Category: Toyah Sofaer

Another term in Chennai: Toyah, farewell!

20/2/2018

I went back to the tiny Jewish cemetery in Chennai the other day to lay flowers on the grave of Victoria 'Toyah' Sofaer. She was from Baghdad, and died here, in what was then Madras, in 1943 a few weeks short of her twenty-third birthday.

I chanced upon her grave exactly a year ago, and so stumbled across a powerful and affecting story which has become something of a preoccupation.

I expect that this will be my last blog about Toyah. It's time to let her rest.

I managed last year to make contact with Toyah's family in Canada, including her half-brother Abraham, just two years younger to her. (I'm happy to say Abraham is still going strong). They didn't know Toyah had a grave. But the story that Abraham related to his family - and through his daughter, Lydia, to me - is deeply tragic.

Toyah was born into a wealthy Jewish trading family in Baghdad, and when aged about twenty fell in love with an Armenian man. To break the romance, her father and step-mother whisked Toyah away to Bombay (where Abraham happened to be living at the time, evading service in the Iraqi army) and then, very suddenly, on to another Indian city - Madras as it turns out - where she died. Under quite what circumstances she lost her life remains unclear.

A piece I broadcast on BBC radio about Toyah's story was posted on the BBC website. It was viewed more than a million times. New information came to light: Toyah's death certificate (though with no cause of death) was located; and so too, for the first time, was a confirmed likeness of her. I blogged as each new detail came to light.

Toyah's family were pleased to know she had a resting place, and to feel that the wrong done to her had been acknowledged. I found this tale of transgressive love across lines of faith and identity deeply moving.

Last year, I didn't manage to make contact with Chennai's very small Jewish community. This year I have had the privilege of meeting all three of the city's established Jewish families. Two families knew nothing of Toyah - after all she probably spent only a few weeks here. But the Levi family did know something of her story. They can't vouch for its truth - and they are reciting at third- or fourth-hand - but it was clearly the account that was once circulating.

Davvid Levi and his mother Sarah say they heard that Toyah, before being taken away from Baghdad, was able to let her Armenian lover know her destination. He turned up in Bombay. That's when she was moved on, hurriedly and quietly, to Madras. Somehow the Armenian man (no-one knows his name) discovered where Toyah had been moved to and again travelled in her pursuit.

And the story the Levis recount is that, once in Madras, the Armenian disappeared. It seems that not only Toyah, but her lover too, probably died here. Just how, and in what sequence of events, will probably never be known.

I shared this information with Toyah's niece, Lydia Saleh. This is her response: 'The details you are revealing now make the story even more desperate and tragic. I hope the Armenian lover is being thought of with as much compassion as Toyah is right now. May they both rest in peace.'

Davvid Levi has a marvellous family archive of photos and documents - linking Amsterdam, France, Romania, Israel, India, Malaya, Burma and Hong Kong. His ancestors went by the name of Cohen, Halevi, Rosenberg and Henriques de Castro. One commercial document, from 1932, signed in Madras, includes as a witness Menashi Sofaer ... Toyah's father.

Menashi, acting in desperation, brought his daughter to Madras because it was a city with which he was familiar. In 1932, Menashi gave his local address as 18 Coral Merchant Street. The Levi family lived at 15 Coral Merchant Street, above what had been the city's first synagogue. They were neighbours.

In 1943, Menashi chose not to live in this Jewish locale but - perhaps because of the taint of scandal - to let a property, Otti Castle, overlooking the sea on San Thome High Street.

And there's more ... Lisette Shashoua, who is related to the Sofaers and has helped to piece together the history of the extended family, has just come across another photo of Toyah.

It was taken at a family wedding in Iraq in about 1935 - the bride was Mouzli Shashoua (nee Haim), Toyah's first cousin. Toyah would have been about fourteen at the time - (other photos from this wedding were posted some months ago). As we look at this photo, Toyah is immediately to the left of the bride.

Lisette has also tracked down a photo of Toyah's father, Menashi, and step-mother, Naima (who was also Toyah's aunt - Toyah's mother, Dina, died giving birth to her daughter and Menashi later married Dina's younger sister). There is no date on the photograph, but it was probably taken a few years either side of 1940. Menashi was born in 1881 and Naima in 1904.

