Jews had many professions in Braila: there were craftsmen, handicraftsmen, and intellectuals. There was the Port of Braila and there were important cereal traders, ship-owners… There were the stone quarries at Turcoaia owned by the Daniel brothers, by Michael Daniel. The present headquarters of the Securitate located on Ana Aslan St. was the property of Michael Daniel and sons: George, Ion, and Otto Daniel.
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Displaying 47611 - 47640 of 50826 results
Silo Oberman
There were several rabbis along the years in Braila, who had a vast Hebrew culture. There were also religious performers, there were choir singers, and on holidays they sang so nice you could say it was an opera recital. They sang in Hebrew using opera arias.
During the persecutions, Joseph Schmidt, the famous singer, was a refugee here, he was coming from his native city in Moldova; he ran for the position of performer here, in Braila. Yet he was rejected by the president of the community of that time who was an illiterate person and didn’t appreciate Schmidt because he was a short person and wore high heels. In order to earn his living, he traveled through various places across the country, and that’s how he ran for a position in Braila, as the population here was richer and they could pay him a salary.
Mayer Thenen was the penultimate rabbi [Editor’s note: Rabbi Dr. Mayer Thenen one of the great personalities of the Braila Jews and of all the Romanian Jews, who was a pastor until 1940; he was the author of the first Romanian translation of the Ros Hasana and Yom Kippur prayers. http://www.romanianjewish.org/en/mosteniri_ale_culturii_iudaice_03_11_12.html], followed by the last rabbi, Michel Dobruschim, during 195-1954, when he left to Israel. There is also a photograph at the Community of Braila’s last rabbi and the former chief rabbi of all the Jews of Romania, Rosen [5]. I met him myself. However, Thenen is more famous and compiled a Siddur of his own, which was republished in Israel. The rabbi didn’t only officiate weddings, but was also the patron of the Jewish community on holidays. I attended marriages officiated by a rabbi myself. Formerly, religious wedding ceremonies were performed, and we were invited as well. There was a different rabbi, Mihailovici, and I was actually a witness, which is to say I signed that document, which is called a ketubbah in Hebrew.
During the persecutions, Joseph Schmidt, the famous singer, was a refugee here, he was coming from his native city in Moldova; he ran for the position of performer here, in Braila. Yet he was rejected by the president of the community of that time who was an illiterate person and didn’t appreciate Schmidt because he was a short person and wore high heels. In order to earn his living, he traveled through various places across the country, and that’s how he ran for a position in Braila, as the population here was richer and they could pay him a salary.
Mayer Thenen was the penultimate rabbi [Editor’s note: Rabbi Dr. Mayer Thenen one of the great personalities of the Braila Jews and of all the Romanian Jews, who was a pastor until 1940; he was the author of the first Romanian translation of the Ros Hasana and Yom Kippur prayers. http://www.romanianjewish.org/en/mosteniri_ale_culturii_iudaice_03_11_12.html], followed by the last rabbi, Michel Dobruschim, during 195-1954, when he left to Israel. There is also a photograph at the Community of Braila’s last rabbi and the former chief rabbi of all the Jews of Romania, Rosen [5]. I met him myself. However, Thenen is more famous and compiled a Siddur of his own, which was republished in Israel. The rabbi didn’t only officiate weddings, but was also the patron of the Jewish community on holidays. I attended marriages officiated by a rabbi myself. Formerly, religious wedding ceremonies were performed, and we were invited as well. There was a different rabbi, Mihailovici, and I was actually a witness, which is to say I signed that document, which is called a ketubbah in Hebrew.
Romania
The Jewish Community of Braila always had presidents, for it is first and foremost a legal entity. During the war, it was called the Jewish Central, and then it resumed the name of the Jewish Community of Braila. Its higher structure is the Federation of Jewish Communities of Romania, and the communities can do absolutely nothing without the approval of the central structure.
Romania
In 1882, the brothers Abraham and David Schwartzman donated the building located on Al. I. Cuza Boulevard for the foundation of the Jewish-Romanian Primary School for Boys. The Clara Baroness of Hirsh Primary School for Girls was founded in 1896-1897. Girls attended Romanian schools until then, where girls of all religious beliefs could attend, just as my sisters did. The Herschleib and Netty Schaffer Gymnasium for Boys was founded in 1912. As a cultural activity, the Nordau and Derera Library was founded in 1912. Max Nordau was a Jewish writer, and Nissim Emanuel Derera, who was a cultured man, was teaching at the Schwartzman School and he translated Cicero for the first edition of Library for All. Nordau wrote “Conventional Lies,” which is very interesting. This library had 3 sections: Romanian, French, and German.
