From that time on my mother looked after us; she invented a product, a masterpiece of fine workmanship. She had been preoccupied with industrial arts even as a child and she was in a terrible dilemma at that time: to choose to deal with industrial arts or to be a dancer. In the 1940's she took up her old knowledge of industrial arts and she made beach-bags. This was when plastic, the imitation of textile and leather, was brought to Hungary, and she made beach-bags and sold them in secret. And there was another thing; we let out one room to a lady who moved there with her daughters, and that’s how we obtained the bare necessaries.
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Ferenc Pap
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In the summer of 1943 they took my father into the forced labour service.
We, just like the other members of the family, lived in Hungary, here in Kolozsvar. Kolozsvar [belonged to] Hungary between September 1940 and 1944.
The persecution of Jews in Temesvar – as a town in southern Transylvania [which belonged already to Romania by that time] – was less than over the border, in northern Transylvania, which belonged to Hungary at that time. The persecution of Jews between 1939 and 1944 meant that from time to time, the able-bodied men were called in to labour service. For example, the husband of one of my mother’s cousins was in Karanszebes [today: Caransebes, Romania] in forced labour service, where they had to dig some ditches.
Then my father dealt with selling books, and he wandered all over Transylvania with books. He told us for fun once, that when he came home, he went to a major railway station where he had book-business with the stationmaster. He introduced himself and the stationmaster told him that he would buy books from a man with such a nice name. He also stood him a treat, but he didn’t know that he was a Jew. This happened in the 1940s.
After a short time, from 1938, the three anti-Jewish laws were introduced in Hungary.
They ousted the Jews step by step; they began with the artists and then they extended it to the others and brought other coercive measures. In 1940 or 1941 they dissolved the insurance company, and my father lost his job. My mother wasn’t even in an official post. After 1938, when they moved back to Kolozsvar, she didn’t have her dance-school any more. There was something that stated that Jews couldn’t have official posts, and then my father had a good friend, an old man who undertook to run the company in his name. Then this had to end too.
They ousted the Jews step by step; they began with the artists and then they extended it to the others and brought other coercive measures. In 1940 or 1941 they dissolved the insurance company, and my father lost his job. My mother wasn’t even in an official post. After 1938, when they moved back to Kolozsvar, she didn’t have her dance-school any more. There was something that stated that Jews couldn’t have official posts, and then my father had a good friend, an old man who undertook to run the company in his name. Then this had to end too.
Then in 1940, when there was the change of power, they offered to send him to a position in the same company in Romanian territory, in Torda [today: Turda, Romania], but he didn’t want to go. He was devoted to Kolozsvar.
In 1938 we moved to Kolozsvar indefinitely. There was a Franco-Romanian insurance company and my father came to Kolozsvar as its manager.
My mother had a school of choreography here, the so-called school of rhythmic dance and art gymnastics.
Somehow or other, at the end of the 1920s she met my father, and they got married in 1930. They only had a civil wedding [they were not married by a Rabbi].
I think that in the first few years my mother opened a [dance-] school in Lugos and then in Temesvar.
I think that in the first few years my mother opened a [dance-] school in Lugos and then in Temesvar.
In the meantime my mother learned choreography at a well-known ballerina’s school, Olga Szentpal’s school, and from there she went to Wurzburg, Germany, where she graduated.
In the meantime my mother learned choreography at a well-known ballerina’s school, Olga Szentpal’s school, and from there she went to Wurzburg, Germany, where she graduated.
In Budapest my grandmother worked for a long time in the factory [that belonged to auntie Rozsi’s husband].
Ferenc Klein, my grandfather, was a shop assistant in my great-grandfather’s shop and that’s how he got together with my grandmother, Gizella. My grandfather didn’t become an owner because he was too young. At that time my grandmother didn’t work, of course. My grandfather was there in my great-grandfather’s shop; he was in the store till the end of his life (he had a very short life). He died very young, of cancer, around 1909.
We didn’t think about whether we should raise our child as a Hungarian or as a Jew. It was all the same to me. The child confirmed; she became a Reformed [Protestant]. But nothing really depends on this. We don’t observe Jewish holidays at all, just Easter and Christmas.
I met my wife through a colleague of mine – from the University Library – who she was friends with. Neither she, nor my parents-in-law had any objections to me because of my Jewishness. We had only a civil wedding. We got married in 1972.
I joined the life of the Jewish community later. In 1984 the president of the community at that time, Miklos Kertesz, who was a lawyer, (in his youth he was a good friend of my father), asked me to participate as a museologist in the preparation of Romania’s first Holocaust exhibition. As proposed by the president of the religious community we organized the exposition with Mark Egon Lowith [a Jewish painter from Kolozsvar, still-living at that time] and with an architect called Daniel Lidianu; I, as a museologist, Lowith, as the art designer of the whole thing, and the architect, who was also a member of the organizers. The preparation consisted of the acquisition and placing of the materials. In some places we definitely had to obtain and to arrange artificial materials which were the nearest to the original.
For example we got so-called "Heftling" prisoner clothing from the Hungarian Opera and we dressed up a puppet in these clothes. There were pictures on the wall, which had to be arranged according to certain rules and there were many other objects in the exhibition. For example there was the so-called “Ilse Koch soap” as well. This Ilse Koch was the wife of one of the leaders of the Auschwitz camp. She told her husband: “Why should we lose this precious material? We have to make soap from the dead Jews’ bones.” They made many soap of this kind, and there was a household soap, which we exhibited. There were also many certifying documents made by the Americans, referring to which people were in this and that camp, and which were liberated here and there. There was enough material for a room. In the synagogue on Horea Street, to the right of the Torah, there’s a little room, and we created this exhibition there. I’ve been a member of the religious community since 1984; for me, this is just as natural as the fact that I’m a Hungarian too. But I go there mostly to pay the member’s subscription. The best way we can put it is that I’m a Hungarian Jew, there is no more to it.
