There's another episode in my life: during the period of forced labor, I have been brought to trial. While I was in the forced labor camp, I received an accusation, in which they charged me with participation in an organization aiming to overthrow the public order. This was basically for my activities within the Red Aid. From Nagybanya I went to Szatmar and I reported to the local headquarters. There they put us in a cell. We were some 7 in one cell, and we had decent meal. There was a so-called famous council of five, that is five judges who held the hearings in different places: Maramaros, Kolozsvar, Szatmar and Marosvasarhely. Judge Lanyi Zoltan was presiding. We were some 600-700 people here in Northern Transylvania involved in different communist activities. In Szatmar we were some 130 in the courtroom, and the lasted for three weeks. Approximately 30% of the accused were Hungarians, the rest were Jews. But none of them was Romanian. We have been accused of subversion of public order – this included accusations of different severity. All the big boys were there: Mihaly Gombo, an important activist, Lajos Csupor, who later became regional secretary general, Julianna Szabo, a woman from Vasarhely, a Szekler girl, who I don't know how got there, I never found this out. Each morning 3 soldiers with bayonets came and took us to the city court, until 2 or 3pm, when they took us back. It wasn't much of a trial, they just asked me whether I adhere to my statement.
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Bernat Sauber
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I don't have to tell you the beatings we got there. And there was this skeleton crew – these guys were the brutal ones –, they beat us up. If they called you and your hand wasn't in the right position when you had to salute, they slapped you in the face twice. They were walking around with beating canes, and if they hit your hand with them, it hurt like hell. I came across one of them after the war herein Marosvasarhely, he was a Hungarian called Seres. He was from Marosvasarhely originally. He slapped me twice one day. But otherwise, since he was from Marosvasarhely, he helped quite a lot the boys from Marosvasarhely: he brought letters, food, packages, and he let them go home, because Disznajo was not far away from Vasarhely [47 kms]. One day, after the war, one of my friends came to me, a former fellow forced laborer, and he said to me: 'Hey, do you remember Seres?' 'Of course, because he slapped me twice so hard I couldn't hear for 3 weeks.' 'Now look, he is in despair. He is frightened that you want revenge' – I was appointed as district attorney to Marosvasarhely. 'Look! – I said. – I know Seres wasn't that mean to you, but he was to the others. But don't worry, I will not have my revenge. I got two slaps, but this was the least of all the awful things that happened there.' From Disznajo we were transferred to Zsibo, also to the railroad, then to Nagybanya to a lumbering.
We had to join up in Nagybanya, our battalion was there. We rented a carriage, that's how we traveled to Nagybanya, just like 4 or 5 months earlier, when the counter-espionage agents took us there. They assigned us to different companies, we weren't in the same company. We ended up around two of us in each company. I was in Nagybanya for some 2 weeks, and then I was transferred to Disznajo, near Szaszregen [15 kms from Szaszregen]. The forced laborers worked there at the Deda–Szeretfalva railroad line. Hungarians worked there, as well, because there were these famous Hungarian construction workers. They had special pushcarts, in which one could put some half a cubic meter. Its two wings were tied with a rope, and the man only had to guide it. We had some good meals there, we got the usual army food. Already when we joined up, we got uniforms. In 1942, for I don't know how long, we had the regular Hungarian soldier uniform, with that three-colored rose in the national colors removed. The captain, Antal Alsopathy, was a hard drinker, that's exactly why he was sent there. These people were usually sent to the forced labor companies. Beside work we had 3 days of field exercise weekly, just like the draftees: crawling, lying down and double march. When it was mud, after 20 meters of crawling we looked like pigs. Fortunately the Maros was near, and it was already early spring or summer. We took a bath in the Maros and washed our clothes without taking them off. There was some landowner there, and the captain courted his daughter. When it came into his mind to court her, he woke us up in the middle of the night and called us out to sing serenades – we sang marching songs. This happened several times, and we sang 'Horthy Miklos katonaja vagyunk, a legszebb katonaja...' (We are Miklos Horthy's soldiers, the most good-looking ones...' As forced laborers we sang these kind of songs, among others. We had to sing for him all the time, when we went to work we had to sing, the whole company. You can imagine he was drunk when we did this.
