Anuta Martinet in Padua

This is my sister, Anuta Martinet (nee Rosenberg), together with some university colleagues, on a street in Padua, Italy. The picture was taken in 1938.

After graduating high school, my sister tried to continue her studies at the Medical School in Iasi, in Romania. When she was denied registration because she was a Jew, she decided to join some of her former high school colleagues who were going to the University of Padua. It was a sacrifice for all of us, because it cost much, but she was very determined to become a doctor.

She arrived in Padua only in January 1938, few months after the beginning of the academic year, because of the lengthy formalities and the finnancial difficulties, but caught up with her colleagues, and six months later, in June, she got the highest grades! The chairman of the examination committee congratulated her and asked her: 'Where are you from, Miss?' - 'Romania.' - 'How many languages do you speak?' - 'Romanian, French' - she mastered French and she knew a little German - 'and now', she said, 'I also speak Italian.' - 'For you, studying in Padua is a piece of cake.' She had figured that out herself. After all, there she was, only six months after her arrival, and she had got the highest grades and all her fellow students wanted to touch her and carried her on their shoulders to bring them luck - you know how it is in college!

That summer, she came home and told our father: 'Father, I'm not going back to Italy. The classes there aren't bright at all. It's not what I had imagined I'd study. I'm going to France!' We had a relative there, Milu Stormann, the brother-in-law of one of my parents, who had also gone to the Medical School there, had married a French woman, and worked as a physician in some smaller town. Our father himself had spent four years in France in his youth. So he said: 'Well now, it's easier if you go to France, because we've got Milu there, we give the money to his parents here, and he will give you the same amount from his own money over there…' Because he really wanted to send some money to his parents in Bacau, but couldn't find a way, so this arrangement would suit him too. So she left for France, to Montpellier.