Later, after he came home from Vienna, my brother was employed at an enterprise, next to daddy, but daddy never wanted his son to be close to him. That is he never wanted to grant him backing. My brother was everywhere: in Szeben, there was a factory next to Szeben, the same rich man owned it, the place was called Talmacs [Talmaciu in Romanian], where the factory was, it was close to Szeben. So he went to Szeben every weekend. It had the great advantage that it was a completely German town. And my father asked the management – as my brother was persistent in his will to work in the wood industry – to send him to learn all the branches of this profession, starting from felling the trees to the shipping.
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Bella Steinmetz
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My brother passed the final examination here [in Marosvasarhely], at the catholic gymnasium. After that my brother was sent to study to Vienna. He didn’t want to go to university, he adored the wood industry. He said he didn’t want to be sent to university, because he wanted to work in the wood industry, he adored woods, he adored timber. But my father kept on repeating: ‘High school degree? I have a high school degree, let my son have a superior education!’ So he went to Vienna and enrolled to the academy of commerce. He said in vain: ‘Daddy, I won’t go to university, I want to work in the wood industry!’ Daddy used to tell me as well: ‘My child, I don’t mind if you get married to a shoemaker, but not to someone in the wood industry! Because wood doesn’t grow on the asphalt. Thus you have to live your life in a forest or village.’ My brother wouldn’t listen to it. In his fourth year daddy went to Vienna to visit his son and to take a look at his course record. There was nothing written in it. He says: ‘How’s that? Aren’t you attending the university? Pack up and come home.’ So daddy was very strict and very determined. Anyway, he made the profit out of this on the ‘ladies’, that he learnt English and German perfectly. My father said: ‘It was quite an expensive course, you could have learnt German much cheaper in Szeben or even in Brasso.’ However he saw the world, more than in Gyergyovarhegy.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
When my brother got here in Marosvasarhely, he wasn’t religious anymore. In Maramarossziget he didn’t attend the cheder, my grandfather taught him enough – my mother stipulated that what my grandfather taught him was enough. That was too bad, because he taught so much the poor child: he woke him up at dawn, and he went to bed late in order to learn, so that he became an atheist by the time he got here.
In Maramarossziget he didn’t have to have payes, there wasn’t such a demand, my mother stipulated that. He attended the catholic gymnasium there. Back then life was very different there. The schoolmaster let the Jewish children to bring into the classroom the books [and they let them there until Saturday]. And they didn’t have to write on Saturdays. They compiled the timetable intentionally or accidentally [or it was the schoolmaster who allowed this] in such a way that they didn’t have to write, as a Jewish child is forbidden to write on Sabbath. And Saturday evening, after dark they brought home the coursebooks. A catholic gymnasium for example was capable of this.
My brother was born in 1905. He was called Sandor Bacher. He lived in Maramarossziget at grandfather’s until he finished four grades of gymnasium. But he lived there under very strict rules, he had to pray a lot. At dawn my grandfather woke him up to teach him how to pray in the morning and in the night. The Jewish religion is an extremely rigorous, so difficult religion. And my brother said that ‘I would rather go to chop wood, but I won’t go back to Maramarossziget.’ And he got then here [to Marosvasarhely] in the fifth grade, and he took his final examination here.
We used to go to the Maros restaurant Saturday evening, after dinner of course. Jews usually don’t drink, but one had to order, so we asked a liter of wine, as we were sitting four or five persons, half of the wine was drunken by the musicians, the rest by us. The Jew would rather play cards. I was a great card-player too all my life.
Marosvasarhely was famous because of its pubs, but those were in fact small high-class restaurants, for example the Surlott Gradics [the Scrubbed Steps], that’s how they called it.
These were peaceful times. For example when I got married, there were Romanian families, they moved recently to Marosvasarhely. And we lived so peacefully. We went to cafes, to nice pubs to have a barbecue: here set the Jewish family, there the Romanian family. The Gypsy played for the Romanian his own songs, for us Hungarian music. None of the songs bothered the other. We clinked. They spoke our language. We spoke theirs too, I spoke Romanian better due to my mother. Most of the Romanian intellectuals were studying in Budapest.
