My father was among those who introduced Zionism to Brasso with Ritter. They remained friends for life, all the more so, since both of them settled in Brasso. There was an organization called Barisia, which was mainly an organization for students and Zionist intellectuals. Members of the Barisia imitated a little the German Burschenschaften [fraternity], they laid quite an emphasis on sports: they went in for sports, they did fencing. At the beginning it was an important thing for them to show that the Jews didn’t just think and philosophize but could also stand up for their Jewishness with a sword or boxing if the need arises. It is no accident that Zionist organizations launched a strong sports movement, the Haggibbor movement, after 1918; it had a football team, as well as an excellent water polo team, they were national champions in table tennis and tennis. My father did gymnastics until his old age but didn’t go in for competitions; when he got up in the morning, he did push-ups. In Barisia he was mainly involved in educating the youth, he held theoretical lectures for them, usually in Hungarian. He mostly told them stories of Jews who stood up for their Jewishness, from the rise of David to the arts of Solomon.
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Displaying 20761 - 20790 of 50826 results
Vasile Grunea
He enrolled at the Faculty of Law in 1919 and attended it as a ‘field-goer’ [commuter], which means that he didn’t go to classes every day. They were called field-goers, that is, people who ‘went to the field’ [went to work] during their studies. He graduated from law but he didn’t pursue a career in law. In 1922-23 my father went to Brasso, where the Albina Bank opened a branch office; he was offered a job there and worked there as a bank-clerk. At that time it was quite a high position, he had the right to sign papers on behalf of the director. The director-general was Brediceanu, who was a full-time composer. He took a leading role in the reannexation of Transylvania to Romania in 1920 [following the Trianon Peace Treaty] [8] and he was made director-general in return. Later he was a broker at the stock exchange and a lottery ticket agent until these were banned and became a petty clerk.
He came home in 1918 and got involved in politics and promoted Zionism. I think that he received his first impulse at the front, mainly from a colleague of his, who had studied in Vienna. There was a doctor called Ritter there, who was one of the heralds of Zionism and my father came into contact with the Zionist movement through him. One of my father’s brothers-in-law, Simon, my mother’s older brother, was also a committed Zionist and his younger brother, Marton, was also a Zionist.
Just before World War I he was accepted to the Medical Faculty, even though he was a Jew, and he finished two years. He should have become a military doctor in the KuK, the Kaiserlich und Koniglich, army [7], that is, the Austro-Hungarian army, but World War I broke out in the meantime. He went to the front as a voluntary sanitary officer and spent almost four years there, from 1914 to 1918.
My father arrived in Szamosujvar around 1904. They lived there rather poorly, they ‘ate days’, as it was called in those days. This meant that better-off people offered lunch to a poorer student during the week or the student tutored pupils who weren’t doing so well at school and was given board and lodging for this. My father told me that he was sharing lodging with a Romanian boy in Szamosujvar at some point, and they regularly accompanied each other before school, one day he accompanied the boy to the Romanian church and the next day the boy accompanied him to the synagogue. My father graduated in 1912, his younger brother in 1918.
In my father’s family, my father and his younger brother Valter were the first who didn’t only go to a traditional school, but were also sent to a secular secondary school in Szamosujvar by their mother, despite the disapproval of the village.
Valter had leftist convictions, and he was arrested and spent some time in prison in Temesvar, convicted of illegal communist activities. He wasn’t a party member but he was involved, he made propaganda against fascism. Uncle Valter was the last to emigrate to America in 1938. When somebody in the family got the visa, they said, as I remember hearing it, that they got the ‘efidevit’ [affidavit]. Maybe I don’t pronounce it correctly but that’s how it was pronounced in the family.
As most of the classes were held in Hungarian, although there were also Romanian language classes, the authorities didn’t want to license the school any more and, as far as I know, it was closed in 1927. Mark Antal continued to live here in Kolozsvar and gave lectures and earned a living mainly from giving private lessons and from making major calculations, for example calculating pensions, for banks and insurance companies. He was well known in educational circles in Hungary, and it was because of him that the Jewish lyceum was given the permission to reopen in 1940 [and operate until 1944].
Romania
In other respects, the school had the same curriculum as all the other schools, with one big difference, namely that the teachers lectured at a very high level. The majority of the teachers had been educated in Hungary or Austria. The director of the school, Mark Antal [3], was originally from Hungary. He was school inspector during the Hungarian Soviet Republic [4] and he had to leave Hungary because of this and he got to Kolozsvar in the 1920s as someone who escaped from the Horthy [5] regime. He had two sons. One of them was an economist and poet; he died in forced labor in 1943. Before that he spent many years in jail in Pest [Budapest] because he was convicted as a communist. His brother, Istvan Antal, was a world famous pianist. My aunt Margit remembered Mark Antal warmly and mentioned that he always gave nice long lectures on French, German and Norwegian literature. He also held lectures on the theory of relativity; Einstein’s theory was novel at the time, and these lectures were attended not only by students of the lyceum but also by many people from town because Antal’s lectures were of very high standards and he was a very pleasant lecturer.
