In this photo you can see my mother, Haia Sura Grunberg (nee Schatz), with a friend of hers, Rachel Katz. My mother is the one on the right. They were both fifteen years old, I think; they were already attending the Jewish school in Iasi.
My mother was born in 1888 in Iasi, and her mother tongue was Yiddish. She studied at a boarding school for young ladies in Iasi, which belonged to two old German spinsters, so she knew German very well. I remember my mother used to tell me that her mother used to tie her beautiful hair in a pigtail with a taffeta ribbon. One of the Knoch spinsters, who was more ill-tempered, always got mad at my mother, because when she moved, the taffeta would creak, and she used to cry out, ‘Du Fratz!’ [‘You little brat,’ a very Austrian German term]. After that, mother took some classes at the Jewish high school in Iasi.
My mother worked as well, but before she married: she taught German and manual training classes at the Jewish school in Iasi; my mother was known in Jewish circles because of her father and grandfather, who were very religious.
All I know about Rachel Katz is that she later became the secretary for Angelica Balanova, who was a famous social democrat of the time, because Rachel was good at languages.
