Je publie ici une excellente recherche que mon cousin Tony Florentin m’a autorisé à reproduire. Tony est le fils de Maurice Florentin dont j’ai relaté le départ de Salonique pour la montagne et la résistance au moment de l’occupation de la ville.
A la mort de Claire Beja née Matalon la grand’mère de Tony, celui-ci découvrit une collection de cartes postales envoyées de la fin du XIX é au début du XXé siècles par Isac Beja, le père d’Alfred Beja. Alfred avait épousé en seconde noce Claire à son retour des camps de concentration. Alfred traita ses petits enfants comme s’ils avaient été les siens. Je l’ai un peu connu lors de mes passages en Grèce. C’était un homme d’une grande gentillesse avec un sens de l’humour légèrement taquin.
Le développement de la photographie a permis un essor sans précédent de cette nouvelle façon de donner des nouvelles tout en montrant une petite partie des endroits visités. Les poilus de la Grande Guerre en ont envoyé des milliers de Salonique avant le grand incendie. On les retrouve sur les marchés et les braderies en France. Isac Beja, le père d’Alfred était un importateur généraliste en Grèce. Il envoie ses cartes d’Allemagne, de France, de Belgique, d’Italie, de Turquie. Il a vécu dans une ville qui fut turque et puis grecque à un moment où les Balkans en effervescence redessinent leurs frontières.
Tony a suivi ces pérégrinations à travers les différents courriers retrouvés.
Une monographie a été éditée par le Jewish Museum of Greece qui reprend la totalité des cartes postales et l’analyse postée ici.
The post card collection of a Thessaloniki Jewish trader from the first decades of the 20th century
Joseph Florentin
Athens 2021
Acknowledgments
- To my friend Nick Fourmouzis for his pertinent linguistic comments
- To my cousin Joe Nahmias both for his proof reading and his information on family issues
- To the expert philatelist George Thomareis for his comments on the postal services operation in the Ottoman empire.
Copyright
The Jewish Museum of Greece grants permission for the publication of this copyrighted material which is part of the JMG collections. It assumes no responsibility for its content
© Collection of the Jewish Museum of Greece
CONTENTS
Introduction
1. The Beja family
2. Sources
3. Postcard statistics
4. What I learned from the postcards
a. Tracing the trips of Isac M. Beja
b. Settlement of Isac M. Beja and his family
c. Use of languages
d. Personality of Isac M. Beja
e. Historical events
f. Post office operation in the Ottoman empire
Epilogue
Introduction
When my grandmother passed away, in 2002, we discovered in her flat a collection of about 300 postcards, most of them dating from the end of the 19th century to the mid 1920’s. These were mostly cards sent by Isac M. Beja, the father of my step-grandfather Alfred Beja. Although Alfred was very close to his grandchildren, my sister and myself, he had never mentioned the existence of this collection neither had he told us much about his father.
Isac Beja (1868-1935) was a trading representative, based in Thessaloniki, member of the city’s large pre-WWII Jewish community. Many of the postcards had been sent by himself to his family from the cities visited in the course of his business trips across Europe.
I found the collection[1] interesting, from many perspectives, and after my recent retirement I dedicated some time to register their contents and form in order to better draw any conclusions. The outcome of this exercise is this essay. This is not a historical study as I am not a historian nor did I do any thorough research to confirm or validate my impressions. It is merely a way of sharing my impressions from this collection which offered me a glimpse both to the history of a part of my family, as well as to the ambiance of those times.
This essay is structured in four chapters:
In the first, one may find background information about the family
In the second the sources and documents used are listed
In the third some statistics are shown regarding the distribution of postcards sent and received by year, country, language used etc.
In the fourth I tried to list the information and conclusions drawn from the contents of the postcards. In this part maps were included to help visualize the main business trips made by Isac Beja.
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[1] This collection is now the property of the Jewish Museum of Greece who handed me scanned copies of the postcards numbered from 1 to 314. Twenty four of the cards have not been used for correspondence.
