The engagement of Sofia Terzieva

This is the engagement of my granddaughter Sofia Terzieva, nee Kohenova. On the photo she is in the center. We organized the engagement in Primorsk, because the grandson-in-law was born there and his parents lived there. From right to left on the photo are my daughter-in-law Vera, my son Mois, the grandson-in-law Dimitar, my granddaughter Sofia, who was born in 1971, next to her is her father-in-law Ivan and mother-in-law Dancheto [Yordanka] and my younger granddaughter Dora, born in 1976.

Sofia has a bachelor degree as a nurse and works as operative ophthalmologist nurse. She has a son, Ivan. Dora graduated in Italian philology and now works in the international department of the Bulgarian State Railways. Both say that they feel Jews although they are married to Bulgarians, because they feel very close to our relatives in Israel whom they know from their visits to Bulgaria and my granddaughters' visits to Israel. They do not celebrate the Jewish holidays.

My son considers himself a Jew, because he was born one and was brought up in a Jewish family. But he didn't have a religious upbringing. He considers religion a science, something that should be known. As far as politics was concerned, my son's ideas were very close to ours. He liked the military and wanted to study in the Naval School in Varna, but we didn't want him to. He graduated from the Machine Construction Technical School and now he is an engineer. After the changes he wanted to leave for Israel, because there weren't many job opportunities here. He had a nice job before the changes, but afterwards the management fired the progressive and left-oriented people, and he remained without a job. He couldn't find another job and wanted very much to leave, but his wife Vera didn't want to. He insisted that the children leave too, but they also hesitated. They have all been to Israel, but they still live in Bulgaria. After 1990 my son wanted to leave, my niece - my brother's daughter and her family left then - but he didn't go, because his wife, who is a Bulgarian, didn't want to. If he had left, with his profession as a machine engineer, he would have been able to find a good job. Now, he can no longer find a job in Israel, because he is more than 50 years old.