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They attacked us in the street. Although we weren't Jews with payes.... but they beat some of us. There were fascists too. The most painful was that these things tried my poor grandfather very much. They lived in Varad already when the Hungarians came in, and Zerind remained in Romania [following the Second Vienna Dictate] [1]. The Hungarian-Romanian border was near Zerind, so my grandfather’s estate remained in Romania. He got a stroke because of this. Then my grandfather was 76 and my grandmother 72.

There was Hungarian era [2] then, they introduced the Anti-Jewish laws [4], and the Jews lived in poor conditions. The situation was better in the villages, but in the towns there were a lot of restrictions, regarding what the Jews could do, and where they could travel. So they persecuted the Jews already.

It was a very nice and loyal village. For example we were on good terms with the Catholic priest. My neighbors were Hungarians too and they had a small boy, who loved very much my father-in-law: ‘Uncle! Uncle!’- he wanted to be together with my father-in-law all the time. They were Hungarian people and we used to visit each other. So, there wasn't anti-Semitism in the village.

We had a common household with my mother-in-law. They didn’t have kosher household, although they were Jews. They weren’t religious at all, and this suited me very much. They slaughtered the geese and the hens, which is forbidden for the Jews [only the shochet can slaughter]. They ate pork meat also. My mother ate with them, but for example my grandfather wouldn’t eat there. Maybe they used to go to the temple when they were young, but I never went with them to the temple. There was a synagogue in the village and there were very religious Jews also.

I was 19 and my husband 21 at that time. And after the marriage I moved to Alsoszopor, to my father-in-law’s house. I lived together with my husband for one year. We lived together with my husband’s parents, they had a nice, two-storied house. My husband’s parents were well-situated very nice people. I had no problems with them at all. My mom came to visit us every six weeks or two months. She didn’t come more often, because she didn’t want to disturb us. She missed me of course. My brother lived in Kolozsvar at that time.

Later they took me to my room, I got changed, and they called the cab already and we went for honeymoon to Pest. This happened right after the dinner because we had the train around 4-5pm. They took us to the railway station by cab, and it was very affecting, because my mom gave us the tickets as a present and she put some money in my pocket too. My father-in-law put some money in his son’s pocket also, they took care about our spending money this way. And then we went for honeymoon to Pest, for two weeks.

We had to drink wine from a glass, and we had to break the glass after that. This is the ‘Mazel Tov’. The ceremony ended with this. The rabbi shouted 'Mazel Tov’, this meant good luck to you or something like this. But it was a really stunt. I didn’t like it at all. But seriously. The rabbi told us in Hebrew that we could kiss each other, and then we went to the dining room. There was an enormous ‘U’ shaped table, we sat at the head of the table but there was only one place setting. When I noticed that I asked: ‘Who wouldn’t eat, me or my husband?’ ‘You have to eat from the same plate!’ I began to laugh like a drain...It was ‘gold soup’, meat soup in fact, and I remember exactly that really looked like the gold, and one of us could eat with his/her right hand and the other with the left. I don’t know how we did it, but we laughed more than we ate.

They stood the groom under the chuppah and I had to walk round him. I had to walk round him three times, and my poor grandmother stumbled over something. The guests stood round the chuppah. And of course the neighbors were there also. There were only a few Jews in that area.

And I found out later that the men had to put on a white tallit or something like this. But he didn’t put up that on his suit, he put it up under the suit. So he married in a black suit.

And so we became friends and he began to court me. He was older than me, and when I graduated he was summoned to forced labor. He spoke with my mother, because he was afraid that he would lose me. He told that if he went to forced labor, I marry somebody else, and better we married before he joined the army. We had to marry because of this. There were such things then. My mother wasn’t agreed, she opposed the marriage tooth and nail: ‘My daughter, don’t do this!’ Try talking with an girl in love... And I don’t know even now, why mom got agree, although we were very young. Perhaps because I wanted so. The fact is, that we married in 1943 in Nagyvarad.