1.The Beja family
The following figure shows the family of Isac M. Beja down to the level of his grandchildren. It is appropriate to note the names of the two children he had with his first wife, Sara. Lucie and Alfred, born in 1895 and 1898 respectively, bore the names of Alfred Dreyfus [2]and his wife. This demonstrates the appeal of the case and of French politics to the Jewish community of Thessaloniki.
Figure 1: the Beja family tree
[2] The “Affaire Dreyfus” divided the Third French Republic and embittered French politics, from December 1894, when Dreyfus was convicted of treason, to 1906 when he was exonerated.
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[2] The “Affaire Dreyfus” divided the Third French Republic and embittered French politics, from December 1894, when Dreyfus was convicted of treason, to 1906 when he was exonerated.
2.Sources
Among the documents kept by Alfred Beja, the following give us information about the Beja family, in addition to the postcards.
- Interview[3] of Isac’s grand-daughter Denise Nahmias (née Angel), the daughter of Lucie, born in 1924. This is a valuable source of information on Isac and his background.
- Certificates of Spanish Nationality issued in 1935 by the Spanish Consulate of Thessaloniki (see Annex 1): The seven members of Isac’s family had the Spanish nationality, at least until 1936[4]. These certificates provide the dates of birth of all members as well as their photographs, with the exception of Lucie and Sara[5] (Sarina) who were already married.
- Certificate issued by the 5th Police Station of Thessaloniki, mentioning that the annual income of Isac M. Beja amounts to 70.000 drachmas.
- Death certificate of Isac M. Beja where the cause of his death (heart attack) is mentioned.
- Funeral Notice which is written in three languages:
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[3] https://www.centropa.org/biography/deniz-nahmias [4] According to the Thessaloniki Municipality certificate (see Annex) Alfred was a Greek citizen by 1938. [5] Sara, the first child of Fortunée, took the name of the late first wife of Isac
Figure 2: Funeral Notice of Isac M. Beja
This is a two-page document where the left-hand side page is written in French and the right-hand side one in Judeo-Spanish written with Hebrew letters. On top of the right-hand side page there are three lines in Greek with the name of the deceased but without any information regarding his funeral.
Regarding the background of Isac, Denise gives us the following information:
“My grandfather, my mother's father whose name was Isaac - Matathias Beza had a flourmill and he was a rich, well respected man back in the late 1800s. He owned a flourmill that used to grind wheat. He was very wealthy. He was born in Thessaloniki [in 1867] and also died there, in 1936 at the age of 69. In this city at that time two families owned the flourmills: the Beza family and the Allatini family. My maternal grandfather had five brothers but we never met them.
At some point the flourmill he owned was burned down. Maybe it was his competitors who set it on fire. This happened when my grandfather was still young. It had nothing to do with the fire of 1917 [2]; it happened much earlier. The competitors gave to my grandfather compensation on the condition that he'd never rebuild the flourmill, because they had always the fear that the brothers might unite and rebuild it someday. So, the competitors agreed to give them a certain amount of money for the next five years. And the flourmill stopped working.
The family of my grandfather, as I mentioned before, was very well off, so he was sent abroad to study and this is how he learned many languages: English, French, German, and thought of becoming a representative. In Greece at that time there were no factories but all the imports were done via firm representatives. Back then this was an extremely profitable and popular profession. So, he became a representative of the DMC house and of other firms as well. This is how he managed to make his fortune: he established a house of imports and later his son [Alfred] entered the job.”
3. Post card Statistics
The following graphs show the distribution of the post cards according to their origin, whether they have been sent or received, the receiving party and the language used.
Figure 3: Number of postcards per year
We note that Isac’s correspondence peaks around 1910 and gradually decreases in the decade that follows. The number of postcards sent by Isac to his family has a direct link with Isac’s eight recorded business trips, from 1902 to 1919. It is not possible to know the number of post cards sent by Isac to his commercial partners.
