Eleonora Horovitz

That little face you can see in the photo as Santa Clause is my sister?s, Eleonora (Lola) Horovitz, when she was just a child, in Bacau, in 1939. She went to a state elementary school, just like me, until the anti-Jewish laws appeared, and she was a very talented and hard working girl, that is why she was chosen to act in all sorts of school plays. On that occasion she was in the Christmas play, it was winter, of course, and I, as the elder brother, had to accompany her to school and carry her costume, which mother had washed and ironed carefully. But I slipped, and the costume was all crumpled, we were so upset about that! My sister had a rather hard life because of the war; she was thrown out of school in the fourth grade, so she didn't even finish elementary school. I helped her study at home, but because of the family's material situation, she had to be bound as an apprentice at a dressmaker and then at a photographer. Being an apprentice back then didn't mean that you learnt the job, but that for 3 or 4 years, you were nothing but a servant for the master. She was a kid, only 12 years old, but she had to scrub floors, walk around with her boots tied with a string because the sole was falling off. Whatever she gained she gave to my mother, we needed it for food. And during the war, Jews were not allowed to go and buy bread before 10 o'clock am; of course that after 10 you didn't find any bread. So one day we were too hungry, and she went to stand in line for bread before 10, and somebody recognized her and started beating her, a 10 years old girl, in front of everybody, because she wanted to buy bread. The baker, a Mrs. Teodoru, had to help her, and she came home crying, with no bread. My sister's ambition was to become a doctor. However, the school was too expensive back then, so in 1946 until 1948 she entered a leather school, where she was the first. But after that she managed to go to a nurse school in Bucharest, and she became a nurse. She worked as one for a while, but she still wanted more. So she studied two more grades of high school, it was necessary in order to go to university, and because all her grades were 10 plus [10 was the highest grade in the Romanian teaching system], she entered university of medicine in Iasi without any exam. She made many sacrifices for her dream, and that is why she married late, when she was 29, with Robert Horovitz, a Jew from Cernauti, and in 1960 she had a son, Emilian.