They got married at the synagogue in Fagaras in 1930. It wasn’t an arranged marriage, but they probably got to know each other in the Jewish circles, because Brasov is close to Fagaras.
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Displaying 19141 - 19170 of 50826 results
Stefan Guth
My parents spoke Hungarian to each other.
My mother was born in 1907 in Sibiu county, near the village of Scoreiu, and she studied in Cluj [Cluj Napoca], at the Tarbut Jewish Lyceum [4], also in Hungarian. She always considered that period, 1920-1924/5, her ‘golden times’: she enjoyed high school very much; she was a star in that place, very, very popular, and from what I understood, her Jewish and Zionist feelings there were very strong.
He graduated from commercial high school in Oradea, where he studied in Hungarian.
In fact, my grandfather sympathized with the Romanian regime: I remember he told me that when he had the restaurant in Scoreiu, there was another incident. There was a pole, or a tree in the courtyard, and on 10th May [later called Victory Day] [3], Romania’s national holiday, somebody hoisted the Romanian flag on that tree. The scandal was imminent, of course, and this time my grandfather knew who it had been; he was part of the plot, but he didn’t say anything. The gendarme, the csendor [in Hungarian] had to come, in his uniform with the cock feathers on his helmet, climb on the tree and take the flag down. They even wanted to cut the tree down, but they changed their mind, it seems, because they didn’t do it. They investigated who it might have been, but with no result.
It’s interesting that, although they lived in Hungary, or to put it more precisely, in Transylvania under Hungarian rule, they didn’t speak Hungarian. They spoke Romanian, and Yiddish between themselves, when they didn’t want me to understand them.
They both observed Sabbath, and went to the synagogue on Saturday, and my grandmother lit candles on Friday evenings. I went with them to the synagogue on Saturdays, and I remember there was a tennis court near the synagogue, where we kids would gather and play.
My grandmother was more religious than my grandfather, she observed all the traditions: she cooked kosher food for the family, and she would have liked the restaurant to be kosher as well, but of course it wasn’t possible.
I stayed with my grandparents a lot, all my holidays when I was in elementary school were spent there. I had a lot of friends there, and it was also there that I learnt to swim and to fish in the Olt River. My grandmother was busy with the restaurant, but she always found time to pamper me, so I was rather spoiled as the only grandson. She followed my every whim, cooked my favorite dishes. But that didn’t happen very often because I had the restaurant’s menu to choose from. I remember I liked to play the waiter and serve the clients myself. Grandma and grandpa were so proud to see me going to the tables with the white napkin on my arm. People liked me, or at least I think they did, and they kept congratulating my grandparents for the wonderful grandson they had! I was 11 years old back then, because I know I was in elementary school.
My grandmother was a housewife, but she had a lot of things to do: she was in charge of the restaurant’s kitchen; she was supervising everything. The cooks and the servants were cooking her recipes, and she herself cooked wonderfully. I still remember one of my favorites, borsostokany [in Hungarian]. It was pepper veal stew, I can still see it being served in deep plates, with a lot of dark peppered gravy and meat, it was awesome! Every Sunday morning the upper crust of society in Fagaras came to Mano bacsi for this famous stew, served with a mug of cold beer. This was the Sunday ritual in Fagaras, for Hungarians and Romanians alike, it was in the Sunday program as certain as the minyan is for Jews in the Saturday program!
I never got to know the famous Mercur. When I visited my grandparents they had a smaller restaurant, in the center of Fagaras, near the bank. I don’t remember its name, but everybody said, ‘Let’s go to Mano bacsi!’, that’s how he was known in town. The restaurant was in their house: two large rooms were sort of a pub, where people had a mug of good cold beer, for which my grandfather was famous, and there was another room where people could eat. In the back, there were two more rooms were my grandparents lived.
His restaurant there was called Mercur and it soon became the most popular restaurant in the city. It had a big courtyard and a garden where the guests could eat outside during summer. My grandfather told me that it happened one time – it was Hungary’s national holiday [20th August], an important holiday in Fagaras as back then it was under Austro-Hungarian rule – that the whole upper crust of Hungarian society in Fagaras came to celebrate this holiday in his restaurant, in the summer garden.
A band of musicians, gypsies, was brought in to sing the Hungarian anthem. Gypsies were very good musicians, they could play anything by ear, and of course they knew the Hungarian anthem as well. However, they weren’t extremely reliable, you couldn’t trust them not to drink too much at a party, so they were locked into two rooms: their instruments in one room, and the gypsies in the other, so that they wouldn’t get drunk before singing in front of the guests. But one of the gypsies was struck by terrible diarrhea, and desperate because there was no toilette, he rushed into the room with the instruments and relieved himself in the helicon, the big blowing brass instrument that keeps the rhythm. Of course the helicon was stopped up as a result. And when they came out to play, the poor gipsy who blew the helicon couldn’t make one sound come out of it. My grandfather told me that the conductor was all red with anger, his eyes were bulging out of his head, and he was waving his fists at the poor gipsy with the helicon who couldn’t keep the rhythm. So the gipsy blew as hard as he could, and blew the excrements on all the guests sitting in the first row! The scandal was terrible, terrible! Nobody knew who was responsible for that, except the gipsy of course who had used the helicon as a toilette, but he kept his mouth shut.
