The picture was taken at our place in Sofia. Our grandchildren are sitting on the pavement in front of the block of flats where we live. In fact, here is only some of my grandchildren. From left to right: Elena (1978), Georgi (1979), Kalina (1982) and Juliet (1978); Nikolay (1973) and Monica (1987) are missing in this picture. Our great-grandchildren: Mladen (1996) and Anton (2001) are not yet born and now they live in Canada.
We have three children with my husband Mois Saltiel: Solomon, Yosif, and Ani. They all were born in Sofia. Solomon is a professor, Ph.D, and was accepted as a member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in the field of quant electronics in 2004. His wife, Veska Saltiel, is also a physicist. They married in 1977. Their children's names are Juliet and Kalina. At present, Juliet lives in Haifa, Israel, where she studies the same specialty as her aunt Ani - architecture.
Yosif is an automatics engineer and currently has his own company in Sofia. He married Nina (I don't know what her maiden name was) in 1976. His wife is also an engineer in automatics. They have two children: Georgi and Monica. Georgi is an IT specialist (he completed his university education in this field), while Monica is still a schoolgirl.
My daughter Ani is an architect, but she is not working at present. As a matter of fact she was the first to marry - yet as a schoolgirl in 1973. My husband and I even had to ask for permission for their wedding, because they hadn't completed their high school education yet (Ani was then almost 18 years old). Her husband's name is Mladen Mladenov, they were classmates. She was still a schoolgirl when she gave birth to her first child Nikolay. Nikolay graduated from the Sofia's High School of Mathematics, after which he married and went to Canada. At present he lives there together with his wife Stanislava, also a mathematician, and their two children Mladen (1996) and Anton (2001). Ani's daughter is called Elena. She graduated from the Construction University in Sofia and is a water conduit and sewerage engineer. Now she is practicing her profession with a company.
All my children and grandchildren were born in Sofia. As a matter of fact, I don't know when they understood they were Jews. We used to celebrate all the Jewish holidays at home, although we didn't always observe the tradition very strictly. My children graduated from Bulgarian schools. So I am not sure if they have an increased Jewish self-consciousness. What is for sure, no one can remember of anti-Semitic incident against a member of our family.
