My father, Iosif Samoil Tucarman was born in 1889, in Iasi. He owned a grocery store, then a ferrous and nonferrous metal shop. He went about his business in the shop and saw to the house as well. He was very good at it.
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Mira Tudor
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I don’t go to the synagogue because all the services are in the evening. I can’t be out at night. I might step in a bump on the sidewalk, fall and break into pieces. Do you think it would make any difference to God that I was coming from the synagogue?
When I said I wanted to go to the [Jewish] Club, they told me: ‘Don’t go to the Club, there are only old, sick people there, and all they talk about is death and illness.’ Hell no! They’re in a good mood and have plans for the future. Many of them have children abroad and go to visit them. They make comments on the political and artistic events, they watch shows on TV, many of them – the ones who live downtown – still go to the theater. It’s a very pleasant atmosphere. I go to two clubs: here, on Ripiceni St., on Mondays, and at the Choral Temple on Thursdays. The latter has a more intellectual atmosphere: we comment events, we read magazine articles. Last time I was there we talked about Auschwitz. At 11 they give us food, lest we should pass away: sandwiches, tea, coffee, and sometimes there’s also cream with the coffee. When one of us has her birthday she gives us a treat, while we gather money and buy her a present. It’s very nice. Lat Monday they ran a film with Rome and Paris. I was in both places and you can imagine how delighted I was. And I said something which I thought everyone knew: in Napoleon’s tomb there are 7 caskets one inside another. I just looked it up – I have a Paris guidebook and I want to show it to them. One of the caskets is made of lead, one is made of zinc, one is made of wood, the one at the top is red granite, and the other three I forgot. But I know what I’m saying, because I was there. I enjoyed it very much. They play rummy, chess, canasta. We chat, they exchange recipes, while I gaze at them in amazement, because I’m not much of a cook. They can prepare elaborate things. One of them in particular seems to be a mistress of cooking. But I can never remember more than half of what she says. It is with pleasure that I go to the club. It feels like family, and everyone knows everything about everyone else. ‘How’s your daughter?’ I have never seen her in my entire life, but I know everything about her. ‘How’s your grandson?’ They all know how he’s doing. So we chat. I don’t go to the synagogue. I sometimes go to the Club on Popa Soare St., where they hold conferences or performances on Sundays at 11 a.m. But I only go if the weather is nice. I feel more like going to the Club and I dress warmly if I have to.
Much to my shame, I did almost everything in my life, except going to the Community. I didn’t have any connection with it. After I finished the Jewish school, I entered a Romanian environment again; and I was already used to the Romanian environment from Ramnicu Valcea. I felt good and I didn’t go to the Community. Let me tell you how I eventually got there. Three years ago, in 2001, I was at the marketplace, after I had collected my pension. I kept bumping into a former colleague from Drilling, Cornel Popescu, who was still an active professor. I was carrying my shopping bags. ‘Mira, why don’t you register with the Community? They’ll send you food.’ – ‘Send me food, Cornele? I get 2,5 million.’ This was already a good pension. ‘I’m ashamed.’ We met again. Cornel had a Jewish neighbor and he knew what he was getting from the Community. One day, he stopped with his legs apart and an arm on his hip, and told me: ‘Miro, what are they going to do to you? Slap you? Throw you down the stairs? They’ll say «Madam, you don’t meet the requirements». What are you, a princess? So what if they turn you down?’ – ‘I’m not afraid they’ll turn me down; I’m ashamed to ask.’ But, to humor Cornel, I gathered a few papers and I went. After two days they informed me that the Community had accepted to assist me. Ever since then, I have been living much better. The pension is just enough to pay for the utilities. This wretched weather caught me with heaters in 7 rooms. I have four rooms, a bathroom, a kitchen and a hall. And only the gas costs me millions. If it hadn’t been for the food from the Community… They also give me some money. I should sell the house and go to the home. It’s a very good home – I have all the respect for it. But, since I’m still able to move by myself, I hesitate...
