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Family
Portraits:
The
Auerbach Family, 1927 |
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back row, left to right:
Steffi (sister) Eda, Herman, Frieda (sister)
front row. left to right:
Moritz/Morris (father), Cilla (sister), Hannah/Anna (mother),
Edith (sister)
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Moritz was a photographer and
Anna played the violin. They were married when Anna was
eighteen. Their first two children, both boys, died not long
after their birth. In 1914, Moritz was inducted into the
military as World War I broke out.
When the Russians overtook
Czernowitz, the townspeople were sent to the interior by
train, a journey that lasted eight days. They would spend
the remainder of the war in Rochlitz. In 1918, the family
returned to Czernowitz and were reunited with Moritz, who
subsequently opened a photography studio. After the war,
Austria was divided into bits and pieces, and Czernowitz
became part of Romania.
Eda was the first-born
daughter, and became especially close to her sister Frieda
who was born just a few
years after her. Eda, Frieda
and Edith all became musicians, Steffi died during World War
II, and Cilla
immigrated to the United
States after the war. Eda and her future husband Herman met
via written correspondence set up by a mutual distant
relative, as Herman had immigrated with his family to the
United States earlier in the century.
The Auerbach "girls" loved
going to the public baths in Czernowitz. There were little
cabins for changing clothes, and all the girls used to pile
into the cabins together.
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