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Roseanu Oscar
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On holidays, our community filled up the synagogue and the prayer house.
Passover was like it was supposed to be: we would have matzah for 8 days. My father was a man who observed all the traditions. People knew he was Jewish and no one had a problem with that. I remember, for instance, the Pesach evening [Seder], when the entire family gathered before a meal that included everything that the tradition required: ‘kos shel Eliyahu’ [Eliyahu’s Cup], the wine drops being taken out of the glasses with words like ‘dam [the plague of blood], tsefardeah [frogs]’ or my asking my father the mah nishtannah questions: ‘Mah nishtannah ha-lahylah ha-zeh mi-kol ha-layloht?’ and so on.
The holidays felt like a fashion parade. All the ladies were showing off their new hats that my grandmother, the milliner, had made. You can imagine the display of elegance. The Jewish community strictly observed the traditional holidays: Yom Kippur, Pesach, Rosh Hashanah, Chanukkah. Harmony reigned in our family. I never heard my parents raise their voice. We didn’t miss one holiday. My parents invited my grandparents, my uncles, and my aunts; all the family would gather at our place and we would celebrate.
The rabbi’s name was Muller. He was known to be very learned. His son, Pinki [Pinkhas] Muller, grew up to become a rabbi too and signed up for emigrating to Israel after 1944. [Ed. note: He was arrested on grounds of urging the Jewish population of Hunedoara County to emigrate and spent several years in prison because of that. After his release, he emigrated to Israel and became the chief-rabbi of Northern Israel.
Petrosani had a synagogue and a prayer house. The synagogue is still there today.
I prepared for the bar mitzvah with a bocher for several months. This teacher taught me what to say and do. My bar mitzvah was held in the prayer house in Petrosani. I read from the Torah and carried it around the hall so that everyone present may kiss it. The tradition was observed in every detail. A table was laid in the evening. All my family attended – grandparents, uncles, aunts. Like I said, we were a very united family.
Every Sunday morning, my father and I retired in the living room to pray. This was the Sunday morning ritual. My father taught me how to wear the tallit and the tefillin. I knew how to put on the tefillin – one on the arm and one on the forehead; it had to be strapped on 7 times.
On every holiday, my parents invited our relatives to eat at our place, because we baked bread. There was an oven in the street and people took turns to use it. Our turn came on Friday.
We ate in the evening and fasted until the evening of the following day.
Every holiday found us at the synagogue – we didn’t miss one. On Yom Kippur, we would spend 12 hours there.
There were many Jews in Petrosani. Let’s take a look at the list of Jewish families who lived on the main street. Coming from Hateg, the first Jewish family one came across was the Fucs family; it was a carpenter’s family. A few houses away lived Simenthal, the elite tailor. Anyone in Petrosani who wanted fancy clothes had them made by Simenthal. Next to him lived the Marek family, who owned the town’s power plant; their house had two floors and an inner courtyard with a fountain. At a street corner there was a butcher’s shop that belonged to the Horvath brothers. The Biber family had a clothes store on the main street too. The Weiss brothers ran a stately food store at another street corner. They lived in a large house with two floors situated above this store. They sold anything from confections to vegetables. It was called ‘colonial goods store’ or ‘general store’. The Weiss family owned a jewelry store that focused particularly on silver. The husband was short and fat and the wife was taller and statelier than him – it was clear who wore the pants in the family. The Schretter brothers’ clothes store came next. The father and all the sons worked in this store. In fact, the Schretter brothers remained the town’s main tradesmen. The youngest of the brothers became the mayor of Petrosani in 1996, running as an independent. The Hertz family owned a shoe store; there were two brothers. The Ranghewurtz family ran a drugstore; their son left for Israel. A second Biber family sold perfumes, photographic equipment, musical instruments and the likes. They left for Israel too. The Goldsteins’ clothes store had a sign that everyone admired: it pictured eight men pulling the legs of a pair of pants in opposite directions, without managing to tear the pants off. This suggested how enduring their products were. The family of engineer Abraham also lived on the main street. They were the ones who organized the Ihud of Petrosani and the Keren Kayemet [3] branch. Another Jewish family who lived on the main street was the Hoffmann family. The husband was a bank manager.
