In 1945 or 1946 they both got into their respective professions; my father became an official, a bookkeeper in a factory in Kolozsvar, then he got a position somewhere else. My mother became the teacher of the ballet class at the Pioneer Centre in Kolozsvar.
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Ferenc Pap
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For a while, my mother was the secretary of a retraining centre for Jews. At that time this wasn’t a governmental organization, the Jewish community of Bucharest [was the organizer of these centres, because] it wanted to give jobs to those who had lost their prospects. There were similar movements in every Central Eastern European state: to retrain for physical work those Jews who came back from the deportations and couldn’t continue the work they had done before. This organization’s name was abbreviated to O.R.T. It had many sections related to physical work: locksmith, turner, joiner, and things like that, and my mother was the secretary of this school for a while.
At first my father was an official of a newly created Jewish organization which ran under communist guiding-principles. It was called the Democratic Union of Jews.
Another boy, Jozsef, became a chemist in Papa.
My great-grandfather on my mother’s side, Markus Rosenthal, started out as a leather manufacturer in Temesvar. Later, as a mature man, he had a leather shop in one of Temesvar’s neighborhoods.
My father must have graduated high school in 1924, I think, and then the auntie from Vienna undertook his education. My father would have liked to be a doctor, but there wasn’t enough money for that, so he finished a one-year course in Vienna: the shortened, one-year course of an academy of commerce. That academy still exists; it is called the World Trade Academy.
The Jewish [aspect] at high-school was probably the fact that the whole high-school – the teaching staff and the pupils as well – were Hungarian-speaking middle-class Jewish people whose mother tongue was Hungarian, and to whom religiousness didn’t really matter. Probably they were obliged to go to synagogue on weekends. All of my father's classmates were Jews as well. Later on, over the course of decades, the company of friends dispersed. Very few of them remained in Temesvar. Some of them went abroad: to Hungary or to Anglo-Saxon territory. My father went to Kolozsvar. The Jewish high school was functioning until about the time of World War II. I think that in the ‘40s there was only a Jewish elementary school inTemesvar.
Then they all came back to Temesvar. My grandfather was a teacher already and they continued their studies there, in the Jewish high school.
My father had a rather eventful youth, because he (and his two sisters as well) went to Vienna with his parents in 1919. At that time, after World War I, there was a program that sent many of the children of the so-called defeated countries – and Hungary was a defeated country – abroad to “be fed up.” That’s how my father and my younger aunt got to London for a year. They attended school there.
The youngest auntie was called Klari. She had three husbands; the last one was called Mihaly Suranyi. Her husband was a Gentile.
Romania
They moved to Israel in 1962.
My aunt didn’t work anymore there, and my uncle commuted to the university in Tel-Aviv from Netanya, where they lived. He taught there Latin and Old French. Meanwhile he went on some study-tours as well.
She got married in 1940 to a teacher from the Jewish high school in Temesvar, called Hauben, who came from Bucovina, from Cernovitz. He was appointed there in Temesvar, and he taught Latin. This uncle of mine knew some thirteen languages.
Later, after the war – in my childhood – I remember that she was a cashier in some kind of ready-to-wear boutique or clothes shop.
The eldest was Ibolya. She learned to play the piano and she taught the piano.
My grandmother stayed at home and took care of the three children. On her own initiative, she lived out her intellectual inclinations. She wrote plays. One of her plays was performed inTemesvar.
My grandfather taught Hungarian and German at the Jewish high school. There’s a little story related to this. My grandfather was a passionate smoker. Many times there was a cigar hanging out of his mouth even when he entered a class. Besides this, he had moustache too. They drew him like this, with the cigar. Well, he was a huge man and his students nicknamed him “The oldster”. A few of his ex-students are still living in Kolozsvar.
In Temesvar they lived in a tenement dwelling somewhere downtown.
My grandfather sent from there all kinds of CV's and self-recommendations, and the Jewish high school of Temesvar [today: Timisoara, Romania] accepted his application. That’s how they got to Temesvar in 1920 or 1921.
And then the events of 1918-1919 intervened: the end of World War I and the so-called Soviet revolution [the Hungarian Soviet Republic]. It was interesting that within this chaos both my grandmother and grandfather took sides. My grandfather was a so-called radical bourgeois and it was said that my grandmother was communist. After a short time they came to Budapest. In Budapest my grandmother was a member of the so-called Council of the Hundred – which was a kind of a parliament – and became the head of some kind of reformatory school. Then in March, of 1919, I think, this movement came to an end. When the whole thing collapsed they went illegally to her wealthy sister in Vienna.
And then the events of 1918-1919 intervened: the end of World War I and the so-called Soviet revolution [the Hungarian Soviet Republic]. It was interesting that within this chaos both my grandmother and grandfather took sides. My grandfather was a so-called radical bourgeois and it was said that my grandmother was communist. After a short time they came to Budapest. In Budapest my grandmother was a member of the so-called Council of the Hundred – which was a kind of a parliament – and became the head of some kind of reformatory school. Then in March, of 1919, I think, this movement came to an end. When the whole thing collapsed they went illegally to her wealthy sister in Vienna.
There was an educational centre in Szolnok called the Commercial School; and my grandfather became headmaster there.
At the end of the century there was a well-known linguist called Zsigmond Simonyi. It was said that my grandfather would be his assistant, but university work was poorly paid and high-school work paid a little bit better, thereupon my grandfather went to Kassa [today: Kosice, Slovakia] as a teacher.
At the end of the century there was a well-known linguist called Zsigmond Simonyi. It was said that my grandfather would be his assistant, but university work was poorly paid and high-school work paid a little bit better, thereupon my grandfather went to Kassa [today: Kosice, Slovakia] as a teacher.
I know of one of my grandmother's sisters; she was called Olga, and she lived all her life in Vienna. Her husband was a factory owner, a rich man.
My grandmother’s father was a distillery owner in Vienna.
He met my grandmother Paula at the end of the last century [the 19th], probably in Vienna or Budapest, and I think they were distantly related, too.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
Anti-Semitism in Hungary grew very strong at the end of the 19th century. At that time there was a radical party leader and Member of Parliament. Due to the disadvantages which were incurred [because of the Jewish name, Grandfather] Magyarized his name. It became Pap [preacher], because the neighbours always called them “the preacher-boys”, because my great-grandfather was a Rabbi. [Besides] everybody who was called Kohn or Kohen or something similar is [of] kohanite [origin]. The name Pap could have come from here as well. He magyarized his name sometime at the very end of the 19th century, and all his brothers and sisters followed him and “Papized”. There were eleven brothers and sisters, and he, the youngest, Magyarized his name, and then all of his brothers and sisters became Pap, too.
Later he was a teacher of linguistics and literature, until the end. As a student in Budapest, he became a member of a literary group called the Kisfaludy Compan. He dealt with the works of Arany Janos [one of the most famous romantic poets in Hungarian literature], and with Lessing from German literature. He wrote a book on this. Besides this there was an old series, sort of like “Everyman’s Library”, which was probably much cheaper, and my grandfather’s book about Ferenc Rakoczi [Prince of Transylvania, leader of the insurrection in 1703-1711] was published as part of this series.
He graduated from high school there, and then he also finished university in Budapest. He majored in languages: Hungarian and German, but he studied something at the Faculty of Philosophy too. The family believes that he gained two doctorates: one in linguistics and one in philosophy.