When I arrived home, my summon for forced labor already awaited me. All the 10 of us had about the same age, and everyone of us had their summons waiting for them. We had to make foot-lockers, but we had no money. We went to a carpenter who made and planed the boards, and we had to assemble them. One of us had more skills and thus we managed to assemble them.
I was there for 3 months, then I was transferred to Garany. There were 2 camps: in Kistarcsa and in Garany. Garany [today Hran, Slovakia] was a village in Czechoslovakia, then Northern-Hungary. In that camp there were not only communists, just like in the prison, but also black marketeers and alarmists. If one said ... the Germans [Editor's note: Mr. Bernat didn't say the swear], or one sold the bread for a price of 50 cents higher than the average, one got deported without trial to Garany or Kistarcsa. It even determined a proverb to appear: 'Silence is golden, speech is Garany.' We lived just like in the prison, but in better conditions. We were not 10 people anymore, but we were 50 in one such community. And then came the help from the Red Aid. Thus we saw our help returned, they sent us packages and corn flour. I received these packages because my father used to dispatch them. We were not starving, even though we didn't eat meat, but we had hominy every day. This was one of our primary meals. One ate one plate of hominy and one felt full. I was in Garany until St. Nicholas Day, because Horthy [10] pardoned on St. Nicholas Day . This was in December 1941. He didn't pardon everybody, just those convicted for lighter crimes, like me. It wasn't an amnesty, he only set free several dozens of people on his name-day. Those who committed more severe crimes, have not been released.
Should I tell you about our life in this deportee camp? When they took us away from home, my father gave me 300 Pengos. That was quite a sum. In the camp they took it away from me and recorded the sum I had on me. It was interesting that you could buy anything on the black market, if you had money. The commander of the department we were detained was a Jew – there were only Jews there –, and he was the king of the pickpockets, a very slick man. He was taken in without any trial, but he was released after 3 months. When they apprehended him, in Pest it was forbidden to go to some streets. They caught him in one of those streets, took him in and he was locked for another 3 months. I will never forget his name, Mr. Frid. I said to him: 'Mr. Frid, I would like to ask for 100 Pengos from my money. 'OK', he said. This was on a Saturday. Sunday he came to me saying: 'Come here! Here you are, 90 Pengos. 10 Pengos, that's the fee.' He had an entire network, involving guards, everybody. I didn't ask for more, just 100, but I only got 90. It cost me 10 Pengos because the money was issued to me by the guard, the accountant and the cashier. So eventually the amount of money I had to give away got quite high. Let's say I wanted to buy bread, and a piece of bread cost 10 florins. Then, just for bringing it to me, they took 1 forint, they always added 10%. If I wanted to break 50, it cost me 5 florins. I calculated that from 100 florins I was left with half, the rest was taken away by this Frid and the people around him. He collaborated with anyone, and every 3 months he left with several thousand Pengos.
We were there for almost 35-40 days, approximately. After that the whole group was put on trucks, in chains, and they took us to Pest in prison. This was kind of a gatherer prison, even worse than a regular prison. The prison had enormous buildings, 6 or 7 of them. The girls were in other places. There was a room of 8 meters by 10, and we put some matting on the cement and slept on them. I don't know, we were some 150, 200, but we had no room to sleep on our backs, only sideways, packed like sardines. And if one wanted to turn over, one had to move two or three other people, because otherwise it wasn't possible. There was a toilet there, and one had to wait a quarter of an hour for one's turn. It was horrible. It was light all through the night in order to prevent us from doing anything. The meal was catastrophic, not only for us, but for the population, as well. I think our daily portion of bread was 180 or 200 grams. In the prison we were like in communism, in communities. I had visitors, my brother and my father came to visit me – it was humane from their part to let visitors to come –, they brought me, I don't know, I think 2 pieces of bread and 1 kg of salami, placed in a chest. After I brought it in, we sat around it, just like in a community. Ten of us were from Magyarlapos. Then everyone of us got 50 grams of bread, 1 slice of salami and half of a sugar cube. This was already in the spirit of communism: equality. There were some wealthier guys amongst us, and they shared everything. In addition, we were lucky because there was a Jewish organization called Omzsa. [OMZSA – National Aiding Action of Hungarian Jews]. They used to also bring us one or two plates of food from the Jewish kitchen for us to eat. Probably this kept our spirit alive. I was in that terrible situation for three months.
