Now I'm conducting the prayer, each Saturday and on the other holidays, as well, for two hours. I know from memory almost three quarters of the ceremony. One time a community members told to another one: 'How can Sauber do this for two hours, him, who was an illegal communist and worked at the public prosecutor's office?' The other ones in the community who know something are Sandor Ausch and Laszlo Grun. (Sandor Ausch and myself were together in captivity. I kept in touch with him when I was still working, and we came together again here at the community.) The service starts each Saturday at 11am and ends at a quarter past 11am. I'm reading every week the Torah, because only dr. Marmor and me can read from it. There is a portion equivalent to some 30 pages to read for each week. The prayer tooks place before and after the reading, which I lead, as well. 15 years ago there were people praying here each morning with tzitzit and tallit. Now everyone uses tallit, but tzitzit only when a rabbi comes here.
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Displaying 20251 - 20280 of 50826 results
Bernat Sauber
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In 1982, after I retired, I became the president of the Jewish community from Marosvasarhely. There was an older gentleman he was the president of the community before me, called Aladar Scheiner, his wife, Juci Scheiner is still alive. He once told me: 'Listen, I want to step down, but I can't find a retired who could be appropriate for the job.' He knew I'm familiar with the Jewish laws and prayers. Little did he know that I did not pray and haven't been in a synagogue for more than 30 years. When I got in this position I started over and I everything came back to me. I can't even imagine how I haven't forgotten everything, because when I learned all these things I was 14-15, and I still remembered them at the age of 60. All this time I never said a prayer. Let's say I was an atheist. How did all these things come back to my memory, I don't know. This is a miracle. Everything I knew before, the customs, prayers, what should be said from memory or read on the holidays, the melodies, everything came back to me as if it was pored back in my mind. There were some good chazzanim, but unfortunately they died out. 3 years ago, when Grunstein was still alive, I sat in the synagogue just like any other simple prayer, ony later I got involved in the preface. Now mainly me and dr. Marmor are leading it, and another 87-88 years old man, Lederer, who helps us out now and then. Dr. Marmor, who is two years older than me, and myself lead the prayer, he did it very nicely.
The Ivrit classes are held by a Romanian man called Darabant. He was a post clerk, and his daughter married a Jew from Tulcea, an engineer. They emigrated to Israel and have good jobs, they are quite well situated. Darabant is a stubborn Romanian gentleman. He said: 'How can it be that I cannot talk to my grandchildren?', so he started to study Ivrit by himself. He learned Ivrit so good, his relatives from Israel are really amazed – he visits them almost every year. He is now the Hebrew teacher here at the community. Unfortunately there are very few Jews among those who are attending the Ivrit classes, 12 in all, once a week.
We have an adopted daughter. Zsuzsa is the daughter of my wife's cousin. She was four when we adopted her and brought her with us, and she is with us since. Her mother lives in Nagykaroly. Zsuzsa was born there. Her father died, and she has an older brother. He graduated the arts school. It is my fault, I insisted on her choosing the lawyer career, although she would have liked to enter the arts school, but we knew then what meant to graduate the arts school: if one wasn't a sheer talent, they would end up as drawing-teacher in some village. When my wife retired, she was exactly 20, and replaced her mother as court greffier. Currently she is working at the court of appeal. She is in charge with the statistics and she also works as greffier. She is working since 1981. Unfortunately she didn't want to get married. She may have been influenced by the situations she saw at the court, how easily marriages are broken, and probably this discouraged her, although she is a very warm-hearted and friendly character. She stays in her own apartment and has her own life, but she comes over for dinner or supper, of course. We even made her snacks, so she doesn't have to spend money on food. To tell the truth, we raised her as atheist, but still she attends Ivrit classes. On every holiday when young people come to the synagogue, she comes, as well, she is rather attracted to my side.
We observed the Jewish holidays. My wife doesn't light a candle on Saturday, in stead she uses to cook a festive dinner. We use to celebrate their holidays, as well. She used to come to the synagogue: when other people come along, she used to come, too. She doesn't come anymore, since two years ago, because she is ill. In the communist era we didn't use to celebrate Chanukkah at home, only after 1990. Now I'm celebrating it regularly. It is a simple ceremony: I read the prayer, light the candles, and that's just about it.
