Klara Kohen with her parents

This is a picture of me and my parents, Zhana Santo Solomonova, nee Almalech,and Santo Avramov Solomonov. The photo was taken in Stara Zagora on 8th May 1951. During World War II my father wasn't sent to labor camps because of his advanced age. When we returned to Stara Zagora in the fall of 1944 after our internment to Targovishte, our entire household was intact. A doctor's family was accommodated in our house, which was a nice house close to the center of Stara Zagora. The doctor used to work in the hospital ascertaining causes of death. They were Bulgarians but they weren't pleased that they had to leave the house. The doctor had even expressed the opinion that it wasn't very clear how the war would end and that he hoped for the V2 rockets - [Hitler's] 'secret weapon'. So, they didn't want to leave the house at all, but they did anyway. Later it was commented that the death diagnoses he gave, especially to the communists before 9th September 1944, were not very correct. So, he counted on V2. Unlike him the other neighbors were very warm-hearted. The number of presents they piled up for us when my parents' left for Israel is hard to imagine! Our house was also well preserved. After our return my father took up his work again as well as the management of the company. I had to continue my high-school studies and my sister got married. She came to Sofia in order to study at university. She enrolled in the Institute of Economics, but she got married in 1945 and quit her studies. Then she gave birth to her daughter Franklina in 1947, and after that she moved to Israel in 1950, where she gave birth to her second child, Menahem in 1957. I studied in the high school in Stara Zagora until 1947, and then I applied and began studying French philology in Sofia. My parents stayed in Stara Zagora.