Matilda Israel with colleagues

Here I am together with my colleagues from the institute in Sofia, photographed in the 1950s. We were very united and we all got along very well. After the war ended, we returned to Karnobat, where my husband started work as head of the district medical center until 1950. Meanwhile, our two sons were born - Marcel, in Plovdiv in 1945 and Michel, in Karnobat in 1948. After Marcel was born, I studied as an assistant pharmacist for two years and right after I graduated, I was appointed to work in the chemist's in Karnobat. In 1950 we moved to Sofia and bought the apartment where my sister lived. In Sofia I started work in the Infectious and Parasitic Diseases Institute as a laboratory assistant, but I had to study more to be eligible for the position, so I studied two years for the necessary qualification. The work was very interesting. We worked in a research lab and ran tests on people from all parts of the country. I very much wanted to study for a university degree, but it was impossible. We already had two children for whom I had to look after and we had to pay installments for the flat, in which I still live today. I worked in the institute as a laboratory assistant until I retired in 1978.