This picture was taken in Thessaloniki in 1939 and it is the day that i got engaged to my husband, Rene Benveniste. This photo was taken in black and white and was then colored artificially by the photographer.
We had our engagement at my husband’s place and we kept an open house for three days. My ring had a different setting than it does now. At some point, when we were staying in Switzerland, there was a huge dog where we were staying. One day, when we came back from our walk, the dog jumped on me and ruined it. They felt very bad; it was made from onyx, so they took it to their goldsmith to have it fixed.
At another point, I lost that stone too. My husband had an obsession with the pendulum with which you can find water or metals. He read a lot about these things. We lived in a house in Kalithea where there was a small room from which you could go through some small stairs to the maiden’s house. I went up there one day to get a mattress and as it seems the little teeth that were holding the stone opened wide and it broke. My husband took this thing and started looking everywhere for the missing rock. He says, ‘It is over here,’ and there it was. My mother and my brothers-in-law were making fun of him, until he found it where he said it would be.
