Mimi-Matilda and Tsvetan Petkov with their grandson Ognyan

This picture was taken in Sofia in December 1980. My husband and I with our son Georgi's first-born son Ognyan. On the photo he is six months old. It was taken in the apartment, which my husband and I left to our son. My husband was born on 3rd March 1927 in the village of Dobrolevo, Vratsa region. My mother-in-law was a priest's daughter. Imagine a village in which one mother-in-law has four daughters and only one son, and the daughter-in-law - a Jew. In 1950 that was quite something. 'She is Uvreika, uvreika?' ['Jewish woman' in the local dialect; in proper Bulgarian it is 'evreika'] said the villagers. Only when my son was born and I named him Georgi after my father-in-law, he crushed some grape, treated the people on the street and said, 'She might be a Jew, but she gave my name to her son?' My son Georgi was born on 27th September 1956. He graduated from the Russian high school and has a university degree in nuclear power engineering. He is unemployed. He is married to Ira, who is from Plovdiv. Ira was born on 24th October 1956. She is a historian and works in the Bulgarian State Archive. Their son is the first-born heir of the family - Ognyan Georgiev. He graduated from the French high school and has a university diploma in Economics of Military Industry. At the moment he works with the Europe TV station as an editor and news reporter.

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).