This must have been much as Menashi and Naima Sofaer looked at the time of Toyah's death.

Naima and Menashi Sofaer

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Another term in Chennai: is this Otti Castle? (UPDATED: the answer is at the end of the piece)

4/2/2018

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I spent part of the weekend snooping around this colonial-era mansion near the Chennai waterfront. It's clearly seen better days. No one lives there, I was told, and it's in use as a laundry and dry cleaning establishment. Not that the workforce I came across appeared to be at full stretch. But what caught my attention was the inscription at the crest of the building.

It made me wonder - could this be Otti Castle?

I need to explain why I am so keen to trace Otti Castle. It's where a young Jewish woman from Baghdad, Toyah Sofaer, lived for the last few weeks of her life. And where she died, in uncertain but clearly harrowing circumstances, on 6 October 1943. I came across her gravestone last year in Chennai's tiny Jewish cemetery, and so chanced upon a powerful and unsettling story of transgressive love and tragic death.

The story I broadcast about Toyah engendered quite a response. New information emerged: a confirmed likeness of her was found ... and her death certificate was uncovered. The certificate doesn't give a cause of death, but it does give Toyah's address and place of death - both are recorded as 'Ooti Castle Street, Lazarus Street, Madras'.

With a bit of help from one of Chennai's leading historians (thanks Sriram!), I was able to deconstruct this address: Otti (not Ooti) Castle was a building not a street, and it was on Lazarus Church Street. But it had been demolished some time back, I was told. So when I got out of an auto rickshaw at the junction of San Thome High Road and Lazarus Church Street yesterday, I wasn't expecting to find much. Which is why the inscription so amazed me ,,,

Could 'O.T.C.' stand for Otti Castle - or perhaps 'O.T.' became corrupted as 'Otti'? The property is now known as Marine View and the name 'Otti Castle' meant nothing to those working there - but it wasn't unusual for these inter-war mansions to be called 'Castle', and there's still a Leith Castle Street nearby.

And then there's the Star of David which features so prominently. The Sofaer family had once had a trading base in Coral Merchant Street in George Town, one of the oldest parts of the city where the first synagogue was built. Was Toyah staying here because this was the home of a Jewish family which had put this religious emblem on the building when it was built?

The hexagram, of course, is not simply a Jewish motif: it appears in Hindu and Muslim design and architecture (on Humayun's Tomb in Delhi, for example), as well as in Theosophy and the occult. It's still the emblem of the Karnataka Bank. All the same, this is quite a coincidence.

A web search on Otti Castle throws up a couple of interesting snippets - this write-up on Flickr from a few years ago being the most substantial:

Otti Castle on Lazarus Church Road at Santhome, was owned by my uncle Mr O Radhakrishnan. This house was rented to many expatriates who lived in Madras upto early 60s. I made a reference to Otti Castle in a blog in "Chennai Metroblogging" on demolition of Hotel Oceanic which is adjacent to our home at Santhome. I received a mail some time last year from one Mr David Greenwood from England. To my surprise, he informed me that prior to coming on a holiday to India, he searched for Otti Castle in the net and he stumbled upon my blog and sent a mail asking whether I could meet him and take to the place where Otti Castle stood. Mr David Greenwood was a resident of Otti Castle when he was very young and his father used to be the Managing Director of Best & Crompton at Madras. He visited Chennai during November 2009. I met him and told him that Otti Castle is demolished and some residential apartments are there in the place where Otti Castle stood. I met him at Connemara and took him to the place where Otti Castle was once there. He gave a long stare possibly reminiscing about his younger days he spent at the place where Otti Castle once stood. He took some photos of the place and I dropped him back at Connemara. This is a photo of Otti Castle sent by Mr David Greenwood.

That suggests fairly definitvely that Otti Castle is no longer standing. Two old photos of Otti Castle were posted to accompany these comments.

This doesn't seem to be the same house as the one I came across yesterday. I didn't get a rear view, and while there are similarities in the front facade, there are several key differences in design.

