Her maternal grandfather, Spielman, an engraver by trade, was a Jew who had converted to Christianity in order to marry a Christian woman. During the Nazi terror, he had to hide in the mountains because, according to the racial definition of the Jew, he was still considered a Jew, even if he had changed his faith.
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Displaying 17281 - 17310 of 50826 results
Ticu Goldstein
My wife, Velea (nee Konig), was born in 1933, in Moscow. Her father was Romanian and her mother was Austrian. She came to Romania with her father, who repatriated himself in 1958.
I go to the synagogue on the spring and autumn holidays, and I attend the meetings and conferences held by the Judaism centers in Bucharest and Cluj or the events organized by the Embassy of the State of Israel on various occasions.
Nevertheless, I enjoy staying in Romania. I am glad the Jewish life in Bucharest has intensified and I noticed there are non-Jewish young people who are interested in Judaism. I have a very active contribution to the Jewish intellectual life through my articles and my translations.
I remembered the communist era, when the books on Zionism from the Academy Library in Bucharest were kept next to the Legionary books, in a restricted documentary fund. Even today, this important Romanian library suffers from a lack of materials on Judaism; and I wonder whether this is accidental or not.
I visited Israel in 1992 and I have extraordinary memories about it. I was impressed by everything that I saw. The libraries delighted me, for I was able to find everything I was looking for, and much more.
When it comes to politics, there are many things that can be said. Deep down inside, I think my admiration goes to the United States. For too many times, Europe proved itself cowardly and ready to repeat its mistakes a thousand times. It didn’t learn anything from the lessons of the past and this disqualifies it, if I may say so. America is extraordinarily dynamic when it comes to Jews, colored people and other minority groups. Thanks to the fight led by the American civil society, many things changed for the better. On the contrary, in Europe, the monstrous coalition between the extreme Right and the extreme Left, both anti-Israeli, is more than surprising. I knew the extreme Right was anti-Semitic. But I see the extreme Left is anti-Semitic as well.
I worked (and I still work) a lot for the Hasefer Publishing House of the Jewish Community in Bucharest, founded in 1980.
Of course my life changed after 1989; so did the life of any other Romanian. We are able to travel and to speak freely and we have better prospects, although the situation is not very bright in the country.
From 2001 to 2003 he studied for a master’s degree in Helsinki. It was there that he met Julie, an Austrian girl. They got married in 2003.
From 2001 to 2003 he studied for a master’s degree in Helsinki.
He settled in Jerusalem and went to a second college, the famous Bezalel Art School.
He always had a passion for photography. In 1991, at the mineriada [20], he took some shots that were compromising for the government of the time. They were featured in some Western magazines. He was afraid something bad would happen to him, so he left for Israel.
As a teenager, then as a young man, he didn’t feel drawn to the religious side of Judaism. But he used to participate in the Pesach seder and he loved the Purim, because his mother would invent all sorts of costumes for him. He sang for a while in the choir of the Community. He took part in some performances and even went touring in Israel with this very talented choir of the Choral Temple, which sang in Yiddish and Hebrew.
My son, Felix, was born in Bucharest, in 1963. He went to elementary school in the vicinity of the Romanian Peasant’s Museum and he graduated from the I. L. Caragiale High School in 1982. Then he attended the Faculty of Mathematics in Bucharest.
Music, theater and books were actually a psychological refuge for many under the communist regime. This sort of suppression led to the implosion of the communist regime in our country, not to its explosion. We never had a samizdat literature [18] in Romania, like the Russians did, for instance. They had a real opposition. We only had a few exceptions here. In all those wretched years of Ceausescu’s [19] dictatorship , I only saw one single manifest, and it was pretty mild too. Someone brought a flyer to the Institute; it condemned the regime for the ‘poor quality bread’. I passed it on like a fool – I could have got in trouble, for people talked. I went to the head deputy of our lab and showed it to her. She said she wanted to show it to someone else, but, when I asked her to give it back, she told me she had thrown it in the toilet. The Russians had more courage. On the other hand, Ceausescu did attempt a form of pseudo-liberalism in the 1960s, but he ended up on the nationalist slope.
I met Velea thanks to a friend named Kadar (a Russian by origin) and thanks to music, which we both loved. This friend, who was a neighbor of my future wife’s asked me one day if I was interested in meeting an interesting girl. He had probably asked her if she wasn’t interested in meeting an interesting man. Kadar was sure the two of us were good for each other. Our first date took place at the Romanian Athenaeum, at a classical music concert.
She was always interested in Mosaism and the Judaic tradition, partly due to my own preoccupations, partly due to the fact that she had had a Jewish grandfather.
In Romania, she worked as a physician at the Ana Aslan Geriatrics Institute.
