Eshua Almalech with the French actors Simone Signoret and Yves Montand

I as a journalist and interpreter at the first and only visit to Bulgaria of the great French actress Simone Signoret and her husband at that time Yves Montand - a great actor and singer of French chansons, in 1957.

While I was still studying at the university in 1945, I started working as a journalist for the 'Sotsialisticheska Mladej' [Socialist Youth] newspaper, then for the 'Narod' [Nation] newspaper, published by the social democratic party and when it stopped appearing in 1947, I started working for the newly founded 'Narodna Mladej' [National Youth]. I headed the Interior Affairs department and the Sports department there and worked there until 1958. From 1958 until 1971 I worked at 'Naroden Sport' [National Sport] and then, until my retirement in 1986, at the illustrated sports weekly 'Start'. I was one of its founders.

After the Israeli-Arab war in 1967 and the events in Czechoslovakia, my wife Nedyalka was fired from Sofia radio, where she worked as a journalist, because as they told her, she was married to a Jew and had a Jewish family name. During that time the director of the National Radio was the Jew Albert Cohen, a distinguished journalist and writer. He was also fired. I often traveled abroad as a sports journalist. I loved my job, but every time there was some possibility for promotion, they hinted to me, sometimes delicately, sometimes directly, that I was a Jew and this was impossible.

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