My maternal grandmother was born in 1850 and she saw King Carol I [1] entering Bucharest from a window. I don’t know where that house was or the way the procession went, but she was 16 at the time and she remembered everything very well. It was unforgettable. There were very few Jews in Ramnicu Valcea – about 10-15 families. But Grandma was very patriotic: ‘What do we need a German king for?! Why didn’t they pick one from our noblemen?’ Dear old her, after having worked in so many aristocratic houses, she could instantly give you three of four men who were suitable to be kings. This is her description of King Carol I: ‘A penniless bastard! He had leather patches at the ells and knees!’ As you can imagine, it was a cavalry outfit, it wasn’t actually patched. We, the granddaughters, tried to explain this to her when we grew up: ‘Grandma, this is how the outfit was supposed to look like!’ – ‘Shut up! Who else had patches at the ells?! And he became king and he did this and that…’ When the king had the Peles Castle erected [Ed. note: The Peles Castle, located in Sinaia, was the summer residence of the Romanian kings. It is the combined result of the taste of King Carol I (1866-1914) and of the skills of architects Johannes Schultz and Karel Liman, as well as of the decorators J. D. Heymann from Hamburg, August Bembe from Mainz and Berhard Ludwig from Vienna. The construction works began in 1873.], Grandma was furious: ‘That’s our money, our work! That bloody German!
My grandmother’s eldest daughter, Emilia, who was twenty years older than my mother, married an upholsterer and left to Ramnicu Valcea with him.
At the time when my grandfather died, my grandmother worked for a noble family in Ramnicu Valcea – the Otetelesanus, a famous aristocratic family. In those days, the seamstress or the embroiderer went to the client’s house and stayed there for a few months to get the job done. Their son went to the same high school as my grandmother’s eldest son, Lazar Sasson, who was 18 when his father died. Mr. Otetelesanu knew my grandmother was hard-working and honest – she had made countless items of dowry and piles of embroidery for them. So he offered to send Lazar to Paris with his son to study medicine and become dentists. He said he would pay all his expenses if he agreed to act as a sort of undercover servant of the young Otetelesanu. He was supposed to look after him and make sure he didn’t do anything stupid – at that time, many of the young men who went abroad got carried away with the flow, started drinking and frequented women with a bad reputation. My uncle performed this job in an exemplary way. However, the ending was [sad] for my grandmother: my uncle fell in love with the laundress who washed his clothes; young Otetelesanu came back and became a doctor here, while my uncle stayed in Paris to work as a dentist. Thus Grandma lost the son on whom she relied the most.
My grandfather was buried in Bucharest, in 1899. My grandmother died in 1952 and was buried next to her husband, in the Sephardic section of the Bellu cemetery.
Romania
My maternal grandmother, Miriam Sasson (nee Nahmias) was a Sephardi. The double s in her last name made Grandma so proud! My maternal grandfather’s name was Moscu Sasson. The two of them were from Bucharest.
My grandmother did luxury embroidery and had to sweat in order to raise the six children. She earned her living with her needle, as they say.
My grandfather was a sort of peddler.
I don’t have any clear political views anymore... But I still feel attracted to the left, because look at what the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank or hell knows who else are doing to me: they make us pay 20% more for gas, 20% more for electricity, in order to align ourselves to the costs in the West, where pensions and salaries are ten times higher than here. This will turn into a masked genocide. People won’t have money for food or for utilities anymore. From a pension of 5 million, I pay more than 3 million for the gas. The rest? The phone, the electricity, the water, the food, the pet food [Mrs. Tudor has a cat and a dog.]. Would my pension be enough if the Community didn’t help me? Under the Ceausescu regime, we all lived in an equalizing poverty.
o I was happy. I thought we would be able to buy books travel abroad without fearing they wouldn’t let us. But the result was that we’re so poor that we can’t even get to Ploiesti [There are 59 kilometers between Bucharest and Ploiesti.] At the present time, I personally live far worse than during Ceausescu’s regime – I’m stating this openly.
