Testimony Of Some Survivors From The Oradea Ghetto

În prezent autoarea trăieşte în Israel, venind anual în vizită la Oradea, unde şi-a petrecut cea mai mare parte din viaţă26 . Pe lângă jurnalele scrise în timpul celui de al doilea război mondial despre realitățile bihorene ale momentului, în ultimii ani au fost aduse în atenția publicului mărturii depuse de supraviețuitorii Holocaustului în procesul ghetourilor, scopul acestora fiind punerea sub acuzație a celor care au ordonat genocidul ,,poporului ales”. Institutul National pentru Studierea Holocaustului din România ,,Elie Wiesel“, Asociația Evreilor din România Victime ale Holocaustului, prin cărțile sale - Procesul ghetourilor din nordul Transilvaniei, care cuprinde mai multe volume alcătuite de Oliver Lusting, au fost editate la Editura AERVH, București, în 2007. Mărturii despre Ghetoul Oradea sunt cuprinse în volumul II27. Această publicație întregește imaginea cititorului despre atrocitățile, suferințele, chinurile la care a fost supus poporul evreu. Scrierile memorialistice au o serie de puncte comune, evidenţiind înrăutăţirea graduală a situaţiei populaţiei evreieşti odată cu adoptarea şi aplicarea legislaţiei antisemite, drama trăită de aceasta odată cu ghetoizarea, condiţiile precare de viaţă, interogatoriile prin care au trecut numeroşi evrei, deportarea etc. În concluzie, precizăm că prin studiul de faţă am actualizat câteva aspecte legate de soarta tragică a evreilor din Oradea şi judeţul Bihor în fatidicul an 1944, utilizând drept surse scrieri memorialistice și publicații locale ale epocii, care surprind cu exactitate înrăutățirea graduală a sorții comunității evreiești. Cu siguranţă, realitatea descrisă poate fi completată cu informaţii existente în alte lucrări, care abordează o tematică similară.

Teacher, Klementina Ardelean Theoretical High School "Ady Endre" Oradea

The history of Oradea is closely linked to the presence of the Jewish community in these lands, which made a major contribution to the development of the city delimited by the river Crisul Repede and the river Peța28 .

26 http://www.oradea.ro/stiri-oradea/diploma-de-excelenta-pentru-tereza-mozes 27 Institutul National pentru Studierea Holocaustului din România “Elie Wiesel“ Asociația Evreilor din România Victime ale Holocaustului, Procesul ghetourilor din nordul Transilvaniei, volumul II - mărturii, volum alcătuit de Oliver Lusting, Editura AERVH, București, 2007, Ghetoul Oradea; http://www.survivors-romania.org/text_doc/oradea.htm 28 https://culturainmiscare.ro/evreii-din-oradea/

Throughout its existence, it has gone through several phases, from settling in this area, to establishing a strong community with all specific institutions, its integration into city life, assimilation of local culture and values, prominent presence in economic life, social and cultural and, subsequently, the abrupt end, meaning the physical extermination, which in an instant erased everything that had been made in hundreds of years of history. The poet Ady Endre, who was educated in Oradea, wrote about the following Jews: “This city, with its multitude of Jews, is as if someone, instead of putting leaven in flour, had put a handful of flour in the leaven; the bread grew, the dough came out of the basket; the Jews of Oradea raised the city from its provincial state. All this has made this city a real Paris on the banks of the Market”. This reality makes the history of Oradea incomplete and cannot be told without including the history of the Jewish community that lived in this area29 . The two world wars, which devastated Europe in the first half of the twentieth century, also led to substantial changes in Oradea. The years 1940-1944 were truly catastrophic for the Jews of Oradea. The city, generally considered tolerant, during these years of great trials remained indifferent. Its inhabitants watched with indifference the expulsion and deportation together of the Jews from Oradea and the localities in the county30 . The largest ghetto in Hungary was organized in the city on Crișul Repede, with the exception of Budapest one, which was established later, in November 1944. In fact, two ghettos operated in this city: one for the local Jews, in which about 20-21,000 people were crowded, located near the Hevra Sas Orthodox Synagogue in Oradea31 and the Great Square, in the densest area inhabited by poor Jews; the other, for the nearly 8,000 Jews brought from the rural communities of the following twelve districts: Aleşd, Berettyóújfalu (today, in Hungary), Biharkeresztes (today, in Hungary), Cefa, Derecske (today, in Hungary), Marghita, Oradea, Săcueni, Sălard, Salonta Mare, Sárrét (today, in Hungary) and Valea lui Mihai. Many of the Jews in these communities were concentrated in the Mezey wood deposit32 . A few days before May 3, 1944, the date scheduled for the beginning of the ghettoization operation in Northern Transylvania, special commissions from cities and communes - which included mayors, deputy prefects and heads of local gendarmerie and police units - held meetings, to determine the location of the ghettos and to develop the logistics needed for the Jewish assembly. Although almost the same procedures were followed everywhere, the severity with which the ghettoization was carried out, as well as the location of the ghettos and the conditions inside them depended on the individual attitude of the mayors and their aides. Consequently, in cities like

