Tag #125209 - Interview #89859 (Estera Sava)

We went through many hardships indeed! Our closest neighbor kicked us out of our home! This neighbor, named Blaga, a very good friend of ours, had served as a warrant officer or something in the army, but he now worked in a factory. He came to us and told my father: ‘You are to evacuate the house until tomorrow night!’ My father got frightened, as you can imagine. ‘I am to do what?’ It was the fall of 1939, and the winter was close. We paid rent and our landlord – in those days, houses were privately owned, not State-owned – didn’t have the courage to stand up for us. My father went out and came across an acquaintance of his who worked for CFR [Caile Ferate Romane, the national railroad company]. He wasn’t a clerk; he worked on rolling stock, but he wasn’t a train conductor either – I don’t know what he did exactly. So this man saw my father and asked him: ‘Mr. Rosenberg, what is wrong with you, why do you look so sad?’ – ‘Well, if you only knew what’s on my mind! I feel like throwing myself in the Bistrita River! I don’t know what to do!’ – ‘But what happened?’ And my father told him everything. ‘Relax,’ said the man, ‘stop tormenting yourself. I’ll tell you what. I’m going to let you stay at my place.’ He didn’t have children. ‘My wife and I will move to my mother-in-law’s! That’s it; I’ll come by your place tomorrow morning to give you a hand.’ My father only knew that man, they weren’t close friends. But he was a real human being! Of course, we could only pack the things that our neighbor let us pack, not what we wanted! And so we moved on Postei St., paying rent to that railroad employee. We stayed there during the war.