Looking for my Ancestors
Early in the morning I walked back to the Synagogue Mare to attend morning minyan. I walked along Strada Cuza Voda (Cuza Voda Street), following the trolley tracks again, along blocks that my family would have walked, lived and worked on, the street which historically had been lined with Jewish shops. As I was walking, I imagined my grandmother as a small child, walking those same streets with her parents and brothers.
During the next few days I would meet Israelis who were originally from Iași, who were going to the cemetery to visit the graves of their parents, grandparents or other relatives. The women I met at the synagogue services told me that to find the grave of family members I would need to stop first at the Jewish Center where they have the burial records.
New Helpful Friends
I met up with Sorina and Stefana, two lovely university professors from Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, located in Iași, and one of Romania's most highly regarded universities.
I was introduced to Sorina and Stefana through some tangled connections with my sister's friends in France. We sat at the cafe in front of my hotel, where I became entranced with their friendliness and warmth. Stefan and Sorina seemed intriqued by my research.
Stefana, whose last name is Iosef, said she believes that her grandfather was forced to convert from Judaism, and has been looking into her own family history (S. Iosef, personal communication, September, 2019).
When I returned to Bucharest, later, I visitied the Center for Jewish History and discovered that in Romania there is a directory with all of the names of Jews who converted. (Staff, personal communication, Center for Jewish History, September 2019).
At a later date when I returned to Iași, Stefana and I met in a park for a quick coffee to catch up. There is a photo of us sitting together on the park bench and looking closely, by chance, there is the slight outline of a rainbow above our heads.
Sorina and Stefana wanted to help. They both enthusiastically and generously took time from their work to help me on my research journey. We went to the Jewish center and there we found handwritten books containing the cemetery records dated from 1917-1941. We poured over the books for quiet some time looking for my great-great grandparents Rebecca (Solomon) Marcovici and Morris Marcovici.
I photographed pages of the record books and then the next step was to bring the names to the caretaker at the cemetery to see if she could find their graves. I found a single record of a Rebecca Marcovici, who had died in 1938, who was likely my great-great grandmother.
