Tag #129106 - Interview #78031 (Arnold Leinweber)

There were many Jewish families in the Aparatorii Patriei quarter – over 60 families –, so the need was felt for someone to perform religious duties. The neighborhood was founded in 1927, at the outskirts of the capital, on a ground divided into lots. There was no pavement, no electricity, no sewerage, and no drinking water. There was a well here and there, from which water was extracted from a depth of 25 meters. We couldn’t afford an outside man, so a cooper from our neighborhood, named Rotstein, who had a lot of children and was familiar with the elements of the Judaic cult, became our religious servant. But on holidays, we still had to bring a hakham to slaughter our poultry. And since this cost pretty much, Mr. Rotstein went to a hakhamim school, probably at the Community. He was authorized to perform the ritual slaughtering, so he was both the religious servant and the hakham of the neighborhood. He was also the one who continued to teach children to read and write in Hebrew. The problem we faced was where to hold the religious service, as we didn’t have a synagogue. So a Jewish citizens’ committee was founded to deal with this problem. We needed a building large enough to allow room for us all – and there were many of us. And we organized a sort of balls in order to fund this building that was also going to shelter the kindergarten. The Romanians’ committee of the neighborhood did the same - they were more than we were. Jews went to the Romanians’ balls and the Romanians filled the Jews’ hall. I don’t know how much money was raised at these balls, because I was only a kid. The president of our committee, shoemaker Saraga, who owned a small store on Regala St., and counsel Stoica [the president of the Romanian committee], the only man in the neighborhood who had a brick house, agreed to do everything together. The money was gathered in one place and it helped to build a school with two classrooms - since the neighborhood didn’t have a school -, a church, which is still there today, and the synagogue [it didn’t have a name, it was known as the synagogue in Aparatorii Patrieie], which sheltered the kindergarten for all the neighborhood children. The opening of the kindergarten was attended by the prefect of the City police, Gen. Marinescu.