Biographies

Marrying someone who wasn't Jewish never occurred to me, and I'm sure my parents wouldn't have approved. But I never had Romanian boys court me, except one, maybe, but that was nothing serious. And I think tradition is good for something, in a marriage there can be so many problems, that a dispute over religion is the last thing one needs.

I met my husband, Carol Ionel Greif, in the social circles in Brasov before I left for university. He was a Jew from Cernauti and older than me; he was born in 1923. He studied at two universities. He studied languages - he knew six or seven languages - and he studied chemistry by correspondence at a university in Belgium. He had quite a reputation with women, but to me he was friendly and he often took me out to the theater, behaved like a gentleman and joked that when I grew up he would marry me.

When my father came to work in Ladyzhin in 1908, he rented a room at the inn. He fell in love with my mother and she liked him, too. Five years later they got married. I never knew why it took so long and never asked them why. I have a copy of their marriage certificate issued by a local rabbi in 1913. I don't know any details about their wedding, but I guess they must have had a traditional Jewish wedding.

In this shop I met my second husband Misha Tetelman, a Jewish man.

Misha was born in Voznesensk, Nikolaev region, in 1914. He was ten years older than I and he wasn't religious at all.

I met my wife while I was in Uzbekistan. Her family comes from Siberia, but she was deported back in the 1930s to Uzbekistan. I don't know why; she was a young girl then - perhaps she had been sent to do labor for some family misdemeanors. I know little about my wife's family history. But she simply saved my life. I was already on my last legs in terms of health, hungry, barefoot, I didn't have anyone. I was sick with malaria, and she looked after me there out of pity. No one thought that something would come of it between us. But it did. While we were still in Uzbekistan we had a son, Anatol, and then we came back to Poland together.

In Prague I met my future husband, Karel Rutar. Life is full of coincidences; Karel was actually almost the first man that I saw in Terezin! But I barely knew him; I'd seen him only in passing and didn't pay any attention to him at all.

When my grandfather listed everything she would get, Emil asked whether she would also get a cow for her dowry. To this my grandfather answered that she wouldn't get a cow. My mother was listening behind the door, and when she heard this, she said: 'You wanted a cow? So marry a cow!' and left for Prague. In Prague she met my father, and married him out of spite.

And he said that it was his ex-wife. You see, Hanka had gotten together in Terezin with this one Dane. Karel gave her a dowry and arranged everything for her; he outfitted her to be a bride.

Karel and I were married in 1946, and I moved in with him, to his place in Vrsovice, where I live to this day.

After the war we weren't well off, so my husband and I both worked. I had an excellent salary; I worked as a payroll accountant and head cashier, and at the same time also hired laborers and clerks.

After the war I married my wife Ljubica, a school teacher, whom I met
during the studies at the university. Ljubica is Serbian. Her family was
from Nis but moved to Pristina after the war to work on the development of
the town. We used to meet while visiting our families. We had a child,
Gavriel N. Navon, who died in 1954 and is buried in the cemetery in
Pristina. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery, together with my father and
grandfather.

Bringing up the children was complicated for me. At home we taught something else than at school, and I was always stiff with fear that they'd say something at school. So I always told them, 'This is our big secret.' And the children were glad that they had a big secret with me.

When the children were small, I worked at home. One relative of my husband's had a knitting machine and knitted for some co-op.

He finished school in 1950, and right after the graduation ceremony he had to join the army. And because I was his wife, he went to the PTP [16] and into a mine. The mine was named Starkov, which was in northern Bohemia, then he was at a sawmill in southern Bohemia in Cerna, and then also worked in the forest in Brdy.

When my husband joined the army, I had no job. The railway was taking on people, and was taking everyone; so that I'd be able to at least somehow exist, I applied and was supposed to start working at the Vrsovice train station, keeping records of wagons.