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Bucharest to Portland and Back L ve was an irresistible force in Romania. It catapulted my father and mother out of that Latinized Balkan country, abandoning their families and his military duties, to the haven ofthe United States. Thus I was born in Portland, Oregon on a Sunday morning, 10 May 1905, covered by a "caul," which according to a Romanian legend indicated that I would have a special life. As far as I know, there were no musicians in the immediate Kaufman or Adler families. The family chronicle before my arrival on the scene was worthy of an old-fashioned movie scenario. My father, Isaac Kaufman, one of six brothers, was born 27 March 1881 in Buza.u, a provincial village and later a full-fledged bustling city not far from the Ploesti oil fields. He was medium tall, handsome, and blonde with blue eyes and a rakish mustache. His temperament was assertive, gregarious, and generous, with natural good humor and quick temper-all sprinkled with hard-headed common sense. He had received a good education in a Catholic school in Buzau that accepted a small quota ofJewish students. He gathered more than a smattering of general education and many languages, including Greek, Latin, French, and German. At home his family spoke Romanian and Yiddish. My mother, Paulina Adler, was the oldest of nine children in Bucharest . When she was quite young, her father died suddenly of a massive heart attack, induced by shock. He had returned from a buying trip to Paris and discovered his shop and home burned to the ground. His wife, Sarah, was so badly burned that she had been placed in a type of glass coffin (an ingenious treatment to protect the burned tissue from infection ) in the house ofa Catholic neighbor. Immediately the Adler children were fatherless as well as homeless. 3 4 • A Fiddler's Tale Louis's father, Isaac Kaufman, in Romania, 1902. Paulina, who could sew beautifully, obtained work as a seamstress in an elegant shop that made clothes for the royal family, and she assumed the care of her mother. The rest of the children were farmed out to relatives and eventually made their way to the United States, where they kept the Adler name. One summer day in 1902, during a briefholiday in the country at the home of relatives, the Abramovitches, Paulina met my father, a young Bucharest to Portland and Back • 5 Louis's mother, Paulina Adler-the photograph that provided a first-class ticket to the United States, I90r. soldier in the Romanian Army. He had hoped to study art in Paris, but the Russian-dominated Romanian conscript machine made that impossible . He was already engaged (by his parents) to marry a young lady he did not love (his family heartily approved of her large dowry). He had been told by his parents to pay his respects to the influential Abramovitch 6 • A Fiddler's Tale family whenever he was near their home during summer maneuvers. Love's uncontrollable power in Romania was proverbial. In the 1920S, Prince Carol began a lifetime obsession withJewish Madame Magda Lupescu ; apropos, England's Qyeen Mary reportedly told King Edward, when informed he wished to marry Mrs. Simpson, ''After all, Edward, we are not Romanians." Paulina and Isaac fell in love at first sight. Because ofIsaac's engagement , the young lovers had no possible chance to marry in Romania. Isaac's thoughts turned to possible escape from compulsory twenty-year service in the army, and dreams offreedom abroad with the opportunity to marry the love ofhis life. I well understood his thoughts and behavior from photographs ofmy mother taken at that time. She may have been of Sephardic origin, with coal-black hair, beautiful white skin, and dainty features - a pretty girl all around. Many years later, I had the gifted Czech artist Lawrence Lebduska paint a portrait of her in Romanian peasant costume, and it is an extraordinary likeness. Mother's physical presence did not belie her inner nature- a personification of goodness and completely unselfish love and devotion to our family. By chance, two of Paulina's brothers had immigrated to the United States to avoid military service and settled in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They had a photograph oftheir oldest sister in their home. A young Romanian friend fell in love with the portrait and offered to pay for Paulina's trip to the United States if she would marry him. Thinking this a great opportunity for their...

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