Manin Rudich with friends

This photo was taken in the central park here, in Brasov. I don?t know exactly when, some time in the 1950s. We were just walking, and we just thought to have this picture taken; there were so many photographers in the park back then. You can see from the right, my cousin Izu Glaubach, next to him my good friend Walter Beno, with whom I still keep in touch even today, then me, then another friend and colleague who is dead, Brasovean Vasiliu. I had a small problem during communism with Izu, who lived in Israel. His mother, Roza, was my mother's sister. He came to visit, and he was allowed to stay with my mother, but not with me because I wasn't a first degree relative. I went to the militia with him and registered him, and said that he would live with my mother. In fact, he intended to stay over at my place from the very first night. And so he did for one night, the first one. The next morning, the Securitate officer in charge of the factory, a friend of mine, called and asked me why I caused him trouble. It was because my cousin had slept at my place and not at my mother's. 'How do you know?', I asked him. 'We know everything', he said. I told him he came over to visit and we talked and it got late, so he stayed. He told me my cousin wasn't allowed to stay with me, and asked me to give him in writing a deposition of everything we had talked about. We hadn't talked politics, just things you would discuss with a relative you haven't seen in years. But he didn't stay over at my place afterwards; it was safer that way. I have been to Israel in 1972, when I was invited by my cousin Izu. He was a truck driver, he worked in constructions, and I traveled with him in the truck. Izu was electrocuted while working and died, and his wife, I don?t remember her name, died of cancer. I met Walter Beno after the camp in Transnistria here in Brasova. He left for Australia during communism, in the 1960s. He inherited something there from a relative, I don't know exactly how, but the whole family left, they didn't have trouble getting out of the country. Probably somebody from Australia paid for them.