This is a photo of the vocational school in Dupnitsa in the 1930s. I’m with my friend Kadina, who’s on the left. She’s a Jew. We studied all obligatory subjects and tailoring.
After three classes in a junior high school I enrolled in the vocational school in Dupnitsa. When I graduated from the junior high school, I wanted to study in a high school. Then my mother told me that I had to learn a craft and enrolled me in the vocational school. There I learned sewing and worked with my mother for some time. Sewing was what we did for a living. My mother sewed dresses and when I graduated from the vocational school I started giving her some advice. There were Jews and Bulgarians among my mother's clients. I graduated with a master's certificate in sewing. That was shortly before 1939. In school I didn't have problems because of my origin. I remember that during the war some Germans, civilians and military, were accommodated in the vocational school. I don't know why. But they didn't treat us badly.