We also note that staring from 1910, his children also start becoming addressees. First among them Lucie, the elder, who entered into a correspondence with a pen pal from Tourcoing, in northern France. Lucie received 13 post cards in 1910. Isac seems to have received his last post card not sent by a family member (at least regarding those included in this collection) in 1924. There are also cards received by Alfred, Sara and Irma. Albert had only received one postcard sent by Isac to him and to his older half-brother Alfred.
As shown in the following graph, most of the cards received by the Beja family, either sent by Isac or by third parties, were sent from Italy, Germany, France, Belgium and the Ottoman Empire. There were more cards sent from Greece, Bulgaria, Russia, Serbia, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Spain, Romania, Egypt, the USA, Mexico and Argentina.
It is noteworthy that with the changes in borders taking place during the Balkan wars, when the Ottoman Empire gave its place to Turkey, and also with the demise of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after World War I, the country designations of the cities change accordingly in the postcards. For instance, Thessaloniki is marked as belonging to Greece only after 1912 and Trieste is marked as belonging to Italy only after 1918. Likewise, Beyrouth is marked as Turkish until 1918, etc.
Figure 4: Number of postcards by origin
Another interesting feature is that of the language used by both Isac and family and their correspondents. In the following graph we can see that most of the post cards were written in French but a substantial number was also written in Italian, Judeo-Spanish, while a smaller number in German or English.
Figure 5: Distribution of postcards by (main) language used
This shows both the dominance of French among the middle and upper classes of the Thessaloniki Jewish community and the mastering of several languages by trading agents. This will be further expanded in Chapter 4b.
4. What I learned from the Post cards
a. Tracing the trips
Between 1902 and 1919, Isac made eight major business trips in Europe. Most of them had a duration of three weeks to one month[6]. Two of them had a shorter duration of eleven to twelve days. And the shorter one, just four days, was made to Greece in 1905.
In the following table we may see the dates, countries and cities from which Isac sent post cards home during each of those trips.
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[6] These durations have been estimated from the dates on the post cards sent by Isac that may not reflect the exact departure and return dates.
* St. Peter in Krain is located in the territory of today’s Slovenia which was part of the then Austro-Hungarian empire
These journeys are outlined in the maps that follow. The depiction is based on the figures on the cards sent by Isac as he used to send cards from the places he was actually visiting, adding sometimes details on his accommodation. The places have been connected by straight lines as it is not possible to know the route followed between destinations.
Isac’s trips often have a regional focus. For instance, Trip 1 focuses on Germany and might be related to the establishment of a local agency in Hambourg. A card sent to Isac in September 1903 [card 19] is addressed to “Isac Beja of the house Assaël & Beja, Hambourg 8, Groningerstrasse 36”.
Figure 6: Trip No.1
Figure 7: Trip No. 2
Figure 8: Trip No 3
Figure 9: Trip No 4
The fifth trip mainly focuses in Northern Italy. In card 138, sent to his wife on 8 May 1910 from Verona, Isac complains that his schedule is really packed so that he does not have much time to write. He also mentions “I am glad to have taken [representation of] some factories”
Figure 10: Trip No. 5
Figure 11: Trip No. 6
Figure 12: Trip No. 7
The eighth trip is the one with the longer distances between the locations visited, except of course if Isac, contrary to his past habits, failed to send cards from possible intermediate destinations.
Figure 13: Trip No. 8
b. Settlement of Isac M. Beja and his family
Following the postcards, we understand that Isac has had business activities in Germany and in Istanbul.
Postcards 39 and 42 were sent by Isac, in September 1905 from Istanbul, with a three days interval between them. Given that few people used to travel for leisure in those years we can assume that Isac was in one more business trip although the text on the postcards does not provide any relevant information. The fact that Isac might have contacts in Istanbul could have helped him take the decision to relocate his family there from approximately 1914 to 1923.
