Golda Salamon before WWII

This photo was taken before the World War II, it represents me, Golda Salamon.

I, Golda Salamon was born here in [Maramaros]Sziget, on 30th November 1926.

I don't know from whom I inherited my name, but it is interesting that there wasn't any other Golda in the family, just me.

There was one more, I think a relative on my mother's side, but they lived in Szaplonca, not in [Maramaros]Sziget.

Since we usually didn't look for names somewhere else, but just in the family.

They give names after the grandparents, if they are no longer alive, or after a family member if they die.

We had a 'hajder' [cheder] here - where the Talmud was taught in Jewish -, because there were many Jewish children in this street.

Everywhere where there were Jewish children, a cheder was established.

It is compulsory; children [boys] go to cheder from the age of four.

They use the pencil there already, and they start to learn the numbers, they have to write numbers until 100, from the age of four.

And they also learn the alphabet, which is in Jewish, since they are four.

Thus our children when they go to school at the age of six or seven, when they go to the first grade, they are not so ignorant, because they know already to count, to write letters, so they learn well, and comprehend things faster than those who attended only kindergarten, and have never taken a pencil in their hands.

The girls had to learn only to read. They had to learn only from the age of 12-13, and we didn't have a teacher who would have taught the girls separately.

The 'rabaj' was teaching boys only, but not girls.

We had a young teacher, who also had finished yeshiva, and was a learned man, he taught only girls, at our house or at my aunt's house, it depended.

There were two girls in my aunt's family, we were two sisters, there were three other girls in the neighbor's family, we took our exercise-book and pencil, and he was teaching us how to write.

First he teaches the Jewish names of months. Then the alphabet. If you know that, you can connect words. Back then it was compulsory to know these.

My poor grandmother, my mum's mother always used to say: 'Learn how to pray properly, you should know at least to read in the synagogue, otherwise when you will go to there, you would count the windows and the doors, because you won't be able to read.

Learn how to pray, because one must know it.'

As people were very religious in that village, in Szaplonca, where she grew up, the girls were studying like the boys.

Finally I couldn't get to [didn't have time to] learn to read well, I know, but not well, I'm not as good in reading as I should be.

Since I was deported in the meantime, and we didn't have enough time to learn. I couldn't get to learn well how to pray either.

I failed to pass the first grade, because I didn't speak Romanian, only Hungarian, then my mum took me to a little Romanian girl with whom I used to go to school together, so that I would play with and talk to her and learn Romanian.

Thus when I repeated first grade I could speak Romanian.

I finished six grades in a Romanian school, and only one in a Hungarian one, the seventh, Hungarians were here then [in 1940, see Second Vienna Dictate].

In the 7th grade I had a teacher, Imre Kis, he and his wife were young married, and had a child. Lojszu was the headmaster of the Hungarian school. I attended only elementary school, I couldn't get further [because I was deported].

However we didn't really go to school in the Hungarian era, because Jews weren't accepted [see: Anti-Jewish laws in Hungary].

And we were wearing the yellow star [see: Yellow star in Hungary], we weren't allowed to walk on the streets. However it didn't last too long, as we were taken.

They closed a few streets, and we were all taken gradually into the ghetto. That was in 1944, shortly after Pesach.

We celebrated Pesach at home, and after Pesach we were in the ghetto already.

There were three streets that belonged to the ghetto, and all the Jews from [Maramaros]Sziget and the nearby villages were taken there. T

hey took the Jews even from the villages, they came by wagons.
And 2-3 weeks after they started to put us into stock-cars, and transported us to lagers.

[12,849 Jews were deported from Maramarossziget on 16th, 18th, 20th and 22nd of May 1944 - Editor's note.]