So what's the story here? Was there a short row of properties which took the name Otti Castle and of which this is the last survivor? That would make more sense of the 'Ooti Castle Street' on the death certificate. What did O.T.C. stand for, and why the hexagram?

If you have any thoughts, please do share them!

UPDATED: I have had a very helpful message from Balasubramanian G. Velu, whose remarks on Flickr I quoted above. The building I came across is not Otti Castle, though it is nearby and was built by the same man. His maternal grandfather Ottilingam Thankikachalam Chettiar built both Otti Castle and Marine View. So the 'Otti' comes from his name - as do the initials OTC on Marine View. There's an article by Sriram V about the remarkable OTC here. The hexagram accompanying the initials is not, it seems, in any way Jewish.

Balasubramanian G Velu's maternal uncle inherited Otti Castle. It was rented out mainly to Europeans and in the 1950s was a bachelor 'chummery' for young English men working for Best & Co. The building was demolished some time after the 1970s and an apartment block put up on the site. Another member of the family lived in Marine View and indeed still lives on the first floor about the laundry and dry cleaning business. Balasubramanian doesn't believe that the houses built by his grandfather were ever known as Otti Castle Street.

So, where does that leave us with Toyah's story? While Toyah very probably didn't stay in the building which is still standing, it does hark back to her brief period in what was then Madras. How did she end up at Otti Castle? Quite possibly her parents rented the house for their short stay in the city.

By the way, another Chennai enthusiast got in touch to say that at the time Marine View was built there were no buildings on the foreshore, that is the beach side of San Thome High Road. So this building would have had a majestic and uninterrupted view of the Bay of Bengal.

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Finding Toyah Sofaer (UPDATED)

15/7/2017

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This is the post I never expected to be able to write - the one with a photo of Toyah Sofaer. But for those of you coming new to the story, let me recap:

Earlier this year, I came across the grave of Victoria 'Toyah' Sofaer in the tiny Jewish cemetery in Chennai in south India. She died in October 1943 aged just 22. Through the magic of the internet, and with the generous encouragement and support of Toyah's family, I pieced together a tragic and deeply affecting story which I've blogged about. She was born into a prosperous trading family in Baghdad - embarked on a transgressive romance with an Armenian man from another trading family - was taken to India by her parents to end the relationship - and died in Chennai 'from a broken heart', in the words of her half-brother Abe, though in what circumstances remains unclear.

More than that, the family had a photograph of Toyah's three brothers and half-brothers taken when she would have been seven. She was in the photograph. But after her death, it was retouched to remove her likeness - and so obliterate any visual reminder of a scandal and tragedy. No one talked about Toyah. No other photographs came to light which the family was confident included Toyah. It was as if any testimony to her life, and death, had been carefully excised. An injustice which Abe in particular, now in his mid-nineties and once close to Toyah, was keen to see rectified.

Last month, a short item I recorded about Toyah for the BBC radio programme 'From Our Own Correspondent' was also posted on the BBC website. It's been viewed more than a million times. The response has been remarkable - one reader tracked down Toyah's death certificate in the Chennai municipal records, another wrote a poem about Toyah, and I'm now in contact with the very small Jewish community in Chennai today.

And as Toyah's relatives scoured their collections of family photographs, these two wedding photos from the mid-1930s have come to light. And, yes, this is Toyah Sofaer.

I owe these photographs, and permission to post them here, to the kindness of Lisette Shashoua. They were taken at the wedding of her parents, Mouzli and Menashy. Mouzli, the bride, was Toyah's first cousin. Lisette, who has taken a great interest in the history of her extended family, was fairly sure this was Toyah. Lydia Saleh, my main point of contact with the family, took the photo to show her father, Abe, and - without prompting - he recognised his half-sister, Toyah, who was two years older than him. He's quite certain it's her.

It doesn't bring her back to life - it doesn't right the wrong done to her - but it does help to honour her memory. I'm very pleased to be part of that.

