Rebecca Yulzari

This is a photo of my mother Rebecca Solomon Yulzari, nee Perets, taken in Karnobat in the 1940s. My mother was born in Asenovgrad in 1887. She was a very beautiful and delicate woman. She was blond, with fair eyes and smooth skin. Later she moved to Plovdiv, because the family was more likely to find work there, I guess. I know nothing about the school and younger years of my mother. I don?t know why, but she never talked about them, probably, because I never asked her. She was the oldest child in the family. She had two brothers - Jacques Perets, who was a leather worker and Israel Perets and three sisters - Regina, Sophie, Mazal. My mother's first husband was killed during the war [WWI] and left her alone with a one-year-old son. My mother and her sisters worked when they were young. I know that they even worked in the factory of my husband's father, Marko Israel, in Plovdiv, where they produced umbrellas and other articles, which I don't remember. Later, when they had their own families, they didn't work. My uncle Jacques saved my mother's life once during a big flood in their hometown Asenovgrad. He carried her out of the house, which collapsed soon afterwards. My mother couldn't walk on her own, because she was about to give birth to my brother Haim. My father met my mother by chance, at the kiosk where she sold cigarettes. Gradually, he persuaded her to marry him and together they moved to Karnobat taking my half-brother Haim with them. I suppose that my mother felt nervous about what she would find there, because she was the age of my father's daughters. At first they treated her quite distantly, but gradually she became part of the family.