29 https://www.tikvah.ro/ro/evreii-in-oradea/istoria.html 30 Tereza Mózes, The Jews of Oradea, Hasefer Publishing House, Bucharest, 1997, p. 13 (hereinafter: Tereza Mózes, The Jews ...) 31 Jewish place of worship in Oradea, located on Str. Mihai Viteazu, no. 6. The building was built in 1890 in an eclectic style. The Orthodox Synagogue of Oradea was included on the List of historical monuments in Bihor County since 2015, with the classification code BH-II-m-B-01060 32 Lőwy Dániel, Az úri város zsidó lakosai. A nagyváradi zsidóság története (Jewish inhabitants of the new city. History of the Jews of Oradea), Magyar Unitárius Egyház Magyarországi Egyházkerülete, Budapest, 2015, pp. 227-230; Erdélyi Néplap, May 11-12, 1944, pp. 5; Tereza Mózes, Evreii ..., pp. 193-199; http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/pdfdrupal/en/report/romanian/1.10_Northern_Transylvania_%20revazut%20gina .pdf

Oradea and Satu Mare, ghettos were established in the poorest areas, largely uninhabited by nonJews; in others, such as Bistriţa, Cluj, Reghin, Şimleu Silvaniei and Târgu Mureş, ghettos were established in bricks. The Dej ghetto was located in Bungur, a forest where some Jews lived in makeshift barracks and others in the open air. On May 2, 1944, the mayors issued special instructions to the Jews and spread them throughout the area under their jurisdiction. The ghettoization of the almost 160,000 Jews in Northern Transylvania began on May 3, 1944. The assembly of the Jews was held according to the provisions of Decree no. 6163/1944, by teams established by local mayors, which included civil servants, primary or secondary school teachers, gendarmes and police officers, as well as Nyilas volunteers. The units were organized by the town hall commissions and acted under their jurisdiction33 . In Oradea, the procedures for closing the Jews in the ghetto started on the morning of May 3, 1944 and were completed after 5 days. The Great Ghetto located on the left bank of the Cris River, between the current streets Avram Iancu, gen. Traian Moşoiu, 1 Decembrie Square, south of Crinului Street, followed by Mihail Kogălniceanu Street, the row of houses on the east side of Independence Square and, finally, the circle was closed by Suceava Street34. The Great Ghetto had an area of 130 acres, or one-fifteenth of the city's 2,000 acres. In just 5 days, almost a third of the city's population, which at that time numbered 90,000, was crowded on this surface. War veterans, the infirm, the mentally insane and those in the TB Hospital, including newly operated patients, were not left out. In this perimeter, the density was so high that 15-16 Jews shared a single room. There are several information of certain historiographical significance about the tragic realities in the Oradea ghetto, the first reports belonging to Dr. Miksa Kupfer, who prepared an "informative material on the atrocities in the ghetto", written on 16 "recipe" forms. The memorandum contains detailed data on the "torture to which Jews were subjected" in the ghetto, some of whom were "pushed to suicide." Through the Consul General of Romania in Oradea, Mihai Marina, the Memorandum was completed with other information gathered from Northern Transylvania by members of the Consulate General of Romania in Oradea, who came into possession of the International Red Cross in Geneva (Switzerland) by through the Romanian ambassador to the Swiss capital - Vespasian V. Pella35 . Two other memorial writings saw the light of day in 1946. These are Katona Béla's book, Várad a viharban - Oradea in the storm36, and Béla Zsolt's book, Kilenc koffer - Nine suitcases37 , both describing, in great detail, the realities from the Oradea ghetto.

