Re: [Cz-L] From today's paper

"At the age of 13 or 14, I was close friends with Lola.
She used to play the piano and I used to sing. As they lived on the second
floor, the windows were open in the summer, we would ask her older sister
Erna, who was deaf-mute, to watch at the window every now and then,
whether anybody stopped in the street to listen to us playing and singing
the Schubert Serenade: Leise flehen meine Lieder. . . I don't think anybody
did, yet we tried hard to be heard."

Pearl Fichman, (1989 / 2005) Before Memories Fade, p. 41

Pearl was my mother. She lived in Czernowitz, at # 3 Mehlplatz / Rudolfplatz
/ Piata Dacia, for the first fifteen years of her life (1920-1935). Lola was
a neighbor there. Her father Markus Spiegel, had a store on Mehlplatz for
fine cutlery and winter clothing. In 1935 they moved to 11 November Street,
with an interlude in the Ghetto in 1941, when they lived at several addresses,
including one on Judengasse. Pearl mentions the hora in her book, Before
Memories Fade, as well as mamaliga. She speaks of them as both being
quintessentially Romanian, although her life in Czernowitz began in the Austro-Hungarian
cultural setting of her family and her community. Pearl's book tells the story
of her life from childhood in Czernowitz, school life, deep friendships, the
religious life of her household, as well as touching on holidays in
Campulung and Dorna. Then she tells about her life and studies in Bucharest, at the
University, before her emigration to the US (she actually emigrated to the
States twice, once in 1947 from Romania, on a student visa, and once in 1957
from Israel, to settle in NYC for 50 years and then, in her final years, in
Pittsburgh). She was part of a circle of friends with Paul Celan and Selma
Meerbaum in high school, as well as being a lifelong student of history and a
loving mother. My brother Mark describes her attitude towards her early life,
between the world wars, as being one of a paradise lost, and that she spent
 much of her life's energy in pursuit of the idealism and romance that
characterized those precious years. She took joy in the music she learned to love as a
child all of her life - Eytan

In a message dated 10/9/2006 3:06:28 PM Eastern Standard Time,
Sagittaria_at_aol.com writes:

I thought this might be of interest to all the Czernovitzers. =20

Obituary: Pearl S. Fichman / She wrote her memories of the Holocaust
March 10, 1920 - Oct. 7, 2006
Monday, October 09, 2006
By Lynda Guydon Taylor, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Pearl S. Fichman, a onetime language teacher who thought it important the=20=
=20
Holocaust not be forgotten, wrote a memoir recounting her personal =20
experiences.=20
Mrs. Fichman, a native of Romania, died of breast cancer Saturday at Forbe=
s=20
Hospice in Oakland. She was 86.
Received on 2006-10-11 16:00:18