David Elazarov and his sister Dora Vakarelova at the Black Sea

The photo was taken in Varna in 1929 by the photo studio 'Photography Varna - Sea Garden'. In the back in the middle is my sister Dora Vakarelova, nee Elazar. I am the first from the left in the foreground. The others are friends of ours from Varna, whose names I no longer remember. The following is written on the back of the photo with a pencil: 'Varna, 20.07.1929'. My father, Solomon Elazar, was married twice. He had two daughters from his first marriage - my stepsisters Rozalia and Dora. His first wife, Matilda Baruh, died of tuberculosis. I am from my father's second marriage. 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. We also took blankets and food and stayed there in the fresh air. There were a lot of chimneys in Sofia at that time and the air was really polluted. There was no central heating and every chimney was spewing smoke either from the wood or from the coal. We also went to Vladaya, but I didn't go to Vitosha Mountain [the mountain of Sofia] as a child. It became my favorite place for walks much later. Dora was born in 1913. Later she worked in the trade field. She married Luka Vakarelov and had two children, Virginia [born in 1942] and Krastyo [born in 1946]. She lives in Sofia. During the Holocaust she and I were sent to a camp. She was in the 'St. Nikola' camp in the Rhodope Mountains, near the town of Asenovgrad, from May until November 1943. We both survived the war. After the war Rozalia came to Bulgaria a few times and the three of us met.