Pinhas Koen

This is Pinhas Koen. They took this picture for fake identification cards. All the Jews had their pictures taken for passports, fake papers. Fake passports were to be issued as if we were Serbs, even though we were not. This was not Serbia, it was Bulgaria. So that they could expell us, as though we were foreigners. [Editor's Note: This photo was more likely taken by the Bulgarian authorities in the first half of 1942 for identification purposes. Source: www.ushmm.org]. Pinhas was my sister Mirjam's son. Even though he was my sister's son we were very good friends. He was a tailor. But more than anything else he helped the movement a lot. He had a tailor shop and he was always giving us clothing for the partisans. He was not an organized member of the Party but he was a supporter, a volunteer. He was a member of Tehelet Lavan. I received a letter from him while he was in the camp in Bitola. I have no idea how he managed to send it to me but he did. It came to me by post in Sofia. It remains a mystery how it got to me. In the letter he asked me to take care of his sister, Solci, who was sick in Sofia. He wrote that since he didn't know what was going to happen to them - he thought they were going to work - that I should take of her. She survived the war and lived in Israel until her death a few years ago. Pinhas died in Treblinka.