- Description
- The Arditti family photographs consist of 62 family photographs mounted on photograph album pages. The images depict members of the Arditti family, a Turkish Jewish family from Smyrna, who emigrated from Turkey to France in 1920. Identified family members include Jacques Arditti, his parents, his brother and sister, his sister’s son, Jean-Pierre Franck, and his wife, Jacqueline Guiard. Photographs also depict Leon and Nelly Jaffe and their children, Albert and Liliane, who were relatives on Jacques’ mother’s side. Most of the photographs were taken in France, in Joinville-le-Pont, Deauville, Nice, Coye-la-Forêt, and Paris, but there is at least one photograph of Jacques Arditti in Smyrna and one photograph of Leon Jaffe in Shanghai.
- Date
-
inclusive:
circa 1911-1955
- Credit Line
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Philippe Arditti
- Collection Creator
- Arditti family
- Biography
-
Jacques Arditti (1911-1981) was born in Smyrna, Turkey (now İzmir, Turkey) to a prosperous Jewish banker and his wife whose names are unknown. His sister Rebecca ("Betty") was born circa 1915. After World War I and the founding of the modern Turkish state, the Arditti family moved to France and sought asylum in Bayonne. They moved to Joinville-le-Pont, a suburb of Paris, where Jacques’ brother Edouard was born December 14, 1922. In the 1930s, Jacques started his own business selling packaging for various products. Betty married decorator and artist Jacques Franck and had a son, Jean-Pierre. On December 12, 1941, Mr. Arditti and Edouard were arrested at home, imprisoned for one night at the École Militaire, and then sent to the camp at Compiègne-Royallieu, east of Paris. Mr. Arditti became ill in the poor living conditions, was released, and died at home shortly thereafter. Edouard was deported to Auschwitz on March 27, 1942 and was killed. Betty's family took refuge in Nice, and her brother Jacques joined them (it is unclear whether Mrs. Arditti joined them as well). A letter of commendation from Roger Bordet seems to indicate that Jacques joined the resistance network on the Riviera. After the war, Jacques met Jacqueline Guiard, a Catholic woman from an anti-Semitic family who disapproved of him. Jacques converted to Catholicism and married Jacqueline in 1949. Their son, Philippe, was born in 1950, baptized, and raised as a Catholic.