Leon Pinkas with his brothers and their wives

This photo was taken in Sela, Israel in 1962. My father Leon Pinkas had three brothers. Two of them moved to Israel with their wives during the mass aliyah in 1947. Uncle Samuel or Sami as he was called lived in Sela and my uncle Yosef in Haifa. My father and his other brother Jacques, who lived in Sofia, decided to visit them. This is a family photo taken in Sela by my uncle Sami. In the upper row, first from left to right, you can see my father Leon, his brothers Jacques, Sami and Yosef and in the lower row from right to left their wives - my mother Lenka Pinkas, nee Beraha, my aunt Roza Pinkas, wife of Jacques, my aunt Lora Pinkas, nee Shaulova, wife of Sami, and my aunt Sterina Pinkas, wife of Yosef. At home we had discussions on Israel [then Palestine] and the necessity of this state. On the whole, my father and his brothers were Zionists. His brother Jacques -originally Jacob - left for Israel with his wife Roza before 1926 when their son Avram was born. Jacques started working with some machines for tile production, but it seems that the business didn't go very well and he, his wife and son came back to Vidin. Here he opened a grocery store at the market. All brothers got on very well with each other and had good business relations. They ran their finances together and they might even have had a common cash-box. I remember that some of the machines for tile production were taken to Vidin and placed in a shed in the yard of the house. During the mass aliyah in 1947-1948 two of my father's brothers, Sami and Yosef, left with their families for Israel. His third brother, Jacques, who had been to Israel before, remained in Bulgaria. Our family also stayed here. Since we were enrolled in university, we didn't discuss the subject of leaving at all. But there was a period when my father wanted us to leave very much. He even tried to persuade my mother, but she was absolutely against it. She said that she was not going to leaving without us. The reason why I didn't leave was because of my studying and because my husband and I had different political views and opinions.