Nissim Leon Uziel with the volleyball team of Hakoah

This is a photo of the Hakoah team which participated in the volleyball tournament in 1940. The fifth from left to right (with the vest) is my husband Nissim Leon Uziel. Next to him, the tall man, is Valko Chervenkov's brother. Before the war my husband worked in the ?Brake&Buy? store. Later he was an organizational worker for the Trade Unions. I joined the progressive organization Hakoah, a sports organization. I met my husband through Hakoah. I married him in January 1943 in the synagogue in Sofia. We celebrated all Jewish holidays, but we celebrated them more progressively. As far as celebrating the different holidays the difference between us - the progressive ones - and the more conservative Jews was that we didn't go to the synagogue. We were members of the UYW. We dreamed of establishing a state. We dreamed of peace and love between people, but not in the way it was later distorted - RMC and everything. We thought everything was going to happen like in the fairy-tales. But life showed its true face. I remember all events - particularly the handing back of Dobrudzha [after WWII the previously Romanian Southern Dobrudzha was given to Bulgaria.], the Czar's death. We closely followed all events at the front. We used to hold our meetings for discussing those events at Vitosha mountain. Usually we spent the night there. We used to leave for the mountain in the afternoon and held our meetings in the evenings in order to avoid being heard or seen by anybody, particularly when we started hearing about certain things. We used to get on the tram after 11pm to go to Vitosha for our meetings.