Esteemed mayor of Tăşnad,

Sr Grieb Csaba Francisc Stimate Domnule Primar Al Oraşului Tăşnad

c/o
Dr. Pomian Ionut-Adonis
Aleea Salcamilor St. #5
Tasnad Town
Satu Mare County, 445300
Romania

Dear Honorable Mayor of Tasnad,

I am writing this letter at the suggestion of Dr. Ionut-Adonis.

I am asking that you consider honoring Mrs Eta Berk (a.k.a. Fuchs) a proclamation
recognizing her 100th birthday which will occur in just a few weeks on April 15, 2018.

My name is Jacob Fuchs, and I am the son of Dr. Abraham Fuchs, who was born in 1925
in Tasnad. My father studied in the public day school in Tasnad. As was the custom at
the time, he also studied Judaism before (in the early hours of dawn) and also in the
afternoon, after the regular school hours at the Tasnad day school which he attended.

At the age of 12, he was admitted to the Yeshiva1 of Rabbi Mordechai Brisk in Tasnad2.
The Yeshiva was closed by the order of the Hungarian authorities, approximately in
1943. At the same time period there was an increased level of antisemitism in Tasnad
and so my father fled away along with a friend3.

Mrs Eta Berk stayed in Tasnad along with her step-mother, Mrs (Chaje-Szase)-Serna
Fuchs and a few of her sisters. As you know, in March 1944 the Germans invaded
Hungary. In early May 1944, the troops of SS officer Adolf Eichmann arrived to Tasnad.
With the help of local citizens, they were able to locate the homes of all Jewish residents.
They rounded them up and brought them to a Ghetto that they erected in the nearby city
of Shimloi. The Jewish population of Tasnad stayed at Ghetto Shimloi for about 2
weeks, and probably on May 30, 1944 they were all hoarded on cattle trains. After 3
days they arrived to the death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau . Most of the Jewish
community was murdered within 24 hours. There bodies were burnt in the
crematorium.
Mrs. Berk was among the few that was chosen to live and was sent to the labor camp4.

1
A “Yeshiva” is a Jewish Academy dedicated to the study of the Talmud and the Jewish code of law.
2
This was one of the largest Yeshivas in the greater Hungarian former empire. It had approximately 400
students who came from all over Europe.
3
He fled with his best friend, Solomon Bumi. Solomon survived the war and eventually moved to Toronto
Canada. He passed away approximately 10 years ago.
4
More details about this can be found in Mrs Eta Berk’s book: “The Chosen”.
In the camp, Mrs. Berk suffered humiliation, hunger, cold, disease and more. But she
managed to live that year and was rescued in the spring of 1945 when the camp was
liberated. She was transferred to the Displaced Person (DP) camp of Bergen Belson and
stayed there for approximately two or three years.
After the war, my own father came back to Tasnad in search for his mother and sisters. It
is needless to say the shock he encountered when he discovered that the whole
community is no longer there. He did not know of this genocide until that moment.
Someone told him that they heard that his sister Eta had survived and is in Bergen
Belson. He decided to join her. Without any money or food – Just with the clothing that
was on his body, he started the long journey by foot. He had no passport or any other
documents, so he smuggled his way across several borders on his way to Bergen-Belson.
Mrs. Eta Fuchs met and married Mr. Myer Berk (originally Berkovitz) in Bergen Belsen.
In approximately 1947 they received permission to travel to Canada. Mrs Berk lives
there to this day. My father travelled with her to Canada, but decided to move to the state
of Israel in 1949.
My father completed his high school studies in a special school erected in Bergen Belson.
In Israel he studied at the Hebrew University and graduated with a BA in History. Later
on, he continued graduate studies and eventually completed his PhD in History.
Post graduation, he decided to write a book dedicated to his home community of Tasnad.
This was published in Hebrew in 1973. When I visited Tasnad a few years ago, I brought
with me a copy of the book as a gift for your library. I also gave Dr. Ionut-Adonis a
copy.
Mrs. Eta Berk wrote a biographical book about her life. About her childhood in Tasnad
and everything that had happened. It is called “The Chosen” as she felt that she was
chosen to live while most her family members were chosen to be murdered.
I do not have any documents for Mrs. Eta Berk. She is very old and frial and her children
do not want to cooperate because they say, Tasnad is a place that she was born, but it is
also a place that had betrayed her (when her neighbors reported on them to the Nazi SS).
I am going to provide here a list of all family members that I am aware of. The proof that
all this is true is in the city’s registry (birth and death documents). This going along with
Mrs. Berk’s book, is the only proof that I have. I hope you will accept it.

