My father, Sandor Rosenfeld was born in Nagykoros in 1884. He magyarized his name to Acs in 1938.
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mariann szamosi
After my grandfather's death, his two sons, Pali and my father, took over the running of the Nagykoros company. Their specialty was collecting lots of fruits and vegetables from around Nagykoros, then many, many women would pack them. They shipped them on refrigerated traincars to Germany, and I don't know where else. The refrigerated cars were white, they had a special color. My father went buying in the morning, and brought the produce by truck, where the women would already be in the courtyard working, so that the produce was taken to the train nearly the same day. They had to work quickly. Sometimes, the produce would arrive in an unacceptable condition, which led to arguments about price. I remember, their correspondence. They would write horribly angry letters, because if the produce wasn't good quality, they couldn't market it.
The business was successful up until 1941. Then the company went bankrupt. The competition ruined it. There was another wholesaler in Nagykoros, the Benedek company. This Benedek firm, who also wholesaled wine, ruined my father, when in one year that my father also sold wine, they let theirs go for such a low price that my father couldn't sell his, and they were left with all their wine. They lost everything. They had to auction off the house, the horses, the truck, everything we had.
My parents were probably recommended to each other. The marriage didn't come from passionate love or intimacy. It was an honorable, decent marriage. My father came back from detention after World War I, it had to be in 1925, then they were married in 1926.
I lived in Nagykoros before my school years. I started at the Jewish grade school there.
The house in Nagykoros was a miracle of my childhood. It was pretty large, separated into two parts, the front part for my parents, and the rear part for uncle Pali and Grandma. In our part, there was a bedroom, a kid's room, a kind of salon and a big dining room, which we never used because it was very dark. Downstairs were the utility rooms: a big pantry, a big kitchen and a kind of maid's room. There were steps on the side of the house that led up to the bathroom. For that time, the furniture was modern, the windows were very pretty, with wild grape vines or proper grape vines covering the house. I remember you could open one of the windows and eat the grapes. There was a little flower garden with a tiny little pond, and fish in it. Great big trees, with turtle doves in them, and there were acacias, which we would breakfast underneath. The courtyard was paved all around, so you could ride a bicycle around the house. That was one of my favorite pastimes. There was a kind of warehouse, where the fruit-packing women worked, plus a big cellar where the barrels were kept. Life was pretty lively there.
The house was in the center of Nagykoros, in a really good location, a very nice area. We lived there all the way up to 1941, when the business went completely bust due to a competing business. Then we moved to Budapest.
I remember we always went to temple in Nagykoros. I started at the Jewish school there. I really loved the teacher. His daughter was a good friend of my cousin, Klarika Rosenfeld. I went down to visit them a lot, even after we had no house there, anymore. In the summer, I stayed with them. And we went to temple, but we didn't pray, we just talked. My friends there were all Jewish. Life there was about going to the open spa together, a very good artesian spa, we took bicycle tours, and went to the cinema. Life was still nice and peaceful around 1935.
The Jews in the city lived all over. We didn't have too many connections with them, and I don't remember that they were particularly so religious. The Jewish school was next to the temple. I don't remember any other institution. I remember the teacher, but not the rabbi. And we had more connections with the secular, intellectual Jews, because one of my uncles, Imre Rosenfeld, was a doctor. He was a doctor for the peasants. He was the kind of man who would go on a motorcycle to different farms, and if the peasants didn't have money, he would buy them medicine. There was my uncle Gyula Rosenfeld, my favorite cousin Klarika, who was two years older than me. And her father, he was a lawyer. Pali Rosenfeld took a Christian woman, Margit for a wife in 1943, or 1944. They'd been lovers for a couple years. I remember there was a glazier, glass seller, or porcelain storeowner; they were the Hoffers. There was a spice merchant, Mr. Fenyves, whose daughter Zsuzsa Fenyves was my girlfriend. There was Mr. Lazar, a feather merchant. He had a lot of children, only one survived, Vera. The others were killed.
Summers were warm and happy. We were at the pool from morning to night, or at the rock garden. There was a very pretty forested park that we went out to, where the older and more clever kids played tennis. We just watched them. In the afternoons, we gathered together in some kind of big warehouse at the Lazars and played Twenty Questions. We went to the cinema. Sometimes we biked to Kecskemet, sometimes to Cegled. Life was happy.
I remember we always went to temple in Nagykoros. I started at the Jewish school there. I really loved the teacher. His daughter was a good friend of my cousin, Klarika Rosenfeld. I went down to visit them a lot, even after we had no house there, anymore. In the summer, I stayed with them. And we went to temple, but we didn't pray, we just talked. My friends there were all Jewish. Life there was about going to the open spa together, a very good artesian spa, we took bicycle tours, and went to the cinema. Life was still nice and peaceful around 1935.
