Gheorghe Grunbaum and his classmates

This is a photo of my brother Gheorghe Grunbaum (first row second from left) and his classmates from Curtici. In the second row, the second girl from the left is our cousin, Marta Stern. The photo was taken in Curtici in 1933. My mother's second sister, Elisabeta Stern, was married in Curtici. Her husband was called Iosif Stern and had a textile store and land in Iratosu. They had two children: Marta and Carol. Marta has a son who is a physician and married with two children; they live in Cologne, Germany. My brother Gheorghe went to the German high school in Arad after finishing elementary school in Curtici. My mother wanted him to learn German. In 1938/39 the headmaster advised her to take him out of this school because of the war, and he didn't want him to be expelled later. My brother was accepted as an apprentice by a very good carpenter. He stayed in Arad during the war, and after the war, he ran away to France with a friend of his. He started working there - carpentry for exquisite furniture. He was very good in his trade. Because of the anti-Semitism there he left France and moved to Holland. While working there as a carpenter somebody from a Jewish organization asked him if he wanted to go to Palestine. He was going to be taken there by plane, but as a Jewish soldier. I was already married. Gheorghe called me and asked me to call my parents - they didn't have a phone at that time - so that he could talk to them. He went to Israel, where he took part in the Independence War, the Six-Day-War and the Yom Kippur War. He had a small factory in Tel Aviv; he did his job as carpenter very well. He got married in Israel to one of my former students from Alba Iulia; her name was Clara Suzana. They adopted a girl, a cousin of ours, the daughter of Marton, my father's brother, who perished in Auschwitz. She lives in Israel, is married, has two children, and works as a physician. Gheorghe died quite young, when he was 53 years old, because of heart problems.