Here I am with other people in a square in Bulgaria. The photo was taken in the 1950s.
My wife and I had a few problems, I had to leave Israel and that is how I got in contact with a Russian girl that worked as a librarian. We decided to leave Israel because this woman really looked like a Russian, and in Israel they didn’t have good relationships with the Russians since Russia helped the Arabs in the war. As communists we didn’t stand well either, so we had to pay to the Israeli state a certain part that anyone that gets help from the Israeli state had to pay, plus some percentages. That’s something that we couldn’t imagine to come up with. That’s why we had our papers done and left as tourists.
We went from Spain to France, to Greece, from Greece to Bulgaria and from there to the Soviet Union. It was a long journey: we left in 1957 from Israel and got to the Soviet Union in 1959, after staying in Bulgaria for six months where we had our papers done to be allowed to cross over to the Soviet Union.
The Bulgarians we worked for during those six months were very pleased with us. I worked as a turner and I made order at the factory where I worked, and my partner - her name was Valia - was working at a shirt company, doing ironing. They didn’t want us to leave. But my wife wanted to get back to Russia because she had her mother there and all her siblings and her whole family. I kept telling her that Bulgaria was better as it had a better climate, a better economy etc. If we stayed there we could go visit them and they could come visit us, and we’d be in contact with her family. In the end we left for her mother’s place.
