Tag #134670 - Interview #93010 (Riva Belfor)

My mother Haya Feurman came from a large family. She had nine siblings. They lived in the Moldovan village Gura Galbeney [which means Yellow Mountain in Romanian], 40 kilometers away from Kishinev. My maternal grandfather, Velvl Feurman, born in the 1860s, was the owner of a grocery store. Besides, he worked as an accountant for the forestry. Velvl was a highly qualified accountant. One of his job functions was to check the parts of the forest that he was responsible for. Grandmother Sosl was a housewife. She raised the children, did a lot of things about the house. My grandparents were rather well-off and respectable people. There weren’t very many Jewish families in Gura Galbeney. There were about 100 families in the village, and 10-15 out of them were Jewish families. Mother was a very sociable lady who kept in touch with Moldovans and Romanians. The Jews, Moldovans and Romanians had a mutual respect for each other and got along very well. There was a small synagogue in that village and the family went there on high holidays. There was also a cheder in the village. My maternal grandparents weren’t as religious as the paternal ones. They adhered to traditions, observed the kashrut and celebrated holidays, but they didn’t do it as devotedly and properly as my paternal grandparents’ family.