My uncle’s house was where his factory was. It was a large place, with spacious and beautiful rooms. It had a bathroom. It only had one floor, but had a courtyard, where the stables were located.
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Displaying 28261 - 28290 of 50826 results
Carol Margulies
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She was married to a man named Mendel Sandman, born in Sadagura, too. He owned a candy and chocolate factory that was called Sandia. He employed around 20 workers. Only some of them were Jewish. They had a boss who my father had brought from Austria. The goods they produced were sent across the entire country. My uncle had agents who traveled and sold his merchandise in all the cities. My uncle also owned about six carts and each had a pair of horses; those were very beautiful and well groomed animals. They shone like dolls. There were Jews who traveled through the villages and sold the merchandise.
My mother’s sister, Aunt Tiny, got deported with us and died in Transnistria, in Tivriv [today Tyvrov, Ukraine], in 1943.
They had two sons: Leo [Zuzu] Engler, who was born around 1894, graduated in Vienna and became a doctor, and Sigmund Engler, born six years after his brother, around 1900; I don’t know what school he went to.
My parents got married in 1920. I don’t know if they had a religious ceremony.
When the war ended, my father returned to Czernowitz; and so did my mother. She didn’t go back to Vienna, because, once the Austrian-Hungarian Empire collapsed, the Czechs, Poles, and Baltic people founded their own independent states. The Romanians received a part of the territories, too.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
My father was an officer and clerk in Czernowitz, but he got sent to several cities across the country; this is how he got to Dulmen, where he met my mother. After a while, my father was sent to another place, Seletin, but he kept in touch with my mother by mail.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
The Austrians didn’t trust the Czechs and Poles, as they wanted to have the country just for themselves [be independent], so they treated them as enemies, not as friends, especially after the war began. So they took those girls who had studied at the monastery and sent them to Czechoslovakia. This is how my mother got to Dulmen [Editor’s note: At that time, Czechoslovakia didn’t exist as a state, so the city mentioned was under Austrian-Hungarian authority.], where she worked with my father for a police station.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
By the time the war began [World War I], my mother, whose maiden name was Antonia Engler, had finished school in a catholic monastery in Vienna [today Austria].
Before World War II, my father was a high-ranking clerk in Czernowitz, Bukovina, which belonged to Romania at the time. He was responsible for the security of the news that entered the country. He used to check the newspapers like an agent of the Siguranta [4], like it was called back then. As he spoke several languages, he read various newspapers; when he came across an article that attacked the royal family, he simply blocked that newspaper from reaching the population. At that time, the country was under a royal dictatorship, and they [the authorities] didn’t want the people to find out that King Carol II had a girlfriend, Lupeasca, while Prince Michael [5] was still a child.
When World War I began, my father wasn’t called up to the front. He remained at the post office. He wore the imperial outfit [the uniform]; he was an officer and was in charge of the Czernowitz post office. In 1915, when the Russians entered Romania, my father gathered all the papers, telegraph machines, and telephones, purchased horses and two large carts in which he loaded everything and carried the items deeper into the country, to Seletin [town in Bukovina, 228km south-west of Czernowitz], which the Russians hadn’t occupied yet [Editor’s note: This is highly likely to have happened in 1918, shortly before the annexation of Bessarabia to Romania [3]]. For his deed, he was decreed by the Emperor of Austria-Hungary, King ‘Apostolosin Koning von Ungarum’. The order read, ‘Awarding, on 23rd March 1915, to Abraham Margulies from Czernowitz, post office and telegraph specialist, the Golden Cross for valor.’ He also received a nice ribbon that read ‘Franz Josef’.
He went to high school in Czernowitz and got a graduation certificate.
At that time, all the children had to go to cheder from the age of four. So did my father and he could read Hebrew.
My uncle, who had a candy and chocolate factory, used to take us riding on Sunday. We made trips to Sadagura, to remember how things used to be there.
