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Shari Weiss - April 17, 1985

Approximately how many people were in your village totally? Any idea?

It's a very hard question 'cause I don't know, I was a child of ahh eight or nine when I left there so we didn't pay any attention to numbers I mean we were ahh

Do you recall anything about ahh - did you live together with non-Jews?

Well, we had neighbors,

Were the two separated?

No, uh uh, we had neighbors across the street who were non-Jews. I mean on both sides of our own house there were Jewish people, but across the street and, I mean, we were scattered all over to the village. I mean, it wasn't a concentrated group of Jews and a concentrated group of Christians. I mean, we were intermingled really.

Did you have non-Jewish friends, do you recall, as a child there?

When a family is as numerous as ours is, was, I should say , I don't even know if we had a need for any outside friends, not only that, but we had cousins and people living so closely in the same courtyards that we didn't need to have any other friends. I mean, I know our parents had more contacts with other people, but we were pretty much ahh together you know just the family; the children in our own family plus the neighbors' children that we were close friends with as I recall, I mean, uhhh..

You mention that you left the village when you were eight or nine. What were the circumstances surrounding that?

The circumstances were such that ahh I had an aunt and uncle, well actually it was my mother's brother who lived in Colagvar in Cluj at the time it was called because it was still Rumania, and they had an only son, ahh, and my aunt who dearly loved her mother wanted the child that was named after her mother, when her mother passed away, to live with her and that was my younger sister but she didn't want to go anywhere. And I had somehow, I don't know even at that age I had a yearning to get out of that small village and I said to my Mom, "well why can't I take her place and go and live with my aunt," which I regretted many, many times through the course of my childhood not because I was ill treated or anything, it's just that I realize now how important it would have been to be with my family for those few years that we had left together. But as a young child, I mean the lure of a richer life, evidently, I mean a more affluent life because my mother described the way my aunt and uncle were living, and it was very tempting, of course, and very luring, and that's why I consented to go and live with my aunt and uncle. Of course, I mean there is no comparison in the lifestyles, of course, because my aunt and uncle were doing very nicely and they lived very graciously, and of course, I benefited through that with schooling and foreign languages and taking piano lessons and all that. It is just natural that I was very content with that situation even though many a nights I cried for my mother and dad.

Did they have any children your aunt and uncle?

Yes, they had one son. An only son who was eight years older than I. My cousin who lives in Germany now, but we don't have any contact at all.

Your aunt and uncle's names were what?

My uncle was Emmanual Soloman and my aunt's name was Bertha Soloman. And when I was in camp, and ordered, I mean when we found out in Auschwitz, I mean, we thought if we say we are mother and daughter that we are gonna be kept together, I mean, little did we know that that was the exact intent of the Nazis to separate families and to divide them rather then to keep them together. But by then, I mean I took the name of Shari Soloman just so that we should have the same name. And I did call her mother just so that we should be identified as mother and daughter.