Izidor and Helen Bacher

My mother and my father were already married when this photo was taken. It is written year 1905 on the photo. They must have been a newly-wedded pair. In 1905 the baby was already moving in her abdomen, my brother was born in 1905, but one can not notice this on the photo. I don’t think this white dress would have been her wedding dress. I don’t have any photo of my wedding dress. They didn't take any picture. As I was so bored by the wedding, so bored, I could hardly wait its end to get in the car and go home. I wouldn't have stayed there to take photos of me. Now I'm sorry, because I had a very nice wedding for my first marriage. My second wedding was sad, it was very sad.

My father had a thick seal ring, you can see it on the photo. It was an even ring, but two times thicker than a normal one. He had only this seal ring and a wedding ring, daddy didn’t wear any other jewels. He also had a gold watch, but he didn’t really wear that. He was very modern, he visited Vienna, and saw wrist-watches there, so he had a wrist-watch too. He had a wrist-watch, not like this one, though this was wonderful. You can see it on the picture, it has a long watch-chain. I still have the watch-chain my father wears on this photo. My poor father died, then mammy divided it in three: she gave one part to her daughter-in-law, to my father’s wife, she gave one piece to me, and she kept one for herself. Ours got where the others, we had to surrender them. After my brother was taken to Ukraine, my husband was taken to Ukraine, mammy lived alone in Toplica, she didn’t live in Marosvasarhely. But she brought to Marosvasarhely her jewels, and they [the authorities] didn’t know her [so what kind of jewels she owned], and I could hide some of them. Like this one. I found it, because I had put it in a bottle, and I had buried it in my garden, that’s how I found it.

For example mammy didn’t have a wrist-watch, but a long necklace, and a small gold watch on it in a small case. It was chased beautifully on both sides. She put it on when she traveled or on holidays. She didn’t want any wrist-watch or jewels. She didn’t like it. She had some, but didn’t wear them. I had a few jewels, but I sent them all to Israel to those who had supported me during all these years.

My mammy attended the convent for eight years in Gyergyoszentmiklos. She also finished two years of I don't know what, so she qualified as a teacher. Of course she had a Hungarian qualification. She said then 'I'll go to look for a job.' She went home, my grandfather lived a few kilometers from Gyergyovarhegy, on the hillside, in a completely Romanian village. Only an Armenian family lived there, and there was a teacher in that family too, who was commuting to Ditro [today Ditrau], to Gyergyoszarhegy [today Lazarea], and the husband worked in a factory, he was a clerk. My grandfather was desperate that a daughter would go to a foreign place to work, to Marosvasarhely or somewhere else. Back then it was something inconceivable. And my grandpa wouldn't let her go. My mother was crying, and she said: 'Why did you let me learn then?' He answered 'Listen to me! - that's how my mother related it to me - If you learnt well the lesson in Hungarian, and you speak Romanian perfectly, here is a four grades primary school - there was a Romanian school in Gyergyoalfalu [today Joseni] -, pay a visit to the schoolmaster, and ask him if he could employ you.' My mother had no choice, she went there, they employed her, and she was teaching there. There was a schoolmaster, a teacher and a Romanian teacher, so there was room for my mammy too, because there were quite a lot of children. So mammy was teaching in Romanian, but not for long, since dad came and married her. And in older times it wasn't fashionable that a woman who got married went to work. My father didn't let my mother work as a teacher, he used to say: 'What's in your mind? What would people say, that I can't support a wife?'