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This woman here is my beautiful grandmother, Estera Goldsmann, when she was in her 30s I think. The photo was taken in Brasov I guess. I still wear today the earings she wears in this photo; they are a family heritage.
My maternal grandmother was born in the 1880s in Turches, in one of the seven villages that now form Sacele. Her husband, Bernard Goldsmann, had died when she was still young, and she never remarried. My grandmother lived in Brasov when I knew her. She lived in a rented house, she never owned one. My grandmother shared a courtyard with several other tenants. There were no Jews there, but she was very esteemed all the same. She worked very hard. She had a store and it was open from morning until late in the evening. She lived in the same house where she had her shop; from the shop you could go into the living room of the house, and she occupied the other two rooms of the house, each with separate entries. She also had a kitchen and a bathroom. She sold several delicacies in her shop, sausages and other meat products, chocolate, liquors. And she was in charge of everything: the stocks, bookkeeping, selling. She was a very energetic and agile woman and she had no help. She didn't have time to breed animals or grow vegetables; she was too busy with the shop. For as long as I knew her, my grandmother never had a vacation. She couldn't leave the store; she didn't want to lose her clients.
When we moved from Sibiu to Brasov in 1940, we lived with her for a while, until we found our own place. I liked to stay around my grandmother in her shop; it was usually pretty crowded because it was very well located, and her business was going well. She was a bit severe with me. I remember I used to be afraid of her, but she was one amazing woman. I had my own two favorite delicacies in the shop: the Sibiu salami, which had a special flavor and taste, and the milk chocolate. I think my grandmother brought her merchandise, especially the chocolate, all the way from Hungary. Of course the shop wasn't kosher; she sold pork products as well.
During the legionary regime, the shop and house were taken away from her, and then my grandmother rented a place, a house on Lupeni Street, with six rooms, each with a separate entrance. She kept a room for herself and rented out all the others, and that's what she lived from. She died in the 1970s, and she was buried in the Jewish cemetery here, in Brasov.
