Lolita Dumitrescu and Cornelia Gatlan

Lolita Dumitrescu and Cornelia Gatlan

This picture was taken in Braila in 1948. On the right there is my sister Lolita Leoni Gatlan, who remains close to me [after her death in 1981]. I am on the left.

I only had one sister, Lolita, who was my elder by seven years and a half. I was born on 1st September 1938. So my sister was born in 1931, in February. I was born in Braila and I totally belong to this place.

Both our parents took care of our education. I couldn't say they told me what to read. I always read what I was required to read at school, so they didn't have to guide me. My parents didn't help me with my homework - I managed all by myself. I didn't have tutors either, like they have today. My sister and I were average pupils - we didn't excel in anything, but we never repeated a year.

In the beginning, my sister attended the Charity Nurses School - these were similar to today's pediatric nurses - after which she attended the Institute for Economical and Commerce Studies in Bucharest, as it was called in those days. After graduating, she became an economist and worked in Braila for quite a number of years. After her marriage, she worked in Craiova as well.

My mother insisted that my sister and I marry Jewish men - I know that she wanted us to marry Jewish men. And my sister's first marriage was to a Jewish engineer from Iasi whose name was Weissenberg. But they were not married for long, only for a couple of years. I went to visit them during the period when I worked at Sfantu Spiridon Hospital in Iasi. Yet they didn't get along well and they separated.

Afterwards, my sister returned to Braila, where she met her second husband, Dumitrescu, through my father. Dumitrescu was a Christian-Orthodox Romanian. But religion is not important in choosing your spouse, what matters is education, social standing, character. What one does is not important, what matters is that one receives a good education. They and my niece lived together in Craiova. My niece's name is Manuela Dumitrescu, and she's also married in Craiova, to a certain Ifrim. My sister died in 1981, when she was 50. She died at an early age, but she had a brain tumor that could not be operated.

Open this page