השואה
מחקר ואוספים
הנצחה
חינוך והוראה מתוקשבת
מוזיאון ותערוכות
חסידי אומות העולם
עדותה של סילביה (בלאו) וירצבאום ילידת 1928 Borod רומניה על קורותיה בגטו Oradea, ב-Auschwitz, ב-Oberhohenalbe, ב-Pocking, ב-Paris ועוד
Testimony
Name of Interviewee: Sylvia Wirtzbaum
Name of Interviewer: Tami Katz
Cassette Number: VT-9796
Date: June 7, 2009
Name of Typist: Cheryl Balshayi
Names:
Borod
Oradea
Auschwitz
Oberhohenelbe
Praha
Pocking
Paris
New York
New Jersey
Q: (Hebrew) Today is Sunday, ט"ב ב'סיון, תשס"ט, June 7th, 2009. I, Tami Katz, am interviewing for Yad Vashem Mrs. Sylvia Wirtzbaum, née Blau, born in Oradea Mare, Romania, 1928. Mrs. Wirzbaum will tell us about life under Hungarian rule, 1940, about the German occupation in 1944, about transfer to the ghetto, about transfer to Auschwitz, 1944, about transfer to the work camp Oberhohenelbe in Czechoslovakia, 1944, about liberation by the Russians in 1945, about the transfer to Praha and return to Oradea Mare, 1945, about transfer to the displaced persons’ camp in Germany, transfer to Paris, and her immigration to the United States, 1948 and her life there.
Shalom, Mrs. Wirtzbaum. Can you tell me please where and when you were born>?
A: I was born in Borod, Romania, 1928, September 12th.
Q: It was next to Oradea Mare?
A: It was next to Oradea Mare.
Q: And you grew up in Oradea Mare?
A: Yes.
Q: Before we talk about your family, what do you remember, visually even, as a child in Oradea? Can you tell me about Oradea Mare at little bit?
A: We were a very happy and stable family. My family was very Orthodox.
Q: We will talk about that. I am talking about the house, the physical place itself. Oradea. Can you tell us something about the town? It was a big city?
A: Well, yes, a big…compared to New York it was a very small town.
Q: Do you have visual memories of the place? How it looked?
A: Yes, I have visual memories.
Q: What are your visual memories of the place? How many people lived there, do you think, when you were a child?
A: I don’t remember.
Q: Many Jews?
A: Many Jews, yes.
Q: They were the largest population in the city? No.
A: No. The Jews are never the largest population.
Q: And you lived in a house, in an apartment?
A: In a house.
Q: With a yard?
A: With a yard.
Q: It was a big house?
A: No, it wasn’t a big house. We were six people – four children and my parents. And my grandparents came every day for lunch to us.
Q: They lived also in Oradea?
A: Yes.
Q: And you had a garden? You grew things?
A: Yes, we had a garden and we grew vegetables. We had trees, cherry trees, and I think apple and a plum tree, very good plums.
Q: Also animals?
A: No. No animals.
Q: And what else are your visual memories of Oradea? What do you remember? There were parks? There was a river? Can you tell us?
A: Yes, it has a park and it had a river. Since we were brought up Orthodox, we were not allowed to go to the swimming pool. We went to the river. My brothers like to go to the river and catch fish. We used to make the fish sometimes. My mother made the fish. We were just Orthodox and we went to school after the Hungarians came and occupied us.
Q: Yes, we will hear about that. I will ask about it. Who was your father? What was hi name?
A: Albert Blau.
Q: He was born also in Oradea Mare?
A: No.
Q: Do you know where he came from?
A: No, I don’t know. He came from, I think, not far from us, where he was born, but he came to marry my mother and then he stayed there.
Q: In Oradea. And his parents – did you know his grandparents?
A: Yes.
Q: What were their names? Do you know? From your father’s side.
A: Herman Blau and Cecilia Blau.
Q: And they lived in Oradea, or in the other town?
A: In the other town.
Q: And you knew them?
A: I knew them very well. They loved me and I loved them.
Q: What did your grandfather do? Do you know? Herman Blau. What was his occupation?
A: He sold textiles to the Romanian peasants.
Q: He had a store?
A: A store, yes.
Q: And they were Orthodox?
A: Yes.
Q: They saw themselves as Hungarian Jews from before the war? You don’t know. But real Orthodox.
A: Very Orthodox, yes. My grandmother shaved her hair and didn’t even put a wig on, just little hairs.
Q: And he?
A: He had peyos. My father didn’t have. He just shaved his head and he slept with a kippa and if in the night it fell off his head, he put the light on and put in on.
Q: And your father, so he got a Jewish education? He went to a cheder, your father? Do you know?
A: I don’t know, but I know he had a Jewish education.
Q: You don’t know if he went to a cheder or to a yeshiva or anything like that?
A: I have no idea. I don’t know. But I know that in shul – he went, of course, every day in the morning and in the evening to shul and on Yom Kippur he used to sing Kol Nidrei because he had a very good voice.
Q: We will get to the holidays. And your mother – what was her name?
A: Teresa.
Q: And her maiden name?
A: Teresa Wirtzbaum.
Q: Your mother was also Wirtzbaum?
A: Yes. Because I married my uncle.
Q: Her brother?
A: Her brother. My mother’s brother.
Q: And the name was Wirtzbaum, Teresa. And what were her parents’ names? Her parents. What were their names?
A: Her mother was Rose and her father was Samuel.
Q: And you knew them also?
A: I didn’t know my grandfather because he died, but my grandmother was in America.
Q: But when you were born, you knew your grandmother? After you were born.
A: Yes.
Q: You knew your grandmother, but your grandfather was…
A: I knew my father’s mother.
Q: No, I am talking about your mother’s side.
A: From my mother, no. Only when I came to America I met her.
Q: When you were born she was already living in the United States?
A: Yes.
Q: And what do you know about them? They were from Oradea, your mother’s parents?
A: Yes. Around there somewhere.
Q: They were born also there, in Oradea?
A: I don’t know.
Q: And do you know what your grandfather from your mother’s side, what was his occupation, what he did? Do you have any idea what he did? How did he make a living? Your grandfather.
A: Which grandfather?
Q: From your mother’s side. You didn’t know him, but do you know…?
A: Yes, I know, He was fanatic religious.
Q: Real Orthodox?
A: Orthodox, with a beard and peyos. And what he did, he was a shadchan.
Q: A shadchan? Matchmaker.
A: Matchmaker.
Q: That was his profession?
A: That’s what he did.
Q: And so your parents got to know each other by a matchmaking also?
A: I don’t know how. All I know, that my father married my mother because he told that the family in America was going to bring my whole family to America, but they didn’t bring them because my mother’s sister’s husband, who was a brother-in-law to my father, didn’t want to take the burden to be responsible for a big family like ours, six people. So he perished in Auschwitz instead.
Q: So your parents got married in Oradea Mare?
A: I don’t know. I guess so.
Q: And they lived there. And how many children were you?
A: Four.
Q: You were the oldest?
A: I was the oldest.
Q: And then? Tell us their names.
A: And then a boy and then a girl and then a boy.
Q: So what was the name of the boy, of your brothers and sisters?
A: The oldest boy was Alex and the youngest boy was Ernest and my sister was Judy, Yehudit.
Q: Yehudit. You were four children. And you said that your house, your parents’ house, was Orthodox or traditional?
A: Orthodox.
Q: Real Orthodox?
A: Real Orthodox.
Q: So your father went to shul every morning?
A: Every morning and every evening.
Q: At the shul, the synagogue in Oradea – there were probably a few synagogues.
A: We went to the Orthodox.
Q: To the Orthodox. There was also a Neological? Do you know?
A: Yes.
Q: There was a Neological community?
A: Yes.
Q: But you belonged to the Orthodox.
A: My father was against it.
Q: He was against it?
A: Yes.
Q: There were tensions between the Neologic…
A: Yes.
Q: You remember that as a girl?
A: I remember my father used to be very angry.
Q: At the Neological.
A: Yes.
Q: The whole debate between…Did you understand the differences, as a child, between the Neological and the Orthodox?
A: Yes, sure.
Q: You were aware of it?
A: I was aware because there was a university. It was called Borjdo (sp?). And when I was about fourteen – fifteen I went to Auschwitz – but a bigger girl, I used to go there and meet the boys and they were not Orthodox and my father would kill me.
Q: He was upset. He knew that you were meeting them?
A: Yes.
Q: And he wasn’t happy about it.
A: No.
Q: So it was an issue.
A: It was a big issue, yes.
Q: So he would go to the Orthodox…do you remember the synagogue in Oradea?
A: It is in front of me all the time.
Q: Can you tell us something about the synagogue in Oradea?
A: Well, you know it was an Orthodox synagogue, so the women were praying upstairs and the men downstairs, and the old ladies didn’t have eyeglasses or something. And my mother didn’t go to shul on Shabbat, but I went to pray for the old ladies.
Q: So your mother would go only on holidays and thing like that?
A: Only holidays.
Q: Shabbat she would remain home. Tell us about how was it Shishi, Shabbat. How was the Shabbat?
A: Well, you know, Thursday my mother used to bake coffee cake, kugelhof, a loaf like this. Delicious cake.
Q: It’s called kugelhof?
A: Kugelhof, yes. And on Friday she used to cook.
Q: Also the challos? She would bake challot?
A: And every Saturday we had cholent with goose neck, with kugel. Not like derma here. In fact, I told my son-in-law I would love to make kugel with cholent, but you can’t get goose here. In the winter, every Friday we had a goose for Shabbat and Friday we had the goose liver for lunch and the skin…
Q: The schmaltz, grivenes?
A: Grivenes, yes.
Q: That was traditional.
A: With mashed potatoes, yes. And cucumber salad, sour cucumbers.
Q: And you had the Shabbat meal on Friday and you had guests, or it was only the family?
A: My father always brought home, I don’t know, a schnorrer. How do you say it?
Q: We understand. Oirech (אורח) they would say.
A: And he was full of lice and dirty, and he had to sit by the table with us.
Q: He brought him from shul?
A: From shul. And he sent my little brother home, “Put another seat because I am bringing home a guest.”
Q: He always used to bring someone?
A: Always, always.
Q: And you would have the Kiddush?
A: Yes. First we would have the Kiddush and in the summer we had it outside and my mother made eggs with liver and onions. My father put the handkerchief on our head and he prayed and we had to kiss…
Q: He would bless you every Shabbat?
A: Yes. And then we had a Kiddush with coffee cake or something and a drink. And once we had eggs on the table, for dinner, to have an appetizer. All of a sudden we saw the guest man full of eggs on his face, on his beard. We went to look. He ate up all the eggs.
Q: He finished everything! That is a clear memory. You remember that.
A: Yes, because we were laughing. And one more thing happened. My father was already a soldier and as a Romanian Jewish man my father wasn’t home. We were invited to my aunt.
Q: You mean they took him to the Romanian army?
A: Yes, the Romanian army. Took him to the army.
Q: This was when you were a child?
A: When I was a child.
Q: He served in the army?
A: He served in the army.
Q: For how long?
A: Until the Hungarians came and…
Q: Oh, so you are talking about the late ‘30s.
A: Yes.
Q: Okay, we will get to that. But as a young man he also served in the World War, the First World War?
A: Yes.
Q: In the Austro-Hungarian army?
A: Yes. And he was locked up in Italy in…what it is called? I can’t think of it now.
Q: First World War.
A: Yes.
Q: In Italy.
A: Yes.
Q: He was a war prisoner?
A: A prisoner.
Q: He was a war prisoner in Italy. As an Austro-Hungarian soldier. He told you about it?
A: Yes. He always told us about it. So when the Hungarians occupied us, somehow my father got home from the Romanians. He snuck away or something.
Q: Okay, we will get to it. I want to still talk about your early childhood, about the holidays. You talked about Shabbat, about the Shabbat dinner. Were there songs? Would you sing also, around the table?
A: Yes, sure.
Q: Zemirot?
A: Yes, of course.
Q: Do you remember anything that you would sing? Do you have any memory of something?
A: What was that song that we always sang? What do you sing Saturday after the meal?
Q: Lecha dodi? There are all kinds of…
A: I don’t know, but we sang.
Q: And Shabbat itself?
A: Shabbat? Every Shabbat there was an old lady that lived alone. After we ate we had to bring food to the old lady, but I couldn’t bring it by myself, or we had a girl that helped my mother. She couldn’t take it because it wasn’t kosher enough. So we had to go with her. I was the oldest. I always had to go with her.
Q: This old woman was a relative of yours?
A: No. Just a stranger.
Q: It was like tzedaka, like doing charity, bringing food to her?
A: Yes. We brought her food. And I made programs with the children and when I just wanted to say that I didn’t want to go, my father was telling me, “Go in the corner and turn around and you are punished.”
Q: You were punished.
A: Yes. After they ate everything I had to come to my father and say, “Daddy dear, I’ll never be bad.” And I kissed his hand and then he forgave me.
Q: So this was Shabbat. What did your father do? What did he make a living of?
A: He was in the leather business.
Q: He sold leather?
A: He had a manufacturer and he sold it and took orders, I think. Something like that.
Q: It was a big business?
A: No. I don’t know.
Q: He had a warehouse? A store?
A: No. He made the leather. He bought the skin in the market and then he gave it to these people to make it, but the factory was near the house.
Q: It was his factory?
A: No. I know we were not allowed to go there.
Q: But he owned the factory. Your father, he owned the factory?
A: Yes.
Q: And it was near the house, you say. He had other workers working for him?
A: Yes.
Q: Many workers?
A: Five, six.
Q: Jewish or non-Jewish?
A: Non-Jewish.
Q: Non-Jewish workers.
A: Jewish workers didn’t work at that. That was the problem.
Q: And your mother was at home?
A: At home, yes.
Q: And he was well-off? He was a wealthy man?
A: No. We had everything, but he never accumulated wealth because he always was ready to go to America. I think that’s why.
Q: He was thinking of immigrating to America. But you were well-off. You didn’t feel any shortage of anything.
A: No, we had no shortage. We had clothes, we had food we travelled.
Q: And so you described the Shabbat. Can you also describe how you celebrated the Jewish holidays? Maybe we start with Pesach. What do you remember about Pesach?
A: Well, Purim, my mother baked a big, big, big basket full of all kinds of cakes, and the one cake we called delkli – nuts and rolled nuts – that stayed till Erev Pesach. On Pesach, every book – you know, my father had these kind of books – every one with a feather was cleaned out.
Q: For the chametz?
A: Yes. And then the shammas came and burned it and they gave him some money.
Q: Burned the chametz.
A: Yes. And we ate that cake for breakfast Erev Pescah and that’s how we finished it. And then, of course, my mother made a big dinner with turkey, I think. Not goose. Turkey.
Q: For the Seder.
A: For the Seder.
Q: Can you tell us what were the preparations for the Seder?
A: Yes. My mother made the beets. She pickled them about six weeks before.
Q: So she prepared a lot of food.
A: A lot of food. And she was very good.
Q: Very good cook?
A: She made excellent food.
Q: You still can smell and taste it?
A: Yes.
Q: And everything was changed at home?
A: All the dishes. Everything.
Q: You helped her or she had help at home?
A: She had help, but I liked to be in the kitchen all the time.
Q: And the help she had – she had a maid who was…?
A: Non-Jewish. Romanian.
Q: Who helped at home. Helped her cleaning.
A: Cleaning, and in the cooking too.
Q: Also helping like a nanny, with the children?
A: No.
Q: With housework.
A: Housework. The children, my mother. If we came home from school, like four o’clock and my mother took a nap, my father used to go wake her up to give us a snack.
Q: So during Pesach you changed all the dishes. What else do you remember? Would you get new clothes for Pesach, the children?
A: New clothes, new shoes. My mother bought the fabric and we went to the dressmaker and she made the clothes. And my brothers also got new clothes.
Q: What do you remember of Leil HaSeder, the Seder itself?
A: We were all the relatives.
Q: They were all together?
A: All together, in our house.
Q: The grandparents as well?
A: Of course. And it lasted until twelve, one o’clock, the Seder.
Q: And you had Sederim? Two nighs?
A: Two nights. And my father wore a kittel. And pillows on the chairs. And he sat at the table and he washed his hands.
