Leon and Berta Kalaora with their daughter Dolya Andreeva (nee Kalaora)

This is my favorite photo. We call it "our Sofia trio" at home. I keep it as a nice remembrance. My daughter Dolya had just graduated with excellence from high school [133rd "A.S.Pushkin" school in Sofia in fact was a communist elite high school before 1989]. At the time when this photo was taken I worked as director of 'Stroymatmetiz' state trade company and my wife Berta worked as a journalist, revered and well-known in Bulgaria. My daughter Dolya Leon Andreeva, nee Kalaora, was born on 6th January 1948 in Sofia. She finished the Russian high school ‘A. S. Pushkin.’ Once a classmate of hers in the elementary classes mentioned to her that she was a Jew. She returned home puzzled and asked us, ‘Mum, dad, are we ‘evreitsi’? [Editor’s note: The correct word for Jews in Bulgarian is ‘evrei’; hearing the word the first time she used a made-up incorrect version.] Then she graduated from the Faculty of Architecture Institute of Sofia University. While she was a student there, she had the following experience. In the break between two lectures the students in the corridor were talking to each other divided into two groups. Dolya and her friends were in one of the groups and a Syrian student with his Bulgarian friends in the other. One of her colleagues from the other group said something insulting about the Jews and Dolya went to him and slapped his face. Today Dolya is married and has a son and a daughter. Her husband is also an architect. He is Bulgarian.