We went to Putna monastery [nunnery, located in Suceava county, 62 km north west of Suceava, built in the 15th century]. I remember playing there, and climbing the mountain from where Stefan the Great sent out his arrow to find the right spot for building his monastery.
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Displaying 12211 - 12240 of 50826 results
Melitta Seiler
My father never went on a vacation with my mother or with us, as far as I remember, but he sent my mother and us somewhere near Cernauti for at least six weeks every summer.
The financial situation of the family was rather good until World War II broke out. My father worked very hard at a restaurant called Beer, after his owner. He worked very late, to pay for our clothes, school and vacations.
She listened to the radio - we had no TV back then - or she used to take us out for a walk: usually in Volksgarten, the public park in Cernauti, which was very large, it even had tennis courts, or sometimes in the public park of the metropolitan seat in Cernauti. Our poor father, when he was free on Saturdays or Sundays, took us kids out to Volksgarten as well.
My mother always had two or three servants, at least before my sister was born, after that there was only a woman who came to clean twice a week. They were all Ruthenian Russians. I remember the woman came to do the laundry; she boiled it and then steamed it. Back then we used a pressing iron that was filled with embers, which made the iron hot. The laundry was always starched, and I know the woman went out on the balcony and then back inside, to air the embers and keep them burning.
We had books in the house, some religious ones and many novels because that's what my mother used to read. I don't remember authors, but I know she read good books, classics mainly, all in German; she didn't read cheap novels. She went to the public library in Cernauti regularly, she was very fond of books.
We had the box for Keren Kayemet [4] in the house.
We lived in a rented apartment that was in a two-storied house, and we had running water and electricity. Cernauti had electricity and running water, only in some villages they might have been missing. My grandmother used to have an oil lamp when I was very little, I remember that. Anyway, the house also had a small garden, so my sister and I could play outside as well. The apartment had a hallway, two rooms, a balcony, a kitchen, a pantry and a toilet.
They got married in the synagogue, and then there was an elegant party; my father was dressed up in a tuxedo, and my mother had a very elegant silk dress and a veil, and a wonderful wedding bouquet made up of white roses and white lilac.
My father needed a passport to stay in Cernauti, and that cost a lot of money, so eventually he had to go back to Zablotov. But my mother's family made her head swim with what a good man he was, that he was an orphan but very hard working, and so on, so my mother eventually gave in and accepted to marry him. My maternal grandmother baked leika - it is some kind of brownish sponge cake with honey that Jews in Bukovina made for every wedding or high holiday. My grandfather took my mother and they went to Zablotov, where the engagement took place. My mother had some jewels with her, jewels she had from her sister Grete. She gave these jewels to my father to sell, so that he would have money to pay for his passport. But she told him that there would be no marriage until he did his military service, which he had to do in 1926, I think. Of course my mother changed her mind several times in this period, but they eventually got married in Cernauti when he came back from the army.
She was born in Cernauti in 1905, and her mother tongue was also German.
He worked in a restaurant, but he didn't cook, he just knew a lot of recipes for fancy appetizers, salads, cold buffets with fish and so on, and supervised everything.
His mother tongue was German, and he studied in a school for chef d'hors d'oeuvre [school for preparing appetizers] in Vienna.
She married and fled to Bessarabia [3]. She was murdered there with her husband, but I don't know his name.
There were also three brothers: Moritz Sternschein, who was married. He had one son and two daughters, but he and his family died in Transnistria in 1944.
And there was Max Sternschein, who was a photographer in Cernauti.
My grandparents were not dressed traditionally: my grandmother didn't wear a wig, and my grandfather didn't wear payes.
I know from my mother that he was rather religious, he observed Sabbath very strictly, he didn't work; of course he went to the synagogue on all the high holidays, and all the food in his house was kosher. His father or his grandfather, I don't know exactly, had been a ruv [rabbi].
I remember very little about my maternal grandfather, Michael Sternschein. My mother told me that her father lived somewhere near Cernauti, and that he was rather well off. My grandmother - I don't remember her first name - lived in another village, and she was poor, the only child of a poor family, but she was very beautiful. My grandfather fell in love with her, and he kept going on horseback to her village, just to see her, during his courtship. After they married, she gave him beautiful children as well.
They fled to Vienna to escape World War I; their grandmother was afraid of the Russian Cossacks [1].
My grandfather was drafted during World War I, and my father, Iosif Seiler, told me he died some time at the end of the war, it must have been in 1917 or 1918. I remember I once saw a photo of him dressed up in the Polish soldier uniform, but it was lost when we were deported.
About Vili I only know that he married a Jewish woman who was from Romania as well, and that he became a diamond polisher.
Uncle Max left for Buenos Aires with his wife Suzie and his son Vili; they managed to do so because Suzie had some relatives there, and they helped her.
Uncle Bernhart left with his family from Bucharest to Israel in 1947, but I don't know how they did it.
We wanted to emigrate to Israel, we were a young family; my father filed for it, but he didn't get the approval, and I don't know if he tried again. I don't know the reasons for the rejection.
Father worked as the manager of a food laboratory, and mother was a housewife.
My parents were never really over the trauma of being deported. All they thought about was our welfare, and not theirs: they wanted us to have good food, clothes, but my father never thought of buying an apartment, although it would have been possible back then, with a loan.
Erika went to university in Bucharest, were she studied languages, Russian and English.
Life was very hard here in Brasov, because we had to live in a house with some Romanians, and we were so crowded, we had to live several families in one room. We had to share the room with one more family, and we slept on the floor at first, then we managed to build a cot and we slept there. After a year or two the family that lived with us left.
One night, they came to our house, but as we lived on the first floor, we heard them ringing the bells of the neighbors first. My mother knew who it was, so she immediately ran bare-foot and in her nightgown to the cellar. She hid and I had to open he door. And I was wearing a black silk dressing gown, a gift from my aunt, Grete, and I probably looked like a young woman, so the NKVD wanted to take me away. I told him I was still a pupil; he didn't believe me, but I showed him my notebook and he finally let me go. That fright I will never forget! There were people who were actually jumping off their balconies when the NKVD came to their door, they would do anything not to be taken to Donets, so we had a pretty good idea about who the Russians were. The first chance we got to leave Cernauti, we did.