I got alienated from religion, we weren’t members of the Jewish community for quite a while. You want me to be honest and tell you why we became members of the Jewish community in Marosvasarhely? Due to our friend, Ferike Velcer, who worked at Prodcomplex as manager, and who used to buy us matzah, because we liked it very much. At one moment he told us, look, guys, I can’t get you more, because they would only give for me, that is they only gave them the amount allotted for a family. So we signed up. And the people from the Community were very nice, because they never asked us why did we sing up that late. Andris wasn’t religious, but neither was I. Andris told me: ‘We have to belong somewhere!’ There was someone who came every month to collect the membership fee.
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Displaying 45751 - 45780 of 50826 results
Anna Eva Gaspar
Doru’s father was a Romanian Orthodox priest, he died already. He ran away, went to buy some cigarettes, and never went back. Doru was still a little boy. He managed to get across the border when the Russians came in [in World War II, after 23rd August 1944] [6]. He never saw his father again. So they went through quite a tragedy. Her mother worked at the Orthodox episcopate as clerk in Rimnicu Vilcea. She had nothing against Doru marrying my daughter. Although she knew we were Jews. After one year of marriage Andriska was born.
My daughter was attending the university in Bucharest. She was in the last year, and during the Christmas holiday they came home and then she married Doru, her current husband. They had no religious marriage, just a civil one. Nor I, nor Andris had no problem with the fact that her husband was not Jewish, but Romanian.
I suffered quite a lot because of the Ceausescu [5] era. I was feeling humiliated as a human. Well, we had to live under continuous constraints. Then we heard the terrible rumors about our phone being tapped.
I couldn’t sympathize with communism because I was brought up otherwise. When someone showed me a communism, I was still a child then: ‘Look, that’s a communist!’ , and I’ll never forget this, I was puzzled: ‘What kind of a disease is communism?’ My grandmother never let me play or make friends with poor children, because she wanted me to maintain a certain level. I told her I didn’t care who their mother or father were, I just liked the kid and I like being friends with them. She really bugged me a lot with this. Because: ‘You should only make friends with the rich ones!’ So I was raised according to opposite mentality. I had no problems during the communist era. I weren’t happy with it, but I kept quiet During the communist era Andris has never used in his favor the fact that he was a chief engineer.
At that time communism was established for quite a while. My husband was a member of the party, and he couldn’t have been chief engineer otherwise. When he came home [after the war] he could have sworn the communist party was the only one which that could protect the Jews. I didn’t see anything in it [in communism]. I just wanted people to live in peace.
Me and my husband never went there [to the prayer house]. To be completely honest, the town was completely unfamiliar for me, totally unfamiliar. I’m not the person to make friends too easy anyway. If I become friends with someone, that’s a different story, but not this way. There was no anti-Seimitism at the soda-works, neither. They never made Andris feel he was a Jew, although I’m sure they knew.
There were no other Jews in the block. They didn’t know what a Jew was. They just didn’t know; there was no anti-Semitism there. Once some neighbors came asking me why I was looking over the fence at the entrance of the block. |On the other side of the fence there were some small houses. They told me there are some very weird people in the back of the yard. So what was I doing there, looking what on the other side of the fence was? In the end it turned out there was a Jewish prayer-house. And it was Friday evening, and the kids heard some singing and they were very amused about that people were nodding and singing in tallit. Then I explained them whom the Jews are, because they had no idea what a Jew, an ‘evreu’ [Jew in Romanian] was. They didn’t even heard the word ‘jidan’ [the derogatory term for a Jew], it was only used in the Regat, in the area of Bucharest, I suppose.
I was a housewife, and took care of the children. My daughter started school in Stej, and finished two grades of elementary school there. She studied in Romanian. Andris wanted badly to have another child. I told him: ‘If you can get me a mother-in-law or a mother, or an aunt, grandmother, then we will have another child.’ I was working: knitting, sewing, everything that had something to do with needlework. I worked for the neighbors and everyone. I had so much work I was almost unable to keep up. I started knitting, sewing in Gyulafehervar. I couldn’t take a job because although there were opportunities, but what about the child? Back then there were no daycare centers. So I made money as I could.
We stayed there for six years, until Andris graduated from university. We had no holidays, Andris had no vacation for six years, because he took his holiday during the examination period, because back then there was no vacation for studies. Anyway, those were hard times. But the professors were very nice. He sent them the works and they sent them back to him corrected. And he had to take the exams once a year. If he had to retake any exams in the fall, he had to take them once again.
