Dora Struhl

This photo is dated 4th January 1939, and it is written on it by hand that it was taken in Brasso. This is Dora Struhl, my sister. My sister Dorika pursued her studies in Kolozsvar, in the Jewish High School, the Tarbut, she graduated there. Dorika stayed home in spite of the fact that she should have studied at a university, because she was extremely clever; she was the cleverest of our family. Her susceptibility was remarkable. She stayed home, for my father was so old, he wasn't able to run the shop anymore, and Dorika took it over. She stayed home, and sacrificed herself, that's how this can be interpreted, when such an intelligent person should have continued her studies, but instead remained where she was. Well, I oughtn't to say it was a backward, insignificant place, because Gyergyoszarhegy was quite a big village, but it was a sacrifice of her anyway. She transformed my father's shop, which was close to failure, into a prosperous and booming business, so to speak. She saved it from the edge of bankruptcy, it was insolvent, but she came to an agreement with the creditors, and she assumed to pay within a certain period. Later it turned into a flourishing shop. When I was a small child, we had a large shop. But since my father gave people a lot of credits, he also ended up having buyers who didn't pay. And my father had debts too, because he got goods on credit, but if he sold them on credit, and they didn't pay for them, my father didn't have means for paying his debts. As a result, he was close to bankruptcy, but Dorika saved him. First, she didn't sell goods on credit anymore; she sold the merchandise only against cash. Besides she introduced the 'currents.' Currents were things that were much in demand; she made every endeavor to have these on stock all the time, and above all she sold them a little cheaper than others. She was traveling and purchasing things all the time, she was extremely busy, and thus she improved the business. Before deportation we had managed to recoup the losses quite well.