For example we got so-called "Heftling" prisoner clothing from the Hungarian Opera and we dressed up a puppet in these clothes. There were pictures on the wall, which had to be arranged according to certain rules and there were many other objects in the exhibition. For example there was the so-called “Ilse Koch soap” as well. This Ilse Koch was the wife of one of the leaders of the Auschwitz camp. She told her husband: “Why should we lose this precious material? We have to make soap from the dead Jews’ bones.” They made many soap of this kind, and there was a household soap, which we exhibited. There were also many certifying documents made by the Americans, referring to which people were in this and that camp, and which were liberated here and there. There was enough material for a room. In the synagogue on Horea Street, to the right of the Torah, there’s a little room, and we created this exhibition there. I’ve been a member of the religious community since 1984; for me, this is just as natural as the fact that I’m a Hungarian too. But I go there mostly to pay the member’s subscription. The best way we can put it is that I’m a Hungarian Jew, there is no more to it.
I also translated hundreds of articles. Mainly in the ‘50s and ‘60s the Hungarian scholars from Transylvania didn’t really speak Romanian properly. And I was the only one who had Hungarian as his mother tongue and attended a Romanian university. I translated from Hungarian to Romanian for almost everybody who dealt with history, art history, folklore and philology. Besides the thesis work [for the doctorate] I devoted much time to the editing of the “Acta Musei Napocensis”, the annual publication of the Museum of History of Cluj. [Ferenc sub-edited the annuals of 1984-1988 as an editorial secretary. The name of the museum today is The Transylvanian National Museum of History, in Romanian: Muzeul National de Istorie a Transilvaniei.] Besides this, I translated more than 20 books and excerpts too. At the present time I’m working on a very interesting manuscript from the 17th century.
I completed my Phd in March 1981.
I devoted a lot of time to my thesis work.
I devoted a lot of time to my thesis work.
After that I waited for a few months because the principal told me that I would get a job at the History Institution, but it didn’t work out. I did all kinds of jobs for seven years. My first post was at a daily paper of that period, called Igazsag [the truth]. I translated the Ager Press’s (Romanian news agency in Bucharest) incoming news for the foreign affairs column. This lasted about one and a half months at the end of 1956. There was no possibility of confirming me in my post. Andras Kovacs was the general editor at that time, and he later went to the Hét [the week]. At the beginning of 1957 I dealt with Romanian-Hungarian translations. Then came the time when I was a pioneer instructor. I was a so-called chief pioneer instructor, which was a paid job at that time. I didn’t have to teach them but just to take charge of their activities in all fields. After that, for one or one-and-a-half months again, I stood in for a teacher of History, and I taught in Hungarian. Then my first real post came. In the spring of 1957 I became a proof-reader at the Kolozsvar press, and at the end of summer I got to the Korunk [our times]. I was a technical editor there for about three years. There were redundancies everywhere; that’s how I got out of there. After that, for almost three years again, I worked in the Kolozsvar University Library. From December 1963, I worked in the Museum of History of Kolozsvar, at first as a museologist then as a chief museologist, then as a chief research worker.
When I finished high-school I enrolled myself at Babes University, to the Faculty of History. I finished in 1956.
My classmates knew that I was a Jew, but they didn’t care at all, at least they didn’t show it. But an interesting thing happened: In the first year, in 1945-1946 I attended a Romanian school. There were many people, at least two, who thought that it was a very temporary condition [referring to the Jews]. During the breaks they passed their time by gathering around me and beating me up, as much as they could. Three years later, after 1948, one of them was my classmate in the Classical School and at that time he was the meekest lamb in the world, so his attitude underwent a complete change.
In 1948, when they closed down all the denominational schools, the Jewish school among them, I took an entrance examination and went to the school from which I later graduated. This was called Classical High School. At that time there were only about six such outstanding school of this type in Romania: one in Kolozsvar, Temesvar, and Nagyvarad, two in Bucharest and one more somewhere else. This was the only type of school where they taught Latin and Greek.
There were a number of Jewish youth associations, not in the school, but outside of it, though many pupils took part in them. There was probably a sports organization too, but it was mainly education of Jewish consciousness. Some of these associations were more radical, so they were Zionist. They said the only way out, was for everybody to emigrate. Others adjusted themselves to the circumstances and said to themselves that this was an opportunity to create some sort of Jewish life in Romania. I wasn’t a member of any of them.
I attended the Jewish high school in Kolozsvar from 1945 through 1948, until the so-called education reform, when it was closed down.
At the same time, sometime in 1949 she got into the newly-made so-called Cluj Conservatoire. At that time it was mainly a Hungarian institution, actually, it was Hungarian and mixed. She taught the discipline called the basics of moving on stage. Then she remained here, also in the new united conservatoire, even after her retirement in 1965.
In ’48 my mother got into the Ballet High school of Kolozsvar where she was a teacher and a deputy-headmaster.
The abdication or deposal of the king was at the end of 1947. During 1948 the communist government increasingly seized everything, step by step. The nationalization was concurrent with this.