Haim Benaroya

This is a photo of my half-brother Haim Benaroya, taken in Karnobat in the 1930s. My mother's first husband was killed during World War I and left her alone with a one-year-old son, Haim. My mother remained a widow. After several years she met my father in Plovdiv, where she worked in a cigarette kiosk. She married him and went to live in Karnobat together with Haim. During the Holocaust my brothers and all Jewish men were sent to labor camps and many people from the capital were interned in 1942. Even my brother Haim was not able to come to my wedding, because he was sent to a labor camp somewhere near Lyubimets [a small town in Southeastern Bulgaria]. He was my dearest brother after my father's death when I was only 15 years old. He looked after me a lot. He got married in Karnobat, I believe in 1944. After the war he took his family and went to live in Israel. His wife's name is Jula. He has a son, Yitzhak, and a daughter, Rebecca. When I or someone else from my family traveled to Israel after the death of my husband's sisters, we always visited Haim's children who live in Petah Tikva. My older granddaughter Matilda, who has been living in Israel for four years, sees them almost every day and they are her family there.

Photos from this interviewee