Klara Perahya with her friends at the beach

This photo was taken in the summer of 1941, at the then famous Caddebostan Beach. From left to right: Klara Angel, her friend Rachel Baruh, Elio Seleker and his father Yasef Seleker (a trader of hardware and sanitary equipment). Elio Seleker moved to Canada in 1970 and settled in Montreal where he lives now. Elsa Angel 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. For many years we used to rent a house in Fenerbahce or Caddebostan for the summer months. Those neighborhoods on the Asian side of Istanbul were summer ressorts with two or three-storey houses in the middle of gardens full of fruit trees. Plenty of beaches on the Marmara sea shore. The sea water was not polluted yet. Today it is impossible for me to recognize the places we used to ride our bicycles around and have so much fun with sweet memories hidden in them; the panorama of those days has been changed so much now I feel alienated.