In Saratel there were Romanians, but there wasn’t any anti-Semite manifestation. People got on well in those times. Hitler didn’t exist yet. We didn’t know, we wouldn’t have thought that something was to come, we had no reason to believe this. We had Romanian newspapers in the village, but one couldn’t find out anything from those, and when Hungarians were in, we didn’t really have Hungarian newspapers.
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Berta Grunstein
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My parents weren’t engaged in politics, well there weren’t parties then! People respected my father a lot, they came to ask for his advice. They used to ask him if his daughter or son wanted to get married. Somebody came from the village: ‘You’re well-to-do, just as I do – he told my father –, let your daughter marry my son.’ My father answered: ‘I won’t let my daughter get married yet’, he talked about me. Back then Jews married only Jews, mixed marriages didn’t exist.
We had a post office in the village, but there wasn’t any doctor or pharmacy, people went to see a doctor in Beszterce. We didn’t have electricity, we did listen to the radio though.
My parents never took a holiday. However, there was a salted bath not far from Saratel, the water emerged from the ground, there was ‘namol’ [mud, in Romanian] people smeared with. I used to go there with my mother and grandmother. My mother told me: ‘I will give you one lei, come with me’, so I did. Everybody went there from the village, one didn’t have to pay anything.
In Romanian Szeretfalva was called Saratel, and it had Romanian and Jewish population. The village was on the main road, which goes to Beszterce, Kolozsvar and Des. It was a somewhat big and wealthy village situated ten kilometers far from Beszterce. There were many Jews, there were two minyans, so twenty, twenty five families, but all of them were deported. The Jewish houses weren’t in a separate part of the village, but among the Romanians. Poor Jews usually had some profession. There were shops, but not only on the main road, there was a street which led to the railway station. There were shops too, which belonged rather to Jews. One of my grandmother’s sisters, Mirjam Lazar – I don’t know her name after her husband – had such a grocery. Jews owned the land in that village, and the mill too, but the miller wasn’t Jewish. It was a water-mill, the Beszterce flew there, I was born there, because we lived on the riverside. All the children used to bath in the river; I learnt how to swim there. When it rained, the water was deep, but when it was drought, it wasn’t deep.
On each Friday night my father prayed, my mother prepared fish in aspic, meat soup and challah. On Fridays it was us, children who brought the cholent to the shochet, and at Sabbath noon we brought it home. On Sabbath my father and my brother went to the synagogue; on high days women went to the synagogue as well, nobody worked. At Chanukkah we lit seven candles [Editor’s note: instead of the usual eight plus one candles].
My mother was a great cook, she was a good housewife, she enjoyed cooking. I remember that in my childhood, at Pesach we had separate dishes we kept in a chest. Each of us had their own plate, every child knew which was their own. We had meat-soup made of beef. We didn’t eat bread at all for eight days; we had fried matzah, ‘reminyi’; we cooked beet soup with potatoes. I often prepare beet soup as well. The beet needs to be grated and boiled a little in salted water. It gets white within a few minutes, then it has to be strained; but it mustn’t be cooked for long, because it would loose its color. The strained soup must be put back on fire, you put some vinegar and a little sugar, and an egg stirred in it. You serve it with potatoes cut into cubes. That’s all. They used to make ‘pldli’ for the meat soup, balls from matzah meal. That’s very tasty. You beat an egg, you add a little salt, pepper and matzah meal; it must be somewhat thicker than the pancake dough, but not much more, because it will grow, and the ‘pldli’ would get hard – it’s not like semolina, that’s not so substantial –, so it needs more egg. So you put it into the meat soup. It is very tasty.
There was a kosher slaughterhouse in the village, and a shochet cut the poultry as well. My uncle, Markus Rosenfeld was the shochet, his wife, Eszter was the sister of my grandmother Jager. They came somewhere from the Maramaros region too, he was a nice bearded man, moreover, his wife was a very elegant and modern woman, she wasn’t old-fashioned at all. They had a clean house; we brought the cholent there on Saturday, it was cooked in their oven alike the matzah. The shochet led the prayer, and he was our teacher in the cheder too. My father was the gabbai, he distributed the meat. At Sukkot my father invited to us everybody, and so my mother and I cooked all night, and people danced a religious dance in circle.
On each Friday evening, on Sabbath and on holidays they went to the synagogue. My mother went to the mikveh each month. We had a big and beautiful synagogue in Szeretfalva, it wasn’t storied. It had two large rooms, one for men, the other for women, and there was a window between the two rooms. We didn’t have a rabbi, only a shochet.
