Lea Beraha with her husband Leon Beraha and friends

Here you can see me while I was on vacation in Rakitovo resort with my future husband Leon Beraha and his friend David Benvenisti in the 1950s. I don't know who the others in the photo are. Leon and David had just come back for a while from their studies in the USSR. The Joint organized this recreational camp for young Jews. David is in the center, I am to the left and my husband is next to me. I cannot remember anything particular about this vacation. David committed suicide after the events of 10 November 1989. [The fall of communism in Bulgaria.] He was an idealist. He couldn't cope with the humiliations communists were put to. He used to teach Marxism at the Pedagogy Institute and he decided that he had only wasted the time of people with foolish stuff. In his farewell letter he wrote: 'I was neither a thief nor a murderer. I am as pure as the Rila Mountain lakes and I want to die as such.' He shot himself in the heart, when his wife wasn't home.

The Centropa Collection at USHMM

The Centropa archive has been acquired by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. USHMM will soon offer a Special Collections page for Centropa.

Academics please note: USHMM can provide you with original language word-for-word transcripts and high resolution photographs. All publications should be credited: "From the Centropa Collection at the United States Memorial Museum in Washington, DC". 

Please contact collection [at] centropa.org (collection[at]centropa[dot]org).