Besides religiousness, tradition had to be preserved to the very end. The Friday evening ceremony began with washing, and of course my grandfather went to the mikveh and to synagogue. There was a mikveh in Torda, too, but I never went there. This was nothing else but plunging in only to keep the tradition.
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Displaying 631 - 660 of 50826 results
laszlo nussbaum
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His religiousness had many facets. One of them was that he had a high position in the Jewish community. He wasn't president, but I know that he was the manager of the administration of funerals and weddings. One should consider this not only from a religious point of view, but from an administrative one as well; he was responsible for the payments. He had a thorough grounding in it, and he went to the yeshivah, I think in Pozsony [today: Bratislava, Slovakia]. This was within the frame of the Austro- Hungarian monarchy. The most important manifestation of religiousness is one's prayers. They put tefillin on their arms and they say a given prayer. My grandfather used to have tefillin like that and every day in the synagogue or at home when he couldn't go there, every morning - in the evening he didn't have to - he prayed with tefillin. In the synagogue he sat near the rabbi, opposite the congregation.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
My grandfather was a very religious man, an Orthodox Jew [4]. He was European, wearing civilian clothes, and had neither beard nor payes. I suppose that as a child he used to walk around like the other children, with payes and all, but later he didn't any more, but he was very religious anyway. The period before the emancipation in 1800 was completely different to the one after 1923 [5], during the permitted emancipation.
I know only one thing about the childhood of Moric Weinberger my grandfather on the mother's side: I think that Egerbegy is near Torda, and his parents lived in that village. At the end of the 1800s Gypsies attacked them in their house, they robbed them and killed them. This is all I know. They found them dead, murdered. The children were bigger, 19 or 20 years old, and only the two old people were at home. I don't know anything else. The children already lived in Torda at that time.
In the yard my grandfather on the mother's side had a brewery as well, but without a shop or counter. It can be imagined as 50-60 square meters in total; this so-called factory was a 'bottling plant.' There were workers, but only a few; there must have been two or three of them. This was a place on the ground floor, I can't remember the manufacturing, but playing in the yard and peeping in the entrance-hall one could rather see the corking part. According to the habits of the time, there were few lorries but many drays came in instead in order to carry the goods away. They didn't work on Sabbath. I know that my grandfather never worked on Sabbath, he was very religious.
The apartment itself was on the upper floor. This was the home of the grandparents on the mother's side and their children, except my mother, who was married and lived in that house as well, but in a different building, in the yard, with a private entrance. At the back of the yard there was a huge building consisting of one hall. A textile factory operated there, but it wasn't my grandfather's, he rented out the space. At one time there was a kindergarten, too. There was another street parallel to the main square, a few hundred meters away, and the other entrance of the house looked on to the other street. There was a coach-house where we used to play with slingshots and arrows.
The house we lived in was in the very middle of Torda's main square. After World War II, there was a Soviet monument exactly opposite our house. It has been demolished by now; they have built housing blocks there. It was a one-story house. It had an arched entrance in the middle, where the drays and lorries could enter, but there were two stones, one on either side of the entrance, to prevent the walls from being damaged. There was a shop on each side of the entrance. I think they sold hats and fashionable items in one of them, and in the other also clothes, perhaps. The shops were not my grandfather's, but he rented out the space.
Romania
My father studied in Italy, and when he came home to Torda to pay a visit he met my mother, Ilona Weinberger. It was quite rare in those times for girls to graduate after middle school. My mother graduated. I don't know under what circumstances they met, but they got married. The only one who didn't find a foreign wife among the siblings was my father. All the other children remained in the country where they had studied. My father went back to Italy for a couple of years to finish his doctor's degree. Then he came back and they lived together with her family in Torda until 1940.
It's true for all the brothers that they didn't change their fate, none of them became Christian, but none of them was religious. They didn't practice anything religious. They didn't go to synagogue, didn't pray. I think they were circumcised. Let's not forget that at the end of the 1800s, though the assimilation had already started, the tradition was still very strong.
In 1942 they called Sandor from Budapest into forced labor service. Supposedly they took him to Ukraine, to some labor camp. They took him away, and he never came back. He wasn't married; he left nothing behind him. After the war they delivered the documents back; the Hungarian Resistance and Antifascist Alliance gave us a paper in which they only said of my uncle Sandor Nussbaum, that he was drafted into the forced labor service on 2nd October 1946 in Nagybanya, from where they took him to Ukraine, where he died as a consequence of the cruelty of the Hungarian members of the skeleton staff. They ascertained all this after the testimonies and the list of Yad Vashem [3].
