This is a photo of the service station of my brother Lazar Aroyo in the Ma?abarot kibbutz. The photo was taken in 1946. My brother Lazar is the first from right to left.
When my brother Lazar 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 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 found 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 in Ivrit in Yambol. They had two children - Gidon and Oro. They live in the kibbutz.
We received this photo by mail. I loved my brother very much and he would often say, ?You can look at me on this photo, so that you don?t miss me so much?. Every time I visited my brothers in Israel, they tried to persuade me to stay there. However, I couldn't adapt to their life - neither to the new environment, nor to the climate. But I also liked many things there - the abundance of food and the perseverance of the people. During one of my visits my brothers took me on an excursion near the desert in Beer Sheva. There is an institute there named ?Ben Gurion?. The excursion was very interesting.