For us, the intellectuals, the lack of communication with the Western world had been a major issue. We didn’t get specialized books of magazines. We did have some tacit agreements with magazines coming from America, but we didn’t get enough. And the Ceausescu family was against the translations from the universal literature. I started to get books in English from abroad and this is how I learnt English. It was because of them. I now have a very nice library of English books.
I only went to Israel once, in 1993. It’s nice. I met some of the people from Ramnicu Valcea. Those were very exciting encounters, for we hadn’t seen one another since 1940, the year when we left Ramnic. They sometimes send me $20 or $50. I am very deeply rooted here. I have my lifelong friends whom I have known for 60 or for 40 years. What can I do at this age? Whom can I make friends with in Israel? And I don’t speak the language either. I never considered moving there. But I enjoyed going there and I liked the place. Israel is something built on sand and sandstone, with no rivers. Jerusalem has a very nice hilly landscape – you go up and down, up and down. I think it’s located at 700 meters of altitude, with a climate resembling that of Breaza [town on Prahova Valley]. The temperature inside didn’t exceed 25 degrees Centigrade, and we didn’t have air conditioning. I had to cover myself at night. Here I would take my skin off me at night.
Romania never broke the diplomatic relations with Israel. When all the socialist countries did it, Ceausescu didn’t. There was no conflict. Ceausescu wanted to act as a mediator between the Arabs and Israel. Of course, he wasn’t too successful, because both sides were too stubborn. He only did it to attract attention. But he didn’t break the relations. Under his regime, armies of Romanian artists went to Israel: Stela Popescu, Arsinel, Piersic, orchestras. They were very well received, halls were crowded, and the Romanians wept at their shows. [Ed. note: Stela Popescu (b. 1938 in Bessarabia), actress; Alexandru Arsinel (b. 1939 in Dolhasca, Suceava County), actor; Florin Piersic (b. 1939 in Cluj-Napoca), actor. The three of them went on tours abroad with comic plays, sketches and variety shows for the Romanian diaspora.] They took them shopping, they dressed them, they gave them presents. We had very good relations with Israel.
But I never considered emigrating. I didn’t have any relatives there [during the communist regime]; my entire family was here, including my parents.
The creation of the State of Israel made me glad. There was a reunion in the hall of the ‘Savoi’ Variety Theater, on Victoriei Ave. Vasile got us an invitation for two and we went. Speeches were held and the Israeli anthem, ‘Hatikvah’ [15], was played. It was exciting. I was very happy.
I went to patriotic labor. I went with my students to husk corn at Baia, in Dobrogea, and we stayed for a whole month – the month of October, which was a month of school. The cold had begun. It was a collective farm and they offered us rooms with mice, bugs and everything. We had to adapt. We, the geologists, were used to field conditions: we often stayed in country houses, with the toilet at the back of the courtyard, so I didn’t mind. The students had fun, played games, threw corn at one another, made dolls out of corn; they were in a very good mood.
We couldn’t have missed the 1st May and the 23rd August events. Those who say they didn’t go lie. Do you know how nice it was? There were kiosks selling sausages and fruit that were hard to find the rest of the year. We took our sacks with us. We were summoned at 6 a.m. only to get in front of the platform at 11 a.m. But it was fun. I played with the students and it was enjoyable. I went because I wanted to. It was hard for me to wake up, but then I came home, boiled the sausages, and laid the table – two sausages per person on that occasion.
