Diploma in the memory of David and Ester Saporta

This is a diploma of some sort, from a donation of the Saporta girls for their parents, David and Ester Saporta.

It reads: ‘2000 trees in the memory of David Saporta, who died in 1912, and Ester Saporta, who died in 1931, by their daughters Sarah Saporta and Mathilda Beraha.’

My grandfather on my mother’s side was called David Saporta and he was originally from Serres. His wife, Ester, was born a Saltiel.

Grandmother Ester died in 1931 from a typhoid epidemic that was rampant in Thessaloniki. I know that Grandfather Saporta died in 1912.

He had a large family. He had two wives; from his first marriage he had two girls and after his first wife’s death he married my grandmother Ester.

She was a widow and had a son from her first marriage called Benveniste. So they had five children all together.

David Saporta was an employee of a pharmaceutical company and was a respected person; however he died early and left his children orphans.

I really don’t know much about his education but I know his mother tongue was Ladino. I think he may have spoken some French, as the company he worked for was a French one. He wasn’t religious.

It was my grandmother Ester who was the most religious of all of us; she used to take me to the synagogue every Friday night to light a candle and to put some oil.

She took me to a synagogue near the 12th state elementary school around Analipsis. My grandmother lived with us in the house.

Photos from this interviewee