I also go to this Circle of ours. We read newspaper articles, jokes, recipes, we knit, and we sometimes go places together: parks, and, once a year, the cemetery. We go visit our graves, at the Giurgiului Cemetery. When the Week of Charity came, I made a commitment. There’s this lady that I go to; I buy her things and I stay with her. I also asked my boss to find me an old man who’s sick and can’t move – who can’t come out of his home. I would go to his place and cook him a warm meal. Well, when I could, because I’m 83 years old myself. Then there’s the president’s wife, who has an assistance service of her own. For instance, she has the Braille service for the visually challenged. Once a week, she has a circle that we attend too. But it’s not actually held every week.
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Displaying 30751 - 30780 of 50826 results
Estera Sava
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The Sabbath begins like this: the candles must be lit on Friday evening. I have a calendar and I light the candles according to that calendar – to make sure I don’t do it too late or too early. The following day, I prepare my food and, of course, I light the candles again. In the morning I go to the temple. But, like I told you, I’m not a bigot. I do it because it’s the natural thing to do. If you’re not religious, you’re not human!
I still keep in touch with the synagogue. I’m actually the most loyal temple-goer – no one comes to the temple as often as I do, at all the ceremonies!
Our democracy cannot be compared to the German, French, English or American democracy. We’re far from the management that takes place in other democracies! There’s democracy in Israel too. Over there, people are free to do whatever they want too, but the situation looks totally different from ours. People can live a decent life and the elderly have everything they need. Down here, we have old people who are simply dying of starvation! So this democracy didn’t do anything for the old and the needy! No way! We thought things would turn out differently. I thought measures would be taken so that everybody may live well! But look at all these beggars that we have – they’re so many! And the homeless children! How is this possible? For me, it’s all the same. I’m the outskirts of my life, on the final run. What I have now will last me for what’s left of my life. But I think of all this youth that’s coming from behind! What can life offer them?...
The change in 1989 affected my financial situation. If it weren’t for the help of the Federation, that is, the Joint [19], I would die of starvation! I’m also lucky because I was persecuted politically, so the provisions of Law no. 118 apply to me! Otherwise, I’d have a really hard time. After my husband died, I lived as a widow under the Communist regime for 6 years. But I managed to survive with my pension: I had everything I needed and I could also save 50-100 lei every month. So, at the end of every year, I would have an extra reserve of 500-600 lei. I can’t do this now! It’s been a long time since I went to a spa. I’ll tell you straight: the management stinks! There’s confusion and there’s chaos! Now you’re allowed to travel abroad, but… who has the money? You can no longer afford to go to a restaurant! This is what restaurants are for, right? They’re for people to go to them! A neighbor of mine moved from here. He came back one day to collect his pension and told me: ‘Let me tell you about my latest blunder. I went for a walk and I suddenly felt like eating a stake and two mici. So I got into a restaurant and I had two mici, a stake and a beer.’ – ‘And how much did you pay?’ – ‘Almost four hundred thousand!’ Who can go to the theater now, when a ticket costs 150,000 lei? Why, that’s my food for an entire week! I only go to the theater when my daughter takes me – she sometimes gets free tickets from someone. Otherwise, I couldn’t afford it…. What about the cinema? Do you think I can go there? Take ‘Orient Express’, which is supposed to be very good. At 80,000 a ticket, do you think I can afford to go see it? I’m a retiree! And it’s not just the food that costs money: there’s the electricity, the phone, the other utilities! Every time I collect my pension, that’s the first thing on my mind! All I have to do is talk a little more on the phone, and that’s it! Since my phone subscription is free of charge, the bill will rise instantly! So I got to the stage where I can’t even make a phone call!
I wanted to go again [to Israel], I applied for this [1989], but they didn’t approve my request. It was only after the Revolution that I got my okay. I went to them and inquired: ‘Sir, I applied for going to Israel. Is my application still valid, or do I have to write another?’ – ‘Write a petition mentioning your name.’ Two or three days later, I was informed my application had been approved six weeks ago! Because of the new regime and all! I went there [and wanted to emigrate], but they all told me: ‘Why come here? Get real! You’ll have a better life in Romania now!’ My daughter told me: ‘Mother, you go, and we’ll file the necessary papers, and we’ll all go!’ A guy said the air was better in Romania. Others said it wasn’t a good idea to move to Israel and things like that. Someone said: ‘I don’t know… You should first send your kids here, to see what it’s all about. You don’t want them to blame you for making them come here, do you?’ Imagine that! He wanted to send them there. But this was right after the Revolution, and who could afford such a trip? My nephew was the only one who said: ‘Tanti, come over here, and you’ll see: it will be good for all of you here!’ My daughter-in-law: ‘Don’t listen to him, he’s just a kid and doesn’t know what he’s talking about!’ He was 22 at the time, and he was a student. He made some plans for me, and I should have gone with those plans! But I didn’t. I listened to the others and stayed. Otherwise, we’d all be there now! I would go there right now. But what can an 83-year-old like me do there?
