Tag #137601 - Interview #78465 (Egon Lovith)

However, the hardest part came once the kids discussed that even though I had come from Mexico I was Jewish, moreover a Hungarian speaking Jew. After this things took a bad turn. The Legionary [6] spirit was already alive and in homes people were talking like, ‘noi romanii…, patria noastrăa…, etc.’ [we, Romanians…, our motherland]. When I went to the back of the schoolyard again, I was suddenly attacked by a bunch of kids – today I would call them thugs – and they knocked me down to the ground. They pushed me to the wall and while strangling me they said, ‘Mai jidane, futu-i mama ta! Striga, traiasca Legiunea si Capitanul!’ [You Jew, your mother’s cunt! Shout, long live the Legionaries and the Captain!]’ By then I knew they were referring to Horia Sima [7], the leader of the Legionaries. I was unwilling to obey. It’s terrible how brutish my peers were, but I was not giving in, I defended myself. All this was happening in 1938.