This collection of short stories contain memories from the life of the author as a young man during the Holocaust years in Romania. A group of other short stories relates to his life as a medical student and young physician. The historical background of these is the nightmarish years of the Orwellian, corrupt, dictatorship of the communist regime in Romania. Another story tells the life of a German woman who chooses to share her fate and life with the Jewish family she comes to work for before and during the Holocaust. Friendship, loyalty, decency, and love make hope triumph.

Transylvanian Rhapsody

By George Joseph

Trafford Publishing

Copyright © 2012 George Joseph
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4669-3581-5

Contents

The Typewriter..........................1The Cigarette...........................6The Kreutzer Sonata.....................11Letter to My Father.....................16Emily...................................19The Hospital............................47Departure...............................78

Chapter One

THE TYPEWRITER

Winter 1940, Brasov

It was late December, and the school's winter vacation had started a couple of days ago. A week before, it snowed, but the snow melted and the city looked dark and drab, the trees without leaves, the sky gray. The first snow of the year caught the children still in their classes. During recess, they took advantage of the snow, and snowball fights erupted in many corners of the schoolyard. Then the snow melted, and everybody was disappointed.

The Second World War was going on already for more than a year. Almost all of Europe was under German occupation by now. Europe's capitals were flying the Nazi flag. Brasov, a midsize city in the Carpathian Mountains, a tourist and economic center of Romania with a sizable German Saxon population, became a garrison of the German Army, a result of the newly formed military and political alliance. This fact imbued the local Saxon population with a great sense of importance, lending them a sense of power that was expressed in more than one way. The Nazi flags were flying from many buildings, and many of the locals were wearing the black uniforms of the Nazi Party.

One of the large buildings on the main street was the Nazi Party headquarters. The city had a mixed population of Romanians, Hungarians, Saxons and a mall minority of Jews who lived in the town too,

Their life was restricted in more ways than one. They were forbidden to travel and restricted in their professional and business activities. The school-age children were not allowed to attend public schools.

German businesses were displaying posters announcing that Jews and dogs were not desired on their premises. Jewish businesses were required to carry posters stating that the shop was owned by a KIKE. This was the atmosphere on a Saturday afternoon when a snowstorm hit the city. In a short while, life started to come to a standstill.

The two Jozsef brothers, Andrew and George, were excitedly running every moment they could spare to look out the window of their home and watch the snow fall. As it was getting dark, a streetlamp was the perfect backdrop to ascertain that the storm was continuing in its fury. They were watching as the snow was falling and accumulating on top of a ledge, and they both tried to guess how deep the snow was becoming. They were anticipating that the deep snow would provide plenty of opportunity for play and fun the next day.

The next day was Sunday. Early morning, the two brothers were at the window. The wind had stopped, and the sky was clear. The bushes, the fence, and the stairs leading out to the street in front of their house were hardly visible. They were admiring the branches of a large fir tree in front of one of their windows, the branches bent by the weight of the snow.

For the people of the city, lots of snow was a familiar sight, but for the two brothers, the storm with the heavy snowfall was a novelty. They were both exited and restless and showed little interest in their breakfast food.

Every Sunday during the school year, the brothers met friends and went for hikes and this Sunday would not be different. Their friend Erwin would soon arrive or they would meet somewhere in the city. The frequent rains, and the snowfalls taught them to master the obstacles, and they were prepared to face the weather. The thought of walking in the deep snow made the Sunday morning look very exciting indeed.

Erwin arrived and was smiling very proudly for having made it on time and was describing excitedly how deep the snow was and how the traffic in the city was affected. The meager bus and car traffic was at a standstill. Only the sleighs drawn by horses were to be seen.

Soon the three boys were on their way. Erwin was telling them that walking on Monastery Street he saw a lot of policemen, which was unexpected for a Sunday morning, but he did not know why and did not stop to inquire either. Nobody knew it then that offices of a German Nazi organization was broken into during the night before, and the commotion Erwin witnessed on his way to meet with his friends was a result of this.

When the three friends got to the entrance of the park, they decided to brave the deep snow and walk through the alleys untouched under the fresh white cover. They could hardly see the bushes that lined the alleys but now lay buried under the deep snow. In addition to the bushes, the wider alleys were lined with a row of benches, now hardly visible.

The three boys were making slow progress in their attempt to cross on the opposite side of the park, as they were sinking in the deep snow to their hips at every step. Their faces were red, and they were giggling and throwing snowballs at each other. At one moment, Erwin threw up his arms, screamed, and threw himself on a bench, pretending that he wanted to sit down and rest. As he sank down on the seat, the snow covered him from both his sides like armrests of a comfortable easy chair. He was fidgeting in his seat when he noticed something under the bench. The seats of the park benches did not permit for a lot of snow to accumulate under them. Erwin could not make out what he noticed, so he pointed to the object of his discovery, and Andrew bent over and lowered himself on his knees and reached under the bench. He extracted a heavy object wrapped in a newspaper. The boys quickly ripped open the newspaper covering the object, and what they found was a shiny typewriter.

They were guessing that their find was a valuable and probably expensive machine, and did not know what to do with it. To take it home was out of the question, so they decided to take it to the police station. A short time later, the three boys marched in proudly to the station and handed over the typewriter to the officer on duty. Their story, names, and addresses were taken down, and they were let go.

The next day, the local newspaper headline informed readers of the break-in at the Nazi Party headquarters, mentioning the adventure of the three boys in the park who found one of the stolen items, and how they brought it to the police station. The three boys and their names in the paper identified them as being Jews.

Before I can continue to tell the story, I will have to say a couple of words about the father of the two brothers. As mentioned before, Brasov was not a large city. The commercial and business life was concentrated on the main street. Mark Jozsef was a merchant owner of a sizable store there. The family was well known. Being Jewish of course marked his store for discrimination. The old inhabitants of the city, the businessmen and the city elders, knew each other or had heard about each other at least. Before the Nazi overtake of the city administration, the relationship between the citizens was fairly civil. The changes occurred in the past two years, and people who knew each other in the past stopped even greeting each other on the streets.

Mark Jozsef, the father of the two boys, was a very proud man, serious, disciplined in his work, and blessed with a sarcastic sense of humor he used many times. Now, this is important to pay attention to in order to be able to fathom the humor...