In Postcard 252 sent by Isac’s nephew Matteo Beja from Chartres, in March 1914, Matteo wishes his uncle “good luck in your new business”, probably referring to his relocation decision. Postcard 253, sent from Palermo in May 1914 to Isac Beja and his (presumed) associate, to the attention of Lucie and Alfred, is the first one sent to Istanbul / Constantinople (without even mentioning the country). Postcard 256, sent from Thessaloniki to Isac Beja, in October 1914, is the first one to bear an address (1˚ Vakıf Han[7] in the Eminönü quarter). This postcard has a rare characteristic as three different alphabets (and languages) have been used on it:
Part of the text is written in Solitreo (Judeo-Spanish with Hebrew characters), the closing and the address is written in French and the address is repeated in Turkish with Arabic letters.
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[1] “Vakifhans 1 through 5 were built in the early 20th century when [architect] Minar Kemalledin was working for the Ministry of Foundations (Vakıfler). The buildings were initially built to serve various purposes, all with the intent of providing the Ministry with a reliable source of income for years to come. Each of the buildings was designed to withstand the test of time.”
Source: www.swissinternationalistanbul>history.
Figure 13: Post card 256 and 1st with a residence in Hamburg
Postcard 261, sent in September 1919, is the first one to mention a residence address: Alianak Han 22.23.
As there are no cards from the World War I period, we do not have documents proving where the Beja family spent the war period. However, as my grandfather had told me that he attended a German school for three years, in Istanbul, we may assume that at least until 1916 the residence of the Beja family was in Istanbul.
Postcard 268 is the last one to have been sent, in September 1923, to the Beja family in Istanbul while Postcard 271, sent in July 1924 is the first one to have been sent again to Thessaloniki.
Regarding Germany, it seems that Isac had opened an office in Hamburg from 1903 to 1904, together with an associate, probably of Sephardic descent as well.
Postcard 17, sent in August 1903 from Itzehoe, a town at 50 km NW of Hamburg, is the first to have been addressed to Isac in Hamburg. Postcard 27, sent in April 1904 from Hamburg, is the last one. Postcard 19, also mentions the name of the presumed associate of Isac, since the recipient of the card is the House Assaël & Beja.
Figure 14: Post card No. 19
During this rather short period of time, Isac received correspondence in two different addresses: first at Groningerstrasse 36 then at Groẞe Bleichen 5, both in the centre of the city.
Figure 15: Location of Isac M. Beja offices in Hamburg
c. Use of languages
It is striking to see in the cards sent to and received by Isac, the command of different languages by himself but also by his family members.
French was a widespread language in the beginning of the 20th century among the middle and upper class members of the Thessaloniki Jewish community. This was the result of the efforts of religious missions active in Thessaloniki since the end of the 18th century but mainly of the Alliance Israelite Universelle[8] and her numerous schools. Italian was also taught and used thanks to numerous prominent members of the Jewish community with ties to Italy. At a lesser degree one could find English and German schools. These languages were used in addition to Judeo Spanish that was the common language of all members of the community.
The main language used in the post card collection is French. However, many cards were also written in Judeo-Spanish. One of the correspondents of Isac, mainly active in the Middle East, used to also write in Solitreo (Judeo-Spanish with Hebrew letters). Quite often Isac seems to be influenced by the country he visits. Many of the cards sent from Italy are written in Italian. This proves that his command of French, Judeo-Spanish and Italian was so good as to allow him to select any of them in his correspondence.
It seems possible that Isac had a special relation to Italy. In card 158 his daughter Sarina writes, in Italian: “I hope that you will enjoy seeing beautiful Italy”. The card bears the date 1910, written in pencil, which means that 9-year-old Sarina had started learning Italian at a very low age. Correspondence in Italian had also been exchanged between Isac and Lucie as well as between Lucie and friends of her (Fabiani family from Livorno).
The other members of the Beja family probably did not speak German. However, Isac had received postcards from the Huni company in Friedrischafen (a company still existing although with different activities) and from two more correspondents. If we also take into account that when the family moved to Istanbul for about 9 years, Alfred went to a German school for three years, we may conclude that the German language was not unknown to Isac.
Isac had received postcards in English, from two correspondents in England between 1901 and 1908. Same as with German, we do not have any specimen of his outgoing correspondence, other than the one addressed to is family, therefore we may only assume that he had some level of command of these two languages.
