My mother was born in 1885 in Tiszalok, this is a little village near Debrecen as well. My mother went to school, I think she graduated from a high school for girls in Debrecen. But she did tell me one thing, that she would have liked to become a teacher, and there were possibilities, but her parents didn’t want her to. And my mother could read Hebrew, even though she didn’t go to cheder; I don’t know who taught her, but she could read it well. She also spoke French, she was a well-read woman. And the governess also taught her some things, like German, a language she also spoke. My mother knew a great deal about Franz Iosef’s empire, about World War I, how and why did that war start, how the Austro-Hungarian Empire was organized here. My mother knew these things, she told me about them. My mother read a lot. She was a well-read woman, she read a lot, a lot of literature, at the manor in Debrecen there had been a library as well.
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Gotterer Borbala Piroska
I knew grandmother better, because she lived with grandfather in my aunt’s Charlotte house in Budapest. I went there on vacations, I spent my holidays there with them for a while. I know the house where my grandparents lived in Budapest, that’s where I knew my grandmother after the war [World War I]. It was a very spacious house, very modern and very beautiful. There were four rooms and there was a room for the servant. They had a servant and she had her own room. There was a hallway and to the left and to the right were two rooms, plus the bathroom. It was a big deal to have a bathroom with faience at that time. The house was luxurious and they had employees. I don’t know many things about grandmother from my mother.
The good situation in Debrecen was lost because of uncle Anton. Uncle Anton was loafer. Because of him the estate was lost, it went up in smoke. He subscribed a note of hand to somebody, a friend. He was an officer, and he got drunk like officers do, who knows what they did. Nobody knows. But some day they just showed up with that note to my grandfather. It had an extraordinary value, and all he could do was to sell all he had and pay. My grandfather was too generous, he didn’t have to do that because Anton wasn’t worth it. It would have served him right to be thrown in jail. My poor grandfather, honest as he was, paid with everything he had for his madness. He should have let Anton be taken where he deserved. My mother told me that much, that grandfather fell ill because of Anton, because he lost everything he ever had and that he became indifferent to all around him; he wasn’t exactly ill, but he was melancholic, nothing interested him and he died early, in 1923, in Budapest.
There was a big Jewish community in Debrecen, people were religious there. They used to go to church on Saturdays and on other holidays. I know that the children, I can’t say all, but many, went to cheder. All my uncles could read in Hebrew, they learnt that from cheder. My grandparents from Debrecen were religious, they observed the traditions, but averagely, not to an extreme. The holidays were observed, and they ate kosher food; grandmother observed the traditions in her house as she wanted, she was very religious, and they went to the synagogue.
Mother also said that they had two spirits plants, which were their property, it was grandfather‘s own investment. They had a manor on the estate, with a garden, but I can’t say what the estate was like. They lived there during summers, but in winters they lived in the city, on Hatvani Street. Mother also told me that every year they raised 200 pigs in the forest (there was a forest as well), because pigs needed to feed on plants from the forest, with acorns. They sold the pigs, and they kept the money. There were workers working on the estate, many of them, my mother told me, and they sometimes had to cook for them. My grandfather had an administrator there who was in charge of the estate, and some sort of a manager for the animals. They also practiced agriculture on the estate, they grew wheat; there, where the estate was, is the best plain in Hungary. Grandfather had rented that terrain, and therefore he could do anything on it, for as long as he paid the rent. All the profit from the pigs, the wheat fields and the spirits plants was his.
Before the war [World War I] grandmother and grandfather lived in Debrecen, and they were considered very wealthy people. And indeed they were. Mother told me their house had many rooms, and that there were many servants, because there were many children; and they had tap water in the house at that time. Not to mention that they had electricity as well. The house had antique, expensive and stylish furniture. Heating was made with wood, in terracotta stoves. The garden was for flowers, maybe for greens as well, I don’t know that. Their financial situation was very good, my mother told me sometimes that the girls would have their dresses made at fashion houses, and that all of them were very elegantly dressed. My mother had a governess when she was young, and she also had a chambermaid. And there was a cook in the house as well. She told me that the governesses came and went, because of the boys. But she said that they were generally not very young women, and that they were all very trustworthy people; they were Hungarians and Germans. I know grandparents had a social life, they had friends and they visited them.
