Fridric and Iuliana Iavet

This is a photo of me and my wife Iuliana. It was taken in Arad in 1950. I have been with my wife Iuliana, nee Simon, since 1946. We got married in 1950. We didn't have a religious ceremony. She isn't Jewish and she was born on 5th July 1929, in Arad. Her native tongue is Hungarian. She too is a dental technician; she graduated from the professional high school. After we got married we lived with my father on Grigore Alexandrescu Street. My father and sister had one room, and we had the other; we shared the kitchen. Life was hard back then. Once I stood in a queue all night to get three meters of cloth for a suit. It was the first suit I ever had. It was dark blue with thin red stripes. In 1950, when my father established that we would go and file for leaving for Israel, I didn't show up, and he realized that I wanted to get married, but that I was ashamed to confess it. After we got married, my father and Alla got their passports, but my wife and I and my sister didn't. We would have liked to go because life here was very hard and it had no prospects for the future. We both agreed on that. My father left for Israel in 1951, and I volunteered for army service because my wife was pregnant and I thought I had better get it over with sooner, so that I could go back home and help her. My father would have wanted to give me a medical certificate to dodge the army, but I wanted to know everything was settled correctly. I served in Bucharest, in artillery, between 1950 and 1952. My wife managed in the meantime with her parents' help. My father had left, but he had left the house to my wife's mother and sister.