Sebastian Sebastien

The photo was taken in Bucharest, in the 1940s. This is my brother, Sebastian Wechsler, in the Regal Romanian Army uniform. Sebastian Sebastien, my brother, was born in 1915, in Bucharest. [He changed his name from Wechsler to Sebastian after World War I.] He first went to the Faculty of Law and Philosophy, and then he attended the Faculty of Architecture, which he graduated in 1945. He chose architecture despite his having already graduated in Law and Philosophy because the Jews were disbarred in 1940, so it was obvious that Law wouldn't make a good career. He was kicked out from the Faculty of Architecture [because of the Jewish Statutum], but he continued his studies after the war and became an architect ahead of me. His fiancée, Lola Gotfried, came from a well-off family - her grandfather had a shoe store on Victoriei Ave. Back then, the shoes sold by the luxury stores on Victoriei Ave. had the name of the store imprinted on them. It was a famous store in Bucharest and her grandfather was very rich. He had a block of flats built at 36 C. A. Rosetti St. which is still there today. At the time, it was a very modern building, heated with terracotta stoves. He had three children and, when he died, they inherited these apartments. My sister-in-law is still the owner of those apartments (her ownership has been officially recognized), but there's no use, for there is someone living there and nothing can be done about it. My brother and my sister-in-law emigrated to France around 1960 and settled in Paris. My brother was employed as an architect - he didn't have his own workshop. Thanks to his wife's entrepreneurial skills, they later opened a decorations and clocks store on a central street in Paris. For many years, this small business brought them more revenues than architecture.