This is me in 1943. The photo was taken here, in Brasov, and I gave it to my boyfriend and future husband, Zoltan Menzel, when he was drafted, along with other Jews from Brasov, to forced labor in Suraia. I gave him this photo so that he wouldn’t forget about me! We had been together for three years already, but I thought it would help him remember me better! And it did, he used to write beautiful letters to me all the time he was there!
When I came with my sister, Angela, my mother and my grandmother, from Iasi to Brasov in 1938, the anti-Jewish laws were already in place, I couldn't find a real job: I had to tutor elementary school girls with all their homework. I did that until World War II was over, in 1944.
I met my husband, Zoltan Menzel, during the war, in 1940, in this very house I live in today, just upstairs, in a Jewish club called Ahava. I don’t know if it was a Zionist club or not: it had several rooms, in some the ladies drank tea, and in others the men played cards. They organized balls from time to time, but that's all I know about the club. Zoltan wasn’t a Zionist though, and neither was I.
We got married when the war was over, in 1944. I don't know if it mattered so much that he was a Jew, but I didn't like anybody else. We didn't have a religious wedding, that cost money and we were broke, both unemployed.
