Rebeca Gershon-Levi

This photograph of me was taken in Plovdiv in the 1920s, before we moved to Sofia. I was born in Plovdiv on 29th May 1923. My childhood in that town was wonderful. Plovdiv was a quiet, cozy and very well-organized town. I don't remember the house where I was born because we lived in rented places then and moved several times during my childhood. It was quite usual at that time to live under rent and most families lived that way. My life in Plovdiv was like a fairy-tale. Our family wasn't very rich but I had a very happy childhood. I found Plovdiv very charming. I loved to walk around Plovdiv and I had the chance to do so a lot. My favorite places were Sahat tepe, Bunardjika and Maritsa River. A bunch of children used to gather and wander around town. We played a lot of games - I used to play with small balls with the boys, for instance. We took the balls from bottles of lemonade or soda. We used to play 'thieves and policemen' a lot. Another interesting game was 'Ghosts': We used to gather in different houses and pull down the curtains. Then we started to summon ghosts until we seemed to see something and usually one of us got very scared and cried out loud. Of course we used to do that only in our parents' absence. We used to play hide-and-seek also.