Then I found other family, where there was a piano too, as my parents checked that, because I attended piano lessons to. I have a qualification of piano teacher, I finished it simultaneously at the conservatory.
In Marosvasarhely I always stayed at families with board. One had to pay for that. And I always stayed at families where they educated me how to eat, how to wash myself regularly, how to wash my teeth. A child has to be taught good manners. First I stayed at a Jewish widow, her name was Mrs. Nagy, she was a piano teacher. She had a daughter. I stayed at them for four years.
t was in the French Institution, up in the clerks’ district. The French Institution was placed in three villas. French teachers came from France, they didn’t speak Hungarian or Romanian, they couldn’t even say yes or no. And I got enrolled in the fifth grade. I was fifteen years old when I entered the fifth grade of gymnasium, and finally I finished eight grades of gymnasium in the French school. When I attended the French school, I was helped, a teacher came to me in the after-noon, and helped me to do my lessons, to learn the language. I even ate frog in the French Institute, they adored it. In the spring the whole school went out up on the hills, and we were catching frogs for the French teachers. As there were only French teachers. They loved it, and they offered us too. I tasted it, I ate it, I didn’t get sick, but I don’t want anymore. I wasn’t a gourmand, I didn’t have a favorite meal, I wasn’t a hearty eater. But I tasted everything, I ate everything.
Luckily for me the French language and French culture started to be promoted. And they established three French institutions in Romania: in Marosvasarhely, in Bucharest and in Iasi. My father made arrangements immediately, he bought shares, he ensured my right to certification.
He had a mistress in Marosvasarhely, so I asked her: ‘Didn’t leave Frici here something for me? Not even jewelry?’ ‘Nothing, nothing.’ And she says: ‘I don’t even know where he is. Lately I got a notification that he was in a prison camp.’ So I went there. Without thinking, only dressed up, without money or anything, I got on the train, and I went there, I searched for the camp. I got on the train, they asked for my ticket, I say: ‘What do you want? I’m coming from the concentration camp.’ I showed them the tattoo. When I arrived there I asked people where a Jewish community was. I went there, I told them my business, and I asked where that camp was. I told them at the gate I was looking for somebody. Why? I say he stayed at me, I want to talk to him by all means.
,
After WW2
See text in interview
At home I found out that the Russians arrested the captain who had lived in my house, they took him to the Regat in transit camp to transport him in the Soviet Union as a prisoner of war.
,
After WW2
See text in interview
My brother didn’t want to come home at all. I was very desperate. He found employment in Germany, in a factory, and stayed there. A friend of him too stayed there. ‘Let’s not go home, it’s useless. Let’s start a new life!’ Especially that he spoke German perfectly, it wasn’t a problem for him to do every kind of work. His wife was a young woman from Nagyvarad, they took her to Riga, the capital of Latvia. People still hoped there that the Germans would win. So the Fuhrer from there received the command to shoot all the concentration camp. My brother knew this. He felt he had nothing to come home for: ‘I have no wife, Bella – that’s me – won’t resist, I have no mammy, Bella’s husband died.’ ‘And one night – he says – I felt I had to come home.’ So I arrived home around June, and he stayed there until the end of October, one morning he got up and said: ‘I’m going home though, perhaps Bellus is alive.’ In November he just stepped in one day. The poor man, how bad he looked like… in an awful clothe, shabby, famished. The trains didn’t run then [as they do now]. So he related me that one night he dreamt that maybe – as he knew me as a fit girl, who has such strength of will –, maybe I’m alive after all. And he came home.
I was home for several months, I mourned already my poor brother, I buried him in my heart. Once, it was around the middle of summer, I was going to work, when a stranger comes to my place from somewhere the countryside. He was a Jew from the surroundings, he knew the town. I didn’t know him, he didn’t know me either, but my brother explained him: ‘Go there, look for this person.’ He explained him where our house was, he told him my maiden name and my name after my husband. He found me at once. ‘I bring you news about your brother, he is in Germany, he works in a factory, and he doesn’t want to come home.’ My brother knew that my mother wasn’t alive, and because he thought too about me – well, I was a young, protected child, though he knew I was a sportswoman – that I wouldn’t survive Auschwitz or working in a factory. He was in a place, where a group of women worked in the wood, at logging.
