Julie's wedding

This photo was the starting point for my initial project.

As the annotation indicates, this is Julie's wedding, celebrated on December 19, 1934 in Salonika (Greece).

She sends this group photo to her aunt Mathilde and uncle Moïse.

I can't find any Julie in my family tree. Mathilde is my grandmother's aunt and Moïse her husband. They settled in Paris in the 1930s.

I'm exploring the various possibilities. I'm looking for a niece (or nephew, Julie's husband) who got married around this time.

I isolate several possible surnames. I contacted a Franco-Greek gentleman who had in his possession marriage archives from that period in Salonika and had done a great deal of translation work. He did some research and the results were surprising. Several marriages were celebrated around this date, including that of a certain Djoya (joy).

Thanks to this gentleman, who knows well the customs of this period in Salonika, I learn that the date error is due to the change in transcription of the Gregorian calendar.

Julie-Djoya married Haïm, her first cousin. These are the newlyweds surrounded by their parents, brothers and sisters in this wedding photo.

Now that I know their surname, I search for their descendants on social networks. I find several people with this name in Greece. Is this the right family? Are they still there?

Among all the requests I send, there's one for Taly, a young woman living in Athens. I explain what I'm looking for and attach the photo. She quickly replies that it doesn't mean anything to her. Then, quickly afterwards, she says she's in shock because it's her grandfather (...) from her grandfather's first marriage.

Within minutes, Taly sends me his copy of the photo, the same as mine from 80 years ago, without the annotation at the bottom.

I'm flabbergasted... especially when I receive another version of this wedding: a different photo taken a few minutes before, during the ceremony.

These people, whom I've known frozen in the same attitude for all these years, come to life.

I discover their names, their links to each other, I put a face to the names on my family tree. I see them come to life in a different posture, a different expression on their faces; the children sitting in the front row are now standing up and looking much taller.

Many questions come to mind about my family's experience during these 80 years. I ask them to Taly, who sheds light on this episode suspended in time.

Julie and her husband had two children. World War II wiped out the entire family, who were still in Greece at the time. Of all the people in the photograph, the bride and groom, their parents, brothers and sisters, no one (including their children born in the 1930s) survived, with the exception of the groom.

A few years after the war, Haim remarried in Salonika, and Taly sent me a photo of the couple, followed later by another of his grandfather in his studio.

We talked a lot and I gradually discovered the story of this man who had another child, Taly's father. The parenthesis fades away and I get back in touch with the various members of this part of my family.

It's the culmination of a long but fruitful search.