Tag #130936 - Interview #78175 (manin rudich)

When we came back to Cuciurul Mare in 1944, we just found wasteland: our house had been demolished. But we had a surprise: the school's principal, Cimbru, had saved from our house the only thing he could and brought it to my father. It was the book into which my father had written all his debtors; the people he had given merchandise on credit. And shortly afterwards a neighbor came and told my father he owed him money from before the deportation. He gave my father rubles - Cernauti and Cuciurul Mare were already Russian territories by then. My father told this neighbor who else owed him money, and word spread around. People came and brought the money they owed. They knew we were poor now; and we had been very well respected in Cuciurul Mare before the war.