Mendel-Bert and Nehuma Roizen

This is a picture of my father Mendel-Bert Roizen and my mother Nehuma Roizen. The photo was taken in Brunshtein in 1921. My parents got married in 1921. My mother was the first of the sisters to get married among her sisters. My grandmother Gitl was a distant relative of my father's mother Dina. A matchmaker offered my father to meet a girl from Kopaygorod. Once my father, his brother Velvl and some friends went to Kopaygorod. They stayed there until late in the evening, and since a snowstorm was approaching my father suggested to stay in Murafa overnight, in the house of his relative, my grandmother Gitl. My father told her about the purpose of his trip, and my grandmother said they didn't have to go anywhere else because she had a beauty of a daughter. My mother and father liked one another. My father was 12 years older than my mother. He arranged a great wedding party in Shargorod. My parents had a traditional wedding with a chuppah in the synagogue. My father rented a café for the wedding party. After the wedding my father took my mother to his house in Ozarintsy. My parents settled down in the biggest house in Ozarintsy, a big stone house with wooden floors. There were 11 rooms in the house: my parents' bedroom, a big living room and two children's rooms. There were several guest rooms and a big room where almost all inhabitants of Ozarintsy had their wedding parties. There was an orchard near the house and a big yard with sheds and a well that my father had made. My parents kept two cows, at least 20 sheep, chickens, geese and turkeys. My father, my brother and I helped my mother to take care of the livestock. There was a machine for making butter. My mother made butter and other dairy products herself. She was a housewife. She didn't keep housemaids, but twice a week Russian women came to help her with the cleaning and laundry. All I know about my father's later work is that he became a merchant of Guild II before the Russian Revolution of 1917. He traded with Germany and other countries supplying food products. He was a respectable and wealthy man. He had a big house in Ozarintsy. After the Revolution, the Soviet authorities nationalized my father's store and storehouses. My father was imprisoned, but released after two weeks. I didn't know then, why he was imprisoned. I guess the Soviet authorities wanted to get some money from him that way. My father didn't tell us any details.