33 http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/pdf-drupal/en/report/romanian/1.10_Northern_Transylvania_%20revazut% 20gina.pdf 34 Nagyvárad, May 6, 1944, p.1 35 Antonio Faur, Involvement of the Romanian diplomat Dr. Mihai Marina in the rescue actions of the Jews from Northern Transylvania and Hungary (1944), Crişurilor Country Museum Publishing House, Oradea, 2014, pp. 45-57; Katona Béla, Oradea in the storm, Teala Publishing House, Oradea, 1946, pp. 225-226; Viorel Faur, The first memorialistic references about the Oradea ghetto (1944-1946), in The situation of Jews in Central Europe at the end of the Second World War (1944-1945), coordinators Antonio Faur, Ladislau Gyémánt, University of Oradea Publishing House, Oradea , 2011, pp. 67-69 36 Katona Béla, Várad a viharban (Oradea in a storm), Teala Publishing House, Oradea, 1946 37 Zsolt Béla, Kilenc Kuffer (Nine Suitcases), Magvető Publishing House, Budapest, 1980

The first work has a foreword signed by Béla Zsolt - one of the few survivors of the program of mass extermination of Jews, planned and executed by the National Socialist regime in Germany, led by Adolf Hitler and his collaborators - who confessed that he was not yet able to read it, for fear of the "ghosts of Oradea." The book describes in detail the profound changes that took place in the city of Crisul Repede during the period following the First World War and their impact on the socio-economic life of the Jews. Below are aspects regarding the cruel fate experienced by this community with the outbreak of the Second World War and the accentuation of the anti-Semitic policy of the Hungarian authorities: introduction of anti-Semitic laws, yellow star (1944), Gestapo in Oradea, organization of the Oradea ghetto , "Treasure hunters" from the former Dréher Brewery, the situation of Jewish doctors and the infectious diseases hospital, later transformed into a typhus hospital, about the Romanian diplomat Mihai Marina, the transport of Jews and desperate rescue attempts, Oradea without Jews, the armistice and the return of those deported38 . In the autobiographical book Nine Suitcases, left-wing publicist and politician39 Béla Zsolt recalls issues related to his deportation to a labor camp in Ukraine, life in the Oradea ghetto, and the typhus hospital, where his life was saved by Dr. Miksa Kupfer, the way in which he managed to escape with his life from that hell, the road to Budapest and, later, to Switzerland. Parts of the book were first published in the pages of the newspaper Haladás (Progress), a weekly publication of the Hungarian Radical Party in Budapest, beginning on May 30, 1946, where Béla Zsolt held the position of collaborator, later editor. The first part of the paper, up to chapter 30, was published until February 6, 1947, the second part seeing the light of day between February 20 and 27 of the same year, when it was abruptly interrupted due to the author's illness. The published chapters were to take the form of a book in the fall of 1947 - as announced by the newspaper Haladás - but this did not materialize. According to some testimonies, the cause of this state of affairs was due to both the sensitive subject and the author's illness. Other opinions cite as a cause of the book's non-completion the threat to the court, issued against him by the doctor Miksa Kupfer, the one who saved him from deportation. However, Béla Zsolt managed to publish, starting with April 15, 1948, for 18 weeks, in the pages of the same Budapest publication, the work Death in Budapest. Due to the author's illness, in the autumn of 1948, followed by his death in February 1949, this book was not completed either40 . The diary of Eva Heyman, a 13-year-old girl, victim of the Holocaust, was published by her mother in 1948. Eva was born in Oradea in 1931, to Jewish parents. On March 19, 1944, while Nazi Germany was invading Hungary, Eva was living with her grandparents, her mother Agnes being divorced and remarried to her second husband, the publicist Béla Zsolt41 . Eva began to post her thoughts and feelings on the front page of her Little Diary on February 13, 1944, when she turned 13 years old. She was an exuberant, intelligent girl, endowed with a developed spirit of observation, recording - with extraordinary acuity - all the realities under the

