Buko Pizanti with a friend

This picture was taken in the P.T. Brasnarev photo studio in Vidin in 1919. My father Buko Pizanti is standing, next to a friend of his, who later became one of the greatest leaders of the rebellion in 1923 in Vidin region. He was imprisoned, because he had organized a mutiny. He was court-martialed. He was imprisoned in a barge together with his accomplices with the aim to sink it in the Danube near Vidin. But the international community managed to save them. In the end, in 1925 he was sent to prison, although he had nothing to do with the terrorist act. [Editor's note: the interviewee is referring to the bombing of the Sveta Nedelia Church] My father's trial was very frightening. He had a death sentence. I wasn't allowed at the trial, because I was young, but my mother and my sister Liza went there. My mother was deaf. When Liza returned, she cried all the time. My father was beaten a lot, they hanged him with his feet upwards for 24 hours beating him on the heels. When my father was in prison, whatever we ate, my mother always divided it into five parts. She gave him his part when she went to see him every Friday. I also went to visit him: we had to wait in line before we were allowed to go in.