We were allowed to sleep from 10pm to 6 am. In the morning, when we went to the closet, they tied us together in pairs. When we had to pee, we had to touch the other one. when we had to wipe with straw or some grass, since we didn't have anything else, so we had to touch each other again, and that was terrible. Just horrible. There was no hygiene whatsoever, we had some cold water in the morning, and that was just about it. We didn't even get a sip of water all day long. For lunch they gave us some poor meal, but we pulled it through somehow, we were young. After 10 or 12 days or more have passed, they called me in. 'So – the man told me – it's your turn now.' I was already looking at my shoes, I thought they will begin beating my foot again. Then he said to me: 'No, just pull down your pants!' They hog-tied me. Do you know what hog-tying means? When you bind the hands and the feet together. Then he put on a glove on one of his hands and began massaging, pressing one's... testicles. Just for half a minute. It was so painful... Only a man can tell, how painful it is. Nobody could stand it, everyone fainted. Or they kick you in the balls like you can only see in movies... they used to hit the women's breasts with canes. And the girls showed us the marks. When I saw them... At this third torture there was no getting away from it, I confessed I was raising money. Then they only called me in once, but they only beat me up. They asked me whether I recruited anyone else to raise money for me. The fact was that I wasn't authorized to do so, I had no such function.
They didn't call me for two days. I don't know how many gendarmes were walking in the stable just to prevent us from talking to each other. On the third day I've heard the call for number 46. It was told that if they called number 46, I should run, no looking to the right or to the left, I just had to go in the first room, the office. There were some 5 people there: 2 detectives and 3 interrogators. they had different functions. The first thing they said tome was: 'Well, Beri – this was my nickname, from Bernat – tell us now why you are here?!' They began asking questions, but finally they got to the point: 'How did you raise money for the Red Aid? Did you hand it over to this man?' At first I denied everything. Then he told me: 'All right..., so you won't tell us?! Nevermind! I will call you back in the afternoon, and then you will even remember how your mother breast-fed you!' I couldn't imagine what would happen. The interrogations began around 7 or 8pm. They called me again, and I ran to them rightaway. And there I stood. 'Tell us now! We have it all here, we know exactly how much money you raised, when you handed it over and where that money was from.' Only then I noticed on one of the walls – I don't want to exaggerate – 15 types of beating tools, canes, black-jacks and anything you could imagine, it was all there on that wall. The black-jack was the genital organ of the bull, processed and put on a steel wire, it had around 50-70 cms. Then he said: 'Hold out your palms!' It was a thin cane, but how bad it hurt, it was just unbearable. He gave me some 10 hits, and then I began screaming for him to stop. But this was only the beginning: 'Tell me, if you don't want me to continue, whom did you raise the money from?!' I knew if I told them whom I was raising money from, they would punish those people, too. Even when we had no idea what was to happen, we had an agreement. There was a very poor Jewish family, an old woman and 2 other persons, three in all, who had absolutely no means of subsistence. We always gave 1% of the money to this old woman. We had an agreement that whatever should happen, we would say we raised money from YX, but he thought we were raising money for that poor old lady. I wouldn't tell them, though. 'Take off your shoes!' They seated me on a bench that had a back, tied up my legs and hands, then they began hitting my sole. Next they forced me to dance barefoot. My feet swelled up from the beatings so much, I thought I couldn't take it anymore and I would have to tell them everything, but in the end I didn't. This was the second torture. After that they didn't call me for two weeks.
I lived in Magyarlapos until September 1941, when I was arrested. We, that is me and my friends, were already prepared for it. We expected it to happen, because we were aware about what was going on, so we knew we would be arrested for our activities within the Red Aid. One day, at dawn, the gendarmes gathered us, put us on carriages and took us 40 kms away to Nagybanya. I brought with me a small package, some clothes, because we weren't allowed to take with us anything else. There was the DEF department, the so-called Department D, the D or fourth department of the counter-intelligence. I don't know anything else about this department of the counter-intelligence. There were these long stables, modern for that period, which have been used before by the Romanian cavalry. There were separate boxes for each horse, at least 100-120 boxes. In front there were two of room-like boxes, and they had us in one of these rooms. They already had every information on us, our names, so I got the instruction to go to box no. 46. There was a stack of straw and a blanket. they told me I should stand and look at the wall, and I wasn't allowed to look to the left or to the right. I was only allowed to talk if the gendarme asked me to or if my number was called. They didn't call you by your name, but by your number. I was number 46. When I got there I had no idea what awaited me there. I can still see the boys and girls standing in the other end of the room, just like in a temple in front of the saints, without a grumble, you could even here the flies.
