Tag #134739 - Interview #101544 (Dr. Janos Gottlieb )

An illegal communist called Gabor Birtas, who later became the chief of the Securitate [10]. How he could occupy the apartment? He wanted to give to the Jewish community of Nagybanya all what was in the apartment. I don’t know from where a few Jews were gathered, I think they were former members of labor battalions who survived, and they formed the Jewish community of Nagybanya; it was the community who took over our belongings from the apartment.

They took out of the apartment everything they had found there, the mineral collection too. I got back a part of the collection. I still have a few pieces, I keep them in memory of my father. But I have just a few. You might ask me why. Because there was a big scandal about it, one wasn’t allowed to keep minerals, it had to be handed over to the state – alike gold and so on.

So I took the cases – the minerals were put into cases –, and I gave them in present to the Bolyai University in Kolozsvar [11]. I didn’t even get a letter of thanks from them. It is there, it must be somewhere. I kept a few things for myself as souvenirs, that’s all. So I found most of the things which had been in our apartment at the Jewish community, but unfortunately not everything.