My father was very busy because he used to go to fairs. I went with him too. There were these fairs in various towns of Walachia. They would be organized on special occasions. Each town had its own times to hold a fair. Those trade fairs would get a lot of attention, as there were no cinemas or bands back then. [Ed. note: Even today, some traditional fairs related to certain holidays are still held. Various tradesmen and craftsmen sell their products there.] They served snacks and meat rolls. Every town had a certain period in which it would organize a fair; periods could coincide and it was possible for two towns to have fairs at the same time. Tradesmen would build some shacks made of wood, many of which were covered with cloth. They were erected directly on the ground and people lived in them. Imagine a curtain with benches to sleep on behind it. Of course, toilets were far away - they were public and had no water. The water supply was a fountain. This is how tradesmen lived for a while - at the outskirts of the towns, in the field, in those shacks built next to one another which had counters to display the goods. My father sold underwear. I often accompanied him to fairs to help him sell his merchandise, during my summer vacations.
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Displaying 7111 - 7140 of 50826 results
Aristide Streja
We lived in a house with a courtyard; there was another family next door. My father had no employees and, by God, he worked like a slave in order to keep our household afloat. Back then, housework was no easy job. My mother, apart from looking after us, the children, had to do all the washing too, since washing machines hadn't been invented yet. My mother's typical day was a very difficult day. She had to wash every one of us using a wash basin - we didn't have bathrooms and bath tubs in those days. All we had was plumbing and sewerage from the public network - and that was already a great progress. We had running water in the kitchen and that was where all the washing took place. It got very difficult in winter. The kitchen was heated with a metal stove. Fire wood was kept in the courtyard. My mother had to complete lots of difficult chores. For the winter, barrels would be filled with pickles, green tomatoes, bell peppers, cabbage - and someone had to buy them and prepare them. My father would give a hand too. Our household looked a lot like a countryside household, only we lived in a town. A woman's work was very hard. Of course, men didn't have an easy time either, as they were in charge of earning money and they also had to do some things around the house. Money was painfully earned in a time when capitalism was at its beginnings. People didn't work 8 hours a day, they worked 12-14. Life was very hard, especially for the petty tradesmen.
My parents met through a matchmaker. It was probably someone from Ploiesti who saw that my grandfather had a daughter who had reached the proper age for marriage and who thought about finding her the best match. So it was through this intermediary that discussions were held on whether she wanted to marry the man and whether she found his situation acceptable. My father's social position was of a tradesman. Since most of the Jews were craftsmen, tailors, shoemakers etc., being a tradesman meant a good position for a Jew. My mother, who was more educated than her suitor (she had attended a boarding school, spoke foreign languages, had painting skills etc.), accepted to marry the man because of his material situation. Being a very beautiful woman, all her children were beautiful, except me. She agreed to this match with my father knowing that they both thought they would make a happy married couple. And so they did.
My mother's culture was rather rich. She spoke foreign languages and she read literature in Romanian and in other languages too. My father's intention was to send us to school to get some education, but it was my mother who insisted that we go all the way from elementary school to college.
My mother made many paintings - I still keep some of them at home. When we were children, she used to do many things related to this decorating skill of hers, including weaving Persian rugs starting from a model. My elder brother would copy decorative models from magazines on a large canvas with little squares and my mother would look at the small model and on the canvas on which it had been copied and would weave the rug. She would also weave decorative pillow covers. I gave one of these to a nephew of mine and I keep another one at home.
Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately - who could tell? -, my mother married a tradesman from Bucharest and moved with him. She interrupted her studies. She would have liked to go to the Arts Academy [in Bucharest], and her teachers had encouraged her about going to college. My grandparents had had a religious, bigot upbringing. Religious Jews believe that girls should get married at an early age, and, if possible, to a rabbi - which is considered to be all that a young girl could wish for. This was my mother's fate.
Estera Wechsler [nee Letzler], my mother, was born in 1888, in Ploiesti. She attended a boarding school and spoke German and French. Naturally, she had also learnt Yiddish at home. All she told me about her childhood was that she used to be a good student and that her teachers thought highly of her, especially because of her skills in painting and drawing.