I continued my activity within the Red Aid in Magyarlapos, as well. My family didn't participate in these actions, I was the only one involved, it was kind of a private matter. Nor my father, nor my brother, nobody knew anything about this. The fliers only circulated in secret about what the Soviet Union, communism and equality meant, and which stated that hatred between nations should be prohibited. And this is exactly what we needed to hear in the situation we were in. Why should we be 'budos zsido' or 'jidan imputit'? [In Hungarian and in Romanian, both meaning 'dirty kike'.] Or why should we be thrown out of the stores? And bearded Jews were seized in the night, got their beard pulled, then cut off. These actions began already in 1937-1938. There were several such cases in Magyarlapos. This made us believe everything was to be changed, and this is our redemption. No longer I would be a Jew, but equal to the Romanians and the Hungarians. Because what was it all about? Anything happened in the country, the Jews were to blame for it. It's true there were many very wealthy Jews, in Magyarlapos, for example, every trader was Jewish. And this was the reason the entire Jewry had to suffer, because it was considered that Jews traded and they had properties. But if they knew what trading meant… My father bought 1 kg of flour for 3.50 lei and sold it for 3.75 or 4 lei, because it wasn't like today, when the profit margin is 20, 30, 50 or 100%. One couldn't afford to do that those days, because there were 6-7 such small stores, and if you tried to sell it for more, the customer went to the other trader and asked him whether they would sell him for less, say for 3.90 instead of 4 lei, and if they did, the client would buy from them.
When Poland was invaded by the Germans, at the start of World War II, I was at home. Then every Jewish community had to send some, I don't know, 100 kgs of matzah for the Jews in Poland, even though our situation wasn't too rosy. After 1941 they began to get out of Poland, and even in our village we had 20 such families, which were supported by the community. But they left after a while.
Romania
There weren't any major changes in our family. We never had any difficulties getting bread, because there was a landowner who was my father's fellow-soldier. He was a lieutenant, while my father was a sergeant at the same company. He had some 120 hectares of land, an enormous sheep-farm and we were lucky to have him as friend, because he always provided for us what we needed. It wasn't for free, of course, we had to buy everything, and we took the wheat to the mill, they floured it there. From this flour we baked the bread for a whole week, so we had no problems. Unfortunately many were starving. There also was another type of bread, baked from flour mixed with corn and rye flour. Rye wasn't too bad, but with corn flour it was almost uneatable. At first, the bread portion was quite big, but it decreased constantly.
The Romanian army retreated unit by unit, and the Hungarian occupation took place in the same manner. They came in this order: today they had Nagyvarad, then Csucsa, Kolozsvar, then Szatmar, Nagybanya and so on. I know the orchestra of the Hungarian army was on the main square, and it was a quite important event. Everybody was out on the streets, everyone was happy, then they slowly realized that the situation wasn't that rosy at all. As they came in, just a few months later the great neediness began. In 1940 they introduced the ticket system for bread. In 1941 everything was given based on tickets, from bread to shoe sole, every products that was important. For meat we had no tickets, because there were villagers who butchered animals, and so did the butchers, but bread was hard to find. Even though I was 21, I couldn't really understand what was going on. I didn't know that, by then, there were two Anti-Jewish laws in effect in Hungary, and Jews had economic restrictions, and in schools the numerus clausus [8], and later the numerus nullus [9] was applied.
