This is the A. Mizrahy store, the clock workshop of my grandfather, Avram Mizrahy. The sign says that the workshop was founded in 1884, and the address was 72 Carol Street (former 76). The shop may have been small, but the sign was big, visible from a distance: 'A. Mizrahy - house founded in 1884'! In the glass of the showcase one can see the reflection of the buildings across the street, as well as the silhouette of the person who took the photograph, whose identity remains unknown, but who may have been a member of the family.
My paternal grandfather was born in 1864 it seems, in Varna, Bulgaria, and came to Bucharest when he was a child. I think he had a sister, Mazal. My paternal grandmother, Lucia Sara Mizrahy [nee Rubinstein], was born in 1873 in Bucharest.
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 - Moscu Mizrahy [my father, the eldest], Leon Mizrachi [the only one whose name had a different spelling, because of a transcription error that occurred in the official papers], Suzette Aronescu [nee Mizrahy], Carola Rosman [nee Mizrahy], and Solomon Mizrahy - spoke the literary Romanian fluently. It was in these 'quarters' that my father grew up together with his two brothers and two sisters. Both my father's sisters lived on Banu Maracine Street, on neighboring plots, with a common courtyard. 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.
