Perl-Fritzi

About Me

History of the Perl Family | by Warren Goldie

Europe and the U.S., 1920’s-1950’s

The following account was sourced primarily from interviews with my aunt, Piri Fiegler, and my mother, Fritzi Goldie, conducted by interviewers with Steven Spielberg’s Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation in 1995, and from conversations.

The Perl sisters grew up in northern Romania in the early 20th century. In World War II, they were imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp, forced to work as slave labor at a munitions factory, and lived in a refugee camp. After the war, they immigrated to Cuba under Batista, and then, as Castro’s revolution took hold, emigrated to the U.S. to New York and Miami.

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Perl family, circa 1941. Clockwise from left: Rose, Anci, Susie, Unknown, Wolf, Fritzi (sitting), Shari’s husband, Shari, Unknown Boy.

Perl family, circa 1941. Clockwise from left: Rose, Anci, Susie, Unknown, Wolf, Fritzi (sitting), Shari’s husband, Shari, Unknown Boy.

IT BEGINS

When the doors of the cattle car slid open, my mother and her family and more than 200 Romanian Jews looked out at the entrance of the Auschwitz concentration camp just beyond the tracks. Jumping down, they were met by Gestapo officers with fierce dogs, yelling out in German, “Line up! Line up! Line up!”

The confused, starving passengers rushed to form up into queues. Their suitcases were hauled away, never to be seen again. Minutes later, three more trains would arrive. In all, the transports brought 3,000 Jews from my mother’s small town to the camp.

Each woman and man advanced as the line moved forward. They were told to “Go left” or “Go right.” My mother Fritzi and her sisters, Shari, Piri, and Susy, like all of the Jews of their town, spoke no German. But they quickly understood that “right” meant survival, while “left” meant death in the gas chambers. The very young, old, and infirm were all sent to the left.

The sisters struggled to keep together in the panicked throngs. Piri, grabbing hold of her mother, Rose, reached into her pocket for a crust of bread she had saved. “Here, take it,” Piri said. Rose pushed her hand away. “No, you take it…”

Copyright: 1944 AP

Selection at the gates of Auschwitz II-Birkenau.  Copyright: 1944 AP

What was clear to Piri was not evident to Rose. In the noise and confusion, hearing was difficult. A woman from their town and her eight children were sent to the left; Rose, wanting to help, told Piri she was going with them. Piri screamed out her objection. But a Gestapo officer shoved Piri away. “You’ll see her tonight,” he said. Rose, my grandmother, who was 48, was led away, never to be seen again.

Shari, the second oldest of the Perl family’s daughters, refused to be separated from her son, ignoring a Gestapo officer’s command. She and her boy were shot on the spot. The crowd parted slightly to make a path around their bodies. Piri, horrified, watched.

Waiting Room

Youthful and fit from a life spent in their mountain village, the Perl sisters—Susy, 21, Piri, 19, and Fritzi, 17—passed by the camp’s entrance. Beyond the fence, several inmates, reduced to near skeletons, pleaded for food. When the terrified sisters had no answer for them, the prisoners said, “Tomorrow you will look like us!”

The young women were led into a building and a holding room and ordered by attendants to remove their clothes. All their body hair was clipped off. Eyeglasses were confiscated. Each woman was given a single dress but no underwear. Each was allowed to keep her shoes. As they emerged from the building, the sisters made a pact never to lose sight of each other again.

After a few days in Auschwitz, what had come before would become a painful memory: their peaceful, bucolic life lived in harmony with their neighbors, and the land, in their home town in Northern Romania.

PART I

Romania: The Good Life

Visuel de Sus, Romania

Visuel de Sus, Romania

For generations the Perls lived in Viseul de Sus (VEE-show duh-soos), a picturesque village in Maramures County on the gentle western slopes of the Carpathian Mountains, a range also known as the Transylvanian Alps. The area had remained unchanged throughout the centuries, a medieval landscape of villages and hamlets scattered amid vast forests, a few kilometers south of Ukraine (simply “Russia” to the Romanians).