My mother’s third sister was Juliana, a housewife, married to Sigismund Laszlo; he was the general manager of the harvesting vehicles division at MAV. Juliana had two children, Ioan, who died in Germany, and Tamas, who lives in Haifa, and has two daughters, Vera and Gabriela. Then there was Margareta, married to Alexandru Solomon, who was the administrator of an estate in Hungary, of course, but I don’t know where. They had four children, three boys and a girl: Ladislau, born in 1910, who was a colonel in the Hungarian army. Ladislau has two sons, and I know one of them is named Alexandru. Ladislau died in 1993. Then there was Mihai, born in 1912, and who died in 1942, a soldier in the Hungarian army; Paul, born in 1924, who was married to Clara, and who had two daughters, Agi and Baba. He was a clerk in the ministry of agriculture in Budapest, and he died in 1988. Margareta’s daughter was called Baba, born in 1921, a teacher in Nyiregyhaza, who was very beautiful. She was gassed in 1944 with her one-year-old child.
Hungary
The second daughter was Lili, who was a journalist. Charlotte Poncz, my mother’s second sister, was born in 1891 and was married to Francisc Poncz. They lived right across the street from the Hungarian parliament, near Gellert, and they had a candy shop on Rakoczi ut [street], which prospered. They were religious people, I know that Francisc wore tallit katan all the time. Charlotte died in 1968.
One of my mother’s fourth sisters was Gizella Meizels, who was a housewife and was married to a rich merchant, Ludovic; they had two daughters: one was Clara, married to a Hungarian officer, Boki Miklos. They both died in 1944: the Russians executed him when Budapest was liberated, because he was a ‘salasist’ [partisan of Szalasi] [3]. I know he loved her very much, and even if he was a Nazi, and he divorced her because she was Jewish, he fought hard to protect her from the war, and he even arranged that she wouldn’t be taken to the ghetto in Budapest. She died during the battles for the liberation of Budapest, before he did.
Ioan, another of my mother’s brothers, was born in 1894; he was a soldier, and he died on the front in 1914, in Doberdo, in Italy. And Anton, the third brother, was an officer in the Austro-Hungarian army [in Kuk] [2] and I know he had children, but I don’t remember whom he was married to.
My mother had three brothers: Ludovic Hidveger, born in Debrecen, who was a MAV [Magyar Allami Vasutak – Hungarian National Railways], engineer, and I know he obtained this position after an examination: he was ‘karamas’, chamberlain [kamaras in Hungarian], and people addressed him with ‘Your excellency’. [Note: The chamberlain is an officer who manages the household of a king or nobleman, or the treasurer of a municipal corporation. After 1526 the function of the chamberlain became formal, they contributed only to ceremonial events.] Emperor Franz Iosef [1] himself remarked him and gave him a distinction. Ludovic was married to Stefania, who was very rich, and they lived in Miskolc. He died in 1940 and she died in 1962. They had two children, Eva, born in 1921, who is still alive and lives in Budapest, and Stefan, born in 1919, who was taken to forced labor by the Hungarian army and died somewhere around the Don in 1944.
My grandparents changed their name from Hidvegy to Hidveger at some time, because of the Austro-Hungarian’s oppression over Jews, but I don’t know when; however, their children were already born, so of course all the family changed their names.
They didn’t wear traditional Jewish clothes: grandmother didn’t wear a wig, she dressed in a modern way, quite in the German fashion of the time – maybe more fashionably than an elderly lady should have dressed.
I once heard my mother say that grandmother studied something at a convent school, but I don’t know more than that, and I know that grandfather had studied at cheder. Grandparents spoke Hungarian between themselves, but they must have known German as well, because they lived in Austro-Hungary. All their records were written in German.
My grandmother lived with my grandfather in Hidveg until my mother, Eszter Lowi, turned six years old; after that, they moved to Debrecen. I know they were tenants on the big estate near Debrecen. The estate belonged to a Hungarian count named Carol Zoltan. This count Carol had an estate of 10,000 hectares, from which my grandfather had 2,000. There were other tenants on that estate as well. My grandfather administered the estate, and my grandmother was a housewife.