I met my wife, Maria Zikh here in Vasarhely. She was originally from Nagykaroly, and she worked as greffier at the court. She wasn't Jewish, just my father-in-law was originally Jewish, but his parents (my wife's grandparents) convert to Roman Catholicism – I didn't try to find out when and why they convert. My father-in-law was a trader, originally from Csernovic [Chernowitz, in today's Ukraine], he bought eggs and fowls, he transported and sold them. I didn't know him, because he was already dead. Her mother worked at home, then she came to Vasarhely, she stayed with us for a while, then she moved to one of her little sisters and later she died. My wife has four brothers and sisters, she has three brothers – Jozsef, Sandor, Antal, and a sister, Magda. My brothers and sisters weren't excited for a while that I married a Christian woman, but eventually they got along very well. We kept in touch with all my brothers and sisters in Israel. We have been three times to Israel, first time in 1978, last time in 1986. We stayed 1-2 months there.
Now I don't observe Seder eve at home. Interestingly, during the communist era I did it. I have a friend, Feri Marosan, and we spent together every Pesach evening. I lead the Seder because he was an oshgelait – this is a Yiddish expression for those who don't know, or don't observe the religion. He had a son, and we all follow the prescriptions. We were on visiting terms with each other for 8-10 years. In the early 1970s they emigrated to Israel. I had one other friend, called Jeno Israel, and we lead Seder alternately. At Rosh Hashanah I use visit them, they always cook festive dinner and my whole family was invited. The communists had nothing against that I go to somebody to have dinner. But if they saw me, Bernat Sauber the public prosecutor of Marosvasarhely, the communist, in front of the temple, chatting, they suspected me that I use to go to the synagogue.
During the communist era people used to buy 2 Christmas trees. Not everybody, mostly the civil servants. The simple workers weren't afraid, because in the worst case they were thrown out of the party, and didn't have to pay the membership fee. But usually this didn't happen. Those who bought two decorated one in the house, and left the other one outside on the balcony until the New Year, because the winter tree had to be decorated on New Years Day. [Editor's note: In the communist era was prohibited to decorate Christmas tree, just winter tree was allowed. So the people left one tree on the balcony to delude the authorities, and decorate the other one inside.] This wasn't a singular case. It was interesting, that they didn't sell the most beautiful trees for Christmas, they put them aside. Who want a nice tree, he can obtained after Christmas. So I bought a little tree, and expose it on the balcony. 'Of course this man is a communist, he didn't celebrate Christmas' To be honest we didn't decorated Christmas tree for Jesus' birthday, since he wasn't born at that day, we only did it for our children.
In 1975 I would go to America to visit my friend but they wouldn't let me out. In that situation I said 'If you don't let me go, if you don't trust me enough after more than twenty years of work to let me go, I will quit.' So they allowed me to go there with my wife. My daughter, my mother-in-law and my house remained here as gage. I managed to bring a VCR and tapes from America. Every evening my house was full, we couldn't sleep, because 10-15 people were watching movies on my VCR.
Practically we didn’t have any cultural life at all. All we had was the theatre, and there were some pretty good performances at the theatre, which suggested things… I will never forget Paul Everac's Iov, Romanian for prophet Job. I think that was the last performance what I saw at that time. It was a performance which could easily send the writer, the actors and the public to prison: the ironic praising that everything get so well, and what is the reality – all these moved in prophet Job's time. The public laughed. Everybody knew there was water in the cup and not coffee, but on the stage they praised up the coffee, saying how delicious the coffee was. And they praised up the salami too, but we knew, that was made by Soya, not meat. They praised up how nice and cheep was everything, but certainly we knew that you had to wait in line 4 hours to get 200gs of salami. In the play they said exactly the opposite to what it was happening. Curiously, they tolerated this kind of performances. These performances were written for the middle-class, the workers didn't use to go to watch them. They went to worker clubs, every big enterprise has a worker club. There they arranged performances and stage-plays with Janos and Mariska, who were quarreling about 'How many piece-rates did you make? You are behind, you are not a success worker!