After the war, David left for Israel, where he had an interesting career – he was an economist. An uncle of his came to me one day and told me David missed his friend, namely me; he asked me if I didn’t want to do aliyah too, and offered me his help. After I got married, I abandoned the idea of leaving Romania.
David Millstein was (and still is) another friend who came from Russia. His father had been the Joint [17] representative to Russia and was assassinated there in suspicious circumstances.
, Russia
Before I entered college, I didn’t have too many Romanian friends, as I mostly frequented Jewish circles. I had all sorts of fellow-students in college, but I only made friends with girls. After each stage in my education was over, I was concerned about staying friends with my former mates. I think the matriarchate is something worth trying – it would be a chance to see the world with more responsibility, sympathy and kindness. When it comes to my relationships with girls, I have to say that the Jewish world was petit bourgeois – not as much from the point of view of its material situation as it was from the point of view of its conceptions. My access to a Jewish girl was virtually impossible. Whenever I entered a Jewish home, the girl’s parents and her other relatives immediately figured out that I wasn’t a good business. My female friends were Romanian. There was no social barrier in the friendships with them. But the Jewry had a very strict class stratification, and it was difficult to penetrate the upper layers.
One other time, I was working with an intermediary. I gave him a Hebrew grammar awarded by the French Academy, which I had taken from the library of the Community. He was supposed to photocopy it for me. After three days, I went to get it back. The man stared at me and told me I shouldn’t have brought him such a book and that I was going to be held responsible for that. “Take it and run”, he told me. I said it was just a grammar book, not Mein Kampf [by Adolf Hitler]. ‘This is worse than Mein Kampf’, he replied. Terrified, I ran all the way back home, as if someone had followed me. I was 60 at that time.
Until 1989 [until the Romanian revolution] [16], all windows towards Judaism were closed. But after that, I was able to activate in this field. Of course, I had read things, I had searched books, I had photocopied materials about the Jewish history and Judaism etc. Speaking of photocopying, I remember an interesting incident. I had a friend who was making a living out of it. And this was a rather risky enterprise, for most of those who were in this business were either employees or collaborators of the Securitate. This is why I preferred to work with intermediaries. At a certain point, this friend of mine, who was Jewish and wanted to leave for Israel, got caught while making clandestine photocopies. They confiscated his passport and told him he would get it back if he told what he had photocopied and for whom. One day, he came to me with an apologetic face and told me I was on the ‘black list’. I had to get rid of all the photocopies I kept at home for my friends, as all the materials were forbidden by the regime: books on Judaism, the history of religions etc.
More than 20 years have passed since I became a contributor for the Community magazine, Realitatea Evreiasca, the former Revista Cultului Mozaic. I wrote my first article on the occasion of Spinoza’s tricentenary. Victor Rusu, who was then editor-in-chief, probably in ‘complicity’ with Chief Rabbi Moses Rosen [15], told me he wouldn’t publish that article, as it had nothing in common with the magazine’s profile. The whole world celebrated Spinoza that year, the whole world except us. A few years ago, at an anniversary of the magazine, I was asked about my debut. I told them what I have just told you, but they never mentioned that my first article was rejected. My boss from the Hygiene Institute always wondered how come my articles were published on the first page, next to the Chief Rabbi’s. Under the communist regime, there was a time when I signed a serial about the Bible, in which I condemned the personality cult and the idolatry.
In 1973 I got fired from the Radio Company because there were too many employees. A commission was made up to help us find other employments. They sent me to work as an editor for the Firemen’s Magazine. I turned down this assignment. Then, a former co-worker of mine, Lia Lazarescu, put in a good word for me with doctor Penciu from the Hygiene Institute. My transfer was done at a ministerial level: the president of the Radio Company phoned the minister of Health and arranged for me to be hired at that institute. I had to write my own characterization; I praised myself and, in order to have at least one negative thing, I mentioned I didn’t… look good on TV! I worked at the Hygiene Institute as a sociologist. I would do family inquiries and medical statistics. I retired in 1989.
At the beginning of the 1960s there was a sort of scandal. According to an order come from above, the institution had to be purged of Jews, on the pretext that there were too many foreign collaborators. This made me angry, so I became more radical and started doing everything I could in order to get kicked out. In 1963 the Securitate [14] investigated me because I had allegedly introduced decadent art in the Radio Company. It was, in fact, an album of modern art that I had shown to some co-workers. I had to sign a declaration in which I promised I would maintain ‘a healthy environment around me’.
I worked for the Radio Company for 18 years. I was an editor for the cultural broadcasts. Most of the time, I would make documentaries for these broadcasts, which fortunately had nothing to do with politics.
After the war, my brother, Marcel, took a specialization course at ORT [13], where he learnt the trade of clocksmith again.
She died in 1984, at the age of 89. This time, it was me who recited the Kaddish and observed the Yahrzeit. She was buried next to my father, at the Jewish Cemetery on Giurgiului St.