My father was born in Tiszadob [in Hungary], a village that belonged to Debrecen, in Hungary, in 1880. That’s where he went to elementary school, and then he went to the normal high school in Vienna. He didn’t study further, back then there was no need for that. As a young man, he learnt how to work with timber from his brother, Armin, because his elder brother had a forest and was involved in timber trade. My father’s job was to go in the forests a lot, he was a forestry engineer. After he graduated from high school, he met my mother there, in Debrecen. Armin, his brother, had been in my mother’s parents’ house, and he met my mother, Eszter Hidveger. And he told his brother, after he graduated from high school: ‘Look, I know a girl; maybe you should meet her too’. And then he took him there and my father was introduced to my mother.
We thought everything would be all right after the revolution [23]. I wasn’t glad that they killed Ceausescu [24]. We thought that culture, freedom were coming…but, what do you know, something came, but there are a lot of steps to be made. I receive help from the German government, because I was deported. It is a monthly fund, and we don’t receive as much as the others, we only get 100 euro per month, others, in other places, receive food as well. In the meantime I received compensations in marks. My health is very bad: I went to the doctor a few days ago and he told me that he couldn’t cure anything, I could walk until now but because of the advanced age the state of my legs has worsened. Now I spent most of my time at home, reading, filling in information in the files I have made about the Jews in Sfantu Gheorghe, and walking with my husband.
I met my present husband, Alexandru Gotterer after a few years, in 1980. He was from Brad, from Hunedoara; his father had been a teacher, and his mother had been a housewife and a sahter’s daughter. During Holocaust he was in Brasov, at forced labor, between 1942 and 1943. He came once in Sfantu Gheorghe with rabbi Ioles from Sfantu Gheorghe. I was there, and I asked that my sister would be given a package as well, if it were possible, because my pension was small and I had to help her. My sister had a very small pension, 400 lei, that was nothing. And I told him to help us; that’s how we met and then we got married in 1984, here in Brasov, in the synagogue. There was a cantor from Bucharest at the ceremony. The civil marriage was held in Sfantu Gheorghe. In 1984, after I became Sany’s wife (that’s what I call my husband, it comes from Sandor, the Hungarian version of Alexandru), I moved here, in Brasov, I went to the synagogue; he was employed as vice-president of the community for 18 years. I learnt here some things I didn’t know, and I heard about the things that happen in Israel, I celebrated the independence day at home.
I had a brother, Emil, who was drafted to forced labor during Holocaust and who ended up after that in Bergen-Belsen. He was liberated by the Belgian Red Cross, which he also joined as a volunteer, and in 1945 he got to Brussels. He was a merchant there, but it didn't work out very well for him, because even after the war there was an anti-Jewish atmosphere. There were no laws or violent things, but he had obstacles as a merchant. Around 1952 he decided to go to Liberia. He wrote to me, and I wrote back. But I had a job with a lot of responsibility and my letter came back with the mention ‘unknown addressee’, but in fact it never left Sfantu Gheorghe. I was a trustworthy person for them, I never did anything wrong, but still they gave me a hard time with the correspondence.
Communism in Romania wasn't bad at all. I had a good job, but a lousy salary, I got half a kilo of salami every month like everyone else, and half a kilo of meat. But I say there were good things as well, some, but they weren't done correctly. For example, at the bank in Sfantu Gheorghe I didn't agree with how people were elected, it was full of fascists there. They are well written by Lenin, but you know how it is, it's like a housewife who has a good recipe but who doesn’t cook it well. That was my opinion. I worked in Sfantu Gheorghe until 1975, when I retired.
I participated in different events, I marched where we were told to go. Every year, on May 1st, on August 23rd [22], we had to go out, to listen to what they said there, from the stands. The lines had a degree of economic importance, we, the ones from the bank, were in the second line, but I don't know who was in the first line. All these units had to take part in the marching in front of the stands, after that we could go home.
I was not a party member, my file was so well made up. They asked me once and they told me I had to bring a recommendation from certain people. And I said: 'If I, who has been to Auschwitz have to bring a recommendation from that person, who was the biggest fascist, then I don't want to get in the party!'. And it was like that, I never signed in, but I didn't have any other problems either. Under communism I had to know everything that was going on in the country, we had to read the newspaper, and we had to explain what we read in the newspaper during party meetings. I had to take a course on communism, I had to know who was Stalin, since when he was in power, things like that, and I had to take an exam. I didn’t want to get involved into politics, and I didn't, I kept clear of these issues, but I knew what was going on. I never had problems, they couldn't do anything to me because my file was made up by the party secretary. One of our superiors from Bucharest told me that I could have been a minister with the file I had.
