I don’t remember women going to the mikveh but I do remember that the men used to go to the steam bath on Sundays. In Kolozsvar, on Szechenyi Square there was a steam bath, separately for men and women. [Editor’s note: Egon Lovith is referring to Jozsef Selig’s steam bath named Cristal, which operated in the same period as the mikveh.] Before we could get into the hot tub, where we would sit quietly, we had to wash ourselves with soap. After the hot bath we went into the cold tub, where there was a terrible frolicking. This is where Hari and Jeno took me. I met many secular Jews there. The mikveh wasn’t far from there on the bank of the Szamos River but I have never been there.
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Displaying 19471 - 19500 of 50826 results
Egon Lovith
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On Sabbath, the cholent would be brought back from the baker, though it wasn’t any of us who brought it back, but some Christian child. The money for his service was on the table already on Friday morning. When the child brought the cholent on Sabbath, it was still hot and the paper was brownish from being well burned. It was at home before my uncles got back from the synagogue. On Sabbath I went out to the yard and I used to draw on a piece of paper. I remember that after my uncles Jeno and Hari got home from the synagogue, they had lunch but after being home for a little while they got bored so they left to visit their friends. But my grandmother insisted that on Sabbath they didn’t go to any public places, parties or to play cards.
The women wore scarves only on holidays. Otherwise they didn’t wear scarves, I remember that my grandmother would often loaf round with her white hair open, not wearing a scarf. But for the men it was mandatory to wear hats on holidays.
I wasn’t a synagogue goer, I only went on the high holidays when my mother and grandmother took me (but I am circumcised).
The candle lighting on Friday evening was absolutely mandatory. We had our fine old silver candlesticks and they always had candles in them. No matter how poor we were we would always have candle lighting.
About four times a week we had some kind of bean dish for the main course; we ate smashed beans, soup and pickled cabbage. On Sabbath we didn’t cook. Cholent was prepared on Friday and it was covered with paper. We always took it to Hilmann, the baker. We had to pay him in advance and he only took the cholent if we had paid him before and then he gave us a number that he also put on the cholent and that’s how we could ask for it later.
In our crowded apartment we didn’t really have the opportunity to observe Sabbath. First of all, there was no real table and there wasn’t enough room for all of us to sit. We could only have all of us together when the women hadn’t yet gone to sleep.
Of course we kids participated in the whole ‘gala’ because I was really interested since I had never seen a pig being roasted, or pork being eaten. And my five-year-old dear sister really desired some pork so she went up and said, ‘If I weren’t a gentle girl then I would ask you for some pork’. By then the pig was getting carved up left and right; the sausages were being made, the other attendants were standing behind. A small child didn’t have the understanding that eating pork wasn’t kosher and that she shouldn’t have any pork, and my grandmother just accepted that my sister tasted the pork.
Next to us lived an observant Jew with payes who had a child. But he never let his child come and play with us because we were treyfs [non-kosher]. Otherwise he didn’t consider us real Jews since we were usually bareheaded except during meals on Sabbath and when we went to the synagogue.
There was also a water pipe in the kitchen because after all it was a downtown apartment. In the room we burned wood for heating. We had a stove of black tin and its oven stuck out. Our yard, which was totally dark, wasn’t far from the Szamos River.
Our family lived in an apartment on Szechenyi Square: my grandmother my mother, my aunt, my sister, two of my uncles and myself. This was a particularly cheap apartment house, one room and a kitchen. The four women stayed in the room and us three men slept in the kitchen. From the street the house seemed tall but to get to our kitchen we had to go downstairs. The kitchen was dark, small but longish and had a low ceiling. We slept there, next to each other in awful circumstances, in such a way, that we had to throw ourselves from the bed-post to the head of the bed. It was by no means like I could get off the bed and there were my shoes. No, the shoes always remained at the end of the bed.
At home they were upset about the anti-Jewish remarks. For us it was like the crucifixion of Christ and we said, ‘Forgive them Lord because they don’t know what they are doing’. My family’s attitude to our Jewish identity was as to a reality that had to be dealt with. We were ready to deal with it but we weren’t the kind of Jewish people who had a lot of patience.
I took the clothes off the rope and I tied it around my waist rodeo like and the next day in school I sat in the last row and took note of the most annoying kids in front of me. They were the loudest and kept saying, ‘mai jidane, mai…’ [You dirty Jew, you]. During class with my most gentle teacher, who was quietly writing on the blackboard completely ignoring the noisiness of the class, I spun the lasso around like a cowboy – I had two Hungarian kids next to me – I tossed it and caught two or three of the loud ones and I started tightening the rope. In the silence that followed there were only choked voices. The teacher looked up not understanding what was happening and then he saw us. I was expelled from school and it was a big scandal. But I also made a name for myself much later, when I grew older, I met a student who had been there in Anghelescu school at the same time and he said to me, ‘Do you remember when you came with the lasso and caught those three …?’ Since then, no one at school tried to hurt me again although those three were in a huff with me for a while. I wasn’t allowed back to school for two weeks but after that my mother begged them to allow me to return.