And then the Germans took him to Poland. After I came back, [from the deportation] I went to Kolozsvar and I inquired about him… but his whole troop disappeared. He and his classmates, a troop with 25 members disappeared. They joined the partisans? They were shot by the partisans? Maybe the Germans caught them? I shall never find out. I hoped that the Russians captured him, and he will come home from somewhere. I hoped for a very long time. But in vain… And the most terrible thing about it is, that I don't have even one photo with him.

He was 20 when he became forced laborer and he was taken to Nagybanya. And I never saw him again. He was in Nagybanya for one, one and a half year. We corresponded with him, and we sent packages monthly. His letters were censored.

Before I started attending school, my governess would take me for French lessons to this one old French woman. We also studied French in high school; our teacher was this incredibly sweet lady. I spoke fluently, but my grammar wasn't very good. And my teacher insisted that I had to learn it, while I insisted that I spoke French the best out of the whole class, so we had a conflict. And she said that if I didn't learn that grammar, she'd fail me. And I contradicted her, that she couldn't do that.

I attended Sokol from when I was little. As a child I attended ballet for some time, but mainly because I was very fond of those ballet slippers. Otherwise I'm a completely non-athletic type, but I did and still do like swimming.

I began attending a normal Czech public school in Vysehrad. I was the only Jewess there, because there were only two Jewish families in Vysehrad.

I was born in Germany, so I had German nationality, but in those days no one worried about that. Grandfather always said: 'In the end she'll get married anyways, so why should we do anything about it?' My mother tongue was Czech, because my mother was Czech. My nanny and governess were as well, but I was able to speak both languages. My mother sometimes spoke German with me, when my stepfather wasn't around, because he didn't know any German.

From the time I was in first grade I used to spend my summer vacation there, and spent my beautiful childhood and youth there.

My grandfather was likely a quite religious person. I remember that once at Christmas I wanted a tree, and he told me that he wouldn't have that in the apartment. But later I had that tree in the room that was used in the summer to enter to the garden, but wasn't used in the winter, and my grandfather made like he didn't know about it. With my grandfather, Christmas simply wasn't celebrated. But it was at Aunt Lilly's place. I've never since seen so many presents as at her place during Christmas. The room would be so full that there was no place to stand. There were presents for everyone, including the staff.

I don't think that we cooked kosher. I recall that we often had shoulet [chulent], but I didn't like it. We celebrated Jewish holidays, Chanukkah not very often, but Passover regularly. We had Passover supper; I recall hard-boiled eggs, matzot and vegetables. Grandfather was an expert at the Passover ritual. I fasted for the New Year, but as I was a child, for only a half day. And then I was once leaving the synagogue and saw my stepfather and my Uncle Rudolf, leaving a local butcher's with their mouths full.

We lived right by the factory. It was a three-story residential apartment house with a garden. My grandfather had a five-room house on the first floor, and my mother and her family lived on the second floor. When Uncle Rudolf moved away with his family, my grandfather and I moved to the second floor into a smaller, three-room apartment, where the two of us each had his own room. I lived alone with my grandfather, because my grandmother died at the beginning of the 1930s.

We lived in the Vysehrad neighborhood of Prague; it's a beautiful place that I like to visit to this day. When you walk around Vysehrad, you can see out over all of Prague.

They belonged to the wealthier part of society. Later Rudolf took over the factory from my grandfather, and proved to be very good at it. Rudolf would tell how Grandpa first sent him to some associate, who also owned a factory, so he could get himself some work experience.

After the war Baruska used to visit me and each time she would bring me some family item of my aunt's. It was humorous that she would bring it to me as a gift, but even so I was ever so grateful for it, because in this way I got to my things.

My parents' marriage didn't last long, and they divorced after four years. After that my mother returned with me to Prague, but my father didn't want to let my mother keep me. In the end they had to go to court, which decided that I would live with my grandmother and grandfather on my mother's side.

