Testimony of Ruth (Lerman) Rafaeli, born in Iasi, Romania in 1929, regarding her experiences in Iasi

Testimony of Ruth (Lerman) Rafaeli, born in Iasi, Romania in 1929, regarding her experiences in Iasi Childhood in a secular home in Iasi; father a tailor; attending a girls’ class in a Romanian-Jewish school for four years; attending high school; the high-school building confiscated by German soldiers in 1940; the Black Sunday riots; expulsion of Jewish men; expulsion of women and children to the police station; release of the women and children; father’s disappearance; curfew; wearing the yellow badge; liberation by the Red Army in 1944; saved from a direct hit on the home and moving to the home of her aunt; joining the Hashomer Hatza’ir youth movement; moving to a hachshara (aliya training camp) in Bacău; departing for Bucharest; moving to Craiova; immigrating illegally to Eretz Israel via Yugoslavia on the “Knesset Israel”; expulsion by British soldiers to a camp in Cyprus; aliya to Israel in 1948.