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I was born in Salonica on 19th June 1930. Obviously the Franco-Sephardi [Farcified Sephardi] roots of my maternal kin had their say. So, I was named after my maternal grandfather, who was Jeuda Merkado Ovadia. [Editor’s note: Jul is probably the local version of the French Jule, which originates from the Latin Julius. Jeuda, on the other hand, is a variant of the Hebrew Yehuda. The two names sound similar but their origins are different. It is customary, however, to name Jewish children after their grandparents and often a similar but modern name is chosen, like the French Jul (Jule) instead of the traditional Jeuda.] I’ll always remember Grandmother Donna with her noble beauty and the songs she sang to me from the cradle until I became a pupil. The songs with which she put me to sleep were the wonderful Spanish romances ‘La paloma’, ‘Maria la O,’ and ‘Donde estas korason.’
At the beginning of the last century [The period the interviewee is describing is between the two World Wars.] there was a law in Greece according to which foreign nationals weren’t allowed to own a company or any real estate. So, we occupied one floor of a house, which my father had built and rented from the landlord. I remember that our landlord’s name was Chorbadjako. He was a good man. My father told me that the landlord had said to him, ‘Build the first floor of the house as you wish. You will live there. Then build the second and third floors as I tell you.’ And so my father did as instructed. My family occupied three rooms on the first floor of a big house. My father’s workshop was also on this floor and he sometimes spent the whole night working there. It was between the children’s room and the guests’ hall where the piano was. By the way, that piano was unique. My grandfather had bought it for an enormous sum of money at that time. It was a ‘Schimmel’ and was produced in a German factory, which had made seven pianos and was burnt down with people inside. [The Schimmel piano company was established in 1885 in Leipzig and has been producing ever since.] That happened in the middle of the 1930s. Hitler knew the exact time and place.
At the beginning of the last century [The period the interviewee is describing is between the two World Wars.] there was a law in Greece according to which foreign nationals weren’t allowed to own a company or any real estate. So, we occupied one floor of a house, which my father had built and rented from the landlord. I remember that our landlord’s name was Chorbadjako. He was a good man. My father told me that the landlord had said to him, ‘Build the first floor of the house as you wish. You will live there. Then build the second and third floors as I tell you.’ And so my father did as instructed. My family occupied three rooms on the first floor of a big house. My father’s workshop was also on this floor and he sometimes spent the whole night working there. It was between the children’s room and the guests’ hall where the piano was. By the way, that piano was unique. My grandfather had bought it for an enormous sum of money at that time. It was a ‘Schimmel’ and was produced in a German factory, which had made seven pianos and was burnt down with people inside. [The Schimmel piano company was established in 1885 in Leipzig and has been producing ever since.] That happened in the middle of the 1930s. Hitler knew the exact time and place.
Location
Bulgaria
Interview
Jul Efraim Levi