Tag #124181 - Interview #97985 (Samuel Coyas)

My mother, Mazalto Fortune Coyas [nee Amon] was born in 1893 in Daghamam, Istanbul. She was a tall, fair-skinned and very good-looking lady. She didn’t cover her head. She went to the Alliance school [see Alliance Israelite Universelle] [5] in Kuzguncuk. She spoke French, Spanish and Greek, and knew how to write using both the Latin and the Rashi alphabets. The Amon family settled down in Kuzguncuk when their house was burned down during the legendary Daghamam fire [6]. My mother, who was newly wed at the time of the fire, used to tell us frequently about this fire: how horrifying it was, how fast it had spread, how the people had fled in panic and didn’t have time to save anything from their homes. A lot of Jewish families lost their houses in this big fire.