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My mother’s parents were Leon Moshe and Bienvenida, nee Florentin. My grandmother’s name means ‘welcome’ in Spanish. There were many names like that at that time.
These grandparents were also living in Thessaloniki, but they were traveling a lot. It was due to my grandfather’s job. I heard that in the beginning he had a factory producing wooden door frames, but later, because he got tired, he got a big shop selling wood and stopped producing it. It wasn’t construction wood but a specialist shop selling wood for furniture, and part of his job was to travel and visit exhibitions.
Despite the fact that he had no formal education he was very avant-garde. He was telling us that when he was young he went to school at the synagogue where they were taught to read and write not Hebrew but Ladino [4], or Judeo-Espanol, and writing in Rashi [5]. I call this type of writing ‘little pieces of wood.’ At that period all the people in Thessaloniki were speaking Judeo-Espanol, it was our mother tongue.
These grandparents were also living in Thessaloniki, but they were traveling a lot. It was due to my grandfather’s job. I heard that in the beginning he had a factory producing wooden door frames, but later, because he got tired, he got a big shop selling wood and stopped producing it. It wasn’t construction wood but a specialist shop selling wood for furniture, and part of his job was to travel and visit exhibitions.
Despite the fact that he had no formal education he was very avant-garde. He was telling us that when he was young he went to school at the synagogue where they were taught to read and write not Hebrew but Ladino [4], or Judeo-Espanol, and writing in Rashi [5]. I call this type of writing ‘little pieces of wood.’ At that period all the people in Thessaloniki were speaking Judeo-Espanol, it was our mother tongue.
Period
Interview
Yvonne Capuano-Molho