At that time you had to learn to read between the lines in literature, and in newspapers, too, in order to understand what the writer wanted to say. If you just read it superficially, everything was so nice, and praised the Party, but inside he was screaming. Here in Vasarhely there were 3-4 defiers who weren't afraid to speak out, like Mera, a lawyer, and Tarnaveanu – I think he was a department manager at some company, and he dared to say at a meeting that Ceausescu shouldn't be reelected – I remember them. (There were some elections every four years, but it was more like voting, than elections. The difference is that at elections you can choose from several candidates, but when voting you only had one. Presence at the elections was mandatory.) They didn't hurt, but recorded these people. For instance when Ceausescu came visiting, the police took Mera in and retained him for two days to prevent him from doing anything, but then they released him. There were other such groups, as well, like groups of Hungarians who used to gather and sang the Hungarian anthem. One of them had to be an informer. They didn't just say: 'So, come to the police station! What happened yesterday evening at Sauber's?' Several months passed, maybe half a year, and then they began citing people. People didn't know what to say, they told all contradicting stories. The sentence was for criticizing the state and the system. Some people have been convicted. There were students who got expelled from the university. The activity of the court-martial was terrible until 1963.
Socialism had beautiful ideals, only not the ones they applied. There were positive things, but also lots of bad things. We weren't allowed to comment any of the government's or the party's measures. We had to accept everything, there was no, alternative. There was pretty bad that I couldn't express my opinion. There was another awful thing, that everyone has to go weekly to Marxism class. They did it separately for each profession, separately for the prosecutors office and for the court, separately for the medics, and so on. They held it in our school, the Bolyai Farkas high school, or in the Papiu high school, or at the party headquarters. Weekly, on Monday afternoon, there were Marxism-Leninism classes. We had to recite, and at the end we had an exam. There wasn't anything more terrible than to study all that nonsense, who said what at each congress, especially what Ceausescu said. If the Party edited a congress material, we had to process it for several months. There were small booklets which described how many pigs we would produce in 1968, how many chickens or how many eggs, or how many oxes we should export - that was all included in the Party's material and we had to learn it. Usually everyone took the prescribed material and read out what was required. But every employee had to be there, from the simple workers to clerks. There was a time when every morning before starting to work we had to read out the editorial of the Scanteia [Spark in English, the Communist Party's journal] at the workplace. I was forced to buy the Scanteia and I had to read it to know what was written in it. There wasn't any other source of information. It was prohibited to listen to foreign radio stations. We had to watch them in the television two hours per day. We were totally in the dark.
I'm not saying communism was heaven on earth. People were generally not doing well, but they got by. Today the majority don't have a life. There was nobody over 18 doing nothing: they either studied or worked. There was a law regarding this, stating that not working is a crime and was treated accordingly. This was called absenteeism. One was not released from prison until they didn't have work. It didn't matter if there was no vacancy. They used to say: 'No matter! You will pay the others less with 100 lei , but you'll give work to these ten people.' This was my job for a period, to get jobs for people, because I was responsible for the prison, as well. I notified in advance the companies on the people who were about to get out of prison, with their professions, and instructed them to give these people work. And they hired them. Or there was no such thing that if you are 30 or 50, no one hires you. Try to obtain a job now if you are 40, it's out of the question! There were canteens, and that was good, because it was cheap. I remember that we ate in a canteen, as well. I had a salary of 19,000 lei, while the average was 6-7000.
We didn't want to emigrate to Israel, but for a while I was thinking about it, because in 1968 [the territorial reorganization in 1968] [22], when the regions have been replaced by counties, that is, an administrative reorganization took place, considering that I was speaking Hungarian and they didn't have a right man for it there, they wanted to transfer me to Csikszereda. I wouldn't want to go there, though, so I resigned and told them I would go away. We even decided to pack up everything, to hand in our papers and to emigrate. Two week later they called me back and thus I remained here in Marosvasarhely.
One year, one and a half year later, this law was abolished, but by then some ten thousand people ended up in prison. The policeman or the commercial inspector went by a pub, and if they went in, they always carried a 50 ml measure, produced it and measured the drink he got. If two units were missing, he drew up a proces-verbal and the bar tender got 6 months in prison. So you had to lock him up because he gave less to that stenchy drunkard. It's true he was stealing from his boss' money, but his situation forced him to do that. I asked for a suspension in many of these cases. If the convict didn't do anything wrong in the next two years, his sentence was repealed. But if he committed some crime within these 2 years, he had to do in addition the remaining time. So they were very careful not to do anything. We could also rule fines, 2-3000 lei worth, the average salary for two-three months. I held my ground, and I had no fear. I knew if they would fire me I would get my hat and would walk off.
