Tag #120261 - Interview #87387 (Rifca Segal)

My grandparents from my father’s side were Iosif and Perla Calmanovici. They lived in Sulita, in the county of Botosani. [Sulita – former borough, a village at present – it is located 35 km south-east of Botosani.] They were merchants in the borough of Sulita, which was a small borough where the majority of inhabitants were Jewish – there were around 300 Jewish families. It was a nice, commercial little borough, all the peasants came from the countryside and bought merchandise here. My grandparents had a store where they sold haberdashery, shoes, perfumes, small ware. They brought the perfumes directly from Paris. They came in small parcels – smaller than a suitcase – by mail, and my grandparents paid for them on delivery. It was Bob Germandre, Chypre fine Cologne. Nowadays the brands are completely different, and they are expensive, it costs millions of lei to buy a fine perfume. But it was affordable back then, you can’t even compare the prices

I didn’t even know my grandfather, I only knew my grandmother. My grandfather died in the 1920’s. He went to buy merchandise in Botosani – people supplied their stores by cart then –, and it probably rained heavily on the way back, he caught a cold which developed into a pneumonia and you couldn’t cure it back then – he died, poor soul. I think my grandmother was around 35-36 when my grandfather died, and it was her who raised the children, she ran the store afterwards.