38 Katona Béla, op.cit. 39 Member of the Hungarian Radical Party, present in political life between 1945-1949. The last president of the political party between 1948-1949. 40 Zsolt Béla, op.cit. pp. 400-401 41 http://www.tikvah.ro/ro/eva-heyman-ro/jurnalul-evei.html

sign of the Holocaust, making one of the original documents on the application of the "Final Solution" on Bihor Jews. Her life was strongly marked from the age of 10, when her best friend, Marta Munczer, was taken with her parents, who did not have Hungarian citizenship, wagoned and deported to Poland by the Horthy police authorities, where they have found their end. In the Journal, Eva obsessively repeated the fear that she would have the same fate with her family as her friend, Marta. The little girl desperately wanted to survive, the whole Journal being overwhelmed by her desire to live: “I don't want to die! I lived so little”!42 Éva Heyman lived the moments of terror instilled by the Hungarian authorities, both through the total deprivation of property of her family and other Jews from Oradea, their offensive treatment, the crowding in the ghetto of the city, the terrible living conditions in it, the tragic experiences here and, of course, deportation to death camps in Poland. According to eyewitnesses, Josef Mengele43 personally pushed Eva into the van of death. The last entry in the Journal is from May 30, 1944, when the former chef Szabó Mariska, managed to sneak into the ghetto and take out the journal. In just 3 days, this "Anna Frank of Transylvania", together with her grandparents, were wagoned, ending in Birkenau-Auschwitz on October 17, 194444 .

Through this partial ghetto diary, written under the rule of the lived situation, Éva Heyman left, without proposing, one of the most valuable documentary sources about the fate of the Jews in this part of the country. "Éva Heyman is, without a doubt, a symbol of the confrontation of an outraged community with an infernal Nazi machine, for the elimination of European Jews from the continent's history", says prof. Univ. Dr. Antonio Faur45 . Eva Heyman's diary belongs to a privileged category of historical sources, which have retained all the drama of extreme situations. It is not only a document of local resonance, but also a story of general European reference, but which is not well enough known, requiring a wider dissemination in scientific and cultural circles, due to its veracity46 . Under the guidance of Schön Dezső, the book A tegnap városa was published in Tel Aviv in 1981. A nagyváradi zsidóság emlékkönyve (Yesterday's City. The Memorial Book of the Jews of Oradea). In its 456 pages, the book presents the history of the Jewish inhabitants of the city on Crisul Repede, being a tribute to all Jews who lived in the northern parts of Bihor until their deportation in the summer of 1944. The author signs several chapters of the book that present the history of the Jews of Oradea, the Zion Synagogue, the book also includes a series of pictures and graphic representations with places well known to the Oradea public. Other chapters present the Oradea Zionist movement, memoirs about labor camps, about the sports life of Oradea Jews, the connections of the poet Ady