On the shore of the River Maleia, there was a beautiful villa, home for two families: the Pick family (still to be found in Petrosani, one of the few Jewish families who remained in this town) and the family of counsel Halmos, who had a daughter and a son. The daughter was a renowned pianist. From what I heard, this family emigrated to India and was never heard of anymore. There was also the Vamos family: the father was an accountant and had a son, Ervin, and a daughter, Lili. Ervin and I went to college together, at the Physics and Chemistry Faculty in Bucharest. After 1960, they inherited a fortune from an uncle in France and they emigrated to Israel, where they led a prosperous life.
There are so many names that are worth mentioning! The Isac family owned a pub. I think they were the only Jewish barkeepers in town. There was another shoe store on the main street, owned by Deri Musen; I met him after the war, in Haifa, where he owned another shoe store. Feldman was an optician; he left for Israel with his family and opened a new optician’s shop not far away from Deri Musen’s shoe store. The Taub family ran a shoe store too. They emigrated to Israel and, interestingly enough, the father became a bank manager there. Mandel Zucker was a friend of mine. He and his brother left for Israel, but one of them couldn’t adapt to the climate; he filed a request for repatriation, but was rejected. Paul Rotman, a housepainter, left with his sister for Israel before 1941. So did the Leb family (two brothers and two sisters) and the Schwalb family, a tailor’s family.
The Kardos family owned a clothes store. I remember a funny thing about Mr. Kardos: he was the one who taught me to blow my nose in a handkerchief when I was 3-4 years old. I used to see him all the time standing in front of his store looking at the street. The next store belonged to Rubb the clocksmith. His elder son became a clocksmith too, while the younger became a physician in Cluj. Old Rubb was the town’s humorist. He knew thousands of jokes. Anyone who passed in front of his store and stopped before the window had the opportunity to meet old Rubb, who came out and always found the time to tell a few jokes; he had them sorted by categories: with rabbis, with policemen, with priests and so on and so forth. The town’s inhabitants were retelling many of the jokes; my father was no exception: whenever I went home, he would tell me the same old jokes and I would pretend I heard them for the first time, in order to humor him.
The next store was a drugstore owned by Reismann. There were two drugstores in Petrosani and both of them belonged to Jews. A hardware store came next. The Weiss family lived on the main street and owned a china and glassware store. They weren’t related in any way to the other Weiss family that I mentioned above. They left for Israel too. The Nagy family lived in a neighboring house. The breadwinner was a shoemaker. They left for Israel before World War II. The next store was the millinery store of my grandmother, Lustig. She shared it with a florist. In the next house lived doctor Weiss and two sisters who were single – spinsters. The whole town thought of them as a bit eccentric because they spent their entire day standing by the window, looking in the street and saying hello to everyone. The Banden family owned a colonial goods store; both their sons left for Israel after the war. Mrs. Banden used to go to ‘Herkulesbad’ every year. When I was a child, I used to think that Herkulesbud was at least in Austria. I later realized that it actually meant Baile Herculane [Ed. note: a Romanian spa located only 166 kilometers away from Petrosani].
There were Jews living in other parts of the town too, some of whom became rather well-known. For instance, Schwartz became a vice-president at the Ministry of Labor. Doctor Herman had two sons; one became a physician in Cluj and the other one became a chemical engineer at the Dermata factory in the same city. The Fischers owned a colonial goods store in the company mining town. The Vertes family owned a terracotta stoves factory. Their eldest son was with the communist underground movement and was arrested in Hungary. After he was set free, he returned to Romania and went to the Medical School and to the Faculty of Mathematics. He died of ulcer. His two brothers both left for Israel.
There was a lad, Tiberiu Horvath, who became the vice-president of the Investment Bank after the war. He and the young Hoffmann, the banker’s son, were the ‘figure skaters’ of the town. Everyone skated near the borders of the skating rink, while the two of them were performing in the middle, admired by everybody. Their skates were attached to their boots with screws, which was something new at the time. They did skate beautifully, no arguing about that.
The Scheffers owned the only soda shop in town. They used a cart pulled by a horse to deliver soda bottles across the town. In winter the soda shop’s ground was transformed into a skating rink. Their nephew went to medical school in Timisoara and emigrated to Israel, where he works as a physician at the Zvat hospital.
