At the seaside

This picture was taken at the beach called Kalpazankaya, which was located at the back of Burgazada [the second of the Prince’s Islands on the Sea of Marmara].

You can see my wife Suzan in the center of the picture, on her right is a neighbor we used to have by the name of Liza and on her left is the wife of another neighbor we had, Mordo Behar. Unfortunately I don’t remember anything about these people.

We became residents of Burgaz [one of the Princess Islands] in 1945. We had everything within reach there. The sea, the sun, friends, and the entertainments at the clubs. We used to spend our summers in this way. We didn't fancy going to Bodrum and etc like nowadays' families. We didn't feel such a need.

My wife, Suzan, is from Istanbul. She was born and raised in Kuzguncuk. My wife's English was very good, because she was a graduate of the British School in Istanbul (English High School for Girls) . Besides this, her French was also very good. Like I said, we were working at the same firm. We met and went out together. Her mother didn't want me, because of my low income, when we decided to get married. Nevertheless, against everything, we got married in the synagogue in Kuzguncuk, in May 1935. (not the one that is in use today, there was another one on the upper part of Kuzguncuk. I forgot its name.)

At those times, the weddings were not celebrated like today's ostentatious weddings. In the afternoon, as the whole family we went to the Novotni Garden, across Union Francaise in Tepebasi. We ate our dinner, and sat outside, as the season was favorable. It was very nice. We all returned home together, and went to work the next morning.
After we got married, we rented a flat from the apartment named "Belvu" [from the French "belle vue" meaning "nice view"] on Bankalar Street. These flats were so large that we rented it together with David Eskenazi and his wife, very close friends of ours who hadn’t had any children and who loved ours as their own. They had two rooms, and we had two rooms and a living room. We shared the kitchen and the bathroom. As a result of this solution we found, paying the rent was not that hard.

After we got married, Suzan always gave her family what she earned. Her family came to live with us when her father got sick. Later on, when the financial situation of Moiz, Suzan's elder brother, improved, he took care of his parents. When my fatherin-law died, my mother-in-law started living with us. Later on in 1957, she went to Israel with her younger son, Moiz, and died there in 1967.

Unfortunately my wife Suzan got very sick, and though we did everything to save her, we couldn't. She died in 1988, and was buried in Arnavutkoy. [The sephardic cemetry in Ulus was always called Arnavutkoy]. I miss her so much that, I go to visit her very often, and talk to her from heart to heart.