Maurice Leon with members of Maccabi

This is a Maccabi group photograph. It was taken in 1932 at the Maccabi club by a professional photographer, whose name I don?t remember. It was taken after a National Parade and we are wearing our formal Maccabi uniforms. In the first row sitting is Harry Perez, who later became a doctor. In the second row from right to left is Elie Sciaky and Elie Cohen. In the third from right to left: I, Maurice Leon, next to me is Fiko Nissim, then Joseph Nissim, then our leader Saragoussi, then is someone also called Saragoussi and last is Solon Molho. I remember that in Thessaloniki there was a vivid religious and social Jewish life. There was Maccabi. It was a club were Jewish children were gathered. It had a very good library, too. We would have scouts meetings, went on excursions, played ball games and things like that. I started going there at the age of ten. And although in the meantime we changed houses, I still continued going to Maccabi. Our house on Italias Street was not very far from our old house. The Zionist issue was very developed there. We had meetings where they were talking to us about Zionism and Palestine. As Maccabi group we took part at the National Parades on Greek National Holidays such as 25th March and the rest. We would wear our scouts uniform which included a green color neckerchief and the various Maccabi scouts emblems. These scouts meeting were something very strong in our childhood years. We would go on excursions to Chortiatis. There we would go for walks in the forest. We went on excursions to the School of Agriculture and to the sea for swimming. Our team leader would urge us to get involved in the various activities organized. We would gather approximately 30 children. We could also find very interesting books at the Maccabi library. I served as a librarian for a period of time there. I liked reading very much. Back then we didn't have television and things like that.