This is a picture of my class, when we finish high school. I'm the 4th girl from the left. I graduated high school in 1946.
There were certain quotas for us Jews. Practically only students with very high grades managed to enter high school. There were girls' and male high school. There were other Jews in our class. Classes at school were formed according to the foreign language that we were studying. And, as we [Jews] were ill disposed towards German because of all the sufferings we had borne, we were all inscribed in a French parallel [a class for students studying French as a foreign language]. We were all girls at the same age. And we are still friends. I even meet those who are still here from time to time. There were Bulgarian girls who were our friends as well. We entered high school in the years of the War [World War II]. There were different youth organizations then - Brannik, etc. Our classes took place in the afternoon. And sometimes electricity cut off and [as it was too dark to see] our teacher used to make us sing. Usually girls, who were members of Brannik, insisted that we sing their songs [songs of their organization]. But we didn't. I remember one day a girl stood up and said: "Madam, Jews and communist don't sing". There was a classmate of mine who was a little massy and she was brave enough to answer "Let's sing some song that we all want and can sing". Out of school most of my friends were Jews, maybe because we lived close to each other. As far as it concerns the subjects we studied, from the very beginning I liked mathematics. Our math teacher was a very nice person. Sometimes you like the subject because you like the teacher. And I had another teacher who was teaching Geography. He wanted to rate my work with a lower mark. I don't remember why. There was a school-leaving examination for students with lower marks. So, I was forced to pass that final exam because I needed high scores to have better chances when applying to the university.
