Morduhay Levi and his brother Azarya Levi

My father Morduhay Levi on the left and his brother Azarya Levi. The photo was taken in 1915 – 1916. There is nothing on the back of the photo.

My brother was mobilized but was still at home and his brother Azarya had received a medal of valor and was on leave. During the leave they made this photo.

That was the last time the two brothers saw each other because Azarya died on the Dobrudzha Front.

My father Morduhay Yako Levi (1896 - 1972) graduated high school and was mobilized as an infantryman at the front.

A year after that he was captured during an attack. He said that it was the most horrible massacre that had taken place during World War I.

The soldiers ran with the bayonets forward and butchered each other.

The battle happened somewhere in France, but I do not know where.

My father was lightly injured and sent to a camp in Marseilles where he stayed until the end of the war from 1915 until 1918.

He learned there to do electrical engineering work and the French language, which he had studied in high school.

When he left the camp, he remained to work in France, at first in Marseilles, then in Paris.

He worked as an electrical engineer. He also made some big improvement on the mechanism of the electrical bulbs. And since he knew no laws and he was not a very practical man - he was very honest and guileless - he took the originals to some electrical company to adopt them.

They took his unpatented designs and they started using them without paying him anything.

He was very disappointed with them. When he came back to Bulgaria, he brought his designs, but the bulbs had already been introduced.

He decided to return to Bulgaria and marry a Bulgarian Jew.

After the marriage my parents left for Paris, because my father liked life there. They spent there 2-3 years, tried to make a living.

They lived in an attic flat. My mother worked as a seamstress and my father as an electrical engineer, but they did not have regular incomes. When I was about to be born, they decided to return to Bulgaria.

A month after my birth, I was born on 24th March, on the 25th April the bombing of the St Nedelya Church took place.

Arrests started, people became anxious. My father's parents who had lost their elder son in the war on the Dobrudzha Front insisted that the young family leave Bulgaria.