Rosa Olivenbaum with relatives

This family photo was taken in Bucharest in 1936. The central character, Rosa Olivenbaum [nee Rubinstein], who is seated on the chair, is the sister of my paternal grandmother, Lucia Sara Mizrahy [nee Rubinstein]. In the back row, from left to right: Berta Feldman [nee Rubinstein], Jean Feldman's wife, my father, Moscu Mizrahy and my mother, Henriette Mizrahy [nee Schonfeld], Iancu Rosman and his wife, my father's sister, Carola Rosman [nee Mizrahy], Paulina Mizrachi [nee Hurtig] and her husband, my father's brother, Leon Mizrachi. In the front row, next to Rosa Olivenbaum, you can see another relative of mine, Jean Feldman, who was a very famous photographer. 

My paternal grandmother was born in 1873 in Bucharest. I met one of her brothers, Moritz Rubinstein, and one of her sisters, Rosa Olivenbaum [nee Rubinstein]; they both lived in Bucharest in the 1930s.

My parents got married on 31st October 1920. The religious ceremony took place in the fashion design shop of my mother's step-brother, Iosef Schonfeld. The blizzard was so strong, that carriages couldn't enter Lipscani Street. After having lived for three years in rented rooms, my parents, who both worked as clerks, were able to build the house where I was later born; they paid installments to the 'Cheap Housing Society.' 

Aunt Carola was born in 1906 in Bucharest. She married Iancu Rosman and the two of them had two boys: Dan Rosman and Lucian Rosman. My aunt was an exemplary housewife who loved to have guests; her stuffed fish was exquisite and all her meals were delicious and abundant. She lived at 43 Banu Maracine St., between the two Spanish temples. For as long as I was a child, we all went to her place after the Kippur fast was over, and she welcomed us with the traditional teaspoonful of preserves. The house she received as dowry, where she lived until 1951, when she made aliyah with her husband and children, was nationalized. 

Uncle Leon was born in 1899 in Bucharest. Until he left the country, in 1941, he was a lawyer and the president of the Zionist associations in Romania. He and his wife Paulina had four children, who were born at relatively big distances one from another: Emanuel, the Theodor and Angelo twins, and then Daniela. 

Photos from this interviewee