Hermina Vlasopolos - April 9, 1984
Life as a Jew in Oradea
Mm-hm.
And uh, one day there was an ad in the paper and they ask--they asked for a, for a person who speaks languages and who is presentable and uh, where you could handle, I don't know, you know, kind of public relation. I didn't know exactly what it is and for--and to come to this and this hotel, you know, if you think that you...
Mm-hm.
...uh, and you meet the requirement. And I went there. I was, I was young, you know, and uh, the man talked to me and he was absolutely enchanted. He was, you know, complete...really ready to hire me. They did say, "No ethnic origin required." And at the end I told them, "I have to tell you that I'm Jewish." And it looked like he poured a pail of cold water or hot water, you know, he, he got, you know, stunned. He was, he said, "Oh I'm sorry, I'm really, really"--I, he really was sorry. I don't know if he was sorry that I was Jewish and he couldn't hire me because he found finally what he was looking for because he was not from the, from the town, you know. Hungarians are not big in foreign languages. And uh, or he was sorry because he felt bad...
Mm-hm.
...for the whole situation. Because there were some really nice people who felt really bad that they had to, I mean, they had to do us some harm without wanting to do it. And uh, well I didn't get the job, and he was, you know, he stayed in windows were like this long, you know...
Mm-hm.
...and I felt how he stays in the window and looking after, you know, like, "Oh I'm so sorry that I...
Yeah.
...couldn't, I couldn't, you know"...
Yeah.
...ah, so we had to, I had to look, you know, as I said, for odd jobs. I mean, tutoring odd jobs, because little by little the children still came, but fewer...
Mm-hm.
...because the situation, you know, worsened. And in, in April the mayor of uh, of, of uh, Oradea, Nagyvárad, as they called it in Hungarian...
Mm-hm.
...said that uh, "As long as he's mayor there," you know, "nothing will happen to the Jews," because they wanted right away to make ghettos. The Germans had come in March in uh, in Nagyvárad and they started already, you know, to clean up...
Okay.
...so, all of Jewish enterprises and so on. And uh, he said it will nothing happen there. Well, they ??? him and in twenty-four hours he was not mayor anymore and this was ???.
This was in what year?
This was in 1944.
Nineteen forty-four.
I mean, March 1944. So as you see, until 1944, I mean, they did before...
Mm-hm.
...take away some of the Jewish, I mean, the schools...
Mm-hm.
...because they were educational and--but the businesses went on, you know. It was a, a, maybe he knew more. It was a Jewish doctor, he was specialist in uh, this uh, throat and nose...
Mm-hm.
...you know. And uh, he committed suicide. He had four little girls and his wife, two, two pair of twins. And he killed himself with his wife, with, with uh, with his children.
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