Tag #126368 - Interview #102084 (Silo Oberman )

I liked the holidays as I ate sweets, for there was Purim when they organized a masked ball. On Purim, there was a game involving masks: Haman’s, Ahasuerus’. There was a house on Frumoasa St. where one could rent Purim costumes. People masked themselves and dressed as officers, domino, and you couldn’t recognize them. I took part in Purim balls myself, and I wore a domino mask and I was mistaken for a friend of mine. It was a sort of merry-making. Women wore masks as well. There were some traditional holidays that were organized at the Communal Theatre. They recruited a poet who wrote humoristic pieces, which were in fashion in those days, his name was Ion Pribeagu, and there were very interesting rhymed chronicles. [Editor’s note: Ion Pribeagu (b. 1887, in Sulita, Botosani county – d. 1971, Tel Aviv) was the literary pseudonym of Isac Lazarovici, Romanian-born Jewish poet and humorist. http://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_Pribeagu]. People liked these poems very much, they were rhymed chronicles that were published in the newspapers ‘Dimineata’ (the Morning) and ‘Adevarul’ (the Truth). (These were the newspapers published in Braila: ‘Curierul’ [the Courier], ‘Evenimentul’ [the Event], ‘Timpul’ [the Time], ‘Romania,’ and many other newspapers, for the press in Braila had a very busy life. There was Leon Feraru, who subsequently left to America; there was Cora Bergovici who also left to America; there was Valeriu Popovici).