Victor Baruh with his friends Haim and Solomon Mevorah

This photograph was taken in 1938 next to Ariana Lake in Sofia. On the picture I am with two of my very best friends - Haim and Solomon Mevorah who were twin brothers. They lived in the neighborhood and I know them from the time when we were kids. They had Spanish passports and this allowed them to leave for Spain during World War II and then for Israel. When one of them came from Israel as my guest, he wanted to see his father's shop along Pirotska Street and a dead-end street - I think it's called Bulgaria - and the Commercial High School in Lozenetz. I brought him there and he burst into tears - there was a balcony at the back of the building and he said, 'Our headmaster talked to us here.' And when the other one came to Sofia we went to see the place where they had lived - we went upstairs, we rang the bell, but the current owners weren't very kind and we didn't go inside. But they felt a great nostalgia - they were very excited when they came back to Bulgaria. In Israel they have an organization, some dance clubs, they sew traditional costumes, they dance the horo [traditional Bulgarian dances], sing Bulgarian songs and cry. I received this photo when I first went to Israel in 1961, some 23 years later. The reason I went there was the Eichman trial. Probably I'm the only one from Eastern Europe who was present at the trial.