My parents used to go on holiday on their own. When I was little, my father suffered from asthma, however he took care of himself: every year he went with my mother to a spa in Czechoslovakia, Karlsbad [4], I think. They always went during the summer, but I don't know if they went alone or not.
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Displaying 7231 - 7260 of 50826 results
Louiza Vecsler
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He had to go to university, but fights had already broken out in universities - the Cuzists [2] attacked Jewish students - and it was too dangerous in Iasi or in Bucharest. So he went to study in France with a larger group of boys.
When my brother David was in high school in Botosani, he only came home during Easter and summer holidays. When he was in the last year in high school, the school-leaving examination was introduced for the first time, and he had to go take it in Iasi. All boys from the high school went to Iasi, and everybody was worried. One day, when we, kids, were out in the street playing at the tree - there was a tree in front of the house - we saw Doctor Tauber, whose son was David's colleague, coming in a coach. We called out, 'Doctor Tauber is coming!'. He stopped in front of our house. He had a telegram saying: 'All boys from Botosani entered the oral examination.' So David had also passed.
I had a good Jewish friend, Ostfeld, whom I mentioned before. We went to the same school, and we took long walks, or we just sat in the garden if the weather was nice. We also went to the cinema or to the theater. We were a large group of friends in high school, boys and girls, and we knew the man who sold tickets to the cinema, and he always gave us the first row on the balcony. I didn't go to Jewish theaters because I couldn't understand the language.
Personally, I never had problems in school because of being Jewish, and I got along well with all my teachers. I had Jewish and Christian colleagues alike, but I got along with everybody. However, I was first confronted indirectly with anti-Semitism in high school. There was a problem with a landowner's daughter, Ciolak was her name. She called somebody, not me, 'jidauca'. [Editor's note: jidauca in Romanian means 'Jewish woman' but it has a derogatory meaning.] I remember the headmistress, Mrs. Adam, reproved the girl, and when her father came to school, he reproved her as well.
In high school I liked languages a lot. I had a very good French teacher, who didn't allow us to answer in Romanian, we had to speak French. When she entered the classroom, we had to stand up and say, 'Bonjour, madame!' When she called us to the blackboard, we had to answer, 'Je viens!'[I'm coming]. When she told us to write, we had to say: 'J'écris' [I write]. My mother sometimes helped me with my French homework. I never studied Hebrew and never had religious classes with a rabbi in school. Also, in high school, I had a physics teacher who mostly slept during classes, so one time I thought of cribbing when we had a term paper. I went to the back of the classroom, and randomly opened a textbook. But the teacher woke up, and when she saw that I had changed my place, came to me, found the textbook - which was opened at a totally different page than the one the paper was about - and took it. But when she corrected the papers she realized I hadn't cheated. So I got the mark I deserved; but she never gave marks higher than 6 or 7.
My elder sister Ernestina played the piano; I took some piano lessons as well, but I gave it up soon; I wasn't patient enough to sit in front of the piano and practice.
I went to a state elementary school, but then the war broke out and the school building was requisitioned. So the teacher, Vasiliu, who was a priest, held the classes in his house, and I went there. He had three daughters, who were also teachers. There were two Jewish schools in town, but I didn't go there, I don't know why. I got along well with everybody in elementary school, but I don't remember any classmates; it was a long time ago.
The town I grew up in, Botosani, was a modern, cultural town, with paved roads and beautiful buildings. I still remember the Eminescu theater, which was later bombed. The town's population was about 30,000, and there was a big Jewish community: about 15,000 Jews. It was a well-organized community, with a lot of synagogues. I remember two of them: one was near our house, one near my grandparents' house. We had cheders, mikves, shochetim and all functionaries. I remember Rabbi Bernstein: one of his children was run over by a German truck. The driver came to him and apologized, saying it had just been an accident.
In the town there was no separate Jewish neighborhood or ghetto; Jews lived everywhere. In our street there were Jews and Christians and we got along very well; all the kids were playing together. I remember one Jew, who was a watchmaker, but a lot of them were merchants: many of the shops in the town center were Jewish. There was electricity and running water in Botosani, only on the outskirts there might have been some problems with that.
In the town there was no separate Jewish neighborhood or ghetto; Jews lived everywhere. In our street there were Jews and Christians and we got along very well; all the kids were playing together. I remember one Jew, who was a watchmaker, but a lot of them were merchants: many of the shops in the town center were Jewish. There was electricity and running water in Botosani, only on the outskirts there might have been some problems with that.
