Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Marton Adler - July 13, 1989

Do you have fond memories of this time?

Oh yeah. Well it was fond memories because we were with boys my age and ah it was discipline. You had to know the lesson. They would teach it to you Monday, Tuesday and maybe on Wednesday and Thursday you have to study it and rehearse it and he give you the test either Thursday or Friday and yeah it was fond memories cause we were young and there was still a little time to play too. I mean ah maybe you go to the river to swim a little bit or ah I mean it's children. You know children in a small town.

How large a Jewish community was there in Volové?

Well, I really couldn't tell you exactly. I would say, say I would say five hundred Jewish families.

Families?

Yeah. Five hundred families

Out of...

They would call it talleyism. The tallis means the shawl that you pray in. The head of household. There was so many houses. Five hundred might even be exaggerated. I would say maybe let's say three hundred.

Out of how many families do you think total in Volové?

Ah, I would say at the time was maybe fifty-fifty or maybe forty-sixty. Maybe forty percent Jewish and sixty percent Non-Jewish.

So there was a strong Jewish flavor to the town?

Oh yes. Oh yes. Very. There was a church, there was two churches and one synagogue. There was the Greek Orthodox, and the Catholic and then there was the Jewish synagogue and then later on there was two synagogues. One uptown and one downtown.

What did you father do for a business?

Well in those days from what I gather, you gotta understand this, that my normal life was really interrupted when I, when the war started just about. This upheaval with wars you know rationing and all that. All I remember is this, in those days if somebody studied and was a learned man, he could get a girl that's well-to-do and he wouldn't have to work too hard. The fact that my mother was the youngest and my father was a learned man, so she had this estate and he was able to continue studying even after marriage and he could have made a living by income from this estate and also they had a general store. And the reason I'm kind of, it's a little foggy because when this part was occupied by the Hungarians all Jewish businesses and all Jewish property was confiscated and turned over to Aryans if that's what they called, to non-Jews. So when you ask me what he did I really don't remember that much. Ah what he did because then he was conscripted into forced labor battalion, he was away for two years on the Russian front so ah we made a living.