Josif Kamhi as a worker on the railway construction Pernik-Voluyak

This is a photo from the brigade on the railway line Pernik-Voluyak, taken in 1947. I am up on the left. I worked there more than a month. The work was voluntary. In 1946, I graduated from high school and started studying in the Polytechnic. When I graduated I started work in the designers’ company ‘Promproekt.’ In October 1952 I had to do my military service and was stationed in Dimitrovgrad. But after 15 days the commanding officer received an order from Sofia that five people had to return to Sofia for a course in radio location. It turned out that I was the only electrical engineer at the base. I went to Sofia and spent three months in the course on radio location, which was taught by a Soviet specialist. Two more courses on radio location were organized after that and I taught them. One of them was for officers and the other for soldiers. The course was in Chepelare. I taught them for three months. Then I was assigned to head a repairs workshop. There was a Soviet colonel there, who insisted that I stay on a termed service in the military, and not on a permanent one. He advised me to write that all my relatives were in Israel. I did what he told me and they kept me only one month at that job. The job in the military was not a promising one. The technical equipment in my base was not good. We were given some appliances to repair, but we could not do it because we did not have any modern equipment. Once a colonel came with a device to be repaired and got angry with us that it was not ready. I told him that we didn’t have the equipment to identify the malfunctioning part. He said that we did nothing the whole day and we did not need equipment for that. It was not easy to explain to him that we could not do anything without the necessary equipment. After the service in the army I started work in the designers’ company, which split into two, and in 1957 I continued to work in one of the two new companies – Minproekt, where I designed the electrical installations of the Maritsa mine complex and the Kremikovtsi metallurgic plant. I was happy with my job and working conditions.