Early Life in Rachov, Czechoslovakia

I was born into an Orthodox Jewish family in Rachov, a small town in Czechoslovakia near Hungary. From the eleventh century until 1920 the town was part of the kingdom of Hungary and called Rachiv. When I was born in 1930, it again became Rachov and was part of Czechoslovakia. Then, briefly, from 1938 to 1944, we knew it as Raho in the Maramaros district of Hungary. After the war the name changed again, to Rakhiv, when it became part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. At the time of my birth, one-eighth of the population was Jewish. Eleven years later, when we were forced to leave, 1,707 Jews lived in Rachov, part of a total population of 12,455.

My father, Lewis Szobel, was from Beregszaz. Tall and handsome, he was working for a newspaper in Budapest when he met my mother, Bertha Zwecher. After their marriage, he moved to Rachov where my mother's family owned two bakeries. He soon became the manager of one while an uncle ran the other.

The newlyweds lived with my maternal grandmother in an old wood-frame house (where my mother had grown up) attached to the bakery on a large plot of land. My maternal grandfather had died long before I was born. The bakery shop was attached to the house while the building with the ovens where the baking actually occurred was farther back. The home was one story, typical of the area and built so low into the ground that in winters, when the snow piled up, we had to shovel several feet of snow to get out of the door.

My mother's sister and her family lived next door in a smaller house. We had a large garden towards the back of the property, where a small house sat that was rented to strangers. It was a beautiful garden and I loved to spend time there. There were walnut trees, ripe in Spring with giant green spiky balls covering the hidden walnuts inside, and a seemingly endless supply of all kinds of berry bushes, ripe with fruit we picked for immediate eating plus canning to preserve for the winter months. There were snakes too in the garden so that, as a young child, I was frightened to go back too far where the grass was highest.

Grandmother was short and feisty. She worked with my father in the bakery making rolls and breads. We had a family cat that did something to displease her so one day Grandmother picked up the cat by the scruff of its neck and rubbed its nose in the mess to teach it a lesson. Grandmother had been a widow and businesswoman for many years and had learned to speak her mind and entertain no dissent.

I used to have a recurring dream that I was a child and went searching for my grandparents who were living in the house connected to the bakery, even though in reality I had never known my maternal grandfather.

We lived a comfortable life, we weren't rich. I didn't know rich or poor but I know I didn't lack for anything. My brother Erno was born when I was three and a half. Occasionally we traveled by train to Beregzasz to visit my father's parents and relatives.

I fantasized a lot. I imagined watching a movie from my bed. I used to think, "Wouldn't it be amazing if I could see a movie right from my own bed?" It actually became a reality decades later with the advent of television.

Once a rift developed between my mother and her sister, culminating in a confrontation where my mother threw a stone at her sister's home. I never knew the cause of the bad feelings; I am not sure that they even remembered how it started.

I don't remember having a very happy childhood. I have only vague memories of my mother, who was sickly, but I know she was very beautiful as there was a painting of her in our house. She looked elegant and serene, dressed up with furs wrapped around her shoulders.

Mother suffered from a mysterious illness, nobody knew what it was. I always felt I had to watch my step around her. Someone told me she was overly protective of me as a young child, but once my brother was born, he clearly was her favorite. I was jealous of Erno for all the attention he got, so I vowed to be the child who didn't give my mother any trouble. I wanted to show her I was strong and could take care of myself. Maybe that was the beginning of my survival instinct — to be quiet, follow the rules and expectations — all to maintain some semblance of stability or security and thus win approval.

Father was the one I felt close to. I admired him so much that I wanted to marry him or someone like him when I grew up. He was the main caretaker due to my mother's frailty. He was the person who did the food shopping and kept the home clean.

I inherited my sense of smell from him. We would go to the market where peasants from the mountains would come down once a week to sell their goods. The peasants would entice customers by cutting out a square of watermelon or a piece of apple — samples to taste their produce. But my father had a very strong sense of smell and could tell from a distance if the butter had turned rancid, if the lettuce or other produce had been picked that day or was too old. Father didn't want carrots in the soup if they were not fresh.

In our small town, we didn't have modern medicine so mother was never properly diagnosed and certainly not helped by doctors. She died when I was six.

A pall hung over our house for several months, but shortly after mother's death, my father married my cousin, Rozci, who lived next door. We moved into a new larger house that my parents had been building next to the bakery. (My mother never lived to see it finished).

The new house was nicely furnished although I don't think my stepmother had an artistic sense. A large bookcase dominated the parlor. I remember a set of leather-bound books by Alexander Dumas that I devoured and my father always said, "When you grow up you will get this library."

When my father remarried, he chose one of my aunt's daughters, I thus had a stepmother who was also my first cousin. I imagine the family thought it would be great for him to marry a relative rather than a stranger, or maybe he fell in love with her, I don't know. I didn't like her. In fact, I absolutely hated her. She seemed crude and unpolished, she picked her teeth in public. She wasn't mean to me, she didn't beat me, but she would make derogatory remarks, for instance, that I walked too slow. She was stupid, I thought. I liked her sister better because she was the smarter one, but my stepmother was the pretty one. Maybe that's why my father married her.

Initially we went often to the one synagogue in town. I sat upstairs with the women, the men were on the main floor. After mother died, my father...