Haim Molhov with his wife Regina Molhova

Haim Molhov with his wife Regina Molhova

This is a picture of my wife Regina Molhova, nee Geron and me, taken in our home on Moskovska Street in Sofia in the 1940s. We got married on 1st September 1939 in Plovdiv. After we married, my wife and I decided to go on a honeymoon to Belgrade. It was announced that on 3rd September 1939 England had declared war on Germany, but we decided to go anyway. We had a very good time there and we even found it funny that while we were in Belgrade, there was a food crisis in Bulgaria and a ration system was being introduced, according to which meat was given out only two days a week. At that time we were still not aware of the hardships we would experience in Bulgaria. After we married, we went to live in the house of my wife's parents in Sofia. My uncle Nissim Geron, the father of my wife, found me a job in a wine company where I worked until 1942. My wife had a beautiful voice and she sang in the Georgi Kirkov choir for many years. She worked in the publishing house of the Toplomontaj bulletin. When my son Benedict was born in 1941, I was in a labor camp in the village of Marikostino, situated along the Struma River south of Sofia. Between 1941 and 1944 I was mobilized to labor camps three times. My wife looked after our son. We also relied on the help of her parents, who lived with us. We got along with them very well. My wife, her parents and our son were interned to the town of Chirpan in 1943. There she came down with a serious form of diabetes and our son fell ill with heavy dysentery. They lived in very poor conditions. They were accommodated in the rooms of the local school and survived only thanks to the care of my wife's parents.
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