I didn’t know anything about my brother. He was taken in 1942, from Gyergyovarhegy to Ukraine. He was married already. I didn’t even hope that he would survive, but he came home. I couldn’t have imagined meeting him again, that he would resist, because he spent twelve months in Ukraine, in hell. And he barely was home for five months, and in 1944 they took him to Auschwitz. He was a thin, meager man. So I came home very sad. I came home in summer. I knew nothing about him. He was in Auschwitz, then in several concentration camps [forced labor camps] to work.
,
During WW2
See text in interview
As far back as 1943 I got sad news that my husband had been shot. So I went to Auschwitz as a widow. He was taken in 1942 [to do work service].
I helped her a lot in Auschwitz, because if I stole a cabbage, I gave half of it to my girlfriend, because she was starving terribly. She found everything when we arrived home. She didn’t let me go home, she took me to her place. ‘You stay at me until you find a job or you recover a little.’ That’s how she repaid me. However we were friends before as well. I stayed at her place for almost two months.
When Transylvania was liberated, he [the brother] came home quickly, on a cart, by foot, on a donkey, how he could, entered his apartment, and found almost everything untouched. Not like me, I didn’t find even a glass.
In Pest we went to the railway station – we were five – and they let us climb up to the top of a freight train. ‘Travel laid down, because we don’t know where the tunnels are, we go to Bucharest’ – said the main engine driver. So we traveled laid down and we arrived to Nagyvarad. There one of my girlfriends could inform her younger brother, Jozsef Helmes, because her brother lived in Bucharest. He came by a large microbus, and took us home to Marosvasarhely, all the five of us went directly to her.
When the Szalasi [9] government started to stink strongly and to be dangerous, and when the Arrow Cross started to gain ground, they could bribe a German SS officer, so they went by a German train to Bucharest, because Bucharest was partly liberated, it was liberated very soon after that. So they all survived, the two of them and the two children. After Pest was liberated, she came back, so we met. All the four of us knew her. She fell on our neck, and she took us to her place. That’s how I found out the story. She kept us there for one week, and she provided us with food and everything.
When we came back from the concentration camp through Pest, they set up a kind of hostelry, perhaps they vacated a school. We arrived there to be registered.
Finally we arrived to Prague, and there we found a freight train, which took us to Pest. We arrived in Buda, but we couldn’t cross to Pest, because all the bridges were bombed. I know Pest like the centre of Marosvasarhely. I had been in Budapest for many times until I got married, and after that too I was there a lot. Every year twice. They took us from one bank to the other by huge rafts, boats, because the Danube is large at Pest.
It took a long time to come home, because the rails were bombed, so trains didn’t run. We didn’t even know where we were, in which direction to go. We departed on foot. We asked Germans in vain how to get to Prague – we thought they knew better where Czechoslovakia was. One showed in this direction, the other in a different one. We got on a small vicinal train, then they dropped us down, because ‘We are going this way, that’s not good for you, try to go that way…’ We got on a truck full with Romanians – we told them we were Romanians, if we met Hungarians, then we were Hungarians – and they took us for a while.
,
After WW2
See text in interview
Everybody went home from deportation. Only the Poles didn’t. They answered with astonishment, when I asked them, ‘Are you going home?’ ‘Home? Where? Which one is our country? That one, where they sent us to Auschwitz, where they sent my mother to Auschwitz?’ So all the Poles emigrated, and they pursued studies. Though Palestine wasn’t Israel yet. They supported themselves somehow, and they graduated. They all speak three or four languages at a native speaker’s level.
