Clara Filderman and her friend Lily Cuza

These are Clara Filderman, my sister, and Lily Cuza, her friend, outside the photo studio, in 1939. Two friends with different hairdos. Most of the girls braided their hair. Clara wore braids too, but before she left with my mother for Paris, in 1939, she had her hair cut and done. She looked pretty. When she came back to the high school, the French teacher was disappointed when she saw my sister had had her hair cut. In the summer of 1939, my mother took my sister to Paris for treatment. They left on 13th July, although my sister wanted to catch the parade [the parade on 14th July, France's national holiday]. While in Paris, my sister bought me a hardback fairy-tale book gilded at the edges, with thin pages and nice pictures. On their way to Paris, they made stops in Milan and Venice. They were gone for a month, but my mother had wanted to come back sooner. From Venice, my sister brought home some gondola-shaped brooches for her schoolmates and two coral necklaces for me. She was friends with almost everyone in her grade, especially with Adina Rabinovici. Her father was an engineer and later taught geometry and Hebrew at the Jewish High School. Clara had very nice schoolmates, but, unfortunately, the war came and those friendships had to come to an end.