Travel

Oto Wagner
Bratislava
Slovak Republic
Interviewer: Zuzana Slobodnikova
Date of interview: March - May 2005

Mr. Oto Wagner was born in Bratislava, and has lived in his hometown all his life – just like his parents and grandparents. At the age of 85, this gentleman lives a very active life. He devotes himself to various cultural, educational and edifying activities. His effort is that the important events of the 20th Century, like the Slovak National Uprising 1 or the tragedy of the Holocaust not be forgotten. And he of course wishes that similar terrible deeds and atrocities would never be repeated. This is also one of the reasons why he shared his life story with us.

My family background

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Growing up

My family background

My paternal grandfather's name was Samuel Wagner. He was a native of Bratislava, and had a pub in Zidovska [Jewish] Street. My grandmother was a housewife; I don't remember her name. Like my grandfather, my grandmother was also from Bratislava. Thus my father was also from Bratislava, and I was also born in Bratislava. My wife was also born in Bratislava. So all the members of our family are true Bratislava natives. My grandparents dressed normally for the times. He didn't wear payes, but my grandfather Samuel didn't take more than two steps without having a hat on his head. His wife wore a wig 2.

My mother's name was Serena Wagnerova, née Polakova. She was the daughter of Zigmund and Klara Polak. My mother's parents also lived here in Bratislava. I don't remember them much. I know that my grandmother was a housewife. I don't know what her maiden name was. My grandfather Zigmund was a door-to-door salesman. He sold various goods. Alas, I don't know any more about these grandparents of mine.

My paternal grandparents were Orthodox Jews 3. Especially my grandfather was very devout. We had to attend synagogue regularly. We went and prayed every Friday and Saturday. My grandfather, as well as my father [Jozef Wagner], if I remember correctly, had a place reserved in the synagogue up in Kapucinska Street in Bratislava. Alas, that synagogue has since been demolished. My mother would also always pray in the evening. Basically they raised my brother [Alfred Wagner] and me in an Orthodox environment. But already in my youth I had broken free of that Orthodox Judaism. I was modern, and one could say sometimes also a "semi-atheist".

My grandparents, the Wagners, initially lived in Kapucinska Street. Later they moved to where the Hotel Tatra now stands. Back then there were old buildings there. I don't remember exactly anymore how it was furnished there, but their furnishings didn't differ in any way from other apartments of the time.

My mother had three siblings, three brothers. I don't know anymore in what order they were born. Alfred and Zigmund perished in Auschwitz during the Holocaust. The third was named Ignac and lived in Budapest, while Alfred lived in Vienna. I don't know much about them, I don't remember them. My father had two siblings, his sister Gizela and his brother Leo. Gizela's was married to a man named Wagmann, and they made a living as merchants. They owned and together ran a clothes story.

My parents met at some Jewish ball. For two years they were friends and saw each other. Then they finally ended up getting married. They were married in 1918, in Bratislava, in the courtyard of the Orthodox synagogue in Kapucinska St. My father had a two-year business diploma. That is, he had people's schools, council schools and a two-year business school. My mother attended five years of people's school and four years of council school 4.

I had one brother. His name was Alfred Wagner. He was four years older than I. He was born in 1920. Alfred was a high school graduate. After graduation, he apprenticed at a clothing store. The clothing store where he began was named Büchler. It was a large store that sold clothes, carpets, and similar goods. Alas, he fell in the Slovak National Uprising. He was a salesman at Büchler. He worked as a salesman at a carpet store. And then, during World War II, he joined the Slovak National Uprising, and I've already mentioned, he died in the uprising.

Growing up

My parents had me in 1924, as their second and also their last child. Like all the members of our family, I was born in Bratislava. My parents named me Oto Wagner. At home we spoke German, especially my grandparents. They also knew Yiddish. That was still the old generation. Then with our parents, we also spoke German, but they also knew how to speak Slovak well. I consider my mother tongue to be Slovak. In prewar Bratislava, hearing Slovak, German or Hungarian in the street was an everyday occurrence. Communicating in these languages wasn't a problem either. Our family was no exception.

When I lived with my parents, the first place we lived was on what was then called Hodzovo Namesti [Hodza Square]. Now it's all changed, the old buildings have long been torn down and demolished. It's all more modern there now. Then we moved to Metropolka, where the state hospital is now. Across from this hospital is this tall building, with a café upstairs and a bank in the front. That's the building where we lived. In Metropolka, we had an apartment up on the third floor. My parents, brother and I lived together there until 1936. The apartment had three rooms, and was nicely and tastefully furnished. The furniture was partly old and partly also modern. In the beginning we had household help. There was one so-called maid, who cooked, cleaned, and so on. But that was only in the beginning. Later my mother did everything. She took on all the work in the household. I'd say that we had mostly Jewish neighbors. Beside us, for example, lived Professor König, who taught at a Jewish business school. Then there was one doctor that lived there; I don't remember his name any more. In all, about 80% of the families might have been Jewish. We always got along well, and were friends. So while I lived with my parents, I mostly met only fellow Jews, because there were only Jews around me, whether at school, in the street in front of the building, or when we'd go to the synagogue. Everywhere I met up mainly with Jews.

At home we primarily bought German newspapers, and then also what we'd get from the Jewish Community. We also had a collection of books, but it didn't contain anything special. My mother always read mostly things of general interest, newspapers, magazines and so on.

Up to ten thousand Jews lived in prewar Bratislava. Back then, the city had a population of about 100,000, and of that one could say 10% was made up of Jews. Jews always got along well amongst themselves. Here in Bratislava there were synagogues in Hejdukova and Kapucinska Street, and a Neolog one on Rybne Namesti [Fish Square]. Alas, after the war they demolished that beautiful building on Rybne Namesti along with the synagogue on Kapucinska St. There were of course also many prayer halls here. A lot of these, what now one could say were cultural landmarks, are unfortunately no longer standing. Synagogues and prayer halls were demolished, whether because of World War II or modernization of the city. While we're on the subject of synagogues and prayer halls, religion comes to mind. I had my bar mitzvah [bar mitzvah - “son of the Commandments”, a Jewish boy that has reached the age of thirteen. A ceremony, during which the boy is declared to be bar mitzvah, from this point on he must fulfil all commandments of the Torah – Editor’s note] as a thirteen-year-old boy in that synagogue on Rybne Namesti. It was a very nice experience. When they called me to the Torah, I went up and read in Hebrew. All in all, it was truly pleasant and nice. I probably got money as gifts for this ceremony. We then had a celebration at home. The whole family came.

My father prayed every morning, and I had to pray with him. He didn't make a move without a cap. We strictly observed Friday and Saturday. This always upset me. The other boys would go play soccer, and we'd go to the synagogue. My brother and I had to go there no matter what, whether it was summer or winter. To sit there and pray. We conformed of course, as we wanted to obey our parents. My brother and I weren't really that devout, we were just listening to our parents. If we had had our way, we would've preferred to play soccer. We couldn't even light a lamp [Sabbath: during the Sabbath, 39 main work activities are forbidden, upon which injunctions on others are based. "The lighting of lights" belongs among forbidden activities – Editor's note].

My Mom led a kosher household 5. No ham, no pork, nothing like that. We kept strict kosher. On Friday, Mom would prepare shoulet. She'd boil beans and I had to run with a full pot, to Obchodna Street, to the baker. The baker's name was Heller. Every Friday I arrived there with a pot of shoulet, and on Saturday I had to pick it up for lunch. Mom made it mainly with goose meat. For the Sabbath, we also had barches. Our mom took care of everything around food preparation.

We observed all the High Holidays. For Yom Kippur [Yom Kippur: The Day of Atonement. The most celebrated event in the Jewish calendar. The day of “cleansing of sins”. Fasting is observed. – Editor’s note] we strictly fasted. We also celebrated Sukkot. We didn't have our own sukkah, but we used to go to our neighbors' [Sukkot: Festival of Booths. A festive atmosphere reigns during the whole week that the holidays lasts, where  the most important is to be in the sukkah – Editor’s note]. Beside us lived a man who sold beef cattle. He'd build a sukkah in the courtyard, and several families would gather there. It was an enclosed courtyard. No one besides us had access to it. There was a large steel gate there, which separated us from the world around us.

When I was still little, I attended nursery school at what was then Obchodna St, No. 21. It was of course a Jewish nursery school. Then my parents registered me in school. I absolved five grades of people's school at a Jewish school in Zochova St. Then I had three years of council school and in fourth year I transferred to a state school at Na Palisadoch. There I finished fourth year of council school. I didn't get any further education before the outbreak of World War II. I didn't do that until after, when I returned from the concentration camp. I took correspondence courses for my high school diploma and university. I remember one very good professor from school, who taught us mathematics. His name was König. Religion was of course very much emphasized at school. Physical education and singing were among my favorite subjects. I was quite sports-oriented. Eventually I was even the junior champion of Czechoslovakia in swimming.

Well, and now too, now that I'm older, a championship in swimming for "veteran" swimmers was held. I entered and won in the breaststroke and the crawl. So I'm the senior champion of Slovakia in swimming. I swam a lot since childhood. I'd say I was about seven when I started. I used to go swimming to Grössling. Professor Stahl used to train me. At first I was a member of Bar Kochba 6, which was a Jewish club. In time I transferred over to the Slovak swim team. There, non-Jews trained me. I trained hard, until I became junior champion of Czechoslovakia. I like to recall those times. There were no comments made about me in the team or amongst the swimmers, that I'm a Jew and so on. Maybe they didn't even know it, I didn't tell anyone about it. I had a German name, so I didn't differ in that either. Before the war, there were a lot of Germans and Hungarians living in Bratislava. My thick blond hair didn't give a Jewish impression either.

Our family was relatively progressive, despite the fact that our father was a supporter of Orthodoxy. We were rather left-wing. My father wasn't in any political party, though. He was a member of the Jewish religious community. He normally paid membership dues and so on. I don't remember him having some sort of important function there, and if he did do something, it was certainly just something small, unimportant. I was also a shomer [a member of the Hashomer Hatzair movement, see 7], but then it fell apart, as the guys moved away to Israel. I didn't do hachsharah 8. My classmates were all Jews. We spent our free time normally, like all children back then. We played soccer, there where Slovak Radio is today. We used to go on hikes together regularly. We'd go to see movies and so on. And what was the best, we used to just sit around and look at pretty girls. We used to go on trips around Slovakia, but mostly we just hiked around the outskirts of Bratislava. Raca [Raca, today a city ward of Bratislava – Editor's note] was already far for us, that was already the countryside. So when we went on an all-day outing, we'd go let's say to Karlova Ves [Karlova Ves, today a city ward of Bratislava – Editor's note], and that was our all-day outing. Mostly we used to walk, or go on bikes. We used to go on vacations with our parents, to visit their siblings. We had family in Vienna, as well as in Budapest. We'd go there occasionally. But we didn't go on vacations as such. We didn't do things like going to the seaside, for example. Back then people didn't know the concept of a recreational vacation. It wasn't as widespread as it is now. In the end, my parents weren't that well off financially that we could've afforded to go on vacation to the seaside. We were more or less middle-class. We weren't badly off, but didn't have extra money.

During the war

In 1939 our father had to give up his clothing store 9. After that he was unemployed. My father's sister Gizela and her husband, who had a store, then supported us financially, and helped us however they could. In 1939 I was 16 years old. I'd finished fourth year of council school, and couldn't find a job. So I worked as a helper in Richard Weinhadel's clothing store. I helped out there, and earned a few crowns. Then I went to help build a war memorial, and for that I earned ten crowns in one night [The value of one Slovak crown during the era of the Slovak State (1939 – 1945) was equal to 31.21 mg of pure gold. The rate of exchange of the German mark to the Slovak crown was artificially set at 1:11 – Editor's note]. In this fashion I managed to muddle through. I earned money here and there, wherever I could. Finally, in that year of 1941, they dragged both my parents away from Bratislava to Zilina, to a collection camp. They came to our place and told them to pack up and bring only the bare necessities. They were supposed to report in Zilina.

Luckily I had a friend, Ludovit Krajcovic was his name, who was from the town of Bahon. He lent me his papers, so I then lived in Bratislava as Ludovit Krajcovic, on Aryan papers. So my parents left for Zilina. From Zilina, in April 1942, they dragged them off to Auschwitz, where they also died. My brother was also living in Bratislava, on Aryan papers. They caught him, and then he was in the Novaky labor camp 10. During one check someone recognized me as well, or someone informed on me. So from 1942 until the start of the Slovak National Uprising, I was in the Novaky labor camp. From there I went to the uprising along with my brother and other boys, and joined the partisans.

The Novaky labor camp was a relatively modern labor camp. Jews worked in workshops there, and manufactured various products. I myself didn't have any particular job. I was a manual laborer. When they needed to dig a ditch, I dug a ditch; when something else was needed, I did it. I was in Novaky together with my brother, and we also joined the uprising together. Those that obeyed the camp rules were relatively well off. The food wasn't the worst, and we built a swimming pool and had swimming races. There were various cultural events there, movies, theater and so on. You just couldn't leave, because if they caught you, you were given worse living conditions. I made long-term friendships with my fellow inmates in Novaky. For example, I still get together with Bachnar to this day. Plus I've gotten together with Kamenciky, with Fero Chorvat, Steiner, plus many others who also lived in Bratislava afterwards. I'd say that there wasn't any great tyranny in Novaky, or drilling. Those that were obedient and did what they were told and worked like they were supposed to, and followed the rules there were left to live in peace.

On August 29, 1944, the Slovak National Uprising broke out, and young Jewish guys from Novaky and from Sered 11 joined together and volunteered for the uprising. In Novaky there was also something along the lines of illegal gunrunning, but I wasn't involved. I knew about it, but wasn't directly involved. But I do know that they used to get guns for people. After leaving Novaky, we got a crash battle course in Kostolany, because some of us hadn't ever in their life held a weapon in their hands.

I was 19, and so I got a gun; they showed me how to use a submachine gun, a machine gun, and I got a couple of grenades and they sent us to Batovany. The German army was approaching, and we were supposed to hold the positions there. A very strong German army, fresh reinforcements from Bratislava, and many of the partisans ran away from there, or returned to the villages they'd come from. The Jewish guys who'd arrived there didn't have any home. They had no place to run away to. So it's fair to say that 80% of those that fell at Batovany were Jewish. They held their positions. Gradually we retreated all the way back to Banska Bystrica.

When the Germans occupied Banska Bystrica, we retreated into the mountains. I was the commander of a recon unit in the Jegorov-Stalin 9th Battalion. My group had between five and ten guys. We then retreated along with the entire brigade up to Prasiva. From there we organized ambushes and sabotage; we'd blow up railway tracks, and attack certain villages, where we knew there was a weak German or Guardist garrison 12. In December 1944, a commando unit of the Hlinka Guard surrounded us during one attack. There were five of us, and out task was to find out where the Germans were, and beg for food from the villagers. But we were captured. Those that tried to escape were shot. The rest were captured. I had the luck that there were also some German soldiers among them, but they were Austrian soldiers, from Vienna. Because I was able to communicate with them perfectly, and I spoke with an Austrian accent, the Guardists and those German soldiers decided to not hand us over to the SS, as they'd have shot us on the spot.

They handed us over to Slovak authorities. Just then there was one transport to Bratislava ready to go. So we went on this transport in January 1945 to Bratislava, to the regional court jail. From Dolna Lhota, by Brezna, or from someplace around there, we went by transport to Bratislava, to the regional court jail, where there were political prisoners, partisans and illegals. We were jailed there up until February 1945. During February, the Gestapo took over the jail. They transferred those of us that were there, around 280 of us, to a jail on the third floor, for political prisoners and enemies of the state, and the other prisoners, criminals, were on the ground floor and on the first and second floors.

We were on the third floor until 19th February 1945, when at 5:00 a.m. they prepared a transport, five German trucks covered with canvas. We had to get onto these trucks. In each truck here were around 50 prisoners plus two SS soldiers in the back with submachine guns. In this way, on 19th February 1945, they took us to the Mauthausen concentration camp 13. We passed through Vienna, and when we were in Melk, about 80 km from Vienna, an air-raid alarm sounded. The leader of the convoy of trucks didn't react to the alert, and didn't give orders for the trucks to stop. We kept going. The English-American fighters, thinking that it was a German transport, as they were German trucks covered in canvas, began attacking us. At that point the trucks stopped.

The SS jumped into the ditches and took cover. We of course also wanted to jump out, but they were shouting "Züruck oder schiesse" – back, or I'll shoot. So we had to climb back on those trucks and I could already see the fighters approaching our trucks. So I hit the deck of the truck along with the rest of the others. At that moment they began firing. Five times they repeated that horrible barrage. Four trucks were partly demolished. Luckily, I wasn't wounded. In the meantime, Germans from Melk had arrived. There was a concentration camp in Melk too [Melk: a subsidiary camp of the Mauthausen concentration camp – Editor's note]. Those who were only lightly wounded, or not at all, had to load the dead or seriously wounded onto trucks. They took the wounded and dead to Melk, and later we found out that they'd shut them up into one room there, and let them bleed to death. Those of us that had remained alive, or were only lightly wounded, were dragged off to the Mauthausen concentration camp in Upper Austria. We were in Mauthausen until 5th May 1945, when we were freed by the American army. Mauthausen was the second worst camp after Auschwitz.

In Mauthausen we slept fifty, sixty to a barrack, either on the ground or on bunks. There were lots of these barracks there. The barracks are still standing today. Every year, I organize bus tours to Mauthausen. We had to sleep on those beds, the bunks, covered only with thin blankets, and we didn't have any pillows. It was all stuffed with grass and whatever. The way it worked was that every morning at 5:00 a.m., they'd chase us out onto the assembly grounds. When we arrived in Mauthausen, it was 19th February 1945, still winter. Ten, fifteen degrees below freezing, and we had to strip naked in some room. They shaved us bald and gave us striped clothing and thin cloth slippers. They then chased us outside, and from morning, from 5:00 a.m., until 5:00 p.m., we stood outside on the assembly grounds. Those that were packed into the middle, survived. Those on the edges, those got chilled through... Many of us also got diarrhea, which was certain death. At 5:00 p.m. they herded us back into the barracks. Food consisted of a half-liter of soup, water in which potato peels had been boiled, and a eighth of a loaf of bread.

Upon our arrival at Mauthausen, we saw emaciated prisoners, Russian soldiers and so on. For the first two days, we didn't know what it was all about. For example people, civilians, who lived in the town of Mauthausen, didn't know at all what was going on in the concentration camp. I found that out from them afterwards. For example, one nice day at 5:00 a.m., they led us out onto the assembly grounds. There was a terrible stink. Then we found out that they'd shot and burned the Russians during the night. Then we again stood outside all day and froze. I was young and healthy, and always tried to get inside the mass of people, so I wouldn't be on the edges of the crowd. Those that were on the edges of the crowd usually didn't return.

I had the luck to run into a person I knew in Mauthausen. He wasn't a Jew. He was a Czech Communist, and was in Mauthausen for being a Communist. He'd already been there for some two years perhaps, and had gotten into the office. Well, and he'd always give us a bit of food or something. We were in the concentration camp until May 5th [1945], when the American army freed us.

After the war

My life was saved three times during the war. The first time was when the Guardists and Germans caught us, that they didn't drag me off and shoot me. The second time was when I survived that air raid, where the Anglo-Americans were shooting at us thinking it was a German transport. The third time was a few days before the liberation of the Mauthausen camp, before 5th May 1945, when I came down with typhoid fever, which was certain death. And because it was a few days before the liberation, the Americans then sent me to a hospital, where they cured me. So three times my life was saved in this miraculous fashion.

At the hospital, they treated me very well and nicely. The doctors and nurses were German, but under American supervision. I knew German, so I was able to speak to them. They were very nice. And those people, the villagers, they knew about the concentration camps, but then didn't have the faintest idea what sort of atrocities were going on there. Mass murders and gassings, they didn't know about that. All they knew was that there were prisoners there, and that they were starving. That's all. I know that, because I spoke with the residents of the surrounding towns and villages, and they swore to me that they didn't know about murders in the gas chambers and similar things.

I arrived in Bratislava from the hospital in August 1945. I of course came home, and didn't find anyone. Be it my father, my mother, my brother, my uncles, all had been murdered. No one was there. I arrived in Bratislava as a complete stranger. My parents had left the apartment, and that was that. After us, someone Aryanized it. I was young, and didn't make any claims on it. What was important to me was that I'd survived. After the war, I of course was inclined towards Jews. I didn't have any other friends except for Jews. It was almost only always we Jews, who'd been together with in Novaky, or in the uprising, that would get together. We met in cafés and so on. Nothing but Jews.

I began living in a place I rented from some non-Jews. I rented for five years, from 1945 until 1950. I began taking high school correspondence courses, because I was working as a helper, a laborer. After graduating from high school, I got a job and worked in a communal company and in various organizations, and then worked my way up. I began taking economics university via correspondence. I graduated and became a commercial engineer. I didn't experience any anti-Semitic comments at work, nothing like that took place. After the Slansky trials 14 I had certain doubts about the regime, but otherwise I myself didn't have any problems, as I wasn't in a position of responsibility. I worked as a minor official, so I didn't feel anything like some sort of pressure. It didn't affect me in any way.

I was a member of the Party 15, and acted accordingly. The reason I was in the Communist Party was mainly because both my son and daughter have a university education, and it was very hard to get them into university. But when I was in the Party, they got it more easily. So at least because of the kids, I was a rank-and-file member. I worked for a communal company as a minor official. I took care of "new forms of work" and socialist competition. And then I transferred to the Slovak Geodetics and Cartography Union. I worked as an clerk, and then worked my way up to manager of the general accounting department.

Most of the people at my work didn't know that I was Jewish. I didn't make it apparent, like saying that I was a Jew and so on. I worked as the manager of the expenses section, and tried to do my work responsibly and as well as possible. I had very good contacts with the directors. I got along very well with them. They valued my work, so I didn't have any problems at work. I didn't have any problems due to my origin either. I've got this nature, as they say, that I get along with everyone. I get along well with everyone, I like to laugh, I like to crack jokes, and so on. So I can say that I was well liked by my co-workers. I tried to make by subordinates' work easier, and improve their pay. We had good bonuses and compensation. I had five people under me, and when there was less work, I let them go home early, for example.

A few years after the war ended, one very lucky thing happened to me. I was at a partisan dance, as a former partisan, and there met my current wife. She, like her father, had been an anti-Fascist. My father-in-law was an upholsterer, and during the Holocaust he hid two Jewish families in the back in his warehouse, who'd also survived. My wife isn't Jewish. Simply put, I fell in love at that dance. My wife's maiden name was Lujza Nagyova. She's also from Bratislava, like me, and was born in 1928. She worked for her parents. Her father, as I've already mentioned, was an upholsterer. My wife's mother was a housewife. My mother took care of all the administrative work in the upholstery workshop. She didn't have any siblings; she was an only child. My wife graduated from business high school.

We didn't have a Jewish wedding; we had a normal wedding, at city hall, on 27th May 1950. We got married, and we've been married for over 50 years now. After the wedding we lived with her parents in Lodna Street. My wife's parents welcomed me as a son. My friends and acquaintances that had been in Novaky with me said about my wife's father: "He's an excellent person, he supported us. He supported us financially in everything, that's one excellent person." He had an amazing relationship with Jews.

