Vesela Hinkova

This is a photo of my daughter Vesela Hinkova while we were visiting Israel in 1966. My husband didn't want to have a second child. My pregnancy was very difficult. I had to lie in bed for a year. But I wanted a girl very much. My husband went to a summer camp with the army and I gave birth to my daughter after seven and a half months. She was like a mouse, weighing two kilograms. I cried a lot when she was born. Once I took her out on a walk in the baby carriage and a girl said to me, 'Why are you walking with that doll in the carriage?' 'It's not a doll, but a baby,' I replied. As a child she wasn't very tall, she was always sick. When she went to high school, she started growing in height. Now she's quite tall. She didn't help me a lot at home, but now she's a good housewife. She's a doctor; she graduated in medicine in Sofia, like her brother. But she's not interested in scholarly work. I went to Israel a couple of times. I went for the first time in 1966 when I went to see my brother in Holon. He had married a German Jew, which I didn't like much. They had just had a son and performed the circumcision. The next time I visited other relatives of mine. They loved inviting me to visit and when I went there, I carried three suitcases of presents for them. They loved it when I told them about Bulgaria, because my nephews were born in Israel. During totalitarianism I didn't have any problems travelling to Israel. I went to Israel a couple of times. I went for the first time in 1966 when I went to see my brother in Holon. He had married a German Jew, which I didn't like much. They had just had a son and performed the circumcision. The next time I visited other relatives of mine. They loved inviting me to visit and when I went there, I carried three suitcases of presents for them. They loved it when I told them about Bulgaria, because my nephews were born in Israel. During totalitarianism I didn't have any problems traveling to Israel. It's my fault that my children weren't raised Jewish. I remember that when my son was in the first grade, he asked me what his nationality was. He had noticed that we celebrated Chanukkah and made sweets, which the other families didn't. Then I said that he was a Bulgarian, because he lived in Bulgaria and spoke Bulgarian. My children were informed about their origin, but they didn't feel Jewish.