Simon and Pene were rather modern Jews. They weren't religious, they celebrated holidays mostly at home and they went to the synagogue very seldom. Though they weren't religious in the mystical sense, they did observe the holidays and admitted being Jews.
Romania
They sold the estate [in Ploiesti] and got enough money to live from and to buy a new estate in Bucharest, on Lacul Tei Ave.
His daughter married a director from the Ministry, came to Bucharest and became a magistrate. She had to leave her office when the Communists came to power because her social origins were considered unhealthy [bourgeois] and she turned into a housewife.
Romania
During World War II he was disbarred. He could no longer practice and, of course, he had to stop doing politics too. His file looked very bad. He was 100% bourgeois and he had become undesirable from a social point of view. He was wealthy enough to survive though.
The Letzlers had a very good financial situation. They were rather well-off, owned their house (which meant a lot back then) and lived on a main street in Ploiesti. Their house looked like a boyar's house [Ed. note: The boyars were the Romanian nobility. They usually owned estates and lived in houses built in the local style.]. It had a ground floor and an upper floor, a metal fence, an extra pavilion to shelter the maids, a place for the car and a place for growing pigeons.
Being a Jewish lawyer in the 1930's (when the anti-Semitic trends began in Romania) was not easy at all.
He lived in Ploiesti and was married to a lady named Mili Letzler. She wasn't too rich and she wasn't too cultivated either, but the two of them were in love. She was Jewish. It was difficult for a rabbi's son to marry a non-Jewish woman, especially in a provincial Romanian town.
He served as a lieutenant in World War I.
He was a famous lawyer in Ploiesti and he was also involved in the Romanian politics - he was the deputy prefect of the Prahova County.
Pene Letzler, my mother's brother, was born around 1890, in Ploiesti. He went to college in Bucharest and became a lawyer.
He first worked as a newspaper salesman, and then he got a job as a clerk for another oil company, because he had the necessary experience.
As he came from Ploiesti, he was hired by an American oil company and he left to America in 1915, just one year before the war [World War I] broke in Romania.
He went to Law School in Bucharest.
I once went to Ploiesti with my mother to see my grandparents' house. It was a large, one-floor house that was rather decrepit - but I suppose that it had looked better while they were alive. Next to it there was a large hall where the shul was. The shul is an ordinary dwelling converted or a small room where a minyan of men gathers. The synagogue is a place specially built where a minyan of men or a group of women congregate.
I am involved here too [at the Great Synagogue, as guide of the 'Moses Rosen' Memorial of the Jewish Martyrs], and I understand every Jew who, although a survivor [of the Holocaust], remains marked by these things for life. I suffered nothing compared to what they went through. I did forced labor, but I wasn't deported. I suffer for each and every Jew who was deported and died in that period. I don't think the Holocaust means burning people alive or complete combustion. It is a historical period that stretched from 1930 to 1945, not from 1940 to 1944. This is what I think. It is true that the Holocaust killed 6 million Jews. But it is equally true that it also killed people who weren't Jewish. Jews should pray for the millions of Gypsies and Poles and other members of the 'inferior nations' who perished then.
I am also affected by all the negative things. One of the most recent of them is that Rabbi Glanz left. The fact that he abandoned us is nothing compared to the fact that we have no rabbi anymore. For a man like me, who gladly frequents the Choral Temple on Friday night, but can't speak Ivrit, and reads the translations of the prayers, the most interesting thing were the commentaries for the weekly pericope. I thought very highly of Rabbi Hacohen, who has the gift of story-telling. He narrates as if he were there; he tells about how the Jews felt and about how they spoke with Aaron when they asked him what they were to do since Moses had been missing for 40 days. I am affected by the absence of these people. I went two or three times on Friday evening and heard some commentaries that didn't please me at all. A tzaddik once came. He was into Torah and the study of Judaism. I don't know what stage he had attained, whether he had been studying for a year, for two or for seven, but he wore a caftan and a black hat and said a few words about the weekly pericope that didn't satisfy me at all.
