Sophie Pinkas with her brother, their cousin and a friend

This photo was taken on the street in front of our house in Vidin, in 1935. I played with the boys very often and with our cousins. From left to right on the photo you can see me with my brother Avram and my cousin Marco Pinkas, who was the son of my uncle Samuel Pinkas. They moved to Israel after the war. Next to him is a child from the neighborhood, Benzion Pinkas who was not related to our family. He graduated as an engineer and also moved to Israel. I don?t know what kind of work he did there. When I go to Israel, I meet him. My brother, Avram Leon Pinkas, is three years younger than me. We got along very well, and played together when we were little. We played 'cops and robbers' and 'chilik'. [Editor's note: 'chilik' is a stick, sharp-pointed at one of its ends, which is thrown into the air by means of another special stick called 'machka'. The one, who throws it higher, wins the game.] I must have had dolls too, but I preferred playing with the boys outside. For example, we used to jump over a rope. We also had a horizontal bar in the yard and we tried to hang down from it for as long as we could. Our parents talked to us in Bulgarian and between them they used Bulgarian and Ladino, because my grandparents talked in Ladino. Thanks to the conversations with our grandparents we learned Ladino too.