Grandma ran the household. Although she used to go shopping at the market, she had a driver in livery for it. I don't know what sort of family she came from, but she was probably used to that. Once a week one of the seamstresses from the factory would come over and organize her wardrobe, do the laundry, ironing and sewing.

I don't think that she had any sort of higher education. She was a Czech Jew; at home they made a point of speaking Czech.

I think that my grandfather tended towards the Social Democrats, but I don't know if he was a member of some political party.

My parent’s marriage wasn’t a subject of conversation, it took place probably in Zerind, but I don’t know exactly. They had both a civil and a religious marriage, and it was particularly difficult for them to divorce. Jews usually didn’t separate the couples like the Catholics. [Editor’s note: The comparison is incorrect because the Catholic Church forbids the divorce. Anna Gaspar referred to the fact that the Halacha strictly regulates the divorce procedure. The Halacha doen't recognize the civil divorce, the divorce procedure must be conducted under the supervision of the bet din (the Rabbinical Court).] It took quite a long time, but my grandparents insisted on the divorce. After they divorced, my mother assumed again her maiden name, and was registered as Olga Weiss. After they divorced, my mother remained single and so did my father. My mom’s photo was all the time on my father’s desk. He claimed my grandmother was the one who separated them. To be honest, my grandmother was a damn bad woman. It’s not nice to say this, but she was a very bad woman. And I believe she separated my parents. But I never found out why.

They divided the grandfather’s estate during their life. Each child got his/her share and lived on that. My uncle built a house in Tasnad and bought land from his share. They managed my mother’s estates as well, and she got some share after her those lands. We lived very well on that.

‘I remember now, I was the sadhen…! I arranged for your mother to meet your father, but then I heard that the marriage went wrong.’ I don’t know where he knew my father from, but it doesn’t matter. But he blamed himself for that. Around then the parents made kind of a fair, and traded what they would bring in. What could one feel for a stranger? Nothing. There wasn’t any courting. My mother became a fiancee, and then they made arrangements for the wedding. It was a great wedding, I think. They married around 1917-18.

My mother’s name was Olga Weiss, she was born around 1890. She was the only girl of her parents. She attended the Catholic school and high school from Nagyvarad, but I don’t know why. There are things I remember and I realize I reconciled with everything. I agreed with everything they did. Why mom was raised by nuns? Her parents were in Zerind, she was in Varad, and she attended the convent there. I don’t know why. I am sure this she was so warm-hearted because nuns raised her. She graduated the high school, although the girls weren’t really used to graduate then. She knew only one Romanian sentence: ‘Merge la padure’ [Goes to the forest]. She didn’t speak Hebrew neither, but she knew German. In our family everybody knew German [we learnt from the governess].

My mother had a third brother, uncle Herman Weiss, who remained in Zerind. His wife wore a wig, her father forced her to do so before the war, but then she took it off. I was a big girl when he got married, it happened around 1933. He wasn’t deported neither, because he lived in Romania, and they emigrated to Israel in 1948. The Jews were taken from the villages to Arad. And they lived there during the war, but then they moved back to Zerind. He wrote me in a letter what he found in the two houses, and how many wheat and corn there was in the granary… so he wrote down all the wealth and he said it would all be mine...

The other brother, uncle Wili, lived in Szilagy county, not far from Nagykaroly, in a village called Tasnad. He built a family house there and he was a farmer. He married the wealthiest girl from Varad, a girl called Leitner. She was the wealthiest girl and my uncle married her. So there was plenty to bite on. Money wasn’t a problem for them. They had two daughters, Agi and Evi. They were deported and their parents didn’t come home. None of them. The girls didn’t come home, neither. When the girls were liberated, the Swedish soldiers asked them, who wanted to go to Sweden. The girls didn’t want to come home, and they spent one or one and a half year in Sweden. They met their future husbands there, one of them went to America, the other to England. One of them died in America.