My parents were religious, but not as much as people of Bnei Brak. [Editor’s note: According to a survey made in 2002 Bnei Brak is one of the most religious towns in Israel.] They observed the Jewish tradition, and we spoke Yiddish at home. My father wasn’t Orthodox; he was a gabbai, he prayed each morning at home with his tallit and tefillin.
My parents were well-to-do. We didn’t feel the want of money or anything else. There were poorer people than us, and they could get along. When they milked the cows, my mother told us: ‘Now, you take milk here, and you there.’ And we brought milk for free for people who didn’t have. My parents dressed nicely, we were almost the most elegant people in the village. There was one more family, they were corn traders as well, who were well-off, then we. At the age of fifteen I was already given a golden watch. We got a new dress for each high day, sometimes we got silk dress, yet silk dresses counted for something really extraordinary. They bought it in Beszterce, not necessarily from a Jewish salesman; it only had to be nice.
There was an old lady, she was called Anna, who looked after children together with my mother. She was Romanian, and on each Sunday she went home. We were crying and holding her skirt, and she told us we should not cry, because she would come back by the evening. During the week she slept in our summer flat. When my mother accompanied my father to fairs, I was the eldest girl at home, and housekeeping was put in my charge.
On Sabbath a neighbor came and he made fire in the stove. Our house was a country-house with three big rooms; we had a storeroom too. Outside we had one more room, that was the summer apartment. My parents lived in one room, we, the three girls in other, and the boys in the third one.
After my husband’s death I didn’t assume any community tasks. I was ill for a long time, and now I can’t leave the house anymore. I have an aid for housekeeping and for daily work, the Jewish community too sends me an assistant. I’m receiving material support from the Jewish Federation in Bucharest due to my thirty years activity for the behalf of the community, and I’m granted the German Claims [11] assistance as well.
In 1957 we applied too for permit to go to Israel, but they didn’t let my husband go. We didn’t try for a second time, it wouldn’t have had any reason. I was in Israel for three times. First I went there in 1969 with Marci, my brother-in-law, because they didn’t let me go with my husband. Since we didn’t have children, his son counted always as our son. When Andris left, my husband told him: ‘When we will have the possibility to go, you will be the first we will visit.’ After I came home, I obtained the papers, and in 1970 I sent there my husband. For instance when I was in Israel, my husband would have had to go to Greece to take over some goods, but they didn’t let him go; he had to send someone else, because they thought he would go across to Israel. For the second time I went to Israel with my father in 1977, one year before he died. His brother, Smil was still alive, he was younger than my father, but Mojse had died. They let us go together with my husband only in 1980, after he retired. We took a trip, so that my husband could see Israel.
,
After WW2
See text in interview
We organized baptism too. [Editor’s note: Of course she doesn’t talk about baptism, but circumcision ceremony.] Once a student came, because their baby had been born, and he wanted the baby have baptized. They studied here; they weren’t from the surroundings, I think they were from Moldova. I don’t remember their name anymore, and I also don’t remember when this happened. In fact I didn’t know them, they just simply came in to the community. We were talking, once they asked about baptism. Of course we would do it, I said. I was in for every such occasion. The brit milah, the circumcision was kept in the great hole. Somebody came, I don’t remember anymore who, and he did it. After the couple finished the university, they emigrated to Canada; we kept on corresponding for a long time, because after the baptism I invited them for lunch several times.
When we celebrated a wedding in the synagogue, there is an armchair in the little room, where Seder night is organized today, so we covered it nicely, I put a carpet in front of it I had brought from home, and the bride was sitting in that armchair. A rabbi of small stature came, I think from Kolozsvar, and he married the couple inside. From there they went over the synagogue, to the large room, and the chupa was installed there: it had four columns supported by four boys. The last wedding celebrated in Marosvasarhely, as far as I remember, was the wedding of Aladar Scheiner; his first wife had died, then he married Juci Mestitz [Julia Scheiner]. A shochet came then too. And it wasn’t organized in the synagogue, but in the small room. I was asked to make the cookies.
