There was no synagogue in Fundu Moldovei, just a prayer house: it was in a room of a house owned by a thriftier peasant. Women could come in there as well, but I don't know who led the ceremony. There weren't many Jewish families in that village, but they gathered there on Rosh Hashanah, on Sukkot, on Yom Kippur or when there were family celebrations.
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Sami Fiul
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I remember he had a tallit, which he used during the prayers; he generally prayed at home.
I got my idea with the clarinet before the war, when the Jewish high school was in big need of wind instrumentalists: they had piano, violin players, but no wind instrumentalists. And some of us guys said: 'Let's be wind instrumentalists'. One of my colleagues was Sergiu Comisioner, now Comisiona, who, back then, used to play the trumpet; I am happy to say he is a famous conductor in Spain now, and he often comes to the philharmonic orchestra in Romania to conduct. However, I haven't had the chance to meet him again.
After the war was over, I was in some sort of a crossroad; nobody had known when the war would end and how it would end. My sister had her fix idea with medicine, but I had no idea what I wanted to do; I liked music, and for a while I dreamt of making a career as an officer in the military music. With that dream in my head, I left for Bucharest, only God knows with what, because my parents had no money, and I joined the De La Pergola Conservatory -it was some sort of a university- , in the clarinet class.
And father worked at 'Izvoreanu ' textile factory, as renowned in Bacau as Fildermann's leather factory -Fildermann was famous on the political stage as a defender of Jews -. But there were several smaller leather factories, also owned by Jews like Davdovici, Abramovici. They gave work to a lot of people, including my mother's brother, Bern, who was a tanner and worked in Abramovici's factory.
Romania
After the war we could return in our house, in the spring of 1944,, some Germans had lived there. Our neighbors were happy to see us, not all of them had been evicted. My father had managed to build another house, next to the one that was left to us as a heritage, with three rooms and a kitchen. After the war, no one used the old house, it almost collapsed by itself, it was ramshackle and the roof with chap board had holes in it.
My sister's ambition was to become a doctor. However, the school was too expensive back then, so in 1946 until 1948 she entered a leather school, where she was the first. But after that she managed to go to a nurse school in Bucharest, and she became a nurse. She worked as one for a while, but she still wanted more. So she studied two more grades of high school, it was necessary in order to go to university, and because all her grades were 10 plus [10 was the highest grade in the Romanian teaching system], she entered university of medicine in Iasi without any exam. She made many sacrifices for her dream, and that is why she married late, when she was 29, with Robert Horovitz, a Jew from Cernauti, and in 1960 she had a son, Emilian.
And during the war, Jews were not allowed to go and buy bread before 10 o'clock am; of course that after 10 you didn't find any bread. So one day we were too hungry, and she went to stand in line for bread before 10, and somebody recognized her and started beating her, a 10 years old girl, in front of everybody, because she wanted to buy bread. The baker, a Mrs. Teodoru, had to help her, and she came home crying, with no bread.
I helped her study at home, but because of the family's material situation, she had to be bound as an apprentice at a dressmaker and then at a photographer. Being an apprentice back then didn't mean that you learnt the job, but that for 3 or 4 years, you were nothing but a servant for the master. She was a kid, only 12 years old, but she had to scrub floors, walk around with her boots tied with a string because the sole was falling off. Whatever she gained she gave to my mother, we needed it for food.
My sister had a rather hard life because of the war; she was thrown out of school in the fourth grade, so she didn't even finish elementary school.
Romania
During winter, when work was scarce, I also taught violin classes for some kids, in private. One Jewish boy I tutored, Leibovici, I met years later, after August 23rd, in Galati, where he was a doctor. His father had been an accountant and he could afford to pay me something for his son's lessons; I was happy with whatever they paid me. Another family, the Kleins, who were related with this family, had a son, Avram, I also tutored for violin lessons; I was so pleased to hear that he is now a plane pilot in Israel.
The first two years of war I had to earn a living for those who were home, my mother and my sister. I was 14 years old when I started working, when I got a job, but I didn't have a written contract or official papers. I worked in constructions. The contractor, Alexandru Foit was his name, was good and lenient towards me, I hadn't turned 14 yet, and he let me work around an old mason, who was also kind. But work was work, there were no elevators for materials, pulleys: we carried the lime with stretchers and the bricks with the roof-batten. This was my first task, for the first construction I worked for, a two-storied house, to go up the scaffold with the roof-batten on my back. Then I worked in a little factory, and I was happy that I could be in charge of my own time. But working in constructions was possible only during summers; I was unemployed in winters. So I found a job in a small factory -there were only 6 or 8 workers-, which produced candles and grease for carts. We worked during summer only in our underwear, and we were full of fuel oil and tar from the head to toes. We had to wash ourselves after that with kerosene, otherwise the oil wouldn't go off, and our skin was full of blisters. I don't regret it, I earned my bread, I had some money to take home to mother. Every penny I earned I gave to mother, and she would give me what she thought she could spare, some money to go to the cinema on Sunday, or for a 'somera' ['somera' means 'unemployed' in Romanian], that was the name of a very small and cheap cake at the confectionary's.