In 1969 a wind of freedom started to blow in Romania. Ceausescu [14] began to let us go abroad. Well, it was easier for those with a clean past. I had a clean past, because I wasn’t a former landowner and no member of my family was a political prisoner. I applied for a passport and, with some help from my former husband, who was a Party activist, I got it. Thus I could see the entire Europe. I left in 1969, in 1971, and in 1973. We were only allowed to leave every other year. In 1969 I went to Hungary, Austria, West Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. In 1971 I saw Hungary, Austria, France, Belgium, and Holland. The third time I went to Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey. We were lucky. You needed money in order to go abroad, hard currency that is, and we didn’t have any. We didn’t have relatives abroad to send us money, or to lodge us. But we took the tent and we camped. In 1969, one camping night cost $1 and $2 in the most expensive place. I filed a request, after having received the approval of the University Party Committee. Vasile sped up the process of getting the visa. There was this family, the Ionescus, and Vasile told them: ‘I’ll help you too, but you’ll have to take Mira with you.’ So I went with them by car. We stopped wherever we wanted and visited whatever we wanted. At that time, you couldn’t get more than $50 per person from ONT for a trip abroad; so the three of us had a total of $150. But this money meant something. We had enough to pay for gas. I had a certificate proving I was a member of the teaching body. This allowed me to enter all the public museums in Italy for free. I had to pay the fee at the Vatican though. I also paid the funicular ticket to climb the Vesuvius, and I paid in some other places too. But I got admitted for free in most of the museums. These were my trips with this family abroad.
In the last trip – Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey – I went with the Soare family. They were both professors at our institute. He got involved in Party work and became our London ambassador between 1976 and 1979. She died this Christmas. First of all, let me tell you that places that looked to me like resorts were mere villages. But do you know what villas and gardens they had? Where were our fences made of planks? In Austria and Germany they don’t have fences between properties and dogs barking at you at the gate. I didn’t see one single cow in all Switzerland. I mean, their roads make detours, these are tourist countries. The Carpathians are not less beautiful than the Alps, only less tall – but the roads in the Alps are a dream! We went to Austria, to Tyrol, and took the funicular at Innsbruck, at over 3,000 meters. I thought I would die because it was moving so fast along a steep wall, and I said: ‘Titi, where is our funicular in Poiana Brasov? I think I won’t make it to the top in this one!’ It was very beautiful. The villas, the restaurants, everything was embellished. We mostly have wild nature here in Romania. You walk for hours in the Retezat Mt. without seeing one single villa with flowers, or a restaurant, or a bar – not to get drunk, but to have something refreshing. I don’t know how things look today, because I haven’t climbed the mountains for 25-30 years. I went to Crucea, to Caraiman, to Pietrele Doamnei, in Rarau. I didn’t go there with my students because we studied sedimentary rocks. And, at those altitudes, one can only find eruptive or metamorphic rocks. We worked in the hills and we were interested in oil and coal. These are not to be found in the mountains, but in the hills.
In the last trip – Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey – I went with the Soare family. They were both professors at our institute. He got involved in Party work and became our London ambassador between 1976 and 1979. She died this Christmas. First of all, let me tell you that places that looked to me like resorts were mere villages. But do you know what villas and gardens they had? Where were our fences made of planks? In Austria and Germany they don’t have fences between properties and dogs barking at you at the gate. I didn’t see one single cow in all Switzerland. I mean, their roads make detours, these are tourist countries. The Carpathians are not less beautiful than the Alps, only less tall – but the roads in the Alps are a dream! We went to Austria, to Tyrol, and took the funicular at Innsbruck, at over 3,000 meters. I thought I would die because it was moving so fast along a steep wall, and I said: ‘Titi, where is our funicular in Poiana Brasov? I think I won’t make it to the top in this one!’ It was very beautiful. The villas, the restaurants, everything was embellished. We mostly have wild nature here in Romania. You walk for hours in the Retezat Mt. without seeing one single villa with flowers, or a restaurant, or a bar – not to get drunk, but to have something refreshing. I don’t know how things look today, because I haven’t climbed the mountains for 25-30 years. I went to Crucea, to Caraiman, to Pietrele Doamnei, in Rarau. I didn’t go there with my students because we studied sedimentary rocks. And, at those altitudes, one can only find eruptive or metamorphic rocks. We worked in the hills and we were interested in oil and coal. These are not to be found in the mountains, but in the hills.
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After WW2
See text in interview
After I retired, I worked for ONT [The National Travel Office], between 1983 and 1991, for Russian-speaking groups exclusively. For 8 years I ate at restaurants and I went to every corner of this country. I don’t mean to brag, but I was better than the other guides because I had been throughout the country as a geologist and I knew things that the others couldn’t have known. I was also requested for French groups, because they saw I was a good guide. But I preferred the Russians. They were more disciplined. They sorted them very well before letting them leave the country.