Because of my retirement, I had more time for myself and I became more of a Jew than I ever was. I am more Jewish than some who go to the synagogue day and night. I have strong ties with the community now, because I am very interested in its situation from all points of view. I am directly affected by all the positive events promoted by the community: social assistance, keeping alive the religious activity in temples and synagogues, reflecting the Jewish culture in the museum. This community supports the kosher restaurant, provides medical assistance, helps its members get hospitalized, and offers those eye operations that are also available to the non-Jews. It has ties with the State through the department of the minority ethnic groups and through the Parliament, and keeps in touch with the world community. In other words, the Community is doing unbelievable things for a group that counts at most 8,000 Jews. This is an optimistic number, because statistics speak of 5-6,000. So I am bewildered by all these positive things, like the museum, the Memorial of the [Jewish] Martyrs ['Moses Rosen'] [20].
I enjoyed that extraordinary freedom which suddenly allowed people to leave the country whenever they wanted. Our relatives from abroad started to call us on the phone. After 1989, I became a retiree and many things changed for me from the point of view of my liberty. I saw my intellectual and moral horizon widening and I thought it to be a great blessing. This is what I appreciated about this revolution, not the material benefits. I can travel abroad, listen to the radio and watch TV. Naturally, this degree of freedom has its negative side. When other people make the decisions for you, you have no responsibilities. But when you're free, some responsibilities ensue.
I saw that the Unic store began to distribute food to the people at low prices, so that they could eat something. The store was on Balcescu Ave., where it is still today, but, back then, it was a large store. Then the Informatia was printed, the first newspaper of the revolution. I bought it and kept it. Later on, the Romania libera and the Liberalul were printed too. The Liberal Party expressed itself through the latter. I didn't really agree with them, because they published a poem by Nichifor Crainic. This man was a right wing extremist and a contributor for some Legionary magazines. A party with a liberal tradition cannot publish in its first issue a poem by Nichifor Crainic. [Ed. note: Nichifor Crainic (1889-1972), essayist and poet. He graduated in philosophy and theology from Vienna. He was the main ideologist of an anti-Semitic and xenophobic Christian- Orthodox trend.
It came as a great surprise for me. I was in Bucharest when Ceausescu held that speech in Palatului Sq. [currently known as Revolutiei Sq.]. I went there to hear him from a close distance. When people became agitated, I left and walked the streets. Shots were heard and people fled. I was out all the time that followed. There were shootings all the time. They even fired at out block [Mr. Streja lives very close to Palatului Sq.]. I saw everything that went on. There were troops outside, guarding our door, and I had to ask for permission to get through. 'Come on, Mister; let him go buy some bread.' [At the 1989 Romanian revolution] [18] they came to offer me weapons to stand guard, but my wife wouldn't let me: 'Are you crazy? You're wandering around while they are shooting.' I went out all the time. I wasn't afraid, and my wife feared my lack of fear.
I never imagined Romania could get rid of Ceausescu. I just looked at those impressive rallies [organized on 1st May, 23rd August, when foreign leaders would visit the country etc.]. The rallies had turned into masquerades: people only attended them because they were forced to - they even had to sign evidence sheets. I was a head of workshop back then and I was supposed to send my people to the rallies. I made up lists of those who were present. People weren't allowed to carry bags or sacks at the rallies, because Ceausescu was afraid of a bomb. Economically speaking, industry was in a deep crisis. The set targets could not be reached because we lacked the necessary resources. And people didn't get paid because the set targets weren't reached. It was a wretched situation from all points of view. But I never imagined things would come to this.
I went to Canada a couple of times. So, you see, I traveled quite a lot with my wife.
I went to the US, but not too often. I didn't see many cities there. My wife stayed there for nine months to look after the first girl. Then we stayed together for three months, when the second girl was born. I wasn't allowed to stay nine months. 'First let's see your wife return, and then you can go.