At that time, many families from Neupanat living in Buenos Aires returned to Neupanat. SAND and SELLNER as well as ZELLER and HEINRICH returned with their families. The REINGRUBER and the TROPFENBAUM families remained. Those families aren’t coming back.

Why did the family return to Neupanat? As I said, my father was not healthy, and he feared that he would die in Buenos Aires and then the remaining family would return to Neupanat. In addition, my sister Nanni became acquainted with a young man who was from St. Anna, a community close to Neupanat. And my other sister Mariann had already become acquainted with a young man who was from Yugoslavia and, in addition, a German. And then our mother realized, if we stayed there one more year, we would never return home. My sister Nanni’s boyfriend was Jakob KOEHLER. And my mother always said, “She may not marry a Koehler, because the Koehlers are all bad.” And Mariann’s boyfriend was Hans SCHNITZER. That ruined everything.

On April 13, 1934, we left Argentina on the General San Martin and, after 26 days, we arrived in Hamburg. From there, we continued by train across Berlin through Czechoslovakia to Prague. In Prague, we had to wait four hours for the train to Romania. At that time, nobody was allowed to travel through to Hungary. Because we had a lot of luggage, we had to get a truck in Arad. Then my father went to a landlord who had ordered wine from us in the past. The landlord said to him, “The man sitting at the table there has a car.” He wanted 500 Lei [about $370 in 2005] to drive our luggage to Neupanat. My father said that he only had a dollar. Coincidentally, there was a teacher from Neupanat sitting there, and he offered to pay the 500 Lei as long as my father repaid him. And, just like that, we were on the truck with our luggage and drove home.

We arrived in Neupanat on May 10, 1934. That was Ascension Day, our pilgrimage day. We thought that if we arrived in the morning, then we could ride along to Maria Radna and our father could go to Neupanat with the luggage. But we had to wait so long that it was already afternoon when we arrived. Given that, we could no longer go along on the pilgrimage. Our grandmother was at home, and, at that time, my father’s mother was still alive, too. The old women always sat in the shade together with SCHMIDT. And they said to my grandmother, “Bel Nanni, Peter is close. Look, there is the car. There it is!” And then it came closer. And as we drove down the lane, I thought, there are only small fences. Everything appeared so small to me.

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