The wedding picture of Mazal Asael's parents Delicia Beniamin and Menahem Eshkenazi

The wedding picture of Mazal Asael's parents Delicia Beniamin and Menahem Eshkenazi

This is a wedding picture of my parents Delicia and Menahem Eshkenazi. It was taken in 1920 in Sofia. My mother wears a silk dress and my father has a wedding brooch at his lapel. My father had been married to another woman but she died very young. It was a concurrence of circumstances that my mother had been a bridesmaid at their wedding. My father's first wife knew my mother and that is how my parents met each other. My mother Delicia and my father Menahem married in 1920. My parents got married in the synagogue. Civil marriage did not exist at that time and all Jews married in the synagogue. My father worked as a hired laborer for many years at the fruit and vegetable shop of a compatriot of ours on Sveta Nedelia Square in the center of Sofia. I remember that every evening my father used to come home very tired from work and he would send me to the nearby pub to buy some anisette for him. I used to taste a little from it every time, and that's why it's the only drink I like, even now. My mother had been a hairdresser before she got married but she became a housewife after that. My mother's family lived in the town of Nis, in what is now Serbia. They moved to Sofia, Bulgaria at the beginning of the 20th century. My mother Delicia had four sisters and two brothers but one of her brothers drowned in a river while they were still living in Nis. All my mother's sisters and brothers were born in Nis, where there was a big Jewish neighborhood. My mother's family members spoke mostly in Ladino. They also spoke Serbian because they had lived in Serbia. My mother knew a lot of songs in Serbian and she sang very well. I suppose that there was a certain reason that made my mother's family move from Nis to Sofia. The fact that one of her brothers drowned in a river near Nis might have also influenced their decision to leave.
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