Q: And he would read the Hagaddah?
A: Yes. All night.
Q: In Hebrew?
A: In Hebrew. He didn’t understand it, but he read it.
Q: And there was the Afikoman also?
A: Yes, sure.
Q: For the children.
A: Of course. Everything. Everything Orthodox.
Q: You liked it, the Seder?
A: Yes, sure. We loved it. It was a big holiday.
Q: Other holidays? Rosh HaShana, Yom Kippur, Succot? Do you remember? Can you tell us about it?
A: We had a succa.
Q: In the garden?
A: We had like a storage room and the ceiling was like this, closed, and at Succot, my father opened it like this and we had the walls and then we decorated it with apples, with fruit.
Q: The children would decorate?
A: Yes. My father and the children.
Q: He would also sleep in the succa?
A: He would sleep in the succa.
Q: Despite even the weather, if it was raining or something?
A: I don’t know. But I know he slept there. We always went in there to look how he slept.
Q: And what do you remember of Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur?
A: The same Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur like here.
Q: You were in shul?
A: Yes. All day. With white kittel and with shoes, no leather shoes.
Q: Even though he was in the leather business.
A: And we had straw on the floor.
Q: And you would celebrate also Chanukah?
A: Yes. Chanukah, everything.
Q: What was it like?
A: Chanukah, my mother had a chandelier in the…it was a dining room, but my older brother slept there. There was a sofa. That’s where he slept. They had a chandelier that had, I don’t know, some kind of a stone and they made out of wood a Chanukah thing, you know. They put all the four letters in there. And my father took that off before Chanukah and he filled it and made a…
Q: Like a candle.
A: No.
Q: Oh, a dreidel.
A: A dreidel, yes.
Q: You would play with the dreidels.
A: Yes. And we got money for it. We played that every evening.
Q: Chanukah gelt.
A: Yes. And of course my mother made delicious food. She was a very good cook. And they say that in America I am a very good cook.
Q: You learned it from your mother?
A: There is a feeling.
Q: You got something at home. Something you grew up with, with the kitchen. You got the same talent for cooking. And you still cook the same style? Hungarian?
A: Yes. Mostly Hungarian.
Q: What else do you remember of the holidays? Any other memories?
A: I remember that my mother got dressed very nicely to go to shul. And we were dressed nicely. And Saturday after everybody got up from sleep, the old ladies were sitting outside and they used to say, “Albert, let me see those kids. Bring them over. Teresa’s kids are like dolls in a box.” “And by Teresa you can eat off the floor”, you know, those black seeds, because she was like clean.
Q: Everything was very neat.
A: Everything was very neat. Very neat. And she was very neat, very perfect. She had a special dress. When my father came home from shul she wore that. We had to be in order.
Q: What language did they speak at home?
A: Well, my parents spoke Hungarian and they spoke to us Hungarian. But for some reason, I don’t know the reason, I always never liked the Hungarians and I liked the Romanians better. And I liked to speak Romanian.
Q: So at home you spoke Hungarian. Yiddish as well? Did they speak Yiddish?
A: No.
Q: No Yiddish. Did they know German, your parents?
A: No. My parents spoke Yiddish.
Q: They did speak Yiddish?
A: Yes. All I remember, my mother used to say to my father, “Slog nist”(Yiddish).
Q: Which means?
A: Which means, “Don’t beat up the children.”
Q: He would beat you sometimes?
A: All the time. For every little thing. Lay me in his lap, took his belt off. But at the same time he loved us.
Q: So there was some kind of discipline.
A: Strict, very big discipline.
Q: He was strict, but very loving.
A: Very loving.
Q: So they spoke Hungarian and Yiddish, and did the children know Yiddish as well? Did you know Yiddish? No. So you knew Hungarian and Romanian.
A: Yes.
Q: Your parents knew also German?
A: German? I don’t know.
Q: From the Austro-Hungarian period? Did they know?
A: No, I don’t know. I know my father spoke Italian.
Q: From the time he was a war prisoner.
A: Yes. Right.
Q: Did they know Hebrew?
A: No. Nobody knew Hebrew.
Q: He knew lashon kodesh, the prayers.
A: Yes, all the prayers.
Q: But he didn’t know any Hebrew. Can you tell us…you belonged to the Orthodox community, the Jewish community. Can you tell us a little bit more about the community itself? Obviously it was a Jewish community with all the traditional people doing…there was the shochet and the rabbi and the chazzan. Can you tell us something about the community, the people of the community? The Jewish community.
A: Every week we had a goose, in the fall and winter, and sometimes the geese were not…they blew the neck out, you know, blew it up, and if there was something, then it wasn’t kosher. So we had grocer, a man that had a pharmacy, and he wasn’t kosher and he always used to like to buy the non-kosher geese from us, but my father wouldn’t sell him the geese because…
Q: You grew the geese?
A: No, we bought them. We bought them skinny.
Q: And you grew them.
A: And the girl used to feed the geese.
Q: Was your father involved with the Jewish community? Was he part of the Jewish committee, of the leaders of the community?
A: I’ll tell you what he was. Succot, I think, you give out the Saturday night candles…
Q: For Simchat Torah? For havdalah?
A: The twisted candles. Havdalah. So the rich got the big candles, the poor got the small candles, and my father didn’t like that. Every year he had a fight in the synagogue because of these candles and my mother used to beg him, “Please don’t fight.” But he was fighting.
Q: And he was part of the leadership also? Of the community? Or he wasn’t so much involved in the politics of the community.
A: Yes, I think he was.
Q: He was also involved in charity? Like in the community?
A: Always.
Q: He would give money?
A: We had a Meir Baal Hanes (מאיר בעל הנס) from Israel. We filled it up and then when it was full we took it into shul and we got a new one.
Q: For the Keren Kayemet, you mean? The Keren Kayemet box? The “blue box”? You had it at home.
A: Yes. I have it now too.
Q: And also I am talking about local activities for the Jews, for orphans, for widows, for people who were in need. There was also probably a lot of support.
A: There wasn’t such a thing…that if somebody was an orphan, Jewish, then a family took the orphan and grew up there. There were some poor people. Yes, that’s right. There was a poor family that had ten children and he used to say…on Simchat Torah, my father was sleeping in the afternoon. They put my father out of the bed with the underwear and they were eating up all the food and all the drinks and dancing and music. Always in our house. I don’t know why. And this poor man used to say, “The poor man reaches for what he has.” And the daughter that was my age went barefoot in the winter to school.
Q: They were so poor.
A: That’s how poor they were.
Q: Before you went to school, was there such a thing as kindergarten? Did you go to kindergarten?
A: Yes.
Q: It was Jewish or Romanian?
A: Romanian. I went to Jewish school from four to six every day.
Q: Like a cheder. After. It was a Talmud Torah or Beit Ya’acov?
A: Beit Ya’acov.
Q: It was Beit Ya’acov. Of the religious. For girls. But first you went to kindergarten. It was Romanian. The official language was Romanian. And you went to that kindergarten with Jewish and non-Jewish?
A: Yes.
Q: And the teachers were Jewish, non-Jewish? You have any recollections of the kindergarten?
A: They were not Jewish teachers.
Q: And then you went to elementary school. It was also a Romanian public school?
A: It was Romanian until the Hungarians came to occupy.
Q: I am talking before the Hungarians. I am talking in the ‘30s. We will get to the Hungarians. But then it was Romanians, so it was a public school?
A: Public school.
Q: It wasn’t a Jewish school. It was a public school. And again with non-Jewish. Jewish, non-Jewish. Did you feel different in school?
A: We were not friends with the non-Jewish. There were sixteen girls my age in my class. Of course, three came back.
Q: Sixteen Jewish girls. But how many altogether in a class, with the non-Jewish?
A: Maybe thirty, thirty-five.
Q: So you were like half? Half were Jewish in the class?
A: Yes.
Q: And how were the relationships?
A: Good.
Q: There was no anti-Semitism in school?
A: Between the girls, no.
Q; The teachers?
A: Were alright.
Q: They were Romanians?
A: Yes.
Q: And how did they treat you as Jews?
A: They taught me right. And the principal lived not far from us and he was very nice.
Q: He was Romanian?
A: In fact, when I was in ghetto, my father said, “Oh, my shoes are in such, such drawer in the night table.” I said, “Dad, I’ll get them for you.” I went to the principal and I asked him if I could go home and he said, “Yes, you just go home.” We could have hidden, but my father said, “It’s a war and they are protecting us.”
Q: We’ll get to it. I am talking of the early years of school. So you said the principal was nice to you.
A: Yes.
Q: You didn’t experience at school any anti-Semitism?
A: No. Not in the beginning.
Q: I am talking about the early years.
A: No. My brothers, if they didn’t go to school on Shabbat – they didn’t – so they had nice hats on and dressed nice. They always came back with bloody noses and no hat and torn clothes and bloody and like that.
Q: The goyim used to beat them?
A: Yes.
Q: On the street?
A: Yes, on the street. On the street, sure. In front of the synagogue.
Q: So you did experience a little bit in the street.
A: Not me.
Q: Your brothers. The boys. The non-Jewish population was mostly Romanian or also Hungarians?
A: Mixed.
Q: Romanian and Hungarian. How were they? How was the relation?
A: They hated each other and the Hungarians hated us. Not the Romanians.
Q: You had good relations with the Romanians?
A: Yes. Not close, but you know, I couldn’t eat there/
Q: You didn’t have friends.
A: I had friends.
Q: You did?
A: I had, yes.
Q: Romanian?
A: Romanian.
Q: Not Hungarian?
A: Not Hungarian.
Q: Romanian. You did have friends. From school or from the neighbourhood?
A: There was a priest that my father was friendly with. They used to have conversations.
Q: He was a neighbour?
A: A little bit further, but a neighbour.
Q: Your neighbours were also Jewish and non-Jewish, or mostly Jewish?
A: Mostly Jewish.
Q: It was a Jewish area where you lived?
A: Yes.
Q: Kind of a Jewish quarter?
A: Yes. Sort of. Because the shul was not far from us.
Q: So you did have non-Jewish friends as well. What else do you remember of your early years in school? You have any other memories? You said that after school you would go to a cheder, to the Beit Ya’acov for Jewish studies?
A: Jewish studies.
Q: Prayers?
A: Prayers.
Q: Only for girls?
A: Aleph, beis.
Q: And in the Romanian school you were separate, boys and girls, or together.
A: Together.
Q: But in the cheder, separate.
A: Separate.
Q: Only girls.
A: Only girls. (end of side)
Q: In the school, the public school, the non-Jewish, the Romanians – did they get religious lessons themselves? No religious lessons?
A: We only sang the national anthem before.
Q: In the morning?
A: In the morning.
Q: The Romanian?
A: The Romanian.
Q: But there were no religious classes for the non-Jewish?
A: No.
Q: Nothing like that?
A: No.
Q: Because we know in certain places they did have religious…but not by you. You don’t remember any.
A: No, there were no religious…I don’t know. Just the national anthem before we started school.
Q: And you were a good student? You liked going to school?
A: Yes, I liked going to school. I was a very busy girl. I always wanted to learn everything.
Q: You had things you did outside of school?
A: I was a bad child.
Q: A bad child? Why? You were rebellious?
A: I’ll tell you why. Not rebellious. I don’t know. I used to tease people. For instance, in the summer we went to the country.
Q: Every summer you used to go?
A: Well, almost every summer until the problems started.
Q: Yes, until it was impossible. Where did you go? In the area? In Transylvania or outside?
A: No. In Transylvania. And the peasants used to have cornfields and fruit fields. And I used to go between the corn and steal the corn and the Romanian peasant ran after me, that I was stealing the corn. And then he went to my father and he told my father and I was afraid to go home, so I went to my grandma’s house. Then when my father knew what I did, he came to my grandma’s house and said, “Where is Sylvia?” and Mutter, in Yiddish, said, “Where is Sylvia?” So she said, in Yiddish, “I’ll tell you, but don’t spank her.” So I went to my father and I went home and he punished me, made me stay in the corner for a long time. I just liked to do that.
Q: You were a child. Like a child likes to do all kinds of these things.
A: Yes, but I was bad. My brothers were better than I was. My older brother. Or one Saturday – I was about fourteen, fourteen and a half – I went for a walk with the boys and I put my jacket on my shoulder. And you were not supposed to carry on Shabbat, right? So boys and girls, we went together and we sat down, I read a book or something. Well, my father saw us coming and it was already time to go to shul. It was four thirty or five o’clock. I think it was in the spring. I came home, this boy brought me home, and my father gave us a big slap on my face, me and the boy, and said to the boy, “Go home. Wash up and go to shul this minute.”
Q: He was very strict.
A: I don’t forget that. And because I wore my coat on my shoulder, I didn’t have my hands in, that’s why I was punished.
Q: And how was the relationship with your mother?
A: My mother was very, very quiet. Always quiet. She always did her housework or cooking and that’s all.
Q: She was more in charge of the children? Your mother?
A: No, my father.
Q: Your father was in charge of education and everything.
A: Yes. My mother didn’t have the strength.
Q: And your relations with your two brothers and a sister? How was your relation? You were the oldest.
A: We were close.
Q: So you remember a happy childhood.
A: Yes, I had a happy childhood. A loving childhood.
Q: You felt secure?
A: It was strict, but it was…since I was the oldest, every new thing that my father did, like when he went into the army, the Romanian army, he took me with him. And we even took a picture. We’ll send you that picture – just my father and I – And we will write what it is.
Q: What was year was this in? Do you know?
A: ’39.
Q: In ’39. We will get to ’39. That is already…things are getting heated.
A: I was very skinny, so my face is very…
Q: Besides school, did you have other activities as a child? There were hobbies or sports or anything?
A: Well, I belonged to the…
Q: To the youth movement?
A: Yes.
Q: Which one? Beitar?
A: Beitar, yes. Beitar. That was all over Transylvania, I think.
Q: What was Beitar? Do you remember what they were like?
A: No.
Q: What was the ideology or what was the idea?
A: I don’t remember. All I remember, that we used to go on walks. Hachshara. And it was mixed, the song (?) was mixed with the Romanians.
Q: It was boys and girls together?
A: Boys and girls together.
Q: It was only religious or non-religious as well? In the youth movement.
A: I don’t know.
Q: But other hobbies did you have? Or sport?
A: Sport, yes. I had a lot of sports. I was very good at sports. I was very skinny and I was very good. We had those circles.
Q: You would exercise. And also things like music? You played an instrument or something like that?
A: No. I tried the violin, but it didn’t go.
Q: Someone else at home would play?
A: No, because by the time they were that age everything was mixed up.
Q: I want to ask you a few more questions about your parents. They were Orthodox, but they grew up in the Austro-Hungarian period. What else can you tell me about their cultural background? At home. Would they read newspapers? Did they read literature?
A: My mother read a lot of books and my father, the newspaper came every day, yes.
Q: It was in Romanian, Hungarian?
A: Hungarian.
Q: Or Yiddish?
A: Not Yiddish. Yiddish – he used to read those big Yiddish books. But the newspaper came.
Q: You also had a radio at home?
A: Yes, a radio.
Q: You did have a radio.
A: Yes. Everybody had, I think.
Q: And your mother would read literature also?
A: She read books. I don’t know what.
Q: In Hungarian or German?
A: No, Hungarian.
Q: In Oradea Mare there was probably cultural life as well. There was theatre, there was opera? There was a movie house?
A: There was sometimes opera. Movies, yes.
Q: Your parents would go? Your parents – would they go to the theatre or to the opera.
A: Yes. My father not too much, but my mother.
Q: She would go.
A: My mother went with my grandmother a lot.
Q: To the opera and to the theatre?
A: To the movies.
Q: To the movies. What about you, the children? Would you go also?
A: We used to go.
Q: To the movies?
A: Yes.
Q: What do you remember about the movies?
A: It’s not like the movies today. I still remember songs from the movies.
Q: Musicals and things like that?
A: Hungarian movies.
Q: Oh, Hungarian movies.
A: Yes, because by the time I was older, it was…
Q: And their friends were all Jewish, the parents?
A: No, no, no.
Q: You mentioned the priest, that your father had relationship with, but other non-Jewish friends also?
