Clara Gatlan

This is a picture of my paternal grandmother, Clara Gatlan. This picture has the following dedication: ‘I send you this picture, to remember me, when I was 66 years old. With love, mother; 1942 May 8’.

My grandmother, that is, my father's mother, was named Clara, but they called her Haia - this was her Jewish name. She was born in 1876, in Vaslui. I don't know what her maiden name was, because I never even met her. I know from old photos that she had two sisters, Pesy and Eufrosine, but their names are all that I know about them. All the members of the Gatlan family were Jewish.

I don't know how they got to have this name, which is their initial name. It's a Romanian name, but, since they lived in Moldova, it must have been the name they bore from the very beginning, because people didn't use to change their names back then; this is something they do nowadays.

I don't know the names of any other ancestors of mine. I know that they were generally located in Moldova and spent the last part of their lives in Barlad. They had been living in Barlad for a long time. The house in Barlad was rather large and roomy as far as I could see, but how it looked is something I don't remember very well.

I don't know if they were landowners, but they did have some land which was a sort of leasehold. I saw a photo of my grandfather on a horse: he must have been either a landowner proper, or a leaseholder who took care of the estate.

I don't know much about my paternal grandmother. Frankly speaking, at my age, I feel sorry I didn't really talk to my parents about my grandparents when I grew up. Maybe this was also my parents' mistake. Now I have to make connections between the few things I heard and what I see in pictures. I try to make the best out of my few memories. My grandfather died before I was born, but I don't know in what year - I believe it was in the 1930s. My paternal grandmother died in 1940-something, when I was very young.