Nusn Naybauer was born in Velké Kapušany in 1924 and grew up in Mala Dobron. His father worked in an equestrian military facility. Naybauer attended religious school until his bar mitzvah and moved to Uzhhorod in 1935. During World War II, he was imprisoned in the Hungarian forced labor camp Munka Tabor, before being deported to Auschwitz, Gleiwitz and Mittelbau-Dora camps. After the war, he returned home via Prague and Budapest.
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Tailored Suits
Uzhhorod, Ukraine
While taking a stroll through the former Jewish neighborhood in downtown Uzhhorod that used to be filled with Jewish artisan shops, Nusn Naybauer talks about his apprenticeship at his uncle’s tailor shop in the very same town, then under Czechoslovak rule. Nusn points out his successful career as tailor, serving customers across Eastern Europe after World War II. During the postwar Soviet period, Nusn - just like many other Jews in the Soviet Union - continued to work in occupations found in any shtetl before World War II. The fact that craftsmanship was passed on from one generation to the next is also a typical shtetl phenomenon.
In this clip, Nusn also points out his great circle of acquaintances, which spanned an area covering Hungary, a Soviet satellite state, all the way to Moscow, the political control center of the USSR. Nusn's connections became particularly important in order to protect his wife, a teacher, from antisemitism at her school. She was asked to write a report and include justification for her son's circumcision.
Nusn's acquaintanceship beyond Soviet borders reveals the Transcarpathian province's unique position as borderland and its role as window to the West in postwar Soviet times. Jewish life in Soviet Transcarpathia also demonstrates that in spite of its annexation to the Ukrainian Socialist Republic (UkSSR) in mid-1945, prewar connections to neighboring countries, like Hungary, persisted after the war.