Saia Grunberg’s birth certificate

This is my father, Saia Grunberg’s birth certificate. It was issued in Iasi in 1887.

My father, Saia Grunberg, was born in Iasi in 1887. He spoke Romanian, and he studied at a business high school in Iasi. He worked as an accountant and as a proxy for another Jew named Horovitz. I never knew my father, he died in 1921, when I wasn’t even a year old. Everything I know about him is from stories my mother told me.

This is how my father met my mother, Haia Sura Grunberg, nee Schatz: at a Social Democrats club, they were both Social Democrats. They fell in love and got married in 1914. They had a religious wedding, my grandfather wouldn’t have had it any other way: but the wedding didn't take place in the synagogue, they had the chuppah at home. My father refused to wear a gold wedding ring, he thought it wasn’t proper for a social democrat, so only my mother had a wedding ring. [Editor’s note: Jewish women receive a wedding ring at their wedding, men don’t need to wear one.] My mother’s parents weren’t against my father because he was a social democrat; their daughter was one as well. He wasn’t very religious anyway. My mother used to say, as a superstition, that if he had worn a wedding ring, maybe he wouldn’t have died so young.

In 1921 he fell ill with flu, got a septicemia and died. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Iasi, named Pacurari; my maternal grandfather recited Kaddish for him.