And then there is Turkish. To what extent was a trading agent established in Ottoman Thessaloniki, at the dawn of the 20th century, expected to know Turkish? Does the decision of Isac to resettle in Istanbul between 1914 and 1923 indicate anything about his mastering of the Turkish language? I have no replies to these questions. I just remember that towards the end of his life, my grandfather used, on a couple of occasions, Turkish words other than the ones that had seeped in his Judeo-Spanish as well as the one of his friends who served as my teachers of this dialect.
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[1]The Alliance Israelite Universelle, established in 1860, aimed at improving the educational and cultural level of the Thessaloniki Jews, mainly through the schools created from 1873 (for boys) and 1874 (for girls).
Fortunately, Denise, in her interview, sheds some light on the language issue, mentioning the languages spoken by her grandfather:
“He spoke many languages, as I mentioned before: English, French, German. And, of course, he spoke Ladino [Judeo-Spanish], Turkish and Greek.”
d. Personality of Isac M. Beja
It is not easy or safe to draw conclusions for a person’s character from his correspondence to his family, however, a couple of comments can be made.
- Something that we can be fairly sure of is that Isac was a philatelist. This does not only come out of his correspondence. In fact, one of our discoveries in our grandmother’s flat was a metal box containing a pre-printed stamp album. Moreover,
o In postcard 231 sent from Sofia in 1912, his correspondent mentions that despite his efforts and the efforts of other friends they could not find him Bulgarian stamps as these were out of stock.
o In postcards 58 and 59 sent to Isac from Hannover, in 1907, two correspondents thank him for the stamps they received.
o In postcard 88 sent from Rome in 1908, he is again thanked for the stamps he had sent.
- Isac seems to have been a rather extroverted and generous person. He wanted to stay in touch with his family while away from Thessaloniki by sending, very frequently, postcards home. When his children started growing up, he occasionally sent them individual correspondence, asking about their progress and reminding the precautions they had to take in case of health problems.
o In postcard 96 sent from Serbia, Isac is thanked for having sent candies and cards to his correspondent.
o In postcards 115 sent to Fortunée in 1910, and 83 sent to Lucie in 1908 he protests for not having received news from his family
o In postcard 103 sent to Fortunée in 1909, 196 and 255 sent to Alfred in 1912 and 1914 respectively, Isac expresses concern about Alfred’s health condition and writes to his son to take care of his health, eat well, not get tired etc.
o In postcard 83 sent to Lucie in 1908 he longs to see his family again
o Finally, in postcard 126 sent to Lucie in in 1910 he says he will buy her nice things from Milan while in postcard 158 sent to him by Sarina, his daughter hopes he will bring her something nice.
- Two of the post cards probably indicate that Isac had a “bon viveur” side and that he had highly ranked acquaintances. In postcard 231 sent from Sofia in 1912 his correspondent transmits the “compliments of Mr. Pipano, Grand Rabbin”. In postcard 262 sent by Isac to Fortunée he regrets not having ordered caviar and fruits while on board of the ship sailing from western Greece to Taranto, in Italy.
What comes out of the postcards content is confirmed by the testimony, of Denise who was 12 years old when Isac passed away, therefore she remembered him quite well.
According to Denise: “He was extremely extrovert, a very cheerful person indeed. A nice person with a lively personality. I remember whenever he paid his visit at our home, he used to bring me a small doll as a present. When I turned twelve, I had a party at home; I remember I had organized a party because I had finished elementary school and this was a big event those days. So, he came to my party and we were dancing 'lansiedhes.' This was a popular dance those days, not exactly a modern dance. We were dancing in pairs one after the other. And he said, 'Take two steps ahead.' This was a European dance.”
e. Historical events
The subject and picture on the postcards give the opportunity to the average reader to get information on not very well known, at least by average people, historical events.
