The visit of my grandmother Doudou Beza's niece from Skopje

This picture was taken before the war. This is the house of my mother's mother and it is situated on Vassilissis Olgas Street, the so-called area of Exohes. Nice houses could be found there and the house in the picture is still situated there. It is among the few houses from pre-war Thessaloniki that is still left. My great-grandmother's niece from Skopje had come to visit her and this picture is a memoir. It is quite tragic that all the people standing in the photograph managed to escape the Holocaust and those sitting down were killed. I am at the top right, the other people in this picture are: Rene Touvi, my mother Loucie Angel, Berta Israel, Sterina Rousso, Linda Safarti. I remember that in pre-war Thessaloniki the danger number one were the mosquitoes. We couldn't sleep at night because of them. And we also had bugs. Every two days they lifted up the beds to check if there were any bugs and they used to clean them with pure alcohol. The bugs were indestructible. Maybe they were surviving because the floor was made of wood. We also had stoves made of clay and we used to burn wood. I told you about the problem with the mosquitoes. This is why there was a malaria epidemic despite the mosquito nets we had over our beds. We used to get ill quite often and we had high fever and they gave us quinine, the only available medicine at that time. In winter our feet were always wet and this is why we suffered from chilblains and we sat near the stove to get warm.