Dan Mizrahy and his family

These two moments were captured in the same afternoon of the year 1936, while we were on vacation in Timisul de Jos [mountain resort in Brasov County]. The first snapshot is more relaxed - we were probably talking about something funny, and my mother and my grandfather were laughing -, while the second, the one with more people in it, is more serious-looking. In the first photograph, from left to right: my mother, Henriette Mizrahy [nee Schonfeld], me, Dan Mizrahy, my father's sister, Carola Rosman [nee Mizrahy] standing, my paternal grandfather, Avram Mizrahy, and another sister of my father, Suzette Aronescu [nee Mizrahy].

In the second photograph, in the back row, from left to right: a distant relative, then my cousin, Marian Solomon, someone else in the background, then my paternal grandfather, Avram Mizrahy, and my father's sister, Carola Rosman [nee Mizrahy]. Front row, left to right: my mother, Henriette Mizrahy [nee Schonfeld], my mother's sister, Mina Solomon [nee Schonfeld], my father's sister, Suzette Aronescu [nee Mizrahy], and me, Dan Mizrahy - of course, the one wearing shorts.

My paternal grandfather was born in 1864 it seems, in Varna, Bulgaria, and came to Bucharest when he was a child. He owned a small clockmaker's shop on Carol Street. The Mizrahy grandparents had their 'quarters' on Banu Maracine Street. My grandfather still spoke Ladino, but the language spoken in their house was Romanian - without foreign accents, even without inflections. All his five children spoke the literary Romanian fluently. My paternal grandmother died in 1935, and my paternal grandfather in 1940. They were both buried at Bucharest's Belu cemetery, in the Spanish section.

My mother’s sister Mina was born in Bucharest in 1896. She worked as a clerk until she married Moritz Solomon. The ties between the three Schonfeld sisters were very strong. In particular, my mother and Mina were extremely close and this is how they remained until the end of their lives. 

Marian Solomon, my cousin, the son of Mina Solomon, was born in 1921 in Bucharest. He left on a small boat to Palestine in 1942 and spent six months in Izmir [Turkey], until the British let him stay in Cyprus, in 1943. After one year and a half he got to Palestine. He never returned to Romania. 

Suzette Aronescu was born in 1901 in Bucharest. She married Felix Aronescu, with whom she had a boy, Mihai Aronescu, born in 1932. Suzette lived at 41 Banu Maracine Street, next to my parents. She got divorced in the 1940s and emigrated to Israel in the 1950s. 

Carola Rosman was born in 1906 in Bucharest. She married Iancu Rosman and the two of them had two boys: Dan Rosman and Lucian Rosman. She lived at 43 Banu Maracine Street, between the two Spanish temples. The house she received as dowry, where she lived until 1951, when she made aliyah with her husband and children, was nationalized. 

I was born in 1926 in Bucharest. When I got to the 4th elementary grade I was admitted in the 1st year at the Royal Academy of Music and Drama. I was 9 years and a half… I started the 1935-1936 academic year as a pupil in the 4th elementary grade at School no.31 and as a student in the 1st year at the Royal Academy of Music and Drama. I felt very proud! 

Photos from this interviewee