In May 2009, József and Matild’s youngest grandchild Matthew
Ehrlich visited Kolozsvár, or Cluj as it is currently known.
Its streets and other features now have Romanian names, and over
a century has passed since Matyu and Józsi got engaged; but
Matthew found the city center still built around a public
square: “the Piata Unirii with St. Michael’s Church in the
middle. The square also features the famous statue of the 15th
Century Hungarian King Matei Corvin astride his horse… The
statue is a popular meeting place for locals who supposedly
agree to rendezvous at ‘the horse’s tail.’ Unfortunately, the
square and the horse’s tail were closed for renovations…
“Cluj’s Central Park is a short walk away, featuring a pavilion
popular for weddings and a lake fronted by what now is a
casino. According to a guidebook, ‘The centennial shady trees
of the park cast their crowns in a vault over the heads of the
passersby, be they calm or melancholic adults, dreamy lovers or
restless youngsters’… Bordering the park on the north is the
Someşul Mic River”—formerly known as the (Kis-)Szamos. “Just
across the river is Fortress Hill, which affords a fine view of
the city; my grandmother spoke of playing and picnicking with
her friends among the historic locales outside the city center,
and this seems likely to have been one of them… North of the
river not far from Fortress Hill is the Neolog Synagogue. It
dates back to the 1880s, but was destroyed by an anti-Semitic
mob in 1927 and then, after being rebuilt, severely damaged by
an Allied air raid against the nearby rail depot in 1944.
Rebuilt once more, it now stands as a memorial to the 16,000 or
so Jews of Cluj who were deported and killed at Auschwitz.
Before all that, however, this may well have been where my
grandparents were married. There was a different synagogue
closer to where they lived (it’s now been redeveloped as a
university arts center), but my grandma spoke of being married
in her temple’s large back yard, which the other synagogue seems
less likely to have had (it was smaller and built right against
the river). Much of the grounds behind the Neolog temple are
now taken up by a music school, but there’s a small garden that
may be right about at the spot where the Ehrlichs took their
vows in 1918.
“My great-grandmother’s death record
had listed her address (and that of the house where my grandma
had grown up) as 7 Rózsa Street. The problem was that Cluj
streets had changed their names frequently over the years as
control of the city shifted back and forth between Hungary and
Romania and then from Communism to post-Communism. I was told
that Rózsa Street had become Fulicea Street, which was just
around the corner from Casa Matei Corvin. Number 7 on that
street turned out to be abandoned and in disrepair. That wasn’t
what bothered me, though: it simply didn’t look big enough to
accommodate my grandmother’s large family plus their business.
“I closely examined my grandparents’s wedding certificate
[confirmation], which hadn’t been prepared until 1922—after the
Romanians had taken over from the Hungarians and presumably
renamed certain streets after their national heroes. It gave
the pre-nuptials address of my grandmother as 7 Samuil Micu
Street, a different street altogether that was a few blocks away
near the university. I could find no clearly marked #7 on that
street, but there is a house that seems to correspond to that
address. Unfortunately, it’s not much more prepossessing than
the abandoned house on Fulicea Street. But this house is much
larger and appears far more likely to have been my grandma’s
actual family residence. It also looks as though it might have
been a handsome home in its time, with a floral motif above the
windows that possibly was in keeping with the original name of
the street (Rose).”
In 2024 Matthew used Google Street View to find “7 Strada Samuil
Micu” in Cluj, and decided that the Kohn/Kun house was in fact
next door to the one he’d photographed in 2009. “Good to see,
anyway, that the graffiti that used to be there is gone, or at
least was gone as of last summer.”
Notes
