Raina Blumenfeld with her family

This is a photo of the women in my family. On the left is my sister Rebecca with her daughter Mariana. Next to her are my daughter Hertzelina, my mother Sarina, myself and my sister Ziumbiula, with my younger daughter Zoya in front of me. The photo was taken in Sofia in the 1980s. My elder sister Rebecca was born in 1925. She worked as a dressmaker. She got married and had two children - Mariana and Mario, who are also married and have one child each. In 1986, unfortunately, she was run over by a police car and died. My other sister Ziumbiula was born in 1931 and graduated from the Medical University as a doctor. For a long time she worked as a doctor in Bulgaria, then went to Algeria where, at the same time, my brother was doing his specialization. He took both my mother and my sister to live with him. My sister lived there for some time; then she married a Belgian. Naturally she moved to Belgium where she spent ten years and gave birth to a girl. She separated from the Belgian and returned to Bulgaria. Now she is a pensioner. Her daughter had a good relationship with a young Belgian, whom she married, and now they live in Vienna. Currently [in 2002] my sister is staying with them, helping to look after their baby. My elder daughter Hertzelina graduated as pharmacist and now owns two chemist shops. She is well off, but is preoccupied with the problems that small businesses are currently experiencing in Bulgaria. She has to spend whole days [working] to solve bureaucratic things. Her husband is a textile engineer, but it is very difficult for him to find a job. My younger daughter is an economist. Her husband is also economist, and it was not until a few months ago that he found a job with a company for trademark alcohol. Both of my daughters have mixed marriages - they married Bulgarians. They have two children each - Zoya's sons are called Martina and Andrey, and Hertzelina has a son, Victor, and a daughter Irena. Zoya's sons observe Jewish traditions and they emigrated to Israel two years ago [in 2000]. With the assistance of our relatives who emigrated there in 1948/49, they succeeded in settling very well. They adapted themselves very quickly and learned the language. They even managed to come back to Bulgaria twice.