Ester Saporta

This is my grandmother Ester Saporta, nee Saltiel. It was taken at Foto Menahem studio in Thessaloniki in the 1920s.

The girls, that is, my mother, Mathilda and my aunt Sarah, adored their mother.

It was my grandmother Ester who was the most religious of all of us; she used to take me to the synagogue every Friday night to light a candle and to put some oil. She took me to a synagogue near the 12th state elementary school around Analipsis.

My grandmother lived with us in the house. I have this very vivid image of her at our house where we used to have a long corridor and I was really young and had received a little toy car as a gift.

Its lights would turn on when it moved, so at night we would turn all other lights off and I would run up and down the corridor with my little car making its lights shine.

Behind me my grandmother would be running in order to make sure all is well.