Avram and Simha Pinkas

This photo was taken in Vidin in 1924. These are my paternal grandmother Simha Pinkas, nee Beniesh, and grandfather Avram Simha. I have very few memories of my grandfather, because I was young when he died. Probably he came to Vidin from Svishtov. He was trading with groceries together with his sons. They were not very rich, but they lived well. I remember my paternal grandmother as a nice-looking, sociable and kind woman. She had grayish hair and she wasn't very tall. She dressed in darker plain clothes and she didn't wear a kerchief. While she was very friendly and loved everybody, my grandfather was a little bit stricter and more distanced. They talked to each other in Ladino. I don't remember with whom my grandmother kept in touch, but I remember that she got on very well with her daughters-in-law. She had four daughters-in-law and they were all very united. Even when my father's other brothers, Jacques, Sami and Josef, already married with children, had to leave the family house, the tradition remained that every Friday everyone would come to have a bath at our place: we had a big bathroom with a shower and a bath tub and we lit a geyser. On that day my mother prepared cheese crackers and sweets and when all the children had had a bath, we gathered and played in the yard, while the others drank coffee and ate sweets. My grandfather died in Vidin, when I was very little. I knew my grandmother better, because I lived with her in Vidin and when my parents came to Sofia. My grandfather was a merchant and his four sons became merchants too. My grandmother didn't work: she was a housewife and kept the house in a very good state. She knitted very nice bed covers on a crochet-hook as well as blankets from cotton and linen. She prepared bed and table covers for all her daughters-in-law.