A: My father went to the market early in the morning. Of course, first he went to shul, then he went to the market and by ten o’clock he had bought what he was supposed to buy and he came home. And he had a Hungarian man that had a business where he had about eight busses that went to the smaller towns, back and forth. And he also, the people got on the bus in the morning and they came back in the evening. And my father and this man used to read the paper. My mother used to make food.
Q: He was not Jewish?
A: Not Jewish. He was Hungarian. And they were like friends. Talked politics together, read the newspaper, and that’s all, I think. The man always came to our house. My father had a small, like an office and they sat there. My mother sometimes cooked something or baked something. And in the summer they had cold coffee or something. When they told us that in two days we had to be ready to go…
Q: This is later, in ’44?
A: In ’44.
Q: Can you tell us when we get there, or you want to tell us now? Can we get to it when we get to ’44?
A: Yes.
Q: Okay, so you will tell us, because you are jumping to ’44. We’ll get to it and I will remind you to tell us the story.
A: I can’t forget it.
Q: It has to do with the Hungarian, I understand, so you will tell us about it. Was your father involved in any kind of political organization?
A: No.
Q: Jewish or non-Jewish?
A: No.
Q: Because in Oradea Mare there were a lot of also Jewish organizations, from Agudat Yisrael through Mizrachi through all kind of Jewish…but he wasn’t involved.
A: There were. There still are, I think. I don’t know how many Jews are there.
Q: But he wasn’t involved in any Jewish….
A: No.
Q: You did say that you went to a Zionist youth movement. Your father was Orthodox. Did he see himself as Zionist as well? Was he a Zionist, or not really?
A: You know, he never talked about it. Yes, he let me go because it was a disciplined good place.
Q: And Jewish.
A: And Jewish.
Q: What did you know about Palestine? About Eretz Yisrael, Palestine, as a kid? Did you know about it?
A: yes, I knew that we had to go to Israel. That’s all I knew. We had to go.
Q: You did know about it.
A: We wanted to go to America because I had a lot of family there.
Q: Did you have anyone in the family that went to Palestine in those years? Before the war? That lived there, that made aliyah?
A: No.
Q: You had no relatives or friends?
A: No.
Q: So there was no one in Palestine. But you had relatives in America.
A: Yes.
Q: So tell us about that. You mentioned already that your grandmother was already there. When did this happen?
A: My mother’s family had twelve children. Of course, six of them died, with typhoid fever, with this, with that.
Q: When they were young?
A: When they were young. So my oldest uncle – my grandfather, I told you, was very religious. My oldest uncle didn’t feel like being so religious, so he went to the market and he dealt with animals or something, I don’t know with what. He made a lot of money and he bought himself an outfit – pants that Jewish people didn’t really wear, tight pants. I don’t know. Some kind of clothes that his father didn’t agree for him to wear. He came home dressed in this outfit and he was very proud of this outfit and my grandfather ripped it off him and burned it. With this, my uncle started out – this was in 1913 – started out…
Q: Before the First World War even?
A: Well, it was during the First World War. It was 1913.
Q: It began 1914, so it was a little bit before the First World War.
A: With this, he started out to go away from the family and immigrate somewhere.
Q: He wanted to run away from home.
A: He had no money, but he wanted, I don’t know. Somehow he went from country to country till he got to Germany, to a port where he got a boat for America.
Q: So he was the first one.
A: From there he wrote us a letter that he was very poor, he had no money, we should send him some money. I don’t know what happened – they sent him the money or they didn’t. I remember this. Yes, they sent him some money. And then he stowed away on the boat to America. He got to America. Finally he managed to become a citizen and he went into the fur business. But he always had a partner, so he didn’t have to work. He was like that. So then he settled himself down, he got married.
Q: This was in New York?
A: In New York, yes. He had children. He had three daughters. And then he brought out two aunts that were not married.
Q: These were your mother’s sisters.
A: My mother’s sisters. The two sisters. Then he brought out my husband, who was seventeen when he came out.
Q: He was the brother.
A: The brother. And my grandmother. My grandmother stayed with my aunt and then they were working.
Q: And your mother, by this time your mother was already married?
A: By this time, yes.
Q: And they were thinking of going there too?
A: Well, yes.
Q: That was the intention of your mother and father, to join her family.
A: And the children.
Q: And the children. To join her family in New York.
A: Right.
Q: So you grew up all the time under this assumption that you are immigrating at some point to America. And why didn’t they immigrate?
A: Because the way I figure, my mother’s sister’s husband, who was like a wild man, I can say…when I arrived to New York…my husband married me in Paris…
Q: We’ll get to that. But I am asking how come your parents didn’t immigrate then? The plan was for them to immigrate. What stopped them?
A: They didn’t send us a visa, they didn’t send us the papers to immigrate.
Q: Why? Do you know?
A: I think that because we were six people in the family. It was too much family to be responsible for, and that’s why we didn’t immigrate.
Q: But you don’t really know. You are assuming this, but you never knew the real reason why.
A: No, I don’t.
Q: So your father during those years was…you said that he always was thinking of immigrating. Was he very frustrated that he was not able to immigrate?
A: Well, I didn’t see the frustration, but I know he didn’t feel good. He felt very bad that he couldn’t’ immigrate.
Q: And your mother – how did she feel about it?
A: My mother? She was always quiet. I never knew. She never showed her feelings.
Q: And the children, you and your sister and brothers – you always grew up under this impression that you were going soon to America?
A: Yes. They used to call me at home, “American Sylvia”.
Q: And you just figured it was going to be, it was taking time. Some day eventually we will get there.
A: I remember after the war everybody stayed in Germany, trying to immigrate somewhere – to Australia, Canada, America. And I went home, figuring maybe somebody from my family is alive.
Q: Yes, you will tell us about it.
A: But nobody was alive.
Q: So let’s get back to the ‘30s. We are talking about late ‘30s, but I want to ask. Even early, you were a young girl, but even in the early ‘30s, in Romania, the anti-Semitism was on the rise.
A: Oh yes.
Q: Okay.
A: I never even knew anything else.
Q: Okay. In 1933 you were a little girl, you were five years old. In Germany, Hitler came into power, the Nazis, and when you grew up Hitler was already there. Did you, as a kid, hear about this? This is something you know? The name? Did you hear about the name?
A: Yes, but it didn’t mean anything.
Q: It had no meaning.
A: It had nothing to do with us.
Q: Did you know what was going on in those early years with the German Jews? Did you have any idea, as a child, as a kid?
A: No.
Q: Do you think your parents knew? Were aware of it?
A: I don’t know.
Q: Did you hear them ever speak about it at home, what was going on in Germany?
A: Maybe they spoke, but not with us.
Q: Not with the children. So you weren’t aware of this.
A: No. At the table my father told stories or they were singing or something like that.
Q: And as we said, in Romania itself, also in the early ‘30s the anti-Semitism was on the rise. There was already numeros clauses – Jews couldn’t go to universities. They were limited. There were economic things that hit the Jews. There was the Romanian fascist party, it on the rise. The legionnaires. Did you know anything of it as a child?
A: I knew that it existed, but it didn’t touch me somehow. It didn’t touch me.
Q: What did you know about it?
A: I knew that we were Jewish and that we had to be afraid of these things and we had to stay away from it. Like that.
Q: In Oradea Mare could you feel it in the streets? There was violence?
A: No.
Q: You mentioned that every once in a while your brothers came back beaten up.
A: Every Saturday.
Q: Every Saturday?
A: Every Saturday.
Q: Did your father do something about it?
A: My father, he just said, “Kids.”
Q: Did he say something to your brothers?
A: No. He just felt bad.
Q: But he didn’t warn you or explain?
A: No. I never heard the word “anti-Semitism”.
Q: But you said that you were aware that things were getting…I mean, that it was on the rise.
A: Yes.
Q: You heard about Cuza, the head of the fascists?
A: Yes, sure.
Q: What?
A: We were laughing about it. About Cuza.
Q: Why?
A: It was just a joke. He used to walk on the street and he was drunk, always drunk.
Q: Where on the street?
A: On the street. He was drunk and he was going home or going somewhere else. I don’t know. And we used to make fun of him and he used to curse us. And it was funny, we though.
Q: But you are talking about Cuza who became prime minister. He was in Oradea?
A: He used to be in Oradea.
Q: And you remember him? You saw him?
A: Yes, sure. I saw him almost every day.
Q: And you weren’t afraid of his…the fascist party, of the legionnaires?
A: No. He was drunk and he was yelling.
Q: Because in ’37 he became already Prime Minister, with quite anti-Semitic, with all kinds of…Did you feel anything? Did your father, with his business? Before the Hungarians came. Were there any limitations, restrictions before the Hungarians came?
A: No.
Q: Life went on. You went to school. You were about ten years old in ’38, when Cuza…And for you, you felt Romanian?
A: Yes.
Q: Or you always felt you didn’t belong there.
A: No, I didn’t feel I didn’t belong there. I felt at home.
Q: A Romanian.
A: yes.
Q: And in 1939, before the Hungarians came, the Germans invaded Poland, 1st of September.
A: We knew about that. That scared us.
Q: You heard about?
A: That scared us.
Q: That began the Second World War. You heard about it?
A: Yes.
Q: Where were you when you heard about it?
A: I was at home.
Q: And you were scared?
A: No. I was a child.
Q: And what did you understand about it?
A: Everybody was scared.
Q: Who? Your parents were scared?
A: Yes, my parents and all the neighbours and people.
Q: There was tension?
A: Tension, yes.
Q: And they were scared because they thought also it would reach them?
A: Reach them, yes.
Q: They did think, or they still thought it was something far away from them?
A: No. They were afraid that it was going to reach them, but it didn’t reach us like it reached the Polish.
Q: And when this was happening, did your father make any other efforts to get out of Oradea?
A: No. I begged my father, “Daddy, let’s go up in the mountains.”
Q: This was later. You are talking when the Germans came. We will get to it. I am talking about ’38, ’39, when things were getting…we said Cuza. He didn’t feel that way.
A: No.
Q: Even when the war broke out?
A: The Romanians didn’t bother us, with Cuza or no Cuza.
Q: You thought you were safe. So he wasn’t pressing on the family, “We must get to America now because things are getting quite…”
A: No, he never talked about it.
Q: He never thought that way. Or not to America. Anywhere else? Did you have any other relatives, not only in America, but in other places in the world, or only in America?
A: Only in America.
Q: Okay. So we said that ’39 the war broke out. It didn’t affect you. You are with Romanians. But as a result of that, the Hungarians, with all these agreements, they come in. 1940. Can you tell us about that? What do you remember?
A: I’ll tell you. My father came home from the Romanian army somehow. I don’t know how.
Q: Okay. They took him to the army. This was 1939?
A: ’39.
Q: Now, when he went to the army, where did he serve? Far away from Oradea?
A: He served in Iasi.
Q: In Iasi. And Iasi was a place where there were a lot of pogroms.
A: Yes. But my father never told us about it.
Q: And you knew about it?
A: I knew about it.
Q: As a kid?
A: As a kid.
Q: How did you know about Jaschi?
A: Because people were talking about it.
Q: They were talking. Were you scared that it would happen in Oradea as well?
A: No.
Q: How come they took him to the army? He was already married, with children. He was not a young man anymore. Such a young man.
A: He was forty-one.
Q: Yes, he was not eighteen.
A: No.
Q: So why did they take him to the army?
A: Because he had some kind of an officer. He had to go with a horse to the army.
Q: This was like in the reserves?
A: I don’t know reserves, but I know that it was called “Skinbasch”. I don’t know what that was.
Q: And he was in Jaschi?
A: In Jaschi.
Q: And when he went, for how long he was gone?
A: Until the Hungarians occupied.
Q: A whole year? Two years?
A: Well, until the Hungarians came in and then he got out somehow.
Q: But when he was away from home, it took about a year until he came home?
A: Yes.
Q: So how did you make a living at the time that he was absent?
A: We didn’t make a living.
Q: How did you manage?
A: We managed very hard.
Q: The army paid him?
A: I don’t know. We didn’t get any money.
Q: And who was taking care of his business while he was gone?
A: Well, there was no business.
Q: The minute he went to the army….
A: We had some leather and some people came and bough it.
Q: He had to close his business when he went to the army.
A: Yes.
Q: And he had to go to the army.
A: Sure.
Q: Other men were taken also to the Romanian army? From the family? From neighbours? Or it was something very special for him?
A: No. I had an uncle younger than my father. No. Only when the Hungarians came, then they took him.
Q: So he went and you barely made a living. Do you remember those times at home?
A: Yes. We had some leather or something that my mother or I or my mother sold, or my brother. We sold it. I don’t know for how much.
Q: You were still a young girl. You were ten years old. And you were the oldest. How did your mother manage, with four children and her husband gone and nothing to make a living on?
A: I’ll tell you how. We drank tea out of walnut shells.
Q: You remember that?
A: Yes.
Q: It must have been hard times.
A: And my grandmother ground the coffee and brought it to us.
Q: They were helping you, from the family?
A: Yes. And my mother had a sister there and she helped.
Q: Everyone helped.
A: We ate, we ate. We didn’t go hungry.
Q: So when the Hungarians came, your father was still away in the army?
A: He was still away in the army.
Q: And you were where when they came?
A: I was home.
Q: What do you remember of the day that they arrived?
A: It was Erev Pesach.
Q: 1940, yes?
A: 1940. And I had to go to the grocery to get something my mother needed. And a Hungarian woman lived on that main street and two German soldiers were walking on the street.
Q: German or Hungarian? We are talking about the Hungarians.
A: No, no.
Q: That will be in ’44. Okay. Let’s talk about the Hungarians first. What happened then? You have any recollection of them coming?
A: I have a very bad recollection.
Q: What happened?
A: That friend that my husband had, that he was friends with him almost every day…
Q: That your father had, the friend
A: Yes. My father had some dollars and some jewellery and Shabbos candles. He put it in his coat and took it to a Romanian family.
Q: When he went to the army?
A: Before they took us to Auschwitz.
Q: Wait, wait, wait. We will get to all that. I want to try to speak about when, in 1940, your father is in the army.
A: No, they didn’t bother us. It was the same thing.
Q: Were you happy that they came?
A: No, I wasn’t happy.
Q: And the family, the Jews?
A: My father was very happy.
Q: He waited for the Hungarians?
A: He waited. He put on the flag here and took them to the house. My uncle had a beer-brewing thing and he took all the beer like this out and gave it to them. And my mother cooked chicken paprikash.
Q: So the Jews were happy that the Hungarians came? Even though they thought they were living well with the Romanians? How do you explain that they were happy that the Hungarians came? Because they had a connection culturally? They felt culturally close to the Hungarians?
A: I think so, yes.
Q: So when they came, was your father still in the army, the Romanian army?
A: No, he came back. Somehow. How, I don’t know.
Q: Okay, so now you were under Hungarian rule. What changed? Anything changed in your life?
A: Everything was terrible. I didn’t go to school for a year.
Q: Why?
A: I didn’t want to go to a Hungarian school.
Q: You had to go to a Hungarian school.
A: Yes, and I didn’t want to.
Q: Why? Do you remember?
A: I never liked the Hungarians and my father wasn’t home. They already took him to labour camp. And everything was rationed and I did the rationing. My mother couldn’t do it or wouldn’t do it.
Q: When the Hungarians came and your father returned from the Romanian army, what did he do for a living?
A: The same thing.
Q: Because you said that the business was closed.
A: For a while. And then everything was rationed, so we couldn’t sell just like that.
Q: They took everything over. And when the Hungarians came, what other things changed? Were there restrictions by the Hungarians?
A: Well, we were rationed, so I had to do the black-marketing.
Q: What did you do?
A: I bought flour and sugar from the Romanian peasants and I covered it with plum jelly.
Q: Marmalade?
A: Yes, something. I put it in a pail and I went to sell it and I got money for that.
Q: That’s the way you were living. What other restrictions? Do you remember specifically? Were you able to go everywhere? To public places? Or were you restricted?
A: Yes.
Q: You were able?
A: Yes.
Q: At that point, did you have to wear anything?
A: The yellow star.
Q: At that point, or when the Germans came?
A: When the Germans came.
Q: Okay. I am talking about the Hungarians. Not yet. With the Hungarians?
