Tag #124896 - Interview #78451 (Livia Diaconescu)

My father kept his store during the war. I think even the Germans bought from him and sent many items back to Germany. It was a store with quality products, which were hard to find under war circumstances. I enjoyed working there. I remember that, during the war, he gave me the key from the shutter and I was the one who would open the shutter, the door, the store. At a certain point in 1941, Jewish clerks were doubled by Romanians [because of the numerus clausus] [16]. I was on my summer vacation, but I wasn’t allowed to walk on the Main Street. I would stay at the store till 6 p.m., when my father would send me home. However, there were times when I came back home with him, in the evening. I had a double too at the store [the employers had to hire one Romanian for every Jewish employee they kept]; she was a very kind-hearted girl, who also went to work in the campaign hospitals on the front; she told about how she washed the frostbitten feet of soldiers and her hand dived into live flesh. One would wonder what those poor men had gone through and why they had to suffer so much.