The beautiful Etty Basch

This is a photograph of my mother, who was a beautiful woman. I was already born then, and I believe the photograph was taken in 1934. My mother resembled Elizabeth Taylor.

Back then, people didn't have photographs taken very often. Family photographs were rather rare, individual ones were more common and were taken on certain dates, for special occasions.

The photograph was taken at Gheorghiu French photo cabinet Braila.

My mother's name was Etty Braunstein. She was born in 1908. My mother was very young when she married, she was 20-21 in 1929, and they only married religiously.

Back then, the engagement was held at the synagogue, too. They also gave out invitations for the marriage ceremony and party. They married on the day of the Epiphany, on 6th January 1927.

My parents had a wedding celebration when they married. My mother was a beautiful bride, you could swear she was right out of Hollywood, she had a very nice wedding attire.

My mother was a sworn atheist. My father was a very religious Orthodox Jew.

When his parents came to meet my mother and found out she wasn't a zealot, they didn't really want my father to marry her, but then they thought that she was young and that any offshoot can be converted. But the exact opposite happened, for it was my father who swayed.

I can safely say that my parents were well-to-do. My mother certainly had hired helpers around the house. There were times when she even had two women who helped her with household chores.

As a rule, there were many women in our house: there was my mother, the grandmother from my mother's side, and one of my mother's sisters, Tilly, who lived with us until the end of the war when she got married. She died last year, in 2003, in Israel.

This aunt was younger than my mother and I believe she was born in 1914.

My mother didn't have separate dishes for preparing the food. She didn't cook kosher food.

We usually observed traditions and holidays in the family, such as Purim, Passover, the autumn holidays, but as my mother wasn't a religious person, she didn't even urge us to fast [on Yom Kippur].

Nevertheless, our grandmother and our father did urge us to fast. We were more influenced by our mother, for you are always influenced by what suits you best.