Margit attended the Tarbut [1], the Jewish lyceum in Kolozsvar. The school had separate boys’ and girls’ classes. Margit graduated in 1926, I think, which was the last year before the school was banned. A rabbi or religion teacher taught religion in the school. But they also paid special attention to classical Hebrew and the presentation of prominent figures of Jewish culture. On Sabbath the students usually went to the Neolog [2] synagogue on Horea Road. The school was next to the Jewish hospital, on Iasilor Street, where the editorial office of the journal Korunk is now. The classrooms were on the first floor where the office of Korunk is located today. The gym was on the ground floor, right next to the entrance. It’s still there but it’s neglected, I think it’s not used for anything.
Hershi Gruber, born in 1895, was my father’s closest brother. He finished secondary school before World War I, was drafted into the army – I think he was second lieutenant – and disappeared in a battle in Galicia in World War I. He was at the same front as my father, who was a sanitary officer in an artillery unit, while Hershi was in the infantry. The two brothers met before a battle and Hershi disappeared after the battle. We don’t know anything about him ever since, he was not declared dead but was reported missing. I was named Zvi after him because Zvi is Hersh in Yiddish, so my name commemorates his name.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
Marton emigrated to America with his wife; the other siblings had not been married before they left. My guess is that when one sibling settled there, he arranged a visa for the next one so that he could also enter America. That’s why they didn’t emigrate together but one after the other. I think Marton made aliyah in 1968, he left New York for Nahariya, a town not far from Haifa, where he lived as a pensioner; he died there and is buried there, too. His wife was a Buchwald girl and a very religious woman. Marton’s wife was probably the most religious member of our entire family. I don’t know how religious she was in her spirit, but she certainly observed all the outward forms of religiosity. They didn’t have any children.
,
After WW2
See text in interview
Marton Gruber was a year younger than my father. He was a baker. He was a lower officer in World War I and it was told in the family that he was responsible for protecting the hall where the first Zionist, that is, Jewish national, meeting took place in 1918 in Kolozsvar. They rented the hall of the Urania Movie Theater – it was at the beginning of Horea Road [in the center of town] – for the meeting. The meeting caused a stir, Uj Kelet, one of the most serious Zionist national newspapers published in Hungarian in Romania, was founded after this meeting; at first it was a weekly but later it became a daily. It had correspondents in bigger towns, and it even had permanent correspondents in Bucharest. Zionism led to the creation of the newspaper Uj Kelet and Uj Kelet created Zionism in Transylvania.
My grandfather and my grandmother emigrated to America around 1926. I think that my grandmother lived two more years in America, and died young of kidney disease there. Later she was reburied in Haifa in Israel. I knew my grandfather around 1938 when he returned to Transylvania. And my guess is that at one point he wanted to stay and live with his son who was a doctor in Kolozsvar but, thank God, his son persuaded him to return to America. My grandfather died in New York in 1952 and was later reburied in Haifa.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
My grandparents in Bethlen were quite well off for some time, but when the store burnt down at the end of the 1880s, their financial situation became worse and worse. They moved to Kolozsvar and rented a smaller store, and they were a little better off financially. Grandfather was turned out of the store after 1918 and a Romanian took over the store. Later part of their apartment was confiscated, so their material situation was gradually getting worse again. I think that it must have been their material circumstances that made them all decide to go abroad. After 1918 the siblings, both the boys and the girls, even though most of them had graduated from a gymnasium or lyceum, started to learn a trade to make sure that they would be able to find a job when they went to America.
It was quite an event when they were given new clothes, although Jewish families, and my father’s family likewise, always bought new clothes for the children for the high holidays and Pesach if they could afford it. It was part of the tradition to renew themselves for the holidays not only spiritually but a little in their appearance as well. They bought clothes rather than toys – at least my father and my aunt never mentioned any toys in their recollections.
My father told me that before the high holidays and Pesach two apprentices brought back the shoes that the village cobbler had repaired and they brought the shoes hanging on a bar. Ten children needed ten pairs of shoes and the younger ones rarely got new things. They usually wore the outgrown and mended clothes and shoes of the older children; the older siblings had better luck.
The house in Bethlen where my paternal grandparents lived must have been quite a big house, five or six rooms, but they lived rather crammed because they had six sons and four daughters. The boys usually slept two in one bed, but they all left their parental home one after the other. The house also had a big garden with vegetables and big fruit trees. In the fall they usually made jam in huge quantities for the winter. Like poor people in general, they also made plum jam because they didn’t need to add sugar to that and this way they could save the sugar. Instead of putting bacon on the bread, they spread plum jam thickly on it. As I learnt from Aunt Margit, my father’s younger sister’s recollections, my grandmother loved flowers very much and she had a most beautiful flower garden. I think that they always had one or two servants around the house because they had many children. General laundry was a reoccurring event every month, and it wasn’t an easy job to do a general laundry for twelve people. During this time the whole household was upside down, and they hired some women to help with the laundry. My father was fluent in Romanian, so I think that apart from having had many Romanian friends as a child, he must have had some Romanian employees as well.
