Mico Alvo's cousins Marcel, Renee and Julika

Mico Alvo's cousins Marcel, Renee and Julika

This is a picture of my cousins. On the right, is Marcel.

On the centre is Renee who died while giving birth to her daughter in Palestine one week before the Germans entered Thessaloniki. On the left, is their younger sister Julika.

At the back of the picture is written: "A l' oncle Simon et a la tante Adina, Mai 1927".

Renee got married to a guy from Thessaloniki who had settled in Israel. His name was Levy Pelosof. The Pelosof family had a good reputation here.

When giving birth to her daughter Ziva, Renee she got an infection and because there wasn't any penicillin or any other medication, she died.

Her grandparents Joseph and Bella, brought Ziva up. Pelosof did not remarry until his daughter Ziva married first.

They all lived at the same house with us, on the upper floor. That's why we were so close together. Renee's Jewish name was Rachel. Julika's was Pnena, but when she was young we used to call her Julie. She was really very lively.

She got married twice and was divorced twice. On the first time, she married a guy from Israel, whose name I cannot remember. He was an army officer.

Then she married a Jew from London whose name was Seltzer. They got married in London. Seltzer was very rich. But he, like Pnena had children from his first marriage and this made things very complicated.

He had a boy who touched Pnena's daughter. They did not get along very well, they quarreled all day long and in the end they got divorced.

Marcel was a Zionist. He used to tell me sometimes, we will do this, we will do the other, that a state would be founded, and the state of Palestine would become a Jewish state. He was a supporter of Herzl.

We used to hang out with Marcel because he regarded us as his younger cousins. We played chess together. He had a bicycle, and he would put us at the front sometimes and we would go around the neighborhood.

Marcel also went to the school of the Mission La?que. He didn't go to a Greek school at all. He really should have done this, because he didn't learn Greek like we did.

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