The area’s principle industries were tanning, stone quarrying and flour milling. Wolf Perl, the family’s patriarch, owned a tannin extraction plant on the outskirts of town and was expert in manufacturing tannin, the essential ingredient used in tanning, the process by which leather is made from raw animal hide. Tanning dates back to antiquity.

Visuel de Sus, 1930s

Viseul de Sus, 1930s

In the 1920s, Visuel was home to about 10,000 residents, Christians and Jews who had coexisted semi-harmoniously over the centuries. The area’s Christians were predominately Romanian Orthodox. Transylvania was also home to large minorities of Catholics and Roma, or gypsies. Historically, anti-Semitism was epidemic in the country, but the Perls, who were Jews, experienced little discrimination in Viseul de Sus.

The Warmth of Home

The Perl home was a large second-story apartment with a curved ceiling located directly above the factory floor. The neighbors were mostly poor farmers and gypsies.

Wolf was a warm and convivial man who would have preferred to live in the village center, but his wife Rose, ever fearful for his health (he had an enlarged heart), insisted that he remain close to her and their six children, which meant living adjacent to the factory.

Romania’s counties (Transylvania in green)

Romania’s counties (Transylvania in green)

Tannin is produced by sheering the bark from trees and melting it and other plant materials in enormous, heated vats, which creates a thick, soupy compound. Noxious smoke is belched out of a chimney, which is why extraction plants are usually located away from population centers.

Wolf’s business had been handed down through generations of Perls and thrived through the teens and 1920s under his stewardship. Great racks of logs would arrive in Viseul by steam train, which were hauled to the plant floor where workers operated bark peeling machines. The finished product (tannin) was sealed in barrels and shipped to leather manufacturers in European capitals.

A Well-Treated Minority

Viseul’s Jews generally received better treatment than their brethren elsewhere in Romania, being neither discriminated against nor merely tolerated but viewed more as co-citizens. Wolf employed many non-Jews at his plant, including a local family who had the Perl children over every Christmas to help them decorate the holiday tree.

Maramures County, Transylvania, Romania

Maramures County, Transylvania, Romania

Viseul’s summers were temperate and pleasant (the town was a climactic resort), during which Wolf limited his business travel, spending leisurely afternoons attending to his apple, plum and pear orchards. He was a self-taught botanist. Often he could be seen painstakingly brushing insect repellent onto the saplings; when he was done, the trees looked like they had been smothered in white paint.

Many of the Perl’s relatives who lived in the region’s largest city, Sighet Marmatiei, visited for a few weeks every summer, enjoying the pleasant environs and the clear mountain air at 510 meters (1,670 feet). The warm months brought thousands of tourists to swim in Visuel’s sulfur hot springs, said to possess healing powers. Brilliant green oak trees towered high in the rolling hills above the springs, a beatific sight treasured by all.

In winter, the Perl children ice skated and skied. Sometimes Rose could be seen leaning out the kitchen window to watch Fritzi, her youngest, skiing down the nearby slopes with the family’s dogs bounding through the snow after her.

In spring, as the snows melted, the Perl children swam in creeks made swollen from the icy waters flowing down the Transylvanian Alps. Life was bucolic, lived in harmony with nature and acknowledgment and respect for life.

Although the region was home to Europe’s largest population of sizeable carnivores, including half the continent’s bears and more than a third of its wolves, the Perls had no trouble with wild animals.

Wolf and Rose

Rose Perl (left) with cousin, 1935

Rose Perl (left) with cousin, 1935

As a boy, Wolf was a top student at Viseul’s Yeshiva, or religious Jewish school. Throughout his life he remained close to the school and its community, mentoring boys and serving continuously on its Board of Directors. Wolf and Rose embodied the traditional Jewish values of social responsibility, charity and service, which they passed on to their children.

The political and cultural history of the region created a household of polyglots. Through the centuries, control of Transylvania changed hands many times. From the 11th century until 1919, rule passed between Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. Wolf and Rose came of age in the “Hungarian era.” Thus, Hungarian was the primary language spoken in the Perl home.

