Sofi Uziel's family

Sofi Uziel's family

This is a family photo taken in 1937. You can see my mother, Ventura Benaroya, nee Levi, my father, Haim Benaroya, me, my elder brother Nissim Benaroya and my younger brother Rafael Benaroya. I have two brothers - Rafael Benaroya and Nissim Benaroya. Rafael used to work for the Boyana Film Center and Nissim was a hat maker. When he went to Israel, Nissim worked as builder. My father knew seven languages. He was a corn-merchant - he used to purchase grain from Kiustendja and sold it in Europe. As a soldier during World War I he had been very badly wounded and had lost one hundred percent of his working capacity. He was ashamed to be among people because he wasn't able to move at all. 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. My father used to spend three months a year in the Home for Invalids in Bankya. This was his holiday. We used to visit him on Sundays and that was our holiday. My father was very ill - he suffered from insomnia and couldn't sleep because he had a grenade splinter in his brain. He died from it later, in 1938.
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