Fulop Grossmann with Jews from Des

This was some sort of gathering, Jews from Des are sitting at the table, this must have been in 1945 or 1946, after they came home from deportation. I don’t know all of them, my husband Fulop Grossmann is there too, that’s why I kept this photo. My husband is the one who is standing in center, behind that boy. The person sitting on the left side is Hersi Samuel, next to him is his sister, the fifth from left, before the boy is Edit Horak.

Mine too was an arranged marriage. My husband was married before the war, but one and a half year passed, and his wife [Anna Grossmann, nee Mandel] didn't return. He had a friend, who was a very good acquaintance to us, he was a very good friend to our family, and he told him: 'Annus didn't come back, I should get married. Isn't there a girl in Nagyenyed, do you know anybody?' 'Oh there is, of course there is.' 'What kind of girl is she?' He says: 'She comes from a religious family.' 'And is she working?' 'Of course, he says, tailoring - my husband was a tailor too -, she learnt the trade at her father's. And she works for everybody in the town. She's a skilful girl, clean, industrious; come and see.' So he came to Nagyenyed, that's how I met him. That's how things were among Jews. Today it's ridiculous. My husband came, I can still picture him… At that time there were more young people in Nagyenyed, and I went to the social club, we were preparing a performance, a ball, a gathering. And mammy came and said: 'Edit, come home, somebody came, a visitor.' 'Who? - I said - I won't go.' She says: 'You must come; what should I tell him, that you don't want to come, what would that look like?' This happened in May 1946, and we got married in autumn. Daddy liked him a lot. Daddy said: 'Edit, you shouldn't marry no matter whom. You should marry a man who is clever, who is a good expert, has a good profession, has a workshop, is proficient in tailoring; look how wonderful his suit is, he's a great expert, he says, you should marry this man, there is no reason to be choosy.' My husband was quite well of already at that time, well, I thought, dad was right indeed.

We organized the wedding in Nagyenyed, it was a usual wedding, with rabbi, with chupa, my husband broke the glass, they said: 'Mazel tov'. I had a wedding dress, a white one, with a veil, my sister brought it in Marosujvar from a relative who was already married, and it suited me perfectly. We didn't take any photos, it wasn't fashionable then. We organized something [a wedding], but the situation was very difficult at that time, one couldn't buy anything after the war. But we had cabbage, we had meat-soup. We didn't have cookies, because there wasn't any sugar. We made snow croissants, it didn't need sugar. And there were a lot of grapes, because we had a Hungarian neighbor called Csaszar - we were on very good terms with that Csaszar family -, and he brought a huge wastebasket full of grapes - oh, but it was very good -, and he brought some delicious wine. That was all.

After the war my husband inherited the house of his brother-in-law, of Mihaly Katz. We lived there, we had a tailor's workshop too, a very elegant one, and we had a little textile warehouse. My husband was one of the best tailors in Des, and even so we were left with nothing. The communist regime came, we had to close the workshop, and they made my husband deputy mayor, in 1949, but only for a few months. He was a very honest man, he didn't come home, he was at the town hall day and night. And he was the first they kicked out. They said he was Zionist, they expelled him from the party too. He was member to the labor Zionist organization, the Hashomer Hatzair. There were several Zionist organizations, right-wing, left-wing, this was a left-wing Zionist organization, a workers' organization. But it [his membership] didn't last too long, the whole story lasted a few months, in 1946 or 1947. Then [after nationalization] he restarted his profession, we kept on working as tailors in the cooperative. When the cooperative was established, everybody had to close their workshop. We had two sewing machines, we handed in one of them. We had to do so, well, that's how they could establish the cooperative. Everybody brought what they had, they brought machines, tables, chairs, all the junks, they brought there everything.