The Saltiel family in the yard of their house

This is my family in the yard of our house on 10 Bregalnitsa Street. From left to right are I, my brothers Albert and Yako, my mother Rebecca and my father Solomon, my brother Haim and a young cousin. The photo was taken in the 1930s in Sofia.

I had three brothers. The eldest was Albert, who was born in 1916. Haim was born in 1918 and the youngest, Yako, in 1928. They all spoke Bulgarian and Ladino, had a secondary education and studied in the same Jewish school as I did. Albert was a dental mechanic. Haim was a cobbler, but later in Israel he worked in the El-Al [Israeli national airways] company, and Yako, who was the first to move to Israel as a young man, worked as a salesman in a shop in Yaffo.

My brothers lived in Bulgaria until 1948 and then moved to Israel. Albert had two children – Solomon and Pnina; Haim also has two children – Rivka and Tali, and Yako’s children are Rivka and Shlomo.

My brothers Albert and Haim Saltiel married in Sofia in 1943 and 1945, respectively, in accordance with the religious ritual. Yako also had a religious wedding, but in Israel in the 1950s. They were not very religious, but they observed the traditions.

I was born in Sofia on 30th November 1923. This is the capital of Bulgaria – a city surrounded by a mountain range, in the middle of which is the beautiful Vitosha Mountain. I was born at the corner of Boris I Street and Tsar Simeon Street where I lived for four or five years. This was in Iuchbunar, the poor Jewish quarter in Sofia. Then a big fire broke out in our house and spread into many of the rooms, where other families lived. We moved to live in the family house of my mother on 10 Bregalnitsa Street in Sofia.