In February 1942, Nésia Ciobotaru (Chubotaru) sent an illustrated card from Bacău, Romania, to her husband Shaya, who was imprisoned in a forced labor camp in Romania, on the occasion of his 36th birthday. Nésia and Shaya both survived, but two of their children were murdered in the Holocaust.
Nésia Grunberg and Shaya-Yishayahu Ciobotaru got married in 1928 and lived in the village of Gărlele-Găzărie, in the Bacău District of Romania. In 1930, 179 Jews lived in the village. Most of them worked at the local oil refineries. Shaya was a trader in foodstuffs, and he and Nésia had eight children: Moshe (died in infancy), David (b. 1931), Blima (died in infancy), Frida-Shulamit (b. 1934), Hanoch, Golda-Zehava, Haim and Rivka (b. 1939). The family led a traditional Jewish lifestyle and was Zionist in outlook.
Under the rule of dictator Ion Antonescu, Romania was allied with Nazi Germany from 1940-1944, and the Jews suffered under a nationalist, fascist regime. In 1940, the Jews of the village were forbidden from trading, and as such, people's livelihoods were affected. In June 1941, with Romania's entry into the war against the Soviet Union, all of Găzărie's 92 Jews were evacuated within two hours to nearby Moinesti. They were only permitted to take as much luggage as could be loaded onto carts, and so most of their belongings were left behind. Then six-year-old Shulamit recalls:
One night, we awoke to the sound of gendarmes screaming and shouting as they tried to break down the iron courtyard gate. The clamor of barking dogs interrupted our sleep and rang in our ears. When I woke up, I saw Father wrapped in his tallit [prayer shawl] and tefillin [phylacteries] and Mother clutching the "Sefer Hatechinos" [Yiddish prayer book for women] and praying to God to save us. The gendarmes screamed at us that they would peel off our skin… When dawn broke, the local governor approached Father and told him to take his belongings and get out, saying: "You've dirtied Găzărie enough".
Shaya found a little food and a room for the family in Moinesti, with a Jewish family he knew. On 15 July, after some three weeks in Moinesti, all the Jews received an order to leave and move to the district city of Bacău. They were allowed to take furniture and belongings, or to sell them. Ultimately, because of the inflated supply, the prices were very low, and they received next to nothing for their property. In Bacău, there was no designated area for the Jews to live, and they had to fend for themselves and wear the Yellow Star. The Jewish community in Bacău did its best to help the evacuees. Shaya was taken for forced labor, while Nésia and her six children, the oldest of whom was ten, crowded together with other Jews in the synagogue. Relatives in Bacău helped them out with a little food. Nésia contracted pneumonia and was hospitalized. The family moved from the synagogue to a stable in the courtyard of the synagogue beadle's house, together with other families.
All during this time, Shaya was being forced to lay iron tracks in Lower Ucea de Jos, in the Făgăraș District. Some 300 Jewish men from Bacău were taken there in August 1941, dressed in light summer clothes, and had to wear the same clothes, which had become threadbare in the meantime, during the cold winter in this mountainous region. The assistance from the Bacău Jewish community was insufficient, and some of the evacuees died of starvation and exposure to the harsh elements. Nésia sent Shaya a card, which she embellished with flowers, for his 36th birthday:
My dear, beloved husband, my lifelong friend
Your faithful, loving wife wishes you happy birthday
May we be together for 120 happy years
Until 120
With much love
Nésia Ciobotaru
(translated from the Romanian by Yehudit Kleiman)
During their time in Bacău, Nésia and the children had to endure hunger and severely unsanitary conditions. Shaya was released from the labor camp and returned to Bacău. "One day, we were playing in the courtyard, and we suddenly saw a man with long hair and a beard, a frightening man dressed in rags coming towards us," recalls Shulamit. "My siblings and I hid, and shouted, 'Mother! Mother!' She came out and cried: 'Shaya, Shaya!' We couldn't believe that this was our father!"
Two-and-a-half year-old Rivka became ill, and died, and two months later, her four-year-old brother Haim suffered the same tragic fate.
In the summer of 1944, the Red Army took over Bacău. Emissaries from Eretz Israel (Mandatory Palestine) arrived and took Shulamit and Zehava to an orphanage in the city of Arad. Shulamit missed her parents too much and returned to Bacău. After a time, Shaya was informed that the children at the Arad orphanage were slated to immigrate to Eretz Israel, and he persuaded Shulamit to return there. In December 1947, Shulamit and Zehava immigrated to Eretz Israel on the Ma'apilim ship, "Pan York". The ship was intercepted by the British, and the passengers were sent to British detention camps in Cyprus. The two girls immigrated in 1948, and reached Kfar Batya with the Youth Aliyah. Nésia and Shaya followed in 1950, together with David and Hanoch.
In 2011, Shulamit Katzburg (Frida Ciobotaru) submitted Pages of Testimony to Yad Vashem in memory of her siblings, Haim and Rivka. In 2017, as part of the national project, "Gathering the Fragments", the birthday card that Nésia had sent her husband during the war was donated to Yad Vashem. The birthday card is displayed here.
