Tag #134349 - Interview #101223 (Anna Eva Gaspar)

I tell you straight, I had a German governess [Fraulein] from Dusseldorf, so I spoke rather in German with her, because she demanded that. Her name was Lia Britz, she was around 20, and she was a true German lady. She was young and cross-eyed. We had many photos with her, but she blurred her face on every photo. On the old photos naturally you stood straight, I was on her right side, and my brother on her left. And we were photographed this way, it looked like a postcard. She blurred her face on the photo, to hide her eyes. She couldn’t see herself, but she knew that she is cross-eyed. She could see it on the photos. It was forbidden to my mother to educate us, the governess did that. ‘Don’t intervene. If you didn’t need me, I go home.’  That was her prompt. She was very severe, and we hated her for that. She was an intelligent, clever woman, but she came to us to earn money. These German women used to work as governesses, this was a source of income for them. They came to Romania, educated children, but they requested a lot of money for that. There were folders, we found her this way. The grandparents told that the Germans are good educators. They were appreciated for their work. But as a small child I considered exaggeration what they [the governesses] did. She raised me austerely, after the German example. She taught us good manners, how to sit at the table, how to behave and how to dress. I learnt that I had to eat this way not that way…And I do a lot of things how I learnt from her. She pursued hers point, but she didn’t intervene when my grandparents asked me not to turn on the light [at Sabbath]. She used to turn on the light then. She accepted it too, but I she didn’t put any pressure on me, she just focused on my education. She wanted me to be well-educated. All of my life they tried to educate me not in the Jewish, but in the European spirit. Not to mention that she didn’t speak Hungarian at all, only German. We spoke German with each other. We scolded her so badly, that I had no words for that. She asked us ‘What you say? What you say?’ ‘Nothing, we just chat.’  When we were together with my brother and my cousins, we spoke about her of course. We detested her because she had no sentiments. I don’t remember if she ever praised me. The governess was so severe, that once - I don’t know why - when my mother screened me, she rebuked my mother: ‘You educate the child or I?' This hurt my feelings very much… I was a puny, weak child. I'm a small eater, and I was small eater in my childhood also, but the governess said that I had to eat what is in my plate. She didn’t understand that I couldn’t eat it, she said that I had to! I ate it, and I vomited it. Then she went to the kitchen, and she brought another portion, what I had to eat. If I vomited it again, she brought a portion again. Everything must happen how she wanted. I remember that I felt very miserable then.