Milka, Sinto, Lora and Miko Kohen

This is a photo of me together with my brothers Sinto and Miko Kohen and my sister Milka Revah. The picture was taken in the 1940s in our town Samokov.

We were four children. We are arranged by age on the photo. From right to left you can see my eldest sister Milka Beniamin Revah, born on 13th April 1921 in Samokov; my elder brother Sinto Beniamin Kohen, born on 2nd January 1923 in Samokov; me and my younger brother Miko Beniamin Kohen, born on 26th June 1926 also in Samokov. We have always been best friends. The four of us were born in Samokov where we studied in the same school (there was no other high school). I remember that we all loved going to school and to the Sunday school. Besides, we always had a lot of books at home, on secular or religious topics. We, the children, loved reading aloud sitting together with our parents, which did not happen very often because my parents were very busy.

We lived in a small house in Samokov. We were about 10 people: my parents with their four children, my maternal grandparents, uncle and aunt, and their children. Our house had two rooms and a kitchen. We did not have a bathroom. We did not have electricity, nor running water. We used an ordinary wood-burning stove to warm the house. We got water from the faucet outside, even in the winter. The faucet was quite far from our house. So, my parents decided to build a faucet in our yard. I remember that we, the children, helped a lot to make it. And we did not have to go so far away for water. Besides, my mother wanted us to grow up healthy and strong. She made us wash ourselves with cold water. They made us a special place in the house where we did gymnastic exercises.

My sister Milka became a social worker in Israel (she had a university education in Bulgaria), my brother Sinto, who was studying medicine in Bulgaria became a famous doctor and my brother Miko (he is the only one of us with secondary education) became a lab chemist. They still live in Israel today and have good families, children and grandchildren. My sister has two boys, my brother Sinto - a son and a daughter, and my brother Miko - a son. Milka married before she left - to Rofat Revah in 1940, who was from Plovdiv and I lived with them in Samokov for a while.