(Wywiady dostępne są w językach angielskim i ukraińskim. Prosimy o wyrozumiałość.)
Uzhgorod, Ukraine
Interview conducted in 2003 by Ella Levitskaya
This is my father Ignac Gohman. This photo was taken in Mukacevo in 1926, my father was photographed on his birthday. This is the only miraculously preserved photograph of my father during World War II.
This is my mother Eszter Gohman (nee Berghida). This photograph was taken in Mukacevo in 1921, before my parents’ wedding. My mother gave it to my father as a token of love. My brother and I found this photo in the storeroom of our parents’ half-ruined house in Mukachevo when we returned from a concentration camp in 1945. This is the only miraculously preserved during World War II photograph of my mother.
Frieda Berghida
This is me, Tibor Gohman (standing on the left) with my brothers. My older brother Miklos is standing on my right and my younger brother Adalbert (in the foreground, on the right). My father photographed us during a walk in a Mukacevo park on a sunny day in 1934.
This is me, Tibor Gohman (on the right) with my older brother Miklos. We were close friends and when Miklos received his first salary, he invited me to a photo shop to be photographed for the memory. This photo was taken in Munkacs in 1943.
This is me, Tibor Gohman (on the right, wearing a military uniform of a soldier of the Soviet army), and my older brother Miklos Gohman. This photo was taken in Uzhhorod in 1953 when I came home in Mukachevo on leave from the army in the Far East. Miklosh and I were photographed so that I could show this photograph to my wife Valentina Novikova who was waiting for me in Vladivostok.
My wife Valentina Gohman (nee Novikova) with daughter Natalia (on the right) and son Victor. I had this photograph taken in a photo shop in Vladivostok on my son’s fifth birthday in 1961. I sent one photo to my brother Miklos in Uzhhorod.
This is my family: me, Tibor Gohman (sitting on the right), with my wife Valentina. Our children are standing: son Victor and daughter Natalia. We were photographed just for the memory during a family walk in Uzhhorod on a Sunday 1970, and we just happened to drop by a photo shop.
This is me, Tibor Gohman (on the right), my wife Valentina and granddaughter Tatania Gohman . This photo was taken near our home in Uzhhorod in 1997, before Tatania’s prom at school. A photographer was invited to photograph school graduates and their parents who were dressed up for the prom.
This is me, Tibor Gohman, at home in Uzhhorod. There is a camp number on my left arm. This photo was taken in Uzhhorod in 2003 after the interview.
Born in Mukachevo, Subcarphatia [Munkacs until 1918, Munkacevo from 1918 till 1939, Munkacs from 1939 till 1945, Mukachevo since 1945.] Mr. Gohman provides detailed descriptions of his home town, where Jews constituted 50% of the population, living alongside Hungarian, Czech and Ukrainian families. The family of his paternal grandfather, a shochet, was religious and he recalls his grandmother being angry when he quit cheder after two weeks. After finishing school, Mr. Gohman became an apprentice to a joiner.
During the Second World War, he was in the ghetto in Mukachevo, then deported to Auschwitz. He worked in Katovice camp until he was taken to Mauthausen in January 1945. Following the liberation of Mauthausen he was taken to a hospital in Hirschwang near Vienna. After the war, he chose to return to Subcarpathia to reunite with his family, not knowing that almost all of them had been exterminated by the Germans. His brother Miklos, however, had survived, they met in Budapest and returned home together. There, they were confronted with the Soviet power and skeptical about it but understood that they had to adjust to life in the USSR. In 1948 he was recruited and served in the Pacific Ocean Navy. He met his wife while in the army, founded a family and after demobilization worked as a driver. 10 pictures illustrate the various chapters of his life story.
