took out a small box, like mine, which I had given [to the captain], mainly my mother’s small jewels were in it. ‘I was here a few months ago, and you told me you had nothing.’ His daughter was there too: ‘How should I have known which one belongs to Mrs. Almasi?’ ‘You gave me straightaway, as you opened it – I say –, you found it at once. How could that be possible?’ I slapped that man in the face, and I spat him on face. In such a case one looses his good sense and self-command. I say: ‘Let’s go, because I will faint in a minute. It’s worthless, I lost my mother, I lost my husband, and now should I fight for jewels?’ Then he [Duci’s father] gave me back some things and said: ‘Believe me or not, that was it, because we took some when we were escaping [with Frici], but when we came home, we couldn’t carry them, and we threw them on the street.’ I had big silver platters, silver cutlery. He gave me back a set for fish and a set for ice-cream, with eighteen teaspoons. This young man left for Israel later, at quite a young age.
And when I had returned [from deportation, thus before the visit in the concentration camp in Regat], I had gone to her family – her father was a lawyer by the way –, I had asked: ‘Didn’t he leave here something?’ ‘No, no.’ They interrogated me about Frici, they registered what I said, how this captain behaved. I gave him such a [positive] reference, so I returned his goodness, I have a clear conscience. On the basis of my statement he was released after four months. He didn’t stay then in Hungary. He was [the descendant of] a rich landowner, but communism came for him too, they took surely from his property, and he didn’t stay there. He left for Holland, and got married there. He never wanted to marry this woman from Marosvasarhely. The poor man, he died three years ago.
,
After WW2
See text in interview
They let me in, the gate shot after I entered, and I fainted. I felt again I was in the concentration camp, I remembered everything, and I collapsed. They brought me round, took me to the guard-room and looked for the captain.
,
After WW2
See text in interview
Polina Levina
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My grandfather remarried after she died. His second wife, Hana, was a short, fat and very hearty woman. She wore common clothes for a village woman, but she also wore a dark shawl. She was a housewife. Grandmother spoke Yiddish, but she talked in poor Russian with her grandchildren. I don’t know what my grandfather did for a living. I cannot say how religious my father’s parents were, but I don’t think they were very religious.
It’s hard for me to describe Novovorontsovka since we left there before I turned ten. It was a small Ukrainian village and there were only a few Jewish families there. There was no synagogue in Novovorontsovka. I don’t know whether there was a prayer house. Jews were craftsmen and workers. There were no Jewish pogroms 1 in the village and there were no wrong attitudes towards the Jewish population.
My father never told me about his childhood. All I know is that he and his brother studied in cheder in a neighboring village and this was all the education they got. They became workers.
At the time I knew my mother’s sisters and brothers they communicated in Russian, but I think that they spoke Yiddish with their parents. My maternal grandmother only spoke Yiddish and I asked her to speak Russian to me since I didn’t understand Yiddish.
The Germans shot Semyon Shatovski during the occupation in 1941. They killed him at home in the presence of his wife and children.
After finishing elementary school my mother went to study at the Russian grammar school for girls in Kherson. Although it was difficult for Jews [because of the five percent quota] 6 to enter a grammar school in tsarist Russia, there were exceptions made for advanced pupils and if they were successful they were even exempt from payment of the fee. My mother finished nine years in the grammar school. Graduates were allowed to work as teachers in an elementary school. My mother returned to Novovorontsovka and became a teacher in a local elementary school.
I don’t know how she met my father. They got married in 1908 and lived in Novovorontsovka. I don’t know whether they had a traditional Jewish wedding.
My parents didn’t wear anything specifically Jewish. They wore common clothes like all other residents of the village. My mother wore dark dresses or a white blouse and a black skirt – this was what she thought a teacher should look like. My mother wore her thick, dark hair in a knot.
We had a small thatched-roof house that my father built from shell rock. There were two rooms and a kitchen in the house. There were a few pieces of furniture: plank beds, a table and a few chairs. There was a Russian stove 7 in the kitchen that served for cooking and heating. Water was fetched from a well in the street. There was a backyard with a woodshed and a smaller storage shed. There were few apple and pear trees and a flower garden near the house.