My grandfather was the one in the family who regularly attended synagogue. He went every morning, of course, on Fridays and on Shabbat... I don't believe he insisted on our coming, but we went in the first years as well... my father, my mother, my sister, and I.
To which synagogue?
The Orthodox one in Iosefin. It was crowded on holidays, with many people in the courtyard. Grandfather had his seat, we didn't have reserved seats.
When my father was in labour camps, we were actually very alone. Jews were not allowed to join the army and were taken to forced labour camps. My mother told me that we had some Romanian neighbours - may their memory be blessed - named Lucica and Ioachim Cârloabă. Cârloabă Ioachim was a forestry engineer. Lucica was a beautiful woman, a housewife. When the Germans arrived, they posted signs on the houses that were Jewish property, and later requisitioned them. Some German soldiers entered and said: “We need this house; German soldiers will stay here. You have two hours, at the most, to get everything out."
My mother didn't even know where to start and what to do. “They are throwing us out on the street”, she sobbed to Lucica. -“They won’t throw you out on the street, you come to us.” Lucica and my mother removed everything they could from our home, and we moved to the Cârloabă family, where we stayed for months. They had no children. When my sister and I got sick with whooping cough, Lucica called a taxi. So it is that I travelled in a taxi where, when the driver wanted to turn on the headlights, he stopped, poured water over the carbide, which would then form acetylene gas. He lit it with a match and obtained a flame that acted as a headlight. In such a taxi, we went up to Semenic, where the Cârloabă family had a villa, a cottage.