My mother had three brothers, she was the only girl among her siblings. At that time we all had our own governess [Fraulein] for the boys and for the girls. This was in vogue in the elite families, and we belonged to those. My mom’s oldest brother was Bela Weiss, he lived in Kolozsvar. They had a distillery on Arpad street 38. I spent many holidays there, mostly the Christmas holidays. They were wealthy, but they had no children. My uncle married auntie Irma, an extremely decent woman, they were full cousins, the mother of auntie Irma was the sister of my grandfather. She became pregnant, but there were complications, premature birth and thrombosis, and the baby died. And the doctors told them they couldn’t have more children. When my brother started the seventh grade, my uncle came to us and he asked my mother to give him my brother. He wanted to sign over their wealth to him, and he said a boy needed a father, a man, to raise him. And my poor mother cried so much after my brother… but enough about this. And my brother finished the high school in Kolozsvar, and he was taken away to forced labor from there. I never saw him again. They didn’t adopt him, just raised him.

My grandparents always spent the winter in the town, in Varad. They were old and they had to be under permanent medical supervision. They were in Varad when the annexation took place, and that’s why they were deported. If they remained in Zerind, they would have avoided the deportation… But unfortunately they were taken away. When this happened, my poor grandfather was around 83-85 and my grandmother 74.

I never heard my grandfather discussing politics. My grandparents were not interested in politics. All what I know is that my grandmother Regina sat down near to the radio, and when Hitler spoke, she scolded him all the time. This was their only political manifestation.

My grandfather was a religious, honest and reliable man. The father of his son’s wife always told him that ‘You are a…’ – it was a special expression for that and it meant he was not a believer, although they met in the synagogue almost every Saturday. He disesteemed my grandfather because he wasn’t so deeply religious. He observed the religious rules generally, but he wasn’t a bigot… he did only what was necessary. I think he didn’t cheat anybody during his life. He didn’t wear payes, he had nice white hair. He had a small, white goatee. He wore a hat. He always had a problem with my brother because he didn’t wear a cap: ‘Laci, you lost your head again! Where is your head?’ Especially when we sat down, and my grandfather said the prayer, then we had to put on a cap.

I also loved Chanukkah. It had such an intimate atmosphere. There was a special candlestick, the chanukkiyah, which had 8 candles instead of 7, and they lit every day one more candle. My mother didn’t light candles, I think my grandfather lit them. There were eight plus one candles, he lit one of them, and the others using this one. [Editor’s note: The first candle was the shammash.] It was forbidden to light every candle with match. They always gave presents to the children at Chanukkah. But not only at high holidays. They were very open-handed. To be honest, they were wealthy enough to be open-handed, but my grandmother was a avaricious woman. I wasn’t on good terms with my grandmother, I couldn’t accept her temper. She was so avaricious that when they brought in the terrine, and my mother drew out the soup for everybody, she looked into the terrine and said what was left was not enough for the housemaids. And she took the water-jug and poured water in the soup. I stood up from the table and I wasn’t willing to eat together with her anymore. These things irritated me terribly. She was very avaricious indeed. If she was poor, I would have understood her. My poor husband used to say when I didn't buy something for me: ‘I can tell you are your grandmother’s granddaughter’ – and this was the worst scolding I could get from him. So I didn’t love her, I know it’s not nice to say such things, but she was a bad woman. As good as my grandfather was, so bad was she, with everybody. She was angry all the time because she had to do this and that, to cook separately for that kid, this was me, but she went to the pantry [in secret] and she ate enough. She, alone…

My favorite holiday was Purim. Purim is a high holiday. If I remember well, we had to eat eight kinds of fruits. They were winter fruits, there was St. John’s bread, and that is a kind of fruit too. We had to get eight kinds of fruits. They observed this. And we, the children, were very happy. They got bananas, oranges, apples, plums and I don't know what else... [Editor’s note: Anna Gaspar confuses the customs of two subsequent holidays.