Lisette has identified those in the photographs. In the one above, standing from left to right: Bertha Haim (Bekhor); the groom, Menashy Shashoua; the bride, Mouzli Haim (Sheshoua); Daisy Shamash. The young girl in the middle of the group is believed to be Dorine Shashoua. Sitting from left to right: Toyah Sofaer; Bertine Shashoua (Khazzam); Violette Haim (Barzel); Marcelle Bekhor (Shamash). Lisette believes the photo was taken in about 1935. There are more details about the family in the wonderful Sephardic diaspora genealogy site run by Alain Farhi, Les Fleurs de L'Orient.

The photo below features the same people but in different positions. Toyah is standing and, as we look, is to the right of the bride.

There may be more to say about Toyah, who knows. But it's so good to look into her eyes.

LATER: updated with photos of Toyah's brother

This is Toyah's half-brother Abraham (or Abe) who was two years younger than her, and probably the closest to her in the family. This photograph was taken in Bombay in 1943, when Abe was 21 - at almost exactly the time that Toyah died.

Abe has taken particular pleasure in the discovery of Toyah's grave and the retelling of her story. This photo was taken in July 2017 - it shows Abe, now in a nursing home in Toronto, looking at a photo of his sister.

Many thanks to Lydia and Lisette for these magnificent photos and for their permission to post them here.

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Searching for Toyah Sofaer: born in Baghdad, buried in Chennai

9/3/2017

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This is the troubling story of Toyah Sofaer. She died aged just 22 and lies in the tiny Jewish cemetery in Chennai in south India. Until a few weeks ago her family did not know that she had a marked grave.

Toyah's life story has been pieced together with the help of her niece, Lydia Saleh, who lives in Toronto; and - through Lydia - of her father and Toyah's half-brother, Abraham Sofaer, now aged 94. For Abraham in particular, my discovery of Toyah's grave has allowed him an opportunity to recall a sister for whom he had a special affection. 'It has' - Lydia told me - 'brought Toyah back to life for my father after so many years'.

This story has never before been made public. I am sharing it now with the family's blessing.

Last month, I came across (and blogged about) the last remnant of the Baghdadi Jewish community in Chennai - a small cemetery fronting onto a crowded market street a few minutes walk from Marina beach. Among the handful of gravestones is that of Victoria M. Sofaer, who died on 6 October 1943.

There was a hint of mystery in this solitary gravestone - who was Victoria Sofaer, how did she end up in Chennai, how did she meet her death so young?

An internet search took me to a splendidly comprehensive genealogy of the Sephardic Jewish diaspora in what was the Ottoman empire - and this told me that Victoria had been born in Baghdad and was known as Toyah. It also revealed that while her family knew that she had died in India within a year of arriving there, they didn't know exactly where and when. Through Alain Farhi, the impetus behind the family history site, I made contact with Lydia, who has been generous in sharing her knowledge of the Sofaer family history and contacting others in the family to check details.

The story begins in Baghdad - and opens a window on the history of the Jewish community in that city, among them trading families with commercial links spreading across Asia to all the key ports of the British Empire in India and further east.

Toyah's father, Menashi, was the main importer of food and drink in inter-war Baghdad. He ran the British General Supply Store (after 1941 Baghdad supplanted British in the company's name) which shipped in via Basra supplies of French brandy, English biscuits, Dutch beer, American cigarettes, Belgian chocolates, Swiss cheese, Ceylon tea, that sort of thing. Menashi had learnt about the import business in Rangoon, where the Sofaers were one of the principal trading families. He spent twenty years in Burma - but after his father's death in 1916, the family moved back to Baghdad (though an uncle remained in Rangoon).

Toyah was the second child of Menashi's marriage to Dina Shamash - her mother died while giving birth to her. Menashi went on to marry Dina's sister, Naima, and had three more children, of whom Abraham - just two years younger than Toyah - is the oldest and the only one still living.

Rashid Street, Baghdad, 1945 https://www.pinterest.com/pin/255438610088881666/

The Sofaers had several prime properties in Baghdad. One of them was on the main shopping street, Rashid Street. On the other side of the road was an Armenian-run ladies' wear shop.

Somewhere around 1939 or 1940, Toyah fell in love with an Armenian man from that family. The two met in secret. They were from different communities and different religions, and when Toyah's family found out about the relationship they were determined to put a stop to it. They sought to marry her to a suitable Jewish boy - but when Toyah rejected these suitors, they shipped her out to India.