Our family got along well with the neighbors; they were both Romanians and Jews. There was a sergeant, Cojocaru, who rented a house and had two children, Jean and Tita, who were always out at play with us. Then there was a Christian barber, who also had a daughter, but she was rather spoiled and her mother didn't let her come out and play with the rest of the kids. Up the street lived the Ionescus. My mother was close to Mrs. Ionescu; they were good friends. They had a house and a garden, but a tiny kitchen, so on Easter and Christmas Mrs. Ionescu came to us and baked the sponge cakes in our kitchen. They had two children, Alexandru and Corina, who always played with us, either hide-and-seek, or with the ball.
In our parents' house, on Christmas, we, the children, used to gather in the summer kitchen: there was a stove, and we took a small fir-tree or just a branch, and trimmed it with colored paper and tinfoil. One night we played until the tree caught fire from the stove, and we put it out and ran into the house. On Easter, the neighbors came and brought us red Easter eggs, but my mother and grandmother also made eggs, boiled in onion leaves.
On Chanukkah we went to the synagogue, and we lit the chanukkiyah at home. Every year, on Chanukkah, my father went to the bank and withdrew some money, which was the 'Chanukkah gelt' for us, the children. He always gave us new banknotes, not dirty or torn ones. I remember I was in high school, and a friend of mine, Ostfeld, had forgotten her rubbers somewhere and she couldn't find them anymore. She wanted to buy a new pair, but she didn't want her parents or her elder sister, who was a harsh person, to know about it: 'Ieti [the elder sister] will scold me and I'll never see money from my parents again!' And she asked me to lend her some money to buy a new pair of rubbers. And I said, 'No, I can't! I only have Chanukkah gelt and it is all new notes!' But I gave her the money in the end, she bought a new pair of rubbers and she gave me the money back some time after that.
On Pesach all cutlery was taken out and cleaned, and the matzah wasn't brought into the house until all the cleaning had been done. If Pesach was on a Friday, matzah was brought in on Friday morning. We spent the seder night at home, and my father led it. Usually it was Ernestina who hid the afikoman, because she sat right next to my mother, and my father had to find it. If he didn't, he had to pay a reward. One of the younger boys asked the mah nishtanah.
My family fasted on Yom Kippur. I remember Ernestina, my elder sister: when she fasted, we were still very young and she took care that we ate: there was food specially left for us, the small ones. I started fasting when I was 13-14 years old, too.
We, kids, didn't go to the same synagogue where our father went to: my father went to the synagogue my mother's parents went to, and we, kids, went to the one closer to our home - it was the one my father's parents went to. But I did go with my father to the synagogue a few times, to the one he usually went to.
On Sukkot everybody from my mother's and my father's family came over to us. We cooked a lot, and I still remember we had honey cake. We had a sukkah, but I don't remember if it was in our garden or in my maternal grandparents'. Somebody, I don't know who, came and built it, and we, kids, played in it. On the last day of Sukkot [on Simchat Torah] there was some sort of party with nuts, wine, syrup and apples in the synagogue; people took out the Torah, sang and danced, and had little pennons.
My mother - who spent a lot of time in the kitchen - always heard us coming home because the kitchen was in the basement and one could hear every footstep from there. She had put a white carpet in the house, so she called out to us, that we leave our muddy shoes at the entrance where there was a mat. And on Purim - I especially liked Purim when masked people came over - we always had a lot of people coming over. Then, my mother used to put rugs and papers all over the white carpet, so that it wouldn't get dirty. The cook baked hamantashen, and sweets, shelakhmones, were handed out. Sandu was the one who usually dressed up: he took a coat and wore it inside out. He did the same on New Year's Eve: my father had a fur-lined coat made for him, white lamb fur it was, and he used to wear it inside out, cover his face with something and go awassailing.
On Purim we always went for dinner to my maternal grandparents, and when Aunt Eva bought a house and brought the grandparents there, we went to hers.
I learnt from my parents to observe all high holidays and Sabbath. But I didn't often go to the synagogue, only on the high holidays.
On Friday evenings the cook baked challah, my mother lit the candles and my father said the blessings.
My parents observed all the high holidays, they followed the kashrut, but they didn't dress traditionally and they didn't go to the synagogue every day.