42 Oliver Lustig - co-author, Echoes from the Holocaust in universal literature: an anthology, AERVH Publishing House, Bucharest, 2005, pp. 153-154 43 Nicknamed the "Angel of Death", he was a German physician who, as SS captain, initiated and led the heinous "selections" and various experiences of Jews deported from all over Europe for the Auschwitz-Birkenau exterminations. 44 Oliver Lustig, op.cit. pp. 153-154 45 https://adevarul.ro/locale/oradea/anne-frank-oradea-eva-heyman-copila-doctorul-mengele-impins-o-duba-mortiifetita-scris-jurnal-despre-ororile-holocaustului-1_55c0cf58f5eaafab2c3d0159/ index.html, 46 Viorel Faur, op. cit., p. 66

Endre with Oradea Jews, statistics about the number of Jews in the Bihor area, the camp regulations, how the Jewish hospital was requisitioned, but also about Eva Heymann's Diary, memoirs about the Auschwitz concentration camp, the Birkenau platform, the list of deported Jews from Oradea and Salonta, poems about Oradea and surroundings. Also in this book was included the diary of Leitner Sándor: A nagyvaradi zsidok tragediaja - The tragedy of the Jews of Oradea47 . Two other memoirs recount the period of the war, giving the reader an overview of it. Radnóti Miklós's diary tells the realities of 1942 in Oradea and Bihor County, the 100 days of forced labor he took part in and the atrocities he went through, and Professor Rózsa Ágnes presents realities from the war48 . The books of the ethnographer Tereza Mózes are a more recent appearance in the bibliography of the period. Born in 1919 in Şimleul Silvaniei, Tereza Mozes graduated from high school in Oradea, from where she was deported with her whole family, at the age of 25, to Auschwitz. She then went through the ordeal of the Nazi camps in Riga, Stutthof, Spilve, Dorbek, Kaiserwald and Gutan, being liberated by the Soviet army. The road home was a new ordeal, which lasted over half a year, passing through Warsaw, Lublin, Chernivtsi and Belarus. As a result of the traumas he suffered, his love of life did not perish. He graduated from the Faculty of History at the University of Cluj, obtaining a degree in art history, ethnography, French language and literature. In 1967 he received his doctorate from the Institute of Art History in Bucharest. From 1946 until the end of his career, he dedicated himself to the organization and reorganization of several museums in Oradea, the most important work being deposited at the Crişana Regional Museum, where he was the head of the Department of Art and Folk Art. In this capacity he contributed to the enrichment and diversification of the collection of popular objects and ceramics. Tereza Mozes is the author of several books of ethnography, but also of a shocking volume of memoirs "Bloody Decalogue", as well as the monograph "Jews of Oradea". The volume "Bloody Decalogue"49 saw the light of day in 1983, first in Hungarian, then, in 1995, in Romanian. It is one of the few books devoted exclusively to life in women's concentration camps. He wrote about the terrible trauma of a group of women who were separated forever from their parents, grandparents and siblings; mothers who were forever separated from their husbands and children on the day of their arrival on the death row in Birkenau50 . The monograph Jews of Oradea51 appeared in 1995, at first in Hungarian, which was translated into Romanian and completed, with new data, in 1997. "Jews from Oradea" is a tribute volume dedicated to Jewish history in Oradea. The chapters of the book record the history of the community in the city on Crisul Repede; the establishment and strengthening of the Jewish community, the emancipation of Jews, aspects of religious, cultural and economic life; the changes brought about by the First World War, the Zionist movement, education and participation in the cultural-artistic life of the interwar period, the fascist threat, the tragedy of the Jews during 1940-

47 Schön Dezső, A tegnap városa. A nagyváradi zsidóság emlékkönyve (Yesterday's City. The Memorial Book of the Jews of Oradea), Tel Aviv, 1981, 456 p. 48 http://epa.oszk.hu/00100/00181/00062/tarsadalom_01_lowy.htm 49 Tereza Mózes, Bloody Decalogue, Ara Publishing House, Bucharest, 1995 50 Oliver Lustig, op. cit., pp. 297-298; https://baabel.ro/2014/07/curriculum-tereza-mozes/ 51 Mózes Teréz: Váradi zsidók (Jews from Oradea), Literator, Nagyvárad, 1995, 172 p.