Gracia Albuhaire, Matilda Albuhaire and Mati Behar

This picture was taken in the house of my sister-in-law Matilda Albuhaire. I am in the center, Jack's sister Matilda is on the left and on the right is their maternal niece Mati Behar, a pharmacist, whose parents moved to Israel in 1948. She is married to professor Albert Behar. The picture was taken in Sofia in 1994 during their visit to Bulgaria. Matilda was a teacher at the Jewish schools in Bourgas and Sofia. During the Holocaust she worked as an accountant in her brother Jack's mill in Bourgas, as he was in the labor camps. Mati is my niece - her father is my aunt Ana's eldest son and Nissim is my first cousin. My aunt Ana was married to a widower in the town of Sliven. He already had three other children. Ana gave birth to four children: Fortune, the eldest one, then Rosa, Jack and Suzana - also known as Tanchi. Ana raised them in the same way as she did her own children, which created a very close relationship among all the kids. When one of them left for Palestine, all the rest followed him. Nissim, the oldest one, was obeyed by everyone else. He took care of the family after their parents' death. It was a very close-knit family.