My paternal grandfather, Moise Springer, was born in 1871 in Baraolt, but for as long as I knew him, he lived in Brasov, where he worked as a dentist. He moved to Brasov in 1920.
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Displaying 5281 - 5310 of 50826 results
Edita Adler
In 1957 my father's practice was nationalized [see nationalization in Romania] [11]. He had to give all his tools to a co-op, and he had to start working there, as an employee. But he could hardly work anymore, he was already very shattered by losing his life's work.
Grandfather died in 1955 and was buried in the Jewish cemetery here, in Brasov. Back then, there was still a rabbi here, Rabbi Deutsch, so he was present, and my father recited the Kaddish.
During college we were members of UTC [Young Communists' Union]; we couldn't get out of it because we were good students.
We had no contact with the Jewish community in Bucharest, none at all, we didn't know how many Jewish colleagues we had, and there were definitely some.
During college we always fasted on Yom Kippur, but it was very hard because we had lectures we couldn't miss.
After high school, Alice and I went to college in Bucharest, where we studied medicine [dentistry]. Those six years were hard and we had to study a lot. We didn't stay in the hostel; we rented a place because our parents wanted us to have the best conditions to study. And we did: we studied all week, Saturdays until 6 o'clock in the evening, and on Sundays until 3 in the afternoon. Back then college wasn't as much fun as it seems to be today with cars, going out, discos and the like.
We went on holidays with our parents, to Tusnad, Borsec [town in North- Eastern Romania in Harghita county, in the intramontane depression of the same name in the Eastern Carpathians with numerous springs of mineral waters], or Sfantu-Gheoghe, and we stayed for about two weeks. Youth camps weren't in fashion back then, but when we were older, our parents let us go alone to Tusnad, to stay at a landlady's. We were there all by ourselves, with the owner's children, and my father and mother would come only on weekends.
And with all the work around the house, there wasn't much time for socializing except school. We sometimes went to the cinema; we were allowed to go once a week: we saw musical movies, about Schubert's life and the like. My parents had to know what we would watch and had to approve first.
We didn't have time to make friends outside school: we were busy with private lessons. Our parents thought it would be necessary for us. We took violin, piano, German and French lessons every week from the age of six. I studied violin in Bucharest with a teacher from the conservatory, but I was no good, I was merely squeaking the violin and tormenting my ears. I liked the piano better, so when we came to Brasov, I took it up instead. I studied the piano until I went to college; I loved it. We had a good cottage piano in the house, which sounded like a real piano.
After elementary school, my sister and I went to Unirea high school in Brasov; it was a school for girls only back then. We started in the same grade, although she was one year younger than me; my parents wanted us to be at the same level with our studies. I liked all of my teachers: they were good people who really cared for our education; it was impossible not to respect them. I didn't like the mathematics teacher though; mathematics was quite a pain for me! I remember one time the Romanian literature and language teacher said to my colleagues, after a term paper: 'Shame on you, girls, two foreign students wrote better about Romanian literature and language than you!' She was talking about my sister and me. I made friends with most of my classmates, no matter their religion, but mostly with the ones who were well brought up.
We had a cleaning on the day before Pesach, but we didn't overdo it. We had matzah and didn't cook anything that required flour. Grandfather said the blessings and read about the history of Pesach, about what it means. He asked the mah nishtanah, and there was the afikoman, which my sister usually found. We had the traditional Pesach dinner: poultry soup with dumplings, boiled poultry and some cake made of matzah flour. And as long as grandfather lived, until around 1955, we had special tableware that we kept in the attic for Pesach.
At home we continued to observe the high holidays and the tradition: there was the traditional Saturday meal, my mother made cholent, that is bean stew, with veal and pearl barley. The food wasn't kosher, but we observed the high holidays.
But I didn't fancy the principal of the Jewish school, Mr. Brief, much: he was very strict. It happened that he punished my sister because she laughed during classes - we were in the same class. She was given two hours' detention after classes, and only after that she was allowed to go home. And at home mother would spank her with a pot stick over the buttocks; she never forgave indiscipline in school.
I only learnt Hungarian when I moved here, to Brasov. In Bucharest it was forbidden, with the war and all, to speak any other language except Romanian. You could have been taken to the police, and maybe receive a reprimand, nothing worse than that though. But here, as everybody seemed to speak Hungarian and used it rather frequently, I learnt it as well. We spoke Romanian in the family while we were in Bucharest, but when we moved to Brasov, my parents started talking Hungarian.
Romania
The rest of the grades, up to the 6th, which back then meant high school, I studied in the Jewish school in Brasov.
My parents wanted me to have a Jewish education as well.
My parents wanted me to have a Jewish education as well.
But then, in 1945, we moved to Brasov. I don't know exactly why my father made that decision, but it must have had something to do with the fact that my grandfather was getting old. We lived in the same house with him, and my father took over his practice, so my grandfather retired when we came to Brasov.
The first grade, my sister and I studied in Bucharest, in a normal state school; we started in 1944.
Odorhei was a civilized small town back then, with a lot of Jews. Most of their social life was spent at the Jewish community club, which organized all sorts of events: balls on Purim, Chanukkah celebrations and so on. But people were far more civil, peaceful and friendly than they are nowadays - you can see it everywhere around you. Jews and Romanians and Hungarians - most of the town's population was Hungarian - lived peacefully in Odorhei, they had no quarrels.
They didn't observe the kashrut strictly, but for Pesach, for example, they had separate tableware.
Grandmother had two servants, who cooked and did the chores around the house. I remember that the laundry was washed in Tarnava [Tarnava Mare, one of the main tributaries of Mures river, located in the Tarnave Plateau].
My grandparents lived in a rented house with three rooms and a garden in the center of town; they didn't grow anything, just had some flowers and maybe some fruit trees. Their house had electricity, but there was no running water in Odorhei in the 1940s; a carter brought drinking water in two and five-liter earthen vessels. Each citizen had some sort of subscription, and the cart with the water - I believe some of it was mineral water - came every day.
During World War II he was deported with my grandmother to Auschwitz and again he lost everything.
Grandfather had a good financial situation, but it was short-lived: during World War I, when he was in the Austria-Hungarian KuK army [4], he was a prisoner in Siberia from 1914-1918. When he came back, it took him a while to get his life back on track and reopen his shop. During World War II he was deported with my grandmother to Auschwitz and again he lost everything.
Grandmother was Neolog, like my grandfather, she didn't observe the kashrut, but she lit the candles every Friday evening and went to the synagogue on the high holidays.
My grandmother, Adela Iszakovics, helped him run the shop: she had graduated from a business high school in Budapest and did the bookkeeping for him.
My grandmother, Adela Iszakovics, helped him run the shop: she had graduated from a business high school in Budapest and did the bookkeeping for him.
He was a watchmaker and he also owned a jewelry shop in the center of town. He imported luxury items from Switzerland. He ordered them from an intermediary who went to Switzerland and brought what my grandfather had asked for: that and that many gold snuff-boxes, that and that many gold necklaces, diamond rings and earrings, silver candlesticks and so on. He didn't do the handwork in watch mending himself; he had an employee who did it. My grandfather mostly dealt in selling jewelry.
He was Neolog and not very religious, but he went to the synagogue on Saturdays and on the high holidays.
Romania
He married my mother, Magdalena Springer, nee Iszakovics, in 1936. It was an arranged marriage: my father's family had met my mother's some time before, and they had established that their children would meet and marry, and so it was. The wedding took place in Odorhei, in my maternal parents' garden; I think the rabbi came there.