Tag #125085 - Interview #97653 (Rebeka Evgin)

My mother had lost her first husband in the war.  My uncle Nesim Ipekel took her under his wing. When my uncle met my father and became friends with him, he found him appropriate for his niece.  He said “Look, he has two children but he is wealthy, and a very good person.  Get married, you will be comfortable”. She agreed to marry my father because of poverty, the stress of being a widow, and most importantly, not being able to contradict the words of your family elder. My father was a friend of my uncle’s family. In an era when family relationships were very strong, the families’ decisions were applied.  There was no such thing as dating then of course. You couldn’t even think about women working.  The best reference for women was being a good housewife.  My mother and father married in Iran. They had a civil marrieage but I don’t think they were married in a synagoue. They were married at home. This situation reflected on my mother’s relationship with my father in reality.  My father was both wealthy and handsome.  He had two children, but he was older in years nevetheless, and “knew the value of a woman” according to the mentality of those times.

My mother was a very clean woman, she cooked very well.  Her time was spent that way anyways. She had jewelry.  When I had measles, she would put that jewelry on me so I would not get up from bed and catch cold.  She was obliged to sell all of the jewelry in time.  In reality, even though my mother married because of pressure from her family, she demonstrated a very decisive and tough personality in her later years.  After my father died, she took my older sister and me and came to Istanbul to prevent the family from dispersing.