In 1974 I moved back to this place. Vasile used his Party connections to get me gas. This happened in 1974. The house has all the comfort you need, but it’s too much for my retirement pension.
Our marriage didn’t last for too long – only 15 years. But those 15 years were very happy years for me. He fell in love with someone else, I couldn’t put up with him having relationships here and there, and I filed for divorce. Maybe that was a mistake. Today, at the age of 80, I’m not sure anymore. However, the last person he called one hour before he died was me. We stayed friends and he took care of me all his life and this says a lot. He was a quality man. The fact that he fell in love with someone else is something that just happened; you can’t control that – you either love or you don’t.
People didn’t go to the theater or the cinema back then. We went to his mother’s, to Dorina’s, to Aurica’s, and the whole pack met there to spend an entire Sunday. Or they came here. This extendable table for 24 people was hardly enough. I had to add a bench on this side. These reunions were very pleasant. My father-in-law – God rest his soul – used to bring one or two demijohns of good wine, and we would party. A very united family. Today, when the fourth generation awakes, cousins barely know one another.
Four Jews became members of their family: myself, the husbands of two of Vasile’s sisters, and the husband of one of Vasile’s nieces. But no one treated us any differently from the rest.
Vasile’s brothers distributed communist leaflets. This was no big deal, but they organized youth balls which attracted other people to the movement. They were workers’ balls, neighborhood balls, nothing fancy. But, in any case, they were under surveillance. Their house was watched. They kept going in and out of prison. My mother-in-law was a very reliable and courageous woman. Sure, she wasn’t happy about her husband being a communist and about the fact that they often had nothing to eat, but she didn’t say a word. She didn’t oppose the idea that her sons get involved in politics either.
The youngest boy, Ion, is now 70-71. He went tot the military school, then they sent him to Leningrad, at about the same time when I was there. He attended a Communications Academy, as he was an officer. He married a Russian woman and brought her to Romania. He got promoted all the way to colonel. He was already a colonel when his son was born. An order then came: all the officers who were married to Russian women had to divorce them and send them back home. I believe it was still during the regime of Gheorghiu-Dej [12], but I can’t remember the year. He went to the general and said: ‘I will not divorce her. I have a child with this woman, and we love each other. I’ll give up the army and find a civilian job, because I’m an engineer.’ Many of them were cowardly enough to yield: they divorced and sent their women back to the USSR. That was a horrible thing to ask, but they did it because they were afraid. Iancu wasn’t afraid – we called him Iancu. It’s true, he relied on the fact that he came from a powerful family of communists and that they couldn’t touch him with anything else. He told them: ‘I am not getting a divorce, because I have a closely united family and no one in our family has ever got divorced. Why should I do it?
He died on 8th November, fighting in Palace Sq. In 1945, on the King’s name day [King Michael] [13], many people had gathered to support him. The communist workers came in trucks, there was fighting, and Nicu was badly beat. He could barely crawl back home, where he died. [Ed. note: On King Michael’s name day on 8th November 1945, a large pro-monarchist and anticommunist rally took place. On the order of the procommunist government, soldiers opened fire and many arrests were conducted.] He was buried in a heroes’ plot, at the Ghencea cemetery, the military section.
Vasile was born in the commune of Mihai Viteazu, on Ialomita Valley. His family moved to Bucharest when he was a child. There were nine children. They all got married and they were all Party activists. Their father had been with the Party since its underground period. He had been involved in a lot of trials; he had been arrested and released. The older children had also been involved in communist underground activities. After 23rd August, they were not among those who were given important positions, mainly because they were uneducated – they had only been to elementary school. One of the girls was luckier though. In the underground period, she was the Party secretary for the entire Dobrogea region. She later worked for the Central Committee [of the Romanian Communist Party] – I don’t know what she did there.
Romania