Leon Madzhar's family in Sapareva Banya resort

This is one of the few photos of me as a child. This is my family: my mother, Buka Yuda Madzhar (nee Komforti) (first from left), my father, Mordohay Sabitay Madzhar (first from right), my sister, Sarina Mordoh, and me (lowermost in the middle). The photo was taken in the 1930s in the Sapareva Banya resort where we went on a holiday. I was born in 1926 in Dupnitsa. My real date of birth is 12th February, but the date written in the municipal registrar is 19th July. It's different, because when I was born my father was working in Kyustendil. He came for a very short time when I was born and went back to work right away. He didn't have enough time to write my name down in the municipality registrar. When he wanted to enter my name in July, he would have been fined if he told them the real date, so he wrote a date which was six months later. It was interesting that Jewish families always went somewhere during the summer holidays, no matter how well-off they were. Every summer we went to Sapareva Banya. It was a village with mineral baths. We spend two to three months there. There were some families there who were our friends, who gave us a room to rent. A bull's cart came from the village, onto which we loaded our luggage and slowly made our way to Sapareva Banya. My mother also went very often to the mineral baths in Ovcha Kupel [district in Sofia]. Our family wasn?t the only one who went on such vacations, all Jews did that. Sometimes during the vacations I visited my grandmother Sara in Sofia. They had a house in the neighborhood Fakulteta, which was a suburb of Sofia, it was like a village. They had two rooms and a kitchen.