Bella Kapnik

This is a picture of Bella Kapnik, the wife of my mother's brother, Grigory Kapnik. Bella, Grigory's wife was beautiful. Their daughter, Maria, a very pretty and talented girl, moved to Germany in 1925. She lived in many countries. She married a Frenchman. Her parents were against her marriage. The bride and bridegroom signed a wedding contract according to which Maria was to receive nothing in case her husband died. It was a civil contract. Since her husband was French they couldn't have a ketubbah. Her husband died at 40. Maria got a job as a shop assistant at a women's underwear store and then at a cosmetics store. She didn't keep in touch with her parents. They never accepted her marriage with a non-Jew, and she could never forget that they didn't. They found her through the French police. In 1976 she sent me an invitation to come to Paris. I visited her. She lived in a small apartment in the center of Paris. It was nicely furnished. She had beautiful clothes. She loved Paris and always spoke nicely about it. She had many Jewish and Russian friends among the immigrants from Russia. She spoke Russian and French, and there was nothing Jewish in her life. Two years ago I received a letter saying that she had got in a car accident and died. She didn't have any children.