A: Yes, I think with the Hungarians. I came home and every Shabbat we went to get the ration tickets, so of course it was always on a Saturday. So I went…
Q: But this was when the Germans came. I am talking before that because there was a period of four years between when the Hungarians came in and when the Germans came. And I want you, if you can remember, if you can describe what happened to you during those four years, before the Germans. What year did they take your father to a forced labour camp? Do you know what year? It was after the Germans came or before? You don’t remember.
A: I think before. No, no, not before, because it was a Saturday when I came home and I told my father that “tomorrow we have to wear a yellow star” and my father didn’t believe it. So of course Sunday morning we had to wear the Jewish star.
Q: You think it was already when the Germans came or before that? Is there anything that you remember from the period before the Germans came? That is what I am trying to understand. From the period when the Hungarians were there. You didn’t go to school.
A: I know I didn’t go to school for one year.
Q: And then you went to school? And then you went back? It was a Hungarian school?
A: Yes. But I knew Hungarian already because my father went home to his mother’s house and brought his books that he learned from and he taught me to read and write Hungarian.
Q: And when you went back to school, it was the same children with you?
A: Yes.
Q: It didn’t change, but the language changed.
A: The language changed.
Q: What else changed at school? The atmosphere? It was more anti-Semitic?
A: Well, m y brother was called Alex. In Hungarian it is Sanyi and in Romanian it is Alex or Alexander. So he yelled out in a rough language “Sandor”. That’s is “peasant”. It made me sick.
Q: You didn’t like that. But in terms of the Hungarians, do you remember other things that happened?
A: No.
Q: Your father was taken to a labour camp.
A: No, he wasn’t taken. He was home until we went to Auschwitz.
Q: Because the Hungarians were taking Jewish men to forced…
A: My uncle was taken, yes.
Q: Did you know where he was taken to?
A: Buchenwald. That is where he ended up.
Q: And he survived?
A: He survived.
Q: But your father they didn’t take to a labour camp.
A: No.
Q: At that point.
A: No. They took him to Auschwitz.
Q: Yes, but I am talking about the Hungarians taking the young men to the army labour camp. It wasn’t. But you knew that they were taking young Jewish men?
A: Yes.
Q: Do you know how come they didn’t take him?
A: No, I don’t know. Maybe because of his age. I don’t know.
Q: So they next thing that you really remember is when the Germans came? Or you have other recollections?
A: No.
Q: Because it was an anti-Jewish policy.
A: But somehow it didn’t bother us. You know, you got immune, you got used to hearing that all the time so like it didn’t bother.
Q: No, before ’44, the war is going already like almost five years before the Germans reached you. Did you know what was going on in the war? Did you know anything of what was going on? Did you know what was going on with Jews in Europe, in Poland?
A: Yes.
Q: Any refugees that came to you?
A: No.
Q: You didn’t see any refugees? Jews from Poland, from other places. What did you know of what was going on? (end of side)
Q: We were speaking of the Germans arriving. I want to ask you if during that period, of the Hungarian regime, you were Orthodox. Were you still able to continue religious life? Your father went to the synagogue? Celebrate holidays? There were no restrictions? You felt no change.
A: Yes, yes. No.
Q: Were you also aware of the Hungarian politics? What was going on there? Horte? The Nyilasoks, the Hungarian fascists?
A: Yes, we were, but we didn’t take it seriously.
Q: Even then? When they were ruling you?
A: No.
Q: So you didn’t feel much change between the Romanians and Hungarians?
A: Oh yes, sure.
Q: What was the difference? Before the Germans came.
A: The Romanians were more laid back, not making a big issue. But the Hungarians were tough. Even in the school they were…
Q: Different character?
A: Like what happened to my brother was, he was in a different class and I don’t know, a Romanian or Hungarian boy didn’t know something about the lecture, the class. And my brother went up with his hand and they asked him. And he answered right and then the teacher, the Hungarian teacher said, “You see? The Jew can answer the question and you can’t.” He came home and told us this story.
Q: How did he see that? As if what? As if looking down or he was proud of it?
A: No. I don’t know if he was proud. He just mentioned it.
Q: And when you went to the Hungarian school, you also continued going to the cheder, to the Beit Ya’acov? That continued as well those years?
A: I don’t think so. No, it didn’t continue. I know it didn’t continue.
Q: It stopped.
A: It stopped. Right. It stopped. I remember when they came in, the Hungarians, my father was so proud. And from us there was a famous big hill where the boss and the horses could hardly go because it was so high. They took up the Jews with the beards and they threw them down and they said, “Kosher meat.”
Q: This was when the Hungarians came in?
A: The Hungarians.
Q: Your father was there too?
A: No, my father didn’t have a beard.
Q: They humiliated them. And you saw this or you heard about it?
A: I heard about it.
Q: So the next thing that you remember is the Germans coming in. Until that point Hungarians were cooperating with the Germans. Fighting with them. Before that, in ’41, did you hear about the war against Russia.
A: Yes, sure.
Q: And then in ’43, did you hear about Stalingrad?
A: Yes.
Q: You knew that the Germans were losing at certain fronts or you had no idea of what was going on?
A: I had no idea.
Q: You know it today, but then you had no idea.
A: Then I had no idea.
Q: So the next thing you know is that Hungary, when it tried to change its policy and to get into some kind of agreement with the Allies, Horte was thrown and the Germans came in. We are talking about March 1944. What happened? What do you remember?
A: It was very bad.
Q: Do you remember the day the Germans arrived?
A: Yes. Sure I remember.
Q: Where were you?
A: I was home.
Q: All the family was home?
A: All the family was home.
Q: Including your father?
A: Including my father.
Q: What happened? What do you remember?
A: I remember that my father was very sad and stayed home. That’s about all. They didn’t harm us.
Q: They were scared?
A: He was scared, yes.
Q: And did you actually see German soldiers?
A: yes.
Q: In the streets?
A: I saw two German soldiers walking down the main street and I told you, I went shopping to a grocery and a Hungarian woman was standing in the front of the door and said to the German soldiers that I was a Jewish girl and they just went. They didn’t bother. I would like to grab that woman, if she is still alive, and kill her.
Q: Were you scared when they did that? At that time were you scared?
A: No. I just watched the way she talked about me.
Q: Okay. So what happened after the Germans took over? What changed in your life? The first days – you still went to school or no school?
A: No school. There was no school.
Q: Your father still had his business or they took it over?
A: No, they didn’t take it over. They just…there was no business. Nobody came to buy or anything.
Q: So what did you live on? How did you manage in those days, the first days?
A: We managed. The Romanians used to bring us food.
Q: The peasants? The neighbours?
A: The neighbours.
Q: They were helping out?
A: Yes. Flour and corn, you know.
Q: They were bringing it without you having to pay for it?
A: Without having to pay for it.
Q: So they were helping you.
A: Helping us, yes.
Q: And what else do you remember of the first days? What were the restrictions? You mentioned the yellow star. What else? Could you walk in the streets? Could you go to public places? Could you ride? Could you go out?
A: I don’t think we did that anymore. We didn’t go out because of the yellow star either.
Q: You were afraid?
A: No. The Romanians fed us. In fact, they wanted to bring us bacon and of course my father…even in the ghetto he wouldn’t let us eat. Everybody had bacon and all that chazerei.
Q: He wouldn’t let.
A: No.
Q: So those first days – what else happened? The whole family was at home?
A: At home, yes.
Q: There was violence in the streets?
A: No.
Q: But very scary. You didn’t know what was going to be.
A: At least I don’t remember or didn’t know about violence on the streets.
Q: Did they come into your house? Did they take things? Did they ask you for your money, jewellery?
A: No.
Q: Nothing of that? You don’t have to give anything?
A: Only when they told us to prepare because they were taking us away. That’s when we packed. And the Romanians took us to the ghettos.
Q: The Romanians or Hungarians?
A: No, the Romanians.
Q: They were police?
A: When we had to go to the ghetto, they took us. They came and helped us with the packages.
Q: What do you remember? How did you know that you had to go to the ghetto?
A: They told us.
Q: How did they pass the messages? They were announcing it on the streets?
A: Announcing it and it was written.
Q: So how many days in advance did you know about this?
A: Three, four days. Something like that.
Q: And what was the announcement? What were they saying?
A: To pack up because we have to go somewhere. I don’t know what they said.
Q: How old were you then? You were about sixteen. Yes?
A: No, I was fifteen.
Q: Did you understand what was going on? Did you understand where you were going? Did you think you were going to a labour camp? To what?
A: I didn’t know anything about labour.
Q: Nothing. You understood then that they were just forcing you out of the house. Did you think this was temporary? You were going to come back to the house?
A: Yes, sure.
Q: That’s the way you thought. We have to leave temporarily.
A: My father said there was a war and they were taking us to a safe place.
Q: That’s the way he felt.
A: Because I said, “Dad, let’s go up to the hills with the Romanians and hide there.” He said, “It is a war and they are taking us to a safe place.
Q: He was naïve, you think?
A: He was very naïve. Very naïve. Because Hungary was the greatest and they were very good to us.
Q: And do you think at that point, ’44, he had no idea of…did you hear about Auschwitz or concentration camps?
A: No. Never. I never heard a word.
Q: Ghetto? About what was going on in Poland?
A: Never. Never heard another word.
Q: Nothing. So the next you know, they were telling you to take…?
A: At least I didn’t.
Q: What did they tell you to take? What were you allowed to take, when they told you to leave the house to the ghetto?
A: We should pack up whatever we could.
Q: Whatever you could, or you were limited?
A: No, I wasn’t limited.
Q: So do you remember the days that you packed? Do you remember the atmosphere at home when you were packing?
A: Yes. We were sad.
Q: And what were you packing? What were you taking with you?
A: Food, whatever we could, and clothes. And blankets maybe. Something like that.
Q: And you father, did he take things to hide?
A: Yes. We had some dollars from America and we had some jewellery and the Shabbat candlesticks and my father put it under his coat and took it. And this man that he was friendly with grabbed him, took everything away from him and beat him up. Yes. My father came home bloody.
Q: He stole everything from him?
A: Yes, stole everything.
Q: Supposedly his Hungarian friend?
A: Hungarian friend, yes, who was always in our house.
Q: And he beat him?
A: He beat him. Of course, when the boys came back, everybody knew about it. They killed him. They beat him to death.
Q: After the war.
A: Yes.
Q: Okay. So do you remember the day that you left the house and went to the ghetto?
A: Yes, sure I remember.
Q: Tell us about it. What happened then?
A: My grandparents came. What did they know?
Q: They came to your house?
A: No, from their home. Oy, and we went into that wagon. A million people like this, like sardines.
Q: You are talking about Auschwitz?
A: When we went to Auschwitz.
Q: No, no. I want to the ghetto. You were walking to the ghetto?
A: No, we were riding.
Q: On what? Trucks?
A: No. The Romanians took us with a horse and wagon and by foot. They took us…
Q: With a horse and wagon?
A: Yes.
Q A cart?
A: Yes, and they put everything down and they left. They kissed us and they left, but they didn’t cry.
Q: The Romanians, they were your neighbours? Who were they?
A: They were our neighbours. Not neighbours. They just knew my father from work.
Q: But when you went to the ghetto, there were no soldiers, no Hungarian soldiers or police? No Germans? When you were going to the ghetto.
A: I don’t remember.
Q: And where exactly did they take you? Where was the ghetto?
A: The ghetto was in Oradea, but it was…what kind of factory was it?
Q: Bricks?
A: Bricks.
Q: Bricks or wood?
A: Bricks, I think.
Q: So it was a big building?
A: Yes, and on the floor we sat.
Q: And when you got there what did you see? What do you remember?
A: Nothing. Just a bunch of people.
Q: But all the Jews of Oradea were there?
A: No, not all. There was more than one ghetto there.
Q: There was more than one ghetto. There were a few buildings. How many people do you think were with you? A few hundreds?
A: More. I don’t know.
Q: Thousands? In that same building.
A: Maybe a thousand.
Q: Did you know anybody? You knew neighbours, family?
A: No.
Q: You didn’t know anybody else?
A: Yes.
Q: From school?
A: Yes, sure.
Q: So they brought you to the ghetto. It was your parents and four children.
A: Yes. And my grandparents and my aunt and her son.
Q: And they put you down there, on the floor. How long did you stay there?
A: About six weeks. But my father went to work.
Q: Okay. Can you describe what happened during those six weeks?
A: We just hung around there. Nothing.
Q: Nothing. Who gave you food? Anybody gave you food?
A: We had our own food.
Q: For the whole six weeks?
A: Yes.
Q: You had enough food for six weeks? You cooked there?
A: No. I think we got bread.
Q: Who was watching you? Police?
A: Soldiers.
Q: Hungarian? Hungarian or German?
A: I think Hungarian.
Q: How did they treat you there in the ghetto?
A: They disciplined us. They told us, “Go here. Do that.”
Q: But you were not working or anything? They didn’t take you to work?
A: No.
Q: You just sat there for six weeks?
A: Yes.
Q: Bathroom, washing – were there any facilities? Anything there?
A: No.
Q: And you slept on the floor? And were there any rumours of what was going on, what was going to be?
A: I didn’t hear any rumours.
Q: How did you pass the time, the children? You played?
A: We were children. You know, you were like animals.
Q: And at a certain point, from the ghetto they took your father?
A: No, my father came with us to Auschwitz.
Q: Ah, he was with you. Because you said he went to work.
A: Yes. In the ghetto he went to work.
Q: Where?
A: I don’ t know.
Q: Every day? They took him to work and he came back?
A: He came back, yes.
Q: Was he able still to pray or something in ghetto?
A: I am sure he prayed because in the ghetto because somebody came back from where he was in Auschwitz and he said that, “Your father every day tried to get ten people together.”
Q: A minyan.
A: A minyan.
Q: So do you remember seeing a minyan also in the ghetto? Do you remember such a thing?
A: No, I didn’t see.
Q: It was during Pesach you were in the ghetto? I am asking if it was during Pesach or it was before.
A: No, it was after Pesach.
Q: It was already after Pesach when they took you?
A: Yes.
Q: Before they took you to the ghetto, do you have a recollection of Pesach, the Seder before? The last Seder?
A: Yes, we had it at home.
Q: You had it at home. Do you remember that?
A: Yes. It was a regular Pesach.
Q: You didn’t have a feeling that something was going to happen?
A: No. We knew there was a war and we were scared, but the days went on.
Q: So you were there six weeks in the ghetto. Any people were sick, people were dying also in the ghetto?
A: No, nobody died. Only they were snoring at night very bad!
Q: But there was no death. There was no violence also. They were not beating them or anything in the ghetto.
A: No.
Q: Do you have any other recollection of the time in the ghetto? Those six weeks?
A: No. We were in the ghetto and hung around there.
Q: And thinking what? That soon you were going back home? Soon you were going somewhere?
A: No, we knew we were not going back home.
Q: You knew you were not going home. Did you know any idea what you were thinking?
A: I knew what my father said that they were taking us to a safe place.
Q: You kept thinking that you were going to go to a safe place. That’s what you thought. Do you think now, from today, do you think he said that because he really believed it, or perhaps he was trying to protect you?
A: He believed it.
Q: He really believed it?
A: He believed it because when I said, “Let’s go an hide,” he said, “We are going to a better place. They are taking us to watch over us.”
Q: So what do you remember of the day that they took you to the train? What happened?
A: When they took us to the train?
Q: Yes. What is your memory?
A: Nothing. We just went like animals, like cows.
Q: In the morning they came and told you, they marched you to the train?
A: Yes. Marched us.
Q: Who was the one? Again, A: I don’t know. I don’t remember.
Q: What kind of train was it?
A: A cattle train. Animal train.
Q: And so they pushed you in?
A: Yes.
Q: Your whole family was together?
A: Yes, together.
Q: Grandparents as well in the same wagon?
A: Yes, the same wagon.
Q: Same wagon, the whole family. Were you able to sit in that wagon?
A: Yes.
Q: You were sitting or you were standing?
A: Both.
Q: But it was crowded?
A: Crowded, sure. Very crowded.
Q: And they closed the door.
A: And we went, we went, we went, day and night.
Q: How long? Day and night? How long? Do you know how many days?
A: Maybe a week.
