Eli Perahya and his son David

This picture was taken in August 1947. Me and my new born son David on my arms, are in the garden of a house in Saskin Bakkal [a then summer ressort district on the Anatolian shore of Istanbul] we rented for the summer holidays. I have two children from Elsa: my daughter Lina, born in 1943, and my son David, born in 1947. Lina was named after Grandmother Belina, as for David, he was named according to a dream Elsa had a short time before his birth. She saw a very old and wise man holding a baby in his arms and giving him to her saying, 'This is your baby. You will name him David.' As we lived all together in the house the children weren't just our children, they were the 'children of the house.' Later we moved, all together, to Tepebashi, a residential district on the European side of Istanbul, near the Jewish neighborhood. Our apartment was named Jul Apartiman after its owner, Mr. Jules Blumenthal, a rich and famous trader, representative and producer in Turkey of Columbia and His Master's Voice records. We had such wonderful days; 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.