[Cz-L] From Florida, etc.

Dear All,
Have been in Miami not so long ago, and met Ruth Gold, at last. I read
her book about 10 years ago ( in English) and her traumatic experience
made an incredible impact on me, it stays on until today. It was only
her youth which made her survive the most horrible trauma of losing her
whole family practically in front of her, in Transnistria. It was only
her youth which gave her the strength to continue, to start a new life.
After much unrest, in the post-war years, then a camp in Cyprus
(another camp!) emigration to Israel. She became a nurse which meant,
to be able to help others, to do something good after so much evil she
had wittnessed as a child, in the death camp of Bershad.
In the meanwhile her book has been translated in several other languages
besides English, also Hebrew, Romanian and Spanish and also German. I am
trying to promote her book in Germany and hope to have some success.
I highly recommend it.
By the way, as Cornel rightly says, Ruth's cookbook has the most
delicious recipies, i.e. Schmettentorte, which I wonder if it is not THE
"real Czernowitz speciality", not having met anything similar in any
other country. I too, got such recipies for this cake from my aunts.

In Florida I also met Sascha Wolloch. It is not easy to meet an almost
"stranger", for the first time, but we found out very soon that there
were lots of things we had in common, first of all the Czernowitz
connection, then the Romanian language and our youth spent in Romania.
Sascha's father had helped some members of my family, and of my
husband's family, to leave Romania after the war by issuing visas and
passports to them!

My uncle Mocca who is at present in Florida was about 18 when he was
taken to go to "munca". Two years later, he was freed and together with
the other young" workers" went directly to Bucharest, since they were
afraid of returning to Czernowitz( least they would be taken away again
by the Russians). My mother, who had been in a camp at Jedenitz, and
had fled Czernowitz in 1944, was in Bucharest and went daily to the
Jewish Community, where there were lists of persons coming, and one day,
at last, she read her brother's name. She can never forget that day and
the joy in her heart.
Gabriele

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