Tag #141289 - Interview #98619 (Margarita Kohen )

My husband Shemuel Samuel Kohen was born in 1906 in Samokov. He was a Sephardi Jew. He had three brothers – Leon, Mois and Zhak. My husband was the youngest – the fourth child. As a young man he studied for a carpenter but later he finished evening courses at the Trade School, he finished some accountancy courses and became an accountant. Afterwards, when the shop needed an accountant, instead of hiring somebody else, he quit the accountancy and started helping his father and brother. After 1944 he finished planner courses and worked as a planner at machine tools enterprises like ‘Balkan’ and ‘Madara’.

My son Samuil Kohen was born in 1940 on my mother’s insistence. We didn’t want children at that time yet but she had written in a letter to my sister that I had to give birth because anything could happen. She used to even come to our house to dare me to get pregnant. ‘Marga, how is the family, dear?’ She was asking about this and that. ‘I’m fine, mama.’ ‘Do you know that there are a lot of childless families? A lot of them bathe in the warm waters.’ And she described the situation to me. ‘And what about you?’ ‘Mama, I say, I’m still very tired of all the arrangements around the wedding, let us have some rest...’ ‘Come on, if you have a child, you’ll have a rest afterwards...’ After that when my son was born in 1940 mum used to help us a lot in his bringing up.