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We also lived on Vasile Sasu Street, but not for long, and I don’t remember when. I still know where the house is located, but what I distinctly remember is the other house, the one at 5 Galati Street – in the center of the town, close to the kindergarten and the clock.
We lived on the second floor. There was no one living downstairs. The courtyard looked like the interior of a country inn. The entrance was rather ugly, through an archway, although the place was right in the center of the town. It opened onto the large courtyard; our quarters were the first thing you saw to the left, and then there was nothing else. At the back of the courtyard, there were several small houses, with apartments. The people who used to live there are no longer among us.
So our place was on the second floor and it was very nice. The hallway led to the main rooms: my father’s practice, the bedroom, and the living room, which was large enough to house private concerts, in the company of friends. The house was big and it had stoves. Heating it was a bit of a problem, because there were many rooms and the woodshed was downstairs; you had to climb four steps to enter the corridor that led to the courtyard and from that corridor, you could access the kitchen and the dining room. Back then, people didn’t eat in the kitchen, like they do now; they sat at table in a room next to the kitchen. We had electricity and running water. I can’t believe the kind of life we used to have.
Let me tell you about our furniture. The house on Galati Street had nice furniture, the kind that was fashionable in those days, with Moldova-type sideboards, as they used to call the pieces in the living room. It was some massive, quality furniture, with sculptures and crystal mirrors. We had delicate china, Persian rugs, a piano, a telephone, and everything else we needed. My parents were among the first people from Braila who were connected to the telephone network.
These candlesticks you see on my table are very old. Any Jewish family used to have some of those, especially the elderly. I have many things that belonged to my parents, including a tray and some china. But I don’t have silver. My parents didn’t really think about securing our future, because they imagined their children’s lives would be no different from their own.
My parents had paintings with landscapes on the walls. I am now more modern in taste, but the ones I have used to belong to my mother. At my age, there’s no point in getting new ones. My parents gave their older paintings to the first daughter who got married, that is, to my sister, Lolita. They were all about fruit and flowers, for this is what people used to hang on their living room walls. There were also family pictures. But no one hung icons on the wall.
My mother gave all the prettier things to my sister, when she got married. There was little left for me. Those things are now probably kept by my niece, my sister’s daughter. People didn’t have TV sets back then. Despite all those things we used to have, we weren’t considered really rich, because it was common for all the doctors to be rather well-off back then. We never owned real estate.
The living room of our house at 5 Galati Street had a balcony, which extended along the entire length of the room. In the summer evenings when a family or some guest paid us a visit, we would place a little table on that balcony, which gave onto Galati Street and onto the Main Garden, and beheld the crowd of people who were taking a walk there, because the area was very beautiful.
We lived on the second floor. There was no one living downstairs. The courtyard looked like the interior of a country inn. The entrance was rather ugly, through an archway, although the place was right in the center of the town. It opened onto the large courtyard; our quarters were the first thing you saw to the left, and then there was nothing else. At the back of the courtyard, there were several small houses, with apartments. The people who used to live there are no longer among us.
So our place was on the second floor and it was very nice. The hallway led to the main rooms: my father’s practice, the bedroom, and the living room, which was large enough to house private concerts, in the company of friends. The house was big and it had stoves. Heating it was a bit of a problem, because there were many rooms and the woodshed was downstairs; you had to climb four steps to enter the corridor that led to the courtyard and from that corridor, you could access the kitchen and the dining room. Back then, people didn’t eat in the kitchen, like they do now; they sat at table in a room next to the kitchen. We had electricity and running water. I can’t believe the kind of life we used to have.
Let me tell you about our furniture. The house on Galati Street had nice furniture, the kind that was fashionable in those days, with Moldova-type sideboards, as they used to call the pieces in the living room. It was some massive, quality furniture, with sculptures and crystal mirrors. We had delicate china, Persian rugs, a piano, a telephone, and everything else we needed. My parents were among the first people from Braila who were connected to the telephone network.
These candlesticks you see on my table are very old. Any Jewish family used to have some of those, especially the elderly. I have many things that belonged to my parents, including a tray and some china. But I don’t have silver. My parents didn’t really think about securing our future, because they imagined their children’s lives would be no different from their own.
My parents had paintings with landscapes on the walls. I am now more modern in taste, but the ones I have used to belong to my mother. At my age, there’s no point in getting new ones. My parents gave their older paintings to the first daughter who got married, that is, to my sister, Lolita. They were all about fruit and flowers, for this is what people used to hang on their living room walls. There were also family pictures. But no one hung icons on the wall.
My mother gave all the prettier things to my sister, when she got married. There was little left for me. Those things are now probably kept by my niece, my sister’s daughter. People didn’t have TV sets back then. Despite all those things we used to have, we weren’t considered really rich, because it was common for all the doctors to be rather well-off back then. We never owned real estate.
The living room of our house at 5 Galati Street had a balcony, which extended along the entire length of the room. In the summer evenings when a family or some guest paid us a visit, we would place a little table on that balcony, which gave onto Galati Street and onto the Main Garden, and beheld the crowd of people who were taking a walk there, because the area was very beautiful.
Location
Braila
Romania
Interview
Cornelia Gatlan