I worked both shifts, night and day at the factory. We were only two during the night, and I worked with a woman, she was 20, or 30, a grown up, and she was pregnant during that time. We had to work together, to spin two wooden kegs with a crank; and from all the hard work, she went in the throes of childbirth. It was 10 o'clock in the evening, it was winter and dark outside, and I, as a child, was dead scared. The woman started to moan, and I went in the street to look for help, I couldn't help her in any way; I was lucky that it was just the time when people came out from the cinema, from the last movie, and seeing me that desperate, a man and a woman, probably husband and wife, came with me. I took them to the plant, they asked me for water and bandages, and the woman had her baby right then.
The plant had three owners: the one with the money was a lawyer, Cristian, who was very nice to me - after August 23rd1944 [10], he even helped me finish my studies; there was another one, also not Jewish, who owned the plant on paper, and a Jew, Weismann, who was some sort of a technical manager. He was very skilled, and he knew some chemistry as well, he needed some formulae for the candles, for the grease. One of my neighbors, a girl who worked there, was attacked by one of them, I don't want to say whom, and I felt I had to intervene, I broke the door and came in, I couldn't leave her like that; I was only 14 or 15 years old. After that, the girl didn't show up, but I needed bread, so I went on working there.
I worked both shifts, night and day at the factory. We were only two during the night, and I worked with a woman, she was 20, or 30, a grown up, and she was pregnant during that time. We had to work together, to spin two wooden kegs with a crank; and from all the hard work, she went in the throes of childbirth. It was 10 o'clock in the evening, it was winter and dark outside, and I, as a child, was dead scared. The woman started to moan, and I went in the street to look for help, I couldn't help her in any way; I was lucky that it was just the time when people came out from the cinema, from the last movie, and seeing me that desperate, a man and a woman, probably husband and wife, came with me. I took them to the plant, they asked me for water and bandages, and the woman had her baby right then.
The plant had three owners: the one with the money was a lawyer, Cristian, who was very nice to me - after August 23rd1944 [10], he even helped me finish my studies; there was another one, also not Jewish, who owned the plant on paper, and a Jew, Weismann, who was some sort of a technical manager. He was very skilled, and he knew some chemistry as well, he needed some formulae for the candles, for the grease. One of my neighbors, a girl who worked there, was attacked by one of them, I don't want to say whom, and I felt I had to intervene, I broke the door and came in, I couldn't leave her like that; I was only 14 or 15 years old. After that, the girl didn't show up, but I needed bread, so I went on working there.
But son after that Jews weren't allowed to be in the army, and my father was drafted for forced labor, but he sometimes came home during the night to sleep. He worked at a mill as a porter, and sometimes, when I didn't have any work, I could go in his stead, that was allowed, and that way my father could rest a bit.
I remember that in the beginning of World War II, when Jews could still be in the army and wear a uniform, father had to go at call-ups near the front line, at Bretcu.
Also, my father was taken to forced labor, from 1940 until 1944.
During Holocaust, in 1942, we were evicted and we had to live in a house on the outskirts of the town, in a suburb of Bacau, called Campul Postei; it was a house with a chiler, that's what we called in Moldavia a very low and tilted roof that almost touched the ground. We had to use gas lamps and to bring water from the well in buckets. Mother, who was a housewife, had to use clay to fix the cracks of the house, we used an oil lamp, and the fountain was in the street; and it wasn't one with a sweep, it was just a pole with a nail fixed on it, and there we put our bucket, let it fall in the fountain and then drag it all the way up until we could grab it again. The water was sometimes scarce, because the fountain would sometimes dry out, or it was muddy, but back then nobody worried about that.