Not far from the railroad station lived the Grossmans, who owned a construction materials warehouse. He was the main supplier of the mines, providing timber and other items necessary for mining. Their son studied in France, fought for the Maquis [4], came back and changed his name to Marin Gaston [Ed. note: He was born in 1918. He graduated from the Polytechnic Institute in Grenoble, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Energy Science. Author of numerous scientific works and veteran of the French Army and French Resistance, he held important positions in the Ministry of Energy, the State Commission for Planning and the State Commission for Nuclear Energy between 1949 and 1962. He currently lives in Israel.] During the war, the Grossmans moved to Cluj together with a daughter. They were taken to Auschwitz and exterminated. When Marin Gaston returned to Romania he didn’t find any family member.
On the shore of the River Maleia, there was a beautiful villa, home for two families: the Pick family (still to be found in Petrosani, one of the few Jewish families who remained in this town) and the family of counsel Halmos, who had a daughter and a son. The daughter was a renowned pianist. From what I heard, this family emigrated to India and was never heard of anymore. There was also the Vamos family: the father was an accountant and had a son, Ervin, and a daughter, Lili. Ervin and I went to college together, at the Physics and Chemistry Faculty in Bucharest. After 1960, they inherited a fortune from an uncle in France and they emigrated to Israel, where they led a prosperous life.
There are so many names that are worth mentioning! The Isac family owned a pub. I think they were the only Jewish barkeepers in town. There was another shoe store on the main street, owned by Deri Musen; I met him after the war, in Haifa, where he owned another shoe store. Feldman was an optician; he left for Israel with his family and opened a new optician’s shop not far away from Deri Musen’s shoe store. The Taub family ran a shoe store too. They emigrated to Israel and, interestingly enough, the father became a bank manager there. Mandel Zucker was a friend of mine. He and his brother left for Israel, but one of them couldn’t adapt to the climate; he filed a request for repatriation, but was rejected. Paul Rotman, a housepainter, left with his sister for Israel before 1941. So did the Leb family (two brothers and two sisters) and the Schwalb family, a tailor’s family.
The Kardos family owned a clothes store. I remember a funny thing about Mr. Kardos: he was the one who taught me to blow my nose in a handkerchief when I was 3-4 years old. I used to see him all the time standing in front of his store looking at the street. The next store belonged to Rubb the clocksmith. His elder son became a clocksmith too, while the younger became a physician in Cluj. Old Rubb was the town’s humorist. He knew thousands of jokes. Anyone who passed in front of his store and stopped before the window had the opportunity to meet old Rubb, who came out and always found the time to tell a few jokes; he had them sorted by categories: with rabbis, with policemen, with priests and so on and so forth. The town’s inhabitants were retelling many of the jokes; my father was no exception: whenever I went home, he would tell me the same old jokes and I would pretend I heard them for the first time, in order to humor him.
The next store was a drugstore owned by Reismann. There were two drugstores in Petrosani and both of them belonged to Jews. A hardware store came next. The Weiss family lived on the main street and owned a china and glassware store. They weren’t related in any way to the other Weiss family that I mentioned above. They left for Israel too. The Nagy family lived in a neighboring house. The breadwinner was a shoemaker. They left for Israel before World War II. The next store was the millinery store of my grandmother, Lustig. She shared it with a florist. In the next house lived doctor Weiss and two sisters who were single – spinsters. The whole town thought of them as a bit eccentric because they spent their entire day standing by the window, looking in the street and saying hello to everyone. The Banden family owned a colonial goods store; both their sons left for Israel after the war. Mrs. Banden used to go to ‘Herkulesbad’ every year. When I was a child, I used to think that Herkulesbud was at least in Austria. I later realized that it actually meant Baile Herculane [Ed. note: a Romanian spa located only 166 kilometers away from Petrosani].
There were Jews living in other parts of the town too, some of whom became rather well-known. For instance, Schwartz became a vice-president at the Ministry of Labor. Doctor Herman had two sons; one became a physician in Cluj and the other one became a chemical engineer at the Dermata factory in the same city. The Fischers owned a colonial goods store in the company mining town. The Vertes family owned a terracotta stoves factory. Their eldest son was with the communist underground movement and was arrested in Hungary. After he was set free, he returned to Romania and went to the Medical School and to the Faculty of Mathematics. He died of ulcer. His two brothers both left for Israel.
There was a lad, Tiberiu Horvath, who became the vice-president of the Investment Bank after the war. He and the young Hoffmann, the banker’s son, were the ‘figure skaters’ of the town. Everyone skated near the borders of the skating rink, while the two of them were performing in the middle, admired by everybody. Their skates were attached to their boots with screws, which was something new at the time. They did skate beautifully, no arguing about that.
