Sophie Pinkas with her brother and mother

This photo was taken in Vidin, in August 1940. It shows me, my brother Avram Pinkas and my mother Lenka Pinkas, nee Beraha. Since my father is not on the photo, probably the occasion for it was the issuing of a passport for our trip to Skopje. Usually we traveled only with my mother, because my father had no time. Our last trip to Skopje was in 1941. In 1940 there were no limitations on the traveling of Jews yet. We were beginning to worry about the events, but they were still away from us, so we went for walks in the Town Garden in Vidin, where we met with boys. In 1941-42 people were already talking about deportation and camps. I remember that my mother had sewn a big rucksack for each of us, which we filled with clothes and underwear. We had them ready, because we heard that we could be summoned suddenly during the night. Moreover, we knew what was happening in Poland, in Austria and in France. This worried us most of all. According to the Law for the Protection of the Nation nobody worked, nobody was allowed to study, my father's shop was closed. We lived on the little amount of money we had saved. Our radio set was jammed. We couldn't get any radio stations. My father liked to listen to Radio London, but the radio set was jammed. Still, he somehow found out how to get rid of it and he listened to Radio London in the evenings. In this way we received more objective information about what was happening at the front.