When the Revolution [18] came, I felt neither happy, nor sad! I knew what was going on. All my neighbors were drunk-happy, but I told them: ‘Don’t be too happy! Wait for five or six months, and you’ll see!’ Six months later, a neighbor of mine, a Hungarian lady who moved to Targu Mures, came to me and told me: ‘You were so right!
Because I had a mixed marriage, I observed both religions. I would go to the temple on Saturday and on holidays. My husband took me there and picked me up. My granddaughter would visit me at the time of the high holidays and things like that. My daughter and my granddaughter had a mixed education and they are familiar with the both types of holidays. We never made any difference between being [Christian] Orthodox and Jewish. I am a believer, but I’m not a bigot – I couldn’t say that I am. I’m someone who has observed the religious rules.
I didn’t encounter anti-Semitic manifestations after the war. Maybe, deep down inside, some still held the grudge. There were others who didn’t know I was Jewish and spoke in negative terms about the Jews, but that’s something else. I, for one, was never insulted on a personal level. Sure, there were some who told jokes about the Jews, or who tried to defame them: ‘A-ha! They brought the Communists then left for Israel!’ This isn’t true though. Jews were actually given a hard time by the Communists, who took everything away from them! It was only after the Communists came that the Jews went bankrupt, because of the nationalization.
We used to go on vacation to the seaside [by the Black Sea] or to the mountains. They wouldn’t let us go abroad. My husband held an important position, my son-in-law was with the military, so we didn’t even bother to ask for permission! My son-in-law did travel a lot, but only on his own [in work-related trips]; his wife wasn’t allowed to join him. We once went to Bulgaria – I don’t remember the exact year, I think it was in the late 1960’s. It was a trip or something. A cousin of mine phoned me and suggested we’d go for one day to Bulgaria, to Ruse and to Golden Sands [Ed. note: Zlatni Pyassatsi National Park]. I told my husband about it, and he said: ‘Sure, if you want to go, let’s go.’ It wasn’t cheap, and it wasn’t worth it, but we did go. The authorities knew their arithmetic back then! They paid you a salary that was enough for you to eat, dress, and indulge yourself once in a while.
,
After WW2
See text in interview
In our spare time we would go to the theater or the cinema. We would go to any theater that had something on! We didn’t have a favorite one, because all theaters featured the same topics; they were all the same! However, there were very good plays and film. I read, of course. The communists had a very good method: while necessities lacked, books were abundant! My husband brought books at home all the time. As for dining out, we did it constantly, once or twice a month. We would go eat a grilled stake. My husband would say: ‘Why don’t we go have a stake, two or three mici and a beer?
I had many friends. I kept in touch with this one, Mandi, whom I grew up with. She’s the one who stood up for us when they kicked us out of our house. But she didn’t live in Bucharest, she lived in Gaesti. She used to come to visit me! I was also friends with the wives of my husband’s coworkers.
I don’t think he was into politics. I never heard of him being the member of some party. My grandfathers and my father went to vote, like any other citizen of this country, but they never joined any party. I don’t know if they had any particular preferences either. They didn’t express their political views; or, if they did, I wouldn’t know, because – let’s face it – I was only a child.
Not observing [the holidays, the tradition] was out of the question, was inconceivable! We saw little of this paternal grandfather. He didn’t visit us [too often]. When he did, he wouldn’t even accept a glass of water from my father, because it wasn’t kosher. And my mother would argue ‘But, father…’ ‘No way,’ he would reply, ‘because you never know…’ – ‘Father, but I don’t…’ – ‘No, no and no! Let it be, I know better!’ It was the same thing with preserves: he wouldn’t touch any of them, because they are among the foods that Jews consider not kosher. For instance, sweets, like preserves or cakes, shouldn’t be eaten, no matter whether they were boiled or baked in the oven. So he didn’t have preserves. ‘No, no, no’, he said, ‘no, no, no.
chaired the community for many years, in a time when the president was the one who gave to the community! He was very, very devout, very religious!
As far as his clothes are concerned, he dressed in an ordinary way. I never saw caftans or sideburns at either of my grandfathers. My paternal grandfather did wear a goatee, but that was all. However, he was very religious.