The third brother was a doctor until 1937 in Germany, but in 1937 the situation was unbearable. He stayed two more years, until 1939, and then he went to London. Refugees from all over the world were gathering in London. He couldn't be a doctor there, but he had a brilliant idea: one couldn't go to America just like that, so he had one chance: to get married to somebody. He just took out the phonebook and called somebody up - I only found this out later. He called mostly women with nice names and he told them his intentions frankly. In the end somebody went along with it. He fled with an American woman to New Jersey, near New York. This was about 1940-41. He couldn't be a doctor yet, because he would have needed to have his diploma acknowledged.
In the meantime, America entered the war in 1942. He attested immediately as a volunteer - as I found out later - because he would have been drafted anyway, but he needed to be a volunteer in order to obtain American citizenship faster. There he could be a doctor, in the war his diploma was acknowledged and he went to Germany, to the German front. He told me the following: 'If I had seen an SS soldier three years before, I would have done a number two in my pants.' He never said in which part of Germany he was, but as a major he had an area of responsibility in which he was the commanding officer, from the medical angle.
In the meantime, America entered the war in 1942. He attested immediately as a volunteer - as I found out later - because he would have been drafted anyway, but he needed to be a volunteer in order to obtain American citizenship faster. There he could be a doctor, in the war his diploma was acknowledged and he went to Germany, to the German front. He told me the following: 'If I had seen an SS soldier three years before, I would have done a number two in my pants.' He never said in which part of Germany he was, but as a major he had an area of responsibility in which he was the commanding officer, from the medical angle.
,
During WW2
See text in interview
And here comes the spicy part of the story: In 1918, when they still lived in Budapest and my grandfather wasn't so old, he decided: I have four children and I'd like them all to go to university. But his requirement was that they all go to different places, though he wouldn't pick where. He sent the first child, Laszlo, to Paris, to the Sorbonne University. With the second child his restriction was that he couldn't go to France. He could go anywhere, except to France, and he couldn't study philosophy like the first one had. This one, Jeno, my father, went to Italy, to Florence, and he studied mathematics; he got a diploma and a doctorate. Then the third child could go anywhere but these two countries and he could not choose these two professions. So the third one, Jozsef, went to Berlin and became a doctor. The fourth child, Sandor, went to a different country and chose a different profession as well, commerce in Prague, to be precise. Grandfather used to call it: 'Spreading my germs all over Europe, because I had enough of this war, but I want children everywhere.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
My grandfather decided to go back to Transylvania, where he had relatives, so he bought a house in Torda [in Romanian: Turda]. They came to Torda, and they lived very well there. He was quite a rich man; his fortune remained even after the war. As far as I know he wasn't engaged in anything. They were just the two of them, Paula and my grandfather - they didn't have a house large enough to need a permanent servant. Later my father and mother lived close to them. My father was there visiting them every day. I don't think they organized meetings because there was a problem: Auntie Paula knew only German, so she could only have a circle of friends who spoke German. But only a few people in Torda spoke German. She also spoke German with my father. She never learned Hungarian or Romanian.
They must have had a rather good financial situation; but exaggerated patriotism, that's something they definitely had. After the few years of the war, the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy grew poor; it issued bonds [2], and those who bought them received a given percent of interest, if, of course, the state were victorious at the end of the war. I'm quite sure that my grandfather bought a great deal of war bonds in order to further victory for the Austro-Hungarian army, which lost the war in the end. Then he was discharged. He could not be a soldier after the war was lost, and he remained with his children, and with his money.
My father comes from this completely assimilated, Austro-Hungarian Jewish family, which means that as a matter of fact, he had no knowledge of religion. None at all, which includes the fact that he couldn't pray and he didn't know the Hebrew letters. He knew he was a Jew, and that's all. The typical assimilated Jew: it often happened that they wanted to be more Hungarian than the Hungarians. He was also a bit of an opportunist and adapted to fit the situation. He wasn't unusual in this way; it was a general characteristic, an acknowledgement, gratitude for the permitted emancipation.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
My grandfather wanted to get married again, but had a condition: he wanted a woman who already had children. He was at the age when he didn't want a new child because he had 17-20-year-old children. He met a widow in Vienna who had lived all her life with her husband in America. Her name was Paula, she was a Jewish woman of Austrian origin, and she spoke German. She became a widow there in America, and then went back to Austria with her child. My grandfather met her and married her in 1914, presumably in Vienna. There were five boys in the house, and they played together.
