Samuel Feld

Samuel Feld

This is a photo of my father, Samuel Feld, when he was 45 years old; it was taken in Resita, but I don’t think there was some special occasion. Maybe he needed the photo for an ID or for his work.

My father was born in Belchatow, Poland, in 1893, and his native tongue was Yiddish. I believe he graduated from high school. He came to Romania to look for a job when he was a young man, and he ended up in Resita because the town had a strong metallurgy industry. There were many factories and one could find a job as a laborer much easier. And that's what my father did for a living in his first years here. He met my mother in the Jewish circles in Resita, I think. They met, fell in love and got married in 1918. It was a religious wedding, but I don't know if they went to the synagogue or if the rabbi came to their home. It was at the end of the war and times were rather troubled. My parents didn't have Romanian citizenship for a very long time, I think they only received it after World War II: periodically, they had to pay a fee and renew their passports.

In the beginning, my parents worked very hard to support themselves. My father worked as a laborer. My mother used to raise and fatten geese, slaughtered them and sold the lard and liver.

By the time I was born, in 1931, my parents already had a small-wear shop, and from what they told me later, the business didn't go very well until I was born. I brought them luck: after I was born, the business started to pick up. The shop was in the house we lived in; from the shop you went through a door into our living room. It was small, only one room, and thickset with all sorts of merchandise: clothes, fabrics and so on - I think you could find anything in it! My father usually went to buy merchandise at different fairs, my mother worked as a cashier in the shop and they had one employee who attended customers.

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