Aleksandar`s mother

Photo of my mother Elsa Mosic. Photo was taken in Vienna, 1912.

My mother, perhaps out of sentimental reasons, remains a very clear memory for me. When she came from Vienna she had an affinity towards the Belgrade Ashkenazik circles, she socialized with her friend with the same name, Elza Flajser, the wife of the famous Belgrade glass and porcelain merchant Benjamin Flajser who had a shop on Terazija and was the court supplier. We socialized with the Flajsers, and the two ladies had the same name like my daughter Elza. 

My mother tried very hard, she was a good bride, she was a very good young wife and she understood it to be her obligation to learn Serbian and she learned it. The truth is she sometimes made mistakes with the cases but today with the greatest amount of love and admiration I excuse her because she never claimed to know perfect Serbian but she spoke it. 

My mother occasionally went to the Ashkenazik synagogue, not because she was of Ashkenazik religious determination, rather simply because that is where her friends were. Mother was also a member of a Jewish women's society, which I no longer know. It is barely felt that my mother and father were from two different, Ashkenazik and Sephardic cultures. For example my mother taught me to say the Sema Israel before going to sleep. She did not teach me to say it in the Ashkenazik manner, rather she adopted the Sephardic manner. She wanted to entirely fit into the Mosic family therefore I did not say Sema Jisroel rather Sema Israel.

Mama suffered a great deal. She tried to escape and hid herself in Obrenovac, then in Loznica and then she was captured on May 9, 1942 and she was killed in Banjica. We were wrong in our estimation that women will not be in such a danger as man. My mother suffered terribly. This is one tragic story among many others from the Holocaust.