My Romanian teacher, Octavian Siraru, was a very intelligent man who was a good friend and an admirer of Goga, the prime minister. While my Mexican identity held up I didn’t have any problems with Mr. Siraru, but that wasn’t true afterwards. Once we had the task to write something and, being an enterprising but naïve child, I decided to write a four-to-six line poem in Romanian about Romania, expressing how in Romania the trees are blooming and the birds are singing and something else along those lines. Mr. Siraru felt so insulted that he lost his temper and he hit me in the face. He was shouting at me in a husky voice in front of the whole class asking where I got my courage to do such a thing. He said, ‘Limba noastra curata …, vii tu, cine ti-a dat voie sa faci aceasta?’ [Our pure language…, how dare you, who allowed you to do something like this?] There was nothing I could say to him because I didn’t speak Romanian well enough yet.
However, the hardest part came once the kids discussed that even though I had come from Mexico I was Jewish, moreover a Hungarian speaking Jew. After this things took a bad turn. The Legionary [6] spirit was already alive and in homes people were talking like, ‘noi romanii…, patria noastrăa…, etc.’ [we, Romanians…, our motherland]. When I went to the back of the schoolyard again, I was suddenly attacked by a bunch of kids – today I would call them thugs – and they knocked me down to the ground. They pushed me to the wall and while strangling me they said, ‘Mai jidane, futu-i mama ta! Striga, traiasca Legiunea si Capitanul!’ [You Jew, your mother’s cunt! Shout, long live the Legionaries and the Captain!]’ By then I knew they were referring to Horia Sima [7], the leader of the Legionaries. I was unwilling to obey. It’s terrible how brutish my peers were, but I was not giving in, I defended myself. All this was happening in 1938.
By that time the fascist movement was already active with the Goga line [that is, sympathizing with the Goga-Cuza government] [5]. I unsuspectingly went outside to the schoolyard and kept playing with my classmates when all of a sudden, in the back of the schoolyard that was surrounded by walls so that the director couldn’t have seen anything, I was surrounded by a couple of kids. First they questioned my Mexican identity and they took their knives and pocket-knives out for me to show them how I could throw at a target to prove how Mexican I really was. I couldn’t perform as well as they did so I got a few hits and kicks from them. ‘This is not a Mexican’ they said. But these were only a child’s kicks, ones that were used in small fights.
Edit became pregnant but I was already taken to forced labor by that time. Edit was exempted from deportation because she went to give birth at the Jewish hospital on Szechenyi Square. It was thanks to Samu, he got her there, because he was able to come and go freely. The Christians in the hospital were hiding Edit. They took her down to the basement where she gave birth to Lea in 1944. They weren’t keen on releasing Edit from hospital; she stayed there with her child for a long time.
When I came back the two owners were still around, they had stayed and weren’t deported, I don’t know how they did it. They came up to me straight away and patted me on the shoulder, ‘It’s so great you’re alive, we are restarting our business and we thought you would come back’. But I said to them, ‘For you I won’t go back to work, I’ve had enough of you’.
When I got my order to forced labor in 1944, I had one favor to ask from the owner of Globusz. I asked him very nicely – I didn’t refer to my Jewish background – to give me my salary in advance because I had to leave behind my mother, my grandmother and my sister whom I had been supporting, bringing them their daily portion of bread and a liter of milk. I said that when I came back I would work it off. There was no way he would give me the money.
The yellow armband was made mandatory. Early on they gave us a Hungarian army hat and I even saluted but the officers protested against it and our hats were taken away. When we were outside the city we had to sing particular songs but I didn’t open my mouth. They took us to the Hoja [near Kolozsvar] to build a ski-run and to deforest. At the time, the lake in the main park of Kolozsvar was drained and we were ordered to clean the bottom of it. They were long working days. After we finished we had to go back to the barracks and we were relieved from there to go home. That’s what I was doing until I was taken away in February 1944.
I was first called up in 1942 to a so-called auxiliary preparation [instead of the levente –Hungarian military youth training], but I only had to go once a week. We had to assemble in the barracks. There they read the names and then we had to march with our tools, with shovels, to the worksite.
So, my mother already knew that Irenke was going to be killed. ‘And so she just stepped out’ – the woman tells me – ‘your mother held your sister’s hands and they walked into death together. I don’t know more. I survived and if your mother had stayed with me perhaps she would have survived, too. She was 40 years old in good health, we would have made it.
She told me how awful it had been, about 100 people crowded in a single wagon without food or water. My grandmother was dead already when they pulled her out of the wagon. When they arrived in Auschwitz some Jews who were taking the newcomers’ luggage away said to them, ‘Do you see that chimney? You will come out with that smoke in half an hour.’ Next my mother and Irenke got in front of Mengele and he immediately sent Irenke to the side, away from my mother.
,
During WW2
See text in interview
The most I know is that my mother, my grandmother and my little sister were taken to the brick factory. The three of them stayed together while they were allowed, this I heard from some woman, and they were even taken away together in cattle cars.