From time to time we had to report to the People's Council, which analyzed our activities. They said stealing is that frequent because the punishment is not severe enough, or they reprehended us because we ruled too hard sentences for small offences. They summoned us to Bucharest, because assistant of the state prosecutor, as well as all the regional prosecutors were there. Then I said: 'Please understand, this is a peasant, a worker who steals a pound of salami or five cans from the factory, and we sentence him for three years, leaving his family without any income.' They replied: 'The comrade has no courage and is too good-hearted, and, if so, you don't belong here. You better tell us now and we will replace you.' At the end of the meeting, the state prosecutor drew the conclusions: he mentioned me by name or the public prosecutor's office in Marosvasarhely in every fifth phrase, with the number of people we sent to prison. This was Law 324, the summary procedure regarding people caught in the act. This went on for a year, and it was horrible. The prisons got filled with poor peasants or workers who stole that pound of salami. The managers didn't steal a pond, because they got ten pounds of it, carried out from the factory by car, because cars weren't checked, not even by the police, because they knew anyway what was going on. There were the low registration numbers, between 100 and 1000, given only to certain people or institutions, very well known by the police. No policeman would stop and check a car with the license plate no. 105! Within 24 hours he would have been fired. And in spite all this, they still criticized us for not applying the law correctly.
I don't want to praise that period, but I can tell you that in those 38 years I worked there, the prime secretary never called me on the phone to close any case if someone committed a fraud. (Back then the prime secretary was Lajos Csupor. He was a tailor, but he wasn't a dull man at all.) There were situations when we reduced the sentence, that is, we didn't convict the man to five years, but for three, and if it was possible we suspended the sentence, but everything within legal limits. There were instructions to convict people they caught within 24 hours. In 1957-1958-1959, there were cases when they caught peasants coming from the land with a sack of corn, some 20 corn-cobs. They apprehended him, took him in and within 24 hours he was sentenced to two years. I don't say there weren't crimes for which no documents have been drawn up, have not been submitted to the police and the prosecutor's office. Most probably there were such situations. But if a document has been handed to us, we solved them responsibly.
We were 11 prosecutors in Vasarhely, and, for a period, I was the public prosecutor. There was one Romanian prosecutor and nine Hungarian ones. And I was the public prosecutor, a Jew. We used to speak Hungarian at the trials. The Penal Code and the Code of Penal Procedure, the Civil Code and the Code of Civil Procedure have all been translated into Hungarian – it was a certified translation from Bucharest. This existed in the 1950s, until the early 1960s, under the Gheorghiu Dej [19] regime. We, the prosecutors, were compelled to speak in Hungarian with the parties who didn't know Romanian. But now they are keeping the silence about it. Why don't they tell people that under the Ceausescu [20] regime, trials could be held in Hungarian in Vasarhely? A year or so ago, when at a trial an old woman couldn't answer the judge, he asked: 'Is there anybody who knows Hungarian?' I said: 'If I may, I will translate.' What a 'great' achievement this is, that you are allowed to speak in Hungarian using an commentator. But there was no such thing before 1989 [the Romanian revolution] [21]. There were two lay judges, and if one of them was Romanian, the other one had to know Hungarian. Moreover, they even wanted to draw up the documents and the sentence in Hungarian, as well, but the central leadership rejected this proposal.
I could see life pulsating from all directions. The economy, agriculture, culture and politics were all of our competence. The initial period was very sad and awful. In 1949-1950 collectivization [nationalization] [17] began, and went on until 1952. It's not a period to remember. I had all kinds of difficulties all along, because I was originally from a middle-class, bourgeois family, since my father owned a store. Why didn't they throw me out from the prosecutor's office on grounds of kulak descendance, I don't know. The kulak [18] problem and the collectivization were very sore points. For example, what did it mean to be a kulak with five hectares of land? If one didn't carry out the manure from the stable within 48 hours to the land, it was considered a sabotage and he was convicted for five years in prison. If following the harvest they didn't plough up the land, and didn't do stubble ploughing, it was again sabotage. If they didn't hand in their quota, it was sabotage. Some of the punishments often meant confiscating their fortune. Collective farms had to be established, so they took a kulak with a beautiful house and beautiful stable, confiscated them and threw him in the prison. I had many inconveniences arising from these situations. I will never forget that one of these kulaks managed to flee, after he was sentenced for seven years in prison. He hid for seven years and I knew that. I didn't know where he was hiding, just that he was. Only I knew, because his younger sister came weekly with complaints to the public prosecutor's office, asking why their house was taken away. Sometimes she got some answers, but other times she didn't. It was an awful situation. For example, if they went to someone's house and found 20 kgs of sugar, they considered it a sabotage. Because the Romanian laws said 'Aprovizionarea peste masura consitituie infractiune.' [Over-stockpiling is considered an infringement.] Even boot-sole was portioned, and if they found five pairs of them, it was an infringement. Then the gold-related problems began to appear. They went for gold like crazy. They used to beat up people. Even we, prosecutors, were helpless. They detained people without waiting for us to make a proper decision.