My grandfather found out later who it had been, but he said nothing. He didn’t have problems with the authorities, although the restaurant was his, because nothing against him could be proven. Moreover, Mano bacsi [Uncle Mano], as my grandfather was called, was a very witty, light-hearted man, and everybody in Fagaras loved him. Only after World War I, when Transylvania was returned to Romania [after the Trianon Peace Treaty] [2], did the guilty gipsy come out and said that it had been him, and he became a small-town hero for a while because he was responsible for that incident and most of the people in Fagaras didn’t sympathize with the Hungarians!
A band of musicians, gypsies, was brought in to sing the Hungarian anthem. Gypsies were very good musicians, they could play anything by ear, and of course they knew the Hungarian anthem as well. However, they weren’t extremely reliable, you couldn’t trust them not to drink too much at a party, so they were locked into two rooms: their instruments in one room, and the gypsies in the other, so that they wouldn’t get drunk before singing in front of the guests. But one of the gypsies was struck by terrible diarrhea, and desperate because there was no toilette, he rushed into the room with the instruments and relieved himself in the helicon, the big blowing brass instrument that keeps the rhythm. Of course the helicon was stopped up as a result. And when they came out to play, the poor gipsy who blew the helicon couldn’t make one sound come out of it. My grandfather told me that the conductor was all red with anger, his eyes were bulging out of his head, and he was waving his fists at the poor gipsy with the helicon who couldn’t keep the rhythm. So the gipsy blew as hard as he could, and blew the excrements on all the guests sitting in the first row! The scandal was terrible, terrible! Nobody knew who was responsible for that, except the gipsy of course who had used the helicon as a toilette, but he kept his mouth shut.
My grandfather found out later who it had been, but he said nothing. He didn’t have problems with the authorities, although the restaurant was his, because nothing against him could be proven. Moreover, Mano bacsi [Uncle Mano], as my grandfather was called, was a very witty, light-hearted man, and everybody in Fagaras loved him. Only after World War I, when Transylvania was returned to Romania [after the Trianon Peace Treaty] [2], did the guilty gipsy come out and said that it had been him, and he became a small-town hero for a while because he was responsible for that incident and most of the people in Fagaras didn’t sympathize with the Hungarians!
My grandfather had a restaurant in Scoreiu, after which he could afford to move his business to Fagaras.
After Felix had been in France, he bought his mother the house she had always dreamt of, as my father told me: a big house in Oradea with a walnut tree in the courtyard. My grandmother occupied only two rooms and the kitchen, the other two apartments in the house were being rented out. She never had a servant as far as I know, she was used to doing the housework herself. She didn’t grow anything in the garden and she didn’t raise animals; but she always had walnut jam, made from the walnuts in the garden. I went to Oradea 15 years ago, and I was curious if the house would still be there: it was, and the walnut tree was huge.
Romania
He had a wonderful villa on the Cote d’Azur. He was married to Renee Schwartz, but he had no children. His only heir was I. But it was impossible for me to inherit that house during the communist regime, in 1980 when he died, so I think he donated it to the Jewish community there.
During the war, Felix was part of the Maquis [1], the French resistance movement during the German occupation, and after that he practiced medicine at Le Havre University.
During the war, Felix was part of the Maquis [1], the French resistance movement during the German occupation, and after that he practiced medicine at Le Havre University.
Felix studied medicine here in Romania, I don’t know in which city, and in 1939 I think, he emigrated to France.
Felix studied medicine here in Romania, I don’t know in which city, and in 1939 I think, he emigrated to France.
She had two sons, Otto and Tomi Honig; Otto was four or five years older than Tomi, and he published several poems in magazines, he was considered a very talented poet.
Miklos was the administrator of the restaurant of the fanciest hotel in Oradea, Pallas, and Bella was a housewife.
She spoke Hungarian; I don’t remember if she spoke Yiddish as well.
My grandmother didn’t dress traditionally, but she observed Sabbath and lit the candles on Friday evenings.
After my paternal grandfather died, she remarried a Jew named Schwartz.
My paternal grandfather, Guth, was a clerk at the Hungarian consulate in Belgrade.
I prefer to consider myself a conservative rather than a Neolog, because the term ‘Neolog’ was first used by the Hungarians. When the Neolog synagogue was first built in Brasov in 1901, it was Hungarian. It became Romanian in 1919, after the Trianon Peace Treaty, but it kept its original name. However, what the Hungarians understood by Neolog is what we understand now by conservative; they practically mean the same thing, only the name is different, and I personally prefer to call myself a conservative. Being Jewish for me has no religious connotation, I’m not a religious man; it means tradition for me. I have experienced Jewishness through Zionism, and not through religion. But I’m proud of it, never in my life did I think of hiding the fact that I’m a Jew.
Today I’m vice-president of the Jewish community here, in Brasov. I became involved in the Jewish community in 2000, when I was first elected secretary of the community, and then vice-president. I’m in charge of all the administrative matters of the community, of its image: I spent most of my time delegating others, and supervising all the ongoing activities.
I believe life has got better since 1989, there’s a freedom of speech, which is important – I was never good at keeping my mouth shut. But words are easily forgotten, and they don’t make a lot of a difference.
My sons’ wives aren’t Jewish, and neither are my granddaughters’, although I saw that my elder granddaughter was wearing a necklace with a magen David, which belonged to my mother. It made me happy to see that.
He never thought of making aliyah. We talked about it, but their bonds here were too strong; they had their families here, and their friendships have always been extremely important for them. Their friends are more like brothers.