Shari Weiss - April 17, 1985
Introduction
This is an interview with Shari Weiss taking place under the auspices and at the location of the Holocaust Memorial Center in West Bloomfield , Michigan on April 17, 1985. My name is Robert Roth.
Could you state your name please?
My name is Shari Weiss.
And where are you originally from?
Well, I was born in Rumania, which became Hungary in 1940. I was born in 1928-1929, excuse me, I'm making myself older already, 1929, April 28.
What was the name of the town that you were born in?
The town was called Harina. It's a small village. It's a small village in Rumania. I'm sure it still exists, but I haven't been back since I was eight years old, actually, or nine years old.
And could you describe the identity and number of your immediate family at that time.
Um. We...I come from a fairly large family. Besides my mom and dad and my grandmother who lived with us, we were seven living children. My mother had nine children altogether. Two of them died. One of them in a car accident and one of them I think was a crib death, which at the time they didn't recognize as such, of course. And uh, we lived, my father was a wheat merchant, actually he used to go to fairs, I don't know if you call it fairs, it's markets really and uh this is how he made his living by buying and selling wheat. I don't know what else you would like to know about it?
What were your parents' names?
My mother's name was Sarine and my father's name was, uh, David Rosenfeldt. Um,
And how many brothers and sisters? You had six others?
I had living three sisters and three brothers, three living brothers, yes, and three sisters because we were four girls and three boys, actually.
Ok. Could you tell me their names and tell us what the age ranges were?
Well the oldest in the family is my sister whose name is Feigie. She lives in Israel today with her own family. She is the oldest of all of the children, of the surviving children. Then there is my brother Nehigh, who also lives in Israel in Haifa. He is childless. I don't know if it's due to the war circumstances or what, but he doesn't have children. And I have my brother Zvi, or Hairshe as we would call him. He also lives in Israel in Fardishanna. He has two daughters. Then I had a younger sister whose name was Marika who didn't come back. And then I had a younger sister whose name was Goldie--she didn't come back. We called her Goldie but her Hungarian name was Arunka. And then I had a little brother whose name was Zelig after my grandfather who had passed away before deportation and all this.
Could you give us a brief description of what your life was like?
Well, we had a very, very beautiful family life at home. Even though we were not wealthy people, by no stretch of the imagination, we had a very, very close family contact. Uh, we were, of course, all our lives all our thoughts were, of course, connected greatly with religion. I come from a very religious family. I mean my mother had a sheitel and my father, as I think I mentioned to you before, didn't have a beard or anything, but he did, it was more of a, he didn't have hair but he had peyes that he didn't, I mean they weren't down long peyes just behind his ears you know because of commercial reasons he couldn't, he didn't walk around with long peyes or anything. And uh, very, very close knit family as almost all families were in the small villages. Families that were so concentrated, who were concentrating on religion as we were. I mean everything centered around our Judaism really.
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