My mother started to cry and my father said: “It’s terrible! What will happen to us now?”’
Even before the Germans occupied Sudetenland on 1 October 1938, many people had left. ‘An uncle of mine was one of them.’ He came to Prague and lived for a time with the Steiners before fleeing to Brazil.
Channa (Hanna) Markowicz Before the First World War, the small town in the Carpathians was part of Hungary and then the former Czechoslovakia, before being annexed by Hungary in 1939, From the Second World War until 1991, it belonged to the former Soviet Union and then afterwards to Ukraine. The town in question is Irshava89 in the extreme west of present-day Ukraine, where the Markowicz family lived. They spoke Yiddish at home. ‘When they didn’t want us to understand them’, says Channa, her parents, Awraham and Zseni Markowicz (née Schwarz), spoke Hungarian, reason enough for her and her four brothers – Schmuel, Jakov, Herschel and Josel – to learn that language.
The two elder brothers attended the Czech middle school in Irshava. Lessons were in Czech and German. ‘We had a teacher who came to our house to help them learn German.’ Channa learned with them. She herself went to the Russian school, where the lessons were in Russian and Czech.
The family owned land and forest. ‘We children also helped working in the field. We did so because we liked it, not because we had to.’ Wood was chopped in the forest and exported, also to Germany. In 1930, there were 102,542 Jews living in the part of the Carpathians belonging to Czechoslovakia.90 This was equivalent to around 15 per cent of the total population.91 In Irshava, Jews made up 30 to 40 per cent of the inhabitants.92 The Jewish community had two synagogues, a cemetery and a Jewish primary school.93 In 1768, there were only two Jewish families there. By 1941, there were around 1,350 Jewish inhabitants. Many were businessmen or craftsmen, but there were also three Jewish doctors and three lawyers.94
The Markowicz family kept kosher and observed the Jewish holidays. Channa describes them as religious but not orthodox. Her father wore ‘modern clothing’. The family was invited every Christmas by a Christian family. Her father usually went with the children to the party, her mother not always. ‘She didn’t like it so much.’ In return, the Christian neighbours visited the Markowicz family on Jewish holidays.
‘I didn’t initially experience any antisemitism. There were arguments in school, but they had nothing to do with antisemitism. At least I can’t remember any. I had both Russian and Jewish friends. That was not uncommon.’
Eduard Kornfeld was born in the western Slovakian town Vel’ký Meder (Hungarian: Nagymegyer), 70 kilometres from Bratislava and 20 from the Hungarian border. It had a population of around 5,000, with some 100 Jewish families, about 530 people.95
The first Jews settled in Vel’ký Meder in the mid eighteenth century. The Jewish community grew steadily. In 1869, there were 217 Jews in the town, by 1919 there were 416, and in 1941 the town had 522 Jewish inhabitants, around 12 per cent of the total population. They were businessmen or craftsmen.96
There was a large synagogue in Vel’ký Meder, a Jewish cemetery, the Beit Hamidrash school near the synagogue, and a mikvah.
The Jewish primary school had around 100 pupils, with two teachers for eight years in two classrooms. The ‘little school’ was for Years 1 to 3, and the ‘big school’ was for the other five. While the ‘little school’ teacher was occupied for half an hour with the youngest pupils, the other two years had to write or do arithmetic. The classes rotated on this principle every 30 minutes. The same system operated in the ‘big school’: Years 4 and 5 formed one group, and Years 6 to 8 the other.97
When Eduard was 2 years old, the family moved to Bratislava, where Simon Kornfeld opened a flourishing linen goods shop. They lived in a large apartment. ‘The Danube was just a stone’s throw away.’
Bratislava at the time was the centre of orthodox Judaism. In the mid thirteenth century, it already had a sizeable Jewish community.98 In the mid fourteenth century, there were probably several hundred Jews living in the city. They had a synagogue, a cemetery and their own jurisdiction.
There were expulsions in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but from 1800 the number of Jewish inhabitants rose steadily, from 2,000 to 15,000 around 1930, 12 per cent of the total population. The Great Synagogue was built in 1864, and many other institutions were created, such as the Jewish hospital, boys’ and girls’ orphanages, and the Jewish old people’s home. In the early twentieth century, there were several hundred businesses owned by Jews, who exerted an influence on both public and economic life in the city.99
Even today, countless pilgrims come to visit the grave of the orthodox rabbi, teacher and writer Chatam Sofer (1763−1839), born Moses Schreiber in Frankfurt am Main. He was principal of the rabbinical school in Bratislava, which became a centre of Jewish scholarship of international renown.100
The Kornfeld family was ‘very religious’. ‘We went to the synagogue not only on the holidays but also on Shabbat. Anything else would have been unthinkable.’ They respected Shabbat as the weekly day of rest ordered by the Torah. It begins on Friday evening when the first three stars are visible in the sky or when it is no longer possible to distinguish between a white and a black thread, and ends on Saturday evening. ‘During this time, no fires could be lit or lights switched on, and no food could be prepared.’ On the other hand, the Kornfelds wore modern clothes and didn’t have payot (sidelocks). ‘Bratislava was more of a western city, just 80 kilometres from Vienna.’
From the age of 6, Eduard attended a religious Jewish, but German-speaking, school. ‘We had only a few compulsory lessons in Slovakian.’ At the time, there were over sixty Jewish primary schools in Slovakia. Half of the schools taught in Slovakian, twenty-five in Hungarian, and six in German.101
The Kornfeld family had little contact with non-Jewish families. ‘We had a good and friendly relationship with our closest neighbours.’ Otherwise, they barely met non-Jews. ‘We simply felt most comfortable among Jews.’
Eduard had a Hungarian nanny, enabling him to learn Hungarian as well as Slovakian and German, ‘which soon turned out to be a valuable advantage’.
He liked to play football and a wooden spinning top game with other children. ‘A piece of wood was sharpened to a point and made to “dance” with a kind of whip. Each person had four or five goes. The one who span the piece of wood furthest was the winner.’ A certain amount of skill and practice was required, ‘but then it would work’.
In winter, there was a ‘special hill’ that was highly popular. ‘I loved to go sledding there.’ He couldn’t get enough of it.
‘But my untroubled childhood didn’t last long.’
Ferenc and Otto Klein were born in 1932 in the eastern Hungarian town of Hajdúböszörmény. Their sister Ágnes was born two years earlier in August 1930.
Their father, Salomon Klein, was a hardworking businessman. He owned a wood and coal yard and a small roof tile factory. He was actually a rabbi ‘but didn’t practise’. ‘I only discovered that after the war.’ Their mother Lilly was a housewife and looked after the children’s upbringing. The family had their own house in the centre of the town. There was no ghetto. ‘The population was mixed.’ The Kleins were respected citizens of the town.
Around 1920, Hajdúböszörmény had a population of some 28,000, including about 1,000 Jews. The history of the Jewish community began in the early nineteenth century, and the synagogue was built in 1863.102
The