I remember for instance the first thing that happened. They came and bought all the dry goods they could find: wool, fabric, linen, everything there was to buy. At that time only Jewish stores existed, and the Hungarian traders came from Hungary – they were called small-ware merchants – and bought up everything within 2-3 weeks and took everything to Hungary, because one couldn't by such things there anymore. This is how it happened: One of the more important small-ware merchants asked: how many bales of 10 or 30 pengo fabric do you have? The other said the amount. Here's the money! They packed up the goods and took it away. This was the situation throughout Transylvania. They converted the money, I can clearly remember that, 1 pengo was 20 lei. And money was converted similarly. So probably it was very cheap here, and although it might had been in Hungary, as well, but it was very expensive. Then, 2-3 months later, the goods made from synthetic fiber appeared here, the traders brought them from Hungary. I don't know what they were made of, but I know that was much to my misfortune, I bought some fabric because I wanted to make myself some clothes, so I bought 2 and a half meters or 3 meters of synthetic fiber. The truth is they looked very good, but they were of poor quality. This happened until the Hungarians occupied Transylvania.
On Saturday afternoon we had a third lunch, which wasn't basically lunch, but more like a supper. It was a cold meal, mince or roast. On Saturday afternoon we didn't eat by any means meal which contained milk. On Saturday evening we looked for the stars appearing. We had to light the candle while my father said the prayer for the end of the holiday [Havdalah]. At the end of Saturday, my father lit a cigarette. That was the first thing he did, because he didn't smoke on Saturday. My father didn't work on Saturday.
I wasn't able to study with my father on Saturdays because he was unable to. He was familiarly with all the prescriptions but if he took a Hebrew book, he didn't understand it completely. Usually 60% of the people who went to pray didn't understand the prayers since they were held in Hebrew. I understood them because I have studied it, unlike those who never attended cheder or those who attended it only for a short period, who forgot it. My father was very young when he got to Pest and he had a completely different life there.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
On Saturday we went to play outside. The temple had a beautiful large garden and yard with lawn, where the boys and girls used to play in separately. The girls didn’t came to play with us because it wasn't allowed. The girls were allowed to enter the yard, but they were forbid to play with the boys. They were even prohibited to go to the rabbi. I used to go to the rabbi on each Saturday afternoon. There was a house in synagogue yard were the rabbi used to read and explain the weekly perek, which were studies written centuries ago by the rabbinate. There were the followers of the rabbi there were all bearded hasid Jewish men with payes. It wasn't for the children, we just went in, and stood there gaping. We looked because we enjoyed how they ate, drank and sang.
The Saturday dinner was such a feast, that you can imagine everybody had their bellies overstuffed. They used to begin the Saturday noon lunch with a small glass of spirit. We used to have onion with egg or fish aspic for side-dish. The fish is a very common meal for Jews. After each bite of fish one used to lick the glass of spirit, because if one drank from it they would get drunk. By the way even now I can only eat jelly if I have a glass of maximum half deciliter of spirit to lick after each bite. (We used to have a glass of spirit on Saturday morning, as well, but only my father and rarely my mother) The fowl liver previously cooked with onion was cut with a hatchet and mixed it with the onion with eggs. One used to eat radish with it. The Saturday lunch consisted of meat soup. We used to eat meat soup with radish, we couldn't even imagine it otherwise. In the meat soup my mother used to put soup stick, or she used to make a very thin sheet from eggs, spiced it with pepper, and cooked it. This gave a very exquisite taste to the soup. I haven't eaten such a soup since. Then we had the good fatty cholent, it had both beef and poultry, one used to mix them, this was the custom. One used to fell chicken skin with corn-flour, and flavored it with pepper and sugar. Then sewed over the two ends of the skin and put it in to the pot. This was called kugli. One use to put gershli with the bean in to the cholent, this was a kind of skinned wheat. Or they put dried farfel. In our house this wasn't a custom, we didn't put any of these in it. There was a special cookie baked by my mother on the stove in advance, on Friday afternoon. It was made with eggs, flour, sugar, and this congeries was baked on the stove. It was like matzah, and she baked it in pieces. It was thin, easy to bake and very delicious. After lunch we used to pray and sing Saturday laudative songs, we called them zmires le shabat in Hebrew. Its meaning in English: Saturday Laudative Songs. After lunch, hose who got used to it, had one or two wine-and-sodas. After lunch 70% of the adult Jewish men used to sleep on Saturday afternoon. Their stomach was so full, that they could hardly move.
