Good morning everyone. I'm glad to be here and I almost didn't make it, for several reasons. I'm going to tell you, not a history of Holocaust because you are learning it, but my and my family's experience during the Holocaust. How do I get to it? I was born in Romania. And you don't, it's not Germany, it's not Hungary, it's Romania, right? And if you see that map, that tat top, top, top is the city of Sighet, and you heard how famous the city had become. So when I was born, the city had about over 30,000 people, equally divided between Romanians, Hungarians and Jews. Actually there were 12,000 Jews in Sighet and it was a very Jewish city. In a sense, you had all your relatives and you had your friends, and almost everybody talked in your language, Yiddish. And it was accepted, but I would say it was Romania, and we sort of second class citizens, but working harder than others, we always made it. Like making it in school, and making it in business, and so on and so forth. My family consisted of my parents and my seven brothers, four younger, and three older brothers. So you know what it means to be one girl, right, among seven brothers. They knew my birthday, I never knew all of their birthdays. So it was a very traditional life at the time being 1920, right. And we, at home, we spoke Yiddish and there was the Jewish people were very much together. They had their temples and they had all their rights at that time, right? So, indeed, I spoke Yiddish at home and started to speak Romanian only when I went to elementary school. I went through elementary school, and then went through high school. The point is, that not many people, not many girls went to high school at that time, and very few Jewish girls. I remember I was a very good student during elementary school. And some parents called me to come and to stay after and do the homework with their daughters, which I did. But when I went to high school, indeed, I was one of the best students. And by the third grade, somehow, I became a tutor. Parents came to me, II want you to come every day and tutor my daughter. And I have three, I'm sorry, I have two girls whom I tutored at the age of 13, this is starting to work in my life. Not that money meant so much, but even today, it is good to have some extra money and order your own dress or your own clothing, because you couldn't buy at that time ready made stuff. So here I, and there were very few girls in our class because, I told you, not everybody went to high school. And I remember my father accepted me to go to high school. So he had some rules and then religious rules. But you promise me you are not going to take notes on Saturday. I promise him. So during this high school many, many things happened, but still it was a peaceful life, I would say. Right. We had many, many friends and we had many organizations. Don't forget it was the 1930s, 1940s and everybody joined all kinds of organizations. We had friends and we had, and in my eight years of high school I even had a boyfriend. High school was very stringent. I have to tell you what we learned in high school, you would think it was a junior college. We had eight years of French, six years of Latin, four years of German or English, depending if we have teachers. This is about languages. We talk about philosophy, one year we did psychology, sociology, and so on. For every material, every year was harder and harder the same. History, local history, European history, the same. And indeed if you came, at that time, to the United States, they would give you at least two years of college. So yes, I was a very, very, good student. I was never number one. Even though I deserved it and I remember in the last year of high school when we got the awards, the first award was a Romanian girl, she passed with 973 and I passed with 972, something like this. This was very obvious, but you accepted this type of things, right. I'm very, very glad that I can make it through school, and I enjoyed very much. We had all these friends, and I told you, being those years, everybody belonged to groups. And I belonged to Zionist groups, and my boyfriend belonged to a Communist group. And all this went until 1940 when I finished high school. And in 1940 the war had started. The war had started 1939, in '40, the Germans had asked asked the Hungarians, their neighbors, you see with the map. They asked to join them, and the Hungarians accepted to the Allies, but they got a reward. And what was their reward? They got part of Romania. You see that hatched part, right? Part of Transylvania, which had been, before the first war, part of Hungary. So, here, suddenly from one day to another we became Hungarians. The Hungarians marched in, there was no war. But it was a very Fascist government already, and when they came, they came with all the rules of all those because they were allies of the Germans. They made it very hard for Jews, they take over some of the bigger jobs, they wanted to take over the businesses. But something very serious was that the Jewish kids couldn't go anymore to public high school. Also, couldn't go to college anymore. I just graduated high school, and the Hungarians came. Luckily, I spoke Hungarian, obviously. So this was a time that we call Hungarian Occupation, it was very anti-Semitic, but we could live, it was not war for us yet. But meanwhile the while the Nazis knew, you know very well, I don't have to give you the history. But you know that when Hitler came to power, right, there were two ideas, which he won the approval of the German people. One was that we are special people, and we need more space to breathe, and wherever, they're Hungarian. They are our people, we have to occupy them. And the other ideas that the Jews are the worst of all. And when I come, I take care of the Jews. I chase them away from Europe. It is very important to know he didn't say, I am going to kill them or anything like that, chasing out of Europe. And indeed this happened for a long time. Those who had money in Germany, still could get out, with money and taxes, okay. So when the Hungarian occupation started to become very hard, and I have to tell you, at that time, out of my seven brothers, only two brothers were at home. Five brothers were not and you would see what happened to this and to that. My brothers at home was my older brother, who was a very talented young man, a draftsman, an artist. And as my father, who was an insurance agent, lost his job in the war, my brother was very happy to get a job at the movie house so at least he would support the family.