In 1919, when Transylvania was annexed by Romania, the Perl children were required to speak Romanian in school. Like most European Jews, the Perls spoke Yiddish at home, making the children tri-lingual.

Breaking Bread with Neighbors

With five daughters and a son (Anci), the Perl household was rarely quiet. Most of the activity centered around the large kitchen where Rose cooked throughout the day. A smaller adjacent room was used for baking breads and pastries. Jewish holidays were festive and exciting, and often included Wolf’s gentile friends and business associates as well as boys from the Yeshiva.

The Perl family home and factory, Visuel de Sus, Romania, circa 1938. From left to right: Susy, two cousins, Shari, Anci, Rose, cousin (boy). Sitting: Fritzi.

Home and factory, Visuel de Sus, Romania, circa 1938. Left to right: Susy, two cousins, Shari, Anci, Rose, cousin (boy). Sitting: Fritzi.

Though the Jewish population of Viseul (as in all Romania) was a segregated minority, Wolf made it a priority to unite Jewish, Christian and Roma cultures, seeking common ground whenever possible. Though he was a practicing Jew, he often did not wear a yarmulke and favored a secular perspective.

On the Passover holiday, the family gathered at the long dining table for the Seder meal, a traditional feast celebrating the liberation of the ancient Jews from slavery in Egypt. The family’s ornate and expensive Rosenthal dishes, which Wolf had purchased in Germany while on business, were brought out at such times. Wolf had in fact made many trips to Germany, where he bought most of the machinery used in his plant. Being enamored of the country, Wolf had named his youngest child, Fritzi, after a popular German name at the time, Fritz.

A Joining of Two Worlds

The Perl children, awed by and deferential to the patriarch, remained silent as their father, wearing his white yarmulke, performed rituals at the head of the table. After the sumptuous holiday meal, Rose had the children share leftovers with the area’s poor.

Anci Perl (left) with friend, 1920s

Anci Perl (left) with friend, 1920’s

Wolf was an intelligent man and a formidable business strategist. Though he had grown up in the backwoods hamlet of Viseul (which none of his customers had ever visited) he had attained a cultural sophistication. He made frequent business trips and was at home in many of Europe’s cosmopolitan centers.

Rose, or Riesel (her Hebrew name), as a rule, placed the needs of others above her own. Unlike Wolf, she grew up in a city, Sighetu Marmatiei, a half-hour’s train ride from Visuel. The couple were probably joined in an arranged marriage, or shiddach.

Sharing the Wealth

The Perls were considered affluent for the time and place. The children’s needs were well met—in contrast to those of the destitute peasants and gypsies of the area.

Roma gypsies, Transylvania, Romania

Roma gypsies, Transylvania, Romania

Children from the neighborhood routinely arrived at the Perl doorstep holding out tattered containers and water skins into which Rose would pour milk. She often gave them pears and apples from the orchard, as well as potatoes and other vegetables.

In the fruit picking season, Rose oversaw a collective effort in which the Perl children worked alongside the neighborhood children to stew pears and apples. The stewed fruit was then stored in jars. The task took a full day and into the night, and was a treated as a party.

On Purim, a joyous holiday, Rose baked cakes under which she placed bills and coins. The cakes were then delivered by the Perl children to the area’s poor.

Wolf operating machinery in the factory, 1920s

Wolf in the factory, 1920s

The family owned dogs and cats. Every morning, Rose was the first awake; she would wake the live-in maid, a gypsy woman, who would milk the family cow after which Rose would bring fresh milk to the children before they headed out for school. Rose wore a wig at all times, her head clean-shaven in the style of Orthodox Jewish women.

City Life: Sighetu Marmatiei

Sighetu Marmatiei

Sighetu Marmatiei

Since Viseul had no secondary school, the Perl children attended high school in Sighetu Marmatiei, a city of 40,000 about 60 kilometers northeast. Sighetu, Hungarian for “island,” offered a rich cultural life. (Sighet Marmatiei was the childhood home of Holocaust writer Elie Wiesel, who, like the Perls, was deported to Auschwitz in 1944. Perl daugther Estie’s oldest daughter and my first-cousin, Daisy, married Alex Gross, a Holocaust survivor who grew up with Wiesel and remained his lifelong friend.)

