These are my cousins Lily and Beka [Rebeka]. Beka is the first person on the left and Lily is in the middle. I am on the right. Lily and Beka are daughters of my uncle Aron Levi from Plovdiv. The picture was taken in Plovdiv in the late 1930s. Their family left for Israel in 1949. They took my grandmother Mazal Levi with them. She passed away in Israel. She couldn't get used to the new country and the new way of living.
My uncle Aron Levi went to live in Plovdiv around the time when I was born so I don't remember seeing him in Karnobat. I think he had left for Karnobat before I was born.
We had closer relationship with my uncle Aron Levi. He was married in Plovdiv. He had a strong feeling of responsibility towards our family and especially towards us, the kids, who were half-orphans. After I started school I used to spend part of the summer holiday in Plovdiv with his family. Apart from that, it was a tradition for him to send us new clothes for Pesach and Rosh Hashanah. I remember that clearly, because it continued till our internment in 1943. My uncle was a very kind and educated man. He kept a shoe store. His wife - aunt Dina was from Plovdiv and they had two daughters and a son. The eldest son was Zhak and then his sisters Rebeka and Lily were born. Unfortunately, his son Zhak who was a brilliant schoolboy, entered some progressive [i.e. leftist] anti-Fascist circles and was killed as a partisan of the ‘Anton Ivanov’ squad at the age of 17. Now there is a memorial plaque in Plovdiv of the killed partisans and his name is engraved there. Rebeka and Lily were younger than me. Now they live in Israel. Generally, my uncle's family was very conservative. My uncle was the one earning money for the family, while his wife was taking care of the household.