They prayed in Hebrew but with a Yiddish pronunciation. Seder night was a big event. According to my father’s recollections Pesach had a very romantic atmosphere. The whole family got together when they were children: his father, mother and even the closest relatives were there on seder night.
My grandmother was religious; she wore a kerchief and lit candles on Sabbath. There’s a traditional short prayer that she recited as she was holding her hands cupped around the candles – this was a traditional gesture; she recited this prayer over the Sabbath candles, the ‘ner shel Shabbat’, blessing them with this prayer. My grandfather probably went to the synagogue with his sons on Friday night, then he went home and recited a benediction, a prayer [kiddush] over the wine. After that the whole family performed the ritual of washing hands and the head of the family recited a prayer, the ‘hamotzi lechem min ha’aretz’ [who brings forth bread from the earth] over the challah. On Sabbath they usually put two loaves of white challah on the table in memory of the time when they [the Jewish people] were on Sinai and had to collect manna for two days on Friday. Then the head of the family broke off a piece of challah for everybody around the table and gave everyone a piece after dipping it into salt – this custom was observed in the family.
My grandmother on my father’s side was Rozsa Weintraub, or Reizele, she was born in 1866. I don’t know much about her, I didn’t know her personally, but only from my father’s stories; he told me that she had a most beautiful voice, and sang most beautifully, and he was surprised that she knew many songs about longing to return to the Holy Land in Yiddish. I think she must have learnt them from her grandparents. They usually sang on Friday night and on Saturday and they must have sung these songs then. After Saturday lunch the family in Bethlen didn’t leave the table but stayed to talk and sing.
My grandfather had a beard and wore tzitzit. If I remember well, he usually wore black clothes and a white shirt. His coat was almost a span [about 20 cm] longer than jackets today, it reached down above his knees – they called it Franz Joseph coat at the time. It was a strange coat. [Editor’s note: At the time it was considered very elegant in bourgeois circles.] He was a religious man, who put on tallit and tefillin; however, he didn’t go to the synagogue but prayed at home.
My father and his brothers and sisters were already born in Bethlen. Grandfather Gruber had a rabbinical training and it was said that he was competent in the Talmud but he wasn’t a rabbi. He was a farmer and he also worked as a merchant; he had a food store for a long time, which he ran himself. He sold everything from sugar to kerosene in this store – as was customary in all village stores – until the store unfortunately burnt down. After that he was mainly involved in buying up apples and eggs; he had a cart and he went around the villages and collected eggs and apples, put them into boxes and sent them abroad.
My father’s maternal grandfather had five children and for some time he directed a traditional higher school, a yeshivah, I think, in Retteg. It was customary that the person who set up the yeshivah taught in it as well; my great-grandfather must have been a rabbi there.
He participated in World War I and came into contact with Zionism as a soldier. There were other Jewish officers in the army, mostly from the Austrian half of the Monarchy, who had come into contact with Zionism earlier. Simon participated in the first big Zionist meeting in 1918, in which my father, charged with propaganda, and my other uncle Marci, charged with defense, also participated. This was the rebirth of the Jewry.
My uncle Simon Sporn was at least ten years older than my mother. He always called the younger ones, Magda and Helen, ‘the pups’. He graduated from commercial secondary school and then from the Commercial and Agricultural Academy here in Kolozsvar. He was a clerk of a high level. In World War I he served as first lieutenant in the KuK regiment.
The girls went to a regular state school in Gerend and in Kolozsvar as well. My mother’s two brothers, Simon and Marci, went to commercial secondary school. The girls went to the Marianum, which was one of the most well-known Catholic secondary schools for girls in Transylvania at the time. It was located on what is Horea Road today, in the building that houses the Faculty of Philology of Babes-Bolyai University. So, they all went to secular schools, but the girls surely learnt Hebrew from my grandmother and the boys had gone to cheder as well. When they were living in the village, they probably hired a younger bocher as a private teacher. The girls could read the prayer book in Hebrew fluently, too; they didn’t speak Hebrew, of course, but they could read it well.
The girls learned the trade of corset making and it became a family obsession, all of them had corset salons. Corsets were in fashion then, I think, and there weren’t many salons, and corsets weren’t made in the factory. They called the corsets Mieder using the German expression. The corset in one piece, where the bra, the suspender and the corset were sewn together was called the Princesse; this was very difficult to put on but ladies were willing to torture themselves and wore them. Magda and Lotti, the two youngest sisters, became clerks.
They lived in their own house – which was a four-room house I think – somewhere near Szechenyi Square in Kolozsvar. At that time Szechenyi Square and the streets around it were mostly inhabited by Jews. Sadly, my grandfather died in 1927; he is buried here in Kolozsvar in the old Jewish cemetery on Tordai Road.
After 1918 a law on the expropriation of property was passed and big estates were expropriated. The state took them over and divided them into 2-3-acre plots and gave them to peasants who had participated in the war and to poorer peasants. So, my grandfather could only rent a smaller estate and the whole family moved to Kolozsvar. From then on my grandfather was chiefly engaged in lumbering in the Beszterce-Naszod region. He was an expert, he went through a forest and could tell almost exactly how much wood could be lumbered from that forest.