Kamondo Family

The Kamondo family, as one of the many Jewish families who had to leave Spain in 1492, first settled in Venice and then in Istanbul (Ortaköy). In the records of 1775, a trader of Austrian nationality named Haim Kamondo is mentioned. Founded by his sons Isaac and Abraham Salomon (born 1781), the bank with the title of "Ishak Kamondo and Company" developed in a short time and became one of the respected international financial institutions of the time. Upon Isaac's death, Abraham Salomon took over and gradually expanded the business. As a financial adviser, he obtained various privileges due to the close ties he established with the Ottoman palace, and even received a "medal of honor" for providing finance to the Ottoman Empire during the Crimean War (1853-55).

 Over time, his grandchildren Abraham Behor and Nisim joined their grandfather's bank and after a while Abraham Behor became the head of the bank. As a rival to the Ottoman Bank, which was established in 1863, the Camondos merged with some other Galata bankers and established the "Ottoman Empire Company-i Umumiyesi".

Abraham Salomon de Kamondo, who closely followed the developments in Europe, opened a school where these languages ​​were taught in addition to Hebrew, so that the Jewish community in Istanbul could open up by learning Turkish, the administrative language of the Ottoman Empire, and French, the commercial language. However, until that day, only Hebrew and Spanish were taught in Jewish schools. This reform attempt was met with a strong reaction from the conservative wing of the Jewish Sephardic community and led to the separation of a group known as the "Frankos" from the Sephardic community in 1865 and to fall under the protection of the Italians in Pera. With the incorporation of Venice into the Italian Union in 1867, the Camondos also left their Austrian nationality and became Italian.

Meanwhile, the Porte began to focus more on foreign borrowing and ignore domestic financial institutions. Seeing that the bank had to open up, the Kamondo brothers decided to settle in Paris, but the headquarters of their bank still remained in Galata. Abraham Salomon Kamondo died at the age of 93 in 1873, shortly after settling in Paris. His body was brought to Istanbul and buried in the mausoleum he had built in the Jewish Cemetery in Hasköy with a magnificent ceremony accompanied by the palace band.

By the end of the 19th century, the Kamondo family's businesses had grown even larger, owning many companies in and outside of Europe. However, anti-Semitism gradually began to make itself felt in France. Nissim Kamondo (1892-1917), the great-great-grandson of Abraham Salomon, became the first member of the family to become a French national, and died in World War I when he participated as a pilot. Nissim's sister, Beatrice, died in Nazi camps with her husband and children. Their mother, Irène Cohen, became a Catholic after her divorce from her husband, Moise Kamondo, and was thus able to escape the Holocaust. Irène, the only surviving member of the Kamondo family after the war, inherited the entire family estate, and this long-established family ended with her.

The Kamondo family, who won the respect and love of the people with their philanthropy as well as their success in business life, left permanent traces in Istanbul, Ottoman lands and France with the numerous architectural works they had commissioned. However, most of the synagogues, schools, hospitals, banks and houses they built are not used for their former purposes today, and few are as well-maintained as the Kamondo Stairs in Galata or the old family mansion "Musée Nissim de Camondo" in Paris, which was later turned into a museum. At the same time, the valuable collections donated by the Kamondos, who were among the main art lovers of the period, adorn the main museums of Paris today. The most famous painting among these is the portrait of Irène Cohen d'Anvers, the last member of the Kamondo family, painted by Renoir in 1880.