Eleonora Horovitz with her son, Emilian

This is a photo of my sister, Eleonora (Lola) Horovitz, and her son, Emilian, in 1961, in Iasi. Emilian had a really girlish face in this photo, he was a smart and cute boy, just like his mother, who is her brother's pride! 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. Emilian is an engineer, and he graduated in Iasi the autovehicles construction university. He is married to a former classmate from college, Odette, and they have a very beautiful daughter, Ingrid Laura, born in 1989, the year of the Revolution. They all live in Roman now, and they are a very happy family. I talk to them quite often over the phone, though I am in another city. They also like to visit me sometimes, during the summer vacation, when Ingrid doesn?t study. Emilian's wife is Christian, but she never spoke anything against Emilian's religion, Judaism. Their daughter, however, was raised as a free-thinker, and they decided to allow Ingrid to make up her own mind about what religion to choose, whenever she wants or feels like.