Clara Dan - July 1, 1982
Introduction
This is a recording of an interview with Mrs. Clara Dan in Oak Park, Michigan on July 1. My name is Kay Roth and I'm the interviewer.
Would you tell me something about the town you're from and when you were born?
??? I was born July 19, 1921 in uh, Tîrgu-Mures,
Would you spell that?
Romania. Well, I tell you, in Hungarian it is Marosvasarhely. Okay? It really--if you want me to spell it, it's Tîrgu-Mures. And, in fact, people tease me that I come from the same place where Dracula comes from because Dracula is from Transylvania. [laughs] So anyway, it's a fairly--I really don't know the population of uh, the town where I come from. But uh, it changed hands between the Hungarian and the Romanians. So I have uh, Romanian upbringing, Romanian schooling, all the way. And um, I was born there, raised there.
What year were you born?
Nineteen twenty-one. And uh, I lived there 'til uh, we were taken in the labor camp first in Tîrgu-Mures, which was called, uh... Want me to tell it in Hungarian how it's called?
Sure.
It was Tégla Gyár, it's a factory where they uh, they made a brick. And we stayed there for about a, a few weeks. I really don't remember exactly what--how many weeks. But uh, we got into Auschwitz, May the 27 or 29, '44. I was there with uh, my sister.
At the ca...at the labor camp?
Yes, with my sister. And the rest of my family lived with us as I told you. I lost my father as a fourteen-year-old child and my mother two months before the concentration camp.
They died at home.
Yes.
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