Q: A week? Does the train stop at any point?
A: Yes, it stopped.
Q: It stopped. They let you out?
A: No.
Q: What about going to the bathroom when you were in the train?
A: It was there. Everything was there.
Q: In the wagon.
A: In the wagon.
Q: What? There was a bucket or something? A pail?
A: Did somebody else tell you about this? I don’t know. The Polish walked to Auschwitz.
Q: Yes, but you went with the train.
A: We went with the train, because I remember them walking. It was terrible.
Q: What else do you remember from the train ride? What is your memory of that train?
A: It was terrible. It was very bad.
Q: What was so bad?
A: The train ride.
Q: What?
A: That my grandparents were there and, of course, they had no comfort. Tied up and no bathroom and…
Q: You had food in the train?
A: Yes, we had our food.
Q: You still had food?
A: We had our food, yes.
Q: People died in the wagon?
A: No, nobody died. Only later. In labour camp somebody died next to me.
Q: No, I am talking in the train. There were old people? There were babies?
A: Everybody. All the families.
Q: You were with your parents. They were encouraging, supporting? They said something to you?
A: No.
Q: Nothing.
A: No. It was just father saying that we were going to a good place.
Q: Even in the train? He still believed it?
A: Yes.
Q: So when eventually, after a few days or a week, you arrived, the door opened. What did you see?
A: It was nighttime or early in the morning. It was dark. Then we got out. My mother and my two brothers and my sister went left.
Q: Who was taking you out of the train?
A: The Germans.
Q: There were SS standing there?
A: SS, yes.
Q: With dogs?
A: I think they had dogs. You know, it was night.
Q: Did you realize where you were?
A: No. I had no idea.
Q: You saw something? Anything? It was dark.
A: I saw a chimney smoke.
Q: From the train?
A: When I got out.
Q: What else did you see? Did you see the camp? Were you able to see the camp?
A: No, no, I didn’t see the camp.
Q: But you saw the German soldiers
A: The German soldiers. We arrived, we got out. And one soldier was sitting like this and I got undressed, nude.
Q: As you were going out of the train you were with your mother and your sister and your brothers and your father?
A: My father disappeared. I don’t know where he disappeared.
Q: When you got off the train. You didn’t see him anymore?
A: No. I saw him when I was in camp.
Q: But there you didn’t see him. Now, at that moment they took you to the right, to the left? Do you remember? They took you to one side and your mother…
A: On another side. With the children.
Q: Your two brothers and sister.
A: Didn’t even say goodbye. Nothing.
Q: You just didn’t see them. And they took you to another side with other women?
A: With other women, yes.
Q: And what next?
A: Next I got undressed completely and a soldier was sitting there and shaved my head – long hair – shaved my hair to the skin and shaves my hair and shaves here. I stayed there and he shaved. What did I know?
Q: All your body hair.
A: Then I put my shoes in water.
Q: Your own shoes?
A: My own shoes. I had a high shoe. My father made me high shoes. How he knew it, I don’t know. And I put it in the water and then I put it on. Then they gave me a rag of a dress, just nothing underneath – no panties or bra or anything. Just a dress. And I went out and stayed there, waiting for them to tell me the next thing.
Q: They spoke to you in German?
A: Yes, in German.
Q: Did you understand what they were saying to you? A little?
A: A little.
Q: Do you know anybody that is with you? The girls that are with you – anybody that you knew from Oradea? A friend, a neighbour?
A: Yes.
Q: There were girls that you knew?
A: Only three girls came back.
Q: Yes, but when you were there…
A: We were looking at each other and we didn’t know whether we should laugh or cry, that they cut our hair.
Q: You couldn’t recognize each other.
A: No. I never told of this horror.
Q: And did you understand where you were then?
A: No.
Q: Did you see other prisoners in the camp? At that point.
A: I saw men in the striped clothes. They were working there, carrying probably bodies.
Q: And did you have any idea that this was a camp? Auschwitz?
A: No.
Q: That you were in Poland?
A: No, nothing.
Q: So what next?
A: I thought I was in Germany, not in Poland.
Q: You thought you came to Germany. And did you think at that point, okay, I will see my mother and brothers later on?
A: This was, I think, a Thursday that I arrived and the next day I was in the lager. I was on the third floor.
Q: So describe the lager. After they gave you the dress, they took you to the lager, to the block?
A: Yes.
Q: What did you see there?
A: Nothing. Just a bunch of blocks.
Q: And you went into a block. Which block were you in?
A: 28.
Q: There were other prisoners there, or it was empty?
A: Full. Full of women.
Q: Full of women when you arrived. The women who were there – where were they from?
A: From Transylvania, where I came from.
Q: From the same area. They were not Jews from other areas. From Poland, Holland.
A: No. There were a lot of Polish, but not there.
Q: Not in that block. And then you went in. There were the wooden…
A: I was on the third one.
Q: Alone or with other?
A: No, thirteen, fifteen, twenty.
Q: No, in the same bed.
A: It was full of girls.
Q: In the same bed?
A: Yes. The bed was, I think, bigger than this. And it was full. Nothing there. No pillow or anything.
Q: How do you sleep like that?
A: You sleep.
Q: You managed to sleep?
A: Yes.
Q: You have to turn around?
A: You could turn around. But only on the side. You couldn’t lay down like this. There was no room.
Q: So you are there. There were women already there. Did they tell you something. Did they have more information where you are? They just arrived as well? They had no idea either?
A: All they said, some Polish women said to us, “Hungarian? Cholera…the Hungarian.” And I didn’t know what cholera meant. Then I found out. So sometimes I have very good Polish friends in New York and I told them and they laughed. They were four, five years. They became animals already.
Q: The Polish. But at this point you still didn’t understand where you were. You understood that you were in a camp.
A: Yes.
Q: Did you think you were in a working camp or something like that?
A: No, I wasn’t working there.
Q: No, I am just thinking what were your thoughts the first day, the first night that you arrive there. What did you figure out?
A: Nothing.
Q: So you got to the block. They gave you something to eat? The first day.
A: They didn’t give us to eat. But the second day…
Q: So wait. You went to sleep. Do you remember the first night at Auschwitz? Tell me about it. What was it, the first night?
A: Nothing. I had no feeling of anything. I didn’t feel bad, I didn’t feel good. Just like an animal.
Q: You think you were in a state of shock?
A: I was in a state of shock, I think, yes.
Q: And you slept? You managed to sleep the first night?
A: I slept, sure. I didn’t sleep a week on the train. I slept there, yes.
Q: When you arrived there in the block, there was a blockaelteste?
A: Yes.
Q: Or a kapo?
A: A kapo, a blockaelteste.
Q: Who was she?
A: A rotten woman from the next town.
Q: Next to Oradea?
A: Next to Oradea.
Q: So she was Romanian?
A: Jewish.
Q: Did you know her before Auschwitz?
A: No.
Q: And you say a rotten woman. Why?
A: She had to be rotten to do whatever she did.
Q: What did she do?
A: She yelled at us, she didn’t let us out.
Q: She beat you?
A: No.
Q: But she was cruel?
A: Cruel. Because my father came. Somehow he found out what block I was in. He was already in the striped clothes and he got a bread like this, but I think it was from sawdust, from the wood. He took it out and he said, “Are you hungry?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “I give you bread.” So he gave me that bread and I ate it.
Q: When was this? A few days after or a few weeks?
A: No. The second day. Second or third day.
Q: You saw him?
A: Yes, And he said, “Where is Mother and the children?” I said, “I think we are going to see them Sunday. They went somewhere else. I am going to see them Sunday.” But by then they weren’t alive.
Q: So you went into the block. The next morning, what happened? You had tzeilappell in the morning?
A: Tzeilappell, yes.
Q: What happened in the tzeilappell? Describe it.
A: Well, we were five in a row in the sun, with the empty head, and we were waiting, waiting until they came. Mengele came.
Q: The Germans
A: The Germans.
Q: The next day in the morning, by that time you knew where you were or you still didn’t know where you were?
A: No.
Q: You didn’t even hear the word Auschwitz?
A: I never heard the word Auschwitz.
Q: Even the second day?
A: Only later I heard from the Polish.
Q: Then you understood that you were in Auschwitz?
A: Yes.
Q: And when you heard about it, did they tell you that they were killing Jews there?
A: I saw it. I saw in the other block. You know, we had wires. The other block they were carrying the dead bodies all the time.
Q: But did you know at this point that they were killing Jews by gas?
A: No, I didn’t know it yet.
Q: You didn’t know about t6he gas chambers?
A: No.
Q: Or anything at that point. So what happened after the tzeilappell the next day?
A: We went back in the room. They brought us food.
Q: What was the food?
A: The food was cooked grass.
Q: Cooked grass?
A: Cooked grass. You heard that already. I wasn’t the only one that got that. And they put it in our palm, holding it like this, and this was running down our arm, and we ate it like this. That’s what we ate. And we got this bread too, I don’t know, once or twice a week. A whole bread like this.
Q: And after that did you remain in the block or they took you to work?
A: No.
Q: You remained there.
A: We just remained there.
Q: And you did nothing. You sat around, the girls sat around?
A: Yes.
Q: Were you able to walk outside the block or you weren’t allowed?
A: No.
Q: In the block.
A: We went for the food, in the big containers. I went once for the food.
Q: The whole time that you were there – you were in Auschwitz about six months, five, six months – they never took you out to work?
A: No.
Q: You just sat, hung around all day?
A: Yes, hung around.
Q: What did you do? You just talked to each other?
A: Yes, we were talking to each other.
Q: What were you talking about? At that point you already knew what Auschwitz was.
A: Mostly about how hungry they were.
Q: You were hungry.
A: I wasn’t hungry.
Q: You were not hungry?
A: No.
Q: Did they also tattoo the numbers? Did you get a number?
A: No. We went late, so we didn’t get the tattoo.
Q: At that point they weren’t doing that anymore?
A: No.
Q: Tell me, six months – what was a routine day?
A: No routine. Going to tzeilappell in the morning. By noon we were finished. Then we went back to the room. They brought us the food, and that’s all. And then at night we went to sleep.
Q: Okay, so when did you understand where you were and what was this place?
A: I didn’t understand anything. We didn’t have our period, only the first time when we got there. They probably gave us something to dope up our heads.
Q: You think you were doped?
A: Yes.
Q: That’s the way you felt – doped?
A: Yes. Yes. Like animals we were. We just went where they…
Q: You got up in the morning. There were bathrooms?
A: yes.
Q: They walked you to the bathroom? You could walk freely? How was it?
A: No, not freely, no. There were men. Latrines.
Q: With holes.
A: Yes.
Q: Together?
A: Yes.
Q: No privacy?
A: No.
Q: Nothing.
A: Men and women.
Q: Men and women together?
A: Yes, sure.
Q: You would meet there men also?
A: Yes, they were sitting there on the toilets.
Q: And how did you deal with it?
A: You don’t deal. Like this. You don’t deal. You just go and come. Like animals. There was no difference.
Q: You felt something inside? Like a curtain comes down on your mind?
A: No. Nothing.
Q: That you don’t want to feel, that you don’t want to see? That you just want to survive?
A: I was sitting like I was sitting…and then a man came, pulled his pants down and sat down next to me. Didn’t say anything, didn’t say “excuse me” or not “excuse me”. Nothing. I think a Polish man. They already had no feelings of anything.
Q: So you heard, you learned from the Polish prisoners – at one point you had contact with other prisoners? Because you said you were always in your own block. Did you ever have contact with other prisoners? Over there in Auschwitz?
A: As far as talking?
Q: Yes.
A: They just told us they were there four, five years.
Q: Where did you see the Polish? Where did you have a chance to talk to them? Walking? So you learned from them that they were sending people to gas chambers, they were killing?
A: Oh, that was way after.
Q: Until then you didn’t know?
A: No, in the beginning I didn’t know.
Q: You saw the chimneys.
A: We saw the chimneys. There was an oven in the block where we were.
Q: A crematorium?
A: A crematorium, yes.
Q: But you didn’t know anything?
A: No.
Q: And when did you learn about it? A few months later or weeks? How did you know that they were killing Jews there?
A: Nobody told us. We saw it. Not in our…whatever it was. Our place, where we stayed. In the next (?). There they were killing them or they were dying from hunger or something. They were carrying them and throwing them, one on top of another. Just throwing them.
Q: And what did you think to yourself? Do you think to yourself, “I’m next”? “I might be next”? Were you constantly afraid that you were the next one?
A: No. I didn’t fear?
Q: You didn’t fear? You still felt safe?
A: How safe? I didn’t feel. I didn’t feel safe or danger or anything. I just didn’t feel anything. I didn’t feel anything.
Q: At what point did you realize that your mother and sister and two brothers were killed? When did you understand that?
A: I know that somebody said that they were in the crematorium and they were burned.
Q: Someone told you?
A: Yes.
Q: Someone told that they saw them? That they saw your mother and…?
A: Not my mother, but in general.
Q: The transport that got there. And then you realized that?
A: Then I realized that. (end of side)
Q: So when you realized that your mother and sister…do you remember any feeling?
A: Yes.
Q: What?
A: It was terrible.
Q: You were crying?
A: Sure. I was alone in the world. I was alone. I had nobody. And my father…
Q: After you saw your father, after the second day, did you ever see him again?
A: No.
Q: You never saw him again.
A: No, I never saw him.
Q: And do you know what happened to him there?
A: I know.
Q: What happened? He was in Auschwitz. Obviously he wasn’t sent immediately.
A: A labour camp. They told me what labour camp, but I forgot.
Q: In Auschwitz?
A: No, he went to a labour camp, but which one I don’t remember.
Q: Do you know how long he stayed in Auschwitz or you have no idea?
A: Till the end of the war. He was alive till the end of the war. Every day he wanted to make a minyan. First, a man, a neighbour man, Ungar Bacsi, came home and I said, “Mr. Ungar, did you see my father?” He said, “Oh yes. There, too, every day he wanted to make a minyan.” I was very happy. I was waiting every day by the train, by the bus, all over.
Q: You thought he would come back?
A: Then two boys came back, two brothers came back and I asked them, “Did you see my father?” They said, “Yes, we saw your father. Your father was healthy and everybody was lying in typhoid fever and he was walking between them, praying.”
Q: And what happened? He got the typhoid?
A: The Germans saw him stand up and they killed him. They shot him to death.
Q: In the labour camp.
A: In the labour camp, after the war.
Q: And you don’t know where the labour camp was.
A: No.
Q: And they told you this? That they shot him?
A: Those boys.
Q: Can you tell us something about your father? His personality? Something about him?
A: He was a happy man. He loved his family. The youngest children always…sat on his lap at dinnertime, at lunchtime, and he used to sing for us. Saturday we used to put on new shoes, so it was by the door and we used to pick up the shoes and take them in to my father and thank him for it and then he put them in his arms and he sang a song that “on the Danube travels a little stool and on the stool are our shoes” and then he went like this, that they go away and the shoes fell down and they sank in the Danube. That’s what they used to sing. And after we had our nap in the afternoon we got dressed and the four of us, he held our hands and we went in the main street for a walk and the old lady used to say, “Albert, come over. Let me see those gorgeous children. Teresa keeps those children like dolls in a box.”
Q: Can you tell us something more about your mother? Her personality?
A: She was very quiet, a very good mother. After school she used to take us where we bought fabric for a dress – silk. I even remember some of the dresses. The last dresses.
Q: She made for you?
A: She had them custom-made. And my father made me shoes, already big-girl, with the little heel – navy blue suede with red piping. And I was like a big girl.
Q: And can you say something about your brothers and sister?
A: They were wonderful kids.
Q: Did you manage to celebrate any bar mitzvahs?
A: My older brother had a bar mitzvah.
Q: This was already when the Hungarians were there.
A: Yes.
Q: But you did manage to celebrate.
A: Yes, his birthday was February 3rd.
Q: So there was a party or it was in the synagogue?
A: There was a party. One in the synagogue and one at home.
Q: Can you tell us something about him? His character, personality?
A: He was a just wonderful, wonderful, good boy, quiet boy. He always had a ball, a football in his hand. He loved the football. The little one was like me. He was a bad boy. He was gorgeous.
Q: You mean a naughty boy.
