Adela Nissimova Levi with her 'Singer' sewing machine

Here I am with my 'Singer' sewing machine, bought by my mother Viza Nissim Cohen in order to provide for the family during the internment. I still sew on it. The picture was taken in my home in 2005. I didn't think about leaving for Israel but my sisters, who were married and whose relatives were leaving, also had to leave. The boyfriend of my younger sister Mimi had to leave with his parents, his sister was already there. So, Mimi married him and immigrated. My other sister Rashel was already married and since her husband was leaving with his mother and his father had already died, she also immigrated. Now during the second mass aliyah six or seven years ago my sister Sofka also immigrated. My husband and I didn't think about immigrating, but we always felt something pull us towards Israel and my husband went there every year. We didn't immigrate because there was nothing we could do there. We didn't expect to find work there. I kept in touch with my relatives. We wrote letters to each other and spoke on the phone, which was a luxury then. They called more often. I remember that one of the times my sister and her husband were passing via Bulgaria to go to a Romanian festival, and they called to tell us that they wouldn't pass through Sofia, but through Gorna Oriahovitsa. They asked our mother to go and see them there. My mother was very worried there because she couldn't find them on the platform. They were in a special wagon and weren't allowed to go to Sofia. Those were special festival wagons. They weren't much different from the others, but they were only for the participants in the festival and no other passengers traveled in them. There was some kind of problem and my husband took my mother home. At that time Ivan Bashev was in charge of the Bulgarian representatives in the festival and I was his secretary in 'Narodna Mladezh'. Later, he became Foreign Minister. So we called him and he did everything possible to find my sister in Romania and put her through to my mother so that at least they could speak on the phone.