They were the simplest of affairs. Family members were notably absent; elaborate dinners were but a memory. Bridal dresses were homemade; friends were the makeshift interfierers. Simultaneous emotions of happiness and mourning ran high. These were the postwar weddings, the bittersweet marriages of thousands of Jews who had experienced the horrors of the Holocaust. They were memorable; they were the unions that ensured the perpetuation of a treasured heritage. They were the cry of “Nachamu Ami."
They were the simplest of affairs. Family members were notably absent; elaborate dinners were but a memory. Bridal dresses were visibly homemade; friends were the makeshift interfierers (escorts of the bride and groom). Simultaneous emotions of profound happiness and deep mourning ran high.
These were the postwar weddings, the bittersweet marriage celebrations of thousands of men and women who had experienced the horrors of the Holocaust. They were memorable and historic; they were the unions that ensured the perpetuation of a treasured heritage. They were the deafening cry of “Nachamu Ami.”
In the years immediately following World War II’s devastation, the world saw a wave of “survivor” marriages of unusual proportions. On the one hand, this trend was not terribly surprising: the survivor population consisted mostly of young people without families, between the ages of twenty-one and forty-five. On the other hand, when one considers the horrors that these scarred souls had just endured, the abnormally high marriage rate becomes astounding.
Data from the Bergen-Belsen DP camp — the largest and most widely known displaced persons camp for Jewish survivors — reveals that during 1946, 1,070 marriages took place in this camp alone; the first year following liberation saw six to seven weddings a day, and sometimes even fifty in one week.
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