Eli and Elsa Perahya on their wedding day

This is a photo of my wife Elsa and me crossing the Marmara on the regular ferry, from Haydarpasha, where we lived, to Karakoy, where the Kal Kadosh synagogue was situated. The crossing takes about 15 minutes. The picture was taken in Istanbul in 1936. 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 spent our honeymoon in the Belvu Hotel in Fenerbahce. Then we moved into my mother-in-law's house. We didn't want her to live all alone. She had been widowed at an early age and was used to living together with her daughters Elsa and Klara. Three years later, just on the eve of World War II, we joined a ten-day cruise on the 'Bessarabia' to Romania, where we visited Bucharest and different sites. 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.