My mother was working for Ufarom pharmaceutical factory at the time – she had to work with vials and medications – where lots of Hungarians were working, too. [Editor’s note: The interviewer refers to Dr. Vilmos Stern’s Ufarom Egger pharmaceutical factory.] Among the workers there was no problem about being Jewish. Leftist thinking was already prevalent among them. My mother became really close to them. They worked in the factory under very unhealthy conditions and their hours were very long so they organized a strike and my mother also participated. But the strike was broken up and my mother and all those who participated were fired.
From 1936 up until forced labor I lived with Jeno. Jeno only had elementary schooling. He didn’t get married for a long time. He was a happy bohemian guy. He was going to be a watchmaker; my dad even gave him a certificate saying he prepared Jeno for the profession. All the watchmakers knew Jeno but he became bored with watch making even though he was great at it. He worked at different watch making stores for some time but he was fired from many of them. Then he went to hard physical work, which damaged the sensibility of his hands, so that he would never pick up watches again. Jeno was taken away before I was and he was in forced labor in Hungary all the way until 1944. He spent some time in Budapest, but it’s difficult to say where he had to work and dig. He was also a cook as part of his forced labor and then he came home.
,
During WW2
See text in interview
Hari got married in the 1940s but he had moved out even earlier. He married a Hungarian Jewish girl but I don’t remember her name. I never met her. He didn’t keep in touch with us. Later he had a child. Out of my family, Hari was the first to go to forced labor in Ukraine. Some people who were with Hari told me that he was at a site sweeping for mines and after that we’ve never heard from him again. According to someone else, he broke his leg and, due to bad circumstances, he died of some infection or he was shot. Hari’s wife stayed here in Kolozsvar with their child but I don’t know what happened to them.
,
During WW2
See text in interview
We had to put plastic into a metal frame and melt it with the heat of electricity. Then it had to be taken out of the frame very carefully, still burning hot, so it wouldn’t break because they deducted the broken pieces from your earnings. You had to do a perfect job, every mistake cost money. There were three Hungarian boys on the other three machines and I was the only Jew. They were strong, muscular guys who were used to heavy physical work. I couldn’t keep up with them and there was always a difference in our payments. The director kept telling me: ‘Why don’t you perform better and do as well as the rest of them?’ ‘I try my best’, I said, ‘but I just cannot do it.’ ‘It’s not the best for my business that you perform so poorly’ – and I got a veiled warning. They didn’t fire me because I really tried hard.
The students of Zsidlic [Tarbut Jewish Lyceum] [14] knew me, and they knew that I drew and by that time I already had sculptures, too. So, one day, one of the assistants of Mark Antal [15] [former director] asked me to go and see him – because he didn’t find any other sculptor at the time – and he asked me to sculpt the death-mask of Mark Antal whose burial was the following day. I think I had previously met Mark Antal when I was looking for recommendations for the private university in Pest and I went to see him. He told me that if I couldn’t get a letter of recommendation from anybody else he would write me one, or something like that. Anyway, so I took some plaster to take the contours of Antal’s face so I could cast the mask. He was quite overweight and with his puffy face, his distinct chin and his strong cheekbones he resembled a Roman Senator. He had his eyes closed. I smeared petroleum wax all over his face and I plugged his ears and his nose with cotton balls so the plaster wouldn’t get into them. I wasn’t really happy to perform this on a dead body but I didn’t have a choice. I made a slip-cover from clay and put it on his neck and that’s how I finished the mask. At home I cast and dried the mask and polished it with a small amount of yellow paint, which gave the mask a deathly white appearance. The most difficult part was that I didn’t have any experience, but somehow I managed to do the job. I gave the death mask to the assistant and I don’t know where they put it up but a lot of people who went to the Jewish Lyceum used to mention it to me.
In the early years of the 1940s when the Hungarians were already in possession of Transylvania, the Jews were expelled from higher educational institutions in Hungary. Among those expelled were two or three well-known artists who teamed up and opened a private school in Pest. They came to Transylvania to recruit some talented Jewish students but they couldn’t offer any scholarships. People knew me in Jewish circles and they told the recruiters that there was a guy named Lovith who was a talented painter. I showed them my work and won their number one award. But the problem was that I would have had to pay my way through school or find a Jewish person who would have sponsored at least my first year. They told me, ‘If you are talented and do well in your first year we will arrange for the rest of your school years.’ I went to see the Jewish owner of a big petroleum company, Mr. Adler, who had big tanks of petroleum that were kept past the train station. He told me to bring him some of my work. I took my best five to six works to him but it wasn’t enough and he made me bring him about 30 pieces: small sculptures and pictures. I left everything with him and when I went back to get his written approval for my financial support he said to me, ‘Look, I can see you have talent but I’m not going to take on your financial burdens. You are a breadwinner. What if I support you for a year and then you go away for 4 or 5 years to be a poor artist? Would you leave your family starve to death? You won’t even be able to support yourself.’ He didn’t give me money. So, that determined that I wouldn’t go to Budapest.