Botosani was the town to which my grandfather Haskell came as a young from some unknown place a considerable distance away. He had married Taube, a lady of good education and status, said to have lived in Iasi. They lived happily and fruitfully in Botosani for some twenty five years, operating a good sized farm and wine garden. He produced some very good wine, according to my mother. At the end of their sojourn in Botosani a pogram raged through the town killing jews and destroying property. The only unscathed property was the cuciureanu place---defended by the mayor and a company of his guards. When a mob approached the place, these worthies forbade entrance. What magic in good wine!

But for Haskell and his family it was the end of their blissful life. But perhaps it was not all that blissful for the entire time. Their must have been some unrest early on that drove him to Turkish Palestine to head up a settlement band of sixty, in the early 1880's. This was one of the early wine producing efforts in Israel. It did not thrive in the beginning, in fact when they arrived they found to their consternation that the land allocated by the Turkish administration was totally unsuited to agriculture. Sheep maybe. Haskell went to the authorities and persuaded them to change the location. There may have been a few shekels involved in the transaction. Yet fevers and droughts and Arab raiders soon did them in. A few remained to receive subsequent immigrants. Haskell returned to his family to commence building in Botosani. Palestine was not for the cuciureanus. So from the early 1880's to 1907, four lovely girls and four burly boys won honors in the Scolas Israelite. They learned all that Botosani had to teach them even before Haskell and Taube packed up with six of their eight children--Baruck, Simon, Sally, Rae, Celia and Rosa. Harry and Max had already left for New York where Harry had become an accountant and Max found his new world on 7th avenue. You can imagine the reunion of these eight and two.

Our leave taking from the archives in Iasi was one of mixed feelings. We had met some lovely devoted people but we had little of concrete value. Maybe Botosani would be better (happily it was).

We took dinner at the Caufman Blumenfeld residence that evening, where we met Odettes 90 year old mother. Miraculously she is on of the very few survivors of the war years and terrorism in Iasi. We heard how friends had protected her and Simon, who owned the leading pharmacy in Iasi one day and was an employee the next. That's how it happened if you were lucky. Usually the reassigned the owner of a business to another. Fortunately for Simon, there were very few pharmacies in Iasi, and even fewer doctors. A professional pharmacist in Romania is regarded virtually as a doctor. He was essential. Mrs Blumenfeld provided a rare insight into the black days half a century ago.

Early the next morning we departed in Mirels commodious Toyota for Botosani, passing pretty countryside, fertile fields, colorful houses, decorative Moldavian fences and gates, many horses and wagons. In one town Mirel said "this is where the bloody pogram of 1907 started". The land owners in this region, Boyars, were in the habit of employing jews to collect their taxes. Jews were honest, they understood numbers, they were available and they worked for less. Why not employ them? So the role of the jew as money grubber was easy to accept by the simple farmers of the region. A particularly onerous Boyar at the time was forcing the evacuation of some of his non paying tenants and the tax-collector cum messenger became the victim. It's usually easier to kill the messenger than the author.

The beleaguered farmers formed into a mob with weapons of convenience and went ravaging throughout the region. Botosani was on the route.

At last Botosani--announced by a decorative road sign. The town was more than a surprise. Wide boulevards, new apartments, public buildings altogether quite pleasant and much larger than anticipated. Mother's description of Botosani of a hundred years ago left an impression of a sleepy little village in the outback. It might have been. Yet it is scarcely on any map. American express doesn't know if its existence. The hotels are not listed in any guide book. So far as the western world is concerned it is a non-place. And yet, here we found a bristling metropolis of perhaps 50,000. Not until later in the day did we find some reminders of the past, when we visited the old jewish area. Some of the alleys and old layered buildings still stand. The community center that is funded by the JDC feeds 60 to 80 a day in the old quarter. But the facade we saw as we drove into town was impressive. More so was the STATE ARCHIVES BUILDING where a PROFESSOR Tom Huvdup was waiting outside to greet us. The professor of chemistry, a friends of Odettes, had been mustered into service to guide us around Botosani, and in general to assist with the people at the ARCHIVES. The Director did not know Odette but did know the professor and after he had a chance to mull over the letter from the minister of foreign affairs and to question its authenticity and the manner in which we had obtained it, he became quite affable.

Professor Huvdup found maps of the old city. He found the location of the street on which the cuciureanu homestead stood. In fact he found the exact location. He found birth certificates of several of our aunts and uncles, school records/diplomas etc., etc. References galore to Haskell and Taube, but not a word of their origin or where they were married.

We drove out to St. John Street. There was the church my mother had described. There was the huge tree on the cuciureanu property, now well over 200 years of age and with the base the size of a small planet. There was no way I could calculate its size, maybe 40 feet around the trunk which appears separated in the photo. But it had to be massive a hundred years ago. Inside the old church an ancient priest watched over the disintegrated trapping and icons. We asked if we might photograph him. "You must wait until I put on my good robe" he said. He did so quickly, and we were proud to record this genial man of God for posterity. He remembered sixty maybe seventy years ago--when all this land was farmland, vines and orchards. So whoever inherited Haskell's place kept things growing for another generation or so. He remembered a happier time in Botosani. We wandered over the open areas that still remain. St. John Street on one side contains recently build apartment houses. The other side remains open. The address on the birth certificate was where some of the children were born. About half a mile to School Street on the other side where the larger home had been built was where the others were born. All this could be pinpointed from the old street plan.

We visited the old Botosani cemetery. It was in no way as well cared for as the one in Iasi. Some stones had fallen-many stood a precarious angles. Clearly it was too much for the single caretaker to rectify. At one point in the nineteenth century Botosani had a large and flourishing population well up in five figures.
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