Jack Albuhaire with family

This is a photo of my husband Jack Albuhaire and our two daughters Reni Jack Albuhaire and Olya Jack Avramova, nee Albuhaire, and with his brother Mair's wife Maria Albhuaire and her son Maxim. The photo was taken on a central square of Sofia in front of the former Mausoleum [of Georgi Dimitrov - the Bulgarian Communist Party leader] in 1955. My husband had a younger brother named Mair and a sister, Matilda. My mother-in-law didn't let us marry for a long time because according to the tradition the daughter had to marry first. When we got engaged, his brother Mair was in a military school, while his sister worked as a teacher in the Jewish school in Sofia. We lived in one room, and my father-in-law, who was ill, and my mother-in-law lived in the other room. My husband provided for all of us. We lived for three months as a family but we were only engaged. In a small town people often gossip and they invent so many things. One day I received a letter from my mother, in which she told me that a rumor had spread in town that I was kept as a mistress and that they would get rid of me sometime, leaving me with nothing. I read the letter, smiling faintly, because we were so busy that this didn't even occur to us. When he read the letter, Jack got so upset that he took my hand and told me: 'Let's go and sign right now.' I told him: 'Please, give me at least a week to prepare myself!' Our daughter Reni was born in 1947 and Olya in 1952.