It was now September 1966 in Romania and I was a girl of fifteen. I passed the entrance examination for Garabet Ibraileanu high school for girls where I was to be a student for the next five years.

I needed a new school uniform and shoes and school materials, but my father’s salary was reduced more and more. How was I going to pay for them?

I remember that summer how I tutored Zuzu Lamasanu, the daughter of a rich communist family. They were all Party members and the grandmother, who was an atheistic instruction teacher, was always talking about how wonderful life was in our country.

Zuzu was a spoilt girl and I spent many hours babysitting for her when she was small. Now I had to help her with her homework. Her parents were engineers and didn’t come home from work till six o’clock in the evening. They lived a few houses up the street from us on the same side and their home was very luxurious. There was an iron fence around the house and fir trees in front. The living room had soft carpets, heavy curtains and oak furniture. Zuzu’s room was full of expensive toys and beautiful dresses.

Zuzu was short and chubby with a freckled face and blue eyes. She was always full of energy and she wore me out as I tried to make her do her homework.

“I don’t want to learn… I want to play!” she would say.

Although they were so rich they didn’t pay me my wages. One morning I talked to Zuzu’s grandmother about it.
Please, Mrs Lamasanu, can you give me the money you owe me?” I said. “Tomorrow is the first day of school and I need to buy myself a pair of shoes.”

“Wait a moment,” she said.

I thought she went to get the money… Instead she came back with a pair of bright red high-heeled shoes.

“Here,” she said, handing them to me.

I quickly saw that they were old and badly scuffed and too big for me. Tears came to my eyes as I took them as my payment for many hours’ work. I felt cheated, but I was afraid to say anything to her.

The next morning I put on my light blue blouse and dark blue sleeveless dress, but when I tried the shoes I found it very hard to walk in them. I left home at half past seven and arrived at school before eight o’clock. The school was a brand-new two-storey building with dozens of classrooms. The playground was bordered by poplar trees on one side and multi-storey apartment blocks on the other. A portrait of President Ceausescu was prominently displayed above the main entrance.

I went in the back entrance with the other children and walked down the corridor toward my classroom.
Mrs Nadejda and Mrs Frost, two of the teachers, were coming toward me in the opposite direction. They chatted together as they approached me.
“Look, here comes Sfatcu Genovieva, that big-nosed Jew!” said Mrs Nadejda, measuring me up and down with her cold eyes. “How ugly she is!”

She was my former Russian teacher from middle school.

“And look at those shoes!” added Mrs Frost and she stopped me there in the corridor. “How can you come to school with such awful shoes?”

She was the atheism teacher and came from a Nazi family who hated my father.

“Mrs Lamasanu gave me these shoes,” I replied.

The teachers roared with laughter and left me alone. I could hear some of my classmates laughing too as I entered the classroom and took my seat at the back.

It was a sad beginning for me at my new school. The days and weeks went by and I had many problems at school, but I worked hard and the Lord helped me to finish the year with good marks.

It was now the beginning of the summer vacation. One afternoon someone knocked at the front door of our house. I ran to open it. It was Mrs Gheorghita and her daughter Zizi, who was a few years older than me. They lived at the other end of the street. Mrs Gheorghita was small and dark and slightly hunched with a fresh perm. Zizi was a split image of her mother, but slightly heavier. They didn’t usually talk to me and the only words I had ever heard from them were ovrei (dirty Jews) whispered behind my back.

What could they want? I wondered.

“I am a recruiter from the Committee for Communist Youth Activities,” Mrs Gheorghita began. “The director of the vineyard needs workers for the summer… Why don’t you children come and work for us…? You will be paid the same as the adult workers at the end of the season at the rate of forty lei per day.”

She was sent to get me and my brothers and sister to spend our summer vacation working for the Communist Party.

“I know the director and he will pay you well,” she continued. “But if you don’t want to work there we can arrange other kinds of work at school or in the fields… Every Pioneer has to do volunteer work during the summer as you know.”

The vineyard is only twenty minutes walk away, I thought. I might as well work there. I need money to pay for my clothes and school things.

“I’ll go,” I said.

“Very good,” she said and gave me a form to sign. “Be at the vineyard at four o’clock tomorrow morning and the director will show you what to do.”

My brothers Dionisie, Costica and Teodor and sister Aurora all decided the same and signed up too.
The next morning we all got up at three o’clock. My mother put some corn mush with milk on the table for breakfast and made us eat. As it turned out it was very good that she did.

We closed the front door behind us and walked quietly in the dark to the end of the street. The neighbors’ dogs barked at us as we passed by. The moon and stars lit our way as we walked along a country road to the vineyard. The air was cool and fresh and day was breaking when we arrived at the vineyard administration building.

About eighty workers were employed there in total, many of them gypsies. The director, Mr Florian, was a man with thick brown curly hair and a pot belly. He told us to sign in every morning. He showed us how to go through the vines and tie the new shoots to the wires with pieces of flax.

“You must finish this acre today,” he urged. “Work as hard as you can before it gets hot!”

