Margarita Kohen with a group of girls from Hashomer Hatzair

Margarita Kohen with a group of girls from Hashomer Hatzair

I with a group of girls from Hashomer Hatzair. There were some boys in the group but they are not in the picture. In the first row from right to left are Meriam, Mani, over them are Hana, Sofi, Rashka. And from the town of Ruse – Debora, Zelma, Margi. Most of them are with plaits because schoolgirls weren’t allowed to have short hair. Only Shoulamid and Sofi are with short hair because they were workers. There is an inscription in ink at the bottom: 1934. We are wearing uniforms that we were sewing ourselves at home. There is neither a stamp on the back of the photo, nor any other inscription. It was taken in Plovdiv.

In Plovdiv in our spare time we were again together with the other members of Hashomer Hatzair. I had two very good friends from the organization – Meriam and Debora. Both of them left the school because they wanted to learn a craft because they would need that later in the kibbutz in Palestine. Meriam became a seamstress, Debora – a shoemaker. I wanted to become a midwife and asked mum to let me enroll in the courses in Sofia but she didn’t agree because she wanted her children to be around. That’s why I had to finish the high school but my mother asked me for forgiveness at the end of her life because she hadn’t let me make that wish come true.

Additionally, in Hashomer Hatzair there were both boys and girls and we started looking at each other and began some relationships.

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