Bina Dekalo with classmates

This is a photo of me and two friends of mine when we were students in Rousse. It was taken in the 1930s. First from left to right is Estrea, I am in the middle and next to me is Lisa Benaroya. At the end of the 1920s Bulgaria fell into a grave economic crisis. As a result, my father's business in Yambol declined and he went bankrupt. He had to support his big family by himself and that wasn?t easy. So in 1929 my father had to sell the house and our whole family moved to live in Rousse. My father decided to build a factory producing bed-springs with the money he had left. He took for a partner an Ashkenazi Jew named Berkovich. My father, however, understood nothing of this business and went bankrupt very quickly. This was a hard blow for him and he went down with a very serious sclerosis. After the bankruptcy our brothers supported us and we sold some more valuable things. My mother had a very nice gold necklace and a watch, which she sold. In the meantime, my brothers from my father's first marriage married and found work. We lived in Rousse for around two years. I studied in the high school there in my first and second grade.