The Levys are working people. Since our earliest childhood we were exposed at home to the world of knowledge and ideas. My mother Evelyne devoted the best years of her life to raise us. My father David was always a loving and respected role model. He taught us what we believe in while we grew up in a comfortable yet fair atmosphere. Both my parents shared a passion for music and literature.

My father David Levy Pesso was born in Istanbul, Turkey, in 1913. A year after he was born, his family moved to Austria. He went to school in Vienna until he was eight, and then his family moved to Paris. There, his parents and sisters Juliette and Nelly took the French nationality. In Paris, David worked by day while he attended night classes at Sorbonne University, where he got a degree in Law, like his grandfather Jacques Levy, the son of a judge.

Although he could have been admitted into the Army Officer’s Academy, he pursued his socialist ideals and served with the rank and file. He was always a man of honor, dedicated to noble actions.

In 1939, like millions of others, he joined the fight of the Second World War. Those were hard and uncertain years in Europe and all over the world. While in the front with the French Army, he was captured by the Germans and sent to a Stalag, a war prisoner’s camp, where often he was almost killed. After the war, when he was 32, he returned to France where he worked until 1950 when, shaken again by the Algerian independence war, France became one more time the scenario of a conflagration of uncertain outcome.

David married my mother Evelyne Calvo in 1948 in Paris, where my sister Renée Rose was born. Soon thereafter, the three moved to Lima, where my grandparents Isaac and Rose Calvo were already living. Rafael, Isaac’s brother, lived with my grandparents. Both were franc masons and very religious men. Aunt Nelly, my father’s sister, had married Mardocheo Franco, one of eight children of this Italian Sephardic rabbi. She also lived in Lima.

My mother, my brother and sister, and myself.

My father arrived in Peru with education and a small capital. He opened a business to sell mostly fabrics wholesale, and also went into construction.

My mother also wanted to have a profession and by the age of 43, when she had finished raising us, she started studying at the Catholic University, where she earned a History degree.

Isy and I were born in 1954. The three of us grew together with my father and mother in an atmosphere of enormous respect. Our education was a very important goal in my parents’ life.

Renée Rose, my eldest sister, went to San Silvestre School in Lima and later took Political Science in Bryn Mawr College, Philadelphia, USA. At New York University in New York, USA. She studied two Master’s Degrees, one in Political Science and another in Business Management. For 20 years she worked in banking in New York. She married Philippe Levi, with whom she had two children. Alexander just graduated from Harvard’s Law School while Elizabeth attends Amhearst College, USA. Philippe, her husband, studied at and earned a Master’s Degree from Carnegie Melon, Chicago, USA. They all live in Manhattan. Renée Rose left a few years ago the competitive work environment to devote herself full time to raising her children and managing my father’s investments. She is a noble and simple mother fully committed to her family.

Isy went to Markham College in Lima, Peru, where he was an honor roll student, winning gold medals for his primary and secondary school achievements. When he turned 16, he went to the United States to study Operations Research at Cornell University, and by 21 he had earned a Master’s Degree in Industrial Engineering. He returned to Lima. He married Heydi Frydman. From their marriage were born two childs. Heydi died in 2003 after a painful cancer. Ever since, Isy has been his children’s father and mother. His major child has followed the steps of her father and she will soon graduate as an honor roll student at Roosevelt School in Lima. She has already been admitted at Columbia University in New York, USA. She is a young woman with a huge sensitivity that touches the lives of her friends and all who meet her. Isy is a man of good and peace.

I, like Isy, also attended Markham College. At school I excelled as a student and athlete. In Lima I took piano. After graduating I traveled to the United States to study Economics in Oberlin College, in Ohio, where Thomas F. Dernburg, a widely published macroeconomics author, headed the Department of Economics. I also studied music, harmony, piano, communications theory, and the arts and humanities. I then earned a Master’s Degree in Leadership from Andrews University in Michigan. I am divorced and live with my daughter Estrela, in whom I have recognized a peculiar spirit of noble sensitivity. Estrela attends Roosevelt School and additionally takes piano and French classes. Now I share my life with Merlis Morales, who is from Venezuela. She holds a degree in Business Management and her son Joseph, an American citizen, also attends Roosevelt School. The four of us are a family.

A family or a clan does not become thieves overnight. A family with integrity does not sacrifice it for a little money, nor does it give up its honor for a material advantage. Integrity gives you strength and is a precious gift.

Our family was educated to live and grow with truth as a guiding principle in anything we do, and never with lies or hate. The Levys were, and still are, a family bound together by ideals that, far from having weakened, have grown stronger in the face of attacks. The pain caused by injustice has brought us closer together than ever before.

David Levy Pesso taught us values and we have learned to live with those values and rear our heads proudly. Nothing ever crushed us because truth always defeats lies.