Memories of Salonica: Estrea Aelion celebrates her one hundredth birthday

Estrea Aelion was born in Salonica in 1884. She belonged to a well-off family; her grandfather opened Salonica’s first department store and her father was a jeweller. In 1994, she celebrated her hundredth birthday in London and dictated her memories for her family and, especially, for her great grandchildren. Estrea Aelion lived at the beginning of a period of great change for Salonica and the Jewish community. Her memories are not a formal historical document, they are personal experiences. She was one of the first girls to go to school, in her case a missionary one, although her brothers went to an Alliance Israélite Universelle school. She witnessed the arrival of modern inventions such as electricity and running water. She lived through the catastrophic 1890 and 1917 fires. Estrea Aelion’s memories, however personal they may be, are a document of great interest to all those interested in a vanished world.