A picnic of some friends of Yako Izidor Yakov

This is a picnic of some friends of mine at the end of the 1930s in Ruse. I took this photo during one of the campaigns we made to recruit new people for the Resistance. Our Resistance began with Hashomer Hatzair, a left-wing Zionist youth organization, which started in Poland in 1912 and managed to gather supporters from all over Europe. Their goal was to educate the youth in the Zionist mentality and to prepare them to immigrate to Palestine. To achieve this goal they paid special attention to the so-called shomer-movement, boy scout education, and supported the re-stratification of Jewish society. They operated several agricultural and industrial training grounds, the so-called chalutz grounds, to train those who wanted to immigrate. In Transylvania the first Hashomer Hatzair groups were established in the 1920s. During World War II, members of Hashomer Hatzair were leading active resistance against German forces, in ghettoes and concentration camps. After the war, Hashomer Hatzair was active in 'illegal' immigration to Palestine. I took an interest in politics from a young age. I was very interested in the elections for the Spiritual Council and in the municipal elections. I was around eleven to twelve years old when I started taking interest in these things. At that time I was a Hashomer Hatzair member. The so-called General Zionists were dominant then. Their youth organization was Maccabi. All well-off Jews were from the General Zionists who had one dream: Palestine. During our free time my friends and I were involved in illegal activities in Ruse; all the more important anti-fascist activities in Ruse were organized and performed with our participation. As I mentioned I was one of the activists together with Izidor Ayzner. He worked for the cause in Maccabi and I in Hashomer Hatzair. At that time we became atheists.