Frasin

“Kőrösmező [Yasinia]. Rafter’s prayer on the arrival of dam water”

“Ngs. [Nagyságos] Tabéry Géza urnak, Oradea-Mare, Kálvária útca 21. Édes Gézám, oly szép ez a vidék, ahol járunk, hogy idekivánunk benneteket is. Pompás helyek, kitünő koszt, szegény zsidók és rongyos oroszok… Igen érdekes helyek. Cseh-lengyel határnál, néha átjárunk 14°-os pilseni sört inni Csehiába. Kár hogy oly kevés a hátralevő idő, de vigaszul szolgál, hogy visszatértünk utján ujra meleg és értékes aranyos közeletekben leszünk pár órára. Igen nagy szeretettel gondolunk rátok! Károly.”

“To the Honourable Mr. Géza Tabéry, Oradea-Mare, Kálvária str. 21. My dear Géza, this region, where we are wandering, is so beautiful, that we wish you were here. Gorgeous places, excellent food, poor Jews and ragged Russians… Very interesting places. We sometimes cross the Czech-Polish border to drink 14° Pilsen beer in Czechia. Too bad that so little time remains, but it is a consolation that on our way home we will spend a few hours in your warm, precious and kind company. We think of you with much love! Károly.”

After the previous post we would like to stay for a few more posts in Kőrösmező/Yasinya. But until the next one is completed, we invite our readers to play a new game.

Kőrösmező/Yasinia in today’s Subcarpathia/Zakarpattya, Ukraine

As we know, between the two world wars Kőrösmező/Yasinia (at that time Jasiňa) belonged to Czechoslovakia together with the whole Subcarpathia, and it was transferred de facto only in 1944, de jure in 1947 to the Ukraine. However, the above postcard, which we found on an auction site, was sent with a printed Romanian caption and Romanian stamp from Kőrösmező (here called Frasin) to Oradea-Mare. In addition, the sender writes that they “go over” to Czechia to have a beer from Pilsen.

How is this possible?

And in general, an old postcard like this is always a message in a bottle, giving news about a number of complicated and interesting stories. What might be the stories referred to by this postcard, including the Romanian royal stamp and the overprinted Hungarian label “Levelezőlap” (Post card), the addressee and Oradea-Mare, the “prayer of the rafters” and the rafters of Kőrösmező, and did these latter belong to the “poor Jews” or to the “ragged Russians”?

We ask our usual experts to let our “outsider” readers guess for a couple of hours before commenting, and in the meantime send us your eventual materials to the post in preparation about this story. :)