My father regularly went to the shul on Friday evening, as he had learnt from his former master, who used to take my father with him. He had even learnt to read those Hebrew letters in the prayer books.
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Mira Tudor
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There was a small synagogue called shul, with a very large garden, and we had a rabbi. He was a man that even the Romanian community in Ramnicu Valcea respected. He had a family – three daughters – and he lived from the salary paid to him by the Jewish tradesmen. So the Jewish life was rather poor compared to the one in Moldavia, where they had yeshivot where children studied from a young age.
Grandma cooked Romanian dishes. We weren’t a devout family. The hakham came from time to time to slaughter poultry. But my mother did it herself too, secretly. My father went to the store on Saturday. We had to go to school, and no one had a problem with that. Such things only happen in Israel, where they have special devices to turn on the lights [on Sabbath], because you’re not allowed to do it yourself, or to light the fire, or to drive a car, and many other things. But we weren’t like that at all.
We never had a nurse. We were raised by our mother and Grandma, who didn’t have jobs. They also looked after the house. My grandmother cooked for ten people: the five of us (our grandmother, our parents and us, the girls), three shop boys who shared a room in our house, and two maids – one for the kitchen and a cleaning woman. Come to think of it, we used to buy industrial amounts of food. But it was easy back then. Peasants we knew came to our house with vegetables. Do you think my mother went to the marketplace to buy carrots? No way, everything was delivered at home!
My father was rather stingy. This was a natural thing, given the fact that he had been so poor and had worked so hard to become rich. He sometimes argued with my mother because of that. My mother went shopping. Linen was not sold by the meter, but by the bundle. How meters were there? 10, 20, 30 meters. My mother picked whatever she wanted and had everything delivered at home: holland, holland lawn – a very delicate fabric –, damask, linen. At the end of the year, when tradesmen closed their books, my poor father would find out that his wife had emptied the store. He would come home yelling: ‘What need did you have for all those things?’ My mother always told him: ‘Relax, Maere, we have two daughters and they both need good dowry.’ – ‘Are they going to leave in a cart? Because all these things will only fit in a cart, you know.’ But my mother kept buying and Grandma kept sewing.
He went back to Ramnicu Valcea after the war. The tradesman for whom he had worked, who hadn’t paid him a dime, but had lodged and fed him, gave him a certain sum – I couldn’t tell how much – which he used to open his own store. He became one of the richest tradesmen in Ramnicu Valcea, between 1920 and 1940. He had an interesting sign, ‘The Country Hora’. [Ed. note: Hora is a Romanian folk dance with a slow rhythm in which the dancers hold hands to form a closed circle.] It was what we call today a general store: clothes, footwear, linen, notions. People would come from the countryside – people in Valcea County were very hard-working and very wealthy –, buy everything they needed from my father’s, and fill their carts. They only paid later, in fall. They never paid for the merchandise on the spot. My father would put them on the credit list. After they had harvested their crops or sold their animals, they came back to pay their debt. This is how things went year after year. What I mean is that my father was a great businessman. It’s true, he had to take some chances, and he might have had some disappointments too, but I never heard him complain about unpaid debts. Even the townspeople used this system. The clerks bought on credit and paid when they got their salary. Clerks and teachers have always been poorly paid – even before the war [World War II]. We never owned any land in the countryside. All we had was our house. My father wasn’t into farming. He didn’t want to buy another house and rent it either. He was only into trade.
In 1940, a group of Legionaries [4] came to our place; they were wearing green shirts with baldrics. I was 14 at the time. The group was led by a Legionary district attorney named Stoenescu. They rang the bell and entered. They started to search the house. They were infuriated by the sight of my father’s decoration. They threw it on the floor and broke it in half.
