Tag #125726 - Interview #97938 (Moiz Isman)

We didn’t have anything like a bookshelf at home. I liked reading a lot. Sometimes I used to read detective novels, sometimes scientific books. I read Journal d’Orient  [8] from the daily newspapers. At the time, the concept of a library did not exist. My family wouldn’t know such a place. I would usually rent the books which I read, from school, or sometimes buy them from a bookstore. I read the novels (detective and dueling stories) of the writer called Michel Zevaco [French writer who wrote novels about knights and duelling and chivalry], and was very fond of them. This is why I learned very good French.

I was always interested in electric wiring and devices since my childhood. We would buy supplies with my neighbor Jojo Sosino and make a lot of things together in ‘Selanik Han’ [Salonika office building]. We made a little portable radio together with him. When the first sound recording machines were launched, I had already invented some sort of recording machine. Sometimes it recorded, sometimes not.  It worked in the same manner as a radio did.  Actually, it was more Jojo’s invention.  Though Jojo was 6-7 years younger than me, he was very skillful in such things. After completing his master’s in engineering, and his military service, they emigrated to the States as a family. Jojo started working in NASA and is still working there. His elder brother, Rifat Sosino, on the other hand, became a reformist rabbi in Montevideo. Their father, Albert Sonsino, worked as the headmaster of the B’ne Berit school [Bnai Brith] for a while.  He had a lot of information about the Tora [Torah], and thus prepared our children’s Bar Mitzva [Bar-Mitzvah] ceremonies’ speeches.