Bonka Davico’s Estera Demajo and her brother Haim Demajo

This is a photo of my mother Rasela, my brother Haim and me in Sarajevo in 1926.

As a young man my father was fradted into the army and took part in the Balkan wars, he fought in Albania, too.

In 1918, he went (from Albania) to Sarajevo. There were five Jews in that regiment, and one of them was my father.

They were greeted on the station by the (Jewish) “Benevolence Society”, of which my mother was a member, as well as by other Serbian societies.

My father met my mother then, fell in love and the final outcome was that he wanted to stay in Sarajevo to get married.

However, my grandfather, my mother’s father, wouldn’t allow the wedding to take place at first because my father wanted to leave for Belgrade at once, so grandfather said they could be married only on condition that they stayed in Sarajevo.

Mother and father were married in 1919. I was born in 1920, and my brother was born in 1923.

In 1926 we moved to Belgrade. At first we lived in the downtown, where we had a cozy four-bedroom apartment.

My father started working, I can’t remember on what job exactly, but it was not in “Riunione asiguracioni” (insurance company) where he worked afterwards. Mother was a real homemaker; she kept the house and looked after us.

Father wasn’t very religious, while mother was, because of her mother, grandmother Mazalta. We didn’t observe Sabbath at our house, but at my father’s cousin Rezinka Hendl Sabbath was observed.