Olga and Bitush Varsano with Albena Naydenova

In this photo are my mother, Olga Varsano, nee Almozino, and my father, Bitush Varsano together with my niece Albena Naydenova - my sister Rebeka's daughter. The photo was taken in front of the 'Ernst Telman' holiday house in Velingrad where workers from the textile mill used to go on holiday.

There is an inscription in ink on the back of the photo: '1959'; there is no other inscription or a stamp of a photo shop. Albena is wearing the Tyrolese dress, fashionable for little girls at the time, but, unfortunately, no matter how coquette the garments are, the stockings are wrinkled because in those times lycra was still not invented.

We were four siblings. Rebeka or Beka Varsano was the youngest and she had the most independent way of development irrespectively of the fact that we have always been united. She finished the first, second and third grades at the Jewish school, which was in one and the same yard with the synagogue in the framework formed by the streets Osogovo, Bregalnitsa and Positano. After that we were interned to Vratsa. The classes in the school were discontinued. On returning to Sofia, she finished the Jewish school but after 9th September there was a completely new curriculum and in practice it resembled a Bulgarian school. After the Jewish elementary school she finished the Third High School for Girls and after that studied medicine.

My sister worked as a doctor in the medical center ISUL. She married the Bulgarian Vladimir Naydenov despite the resistance from our parents - they opposed this marriage not because he was Bulgarian, but because he was an actor. Later she divorced him. They have one daughter, Albena. In 1994 Rebeka left for Israel and lived there for ten years but then came back to Bulgaria and now she lives with her daughter Albena.