He came back, and then he left to fight for the reunification [3]. [In World War I] he served as a paramedic. He would go to the battlefield during the fights and pick up the wounded. One of his first missions – of which he was particularly proud – was on the Teleajen Valley [in Prahova County]. He was in a team that had to burry the bell of the Suzana Monastery [10 kilometers away from the Cheia resort, on the Teleajen Valley], to hide it from the Germans, who melted these things and turned them into weapons. The mission was not a big deal, but my father was so proud of it. Then he went to the Moldavian front [3]. He was a soldier at first, and he finished as a corporal. He was decorated too. He caught the typhoid fever and nearly died. He kept his decoration on a piece of cardboard in a frame. In 1940, a group of Legionaries [4] came to our place; they were wearing green shirts with baldrics. I was 14 at the time. The group was led by a Legionary district attorney named Stoenescu. They rang the bell and entered. They started to search the house. They were infuriated by the sight of my father’s decoration. They threw it on the floor and broke it in half. As soon as they left, my father picked it up and hid it. It survived to this day – I have it –, although it went through so many things. It was his pride.
After he got married, he fought in the Balkan War [on the Romanian side], in 1913.
His mother died when he was 9. Since the step-mother had no affection for him, his father, a tinsmith, sent him to Ramnicu Valcea, to work in the store of a Jewish tradesman, called Marcu Adler. What kind of work can a 9-year-old do in a store? He became a sort of servant in the house. But he stayed with this tradesman until he grew up.
My father’s education consisted of two years in elementary school. But he was very clever and had an extraordinary business sense.
Many years after, when my grandmother was 90, in 1940, I fell in love with a Romanian and I told them I wanted to marry him. My father was against it. My mother was neutral. The one who supported me was my grandmother. So I got married to the man I loved so much. Grandma was very clever. She had a rich life experience.
The tinsmiths of Ramnicu Valcea were Jewish. They were the Fritz family, uncles and cousins. They were the ones who did the roofs of the houses.
In those days, a girl needed a dowry in order to marry well – like marrying a doctor, for instance. Love matches were very rare back then. My father demanded a dowry too. So my mother’s brother, the doctor from Paris, sent money for this. Grandma asked him to. She told him she had found a tradesman with good prospects, a serious, good man, but that he demanded a dowry. A girl without a dowry would marry a craftsman, like a carpenter.
In 1492 [in Spain] [2], King Ferdinand and Queen Isabelle thought, like so many others did over the centuries: ‘What do we need the Jews for? Let’s take everything they’ve got and kick them out of the country!’ The Jews were very rich – they were the bankers of the kings, they were physicians, wealthy tradesmen; they were doing very well. They were given this alternative: either renounce their religion, or leave. And it was on very short notice. Of course, the wretched ones who refused baptism left with nothing more than a bag. But those who accepted it had to suffer too. So my sister, my mother, my grandmother and I spoke Ladino. My father came from a family of Ashkenazim. When the temple was destroyed and the Jews were banished, the Ashkenazic group took another way – through Asia and Russia. Grandma was very upset because she couldn’t provide enough dowry for Anicuta so that she could marry a Sephardim. Unfortunately, the Spanish Jews demanded that the bride have a huge dowry. And marrying an Ashkenazi was regarded as a step backwards. Grandma was a very proud woman, but she came to terms with this, because my father was hard-working and wealthy, and he supported her and helped my mother’s sisters.
At home, we spoke a dialect of Spanish called Ladino, a dead dialect. Since we’re at it, I’d like to tell you that, today, Spanish linguists try to track those who still speak Ladino, because they’re interested in recreating this dead dialect.
So my sister, my mother, my grandmother and I spoke Ladino.
There were very few Jews in Ramnicu Valcea – about 10-15 families.
Estera Sava
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The village where I was born, Prajesti, was a Catholic village. I don’t know if there were other Jews there. But we got along well with the neighbors. My mother included! She told me the story of my birth. I told you I was born on 2nd February, so you can imagine the blizzard outside. When my father went to get the midwife, the couple living next door, who weren’t Jews, but Catholics, stayed with my mother until the midwife arrived. They made her tea and looked after her, and they didn’t have any problem with that!
At home, we spoke Romanian more than we spoke Yiddish. My parents only used Yiddish between themselves, when they didn’t want us to understand what they were talking about, and this is how we learnt a bit of it. I don’t speak any other language, except for very little German.
He lived in Bacau until 1978, when he left with his family for Israel.