A: Naughty boy. And my sister…the two middle ones were very good. My sister had blonde, curly hair. Most of the time we were dressed alike. She was also very good. She came home, she washed her handkerchief and her socks and she started studying. And me, I was very skinny. And my father sat me in his lap and I had to drink a big glass of some kind of a heavy milk, rich milk so that I would gain weight. And if I gained it, I got two dollars.
Q: A prize.
A: A prize, and I could go and buy candy for it. I had to do that.
Q: So coming back to Auschwitz – you realized that you were left alone in the world? At that point?
A: No.
Q: Or you still thought you would see them?
A: Yes.
Q: You were hoping. You were always hoping that you would see.
A: Yes. Always hoping that the war would end and we would go home, the whole family.
Q: But even though you knew that they were killing the Jews there in gas and the crematorium, you still thought, “My mother is not there.” You still believed, the whole time?
A: The whole time believed that we were going to go home. After the war we were going to go home. All of us. That’s what I thought.
Q: And during those six months, there was a point where you broke, you said to yourself, “I can’t take it anymore”?
A: No.
Q: You didn’t think about it. You just went about surviving, every day?
A: Yes.
Q: Can you tell us about in the camp, in the lager, the block, the relationship between the women prisoners? What was it like?
A: Quiet.
Q: Girls were helping each other or there was tension?
A: There was no tension.
Q: People were stealing from each other?
A: No. But we were all like my group and it wasn’t wild at all.
Q: Good relationship?
A: Good relationship.
Q: Helping each other?
A: There was nothing to help, but we were just…
Q: Someone became sick, ill during those…?
A: Well, they tried to. I have a example. I walked out one morning and I spilled the urine from the shoes. I put my foot down and I stepped on a rusty nail. From this I got an infection, that it went up my leg, red all over here, and I couldn’t stand in the tzeilappell. So the girls put me in the middle, two here, two there, and I was in the middle.
Q: Protecting you, hiding you.
A: Hiding. And I sat down and I stretched my leg out. Came this terrible blockaelteste or whatever she was, because she went to the all the blocks. Came, she looked, she saw me in the lane, she pulled me out and she beat me till today. I still feel the beating. That’s how she beat me. I got better – no medicine, no injection, no nothing. Nothing happened to my leg.
Q: What would have happened if they would have found out that you were sick?
A: I wouldn’t be here.
Q: They took them?
A: Of course.
Q: So everyone was trying not to get sick.
A: Not to try. You can’t try. But I didn’t get sick. This went away in, I don’t know, maybe a week or two weeks.
Q: But other girls around you?
A: I went to every tzeilappell.
Q: Other women – they got sick?
A: No.
Q: No one was sick during those whole six months? No one got sick? There were any other selections while you were there?
A: Yes. Every day. We took that one dress off and we were walking around.
Q: And the Germans were…?
A: Should I tell you? They threw me on the wagon once. For some, I don’t know what reason.
Q: After a selection?
A: They threw me on the wagon.
Q: Because you were too thin?
A: Maybe I was too thin. I don’t know. They threw me there and before the kitchen, before the gate, I jumped off and I ran back to my camp. I do that today too.
Q: Where did you get the courage to do that?
A: No courage.
Q: Intuition.
A: Whatever happens, happens.
Q: And no one saw you jumping out of it?
A: No. The girls didn’t bother. They went, most of the girls went.
Q: Where were they taking you, do you think? To the gas chamber?
A: I guess so. Where else? I don’t know. I was by the gate.
Q: At that point you knew about the gas chambers?
A: Yes. There were a couple of older ladies, ladies of the boys that I was friendly with. They were older than my mother, but they had no children, so they came in the ghetto, and by then they disappeared. I don’t know how they took them. At night they must have taken them.
Q: You are talking about the ghetto or about Auschwitz?
A: About Auschwitz. The barracks. They just disappeared. We were sleeping or something.
Q: But you say that the relations with the girls were good, because at some places that people for survival were ready to kill each other.
A: Because they were Polish and they were really wild. They were wild, those Polish. We were all calm because they gave us something to make us very calm, very nothing.
Q: They were also longer times perhaps. Did you meet, besides the Polish, other prisoners from Holland, from Greece, from other places in the world?
A: No.
Q: You weren’t in contact. Were you able ever to see the men, to speak to the men? Besides the bathroom.
A: No, nothing. There were no men around.
Q: And when you were in Auschwitz you were totally isolated. You knew nothing of what was going on outside.
A: No.
Q: Or did you get any rumours of what was going on? You were there during ’44. It was quite late in the war. The Germans were losing. They were withdrawing in a lot of areas. Were you aware of that?
A: No.
Q: Nothing. What did the girls talk about in the camp, in the lager? What did you talk about?
A: No politics. We didn’t know anything about politics.
Q: What did you talk about?
A: Our families.
Q: Everyone spoke about their family?
A: Yes.
Q: Fantasizing also about a future, about liberation, or no one thinks about it?
A: No.
Q: Did you? Was it in your mind that one day this was going to end, you were going to be liberated? Did you ever think about it?
A: No, never. Maybe I was a child or I don’t know, but I never thought about it. The days just went on.
Q: And you said you got used to the hunger?
A: Yes.
Q: You must have lost a lot of weight. You said you were a skinny girl as it was, so how did you manage in Auschwitz, being such a skinny girl, losing so much weight?
A: But I always had a body.
Q: But I am talking about Auschwitz. How did you manage?
A: I had big breasts. I had a skinny body, but I had big breasts, I had arms.
Q: But I mean, you were undernourished, and you didn’t feel weak all the time? You felt weak?
A: No.
Q: But inside, did you feel that you were going to survive, you were going to make it? Were you optimistic about yourself?
A: I was pessimistic about the family.
Q: But about yourself?
A: No.
Q: You thought you would make it?
A: I just, “Will I have my family back? Will I see my family?”
Q: And you thought you could make it, you would survive.
A: Yes, I was sure that at least one brother, the older brother would be alive.
Q: You thought someone would be alive.
A: I looked, I looked, but I didn’t find. That’s why I went home.
Q: Now, in Auschwitz – you came from an Orthodox family. I imagine there were other religious women.
A: Yes, sure.
Q: Anything of it that you could do? Was there anybody praying there?
A: Praying? No.
Q: You said that everyone described your father, that wherever he was he was praying. Even in Auschwitz. What about where you were? The girls. Anybody praying?
A: Praying? No. Or did we?
Q: Yourself?
A: I didn’t pray. Did I? Maybe Shmone Esrei. In the evening. Maybe. Because the rabbi’s daughter was there. Not my friend, rabbi, but older. She was there with me to the end.
Q: And it was night. You dreamt at Auschwitz when you went to sleep?
A: No.
Q: There were dreams?
A: No, I didn’t dream. I just went to sleep.
Q: No dreams, nothing. And no one expressed his feelings? No one was crying?
A: Nobody was crying.
Q: Humour? Was there anything that you laughed about?
A: No, we didn’t laugh. We didn’t have what to laugh about.
Q: No jokes or anything of that sort. Everything was flat.
A: We were talking about the Polish women because…once I went to the kitchen to get the food and it was this grass and the girl ran to the food, takes off the lid, takes the shoe off, sticks it in the food and runs away with it.
Q: In the shoe?
A: In the shoe. And that shocked me so that it is always in front of me.
Q: How did you eat the soup? You had a spoon?
A: Spoon? Like this.
Q: The whole time? Six months, that’s the way you ate it?
A: The whole time, six months.
Q: No spoon, nothing.
A: No. In fact, I went to Auschwitz a few years ago because a customer of ours asked us and Rita wanted to go, so I went, and we saw millions of spoons and shoes there in Auschwitz. Millions. We didn’t get one. It wasn’t kosher or clean enough.
Q: And so it was routine, daily life, that you saw bodies around you?
A: Bodies.
Q: You always saw bodies?
A: Yes.
Q: How did you deal with seeing death, so much death around you?
A: How do you deal? How do you deal with the whole thing? They gave us something that we became wood, we became not human. We were like robots.
Q: Now, in ’44, we do know that in Auschwitz there was an underground. Did you know about it?
A: No.
Q: You heard about the sonderkommando? Those who worked in the crematorium, who blew the crematorium in October ’44? You heard something about that?
A: No. This is the first time.
Q: You didn’t know they were trying to rebel. You didn’t hear of any activity of the underground or anything of that sort?
A: No.
Q: While you were there, anybody tried to run away? No. You knew that there was the wired fence. Anybody that you saw running to the fence?
A: No.
Q: Trying to commit suicide?
A: Yes. Somebody wanted to give an apple or something and she reached for it and she got electrocuted.
Q: But se wasn’t intending to do that. It was by accident. And you saw it?
A: Yes.
Q: She was killed?
A: She was killed immediately.
Q: How would they punish you, or there weren’t so many punishments for you there? I don’t mean you personally. I mean, what were the kinds of punishments that you saw there?
A: Only that we got undressed in the nude and held the dress like this, in our hand, like this, and we were walking around in the nude.
Q: That’s the selection, when they did the selection. But did they also punish in other ways?
A: No.
Q: They weren’t beating or anything?
A: Spanking.
Q: Or if you didn’t do things.
A: No. Nobody did. We just did what they told us to do.
Q: You didn’t have much contact with the Germans there.
A: No. Not there.
Q: Not there. Just the blockaelteste. And so the days went by and you were just sitting there and waiting, didn’t know what was going to happen. So what happened next? Before we go on, any other memory of Auschwitz that you have?
A: No. Just the daily routine, the tzeilappell.
Q: What happened next? When did they take you?
A: I think that the war really started coming to an end because I think they emptied Auschwitz.
Q: Yes, as the Russians were getting closer and closer.
A: So we went to get ready to go to a labour camp.
Q: Wait. They told you this? You got up in the morning. There was a tzeilappell and then they told you…
A: To go to the gate. We walked to the gate.
Q: You knew why?
A: No.
Q: No explanation.
A: No.
Q: Just one morning…
A: We went and sat at the gate.
Q: The whole block, the whole group?
A: Yes. The whole block. We sat at the gate on the floor. It was raining and cold.
Q: It was winter?
A: It was October or November. It was cold already. We sat there for about five, six days until we got a train.
Q: Just sitting there, sleeping, sitting?
A: Nothing. Like garbage.
Q: They brought you food there?
A: Probably. I don’t know, but probably. And then when they got a train we went on a train.
Q: What kind of train? Cattle train? It was again a cattle train?
A: No. I think it was a regular human train. Yes, a human train. And we sat in there in the morning and by the evening we got to Oberhohenelbeelbe.
Q: Which was in Czechoslovakia.
A: It was in Czechoslovakia.
Q: You knew that you were there? That you were in Czechoslovakia?
A: No, we didn’t know where we were.
Q: But you knew it was a labour camp?
A: It was a labour camp.
Q: What did you see when you arrived there? It was a camp just like Auschwitz?
A: On the bottom was the factory and on the top was the room where we were sleeping.
Q: On top of the factory? It was a building, a big building? From bricks? From stone or wood
A: I don’t know. I have no idea.
Q: But it wasn’t like the camp.
A: It was full of beds.
Q: yes, but it wasn’t like the lager in Auschwitz.
A: No, no. It was with separate beds. Two beds in one – my bed and somebody else’s bed, and then underneath and on the top. Three racks.
Q: And when you got there, there were other prisoners there, or you were the only ones?
A: There were other prisoners.
Q: From where? Also Hungary? Transylvania?
A: No, no. I was together with a Polish woman that we went to a meeting, a UJA meeting.
Q: So from Poland, and other countries as well, or just Poland?
A: No, I think just Poland.
Q: And did you communicated with them? What did you speak with the Polish Jews? Yiddish?
A: Whatever we could. I couldn’t speak Yiddish, so…
Q: You got along with them, or there was tension?
A: No, there was no tension.
Q: They were there when you arrived? The Polish Jews, the Polish women?
A: Yes.
Q: And who was in charge of this factory, of this labour camp?
A: Germans.
Q: The Germans. SS also?
A: SS.
Q: Women, men?
A: Women.
Q: Women SS.
A: So we arrived to Oberhohenelbeelbe. It was kind of dark and I saw this ugly woman, very ugly, with a mouth like this, and I got scared. I said, “My G-d. What a woman.”
Q: She was German?
A: She was German, in uniform. As we got off the train she gave a little package to everybody, which was delicious torte cake, delicious chocolate something cake.
Q: Which you hadn’t seen…
A: It was heaven. We couldn’t believe it.
Q: How come she gave you this?
A: She felt sorry for us, I guess. And she gave everybody a package like that.
Q: She was SS?
A: SS. Well, you known, some of them had hearts. And I had another one that had a heart. The big officer there.
Q: A woman?
A: A woman. Every week she sent me to her apartment to clean her apartment. On the table she had cheese, salami, bread, butter. Everything. I took all the things. I took it back to the camp, to the barracks, and we had a party.
Q: Okay, so you got there. How many women were you altogether do you think?
A: About three hundred.
Q: Three hundred women. And they told you what? That you are going to work there? You understood that there was a factory?
A: They didn’t tell us nothing.
Q: So what happened next?
A: Next we went to work.
Q: What was the factory for?
A: I worked at a car factory.
Q: It was a car factory?
A: Yes. Cars. But I had a terrible boss.
Q: Theyw ere producing cars?
A: I made little metal something things like this.
Q: For what?
A: For the car, I guess.
Q: What was it? For the Germans, the cars? It was a German company.
A: It was Lorenz factory. That’s what they called them. Lorenz.
Q: And it was a big factory?
A: Big factory.
Q: So you were working there. What was the routine? You got up in the morning? Appell?
A: We had no tzeilappell. Just eat breakfast and go to the factory.
Q: Eat breakfast. What were they giving you? What were they giving you for breakfast.
A: I don’t know, but it wasn’t bad, the food. I don’t remember, but it wasn’t bad.
Q: You were less hungry then?
A: I wasn’t hungry.
Q: They were giving food.
A: And for lunch too, they gave us something.
Q: And the factory, you said, was underneath? So you would just go down.
A: No tzeilappell.
Q: And you were working shifts or just routine?
A: Every day the same work.
Q: Also at night?
A: yes.
Q: There were shifts?
A: In fact, my friend from here worked at night.
Q: There were shifts. So what? You worked twelve hours? Something like that? It was physically hard work?
A: No. I just sat on a chair and I was trying to make those, but I never made them good.
Q: Who supervised? Was German SS?
A: Not in uniform.
Q: Civilians?
A: Civilian clothes.
Q: German or Czech?
A: German, German. Very bad German. Was very bad. Every day he hit me on the head because I didn’t make these things right. I don’t know why. I know I have very handy hands, but it didn’t work.
Q: So he was beating you.
A: Yes. He hit me on the head all the time.
Q: How long did you stay in this labour camp?
A: Until the end of the war.
Q: So you arrived there – it was November ’44? Something like that?
A: It was May ’45.
Q: That’s when you were liberated, but when did you arrive there? In November?
A: In November.
Q: So you were again something like six months? In this labour camp you were about six months.
A: Yes.
Q: Besides that German who hit you, the supervisor, other Germans that were there, civilians – you had any contact? Able to speak to them?
A: No. Even the woman who I went to the house to clean. She just said…I understood. I learned German in school at the end. To read and write, which I don’t know, not even a letter. Just she was in uniform and this other woman was in uniform. That’s all. There was nobody. And then we went to the kitchen. For that I was punished badly.
Q: That you went to the kitchen?
A: I went to the kitchen and when I came out I saw a door open and it was full of some kind of, I don’t known, vegetables or something, and I wanted to take one. I bent down and I wanted to take one. They caught me.
Q: How did they punish you?
A: I walked in the snow in that one dress, with the torn shoes. The snow reached up in the mountains there.
Q: They took you out to the snow? You had to stand in the snow for hours?
A: No, walk. I walked up in the snow, in the mountains, in the big, bad mountains.
Q: Alone?
A: No. With more girls. I didn’t even catch a cold.
Q: That was the punishment? How long was this? For a few hours or what?
A: About two, three hours.
Q: That was the way they punished?
A: That’s how they punished.
Q: You had to walk in the snow and the cold.
