Engagement photo of Mayer and Gitli Alhalel

This is me with my wife Gitli David Alhalel. The picture was taken in Vidin in 1948, a time when I was still living at my sister's house in Cherven Bryag and Gitli lived in Vidin. She had just graduated from high school. I married my wife Gitli Alhalel on 9th July 1949 in Cherven Bryag. Before that we lived together for a year. We got married before the registrar on a working day. We didn't wear any wedding attire, because we couldn't afford it yet. After our wedding we returned to Vidin, where we looked after our parents. To be honest, there was a moment when we thought about going to Israel too. But our parents, hers and mine, didn't want to immigrate, because of old age. Yet, there were many Jews older than them, who had left Bulgaria for Israel. I didn't have any financial problems. My wife also had a job. She was an accountant in a meat processing plant and in a construction company in Vidin. In fact, she retired from those two positions. In Vidin my mother was still working as a seamstress and my father was still in the mill working as scales operator: he weighed the corn on the scales. So, we were financially stable. I had to work for one year as a supervisor in the printing house: I was in charge of a group of workers, some of whom were even better at the job than me. Soon after that the printing house was nationalized. I, personally, was never able to understand that part of the legislation of Bulgaria. I mean that not everyone was convinced that such nationalization was necessary. I think that only the big companies should have been nationalized, but the small private ones should have been left to function. To enter the workshop and take the instruments of a tailor or a shoemaker is just not acceptable, in my opinion. I don't understand that.