My wife didn't care that I met only with Jewish friends. She was raised to believe that all people were equal. Her father had been a member of the Communist Party since 1936. And he had a very good attitude towards Jews. He had very many Jewish friends. So he also had a lot of Jewish customers. When I got married, he immediately automatically said: "Why would you live in a sublet?!" You'll live with us." They had a five-room apartment, so of course right away my wife and I had one room to ourselves.

After finishing university, I already had a relatively good job. I worked as the manager of the general accounting department of the Cartography and Geodetics Institute in Bratislava. Then I worked as the manager of the economics division. In 1950 Dr. Gerej, the head of communal companies, issued me a two-room apartment in Laurinska St. My wife and I moved in and lived comfortably there. Later we traded that apartment for a three-room one in Spitalska St. My wife and I lived there until the 1990s. Then we traded it for our current one.

We've got two children. Our daughter Sona, and our son Petr. Sona is married. They've got two daughters, and her husband owns a company. They live in Bratislava. Our son Peter emigrated back during Communist times. He was working here in Slovakia as a phys ed teacher. He didn't agree with the regime, so emigrated to Austria. He became an Austrian citizen, and today lives in Vienna. He left for Austria alone, as his wife didn't want to go. But he used to send his wife and son here in Slovakia money. In the beginning he worked as a masseur. He then divorced his wife. His son lives in Bratislava. But we don't keep in touch that much. He'll come by when it's his name day, or his birthday. My children weren't raised in the Jewish spirit and traditions. Both our children graduated from university.

My wife didn't have any objections when I'd go, or now go to the synagogue, or to various Jewish events. I'm in very good contact with the leaders of the Central Union of Jewish Religious Communities, concretely with Dr. Weiss, as well as with Petr Salner and many others. I get along well with them, and we understand each other. So when we have some events, we always get together and have a pleasant conversation. Now I was for example lecturing for fifty, sixty Jewish people who'd been in Terezin 16. I lectured on the Holocaust.

Currently I'm the vice-president of the Central Council of the Slovak Union of Anti-Fascist Fighters 17. I'm also the president of the Association of Prisoners of the Nazi Concentration Camps Auschwitz, Mauthausen, Ravensbrück, Terezin, Stutthof [Sztutowo in Polish], and am the vice-president of the International Political Prisoners of Concentration Camps of 18 European countries.

Each year, we organize a bus trip to the Mauthausen concentration camp; the participants are former prisoners, their family members and sympathizers, but recently we've been taking students and history teachers, where I show them right on the spot, as a former prisoner, what concentrations camps were all about. I got this idea because various tours of Auschwitz and I don't know what else are put on. And once I was talking to a friend of mine, the poor guy died recently, Colonel Oto Michalec was his name. He'd been there too, and he said to me: "Oto, why don't we also put together a but tour to Mauthausen, where we'll show people right on the spot, what was there, how it was?" At first we had problems, but the Central Union of Jewish Religious Communities paid for the bus. In the morning, at 6:00 p.m., we left for Mauthausen and in the afternoon, around two or three, back to Bratislava. Then I promoted the whole thing, and I took out an ad in a newspaper named Bojovnik [Fighter] published by the Slovak Union of Anti-Fascist Fighters. I got people to sign up, and now we regularly go to Mauthausen in May, on the anniversary of the liberation.

Right after the war, in 1945, I renewed my membership in the Jewish religious community. Our children always knew about all my activities and about that I was a Jew. They live as atheists, but have a positive relationship to Jews and Jewry. Most of my daughter's girlfriends are even Jewish. Our children are just aware that their father is a Jew, and that they're from a Jewish family.

I retired in 1986. I was 60. At one time I was still working as a retiree, part-time, in cartography. I still have my positions in the various unions. I'm the vice-president of the Central Council of the Slovak Union of Anti-Fascist Fighters. I've been active in this union since 1945. I got in as a former concentration camp prisoner, and a partisan. The entire union represents former resistance fighters, illegal workers, anti-Fascists and their sympathizers. I've been vice-president for 8 years now. That was a matter of course, that my path led to this union, which fights against neo-Nazism, against Fascism. I was always active. At first I was the head of one group. Then I was secretary, then president of the western organization, so I then worked my way up to the position of vice-president of the Central Council. My work in the union entails representing the president in his absence, and I also take care of the entire agenda in cooperation with foreign resistance members in the surrounding countries. I also verify requests for compensation and so on. While we're on the subject of compensation, I also received compensation. I got 15,000 marks from Germany, then I got 40,000 crowns for my participation in the resistance, and finally 117,000 for the uprising, and for having been in a concentration camp 18. That was from the Slovak government.

As far as religious life in the community is concerned, when they invite me I go, but I don't go to synagogue regularly. I only go when there's some sort of a holiday, remembrance of the dead for example. In my free time, I get together with both Jews and non-Jews. The Jews are relatively few. If people are reputable, I don't distinguish between Jew and Gentile. I take with reserve those people who I know have a negative attitude towards questions of Jews or the uprising. Because there are also those that say that the uprising was a tragedy for the Slovak nation. But as long as a person is decent, I don't care if he's a Jew or not. That's a principle of mine. I was liked for never distinguishing whether someone was a Jew, a Catholic or a Protestant. I always took people as being in the first place human beings. But I'll discuss things with those that don't have a positive attitude towards Jews. I'll either change their mind, or I won't discuss it with them any longer. I'll tell you honestly, the people I meet, they respect me, and I them. For one, they know that I was in a concentration camp, that I was in the uprising, I was in a labor camp, and that I hold high positions. I've got all sorts of foreign awards. I was in Moscow for example, where I met Putin, and so on.

I've got a couple of awards for my lifelong successes and resolve to achieve something. The last time was on 1st January 2006, on the occasion of the national holiday celebrating the creation of the Slovak Republic. Ivan Gasparovic 19, our president, gave me the Milan Rastislav Stefanik Cross [The Milan Rastislav Stefanik Cross is awarded to citizens of the Slovak Republic who have risked their lives to defend the Slovak Republic and save human lives or significant material values. It is awarded by the president of the Slovak Republic upon nomination by the government. It was awarded to General-Major Oto Wagner in 2006 – Editor's note]. It's a state award of the order of Milan Rastislav Stefanik for merit and saving human lives while risking one's own. The Central Council of the Slovak Union of Anti-Fascist Fighters nominated me for it. I value equally an award from Austria, from the president of the Austrian Republic. It's an award for merit for the Austrian Republic, which I was given at the Austrian embassy, commissioned by the president of Austria.

We, the Slovak Union of Anti-Fascist Fighters, used to have a very good relationship with the Communists. Now, when the government is oriented towards the right, and groups itself mostly with rightists, that relationship is not as ideal [during 1998 – 2006 (thus also during the time of this interview), a right-wing government was in power in Slovakia. After the 2006 parliamentary elections, the situation changed. Currently, leftists have a parliamentary majority in the government of the Slovak Republic – Editor's note]. I attend all sorts of receptions – Chinese, Austrian, German. I meet our ministers there, we say hello, exchange a few words, but that's all. I was always oriented towards the left, and don't see it as being very rosy right now. Now I've for example found out, Janek Langos 20 is a friend of mine, and he told me that they've got two thousand names of former Aryanizers [Aryanization:  the transfer of Jewish stores, businesses, companies, etc. to the ownership of another, non-Jewish person – the Aryanizer – Editor’s note]. And I said: "Janek, but most of these people aren't alive anymore." "That doesn't matter, their children and grandchildren should know that their parents and grandparents Aryanized Jewish property." And that's supposed to be normally published like the StB records [21, 22]. I'm assuming it'll be quite unpleasant for the children and grandchildren, when they find out that their grandfather Aryanized Jewish property. I wouldn't publish it. But I don't have any influence over it. It'll just cause useless friction again.

The last few years I've been lecturing often. At one lecture, at the Central Union of Jewish Religious Communities, where there were about 200 people, mostly people that had been in concentration camps as children, I said: "We can't be angry at Germans, because it's not the fault of today's generation that their fathers and grandfathers committed such horrid things." That's what I said there, and they were all Jews there. And they weren't against it. No took issue with it. You know, we can't be angry with one young German because his grandfather was, let's say, a member of the SS and murdered people. It's not the fault of today's generation. But I do think that every school should visit a concentration camp at least once, it doesn't matter which one. Let those young people see what atrocities were committed, what war, hunger and torture are.

I was invited to one school, and was asked to tell students that were going to be graduating something about the Slovak National Uprising – as a former participant and the vice-president of the Central Union of Anti-Fascist Fighters. So I organized a talk there, and gave a lecture about the Slovak National Uprising and the Holocaust. That the Slovak National Uprising has been recorded in the history of the Slovak nation with a gold pen. Because with the help of the Slovak National Uprising, Slovakia as such was included with the victorious countries, and not with the defeated Fascist countries. So I spoke about it, and when I was finished, one graduate stood up and said: "Sir, please, I have one question." I said: "Yes, what is it?" "You say that you fought in the Slovak National Uprising, that you were the head of a recon unit, and that you were wounded and captured. You were dragged off to the Mauthausen concentration camp in Upper Austria." I said: "Yes." "So could you tell me please, what did you do in that camp all day?" This means I can't be angry with him, at that boy. They didn't study anything at all about the Holocaust and the concentration camps. They didn't know anything at all. They just knew the bare outline of the uprising, otherwise nothing. That's why I'm trying to tell this young generation what the uprising was, what the Holocaust was, and so on. So that they'll have at least some sort of a foundation. If their parents and teachers didn't tell them about it, or if they weren't interested in finding out about it, whether from books, or from magazines, I at least tell them about the past like this, orally.

Not just the Holocaust is left out of the school curriculum, but neither do they for example teach that Czechoslovakia was from the year 1918 23 a multi-ethnic state. After all, there were Jews living here, there were Germans and Hungarians living here, and everyone got along. Why, Bratislava and lots of other places in Slovakia were trilingual. That was something normal, that families spoke Slovak, Hungarian and German amongst themselves. Those of my generation that were born in Bratislava or lived here, all of us spoke Slovak, German and Hungarian. When as children we played soccer and similar games, there were Germans and Jews there, and no one cared about nationality. There weren't any problems; everyone was first and foremost a human being. There wasn't any anti-Semitism here. During the time of the Slovak State 24 these kinds of comments already existed. There was for example anti-Jewish propaganda in the newspapers. Suddenly things, that before people had looked at normally, changed. They began to paint Jewish stars on windows of shops owned by Jews, and so on. Finally it culminated in the persecution of Jews. It was all artificially created by the Fascist-Catholic government of the time. Yes, these are facts that are known today, but no one talks about them. And it's also my obligation to educate people, and mainly the young generation, about it and tell them how it was. So that what took place during the Holocaust and the Slovak National Uprising is never forgotten. Mainly, so that these tragic events and atrocities are never repeated.

Glossary

Lora Benjamin Melamed

Sofia

Bulgaria

Interviewer: Patricia Nikolova

Date of interview: September 2004

Lora Beniamin Melamed is a considerate and kind person to talk to. Her delicacy and intelligence blend into a strong selflessness towards the interlocutor – a rare quality. Her appearance reminds of a beautiful fragile porcelain figure from the XIX century. Lora is a very affectionate, delicate and interesting woman.

My ancestors came to Spain more than five hundred years ago. [Expulsion of the Jews from Spain] 1 After the Jews were persecuted from Spain, a big part of them settled on the Balkan Peninsula. Some of the Jews were killed by the Inquisition and another part adopted Christianity, but most of them left Spain and moved to the Balkans. The Jews in Greece, Turkey, Macedonia, Bulgaria, a part of former Yugoslavia and a part of Romania spoke a Spanish language from the Middle Ages. It was called Ladino or ‘Spaniolit’ as Bulgarian Jews often call it. My ancestors are Sephardi Jews like most Jews in Bulgaria 2, although some of them are a mixture of Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews. So, my ancestor’s traditions and rites are Sephardi and they spoke Ladino. 

My paternal and maternal grandparents were born in the beautiful Bulgarian town of Samokov. They were quiet and kind people with a great sense of humor. They dressed in cheap, but clean clothes. They did hard physical labor all day. They were religious, especially grandmother Orucha (the mother of my mother Iafa Beniamin Kohen), who was very lively and talkative. I knew from an early age that Grandma Orucha lost her husband early and that was why she constantly prayed to God to join him as soon as possible.

Grandma Orucha was something like a hakham for the family. She loved gathering all the families of her children on the high religious holidays. She did all the preparations by herself and she also found some free time for us – her grandchildren. I still remember how she taught us a game with walnuts and what songs to sing on the various holidays. She had interesting conversations with the adults and the children. And she had a lovely sense of humor. She could tell us a lot of interesting, important or funny stories. She dressed in cheap, but very clean clothes. She did not stop working for one minute – cooking, cleaning, going to the synagogue where she always sang. She insisted that the families of her children observe both at home and in the synagogue the Jewish traditions on erev Sabbath and during the holidays.

I remember that my maternal grandfather Rahamim Yuda Levi wore simple, but clean suits and a hat, while my grandmother wore a kerchief. They were not educated. My maternal grandparents were not members of a party, although my grandfather adopted the communist ideas before 9th September 1944 3. That is, he believed in social justice and kindness to people regardless of their nationality or culture. About my paternal grandmother Mazal Shemtov Kohen and grandfather Nissim Shemtov Kohen I know only that he was a merchant and she was a housewife. They were both from Samokov, as was my mother’s family. They were both religious, observed kashrut on Pesach, fasted on [Yom] Kippur, celebrated erev Sabbath and all high religious holidays such as Rosh Hashanah, Chanukkah, Sukkot, Lag ba-Omer, Tu bi-Shevat, Simchat Torah.

We lived in a small house in Samokov. We were about 10 people: my parents with their four children, my maternal grandparents, uncle and aunt, and their children. Our house had two rooms and a kitchen. We did not have a bathroom. We did not have electricity, nor running water. We used an ordinary wood-burning stove to warm the house. We got water from the faucet outside, even in the winter. The faucet was quite far from our house. So, my parents decided to build a faucet in our yard. I remember that we, the children, helped a lot to make it. And we did not have to go so far away for water. Besides, my mother wanted us to grow up healthy and strong. She made us wash ourselves with cold water. They made us a special place in the house where we did gymnastic exercises.

We had a small garden, in which my mother sowed vegetables, fruit and flowers. We did not have any domestic animals, nor any maids. But our neighbors – the Bulgarians and the Jews were very kind people. We got along with them very well. They cheered with us if someone from our family managed to sell something in a nearby village, or went to have medical treatment at a bath, which was the practice at that time.

My mother's name is Iafa Beniamin Kohen, nee Levi, and my father's name – Beniamin Shemtov Kohen. They were both born and raised in Samokov. My mother had primary education and my father - secondary high school education. He knew French, because his parents wanted him to go to study in France, which did not happen, because my father was the first born child and his duty was to stay and support the family, who was not very well-off. My father believed in communist ideas, but I did not remember if he was a member of the party or if he was involved in illegal party activities. In this sense my father was more of an idealist and communist in beliefs than an active party member. My mother was apolitical.

My parents spoke in Ladino to each other. Of course, since we had to go to a Bulgarian school and when we were among Bulgarians, we spoke Bulgarian and learned Bulgarian very well. So, we spoke Ladino and Bulgarian equally well, though our Bulgarian vocabulary was richer. My parents did not know Ivrit, though they both were very religious, observed kashrut on Pesach, fasted on Kippur, celebrated erev Sabbath and all other high religious holidays such as Rosh Hashanah, Chanukkah, Sukkot, Lag ba-Omer, Tu bi-Shevat, Simchat Torah. 

I do not know how my parents met. But I know for sure that their wedding took place in 1919, when my father was 37 years old and my mother – 29 years old. My parents' brothers and sisters were kind people. My parents kept in constant touch with them. They met on holidays, weddings, celebrated holidays together, visited the ill relatives. My father's sisters are Ester Beniamin Kohen [her maiden family name] and Victoria Beniamin Kohen, but I do not remember anything else about their families or about them. My mother's sister's name was Rashel Rahamim Levi [her maiden family name] and her brothers' names were Mordehay Rahamim Levi, Leon Rahamim Levi and Ruben Rahamim Levi. I have no information about them.

I remember that my father worked in a small shop owned by him, but did not earn much money. I also remember that we were constantly short of money and my father had to carry goods on his horse to the nearby villages on Sundays. He carried the villagers' hats, which my mother sowed and knitted at home, as well as cotton, or other things they needed. The Bulgarians bought them and provided us with an income. At first my mother sowed clothes for my father's shop. My father often worked as a travelling salesman to the nearby villages so that his children would have enough food and clothes. My parents also insisted that we further our education. When my parents wanted to go for a walk, they asked us to draw or write something interesting, made up a variety of artistic activities, then they came back and pointed out our best works.

There was not a Jewish school in Samokov. But there was a Bet Am [i.e. a Jewish home], where there was a Sunday school. A special teacher from Israel [then Palestine] was invited there and he taught us to read and speak in Ivrit. We learned a lot then, but we could not practice it anywhere so we soon forgot it. I remember that there was only one synagogue with one rabbi, who was also a chazzan. Unfortunately I do not remember his name. Since my father had the Kohen family name, he had to sing in the synagogue as a kohen. When he was not in the shop, he was in the synagogue. He loved singing and he had a great voice.

I was born on 11th November 1924 in Samokov. My sister and my brothers are Milka Beniamin Revah [nee Kohen], born in 1921, Sinto Beniamin Kohen [1923] and Miko Beniamin Kohen [1926]. We have always been best friends. The four of us were born in Samokov where we studied in the same school (there was no other high school). I remember that we all loved going to school and to the Sunday school. Besides, we always had a lot of books at home, on secular or religious topics. We, the children, loved reading aloud sitting together with our parents, which did not happen very often because my parents were very busy.

My sister Milka was the first to start learning to play the violin. She had private lessons, which also affected our family budget. In order to pay the teacher my mother prepared a large table cover, which she gave to her instead of money. My brother Sinto played a mouth the mouthorgan, and later – an accordion. My little brother Miko had inherited my father's talent and sang very well. I also played the violin when I was in high school. So, we made some merry concerts at home, in which everybody took part. 

On the whole, our family was part of the Jewish community in the town of Samokov, which was not big. The high Jewish holidays such as [Yom] Kippur, Rosh Hashanah, Pesach, Purim, Sukkot, Lag ba-Omer, Tu bi-Shevat we always celebrated at home and at the synagogue. Of course, we had the best time when we celebrated them at home. Like all Jewish children, we also loved Purim most. It was most fun then. Usually our parents prepared some cheap things, because they did not have money to buy us expensive gifts. But every time my mother made some nice and colorful purses, in which we put sweets, candies and other sweet things. Then we made a contest who would remain with most sweets in their purse. And whoever won, was considered the most important child.

I studied philosophy in Sofia University ‘St Kliment Ohridski’ 4, but I did not graduate. When I was a student I helped my parents a lot. I went shopping with my mother who was always busy, I helped her in the sewing, cooking, cleaning. I also helped my father who had a hard time earning money from the shop and I sold instead of him the clothes sewn by my mother. Besides the miserable conditions we lived in, I also have other unpleasant memories. I was still a high school student, when I felt anti-Semitism for the first time. On some Bulgarian holiday lots of people gathered in the center of the town, folk music was playing and a beautiful folk ring dance was winding around the central square. We, the three Jewish girls who studied in the Bulgarian school, also joined the dance. Suddenly a tall student came, stood between us and with a strong hit accompanied with dirty and insulting words drove us out of the dance. The three of us also sang in the school choir. We sang patriotic, Bulgarian songs, which I liked very much. Soon after that incident our music teacher, whom I respected very much, summoned us and told us that a higher authority forbade us to sing in the choir. That happened before the Law for Protection of the Nation 5 was adopted in 1942 [Editor’s note: the law was promulgated in 1941].

We had a Jewish youth group in Samokov, we met often and had a great time. At first we gathered in the Sunday school, where we sang and studied Ivrit. My favorite song at that time was ‘Adio kerida’ [Goodbye darling]. We also tried to improvise short plays and theater performances, whose plots we made up by ourselves. My friends then were Stela, Bella, Panka and others (unfortunately I cannot remember their family names). When the Law for Protection of the Nation was adopted, our group disintegrated. We stayed at our homes in Samokov, but it was like living in a ghetto.  We wore the shameful yellow stars, we were humiliated and had to observe a number of limitations, such as the curfew and the ban on Jews to go to social places such as theaters, cafeterias, shops and restaurants in front of which there were the degrading notices ‘Entrance Forbidden for Jews’ or ‘Sale for Jews only’.

In the worst time during the Law for Protection of the Nation, we, the young Jews, had a small Jewish orchestra, including a violin, accordion and other instruments. We gathered, sang and had fun. But suddenly, in 1943, my family learned that we would no longer live in Samokov, because we would have to be sent somewhere else, no one knew where. [Internment of Jews in Bulgaria] 6 At that time some of the interned Jews from Sofia had already been living in Samokov. We had to think about what to pack. Of course, the first thing I thought of was the violin. The rest of the orchestra also packed their instruments. We thought that we were sent to somewhere only temporarily, to some place like Samokov. Gradually my parents learned that something was not right, that things were not as we thought. I remember that my father’s Bulgarian friends supported us a lot, so did the people from the villages to which my father went and sold bread during the Law for Protection of the Nation. They would bring us a little butter, a little yogurt, a little bread. And they would tell us, ‘Don’t worry, we will help you, everything will be okay.’ In the end, they did not send us anywhere, although we never fully realized how nightmarish our journey would have been.

When the scary days came, other friends of my father’s, and some classmates of mine also came to console us, although we were afraid for our lives all the time. We were really very afraid. Germans walked around the town all the time, people shouted at us and threatened us with murder, that they would cleanse Bulgaria from the Jews and horrible things like that. The scariest thing was when a classmate of my sister’s tried to kill her once. She was returning home one evening, when he ran after her with a gun and tried to catch her and kill her. I remember very well how horrified she was when we came home. Then we realized that something very frightening awaited us. And our friends came secretly and told us, ‘We will stand beside you, we will not let those horrible people hurt you.’ The people consoling us were Bulgarians again.

From the articles that I read in the papers at that time (‘Utro’ [Morning] and ‘Zarya’ [Dawn]) I remember that the Law for Protection of the Nation was introduced after the fateful meeting between the monarch at that time King Boris III 7 and Hitler in November 1940 and with the signing of the Trilateral Pact by the Prime Minister Bogdan Filov in Vienna on 1st March 1941. Very few people know that in a strange concurrence of consequences the Hitler forces entered Bulgaria on 3rd March – 63 years after the Russian forces liberated us from Turkish rule 8. In fact, the meeting between Hitler and Boris III introduced a lot of the Nazi ideology and practice to Bulgaria.

In the days before and after the meeting between the king and Hitler in Bulgaria a very energetic anti-Semitic campaign was started, which my Jewish friends and I found very strange for our peaceful country. It was started by a number of Bulgarian pseudo scholars led by Filov and the Interior Minister Petar Gabrovski 9. To our surprise they were fascinated by the Nurnberg laws. And they openly declared that the Bulgarian, was of a pure Aryan type, which had nothing to do with the Slavs. And we, the Jews, were the main enemy of that so perfect Bulgarian. Those speeches supporting Hitler’s ideology led to a kind of a Kristallnacht in Bulgaria. Thanks God that I am not a witness, but we all knew from witness reports that groups of youths in uniforms armed with knives broke down the windows of the Jewish shops. And despite the resistance of the citizens, they stormed the poor Jewish neighborhood Konyovitsa, broke down flats, molested old people and women, painted swastikas on the walls, as well as anti-Jewish and anticommunist slogans.

I remember that all people from Sofia and the country were shocked. But then came a strange lull – no one commented on what happened, probably the people were afraid of the authorities, I do not know. Maybe thinking that the silence of the people was a kind of agreement, the Interior Minister suddenly declared that he was introducing to Parliament a bill called ‘Law for the Protection of the Nation’. We had no idea then that this law would be like the Nuremberg laws. In fact, the only difference between the two laws was that the Law for Protection of the Nation did not say anything about blood or blood differences, but about religion and religious differences. It would have been stupid and laughable if its creators had put in it terms like an ‘Aryan’ and ‘purity of the Aryan race’. But this small difference provided some Jews with the chance to adopt the Christian faith quickly. I do not know such Jews personally, but I have heard about them. My Jewish friends and I did not approve of their hasty act. But then the authorities noticed that omission in the law and hurried to add in a consequent regulation that relationships between Jews and people of Bulgarian origin are forbidden.

There were also some cases of superstitions related to Jews. For example, I remember that during the Law for Protection of the Nation a rumor was introduced that on the Jewish holiday of Pesach Jews would steal a child in order to imprison it in a barrel with nails, can you imagine that, and in this way they would drain its blood, which was necessary for the holiday…. I remember that there were some simple mothers who really believed in these things. And when Pesach approached they were very afraid about their children and told them to run if they see a Jew on the street, run, so that they would not be caught and their blood drained. I have even heard such a pseudo threat used by some women to scare their children when they did some mischief – threatening to leave the child to the Jews, to the ‘blood-drinkers’. There were also cases when a child would disappear and the first thought of those people would be that the Jews had stolen it to drink its blood. For me that was an obvious form of anti-Semitism, but thanks God, it was not very common in the Bulgarian society. I speak only of individual cases, but although they were rare, they did happen.

To be honest, I think that King Boris III carries a political responsibility and he was not the true savior of the Bulgarian Jews. The truth is that at those trouble times, we could really rely on our Bulgarian neighbors. The anti-Semites, with all their cruelty, were only a number of crazy individuals. I remember that both before and after 9th September 1944 opinions were heard throughout the country that the former king Boris III was a democratic monarch. Yet, I think that is not true as far as democracy is concerned, because at that time tens of thousands of people (including many Jews) were sent to prison in the name of ‘His Highness’ and underage girls and boys were executed in the name of ‘His Highness’ with his signature on their sentences.

All of us in Samokov were very happy about the big protest organized by the Jews in Sofia on 24th May 1943 10 against the internment of the Jews from Sofia and the deportation of all Bulgarian Jews. The protest started from the Jewish school, moved past the [Great] Synagogue 11, along Stamboliiski Blvd, where the Jewish Cultural Home [Bet Am] 12 is still located today, and stopped at the Klementina Square. Some of the protesters wanted to go to the palace and ask King Boris III, called by Hitler ‘the fox’ to help them. The Sofia Jews interned to Samokov told us that the police met them with trucks and wagons somewhere along Opalchenska Str. between Stamboliiski Blvd and Vazrazhdane Square. They arrested a lot of the protesting Jews, led by rabbi Daniel 13. It was good that he managed to hide at the place of bishop Stefan [Exarch Stefan] 14, who remained in history as one of the greatest supporters of the Jews in Bulgaria. His protests against the deportation of our Jews played a major role and are still remembered with gratitude by the community.

But in the end of 1943 Italy had already left the war by breaking the alliance with the Germans. The Americans and the English had entered Italy. They started bombing Bulgaria from Italy but not so intensely as Romania, for example. The situation changed fast and contrary to the expectations of the Bulgarian government after October 1943 the Americans started bombing Sofia for real. The reason was that their way to Romania passed through Bulgaria, that was why they bombed Sofia and some other towns. In Samokov we only heard about the bombings, but it was more than enough to increase the fear, which we felt all the time.

My hometown Samokov like most of the big towns in the countryside accommodated a part of the interned Sofia Jews during the Law for Protection of the Nation. I think that introduced some optimistic vigor in us, the young Jews from the country, despite the tragic times. We often gathered together, discussed our situation and always tried to view things from a positive angle. We organized progressively oriented groups (an illegal youth party organization). All the time Jewish chamber orchestras were being formed, in which the accordionists were the center of the company. We read a lot. We exchanged the so-called ‘progressive’ books (books by Gorky, Lenin, Marx etc.) which we were eager to discuss. I found that fascinating! When radio sets were officially banned, we gathered in a small ‘bozadjiinitsa’ [a shop selling boza] 15 on the market street, in which the radio was always on.

It was a great pleasure for us, the Jewish youth, to spend the Sunday mornings there, drinking boza and listening in a daze to the traditional holiday concerts. I do not know if even real musicians could be so impressed by the overture ‘Koriolan’ or ‘year 812’, ‘9th Symphony’ or ‘Pathetic’, Beethoven and Chaikovsky… We would gather around a small table and listen in a trance, lost in a world, which was unreal, and yet belonging only to us, a world, which lifted us above the horrifying present. What we heard, filled us with revolutionary emotions, we were ready to fight so that there would be ‘An Ode to Joy’ for everyone in the world.

The exultation at our unreal world continued until the fateful day. The rumor spread with the speed of lightning: we are going to be interned. Where? Why? Nobody knew. Our parents felt the enormous danger, but tried to save us the worry. The appointed day was coming close with all its terror. Still optimistic, we, the young Jews, went to farewell meetings with our favorite friends, promised that we would write to each other from the new place… At home we packed violins and accordions, my mother cried all the time, while my father, seemingly angry, scolded her. And then came our Bulgarian friends. Everyone brought us something: some fresh butter, bread, yogurt. And they would tell us, ‘Don’t worry! Do not believe that something bad will happen!… Look at us, if necessary, we will protect you! If they touch you, it is as if they touch us. Do you hear, do not be afraid! You will come back, and everything will be like old times...’ It was as if the little butter eased our tense nerves. Well, we were lucky then. After a couple of years, we realized what would have been our fate. Our friend Dr. Buko Isakov (a Jew from Samokov) who had accompanied the echelons of the Aegean Jews to the death camps and had experienced the horror of the doomed people, could not recover from the shock for a long time. [Annexation of Aegean Thrace to Bulgaria in WWII] 16 We did not need any words, his state was significant enough.

9th September 1944 brought my family and me the calmness and the hopes for a completely new and secure life. Then the Soviet army entered Bulgaria not as a conqueror, but as a liberator (except to the fascists). Let’s not forget that at that time there was a strong partisan movement in Bulgaria, which opposed the fascist regime imposed by the Bulgarian government. Naturally the government searched for and killed the partisans, burned their houses, terrorized their families. Many young people died between 1943 and 1944, including a lot of Jews – mostly young people from Plovdiv and Sofia. For example, my future husband, who is from Plovdiv, had been involved in antifascist activities and his life had been in real danger. Unfortunately, I do not know any details about that period of his life, because I met him after 1944.

In 1947 I married Avram Melamed. We met through a group of Jewish friends from Plovdiv. I was in Plovdiv visiting my sister who had just married Rofat Revah from Plovdiv. Friends of his decided that I and Avram Melamed were perfect for each other and made everything possible to convince us in that. The main person ‘to blame’ for our marriage was Morits Assa, the former chairman of the Organization of Sofia Jews ‘Shalom’ 17, who lived in Plovdiv at that time. The story is quite unusual. I was introduced to Avram the day before he left for the USSR, where he was about to spend 5 years at a university (he graduated as an engineer there). At first, I thought I was only one of the many friends who came to see him off. But they had something else in mind, which, after all, I did not mind. While we were talking to each other, I suddenly heard Morits Assa saying ‘Lora and Avram are getting married tonight.’ And everyone started taking out some treats – potatoes, meat. ‘Congratulations! Happy wedding! Have a nice journey, Avram! And Lora will be here, working and waiting.’ At that time I was helping Morits with the administrative work, I was something like his secretary.

The next day Avram told me: ‘I am leaving.’ We left for Sofia where he had to take the plane to Moscow. There we went to marry before the registrar. But we had no witnesses. We went out on the street, looking for people to become our witnesses. We asked one stranger, and we found another acquaintance who agreed. And so, my husband left. But before that he said, ‘We will organize the wedding when I come back. And remember, no going out with other men.’ But a year passed, then a second, a third, a fifth... and we still had no wedding. Meanwhile my elder son Sheni  [Shinto] was born in 1948.

At first I lived with my sister and my brother-in-law in Plovdiv. My sister’s husband advised me not to go to the relatives of my husband, because I did not know them, but I thought the right thing was to go and live with them. So, I went to live together with my parents-in-law in Plovdiv. My husband's sister and brother also lived with them. His brother's name was Samuel Melamed, but I do not remember her name. At that time I was working as a weaver. I gave all my money to them. In fact, everything was for them, even the food. The situation grew unbearable especially in 1948 when they understood that I was pregnant and I was going to have a baby.

Before Shinto was born my husband's relatives moved me from Plovdiv to Sofia. And there, while I was pregnant in the last month, they showed me where I would live. I went upstairs to the third floor and I nearly fell downstairs with the baby.... My husband's mother and brother were coming behind me. When my son was born, I wrote a letter to my husband and his answer was: ‘A boy, something to be proud of!’ He neither asked me how the delivery went, nor how the child was. Very often the money for the baby went for the needs of my husband's relatives. Then my brother Sinto came, took my child and gave him to my parents who had still not emigrated to Israel. They looked after young Shinto. At that time I was working as a weaver in the Slatina factory in Samokov.

I remember very well an unpleasant incident from my work as a weaver. Once a woman got hit (I can't say if it was an accident or done on purpose) and I went to help her, because her hand looked very bad. My decision was spontaneous, I wanted to help her and accompany her to a doctor. Then some boy came, a Bulgarian, and told me, ‘This is none of your business. You are a Jew...’ His words hurt me a lot. That was a very ugly case, which I want to forget, but I can't.

My family dispersed in 1948 when all my relatives except for me emigrated to Israel. 18 In fact, the decision was taken by my brothers and sister and my parents decided that they should follow their children. At that time I was already married. My sister Milka became a social worker in Israel (she had a university education in Bulgaria), my brother Sinto, who was studying medicine in Bulgaria became a famous doctor and my brother Miko (he is the only one of us with secondary education) became a lab chemist. They still live in Israel today and have good families, children and grandchildren. My sister has two boys, my brother Sinto – a son and a daughter, and my brother Miko – a son. All I know about their families is that Milka married before she left – to Rofat Revah in 1940, who was from Plovdiv and I lived with them in Samokov for a while.

My husband returned from the USSR in 1951 as an engineer. He was also a communist so he found a job very fast. In that period I worked a lot, I was a member of the [communist] party, shared their ideas, read a lot. After 9th September 1944 when I went to Plovdiv to live with my sister. I worked as a typist in the propaganda department in the regional committee of the Fatherland Front 19, and later in the Regional Inspectorate on Information and Arts – Plovdiv where I was in charge of cultural information.

So, I was weaver in the 'Slatina' factory in Samokov. After 9th September 1944 – typist in the propaganda department at the regional committee of the Fatherland Front; later in charge of cultural information at the Regional Inspectorate on Information and Arts in Plovdiv. 1947-1998 - headed the personnel department of the City Committee of the Fatherland Front; instructor in the 'Propaganda' department of the BCP City Committee until 1952 ; head of the cultural department of the regional committee of the BCP (Bulgarian Communist Party) after my return to Samokov. 1952-1954 - instructor in lecture propaganda in the 'Propaganda' department of the Central Committee of the Dimitrov Communist Youth Union. 1954-1958 - Ministry of Culture in Sofia, department 'Community, headed the 'Propaganda' sector until 1958, when my department was renamed into 'Cultural and Educational Institutes'. Later I became an assistant in the sector 'Library Control' until 1960. June 1960 - head of the sector 'International Relations' in the Institute for Amateur Art Activities and after I returned from Spain I was once again head of the 'Propaganda' sector. In 1946 I became a head of department in ‘Septemvriiche’ and in charge of propaganda information of the UYW association 20 in the residential district. The same year I became member of the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP) and head of the Regional Inspectorate on Information and Arts. In 1947 I became a party secretary of the same organisation. I was also in charge of party affairs in the Centеr for Children’s Folklore Art, chaired the trade union committee there, I was a member of the committee on institutions at the Ministry of Education and Culture, member of the party committee at the Culture and Arts Committee, deputy party secretary of the Institute of Amateur Art Activities.

My son Shinto Avram Melamed and my daughter Iafa have an age difference of four years. Iafa was also born in Sofia in 1952. Shinto Avram Melamed has a university education in computer systems at the Higher Mechanical and Electrical Technical Institute in Sofia. My son graduated as a computer engineer (1960-65) and between 1965-71 he worked as an engineer in the Center on Applied Mathematics in the Higher Mathematics Institute; between 1972 and 1974 he was research associate in the Main Information Computer Center of the Ministry of Health; between 1974 and 1979 he headed that center, took part in the research of a national computer system for the health sector. Between 1979 and 1985 he was a director of a computer center, automobile plant 'Sofia' where he designed a control system with five innovations – certificates from the International Federation of Inventors’ Associations (IFIA); from 1985 to 1989 he was chief specialist in the Ministry of Transport in charge of the computerization of transport; from 1989 to 1991 he was deputy director of 'Mikrokom' (a state company) in charge of the computerization of the national post office system; from 1992 to 1994 he was adviser to thе chairman of First East International Bank; from 1993 to 1994 he was a representative of Bulgaria in the English-American Banktrust. From 1996 to 2001 Shinto was president of Geula Fund, and since 1991 he has been a president of the private consultant company 'Annex', in charge of foreign investment, interbank relations, financial and investment projects, their relations with the Bulgarian authorities and financial institutions.

My daughter Iafa Avram (nee Melamed) also has a university education in sociology from the Sofia University. After 9th November 1989 she worked in Bulgaria as a sociologist in the Sociology Institute at the Bulgarian Academy of Science, as a translator, spokeswoman for the Bulgarian National Radio, and in the Embassy of Portugal to Bulgaria. For a while she lived in Madrid, before 10th November 1989 21. Iafa knows French and Spanish.

My children are raised Jewish, so they feel Jews from an early age. My husband and I lived in Sofia and there were suitable Jewish youth groups for both Iafa and Sheni [Shinto] here. They gathered in the Jewish Cultural Home, the so-called Bet Am. They are proud of being Jews. So are their children.

Our family friends during the totalitarian regime were Jews, Bulgarians and Spanish –from our short stay in Spain. We gathered together on all religious Jewish holidays, mostly on Pesach. We had a great time. Now my friends are mostly from the Jewish community in Sofia. We gather often, talking, singing, laughing and dancing. We do not meet only on holidays. We gather daily at the Jewish Cultural Home, housing the administrative department of the Organization of Jews in Bulgaria 'Shalom', the Jewish community house 'Emil Shekerdjiiski', the editors' offices of 'Evreiski Vestnik' ['Jewish newspaper'] newspaper, and the magazine in Bulgarian and English 'Evreiski Godishnik' ['Jewish Year Book'], the Sunday children's school, the rehabilitation center for elderly people, the repatriation service 'Sochnut 22 ', which is the connection of the Bulgarian Jews to Israel, as well as the offices of the ‘Lauder' 23 and 'Joint' 24 foundations. To be honest, I must say that at the start of the democratic changes I received for a while aid from Switzerland and Germany, which helped us a lot.

I have been to Israel three times. I visited my relatives, friends and acquaintances. I remember that when I first arrived in Israel, I was welcomed by a sequence of sunny, bight, fresh and hot days. I was most fascinated by the thriving greenery in Israel, which was everywhere – in the cities, kibbutzim, flats, on the roofs, roads, in the synagogues and parks. I also noticed that the beautiful magnolias, rubber plants, jasmine, hedges, grass and all flowers were looked after with love not only by the common people, but also by municipal employees.

If someone dared to tear a flower from a bush, he would be scolded right away by a child or a passer-by. The terraces and gardens in Rishon le Zion, Rehovot and in the kibbutzim Hazorea, Shvaim, Nevo Betar fascinated me with the wonderful greenery in the midst of the desert where Israel is located. I found the Mediterranean Sea very warm, even in the end of the year. The scenery of Tel Aviv’s seaside is magnificent and inspiring, especially now. One visit of a stranger like me is enough to make him feel at home. The warm ‘boker tov’ [‘good morning’ in Hebrew] used to greet everyone you meet, the cordial ‘shalom’ when parting, the common ‘you’ melt the ice and make you a part of Israeli society. To be honest, I did not find it dangerous there and did not feel afraid of the threat of terrorism. Young children would play tennis, ride bicycles, go swimming, eat and drink and have fun under the watchful monitoring of planes and ships. I remember that one day the sea was a little bit dirty. I was walking along the shore with my husband, when looking at our feet we heard a voice from the loudspeakers saying to us, ‘Don’t worry, sir and madam, next to the changing rooms there is a device, which will wash away the bitumen. The device turned out to be a simple cylindrical brush soaked in petrol.

And the people in Israel really managed to have fun! We were in Tel Aviv during the visit of Luciano Pavarotti. He had to perform together with the Tel Aviv Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by the famous Zubin Meta. The tickets were 400 shekels each, which was quite expensive. But many Israeli were interested in music and the interest in the famous singer was even greater, so the sponsoring companies decided to place an enormous screen on the square, and benches in front of it. Naturally a multitude of music lovers filled the square, there were many people standing or sitting on the ground, all of them clapping and cheering and shouting with joy. I also witnessed the Sukkot celebrations in Israel. The same square was once again overfilled with people dancing, everyone singing, it was really spectacular. Both the young and the old had a really great time.

In the kosher restaurant of 'Shalom' we, the pensioners from Jewish origin, eat together every lunchtime, and on some weekdays some of us do exercises in the 'Health' club. We also meet on Saturdays in the 'Golden Age' club chaired by the former chairman of the Jewish community house Mois Saltiel. We meet various Jews from the area of art and science. I am also a member of the international women's organization 'WIZO' 25, whose meetings are both entertaining and educational.

If 9th September 1944 made my husband and me stay in Bulgaria (because we were communists), then 10th November 1989 made us think whether or not we should emigrate to Israel. Life in Bulgaria became hard, the conditions unacceptable, the country fell into a social crisis, inflation soared, unemployment became widespread. So, firstly Shinto and then Iafa decided to leave for Israel and see how life was there. They went to visit our relatives, stayed for a while and returned. My husband Avram and I had already prepared our documents to emigrate to Israel. But we decided to stay. Our children realized that our life in Israel would not be easy. We had already forgotten Ivrit, the social situation there was different, and Iafa decided that there was no point in emigrating if her child and her work are in Bulgaria. So, we all decided to stay in Bulgaria and I don't think we made a mistake.

Translated by Ivelina Karcheva 

Ruzena R.
Bratislava
Slovakia
Interviewer: Martin Flekenstein
Date of interview: June – August 2006

This interview with Mrs. Ruzena R. took place over several sessions in her apartment.

Editing the interview was made easier by the fact that all information stated in it was exact, and so was easier to verify.

At the request of the interviewee, the final text does not contain surnames from her father’s side of the family.

Despite that, this material offers valuable witness to the life of one branched-out Jewish family on the territory of today’s Slovakia.

• My family background
• Growing up
• During the war
• After the war
• Glossary

• My family background

My father’s father was named Rudolf R. He was born in the Hungarian city of Pápa. He supported himself and his family by selling supplies to village shoemakers at fairs. My father’s mother was named Rosalia, née Goldschmidt. That’s who I got my first name from.

They lived in Trnava, where they had three children. Grandma took care of the household and the children. My grandparents’ oldest daughter was Johanna, next was my father [Ignac], who was born in 1876, and the youngest was named Arnold.

I know more or less nothing about Grandpa Rudolf, because he died very young. My father said that he caught a cold during one fair, from that he got pneumonia, which back then was definitely a deadly disease, antibiotics didn’t exist yet, and he died of it. He left behind three little children with no means of support. Grandma got remarried, to Simon Weiner, with whom she had a son, Max.

My father left home at the age of twelve to become an apprentice in Vienna. He had to leave home early on because he was the oldest son and the family was poor. He kept in only sporadic contact with his family, which is why I know practically nothing about my father’s family from that time period.

In Vienna my father apprenticed as a bookbinder. After finishing, he worked as a traveling salesman. He sold office supplies, mainly to notaries. Because his original name sounded German, he changed his name to sound more Hungarian, mainly because his customers wanted it that way. Naturally, this was still before World War I. My assumption is that he lived in Vienna up to around 1912.

During his travels around Slovakia, he met a widow who had a store with office supplies in Topolcany, and married her. After the wedding he took over the store, which was on the verge of bankruptcy. After he took it over, it began to grow and flourish.

Part of the store was also a book printing and binding business. In 1941 his business was Aryanized [Aryanization:  the transfer of Jewish stores, businesses, companies, etc. to the ownership of another, non-Jewish person – the Aryanizer] by his employee Stefan Radic, who was a member of the HSLS 1 and perhaps also a member of the Hlinka Guard 2.

My father’s first wife died after World War I. No children were born of this marriage. Before the Aryanization, our family was well-off financially. Because our father had been poor when he was young, he liked saving money in case of hard times.

During the time of the Slovak State 3, 1939-1945, we lost everything. One law and regulation after another was passed gradually confiscating various parts of Jewish property, so we were left with nothing, including our savings. They took everything we had 4.

My father’s sister Johanna married Mr. Adler. I never knew him, because I think that he died before I was born. The Adlers lived in Vienna. They had four sons, one of whom [Alfred] died before the war, the oldest, Rudolf, immigrated with his family to Palestine in 1938, and Fritz and Richard perished during the Holocaust.

After Hitler occupied Austria 5 in 1938, Aunt Johanna came to stay with us in Topolcany. But she didn’t stay there long, because the day the First Vienna Decision took effect 6, the cessation of southern Slovakia to Hungary, when the Slovaks had already left the territory to be occupied by the Hungarians, and the Hungarians hadn’t yet occupied it, Jews that didn’t have Slovak citizenship were transported to this territory. They were mostly emigrants from occupied Austria. It was in November 1938, shortly after the proclamation of Slovak autonomy, thus still before the proclamation of the independent Slovak State.

Later, Aunt Johanna went to Brno, where she lived until they deported her. The last letter from her came from Terezin 7. From Terezin they most likely deported her to Auschwitz. She didn’t survive the war.

Before the war, I didn’t know much about the Adler family. It wasn’t until my aunt came to stay with us, and, similarly her son Fritz came to Topolcany, whom they deported in March 1942 8, that I got to know them better.

My father’s brother Arnold lived in Budapest. His wife’s name was Malvina. They had a son, Rudolf. All of my father’s siblings, including my father, named their oldest son Rudolf, after their father. Arnold’s son Rudolf immigrated to Chile before the war.

Uncle Arnold was a rich man; he owned some factory and lived in Budapest, on Rózsadomb 9. That address in and of itself said a lot. My uncle and his wife managed to get Swedish passports with the help of the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg 10. Unfortunately, not even this helped. They were shot during the Szálasi regime 11.

After the war, their son once showed up in Slovakia. He met with only my father, as he’d only come to Bratislava, and our financial situation at the time could only afford one ticket from Topolcany. Since then he hasn’t been in contact.

After the war, Rudolf Adler also got in touch once, but once he found out we were alive, he didn’t contact us again. I think that he was interested in my father’s property, and not in us. I currently have no news of this branch of my family.

My grandmother’s fourth son was named Max Weiner. He worked as an accountant for a sugar refinery in Trnava. In 1929, during the Great Depression 12, he lost his job and then lived with us in Topolcany, until they deported him in 1942. I don’t know what happened to him. He unfortunately didn’t survive the war.

My mother, Margita, née Goldberger, was born in Zbehy, where her father rented a farm. She had five siblings. Grandpa, Samuel Goldberger, was from Dolné Otrokovce, near Hlohovec. That’s where our family survived the war.

Grandma Johana, née Deutelbaum, was born in Vítkovce, near Topolcany, as the youngest of her parents’ twelve children. They were a large family, but only up until the Holocaust. In my mother’s generation there were 46 or 48 cousins. Around three quarters of them didn’t survive the war.

I was never on the farm in Dolné Otrokovce during the time my grandfather farmed there. When he got old, he left the farm to one of his sons and he and Grandma moved to Topolcany. There they lived in this dark apartment that I didn’t like at all. Grandpa died there, too, when I was around five. Grandma then moved to a nicer apartment in the city.

Grandma wore a wig. From what my mother told me, I know that her oldest son was very ill. Back then she swore that if he got well, she’d wear a wig. When I was a child, that wig seemed very tawdry to me.

But Grandma was devout, so she kept her promise to God. She observed all the holidays. Every Friday evening she’d light candles, and she kept a kosher household 13. I even lived with her at one time. My brother got scarlet fever, and I got sent to stay with her. That was in 1935.

I lived with her in 1939 as well. I know that at that time German soldiers were marching through Topolcany. Grandma was afraid of the clumping underneath her windows, and sat by me on my bed and was all afraid that I’d wake up.

I slept like a log. At that time, the German Wehrmacht 14 was crossing Slovakia to Poland. On 1st September 1939, the war began 15. It was during that time. Grandma was teaching me handiwork, mainly knitting. Because she was a diabetic, she used saccharin instead of sugar. I didn’t like that food.

I liked my grandma very much. I think that of all her grandchildren, I liked her the most. It’s no wonder, the others didn’t spend as much time with her as I did. She also used to come to our place to visit at least once a week. She’d usually come on Friday to bathe before Saturday, because we had a bathroom and she didn’t. During the war she moved in with us. She and I slept together in the same room.

I remember how one night in 1942 they came for her at night and wanted to take her away and put her on a transport. At that time she was over 70. Four of them came for her: one German from the Deutsche Partei who had a brown shirt and a band on his arm with a swastika, a Guardist in a Hlinka Guard uniform, one policeman and one gendarme.

They used to go around at night, around 3am. At that time my mother had a so-called yellow exception, in which my grandmother was listed as well. [Editor’s note: this was an exception for Economically Important Jews.

It was given to Jews that were irreplaceable for the economy of the Slovak State.] Economic Jews’ exceptions protected their parents as well. Back then they cancelled that part of the exception, which is why they had come to take my grandmother for transport.

Luckily, my mother’s younger brother, Maximilian Goldberger, was a pharmacist who worked in Prievidza. At that time, the cancellation of parental protection didn’t extend to academically educated workers.

My mother sent my oldest brother Andrej to get him. They returned still that same night by taxi from Prievidza, and reclaimed Grandma on my uncle’s papers. My grandmother had to leave right away to go to Prievidza with my uncle. After that I saw her only one more time.

My mother’s brother Maximilian Goldberger originally lived in Hlohovec. He was the only one of my mother’s siblings to have a university education. He married into money with Edita Linkenberg, who was from Topolcany, and with her dowry my uncle opened a pharmacy in Hlohovec.

In 1930 they had a daughter, Lilly. During the time of the Slovak State his pharmacy was Aryanized and the Aryanizer threw him out that same day. By the way, its Aryanizer was Dr. Entner, a German, who later founded Slovakofarma in Hlohovec. [Editor’s note: the beginnings of the first and largest Slovak pharmaceutical company go back to the year 1941. In 2003, Zentiva was created with the merger of the Czech company Leciva and the Slovak Slovakofarma.]

After they threw him out of his own pharmacy, my uncle found a job in a pharmacy in Prievidza. The family moved there, too. In 1942 they brought my grandmother to Prievidza as well. They lived in Prievidza until the Slovak National Uprising 16 broke out.

My uncle left for rebel territory with his wife and daughter, but first they found a hiding place for Grandma with one family in Bojnice. I don’t know the subsequent details, but I know that they found her hiding place, deported Grandma at the end of 1944, and most likely immediately sent her into the gas.

After the uprising was suppressed, my uncle and his family retreated to the mountains. There Edita accidentally stepped on a mine. She died on the spot. The explosion alerted the Germans or Guardists, I don’t know exactly. They captured those that had survived the explosion. They shut them up in a barn in Motycky, and set it on fire. They’re buried in Stare Hory.

My mother’s oldest brother was Viktor Goldberger. He married Aranka, née Rosenthal. They lived in Prievidza. Viktor owned a large textile store in the center of town. In 1922 they had a daughter, Truda. Girls of that age were deported on the first transport in March 1942.

Her father wanted to buy her out, to bribe the officers in charge, but she said that she was going to go with her girlfriends. Her parents were put into the labor camp in Novaky 17. There, they applied for the Yom Kippur transport, the last transport before the temporary end of the deportations, because they wanted to go be with their daughter. Their daughter was no longer alive at that time, and they also died. Such terrible tragedies!

My mother’s youngest sister was Jolana. Her first husband was Adolf Guttmann, who had already died before the war, and in 1942 she remarried. Her second husband was named [Alexander] Fröhlich. From her first marriage she had a son, Mikulas – we called him Miki – who was born in 1930. Up to 1944 Fröhlich had an exception, meaning they were protected from the transports.

Uncle Fröhlich was an administrator of one large farming estate. When exceptions no longer helped, the Guardists came for him. They caught my uncle as well as Miki. Jolana hid. Because they’d taken her husband and her son, she surrendered voluntarily, so they’d go together.

They got to Auschwitz, where they sent my aunt into the gas; her son and husband survived the war, because they ended up in the coal mines in Gliwice 18. Uncle Fröhlich cared for Miki a lot in the camp. At that time Miki was only 14. They both managed to survive.

The tragedy is that the husband and son survived the war, and my aunt was killed. These two men moved away to Israel in 1949. I’m in contact with my cousin Miki to this day. You could say he’s my closest relative from my generation.

My mother’s youngest brother was Béla, in Slovak Vojtech Goldberger. Béla ran a farm he’d inherited from his father. For a wife he took Erna, née Zobel. Erna was from Dunajska Streda, but was of Polish origin.

Her mother had already died before the war, and her father and brother were deported to Poland already in 1939 or 1940. Back then the Hungarians weren’t deporting their own citizens yet, but they most likely didn’t have Hungarian citizenship. Béla and Erna had two children, a son, Zoltán, who changed his first name to Shlomo, and a daughter, Marta. After getting married, Marta was named Kohen. Béla’s family survived along with our family, we’ll get to that later.

My mother graduated from council school 19. Her first husband was named Hugo. Together they had a son, Andrej. Hugo was an administrator of a farming estate in Tardóskedde [in Slovak Tvrdosovce, a town in the Nove Zamky district].

Hugo got cancer at a very young age, and died of it. My mother was left alone with a little son. That’s why she moved in with her parents, who at that time were living in Dolné Otrokovce. So that she wouldn’t be a burden to them, she opened a store and a village pub. With this she supported herself and her son.

How did my parents meet? In German it’s called ‘geregelte Partie’ [arranged marriage]. My father was a widower, my mother was a widow. This one man and his wife, who was related to my mother’s sister-in-law, used to live in my father’s building.

They arranged it. That’s how people got married back then. My parents had two weddings. The first one was civil, at the notary’s office in Horné Otrokovce, and the proper one was in Piestany. They were married by a rabbi. For sure it was an Orthodox wedding, because in Topolcany, where my father was already living at the time, and where my mother also moved, there was only an Orthodox religious community 20.

We spoke German at home. My father learned his trade in Vienna, where he’d lived from the age of twelve almost up to World War I, so German was his mother tongue. My mother could also speak German, but her main language was Hungarian.

With the maid my parents spoke Slovak, and when they didn’t want the children to understand them, they spoke Hungarian together. We, the children, spoke Slovak together, after all, all three of us attended a Slovak school. So at home there were three languages spoken, but German dominated.

As far as clothing goes, we all dressed the same as everyone else of our social class, regardless of religion. Which means no typical Jewish clothing. My father always wore a suit. Under his suit jacket he had a vest, and pinned on it he had a pocket watch on a gold chain.

My mother liked wearing silk dresses most of all. Up until she died, she wore mostly silk dresses, even at home. Up to lunchtime she’d wear a normal dress, so that the silk ones wouldn’t smell like the kitchen, and after lunch she’d shower and put on a silk dress. I remember going around looking for silk for her dresses. Because back then you couldn’t always get it.

My father was a very kind father. You know, he was already relatively old when his children were born. My brother Rudolf was born when my father was 52, and I was born a year later. We were his treasures. Otherwise he worried about his business. He lived for that.

He and Mother got along very well. Sometimes he’d grumble a little to himself, but I never heard them argue. My father was a very honorable person. Honor was very important in our home. One always kept one’s word, and lying was completely out of the question.

They were principles, which today, especially in Slovakia, are no longer at all principal. I observe the principles I was brought up in to this day, and my brother Rudolf is a very correct and principled person. Our mother was very strict with us. She always emphasized what a person’s responsibilities were. She never talked about rights.

My father was always praising my mother, especially her cooking skills. He never liked anything else as much as what she cooked. He used to say that there wasn’t another cook like her. Of course, when hard times arrived during the Slovak State, priorities were elsewhere than on good food. An understandable nervousness dominated our home. That was no longer ‘normal’ life.

We lived with our parents in a large, two-story building that had a courtyard but no garden. The entire courtyard was paved with concrete. There were two stores facing the street. One was our store, and my father rented the other one out.

Above the stores there were four windows that belonged to our apartment. It was a large four-room apartment with a bathroom, which was a relative rarity back then, a large front hall and a courtyard gallery. The apartment had old-fashioned furniture.

Back then there weren’t the conveniences there are today. The entire apartment, except for the bathroom, had wooden floors. A fairly rare convenience – as I’ve already mentioned – was a bathroom and running water. You see, Topolcany didn’t have a city water main. We had a well dug in the courtyard, from which a pump supplied water upstairs. The pump always had to be turned on by hand, and watched so that the pump motor wouldn’t burn out. Which also quite often happened.

There was an oblong building attached to the house, perpendicularly. It contained workshops, specifically a book bindery and a printing shop. Above the workshops was another apartment, and in the back on the ground floor, there were another two smaller apartments.

One had one room, and the other had two. The Schick family, who also rented the other shop in our building, lived in the larger one. The Freund family lived up on the first floor, and an older lady by the name of Finkelstein lived in the smaller ground-floor apartment. None of them survived the Holocaust, except for two of the Schicks’ sons.

Our staff was composed of a maid and a ‘Kinderfräulein’ [nanny], who watched over me and my brother Rudolf. The household was under my mother’s command. The maid cleaned house and cooked. In the morning she’d go to the market with my mother, and would bring it home.

She’d then receive instructions as to what to do while my mother would go and help my father in the store. The maid cooked, set the table and after lunch would wash the dishes. Once a week, a so-called ‘pedinerka,’ from the German word ‘Bedienerin’ [cleaning woman], would come by. She would scrub the floors. She scrubbed the wood floors and the entire stairwell.

I liked our ‘Kinderfräulein’ very much, as she did me. By this I mean the last ‘Kinderfräulein’ that worked for us. My brother Rudolf didn’t get along with her very much. He’s got a very different personality from me. Our ‘Kinderfräulein’ was a devout Catholic.

She wasn’t only religious, but also very superstitious. She was a very good person. She would have even given her soul for me. These relationships weren’t as bad as the Communists claimed, that the rich exploited the poor, who had to serve them.

She came to work for us when I was four, and was with us until she had to leave, when Jews were no longer allowed to employ so-called ‘Aryans.’ At that time I was 11. We both wept. She even hid some things for me during the war, and after the war she searched me out and returned everything to me.

We kept in touch until she died. I was also at her funeral. During the last years of my mother’s life, she used to come to our place when I went on holiday, so that my mother wouldn’t be alone. On those occasions she used to stay with us even longer, because she wanted to be with me as well. This was always a holiday for her. She got along very well with my mother as well.

Our apartment: three of us slept together in one room, the ‘Kinderfräulein,’ my brother Rudolf and I. Then there was my parents’ bedroom and one huge room, a so-called dining room, which was used only rarely, and a living room where my brother Andrej also used to sleep.

A huge front hall ran alongside the rooms, and the kitchen was separated off by a hall to the stairwell. The dining room was used sparingly. It had a large Persian rug on the floor. The dining room was used when guests came, and during seder and Passover.

My father’s printing shop printed mainly business cards, invitations, posters and so on. Books less so. But for example Valentín Beniak had us print a book for him. [Beniak, Valentín 1894-1973: Slovak poet and translator, a representative of symbolism]

My father employed two typesetters. One of them, Stefan Radic, Aryanized our store in 1941. My older brother, Andrej, was an apprentice typesetter in this workshop. Another two employees worked in the bookbindery, a woman and a man. The man’s name was Schenkmayer. Another young Jewish girl worked in the store. Besides this girl and my brother Andrej, all of my father’s other employees were Aryans.

As far as religion goes, my father was very lukewarm. He liked ham, which isn’t kosher. But my mother observed kosher regulations at home. When my father wanted to enjoy some ham, it was kept secret from the children, too, so that they wouldn’t divulge it to anyone. It was done so that no one would know about it.

Because my mother couldn’t show up in a store that sold non-kosher meat herself, she’d send the maid there. My father would shut himself up in the dining room, where he’d dig in with relish.

Later my brother Rudo brought him around to religion. Because whatever he did, he did thoroughly. He began attending a Jewish school, but after 1940 Jewish children weren’t allowed to attend any other schools but Jewish ones.

Back then he had a choice: either a normal Jewish school or a school where they educated the boys in an Orthodox spirit, led them to know the Torah and other Jewish religious literature. This school was preparation for yeshivah.

All morning and afternoon they taught only religion, and in the evening they had two hours of civil subjects, from 4 to 6pm. The students – exclusively only boys, were engaged in studies all day. Two or three would debate amongst themselves, and thus learned.

My brother is and also always was very bright and clever. Back then he drove both our parents crazy with religion. He stood above my mother while she was preparing meat, to make sure she was doing it correctly kosher. My father began going to synagogue each Friday.

Whether he gave up ham, that I don’t know. That was already at the beginning of the war years. Even in Novaky, my brother was still driving the whole family crazy with religious regulations. He didn’t manage to catch me and my brother Andrej up in it. Right before the war, I became a member of Hashomer Hatzair 21. Hashomer was atheistically oriented. Back then I didn’t yet know what being a leftist was.

We observed all the holidays at home. For Rosh Hashanah we’d go to synagogue. At that time my mother would also go, as well as for Yom Kippur. I’d go visit them during the day. For Yom Kippur they’d sit in the synagogue all day. On that day everyone would fast except for me and my brother Andrej.

Back then the two of us kept a common front in this. Then, when Yom Kippur was over, there’d be a festive supper at home. Grandma Johana would also come for it. I don’t remember exactly what sort of food was served, but for supper before Yom Kippur, we definitely had soup with noodles and meat.

During Passover we had seder. As the youngest member of the family, I’d say the mah nishtanah. The two of us, my father and I, would sing together. I liked that very much. I can do it to this day. For Passover our parents would usually buy us new spring clothing. We’d get a new jacket and so on.

For Sukkot we for example didn’t have a sukkah. Our neighbors had a sukkah built in their courtyard, and I envied them that. They had all sorts of cutouts hanging in it, and I liked that. Their courtyard began where ours ended. Between them was a low fence with a gate.

They lived in a one-story house and were friends with our parents. They were named the Felsenburgs. During the summer my parents would sit up on the courtyard gallery, the Felsenburgs would sit in the courtyard, and they’d talk over the fence. Our parents got along very well with them. They had a little garden, and in it they had that sukkah set up.

My mother would bake excellent pastries for each holiday. That’s something she kept up until she died. After the war she’d bake them for Christian holidays, too. Because she liked pastries, liked baking them, and even Christian holidays were a good opportunity for that.

For Purim a carnival was held in Topolcany, and what a carnival! Always only indoors, usually in some large gym. They put on masquerade balls for the young people, which we usually attended. But during the war it all stopped, and in Topolcany forever.

My older brother Andrej had his bar mitzvah when I was still quite small. I remember only that there was a party in that large room of ours. It was full of people, including a rabbi. My mother told me that what she’d prepared didn’t seem to be kosher enough to the rabbi, and he didn’t want to eat it.

So my mother offered him a can of sardines. Rudo didn’t have a bar mitzvah. Right at that time he was being operated on for appendicitis. Everything for the bar mitzvah had already been prepared.

He’d learned his droshe, he was supposed to read from the Torah, and he also learned it. To this day he claims that it wasn’t appendicitis, but that he’d just wanted to get out of school and had faked it. It ended up with an operation, and the bar mitzvah wasn’t held.

In Topolcany, the Jewish population didn’t live together with the non-Jewish. Contacts weren’t frequent. I for example had only one girlfriend who wasn’t Jewish. She lived in the building across from us. We attended Jewish school, and there we had our Jewish friends.

In one class [year] there were around 40 children, so from there we also had our friends. My mother also had many relatives in town, and they fraternized amongst themselves. One of our relatives had a large house with a nice garden. We used to go visit them, too. They also used to come to visit us as well, and that’s how we’d meet.

My parents weren’t inclined towards any political party or to any associations. Not even Zionist ones. My father even didn’t go out with friends by himself. Neither did they approve of me becoming a Hashomer member very much.

In their opinion, ‘better’ people didn’t belong to Hashomer, as there were leftists there, so mainly poor people. There was also a Betar 22 in town. As Hashomer members, we were enemies. Why, that’s something that I didn’t understand at all back then.

We also used to go on vacations, but the whole family never went together. The business couldn’t close. They actually weren’t even vacations. My parents used to go, each separately, to spas, so for treatments.

According to their philosophy, if a person did go somewhere, it had to be necessary for his health. Otherwise it was a waste of money. My father used to go to Karlovy Vary 23 and Luhacovice. My mother used to go to Karlovy Vary.

• Growing up

I’ll tell you one anecdote: My mother’s brother Maximilian, the pharmacist, was very well off, and he and his wife set out to Opatija, to the seaside. To explain to his parents why they were going to the seaside, he told them that he had to go for treatments, because he had lumbago.

To the end of her days my mother thought that that’s why he’d gone there. Later, long after they were already dead, I told her that if he had wanted to treat lumbago, Piestany was just on the other side of the hill. They lived in Hlohovec.

But I didn’t succeed in convincing my mother. That was a typical Jewish attitude towards vacations back then. Only spas were recognized as being appropriate for vacations. My parents even went to Karlovy Vary for their honeymoon.

We children spent our vacations with my mother’s siblings. Once I was in Hlohovec at my uncle’s place, and a few times in Dolné Otrokovce at another uncle’s. Nowhere else. I was always terribly bored in Dolné Otrokovce, so sometimes they’d also invite my cousin Lilly from Hlohovec.

Once they sent the two of us from Dolné Otrokovce to a neighboring village, Merasice, about two kilometers away, for meat from the ice plant. Back then refrigerators weren’t common, and when someone bought meat for several days, they’d put it on ice in an ice plant.

The Reichenthals had an ice plant in Merasice. On our way back it began to rain. We cried the whole way, until we returned with the meat, soaked to the skin, to Dolné Otrokovce. We were also frightened. Back then I was nine, Lilly eight.

Now let’s return to my early childhood. I was born in Topolcany in 1929. I didn’t attend nursery school. The ‘Kinderfräulein’ lived with us. I began attending Jewish school in 1935. I liked going to school, high school, too, up to graduation. I liked all subjects. I had straight A’s.

The teachers praised me and held me up as an example for the other students. I liked that, they probably less so. In Grade 2 the teacher would pass my exercise books around to show what good handwriting should look like. So because of things like this, I wasn’t very well-liked by my classmates.

In 1940, when Jews were allowed to attend only Jewish schools, we had a teacher who’d come to Topolcany from Presov. His name was Jozef Roth. Him we all liked. He was young and single, not handsome, very shabbily dressed; one could see that he didn’t have money to spare.

He talked to us as if we were adults. But he liked us, and knew how to deal with children. He would tell us interesting things. He was my favorite teacher, and not only mine. Sadly, they deported him right on the first transport, in March 1942. I never took any private lessons outside of school except for English, which I attended with my brothers from 1938 or 1939.

The city that I grew up in was very anti-Semitic. Many residents behaved horribly towards Jews. For example, on the way to Jewish school we had to walk through a narrow little street. We would walk in double file all the way to the end of the street under our teacher’s watchful eye. Non-Jewish children, from the lumpenproletariat of course, would be waiting in ambush there, to beat us up.

Waiting at the end of the street would be our parents, some other adults, or the ‘Kinderfräulein.’ Often children who had no one waiting for them would also walk under their protection. So the teacher would then hand over the children to the protection of other adults.

As far as the attitude of the population towards Jews goes, Topolcany was the worst city in Slovakia. Where else were they still beating Jews after the war? Only in Topolcany, in the today already notorious pogrom right after the war.

I and my classmates were friends. We were one big gang. My best friend was Herta Nagelová. Her father was a baker and we used to meet in his bakery, mainly during the winter; we used to go there in the afternoon, after school. At that time the bakery would be empty, because Herta’s father baked bread and pastries at night.

There we’d play and talk. Mr. Nagel’s father was also a baker. His bakery was on the main square. We used to take shoulet [chulent] there on Fridays. Because this bakery was the closest to us. The shoulet was still raw in the pot, which was covered by paper and our name would be written on it.

When you came for your shoulet, you recognized your pot. In the worst case by the name on the pot. I remember that once the shoulet didn’t come out very thick, and I poured it out all over my coat on the way home.

I used to spend my free time with my classmates or in Hashomer Hatzair. I felt very comfortable in Hashomer. We used to have lectures and on Saturday we used to go on tiul – an outing. We used to go out into the country. We were learning the basics of Hebrew. From those times I remember the word ‘sheket,’ which is what you’d shout to quiet people down.

Otherwise, Hashomer Hatzair was a leftist organization, and they tried to indoctrinate us with Marxism. My brother Andrej, who brought me into it, wasn’t a very big Zionist 24. His friends went there, and that influenced him. Before the war Andrej was supposed to aliyah [immigrate to Palestine]. He was already even all set to go, but in the end it didn’t happen.

We never went to restaurants with our parents. That’s something no one in Topolcany even considered. My father used to say: ‘Why would you want to eat somewhere else, no one cooks as well as your mother.’ I’ve got a whole book of recipes from my mother.

Some years ago I sat down with her so that I could preserve her recipes for myself. Some recipes I have from Mrs. Weissová, who was friends with my mother until my mother died. Her cooking was practically the same as my mother’s, because that’s the way almost all Jewish households in Topolcany cooked.

I for example didn’t manage to get my mother’s recipe for fish with nuts in time. Mrs. Weissová gave me this recipe. What I didn’t learn was how to bake a barkhes, especially how to braid it.

The first time I sat in a car was when I was five. My mother’s cousin, who they shot along with his whole family in 1944 in Nemcice, was getting married. The wedding was in Piestany, and the whole family took a taxi to the wedding. I remember the taxi driver’s name. He was named Mr. Cerveny.

Because Topolcany is on the Prievidza – Nitra train tracks, we traveled mainly by train. For example to my mother’s brother’s place in Prievidza. We used to mainly buy textiles from him. Once my mother bought me cloth for a coat there. That was the last coat that I got before the war.

We also used to by train to Malé Bielice for recreation. There was this small spa there, just for the day, without accommodations. There I learned to swim in this tiny pool. Once a year we’d travel to Dolné Otrokovce. By train of course, to the nearest train station. Dolné Otrokovce isn’t on the train tracks. There a coach would be waiting for us, which would take us where we were going.

My brother Andrej became a typesetter by trade. When the deportations began, he was already 20. Each time there was a sweep being done in Topolcany, they would come for him. He ended up in Sered 25 for six or seven weeks. They took him there on one of the first transports. To this day I don’t know how my mother managed to get him out of there. He returned to Topolcany, and they would come for him during every transport.

They used to come for the rest of us almost every week as well. It was horribly nerve-wracking. Our mother was constantly running around and arranging postponement of deportation. We had our rucksacks packed the whole time.

I had a smaller one, because I was only 13 at the time, and the others had bigger ones. Our mother had an exception because we owned some fields, because according to the exception she was farming on them.

All in all, I can say that she was constantly working on it, and our family has her to thank for its survival. At that time my father was almost 70, and a person as old as that couldn’t get up to much at that time, under that horrible stress.

• During the war

In those days I didn’t understand the political events of the beginning of World War II very well. The first thing that afflicted us, children, was that they didn’t accept us into high school, where I wanted to go study.

This was in 1940, when Jewish children weren’t being accepted in any schools except Jewish ones. So I stayed in Jewish school. They added new grades for students that had been thrown out of other schools. Before that the Jewish school had had five grades, and from 1940 it already had eight grades. Because before that, students had gone from Grade 5 to council school or to high school.

Since the school didn’t have enough room, Grade 6 was mixed, and also had boys from Grades 7 and 8. This large class was located in the gym. Grade 7 and 8 girls made up a separate class. I attended Grade 6 and 7 there, up until we left for Dolné Otrokovce. We left for there on 13th July 1942.

From Rosh Hashanah in 1940 we had to wear a six-pointed star 26 as a mark. We weren’t allowed to go to the cinema, to the city park. We weren’t allowed out after 6pm. We weren’t allowed to go shopping, neither to the market nor to stores, before 10am. Then the Aryanization of my father’s store arrived, and finally the transports, from which we tried to save ourselves, with exceptional luck, successfully.

All businesses were already Aryanized, for the sake of appearances. In the first round of Aryanization, the Aryanizer got 60%, and 40% remained in the hands of the Jewish owner. Afterwards they changed this ratio to 90 to 10%.

My father’s business was Aryanized later, when the Aryanizer already got everything. That was in 1941. My father had already stopped ordering goods long before, so the Aryanizer didn’t get a lot of goods.

To this I’d also like to add that the printing shop and bookbindery were ‘purchased’ from my father by Radic and Schenkmayer for a symbolic price. My father was constantly having some problems, because until they got to the last source of finances, they didn’t let him alone.

Problems began with bankbooks that my father hadn’t reported in the list of property that Jews had to fill out in 1940. They found out about it somehow, that there were some deposits not on the list of property. This caused terrible problems. My parents were completely shattered by it all. Back then I didn’t understand it yet.

To this I have to add an interesting little story: a few years ago, already after 1989, Radic phoned me, whether our family members, specifically my nephew, could arrange for him to have the print shop returned to him.

I’d heard of cases where people – even some Aryanizers – helped Jews. But us no one helped. To this I have to add that at the beginning of the 1970s I once met our Aryanizer Radic on the street in Topolcany, and he said to me: ‘I was decent to you, I didn’t send you to Auschwitz!’

After the Aryanization came the transports, which was the most horrible thing I’ve ever experienced. I was 13 at the time, and was attending school. There were gradually less and less of my classmates at their desks. There were less and less teachers, too.

We had a couple of teachers who were single. Those they took first. I’ve talked about how they came for my grandma. She was so fright-stricken that she left for the Jewish school, where they were gathering people for the transport, in only her nightshirt and slippers.

They yanked us out of our sleep at around 3am. My mom told me to wrap up some essentials for her and take them to the school. I met there our needlework teacher. The poor thing. Because they’d written that everyone should bring some tools with them, she took her knitting and crochet needles with her.

I’m sure it was in vain, I’m sure that she went straight into the gas. The school superintendent, who was there, made faces at her behind her back, snickered and was entertained. She was a primitive, disgusting anti-Semite. Her name was Tonková. She was all glad to see the Jews gathering in the schoolyard.

There were more people gathering around the school. They were jammed against the school gates, were laughing, and for them it was a big show. I saw it all on other occasions as well, as I wanted to help by at least letting know those that didn’t know about it, and could help those that had been afflicted.

Finally we got Grandma out of there, to my uncle’s place in Prievidza. She stayed with him until 1944. After the Slovak National Uprising broke out, my uncle left for rebel territory with his family, and found a hiding place for her in Bojnice. There were three women there.

My grandmother, my uncle’s mother-in-law, so Aunt Edita’s mother, plus another lady their age. The third one somehow lost her nerve, left the hiding place and went out onto the street. Thus she gave away the others as well. They took them all at the end of 1944. She ended up in Auschwitz, in one of the last gassings! Horrible!

They used to come for us every little while. They would, of course, always be given something so that they’d leave and leave us be. I remember one time, when two of them came. Dobrovodsky, a city cop, and the gendarme Sládek. Sládek’s wife was also an Aryanizer.

My father pulled 2,000 crowns out of his briefcase. [The value of one Slovak crown during the Slovak State – 1939-1945 was equal to 31.21 mg of pure gold. The rate of exchange between the German mark and the Slovak crown was artificially set at 1:11.]

Later that came back to haunt me, because after the war, during the Slansky affair 27, they expelled me from technical university. My cadre profile for that purpose had been sent from Topolcany. It was written by the same Dobrovodsky, who’d become a city clerk when they dissolved the city police force.

He wrote that besides other things my father had two apartment buildings, and that he was a big capitalist. Meanwhile, the other building wasn’t my father’s. Once I met Dobrovodsky in Topolcany, and I remember my conversation with him:
‘Mr. Dobrovodsky, what was it that you wrote about my father having two buildings?’

‘On the main square, this and this building,’ and he pointed to two neighboring buildings, of which only one was really ours.
‘But that other building is Polak’s!’

‘Oops, so I was wrong.’ That’s what people were like. The cadre material that he’d put together followed me all the way to retirement. All my life I had problems based on this material, and they de facto persecuted me because of it, or for my being Jewish.

So on 13th July 1942 we left Topolcany for Dolné Otrokovce. At home I’ve got a copy of the request that my father wrote so that they’d allow us to go away – Jews were forbidden to leave the town where they were registered with the police. This application had, according to regulations, a six-pointed star in the upper corner and the designation ‘in the matter of a Jew.’ Our entire family left: my parents, my two brothers and I. My uncle Béla lived there, with his wife and children, Zolo and Marta. He farmed on a farm he’d inherited from my grandfather. We moved in with him. It’s only now that I understand properly how it got on his nerves when one day a family of five arrived. Especially his wife didn’t like it. She was very religious, and at that time I’d had myself baptized. It was especially I that stuck in her craw. It even went so far that she stopped talking to me. She also caused me other unpleasantries. I guess we mutually very much got on each other’s nerves. But in that situation none of us knew what to do.

In Dolné Otrokovce I was allowed to attend a state school, because I’d been baptized. The standard [of education] that I’d come with from the Topolcany Jewish school far outstripped the standards of that two-room village school.

So I had several privileges. For example, when the teacher was teaching, he’d sit me behind his desk and gave me my classmates’ exercise books to correct. I, of course, had straight A’s. Even though I didn’t deserve the one for drawing.

The people living in this village were without exception decent people with a humane attitude towards Jews as well. After the atmosphere and experiences of anti-Semitic Topolcany, it was a big relief. Only once did it happen to me that one kid at school started yelling at me and cursing me that I was a Jew. He was smaller than I was, so the way I resolved it was that I beat him up.

Many people there helped us. Peter Durka, for example. We were like one big family with the Durkas, which has lasted almost to this day. The commander of the gendarmes in Horné Otrokovce, the Horné Otrokovce notary, helped us as well.

Despite this, in 1943 someone in the village informed on us. First they took Uncle Béla, then his family and finally us as well. We ended up in Novaky. I don’t remember the name of the person that informed on us, but allegedly he fell in the uprising. I’ll never forget the night that we spent in the jail in Hlohovec before the trip to Novaky.

Although we were five, we had only three narrow beds at our disposal, so my mom and older brother sat all night, and the rest ‘slept’ on beds that had paper sheets that rustled with every movement.

In Novaky we lived in the first complex. The second complex had workshops, and the third was also residential. My mother worked in one workshop in the first complex. This workplace was for women that had small children and for the old and sick who weren’t able to walk over to the second complex to go to work.

Already back then my mother had problems with her legs, and wasn’t able to make the daily walk to work in the second complex. In the workshop in the first complex they did various work: knitting, and cutting rags for rugs that were also woven there. They did all sorts of other things, too.

My father worked in the cardboard-making shop with my brother Andrej. Then Andrej was transferred to the cabinetmaking workshop. Rudo worked in the tinsmiths’ workshop. From my first to my last day there, I worked in the sewing shop.

Overall, the living conditions in Novaky were good, especially in comparison to what was taking place in the German concentration camps. We were especially afraid of the Germans occupying Slovakia as they’d be retreating and the front would be passing by here.

We expected that the first thing they’d do would be to immediately send the interned Jews in the camps to camps in Germany or Poland. Thank God, this didn’t happen. It was prevented by the uprising. So we can also be thankful to the Slovak National Uprising for our lives.

As soon as the uprising broke out, on 29th August 1944, they dissolved the camp. Everyone could go where he liked. My mother sent Rudo to Prievidza to stay with his uncle. Andrej stayed in Novaky and I and my parents went to the train.

We were left with only what we were wearing. Everything else that stayed in the camp was stolen. We got on exactly the same train on which Rudo was returning from Prievidza, as he’d found that our uncle and his family weren’t there anymore, and so he intended on going to Topolcany.

As the train was arriving at the station in Topolcany, my mother wanted to get off. My father pulled her back onto the train with the words: ‘Topolcany stinks’ and that under no conditions whatsoever would he go to Topolcany. So we kept going, and ended up in Dolné Otrokovce. Later this showed itself to be a fortunate decision.

Uncle Béla and his family were also in the Novaky camp and also returned to Dolné Otrokovce. We decided that we’d wait in Dolné Otrokovce to see what would happen next. My parents were so exhausted by those two years of fighting for survival and the stress connected with it, that they didn’t want to think about or do anything. Because I wanted to do something and not just sit around and wait, I set out for Nitra, that I’d find something there.

After two or three days I returned, because my nerves couldn’t handle it. All I did was cry constantly. In the meantime they had come to round up Jews in Dolné Otrokovce as well, but someone had warned my parents and Uncle Béla ahead of time. I’ve got this impression that either the commander of the gendarme station in Horné Otrokovce or Mr. Durka warned them. When I returned, they were already all in hiding. I went to see one local family, and they told me where I could find them.

When they left, they didn’t have time to take hardly anything with them. My mother was accustomed to taking duvets everywhere with her instead of clothing. That paid off when they took us to Novaky and then also during our return from Novaky to Dolné Otrokovce, and it showed itself to be a good decision this time as well.

So anyways, still before dawn, I set out to look for them. I got there by morning, and spotted my mother. They were hiding in a grove of trees, under the open sky, together with my uncle’s family. There was nothing there, just a quickly dug out ‘zemlyanka’ [a shelter dug into the ground] made of twigs and branches.

Then it somehow spread that we were there. We had to leave. We set out for Horné Otrokovce, where there was an abandoned forester’s lodge. During the day we stayed outside – we were lucky that the weather was nice – and at night we slept in the lodge on a bare cement floor.

Once in the morning, when it had begun to rain a bit, a man with an axe appeared. My mother went out and began with a quavering voice: ‘For the love of God, please don’t hurt us, we’re Jews and we’re hiding here.’ The answer was very surprising: ‘Why, I recognize you, I’m Dr. Roth from Hlohovec.’ The Roth family was hiding in Horné Otrokovce, and survived the war.

After several days, someone from the village warned us that they’d be coming to look for us – someone had probably informed on us. We had to immediately leave for Dolné Otrokovce. You see, in the meantime we’d found out that they’d already looked for us in the ‘zemlyankas,’ so we returned to the same ‘zemlyankas.’

Remember, all movement was done at night. The most dangerous part was when we had to go along a road. Luckily back then there weren’t as many cars on the road as today, so at night we didn’t run into anyone. The weather in September was still nice, so several farmers from the village set out on a Sunday outing and came to visit the Jews hiding in ‘zemlyankas.’

Back then, my mother, correctly guessing the value that land had for farmers, said that she would give the one that saved us his pick of part of our land. The next day one of the farmers returned with a kettle of soup. It was Peter Cizmarik. ‘Here’s some soup from my wife. So, let’s make a deal on that land.’

It was signed and sealed. After nightfall we went to their place. We then stayed with them in one room, nine of us, our family – five people, and my mother’s brother and his family – four people. We stayed there until liberation on 2nd April 1945.

We paid extra for the food they gave us – the fields were only in return for saving our lives. Despite this, what the Cizmarik family did for us was amazing. Peter Cizmarik endangered his whole family, he had five children. His wife cooked for all of us.

That means that she cooked for seventeen people, and all the while no one was allowed to see what large quantities of food she was cooking. The food wasn’t anything special, we didn’t get supper at all, but we ate and didn’t go hungry.

After the terrible months of hiding, liberation arrived. Nitra was bombed on Easter Thursday. On Saturday we were looking through the curtains in the room, and saw that there were Germans running away through the valley below. In the afternoon a drummer came and announced that people shouldn’t go outside. In the distance we heard artillery fire. The village is located in a valley, and above it there’s a hill.

The Russians were already behind the hill. The lads from the village went up on the hill to have a look at the Russians, and one of them paid for that. The Russians didn’t know who they were, and to be on the safe side shot at them, and killed one of them.

The last night, the farmer sent us all into the cellar. I was completely hysterical down there. I was imagining that after all that we’d lived through up to then, that they could kill us on the last night. Just before morning, we heard someone moving about in the yard.

The farmer came out into the yard and asked who was there. The answer was one of the most beautiful ones of my life: ‘We’re Russians.’ The following evening we went back to the apartment where we’d lived in Dolné Otrokovce during the war.

The Russians were having a lot of fun with the village girls there. We lived in that apartment until May. I was the first in the family to go to Topolcany, because I wanted to investigate possibilities regarding attending school.

• After the war

Gradually our entire family returned to Topolcany, but not to our own apartment. Our Aryanizer, Stefan Radic, was living in our apartment. We had two free rooms upstairs, where one family who’d been deported had lived, and they’d all died.

Our kitchen was on the ground floor, where there was a vacant apartment from one old lady that had also been deported, and the Aryanizer had been using it for storage, and freed up one room for us, which we used as a kitchen.

There were strong anti-Jewish feelings in the town, fed by those that had things stolen from Jews who had returned and wanted their things back. During those times we constantly heard: ‘More of you returned than left.’

This mood also fed the pogrom that broke out at the end of September 1945. It began with the fact that a Jewish doctor, Dr. Karol Berger, was vaccinating children who were going to school in the local convent. Already in the morning it spread through town that many children had died as a result of the vaccinations, which was a lie.

At that time I was in high school. That day our class didn’t have school because of a so-called Principal’s Holiday. When I got wind of what had happened, I left town. My older brother Andrej was working on a farm in Velké Dvorany as an accountant.

I went to see him. Alone and with no money. On the way there, I stopped off in Topolcany at a sawmill, and there I asked one man who was a friend of my father’s for a hundred crowns for the trip. [In November 1945 the value of the crown in gold was set at 1 Kcs = 0.0178 g of gold.]

My mother stayed in town. My father went to visit a friend of his, also a man of similar age. Soldiers who had joined the pogrom came there for him, and took them away with them. They brought him, all bloodied, to the police station, where the town’s Russian commander had ordered all the Jews to be gathered. Someone had beaten him on the way there. They took him to the hospital for treatment. He was the oldest of the Jews that had been beaten.

Soldiers came to our home for my brother Rudo. They were brought there by our Aryanizer’s brother-in-law, Moravcik, who was helping his brother-in-law, our Aryanizer, at the store that had originally belonged to my father. The soldiers also took Rudo to the police station.

On the way there he was hit in the face so hard that he started bleeding. It happened in front of a store where the Aryanizer Korec was. During the war Korec was a well-known Guardist and participated in the rounding up of Jews.

I remember how he came for our neighbor, Ruzena Felseburgova, who they’d caught while she was attempting to cross the border into Hungary, to save herself from the transports. She’d gotten a half hour to pack her things, and Korec was ordering her to quickly finish.

In the evening, when Andrej and I returned home together, everything was over with, as gendarmes from Bratislava had arrived and restored order. Nothing happened to the people that had initiated the pogrom and took part in it, and demonstrably beat Jews.

They put them on trial, but let them go. At home we found our mother, who hadn’t dared to turn on the lights, because she didn’t know what things looked like outside and whether the pogrom wasn’t still continuing. She didn’t know anything about any of us, where we were, and was very glad when she saw my brother and me.

Then we went to the police station and there we met our father and my brother Rudo. Both of them had already gotten medical treatment. Then, accompanied by a Bratislava gendarme, we all went home.

My father never ever got back into his business, because he needed to get a so-called ‘reliability’ [a state certificate of reliability or loyalty]. I don’t know exactly what it was called, but people used to call it ‘reliability.’ It was a piece of paper that certified that the person hadn’t collaborated after the First Republic 28.

As the Aryanizer had a friend in the people’s committee, he got a ‘reliability,’ but they refused to give my father one. The reason they gave was that we were Hungarians and Germans. At the time it was forbidden to speak German, and my father didn’t know how to speak Slovak well. That was the reason he didn’t receive that ‘reliability,’ and thus the store remained in the Aryanizer’s hands and my father couldn’t get his own store back.

Nothing remained of our prewar property. We got back only a little of it. I remember how once my mother went into the courtyard and from one neighbor’s clothesline yanked some dishcloths and similar things, which had originally been ours and she was drying it out in the yard. They didn’t even have enough shame to hide the things they’d stolen. Our neighbor saw it, but said not a word.

My mother even found our closets in one apartment. On the back of these closets, my father had written down the numbers of bankbooks he’d burned, as he hadn’t included them in the declaration of property in 1940, when Jews had to declare their property, so that they could gradually confiscate what they’d declared.

He had the same numbers scored into a little pillbox that he’d carried on him throughout the whole war. My mother entered that apartment with a policeman. They, of course, immediately began with what was this supposed to mean and so on. The policeman said: ‘Turn those closets around.’ The numbers of course matched, and so we got the closets back.

Things like this naturally fed the pogrom mood. This is also why in his speech on the radio Lettrich 29 asked Jews to not ask for their things back from people they found them with, because it was causing needless anti-Jewish sentiments. It was always typical to turn the victims into the guilty.

With his property and income, my father belonged to the upper middle class. After the war, nothing remained of his property. We returned home with only the clothes on our backs. After the war, I went around in a coat I had gotten from one aunt.

I had only one dress, and I didn’t get others until a few months after the war, from cloth sent by the UNRRA [The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration]. From January 1946 I started tutoring classmates, and with that money I bought myself clothes, because my parents didn’t have money.

Our family’ composition wasn’t very well suited for emigration. My father was old, and he soon died, in 1948, and my brother Rudo and I were still snot-nosed kids, plus both of us wanted to study anyways.

Our brother Andrej did talk about how he would work to support the family, but we couldn’t expect that of him. We also made a few attempts, but they ended up in failure. We had a relative in the United States, whom my father had entrusted with a huge sum of money in case we needed it.

His wife came to visit us before the war, and took 400,000 crowns [in 1929 it was decreed by law that the Czechoslovak crown – Kc – as a unit of Czechoslovak currency was equal in value to 44.58 mg of gold] back with her to the USA, but after the war they returned almost nothing.

They just sent us some used clothing and around 20,000 crowns, and that was it. He was my mother’s cousin. During the war I was memorizing their address, and I knew that it was because we had lots of money there.

My father died in February 1948, and is buried in Topolcany, at the Jewish cemetery. My mother remained alone in Topolcany. My brother Rudo and I were studying in Bratislava, and Andrej was commuting to Piestany for work.

They wanted to throw my mother out of her apartment, saying that she was alone and didn’t need it. They didn’t want to recognize that all three of us siblings had our permanent address in Topolcany. Andrej went with me to the police station, they were the ones that wanted to throw my mother out, there he banged on the table and that helped. That’s how it was finally resolved.

After the war, we didn’t practice any religion in the family at all. My mother used to say that the God that had allowed what had happened is not God, and turned her back on him. She never set foot in a synagogue again.

Neither did we ever fast, and on Friday we didn’t light candles. We just made pastries for the holidays, that remained. My father died in 1948, and he didn’t have any affinity for religion at all. What’s interesting is that my brother, who had at one time attended yeshivah, also became a non-believer.

We all became atheists. While he was still in Novaky, Rudo had been very devout, and when we began hiding out, during the first few days he didn’t want to eat any meat, and ate only bread and milk, and butter when there was some.

After the war my mother told him that if he wanted it, she would lead a kosher household. He told her to not bother. After the war something in him changed, and he became a Communist. But he got over that as well.

My mother was very exhausted from saving the family, and no longer had the energy for anything bigger. In 1948 my father died, and from that time on she became very dependent on me. She did work at one time, she worked as an invoice clerk for minimum wage, but only so that she would get at least some sort of pension. Her first pension was 400 crowns. Because we had no property left, she lived from hand to mouth. She lived in Topolcany, and Rudo and I in Bratislava. My brother Andrej did live in Topolcany, but worked in Piestany, so wasn’t home during the week. When he got married, his wife also moved in with our mother.

I didn’t get to a relatively decent apartment until 1962, and my mother would spend most of the year with me. Near my apartment there’s a park where she used to sit on a bench with her friends – Jewish women her age. In 1966 she moved in with me completely.

She lived with me from then on, until she died. She died in 1977. She had heart problems and very limited mobility, so during the last few years she didn’t even go out anymore, and insisted on not sitting at home alone, so I spent most of my time outside of work with her. According to her explicit wishes – ‘I don’t want to be eaten by worms’ – we had her cremated, and her urn lies in an urn grove.

After the war, Rudo spent a year at home preparing for being accepted to high school. After the pogrom, he didn’t want to live in Topolcany. He never even returned there, and lives in Bratislava. He decided to go into science. He made it as far as a doctorate.

Andrej eventually got a job, at first he worked in a printing plant in Bratislava. His last workplace before retirement was a book printer’s in Partizanske. He died in 1994.

After the war I wrote my high school entrance exams, and after graduation I went to Bratislava to study at the Slovak Technical University. I managed to successfully graduate, even though in second year, in 1951, during the Slansky trials, they expelled me from school.

They gave various reasons: that I was a careerist, that I had a bad – capitalist – class background and so on. One of them was even true. I really don’t have a fondness for manual labor. That was true, I was always more inclined towards mental and not physical labor, which back then meant mainly work with a pick and shovel. In order to prove my fondness for labor, I applied for brigade work, washing windows at a newly built building on campus.

During the brigade work, I received an invitation to register for the next year. The woman clerk at the dean’s office didn’t want to register me. The dean of the faculty resolved it. He formally gave me a dean’s ‘reprimand’ for ‘behavior unbefitting Communist youth.’ ‘And now run and get yourself registered.’

Before I graduated the Communists tried to expel me one more time, but this time the university chancellor came to my rescue. He then talked about such cases in television after the year 1989 30, that he didn’t allow good students to be expelled for ‘singing Communist Youth songs out of tune.’

However, I received such a cadre profile that I could only work in a factory. In it they wrote that they had expelled me from school, but that they’d refused it at the chancellor’s office, because ‘the chancellor’s office contained elements similar to Ruzena R.’

This is what I had written in my cadre profile, which followed me my whole life until retirement. By those ‘elements’ they meant that there were some Jews sitting in the chancellor’s office, and that they had arranged it for me. It took me several decades before I realized this.

And that at the instigation of a non-Jewish girlfriend of mine. Those were the 1950s, today we know that they were strongly anti-Semitic, but back then we didn’t understand it. So finally I finished my studies after all. Everything ended up fine, just in Marxism-Leninism I couldn’t get higher than a C, the worst grade, but enough to pass the exam.

After finishing my studies, I got a placement offer for the Dimitrovka [Editor’s note: The Juraj Dimitrov Chemical Works, today named Istrochem. One of the oldest companies in the chemical industry, it was founded in 1873 by Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite.]

Apparently my ‘diagnosis’ [cadre profile] contributed to this. They greeted me enthusiastically, because they had a shortage of engineers. Back then, no one wanted to start working there voluntarily. The conditions there were very bad. Whoever could, got out of there. I used to say that through a process of natural selection, the only ones to remain there will be either stupid or with a bad cadre profile. In other words, people who didn’t have a chance anywhere else.

My cadre profile chained me to that place all my life, which they made sure was thoroughly bitter. In what way? My boss, who was my boss for ten years, was a terrible anti-Semite. When I needed only one day’s holiday, because I wanted to have a long weekend because I was going to go visit my mother in Topolcany, his answer was: ‘Not on Monday, take Tuesday off,’ and so on. During the time he was my boss, he never even once gave me a raise. After 1968 31 conditions improved a bit.

After 1968, a slightly softer era began in the plant as well. My position improved a bit, too. I no longer had an anti-Semite for a boss, and I was treated decently, too. In 1983 I was eligible for retirement, as I had a so-called 255 32; because they asked me, I stayed there and worked for another three years part-time.

Those were the nicest times in the plant where I worked for 33 years. In June 1986 I retired. I still remember that the most beautiful day of my life, besides 2nd April 1945, when we were liberated, of course, was 30th June 1986. After that I did translations at home and worked as an interpreter. I translated mainly from German to Slovak and vice-versa. This I did until 1991.

My lifelong hobbies have been reading, swimming and attending the theater. My friends were from various circles. In the first place, I had to be sure that they weren’t anti-Semites. I’ve got very sensitive ears for subtle insinuations.

They apparently don’t realize this. For example, one female colleague of mine was scandalized by Jews being thrown out of good positions [during the 1950s]: ‘they should really have kept them working – for us.’

I was 48 when my mother died, and right after that, I began to concern myself mainly with my own illnesses.

From the time I learned to read, I read every day. Luckily I’m able to pick from among several languages, which was an advantage especially during the Communist era, when there weren’t a lot of good books being published in Slovak or Czech, as they were forbidden.

I came by my linguistic capabilities quite early on, and therefore also easily. At home, besides Slovak we also spoke German, my parents also spoke Hungarian to each other, I took private English lessons since childhood, in high school we had French, and I caught on to Russian. I’m sorry that I don’t know Hebrew, because most of my next generation of relatives in Israel don’t know any other language.

Even though opportunities for travel were very limited, I tried to take vacations abroad. But always when I returned, especially from the West, it took me a few days to get used to the conditions here. As soon as it was possible, my first trip was to Israel.

That was in 1991. I was there for three weeks. I wanted to make use of the possibility as soon and as much as I could, because my health was rapidly getting worse. I mainly visited my relatives and friends from school in Topolcany.

I tried to see everyone, as I hadn’t seen them for 40 years. The sight that made the greatest impression on me was Masada. I was captivated by that whole atmosphere. Of course, visiting the Wailing Wall was also a big experience for me.

I was no longer able to fully take advantage of the changes after 1989. My age and bad state of health didn’t allow it. But during the first few months I was very happy that I’d even lived to see the change.

I realized that the euphoria that I had also allowed myself to be enraptured by wouldn’t last long, but I enjoyed it to the fullest. I remember that right when it was going on, I was lying in the hospital. I got discharged home from the hospital, at home I turned on the TV, and had an immense feeling of happiness.

Several months later, the filth began. Communists were leeching off it, nationalists were rearing their heads, mainly descendents of the wartime Slovak State, and once again history began to be rewritten.

In 1991 this one funny thing happened to me. My cousin from Israel and his wife were at my place visiting. On the street I met the wife of one of my colleagues, who we called ‘Emil the Communist.’ In his time he used to threaten me that my comments could have dire consequences for me. With great satisfaction I said to his wife: ‘Right now I’ve got relatives from Israel visiting me, whom I kept a secret from the Communists for 40 years.’

The revolution in 1989 influenced our daily life, starting with being able to find the basic necessities of life. I say to people that I’m no longer able to imagine how we used to shop back then, because every day on the way home from work, I’d go stand in a queue to buy something – whatever they had right then.

The store was up on the first floor, and the queue used to stretch down to the ground floor. There I stood and waited, to see what I’d get that day.

Today I spend my spare time at the computer; I send emails and also look around on the internet a bit. I recently found the address for Yad Vashem 33 and I’m upset over the lists of those that perished, whom I’d known and who for me aren’t an abstract concept. I correspond with friends, I talk to some of them on the phone regularly, and sometimes I watch TV, on the rare occasion that there’s something interesting on.

I’m glad that research of this type is being carried out, so that what went on during that bloody 20th century will be recorded, and I consider it my duty to leave the facts about my life for those that will come after us. Though I’m not very convinced that it’ll be of interest to anyone.

Glossary

Yosif Avram Levi

Sofia

Bulgaria

Interviewer: Dimitar Bozhilov

Date of Interview: July 2003-August 2004

Yosif Avram Levi is a former chairman of the Israeli Spiritual Council in Bulgaria. He is of medium height, always dressed in a suit and when he works in his office in the Sofia synagogue, he wears a beautiful blue kippah with golden embroidery. He is widely recognized among his coevals as the one with the deepest knowledge in Ivrit. Therefore he is in great demand as a Hebrew translator. There is always an Israeli daily at his desk and portraits of Sofian Rabbis are hanging on the walls of his office. He spends every working day in the Sofia synagogue. On Sabbath and holidays he reads the prayers and demonstrates an excellent talent in singing. 

As you know, most of the Jews in Bulgaria came from Spain [following the expulsion of the Jews from Spain] 1, therefore the Jews on the Balkan Peninsula, from Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, Macedonia, part of Yugoslavia and a small part of Romania spoke Spanish [i.e. Ladino] 2. Our origin is Sephardic as well as the traditions we observe. Wherever we go in Spanish speaking countries, we can easily communicate in this language. We have good contacts here, at the Sofia synagogue with Spanish Jews, with people of any ethnic origin from Spain and Latin America, and we maintain good relations with them. Yet, there is quite a difference between our ancient Spanish, which is the language of Servants and the contemporary Spanish language. This is a very interesting topic for the Spanish linguists.

There are a lot of rabbis in my father’s kin. My paternal grandfather, as well as many of his ancestors used to be rabbis, who have played an important public role. They were Spanish Jews who used to live for a long time in Solun [today Thessaloniki, Greece]. My grandfather went with his family to Gorna Dzhumaya and settled there.

I can’t tell anything specific about my grandparents, as our father was quite old when he got married. There is a big age gap between my parents. It was a second marriage for both my parents. My father used to have a wife but they had no children. His first wife burnt to death in a tragic accident in Dupnitsa. There was a fire in their house and she died in it. He was 46 or 47 years old at that time. Then he went to Sofia in order to look for a wife. My mother was born in 1889, and my father in 1865. Their age difference was 24 years.

My father’s name was Avram Levi. He was the third child in his family. The first-born child was his eldest brother Haim, followed by Shabat, and then he. I suppose my father’s brothers used to be merchants. My father had two names: Avram-Nissim. At the time of his birth his mother had severe pains and the family decided that if a boy was born they would call him Avram, yet because of the fact that he was born with difficulty, they added also Nissim, which means ‘wonders.’ He was known among people as Avram-Nissim. He was the only one with two names in our family and among our Jewish community. The fact that he had two names caused quite a lot of trouble for us, because it isn’t common in Bulgaria for someone to have two names. Our family name is Levi. I was called Yosif Avram-Nissim Levi, thus they become four names, which isn’t customary here neither among Jews, nor Bulgarians. Therefore, we accepted only the first and last name: Avram Levi. In his youth, my father used to sign himself as Avram-Nissim David Levi, while later, when he grew older, he signed himself as Avram-Nissim Levi.

Both my father and mother originated from Sephardic families and the language spoken at home was Ladino. Of course, as soon as we started attending school and in a Bulgarian environment, we learnt Bulgarian well. Our Bulgarian was more fluent than our Ladino.

I know an interesting story about my mother’s kin. Two thousand years ago the Jews in Palestine used to live in tribes. When the Roman legions realized they wouldn’t be able to conquer them, they chased all of them away. They set out in the four cardinal points. The chosen direction of each tribe was known by its tombstones. When the Spanish Jews settled on the Balkan Peninsula they found other Jews. Those were the local Jews, who had settled there before the arrival of the Spanish Jews. The chief family among them was the Behar family. My mother’s kin is Behar: her father was called Isak Behar. My grandfather originated from those Jews. According to sources of Bulgarian history, at the beginning of the 14th century the Bulgarian tsar, Ivan-Alexander, sent his first wife to a monastery and married a beautiful Jewess, Sarah, who gave birth to his heir to the crown: Tsar Ivan Shishman. According to our Jewish laws, Tsar Ivan Shishman was a Jew, as his mother was Jewish.

My mother, Rashel Levi, was from Dupnitsa. She had been married before but her first husband perished on the front during the First Balkan War 3. Thus she remained a widow with one daughter. From Dupnitsa she moved to Sofia, where her brother lived. There she searched for an opportunity to get married. And this is how my parents met. My father learned somehow about her, likewise she learned about him and he took her to Gorna Dzhumaya. They got married and every two years my mother gave birth to a child: she gave birth to six children. All my siblings were born in Gorna Dzhumaya, except for my eldest sister. The story of my family, which I’m about to narrate began in the town of Gorna Dzhumaya, where my family lived until 1925.

My father used to be a rabbi in Gorna Dzhumaya. The rabbi played a very significant role in such [small] places, as he used to perform all the rituals. He not only read the prayers but also slaughtered the animals, circumcised the boys after their birth, and conducted wedding ceremonies. I don’t know why my father decided to settle in Vratsa, moreover it seems to me that I had never asked him, but during the 1920s many emigrants from Macedonia settled in Gorna Dzhumaya and there were a lot of murders. My father got scared of these things and in 1925 my family moved to Vratsa.

My father was the only one in the town to perform Jewish religious customs: beginning with the reading of the prayer on Friday and Saturday as well as all the holiday rituals. Moreover, he was also a shochet: he used to slaughter the animals and provided meat for the Jewish community. When he slaughtered the animals he used to bring home meat and pluck from the slaughterhouse. We were fed up of eating liver and pluck as when he slaughtered the animals he always brought such things. In accordance with our custom he made us put liver and heart on a plate and take it to other Jewish families. It’s also done during the holiday of Purim.

When my brothers and I were still small the spirit of patriarchy used to dominate in our family. Every evening we used to get together and read the prayer before eating. After finishing dinner we used to say the prayer again. It was quite long and therefore we, the kids, impatiently waited for it to finish. We also performed all customs in accordance with our traditions during the holidays: Rosh Hashanah, [Yom] Kippur and Pesach.

We weren’t quite well-off in those times. Begging us to eat wasn’t typical for our parents likewise in other families. Our food was always scanty. We always observed who would receive less and who would receive more. My mother always split the food equally, but in the end she would always give me just a little bit more.

My father was the head of the family and he made most of the money. We used to consult him concerning every problem which had to be solved. Life was difficult for him. He gave all the money he earned to his family: he never kept it for himself. It was very rare for him to have a suit made for him, or buy something for him personally. Money was never enough and we were in a difficult financial situation. But I must emphasize that despite the financial limitations we had to endure, as a whole we grew up comparatively healthy. Diabetes was the illness of rich people, who pampered themselves with food containing a lot of sugar. This illness was quite ‘popular’ among Jews, as the rich Jews did like to overindulge into it. We had nothing to pamper ourselves with. We ate less butter and fat food unlike the others, but at dinner time when my mother used to cook beans, we used to eat two plates of it, or potatoes with meat balls, which was also among our favorite dishes. As a whole our cuisine was a ‘soup’ one, i.e. it consisted mainly of liquid dishes, which could be poured into the plate, so that we could eat more. Anyway, financial difficulties never became an obstacle for us, always being very glad and happy at home.

I was born in Vratsa in 1925. I remember very well that at that time we still didn’t have electricity in the town. The synagogue was stuck to the house we used to live in. We shared it with another family. I remember my mother washing the gas lamp every Friday, changing its candlewick, and lighting it up. In fall, my mother used to prepare a special grape wine so that my father could read the blessing for Sabbath after returning from the synagogue. On Sabbath we usually had chicken with rice or pastel [traditional Jewish dish made of flour and mince veal]. This is a pastry with meat. During the week we had ordinary meals but on Friday evening and on Saturday there was always meat, and it was a great pleasure for us. Our family was poor and we didn’t keep any special dishes for holidays except for Pesach.

We used to get together during the holidays when we were young: on Pesach and Rosh Hashanah, and my father performed the rituals. Yet, after some time, when my brothers started to work, the closeness of the family gradually disappeared. The family couldn’t gather any longer. Only the two of us: my sister Adela and I were present. Yet all of us did gather on Pesach and the other great holidays. And my father always performed the ritual in accordance with the Jewish customs.

I remember that in the morning when we wondered what our breakfast would be that day, I usually went to buy a large piece of khalva [oriental dessert delicacy: the word is of Turkish origin], which was around a quarter of a kilo. My mother gave each one of us a piece, and that was our breakfast. I was always sent to do the shopping and although I didn’t have any financial guarantees, every day I took on credit four breads from a bakery on Sredna Gora Street. We ate mostly bread on a regular basis. As soon as the 15th or the 30th day of the month arrived my father and brother went there and paid for the bread for the whole period. That’s how our life went on.

In 1933 the family moved to Sofia with the help of my uncle, my mother’s brother, who assisted us in finding a place to stay. In Sofia my father wasn’t a chief rabbi but he served in small prayer houses which were spread all over the city. It was done because according to our customs Saturday is forbidden for traveling, using a car or any vehicle. People insisted on having a prayer house near their homes so that when the prayer was over they could easily get back home. So, my father served in one of those houses.

When we moved from Vratsa to Sofia I had already finished the first grade. There were no Jewish schools in Vratsa, so when we moved to Sofia my father decided to send me to a Jewish school. But the children here first had cheder and then there came the first grade. I was about to start the second grade, so they enrolled me in the second grade. I didn’t know anything in the beginning: I had no idea of the language. The first day I went home crying. I told my parents that the children at school were laughing at me because I didn’t know anything. My father calmed me down and said to me that I had to be patient. One of the children I used to study with had an uncle who was a shoemaker in the Jewish neighborhood, where we lived. He used to come home and little by little he taught me the alphabet and how to read. At that time there was a very interesting method in the Jewish school, which is no longer being practiced: the classes were separated under a certain criterion. There were A, B, C classes. ‘A’ class was the best, ‘B’ was the average, and ‘C’ was the weakest. In the beginning I was enrolled in ‘C’ class and for a year I studied there. The next year, after the teachers revised the selection, I was moved to ‘A’. When I was in ‘C’ I was the best among the weakest, yet when I moved to ‘A’ I was already at the average level.

There were two Jewish schools in Sofia. One was in the center of the city, and the other one was in the Jewish neighborhood to the west of the center, which was called Iuchbunar 4. The concentration of Jews in the central part of the city was smaller than in Iuchbunar and there was a shortage of students there. Therefore, about 20 children from Iuchbunar’s Jewish school were moved to the central Jewish school. I was in that group. There was even greater competition there because the children there were from intellectuals’ families whose parents were doctors and teachers. I could no longer be in the elite as I was somewhere at the average level. Our teachers were very good indeed and I finished with a 5 & 4/5 mark out of 6 maximum. This is equal to 5.80.

I was very good in Ivrit indeed and I got 5 & 5/6, which is more than 5.80. I remember that at the end of the school year representatives of the Ministry of Education came in order to examine how the Jews studied the Bulgarian language and history. Therefore, our teachers were very strict and demanding, as a result of which I never had more than a four in Bulgarian. No more than two people from our class got a five, and no one could even imagine a six. But the knowledge we gained was so useful for us and later when I was in high school, I knew much more than the rest of the students. The high school was a Bulgarian one and I studied there till the fifth grade. That was in 1941. The situation then was very hard and I had to begin to work, on the suggestion of my brother Isak. At 16, I started working in a drugstore as a laborer.

Before the war [World War II] my family lived harmoniously. We changed houses all the time searching for something better. Our last home was at Sofronii [today Vrachanski] and Pirotska Streets and was comparatively nicer. Anyway, the authorities decided to build a high school at that place and the house we used to live in was destroyed. Thus we moved to a new place in the Jewish neighborhood again. Although we were poor, we survived because we grew up healthy. No one has ever had diabetes because we ate neither butter nor delicacies, but only simple food.

As a family we were united. Our living conditions were very miserable: in one of the houses we used to live in, there was a room which was divided into two and another one with a corridor opposite it. We lived in one of the rooms and the other one was occupied by another family. The only restroom was outside. The conditions we lived in were similar in all our lodgings. We used to heat water for our domestic needs and visited the public baths because there were no bathrooms in the houses we inhabited at that time.

During our childhood we were brought up in the spirit of creation of our Jewish country. The leftist Hashomer Hatzair 5 organization existed. There were the rightist Zionists Betar 6 and the center – Poalei Zion 7. We became members of Hashomer Hatzair when we were small children. We were brought up well over there. We discussed scientific matters, and went together to the cinema and theater. Mountain camps were organized during summer. We spent our time there nicely and usefully. We were occupied with serious things and played a lot. There were also sporting activities.

When fascism started in Bulgaria, we gradually realized that we should stay aside and watch its invasion. When I was 15 or 16 years old, after the Germans invaded Russia in 1941, my adherents and I decided that we should help the Soviet army who were struggling with fascism. Many of the Hashomer Hatzair members passed on to UYW 8, the [communist] youth organization fighting against fascism. In fact our opposition was a rather harmless one. But there were combat groups, which carried out sabotage activities on trains as well as some restaurants attended by Germans, where they threw bombs. We were younger at that time and our task was to raise funds and provide food and medicines for some friends of ours, who had landed in prison under hard conditions. Once we had a set-back during the setting up of such a group. We were detained by the police: some of us were set free, while others were sentenced. This happened in February 1943. In May 1943 I was sentenced to 15 years of imprisonment.

At first I was in Sofia prison. This coincided with the events of deportation of Jews in March 1943. At that time we were about eight Jews in the prison. The deportation failed and Jews were saved. In order to compensate this failure the Bulgarian fascists decided to intern all the Jews from Sofia. At that time around 25,000 Jews lived in the city. Orders were given for every family to be interned to a particular town: Kyustendil, Shumen, Ruse or others. They had to leave with a maximum of 20 kilograms of luggage and abandon their houses. It was a very ugly scene. The people took their belongings to the market and sold them very cheap as they neither knew what they were destined to, nor whether the deportation would be temporarily stopped. A lot of Jews thought that it was temporary and that from the Danube they would be deported to the death camps. In the meantime I was in prison and it can be said that I was comparatively well until May 1943. There was no food for most of us. Actually we were given some kind of a soup, which was close to nothing. Until May [1943] my relatives were still in Sofia and they would bring for us some food occasionally. After 24th May 1943 9 all Jews were interned from Sofia. My relatives went to Kyustendil and Lom. Thus we couldn’t communicate with them and the situation became much worse.

At the end of 1943, Italy was already out of the war, terminating its alliance with the Germans. Both the Americans and British had entered Italy. So, from Italy they started bombarding Sofia and most of all Romania. But things changed and instead of symbolically, as the Bulgarian Government hoped, the Americans started bombarding Sofia for real in October. They were passing through Bulgaria and on their way to Romania they bombarded Sofia, Vratsa and some other towns. So, bombs were falling down in Sofia including around the central prison. One day the wall near my place was destroyed by a bomb because next to the prison there were barracks. The planes bombarded the barracks and the raids ruined part of the prison as well. Therefore, on a freezing January day in 1944 around 800 people from Sofia prison were loaded up in horse wagons and taken to Sliven prison.

We traveled for around 30 hours because of the damaged railway road. It was terribly cold and all of us were frozen in the train. Finally, we reached Sliven civil prison: it was called a civil prison, as there was a military one there also. Once it used to be some kind of a Turkish prison or an inn. In Sofia prison our cells were very narrow: 1.5 meters wide by 7-8 meters long. This accommodated around eight people. Sliven prison had larger cells and accommodated 30 to 35 people in one room. There were no beds so we slept on the floor, and everyone covered themselves with whatever they had at hand. Life became somehow easier, I mean that we were a larger group of people in Sliven and it was warmer. Moreover, we started receiving aid: mostly food and clothes. On the other hand we didn’t waste our time there, as we began to learn languages and read, and we also formed various groups, in which we studied different things. This is how time passed for us until August 1944. The Soviet troops were already by the Danube and on 2nd September the last Bulgarian Government before 9th September 1944 10, fell from power. In order to enter Bulgaria, the Soviet Union declared war on Bulgaria and it was then that I was set free.

The Soviet army crossed Bulgaria not as a conqueror but as a liberator and it was very well accepted by the people. Every power has its good and bad sides. Fascism was good for its upholders, giving them rights and privileges. But the more progressive people wanted to oppose this policy of supporting the Germans. Therefore, a partisan movement was developed in Bulgaria in order to fight against the Germans. The Government, in its turn, murdered the partisans and burnt their houses. There was a great terror during this period, especially in 1943 and 1944. A lot of young people, among them many Jews, were killed in Plovdiv and Sofia. Besides, there was a concentration camp in Pleven [see Kailuka camp] 11, where close relatives of the partisans were imprisoned. This camp was set on fire and burnt by some fascist organizations in the summer of 1944. Around ten Jews were killed in this fire. There were elderly people there, who couldn’t escape.

On 24th May 1943, a protest was held in Sofia against the internment of Jews from Sofia and the deportation of Bulgarian Jews. The demonstration had started from the Iuchbunar Jewish school where 130 High School is located now. People walked from the synagogue to the school along Stamboliiski Blvd towards the King’s palace to ask him for help. At that time people believed in King Boris III 12. Yet, the police met the demonstration somewhere on Opalchenska Street before Stamboliiski Blvd on Vazrazhdane Square and arrested a lot of people putting them in trucks and thus the protest was kept under control. The protest was led by Rabbi Daniel [Zion] 13. He succeeded in hiding at Sofia metropolitan Stefan’s place. He was among the people who actively opposed the deportation of Jews.

A lot of Jews who were scared for their lives converted to Christianity. Yet, the police and the fascists issued an order that the newly converted Jews would be treated in accordance with the Law for the Protection of the Nation 14, just like the non-converted Jews and regardless of their conversion. I have to mention that the Christian churches were like centers of anti-Semitism all over the world. This not only happened among Catholics but also in Russia where they practiced Eastern Orthodox Christianity. A notion was spread that the Jews crucified Jesus ignoring the fact that he was actually a Jew himself. They used to say, ‘Christ, our God, was crucified by the Jews,’ and this spread hatred against Jews among the masses. Children were also told the same thing. Anti-Semitism had been implanted on other grounds as well. Jews were quite skilled in their professions and I’m not praising myself. For example, if we take the doctors: a Jewish doctor often had a lot of patients and the other doctors envied him. This became a basis for anti-Semitism. So, here in Bulgaria there were manifestations of anti-Semitism.

There were rumors among the Bulgarians that during Pesach the Jews took a child, put it in a nailed-up casket and sucked dry its blood, because we needed blood for our rituals. Therefore, some superstitious and ignorant women would say, ‘Let me take my children home.’ Yet, there were provocations, i.e. some Christians deliberately kidnapped a child, hid it somewhere for some time so that people would think that the Jews had stolen it. There were such cases of outrage against Jews in Vratsa and in some other towns. These were separate cases, and it wasn’t a common phenomenon. As a whole Bulgarians and Jews coexist well and keep good relations. Of course, speaking about Bulgarians, I don’t mean the entire nation, because back then fascist organizations existed, which used to chase the Jews. In 1940 a lot of Jewish shop windows were broken during a persecution of Jews. Therefore we say, ‘If there are Jews, there is anti-Semitism.’ We can’t compare the local manifestations of anti-Semitism with the ones in Ukraine, Russia, Hungary and France. As early as the Middle Ages, Jews had settled in Bulgaria because they led a calmer life, unlike in other places.

In the period between 1939 and 9th September 1944 Jews used to live under quite heavy conditions because of the Law for the Protection of the Nation. Especially Sofia Jews were in a very difficult situation. We were interned to schools and in lodgings inhabited by two to three families in a room. The men were sent to forced labor camps [in Bulgaria] 15 in order to work in the mountains on road and other construction sites. Yet, there was one good thing the authorities did: as they saw that the people had nothing to eat, they spared part of the money, which had been confiscated from the Jews so as to build communal kitchens. Once a day every family went there with its pots in order to receive warm food with or without meat or potatoes, yet there was food. Some Bulgarians undertook to keep the property of interned Jews.

Not only the Jews from Sofia were interned, but also the ones from Kazanlak. Because there were, and still are military enterprises there, Jews were suspected of spying there. I know that Jews were interned from Ruse too. Jews were forbidden to own chemists’ shops and this favored the Bulgarians, who took charge of a lot of them. Jews used to have very nice chemist’s shops in the center of Sofia and in other places as well. There were also restrictions for Jewish merchants. Students of Jewish origin weren’t allowed to study at the universities. Many other restrictions of different characters were imposed. There was a one-time tax: if you had 100,000 levs deposited in a bank, 30 or 40 percent of it was directly confiscated. The ones who had factories were immediately deprived of them. So, from this point of view Jews were in a very difficult situation, yet they survived in the end.

You know about Dimitar Peshev 16 and how he contributed to the salvation of the Bulgarian Jews. Yet, he didn’t improve the situation of the Jews. That law existed and not until August 1944 all its clauses were effective. After that some of its clauses were repealed. Then the authorities with a more conformist disposition took power in Bulgaria. Witnessing how Germany was losing the war, they wanted to make it up to the Americans, English and Russians. It was then that certain clauses from the Law for the Protection of the Nation were abolished.

After 9th September 1944 the rights of Jews were regained. But after the establishment of the state of Israel, i.e. after 1948, there were some problems again. During the communist regime, if you had connections with a capitalist country, this made you a threat to the regime. Therefore, the Jews who had connections in Israel were almost entirely removed from office in the Department of the Interior, Ministry of Defense, as well as some international commercial organizations. This was one of the forms of hidden anti-Semitism. Jews weren’t allowed to hold such posts. There were Soviet councilors everywhere, carrying out this policy. There were a few diplomats or employees in the Ministry of People’s Defense [as it was actually called then] or the Ministry of Interior, but these were separate cases. Until 1948, which was the year of the establishment of the Jewish state, there were more Jewish employees in these two ministries, but after that many of them were discharged because of the above-mentioned reasons. There were Jews who visited the Embassy of Israel and were detained as a result of this. There were also several Jews in the Central Committee of the [Bulgarian Communist] Party 17. One of them was the ideological adviser of Todor Zhivkov 18. But as a whole Jews didn’t hold leading positions.

I have three brothers and two sisters. My eldest brother is called Isak Levi and he is a textile technician. He is a widower already with a daughter: Ema. They both live in Sofia. My second brother is Mordechai Levi and he used to work as a printer. My sister Oro Morits Frank didn’t have any special profession and she used to work in a glass shop as a laborer. She finished secondary school and had no other qualifications. She married in 1938 and her wedding was a disappointment for us because in accordance with our traditions, when a girl is getting married she is supposed to bring a dowry into her new family. We had no money and had to take loans. Mordechai had to work for a whole year in order to pay off the loan.

My other brother is called David Levi. He wasn’t very ambitious, he remained uneducated and he used to be a laborer. He used to sell seeds, ice-cream or something like that. He felt underprivileged in our family because we didn’t pay much attention to him. We treated him well, although as a child he began speaking only when he was four or five years old. He got married in Bulgaria and had four children: his two daughters were born here. He used to work in a textile factory then and was given a small room, which he used to live in. He moved to Israel as early as 1949, where he continued to work: he did whatever job he got. But his kids are very good. One of his daughters used to be a bank clerk, and the other one has a career as well and they both have nice families. The kids born in Israel aren’t as skillful as their parents.

My sister Oro had two children before leaving for Israel: Morits and Lily. Morits finished technical school and built a car garage. He was successful. He is 65 years old and leads a good life. The daughter is also alright. She became a bank clerk; she used to work for a long time in an Israeli bank. She is now retired, had two daughters, granddaughters, etc. My sister died quite early, before her 70th birthday, and my brother-in-law remained alone. He is of Russian origin. During the Russian-Turkish war [see Liberation of Bulgaria from the Ottoman rule] 19 some Jews went to Bulgaria and settled there. He loved drinking and it seems like it had affected him because in the last years of his life his children took great care of him. They placed him in an elderly people’s home. They were very good kids. Now, I visit my nephews in Israel.

Mordechai married Sofia. She was a seamstress, and they got two sons: Avram and Emil. They lived in Sofia on Dimitar Petkov and Albert Antonov Streets. They used to have a house there, which has already been destroyed and replaced by an estate. Each of them bought an apartment on Dimitar Petkov Street. Meanwhile, my brother managed to somehow get an apartment in ‘Mladost’ residential quarter near the Regional Hospital. He passed away a year ago. Now one of his sons, Avram, has a problem because both his sons left for Israel. My brother’s children stayed in Sofia. Avram finished military school, but he was unemployed and he became an insurer. His wife wants to be closer to her kids and she visits Israel on a regular basis and stays there for quite a long time. She wants him to leave for Israel also, but he thinks that he has nothing to do there. He is already 54 or 55 years old, doesn’t receive a pension, and would have to learn the language and find a job there, so he considered all these aspects as extremely difficult.

Only my sister Adela currently lives in Israel. Her fate was unfortunate. For a year or two her husband has been paralyzed. He isn’t able to speak or do anything and so she is taking care of him. They have a daughter who is a hot head. She was married to a boy in Israel, but got divorced, and then she left for South Africa and married an African from Nigeria. She gave birth to two children, who are black. It was a very hard blow for my sister: it was something difficult to cope with. Her daughter got divorced again. Her two boys are already grown-ups. They are soldiers now.

I met my wife Matilda accidentally at a youth club. We didn’t know each other before the war at all, because at that time I was in prison for half a year, while she had been interned to Shumen. After 9th September 1944 she went back to Sofia from Shumen. We got married in August 1948 and a few days ago we celebrated our 55th wedding anniversary. We have been together for a long time. After 9th September [1944], she worked at the Department of the Interior for a while, which also contributed to our meeting as I worked there as well.

I have two children: Sonya Avramova and Albert Levi. They both graduated from the French Language School. My son finished international economic relations, while my daughter did home trade. My son is married, his wife isn’t Jewish and her name is Elena. She has a degree in English philology, but she couldn’t start working anywhere. She never liked anything for real and she always found obstacles, and as soon as she got married to my son, she stopped working completely. She is taking care of their child, she helps her husband, but obviously she would never start working on her own. Their daughter is eleven years old and is in the fifth grade.

My daughter has worked for different companies, but hasn’t been very lucky. My son succeeded in establishing a cosmetics company, as a distributor for a Greek company. Currently my daughter works for him.

After 9th September [1944], we used to live in rented rooms. Later, in 1977 we managed to buy an apartment. So, now I have a home of my own. Otherwise, I have lived much longer in rented rooms.

My mother Rashel used to live for some time with me, and for some time with my brother Isak, yet mostly with my youngest sister Adela. There, when she lived with Adela, she passed away. After her death my sister left for Israel.

I had a small circle of family friends: Jewish family friends we used to know since early childhood, our school years, and we used to be a little company. We used to get together almost every week at one family’s place or another. We used to gather with our children or spend our vacations together. One of my friends was also an official at the Department of the Interior and we had the opportunity to spend our vacations together. We spent considerable time going to the cinema and theater. We spent a lot of time at the cinema because my wife used to work in the field of cinema so I had free access to many cinema halls and had the opportunity to watch a lot of films without queuing like it used to be in the past. Wherever I would go even in the most prestigious cinemas of the time: ‘Blagoev’, ‘Mlada Gvardia’ [Young Guards], ‘Moskva’ [Moscow], as soon as I said that she was my wife they let me in immediately without any problem. We used to go to operas, theaters as we had cultural interests, we weren’t, so to say, idle. The fact that we used to get together every week kept us closer together and we spent our time most pleasantly. Otherwise, everyone performed their duties during the week: with their children, and work. Unfortunately, most of these people have already gone away.

After 9th September [1944], I completed high school via correspondence and after that I graduated in law. I started working as a state official at the Department of the Interior and I retired in 1982. Since 1983, as I hadn’t forgotten Ivrit yet, I was invited at the synagogue as chairman of the Central Israeli Spiritual Council. During the totalitarian years the Jewish organizations in Sofia used to be an educational center. It didn’t deal with Jewish questions. At that time, 1st May, 9th September, and 7th November [October Revolution Day] 20 were celebrated and these were holidays of the Jewish community in Sofia also. Yet, here, in the synagogue, the status quo was quite better and during this period of time I managed to read lectures about Chanukkah, Pesach, Moses and the migration of Jews from Egypt. Our holidays are most often connected with history, so the Jews in Sofia became aware and began to realize the true meaning of the Jewish history. Besides, I visited quite a lot of conferences of the Jewish World Congress and some other organizations. I was well accepted as I spoke Ivrit well, which was rather uncommon for most of the people there, because most representatives of other countries spoke English. Therefore, my speech in Ivrit was always a huge success.

I was quite efficient in terms of public activities not only for local organizations but also with international Jewish organizations. Yet, when 10th November [1989] 21 came things changed as Shalom [Organization] 22 took over the international Jewish activities and it was their responsibility to maintain contacts with international Jewish organizations. Actually, from 1983 to 1989 I established a lot of contacts, and provided matzah and other things here, which was quite difficult at that time because the Department of Ecclesiastical Matters had a negative attitude towards religion. There was even a representative who kept a close watch on the quantity of published calendars. It was a great achievement for him if he could report that in the course of years fewer and fewer calendars were issued, which proved the death of religion. Yet, the Jews are a hardy nation and they couldn’t vanish so easily.

In totalitarian times people visiting the synagogue were treated as suspicious characters. If an official of Jewish origin was spotted visiting the synagogue, he became a subject of persecution. There wasn’t a law forbidding visits to the synagogue, on the contrary, the state financially supported the synagogue. Yet, it was forbidden for children, young people and citizens here. All religions were treated in that way, and this didn’t only happen to us. Religion was considered something bad which had to be abolished. There is also another thing: as a whole, the Bulgarian people aren’t fanatics concerning religious matters, unlike the Catholics, for example. This could also be one of the reasons that in Bulgaria there weren’t large manifestations of anti-Semitism.

Adela had a problem before leaving for Israel. That was in 1966 or 1967. My brother-in-law used to work as a refrigerator technician and upon his immigration to Israel he had to expatriate, sign different declarations, and it was very difficult for him to get permission to settle in Israel. In 1948 there wasn’t such a problem. A lot of people immigrated to Israel then and some of them even wanted to return. Yet, Chervenkov banned the returning [Valko Chervenkov was Prime Minister of Bulgaria between 1950 and 1956]. People were forbidden to come back to Bulgaria on the occasion of weddings or funerals, or as guests, and this brought families a lot of grief.

During the totalitarian times we never attempted to leave for Israel as nobody was allowed. After 1982, when ‘perestroika’ 23 started, another problem occurred, also of importance. The authorities told us that we could leave but only if our relatives over there sent us tickets. It was impossible to buy tickets here. It was rather inconvenient to ask them to buy us a ticket in our local currency in order to go and see them. I remember also that this was a problem even earlier when my wife wanted to visit Israel in 1956. Only by co-incidence then an acquaintance of mine was the Deputy Governor of the People’s Bank and I was able to get some foreign currency through him in order to buy tickets for my wife and daughter and thus they went to Israel. They had only left when the Soviet campaign in Hungary began, the war started and it was a problem for her to return. I went to Israel in 1981 and saw my brother David a year before he passed away. Then I went there after 1985: three years after I had retired.

During the wars between Israel and the Arab countries [see Yom Kippur War] 24, of course, we were on Israel’s side. However, Bulgaria was on the side of the Arabs. It was a curious fact that in 1973 when Egypt attacked Israel the newspaper here wrote that it was vice versa: that Israel attacked Egypt. Things were interpreted in that way.

I didn’t openly express that I was on Israel’s side during the wars, but it was natural for me to be on Israel’s side. Politics at that time was a completely different thing. Bulgaria had strong contacts with the Arab countries at that time. It supported the Arab cause, because it maintained close economic relations with Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and other countries and it was natural for it to support their interests. At some point Bulgaria’s position was overdone. There were such writings that Israel was an artificially created country and that it shouldn’t exist. The communists also supported that thesis because it was the political line followed by the Soviet Union also.

I can say that I felt a certain change of attitude towards me during the wars in Israel. It was because of the people’s general disposition at that time: they used to consider Israel the greatest aggressor. Israel was a synonym of aggression. The Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs [Andrey] Gromyko [1909-1989] announced that an Arab-Palestinian state must be founded and it was immediately accepted by Bulgaria.

The events in 1989 in Bulgaria and Europe: the opening of Eastern Europe, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the changes, are a contradictory moment, because it’s wrong to deny everything which was done in socialist times, and at the same time some acts during socialism can’t be justified. So, on one hand, the changes brought good things, and on the other hand they brought a lot of misery, because during socialism no matter that people weren’t rich, they used to receive small salaries, which gave them the opportunity to go every year on vacation, they retired and led a calm and secured life as pensioners. Their pensions were enough to cover their expenses. In winter they used to pay almost nothing for heating, as at that time heating was only around five percent of one’s income. I mean that socialism has its pros and cons.

Therefore, some people dream of restoring socialism, because during those times everything was provided for them even though scanty and poor. And there is something else, which is of great importance: people felt safer at that time, i.e. people were afraid of the authorities and the level of crime was much lower. These things can’t be judged one-sidedly: there are good and bad things. And it applies to socialism too. Now, after 1989 things are good for people who have got back their property, yet, for most of the people life is hard indeed, as they are forced to spend all their earnings only on heating.

Currently, I’m doing translations from Ivrit into Bulgarian and vice versa. I have a small room in the synagogue for that purpose. Of course, most of the work I do here is in favor of the synagogue. During the holidays I assist the rabbi, who is from Libya and sometimes I have to translate from Ivrit to the congregation present there. We have a tradition to gather in the synagogue on Sabbath.

Glossary

Moiz Isman
Istanbul
Turkey
Interviewer: Meri Schild
Date of interview: July 2004

The interview with Moiz Isman took place in his summer house in Burgaz, one of the Princes’ Islands, a popular resort in the Sea of Marmara. Moiz Isman has been spending the summer season in his summer home in Burgaz for the last 65 years. He lives on the second floor of an apartment building, which is located in a very well-cared garden.  It is quite a large flat, for only summer use. The house has 3 bedrooms, a modernly decorated living room, a very big balcony with a sea view, a kitchen, and a bathroom. Unfortunately, he has been a widow for 16 years, and has chosen to live alone. He’s such an orderly person that his house always shines. His lively personality, which spreads positive light all around him, surrounds one immediately. For this reason, speaking with him is very pleasurable. He always listens and gives advice. This is why all the family members are very close to him. He is someone who knows how to be young with youngsters. In spite of his old age, he shaves every morning, and does his daily shopping.  He meets with his friends everyday in the summer, and chats. At noon, he always dines at home, and then takes a nap. In the afternoon, he again meets with his friends and plays backgammon.

My family background

Growing up

After Ataturk's death

My wife Suzan

Family life

Glossary

My family background

I don’t have much information or memories about my paternal grandparents. I only know that paternal grandfather’s name was Moiz Menase and that he was married to Ester. They had lived in Istanbul but I don’t know in which neighborhood they lived in. My father didn’t tell me much about them. They died before I was born.

My mother’s father, Rafael Adevah, was married to Ventura. Unfortunately, I don’t know my grandmother’s last name. Educated people were very rare in those times.  My grandmother and grandfather spoke Judeo-Spanish amongst themselves like in all the Jewish homes.  They only knew this language.  The heating of the houses was less than perfect. The only stove would be in the living room, and the rest of the house would be cold. After he came home at night, my grandfather would wear a kind of long robe called “Kurdi”. This was a thin coat, with fur lining. He had his own corner in the living room, where he would drink his glass of uziko [raki]. 1

According to what I used to hear from my mother, my grandfather sold glassware items.  I don’t know where and how he sold them. Did he have a shop? I don’t know.  Like all Turkish men, my grandfather threw away his fes 2, and wore a hat, after the Hat Law was passed. My grandmother used to wear a dress like today’s ladies. She didn’t have a “sheet” [garment covering a woman, from head to foot, which is what the Moslem women used to wear], nor did she wear a wig like very religious ladies did.

When I became aware of myself and my surroundings, neither my grandfathers nor my grandmothers were alive. They had died young. I really have no idea when.   During those times, my grandfathers had no interest in politics. They didn’t even know what politics was. They hadn’t served in the army. I suppose Sultan Abdulhamid 4 was in reign, and non-muslims weren’t even drafted. 5

My mother Fortune Adevah, was born in Istanbul, in 1882.  My mother had 10 sisters, and one brother. I remember some of their names: Luiza (f), Roza (f), Recina (f), Ester (f).  My mother was the most beautiful one amongst the 10 sisters.  All of these sisters emigrated to the States and got married there, when I was only about 10 years old. I remember them vaguely. The only memory I have left from them is that sometimes they used to send 10 dollars in an envelope as a present to my mother. I used to exchange these dollars into Turkish liras.  At that time, one dollar was 180 kurus. [one lira = 100 kurus]

From my aunts, Esther, went to Cuba from the States. She married someone named Baruh. They had two daughters. (I don’t know the name of her husband, nor her daughters’ names.)

My aunt Luiza married someone whose surname was Biton in the US, and had a son named Rafael. Rafael Biton was a taxi driver. He came to Istanbul during 1935. He found us and stayed over at our house for a week. We were the same age and had a very nice time together. Later on we lost each other again.

My mother was educated up to primary level.  She studied at the school in her neighborhood but I do not remember the name.  Unfortunately during those times the literacy rate was very low. [It was the introduction of the Latin script for Turkish (1928) that made literacy more widespread.] Naturally my mother’s mother-tongue was Judeo-Spanish, and her Turkish was almost non-existent. Because they didn’t have any Turkish speaking circles, there was no reason to force herself to speak Turkish. She was the head dressmaker at the firm called “Stregilo” (sewed shirts and blouses for women) in Beyoglu. She trained [vocational] students there.  My mother also spoke very good Italian. (I don’t know how or where she learned it.)

My father had two sisters, whose names were Viktorya and Sultana. Sultana, the eldest sister, was born in 1863, Viktorya, on the hand, was born in 1869.  During 1889, Viktorya married a gentleman with the surname “Yerushalmi”. (I don’t remember his first name). Unfortunately, her husband died after they had been married for two or three years. She didn’t get married again. She lived at our house for a long period of time. My aunt Viktorya knew very good English. I suppose that she was a teacher at the High School of the time. 6 She was a very unfortunate lady. When she had something wrong with her eyes, she had to quit her work at the school.  She volunteered to work at the ‘La Paix’ Hospital, where she also received treatment for her eyes. (I don’t know what she did there, she probably helped the nurses, etc). She lived as a boarder over there during the last years of her life. (I suppose being there caused her to draw apart from Judaism and to choose Christianity. She had no other chance of staying therefore free). But in spite of everything, after I got married to Suzan, she always visited my aunt Viktorya, and cared for her.  Viktorya died between 1978-1980. She had a daughter, named Mari. Mari grew up and got married in Istanbul. Later on she moved to Israel with her husband. She had two sons whose names were David and Daniel. They were both stove fixers/installers and house painters.  I don’t know what they did aferwards, I lost track of them.

