Tag #137992 - Interview #101975 (Alexandru Kohn)

All of this took a great toll on me, as did reports from the rest of Europe. We would often listen to the news before Jews had their radios confiscated. [Editor’s note: After a certain point Jews were not allowed to have a radio in their own house, one of many humiliations endured by the Jews in Romania. Jewish physicians, for example, could only continue their praxis with Jewish patients. Jews were also obliged to surrender clothes to the authorities for the reason that the Romanian army and the rest of society needed them. Jewish properties, businesses, factories, land and farms were all confiscated. And although these were governmental decisions, they were not totally legal. Usually the orders were followed on the basis of verbal commands given by the legionary leaders. With the advent of the Antonescu regime all of these decisions became official and continued during 1941 and 1942. Source: Victor Neuman, “Evreii din Banat şi Transilvania de Sud în anii celui de-al doilea război mondial,” or “Jews from Banat and South Transylvania During the Years of the Second World War,” in “România şi Transnistria: Problema Holocaustului,” Curtea Veche Publishing, 2004, Bucharest, p.152.] Every time they transmitted a discourse of Hitler it was a catastrophe, an event that saddened me and threw my family into despair. This was a period of great anxiety for the entire family, but particularly for my little brother, who was only some five years old at the time of our evacuation. He kept on having nightmares. When we were evacuated, he shouted, ‘I want my little bed, my little bed, my little bed. Why did you take me out of my little bed?’ It was terrible.