A: That was punishment. But it was good there, if I wouldn’t have wanted to steal. I told you, I always tried to…
Q: If you couldn’t go to work, if you were sick, what would happen? I am asking.
A: I wasn’t sick from the cold.
Q: No, I am asking. If a girl – not you necessarily – if a girl that worked woke up in the morning and she was sick and couldn’t go to work, what would they do to her?
A: There was a hospital there.
Q: She would get treatment or they would throw her away from the camp?
A: No, no.
Q: They treated you.
A: Yes.
Q: But you were never sick. This whole time you were never sick.
A: I was never sick.
Q: You were very strong.
A: Yes. With my foot I wasn’t sick, from the snow I wasn’t…
Q: But there was a rivier there.
A: Yes.
Q: That they took care of whoever was sick.
A: One girl died next to me.
Q: There, in the labour camp?
A: Yes. One girl was next to me. I wanted to wake her up and she didn’t wake.
Q: You knew her
A: Sure I knew her.
Q: She was from Oradea?
A: No. No, I just met her there. She wasn’t from Oradea. One girl died, one girl went crazy. She was yelling, yelling all night and then she disappeared.
Q: And what happened with her? Do you know? They killed her?
A: Probably. She didn’t come back. And this crazy girl that lost her mind – I don’t know what happened to her, but she also stopped yelling.
Q: Was there any point, with your whole experience, in Auschwitz and there, that you felt that you were losing your mind too?
A: No.
Q: You were under control?
A: I was under control. But I had this Suri, who was a rabbi’s daughter. She was very calm and she always tried to calm everybody down. I didn’t need it, but I just listened to her.
Q: She was helping.
A: Yes.
Q: Supporting people, the girls.
A: You know, she was so skinny and so nothing, and she survived, and her sister, that my age – big and beautiful and strong – she didn’t come back. They were also four children – three girls and a boy.
Q: So in the camp there, you worked during the day. In the evening, was there any kind of – between you girls – any kind of activity? Were you singing?
A: Singing? No!
Q: Because there were camps where there was even in a little bit of a cultural life. But not there. Nothing. Were you more optimistic there in the camp, now that you knew the war was already…
A: I didn’t know the war…
Q: You didn’t know in the camp the fact that…
A: Only one morning we woke up…
Q: But when you moved from Auschwitz, when they moved you, you didn’t know that the Russians were getting close?
A: No.
Q: You had no idea?
A: No. Only when they were there, by the door.
Q: But before that you heard no rumours? You didn’t hear?
A: No.
Q: And also there in the camp, in the labour camp, it seems to me that it was a little bit easier than Auschwitz.
A: Much easier.
Q: People were able to pray or something of Jewish life? Nothing.
A: No. Nothing.
Q: But were you more optimistic because it was easier? Did you think, “Okay, this is easier, better than Auschwitz. We’ll make it”?
A: No. Only I was happy and everybody was happy that we were under better conditions.
Q: Besides cars, what else were they making there? Only cars?
A: Only cars. One side they were making these little things and on the other side…
Q: Because earlier on you told me something about radios or something? It was not a radio factory also?
A: No.
Q: Just for cars.
A: I think somehow I found out that it was Lorenz cars.
Q: Okay. The next thing you remember is the Russians in the camp?
A: Well, we got up in the morning and nobody was calling us to work, and we looked out and the black flag was up.
Q: No Germans around?
A: No Germans around.
Q: You didn’t see anybody?
A: Nobody. And by the door the Russians were drunk and talking and wanted to come in, but we wouldn’t let them in.
Q: With uniforms?
A: With uniforms.
Q: When you saw the Russians were there, you realized that they had arrived, that this was the end, that you were liberated?
A: Yes, yes, yes! We realized.
Q: Were you afraid of the Russians?
A: No.
Q: You were not. You were happy to see them.
A: Yes, but they were drunk and we wouldn’t bother with them.
Q: So, you know, a lot of places that the Russians came there were rapes. Were you aware of this? Were you scared?
A: Yes, I was raped. You know where I found out? When I went home to Romania.
Q: You found out about what?
A: That the Russians were coming. “Hide under the bed or somewhere because they will rape you.” That’s how I found out.
Q: But in the camp you didn’t know anything about it. So do you remember the moment that you realized this was the end for you?
A: Yes.
Q: Was there a moment of happiness, of joy?
A: No, it wasn’t happiness because my family..
Q: You were always concerned.
A: My family, where was my family? That’s what I was right away.
Q: And then, by then you knew that you were in Czechoslovakia, that the labour camp was in Czechoslovakia?
A: Yes. I knew it, yes. Very nice.
Q: And the Russians when they came – what happened next after they liberated you? You remained in the camp? They organized the camp? They brought food?
A: Well, a few days later I got typhoid fever and they took me, the girls took me into the hospital in town.
Q: In which town?
A: In Oberhohenelbeelbe.
Q: It was a local hospital or it was a military hospital
A: No, no, a local hospital.
Q: Czech?
A: Czech. And the people from town brought me a nightgown and food, but they couldn’t come near me. They just left the food there. And I was there for about two weeks.
Q: There were nurses there?
A: Nurses. A regular hospital.
Q: And they took care of you?
A: Yes.
Q: You were the only one with typhus or there were a few girls?
A: No. I was the only one. And another girl had…what did she have? Appendix problem. But she was in a different…She was older than I was and she was in a different neighbourhood. Then when I got better and we went out in the garden there and they fed us and they gave us clothes and drinks and very nice, then I said, “Edith, I want to go home.” She said, “Wait, the doctor is going to take us to Praha.” I was waiting one week, two weeks, about three, four weeks. He didn’t take us back yet, so I said, “I am going to the train tomorrow morning and I am going into Praha.” She said, “I’m not going. I am afraid.” “Well, if you are afraid, you stay.” But she changed her mind and she came. She came with me on the train and we arrived to Praha and a man saw what we were and he took us into a restaurant and bought us coffee and croissants.
Q: Who was he?
A: A Czech man, just on the street.
Q: Now, you were walking. You didn’t have money, you didn’t have anything. How did you manage?
A: I managed by going on the train and not having money, and not have money to buy food or anything. They knew who we were, so on the train they asked for money. I showed them that I had this flag and what I was and they let me go.
Q: And in Praha you stayed where?
A: In Praha this Czech man took us into the Russian zone and we went in there. It was a big room, with a stone floor.
Q: For the army? It was a camp for the army?
A: I don’t know. They just had that building and they put us in there. (end of side)
A: They put us into that big room. Slept on that stone floor, and it was nothing. I said to this friend of mine, “I am getting out of here.” She said, “How? They are going to kill you. Don’t get out.” “I am getting out. You want to come?” No, she wouldn’t come.
Q: You were very determined to get home.
A: I was determined. I think I had to be like that. I couldn’t just be afraid and stay home. What difference would it make me to be…? It didn’t make any difference. So I got out of that. I snuck out and I got out of there, and she said, “They are going to kill you.” Nobody killed me. I walked in Praha on the street and on the bench was sitting an officer and about four or five soldiers.
Q: Russian?
A: Romanian. And talking Romanian. And I heard Romanian. I went over there and I started a conversation and I told them where I came from and what. He said, “You don’t have anybody alive.” Gave me pyjamas. I took a shower. He stayed in a hotel in Praha, broken down, but it was alright.
Q: The Romanian soldier.
A: The Romanian soldier. The officer. He wouldn’t let me go. He took me to his hotel room. I had a room by myself, pyjamas, shower. He sold his horse for butter, salami, bread.
Q: He took care of you.
A: Yes. And we had a big dinner. And the windows in Europe open out, you know, and they hung the salami on the window and the salami fell down. “Oh my G-d! What are we going to do?” The boys ran down on these circle steps and they got the salami. Then we took the train to go to Budapest. From Budapest to my town is very close. We arrived to Budapest and people came with a picture, “Did you see this? Did you see that?” He said, “No one comes home with me to Constanza. I have no children, my wife has no children. You will love my wife. Is going to be very good for you. Don’t go home because you have nobody.”
Q: But he was not Jewish.
A: He was not Jewish.
Q: He wanted to adopt you?
A: I guess he wanted to adopt me. He was begging me to go home with him, but I wouldn’t go. First, it was a Romanian family. I wouldn’t go. So I left him in Budapest. I took the train and I went home, but you know? On top of the train. I went home and by the train a man that I knew was doing business already and he wanted to travel somewhere for business. He saw me, that I came home. He came back to town, took me into a restaurant. I had dinner – very good chicken paprikash. And then I went home.
Q: What did you see?
A: I saw nothing.
Q: Someone was living there?
A: Nobody was living there.
Q: It was empty?
A: Only my parents’ bedroom set was not in there. And the floor was picked up because they thought that I had dollars there. You know, it was pulled apart.
Q: But no one was living in there.
A: Nobody was living there. I left the apartment and I went looking who was where. And I found the house where people were living there, Jewish people that came back home already and I ate there and I slept there for a few nights. And then my mother’s sister’s husband came home.
Q: Survived.
A: We went to his apartment and he did business and I cooked and like that.
Q: In Oradea at that time, was there a Jewish office or committee or the Joint?
A: Yes.
Q: The Joint was operating there?
A: Yes, but I didn’t go there.
Q: No? Why? You didn’t go also to get information? You know, they passed information of people who survived.
A: No. I got a lawyer. There was a Jewish lawyer.
Q: But they also helped with food and things like that.
A: No, I never liked to eat food like that.
Q: But you were okay? Your relative was supporting you?
A: Yes.
Q: You weren’t working or anything.
A: No. The man brought us the food and I did the cooking and baking.
Q: And you were waiting, hoping that someone would come back.
A: Finally, I got a letter from America from my aunt. “I know what happened. Is anybody alive?”
Q: She was looking. She didn’t know that you were alive.
A: No. “Is anybody alive?” I wrote back to her that yes, I was the only one that was alive. Then she wrote me again. “I have a cousin in Germany who is in the American army and he will try to get you to America.”
Q: At that point you realized that no one was going to come back, or you still had hoped?
A: No. I had hope. Still today I have hopes. I know they killed my father, but my older brother? I looked all over for my older brother, but I couldn’t find him. And I had this American cousin in Frankfurt and he spoke a little Hungarian because Grandma only spoke Hungarian.
Q: So at a certain point you left Oradea and you went to Frankfurt?
A: Illegally. Every border I crossed…
Q: Alone?
A: No. He sent a boy. Gave him five hundred dollars to come to pick me up and through the borders to get…
Q: This was the cousin from Frankfurt.
A: From Frankfurt, yes.
Q: And you crossed illegally.
A: Illegally. I heard the guns shooting. All night walking with mud up to my neck. There was a river. Then I took the shoes off and I washed them.
Q: This boy who took you – he was a smuggler? He knew his way?
A: He was not a smuggler. He just did this. He died since then. He also had somebody to lead him.
Q: So eventually you arrived in Germany?
A: From Germany I went to Paris.
Q: But first you came to Frankfurt, to your cousin?
A: Yes. I stayed there a few weeks in Frankfurt.
Q: How was it?
A: And then illegally, by train, with my cousin I went to Frankfurt. In Frankfurt my uncle, my mother’s sister’s husband, uncle, had a brother. They lived near Paris in Bologne.
Q: Wait. You are talking about Paris. Not about Frankfurt.
A: Yes.
Q: How was it for you to go to Germany after the war? How did you feel about it?
A: How as it? I was in camp first.
Q: DP camp?
A: DP camp.
Q: You went into a DP camp?
A: Yes.
Q: Why didn’t you stay with the cousin?
A: Because everybody was in a DP camp. They were liberated and they went into a German DP camp.
Q: But the cousin?
A: The cousin was in the American army. He gave me cigarettes and chocolate and Coca-Cola.
Q: He was from the United States, a soldier in the army. So he sent you to the DP camp. Which camp was it?
A: Because that was where I arrived. He wasn’t there. I arrived maybe Tuesday…
Q: Do you know what was the name of the DP camp?
A: That’s what I am thinking of. Pocking.
Q: It was close to Frankfurt?
A: Close to Frankfurt.
Q: And how long did you stay there?
A: A few weeks, and then I went into Frankfurt. I was in Frankfurt again a few weeks.
Q: So when you were in the DP camp you weren’t much in contact with what was going on.
A: No.
Q: It was just like a transfer…
A: Transfer. There, too, I slept on the floor.
Q: Were you happy to go to America?
A: Yes, sure I was happy. I was happy. Then I didn’t think of why they didn’t take us to America, but now I am thinking back and that’s the conclusion I come to.
Q: You held it against them?
A: No, I didn’t. I lived in Paris and I became a temporary resident.
Q: In Paris?
A: In Paris.
Q: How did you live there? In an apartment?
A: No, I lived with these relatives.
Q: And how long did you stay in Paris? A few months?
A: I stayed in Paris until the end of January.
Q: End of January ’46 already.
A: ’47.
Q: Ah. So you were there for a year or more than a year?
A: ’48.
Q: So how long? A few years in Paris!
A: Well, I stayed home in Romania…
Q: A whole year?
A: Over a whole year. I married my uncle.
Q: In Romania?
A: In Romania I married him.
Q: Wait. You skipped that, so you have to tell us. When you came back to Oradea you met your uncle?
A: Yes.
Q: He came back from where? He was in the States, no?
A: What camp was he in? A very bad camp.
Q: So he survived and came back.
A: He was in a camp where the cut the meat from the dead people and they ate it.
Q: It was in Poland, in Germany?
A: I don’t know. Which camp was it? I said it today, but…
Q: Okay, so maybe you will remember it after. He came back when you were in Oradea. This is your mother’s brother, yes?
A: No, my mother’s sister’s husband. My uncle.
Q: But he wasn’t her brother.
A: No, only two sisters remained in Romania.
Q: So he was the husband…
A: Of my aunt.
Q: Who died in the camps? And he came back. Did they have children?
A: One son.
Q: And he survived? No. So he came back.
A: He was nine years old.
Q: He was older than you? Many years?
A: Yes.
Q: How old?
A: I think nineteen, twenty years older.
Q: And he suggested that you get married?
A: Not me. I didn’t want to get married. I wanted to come to America.
Q: So how come you got married?
A: I was in Paris and a lawyer told my aunt I should marry an American citizen and then I could come out. So who was a citizen? They couldn’t get a single man in America. My uncle, my youngest uncle, who was the twelfth child – they asked him if he would come to Paris and marry me and bring me to America and here we would get a divorce and I would remarry. It was February 7th that I arrived.
Q: Where? In Paris?
A: To New York. I arrived Febraury 7th. My whole family was in Florida, vacationing. Only my grandmother was home.
Q: Something is not clear. Excuse me. You said that in Oradea you got married with the husband of the aunt or not yet?
A: I didn’t get married in Oradea. I went to Paris. In Paris my uncle came and I was a citizen. We went to court and the judge said whatever he said in Paris – we didn’t understand. And then they asked if we wanted to get married. We said, “Oui” and we got married and we got a paper.
Q: And then you left to the States?
A: And then I left to the States with my uncle. Came by boat. We arrived here. Friday night I made dinner in my grandmother’s house, by my aunt, where my grandmother lived.
Q: Did you know them?
A: No.
Q: It was the first time you saw them?
A: Yes. I was a year and a half old when they left.
Q: How was it to meet them? Here you have a family all of a sudden.
A: They wanted me to be a little schlemiel, a nothing, but I wasn’t a nothing. I was a something, like all the Israelis. Right?! I called her Grandma, Grandma Rose. I called her in Yiddish, “Bubby”.
Q: The fact that you lost your immediate family, but here you found a new family. Was it any comfort to you?
A: I don’t know. All I know is that my aunt came home. She brought me a beautiful dress, because my uncle already telephoned her that – they spoke in Yiddish, I think, or in English – that he wants to marry me.
Q: Wait. Let’s straighten this up. You got married with the uncle that brought you to America and then you got divorced there?
A: No. My husband, my uncle, was a big gambler, but a big, big gambler. In thousands of dollars.
Q: This is the American. He was born in America.
A: No, no, no. He was born in Romania, but when he was seventeen, his brother brought him here to work for him in the fur factory, because my uncle didn’t work.
Q: What was his name?
