My husband, Oskar Unger, comes from a village near Rzeszow called Lubenia [15 km south of Rzeszow]. He was born in 1912, I guess, in peasant Jewish family, there were thirteen children, that’s the way it was those days; Jews didn’t do abortions. I knew my husband’s parents, the father was very religious, carried a beard, but that’s not what I mean but how he lived. They lived in the countryside, and throughout the countryside wandered people, religious ones too. I don’t know whether it was in the name of God or whatever. But if someone came, you had to give him food, water, whatever, and give him a place to sleep for the night. [My husband’s father] had a special little room for that and he never told the pilgrim to go away but slept him there. He even gave him food to eat, those were the customs, different than today.
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Displaying 27751 - 27780 of 50826 results
Rozalia Unger
Then my husband came and we moved in together [Mr. and Mrs. Unger got married during the war, around 1941], there was a bridge beyond the Planty park, and beyond the bridge was Grzegorzewska Street, and there we lived at no. 8. The apartment had three rooms, and the owner, an obviously impoverished Jew, sold shoes, had a store somewhere, the store eventually move to the apartment, and he sold there, and one room he rented to us. We paid for that room, but then the war broke out and we left the place. I took the pillowcase, stuffed whatever fit inside, the basic things, and off we went. You thought it was just for a moment, that the war would not last long.
,
During WW2
See text in interview
I spent perhaps two years in Cracow. When there was work, I worked. I once worked for a tailor that made vests and my job was making the buttonholes, and to this day I can make a very nice buttonhole. The better I performed, the more money I got, but those were only temporary jobs. I wrote to my mother, sent her 10 zlotys from time to time. My brother also kept in touch with her like that [sending her money].
,
Before WW2
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I joined the party [6] because the economic situation, the living conditions in a way segregated us, made us part of a certain sphere, even though in the party – I was in the youth organization – there were also students from well-off families, cultural, educated, up-to-scratch people. (I didn’t think about joining the Jewish party). The Bund [7] had similar principles but a different goal. We worked with the Poles and the Jews, both were represented in the party. I remember no anti-Semitic behavior; there was nothing of the sort between young people. We were all equal, none of us had anything.
The meetings were all hush-hush, each time in a different place, at somebody’s home. Above all, we studied. We couldn’t have books because we might get caught, but there were educated people who knew how to pass knowledge on to us. [Everyone had their responsibilities] and mine area of responsibility were leaflets for the military. I don’t know where they printed the stuff – you weren’t allowed to know, it was top secret. Those were leaflets they distributed among soldiers. They spoke the truth – I don’t remember precisely what they said, it’s too many years, but they spoke the truth about the situation in the country, about poverty, indigence. My job was to deliver [those prints] to the military barracks. I faced a very harsh prison sentence if I got caught. My military contact, his name was Rajber, is dead now. They organized 1st May demonstrations [May Day, a holiday established by the Second International, celebrated annually with mass rallies, demonstrations, and marches], but on a very low key, and I don’t remember how it looked like. I remember pasting up posters on the wall, whether for 1st May or something else.
When I was 17, they arrested 36 people from the past. This could have been 1934 or 1935. Somebody betrayed us. I don’t remember who it was. I met my husband during the trial; he got two and a half years and served it. I also served time, but they released me after a year because I was the youngest.
The meetings were all hush-hush, each time in a different place, at somebody’s home. Above all, we studied. We couldn’t have books because we might get caught, but there were educated people who knew how to pass knowledge on to us. [Everyone had their responsibilities] and mine area of responsibility were leaflets for the military. I don’t know where they printed the stuff – you weren’t allowed to know, it was top secret. Those were leaflets they distributed among soldiers. They spoke the truth – I don’t remember precisely what they said, it’s too many years, but they spoke the truth about the situation in the country, about poverty, indigence. My job was to deliver [those prints] to the military barracks. I faced a very harsh prison sentence if I got caught. My military contact, his name was Rajber, is dead now. They organized 1st May demonstrations [May Day, a holiday established by the Second International, celebrated annually with mass rallies, demonstrations, and marches], but on a very low key, and I don’t remember how it looked like. I remember pasting up posters on the wall, whether for 1st May or something else.
When I was 17, they arrested 36 people from the past. This could have been 1934 or 1935. Somebody betrayed us. I don’t remember who it was. I met my husband during the trial; he got two and a half years and served it. I also served time, but they released me after a year because I was the youngest.
