Tag #138978 - Interview #100840 (Bedrich Hecht)

My mother was born in 1893 in Preselany. My father was born in Svrbice. Both of them attended the high schools there. My mother had girls’ school, and my father agricultural school. Their mother tongue was Slovak, as in Svrbice people didn’t speak anything else but Slovak. They also spoke German and Hungarian. Like my grandparents, they also made a living by farming. My mother’s older sister married my father’s older brother. She was named Cecilia and my father’s brother was Henrich. They got married in Preselany and lived across from us. My father was attracted to my mother, and he wanted very much to have her for his wife. And he did whatever he had to, to be able to marry her. Finally they were married. So their marriage wasn’t arranged. They were married in 1918 in Preselany. They brought a canopy [Chuppah: a canopy under which the couple stands during the wedding ceremony – Editor’s note], and under that canopy they were married. They had a clerical wedding.

My father was a soldier during World War I. He worked in supply, and wasn’t directly at the front. I don’t know any stories from his army days.