Saturday morning we weren’t allowed to take breakfast before going to the synagogue. It was approximately 12am-1pm when we got home. The service was longer than those I’m conducting nowadays. [Editor’s note: For the moment, Bernat conducts the service in Marosvasarhely.] Saturday, after we went home from the synagogue, until I turned 13, I used to bring home the cholent. When all my brothers and sisters passed this age, only the shabesgoyim did it. He came in with 5-6 pots, and it occurred that he misplaced the pots.
The Jewish kitchen has a very specific national food, the cholent. It is an extremely delicious food, people cook it in different ways in each house, but it tastes almost the same everywhere. Its preparation is as follows: one put in a big pot bean, vegetables, meat, fat, then one put a lid on. On Friday afternoon it must be brought to the baker, who takes out the coal from the oven before Saturday and puts the pots in the heated oven, all of them, some hundred or a hundred and fifty. The fee for a pot was 5-6 lei, depending on how big it was, and how much place it occupied in the oven. Everybody knew their pot. After that the baker luted the oven-mouth to keep it hot and left the pots to boil slowly until Saturday noon. In Lapos only two Jewish families didn’t keep kosher household, 2 lawyers: dr. Samu Biro and dr. Harnic. They were not religious at all, never went to the synagogue, didn’t eat kosher meal. Interestingly they cooked cholent, probably with pork meat. When they brought the pot, they covered it with a bigger one and only after that they put it in the oven to protect the other pots from the treyf steam.
There were these so-called shabesgoyim, the Sabbath Christians. Each of them used to go to 10-15 or 20 families. On Friday evening they went to each family and put some wood in the stove. We only had wood heating, but in Magyarlapos there was plenty of wood, and cheap, too. My father always bought 15-20 stacks of wood in the spring, and it had time to dry. In fall, when the wood dried up, the villagers came and cut it up, then they placed it in the shed where the hen were, but to a different level. He prepared the firewood and the lighter already on Friday evening, then he came on Saturday dawn and put the fire. It was the shabesgoy's duty to come back every one and a half hours, and during winter to put some wood on the fire, because Jews were not allowed to light or put the fire. On Saturdays we weren't allowed to cook, you know. One was forbid to put the meat-soup to on a hot, heated stove, but one was allowed to put it on a cold stove. So the soup was on the cold stove, then the shabesgoy came and lit the fire, and thus the soup warmed up. Everything was cooked in advance. We were allowed to take off the soup from the stove. In the morning he lit the kerosene lamp, and he turned it out in the evening. He knew when people used to go to bed. He lowered the lamps, and people went to sleep. One hour after dawn, or when it already was daylight, he turned off the lamps. This went on until Saturday evening. Each month this was counted as 4 days of work, that is 100 lei per month. So, for 10 families he got 1000 lei, and this was a big salary then. Payment was made upon common agreement.
In the evening, of course, we had to celebrate Sabbath. There was the candle-lighting on Friday evening – this always had to be done by the woman. My mother lit the candles and blessed Sabbath. My father, too, had to tell a bless. He blessed his sons and kept the Sabbath day holy with a glass of wine. He than gave everybody a dip from that glass. And not because we had little wine, but because only that wine was holy, and each of us had to drink from it. For Friday evening we had fish aspic, gefilte fish or the so-called fake fish: they made dumpling out of chicken or hen breast, but spiced it just like the fish. This was kind of a sweet mince. We even used to make the aspic sweet, it tasted sweetish. We also had meat soup with farfel, and from time to time my mother baked some pastries, as well.
My poor mother used to wake up at 4am. There were 7 of us in the family, so she kneaded 2 troughs of flour in carved troughs. We had plenty of wood in that area, so they made quite a lot of these troughs. When I grew bigger, I used to help her out, especially after her illness began to develop, I used to do the kneading. Almost everywhere the custom was that the first thing people did on Friday morning was to cook cheese-cake. This was a speciality of the Jews, and I will never forget how it tasted, I haven't eaten anything like it ever since. The cheese was inside the cake, which had to be eaten hot, or warm, with sour cream. There is something special about this decilitre of sour cream. On Friday noon bread for the whole week was already baked. My mother also used to bake challah in the oven, and she always glazed the top: we had two for Friday evening, two for Saturday noon and two for Saturday afternoon or sunset, because on Saturday we only ate white challah. The challah was not made with milk, but with plain water. It had a simple mass, just like bread, only it was braided. On Friday afternoon my mother cooked the meal for Saturday, as well. For lunch, on Friday we used to eat cracklings and goose-liver with mashed potatoes.