There were around ten families living in the castle. Each of them got one or two rooms, depending on the fact that the employee was alone or with the family. Everyone had a bathroom, kitchen, closet, everything they wanted. We liked it very much there. It was beautiful, a nice little apartment. If it was rearranged after Pokol went away, that is whether it was the same when he lived there, with this many kitchens, I don’t know. In front of the castle it was a beautiful garden. We didn’t live there too much, only one winter and one spring.
I wasn’t cooking because I didn’t want to have smell of food in the room, so we subscribed at the canteen. I never ate so much bacn than in that period. If I was kosher, I would have never eaten it! My husband didn’t observe the Jewish traditions, nor did his parents. After the war we had no problems because we were Jews. We never felt we were considered different [by the non-Jews]. I have been among Hungarians and Romanians, but we never faced such problems. Wherever we went, our neighbors, and everyone knew who and what we were, because they could find out from the office. But we never had any conflicts with anyone. We always were on good terms with people.
In 1950 my daughter Veronika Gaspar was born. I gave birth to her in Nagyvarad, when I was 27. Andris was 28. We moved to Borsabanya. This is a small country town in tip of Maramaros. We felt quite well there, it was a beautiful scenery. I, as wife, I moved like a snail, with the house. We never asked ourselves the question whether I should go with him or not. We went together. There they gave us a one-room flat with all mod cons. This meant the bedroom, the children’s room, the bathroom and the kitchen were all in the same room.
In the meantime my grandfather’s estate was nationalized. Recently I got something back from it, but nothing then.
From the little money I have left I bought some furniture I’m still using, but we had nothing. We were so poor that the first thing I did was to have him made six pairs of pants. He was employed, he had a salary, and we never had financial problems. We always discussed what we could afford from it and we bought those things. Since my husband was working in Rev, we moved there, in the village. We lived there for about one year, then the whole office was moved to Bratka, come thirty kilometers from Rev in the direction of Kolozsvar. [Editor’s note: to be more precise, the distance between Rev and Bratka is 15 km.] We were given an official quarters so we had no such problems.
And then we got married in 1948. We only had civil marriage. I didn’t divorce according to the Jewish prescriptions, because we went to the Jewish community and they advised us not to, because it is a long procedure and we couldn’t afford it. I got my civil divorce, I still have the decision. So my second marriage was only a civil one, with two witnesses, and after that we and our friends, former classmates went to a restaurant. I even remember that we couldn’t order too much because we had no money, and I found a fishbone in my potato soup. This happened in Nagyvarad’s most elite restaurant, the Transilvania. And it turned out to be such a wonderful marriage you could rarely find, to be honest. We had no arguments or any misunderstandings for 48 years.
I respected Andris very much, but love or something like that it was out of the question... Then he wrote a statement, it got lost once we moved: ‘In full possession of my faculties I sign that I will take Anni as my wife.’ The whole thing was a joke. I gave it a thought, because I went through a marriage once and was a love match.
When we met he was already working at a mining company, he was the manager at a clay and kaolin mine in Rev [Bihar county]. He was hired as manager although he only had a high school graduation diploma. And from then on he came to Nagyvarad every Saturday-Sunday.
His elder brother has not been deported, because he, for the sake of his wife, converted to Christianism and he wasn’t taken away because he wore the white armband.
After I moved to Nagyvarad I met on the Main Street Andras Gaspar, Andris. He fell on my neck, since we were friends and lived opposite to each other. During the Holocaust he was a forced laborer in Poland. To be honest, we didn’t really talked about this subject. Some time ago I wasn’t able to talk about this, I didn’t even tell anything to my children. He was a real sportsman, he played tennis and was a swimmer. But when he came back, he was nothing but skin and bones. In the last weeks-months of detention they were all thrown in a relocation camp. He was amongst the first to come home to Nagyvarad.
Romania
When I had a little money, I rented a room, a small apartment, I wasn’t willing to take advantega of my lady-friend. It had a small vestibule, a washbasin alcove and a toilet. It was just what I needed. In the meantime I learnt stenography and typing from a teacher called Rado, because I wasn’t feeling strong enough to go to university.
My ‘dear’ husband wasn’t willing to give me what I was entitled to... He was fond of me in his own way, but I wasn’t willing to live with him anymore. After some hard time he gave me back my clothes, but he refused to give me my things, like the photos left in the apartment the neighbors gave back to him.
