Rebeca Assa's wedding photograph

This is my wedding photograph. It was taken in Plovdiv in 1941. My husband's name is Moritz Assa, and he was also born in 1922, like me. His family was richer than mine. He lived nearby and when I went out for work in the morning, he also used to go out so that we could walk together. My husband was studying at the Commercial High School then. We got married in 1941 when we were both 19 years old. It was a very humble wedding. We didn't have the financial means to organize a party, and we even made one dress out of two. I?m wearing that dress on the photo. Many people attended the ceremony and they were all comrades from the Revolutionary Youth Union [a youth anti-fascist organisation]. We moved to 16 Bratia Miladinovi Street in Plovdiv in 1936. We married there - I knew my husband when I was 16. When the hahan came to our house I was already pregnant. That's why we didn't get a permission to marry in Sofia and had to marry at home. The wedding was performed according to our Jewish traditions - with a talamu [Ladino for chuppah] over our heads that makes the place as sacred as a synagogue. My husband came to live with me when we were 16. His father had chased him out of home because he was a communist, and they didn't accept me as his wife because my family wasn't rich.