A: My husband? Ben. Ben Wirtzbaum. And my little grandson is Ben and he is, kneine hahora, wonderful.
Q: He is not the one who came to take you from Paris.
A: My uncle was the one to take me.
Q: That’s Ben. He came to take you from Paris.
A: He took me from Paris to America. Grandma was home. He went to work every day and Friday night he came for Grandma for dinner. The family – my aunt, my uncle – they were not home. I cleaned the house, I cooked dinner, I decorated the food. The food was good and my uncle came into the house and he said, “Oh, what a good smell and he ate the dinner and then he lay down on Grandma’s bed and he said to me, “Come here a minute.” I went there and he pulled him to sit down on the bed. I sat down on the bed and he said tome in Hungarian, “We are going to stay married.” He didn’t ask me if I wanted to or I didn’t want. “We are going to stay married.” He was a gorgeous man, a gorgeous, gorgeous man, but so gorgeous that wherever he went, they thought he was some kind of an actor and they wanted his autograph. To sign, to sign. Always with a paper to sign. In Florida he was playing ping pong and the kids went over for an autograph and he said, “Get away from here. I am a furrier.” Too bad I don’t have a picture of him, but he was really gorgeous. My aunt came home and she said to me, “You cannot marry him. He is a gambler. He is never going to be home. You will be alone. You will be fighting all the time.” And she begged me for about ten days not to marry him. But I let her talk and I married him. My aunt wanted to make a big wedding, but I didn’t want a big wedding because I had no family. So we just had a wedding.
Q: You lived in New York?
A: We lived in Brooklyn. Couldn’t get apartments then, after the war.
Q: And he worked as a furrier.
A: Yes. Then I learned to be a furrier. I wanted to because he would never save the money. He always said, “I don’t have to save. I can always make a living.” Now, I am almost twenty-six years alone and I support myself because I stole money from him and I put it away and I invested and I sold and like that.
Q: The business was yours?
A: His and mine.
Q: But it was your own. You weren’t working for someone. So all the years it was fur? That was your business.
A: Yes. I learned how to be a furrier, how to work in a fur shop. He sat to the machine and he said, “This is to bend something. So you see? Bend it and then sew it.” But the machine was automatic, was electric. He just showed me a little bit and he got up and he said, “Now you sit down.” I sat down and I pushed and the electricity went and I screamed!
Q: So eventually you learned the business. When were the children born? And can you tell us their names?
A: I got married March 27th.
Q: This was ’48?
A: ’48, yes. May, I was pregnant.
Q: And who was born?
A: I didn’t get pregnant after the first time being together and he was scared that something happened, I could not have children. I went to the doctor and he said, “Maybe it will take one month, six months, six years.” He was thirty-five, sixteen years older than me. He said, “I want children right away.” So in May I became pregnant and in January 31, ’49 I had by son.
Q: What is his name?
A: Albert, after my father.
Q: He was the first.
A: He was the first.
Q: And then?
A: Then, maybe six weeks later, I got pregnant again and I had my twin daughters.
Q: Their names?
A: Their names are Rita and Rene, but Rene had a very bad heart and…
Q: She passed away?
A: Passed away.
Q: She was a baby?
A: She was a baby. I was in the newspaper because my doctor was Hungarian. He put me in the newspaper – came from Auschwitz.
Q: It must have been very difficult for you, losing the child.
A: We were very poor because my husband had no money. That year he made…in ’48 you could buy a house for four thousand dollars. Buy a car for two thousand dollars. He made seventy-five thousand dollars in the business that year. Not a penny was left from the seventy-five thousand dollars. Everything was gambled away.
Q: All the years, or eventually he stopped gambling?
A: He just came home from the army and he wanted to have a good time.
Q: No, but during the rest of your life, he kept gambling or he stopped?
A: No, he gambled to the last minute.
Q: But you made well-off with the business.
A: Yes, it was a very good business. And I stole a lot of money!
Q: You lived all the years in New York?
A: No. First we lived in Long Island. When we made a little more money we moved better, and more money…
Q: New York area, I mean.
A: New York area, yes.
Q: I want to ask you a few more questions and we will wrap it up. How did you feel in America, being an immigrant, a survivor of the Holocaust? How did the accept you? How did they treat you?
A: Not good.
Q: No? The Americans? The Jews?
Q: My aunt lived in Brooklyn in a house where you climb up the steps and the living room, everything was all together. They saved money. They had a lot of money, but they didn’t spend it. And when they got older and they…they had one son who became a doctor, who cost them a lot of money. Then they moved to Florida. There they bought a house. They had a very nice house for a long time. But I told you that my uncle was wild man. Jewish, but wild.
Q: I was asking more in terms of the Americans. How did they accept you? How did you feel in America? Did you feel good? Did they understand?
A: You know what I said once? That I want to go home. And my uncle almost killed me.
Q: You felt you were homesick?
A: I criticized everything in America. They lived poorly.
Q: It was difficult for you.
A: It was difficult for me.
Q: And eventually you got used to it?
A: Yes, I got used to it and now I love it.
Q: You learned the language.
A: Yes. In three months I learned the language. My grandmother, as soon as I arrived, gave me a book, an America book. I started reading and I found there words that sounded like Romanian, like corridor, umbrella. It’s all like Romanian.
Q: In beginning, when you came, did you tell people what you went through during the war? Did you speak about it?
A: No. My husband never let me.
Q: Why?
A: Never let me.
Q: Did you want to talk about it?
A: I wanted to, sure.
Q: But why?
A: You know, near the business was the office for the money that the Germans gave.
Q: The compensation money.
A: And one lunchtime I walked over there and they interviewed me and a few weeks later I got four hundred and some odd dollars. I had to go again. He wouldn’t let me because I was crying. Sure I was crying.
Q: It was affecting you.
A: And he got upset and he said, “I don’t want you to cry. You cannot go there anymore.” And I didn’t go and I don’t get money. I don’t get money from the Germans. And all my multimillionaire friends get a lot of money.
Q: Did you make friends? Your friends in America, when you came to America – you also had friends who were survivors? Holocaust survivors when you came?
A: No. Because my husband had his own group and I had to go into that group, which were all card players. Everybody was a gambler.
Q: They were Hungarians?
A: Hungarians, from Budapest.
Q: Did you tell them what had happened to you, or you never talked about things?
A: No, they weren’t interested to listen.
Q: What about your children?
A: My children, yes.
Q: When they were small, did you talk to them about it?
A: Yes.
Q: You did speak about it. You told about…
A: In fact, my son went to a private school and one holiday I went to pick him up to bring him home. I was coming back with him in the car and there was an airplane accident and they were reading the names and there were no Jewish names. And I said, “Thank G-d there are no Jews.” He almost jumped out of the car. How could I say there were no Jews? What was the difference?
Q: And when you came to America, you came from an Orthodox house, home.
A: And we were kosher.
Q: And you were Orthodox in America? Traditional?
A: For a while I was Orthodox. You know until when? Friday morning I cooked for Shabbat. Then around one, two o’clock my husband called me up, “Come into the city. We will go out for dinner.” I knew what dinner meant. I said, “Why go out for dinner? I cooked. I baked, I cooked, I made challot.” “We will go out for dinner.” A fight right away. I could never leave him alone. I was so in love with him. And he was very good to me. A birthday came, or anniversary. Forty-seventh Street is the jewellery street, so he used to say, “Your birthday is coming up. Go find yourself something on 47th Street.” Some kind of jewellery. Or “your anniversary is coming up.”
Q: Now I was asking you about your religious life. I want to ask not so much about religion, but about faith and belief.
A: That is a very hard time for me.
Q: You know, there were a lot of people who were in the Holocaust and their experience, what they went through, it undermined their faith and belief, and others, the opposite. It strengthened, the fact that they survived strengthened.
A: Yes, but I didn’t survive good.
Q: How did you feel about it?
A: With somebody from my family. So I have a mixed feeling when the holiday comes.
Q: I am not talking about belief. I am talking about your faith in G-d or how did you feel about it?
A: I don’t want to talk about it. I can’t talk about it.
Q: Okay. And what about your belief in human beings after the war? Did it undermine your trust, belief in people? Did you become more suspicious?
A: Now I have to tell you a big secret. My granddaughter married not a Jewish boy, but, of course, the children had a bris and the bar mitzvah and the wedding was Jewish and the rabbi, broke the glass. Friday night they know the prayers, and all the Jewish things. If she married a Jewish boy, there is no religion, but with this non-Jew there is a stronger religion. So she was buying a house and the older one, the six-year-old was in school. They picked him up and they took him the house and they looked at the house and it was nice and they came out and they asked, “Evan, how did you like the house?” He said, “Well, I like the house, but too many Christians live around here.” That’s how Jewish he is. “I am Jewish,” he says, “I am Jewish.” In front of his father he said, “Too many Christians.” So that’s very good. And the little one’s name is Asher, which is very nice. I wasn’t even home when he was born.
Q: When you were in the States, you went back after a few years to visit Oradea?
A: No.
Q: You never went back.
A: I went back to Oradea, but I didn’t go to my house. My husband wouldn’t let me.
Q: Did you also go to the camps? Were you in Auschwitz after?
A: I went to camp.
Q: With your daughter?
A: With my daughter and a whole group.
Q: How was it to go and see it after? What did you feel?
A: It is nothing there.
Q: And what did you feel when you were there visiting?
A: What did I feel? I think for my family, for my sister and brothers. My parents, too, but…my poor mother.
Q: You went to your block? You saw your block?
A: Yes, sure. Twenty-eight, sure. I went through all the blocks, from 1. The 1 was full of Polish people.
Q: Nowadays, today, at your age, at your stage, do you still dream about the war, about what happened, about Auschwitz?
A: Every day, every day.
Q: You have dreams?
A: Every day. Every single day. I can’t get it out of me. And when I lie down tonight I am not going to sleep because everything is going to be in my head.
Q: Coming back. All the pictures. And when you think of the fact that, of the whole family, your two brothers and sister and parents, you are the only one who survived – what do you make of it? What do you think about it? It is a matter of luck?
A: No, it’s not luck.
Q: That you survived.
A: It’s just a suffering age. I have my children. They are wonderful. My son-in-law loves me more than his own mother.
Q: But how do you see the fact that you are the only one who survived?
A: It is a terrible thing.
Q: It was coincidence that you were lucky and survived? Or is it G-d’s will? How do you see it?
A: I don’t think I was lucky.
Q: You don’t see it as luck?
A: No. It’s no good to survive alone. If I would survive with someone from my family, at least one person, to have something in common with one person…nothing.
Q: But the fact that you got married, you had children, that you have your own grandchildren – is it any comfort for you?
A: No. There is in New York a family that I am very friendly with. I was very friendly. Most of them died already. Only the youngest one, that was also in concentration camp, lives in Florida. She is full of cancer. I said, “Ansi”, when I was pregnant, “Ansi, aren’t you getting pregnant? Don’t you want children?” She said, “I don’t want children. I want money.” So she does have a lot of money. Her husband died, she has no children. She is alone, with cancer. I have money, I have children, I have naches from my wonderful family and I have money too. Maybe I don’t have has much as she has, but I have enough to live on, come to Israel, go to Florida.
Q: So you do feel in one way lucky, with your family, with your grandchildren. Yes?
A: Well, I love my grandchildren, especially when he feels Jewish, my little boy.
Q: And when you think, today, at your age, of what you went through – Auschwitz and the labour camp – what do you think today…?
A: And America too.
Q: Was hard.
A: I worked from seven in the morning until eleven at night.
Q: You worked very hard.
A: And my husband came home, sat down to the table. He said, “What is for dinner?”, like I was home all day. Then I gave him an appetizer, something, then I went to wash up and give him the main meal, and he had to have just so everything.
Q: You worked very hard. So what I am asking is, thinking about the war, what you went through with the war, what do you think today, from your perspective, what was the hardest thing for you?
A: To lose my family. What happened in the camp to me, happened many, many other things. Just to climb up to that bed up there, full of…
Q: Lice?
A: No, not lice. A friend of mine who I was together with, she had lice. The wood before it is smooth, it has those rough…It went, it didn’t bother me. Only that my family, I didn’t have a family member then.
Q: That was the hardest thing. To be alone.
A: Thank G-d, my daughter is so wonderful.
Q: To be alone – that was the hardest thing for you.
A: My daughter says to me, “I’ll wash the tub so you can take a bath.” This morning she said, “I’ll wash your hair and I’ll dry it.
Q: She takes care of you.
A: She has a girl in the house. My daughter has problems with her hands. If you touch them, they are ice-cold and it is not a good thing. And I like to cook there and her husband loves my cooking and her family, my little boys, love the cooking. They all love my cooking and my baking. Baking they don’t want to eat. Like I make kugelhof.
Q: What you remember from home.
A: What I remember from home.
Q: You continue.
A: I continue.
Q: The tradition. What your mother used to make.
A: What my mother used to make. But she made it much better.
Q: And when you think of who you are today, as you are, your identity, the way you think about the world, the way you brought up your children – in what way did the past, what you went through affect who you are today? Do you see the connection of what you went through during the war? Does it affect who you are?
A: No, there is no connection. I had no money, but my children went to yeshiva, both of them, my daughter and my son, until his bar mitzvah. He spoke beautiful Hebrew. Now he doesn’t have a mezuzah on the door. He is not married. He has a girlfriend. I went to see their new house. She bought a mezuzah and put it on the door because I was coming.
Q: But I am asking something else. I am asking, what you went through during the war – in what way did it shape who you are today?
A: It didn’t shape me.
Q: It didn’t affect?
A: I have a connection inside.
Q: But it didn’t affect who you became, the way you look at the world, what you think about things?
A: Maybe yes. Because I am after things. We go on vacation with my son-on-law, like we went to Italy. I saw a mirror that I liked very much and the man asked a big price for it and I bargained until I got it for less than half. I got it for less than half and he was admiring it. I am a pushy person.
Q: The fact that you learned to be independent? That you can trust in yourself?
A: Yes.
Q: That you can survive? Practical, that you know how to deal with things. You had to, at a very early age, know how to deal with…
A: At the age of twelve my life was over. My beautiful good life was over.
Q: So I think it made you a strong person in many ways. You know how to go about…
A: But I am not strong today anymore, because I am sick and I am old. I was very strong. I could do a million things at the moment.
Q: Okay, Sylvia…
A: Like customers came to us from Texas and my husband said, “You know what? Make dinner at home.” Two brothers from their store came to us. I said no, I said yes. Form seven in the morning I worked till four. Four o’clock I went to the store shopping. I called the butcher to send home a chicken home, left it with the concierge – they have a fridgedaire there. I picked up the chicken, I went upstairs, I made the fruit salad…(end)
עדותה של סילביה (בלאו) וירצבאום ילידת 1928 Borod רומניה על קורותיה בגטו Oradea, ב-Auschwitz, ב-Oberhohenelbe, ב-Pocking, ב-Paris ועוד
החיים תחת הכיבוש ההונגרי ב-1940 כולל אנטישמיות ומדיניות אנטי-יהודית; כיבוש Oradea Mare בידי הצבא הגרמני ב-1944; החיים בגטו Oradea במשך שישה שבועות ב-1944; העברה ל-Auschwitz ב-1944; החיים במחנה כולל הפרדה מהמשפחה; העברה למחנה גירוש למחנה Oberhohenelbe בצ'כוסלובקיה ב-1944; החיים במחנה כולל עבודה במפעל "לורנץ" לייצור מכוניות בעבור הגרמנים; שחרור בידי הצבא האדום ב-1945; אשפוז בבית החולים בשל מחלת הטיפוס; הברחת הגבול ל-Frankfurt; מעבר למחנה עקורים Pocking ב-1946; מעבר ל-Paris בסיוע בן דוד אמריקני; נישואין לדוד מארצות הברית ב-1948; הגירה ל-New York ב-1948; החיים לאחר המלחמה.
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7886377
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Sylvia
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Wirtzbaum
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בלאו
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12/09/1928
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Borod, רומניה
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עדות
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O.3 - עדויות יד ושם
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07/06/09
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וירצבאום בלאו סילביה
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כן
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ישראל
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O.3 - עדויות שנגבו בידי יד ושם
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וידאו
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קומת הארכיון ע"ש מושל, אוסף ארכיון, יד ושם