Tag #126800 - Interview #78071 (Edita Adler)

I believe my parents' close circle of friends was Jewish; they were colleagues of my father's and their wives. But they had some good Romanian and Hungarian friends as well: Mrs. Georgeta Pasan, a Romanian, for example. Her husband owned a small watchmaker's shop near our house, and she became a good friend of my mother's; they were about the same age. During the war Jews were forbidden to travel or leave Bucharest, so when all the disorder started, Mrs. Pasan took my sister and me to Focsani [town in the south of Moldova, 181 km from Bucharest], where she was originally from, for a few months during the summer of 1943, I think. She took this risk for my mother's sake - but it was her who had the idea - she could have been arrested and imprisoned for a year. She declared to the ticket inspector on the train that we were her children. We stayed in her house, with her parents and a sister of hers; it was more like a vacation in the countryside, we didn't do anything special. Anti-Semitism wasn't a real issue there by then. Mrs. Pasan was also a big help for my mother after the war ended; their friendship continued. When my mother was sick, Mrs. Pasan came to our house here, in Brasov, and looked after her for as long as it was necessary.