I once had a problem because I was Jewish. I went to a meeting in Bucharest once. It was summer, and I went in a blouse with short sleeves and one could see the number. A very nice and kind colleague, the Greek Linbidis, came to me and she said to me privately: 'Next time get a blouse with long sleeves, because these [the communists] can't stand Jews'. And indeed I felt that in their attitude. But I also had a very good colleague, a Romanian from Bucharest, he was a boss and he always asked me if I had any displeasures.
My work colleagues were good and bad. The good ones were the friends, I remember an accountant, they were usually the people in my suborder. But there were about three inspectors who couldn't stand me, who wanted to get me fired several times, but I had a good friend among the communists as well, he was a Jew, Lemorti, who had been a chief in Bucharest, and who had come home to Targu Mures, to the party committee. He was an old communist, but he was a true communist, not one of the phony ones. He told me 'don't worry, when you have problems let me know.' I didn't intend to do that, but a friend from Sfantu Gheorghe went to him and when he asked 'How are the Pollaks?', he was told 'they are firing Mrs. Pollak from the bank because she has some colleagues who want her job'. But a call came, and a telegram, which said that they should leave me alone if they don't want to be fired from the bank.
The party secretary at the time, Sogoran, was Luca's brother-in-law, Vasile Luca was in power then [20]. And Luca came from our county, and therefore his brother-in-law was first secretary there. And when this bank instructor came to organize the county branch, he first went to the party to see how things were and ask for help. The party secretary said: 'the first thing I have to say is that I'm hiring Mrs. Pollak (that was my name after my first husband, Mrs. Pollak). I say she is an excellent clerk'. He saw my reports, about what I had done in a year at U.F.D., I had a recommendation for Ferdinand Furgaci, who was the director of the bank, and I was hired at the Investment Bank. Because I was not qualified, they hired me at first as a secretary-typist and secretary-cashier, and then I caught on fast, I learnt accounting in three months, and after that I was promoted accountant, main-accountant, and then I was promoted chief-accountant. Then I was promoted inspector, and chief inspector, and I was director for two or three years, but it wasn't for me because I didn’t want to get involved in politics. The director had to get involved in politics from time to time. I said I'd rather do my job and I remained assistant director.
I found out when the wars in 1967 and 1973 happened, I listened to the radio. In 1967 Israel broke the diplomatic relations with a lot of countries, but they were always good friends with Romania. I know who Moses Rosen was, Moses Rosen [19] arranged so that so many people could leave. And I always said that he did a very good thing.
I used to say that communism has good parts as well, it has beautiful and good ideas, but that Lenin understood that this ideas were not for a nation that wasn't cultured, that doesn't know much and that has a lot to learn first to understand communism. I still sustain this idea, that the cultured men should uphold the society.
I knew I couldn't emigrate, because I couldn’t stand the heat. My sister couldn't leave either, she was still ill after the camp, and my husband didn't want that because he too was sick. I would have liked to go even in those conditions, but my husband told me I wouldn't stand the heat and that we wouldn't go there so that I could get sick.
After repatriation, I had more Jewish friends. That's how it turned out then, Jews were more around Jews and Christians around Christians. Each was comfortable with his kind. When I heard that the state of Israel existed, we had a big dinner at home, all my friends came, I was very happy. I had many friends, we were a circle of 20 persons, but they left when aliyah was made in 1960, and they all left. Clara and I lost contact. I don't write letters to her anymore, but when I go to Covasna, we meet and talk.
There was a synagogue in Sfantu Gheorghe, very beautiful. After deportation, after I got married, I celebrated the holidays at home, but I didn't cook kosher. I always light two candles on Friday, even today, and I say the prayer, I know it by heart. That's what supported my in camp, I always thought about my mother lighting candles on Saturdays, and that I had to make it home to light the candles. I always said the prayer in camp, it was the only thing that they couldn't take from me.