Our commander never let us go to a village if we were not shaved and our hair not cut. He did not want the villagers to think that we were some bandits. We were handsome boys then.
Baruch Bernstein was born to a Jewish family in Sofia in 1924-the family was very poor. When he was 15, World War II broke out. Motivated by various anti-Semitic regulations, he decided to join the youths who were involved in the resistance activities. A year later he joined the partisans and remained with them for two years. After the war ended for Bulgaria, he went to fight in Macedonia as a volunteer and took part in the fighting at Mt. Stracin. After the end of the war, he went to study mechanical engineering in Czechoslovakia and eventually decided to settle there for family reasons. Baruch Bernstein passed away on November, the 16th, 2011.