Ancsel Feuerwerker (later Arthur Feuer) was born on November 4, 1922, in Craciunesti, Romania, to a Jewish couple, Lazar (Zvi) Eliezer and Regina (Rywka) Chaya Perl Feuerwerker. Zvi was born on August 24, 1893, in Tiszakarácsonyfalva (later Craciunesti), and had 1 sister. He worked as a timber cutter, floating the large logs down river in Romania to Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Rywka was born in 1897, in Tiszakarácsonyfalva, and had 5 siblings. Ancsel was a middle child with 7 siblings. He had 3 brothers Moshe (Moses, 1914), Leib (1916 - 2010), and Chaim (1919), and 4 sisters Mania (Manci, 1921 - 2014), Hency (1924 - 2015), Gisela (Gitel, 1929), and Frieda (1930). His family lived in a duplex with his paternal grandparents, which was near the school where everyone gathered to listen to the radio. The town had about 500 families, half Jewish and half Ukrainian or Russian. Ancsel’s family spoke Yiddish at home, but could also speak Hungarian, Romanian, German, and some Russian. Many in the town had to rely heavily on assistance from relatives that had immigrated to the United States. Ancsel attended the local, Romanian school and the Hebrew school. His family was modern Orthodox, and his father served as a cantor at their synagogue. His family was poor, but happy, and had some additional money each month from his maternal aunts, who had immigrated to the US. Ancsel was part of a Zionist group, and learned how to keep bees from another member. The Romanian government required all adult males to register for army service. Ancsel’s oldest brother, Moses, was almost entirely deaf so he served as a military secretary. Leib and Chaim were both in the regular army. Once he finished school, Ancsel picked fruit, farmed a little bit, and helped his father cut timber.
In September 1939, Germany invaded Poland. One of Ancsel’s maternal aunts paid smugglers to bring Leib to the US illegally. In August 1940, as part of the second Vienna Award, Germany forced Romania to cede northern Transylvania, including Craciunesti, to Hungary. The Hungarian government required all adult Jewish males to register for forced labor. Life in town did not change dramatically, though people had to speak more Hungarian and they were no longer able to receive assistance or news from relatives in the US. The Hungarians did not trust the Jews to carry guns, so in 1941, Ancsel’s brothers were forced out of the military. Chaim was transferred to a forced labor battalion and Moses had returned home after his service was completed. In October 1942, Ancsel was about to come of age at 20, so he was conscripted into a forced labor battalion based out of a camp in Szaszregen (Reghin), Romania. In the camp, laborers slept on the floor in empty buildings, and wore their own clothing, with yellow Star of David patches sewn on, because there were no uniforms. The camp had roughly 300 forced laborers, who were not considered prisoners, but were regularly counted and always monitored by 6 armed soldiers. Ancsel and 12-14 others from his town were assigned to a battalion that put up tar-covered telephone poles, each requiring twelve men to lift. After 8 or 9 months, Ancsel’s battalion shifted to the front line, where they dug trenches for the soldiers fighting the Soviet army.
In March 1944, Germany invaded Hungary. In September, German authorities ordered the Hungarians guarding Ancsel’s camp to march the laborers to Germany. Ancsel didn’t know where they were going and was exhausted after many days of endless marching and sleeping in fields. One morning, he woke up and decided he wasn’t going to keep marching. He and two other men remained hidden when the group began to leave. The guards did not notice their absence, and after everyone was gone, Ancsel and the others walked to a nearby village. After a local woman heard about their situation, she and her siblings agreed to hide the men in their homes. Two weeks later, in October, the village was liberated by the Soviet army. The head Soviet, a Jewish man, told Ancsel not to return home yet because he would be sent to a prison camp. After several more weeks in the town, Ancsel returned to Craciunesti. He found all of the Jewish houses empty and learned that in late April, the entire Jewish community, including his family, had been transported a ghetto in Slatina across the river from the nearby city of Sighet. He didn’t think any of his family was still alive and could not bring himself to go into his house. He stayed with several other Jewish people that had also returned to try and find their families.
On May 7, 1945, Germany surrendered. Later that month, Ancsel heard that his brother Chaim was alive in Germany. In June or July, a gentile that Ancsel knew returned to Craciunesti and told him that three of his sisters were living in Föhrenwald displaced persons camp near Munich, Germany. After several weeks of walking and hitch hiking, Ancsel was reunited with Hency, Manci, and Gitel. They told Ancsel that the ghetto had been liquidated in late May and their family had been deported to Auschwitz concentration camp in German-occupied Poland. Their mother, Rywka, and sister, Frieda, were killed upon arrival. In June, Hency, Manci, and Gitel had been transported to Fallersleben and Salzwedel concentration camps as forced laborers for factories. While in Germany, Ancsel met Kato (later Kathy) Roth (1927-2017), a family acquaintance and fellow Holocaust survivor from Sighet, Romania, who had been deported to Auschwitz and later sent to Gelsenkirchen and Soemmerda concentration camps. Ancsel later learned that in August 1944, his father, Zvi, and brother, Moses, had been deported to Dachau concentration camp in Germany, where in October, both men had been shot for moving too slowly while working. His grandparents perished in the Holocaust. Ancsel immigrated to the United States in March 1949, under the displaced persons (DP) Immigration program and changed his name to Arthur. His siblings also immigrated to the US and Canada, where Chaim became Harold and Manci became Nancy. They reunited with their aunts and Leib, who became Larry. On March 25, 1951, Arthur married Kathy Roth in Montreal, Canada, where she had been living with relatives. They settled in New York City, where he worked as a bricklayer for a cousin. They had two children. In 1956, at his sister Hency’s suggestion, Arthur’s family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where he started a masonry contracting business, A & F Construction. Arthur, 90, died on August 26, 2013, in Pepper Pike, Ohio.