We also had a Christian gardener, Colibaba, who took care of the garden and planted flowers. He used to say, 'These flowers will last until the first snow!' We had mauve and white flowers - I don't know what they were - and also a bed of tulips.
My mother also planted cucumbers for pickles. And one season, after a strong rain, there were so many cucumbers, that we filled two huge baskets. My mother didn't know what to do, she didn't have jars for all of them. There was a Jewish merchant living next door, Mr. Iossl, and my mother went to him and asked him, 'Do you want to buy cucumbers? I have fresh cucumbers'. 'Yes, bring them', he said. This merchant also lived across the street from the power station and close to the railway station, and all the workers came to him and bought merchandise on credit, and they paid for it when they got their salaries. Mr. Iossl had a big, five kilo empty khalva box, and everyone who bought something on credit wrote his name down on a piece of paper, what he bought and how much he would pay for it, and put the paper in that box. Mr. Iossl knew how to make his business work. And so, all our cucumbers were gone in an hour. I remember he had a lot of cereals, too.
Our family bought things from him as well, because his house was exactly next to ours. If we needed a liter of oil or a kilo of sugar, we would go to Mr. Iossl. We, the kids, loved to eat salad in summer, and it sometimes happened that the oil bottle was empty; then we would go to Mr. Iossl and ask him for some oil: he measured the oil, put down a note, and my mother paid for it when she got home.
Our family bought things from him as well, because his house was exactly next to ours. If we needed a liter of oil or a kilo of sugar, we would go to Mr. Iossl. We, the kids, loved to eat salad in summer, and it sometimes happened that the oil bottle was empty; then we would go to Mr. Iossl and ask him for some oil: he measured the oil, put down a note, and my mother paid for it when she got home.
We lived in a house with four rooms, a kitchen in the basement and a hall that stretched throughout the house; the house also had a long wooden porch. We had nice furniture in the house. My parents slept in one room, and we, the children, in the other three. I remember I first shared a room with Reta [Henrieta], then with Tina [Ernestina]. We could afford a cook and a cleaning woman, who also slept in the house: the kitchen in the basement was big, and two beds fit there nicely. They weren't Jewish, but we all got along well.
There was also a summer-kitchen, a somewhat narrower room, with two beds and a table, where one could sleep in the summers, when it was warm outside. That's where we ate on rainy summer days; otherwise we ate outside. I remember there was some renovation at some point, and a new room was added and turned into a kind of drawing room: there was no bed, just hall furniture.
We had electricity because we lived across the street from the power station, but no running water. There was no sewerage, and every time the power station needed more water, it would close down the water in the whole street. We had a water tap in the garden, but we depended on the power station. We only raised poultry: my father had built a two-storied chicken- coop with a small ladder in the courtyard. We, the children, occasionally played with the hens, fed them grain, but the woman who helped around the house took care of them.
We had a garden and grew a lot of vegetables there, but in springtime my mother usually also went to the market to buy vegetables, when it was too early for the ones in our garden.
There was also a summer-kitchen, a somewhat narrower room, with two beds and a table, where one could sleep in the summers, when it was warm outside. That's where we ate on rainy summer days; otherwise we ate outside. I remember there was some renovation at some point, and a new room was added and turned into a kind of drawing room: there was no bed, just hall furniture.
We had electricity because we lived across the street from the power station, but no running water. There was no sewerage, and every time the power station needed more water, it would close down the water in the whole street. We had a water tap in the garden, but we depended on the power station. We only raised poultry: my father had built a two-storied chicken- coop with a small ladder in the courtyard. We, the children, occasionally played with the hens, fed them grain, but the woman who helped around the house took care of them.
We had a garden and grew a lot of vegetables there, but in springtime my mother usually also went to the market to buy vegetables, when it was too early for the ones in our garden.
The elder siblings usually looked after the younger ones, although I had a Christian nanny from Botosani when I was little, and at one point, one of my younger siblings, I don't remember who, had one as well.
I don't know if it was a shadkhan who brought them together, but I know that my parents had been neighbors before they got married. They married in the synagogue.
I'm not sure what kind of education she had, but she could read.
My mother knew Yiddish and Romanian.
After the anti-Jewish laws in Romania [1] had been passed, he worked as a salesman and then as a high school secretary.
He worked as a bookkeeper for a mill - but not the one where my grandfather had worked. We had a good financial situation back then.