One such event is the Adana massacre[9] that occurred in April 1909, in Adana and neighbouring cities, when around 20.000 people, mostly Armenians were killed during the unrest and riots that followed the Ottoman countercoup of 1909, against the secularist New Turks who had seized power after a bloodless coup in 1908 and had deposed the sultan Abdul Hamid. Before the riots, speculation had circulated, among the Muslim population, of an imminent Armenian insurrection.
Postcards 170 and 175, sent in May 1911, from Adana and Mersina respectively, by H.M.Ergas, a friend and regular correspondent on business cooperation issues, depict the situation in the aftermath of the Adana massacre. The first one shows the transportation of corpses outside the city and the second shows a group of refugees at a Capuchin Fathers establishment.
Figure 16: Post cards No. 170 and 175
f. Post office operation in the Ottoman Empire[10]
When I started reading the postcards, I was surprised to see that cards sent from Thessaloniki had Austrian or British or Italian stamps and that the cards received in Thessaloniki had been stamped by foreign postal services.
Indeed, from the end of the 16th century the correspondence between the Ottoman Empire and other states was mostly carried out by foreign postal systems and post offices until the first quarter of the 20th century. During this period the first foreign postal service within the Ottoman frontier was run by the Venetians. By the 18th century, Austria (1721) and Russia were entitled to establish postal organizations in the Ottoman Empire. Within a short period of time, this right was also claimed by other European states such as France in 1812, Great Britain in 1832, Greece in 1834, Germany in 1870 and Italy.
On finding the Ottoman postal service inadequate, western states initially opened post offices to serve their own embassies and consulates. Later, they began to carry the post of foreigners from other countries, along with that of their own citizens and merchants living in the Ottoman Empire. Austria, for instance, established the first post office for merchants in Galata, in 1748, and eventually extended this network to 65 locations] throughout the Balkans and the eastern Mediterranean.
All foreign post offices closed in October 1914 but after the WWI Great Britain, France and Italy reopened their post offices in Constantinople and, in the case of Great Britain, Smyrna. This system came to an end with the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923.
Another striking detail is that no card sent to Isac in Thessaloniki, bears an address. They only mention the name of the city and the country and on few occasions not even the country. One may assume that individuals receiving frequent correspondence had some kind of registration with the postal services operating in the city. Only after June 1925 (postcard 272) is mention made of a Post Office Box: “BP [Boite Postale] No. 14”. In some postcards BP No. 17 is mentioned.
On the contrary, most of the cards received in Istanbul, bear an address.
One more detail is the use of different calendars by the correspondents and the post offices in different countries. Bulgaria adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1916 and Greece adopted it in February/March 1923, last of all European countries.
For this reason, there is a discrepancy between the date written by the sender and the time stamp of the post office, in the postcards sent from eastern European countries. Several such cases are shown in the following table:
With this information in mind, we may have an idea of the time needed for a postcard, sent from a European country, to reach Thessaloniki, in the first years of the 20th century. In fact, if we add the 13 days of the difference between the two calendars, to the difference between the departure and arrival time stamps we can have an estimate of that time. Unfortunately, there are not many postcards bearing both (departure and arrival) post time stamps and many of the existing ones are illegible. Here is the rather short list of the existing ones.
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[1] This part was based on the following sources:
M. Kaan SAǦ, sag@itu.edu.tr, “The British Post Office in the Ottoman capital: A transition through turbulent period” in ITU A|Z, Vol 12 No 2, July 2015, pp. 103-117.
In the last line of the table, we did not add 13 days since both Greece and Turkey still followed the Julian calendar in 1919. Egypt adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1875. Although there is a consistency in the above results, the specimen is small and it does not span many years, therefore it might not be appropriate to draw conclusions from that. According to experts, seven to ten days would be the expected time for the delivery of such correspondence. The beginning of the 20th century had many periods of turmoil for the Ottoman Empire which may have had their impact also on the postal services during that period, even those provided by foreign companies.
Last by not least, I was surprised to see that despite the integration of Thessaloniki in the Greek state in 1912, the correspondents of the Beja family keep sending their postcards to “Thessaloniki / Turkey”. In the same period, as if the correspondents were uncertain about the final status of the city, many postacards are just sent to “Salonique” without mentioning any country.