Here is the list of the family members:

Boy 1:  Lipe Fuchs.  He passed away young and is burried in Tasnad. 
(son of Serna and Jakob)
Girl 2: Reisel Fuchs.  Murdered in Auschwitz
(daughter of Serna and Jakob)

Boy 3: Moshe Fuchs.  Survived.  When he married, he moved to the city of Des.  During
the war, he suffered significantly but refused to provide details.   His wife and 2 children
were murdered.  After the war he moved to the city of Bnei Braq in Israel.  Was a
talmudic scholar and operated a book store for judaic books.  Passed away approximately
in 1980 and is burried in the city of Tiberias in Israel.
(son of Serna and Jakob)

Girl 4: Lea Fuchs. Murdered in Auschwitz.

(daughter of Serna and Jakob)

Girl 5: Libush.  Married Moshe Fuchs (just a coincidence that he has same family name). 
She was murdered in Aushwitz5.
(daughter of Serna and Jakob)

Girl 6: Etelka, later renamed her name to Eta.  Born on April 15, 1918
(daughter of Serna and Jakob) I am asking a certificate for her.

Mother Serna (Full Jewish name was Chaje-Szase-Serna) passed away and is burried in
Tasnad.  probably approximately in 1920 give or take a year or two.

Father Jakob (I am named after him) remarried to Czivje (from the city of Bardiov (? not
sure)).

Girl 7:  Chaje-Szase-Serna6 Born on January 15, 1923 .  She passed away at a very
young and is burried in Tasnad. 
(daughter of Czivje and Jakob)

Boy 8:  Abraham-Leb , my father, born on Sepember 10, 1925. .   Abraham-leb later
shortened his name to Abraham.
(son of Czivje and Jakob)

Wife Czivje murderd in Aushwitz along with the whole community.  Details in THE
CHOSEN.   I named my second daughter after her with a minor variation of spelling:
5
Details can be found in the book THE CHOSEN.  In short, she refused to leave her baby daughter (Chaya
Sosha Serna, named after her mother that passed away) and was murdered in Auschwitz along with
daughter.  Her husband survived and moved to israel and re-married.

6
She is named after jakob’s first wife. In the book, The Chosen, Mrs. Berk wrote a very interesting story
about why she was named this way.
Tzeviya.

So, the best proof for all this is really in the birth and death registries that are located in
your city archives. ( I will appreciate very much receiving official birth certificates for
all of them and will pay whatever fee is necessary).

You will see there that Mrs. Eta is listed as: Nutovits Etelka from the parents Serna and
Jakob Fuchs  (Nutovits is Serna's maiden name) - and so you can see that they both have
the same father. 
My father is listed as Fucs Abraham-Leb, son of Fuchs Iacob si Bodner Czivje.
As you can see, both have the same father name.
This, along with the details in the book “The Chosen”, proves that Mrs. Eta Berk is
Etelka that was born in Tasnad 100 years ago.

Summay, I would appreciate it if the city will issue a proclamation in honor of Mrs. Eta’s
Berk 100th birthday. I hope that this proclamation will include some sort of apology for
what she had to go through.
It will also be also very appreciated if a birth certificate or a copy of the registry would be
made available for the other family members.
Last, this may be a good opportunity to consider providing a posthumous proclamation to
my father in recognition of the historical work he did to document the city of Tasnad.

Thank you

Jacob Fuchs
PO Box 3
Bnei-Braq
Israel
Email: jacob@fuchs.org
Phone: +972+3-616-4042