Sofi Uziel and her mother Ventura Benaroya

This is a picture of my mother, Ventura Benaroya, nee Levi, and myself as a student. It was taken in the 1940s. I have university education - I graduated from the Sofia University, majoring in history. I worked as a history teacher in Svoge for two years. Altogether I worked for 31 years - mainly as a bookshop salesperson. My mother was a manlike, hard-working woman. Life made her such. My mother's brother Avram - he was my mother's benefactor - opened a grocery on the corner of Positano Street and Sredna Gora Street. There my mother achieved her proficiency in calculating and in reading Bulgarian. At that time marriages among young people weren't a love-match. Parents used to do the matchmaking. Thus my mother's brother Avram arranged the marriage between my parents. They had a religious marriage in March, 15 days before my father went to war, but I don't know the year. We were a very close family. My mother was a great woman! No woman would stand living without a man for such a long time, without going for a walk, without getting dressed up to go out. She only knew home, home, home? She knew nothing else, poor thing.