Surviving with the few lucky ones the horrors of the Romanian Holocaust being deported with my family to Transnistria - Ukraine during the second world war, we did everything we could to get repatriated.

Our direction was Satu-Mare and Baia-Mare, where my parents were from and where we expected to find and join our family with whom we could not keep in touch during the war. In Satu-Mare we had to face the cruelest reality !

ALL ! ALL ! ALL ! of them (except my aunt Iren who survived with very damaged health) had fallen victim to the final solution of extermination of the Jews by the nazi Germany. During the war, Satu-Mare and Baia-Mare were under the Hungarian administration, a very close ally of Hitler’s Germany.

A nameless little star who shined very shortly on the sky – whose name is forgotten forever – my little cousine who I never had the privilege to know personally – the young daughter of my uncle Jeno and my aunt Jolan, who had to be eliminated being a danger to the existence of the Deutches Reich.

My cousin's parents – Jeno Schwartz , my father's brother and his wife Jolan, were taken from Baia-Mare to Auschwitz. They did not survive.

Anci – Anca – my ten year old cousin, the daughter of my aunt Hanely and my uncle Feri. The dedication on the back of the salvaged picture written lovingly by her parents: a flower amidst flowers. I had hoped to meet her after the war but that never could happen – she perished in Auschwitz along with the rest of the family.

Anci's parents were Hanely – Helen, my mother’s sister and her husband Feri Braun had the same cruel fate. They were taken from Satu-Mare.

My four year old little cousin – Anna – never had a chance to meet her and I don’t even have a photo of her. She was the baby of my uncle Sroly-Izidor Rapaport, my mother's brother and Shari – his wife, my aunt.They were taken to Auschwitz from Seini.

Shanyi Schwartz, my father's brother, and his wife my aunt Margit were taken from Baia-Mare and never returned.

Ella Schwartz, my father's sister, was also taken from Baia-Mare and did not survive deportation to Auschwitz. Ella is in the middle of the picture, between her two brothers; my dad is on her right.

My poor old grandparents who so deeply believed in the mighty God – Rapaport Samuel (no picture) - my grandfather and Leitner Rozalia – my grandmother – my mother’s parents, were taken with the rest of the family from Satu-Mare. In the attached picture, my grandmother is surrounded by relatives.