Jozef and Fortune Danon

This photo of my parents Fortune and Jozef Danon was taken at a studio called “Foto Resna”.  Their clothes are the type of clothes people wore in the 1920s.  I do not know if they were engaged when this photo was taken.

My father Jozef Danon, I don't know his date of birth, was born in Istanbul.  My Dad was a very good man, and he did a lot of good deeds for people.  He was always doing good to people in need.  He exhausted himself trying to help people.  He was also a member of one of the charity organizations of the Jewish community, called "Sedaka u marpe".  He used to take a lot of things there, like hats.  I distinctly remember him taking them hats, I don't know why or what they were doing with those hats but hats it was.  He worked very hard for this organization of the community and tried very hard to help. 

My father was a very talkative person.  He was skillful and hardworking.  My father had a hardware shop.  He was the only one there were no other hardware shops around.  He used to do a lot of business with Anatolia and his business was very good.  We were very well-off.  I grew up with a nanny and we had a maid, too.  Unfortunately my dad died in January 1936.  I was 9 at the time.  He had a heart attack.

My mother, Fortune Danon, (I don't know when she was born), was born in Salonica.  She came to Istanbul when she was 13.  My mother was a quiet person, she did not speak too much.  She spoke Greek very well and French, too.  She had studied in Greek in Salonica.  Then here, she studied in French, I don't know which schools, maybe there was a French school in Bakirkoy.  Her French was very excellent.  She was very intelligent. 

She was not a very authoritarian mother.  She raised us all with great economic difficulties after my father died.

My mother used to read a lot.  That is why there used to be a lot of books in our home.  She used to read books in French, all sorts of books.  After my father died, she started reading books about diseases.  She got obsessed with illnesses, heart diseases, other diseases.  She would read these all day long and would not go out.