On high days rabbi Rosen [10] sometimes came here from Bucharest together with his wife. She was a real lady. She was also a lawyer like Mr. Rosen, that’s how they got to know each other. They always came by plane, and I welcomed them at the airport with flowers. Sometimes it was only his wife who came by plane from Bucharest, and the rabbi came by car from Moldova. Generally they traveled further to Kolozsvar. If they stayed overnight, they stayed at the Continental Hotel, that was the most elegant hotel back then. So we rented a room there, and we laid the table, we had tea, coffee, sardine, cheese, olives, bread, things like that.
I invited several times everybody who worked at the Jewish community; there wasn’t any special occasion, I just promised them to make a big challah, and birds, flowers made of cake and many other things. I baked it at home, it is some kind of braid, it can replace bread: it has salt and a little oil in it. That’s how they do it, that’s how my mother prepared it. First, when they wash hands, they recite a prayer, then they cut a little piece of challah for everybody, they dip it into honey, and everybody is given a piece, so that the whole year would be sweet. [Editor’s note: So this must have been on Rosh Hashanah.] Then I served up a lot of cookies, and we had liqueur and brandy. Then we had fish in aspic, which I prepared of ten kilos of fish; all these people ate fish in aspic only when dining at me. After that I served stuffed cabbage from kosher beef and fine home-made wine, that’s the custom. When meat was brought to the community, I bought some and I used it. Then we had coffee, I have a very nice German porcelain coffee-set, I served it up in that, then we had two or three kinds of cakes made of different creams.
While my husband was alive, I prepared dinner for each Seder night. I organized the last dinner in 2001 – I was doing this for thirty years. There were a hundred and thirty persons at the last dinner I organized. They always used to say there wouldn’t be many people. ‘Don’t spend much money, don’t buy much stuff.’ Nevertheless I always bought the quantity that was needed, because I already knew; luckily I did it well, because at the end there was nothing left for the staff. I had assistance, but not much; I did by myself what was the most important part of it, because I wanted it to be as it had to be. We worked a few days in advance, then on the last day I was up and working for sixteen hours. When Seder was over, men made order in the room, women did the dishes, made order in the kitchen, and we came home at midnight. During the night I always had cramp in my legs. My poor husband, when I had cramp, I cried, so he brought spirit and did a massage for me.
After the Jews emigrated, during the 1950s there wasn’t anybody in Marosvasarhely to cut the animals, so a shochet came from Bucharest or Kolozsvar; later people traveled to Kolozsvar to buy meat. We always prepared different meat, depending on the raw material; we made meatballs, stew with potatoes, horse-radish, we always had beet, starter, eggs; everybody was given two eggs. I put lettuce under the eggs, parsley on its top, fresh radish, if we already had; we cut out tulips of the radish. Sometimes people said that in spring it was costly, yet I bought as much as I needed. I have a knife with a reticulated edge, I used that knife when I cut up the cucumbers, and I put two slices on the plate.
During the Ceausescu era Jewish shochets came to Marosvasarhely to cut kosher meat for Israel at the slaughterhouse, and they exported it to Israel. Three shochets came together with their families, and a mashgiach, who had lived for two years in Vienna before, then he came here. He’s the person who supervises whether the meat is kosher or not. They lived here for about two years; they all stayed in the Furnica block of flats [in the block which is near to the store called Furnica], because the Securitate usually watched the strangers, everywhere in the town.
On high days it was me who organized the festive dinner. On Yom Kippur, when fasting was over, they made grilled meat for dinner, and I baked the cake, three or four hundred hamantashen, which is the specialty of Purim. I baked them at home, for the most part alone; I baked a few days earlier, because it had crumbly dough, so it got soften. It has to be cut out in circle, then folded in triangle.
For Seder night I prepared dinner from thirty or thirty-five kilograms of meat, sixty kilos of potatoes and thirty kilos of beet. I presented the list of what I needed at the community, and they bought the things. They gave eggs, oil and meat as well. I had to buy the rest, but it was well organized. There was a Hungarian family, who for each Pesach brought us thirty kilos of beet for pickles, but I had bought the horse-radish in advance. The entire preparations started one week before the high day, because the horse-radish and the beet had to mix well. I put on the flowers and the decoration on the last day to make it fresh. We were cooking khremzlakh for two hours, but it was the last thing to prepare, because it had to be fresh.
