Josif Kamhi in the town of Pleven after the liberation from the Kailuka camp

This is a photo taken in Pleven in 1944 after we were released from the concentration camp near the town. These are people who came to meet us. I am in the middle of the first row. At the beginning of June 1944 our whole family was interned to Pleven, the Kailuka area, where a concentration camp had been built. We were shut in a wooden shed. They put it on fire during the night and my mother was burned alive. My mother had a long dress which got stuck between the boards of the house and she could not get out. I tried to pull her out, but I could not. We were released on 21st August 1944. We went to Pazardzhik first, to Liza’s place. Liza was my mother’s sister. My father was sent to a labor camp in Enikioy. My sister and I waited for our father and our brother to return. My father came back at the end of August 1944 and we celebrated 9th September 1944 there. Long after 9th September we waited for my brother to appear. There was information that his squad had gone to Yugoslavia with the partisans there. Some men of his team had really gone there after one battle. We hoped that he was there, too. My sister went to Yugoslavia but learned nothing. It seems he had died as a partisan. We came back to Sofia and found our apartment completely plundered. We had left the furniture there before we moved. Besides, some man had used the apartment as a storehouse for wood material. He quickly collected his things and left.