One of my sisters, Matild Weis, came to me saying: 'Leave everything behind and come with us to Israel.' They emigrated. They made aliyah in 1965 to Kiryat Tivon. She and her husband were both retired in Israel. Matild still lives there. My other sister, Emma, had asthma and was afraid to go to Israel. She asked me to stay with her if I can, because she wanted someone to stay with her. So I remained here. In the end she emigrated with her family, but I remained here. She decided it would be better for her son, because she saw no future for him here. They emigrated to Israel in 1974, to Nazareth. The poor thing still lives there at 79, and so is her son and husband. Her husband is 92, and he is blind and deaf, seriously ill.
In spite that I had some history within the movement, and worked for the Red Aid since I was a child, they didn't accepted me in the Party. In 1952 I still wasn't a party member. They appointed me assistant of the regional public prosecutor, but shortly after that I became the public prosecutor. Then I plainly told the regional judge that I was not a member of the party. He said: 'Comrade Sauber, don't give us hints, we know who we should put there!' I joined the party only in 1963.
Until 1952 I worked in Vasarhely at the county public prosecutor's office. But then the county ceased to exist, and 8 regions were formed [after the territorial reorganization in 1952] [16]. I found myself at the regional prosecutor's office here in Vasarhely. After six months I have been appointed assistant of the public prosecutor. 75% of the prosecutors were Hungarians, and, unfortunately, several of my colleagues could hardly speak Romanian. They studied in Hungarian at the Bolyai University in Kolozsvar, and when they began their activity, they didn't know Romanian – this was a fact. All of my colleagues graduated from the Bolyai University, the Hungarian university, while I finished the Babes university, therefore I was speaking very good Romanian.
I was sent to Kolozsvar, and we had this cram-course for one and a half year. We mainly studied the disciplines related to the practical applications of law: code of penal procedure, code of civil procedure, civil code. We didn't study any theoretical disciplines, such as legal history. Then, after we had been examined by a commission, they appointed us temporarily, under the condition that we would enter the law school or we would finish three years of law school in private, otherwise we had to step down. In 1950 I was transferred here, to Marosvasarhely. I wanted to go to Des, but they didn't let me considering that I was originally from the area, and they told me they couldn't allow it. A entered right away the Law school in Kolozsvar, and graduated it after four and a half years in the distance learning classes. I had to go there every three months to take the regular examinations. There we studied theory, as well. I had no physical time, because I had to work in the meantime. That much is true, they granted us leave before each terminal examination and exam. I don't want to brag about it, but only two of us from the distance learning class managed to graduate from the faculty, the others couldn't manage to do that. The other one was Rozsa Kelemen, who also lives here in Vasarhely, and she is a 78 years old arbitress.
We only had electricity since 1938, and even then it was just some improvisation. There was a steam-boiler that worked with wood, and attached to it with straps there was a generator that generated electricity. They connected then the offices and the stores to it. It only functioned in the evening and in the morning.
I only worked for a short while beside my father, until I turned 12-13, then I was sent to the rabbi school. There were others who remained there to work with their fathers, but others became traveler agents for different companies. There were these sheets with pieces of linen, called patterns. They cost 100-120 lei per square meter, and the agents went to every house and showed them to people. They even sold it in installments. This ensured a good living. Others, especially the younger ones, got commissions to make arrangements in the shire-town. It wasn't easy to get to Des, the trip cost some 100 lei, some four day-wages. So it wasn't possible to go to Des for every smallness, such as going to the public finances or buying drugs.
