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My mother, Fortune Danon, (I don’t know when she was born), was born in Salonica. She came to Istanbul when she was 13. My mother was a quiet person, she did not speak too much. She spoke Greek very well and French, too. She had studied in Greek in Salonica. Then here, she studied in French, I don’t know which schools, maybe there was a French school in Bakirkoy. Her French was very excellent. She was very intelligent.
She was not a very authoritarian mother. She raised us all with great economic difficulties after my father died. After being really well-off with maids and nannies, it was douby difficult for her to raise 4 children. She did it all on her own. My uncles also helped of course, moneywise. My grandfather (mother’s father) had 4 houses in Bakirkoy, 4 houses for each of his 4 children. When my grandfather went to Germany to live with his son, he rented out those houses. When my father died, my grandfather was no longer alive. My mother had 2 brothers in Germany and they immediately wrote to her and said: “we do not want our share of the rents of the houses”. The brother who was living here said the same thing and they made it possible for my mother and us to live on these rents. She would go to Bakirkoy every month to collect the rents, and the tenants would sometimes give her the money and sometimes not. My uncles in Germany would send her money from abroad, too until Hitler came. When Hitler came, they came back here. I do not remember exactly when they came back but it must have been a little before the war.
She was not a very authoritarian mother. She raised us all with great economic difficulties after my father died. After being really well-off with maids and nannies, it was douby difficult for her to raise 4 children. She did it all on her own. My uncles also helped of course, moneywise. My grandfather (mother’s father) had 4 houses in Bakirkoy, 4 houses for each of his 4 children. When my grandfather went to Germany to live with his son, he rented out those houses. When my father died, my grandfather was no longer alive. My mother had 2 brothers in Germany and they immediately wrote to her and said: “we do not want our share of the rents of the houses”. The brother who was living here said the same thing and they made it possible for my mother and us to live on these rents. She would go to Bakirkoy every month to collect the rents, and the tenants would sometimes give her the money and sometimes not. My uncles in Germany would send her money from abroad, too until Hitler came. When Hitler came, they came back here. I do not remember exactly when they came back but it must have been a little before the war.
Location
Bakırköy/İstanbul
Türkiye
Interview
Suzi Sarhon