Haia Sura Grunberg with her high school friend Rachel Katz

Haia Sura Grunberg with her high school friend Rachel Katz

In this photo you can see my mother, Haia Sura Grunberg (nee Schatz), with a friend of hers, Rachel Katz. My mother is the one on the right. They were both fifteen years old, I think; they were already attending the Jewish school in Iasi.

My mother was born in 1888 in Iasi, and her mother tongue was Yiddish. She studied at a boarding school for young ladies in Iasi, which belonged to two old German spinsters, so she knew German very well. I remember my mother used to tell me that her mother used to tie her beautiful hair in a pigtail with a taffeta ribbon. One of the Knoch spinsters, who was more ill-tempered, always got mad at my mother, because when she moved, the taffeta would creak, and she used to cry out, ‘Du Fratz!’ [‘You little brat,’ a very Austrian German term]. After that, mother took some classes at the Jewish high school in Iasi.

My mother worked as well, but before she married: she taught German and manual training classes at the Jewish school in Iasi; my mother was known in Jewish circles because of her father and grandfather, who were very religious.

All I know about Rachel Katz is that she later became the secretary for Angelica Balanova, who was a famous social democrat of the time, because Rachel was good at languages.

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