Matilda Albuhaire in the Bourgas sea garden

This photo was taken in the Bourgas garden by the sea in 1939. I have just come back from Sofia and have become a teacher at the Jewish school. Young, attractive, I am out for a walk and have this picture taken, wearing a beautiful pink dress made of Shantung. It is a dear memory of the sea and the garden and the jetty from which young people used to jump into the water for a swim. When I finished the teachers' course after high school in 1936/37, I spent two years in Sofia, and I had a hard time there because I had a throat infection. Then, between 1938 and 1943, I was employed as a teacher in Bourgas - actually it was until 1941, but on record it says until 1943, because the time I was unemployed was recognized as working experience. I was a Hebrew teacher at the Jewish elementary school and I was paid by the Jewish community. The children loved me very much. I loved them, too, because I was very young, 21 years old. We celebrated all the holidays. We had a very intensive Jewish life before the war. During the war the Jewish school was closed in 1941. For some time we were sent to an old school which was later transformed into gendarme's barracks.