Tag #124290 - Interview #78113 (Louiza Vecsler)

Before World War II, I had worked as a pharmacist. The owners of the shop where I worked were Jews, and they lived upstairs. Their name was Rosenberg, and I got along very well with them. In 1942 all the merchandise in the shop was handed over to a Christian pharmacist, Mrs. Constantinescu. She wanted to keep me because she was from the countryside and she didn't know anybody in Botosani, except for her sister, who lived there. And it was something else, when the customers saw somebody familiar at the counter. People in Botosani knew me, and whoever came into the shop said: 'Thank God you are still here, you know what to give us'. There was a peasant from Cotusca [a small village near Botosani], whose wife was sick, and he always bought a 100 gram bottle of valerian tincture. He used to say, 'I wouldn't buy it from somewhere else, even if they gave me a kilo for free! This one is clean, carefully prepared and it cures!'

On one winter day, when it was already dark and there was a blizzard outside, the ex-owners upstairs asked me to sleep over because I lived far from the chemist's shop. I accepted, I had also joined them for dinner on several occasions. And in the morning, when I came down, a man from Social Insurance came into the shop, saw me and said, 'What is a Jew doing in a Romanian drug shop? You just got your shop, Mrs. Constantinescu; if you keep her, we will revoke your license!' I went upstairs, took my coat and left. [This happened around 1942.