A picnic of the Angel family

This photo was taken in the year 1930, at a picnic resort on the Asian side of Istanbul: Tomruk Suyu near Camlica Hill. My mother-in-law, Fortune Mazaltov Angel, wearing a black dress, is sitting on the right. The others are: in the rear row from left to right: Beya Eli, Rafael Eli (cousin), Rafael Kasavi (son of Elia Kasavi), Rebeka Kasavi (wife of Rafael Kasavi) and in the front row from left to right: Klara Angel, Sara and Eli Kasavi (children of Rebeka and Rafael Kasavi), Elsa Angel . The Elsa and Klara Angel sisters lived on Ferit Bey Street in Talimhane. Their house was just opposite the Turkish state school. Later the school was transferred somewhere else and the building started to be used as 'Askerlik Subesi' [Military Department]. Their father, Yaakov Angel, passed away when they were children, so they had been raised by their mother, Fortune Mazaltov Angel, and their maternal grandparents, the Kasavis. Elia Kasavi, their maternal grandfather, was a money-changer and also the mukhtar of Talimhane. A pious but liberal thinking man, he was married to Klara Salti and had two children: a daughter and a son. The daughter was Fortune Mazaltov, who had two daughters and had been widowed very young. Fortune Mazaltov was my mother-in-law twice: when I married Elsa and then, after her death, when I married Klara. Kasavi's son, Rafael, was a veteran of World War I. He and his wife Rebecca had three children: Sara, Yaakov and Eli. Eli is today a member of the Communal Council of the Etz Hayim Synagogue in Ortakoy, a neighborhood of Istanbul. 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.