Hana Muchnik with her friends

This is me, Hana Muchnik, photographed with my friends in the Day Center in Hesed, I am the first from the left. This photo was taken in Kishinev in 2004.

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 member 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. I was considering moving to Israel, but I’ve always been so irresolute and I feared changing my life at my old age. I feared loneliness in a nice, but different country. Haim didn’t try to convince me, giving me an opportunity to make my own decision. When leaving Israel, I knew it was my farewell to my brother. He died a few years ago.

In the mid-1980s I visited Orhei and went to the cemetery. All of a sudden I stopped still, staggered. There was a gravestone with my grandfather’s name engraved on it: Joiseph Muchnik. Since then I’ve been visiting my grandfather’s grave and the mass grave where my parents ended their days.

I am very ill and hardly ever go out. I wouldn’t have lived this long, if it hadn’t been for the support of Jewish organizations and Hesed. They give me moral, physical and financial support. There is a visiting nurse tending to me. I have many friends in Hesed. I attend the Day Center where I am taken by bus and where we listen to Jewish songs. I read Jewish publications. I return to my little town in my thoughts. I would like to immortalize the memory of my dear ones and I write articles to our Jewish newspaper. I think, this story that I’m telling today, will also help to keep the memory of my family and the past of a little Jewish town in Bessarabia.