Tag #123358 - Interview #90376 (Lazar Abuaf)

With time, the small sewing jobs that my older sister started in Ortakoy developed into a large clientele, so that one of the rooms of the house became a workshop. In this workshop, along with a few young ladies, the biggest helper of my sister was her sister Sara.  Every Monday, new orders would come in, Friday before noon, the last ironing would be applied to the orders and hung on a rope that was stretched from one wall to the other in the room and delivered to the customers. The room would be cleaned up for the Sabbath, at the end of Sabbath, it would be converted back to a workshop.

As I mentioned before, my sister Fortune was engaged to Sabetay, who was in a typesetting job in a printhouse before my brother-in-law went to the military; on his return, they opened up their own printshop with his older brother on Kumbaraci Yokusu (Piggybank Maker Hill) [A neighborhood on the European side].  They would print invitations, cards, signs and bulletin boards in this printhouse.

My older sister Fortune married Sabetay in the Zulfaris Synagogue probably around 1942, even if I cannot remember the exact year. My sister worked as a tailor for long years in Galata [A neighborhood on the European side where Jews lived together],  since my brother-in-law did not earn too much money from this printhouse, that is how they managed to raise their children.