The Jews in the city lived all over. We didn't have too many connections with them, and I don't remember that they were particularly so religious. The Jewish school was next to the temple. I don't remember any other institution. I remember the teacher, but not the rabbi. And we had more connections with the secular, intellectual Jews, because one of my uncles, Imre Rosenfeld, was a doctor. He was a doctor for the peasants. He was the kind of man who would go on a motorcycle to different farms, and if the peasants didn't have money, he would buy them medicine. There was my uncle Gyula Rosenfeld, my favorite cousin Klarika, who was two years older than me. And her father, he was a lawyer. Pali Rosenfeld took a Christian woman, Margit for a wife in 1943, or 1944. They'd been lovers for a couple years. I remember there was a glazier, glass seller, or porcelain storeowner; they were the Hoffers. There was a spice merchant, Mr. Fenyves, whose daughter Zsuzsa Fenyves was my girlfriend. There was Mr. Lazar, a feather merchant. He had a lot of children, only one survived, Vera. The others were killed.
Summers were warm and happy. We were at the pool from morning to night, or at the rock garden. There was a very pretty forested park that we went out to, where the older and more clever kids played tennis. We just watched them. In the afternoons, we gathered together in some kind of big warehouse at the Lazars and played Twenty Questions. We went to the cinema. Sometimes we biked to Kecskemet, sometimes to Cegled. Life was happy.
When the business went under, we moved up here to Budapest, my mother and father and I. I continued my life here under the wing of my grandmother. The grandparents' Budapest house was a happy family nest up to the beginning of the war years. We lived at 119 Ulloi street [a main avenue in Budapest] in a four bedroom apartment, grandma and grandpa - while he was alive, my mother and father, me and my Uncle Lajos, until he got married. It was a family of love, music and literature. We weren't rich, in fact our life was rather troubled.
When my father's possibilities of putting bread on the table had already run low, my grandmother and mother started knitting. They primarily did needlework. Knit patterns were popular in the years up to the war, and they learned them well. That was the source of income. In fact, they even had people working for them. They sold the finished pieces to a shop on Vaci street [the most elegant promenade and shopping street of Budapest]. My father spent most of this time playing cards. I learned piano.
When my father's possibilities of putting bread on the table had already run low, my grandmother and mother started knitting. They primarily did needlework. Knit patterns were popular in the years up to the war, and they learned them well. That was the source of income. In fact, they even had people working for them. They sold the finished pieces to a shop on Vaci street [the most elegant promenade and shopping street of Budapest]. My father spent most of this time playing cards. I learned piano.
I went to gymnasium [High School], read a lot. I didn't notice anything around me, but music and literature.
We kept a modest house, but while it was still possible, we had hired help come in. Just one girl, plus the German fraulein who tutored me, and helped raise me. The maids were usually little Transylvanian girls who took part in the cleaning and cooking. [The previously Hungarian province of Transylvania was annexed to Romania in 1920. Many of the Transylvanian Hungarians found refuge in Hungary, especially in Budapest, in the interwar times.] Until the Jewish Law [anti-Jewish Laws]7 forbid it, then later we didn't have the money for them. In the later years, the maid's room was rented out.
The family wasn't religious. Except that grandma did light candles on Friday, and we fasted on Yom Kippur. That was all. There was some kind of esoteric faith within our family. My parents didn't go to temple. I went to religion class - since it was compulsory - at school. But we never got deeply involved. Our family had an enlightened, liberal view of the world. But naturally, we had feelings towards things Jewish. My grandmother had two siblings in Israel. [At the time, the area was called Palestine, and was under British authority.] It was hard then to keep in contact with them, but we did somehow.
My uncle, Erno Sebestyen, who'd been working in Germany in the 1930s, in the time of Hitler, as a commercial agent, was a little dazed by what the Germans were producing, Hitler's products. There were a lot of bloody arguments within the family because of that, they couldn't understand how a Jew could show appreciation for anything the Germans did.
I finished six grades there, because then came March 19, 1944, the German invasion 9. I didn't finish my sixth year of secondary school. From the time the Germans came, when I had to start wearing the yellow star, from then on, I couldn't go to school.
Concretely, it was the Jewish Law that hit our family, when my uncles could no longer work. In school there were people we already knew to be sympathetic to the Arrow Cross. There were two boys in the building where we lived, called the Rostas brothers. We knew them to be Arrow Cross. They would never speak to me. They were older than I was. I couldn't say they ever directly harrassed me.
