Margit Mezei

Mezei looks at a photograph of her sister and her sister's husband, says that she and her husband, both from Sighet, were taken to Auschwitz, and mentions that she has lived in Oradea for almost fifty years. She names her parents, grandmothers and the work of her father, who had a textile shop. She says she was the eldest of three children, with a sister and a brother. Her brother was taken as a laborer, was held by the Russians in the Donbas until his return in 1948, and later married and lived in Oradea. Her sister-in-law lives in Israel, where Mezei has visited three times.

Names her parents and both grandmothers, and her grandfather as a timber merchant; the sister-in-law's name and where she lives.

Mezei recalls her childhood in Sighet: the family lived with her widowed grandmother in a poor street and later moved to a better house her father bought. She describes caring for her sick grandmother, going to a preschool at three, and learning Romanian, Hungarian and Yiddish, and some German. She mentions her brother's passion for football and her own school graduation in 1939. She says antisemitism grew once the Hungarians arrived.

Mentions the grandmother's illness, her languages and her brother's football, and the growth of antisemitism under the Hungarians.

Mezei and the others briefly speak about the war years: the last Passover seder at home in April 1944, the family being taken into the ghetto in mid-April, and arrival in Birkenau in May. Others in the room also talk about showing a photograph to the camera.

Mezei explains her school photograph from 1939, found at home after her return from Auschwitz, and the languages taught at her Romanian lyceum. She speaks about Jewish life in prewar Sighet: observance in her parents' home, Yiddish games with other children, and the youth organizations she attended, including Hashomer Hatzair, Hanoar Hatzioni and a Trumpeldor club. She then describes her husband's background: he was poor, lost his father early, and studied law in Cluj. His mother came from Vienna, spoke German and was a music teacher. Her husband worked as a lawyer and held a doctorate.

Gives her husband's family background: his Viennese mother, his father's early death and his poverty.

Mezei discusses prewar Sighet, where about half of the population was Jewish and few were rich, and the poor street where she grew up. She describes Sabbath customs in her home, including the cholent taken to the baker, Sabbath foods, and her grandmother's strict kashrut. She then tells of her husband's labor service, his survival in Budapest under a Hungarian name, his work at a stone factory, and his walking home to Sighet in January 1945.

Covers the Jewish share of the population, Sabbath foods and terms, and her husband's labor service and return on foot.

Mezei says what the husband and his friends found in Sighet on returning, the burnt Reform synagogue, and the Great Synagogue where the Jews were held before deportation. A memorial now stands there. She then recalls her father, a committed Zionist who set up a small Zionist prayer house, and her taking her grandmother to services.

Adds the burnt Reform synagogue, the deportation memorial and her father's Zionist prayer house.

Answering Kerler, Mezei talks about Passover in her prewar home: matzo dishes, borscht made by her grandmother, and whether matzo was soaked. She mentions her uncle and a relative who was a Vizhnitz Hasid, and says that her father studied textiles in Budapest and served as a Hungarian soldier in the First World War. She then shows photographs of her father, her school days, her sisters and relatives who died at Auschwitz or live abroad.

Includes the uncle and the Vizhnitz Hasid relative, her father's WWI service, and photographs of relatives abroad.

Kerler asks whether a Yiddish newspaper appeared in Sighet; Mezei says she receives a Hungarian paper from Israel. She shows photographs of friends, including a man from Sighet whom everyone knows and his wife. She also recounts an interview given to students from the university in Cluj about the ghetto and Auschwitz, which lasted for hours.

Asked by Kerler whether she saw Mengele, Mezei describes being in the Birkenau C sector near the infirmary block, where Mengele came a few times a week and the women feared a selection. She tells how her mother was taken by Mengele in October. She reflects that the world knew and stayed silent, and that men suffered more in the camp, including the Sonderkommando and Russian prisoners of war. She tells of a friend's brother, a lawyer in the Sonderkommando, who asked her through the fence about his sister.

Mezei concludes her account of Auschwitz, where she stayed six months, and then describes being moved to a factory in Thuringia. She talks about the mild climate, the heated quarters in an SS garrison, the washing facilities, and the poor clothing issued to the prisoners. She describes the camp barracks and the selection of women by their hands for lighter or heavier work. She had an easy inspection job and says she was liberated by the Americans in April 1945.

