In memory of my grandfather - Dr. Eli Toledano

Ach Shirley שירלי אך
Feb 23
2 min read

My grandfather, Doctor Eli TOLEDANO, was a well-known doctor in Casablanca and known for the accuracy of his diagnoses.

My grandfather attended the French high school in Meknes where he obtained a mathematics baccalaureate at the age of 17 (1940).

Wishing to continue studying mathematics, he was unable to do so because a numerus clausus imposed by the Vichy regime in Morocco prohibited access to higher mathematics classes for Jews.

He therefore worked as a teacher at the Alliance for 2 years and it was in 1942, when the Americans landed in North Africa and liberated Algeria and Morocco from the Vichy regime, that he was able to enroll at the medical university of Algiers (1942-1945).

With the end of the war, he continued his studies in Bordeaux then in Paris where he presented his thesis on November 10, 1948.

The house he built later became the main office of architects in Morocco.

This house was chosen for the quality of its architectural style.

All sorts of Moroccan personalities came to my grandparents to honor them.

My grandparents had a respecteble lifestyle like most prominent people in Morocco at the time.

Two cars in the household and house servants.

My grandfather, often shone his historical knowledge, a field that he particularly loved.

My grandfhather was also very proud of his family and the "14 generations of rabbis from whom he descended", since Toledo in Castile and the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. Among his ancestors in fact, he cited the great rabbis and head of the Rabbinical court in Meknes but also an ancestor ambassador of Sultan Moulay Ismaël in the Netherlands and advisor to this same sultan.(encyclopedia Judaica)

They left Morocco to live in Paris.

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My grandparents were people of honor.

When I visit them in Paris and when I lived for a while in my grandmother and grandfather houses, I absorbed their culture.