Rudich Manin

This is me when I was 18 years old. The photo was taken here, in Brasov, I probably needed it for a certificate. I went to the normal state school when I was seven, it was compulsory to go. When I was in my third class in elementary school, the Russians came to Cuciurul Mare. I still remember the day I first saw them, in the summer of 1940. They took over Bukovina, Bessarabia and Cernauti, and they immediately imposed Russian in schools, so half of that year I studied in Russian. I can't say it didn't help later: when we were deported, I could already read in Russian. We were deported in 1941 to Transnistria, where we stayed in the ghettos of Snitkov, Shargorod and Copaigorod. It was in Copaigorod that we were liberated by the Russian army in 1944. I was 12 years old when I came back from Transnistria, and I studied two more years in Russian, because Cuciurul Mare was under the Russian authority by then. We stayed in Cuciurul Mare until March 1946, when the Russian authorities announced that everybody who had been deported and was Romanian citizen could emigrate to Romania. Almost everybody left; at least we, who had been deported, knew what Ukraine was like, and we realized that Cuciurul Mare would become the same. We moved to Brasov. After I finished high school here, in Brasov, I started working at Carpatex textile factory, in 1951. I worked there until I retired in 1990. Then I started working at the Jewish community here as a cashier and then as the canteen administrator.