Matilda Werner, Andrei Popper and Ana Werner

This is my grandmother Matilda Werner with me and my cousin Ana in 1923 in Arad.

My maternal grandmother, Matilda Pollak, who became a Werner after she got married, was a housewife. Grandmother Matilda was in charge of the household; she went to the synagogue for the two great holidays: the New Year and the Day of Atonement. She didn't keep the kashrut and wasn't too religious; she did light the candles on Sabbath. In Arad, the Werner grandparents lived in the center of the town, in the house that had been bought by my great-grandparents. This is the house where I was born.

I was born on 29th June 1915. I was my parent's only child. At the time of my birth, my father was already a prisoner. They would take a photo of me every month and send it to him in Siberia. In the evenings, my mother would pray with me so that God could bring my father home. I first saw him when I was five. He came back from the war in 1921. We lived in Arad until 1923, when we moved to Buteni, I was eight. But my grandmother continued to live in Arad.

My mother had several brothers and sisters who were all born in Simand. The one I knew best was Uncle Alexandru, born in 1883, who was a physician in Arad and married Ileana Halmagyi. The two of them had two children: Ana and Gheorghe. Ana died of scarlet fever in 1928, at the age of three or four.