This is a photo of my brother Lazar Aroyo in the Ma?abarot kibbutz. The photo was taken in 1946 in Israel [then Palestine]. My brother is the second from right to left. His son Gidon is sitting on the mud guard of a truck. The other people on the photo are workers in the service station for cars and farm machines.
When my brother Lazar Aroyo reached the age of 13 and seeing that my father couldn't support the family and send him to study, he decided to go to Pazardjik, where there was a school funded by the Zionist organization and teaching agriculture and various crafts. After he studied two years in that school, around 1927, he left for Israel. He traveled two months until he reached the country. Together with other youths from Bulgaria, Poland and Russia they founded the Ma'abarot kibbutz struggling with the Arabs, the marshes and poverty.
Today the Ma'abarot kibbutz is quite advanced in all respects. My brother was in charge of repairs and maintenance of the cars and farming machines. He had learned that craft in Bulgaria in the school in Pazardjik, which was called 'HaTikvah' [Hebrew: Hope]. My brother Lazar married a Bulgarian Jew in the kibbutz. Her name was Rosa and she was a teacher of Ivrit in Yambol. They had two children, Gidon and Oro. They live in the kibbutz.