At the holidays of fall we made a tent in the yard, in our garden from Varad, because the grandparents were already in Varad in the fall. There was a kind of summerhouse which had a removable roof, they covered it with twigs and so they converted it into a tent. But we never ate there. My grandfather used to pray there, several times a day, but we didn’t eat there because it was too small. My grandfather never ate or slept there. Children used to decorate the Sukkah. I decorated it together with my brother, we used colored paper, branches and flowers… But it was a really pleasant place for sitting, but it was forbidden to go there when my grandfather was praying. It wasn’t a large place, it was a small summerhouse. Otherwise it had furniture, a table with chairs, but it was small.

The really big ceremony was at Pesach. Before Pesach there was the chametzing. My mother spread crumbs and my grandfather gathered them with a small dustpan and a brush. He had to go to every room to gather the crumbs. And then they brought down the Pesach dishes from the loft in a big chest. The Pesach dishes were a different service. They changed the chinas, the glasses, the cutlery, the cookers, absolutely everything. Nothing remained from the everyday ones. They put the everyday ones aside and took out the Pesach dishes. The Pesach dishes were a Rosenthal service, the most famous china. I don't know exactly whether they were made in Germany or Austria, but I think the Rosenthal chinas were made in Austria. We couldn’t use wheat or yeasty flour at Pesach, but we could buy potato flour from the store. My mother made yellow cake from that…I didn’t eat it and I will never eat that good yellow cake, made from potato flour. She made it like the normal cake. She mixed the egg-yolk with sugar, put in the mousse and the flour. And from this a yellow cake is made. And then one can put coca in it, or nuts, but the base is that yellow cake. And it had to contain flour. But instead of flour she put potato flour in it, but that wasn’t that dry, but this yellow cake was quite dry, and has a much better taste, at least I liked it better. There was a label on every food-product that ‘sel Pesach’. We had special milk; we couldn’t buy milk from the store, we got the milk from the Jewish Community and that was Pesach milk. We did it in the same way at my grandparents, in Zerind and in Varad also, because they lived in Varad since 1940. The chicken are taken to the shochet and he slaughters them, right? It was forbidden to eat it, the shochet had to see it first whether it was kosher or not. There was a shochet in Zerind. He slaughtered the cows and the sheep and all the other animals too.

At Pesach the first evening is the eve of Seder. On the eve of Seder all the family gathered in Zerind, and we sat to the table in the enormous dining room, it was a very long table there, my grandfather sat at the head of the table in a large armchair and he leaned against the armchair, because one had to lean sometimes to the right, then to the left, just as it is written in the Haggadah. [Editor’s note: According to the Haggadah, during Seder eve one has to lean aside to eat what’s on the table. The Haggada provides an instruction for this in the section starting with ‘Mah nisstanah’ (What is the difference? i.e. between this night and the others): The fourth question of Mah nishtanah: ‘Why is this night different from the others? On the other ones we eat sitting down and leaning, but this night leaning.’ The custom of leaning comes from the Roman custom according to which the free, full citizens used toe at leaning on pillows. The Jews gain their freedom at the holiday of Pesach, when they managed to get free from the pharaohs rule. The custom of leaning on pillows symbolizes the status of freedom. There is no chalakhic rule for this. One has to lean to one side, but according to some traditionsone has to lean to the left and to the right, but this has no chalakhic motivation.] My oldest uncle, Bela, together with his wife, sat on my grandfather’s right-hand side. They had no children. On my grandfather’s left-hand side there sat uncle Vili with his wife, then my mother and my youngest uncle with his wife and we, the children. We were four, my two cousins, my brother and myself. We sat at the other end of the table. All the grandchildren were there. My grandfather sat on the head of the table and he led the Seder. That was a great experience. He told us what to do: we had to eat this and drink that. And of course we, the children, used to giggle, because we didn’t care too much… We sat at the other end of the table, and we played silly pranks, but it was very impressive… Not really because of the religiousness, because I'm not religious at all, I couldn't believe in something after what I went through, but the grandparents imposed us the ceremony. The plate I have now in front of me is a special china plate, a large white plate with a few dents. In every dent there were different vegetables, horseradish and parsley and I don’t now what, but to be honest I didn’t really care. But my grandfather gave it to me to put them between two matzot, and that matzah was a special matzah, not this thing we eat now. They were thick and handmade, not machine-made ones. The other matzot, the ones we bought, were machine-made, but those from the top of the plate, separated with table napkins, were special ones...

