Tag #125579 - Interview #77980 (Sami Fiul)

The town I grew up in, Bacau, had a large Jewish community - all of Bacau's population was 35,000 and half of it was Jewish -, and very active: there were several synagogues. It is interesting, the synagogues were named after the guilds that went there: so we had the printers' synagogue, the shoemakers' synagogue, the corn dealers' synagogue - which was very large - and so on. I believe that on only one Jewish street, Leca Street it was called, there were eight or ten prayer houses, and the Rebe Strul synagogue, where my parents and we children went. Bacau had two large synagogues, and two smaller, aside from the prayer houses. One of them was the one of the corn dealers', which I think is the only one that still exists in Bacau nowadays. I remember there was a chazzan at the synagogue where we went, and a choir of children, aged between 6 and 14, who sang divinely. I didn't understand the lines, but I could hear the music, one of the most beautiful and touching songs for me is Kol Nidre. Even during communism, when I drifted away from religion, I still went on Yom Kippur Eve to the synagogue, just to hear Kol Nidre.