Until 1940, there were 14 houses of prayer in Braila, temples and synagogues included. The Frankishe Schul synagogue, today’s Choral Temple, was built in 1837. It was rebuilt in 1862. The Main Synagogue was built on Coroanei St. no. 25 (today, Mihail Sebastian St.) in 1833. There were 2 representative synagogues in the city, among which was the Main Synagogue as well, which has been dismantled in the meantime and the plot of land was sold, and turned into Hotel Corona nowadays.
The street on which we live is called “the Jewish Street,” and it was described by Uri Benador, the writer, in one of his books; he was an inhabitant of Braila by adoption, for he was born in Moldova. His name was Schmidt, and he Uri Schmidt’s father, the conductor of the Galati Philharmonic. Naturally, the Jews in Braila lived in other neighborhoods as well, for they represented a numerous and important population as Braila was a Danube port where there were many Jewish cereal traders, ship-owners, manufacturers. The “Laminorul” Factory was built by the Goldenberg family and it was called “Herman Goldenberg and Sons.” From an economic point of view, this factory was the creation of some former hardware traders.
Formerly, the people of Braila strolled along the Corso, along Regala St., downtown. I used to go with my mother to the Small garden, which was called Tiriplicu, nowadays it is called the Holy Archangels Garden. And we sat on a bench. We used to go with my mother to the confectioner’s as well, and it was an event for us. There were many confectioner’s shops, among which was the famous Andronic confectioner’s shop, located downtown, where the Syndicates’ Cultural Club stands nowadays. There were tables outside, in the open air, and there was also an orchestra playing music, and we had a good time because of the music, and ate Marshal ice cream or Marghiloman cakes. It was a feast.
At the time when I was going to school, there were around 2-3 cars in the city of Braila. One belonged to a ship-owner, his name was Moreno Blaskel, and one belonged to some director from Forestiera, nowaday’s P.A.L., and there was yet another one that belonged to Dudeleanu, the director of the I. G. Cantacuzino Cement Factory, formerly Stanca. There were 3 cars, and it was a real event when they drove past. Other than that, there were carriages. I first rode in a car around 1930.
For a while, I was a librarian at the “Nordau and Derera” Library, where Mihail Sebastian worked as a librarian as well, long before I worked there, for he was 10 years older than me. I met him myself, but he was studying in Paris when I grew up. I was a classmate of his brother, Beni, who was the holder of Mihail Sebastian’s diary.
Romania
I attended the Primary School for Boys no. 1, opposite the Haunted House, meaning the Oancea residence – which is actually the Home for the elderly. I had very good teachers at this school. I was a classmate of Eugen Spileriu and of Mihail Sebastian’s brother. [Editor’s note: Mihail Sebastian (born Iosif Hechter; 1907–1945) was a Romanian playwright, essayist, journalist and novelist. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihail_Sebastian]. I donated my school year photograph to the State Archives. I wrote on the back the names of my classmates. Then I attended the Schaffer secondary school, followed by the Commercial High School. This was a mixed school, for I didn’t go to the Jewish School.
I didn’t take piano lessons, yet I tried to take private violin lessons, but I discontinued them because of the hardships of those days, too. The teacher used to come to our home. My sisters tried to learn to play the piano, also in private, but they discontinued them.
In school, my favorite class was arithmetic. I had an eminent teacher in secondary school, Oscar Kreindler, and I learned the lesson in class already. He was Jewish and he was an emeritus teacher which had been the principal of Balcescu High School, chairman of the baccalaureate commission. He left Braila years later, and became a university professor at the Polytechnic, at the Military Academy. I also had his wife for a teacher, her name was Ana Kreindler, she taught biology. He was an eminent teacher, which had such a good teaching method that you practically learned the lesson during his arithmetic class. That’s why I actually liked mathematics, it didn’t require any efforts on my part. There weren’t any teachers whom I didn’t like. I had a very nice teacher of geography, he came from Transylvania; his name was Corneliu Guseila, he was the father of actress Lili Guseila Carandino, the wife of Nicolae Carandino.
I didn’t go to kindergarten, but directly to the Primary School for Boys no. 1. Back then, people paid schooling fees both for primary school, and for high school as well, because you paid to go to state schools as well, for they had their own budgets, they weren’t subsidized by the ministry. Depending on what the school administration deemed fit, they told you: “You are richer, you will pay this much…” The fees were decided by the administration board of the school and they asked you to pay schooling fees, depending on the family’s material situation, which was a very subjective, very relative estimate. It was very hard to send three children to school with just one salary.
As a child, I did all the mischief children do. I played in a certain place called “The Grass Courtyard,” and all the children in the street played there. We played with balls, a game called “la chioc.” We dug a hole in the ground and tried to throw the ball in there, which was called “la chioc.” In addition, we played with clothes’ buttons, postal stamps. These were about all the games we played as children.