For a while, he lived in the countryside – he was well-off –, and then he moved to Bacau. Down there, he owned a restaurant located in the same building where he lived with his family. As I remember it, the place wasn’t a Jewish neighborhood, it was a very nice street inhabited by Romanian boyars My grandparents lived in the center of the town. Theirs was an ordinary house, simple, like most houses used to be back then. It had three rooms. They didn’t have a bathroom inside, the toilet was outside – I mean, they lacked the modern utilities. There was no electricity in those days – one hundred years ago… They used wood for heating.
His native tongue was Yiddish, and he also spoke Romanian. I think these were the only languages he could speak; I never heard him use another.
My parents’ marriage was a true love match. This is how they met. My father lived in Bacau and was as good as married. The legal marriage had already been performed and the wedding was to come in three weeks. He happened to pass by the small town of Valea Rea. He was friends with my mother’s cousin. And my mother was there, in front of the butcher’s shop. So he sees her and tells his friend: ‘Sofico, who’s this sweet girl?’ – ‘That’s my cousin!’ – ‘I’d like to meet her!’ And my mother’s cousin says to him: ‘Why on Earth would you want to meet her? You’re getting married in three weeks! I’m having a dress made for your wedding…’ You see, my mother’s cousin had been invited to the wedding. ‘It doesn’t matter, I want to meet her’ – ‘Get out of here, mind your own business. If he [her father] hears about it, he’ll chase you around with an axe in his hand!’ Her father was a butcher, and these are rough people! But he says ‘I’m not leaving this place until I get to meet her!’ And so he did. He got divorced, and he never had his wedding, although he had nothing personal with the other woman. And, four years later, he married my mother. This is another story, because my maternal grandfather was always against this They went to a wedding, and it was winter, and my mother, who wore a low-necked dress, caught a bronchopneumonia. You see, 90 years ago, this was a serious lung disease! It was no joke. They called the doctor, because that small town had its own hospital. And the doctor said: ‘She’s got a bronchopneumonia, it’s quite complicated’ and things like that. ‘Well’, my grandmother said, ‘that’s it, he got my daughter suffering from a lung disease, let her marry him, because he’s the one she loves!’ And she wired my father, who came to Valea Rea. No sooner did he get there, than my mother’s fever began to vanish and she felt much better before the day was over. So they let her get engaged with my father and marry him.
She learnt everything children could learn at that time; she went to a Romanian elementary school, a public school, not a special one.
All my mother’s siblings, except for the one who died at an early age, left for Israel.
She was very, very religious – nothing from the outside would make it inside my grandmother’s house, not even bread! She wouldn’t buy bread from the baker’s. The whole town did it, but she baked bread at home! Not to mention the baker was a Jew! So everything she ate had to be cooked in the house! She didn’t even buy oil – she made it herself. She grew geese and, well, since my grandfather was a butcher, she had all the meat she needed for soups and that sort of thing. My grandmother didn’t let anyone milk the cow except for herself. She was a very clean woman. When she didn’t feel well – and that happened rather often, because she had problems with her health – my grandfather would say ‘Let me milk the cow, don’t go yourself…’ – ‘No way, because you don’t wash your hands properly.’ – ‘But we boil the milk.’ – ‘Oh, give me a break with the milk, will you?
The house of my maternal grandparents had two rooms and a large kitchen; they spent most of their day in the kitchen, where they also ate, and they slept in one of the rooms. They didn’t have electricity or tap water. They used wood for heating. They lived in the countryside, but they didn’t cultivate anything. However, since my grandfather was a butcher, he always had a cow around the house. They had a cart with two horses, and chickens – was there any household without chickens? My grandfather used the cart when he went to buy cattle. In the courtyard, he had arranged a place where he slaughtered cattle. My maternal grandparents didn’t employ anyone to help them around the house.
In Valea Rea, Jews lived on one side of the Tazlau River, and the [Christian] Orthodox – on the other one. There was also a landowner there, who had his mansion on the Christians’ street. The Jews in Valea Rea were from the middle class and there were no great differences between them.
I don’t know what school he went to, but he could read and write. He was an evolved person, he read the newspaper all the time and he understood the political arena.
His native tongue was Yiddish, and he also spoke Romanian.
His native tongue was Yiddish, and he also spoke Romanian.
He went to the army because they caught him and drafted him against his will – he was a sturdy fellow, and so were all the members of our family.
He ran a kosher butcher’s shop located in the same courtyard where his house was. He was a butcher by trade; this is what he did his entire life.
He finished high school and went to France. He lived in Paris for about 4 years, before World War I, because my grandfather had a sister there, and he sent him to study. Study is what he didn’t do, however. He was into other things; he was a very handsome man and girls just wouldn’t leave him alone. He came back right before the war started.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview