Tag #127842 - Interview #89861 (Dan Mizrahy)

On 3rd November 1958 my family – my parents, my wife, my sister, my brother-in-law, my niece, and I – filed a request for passports in order to emigrate to Israel. Two weeks later, my wife was sacked from the theater; on 27th November, in the morning, the principal of the intermediate music school called me and informed me – with an embarrassed voice – to prepare my teacher card and hand it to the cleaning woman who was on her way to my place. She was bringing a memo informing me that my contract had been terminated, based on an article that labeled me in such a way that no one would ever hire me again. Some managers limited themselves to a simple notification, like in my case; others called people to their office like in Reli’s case; and there were institutions, like the Romanian Opera, where they put on full-scale union and party meetings in which the applicants were ‘exposed’ as traitors and enemies of the people and were hooted out of the hall – this was the case of the couple Robina, a ballerina, and Sergiu Comissiona, a conductor. Other colleagues told me that the ones who were fired from the Radio hadn’t had an easy time either. Our situation was very serious. We became outcasts. Some of our former colleagues, the cautious or fearful ones, avoided being seen in our company, because one ‘didn’t look good’ if seen with the outcasts.