Resi Farkas

Resi Weisz is in this photo. She was one of my mother's sisters.

She wears the symbol of the Aviva Zionist women's organization.

It was a silver embossment with two or three palm trees, and under them the caption 'Cion'.

All the women and girls of the family were members of the Aviva.

My grandfather was a great Zionist, he was a member of the Barisia.

The meetings always took place at my grandfather's house, they felt good there because it was a pleasant atmosphere there.

As far as I remember, they had uniform caps, made of red velvet, with a golden border, this was their uniform cap.

When they assembled, they put on these caps and began to sing the song that is the march of Israel today [the Hatikva].

But they sang it with Hungarian and Hebrew text.

The Hungarian text sounded approximately like this: 'Reach up for the skies, men and brave, undeterred by the future /you see.

Let it roar and wail, and welter the camp ....... the youth’s song of vow.'

Resi married Hermann Farkas, aunt Pepi's younger brother, who died later of tuberculosis.

Her husband died earlier, but Resi died also of tuberculosis approximately in 1939.

They left behind two children, Tibi and Karoly. The children were born in Retteg (near Des).

Both of them ended up in the orphanage in Varad, and because my grandmother grew poor, so did my father, there was no other solution.

They had a distant relation in Varad, who arranged for them to be accepted in the orphanage.

I had the opportunity to meet them for the last time in 1942, because I was taken to forced labor to [Buda]Pest then.

Because we were in Nagybanya for a while then, and the sapper battalion from here asked for a group of forced laborers, we were 40-50 people, to get to Pest and load from the central warehouse (I didn't know how many) freight cars with heavy boots for the army from Nagybanya.

But we had to wait a couple of hours in Varad for the train which got us to Pest and I asked the sentinel to leave me to go and tried to find them.

The sentinel said: 'All right, I let you go!. But for God's sake, don't late!' I promised him that I shall not late.

I walked away, I found the home for orphans with difficulty and I found the two children.

I didn't know about the deportation then. That was in 1942, the elder son was in the third form, the younger in the first form perhaps.

They were took to Auschwitz and they perished there.