The Romanian Jewish Community

         My name is Magdalena Stroe. I was born on September 13, 1925, in Cluj.

         I went to the Romanian elementary school and high school until 1940, when northern Transylvania was yielded to Hungary. Dramatic changes occurred in the life of my family that year. We decided to stay in Cluj and my father had an early retirement.

         Up until then, we had led the life of an ordinary family; we weren’t rich, but we were well-off: I took German and French lessons, studied piano, went to ballet classes and played tennis. But in 1940 the material difficulties began. The worst part was the way in which we were treated as a minority. Although my mother was Hungarian, she had a hard time because of her Romanian name. The ‘Principesa Ileana’ High School, where I had been studying, was closed, so my parents transferred me to a Hungarian elite denominational school, the Reformed High School for girls.

         This is where I met Hannah Hamburg; she was one of the very few Jewish girls to whom the provisions of the racial laws didn’t apply. So she could go to a high school that was Hungarian and denominational at the same time. Her father was one of the men who had fought in World War I and had been highly decorated. Thanks to that, they and their families enjoyed certain privileges. Hannah’s father was the most famous and esteemed optician in Cluj. One of the reasons she and I became friends was probably the feeling that we shared the same fate, that of the outcasts; this is how we both felt in our class, she being Jewish and I being half Romanian with a Romanian name.

         So we decided to help each other, which kept us united, despite the discrimination we were exposed to. Another thing that kept us together was our joint effort to build a solid general culture for ourselves. We both read the most famous authors of the universal literature: Thomas Mann, Andre Gide, Hans Christian Andersen, Tolstoy, and Dostoyevsky. We went to the theater and to concerts. We wanted to outsmart those who looked down to us. However, after a while, much to my sorrow, Hannah was got transferred to the Jewish High School that had been founded in Cluj in the meantime; the discipline of the Hungarian school had been unbearable for her.

         The situation of the Jews all across Hungary was very difficult, but it was bearable. Though their rights had been limited, they managed to survive thanks to their non-Jewish friends. The Jewish men were sent to forced labor in extremely difficult conditions, but no mass extermination program had been launched yet. Everything changed in March 1944, when the German troops occupied Hungary. Jews were immediately outlawed… They were forced to wear the yellow star. Those who wore it were at the mercy of anyone who felt like picking on them; no one would interfere even if their life was in danger. Many a time did I witness gangs of young thugs humiliate old people, mothers with babies, and women wearing the yellow star.

         Then there was the order that aroused the most terrible hunches. Jews were to leave their homes carrying one single suitcase and to gather in the ghetto organized at the Brick Factory, from where they would be taken to an undisclosed destination. Decrees were also issued against anyone who did anything to help the Jews elude deportation. The offenders could even face deportation or execution. I didn’t know about the extermination camps. But I, a teenager, wasn’t the only one who hadn’t heard of Auschwitz. None of the Jews had any idea about that.

         There were clues that suggested that the Jews would have a terrible fate: the fact they had been forced to leave their homes, the fact that they had only been allowed to carry necessities in a single suitcase, the fact that they weren’t told where they would be taken. I had this is mind when Hannah came to me one day to say goodbye. She was very pessimistic. ‘Isn’t there any way to save you?’ I asked her. ‘Only if I had fake identity papers.’ Without caring about the consequences, I went to the case, took out my birth and baptism certificate, and gave it to Hanna. At 18 years old, according to the Hungarian laws, I didn’t need an identity card. I used the birth certificate instead. I gave her my papers and urged her: ‘Go, run away!’ Her mother lived in the west of Hungary.

         I have never seen my deed as an exceptional one. On the contrary, I felt it was a normal thing to give my friend a chance to escape the terrible fate that was awaiting her. My gesture was in accordance to the way I had been raised by my parents and I’m happy it wasn’t in vain. Thanks to my papers, Hannah managed to flee the city, despite the numerous checkpoints they had set up to prevent any Jew from escaping.