Anelia Kasabova, her cousins and grandmother Ester Elazar

This is a photo of me, my cousins and my grandmother taken in Tel Baruch in 1956 just before I returned to Bulgaria. My cousin David Albelda, who is a lawyer in Tel Aviv now, is on the very left, next to him is Ester Avramova, who lives in America, then you can see me and next to me is Nisim Gadol, who married a French woman and lived with her in France but then divorced her and went back to Israel.

We left for Israel in 1953. My relatives, who already lived there, immediately sent me to Jerusalem to study Hebrew at the Institute for Hebrew Studies. That was a very famous language institute and I stayed there for a year with board and lodging. Only immigrants with higher education such as doctors and engineers who were determined to study the language used to go there. My grandfather was the only one in the family who knew Hebrew before we went to Israel. I used to talk in Ladino with my grandma who knew almost no Bulgarian. I myself hadn't gone to a Jewish school in Bulgaria, and I had to learn Hebrew quickly - that was very important for a young person in Israel.

I had to join the army after graduating from the language institute. That's why I enrolled in a nurse school in Jerusalem, where I studied for two years. I was in touch with my future husband, Liubomir Kasabov, and I had already made up my mind to go back to Bulgaria. A friend of mine had introduced me to my future husband at the time when I was studying at the language school in Lovech, before I went to Israel. At that time he was studying in the Higher Military School for Construction Officers in Sofia. I came back to Bulgaria alone, in 1956, to marry and live with my husband.