Our family respected the traditions right until the deportation, we had separate pots for meat and milk. For example, you weren't allowed to eat curds dumplings with the fork you ate meat before. We also had a separate washing bowl for the pots. We had special Pesach pots, and we used to store them in chests – we had a large chest in the loft. On Pesach we brought these Pesach pots and ate from them. We never ate pork meat and never had lard. But we had to store some lard, and we bought either a duck or a goose. They started to buy goose in fall. My mother always crammed 6-10 geese. I still remember how my poor mother sat and choked down the geese with corn. They usually fed them up until they had 5-6 kgs. They were quite big. The poorer families, when they slaughtered the goose in winter, they preferred to sell the goose-liver to the wealthier families, because it was much in demand.
My family was quite religious. May paternal grandmother was religious, she had a wig, and so did my mother and my maternal grandmother. They cut off their hair, but I never saw them bald, they were very careful with this. The Jewish women usually wore a shawl. The shawl was on the wig. Everyone [the women] had wigs in Magyarlapos. At most 15% of them had no wigs, everybody else had. Although my father wasn't a Jew with beard, he went to the synagogue each morning and evening. He used tzitzit and a tallit at the prayers. I also used tzitzit in the cheder after I became 13. In my family it wasn't accustomed to pray with tallit, it was compulsory only after one got married. At the evening prayer one didn't use tallit, nor tzitzit, one only needed it at the morning prayer. My father wore modern clothes. We wore tzitzit, but under our shirts. There was a square material, which was cut and one put it around their neck, and we kept our tzitzit in our trousers. This is prescribed by our laws, we are obligated to wear them all day long.
After the world-wide crisis [world economic crisis between 1929-1933] [4], it was very difficult for my father to make money, and he tried everything just to make some. Eventually he managed somehow, but I did feel the difficulties. This was a world-wide crisis that also affected Romania. It was a two-year long drought, I remember this long drought, and some hail-storm, as well. There were problems I cannot talk about for just a few minutes, it would take me long hours. 60-70% of those who had servants had to lay them off, because they had to provide him with a place to live, food and such things. For a while, when I was already a big boy, we had a servant, as well, but later, after 1932, we couldn't afford anymore to have employees. I noticed there were castes: the rich and the poor. There were people who lived on their salary, others lived in poorer conditions and needed assistance. Thank God we didn't need any.
I was around four or five, that is in 1923-25, when there was a enormous wave of emigrations to America. My father was on the list, as well. But my mother didn't want to leave her family here, and didn't want to leave her brothers and sisters, so we remained here. My poor father, when he wasn't doing that well, always blamed my mother: 'You are to blame for the situation we came to, because remained here.' Everyone emigrated then because one could get on one's feet and get rich quite rapidly.
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Before WW2
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Our neighbors were a very rich, well-situated Hungarian family, and we were on very good terms with them. They had 3 or 4 cows. We used to go there for 3 litres of milk. I was the oldest, so I had to go for it. They had some large cans and a pail. The woman who was milking the cow, or her servant, had to wash their hands first: they rubbed their hands with boiled potatoes, just like with soap and washed it off with water. It wasn't allowed to wash hands with soap because soap is made from fat, and milk shouldn't come in contact with fat. So I had to wait for them until they milked the cow. We had one-litre bottles and a pail, specifically for milk, we didn't use theirs because it wasn't kosher. The neighbor poured the milk from the pail in one-litre bottles, and I carried them home.
We weren't allowed to go to the movies, cinema was forbidden, our religion forbid it, even though there hardly was even a kiss in it. In the evening, grandmother used to let me out through the window, because the movies were running from 7pm or 8pm. So I got out through the window. The cinema was owned by a Jew. We got into the cinema, and I used to watch a movie three, four, even five times. There were these westerns, then Pat and Patason, similar to Laurel and Hardy, but an earlier one. And there was Zigotto, the main character of the movie was called this way. These movies ran in the cinemas in the 1930s.