Albert and Mariana Farkas with their daughter Eva Gottschick

In this photo you can see my husband, Albert Farkas, to the right, then me with our daughter, Eva, as a baby, in my arms. The photo was taken in Brasov in 1951, the year Eva was born, in the garden of the first house we moved in here, in Brasov.

I met my husband, Albert Farkas, at a hockey match, in Miercurea Ciuc, in 1948. My husband's boss was an acquaintance and he introduced us. Albert was born in 1923 in Sandominic, he was a Jew, and he spoke Hungarian, just like me. He studied at the librarianship school in Budapest, but when I met him he was an officer in the Romanian army.

We got married in 1950; it was more because of my father's pressure, who kept telling me that a good Jew was hard to find in that town. It didn't matter to me if my husband was Jewish or not, because my family was very variegated, very mixed up. We had many Christians in the family, especially my cousins. We didn't have a religious wedding, because there was no synagogue in Miercurea Ciuc. There was a temple, but it was in ruins. And the Jews were so few that they couldn't afford to repair it, and I don't even think there were ten men for the minyan. It was demolished between 1940 and 1944, when the Hungarians were there, and all the things were stolen. More to the point, Albert was a party member and he worked where he worked, so there was only a civil ceremony.

After I got married we lived in Miercurea Ciuc for almost another year. We rented a house, it had a room and a kitchen, that's all we had, and we stayed there. Our friends were Romanians and Hungarians and Jews alike. There were few Jews there, because they had been deported, and the majority of those who came back left for Israel.

I got pregnant with Eva very soon, and I didn't intend to have a baby, I was too young, I was only 20 years old, but my doctor said that I was very thin, very small, and that I might never get pregnant again, and I would regret it for as long as I lived, if I lost that child or had an abortion. Moreover, my husband worked in the army and nobody would have performed the abortion.

Before Eva was born, in 1951, my husband was transferred to Brasov, and when he found a place to live we moved there as well, Eva was three weeks old. I gave birth to Eva in Targu Mures, because there was no hospital or a specialist in Miercurea Ciuc, and my mother didn't want to leave me there, if a problem or complication occurred, it would have been dangerous. Taking into account that my husband's sister lived in Targu Mures, I stayed with them, and had my baby there.

In the meantime my husband had received a place to live, and we brought the furniture and everything we had from Miercurea Ciuc to Brasov. It was a house that belonged to the state, and we had a room with a hallway, a kitchen, a bathroom and a garden.