Roza Eskenazi, arguably the greatest and most renowned Greek diva, was born in Constantinople and named Sarah Skinazi. Roza’s exact date of birth is not known. In her autobiography Auta Pou Thimame (What I Remember) she states that she was born in 1910. Published in 1982, the autobiography is based on interviews Eskenazi gave in 1972. Apart from being forgetful by then, she appears to have deliberately concealed her age, as she probably had done since the 1920s. The Greek musicologist Panayiotis Kounadis is among those who believe that Eskenazi was born between 1883 and 1887, whilst others maintain that she was born between 1890 and 1900.
Roza Eskenazi was a Sephardic Jew. Her father, Avraham Skinazi, owned a storage facility. No documented facts can be found regarding her mother, Flora. She had one sister (name unknown) and two brothers, Sami and Nissim. By 1972 she had outlived all her siblings. by Yaron Enosh