The Scheffers owned the only soda shop in town. They used a cart pulled by a horse to deliver soda bottles across the town. In winter the soda shop’s ground was transformed into a skating rink. Their nephew went to medical school in Timisoara and emigrated to Israel, where he works as a physician at the Zvat hospital.
Not far from the railroad station lived the Grossmans, who owned a construction materials warehouse. He was the main supplier of the mines, providing timber and other items necessary for mining. Their son studied in France, fought for the Maquis [4], came back and changed his name to Marin Gaston [Ed. note: He was born in 1918. He graduated from the Polytechnic Institute in Grenoble, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Energy Science. Author of numerous scientific works and veteran of the French Army and French Resistance, he held important positions in the Ministry of Energy, the State Commission for Planning and the State Commission for Nuclear Energy between 1949 and 1962. He currently lives in Israel.] During the war, the Grossmans moved to Cluj together with a daughter. They were taken to Auschwitz and exterminated. When Marin Gaston returned to Romania he didn’t find any family member.
Petrosani is the town of my childhood. I feel tied to this town by my most beautiful memories. I read somewhere that the town had 18,000 inhabitants [in the interwar period]. Romanians, Hungarians, Jews, Germans, and Frenchmen lived together in harmony. Petrosani had a strong Jewish community and many notabilities were Jews: the town’s notary, Bercovici, my father, Martin Rosenfeld, the head of the supply department of the Lonea coal mines, and many others. Once a year I try to go back there and visit my parents’ tombs. A trip through the cemetery means remembering the whole past of this town by reading the names on the tombstones. Almost everyone who was buried here was my friend or my acquaintance.
I took violin lessons and I went to the Conservatoire in Cluj for two years, on an optional attendance basis. I had a violin teacher who came by my place once a week. I played in the band in Petrila. I went there as often as twice a week and I walked my way back in the night, carrying my violin under my arm [Ed. note: Petrila is located 5 kilometers away from Lonea.]. I played in a semi-classical band. I also had an accordion and today I feel really sorry for our poor neighbors who had to listen to me play in the courtyard. The sound of my accordion could be heard in the entire neighborhood.
I used to play tennis. There were about 7 courts in Petrosani, although there weren’t too many inhabitants. I was very proud when I carried my racket around the town; I would often ride my bike to Lonea, 7 kilometers away from the town, where I played tennis with clerks, coworkers of my father’s. The Clerks’ Club had its own court. I would skate in winter. There were 3-4 skating rinks in Petrosani. My father and I would go skating every evening, while our mother watched as a spectator. I also skied. My classmates and I once built a jumping hill on the slope near the town; we could jump as far as 100 meters. We also had a bobsled; my father was the driver and I was the brakeman. The town had a bobsled track over 5 kilometers long. The ride was breathtaking. We once managed to persuade mother to ride with us. It was a one-time experience. It just so happened that we left the track and made a sudden stop; my mother fell over dad and this incident put an end to her sporting activity.
I had all kinds of friends of more than one faith and I played soccer in the meadows all day long, like any boy. My mother would yell: ‘Osiii!’ I think I was hundreds of meters away, separated by several rows of houses from my home, but I could still hear her call me for lunch. My childhood friends were: Dick Laci, the goalkeeper of our soccer team, Sporia, a momarlan’s kid, Rubb Dudu, son of a clocksmith, Zuberetz, son of a shoemaker [Czech]. No kid ever asked any other kid about his ethnicity or faith. We often played in my courtyard, where we had rings and a swing. The entire neighborhood was there. We once saw a character named Alexander who was touring Petrosani and who danced on a wire. I wanted to do that too, so my father had to comply and provide me with something similar. I danced on a rope placed 1.5 meters away from the ground, with a friend standing by to catch me if I fell. We once built a small barrack made of bricks to hide in it and it collapsed all over us. We would go fishing in the River Maleia [which crosses the town of Petrosani]; we would stand in the stream, catch fish empty-handed and put them in jars. We would ride our bikes to Barul Mare, about 20 kilometers away, and we would bathe in the mill’s pond. Silly things like that.
So my name is Oscar Roseanu [changed in 1947 from Oszkar Rosenfeld].
