Isak and Rebeka Varsano

My brother Isak and my sister Rebeka are in this photo. I, Roza Varsano, took the photo myself in front of our house on Odrin Street. The photo was taken in 1943 in Sofia before the internment. In the house on Odrin Street we lived with one more family, only a man and his wife. While we lived there, there was one tiny living room that we shared with the other family, with a kitchen and two rooms. There were two chimneys in the kitchen - the other family cooked on one of them, ours - on the other. We, the children, were sleeping in the room, on those beds, and our parents bought a bed - the ordinary size and a half and were sleeping in the living room with our neighbors' permission because we were living together with them. There was electricity and my father, as a plumber, always ensured there was running water in the house. The yards in Iuchbunar were brimming with life. When it was time for coffee, one or another of the women living there would take the brazier outside and would start the fire, and everybody would go there and put their coffee pot there. The most important thing was that they sat together to talk, to chat. They were all chatting - Bulgarians, Jews - everybody. In that respect the poor were living much more in harmony, they were more united, there was a feeling of togetherness, they got on with each other much better and they quarreled, quarreled, but there were no anti-Semitic attitudes. The children quarreled, the families quarreled with one another, for example if a husband returned home drunk, in the yard there would invariably be a real spectacular scandal - very Italian-like. There wasn't a distinctive line between wealthy Bulgarians and wealthy Jews, but there was a distinction between poor and wealthy Jews.