(2023-06-09/13) That's how it goes sometimes, one love story ends, a new one begins. On July 9, 1888 Iosif Hussar, the youngest son of Maria Hausthor, the sister of my great-grandfather Isak Hauster, married in Bucharest. Maria had meanwhile remarried and bore now the name Zucker. Eight years earlier, at the wedding of her eldest son Herman Hussar, she was still married to Adolf Hussar (Love Story - Part I). One could fill whole volumes about Iosif, he was a political dissident, was exiled in 1893 as a Jew = "Alien"; two years later he was allowed to return, but was arrested in 1917 - this time by the Germans - as an opponent of the regime. During the exile years in Munich he studied mechanical and electrical engineering, then translated Goethe, Tolstoy, Maupassant, Neruda and others, after all he was a printer and publisher. As editor of the bilingual weekly newspaper "Bursa" [The Stock Exchange], he came to international reputation as one of the most renowned Romanian journalists and publishers until his death in 1933. Even in death he remained a nonconformist. He was cremated at his own request in the Crematorium "Cenușa" [The Ashes]. For the Orthodox Church at that time, cremation was considered a pagan rite of heretical Freemasons.
The Crematorium is in danger of decay. It is still heritage-protected, but for how long? The same question arises for the remaining Old Town and the former Jewish Quarter, which will definitely not be able to withstand the urban development pressure for much longer. The three remaining synagogues are either surrounded by communist apartment blocks or dwarfed by modern steel and glass palaces. Skeletons of a completely different kind, for example that of a dinotherium, can be admired in the Grigore Antipa Museum of Natural History; an oasis of peace before plunging into the pulsating nightlife of Bucharest.
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