My younger brother, Haim Muchnik, with his girlfriend Tubele, they separated and I have no information about her. This photo was taken in Orhei, the Elzon Photo Studio, in the early 1930s.
Haim was born in 1910. In the 1920s there was a number of Zionist organizations in Bessarabia. My older brother Haim moved to Bucharest at the age of 15 and entered a vocational school. Haim became a high-skilled worker. He also became fond of Zionist ideas of restoration of Israel [then Palestine]. He joined a Zionist organization of young people, I don’t know the name of this organization, and was preparing for repatriation to Israel. In a camp in the Carpathians he met and fell in love with a Jewish girl named Tubele. When he told Mother about Tubele and his intention to marry her, our mother got very angry: Tubele came from a poor family and wasn’t our equal. Haim left his fiancée and moved to Israel in 1927. He got married there and had a daughter. Haim was involved in the establishment of the kibbutz settlements in Israel. In his letters he tried to convince Anchel to move to Israel. Anchel moved to Palestine in 1936. However, shortly after he moved there, he was killed by terrorists.
In the early 1990s my brother Haim found me. He lived in Haifa in Israel and I went to visit him. I was happy to have one of my family in Israel. I admired Israel. What a beautiful country! What nice people: smiling, friendly people, the sea, so much sun! My brother was a worker at a plant, but he has had a very good life. He and his wife have a nice spacious apartment. Unfortunately, he lost his only daughter in the 1980s. She was seriously ill and died young.
