Carolos Beraha with friends

Here you can see my father Carolos with Ernesto Cohen and Ivet's father, Isaak Beja.

I have a cousin named Beja. I think the picture was taken before my father got married, in the early 1920s, but I’m not sure. My father used to be friends with Ernesto since before his wedding.

Ernesto’s family seems to have had a lot of money and when his father died he was left with a fortune, a shop and cash.

He was a communist and he didn’t care about money, so he either spent it or donated it to the Party. He managed to end up with nothing to his name.

Eventually, around 1925 he and his family had to move to Paris. They had a very hard time there as everyone had to work; he, his wife, his brother, his sister and their mother.

His sister was married to a very difficult man, Beja. He had been married to a woman called Rinet with whom he had a daughter with red hair, very beautiful, but he got a divorce when in Paris.

Being a communist he enrolled in the Red Brigades, to fight Franco in Spain.

All this time that Ernesto was in Paris, my father hadn’t heard anything of him. After the war people tried contacting each other, my father went to Paris but didn’t find him and then he went to London.

It seems they were looking for each other. The story is that Ernesto was probably captured in Spain and was taken to England.

Carolos appears to have found him somewhere in England really tired and old in the company of this English woman, who took care of him, and he had a son as well.

Photos from this interviewee