Kelman Kreimer

This is my father Kelman Kreimer. This photo was taken in Kishinev in 1936. My father was born in Kishinev in 1886. He was six years older than my mother. He finished elementary school in Kishinev. Before World War I my father served in the tsarist army. He had beautiful handwriting and served as a writing clerk. His military service was in Poland which belonged to tsarist Russia then. My father got married in the 1910s after his army service. I never asked him about the wedding, but I'm sure it was a Jewish wedding. It couldn't have been otherwise at that time. My father owned a leather goods store at the time I was born in 1921. He purchased leather goods from manufactures in Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Germany paying cash for them. He also arranged railroad shipments. My father got broke during the inflation in Germany. He kept all his cash in German Marks. When I was small I saw a whole heap of Mark notes in the wardrobe. My father lost such a whole lot of money: he was so shocked that he even wanted to commit suicide, but my mother managed to calm him down. She was a strong and intelligent woman. My father had no employment for a year or two. Later, my father managed to get a job as a financial controller in a joint-stock company. This transportation company arranged passenger transportations by the following routes: Kishinev-Orgeyev, Kishinev-Gonchesti, Kishinev-Kreuleni, and Kishinev-Leovo. My father was smart and honest. He managed to increase the company profit significantly within two months and his salary doubled. He told me that their drivers were mainly children of wealthy parents who had escaped from the revolution in Russia in 1917. Many of them owned their own vehicles. My father had to work a lot: almost twelve hours per day and had no days off. In winter he often had to walk to the town since vehicles would get stuck in deep snow. My father only had a day off on Yom Kippur and Pesach, when he went to the synagogue and took me with him.