Eli, Elsa and Klara Perahya

Here you can see me, second from left, my then sister-in-law Klara (on my left) and my first wife Elsa (on my right) at a walk on a sunny day in December 1942, at Taksim Square. It's a photo taken by one of the many photographers strolling around the square. Taksim Square, opening onto four large avenues and two main streets, with the Independence Monument commemorating the Turkish Republic's founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, in the center, has been since the end of the 19th century, and for many years, the heart of modern Istanbul. Walking dressed in the latest fashion and both women and men wearing hats, from or to Taksim Square through the Istiklal Caddesi, formerly the Grande Rue de Pera, which extends to Tunel Square through Galatasaray Square, was very a-la-mode in the 1940s and 50s. Elsa and I got married on 30th June 1936 in the Kal Kadosh Galata Synagogue, which became The Museum of Turkish Jews in 2001. We had such wonderful days together; however, very unfortunately, my wife Elsa died of cancer in 1949, in spite of all the efforts by the renowned physician Dr. Barbut. I was a widower with two children. Although we lived together as a family I was feeling the absence of a wife very dearly. In 1951, my then-sister-in-law, Klara, and I decided to get married.