Alberto Abrananel

This is Alberto Abrananel, my husband Leo Abravanel’s brother. The photo was taken in Salonica in the 1910s.

He was much older than me was but I remember him very clearly. He was the first for us to meet when me and my family settled in Salonica in 1928. He was very sociable, outgoing and open-hearted. I was then a young girl of 18. My mother started talking with Alberto and invited him to come and visit us. We would see Alberto every day, either we met while shopping from the mobile donkey  merchants, or when we bought ice. He would always ask my mother why didn’t I go to their Saturday surprise parties, which he organized in their home together with his brothers. Afterwards he got married to Bella and had three children: Gaston, who died of high fever, Zermain and Jacko, named after his grandfather. After tWorld War II they emigrated to Israel and for some years we kept writing letters to each other.