Eva Gora Moldovan

This is me when I was in kindergarten in Resita; it was a state kindergarten, Resita didn’t have Jewish kindergartens. It was too long ago to remember, but I think it was at a fancy dress ball, that’s why I had the nice dress and the umbrella.

I was born in 1931, and at that time, my parents lived in a rented house with three rooms, whose owner was an old Jewish woman, Schwartz neni [Hungarian for Aunt Schwartz]. The furniture was ours. I remember I had my own room, and the furniture was white, and the edges had little black wooden beads on them; I even had a mirror and a dressing table. The house had a garden with beautiful roses, but we weren't allowed to enter it; the roses belonged to the owner. We had running water and electricity, but it was the same everywhere in Resita. We didn't have a big library at home, but we did have some religious books, like the siddur, which my mother and father used on the high holidays. My parents never advised me what to read; there was no need to.

My parents already had a small-wear shop, and from what they told me later, the business didn't go very well until I was born. I brought them luck: after I was born, the business started to pick up. The shop was in the house we lived in; from the shop you went through a door into our living room. It was small, only one room, and thickset with all sorts of merchandise: clothes, fabrics and so on - I think you could find anything in it! My father usually went to buy merchandise at different fairs, my mother worked as a cashier in the shop and they had one employee who attended customers. We could also afford a Hungarian servant to do the chores around the house: she did the cleaning and the shopping. I don't remember ever going to the market with my mother.