The photo was taken in the Jewish cemetery of Beszterce. On the left is my father, next to him is the wife of my father’s first degree cousin, Lazar. The photo was taken many years ago, but I ignore when precisely. There is an interesting story about it. Once my uncle’s wife paid a visit at home, and he asked her to arrange his father’s grave. She didn’t arrange the right grave she should have to. So this photo was taken when they cleaned the right grave. He even sent us the photo and wrote us that this was the real grave.
At the age of seventy-five he was already sick, and he was grieved about the fact that he couldn't work anymore. He always worked as a self-employed person, so he didn't have any employment to retire of; he didn't care much about it in fact, because he had means to live of. He was taken to a hospital in Kolozsvar, and he died there in 1978. We took him up here, in the Jewish cemetery.
In case of every Jewish person who dies at home they put the dead on a sheet, and cover him with another; they put a candlestick and candle next to him. The mirror is covered, and they keep a deep mourning for eight days, yet they bury him the next day of his death. My father had brought sand from Israel, and they made a pillow of it. The dead is washed, for this purpose every cemetery has some kind of washbasin made of cement, and the people who wash him say a prayer for him. Formerly there was a person who did this here too, but now there isn't. There was a man called Mendel, he worked at the post, he delivered newspapers. Then it was Lederer who did this for a while. The coffin is made of rough board. The dead is dressed up properly in a clean, white linen, which is sewed just then, and they put stockings, shirt, cap [kippah] on him, which is made of the same linen. And they put on the dead person's own tales.
