Our daughter Verjel’s wedding

This picture was taken on the wedding day of our older daughter Verjel.

Our daughter Verjel who was born in June of 1953 brought us a lot of luck.  After her birth, everything worked out for the better.  Until that day, because we did not have much money, we shared a house with Fani's older sister Sara, her husband Anri and my mother-in-law.  A short while before her birth, business in the store started to work like clockwork, a specific clientele was formed, and I took the plunge and bought a tiny flat at Shishane (on the European side, where Jews lived together) to live with Fani alone and moved in.  

Our older daughter Verjel  attended 2. Coeducational Jewish elementary school, a Turkish middle school and completed her education in Turkish Highschool.  She worked in the accounting department of my store for a while.  We marrried her in 1971 at the age of 18, with Attorney Selim Ishman who was an acquaintance of a friend of ours, in Neve Shalom Synagogue.  We celebrated the evening of the wedding in a place in Tarabya as a family [a neighborhood on the shores of the Bosphorus]. 

Verjel's family lived in Shishli like us.  Their son Eytan was born in 1973.  After finishing Robert College, he graduated from Marmara University, Faculty of Business Administration.  Eytan who settled in Izmir in the year  2001 to work for the firm named  Korozo, married Sibel Almelek in 2003 in Shishli Etz Ahayim Synagogue.  The newlweds currently live in Izmir.  Sibel studied art history in London and graduated.  She is pursuing her master's degree at this time and teaching in September 9 University at the same time.  Our daughter Verjel had another son they named Koray in 1985.  Koray graduated from Ulus Jewish Highschool in 2006.  He is studying Business Administration at Koch University at the moment.  Verjel and her family have been living in Yenikoy since 1998 [one of the neighborhoods on the Bosphorus].

In 1957, our younger daughter Meri was born.  In the meantime, the landlord of our flat, our neighbor downstairs started ruining our tranquility.  We in turn sold our tiny house for 35thousand liras and moved to a 220 meter square flat in Shishli that was one of the modern neighborhoods then as renters.  We preordered the furniture in this house to a carpenter in Harbiye.  My wife Fani wanted my daughters to play the piano, I then imported a "Bluthner" brand piano in 1963 and started our daughters with the piano with Shahan Arzuni.   The girls liked this teacher a lot and gave a concert within a very short time like a year, with all the students of Mr. Shahan.  We moved to another apartment in Shishli in 1965.

Meri finished Saint Michel, and even though she had won entrance to Istanbul University, French Philology department, she could not go to school for more than a few weeks, the anarchy was at such a scary level, that I could not permit my daughter to go to school.  Meri also worked in my store, sometimes in accounting, sometimes in other internal departments.  She married Robert Schild in 1978 in the Ashkenazi Synagogue.  We celebrated the wedding in Divan Hotel as a family. 

They had sons named Percy in 1980, and Larry in 1984.  Percy finished German Highschool, and studied International Business in Reutligen in Germany.  From there he went to the United States and did his master's.  He returned to Istanbul in 2001 and started work in Siemens in the treasury department.  We are going to marry Percy who is now working in the Consulting department, to architect Rivka Geron in March of 2007.

Larry who is a graduate of Austrian Highschool on the other hand went to Israel in 2005, he lived in Haifa in a kibbutz for a year and learned Hebrew.  He started studying business in Herzlia University starting in September of 2006. 

Photos from this interviewee