This is my father, David Davidsohn, with my stepmother, Estera Davidsohn, and their daughter, Jaffa Haftca. My father was already ill when this photograph was taken, he was ailing, it was after the brain surgery he underwent. This was their passport photograph, so it was taken just before they left to Israel.
My father remarried in 1947. And a daughter was born out of his second marriage, Jenica. I was glad when that happened. And we got along very well. But people started leaving, emigrating to Israel. And I wasn't a minor anymore, I was 18, and I had my own passport. My father, his wife and his little daughter had one single passport. So they were listed on my father's passport. At a certain point they received the approval for departing. And so did my grandmother. My grandfather was no longer alive. I received a negative, a reply stating that my request for departing was denied. 'What shell we do, then?' 'I will apply again.' I applied again. In the meantime, they had a passport, they had to leave. My father left together with my sister and her mother; my grandmother left as well.
After returning from the deportation my father developed a brain tumor. He had been beaten, hit, and, approximately 2 years after he got married again, around 1949, he started having terrible headaches. He went to Bucharest, underwent surgery - he had a brain neoplasm. He recovered well after the operation. He left to Israel. But these operations are effective only for a year, a year and a half, after which the tumor grows back. And he passed away in Israel.
They emigrated to Haifa in 1951. And life over there was hard in the beginning. They had nothing when they arrived there. My father received a job, he worked until he saw that he started having a relapse of the disease. And he died in Israel a year later, one year and a half after emigrating there, in 1952-1953. He died in Petah Tiqwa, for that's where he was hospitalized, and he is buried there.
And the little girl grew up, she went to school there, she got married. Her husband's name is Miha Haftca. He was born in Israel, but his parents had come to Israel from Poland around 1932, and they had 3 children there, if I remember correctly. Her name is now Iaffa Haftca. When she was living in Romania, her name was Jenica, Jeni, but she changed her name to Iafa when she arrived in Israel. But I still call her Jeni, as I used to do. We lived under the same roof until she was 3. Our relationship is very good, we are very close. She calls me even twice a week and, if she feels like it, 3 times a week. And I travel there very often to visit her. She too came to visit me on 2 occasions, but this was many years ago.
