Elsa and Klara Angel

This picture was taken in Istanbul in 1933. These are the Angel sisters, Elsa and Klara, in front of their house. From left to right: Elsa Angel, Eli Kasavi, Klara Angel, Sara Kasavi and Ida, a friend of Elsa. One can see Rebeka Kasavi at the left and grandmother Klara Kasavi at the right window, watching the children very carefully. The Angel family lived on Ferit Bey Street in Talimhane. Their house was just opposite the Turkish state school. Later the school was transferred somewhere else and the building started to be used as 'Askerlik Subesi' [Military Department]. Their father, Yaakov Angel, passed away when they were children, so they had been raised by their mother, Fortune Mazaltov Angel, and their maternal grandparents, the Kasavis. Elia Kasavi, their maternal grandfather, was a money-changer and also the mukhtar of Talimhane. A pious but liberal thinking man, he was married to Klara Salti and had two children: a daughter and a son. The daughter was Fortune Mazaltov, who had two daughters and had been widowed very young. Fortune Mazaltov was my mother-in-law twice: when I married Elsa and then, after her death, when I married Klara. Kasavi's son, Rafael, was a veteran of World War I. He and his wife Rebecca had three children: Sara, Yaakov and Eli. Eli is today a member of the Communal Council of the Etz Hayim Synagogue in Ortakoy, a neighborhood of Istanbul. Elsa and I got married on 30th June 1936 in the Kal Kadosh Galata Synagogue, which became The Museum of Turkish Jews in 2001. We had such wonderful days together; however, very unfortunately, my wife Elsa died of cancer in 1949, in spite of all the efforts by the renowned physician Dr. Barbut. I was a widower with two children. Although we lived together as a family I was feeling the absence of a wife very dearly. In 1951, my then-sister-in-law, Klara, and I decided to get married.