Boris Dorfman

This is a picture of me at the age of 11. The photo was taken in Kishinev in 1934. My aunt Chiza Zinger gave me this photo after the Great Patriotic War. My mother Molka Dorfman (nee Zinger) used to give photos to her sisters, and Chiza had kept this one I was born on 23rd May 1923. I was a sickly child and my parents took me to the Black Sea in summer. I had malaria, inflammation of the tonsils, but it didn't keep me from playing with other boys or climbing trees. I studied in a Jewish school, the Tarbut, for four years, from the age of 6 to 10. We studied religion there, Hebrew, prayers and Jewish history. After finishing Jewish elementary school in 1933, I entered a Romanian grammar school for boys where I studied for four years. There were German, Russian, Bulgarian and Jewish children in that school. There were six Jewish boys in my class. There was a period in 1938, when the Romanian fascists came to power, and we [Jews] had to sit separately from other children. However, it didn't last long. We got along well with our schoolmates. There were religious classes for Christians at our school, but Jewish boys studied Jewish religion and history with another teacher. I had my bar mitzvah at the age of 13. It was a big event that took place on 30th May 1936. I recited a prayer at the synagogue. The celebration lasted three days. On the first day my relatives got together for a celebration, the second day was for my friends and on the third day there was a celebration at school.