Wedding photo of Leon and Berta Kalaora

This is my wedding photo, taken on 1st March 1944. It was taken in the building where we all lived. I do not wear the humiliating yellow star by accident. After the wedding in Shumen Berta and I packed our rucksacks in order to escape to another place, but the illegal organization of the Workers’ Party in Shumen insisted that we stay. The reason was that they did not have any people, whom they could trust to hide them. So, Berta and I took that risk and remained in Shumen until the end of the Holocaust. The deputy commander of the Shumen partisan squad, Stoian Radoslavov, speaking about his memories of the events before 9th September 1944 still adds, ‘Only three secure Jewish apartments had remained: that of the Kalaora family, of Albert Basat and of Baruh Grimberg.’ And it was true that there were only three apartments that could be used as hiding places, because all the others had been arrested and sent to the labor camp in Enikioy, Xanthi region.