Tag #142601 - Interview #98803 (Reyna Lidgi)

My mother’s father, Isak Moshe Beniesh, was born in 1863 in the town of Ruse and died in 1939. His mother tongue was Ladino. He was from a rich family, which was known in Ruse as the family of the Benishimi, who used to have sugar factories in the town. They were five children (altogether three brothers – Samuel, Mois and Isak and two sisters – Tihana and Timazal). I can’t say anything else about them. My grandfather was the youngest. To a certain extent my grandfather was a failure and he couldn’t find his place in life. He was poor – his brothers didn’t include him in their business. I couldn’t say what the reasons for their decision were. He used to be a commission merchant – he would offer goods to different companies and delivered them afterwards, but he didn’t profit very much from this activity. He used to be very religious – attended the services in the synagogue and afterwards would wake the whole family up for the Morning Prayer. Due to religious motives, as well as to his love for traveling, he decided to leave for Palestine [at that time] and to become a Hadji. [Hadj for the Muslims and Hadjiistvo for the Christians are connected to a pilgrimage to the sacred places. For the Muslims the sacred place is Mecca whereas for the Christians it is Jerusalem. There is no data about Hadji in Judaism.] Shortly before that, he had got engaged to his first wife, Sarah (nee Eroham). While he was in Palestine the rumor had it that she was very sickly, which was something terrible at the time but nonetheless, after returning from his pilgrimage, he married her in 1901. My mother was born in 1902, in 1907 in the town of Ferdinand my uncle Mois Beniesh was born (he died in 1976) and in 1910 in the town of Sliven my other uncle Nisim Beniesh was born (he died in 1948). His children were born in different towns because grandpa used to travel a lot. On the one hand, he loved traveling and, on the other, it was connected to his job. Additionally, the frequent change of the place of living was indispensable because of their necessity to find a cheaper way of living, as grandpa didn’t earn much.

In 1918 his first wife Sarah (nee Eroham) Beniesh, (by marriage) died from Spanish influenza [At the time of the First Balkan War in 1913 and World War I in 1914 on the front lines and in the regions of the military operations there were several outbreaks of certain diseases that took the lives of many soldiers and civilians. The diseases were cholera, typhus and plague and they were mentioned in the official statements of all the countries involved in the war. Probably Spanish influenza was also an epidemic disease.] in Ruse. I don’t know what the symptoms of this disease were, I know that it was a real pandemy at the time, which did all kind of harm and took more victims than the victims of World War I. My mother also caught Spanish influenza, together with grandma, but she managed to survive whereas grandma died because of her weak heart. Exactly forty days after the death of grandma Sarah, grandpa got married for the second time - to Dzhamila. He met her in Ruse where she was born in 1880 (there is no information about the time of her death). After the wedding, in 1919 the whole family, for I don’t know what reasons, settled down in Sofia.