Before the war, they used to say: ‘Czernowitz, near Sadagura.’ Sadagura was a larger town and belonged to Austria-Hungary. When my grandparents were alive, there were still many Jews there, but they left during World War I, so Sadagura disappeared as a town. It has never been reborn. Even today, only a few ordinary people live there. There’s a book on Sadagura, written by a Romanian author, I don’t know his name, entitled ‘A name from Sadagura.’ [Editor’s note: Mr. Margulies refers to a play written by Vasile Alecsandri (1818-1890), ‘Iorgu de la Sadagura’ (Iorgu from Sadagura), premiered on 18th January 1844 at the National Theater in Iasi. Alecsandri was a Romanian poet, author, playwright, folklorist, politician, minister, and academician; he was the founder of the Romanian theater and dramatic literature, a remarkable personality of Moldova and then of Romania during the entire 19th century.] I went there more than once; it wasn’t far, you only had to cross the River Prut. My uncle, who had a candy and chocolate factory, used to take us riding on Sunday. We made trips to Sadagura, to remember how things used to be there.
They spoke Yiddish at home and observed the kashrut. My grandfather was very religious. After all, he lived in Sadagura, in a very strong Jewish environment, where everyone was very religious.
They spoke Yiddish at home and observed the kashrut.
My grandfather was in the cattle business: he bought cattle for export or consumption.
All I know about Regina is that she got married to a man whose name I can’t remember; after World War I, in 1919, and they left for America.
As he had passed away before I was born, I was given his name.
My mother, brother and I got home after four or five weeks. We found an empty house. The windows were broken and everything was gone. Our beautiful furniture, paintings, books, stamp collection, were all gone. We found some photos lying on the floor and the neighbors told us they were of the man who had lived there. I don’t know who he was. They told us that one day after our departure, our piano was loaded into a truck and sent to Bucharest. I know this for sure, because I asked them.
We stayed in Tivriv until we found out the Germans were far away. We started to walk back home and got there in fall 1944. It took us several weeks. From time to time, a truck with Russian soldiers would stop and give us a ride for one or two kilometers. We spent the nights in cemeteries lest the Russian policemen should catch us and send us to God knows where in Siberia.
They issued a death certificate. When we returned to Czernowitz, my mother hired lawyers and submitted this certificate to the post office; she got a pension.
, Ukraine
We had very little food: they gave us some corn flour and one or two potatoes. The gendarmes told us, ‘We’ll leave you alone as long as you don’t leave the premises. If you do, we’ll shoot you!’ One morning, my father announced, ‘I’m going to trade some clothes for food. It may get me killed, but, if I don’t, we’ll starve to death.’ He took the clothes and left. He never returned; he was shot dead. The Jewish Community helped me bury him in the former Jewish cemetery in Tivriv. There used to be Jews there, but they all died. They issued a death certificate.
The place was located in Gyorgy Bernady Square. I spent little time there, because the workshop was taken over by the printing shop. As an employee of the printing shop, I still did bookbinding until I got transferred to billing. I had to centralize sales, receipts, everything. My work was done in an hour as I had a calculator. I didn’t spend too much time there either, as they transferred me to accounting. But, right after that, they made personnel cuts. I wasn’t fired, but they lowered my salary. I told the manager that I couldn’t go on with that kind of salary. I went to see Borshivetzki, the manager of ‘Cartea Rusa’ [‘The Russian Book’, the bookstores’ organization, today Sedcom Librarii Company], and asked him if he could hire me. This is how I got to their accounting department. The head of the department was a married lady named Luca.
In Targu Mures, I met a man who was from Czernowitz. I hadn’t met him back home. We went to his place from time to time. He had a radio set and we listened to the news. I loved to listen to the news in the evening. He worked in a bookbinding shop and got me hired there.
In school, at handicraft, I had learnt how to compact books.
In the beginning, after we settled in Targu Mures, I got a temporary job picking berries. We had to go to Stanceni [88km from Targu Mures], where we lived in huts. We gathered the fruit in barrels together with some German women from Sibiu – they were very stout women. I spent three or four months there.
They’re not religious, but they keep in touch with the Toronto community and attend their meetings.
Since they didn’t let him bring his son, who was already four, they decided to leave England. They applied for Canadian visas and got them.