David Elazarov with his father Solomon Elazar

This is my father, Solomon David Elazar, and I sitting on his shoulders. Our dog Sharo is in front of us. The photo was taken probably in the middle of the 1920s, in Sofia. My father's had secondary education. In the Balkan War and in the Inter-Allied War he fought as a supply officer, because he was an educated man. I remember that he wore a beard and a fur cap. At that time all men wore fur caps and most of them had beards and moustaches. Moustaches were almost obligatory. In fact, on the oldest photo that I have of my father, which was taken during World War I, he also has a moustache. My father worked as a distributor of paints and varnish produced by German companies. The goods arrived in large chests. There were even special tools for opening the chests. My father's business declined during the general economic recession [at the end of the 1920s] and following the advice of uncle Rufat he declared bankruptcy. All that affected my father deeply, because we had a very good reputation. After he died on 1st March 1932 we were in a very hard situation; it was a huge blow to us. He died at the age of 52 of cancer. I am from my father's second marriage. I was born on 30th April 1920 in Sofia. At that time my mother was 33 years old and my father was 40. My birth was a great joy for them, because only girls had been born in the family before me. They prepared a special canopy with silk curtains [for the cradle] and organized a big celebration. When I was a student, my family and I often went to a place outside Sofia, Korubaglar - it was some 10-12 kilometers from town. It was an uninhabited area eastwards towards the Iskar River Gorge. During the holidays we got on carts and went there. We had a dog named Sharo and took it with us.