Mentions the threat of being sent to Buchenwald for those who failed their work quota.

Mezei recounts the night march from the camp in April 1945 to a village and then to the woods near Waldenburg, where air-raid alarms sounded. Some 600 prisoners, mostly women with a few men, hid in the forest overnight. In the morning the prisoners went down and found American soldiers, which she describes as their liberation. Two or three days later she fell ill with pneumonia and a high fever, which she says kept her from overeating the tinned food, from which many died. Kerler then steers back to the holidays discussed earlier.

Includes the night spent in the forest with her sister and the sister's tea during her illness.

Answers questions from Kerler about prewar holidays: Passover with two seders, new clothes for children, and the father conducting the seder. She mentions Hanukkah games with the dreidel and gelt for the children, and dressing up on Purim to visit grandmothers and bring gifts of food. She discusses baked goods for Purim and Hanukkah and Passover dishes, and recalls young men bringing large baskets of matzo and an uncle who ate only shmurah matzo.

Also covers Hanukkah dreidel play and gelt, and Kerler's questions about the Yiddish words for potato and for ingredients of Purim pastries.

Sings the song about how what was is gone, with Kerler asking about the refrain's wording. She recalls the summer theater in Sighet, the Hungarian and Yiddish actors Strömer and his wife, and an actress who sang there. She sings a song that a Jewish girl needs a Jewish boy, tied to a woman who married a Romanian and later died in Auschwitz. She mentions her friends' fates after the war, including those who went to Israel, and the judge husband of the woman.

Includes the theater visits in Sighet and the story of a woman who married a Romanian judge.

Mezei tells of an elderly relative's marriage match and her Romanian lesson, then answers Kerler about singing in Auschwitz. She tells in detail of Miri, a Slovakian or Hungarian block elder from Birkenau, who knew her fiancé's family and helped her and her sister with food while they were in forced labor. She describes selections, the transport, twelve-hour day and night shifts, singing Hungarian and Romanian songs with other women, and the final evening when Miri decided not to leave with them. The part also touches on an uprising by the Sonderkommando and her friendship with a rabbi's wife.

Beyond the shidduch and the songs, the passage covers the helping block elder Miri and a fiancé's cousin link.

Answers Kerler's question on the language spoken at home: her parents spoke Yiddish and Hungarian, the children Hungarian and Romanian, and the grandmother Yiddish only. She recalls her grandmother's shock at her using an umbrella on the Sabbath and a sister who smoked. She says she read in Hungarian and Romanian, including Gorky and Dostoevsky from her father's library, and she begins a joke attributed to Sholem Aleichem about a widow's daughter.

Adds the languages spoken at home, her reading list and a joke.

Mezei tells jokes, some in Yiddish and some in Hungarian, with the second woman and a third voice helping her translate for Kerler. They include one about two men and their wife and lover and a taxi joke that turns on a brothel. Kerler asks about Yiddish joke tellers of the region and how to say the word for brothel in Yiddish.

Mezei recounts her journey home after Auschwitz, by way of Prague and then Budapest, where she was put up in a hospital. In the yard there she unexpectedly met two cousins, who took her to their mother, her aunt. The aunt gave her a bath and fresh clothes. She goes on to Timișoara, where relatives of hers lived and had not been deported, and travels on by train toward home. She says she had heard in Prague that her fiancé was back; she returned on the first of July and married him on the first of September, and they lived together until his death nine years ago.

Adds the cousins met in the hospital yard, the relatives in Timișoara who were not deported, and the date of her marriage.

Mezei describes what she found at her home after returning: a woman and a young man were living there. He had asked for the apartment when the family was deported. He found very little in it. She then points out something she made on the wall of the apartment, before she went to the synagogue, at about fifteen. The passage is partly unclear.

Adds the young man who asked for the apartment, and the object she made as a girl on the wall.

The talk about the object she made as a girl continues briefly. It then turns into Hungarian-language talk about Budapest: a villa, an aunt, a walk along the boulevard in 1948 and a postcard sent to a friend. The recogniser makes much of this passage unintelligible. At the end the speakers seem to be arranging how to carry on. The catalogue mentions family photographs, but they are not evident in the transcript.

Adds the Hungarian-language talk about Budapest and an aunt, which the catalogue sentence does not mention.