I went to work, for three years, to learn a trade. The people that gave me the job were Jews, and they were also communist sympathizers. There was some favoritism involved. I worked in a private tailor-making shop, we sewed dresses, blouses. I worked there as an apprentice. And other girls worked there [too] simply for nothing. Why for nothing? Because they wanted to go to Palestine, to Israel, and they needed a profession. They usually didn’t speak Hebrew. Young people generally didn’t know the language, few did. The religious Jews learned Hebrew, I don’t know whether they knew what the prayers they recited meant, whether they understood the words – this is something they know, but young people weren’t religious, like they aren’t these days.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
I completed seven grades in a girls’ school, a mixed one [for both Jews and Christians]. We played all together, there was no problem. There was a religion teacher, a Jewess, religion was taught in Yiddish. There were [also] schools for boys, nearby, on the same street, I don’t know how it was there, my brother went there. Upon completing elementary school I wanted to go to a business high school, but that cost something 45 zlotys, my mother told me, ‘Write your uncle in England, he’ll send you the money,’ and that ended the story, he was supporting us anyway.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
I remember the peasant strikes, I could have been 9 or 10 at the time, then the funeral of Orbach [a less known communist activist in the 1930s], a Jewish funeral, and the communists pulling the covering off [from the coffin], people carried the coffin on their backs, and covering it with a red cloth instead. I remember a massive crowd, because the way to the Jewish cemetery was down our street, Lwowska, and people [lost] a lot of money, they were hiding in the gateways, I don’t know whether it was from the police or for some other reason, and I went picking up that money, those pennies. Orbach was a communist, they killed him in prison, punched his lungs.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
I am a member of the club [TSKZ] [18], but no activist, I just pay my fees. I couldn’t do anything even if I wanted to. In the past, I helped. Me and my husband had been in the club since the very beginning. There was a time when everyone had gone away and it looked like the club might be closed down. My husband had a talent, the talent of a social activist, and he organized everything, found a president and a caretaker. He died in 1993, but everybody still remembers him. We had never been to Israel, had no money. We have never been abroad, in fact.
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After WW2
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Me and my husband were party members uninterruptedly: before the war, during it, and afterwards. We were moved by 1968 [17] like everyone else. Only we viewed it from a different angle: for us, those were mistakes committed by our own [the communists]. One generation has to sacrifice its life, its health, for things to change.
,
1968
See text in interview
[My children] went to the Public School no. 5, the communists’ children all went there. There was a period when religion started to be taught at schools [until 1961, religion classes were held at public schools], it was under Gomulka [15], I guess, and all the kids enrolled, communist or no communist, but [Leon] didn’t. The priest came, told him to stay, said God would bless him if he did, stroked his head, and [Leon] says there is no God at all. The priest got angry, grabbed him, opened the door and hurled him so the poor Leon landed under the opposite corridor wall, all bruised. But that wasn’t all, because after classes, in front of the school, the kids attacked Leon and started beating him. There’s a police station opposite and one of the policemen came up and he couldn’t tear the boy off because he sat on my son’s face and didn’t want to let go.
My daughter has a daughter, Ania. She divorced her first husband and has married again. Ania’s father was called I., a Pole. I don’t know who he was or where he works – it’s been some years. Ania is 37. She worked as an English teacher in school, earned poorly, and eventually she made some arrangements and went to Sweden to work.
,
After WW2
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My children knew from the very beginning [about their Jewish roots]. My son left Poland during the martial law [16] and went to America because he couldn’t get a job [here] because he was a Jew. And today he understands a lot because he lived among Jews in America. And they wanted to give him a job, only the rabbi told him to get circumcised. And he didn’t want to. Today he lives in Kiel [Germany] and remains a man at the crossroads, while my daughter wants to have nothing to do with all that; she’s married to a Pole.
[My children] went to the Public School no. 5, the communists’ children all went there. There was a period when religion started to be taught at schools [until 1961, religion classes were held at public schools], it was under Gomulka [15], I guess, and all the kids enrolled, communist or no communist, but [Leon] didn’t. The priest came, told him to stay, said God would bless him if he did, stroked his head, and [Leon] says there is no God at all. The priest got angry, grabbed him, opened the door and hurled him so the poor Leon landed under the opposite corridor wall, all bruised. But that wasn’t all, because after classes, in front of the school, the kids attacked Leon and started beating him. There’s a police station opposite and one of the policemen came up and he couldn’t tear the boy off because he sat on my son’s face and didn’t want to let go.
My husband had a job with the WPHO, a shoe-distribution enterprise that exists to this day. And I didn’t work. I had two children! In 1948 I gave birth to a son named Leon. He completed a musical school and is a pianist, and my daughter completed a business college.
,
After WW2
See text in interview
My husband secured an official paper from a court, somewhere near Przemysl, confirming all those people were dead.
[Alman Intrater] went through all the camps here in Poland, and he was saved from a camp by some German nuns, he was already very weak, someone they called a ‘moslem’ [in the camp terminology, a ‘moslem’ was a prisoner on the verge of death, already so starved that he had virtually lost his will to survive], he could no longer eat anything, whatever he ate, passed through him in no time, so that was a pre-terminal stage, and then the war ended, and they took him to Sweden.
[Alman Intrater] went through all the camps here in Poland, and he was saved from a camp by some German nuns, he was already very weak, someone they called a ‘moslem’ [in the camp terminology, a ‘moslem’ was a prisoner on the verge of death, already so starved that he had virtually lost his will to survive], he could no longer eat anything, whatever he ate, passed through him in no time, so that was a pre-terminal stage, and then the war ended, and they took him to Sweden.