,
1978
See text in interview
Let me tell you that my brother had an awfully hard time after the war too! Right after 23rd August 1944 [3], he and a friend of his started an oil press. The business worked for a couple of years, then the trouble started, because it became forbidden to own an oil press. There were all sorts of inspections and all sorts of setups! You see, setups weren’t something that happened only during the Persecutions; they also occurred afterwards! People were accused of having bought or sold what they weren’t supposed to, for not having what they should have had or plainly for stealing… Those were dirty setups! My brother was convicted and had to do forced labor; he was imprisoned in a labor camp in Spantov, near Oltenita [in Calarasi County]; it was a rice field. He spent about two years and eight months there. All this happened because he was a Jew. The town was full of Legionaries, and they were the first to become Communists! They sought to satisfy their sadistic urges. After he got out, my brother worked in the vulcanization field.
He went to elementary school, and then to a vocational school where he studied mechanics.
We had a hard time, because, after the war [World War II], all the sons and daughters who had gone to college abroad came back, except for my sister and another boy! A year went by, then two, and we couldn’t understand. My mother would say: ‘By God, even if she were at the end of the Earth, a smart girl like her would still give us some sort of sign!’ All the postmen in Bacau had learnt their lesson well: when sorting the mail in the morning, they had to pay particular attention to any letter addressed to my father! Then my mother went to a sister-in-law of hers, because it was her brother to whom we sent money. And she told her: ‘I’d like to find out what happened. Please write to Milu and ask him to investigate!’ Milu sent a letter to the Medical School. They answered, and so detailed, how she was taken, and everything! The school forwarded to my sister’s husband the letter in which we were inquiring about her fate. He gave us all the details. He told us his wife and a fellow-student from Iasi had been seized in front of the hospital two days after he had left. After the war ended, he looked for her everywhere! But he couldn’t find her. He accidentally came across someone who had been there – the Germans had also sent French people to the labor camps – and he was told the Nazis had used his wife as a physician, and then disposed of her. He spent seven years searching through cemeteries, hoping her name would come up somewhere. But this couldn’t have happened, because she had… she had been killed there [in Auschwitz].
Unfortunately, my sister’s studying was in vain. She never got to practice as a physician. Before she could pass the last two exams, the Germans seized her and took her away… Her husband was fighting in the French army and, when they withdrew to the mountains, he told her: ‘Anja, come with me, don’t stay here all by yourself.’ To which she replied: ‘Well, what can I do? There’s the hospital,’ – she was working in a hospital – ‘and I have two more exams to pass. What am I supposed to do? Postpone them, after I studied for six years? I worked too hard to do that… So let God’s will be done.’ Two days later, the Germans took her and moved her from camp to camp, because she was a doctor. Finally, she got to Auschwitz. Someone who had escaped from there told her husband about her, and her husband wrote to us. The former inmate remembered that they used my sister as a physician at first, and later they sacrificed her.
,
During WW2
See text in interview
Eventually, my sister got married in France.
Her husband’s last name was Martinet. He wasn’t a Jew. He had a very good financial situation. He met her in class, in the dissection room. He used to go there to watch. He was from Paris, worked as an engineer, was specialized in photographic and medical equipment, and was an intern at the Medical School. So he met her, fell in love with her – she was very beautiful, and very clever if you think of how she had come from Italy and had proved herself worthy in Paris! Did I mention that she was pretty? So she got married.
Her husband’s last name was Martinet. He wasn’t a Jew. He had a very good financial situation. He met her in class, in the dissection room. He used to go there to watch. He was from Paris, worked as an engineer, was specialized in photographic and medical equipment, and was an intern at the Medical School. So he met her, fell in love with her – she was very beautiful, and very clever if you think of how she had come from Italy and had proved herself worthy in Paris! Did I mention that she was pretty? So she got married.
