The man on the left smoking a cigarette is Marcu Soifer, my uncle who lived in Grenoble; next to him is his friend, the physician Rapaport who visited him in 1937 for the exposition in Paris. So this photograph was taken in Paris in 1937. Doctor Rapaport was a family friend, they had been neighbors in Bucecea; he too is dead, he lived and was buried in Botosani.
My mother had two older brothers, Nathan and Marcu, and a younger sister, Ana. Their actual name was Soifer, and they took the name of Safir. But officially they never changed their name.
Marcu Soifer lived in Grenoble, France. He went to France in order to study, he graduated the Commercial Academy and settled there, he had a job there. He used to come to Romania every now and then. The Germans shot him. The people he lived with loved him very much, they were older French Catholics and they loved him as if he were their own son. And these hosts offered him a hiding place during World War II, they kept him there, protected him all the time, but they couldn't hide him towards the end of the war. German soldiers took him out of the house and shot him.