When the Germans came, we started thinking about survival. My mother was a pretty smart woman, and she decided we won't go into the yellow star 10 house. They took the furniture and belongings to the delegated place, her girlfriends house, if I recall, on Zoltan street. We went deep underground, instead. My mother had a Christian girlfriend named Mrs. Aniko Vertes. She offered to hide us. So when it was time to move to the star houses, it just looked like the four of us went there, we really went to 1 Hogyes Endre street, to Aunt Aniko's apartment. It was a groundfloor apartment, and she supported all of us. Cooked for us, shopped. We lived with the rollblinds down, and when the Americans carpetbombed, it was horribly frightening. Nevertheless, we didn't dare go down into the shelter.
When the Horthy Proclamation 11 came out, the Arrow Cross government takeover, then everybody got scared, and my mom said we couldn't stay there any longer. Then she thought of the old man, Tomasek, the miner, and she went over to Vertesszolos, and then came the family. He was the third person to hide us, but the first who didn't know we were Jews. It's possible he knew, but he took us in, anyway. We stayed there until December 13th. My father couldn't do much there either, but the two women, grandma and mother again, and I, just started knitting. We knitted socks, and warm gloves. And we lived from that. I remember, one December day, probably the 13th, there was a sudden deluge of Arrow Cross, saying they were looking for Sandor Acs who goes by the name of Ferenc Veres, and Mrs. Sandor Acs, who goes by Mrs. Ferenc Veres, and Mariann Acs, who goes by Ilonka Veres. From that we knew they had come out because someone had turned us in. Our suspicion is that that certain Mrs. Zoltan Kiss, who lived in the house, had a brother who was Arrow Cross. They found us from his report. The problem had been that Mrs. Kiss knew where we were. Sometime somebody, either Ilonka or Bela, had told her. One of them could have accidentally given themselves away, and that's how Mrs. Kiss's brother moved into our flat. He probably wanted to make off with the whole thing, so he reported us.
That's how the Arrow Cross took us away in December of 1944 from Vertesszolos, from the Tomasek family, poor people who suffered for it too, because they were beaten badly, his wife as well. They even took him to Komarom, to the Csillag Fort. We stayed a night there in Vertesszolos, then they turned us over to three Hungarian constables 12. The three constables took us from Vertesszolos to Tata- a 5 km trip - on foot. My mother tried to convince them to let us go. It was very near the end of the war. She would testify, if they get in trouble, that they had let us go, let us escape. But no, they took us to Tata. It was either a constabulary or a military center, I don't know exactly, and a short time later, to the Komarom Csillag Fort. We were there for about eight days. My mother had a map which marked where the front was, that's how they knew where the Russians were, and how the Americans were coming across Sicily. I remember the scene, there in the jail, a lot of women, we could already hear the cannons, from above, and we hoped we might just make it. But we didn't.
They put us in train cars in Komarom and took us to Ravensbruck. My father was taken by another train, we can only guess that he went straight to Dachau, but maybe from Dachau he ended up in Auschwitz. The two trains went parallel. After a long freight train ride, we arrived in the village of Furstenberg on December 24th, where there was a concentration camp, Ravensbruck. They took us in to the camp when we arrived, we had a night of freedom, we slept on the ground. The next morning they took away every last little trinket we had. After a cold shower, we had to remove all our clothes, we got a kind of rag in place of them, and they took us to Barrack 31. We were there for two months. Every day, there were constant appeals for mercy, it was very difficult to bear, it was very cold. It's close to the Baltic Sea. My mother got very sick, either with kidney stones or cancer. A prisoner doctor examined her, talked to her. My seventy-five-year- old grandmother was in better condition. They sometimes took me out of the camp to do all kinds of nasty work, sometimes they didn't. When I could, I tried to conserve energy so I'd stay strong, it was frightening.
That's how the Arrow Cross took us away in December of 1944 from Vertesszolos, from the Tomasek family, poor people who suffered for it too, because they were beaten badly, his wife as well. They even took him to Komarom, to the Csillag Fort. We stayed a night there in Vertesszolos, then they turned us over to three Hungarian constables 12. The three constables took us from Vertesszolos to Tata- a 5 km trip - on foot. My mother tried to convince them to let us go. It was very near the end of the war. She would testify, if they get in trouble, that they had let us go, let us escape. But no, they took us to Tata. It was either a constabulary or a military center, I don't know exactly, and a short time later, to the Komarom Csillag Fort. We were there for about eight days. My mother had a map which marked where the front was, that's how they knew where the Russians were, and how the Americans were coming across Sicily. I remember the scene, there in the jail, a lot of women, we could already hear the cannons, from above, and we hoped we might just make it. But we didn't.
