Tag #136735 - Interview #78801 (Gyorgy Neufeld)

Both our children knew that we were Jews, and that they were Jews. By this time we were both working in education: my wife was a teacher in Apaczai Csere [Janos] school and I was an adjutant at the X-ray clinic. If the smallest religious thing had been found out about us, both of us would have been sacked. We didn't want to educate our children to be two-faced - to pretend in school that they were pioneers and to give them Jewish education at home. I didn't want to teach them to lie. I didn't want them to say in school that we went to the synagogue, nor did I want to go there and then order them, 'Don't you dare talking about this in school!'

Religious life became non-existent after the war. It was completely formal, like now, even though then we were about 1500-1600. The religious things faded away, but we insisted with our children that they were Jews. We didn't circumcise them because even that was monitored in the hospitals then. We couldn't keep the bar mitzvah because had anyone found out about it, both Agi and I would have been sacked.