It was a massive vineyard covering several square miles. When the sun came up, Mr Florian put on a straw hat as he shouted orders to the workers. He spurred us on when we got tired.

In the middle of the vineyard was a cafeteria and at noon I could smell mushroom stew with fried onions and carrots. I couldn’t wait for lunch time to come.

When the other workers lined up to eat, we joined the line too. Mr Florian came over to talk to me.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I could not register you to eat at the canteen. You will have to bring your own food every day for lunch.”

We barely made it through the day.

The next days my mother prepared a packed lunch, usually corn mush in a paper bag and baked beans in a glass jar, which we carried in a cotton bag. At twelve o’clock each day we took an hour’s break for lunch. We sat down on a grassy bank under a walnut tree beside a stream. We knelt down among the blue forget-me-nots and thanked the Lord for our food. I was so hungry that the corn mush and beans tasted delicious! When we got thirsty we drank water from the stream.

“They treated you like the children of Israel in Egypt,” he said. “But remember, the Lord delivered them and He will deliver you too.”

An old man who also worked there joined us for lunch. He brought a quarter of a loaf of dark bread every day. The bread was so dry that he had to dip it for some time in the stream to soften it. Then he ate it with much thankfulness to God.

Two months passed and we did the same work every day.

One morning a new worker appeared. He was a young man with blond curly hair and blue eyes. I noticed him in front of me on the same line of vine bushes. His hands were smooth and I could see that he was not used to physical labor. My hands were swollen and rough from the work. After lunch that day he came close to where I worked. He looked around to make sure that no one overheard him.

“I too am Jewish,” he said in a low voice. “I know your father and I have a letter for him. It is about how we are being treated here.”

He read the handwritten letter to me. It was a complaint about the treatment of Jews in Romania. I listened carefully.

My father taught me never to complain because anyone who complained could be severely dealt with. The police could beat them up or imprison them.

“Please give this letter to your father and ask him to make it public abroad,” the young man pleaded as he handed me a white envelope.

My heart beat fast. Don’t take it! Danger! I heard inside.

“I can’t take it,” I said and ran away from him.

I found my brothers and sister and worked with them for the rest of the afternoon.

Soon the end of the day came and we headed for the gate. As we were leaving the vineyard a policeman stopped me.

“Buletinul la control,” he said.

I quickly got out my identity card from a pocket in my dress and gave it to him.

“Sfatcu Genovieva,” he said. “We have information that someone in the vineyard gave you a letter. Where is it?”

“I have no letter,” I replied.

“Yes, you do!” he said. “Give it to us!”

“Someone did try to give me a letter, but I refused to accept it,” I replied.

“Are you sure?” he asked and gave me a quick search.

I walked home trembling. I realized it had been a trap and that the Lord had saved me. Oh, how much I praised the Lord!

After ten weeks of hard work twelve hours a day, six days a week, the volunteer work came to an end. When pay day came I was so excited! I made a list of what I would buy: a brown winter coat with a white collar which I saw in a shop, a pair of comfortable shoes and some warm boots, a woolen sweater, a pair of gloves, a woolly hat, a scarf and some school things. But a surprise awaited me…

Mr Florian paid everyone else and left me and my brothers and sister to the end. I saw Zizi receive an envelope full of money and go away happy. He gave us our envelopes at the very end, but before we could open them he had driven off in his car.

I quickly ripped open my envelope. Inside was only eighty lei, the payment agreed for two days’ work! I burst into tears and I couldn’t stop crying. My brothers and sister received the same and were also very upset. All I could buy with that money was one wool sweater!

When I got home I told my father everything that happened.

“They treated you like the children of Israel in Egypt,” he said. “Not only did you have to work for nothing, but you also had to take your own lunch… But remember, the Lord delivered them and He will deliver you too.”
Then he prayed, “Please give Genovieva the money from somewhere else.” And he prayed the same way for each one of us.

As we shared our potato soup and bread that evening my father continued, “Some years ago, before the war, Queen Maria organized a competition to compose a new tune for the national anthem. My musical composition won third prize and I received a five-acre vineyard not far away from the vineyard where you worked, but the Communists confiscated it. I never tasted a grape from it, but I chose to forgive my enemies as Yeshua taught us. The Lord gives me joy. He will provide for you and reward you in His time. So try not to be upset.”

I did forgive my enemies and asked the Lord for help.

That Sunday at church after the service the pastor’s wife, Ada, taught me how to mend runners in stockings. She showed me how to put the stocking over a glass, catch the end in the needle and rethread it into the stocking where it had come out. She also gave me a very expensive needle which was specially made for the purpose.

After that rich ladies who paid a lot for their nylons came to me to repair their runners. When I came home from school I did my homework, then I sat up late at night and mended stockings. I worked at the table by the light of a small lamp. I received one leu per runner.

The Lord blessed me and I had plenty of customers. For the next years in this way I was able to buy the clothes and shoes I wanted and everything else I needed for school as well. Oh, how good the Lord is!

(to be continued)