When the gunshots could be really heard, he [the supervisor Pole foreman from the factory] taught us: ‘Don’t go anywhere! They will command you in the yard, but don’t move! Don’t obey!’ And he showed us how to evade. A few of us really went there, eight or ten to the fence, and he knocked the iron to it skillfully, and we saw it worked. However we didn’t dare to touch it, but he did. We said: ‘We went through this terrible year, should we die like this now?’ But he grabbed it, drew it apart – nothing happened –, and he slipped through it. Then the second slipped through. I didn’t dare. About four slipped out, but I wasn’t among them. They weren’t searched for. The Germans themselves, the supervisor soldiers escaped too. We started to notice that they are less each day. On the third day even less. That’s how we became courageous. We didn’t go anymore to the factory, but they wanted to empty the concentration camp. One night, when they took us out from the concentration camp, we lay down in quiet on the roadside. The procession passed, and we stayed there. This must have been by the end of March or middle April [1945]. Only the chief of the concentration camp kept on walking, he thought that if he took them [the prisoners] to a certain place, and the Russians caught him up, he would be saved, because he would have said: ‘Here’s the writing, the order to execute the prisoners, and I didn’t.’ So he would have escaped as a reward. But nobody protected him. They asked how he behaved. Everybody told them that he was an alcoholic crook, so they arrested him at once and took him away. He didn’t survive for sure, he didn’t deserve it at all. The war ended officially on May 9th [1945], we felt safe only then, that we weren’t prisoners anymore.
Nobody hurt people in the factory. Everybody was working there. When we were already in the factory, whoever was thinking, they could see that it was a lost case. So they weren’t course, but they were revenging. When the executioner found me asleep, my girlfriend wanted to protect me, and she begun to speak in a foolish way, in a perfect German: ‘The poor woman, she’s not used to such hard work, she’s the wife of a lawyer.’ The German boss who was responsible for work heard this. When the executioner was left, he says: ‘Du bist Frau Doktorin? [In German: ‘So, you’re a doctor’s wife?’] Hold on, Frau Doktorin!’ Each day, during break, from one to two o’clock, when we had one hour lunchtime, he took me into his office: ‘Clean the window, scrub the floor, Frau Doktorin. That’s not well done, Frau Doktorin!’ Well, this was his revenge. Though I was a simple human being, a lawyer’s wife, that’s also a simple citizen, not a somebody.
It happened at the workplace, one night my machine was kaput, so it was broke down. My master wasn’t there. I set down on the boxes, and due to the fatigue, exhaustion I fell asleep. Right then the executioner, the commander-in-chief came to verify us, his eyes were full-blooded. I could see he was out of his mind. He said: ‘You present yourself to me in the morning.’ I knew what it meant. When the sichta was over, so at six in the morning, when the other turn arrived, we were going in the concentration camp, the office was there, and one had to stand in front of it. It meant that he would put me at one meter distance from the wires. I could stand hunger, but I suffer terribly of being cold. I said to my colleagues: ‘Guys, I won’t stand there. I won’t bear that.’ They implored me. ‘Dear Bella, we will all bring you hot bricks.’ When we went to the factory, we got a boiler suit, a work clothes. They said: ‘We bring you a warm overall.’ I told them: ‘No, because I won’t bear it anyway.’ ‘Bella dear, he will put you in the bunker.’ There the water was high like this. I said: ‘It is all the same if I die this or the other way! I won’t go. Don’t be upset, we will all suffer, I’m one with you, but I don’t want to die like this. Believe me, I saw he had no idea, he forgot it a long time ago, you didn’t see how he looked like.’ Well, and that’s what happened. I didn’t go. We were watching all day if he was coming, but he didn’t. That’s how I escaped. I can’t imagine how anyone could bear it. I felt I couldn’t. I would have lost my balance because of tiredness and cold, I would have fallen on it [on the wire-fence]… I didn’t suffer at all from hunger during one year. Others suffered a lot. I never had a good appetite, and I ate every shit they gave us. I said: ‘You want to survive this, so you must eat everything.’ I wanted to live to see what would happen after that. This was my slogan. Especially when it was coming to the end.
,
During WW2
See text in interview
He had ten machines he was responsible for in front of the German boss, reporting if everything was alright. After a while he said: ‘Listen to me! You make twenty or twenty-five bolts, very accurately. You put them aside, but then you make it like this, to produce rejects. You put them at the bottom. I will verify, if you don’t do this, I will transfer you to the heavy machine.’ So he taught me sabotage. The Germans came to verify, they checked the bolts at the top. They had an instrument they used to measure the bolts, it was ok, that was it. But only rejects were underneath. Well I wouldn’t have liked to get up on the plane I did. They taught the others how to sabotage.