The name of the organization was DZSISZ; this is short for Democratic Jewish Youth Organization. The head office was in today's Peter-Pal villa [22], which used to be Jewish property, but the owners didn't come back, so the organization got it. The lectures were held in these apartments, and we lived there, too, for two years, until the nationalization [23]. This organization was a mutual-benefit society, which had developed different branches, like cultural activities, and intellectual self-education. Because, for example, one was a sculptor who immediately made a sculpture about the experiences of the deportation and he unveiled it. Communities, conversations and lectures developed, and the era of those times also contributed to their character, which was more related to socialism and its development. This functioned for a few years, until everybody got to his or her rightful place. It existed until the 1950s, but it was already agonizing then, because I was in the youngest age group, and when we grew up the organization collapsed. We had homes, we went to university hostels, and the older ones got married, so it collapsed by itself.
There was a Jewish gathering after 1945, but not on Jewish principles. It came to life though, namely because the youth, who had returned from the deportation, looked around and couldn't find any relatives - they didn't have a home, they had nothing - and spontaneously began to organize themselves. They gathered in one place and lived together at first. But it didn't come to life because of the Jewish religion and ethnic group, only by chance, because it became an organization in order to organize canteens and housing.
In the meantime I went to work for a newspaper called Igazsag [20] as a freelance contributor, and when I finished university they appointed me immediately to the position of assistant professor. I also worked at a weekly, as an editor; it was called Uj Ut [21]. From 1950 I had two jobs: I was an assistant lecturer and editor at the Uj Ut. The Uj Ut stopped in 1953, but I continued writing for the Igazsag.
I was admitted to Kolozsvar University in 1947. I always liked mathematics. I was admitted to the faculty, and had finished two years of the course, when they convinced me again that for the building of new life there was a need for economists. And I attended both faculties, economics and mathematics. Two years later a new law came into effect: the socialist school reform. The new law forbade me to attend two faculties at the same time; so then they convinced me that I should concentrate on economics, rather than mathematics, because there was a need for new cadres.
It took a month to get home. We came in groups and we didn't have a map. We made a massive detour in Germany, and after a few days we arrived back at the town we had started from. We went by foot, by ship on the Elba and by train. The train was so full that we traveled on the top of it, and it was even derailed.
I came home to Kolozsvar and realized that there was nothing left, everything had disappeared. My aunt and uncle were still in Torda; I was there for two years until I finished high school.
I came home to Kolozsvar and realized that there was nothing left, everything had disappeared. My aunt and uncle were still in Torda; I was there for two years until I finished high school.
Meanwhile time passed by, the war was about to end; it was after May. It came to my mind that there was still a postal service, and I could send a letter by mail. [Editor's note: The interviewee asked his American soldier friend to write to Jozsef, his uncle in America - whose address his father had drummed into him before being confined to the ghetto - to say that he was alive.] And I set off for home. What I'm explaining now came to light subsequently: he did write a letter to America; my uncle's wife received it and wrote immediately to my uncle, the doctor major, her husband, who was by that time, in Germany: 'Your nephew is in Buchenwald.'
He came immediately to Buchenwald, and it came to light that I had left there a few days before. I could have gone home via Vienna or Prague. It was all the same to me: I decided to go via Prague. He went via Vienna; you know, Vienna was divided into three zones - French, American and Russian - and he could only go as far as the American zone. He managed to contact by telegram, another aunt, my paternal grandmother's sister, who lived in Budapest. She magyarized her name from Seelig to Etelka Szasz. She was a spinster. She informed my uncle that I had left Budapest and gone to Kolozsvar that morning or the afternoon before.
He came immediately to Buchenwald, and it came to light that I had left there a few days before. I could have gone home via Vienna or Prague. It was all the same to me: I decided to go via Prague. He went via Vienna; you know, Vienna was divided into three zones - French, American and Russian - and he could only go as far as the American zone. He managed to contact by telegram, another aunt, my paternal grandmother's sister, who lived in Budapest. She magyarized her name from Seelig to Etelka Szasz. She was a spinster. She informed my uncle that I had left Budapest and gone to Kolozsvar that morning or the afternoon before.