My grandfather had a big, silver goblet, the boys a smaller one, while we had a little one, but also made from silver. That was in front of us, and we had to drink from it when my grandfather told us to. It was a really intimate atmosphere. We put a separate goblet for Eliyah. That one was an even bigger goblet. There are so many things that were wiped from my memory, and I don’t really want to think about them, but I remember the table very well. Everyone’s face was in front of me. Although I had no photos of my uncles and aunts or anyone else, I can still see them even now. Everyone had a silver goblet. I was very upset because aunts had smaller goblets than the uncles. Feminism was already working inside me. From the head to the other end of the table the goblets became smaller and smaller. But it was only allowed to use those goblets at Pesach, on Seder eve.

We had to say the mah nishtanah, and my grandfather read the Haggadah in Hebrew. We didn’t understand it, nobody explained it to us. They told us if we didn't understand something we only had to ask and they explained it. But who cared? We were children. Adults always told the children what they had to do, so we did the same. I remember we had to dip our sins with our little finger in the glass and shake it off to get rid of them. And when one of the children, I don’t remember who, put his/her finger in his/her mouth, my grandfather scolded him for that, because he/she could remain with the sin in this way. He explained it something like this. At mah nishtanah they always asked another child’s name, and he/she answered. We, the children, had approximately the same age. One of my cousins was born in 1923, the other in 1924 and my brother in 1921. So we had almost the same age, and we always decided who would say the mah nishtanah. My grandfather asked who would say the mah nishtanah. In fact there are some questions in the mah nishtanah regarding how/why we did this or that. It is a crying shame that I don’t remember the mah nishtanah, even though I finished the elementary, the middle and the high school in the Jewish school. We had religion classes and separate Hebrew classes, taught by that poor Leichmann, and we learned how to write and read in Hebrew, but I don’t remember anything now. One of these days it occurred to me that I don’t remember even the Hebrew letters. But then they asked the mah nishtanah in Hebrew, the booklet was in front of us, but it was written with Roman letters. Not with Hebrew letters, to avoid the confusion. In a word we had to read it out if we didn’t want to stammer.

There was a ceremony where one of my uncles distracted my grandfather's attention, and we had to hide a piece of matzah somewhere in the room. He didn’t have to know where the matzah was, he just told that the person who hid it to bring it back. It wasn’t so strict that he had to find it. Usually a child hid it, and he gave it back, in exchange for a present. A kilogram of chocolate, or anything you asked for… I know my brother requested some writing utensils, because he always wanted to learn. There were no computers and this kind of things. I think my cousin asked for clothes, but I don't know exactly... But we had everything we needed. Every year it was a different grandchild who stole the thing we had to hide, and he/she got something for it …, he/she gave it only in exchange of a present.

We opened the door, and we waited for the Messiah to come in. [Editor’s note: According to the liturgy Elijah is expected, who is the messenger of the Messiah’s coming.] A really funny thing happened once. There was the new part of the house, my uncle built it. It was near the old house, and we had to go up ten steps to the corridor. And the apartment opened from the corridor There were many rooms there. And they opened all the doors, the door of the dining room, the front door and the outer door. And who came in? A cow popped in its head through the door. I’ll never forget this. Everybody was so shocked about how could this have happened...? They surely took up the coachman for that. The cows were in the stable, and probably this one wasn’t tied well, nobody knew, I don’t remember, but I know it was a great fuss because of that, and they sanctioned the coachman. And the cow popped in its head. But only its head. I can almost see it even now, it had a mottled chop, but you could imagine the face everyone made. My grandfather told that if he was superstitious, he had to believe that the soul of the Messiah moved in a cow. But he didn’t believe in such things… he opened the door for the Messiah. Well, this was funny event. And I related this to my religion teacher, and he enjoyed the story also. This really happened.