The Weisselbergs

This photo was taken at the main entrance of the house on Uranus St., where I lived with a large part of my mother's family, the Weisselbergs. On the stairs, on the left, is Uncle Filip Weisselberg (my mother's brother), and on the right is my mother, Eveline Marcussohn (nee Weisselberg); in the center, on the stairs, from right to left: me, Gavril Marcuson, holding my little dog, Fifi, in my arms, then my brother, Octav Marcussohn; in the center, second row, sitting down on one side on the other of the photo of my cousin, Laureta Michell (who died at 16) , are my maternal grandmother, Frederica Weisselberg, and my paternal grandfather, Isac Weisselberg; the first on the left in the third row is my father, Leibis Marcussohn; in the center, on the same row, are Aunt Stephanie Weisselberg, and her husband, Neuman Weisselberg (my mother's brother). I don?t remember the others. My maternal grandfather, Isac Weisselberg, was born in 1855, in Targu Neamt. He lived in the places where his children were born: Husi, then Bucharest. He was a tradesman, a wine wholesaler. My maternal grandparents were deist, and they were religious people. My parents were deist too, but they weren't religious. I remember that my maternal grandmother, Frederica Weisselberg, had black hair even in her old age - it hadn't turned gray. She didn't go out and she dressed modestly. My maternal grandfather had 16 children. Only 7 of them lived to be adults - three boys and four girls: Sabina, Filip, Rasela, Evelina (my mother), Victor, Neuman, and Lucia. I knew them pretty well, because they lived in Bucharest. Rasela was the only one who lived in Botosani, but I met her too. My maternal grandparents lived there with most of their children and grandchildren. Most of these seven sons and daughters lived with us, with my parents and me [in the same house], but they had their own apartments. My grandfather hired Italian bricklayers - most of the bricklayers in Bucharest were Italian at that time -, and they added an extra floor to the house; the following people moved there: the families of two brothers of my mother's, Filip [Weisselberg] and Victor [Weisselberg], my mother's sister, Sabina [Michell], and my parents and me. Filip, who was a businessman, lived upstairs with his wife, and he also had an apartment at the ground floor, where his offices were. Filip Weisselberg was a tradesman, a businessman, and his wife, Rebeca Weisselberg, was a pharmacist. They didn't have children. Filip owned a company that sold ploughs and was called 'Plugul' ['The Plough']. He also sold welding devices, carbide, which was used for the autogenous welding, and so on and so forth. Neuman Weisselberg was a chemical engineer at the Zurich University; his wife, Stephanie Weisselberg is still alive - she is to turn 100 this April [2005]. They have two sons, my cousins: Mircea Weisselberg and Isac Weisselberg. Both of them are engineers and live in Haifa. Their mother lives in Tel Aviv, in an old age home. My mother, Eveline Marcussohn [nee Weisselberg], was born in Husi, in 1892. Her education consisted of some years of high school. She wasn't a religious person. She was a rather simple woman, and she spoke some French. My grandfather only sent the boys to college. One of them became a chemist, another one became a lawyer, and another one became an accountant; but the girls never got to college. Girls were despised. Men are the ones who lead. Even at the synagogue, women have to stay separated from the men. My mother was a housewife. She got upset once in a while, but didn't beat us. Neither my brother nor I ever got beat by our parents. My mother made aliyah in the 1960's. My brother and other relatives were already living in Israel. She stayed in an old age home in Tel Aviv. I visited her there and, when I returned, I got the news of her death. She died after I had visited her. She was 89 when she passed away [in 1981]. My father , Leibis Marcussohn, was born in Iasi, in 1888. He studied in Vienna, at the Commerce High School. He looked after us and loved us in a way that was more intelligent than my mother's, because he was more intelligent and more cultivated. He never scolded me and beating was definitely out of the question. He was a literature enthusiast, he could read German, and he had a German library. My father was an accountant and a tradesman. He wasn't a religious man. He had his own business - he sold welding devices and carbide -, but didn't actually owned a company. He worked with his brother-in-law, Filip Weisselberg, for a while, and, after he and my mother divorced [before World War II, in the 1930's], he bought a house in another neighborhood and continued his welding devices business. My father died in Bucharest, in the 1960's.