For Seder night I prepared dinner from thirty or thirty-five kilograms of meat, sixty kilos of potatoes and thirty kilos of beet. I presented the list of what I needed at the community, and they bought the things. They gave eggs, oil and meat as well. I had to buy the rest, but it was well organized. There was a Hungarian family, who for each Pesach brought us thirty kilos of beet for pickles, but I had bought the horse-radish in advance. The entire preparations started one week before the high day, because the horse-radish and the beet had to mix well. I put on the flowers and the decoration on the last day to make it fresh. We were cooking khremzlakh for two hours, but it was the last thing to prepare, because it had to be fresh.
I started to work at the Jewish community a very long time ago; I worked for thirty-one years. Without anyone sending me, unasked I started to visit elder people, I wrote reports, I was some kind of social worker. I visited elder people; there were many old persons, so I brought them challah made by me. Poor people, they always used to tell me I should not bring them anything, just go and visit them. Whether they got any support from the Jewish community of Bucharest, I don’t know that, it was a long time ago.
Once leaders came from the Bucharest community, and they chose me and appointed me as an assistant at the Jewish community; they said a person was needed there – the community was large, the synagogue was full, it was some thirty years ago. I spoke and asked them why they didn’t establish a kosher canteen. There were many students here, and a kosher canteen would have been in a good place, but they said it was too late, there weren’t enough people.
Once leaders came from the Bucharest community, and they chose me and appointed me as an assistant at the Jewish community; they said a person was needed there – the community was large, the synagogue was full, it was some thirty years ago. I spoke and asked them why they didn’t establish a kosher canteen. There were many students here, and a kosher canteen would have been in a good place, but they said it was too late, there weren’t enough people.
The holocaust memorial was built a long time ago in the cemetery of Marosvasarhely; people light candles there in memory of people died in Auschwitz. The commemoration is organized yearly. Before they emigrated, a lot of Jews lived in the town, and we marched by fives from the centre up to the cemetery, just like in Auschwitz. However, in recent years they keep the commemoration in the synagogue; we are not able to march up there anymore.
My husband attended the Jewish community for sixty years; he was there with every occasion. While he was working, he went to the synagogue each Friday and Saturday; after he retired, they prayed each day in the synagogue until they were enough persons. Later he took part in the prayers only on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. When he was still working, he entered the synagogue through the neighboring yard, yet they watched him and reported him. In the communist era, during services women came to us, because they were afraid, so they waited for their husbands here to come from the synagogue. We weren’t afraid. In those times Scheiner was the leader of the Jewish community, then it was Sauber. [Editor’s note: Centropa made an interview with Bernat Sauber as well.] My husband led the funerals, the weddings, he was the cantor. He died at Pesach, in March 2002.
My husband wasn’t a party member, and still he was a director, because he was a very good expert, they needed him. In those times it meant a huge thing to be director without being a party member. He was denounced, and they called him in to the Securitate. They even came to our house; we weren’t at home. They looked in through the window, and they said we had Persian carpets up to the ankles. So they called him in to the party office; for there were people who informed about everything, but there were people who knew these; so at the end my husband found out who had turned him in. They didn’t harm him, because they needed him.
Bella Steinmetz
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I had hard luck that the Iron Guard [4] movement had begun already. And in an after-noon they beat soundly a Jewish girl, a classmate of mine on the Bulgar square – it wasn’t built up that much as now – in the evening. We were desperate. But we had friends too, Jewish boys at the gymnasium. We told them: ‘You see what happened to Juci, just like that!’ They had heard for sure about the beating of Jews in Iasi. And of course, our boys watched them, recognized one boy who had beaten the Jewish girl, when he was going home in the Ballada street, since he lived there. They beat him so hard that he couldn’t walk for one week. All this should have been ok, but my father found out the story. He came instantly from Toplica, as he was employed there at a large firm: ‘Oh my God, my child is in danger! I’m taking you home.’ ‘Oh, dear daddy, thus I will finish not even four years of gymnasium!’ I implored him to let me finish that year. He agreed to it with difficulty.
Romania
When I started the forth grade, a law entered into force: a Jewish child might attend only a state or a religious [that is Jewish] school [3]. There wasn’t religious school here, only primary, the Jewish school was in the present Horea street, but there wasn’t any secondary school. My father said then: ‘If there isn’t, you’ll go to the Romanian school.’ I finished the forth grade in a Romanian gymnasium. I was 14 years old.
Both my grandfather and my father had a progressive mentality in the sense that he provided us everything a Jewish girl or a Jewish boy should know on religion. My father always used to say: ‘I give you and your brother everything a Jewish child is ought to be given. It’s your own business what you will keep of this. My conscience requires me to do so.’ This was the principle.