When I was already here [in Marosvasarhely], I was still attending the gymnasium, my father paid a teacher, so that I really learnt our religion. Until the forth grade in gymnasium a student, a bocher came once in a week, in the after-noon to teach me. He taught me how to write the Hebrew letters, to read in Hebrew. He taught me prayers, the blessing over bread, how to wash hands before every meal. That is to say that the Jewish religion outdoes all the religions in hygiene. I can read in Hebrew, I know the letters, I know some prayers.
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Bella Steinmetz
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That’s how I got to Marosvasarhely. I finished the second and third grades of gymnasium there, at the Hungarian section, in the Liceul Unirea de Fete.
The convent had a higher elementary school too. My father wanted me to attend a gymnasium, and since there wasn’t a gymnasium for girls there [in Gyergyoszentmiklos], and my mother had a married sister in Sepsiszentgyorgy too, aunt Netti, they sent me to the Szekely Miko College. I attended it for one year. When I went home, I had a Szekler dialect: ‘Nay, nay, I don’t wanna. I won’t go there!’ Well, when my mother heard this: ‘Well, you won’t go there anymore, you can be sure of that!
My parents sent me to school to different towns. I attended the first grade of primary school in Gyergyoszentmiklos, my aunt Berta, the eldest sister of mammy was living there. I attended the catholic convent for four years. I finished there the four grades of primary school. I attended religious classes, I had to. The nuns didn’t care about it. The religious education was shallow. We had a teacher of religion, he didn’t even give lessons in the synagogue, but in a room, where he lived. We were a few girls in the convent who attended it. Those were observant Jews, they didn’t eat bacon or pork at home.
So I had a middle-class family. In 1923, at the age of 12, I was given a radio, it even had earphones, but I don’t remember its name. The radio was installed in my room, and it was connected to my parents’ bedroom through earphones. But we could pick up only Pest then. It was a battery radio, we always had to recharge it.
He was always a reader, he talked politics, and so he was aware of politics. My father was always a great admirer of Kossuth, therefore he brought me toys, for example a pack of cards with thirty-forty pieces, with questions related to history. When was the Battle of Mohacs? What does the Golden Bull mean? Things like this, and the answers were on the back. I had to learn all these, and from time to time he asked me the questions. My mother gave me books fit to my age. We had such a library, one could transform it into a public one. I read the newspaper since then, I order the newspapers even today.
Before school, I couldn’t read and write yet, but my father taught me the French and the Hungarian cards. And how to play dominoes and chess. And it’s also due to my father that I know the Hungarian history. He was a great Hungarian patriot. He brought me toys related to the Hungarian history. When he heard the Hungarian national anthem at the radio at noon – we didn’t have television yet –, his tears were always flowing. The national anthem was always at noon.
In Toplica we belonged to the illustrious society: those who worked on the timber-yard, the enterprise employees considered themselves a separate class.
When the director saw that my father was very good in his profession – actually he was a mathematical genius – he became a factory manager. The factory had two directors: a technical and an administrative director. My father was the technical director. He had a secure job and a great salary. He was the expert.
At the beginning papa was cashier in Gyergyovarhegy. Well, it was close, and I don’t know how, but he met mammy, who married him.
My mother had no choice, she went there, they employed her, and she was teaching there. There was a schoolmaster, a teacher and a Romanian teacher, so there was room for my mammy too, because there were quite a lot of children. So mammy was teaching in Romanian, but not for long, since dad came and married her. And in older times it wasn’t fashionable that a woman who got married went to work. My father didn’t let my mother work as a teacher, he used to say: ‘What’s in your mind? What would people say, that I can’t support a wife?
Romania
My mammy attended the convent for eight years in Gyergyoszentmiklos. She also finished two years of I don’t know what, so she qualified as a teacher. Of course she had a Hungarian qualification.
My grandfather’s family, the Alschuchs was the only Jewish family in the village. People are angry about Jews, because the Jew was always a merchant. What did he sell? What needed the villagers? Carriage grease, dressing, since there weren’t motors then [cars]. And people needed horseshoes, as horses had to be shod, boot-polish, needle, salt, maybe corn flour, sugar… He might have sold rice, because at pigsticking people prepared white pudding, and it needed some rice. He didn’t have to sell pork bacon, as they [the villagers] cut pigs. They didn’t need curd cheese either, since they had sheep. Well, these were his merchandise, and what a rural merchant could sell.
When I was a grown-up, 18 years old girl, and later too, poor Jews still did this in Budapest. They stopped down in the yard – these storied houses all had small yards – and they shouted: “‘Handle!’ What is for sale?” And there were worn-out clothes, shoes that people gave them for free or for peanuts, well for two times nothing. He brought these to the villages, sold them and earned some money. The Jew was like this in order to make his living. He couldn’t be a farmer, he wasn’t good in agricultural work. One had to support his family.
He took his ‘pintli’, it’s a kind of haversack called ‘pintli’, but maybe just here in Transylvania, or it may come from a Polish word. He went from one to village to the other, and he shouted “‘Handle!’ What is for sale?
My grandfather was a shopkeeper, everywhere the Jew was a shopkeeper. It is important that in 1880, in the Bach era – that’s how they call it – there was a law saying that Jews couldn’t own land.
My grandfather lived in a small village. It still exists, I think the train stops there: you pass by Toplica [today Toplita], Galocas [today Galautas] and then Gyergyovarhegy. This small village was on the hillside. It was completely Romanian, there wasn’t any Hungarian family. My grandparents spoke Romanian perfectly. And my mother too, as she was among Romanian children. There is a photo too, it shows my mother dressed up in Romanian clothes.
