Eshua Almalech's family, expecting the second child

I with my wife Nedyalka and our daughter Zelma in 1954. My wife is pregnant with our son.

I married Nedyalka Nikolova, nee Dineva, in 1948. She was born in 1928 in Stara Zagora. She is Bulgarian. Her parents are from Stara Zagora too. Our families knew each other; they had even done shopping in our shop sometimes. Her mother Marinka and my mother Zelma had been classmates as children. But I got acquainted to Nedyalka in the end of 1944 when she came to study in Sofia. We were inseparable after that and later we married. Our daughter Zelma Eshua Almalech was born in 1950 and our son Mony Eshua Almalech - in 1954. My wife has a degree in history. We are both journalists.

My children grew up in a democratic atmosphere at home. In the old passports issued to all Bulgarian citizens when they become 16 years old, there was a column 'nationality'. When they were old enough to be issued passports, they both wrote 'Jew' in it. Although my wife Nedyalka is a Bulgarian, after she spent a couple of years with my stepmother Luna, she learned the Jewish cuisine. Later when we lived with her parents, they also got to like our cuisine. Both the Jewish and the Christian holidays have been observed in our family.

My son is one of the best experts in Hebrew in Bulgaria. He completed a degree in Bulgarian philology at Sofia University and specialized in the area of linguistics. He is a Doctor of Philology and he studied for three years at the Jerusalem University. Now he works in the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. He is preparing for print a Hebrew-Bulgarian and Bulgarian-Hebrew dictionary. He is also the author of a Bulgarian-Hebrew phrase book and scholarly articles on Judaism and Hebrew. Although he lives in Bulgaria now, he is an Israeli citizen. He is married. His wife Tanya has two daughters from her first marriage.

My daughter worked for more than 27 years in the Bulgarian National Television first as an editor and later as editor-in-chief of the cultural programs and as a member of the board of the directors of the national television. From the beginning of this year, she works in the 'Marketing and Public Relations' department of the Anubis Publishing House. Being a journalist, my daughter also writes regularly on the issues related to Judaism and more particularly, to Bulgarian Jews. She completed the course 'The Role of Media in Civil Society' offered by the Israeli Foreign Affairs Ministry and she has many publications related to Israel and the problems of anti-Semitism. She is a member of the board of directors of the 'Bulgarian-Jewish Cultural Relations' foundation.

Photos from this interviewee