There were two board warehouses where they sold boards, and there were two carpenters, around five tailors, a Jewish doctor and three Jewish lawyers. The other Jews lived anyhow. and how did they sustained themselves? On Thursday they went to the market in Lapos and bought up eggs, there were no egg factories yet. Each week on Sunday and Thursday the villagers came to the market and sold eggs, they came from as far as 20-25-30 kms. I remember an egg cost 25 banis. One used to look at the eggs to see how big they were, and bought some 3,000-4,000 eggs for 20 banis each. There were 2 meters long and half a meter wide chests, and they used to put some 1,200 eggs in such a chest, this was the standard, and they used hay, straw and offal timber to prevent them from breaking as easily as today. This had to be done very quickly, because it was quite hard work. They had such skill, they could hold 6 eggs in their hands. They nailed down the chest, hooped it with thin bands, then in the afternoon the wholetraders from Des came and bought three or four such chests, so who they made a profit of 10 banis, or 5 banis per egg. They couldn't sell all the eggs, because everyone had hen at home. We too had 5-8 hen, so we didn't have to buy eggs, everyone had. The villagers had no one to sell the eggs to, so when these traders came they bought it all up. These eggs were all exported. There were at least 30 families with such occupation, and they got by, but just.
There were 6 retailers and 2 wholesalers, who also sold by the piece. My father was a trader, as well. He bought each week two sacks of flour, a chest of sugar – the sugar cubes were in chests, granulated sugar wasn't yet that popular, people preferred sugar cubes. He also bought 300 l of kerosene, 50 kgs of copper cable, rice, coffee and everything. These traders all had their own territories, and mainly Jews, but Christians, as well, used to buy from the Jewish stores. There was only one Christian store, owned by a Romanian, but it went broke. 70% of the customers bought on credit. This usually took place as follows: the customers who came in had a small booklet, and the trader had a large book. The customer said: 'I would like two kilos of 0 flour, four kilos of 0000 flour, one kilo of rice, 2 liters of kerosene etc.' They both wrote in their books all these goods. At the end of the month they settled the debts, usually without any problems.
In the winter, the poorer ones bought 8-10 kgs of meat, cured it just like pork meat and smoked it to be totally dry, then they ate it through the year, once a week, on Wednesday, with the bean soup. This was a common menu for everyone in Magyarlapos: on Wednesday there was bean soup with smoked meat. By the way, I was and still am a big fan of bean, I can still eat bean seven times a week, in any form.
Romania
Then there was a shochet – he was a Hasid shochet. He went each week to the slaughterhouse and his duty was to butcher a certain number of cattle. He examined them, of course, for any illness: this meant they inflated its lungs, and if they found small TB utricles in it, Jews weren't allowed to eat it, it was treyf (treyf food is eaten by Christians). The shochet slaughtered the cattle following a special procedure, then they took it to the butchery. There were 3 Jewish butchers who processed the slaughtered cattle. My grandfather Mendel Berkovits also had a butchery where they used to take cattle. Usually the shochet slaughtered for the Jews each Friday or Thursday some fowls, one or two hen, geese or anything, but mainly crammed fowls, since those had fat. Then they collected some 40-50 liters of fowl fat in cans, because Jews weren't allowed to cook with lard. Oil was still relatively rare to find, people only began using it in the early 1930s. There was a Jewish miller who had an oil-press, and he used to make oil. People somewhat despised those who cooked with oil. They even said it: you can smell this man is cooking with oil, and he is a poor man – the goose and duck fat was very expensive.
Romania
Magyarlapos had some 5 and a half thousand inhabitants. They were mainly Hungarians, some 60-70% of the population were Hungarians, that's why it was called Magyarlapos [Hungarian Lapos]. Some 18-20% were Jewish, and the rest were Romanians and Gypsies. Magyarlapos was a district residence, it even had a courthouse. In Magyarlapos, the some 900 Jews who lived there were all religious, with 2-3 exceptions. They used to go to the synagogue every morning, evening and Saturday. As I see it now, they had a quite harsh life. There were three wholesalers who supplied food for the countryside with flour, sugar, rice etc., pots, cotton, iron, horseshoe iron, horseshoe nails and kerosene. One of them was an uncle of mine from the maternal side, called Lazar Karl, Mihgaly's father, he was the wealthiest.
Romania