Ruth Greif with family and friends

This photo was taken here, in Brasov, in 1944 or 1945. I was 12 or 13 years at the time, you can see me in the middle. The woman on the left is Margareta Rosenberg, nee Goldstein, my father Bela Goldstein's second wife. Next to her there is one of my father's cousins, Iosif Goldstein, then me, and next me there is Tibi Andor, and a friend of his, I think, I don?t know her name. It wasn?t a special occasion when we had this photo taken, we were just out at the swimming pool here in Brasov, Eforie it was called back then. Tibi Andor was a Jewish architect, friend of the family, he made the blueprints for the canteen in our community. I knew Iosif since he lived in Sibiu; after moving to Brasov, he studied at a school for opticians and then had a small shop downtown, but after I grew up we didn't keep in touch much, I don?t know much about his family. At the time of the photo, I was a student at Elena Princess high school in Brasov. My parents, Bela and Paraschiva Goldstein, divorced in 1943. After the divorce, my mother married Iosif Juhasz, my father's former associate in the dental materials depot business, and I had to stay with my mother and him. My father remarried in 1945; he married a young Jewish woman from Brasov, Margareta Rosenberg, who got pregnant. She was 16 years younger than him. Unfortuntely, my father died on the very same day his wife gave birth to his son, Benjamin. His wife was devastated, she loved him very, very much. She came from a very poor family and she had another sister and a mother to support. So Margareta had to work as a laborer at a weaving factory here, in Brasov. She had to work very hard, and she couldn't support them all, her parents, her sister and her small baby. But in 1949, she made aliyah with her family. She was among the first to go, emigrants still had to leave by ship back then. My mother insisted that she left Bejamin behind, that we would pay for his education and look after him, and she almost convinced her. But in the end, Margareta, who still loved my father, even if he was gone, didn't want to give up her son, so they all left.