Tag #139628 - Interview #101729 (Bella Steinmetz)

The ceremony was held in the yard. We still had a rabbi, even a shochet, but I don’t recall the rabbi’s name. I was so angry that I was hopping mad. I had agreed with them previously to set up the wedding canopy not outside, but in the office, because I had been married before. I knew anyway that I didn’t have any relatives, nor did my husband, so I didn’t need at all a public or a fuss. They said ‘Alright, no problem.’ My brother lived in Brasso, but they came, they stayed in a hotel, because I had one room in that big house. I said: ‘Don’t come to pick me up, I will walk to the synagogue by myself.’ I was ambling alone very sadly, I walked all the way crying. You have never seen such a sad bride in your life like I was. I remembered my first marriage, and this one was so miserable, without a family… The fact that my mother didn't escort me, nobody escorted me... I was very sad... Not even Hitler could take away the memories. Until this present day. I was walking, and then I saw that the canopy was set up in the yard, and the crowd – there was a lattice fence – was standing there and waiting for me. I got so angry! The person I talked to knew that I had been married. But he didn’t ask me if my husband had been married before. So I fell angrily upon this fellow, that ‘We agreed to set it up inside, so why did you do this? Do you think I need all this circus?’ My tears started to fall. He said: ‘Excuse me, dear Madam – he spoke a bad Hungarian, he was from Regat –, but you didn’t tell me that the bridegroom was still a boy!’ That’s how he expressed it. My husband was a single, he was 44, me 36. I got angry. I said: ‘So what?’ So he informed me that a person who wasn’t under the chupa, the canopy, must be in the open air.