In the early 1940s, Abraham Sofaer was living in Bombay - along with his older step-brother and an uncle. He had gone there to avoid military service in the Iraqi army. While in Bombay, the family traded in textiles which were shipped back to Baghdad.

Towards the close of 1942, Menashi and his wife turned up in Bombay with Toyah in tow. 'I felt there was something in Toyah, in her face and demeanour, that was very perplexing to me', Abraham recalls from the Toronto nursing home where he now lives.

'I was very bewildered to see her so transformed and I wondered what had happened to her. Her silence gave the impression that she was in complete shock. I felt there was something mysterious and unusual that I could not understand. She didn't utter a word to me and this saddened me greatly.'

After a while, Toyah and her parents moved on to another Indian city - Abraham didn't know which one. He never saw Toyah again. He was told she had died. Her parents returned to Baghdad.

Abraham knew nothing about Toyah's romance until - seeing his grief - he was told the full story by 'grand mere', the maternal grandmother he shared with Toyah. 'I happened to be the closest to Toyah among the whole family. I still wondered about the details which led to her demise and I still don't know all the facts.'

'I heard that the doctor who looked after Toyah in India felt the urge to tell the authorities about the serious decline of her health and the role her parents played in this matter. The doctor apparently did not pursue this idea. The Armenian lover also felt the need to alert the authorities in Baghdad about Toyah's deplorable condition and the role that her parents played in her health and incarceration. But for whatever reason, he did not go through with this idea either.'

So there was no public scandal or fall-out - even within the Jewish community in Baghdad, the romance was hushed up - no one talked of how Toyah had died, as her brother sees it, from a broken heart.

And there is another tragic aspect to this tale. I asked if the family had any photographs of Toyah. This is the photo that her niece, Lydia, sent me -

It shows three of the Sofaer boys - Elias, the oldest and tallest, Abraham, standing next to him and Jack, the toddler. It was taken in around 1927. Toyah would then have been 7. Why doesn't she feature in this professionally taken family photo?

Well, she did - she was standing on Elias's left. After her death, the photo was retouched to excise her likeness - you can still make out where her right arm overlapped with Elias's left arm - so that, in Lydia's words, 'there would be no reminder of the scandal and tragedy of her life'.

It was apparently a custom in Baghdad - a superstition - that when people died all the photos of them were disposed of. That may be why - much to Abraham's regret- there is no confirmed likeness of his sister.

But Lydia did come across this wonderful photo taken in Baghdad probably in the early 1930s. The elderly woman with the stick is 'grand mere' Farha Shamash; the man on the extreme right is her husband Saleh Shamash. The woman leaning against a tree is Khatoun Meir, Toyah's aunt ... and the girl with wavy hair peeping out above her aunt's head may, just may, be Toyah Sofaer.

'We have been given the rare chance to honour Toyah's memory by thinking and talking about her now', Lydia told me by email. 'We are truly grateful for that. Bringing back memories of his sister is incredibly important and moving for my father.'

'It is also comforting to know that a gravestone was built for her with such care, love and respect.'

LATER (August 2017): this photo is not of Toyah Sofaer - but click here to see her aged about 14

UPDATE: some more family photos

I've now received some more photos from Lisette Shashoua, not of Toyah but of members of her family, which I am posting here. Thanks Lisette! I've also included Lisette's description of the photo under each one.

On the left, Naim Shamash (he was the older boy on the tree in the photo above) - Naim was .the Uncle of Toya , Elias and Abe....and the father of Jimmy and David.; my aunt Renee, Toya's cousin, is next to him; then our grandmother Sarah Khatoun Meir; and an unknown person

Our grandmother Sarah Khatoun with our grandfather Eliahou Meir in Nice around 1952

My mother Mouzli Shashoua, the.daughter of Sarah Khatoun and cousin to Elias, Abe, Toya and Jack

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A term in Chennai: the 'lost' Jewish cemetery

13/2/2017

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'Beit Ha Haim' - the house of life; a Hebrew euphemism for a cemetery. This 'house of life' is a last testament to a community that is all but gone.