They put us in train cars in Komarom and took us to Ravensbruck. My father was taken by another train, we can only guess that he went straight to Dachau, but maybe from Dachau he ended up in Auschwitz. The two trains went parallel. After a long freight train ride, we arrived in the village of Furstenberg on December 24th, where there was a concentration camp, Ravensbruck. They took us in to the camp when we arrived, we had a night of freedom, we slept on the ground. The next morning they took away every last little trinket we had. After a cold shower, we had to remove all our clothes, we got a kind of rag in place of them, and they took us to Barrack 31. We were there for two months. Every day, there were constant appeals for mercy, it was very difficult to bear, it was very cold. It's close to the Baltic Sea. My mother got very sick, either with kidney stones or cancer. A prisoner doctor examined her, talked to her. My seventy-five-year- old grandmother was in better condition. They sometimes took me out of the camp to do all kinds of nasty work, sometimes they didn't. When I could, I tried to conserve energy so I'd stay strong, it was frightening.
I was there in the hospital, laying on a bed with a gypsy woman, who died there next to me. That was about the middle to the end of April. And all at once, the Germans left. We stayed there for one or two days in complete stasis. The people who could walk broke into the warehouse, and found an incredible amount of Red Cross packages. They dumped the boxes into the main road; food, chocolate, milk powder, sardines, canned meats, and we ate that. I remember that I only ate chocolate, very carefully, so I didn't get sick. Two days later the Russians arrived.
It was miraculous! They came in two columns, hanging in bunches off the tanks, playing guitars. And those who were still in good shape, jumped up on the tanks. In an hour and a half, they had set up their goulash cannons [portable cooking vats], cooked soup and potatoes. They transferred us, those of us left, within a week, and turned the whole place into a Russian hospital. All at once, it was full of Russian doctors and nurses. They healed us. That was in the first days of May, and on the 22 of August 1945, they let us go. They healed the scar on my leg, I was still feverish, plus I had to fill out, I weighed 36 kilos [79lbs]. Then we left in Red Cross buses. We had no idea that we weren't going home. It never occurred to us that we're going somewhere else.
It was miraculous! They came in two columns, hanging in bunches off the tanks, playing guitars. And those who were still in good shape, jumped up on the tanks. In an hour and a half, they had set up their goulash cannons [portable cooking vats], cooked soup and potatoes. They transferred us, those of us left, within a week, and turned the whole place into a Russian hospital. All at once, it was full of Russian doctors and nurses. They healed us. That was in the first days of May, and on the 22 of August 1945, they let us go. They healed the scar on my leg, I was still feverish, plus I had to fill out, I weighed 36 kilos [79lbs]. Then we left in Red Cross buses. We had no idea that we weren't going home. It never occurred to us that we're going somewhere else.
Fridric Iavet
We always had guests in our house, every week on Friday and Saturday evenings, or on the high holidays. My parents had a lot of friends. They met very often. A few families gathered and played cards or other fun games: for example, you had to jump over a chair, and if you couldn't, you had to take off your coat. I was a child, but I remember some things - they talked, played domino or some other game. They met almost every week. My parents' friends were Jews and non-Jews alike.
My parents weren't very religious, but on Pesach we changed the tableware with the one we kept in the attic. We couldn't wait for the tableware to be brought downstairs. We probably visited our relatives on Pesach. We went to my maternal grandparents because they lived there, in Adancata. My maternal grandfather led the evening. I remember that on Pesach, when I was 5-6 years old, I liked to wait for Eliahu to come and empty his glass of wine.
I ran into a cousin of mine not long ago, Gustav, son of Sami and Berta, who told me that mum was renowned for her cakes and for the fact that she cooked several types of cakes: chocolate cake, hazelnut cake, 'mezes' [honey in Hungarian] cake, 'colaci' [milk loaf], 'cremes' [cream cake] with very thinly spread dough, kuglof [ring-cake], but different from the one we have here, with cocoa, poppy cake, apple strudel. There wasn't one week left without a cake. Until 1941...
My favorite holiday was Purim. On Purim she made hamantashen, marmalade triangular dumplings. She loved to cook, especially deserts.
Holidays were very beautiful in our house; we observed the traditions one hundred percent. Mum lit the candles on Friday evenings - until 1940 when we left. My family went to the synagogue only on the high holidays, on New Year and Long Day. Dad and mum fasted, I think, on the Long Day. I also liked Pesach. You could always tell when there was a holiday in our house. Mum prepared everything so that there was an air of feasting. Moreover, we dressed in a more special way. Although we were not religious, she made all the traditional dishes.