In Bacau, we lived the terrible fear, when armed groups of legionaries marched in the street, singing legionary songs and kneeling in the street. We hid in a garden, in a pit, so that they wouldn't see us. That fear didn't last for long, and some peace followed after that, but not for long: soon after that the fascists came to power. After the legionary rebellion I saw legionaries being shot dead in Florescu Square, it was near our schil, in 1937/8, and I saw them lying on the ground, in the rain, among candles that someone lit, a sign that even the governing party of the time didn't agree with their terrible ideas. I don't know much about the politics of the time; I was just a kid. All we kids knew was that they were to be feared and that we had to stay as far away from them as possible.
In Bucharest there were famous trade schools, like Coicanul, where I studied: it was a Jewish industrial high school. I went there in 1939, and I remember that during the first year everybody studied locksmith's trade. And I remember that not only Jews came during the night classes, but also intellectuals, doctors, lawyers, who were also affected by the political situation. It was a boarding school as well, with high fortress walls, and a strong janitor guarded us during the night, we couldn't go where we wanted. I did sneak out, however, I was passionate about music and I went to operas and operettas. In 1940, in January, right after the rebellion, I remember machine guns being set up on the corners of the high walls, but I don't know what for. And that year, we went home for the Christmas holiday, and we never returned.
After I finished four years of high school and took my diploma, I was kicked out of the state schools because of numerus clausus [in Romania] [9], so I went to Bucharest. All this happened right before the legionary rebellion.
I was in trouble myself: when the Cuzists came to power, in 1936/7, they had their own headquarters in Bacau, a house painted in blue, the Cuzists' house, which we always went around in fear. I remember a newspaper seller, a man without an arm, who sold 'Porunca vremii' ['The command of the times'], the Cuzist newspaper, anti-Semite from the first to the last page. He was a scoundrel, a vagabond: whenever he met a Jewish kid, he kicked the kid in the back as hard as he could with his foot, and he was a grown-up - grown-up in matters of the body, not of the head, God forgive me!. But when the legionaries came to power, it got worse.
I was faced with anti-Semitism as a child, in school; although most of us were good friends, one or two boys from a class of 30 happened to be anti- Semites. But I must tell you, one third of the class was Jewish. And these two colleagues were picking on the Jewish classmates, hitting them, usually the weak ones, because many Jews fought back. So they just picked on the weak ones, like Gold, I still remember him, he was a little slow and chubby, and they were usually after him, tormenting him, insulting him, and beating him if he replied. But everybody stood up for Gold and defended him, not just Jewish boys, but the others as well.
I went to kindergarten before I was 6, and then I started school. I went to a state elementary school, and I had two great teachers I will never forget, husband and wife, the Carjas. We studied two grades with him and then two grades with her. They were an elderly couple, in their fifties I believe; we addressed them with 'Mr. or Mrs. Teacher'. He was a very kind man, and she was a bit quick-tempered. I remember I was punished only once during elementary school, I had to stay on my knees, that was the standard punishment back then. I was in the fourth grade, and the teacher, Mr. Carja, caught me reading under my desk 'Doxes'. I was a collection, 'The adventures of Dox submarine', which came out weekly, and all the kids were dying to get their hands on them. Very popular were also the 'Bill Gazon' or 'Al Capone' collections. My parents gave me money to buy the leaflets, and I used to run to meet the postman five minutes earlier. In school I was usually the prank master, but I was a bit afraid of the teacher. One of my colleagues was Dolfi Drimmer, he is now the dean of the American-Romanian university. His parents had a ribbon factory near the school, and he was the best pupil in our classroom. He was a chubby boy, quiet and obedient, while we were more into football and running around.
We, the kids, didn't go to cheder, but we had a lehrer, or a melamed, who came to our house to teach us how to read. I remember we ran from him sometimes, but I don't know why. But education had no pedagogical features back then: for example, we learnt how to read, but we had no idea what we were reading from the prayer book; I think it would have been normal, for a kid, to have some pictures near the text, a translation, something to incite him. Poor lehrer Moise, that was his name, was a kind man, and warm-hearted, he would have liked to teach us more, but we didn't want to learn. When he found us playing together, he would start teaching each of us separately. When we climbed in a tree, he came looking for us. We had a garden near our house, and we climbed in the one of the trees there, and giggled as softly as we could, so that he wouldn't hear us. One time I remember we hid in straws, around the household; and he came looking for us, and even stepped on us - that is on the straws that covered us, but we didn't say a word, we were that desperate to get away from the lesson. Another funny memory is from my first grade, when we had a vaccine shot. It had a crust that itched, and we weren't allowed to scratch it. So poor lehrer Moise had a rush straw with him, and he tickled the crust, he was that kind, he did everything so that we would read. Of course he got tired after a while, and when he stopped, we stopped reading as well! He started tickling us, we started reading, and that was the way the lesson was held! I suppose that's also the reason why we didn't learn much.
