I was even decorated by Ceausescu [14] himself. I received a citation for the medal of work from him. In 1973 the factory celebrated its 150th anniversary and some top ranking workers were decorated. Ceausescu came to Brasov, to Casa Armatei [House of the Army, a building which belongs to the Ministry of the Armed Forces], somebody called out our names and we had to step forward and say, 'I serve the Socialist Republic of Romania! Good luck, comrade!', and afterwards we shook hands with comrade Ceausescu. I should have said, 'It is for this [decoration] that I serve the Republic.' - it would have been closer to the truth. It was December, I remember, and I was in mourning over my father, who had died that year, but they didn't let me wear a black tie, I had to wear another one.
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Displaying 10081 - 10110 of 50826 results
manin rudich
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I joined the Communist Party because I didn't have a choice, although I had no political convictions. The director of the factory summoned me one day, and told me that Staicu, a colleague of mine, was retiring. I knew it already, I worked in the same department with him. And he told me I was to be made chief of the department. I said, 'Thank you', and he said, 'Now run over to Deliu - Deliu was the Communist Party secretary - to join the Party!' When I went to Deliu, he already had my file ready with two recommendations; all I had to do was sign. I didn't get upset back then, the salary was better and I was chief of department.
After high school I started working at Carpatex textile factory. That was in 1951 and I worked there until I retired in 1990. I had no problems at work for being Jewish. There was another Jew working there, Weinberg, the technical director. When we had to attend meetings, he was the one to make the report on the nationalities present. He always used to say, '80% Romanians, 10% Hungarians, 8% Saxons and 2% others.' The two per cent others were actually the two of us, him and me, and he always giggled and gave me a nudge when he said that.
We had sports classes in high school, but I also played football in the team of the Jewish community here, in Brasov. The team's name was Hacua, and I and other boys, like Gut, a friend of mine, were playing in the junior team; I was 17 then, I think. The team may have belonged to a Jewish organization, but I don't know for sure. There was also a senior team that was playing some championships, but it was too long ago for me to remember exactly.
I went camping with colleagues of mine when I was in the last year of high school, in the 10th grade, to Slanic Moldova, and to Costinesti. [Slanic Moldova is a spa in Moldova and Costinesti a Romanian resort at the Black Sea.] We were there with some of our teachers. Back then Costinesti was more of a village, and we slept in rented rooms; six boys in one room because we didn't want to be separated. We slept on the floor, only on straw and sheets, and cooked ourselves in the courtyard, but it was very nice.
There was a Jewish teacher, who had been deported to Transnistria as well, and he moved to Brasov, too; that's where we met. He tutored me, along with others, for the seven grades examination that you needed back then to pass to start high school. I studied with him in his house for two and a half years, and then I took my seven grade graduation diploma here, in Brasov.
When we moved to Brasov, I was 14 years old and I hadn't had my bar mitzvah. There were three or four other boys, from all over the country, in the same situation, some older than me, and we got Rabbi Deutsch's approval to have our bar mitzvah in the synagogue, all at once, because we had been deported. We had our bar mitzvah in the Neolog synagogue.
So he worked as a shift supervisor in a food shop. He worked there from 1946 until he retired in 1960.
I never thought of emigrating, I considered it was too difficult, and so did the rest of the family. When we got to Brasov, some of our acquaintances from there left for Israel, but they had to stay in Cyprus first for a probation period and then pass the border to Israel illegally. We had a family council, and my father said, 'We already started from scratch after the camp [in Transnistria], I don't think I have the strength to start all over again.
I was already here, in Brasov, when the state of Israel was born. We went to our synagogue, to the Neolog [13] one: everybody was in the courtyard; there were so many people singing and celebrating! We also went to the Orthodox synagogue because some of my friends' parents were Orthodox: there was also dancing, but there were two separate ring dances; one for women and one for men. And they served beer and nuts, I don't know why, probably somebody had a stock kept away somewhere and took it out to celebrate. Over at the Neolog synagogue, we had cookies and sweets. The women had prepared them beforehand, they probably knew of the birth of Israel before. And we celebrated far into the night. Later, I was upset to hear about the wars in Israel. Luckily, I didn't have any relatives in Israel back then; that would have been worse.
We lived in a house with two bedrooms, a large living room and a kitchen. I slept with my parents in one room, and my sister slept alone in the smaller room. The shop was in the house as well, in a separate large room: it had two big windows and a door for the customers to enter. It was a big, big room with a counter and all sorts of merchandise on shelves, and it had a cellar as well, for wine because there were no refrigerators back then. We entered the house through the courtyard, which was rather big. We had no running water or electricity, but we had oil lamps and a fountain in the courtyard. There were some nut trees and plum trees in the yard as well.
We had a good financial situation; I don't remember ever being in need of food or clothes.
My father had been in the Romanian army during World War I. He told us he had traveled a lot, he had been in Czechoslovakia and in Italy, where people used to eat cats. But he didn't talk much about the war; they weren't things for a child to hear, I assume.
My mother was rather religious: she lit candles every Friday evening; on Sabbath the shop was closed and all the family went to the synagogue. All food was kosher and she kept separate pots for dairy and for meat products.
He wasn't fanatical as far as religion was concerned, but every morning he put on his tefillin and tallit and prayed, and he went to the synagogue every Saturday.
My father started to run the shop, along with my mother.
She was born in Cernauti in 1907 and spoke Yiddish, Romanian and German.
He used to come to the shop my maternal grandparents kept, and that's how he met my mother, Gusta Rudich, nee Weiselberg.
When he was young he had worked as a clerk for a lumber station, and he had to come and work in Cuciurul Mare.
He spoke Yiddish, Romanian and German, and also some Ukrainian.
Cecilia was shot in front of her house along with her son Ficicu, and one of her brothers, Bubi Weiselberg, in 1941.
Her husband left for the USA, and was on the Struma ship [2].
,
1941
See text in interview
Both his children studied medicine, and the boy became a military doctor.
Another brother left for the USA, married there, and had two children, a son and a daughter. They wrote a bit right after the war, but after a while we lost contact.
They became diamond polishers.
, Peru
I know one brother was married and went to Peru. However, he was married and they had three sons here in Cuciurul Mare, all about my age. When their mother died, he came back for them and took them with him, in 1939.
My father had a younger brother, Samuel Rudich, who was some sort of shopkeeper, I think. He was married and had a son, Izu Rudich. He died in Transnistria [1].
We stayed in Cuciurul Mare until March 1946, when the Russian authorities announced that everybody who had been deported and was a Romanian citizen could emigrate to Romania. Almost everybody left; at least us, who had been deported, knew what Ukraine was like, and we realized that Cuciurul Mare would become the same thing.
In these two years we spent in Cuciurul Mare, my father was a supervisor in a food warehouse; he distributed food to different shops. My mother had suffered from frostbite, especially on her legs. She was a housewife.
I was twelve years old when I came back from Transnistria, and I studied two more years in Russian, because Cuciurul Mare was under Russian rule by then.