Chennai/Madras was once a major commercial hub of the British Empire, and along with cities such as Mumbai/Bombay, Calcutta, Rangoon and Singapore, it had a trading community of Baghdadi Jews. Here in Chennai, the community seems to have been small - mainly dealing in diamonds and coral, which didn't prove to be the most enduring aspects of the city's economy. So by the late nineteenth century, the community had largely dispersed. The synagogue has long since disappeared, and Chennai's established Jewish community is now said to be in single figures.

But there is still, wonderfully, a Jewish cemetery - though it's tiny and reputed to be so difficult to find that it's all-but-lost in one of the more crowded corners of the city.

There's nothing like a challenge - so the other day, I ventured along Lloyds Road on the look out for a Star of David. And I found it! (Directions below if you are on the same trail). The woman selling fish and vegetables just by the locked blue gate gave the caretaker, Kumari, a quick call. Within half-an-hour, she was there ... tackling the double set of padlocks ... and welcoming me in to a fairly barren but well tended burial ground recently painted in a fetching sky blue.

This is not the original site of the cemetery - it's moved, perhaps twice, and appears to have relocated here in the 1980s. This seems to be the spot for burial grounds - there are apparently Chinese and Baha'i cemeteries nearby. Only a handful of the older Jewish graves remain. The grandest, dating from 1745, is that of Abraham Salomons, one of the principal coral merchants - there's still a Coral Merchants Street in the George Town district of the city.

One of the most affecting graves is that of a young woman who died in her early twenties - and thanks to the internet, it's possible to say a little bit more about her than the bare details on the gravestone.

Victoria 'Toyah' Sofaer was born in Baghdad. The surname Sofaer is conspicuous in Baghdadi Jewish communities - indeed a Sofaer in Calcutta became a leading actress (the Jewish community being a little less conservative).

According to this genealogical site, the family aren't aware of where Toyah is buried. I do hope they get to see this photo.

There has, it seems, just been one burial since the cemetery moved to Lloyds Road - Eileen Joshua who died in 1997 at the age of 68. And I guess it's unlikely that this burial plot will ever be full.

And here's how to find the cemetery ...

This isn't the last word as maps go - but I hope it will suffice. Lloyds Road is now known as Avvai Shanmugam Salai. If you start from the beach heading west, you walk past the Marina fish market, cross over the open drain that's marked, and the cemetery is another fifty yards on along this increasingly congested market street and on your right.

Kumari, the caretaker, doesn't speak English - but the local stallholders (who also don't have English but were both friendly and helpful when I turned up out of the blue) know her mobile number. If she is summoned, she will of course expect a tip - and while whatever you give is unlikely to be acknowledged as sufficient, she seems as far as I can tell to do a good job. And she doesn't get many visitors.

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Andrew Whitehead's
Blog

Another term in Chennai: Toyah, farewell!

Another term in Chennai: is this Otti Castle? (UPDATED: the answer is at the end of the piece)

Finding Toyah Sofaer (UPDATED)

LATER: updated with photos of Toyah's brother

Searching for Toyah Sofaer: born in Baghdad, buried in Chennai

LATER (August 2017): this photo is not of Toyah Sofaer - but click here to see her aged about 14

UPDATE: some more family photos

A term in Chennai: the 'lost' Jewish cemetery

And here's how to find the cemetery ...

Andrew Whitehead's blog

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​Andrew Whitehead'sBlog

Another term in Chennai: Toyah, farewell!

Another term in Chennai: is this Otti Castle? (UPDATED: the answer is at the end of the piece)

Finding Toyah Sofaer (UPDATED)

LATER: updated with photos of Toyah's brother​

Searching for Toyah Sofaer: born in Baghdad, buried in Chennai

LATER (August 2017): this photo is not of Toyah Sofaer - but click here to see her aged about 14

​UPDATE: some more family photos

A term in Chennai: the 'lost' Jewish cemetery

And here's how to find the cemetery ...​

Andrew Whitehead's blog

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Andrew Whitehead's
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LATER: updated with photos of Toyah's brother

UPDATE: some more family photos

And here's how to find the cemetery ...