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Oral history interview with Peter Ehrenthal

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 2015.438.1 | RG Number: RG-50.030.0861

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    Oral history interview with Peter Ehrenthal

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Peter Ehrenthal, born on September 2, 1920 in Bánffyhunyad (now Huedin), Romania, discusses his family; speaking Hungarian at home and learning Romanian at school; his brother Gershom, who was born in 1924 (he lives in Israel now); his father’s dentistry practice, which was in their house; having no electricity in their home; attending primary school in town and going to Cluj (50 kilometers away) for high school; people mostly traveling by horse and buggy; how his family was not religious but his grandfather took him to synagogue on the High Holidays; moving with his family to Bucharest, Romania when he was 13 years old; fighting with a newsboy who called him a Jew; attending a gymnasium (high school) in Bucharest until 1936 when he was thrown out; apprenticing to a silversmith until the war began; his father being forced to clean the street, but was permitted to continue his dental practice; being forced to work in a labor camp for a short while; returning home and not reporting to duty (no one looked for him); working in the basement doing his silversmith work during the war; being liberated by the Russian Army; joining the Young Communists (he believed in their philosophy but did not like the way it was carried out); getting married to Erica; leaving Romania for Palestine along with his new wife as well as his brother and uncle and their families; receiving help from the Hagenah; being captured by the British on a fishing boat and interned on Cyprus until Israel became a state; working as a school manager in Israel for newcomers and then as a merchant; being sent by a company to the United States in 1957 and deciding to stay in the US; going into the silversmithing business and later became an antiques dealer; accumulating 550 objects portraying antisemitism, some of which were exhibited in Israel (Peter shows a few of the Judaica items); and his son, Michael, who was in the business for 30 years and adds some details.
    Interviewee
    Mr. Peter Ehrenthal
    Interviewer
    Ina Navazelskis
    Date
    interview:  2015 December 16
    Geography
    creation: Queens (New York, N.Y.)

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    1 digital file : MPEG-4.

    Rights & Restrictions

    Conditions on Access
    There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
    Conditions on Use
    No restrictions on use

    Keywords & Subjects

    Administrative Notes

    Provenance
    Ina Navazelskis, on behalf of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Oral History Branch, conducted the oral history interview with Peter Ehrenthal on December 16, 2015 in Forest Hills, Queens, NY.
    Funding Note
    The cataloging of this oral history interview has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:05:14
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn531227

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