Tag #127963 - Interview #78014 (Matilda Israel)

During the holidays we often went to Bankya with Liza, the wife of my brother Sabetay. She went there to have her sick heart treated. I mostly loved the weekends when we went to Bourgas [a port town at the Black Sea coast]. We caught the train which passed through Karnobat at 6am and in an hour we were in Bourgas. It's a very nice town, where we used to go sunbathing. We spent the whole day there and we returned with the last train. Sometimes during the holidays I also went to Sofia to visit my maternal grandmother Ester, who I loved very much, because she indulged my every whim. She lived with her son Jacques in the Krasna Poliana living estate. She was a very lean and small woman with light blue eyes. Her husband, my mother's father, left for Palestine and never returned. We never received any news from him and we don't know what happened to him. My mother, who was the oldest child, had to work to support the family. There was a rumor going around that my grandfather married an Arab woman in Palestine, but we never found out if it was true. I don't know why he left. Since then my grandmother lived at my uncle's home in Sofia. Grandma Ester died in 1942.