Tag #139624 - Interview #101729 (Bella Steinmetz)

Both [Steinmetz] siblings came home from misery, and my husband’s sister got married here in Marosvasarhely. My husband visited her every weekend, because only the two of them survived from the eight siblings. In those times he worked in Szatmar, and there was a flight from Szatmar to Kolozsvar, so he visited his sister every week. So my girlfriend had this idea, that he wasn’t married, I was a widow, and she introduced us to each other. However, as she knew well, that I would refuse people to arrange for me, she visited me Sunday morning, and said: ‘Come out, stop that cooking! Come, let’s take a walk!’ The promenade in the morning was fashionable. It wasn’t for us though, because we weren’t elegant… But she agreed with her brother that ‘You too, come out, and we will meet on the esplanade.’ And my husband escorted me until the door already. He took his leave from me so hardly… And he asks me if I would let him to visit me. ‘Well – I answered – you are welcome.’ I got married [again] in 1947. I came home in 1945, and I took more than two years getting persuaded, I was afraid to marry him. I told myself, he was 41-42 years old, and he wasn’t married before, either he wants a cook, either he is impotent. So I started to wonder, what the hell… I was a married woman for 14 years. The poor man courted me, he came from Szatmar to Kolozsvar every week by plane, from there he came here. Finally I told him: ‘You know what, we have nothing to loose, we get married, if the marriage is working, fine, if not, one of us steps out.’ I didn’t have any children, nor did he. That’s how we got married.