I was born on October 26, 1926 in Gherla, Transylvania (now Romania). My mother's family had lived there for hundreds of years, and my father's family had been there since the time of Napoleon. We were an orthodox Jewish family. There were hard times during the Depression. There were five children in our family, so we often had to wear hand-me-downs and make do with corn bread instead of wheat. My father was a merchant; he would buy and sell things. He was a young and capable man, so by the late 1930s life improved economically and we moved to a new home in Bistrita.