Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Albert Fein - February 19, 2005

Life Under Hungarian Occupation III

But you kept going to school when the Hungarians came in?

The--I was going two more years, I believe, and then my father says, "I cannot pay, pay privately so you will go to cheder." And my mother she says, I--besides we was already uh, we read and write in Hebrew, in, in, in Hungarian or in Czech.

What language did you speak at home? At home most of it was, with, with our mother, German. With my father: Yiddish. When the family was together, we was all speaking Yiddish.

So your mother spoke Yiddish as well.

Yiddish. Sure, she speak Yiddish. Only she tried to--so that we learned German language. And on the street was speaking Hungarian, because there was--I think a lot of people was speaking Hungarian, like, like this gentleman who was talking to me.

Yeah, Adler.

He--I don't know. He was probably living in, in a small town...

Vo... Volové.

Volové...

Volové in the, uh...

Volové

...in the Carpathian mountains?

Yes, this is Carpathian Mountains so that's why he didn't speak Hungarian. You see, Uzhorod, in this area, this was more Hungarians.

And he was--it's Romania.

In Romania?

Volové is in Romania.

Volové, no. Volové was up in the mountains, Volové.

But I think it's near, it's Sighet.

It's near Sighet, yeah, Volové.

I think was Romania at the time.

It's possible, I, I you know, I don't really to say this--meanwhile I heard Volové--this from Munkach...Mukachevo. Yes, there, there is some--here you probably know better--but Munkacs here up...

Yeah, up a little bit more.

...a little more. It's more to the Polish border, Volové, because there was farther out here from Uzhorod, there was Jasiňa. There, there was the thing. Even you couldn't, you couldn't take, take by train, you have to go through Romania because there was mountains, and, and this was impossible to build, you know, the thing. They was building tunnels--they had tunnels, you know, only they came out to the corner of, of Carpathian Rus--all of it. This was Jasiňa and the Hungarians called it Kereshmeze.

Right.

This was on, on the end of the thing. This was a triangle. All Polish border, Romanian, and Carpathian--this means the Hungarian.

Hungarian.


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