My ex-husband was away quite a lot, his job required it, but he mostly didn’t take me to the entertainment events and balls. And the truth is that in time I found out he only cheated me with two women: anyone and everyone... And I was there alone in that big house, and in order to be able to defend myself, he gave me a gun. A pistol trimmed with pearls. And I shot myself. I tried to kill myself, because I thought I couldn’t live with this man, and I have nowhere to go so I didn’t want to live anymore.
There were people living in our apartment, some strangers have been moved there. There were people moved in every house and apartment, I don’t know who moved them in. The house was there... empty. I couldn’t find anything. There were no pieces of furniture, only the chandeliers. I still remember that out in the yard our white sideboard, the Russians took everything else away. They emptied the house. None of our pieces of furniture were left there. They made a law that if they found any locked, uninhabited house, they broke in and everything [they could find] was taken to a warehouse. I don’t know when this happened, because I wasn’t there, the neighbors related me this. Those who came home could go to the warehouse and could pick out the things they said it was theirs. By the time I arrived home, the warehouse was empty. Well, it was easy to say that something belonged to you, a piano or something... There was a Steinfeld piano, the furniture for four rooms, in a word they took away everything. First the Russians, than anyone who were interested could take from the warehouse whatever they wished to. Pots, everything, everything.
And when the war was over and Transylvania was reattached to Romania, he came home from Budapest. The rest of his family didn’t come home. He was the only one, and one of his cousins, Laci, Miksa’s son. Laci came home, and then emigrated to America. I don’t know where he lives, if he is alive. My husband took over the management of the estate and of the mill, and he made loads of money.
I went home to Alsoszopor, to my husband. He remained there, he wasn’t deported. He was in Budapest all the time, free. He had some relatives there: His grandmother, grandfather and aunt. His mother was originally from Budapest. My husband managed to escape from the labor camp in Nagybanya and lived in Budapest until the end of the war. He hid there. He was smart and managed to give out himself as Hungarian. He wore Burger boots. That was in vogue than, it had long legs, had a yellowish-brownish, leather-like color and had laces. These were the so-called Burger boots, it is most certainly of German origins. He considered himself a Hungarian patriot. And not everyone could afford themselves to wear Burger boots. This could also be a symbol of nobility. He used to walk around Budapest and he didn’t look like a Jew, and probably this is why he was never asked to show his papers, otherwise it would have been al over for him.
Romania
To be completely honest, when I came home I told everyone I’m the fearcest anti-Semite in Nagyvarad. Because the Jewish foremen hurt us more than the SS. And they did it only to impress the Germans. And they had a very easy life. How is that possible that your own people would do you wrong? We had to stand in line for meal. Ant there were some very resourceful young girls who did it twice. The cook came out, who was a Jew, too: you already got some, and she took me out of the line, as well, among others, and I was left without food until the evening, because they didn’t give me lunch, neither.
So I slept at my relatives. I was very happy. The first thing I did was to take a bath, I haven’t had a bath in a bath-tub for one and a half year. And they weren’t able to get me out of there: ‘come out now, are you still alive?’ they were shouting. I didn’t take a bath for one and a half years... it was no use to wash up in cold water... anyway, enough of that. I managed to brush my teeth and they gave me fresh underwear, but the clothes didn’t fit me so I had to wear the ones I got from the Russians. When we left the hospital we received skirts, a blouse, a jacket, a handkerchief, some stockings and other things.
We reported there with the Russian document, and got fifteen hundred pengos. There, in Budapest, we were told at the station which school we had to go to. This was before September 15th, before the school year began. We were accommodated in a school. They gave us someblankets and we slept on the floor, but we were used to that, we had no problem with that. They gathered us there. I you had any relatives, you were allowed to go and sleep there and the next day you could return. We got some food. The Association of Jewish Deportees helped us, so we became human again. With the fifteen hundred pengos we were able to buy ourselves food, soap, toothpaste and toothbrush. This was the first thing we did.
Five women came home from our group, but I'm the one alive. And there is Edit, who lives in Brasso. She recovered much sooner than me, but we said that we are sisters. 'The knotted one' understood that we are siblings, and she asked us 'Why you have different names?' We answered that I adopted my husband’s name and Edit kept her maiden name. We lied. She didn't want to come home without me. And we came home together. I’m keeping in touch with her since. We talk on the phone every month, sometimes I’m calling her, on other occasions she does. In the past we used to visit each other, but she’s not young anymore, although she is younger than me with four or five years...