This is a wedding in my wife’s family in Bialystok. First on the left in the first row is Lena’s brother Mojszele, and next to him is sitting Lena.
In 1946, at the Bund camp in Bielawa [60km south of Wroclaw], I met Zenia. And back in Lodz, then working for a tailor's co-operative - I was a buyer and a seller - I met her again, walking back to her student dorm with her friend Lena. I kissed Zenia, shook hands with Lena, and Zenia says: 'She used to work in the embassy in Moscow.' So I say to her: 'I need you - I've got a problem for the embassy. Can I come and see you today?' Because all the time the thing with my brother Ksil was upsetting me [he was in the gulag]. I come, I started telling her of my brother, and she started writing letters. She was a very practical girl. I started coming to her, and almost every day in the evening were together. Apart from that I had meetings in the evening - I was secretary of Zukunft at that time. And Lena moved in with me.
Rubin came, Ryfka's husband, and he saw that there's some girl here in bed. Well, they introduced themselves, and everybody liked her a lot. And my eldest sister asks me: 'What kind of wedding do you want?' So I say: 'We'll go to the town hall and register.' But she says: 'But if our parents were alive, wouldn't you have a chuppah?' Well, I despaired, and I said: 'Do what you want.' And they ordered some rabbi, and we went, it was raining, a Saturday evening, and they did the chuppah thing, and we laughed, and the rabbi told us not to laugh.
We met on 17 September 1947. At the end of November, on her birthday , I took her to my place. We got married before the rabbi on 27 December 1947. Our son, Samuel, was born on 24 November 1948.
My wife was born on 30 November 1924 in Bialystok. She was 6 years younger than me. She was called Lea Jedwab. Later, in Russia, she became Lena, and that's what they called her all the time. Lena Rozenberg-Jedwab. She came from more or less a family like mine. Even more miserable. She went to a CISzO school, too, in Bialystok. And she moved in, and she was pregnant, and she didn't even make food. We had this kitchen in the Bund, opposite where I worked, so she came and we ate there every day.
Our first daughter was born on 30 March 1957 and is called Flore, the second, Dorote, was born on 23 January 1962.