My grandfather lived in Maramarossziget, and my father moved to Transylvania [1] alone. He met mammy here, she was from Gyergyovarhegy [today Subcetate Mures]. He got married there, he married my mother.
After the final examination daddy got employed first in Szeged, he was a cashier, he lived there for more than one year. And he knew that there was wood and woodwork here by the side of the Maros river, and he came to Gyergyoszentmiklos and settled here.
My father, Izidor Bacher was a high school graduate. In Maramarossziget, at the catholic gymnasium it was possible, as they were humane; it was possible to bring the books to the gymnasium Friday after-noon [and to leave them there]. I don’t know if they had exams on Saturdays, but they didn’t have to write for sure. On Saturday evenings they went to take the books, they learnt on Sundays, and Mondays the ordinary lessons begun.
And before the meat was prepared, there was a ceremony, it had to stay salted for half an hour, after that they threw water over it and it had to stay for one hour in clean water, and only after that they started to cook it. My mother always proceeded so. Me as well. Well, not me, but the servant. It was enough for me if the girl did it. We had a kosher household at home, at my home as well until 1940, until it was possible.
But my father worked on Saturdays. In this case he couldn’t have been called an Orthodox. And if needed, he traveled, he wrote and did other things too which an Orthodox is not allowed to. But otherwise we never had pork in the house.
He was observant, well, he was the manager of a community office, but I never saw him praying. He observed Sabbath strictly. He was Orthodox, a bearded man. He would never work on Sabbath. Every Saturday he had some brandy, beautiful snow-white challah, meat-soup. They were simple persons, but they never hungered. His sons had a more progressive way of thinking. Grandfather ate only kosher meals. He had a divorced daughter, who moved to his house, and she took care of him to the end. We didn’t go too often to Maramarossziget, as until grandpa was able to move, until the age of 70-75, an uncle who got married in Torokszentmiklos, in Hungary, always came and brought him to us to Toplica for four weeks. My father was no longer alive, and grandpa stayed with us for four weeks. Last time I visited him in Maramarossziget for three days, he was confined to bed, and he could only speak.
So my grandfather was a literate. He was a simple poor man, but a self-taught person, as he spoke four languages. And he tried to provide education for his children. I understand that he spoke Romanian, Hungarian and Hebrew, but I have no idea where did he learn German perfectly.
Maramarossziget was a great Jewish center. There were several communities, my grandfather was the clerk of a small Jewish community, he did office work for the Orthodox community. They also had accounts, a budget on what they were spending money: funerals, expenditures, incomes.
People fled before World War I, from Russia downwards, but in Poland too the persecution of Jews had already begun. I don’t know in which year my grandfather arrived, but he must have come at the end of the 1800s.
There were some here too, who were smart – not in Marosvasarhely. The Jews from Maramaros were more in their right mind. I lived in Maramarossziget for almost two years with my second husband, and I met a man from there who knew many things. Among others he introduced me to a boy who went up in the mountains, load up with money, food, whatever he could carry. He went to a shepherd and told him: ‘Look, save me. I will stay here, and if you shield me, I will give you this and that.’ The shepherd had a wife, who sometimes went up to bring food to her husband, so she brought to the young man too. Thus the young man escaped the ‘oven’. When the wife told him that Russians were in Viso, he came down, went in his house, he found there all his things. He had his life too, but not his family unfortunately… The family couldn’t go with him, it would have been too striking. However, the parents were old, they were approximately sixty years old. They wouldn’t have gone up to the mountains! For the mountain is so close in Maramarossziget, as if we would be climbing up to the Cenk in Brasso. Whoever knows the mountain and undertakes such thing, can go up.
Romania
People came from Poland, brave and young people, who succeeded to escape not to get to concentration camps. Hungary wasn’t involved in the war yet. And they went to the Jewish communities, and asked the addresses of Jews. They came to me as well, that ‘This and this is happening to us, they want to kill us, they are killing the Jews. They take them to Auschwitz.’ I gathered some food rapidly and I told them: ‘Leave me alone, go now, so many lies…! This isn’t true, this is a bullshit!’ Everybody was angry on them for what nonsense they were telling. We said that it wasn’t true, that they were lying, they were Jews of naught.
This was the greatest crime of Hungarians: they were the last ones who effectuated deportation. Couldn’t they have handled somehow three months more that miserable people?! That Frici begged me. But I answer: ‘All right, you take me over the border, but where should I lay down mammy?’ ‘Go – he says – you’ll get help in the first house.’ I said myself, he wants to own the whole house – as I had a nice, five-roomed, furnished apartment, he had my money, jewels, everything –, now he wants this too. I was unable to believe that a Hungarian royal captain would want to do such a good deed.
He brought me home everything, food – bread, meat –, so that I wouldn’t need to go out frequently. So I could see that he behaved very correctly. And well, I wasn’t allowed to have this and that, so finally I gave him jewels, mainly mammy’s, not mine, and money, everything. By the end, when he knew already that they would take us away, he implored me. He already knew where they would take us. He asked me to let him take us to Romania by his own car, the border was fifteen kilometers far. ‘There – he said – you have to walk with your mother only one kilometer. You will be taken…’ I said: ‘It doesn’t matter, Frici, they take us to the Hortobagy to work on the fields. Mammy is healthy, I am too, we will work.’ In 1944 the Russian canons were already roaring here, at the Romanian frontier. Imagine that, they took us in May, and on August 23rd [6] the region here was liberated, Russians were already here.