Many generations of Perls attended public and Hebrew school in Sighet. Each Perl child, on first setting eyes on Sighet’s high school, was said to have been struck speechless at seeing its large classrooms and gymnasium, which dwarfed all the buildings in Visuel.

Whereas Viseul was looked down upon as backwoods, Sighet was cosmopolitan and high culture, boasting theatres, restaurants, specialty shops, and a Yiddish newspaper.

Rose’s parents, Hershel and Gittle Berkowitz, lived in Sighet. The Perl children regularly visited them and their many aunts, uncles and cousins, boarding the train at the Visuel station for the short ride. Estie, the oldest of the Perl children, often traveled to Sighet on her own.

Each summer, Hershel and Gittle came to stay with the Perls in Visuel for several weeks.

Wolf’s parents, Yankle and Elka, lived nearby in Viseul. Yankle was a stern, highly religious Hasidic Jew feared by the Perl children. When they visited his house, they were required to yield to strict Orthodox law.

Peace Amid a Gathering Storm

In 1933, when Hitler came to power as Germany’s chancellor, he ordered a boycott of Jewish shops, banks, offices and department stores in Romania. Under his rule, anti-Semitism spread throughout the country.

Remote Viseul de Sus, however, remained an island removed well into the mid-1930’s, the approaching storm still a few years off. Life carried on as usual. The Perl children attended school in Viseul and Sighet, and Wolf’s business thrived.

Estie’s Travels

Steamship, Cuba, 1938

Steamship, Cuba, 1938

Estie (Esther) was the most glamorous of the Perl daughters, possessed of a movie-star beauty and a self-assured, adventurous spirit not unlike her father’s. Feeling perpetually stifled in tiny Viseul, she traveled often to Romanian cities for fun and excitement.

In the summer of 1937, the 22-year-old rode the train with an aunt to Vatra-Dornei, a resort town in the neighboring Bukovina region, home to a popular summer spa, a kosher restaurant and Jewish-owned hotels and businesses.

It was there that Estie unexpectedly ran into a friend from Sighet who introduced her to her nephew, a 35-year-old young man from Cuba, Luis Rosenthal, also Jewish. He had grown up in Budapest and like Estie, spoke Hungarian.

Luis’s Journey

Luis had immigrated to Cuba 13 years earlier, in 1924, desperately wanting to avoid serving in Hungary’s anti-Semitic military. He hatched a plan with a few friends to sail for America to seek their fortunes. But when the ship approached American shores, it was refused entry; the quota for Hungarian immigrants had been filled. Dispirited, the young men disembarked in Cuba instead.

Estie and Luis, Havana, Cuba

Estie and Luis, Havana, Cuba

Nine months later, when Luis’s visa to the U.S. was approved, he was already settled in Havana, the owner of a thriving watch repair shop. He stayed. Over the next decade he would expand it into a prosperous jeweler’s supply business.

In 1938, missing his parents, Luis sailed across the Atlantic to visit them in Budapest. On the trip to Vatra-Dornei, he met Estie.

The couple fell in love. After their too short, exhilarating time together, he sailed back to Cuba. Luis and Estie commenced a year-long, cross-Atlantic letter-writing courtship in their native language of Hungarian. When Luis mailed her a marriage proposal, Estie accepted. Within a month the adventurous Estie was sailing for Cuba and an unknown destiny.

The Winds of War

Nazi poster, 1940

Nazi poster, 1940

In Romania, the brutal Goga-Cuza government had seized power, a regime that not only preached anti-Semitism but made it state policy. For the Jews of Transylvania, the tide was turning.

Bad news became worse news. In 1942, Wolf died suddenly of a heart attack in a hotel room in Sighet, while playing chess with a physician friend.

Soon, Romania would be thrown into horrific circumstances. In Cuba, Estie, knowing what was coming, tried to find a way to arrange passage for her family out of Europe.

But war would come too fast.

End of Part I of II

Part II