Tag #123469 - Interview #78516 (Eshua Aron Almalech)

My father was born in 1885. He was orphaned very young. His father died in 1898 and his mother Roza Almalech soon after him (in 1901). At the age of 16 he started working as an accountant in a Bulgarian company in Stara Zagora and was attracted to the socialist ideas. The Bulgarian Socialist Party was set up in 1892. But there was a congress in 1903, at which one part of the party proclaimed itself left-wing socialists [these were the future communists] and the other right-wing socialists [these were the future social democrats]. My father was present at that congress and joined the latter group. He took part in the two Balkan wars and in the First World War as an infantryman in the 12th Stara Zagora infantry regiment of the Bulgarian army. He told me that he used to shoot in the air, thinking that if he didn’t kill anybody, he would not be killed either. He married my mother Zelma Michael, nee Behar, in 1919 after he returned from the war.