Yako Yakov with his best friend, Izidor Ayzner

This is my best friend Izidor Ayzner and I. The photo was taken in 1938 or 1939 in Ruse. I am to the right in the photo and standing to my right is Izidor Ayzner. We worked together in a shop. He could not graduate from high school and started working, because he had no money. He was a very interesting young man. His father was an upholsterer. His mother was a housewife, as all Jewish women were at that time. He had two more brothers and one sister. One of his brothers, Elias Ayzner, was a very easy-going man, who also had a very interesting personality. He was one of the distinguished merchants in Ruse after 9th September 1944. During our free time my friends and I were involved in illegal activities in Ruse; all the more important anti-fascist activities in Ruse were organized and performed with our participation. I was one of the activists together with Izidor Ayzner. He worked for the cause in ?Maccabi? and I in ?Hashomer Hatzair.? At that time we became atheists. Izidor Ayzner died of tuberculosis in the Varna prison in 1942. He was in prison because he took part in the UYW organization in Ruse. After a police action, we were all arrested, but Izidor took the whole blame. He was beaten to death. Four people went to prison: Professor Jacques Aroyo, Sasson Panizhel, Izidor Ayzner and Solomon Hakim. Izidor continued to spread his revolutionary ideas in prison and they beat him again. He developed tuberculosis and died in prison. Izidor was the man who recruited Ana Ventura in the UYW. They fell in love and because of him she became involved in the UYW. Again, it was because of him that she went underground for a long time. She was from a very rich family. Her father was one of the people with the most shares in the Louvre shop in Paris. He owned a factory in Ruse and was the director of the shareholders' company 'ZHITI', which is still working and is one of the most stable factories in the town. So, Ana Ventura could have led a rich and calm life, but she preferred to take part in the resistance. She was betrayed and shot in an underground lodging in Ruse at the beginning of 1944.