And now, on holidays, a man comes from Bucharest, as there is the custom on New Year’s Eve for the Community members to eat kosher meat. A fowl is slaughtered for the forgiving of one’s sins. [Editor’s note: This is called kaparot – a ceremony performed by some Jews on the evening before Yom Kippur, when sins symbolically transfer from individuals to a white rooster and a white chicken for women]. Also, the slaughterhouse paid a great deal of attention to the slaughtering of cattle. They chose the animal, which had to be healthy, perfect, approved by a veterinarian, and the meat they gave to the Community was called kosher meat.
There was a hakham in Braila, too. Years ago, around 1939-1940, there was a hakham on Tamplari St., where there were Jewish butcher’s shops, dedicated to the Mosaic religion. There was a man who slaughtered the fowl and sold kosher meat. That’s where people took the birds to be slaughtered, and those who observed religious prescriptions didn’t eat meat one could buy in the city, they only ate this meat that the hakham prepared.
We celebrated Chanukkah before the war, the holiday of the Light, the equivalent of Christmas in Romania. Children were given gifts, which were called Chanukkah gelt, meaning Chanukkah money. We played for money using a spinning top that we called dreidel. Each facet had a meaning of its own, and the spinning top turned and fell on one of the facets, one of them read ‘Niemt Roma,’ meaning ‘Take everything,’ and then you took all the money that was on the table.
Andrei Lorincz
Between 1916 and 1918, she went to the Medical School in Budapest for two years. In 1918, when Bela Kun [2] brought Communism to Budapest, she came back home. [Editor’s note: Mr. Lorincz is talking about the 1919 events, when the Hungarian Soviet Republic [3] was proclaimed in Hungary.] Afterwards, she never went to college again and she married my father.
Ernest lived in two other places: he stayed in Cluj Napoca until he was arrested by the communist regime, but he never worked there, and in Ineu, where he died, in 1976.
He worked as a butcher in Deva too. He sold both kosher and non-kosher meat.
He lived in Deva and worked as a butcher and stock exporter. He was a very hard-working man and made a fortune after my grandfather’s death. He delivered cattle and swine – live or slaughtered. Uncle Bernat owned refrigerating cars. In winter, he stored ice in cellars; ice was collected from the Mures River. He went to many places, from Israel to England: he delivered cattle in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Germany, England; he went to Constantinople [today Istanbul] or to Rome countless times, for instance. He traveled across the entire Europe from 1930 until 1940, that’s for ten years.
Bernat was born in 1900 and graduated from the School of Electrical Engineers in Bratislava.
My grandmother was a nice person; she kept the accounts for my grandfather’s butcher’s shop.
My maternal grandparents’ house is still there today, but it no longer looks like it used to. It’s a 180-year-old house built at the time of my great-grandmother and great-grandfather. It fell into ruins in the 50 years of Communism and there’s not much of it left now. However, in my childhood, it looked all right, relatively well. It had three rooms and a kitchen; there was no bathroom. My grandparents had electricity, but no gas. The kitchen was plumbed. They didn’t have a garden, only a courtyard, and they had cows, horses, and a dog.
Both my grandparents were extremely religious, very Orthodox [1]. But, despite that, they didn’t go to the synagogue every week, only during the holidays. My grandfather didn’t go during the week and not even on Saturdays.
My maternal grandfather, Gottlieb Seiger, was born in 1864, in Hunedoara County, and lived in Deva. He was a butcher by trade.
In 1953, when the International Youth Festival was held in Bucharest, he left for Western Europe dressed as an Arab and got as far as Germany. [Editor’s note: The fourth Youth and Student International Festival took place from 2-14 August 1953. This was the first direct contact since World War II with foreigners, who were the few thousand youth attending the festival.] He went to Frankfurt, then to Hamburg, where he boarded an American ship. The Americans caught him, beat him up and forced him to disembark, so he had to return.
He arrived back home on 7th June 1954, right on time for our father’s birthday. This is the reason why the Securitate [9] seized him that same year and took him to Cluj. They held him there for two weeks and they killed him because he refused to declare that he was an American spy. They had no valid charge against him, but they came up with something. I know nothing about this story, except that, on 1st July 1954, I received a telegram from the Neuropsychiatric Clinic in Cluj; they told me to come pick up my brother’s dead body, as he had died at the clinic, where the Securitate had brought him in a state of coma.
He arrived back home on 7th June 1954, right on time for our father’s birthday. This is the reason why the Securitate [9] seized him that same year and took him to Cluj. They held him there for two weeks and they killed him because he refused to declare that he was an American spy. They had no valid charge against him, but they came up with something. I know nothing about this story, except that, on 1st July 1954, I received a telegram from the Neuropsychiatric Clinic in Cluj; they told me to come pick up my brother’s dead body, as he had died at the clinic, where the Securitate had brought him in a state of coma.
Ernest graduated from the Decebal High School and worked as a clerk here in Deva.
Romania
As for my uncles, they were rich, there’s no doubt about it.
My father was a lawyer and was one of the most skillful men in town.