We had a relative there, Milu Stormann, the brother-in-law of one of my parents, who had also gone to the Medical School there, had married a French woman, and worked as a physician in some smaller town. Our father himself had spent four years in France in his youth. So he said: ‘Well now, it’s easier if you go to France, because we’ve got Milu there, we give the money to his parents here, and he will give you the same amount from his own money over there…’ Because he really wanted to send some money to his parents in Bacau, but couldn’t find a way, so this arrangement would suit him too. So she left for France, to Montpellier. When she got there, she wanted to enroll in the 2nd year! They checked, and told her: ‘You can’t, because you’re coming from Italy and the classes there are considerably inferior. If you had studied for one year in Romania, we would have taken it into consideration.’ You see, we used to have great universities: Iasi, Bucharest and Cluj! ‘So it’s impossible.’ So she went to the dean’s office; she pleaded, showed them her grades, and asked that she be allowed to attend the lectures of the 2nd year, explaining she was planning to pass the equivalence exams during the next session. They let her. And so she did. She succeeded at the equivalence exams and was able to continue.
And she left for Padua, Italy in January, three months later than she was supposed to. Because there were many students there, and there were also five or six Jews from Bacau who worked there. A former high school classmate of hers was going too, so my sister said: ‘See, Anne Sarf is leaving, so I’ll go to Italy with her.’ My father said: ‘Now, why would you go to Italy? It costs a lot of money, how are we supposed to manage?’ The persecutions [because of the numerus clausus] [2] had already begun and the situation of the Jews was deteriorating. But my sister said: ‘I’m leaving, no matter what; I’m going over there, I’ll do anything, I’ll scrub the floors in restaurants or I’ll wash dishes if I have to. But I need to go to the Medical School!’ And she left on 1st January 1938. She couldn’t leave earlier because she had to get the necessary papers and all; and my father needed some time to raise the money, to find someone here whom he could pay and whose relatives in Italy would give my sister the same amount there, because money could not be transferred directly. And so she went to college. Six months later, in June, when the 1st year was over, the exams came. She got the highest grades! The chairman of the examination committee congratulated her and asked her: ‘Where are you from, Miss?’ – ‘Romania.’ – ‘How many languages do you speak?’ – ‘Romanian, French’ – she mastered French and she knew a little German – ‘and now’, she said, ‘I also speak Italian.’ – ‘And, may I say, your mastery of the Italian is better than a native Italian’s, since you were able to express yourself the way you did in class and at the exam! For you, studying in Padua is a piece of cake.’ She had figured that out herself. After all, there she was, only six months after her arrival, and she had got the highest grades and all her student-fellows wanted to touch her and carried her on their shoulders to bring them luck – you know how it is in college!
That summer, she came home and told our father: ‘Father, I’m not going back to Italy. The classes there aren’t bright at all. It’s not what I had imagined I’d study. I’m going to France!
That summer, she came home and told our father: ‘Father, I’m not going back to Italy. The classes there aren’t bright at all. It’s not what I had imagined I’d study. I’m going to France!
In 1937, when she graduated from high school, she left for Iasi, to pass the admission exam at the Medical School. Like I said, she was a very smart kid – after all, she had been one of the first in her graduating year! In Iasi, those anti-Semitic movements had already begun. So she was inside that large hall, waiting to be registered for the Medical School. Two young students showed up and started asking questions: ‘What’s your name?’ – ‘Popescu.’ – ‘What’s your name?’ – ‘Rosenberg’ – ‘Step to the other side. Popescu, go over there; you, Jews, move to the other side.’ Among them was a certain Maria Moise. When they heard the name Moise, they moved her with the Jews. But she actually came from a village near Iasi. When the selection was over, the Romanians were taken to be registered for the exam, while the Jews were told: ‘You, jidanii, go home. We have no need for Jewish doctors!’ The Moise girl started yelling: ‘But I’m not a jidanca, I’m a Romanian! I come from the commune of…’ whatever it was called. My sister immediately left the hall, went straight to the station, and took the first train home, to Bacau. She came back crying over the eight years she had spent studying in high school. ‘What should I do?’ My mother said: ‘Well, you’ll get married and that will be the end of it.’ – ‘But I didn’t go to high school to return to the kitchen. You knew very well that I wanted to go to the Medical School from the very beginning!
My sister was the perfect child. She studied very hard and always got the highest grades, whether it was in elementary school, in high school or in college.