Anuta Martinet

This is my sister, Anuta Martinet (nee Rosenberg). This is a snapshot, taken in the winter of 1936, in a street in Bacau. She was still in high-school then and was going sledging with her friends. I made the sweater she was wearing that day.

My parents had two girls and a boy. My sister's name was Anuta Rosenberg; after she got married in France, her last name changed to Martinet. She was born in 1916, a few weeks before Romania enterred World War I, in Tisita, Vrancea County, in the vicinity of the town of Marasesti. My sister was the perfect child. She studied very hard and always got the highest grades, whether it was in elementary school, in high school or in college. She was a nice girl, and had many friends. She liked to go out, to go to parties, enjoyed life. She always knew she wanted to become a doctor, and sacrificed everything for this. 

In 1937, when she graduated from high school, she left for Iasi, to pass the admission exam at the Medical School. Like I said, she was a very smart kid - after all, she had been one of the first in her graduating year! In Iasi, those anti-Semitic movements had already begun. So she was inside that large hall, waiting to be registered for the Medical School. Two young students showed up and started asking questions: 'What's your name?' - 'Popescu.' - 'What's your name?' - 'Rosenberg' - 'Step to the other side. Popescu, go over there; you, Jews, move to the other side.' Among them was a certain Maria Moise. When they heard the name Moise, they moved her with the Jews. But she actually came from a village near Iasi. When the selection was over, the Romanians were taken to be registered for the exam, while the Jews were told: 'You, jidanii, go home. We have no need for Jewish doctors!' The Moise girl started yelling: 'But I'm not a jidanca, I'm a Romanian! I come from the commune of…' whatever it was called. My sister immediately left the hall, went straight to the station, and took the first train home, to Bacau. She came back crying over the eight years she had spent studying in high school. 'What should I do?' My mother said: 'Well, you'll get married and that will be the end of it.' - 'But I didn't go to high school to return to the kitchen. You knew very well that I wanted to go to the Medical School from the very beginning!'

And she left for Padua, Italy in January, three months later than she was supposed to. Because there were many students there, and there were also five or six Jews from Bacau who worked there. A former high school classmate of hers was going too, so my sister said: 'See, Anne Sarf is leaving, so I'll go to Italy with her.' My father said: 'Now, why would you go to Italy? It costs a lot of money, how are we supposed to manage?' The persecutions [because of the numerus clausus] 2 had already begun and the situation of the Jews was deteriorating. But my sister said: 'I'm leaving, no matter what; I'm going over there, I'll do anything, I'll scrub the floors in restaurants or I'll wash dishes if I have to. But I need to go to the Medical School!' And she left on 1st January 1938.