On the morning of July 6th we all met for breakfast at the hotel we stayed in, The Ambassador Hotel. The breakfast was so yummy and it reminded me of the Saturday mornings special breakfast we used to have at my home when I grew up. It's one of the most memorable times of my life, the Sat morning breakfast, filled with different types of cheeses, eggs, variety of fruits and vegetables. I remember my dad will wake up early and prepare the meal for all of us. Sometimes we all will make it together. And we always laughed at the table. This breakfast rocked! Everything was so yummy!
We had no Idea what is going to embark on us a little bit later.
We finished our breakfast and went out to meet our personal tour guide and bus driver for this trip, Daniel Saraev. We knew he is a great tour guide because he was hand picked carefully by my brother Avi, that planed this trip and researched for a long time and put many hours into finding the best. In fact he was so impressed by him that it was Daniel or no one else to be the one to show us Romania. And after knowing him for 10 days I can easily say that he is THE BEST!!! And we will have not have the same experience in Romania without our dearest Daniel. I will write about him a little later in the blog. We love you Daniel!
So our first stop was to go and see where my father and my aunt Stella, Uncle David and My grandmother Betty lived during the war. I always heard stories from my father, growing up about how hard his life was growing up during world war II and how poor they were.His father got taken to concentration camp for hard labor. My grandmother got left alone to raise 3 kids on her own. My father used to describe his home as a wooden kind of a cabin underground. The only one extra room next to their room was a place to store pieces of wood for fire. They had no electricity, a couple of beds and a table with a candle light lamp. Thats all they had. We weren't sure if we are going to find anything or maybe the place got torn down and rebuild. We had no Idea what we are going to find.Nothing would prepare us for what we saw when we arrived there. At first we looked through the green gate and no one was there. Finally a young man open the gate for us. It was a bit overwhelming for him since we arrived as such a big group. He wouldn't let us in. Stella my aunt bagged him and said that she was born here and we came from two different parts of the world to see her home where she grew up. Out tour guide Daniel tried to talk to him also.Finally after a lot of tears and a lot of convincing he called his wife. My mom told me that many years ago she came here with my father and there was a little girl living in this place. Well, this little girl is now the guys wife and she told him to let us in. Excited, emotional and nervous, we all walked in not sure what to expect. Like I said before, nothing would have prepared us for what we saw. It was a like rats living underground. Im getting teary just thinking of it right now. It was just so sad to see how they lived for so many years. On the other hand it was world war II and at least they had a place to be and they haven't been taken to concentration camps. They stayed alive. Those children today are called the lost children in terms of the war. I met a few of the lost children when I last went to Israel for my father's funeral a few months ago, such nice people that went through so much. Im so happy we were able to take Stella and my mom there, so they can close a circle in their lives now. Both my father and Stella grew up with nothing and ended up the richest people alive, they have a beautiful family. And they are also the most generous people I know. I asked Stella what did she feel? And she said it made her feel very sad it kind of traumatized her. But also she said they grew up happy and didn't feel that it was small, It was their home.Here is the very emotional video I took of my family finding their childhood home.
