Bonka Davico’s daughter Svetlana with her cousin Nikola and her uncle Leon Davico

Bonka Davico’s daughter Svetlana with her cousin Nikola and her uncle Leon Davico

This is a photo of my daughter Svetlana, (on the right) her cousin Nikola (on the left) and her uncle, my husband’s cousin, Leon Davico.

The photo was taken in Belgrade in the garden of our family house in 1954.

Svetlana was born in Madrid in 1943. From Madrid, with a two-month old daughter we started for Lisbon because from there we could catch a plane to London.

On April 1st 1943, I arrived with my daughter and husband to London, with an English plane that flew from Lisbon to London in the so-called “Patriotic school”.

After the war I must say that while I was working I couldn’t get around to doing Jew affairs at the Jewish Community, but my daughter Svetlana even before she went to school attended the Jewish kindergarten, the best daycare facility in Belgrade.

Many Serbs would ask through other connections and me to enroll their children there.

It was located in the front yard of the synagogue in Marsala Birjuzova St., then in Kosmajska St. and two women ran it. Languages were taught there, the teachers were excellent, and the mother of a good friend of mine, Mrs. Fleissman was in charge.

My daughter went there for 2-3 years. She finished four grades of primary school in the Kralja Petra school, where my grandfather, my father and I studied.

I insisted that after that she should enroll in a very good high school, the so-called classical high school, that had exceptional teachers, and where they even learnt ancient Greek and she finished eight grades there.

She enrolled in the Philological Faculty at once, where her majors were Spanish and English language and she graduated before she was 22.

After she graduated she went to Argentine and attended the school for consecutive translation there for a year.

She came back and she worked as a consecutive translator for a year but as it isa very demanding job she then started working in Radio Belgrade in the Spanish language program.

She wasn’t there for long though, she applied for a job at the Kolarac University where she was accepted and she was an outstanding Spanish language professor.

Svetlana married and have a daughter Dina.

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