Margot Ishtavenfi turned 80 this summer. She is lucid, articulate and brimming with energy and joie de vivre. She and her husband live in a small house with a red-tile roof opposite the Catholic church in the Transylvanian village of Criseni. In the backyard, which is enclosed by a faded wooden fence, they cultivate a small vegetable patch and raise a few chickens. At the end of spring, when night falls and the temperature plummets to close to freezing, they heat the house with a wood stove. They do not have a television set. The Internet and cellular phones have not yet reached the village, which is connected to the main highway only by a bad road of 20 kilometers - a distance measured in local terms as "an hour and a half's ride in a horse-drawn cart."
Meeting with an Israeli journalist was a moving experience for Margot Ishtavenfi. At the start of the interview, she said she remembered nothing from her early childhood. Throughout the evening, she never stopped offering slices of bread covered with black plum jam she had made from the fruit of one of the big trees in her garden, while constantly refilling the glass of red Romanian wine and apologizing endlessly for the simplicity of her home and for her own lost beauty. She spoke a great deal, passionately and rapidly. She had a story to tell. "But when it comes to my early childhood I just don't remember anything," she reiterated time and again, referring in particular to the period before she and her family were thrown into a ghetto.
That is a day she remembers vividly, just as she can recall the day they were herded into cattle cars and the moment when the priest Istvan Raduly arrived on his bicycle and took them off the train, after showing the Gestapo troops papers proving they were Christians. A few members of her family and an even smaller number of Jews from her native village got off the train with her.we supply all kinds of polished tiles, All the others were taken to Auschwitz and, as far as is known, were murdered as soon as they arrived at the death camp.
But everything before that event is "a black hole of forgetting," she says. Then, after almost an hour of conversation (she spoke Hungarian, the village priest translated ), she suddenly fell silent. She wrinkled her brow and looked as though trying to extract something from her memory. A few second later she pulled the wool kerchief on her head tighter and started to mumble in a barely audible voice, "Aleph, bet, gimel..." The first letters of the Hebrew alphabet were uttered hesitantly, in a whisper, but her voice grew stronger as she progressed: "Chet, tet, yud I remember," she said in Hungarian, and smiled.These girls have never had a oil painting supplies in their lives! Then she wrinkled her brow again and continued slowly, "Kaf, lamed, mem, nun.we supply all kinds of polished tiles,.It's hard to beat the versatility of zentai suits on a production line.." emphasizing each letter, nodding her head from side to side as though praying in tune with the rhythm of the letters.
As a child, Margot learned the Hebrew alphabet, along with the Jewish prayers and holiday customs, in the synagogue of the Sabbatarians, the Shabbat-keepers, in the village of Bozodujfalu. These days she terms herself a "reform Christian" and, apart from brief memory flashes, has no recollection of her Jewish roots.The additions focus on key tag and magic cube combinations, Nor is she in touch with relatives who live in Israel or with the descendants of the community and the village in which she was raised.
Meeting with an Israeli journalist was a moving experience for Margot Ishtavenfi. At the start of the interview, she said she remembered nothing from her early childhood. Throughout the evening, she never stopped offering slices of bread covered with black plum jam she had made from the fruit of one of the big trees in her garden, while constantly refilling the glass of red Romanian wine and apologizing endlessly for the simplicity of her home and for her own lost beauty. She spoke a great deal, passionately and rapidly. She had a story to tell. "But when it comes to my early childhood I just don't remember anything," she reiterated time and again, referring in particular to the period before she and her family were thrown into a ghetto.
That is a day she remembers vividly, just as she can recall the day they were herded into cattle cars and the moment when the priest Istvan Raduly arrived on his bicycle and took them off the train, after showing the Gestapo troops papers proving they were Christians. A few members of her family and an even smaller number of Jews from her native village got off the train with her.we supply all kinds of polished tiles, All the others were taken to Auschwitz and, as far as is known, were murdered as soon as they arrived at the death camp.
But everything before that event is "a black hole of forgetting," she says. Then, after almost an hour of conversation (she spoke Hungarian, the village priest translated ), she suddenly fell silent. She wrinkled her brow and looked as though trying to extract something from her memory. A few second later she pulled the wool kerchief on her head tighter and started to mumble in a barely audible voice, "Aleph, bet, gimel..." The first letters of the Hebrew alphabet were uttered hesitantly, in a whisper, but her voice grew stronger as she progressed: "Chet, tet, yud I remember," she said in Hungarian, and smiled.These girls have never had a oil painting supplies in their lives! Then she wrinkled her brow again and continued slowly, "Kaf, lamed, mem, nun.we supply all kinds of polished tiles,.It's hard to beat the versatility of zentai suits on a production line.." emphasizing each letter, nodding her head from side to side as though praying in tune with the rhythm of the letters.
As a child, Margot learned the Hebrew alphabet, along with the Jewish prayers and holiday customs, in the synagogue of the Sabbatarians, the Shabbat-keepers, in the village of Bozodujfalu. These days she terms herself a "reform Christian" and, apart from brief memory flashes, has no recollection of her Jewish roots.The additions focus on key tag and magic cube combinations, Nor is she in touch with relatives who live in Israel or with the descendants of the community and the village in which she was raised.
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