Tag #132800 - Interview #78074 (hanna ferber)

Shimon courted me from the time I was 13. In Jelgava he had an aunt - Frau Klauss - his mother's sister. He used to go to her place on holidays. The Klauss family had a little two-floor house. On the first floor lived his aunt and her husband, and on the second floor there lived my classmate. In Jelgava there used to be a wonderful park - at the site of a palace, which had been destroyed during World War I. Children used to play there, and Lyuba used to go there with her relative Shimon. When we grew up he fell in love with me. I was too young to be allowed to receive letters. Lyuba Klauss had a housekeeper and Shimon wrote to her. These were letters for me. When I went to Kirov during the war, it turned out that Shimon's parents were also there. He joined the family in Kirov and came to my mother. I was at work at that time and though he sent me greetings, we didn't meet.

But when my mother and I came back to Riga through Leningrad in 1945, I continued my studies at the English Language Institute. Lyuba Klauss told him where I lived. Shimon Ferber came to me when Mother was ill, when I was in a strange apartment with no money. He came and was so kind - he bought groceries for all the ration cards [8]. We went to the cinema, the circus and the theater. We got registered, got a document stating that we were officially married. We went to my mother and told her that we were married. My mother asked that his mother come to her. 'Children marry without a chuppah!' my mother said. On 17th November 1945 we went to a rabbi and had a chuppah.