My father was the head of the supply department of the coal mines in Lonea, a town located about 7 kilometers away from Petrosani. He commuted daily using a small local train. In winter, they used a godin [in Romanian, small cylindrical stove] to heat the cars. He left for work at 6 a.m. and came back at 6 p.m. He had lunch at the clerks’ canteen in Lonea. Every evening I used to wait for him at the small station – it was for local trains only and was about 2 kilometers away from home. On the way back to town he would talk to his coworkers, not paying much attention to me – I was a sort of appendix, but he held my hand. He also had some work to do at home: he did accounting for the furniture factory in Farcas and for a tailor named Schwalb. Working for the furniture factory, he learnt carpentry. He built a gazebo in the courtyard that could shelter at least 10 people. I would spend a lot of my time there in summer. I did my homework there too. My father also made me swings and devices for exercise – it was a hobby of his.
It was funny to watch my mother speak Romanian. Nevertheless, she could make herself understood. We only used Hungarian at home.
Romania
Our house in the company town had a nice porch and a flower garden in front of it. At the back of the house, there was a vegetable garden. My wife remembers: ‘I watched Mother go to the garden and pluck a carrot from the ground. She came back, chop-chop, and the food was almost ready. Then she remembered she also needed a parsnip.’ She grew all the vegetables she needed in her garden; everything was neatly ordered. My father made her a box that allowed geese to stick out only their necks. She would force-feed them corn. She gave them salted water to make them even more thirsty and hungry. This is how she secured 12 fat geese for the winter. The meat was smoked in order to last through the winter. We bought the milk from a momarlanca [Ed. note: peasant woman from the Jiu Valley] who used a horse to carry the pails. They would put mamaliga [Ed note: food made of boiled corn flour] around the pail so as not to spill the milk and taste it on the spot. My mother negotiated with the momarlanca.
We occupied a large house made of brick when we lived in the company mining town of Lonea. We stayed at 14 Nicolae Iorga St. The street began with the houses of the railroad employees and continued with the mining town until it reached the main street. We were the only Jews there. All our neighbors were clerks or workers at the mine. Our best friends were the Szekely family, who lived opposite our house. She was a housewife and he was an apprentice at the company store. The miners paid at the end of the month – they brought in a receipt and the cost of their purchases was deducted from their monthly salary. They usually bought a sack of wheat flour, a sack of rye flour – as bread was baked at home back then –, a sack of corn flour, half a sack of sugar. This is what shopping meant there… That was the company town life.
Imre Lustig never got married; he was a rather lonely character. He worked for CFR [Caile Ferate Romane – the Romanian Railroad Company].
Romania
He was an electrician. He installed the first elevator in the city at the German High School, the ‘Baratium’. He was very proud every time he told us about that elevator. He was a man with technical intuition and was very good at his job.
William Lustig did his military service in Timisoara.
During the war, they stayed in Petrosani, because my grandfather was older than 50 – they only took those who were under 50.
She was a milliner and owned a women’s hat store on the main street, where all the stores were located. It was the only store of its kind in Petrosani and its clientele consisted of the town’s elite. I think she had an employee. My grandmother was the one who designed the hats. She shared the premises with Mrs. Benedek, the florist, with whom we were good friends. For my bar mitzvah, this lady offered me a volume of Petofi’s poems in Hungarian; I still have it. My grandmother’s store consisted of a long hall; at the back, there was a sort of stand where the hats were shaped. That was all. At a certain point, my grandmother also kept a section of toys. I was very excited about it, because, every week, she would let me have a toy from her store. There was a biker that circled around the house; there were toy cars, dolls and the likes.
They all spoke Hungarian in the region except for my grandmother, who spoke German fluently.
He told stories from the time of World War I and bragged about how valiant he had been as a soldier [in the army of Austria-Hungary] [2].
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
My maternal grandfather, Eugen Lustig, was born in Vienna. He was a tailor. A wisecracker, he knew all the small craftsmen and spent his entire day bowling and drinking beer with them. But he was a very good cutter for trousers; he was the one who did the tailoring. He had an apprentice who did the rest of the work. He may have been out drinking most of the time – if you don’t mind my saying that –, but he made some great clothes. Every time I went to him to have my pants fixed, he would say: ‘Here comes my best customer!’ He was a hell of a guy. His workshop was at his place; he had a special tailoring table in the kitchen. He had quite a reputation. Many people came to him to order clothes.
I know my father experienced a ‘coup de foudre’ [love at first sight] when he met my mother. He married her in 1921 or so and they were very happy.