,
After WW2
See text in interview
I was 16 years old when we were liberated. I became close to a young American soldier, just 18 to 20 years old. As for him, I saw that he felt that he had liberated a child; he probably felt this because he kept on asking what he could do to help; he was the one who got me used to cigarettes, gave me chocolate and all kind of things and asked me whether I would go with him to America or not. But I didn't go. I came back to Romania. I had many reasons. One of them was that the communist organization - which spoke about the building of the new world, that life wouldn't be like that anymore and we would have to make a new life - had a powerful influence on me. The liberation was coming; a new world was coming. They sowed seeds in a soil, which germinated quickly [the youth]. The other reason was that I didn't know what had happened to my family.
The leader of KISZ was a gentleman called Jozsef Klein, who later lived under the name of Mincu Klein in Bucharest, and published many books. Hilel Kohn [sentenced to death in 1942 at the trial of Szamosfalva, where they sentenced the communists. Nazism saved his life because they deported him into a 'Lager' before he could be executed in jail.], was another well- known illegal Transylvanian Jewish leader; then there was Erno Gall [19], Miklos Kallos, dean and professor at the faculty of philosophy, Nandor Gyongyosi, former illegal leader. Many of the leaders remained in Budapest. Those who decided to go west or to Israel, didn't join KISZ. One didn't have to sign anything, but just joined the group, and at the end they gave a paper that said you were a member of the Romanian KISZ in Buchenwald.
A few weeks after the liberation, the KISZ [18] was organized, and it operated for two and a half or three months. The liberated political prisoners lectured, really wisely and skillfully, just right for people aged between 15 and 18 years. What kind of world was waiting for us? The building of the new world, democracy - they organized lectures on such subjects. Where I was, the lectures were held in Hungarian, but it is possible that they were in other languages, too. There were many people in the camp who were captured by the Germans in France; there were very few young people from there. But they deported the young people from Transylvania en masse. The communist organization held lectures separately for the French adults and the children under 18. They held lectures from morning until evening. Those who joined KISZ clustered together, even in their rooms. These communist leaders held Marxist lectures for the young people in the former SS dining room.
They [the Americans] kept us in the camp because we could not disperse. There were three categories: those who wanted to go home; a part of the other category were the skeptics, who said they'd go anywhere but back there; another part wanted to go nowhere except to Israel, then Palestine. Those who wanted to go west could go earlier. Young people were actually received into any country. A 16-year-old liberated from the camp could go everywhere from Sweden to America.
There was no question of leaving the camp and walking around on the front line before the capitulation, which meant that after the liberation we remained in the 'Lager,' of course under different circumstances. They gave us food at the kitchen, and I have to say that the Americans made a quite a big blunder; though I don't believe it was intentional. They gave us fatty soup, I tasted it, and I felt that I mustn't eat it. Then I saw with my own eyes that many people died within a couple of days at the toilet, with cramps.
On 11th April, when early in the morning the Germans shouted to go out to 'Appell' [German for 'roll call'], these people came into the room: 'Nobody is going out! You stay here!' The Germans shouted 'Appell!' in vain. If the senior man in the room said to stay there, then everybody would stay. Soon after that, I heard the first shot. They were shooting at the SS soldiers in the watchtower. We resisted from 11am until about half past 1, when the first American tanks rolled in. So they [the inside liberators] had only to calculate how long we could resist until the real liberators, the Americans, came in.
There was an international underground organization, which was able to obtain a few weapons. The essence of the self-liberation is as follows: we could not know whether the 'Lager' was laid with mines, and whether the Germans would blow it up, and us along with it, at the last minute, and if so, when this might be. The self-liberation was based on surprise: that the Germans were shot from the inside, from the camp. We had to calculate how long we could hold the 'Lager' and above all: the prisoners. There were prisoners who were generals with previous war experience, and they worked out the plan of campaign; how it should be done.
When I arrived at this labor camp [called Tröglitz] where they put me, a guy appeared and told me, whispering: 'Tell them you're a lathe operator!' 'But I'm not competent,' I said. He came close to me again and repeated: 'Tell them you're a lathe operator!' And when I got there and they asked me, finally I said I was a lathe operator's apprentice, though I didn't even know what a lathe looked like. They did this because the lathe operators were in a place which they heated in winter somewhat; it wasn't zero degrees but 3 or 4 degrees; the other places were totally unheated. But they didn't heat it for us; it was the working process that demanded the heating.