This is I and my husband Sharlo Shelomo Kohen [Shemuel Samuel Kohen] a month after our wedding in 1939. I am 22, he is 32. The photo was taken in Stamenov photo - in Plovdiv in 1939. There is no other inscription on the back. There wasn’t a wedding in the synagogue but in my husband’s house because he was an atheist and my mother-in-law was paralyzed due to apoplexy. Nonetheless we had invited two rabbis. In the photo I am wearing my blue wedding dress. The bouquet belongs to a friend of mine who gave it to me for the photo because the wedding had already taken place.
My brother and my future husband knew each other because they were working for the Jewish conspiracy but in that same year [1935] there was a failure and my brother, Sharlo and 14 or 15 other people were arrested after a manifestation, I don't know what that manifestation had been. At that time I was preparing for my matriculation but I was very upset indeed and was thinking about that all the time because I was bringing food to the arrested and I could see they were pale, tortured, beaten. I passed my exams with the lowest possible marks which, of course, influenced my final results but didn't have any significance in my future life.
I had seen my future husband Sharlo [Shemuel Samuel Kohen, 1906-1988] with my brother. First they released him together with two or three other guys, on bail, but my brother was still in custody. They kept him there for six months and during the trial the prosecutor wanted many years prison for him but my mother intervened - through a cousin of hers she influenced the prosecutor's wife, she influenced the prosecutor and my brother was released. Meanwhile, I bumped into Sharlo and a friend of his and told him that it was not fair that they were walking about like that and be free while there were others who are still in prison. They obviously realized what I was trying to tell them and came to take me from home and accompany me on a walk so that I wouldn't be alone and sad. Afterwards I left for Chirpan to visit my sister. I recall that they came there to visit me and we came back home together by train. When I was getting off the train he reached out his hand to help me and embraced me so that I could feel his masculine strength.
So step by step we started dating and were getting to know and like each other more and more. My future husband Sharlo had finished the Jewish junior high school. After that he had enrolled the high school and had started studying there but his parents couldn't afford it and he couldn't finish it, he dropped out. He started work first as a carpenter, then he became a clerk and in the end, just before getting engaged, he started helping his parents. It was very nice to be with him, he was good company. He wasn't picking on people, he was very tolerant and later, in marriage, he remained the same - very open-minded, easy-going and with great sense of humor - man with spirit. In fact, the choice was mutual but it seems to me his father liked me very much too.
