This is a picture of my second husband, Aladar Scheiner. He is the one standing on the left. Chief Rabbi Moses Rosen is in the picture, too, standing next to Aladar. The photo was taken in Nagysarmas (Sarmasu) in 1975.
I don't remember exactly, but I think a lot of Jews were murdered there. [Editor's note: In Nagysarmas, approximately 30 km from Marosvasarhely, on the night of 16th or 17th September 1944, on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, the retreating Hungarian army, lead by Laszlo Lancz, a gendarmerie captain, massacred the Jewish population of the village, 126 people.] The men from the Jewish community from Marosvasarhely took the trouble to go there to commemorate this tragic event.
In the 1960s my husband was hired by the Jewish community of Marosvasarhely. He had probably had some previous ties with the community because they asked him to be the president. Aladar was already the president there when I married him in 1978. He was president for twenty years. On high holidays he went earlier to the synagogue then I did, but this was never a problem. Aladar never bothered about me being religious or not, and this was a very good thing because I was very weak on Jewish issues. I never kept a kosher household, although he was the president of the Jewish community. But neither did Magdus, his previous wife. The only thing we did was that we went to the synagogue on holidays. Aladar, of course, had to go there more often, and he was at the community office all the time.
I remember Moses Rosen always brought his wife, and I had to stay with her. She was a nice woman. The Chief Rabbi never let anybody close to him. When we went to Bucharest to arrange the American visa, Aladar came along to have Sauber appointed as the new president, because he wanted to resign - that is, I kept nagging him to resign. Rosen's secretary received us and called to ask him whether he wanted to see us. He knew very well we were from the provinces and we would have to go back. I got very angry with him when he said he would only be able to see us the next day. Thus we had to stay one more day in the hotel in Bucharest, so he could see us.