There were cheders, mikves, yeshivot in Bacau, but I didn't go, we weren't Orthodox Jews.
There wasn't a single house in that street that wasn't owned or rented by Jews, but not just well-off Jews: there were porters, ironsmiths, house painters, small traders, carters. But Jews lived scattered around the city as well: there was the commercial street, called Strada Mare [Main Street], where Jews owned most of the shops.
Most of the Jews were traders, but only some of them were worthy of the title, that is had larger shops in Strada Mare; but there were many who were just petty traders or door-to-door salesmen. Jews were very good with horses, therefore many were carters, there were also porters at cereal shops, a backbreaking job, there were Jewish servants. The textile, tanner and furrier industry in town was more or less sustained by Jews, be it that they owned textile factories, or that they were just small laborers, like my uncle Bern and all his sons. They worked in a kerchief -'casanga' in Moldavian talk- factory. Then many Jews were pretzel sellers, or bakers, and, from all I have seen, they were very good handicraftsmen. All the town's industry was based on textile factories, tanner and furrier factories; the factory owned by Filderman, another Jew, was renown in all the country.
Most of the Jews were traders, but only some of them were worthy of the title, that is had larger shops in Strada Mare; but there were many who were just petty traders or door-to-door salesmen. Jews were very good with horses, therefore many were carters, there were also porters at cereal shops, a backbreaking job, there were Jewish servants. The textile, tanner and furrier industry in town was more or less sustained by Jews, be it that they owned textile factories, or that they were just small laborers, like my uncle Bern and all his sons. They worked in a kerchief -'casanga' in Moldavian talk- factory. Then many Jews were pretzel sellers, or bakers, and, from all I have seen, they were very good handicraftsmen. All the town's industry was based on textile factories, tanner and furrier factories; the factory owned by Filderman, another Jew, was renown in all the country.
The street was called Dr. Herscu Aroneanu during communism, until 1990, after a socialist Jew [who lived between 1881- 1920], who died under terrible torture in the basements of Bacau garrison, under the orders of a certain colonel Polzer, may God not rest his soul for what he did; I knew him, he lived near my high school. All this happened around 1923. [Editor's note: it is very probable that it happened in 1920.]. I know I heard talks in our house, uncle Bern, my mother's brother, and others, wanted to assassinate Polzer, to avenge doctor Aroneanu, who apparently died after his testicules were crushed. The politicians nowadays changed the name of the street again, which is a shame; it deserved that name.
I know there was a cheder on Leca Street, which was one hundred percent Jewish, it was like a ghetto.
I remember with a lot of joy and respect about one of the rabbis in Bacau, Alexandru Safran [8]. He was my religion teacher, and I went to his and his father's schil, which was not very big, every Friday evening, as a pupil. He was a very handsome man, thin, elastic, he must have been in his 30s when I knew him, and he had a beautiful well-trimmed red beard. He was a model among rabbis, and we were very proud of him, especially because of his rhetoric. He spoke such a beautiful Romanian, like few native Romanians did or do, you felt like pearls were coming out of his mouth when he talked. We, the children, always thought of him as a prophet. I remember him holding a speech in Yiddish at the schil where my parents went, Rebe Strul, two or three years before World War II and the Holocaust. I can still see him shaking as he said these words, words I will never forget: 'Alh sein blut!', that is 'I see blood!
The town I grew up in, Bacau, had a large Jewish community - all of Bacau's population was 35,000 and half of it was Jewish -, and very active: there were several synagogues. It is interesting, the synagogues were named after the guilds that went there: so we had the printers' synagogue, the shoemakers' synagogue, the corn dealers' synagogue - which was very large - and so on. I believe that on only one Jewish street, Leca Street it was called, there were eight or ten prayer houses, and the Rebe Strul synagogue, where my parents and we children went. Bacau had two large synagogues, and two smaller, aside from the prayer houses. One of them was the one of the corn dealers', which I think is the only one that still exists in Bacau nowadays. I remember there was a chazzan at the synagogue where we went, and a choir of children, aged between 6 and 14, who sang divinely. I didn't understand the lines, but I could hear the music, one of the most beautiful and touching songs for me is Kol Nidre. Even during communism, when I drifted away from religion, I still went on Yom Kippur Eve to the synagogue, just to hear Kol Nidre.
I wasn't a Zionist, and I am sorry now, although I participated in meetings and the like; my sister, on the other hand, was a member of Hashomer Hatzair [7].
Romania