On holidays mum made all sorts of dishes: you mixed scraped potatoes with egg and yeast, and then let it leaven and then put it in the oven. After that it was cut into slices - it was an extraordinarily tasty dish. I believe it was also a traditional Jewish dish. Mum also made maize cake, from a mixture of corn flour, eggs, sugar, which was left to yeast and then put in the oven. Mum made all sorts of dishes: marinated meatballs and she put raisins in the sauce. She also made triangular dumplings parties: you cut the dough in a triangular shape, then fill it with marmalade or potatoes with fried onion, then boil them. Once uncle Berthold wanted to make a joke and told mum to fill one dumpling with feathers and gave it to a certain person. Mum, instead of giving it to the person Bertold said, gave it to him. I believe the dishes mum made were specific for the Bukovina area; in fact, they were Austrian and German dishes. She also made oblong dumplings, from scraped potatoes and eggs. She put inside plums or cottage cheese: a sort of slightly peppered cheese. When the dumplings were ready she rolled them in fried breadcrumbs - they were very good. There were occasions when she made 7-8 types of cakes at one time.
For me religion means to be human first of all: not to lie, not to steal, not to do bad things. My parents didn't preach me about religion, but I have inherited a lot from them. I never heard my parents lying to me or to others. I didn't see such things in our house. They really gave us an education. I remember mum reproved me once because she heard me cursing. When I was 8 or 9 years old she caught me smoking and she threatened that she would tell my father. I didn't smoke after that. I wasn't a smoker or a drinker. I never drank beer, let alone brandy. I probably tasted it for the first time when I was 20 years old, when I was in Arad. My parents weren't drinkers either.
I don't think we had a rabbi, but there has a cheder. I didn't go there, because my parents didn't want me to get spoilt. There were all sorts of children, they cursed sometimes, and they wanted to protect me. My father hired a melamed for me, but when nobody was home, I ran away. I locked him in the house and I left. My parents reproved me, but they didn't beat me - only my mother hit me sometimes. I remember the melamed taught me the alphabet and how to say the prayers. He was in his forties and he wore a beard. He went from house to house and the taught children, but he didn't have many students, because most of them went to the cheder. Dad wanted me to learn at least what was necessary for the bar mitzvah, which didn't actually happen, because of our leaving to Asia.
There was only one synagogue in Adancata. There was no such thing as Neolog or Orthodox there. The ones who were more religious went there daily, the others once a week or only during the holidays. My father, for example, went there only during the holidays and on the anniversary of his parents' deaths. I never heard of Neolog and Orthodox until I came to Arad.
My father was very good friend of Lotar Radaceanu, who later became Minister of Labor. He didn't live in the same town with us, but he was also from Bukovina, from Cernauti I think. He was also president of the Social Democrat Party for a while. When the communists came, in the 1940s, he died under very dubious circumstances. I think he attended a meeting in Helsinki, and he was liquidated. My father did social democratic propaganda; he spoke at the gatherings of the Social Democratic Party. He had the gift of speech. He wrote articles in the local newspaper, Neue Zeit ['New Times'], an independent German newspaper [edited in Cernauti]. My father was a very well known man.
Romania
As far as politics in my childhood is concerned, dad was threatened that if he didn't quit politics he would be imprisoned. The commissary called my grandfather David's attention to it, and he came and he kneeled in from of my father, asking him to give up politics. I know he was also beaten once, he had his arm in plaster, and his bone didn't heal for a long time. I think my father's inclination towards politics appeared when he was a young boy - he was a party member in the Social Democratic Party, a party that was illegal back then, during the legionaries' time.
Romania
We had books at home, but when the legionaries [2] came to power, we buried two trunks with books in the back of the courtyard. Dad dug them out when the Russians came. Dad loved the poems of Heinrich Heine, Schiller, Goethe very much [some of the greatest German writers, 18th century] - slightly right wing writers. He liked to recite them in German. Dad also acted when I was small. So did mum. The acting evenings were held in a hall - cultural evenings were held. They read newspapers too - my father generally read German newspapers. He also had press subscriptions - he received magazines from Czechoslovakia too, because he liked politics, verses, and poetry a lot.
Romania
My father knew Yiddish, but he talked to us only in German, which was his native tongue, and ours too. Both parents spoke German. Although I don't speak Yiddish, I would understand it, because I speak German and Yiddish is similar to German.
, Ukraine