Poland
Miriam Bercovici
Right after the war broke out, events got precipitated and restrictions got more severe. By winter-spring it became mandatory to wear the yellow star [8]. I remember how I made it by stitching an approximately 1-cm-wide yellow ribbon on a black material. It had to be of certain dimensions, but I don’t remember them anymore. Restrictions were introduced for the Jews to travel by train; they needed special permits to be able to practice medicine, advocacy, teaching. On the other hand one could only have a Jewish housemaid; it was prohibited to have a Christian housemaid.
There was no girl’s school in Campulung, there were too few girls of that age, both Jewish and non-Jewish, people didn’t really have money for school and, furthermore, the situation was quite messed up and there were no exams held that year. The community itself was too poor to support a girl’s school. Under the circumstances my mother was afraid to send me to Botosani to continue my studies, and thus I had to give up school in the 7th grade.
Romania
My grandfather went to the synagogue daily.
That year I decided to become a doctor because I had the opportunity to follow into the footsteps of one of my cousins, Berthold Merdler, or Berola, as we called him, a young doctor evacuated from Breaza to Campulung, who lived with us while trying to help anybody in need. He visited the sick for free, went to any village he was called to, and I thought this was extremely heroic, extraordinary. Later, in Transnistria, Berola worked in a hospital where he even fell ill with typhus fever. He was so dedicated he would have done anything he could to cure people.
An extremely difficult year followed [see anti-Jewish laws in Romania] [7]: Jews were ordered out from villages and sent into the towns, and the identity cards of the Jewish people were changed based on deeds of citizenship. Later some were kept hostage in Campulung, and the wealthier owners were forced to stay in a Jew’s house on an outlying street during daytime. There, because they had nothing to do, they played backgammon and discussed things. They weren’t allowed to leave the house before dark, when they returned to their homes.
Immediately after 6th September 1940 – it was during Antonescu’s [3] dictatorship, under the Sima [4]-Antonescu legionary government – while I was in the 7th grade, as a result of the numerus clauses [in Romania] [5] we were only three Jews left in my grade. The selection was made based on the parents, whether they were heroes of World War I, and on the achievements at school. I was allowed to stay because I had very good grades. They put the three of us at the same desk, which previously was used for the weak students; it was very hard for me to accept this role and after three days I stopped going to school. Several weeks later, when the numerus nullus [in Hungary] [6] was adopted, I wasn’t allowed to go to school any more, so I returned to Campulung.
Mother sent me to Botosani to attend the 6th and 7th grades there because there was no girl’s school in Campulung. Thus I stayed at my maternal grandparents in Botosani and studied at the Carmen Sylva high school. I made some friends, girls and boys of my age, Jews, Germans and Romanians, and it seemed we were perfectly integrated in the town’s life. About half of the pupils in my grade were Jewish.
My family observed every Jewish holiday: Pesach, Seder, Purim and Chanukkah, and we never worked on Sabbath.
In the house I grew up we usually talked in German and Yiddish, the language of the simple Jewish people, craftsmen such as tailors, boot-makers, cart wrights and framers, and small traders. Our grandparents spoke with each other in Yiddish. Mother knew better Yiddish than Father. The town was quite small, so people knew each other; we had German, Romanian and Jewish neighbors, and we spoke with them in their mother tongue. At home, though, we talked in German, and even though I never had a German tutor, I never made mistakes.
I studied Hebrew, French and English with a tutor, Doctor of Civil Law, attorney-at-law Berthold Hard. He was the son of the manager of the Eastern Bank and unable to work as a lawyer because he was Jewish, so he took up tutoring.
Romania
I studied piano at home from the age of seven to the age of twelve with a music-mistress called Vanda Biscubska, who left the country around 1938-39.
I had a normal life, one could say. I attended elementary school, and then the girl’s school in Campulung. I had good grades.
If we did well, we went out to the cinema on weekends, and I was very passionate about it. Movies were showing three times a week, and a ticket cost 7 lei. I saw Chaplin films, the movies ‘Ben Hur,’ ‘Congress Dances’ and others I can’t remember any more. I was deeply impressed by the movie ‘Jew Süss,’ made by the Germans, reflecting their point of view, and I read the book to be able to make comparisons.
I was born in 1923, when my father already had his small glasscutter shop, which later did quite well. Unlike my grandfather, he didn’t hire any help; we worked for him. We had a housemaid, but the entire family worked in the shop, everybody helped out. We even learned the method of unloading, so when a truck full of glass arrived we used to unload it. I was happy to help because I was paid for it.
Her first revolt was when she had to choose her specialization. She told us she couldn’t work on humans, so she chose the laboratory. She worked as researcher at the Cantacuzino Serum and Vaccine Institute in Iasi until 2003, and she is the discoverer of several vaccines, such as polidin.