What is even more surprising, in postcard 243, hereabove, sent in August 1913, is that the time stamp placed in Thessaloniki still reads “SALONIQUE TURQUIE”.
The first postcard to have been sent to “Salonique / Grèce” was also sent in August 1913, from France (Postcard 241).
And the last one to have been sent to “Salonique / Turquie” was sent as late as January 1914 from France (Postcard 250).
Epilogue
The epilogue was written after WWII during which the Beja family managed to avoid losses. My grandfather, Alfred, joined the guerilla forces in the mountains of Central Greece. Fortunée had been a widow already since 1936.
The testimony of Denise Nahmias (already mentioned in p. 5) offers us plenty of information on the way part of the family was saved from the holocaust.
“My mother's brothers were saved during World War II because they were Spanish citizens. My uncle, i.e. my mother's brother, Alfred Beja, escaped to the mountains with the partisans; this is how he managed to survive the war. His sisters, who had a different mother because as I have explained Grandfather was married twice, were also Spanish citizens, and they left for Athens. But the Germans assembled all Spanish Jews in Athens and took them to Germany. When the war was over, they allowed them to return to their countries.”
Lucie and Isac Angel and their three children spent most of the wartime in Athens, with false identity cards bearing Christian names, that had been issued by the police authorities with the mediation of friends. According to Denise, although they had to hide from time to time, they lived relatively freely since Denise mentions participating in excursions, with other young people, attending cultural events etc. According to Denise the main problem was the scarcity of food.
The two last postcards of the collection testify of the temporary emigration of Fortunée, possibly with her son Albert to Palestine, for whom we do not have any information on how they were saved during the war, and of the emigration of Sarina and Irma, with their families to Mexico in the ’40s. According to Denise, the main reason for the emigration of the two sisters and their families was the uncertainty regarding the situation in Greece, as a result of the ongoing civil war (1945-1949).
“My mother's sisters Sarina and Irma were married to two brothers, Haim and Albertos Boton, and after the war they settled in Mexico. They were afraid because there was a popular scenario after the war that the Russians would take over Thessaloniki in collaboration with the communists. And this is why they left.”
The first postcard (No. 319), was written by Lucie in French, and sent in February 1945 to Fortunée at the Refugee Camp Nuseirat, run by UNRRA[11] in Gaza. In this Lucie informs her step-mother on how they learned that she was at that camp, wonders why they had not received any news from her and gives her some news on the other family members in Greece.
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[1] United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (1943-1947)
In the second, (Postcard 318), written in Judeo-Spanish, a family acquaintance, apparently established in Tel-Aviv, replies to the query of Fortunée on the status of family members who had left Greece after the war, including the family of Haim Botton, the husband of Sarina. According to his information they were in perfect health at a refugee reception centre (no. 5) in Brussels.
Eventually, both Sarina and Irma settled in Mexico-city with their families. The information regarding Irma is given in postcard 315 sent, from New York, in May 1949 by Irma’s son Leon, to his uncle Albert in Athens, informing him that they had arrived to Ney York and were due to leave to Mexico, by train, 3 days later[12]. The two cards sent by Leon to Albert, are the only ones written in Greek in the whole collection.
12 This card was sent from New York on 29 May 1949 and arrived in Greece more than one month later, on 2 July 1949.
Annex
1. Certificate of Spanish nationality of Isac M. Beja
2. Revenue certificate of Isac M. Beja
3. Application of Isac M. Beja to the Immigration Office for the renewal of his Identity Card
4. Certificate of the army enrolment office of the Municipality of Thessaloniki, certifying Alfred’s nationality
Certificate of Spanish nationality of Isac M. Beja
Revenue certificate of Isac M. Beja
Application of Isac M. Beja to the Immigration Office for the renewal of his Identity Card
Certificate of the army enrolment office of the Municipality of Thessaloniki, certifying Alfred’s nationality
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