Memory of ___ Rutman/Great Grandfather

When he was still young around his 20's He was a Rabbi in a small town in Russia called Ostrov.

His wife died during childbirth of David Rutman. He would never be able to see his son because he was in school and as a Rabbi he had to be in the Synagogue. He was getting tired of doing the exact same thing almost every day, and so he went to the doctor and found out that he had a terminal sickness and his son being only ten years old and he had to organize for his brother to take him.

Memory #2 Ioan Balaj/Great Grandfather

He was born in Sicily until he was twelve. One of his memories was traveling to Hungary as a kid with his family of miners. They not only mined copper but also gathered cork, and not living a very good life ,working sweat and blood all day they decided to go to Hungary. One of his favorite parts was the traveling on the fairy. He had never been on one before and it was exiting for him. They had moved in a very small apartment and the next day he arrived there he was on his way to his very first day of school, but not of the year, of his life. He had not been in school until this age because he was helping the workers and his family mine. It was exiting for him to meet new faces and be on a playground for the first time. But it was not as exiting for the other kids. The teacher made them help my great grandfather and he was slow and behind. But he always thought to himself that he was lucky that he got an opportunity to go to school.

Memory #1 Ioan Balaj/Greatgrandfather

There was sounds of gunfire all around us, being in a 15inch thick steel tank doesn't break the feeling of fright. I was the gunner on a tank that delivers food to the injured. Not too often did I have to shoot down other tanks and people but there were times when we had to get through the battle field that was filled with mines. My heart was racing at the speed of light and at the same time I had to have the quickest reactions. After I was injured I was the guy who took the food from the tank and drove it up the mountain with a truck. My injury occurred in the middle of the battlefield. All tanks were assigned to go there because we were under heavy fire. My best friend was so afraid he peed his pants and I told him I wold take his spot as Machine Gun Gunner. I was firing a lot and I was even more frightened because I was not covered in 15inch metal on all sides, only in front of me. I had dust all over my face I was crying because I had never had to kill with direct contact only through the telescope. I was shoot in the back of the shoulder, hauled back into the truck and then I passed out I woke up in the injured room and my shoulder was bandaged and that's when I knew my fighting was over. After a long time of being the food delivery person something made me stop. I was down at the bottom of the mountain and I was about to greet the tank but I had seen it coming and it had run over a mine and exploded the tank. I got sick of all this fighting and I fled to Bucharest where I met my wife.

memory of Nura Rutman/Grandmother

When she was just a kid her first job was selling gematogen . It is an extremely tasty sweet syrup that had a lot of Iron and vitamins in it. For her it was tastier than any chocolate and it only cost a santime back then(like most of the stuff). So when she got this job she thought that she could drink all the syrup she wanted and by the first hour of her job she drank all the syrup and had no more left and didn't make a penny. But she had only realized that until people started putting pennies in the syrup jar and she realized that she was swinging an empty bowl towards them, so she actually made some money after all.

Memory of David Rutman/Grandfather

It was a long and painful night, I knew that hiding wouldn't do me any good, so I had to get away. Short on money, low on supplies, and extremely hungry my wife and I were running away from the Nazi occupation of Latvia. They had already taken Lithuania and were heading their way into Latvia, we fled into Estonia and were on our way to Russia (where we heard is safe from Germans soldiers). We were now on the train heading to Russia hoping everything would be okay. I was a child when the Great war ended. But now that this one started I am more grown up and I understand how dangerous it is if the Nazi find out I am Jewish.

Memory of Theodor Balan/Grandfather

My grandfather was just seventeen when the Nazi occupied Sibiu. They had taken all the men to concentration camps including him and his father. After weeks of treacherous labor rumors had been passed around that they were all going to be executed. Frightened to death he was crying. But then again he was wondering whether he would like his pain to end. His father said, Teodur (the Romanian way of saying his name Theodor) your life has just begun. I have lived enough, me and the other old people will distract the Germans while you and your friends will run away. But remember, you will have to run as fast as you can. And he did. He ran up the hill with his friends while being shot at. Some of his friends were left behind but he knew that if he stopped they would kill him so he ran and ran and ran until he had reached Bucharest (which was free of German occupation) to his surprise, the priest that tried to run way with him was there and he had been captured. It turned out that he was to be executed but when they shot him the bullet missed his brain and went through his nose and they left him there for night by the time he managed to crawl out onto the road and be helped by a passing truck.

My grandfather had thought that he wouldn't live to tell this story, but to his luck he could.

Memory of Anna Balan/Grandmother

“I clearly remember the German occupation of Transylvania.” said my grandmother. “I would like to feel that it wasn't a coincidence the sky was dark, bringing a stronger feeling of terror. “I saw depression in their eyes. My mother told me not all of them were bad people but they were forced to join the Nazi force. Some of the people had strict faces other sad, and others were young and cheerful. I had started crying and one of the soldiers stepped out of line to give me some candy and I understood not all of them were bad.” She mumbled with a tear of sadness in her heart. “I remember on that day my mother sent me to get a new clay pot to replace the one I broke on my way home from the store to get milk. The way I broke it was a carriage passed by and there would be two sticks sticking out the back and I would always grab onto those sticks and hang on to them like a sloth barely moving. And every time the pot would fall out and I would start sobbing to my grandmother saying sorry.” She said “Those were the happiest times of my life... on the farm.”