The Pardo family

The Pardo family

This is a picture of my family. My mother Eugenie Pardo and my father Haim Pardo, my sister Roza and myself.

The picture was probably taken between 1934 and 1938, as my younger sister Deniz is not present and she was born in 1938.

The picture was taken at a studio but I don’t remember very well the day the it was taken. I remember being put on the table though, so the formation would look good.

We were all wearing our nice clothes as that’s what people did at the time when they were to have their picture taken.

I was born in Thessalonica in 1929. My mother took care of my two younger sisters and me even though we also had a teacher that looked after us.

My grandmother did the cooking. I went to school when I was six, the Valagianni School; it was all girls, but I don't remember making any special friends. We had a lot of lessons at school and also French lessons.

We would go to school in the morning, come back around one, have something to eat and go back at three o'clock, then we would go back home at five, and at five thirty our French teacher would come. After that we had to do our homework.

When I was a bit older, about eight or nine years old, I would try and finish my homework earlier, so I could go to my father's shop, which was very close to our house.

We lived on 35 Tsimiski Street and the shop was across the street on 28 Tsimiski Street. I really loved going to the shop because I really enjoyed being close to him and also watching and listening to what they were doing.

I went to the same school as my sisters; I remember we used to play a lot. We would never go to the synagogue, only if there was a wedding or some other event.

Of course we had a beautiful synagogue of the people from Monastir, where my father came from, and which was being maintained.

My father always went alone to the synagogue; he never took us with him.

Every Sunday my parents would meet up with other couples who had children our age; they had about two or three friends like that.

They would talk to the grown-ups and we played with the children, who were pretty much our age. All these friends were Jewish.

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