My aunt Sultana was born in 1863. She probably studied up to the primary level. She married Eliya Guakil, who came to Istanbul for a touristic stayas he had emigrated to Mexico from Istanbul before. (I don’t know much about Eliya). They lived in Istanbul for two years, and then they moved to Mexico. They had two sons whose names were Moiz and Albert.  (I don’t remember the dates). There, aunt Sultana’s husband went into the oil business, and they got very rich. We exchanged letters for a long time, but later on we lost contact.

My father Salamon, was born in Haskoy, in 1869. He went to the Jewish primary school. He did his military service in the Dardanelles War in 1914 during the First World War [7 see: Ottoman Empire in World War I]. He didn’t have a job in Istanbul when he was young and in his 20’s.  So he left, and went to try his luck in France.  He went to Marseilles by ship. He opened up a haberdashery store there. He lived there for 17 years, married a Jewish lady, and had a child. One day there was a fire that started due to an electric short circuit in the store and unfortunately his wife and his child were poisoned by the smoke of the fire. Losing both his wife and his son, was too terrible for him, so he came back to Istanbul when he was around 37-38.

My father experienced some sort of a detective story event when he was in France. My father had a partner there. They used to go to the neighboring villages on horseback to sell goods, with their dog accompanying them. During a trip like this, one night, when it started to get dark, they went to a guesthouse. They ate their dinner and went up to their rooms. Near midnight, the dog started barking constantly. My father and his partner felt as if their beds were being pulled somewhere from below. Thank God, they had their pistols with them, and fired into the air. The gendarmes heard the noise and took control. Apparently, the husband and wife, who were the owners of the guesthouse, used to pull the guests down somehow and kill them, in order to steal their goods. Afterwards, they used to sell the goods, as if they were their own. 

My father was 40 years old when he returned to Istanbul. His time to get married had come. His circle of acquaintances introduced my father to a lady named Fortune Adevah, who had been born in Istanbul in 1882.  They decided to get married after a while. When they got married during the years of 1911-1912, my mother Fortune was 38 years old. They got married at a ceremony done at the office of the chief rabbi, as there was no civil marriage then.  [Civil marriage was introduced in 1923 in the new Turkish Republic] I don’t know whether they had a party after the ceremony.  

Growing up

I Moiz Isman [According to Sephardic traditions, the first boy born in the family was given his father’s father’s name.] was born from this marriage on the 25th of December in 1913, in Buyuk Hendek, Istanbul.  [Jewish district on the European side of Istanbul]

In 1916, my sister Ester was born. [In Sephardic tradition, the first girl born in the family was given her father’s mother’s name. The second child is named after his maternal grandparents.] Unfortunately, Ester was a handicapped child. She was born with the “Down Syndrome”, and she died when she was 9 years old. That was the saddest event in our family.

My mother was a very good housewife and a very gentle mother. As is usual in all the families, my mother managed my father. My father was a very clever, cheerful person who really had a sense of humor. He had a very gentle heart and loved me very much. I grew up in a very peaceful and understanding family. Both my mother and my father shopped for home. They had certain stores, which they shopped from. My mother continued going to her workplace, once a week as a part time job in Beyoglu, [Beyoglu, then called “Pera”, the neighborhood of the time where the most fashionable stores, cinemas, cafes and etc… were located] after having gotten married to my father. She received her payments on a daily basis.

The main language spoken at home was Spanish [Ladino]. My father also spoke very good French. I also learned this language, after starting school.  My mother only knew Judeo-Spanish. Sometimes salesmen came to our door to sell something. When they spoke Turkish a bit too long, she would call me and say “Ven Moiz; ke me esta embutujando” [Moiz come and see what this man is trying to cheat me with].

My family wasn’t very religious, consequently they went to the synagogue only at Roshashana [Rosh Hashanah] and Kipur [Yom Kippur].  All the festivals were celebrated as they were supposed to be. My mother did kol hamira in Pesah [Pesach] [Hebrew for cleaning of the house till no chametz is found] During Pesah [Pesach], besides cleaning the house thoroughly, we used special cutlery for the festival.  Twice a year, at the Roshashna and Pesah festivals, new outfits and shoes were always bought for me. We spent Pesah evenings with my mother’s sister’s family, Rashel Beraha, her husband Robert and their children Ceni, Moris and Rafael. We weren’t too many, we would be 7 to 8 people at the table. Sometimes at “Noche de Shabat” [a sephardic term used to designate Friday nights], we would light our candles.  We fasted at Kipur [Yom Kippur].  Though we didn’t pay attention to “kasherut” [kashrut], kasher [kosher] meat was always bought for our home. My family didn’t have any effective roles in the community, they were common members. We were as if in a ghetto, all of our neighborhood, and neighbors were Jewish. We were together during all the festivals and always had long chats at homes.

My interest in the prayers, and the synagogue being closely located to our home, made me go to Tefila [tefillah], Arvit and Minha [mincha] prayers every day when I was a child. My father sometimes came along with me during Shabat [shabbath] nights. Like all “Judyos” [Ladino for Jews], I had my Bar-Mitzva. I did not have any special celebration, just the ceremony at the synagogue.

Upon his return from France to Istanbul, my father, together with a partner, rented the store at the location of Yapi Kredi Bank, across today’s Neve Shalom.  They used to collect furniture from houses. They repaired them, increased their value and sold them. In this way he became a furniture dealer. They used to sell also antique furniture. There were also pianos at the store, which were collected from houses. I used to go over to my father’s, to have chats with him and to play the piano, everyday after school was over. My father was the breadwinner. Though our financial situation was not very good, we were still better compared to many. We managed to get by. He liked spending for his home and his family when he had money. He had a rich heart and liked spending lavishly.

We didn’t have the concept of today’s “going on holidays”, then. We sometimes went on picnics as a family on Saturdays to Hunkar [a picnic place on the Black Sea]. We would lie on the grass, and swing on the swings. We sometimes went there by boat, sometimes by tram. These vehicles did not take us up to the picnic area, therefore after a certain point we would continue with horse carriages called “Talika”.  Among the members of our family, we would only meet with my mother’s sister, Rashel Beraha, very often. She didn’t go to the States like her other siblings, because she had gotten married here. Her daughter, Ceni Benefrayim (after the marriage), is still alive, and though not very often, we meet or exchange calls. Her husband is the owner of the shop, Rubo, selling textiles, in Osmanbey.  However, due to the metro constructions going on in that street, their business did not go well and they had to close down the shop.

We lived in a house in Kuledibi, till I was 5-6 years old. [popular neighborhood amongst the Jews, located on the European side] Later on, we moved to Azapkapi. [the lower part of Kuledibi] It was my grandfather’s house, we inherited it from him. We stayed at that house, till I was 15 years old. I remember this house of ours very well.

It had a living room which we called the salon, two bedrooms, and also a very small third room. [like today’s larder]. We used to put this and that in that room, and whenever it was needed, I would sleep there. The floor was wooden. We had long mattresses, table and chairs, and a “Boron” in our living room. [“Boron”, a sephardic term, was a closet with a mirror, which had 4 to 5 drawers. We would keep the sheets and the towels in it]. My father had brought a phonograph home from his shop. Listening to records on the phonograph was very nice. We had a closet with a mirror in our bedroom. If I had been able to save it till today, it would probably be a very valuable antique piece.

There wasn’t a bathroom in the houses of that time. We had a traditional “alaturka” toilet, in a separate part of the house. [Old fashioned toilet, before modern water closet got widespread.]  My mother washed the laundry by hand, because we didn’t have a washing machine.  Of course, we also had a small kitchen.  We had a wired cupboard, kept outside a window that did not get any sunlight, instead of a refrigerator. Our food was kept there. We had a backyard and a well, too. Besides the fruits we dangled in the well, we also kept my father’s Uziko [raki] there, in order to keep it cold. My father also wore Kurdi [a thin coat, with fur lining], like my grandfather.

We first used a big brazier for heating, and of course burned coal. Later on we started coughing continuously.  When we investigated why, we found out that we were slowly being poisoned by the fumes that the coal produced while burning.  Upon this, my father brought a very nice porcelain stove. We used to cook coffee, quince, and chestnuts on that stove. We were burning wood then.  250 kilos of firewood would cost 125 kurus. It was very easy to light that stove, my mother used to do it. Only the living room was heated with this stove. Of course it was not sufficient enough to heat our house, which was made up of three rooms and a kitchen.

We had running water, when we started living in that house, but of course there were some houses which had no running water. These households had to carry their water from the fountain in the neighborhood, in barrels. That was very hard.

Generally, Tuesdays and Fridays were our bathing days.  If there was a necessity, of course we would take baths on other days. We would place a big washtub in the room with the stove. And we would mix cold water, with the water heated in a large pan, called “gugum”, and take our baths. The floors were wooden. We would remove the rug, and dry the floor after the bathing was completed, then we would put the rug back. Though we were taking baths at home, I would go to the Hamam [Turkish bath] called Abbas Efendi, across my working place in Karakoy, every 10 or 15 days. The women of the families would also go to the hamam, before festivals. On the other hand, my father didn’t go to a hamam much.

Our first means of lighting at homes, was karosene lamps. I studied in candle light, when I came home from school. The electricity at our home was connected either in 1922 or1923.  Our financial situation was just enough to support us, and thus my mother was responsible for all the housework. We never had any maids.

We had a completely white cat, called Pamuk [cotton], like the Ankara Cat [Ankara or Angora Cat, is a breed, known for its long hair, it is often all white, with one eye green, the other eye blue]. I liked Pamuk a lot, but the real responsibility was on my mother. She took care of him.  When he aged and died, both my mother and I cried very much.

We didn’t have anything like a bookshelf at home. I liked reading a lot. Sometimes I used to read detective novels, sometimes scientific books. I read Journal d’Orient  8 from the daily newspapers. At the time, the concept of a library did not exist. My family wouldn’t know such a place. I would usually rent the books which I read, from school, or sometimes buy them from a bookstore. I read the novels (detective and dueling stories) of the writer called Michel Zevaco [French writer who wrote novels about knights and duelling and chivalry], and was very fond of them. This is why I learned very good French.

I was always interested in electric wiring and devices since my childhood. We would buy supplies with my neighbor Jojo Sosino and make a lot of things together in ‘Selanik Han’ [Salonika office building]. We made a little portable radio together with him. When the first sound recording machines were launched, I had already invented some sort of recording machine. Sometimes it recorded, sometimes not.  It worked in the same manner as a radio did.  Actually, it was more Jojo’s invention.  Though Jojo was 6-7 years younger than me, he was very skillful in such things. After completing his master’s in engineering, and his military service, they emigrated to the States as a family. Jojo started working in NASA and is still working there. His elder brother, Rifat Sosino, on the other hand, became a reformist rabbi in Montevideo. Their father, Albert Sonsino, worked as the headmaster of the B’ne Berit school [Bnai Brith] for a while.  He had a lot of information about the Tora [Torah], and thus prepared our children’s Bar Mitzva [Bar-Mitzvah] ceremonies’ speeches.

Later on we moved to a house on Bankalar Street [a street in the Jewish district on the European side], across the “Goldschmith” [Ashkenazi school with German and Hebrew as languages of instruction] school. I lived in this house till I met and got engaged to my late wife.

There were neither horse carriages, nor cars, in the neighborhoods I was brought up. Everyone walked to wherever they were going. The streets were cobbled. I suppose we were 40-50 families in the neighborhood. Besides the Knesset Israel [the synagogue in the neighborhood], there were synagogues in Balat and Haskoy [the other Jewish neighborhoods around] (The Sisli Synagogue and the Neve Shalom Synagogue were opened later on). It was a typical Jewish neighborhood. We had two Shohets [shochetim] (unfortunately I don’t remember their names). These people also did Beritmila [brith millah] besides doing the shohet [shochet] work. We had Palachi, the hazan [hazzan]. Our chief rabbi was “Rafael Saban” [he was the grandfather of Rıfat Saban, who was the president of the Jewish Community in 1998]. We had the “Azara” [azarah] [the place where women sat in the synagogues]. There gathered around 30-40 women at Keila Shabat [keillah shabbath] [the prayers done on Shabat nights]. I’ve been going to synagogue every Friday and Saturday since I knew myself.

We used to play football and voleyball with the children, who were the same age as us, on the empty field next to the school, in our free time. All of my friends, were either from school or from our neighborhood, thus 98% of my friends were Jewish. We had a football team, called “Etoile” [“star” in French]. I always played in the matches, because I was a good forward player. We played in this team for 5-6 years. I played ball on the island till 10 years ago, but now I only play bezique and backgammon.

During World War I, a British unit used to live in Arapyan Inn, which was behind our neighborhood. The British, who did not have anything to do, used to play football, on the open field near the Inn. One day, when the British were playing football, the ball bounced from the foot of one of them, and flew directly into our house, breaking the window. The British, who did this, apologized a lot. My aunt [father’s sister] was living with us then, and her English was perfect. She told the British soldier that he can only get his ball back, after he fixed the window. I remember playing with that ball at home, till the window was fixed.

I started primary school, at the Alliance Israelite Universelle 9 at Kuledibi, Yazıcı Sokak. Our friends and teachers were all Jewish. Our language of education, which was French during the first years of our schooling, became Turkish after the foundation of the Republic [1923] There was no French after that in the Jewish schools. There were also Hebrew classes at our school. There were also two Muslims students in our class. These students were free not to attend the Hebrew classes. They were free to stay in the class, if they wanted to learn another language, because the lessons weren’t about religion. We also had Turkish teachers at our school, after the foundation of the Republic. I was a very hard-working student, and my head-master always sent congratulations home, which made my father extremely happy. Later on, the yearly fee of the school became 13 liras. 13 liras would meet the expenses of a family of three for 15 days.  My father’s business wasn’t doing very well during that time. At the suggestion and the advice of my head-master, I entered the Jewish High School with a scholarship, and graduated from there. Most of our teachers were Jewish. Miss Pardo came for literature, Mr. Natan for math, Miss Sidi for foreign language, and Mr.Goldenberg for music. I did not differentiate between the lessons, and was interested in all of them, and studied hard.

Before the foundation of the Republic 10 our school was closed on Fridays right after noon and was opened again on Sundays. After the foundation of the Republic, our school was closed late in the afternoons on Fridays. Saturday and Sunday were declared as the official holidays.

We had a Talmud Tora [Talmud Torah] at the schools. It was forbidden to give such information at the synagogues. [The law forbids any kind of religious courses given outside school] It was given secretly. There weren’t that many very religious people, and thus the need for a yeshiva [yeshivah] did not arise.  During those the times, all the Jews chose to live together. Our community lived around Kuledibi, Haskoy, and Balat. [Districts on the European side]. Later on living in Sisli and Nisantası became popular. We settled down in those places later on, too.

I wasn’t interested in politics. Of course, I would listen to the news, and watch the developments taking place closely. I remember Venizelos [President of Greece] coming to Istanbul to meet Ataturk 11, and the public applauding them with small and big flags, as they were passing by through Beyoglu, when I was 12-13 years old. Venizelos had a completely white beard. Both commanders were sitting side by side in a convertible limousine and were waving at the public.

We used to go to Florya for swimming by train at summer time, when we were young and around 18-19 years old. We also went to Moda, Kalamis, Caddebostan, the Princess Islands and Sureyya beaches.

I was always interested in motor vehicles. I used to rent motorcycles during my youth.
One winter day, I took the man renting the motorcycles, on the back of my bike and we rode to Kilyos. The weather was so cold that, upon our return to the garage, I lost consciousness for one or two minutes.  I took great pleasure in these trips. There was an empty field in Talimhane, where cars and motorcycles were rented. The Talimhane [a neighborhood on the European side] tour by car cost 10 kurus. [ kurus = 1/100 of lira]

My father’s last name was Menase. But with the Surname Law [see Reforms in the Turkish Republic] that was passed in 1932-1933 [actually in 1934], our surname was changed to Isman. The officer at the registration office told me that the surname Menase had been taken by somebody else. I had to find another surname. My boss at the firm which I was working at then, used to tell me “You are a very good businessman”.  I was inspired by these words, and had my surname registered as “Isman” [’Is’ means business in Turkish, it is attached to the English ‘man’]. 

After Ataturk's death

I remember the day Ataturk died very well. I was around 25 years old. Of course we were all very sad. We went to Dolmabahce, to watch the funeral ceremony, and to pay our respects to him. It was very crowded. Officers on horseback and soldiers were trying hard to establish order to prevent any chaos. Nevertheless, many were run over in the crowd. If we hadn’t been able to throw ourselves into a garden-like place near the street, we would also have been run over. Dolmabahce and its vicinity was almost like nowadays. Of course the streets were not asphalted, but cobbled.

The non-muslims did not serve as officers or real soldiers in the army till 1950’s. But they started drafting non-muslims as officers in 1950. During those times, even high school graduates could become officers. I was a non-muslim, who had graduated from high school, so they did not take me as an officer. There was an issue of being “unfavorable”. [At that time they did not want to make non-Jews officers because they were not trusted.  This was especially true for the Greeks and Armenians, but as with other applications which concerned them only, it was applied against the Jews as well] The ones who were announced as unfavorable, had to do compulsory service for 1.5 years. In 1936, I said that I did’t finish high school, paid 230 liras as compensation and did my military service for 6 months in Sirkeci [inner district of Istanbul]. I was in the quartermaster corps.  I was responsible for the depot of military supplies.  Whenever new soldiers arrived, we would dress them, provide them with travel money and sent them to their new places. The marches I know from that period [military service] are very few, I only know the Turkish National Anthem [lyrics: Mehmet Akif Ersoy; music: Zeki Ungor] and the Izmir March. I had learned these marches at school actually. [Izmir march is the most popular marching song in Turkey.] This was my first military service.

In September 1939, when World War II started, they collected all the non-muslims in 20 classes 12, drafted them again. I was drafted again as reserve and was discharged in 1941.  3-4 months after the war started they drafted the 1911, 1912, 1913 born men as reserves.  6 months after that the war was raging and while we were waiting to be discharged, they drafted all men between 21 and 41 years old as the famous 20 military reserve classes.  So, we, the three classes that had been drafted before were discharged after one year reserve duty.  I did my duty in Yozgat.  We used to do exercises every day.  They did not give arms to non-Muslims.  They gave tools to construct roads with.

I started my business life at the place of the famous glass merchant of the time, called Ishak Niyego. Our place was in Karakoy. [district on the European side]. We had a warehouse, which we would call a “factory”, and a shop at the exit of the “Tunel” 13 in Karakoy. The customers’ orders were taken at the shop, and then we would prepare them at the warehouse. The glass was processed according to the order or mirrored.  I was the technician of the firm, and my assistant was Israel Menase. (later on he became the president of the Jewish Community) I met my late wife Suzan there. She was the secretary of the firm.

We were all together 15-20 people in the shop and were all Jewish. I worked there for 10-12 years, till the Wealth Tax 14 was imposed, and ruined our lives. During the Weath Tax event, our firm was closed, and we became unemployed.

My friend and confidant Izak Altabev (he became a member of the Turkish National Assembly), was the General manager of the Koc Company [one of the oldest companies of Istanbul’s most important group of companies dealing with many diverse industries, from the automotive to the electronic.] During one of our conversations we had together, I learned about Vehbi Koc’s personality, and his being open to new investments. Thanks to Izak, we went to meet Vehbi Koc himself, owner and biggest shareholder of the company.  At the end of the meeting, we came to the conclusion that a separate “glass” branch could be opened within the company’s own structure. From then on I had a new job. We imported the glass from various parts of Europe. Hungary, Bulgaria, and Belgium were the countries with which we worked frequently.

There was also the installation, iron, and export divisions, within the structure of Koc. “Glass Division” was the last one that was founded. The profit made by the glass division within the first year of its foundation, constituted for the 62% of the profit made by all of the other companies. We became first in four branches with 62%.  38% was shared by the other three divisions. I continued working there for long years. After a certain period of time, I started receiving bonuses from the profits.

One day in 1971-1972, while I was the general manager of the glass division of the Koc Company, I received an invitation from a firm in Britain, which we imported some goods from. “Pilkingtone Brothers” was Britain’s most famous glass factory, had 40.000 workers, and everything was automatized.  My wife Suzan, and I went to Britain to visit the factory upon the invitation we received. They took us around. We went to Sweden, Norway, and Denmark with the overcraft. (the guide who showed us around in Sweden, was Jewish-Swedish) . We went to Austria after this trip. I had to make a decision, as a result of the meetings I had had with one of the division managers over there.  We were producing glasswool under the brandname “Izocam”, within Koc’s divisions.  The population of Austria was only 7 million and was consuming 17 tons of this material (Izocam) a day.  On the other hand, Turkey had a population of 25 million people, and we were only producing one ton a day. We learned that lack of advertising was the cause of the situation. When we returned, we prepared a feasibility report, and presented it to Koc Holding. We founded a factory, with 4 million liras, and I became a shareholder. We produced 4 tons a day of the material and sold one ton of it. After 6 months of advertisement campaigns, it was not possible to find glasswool on the market any more. The 4 tons we produced daily, was sold immediately. As a result, we enlarged the factory, and increased the production to 11 tons a day. As you can understand “I can say that I’m the creator of Izocam. As you know this is very good material used both in sound and heat isolation.  Our expert engineers take part in the installation process, where the material is installed in the places it’s needed.

In the same way, I also took part in the foundation of Aygaz [an LPG, liquid petrol fuel company]. We used special lamps at our houses on the Princess Islands. We used to cook our food on them. On one of the trips we made to Israel, I saw Aygaz tanks [liquid fuel tanks], and its smaller sizes. Till then, we didn’t have such LPG tanks. Upon my return, I immediately presented a proposal to Koc Holding. We did some research. A Jewish Italian citizen, originally from Egypt, had founded such a factory there.  We contacted him and visited his factory. I brought him to Koc Holding. He explained to us about the things that had to be done. The factory was founded with 4 million dollars. This factory today is very rich. Besides its capital of 4 quadrillion, it owns ships, cisterns, and quite a lot of land.

My best friend, partner, and the person from whom I learned about life, Israel Menase, unfortunately died in 1973.  I was 60-61 years old then. The glass work, required personnel. When my children said: “Father dear, this is enough, live your life a little bit”, I  retired from the firm in 1975.  After I retired, I did few projects on my own. As you can understand I have had a very stable business life.

Thank God, we always had people who had become prominent figures in our society. Veysit the lawyer, Ventura the architect, [In the 1940s, the synagogues in the Galata Tower region could not meet the demand of the population, especially during the festivals like Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.  So, the architects Elio Ventura and Bernard Motola, newly graduated from Istanbul Technical University presented the community with their new synagogue project, on which they had worked very hard for 6 months.  The Neve-Shalom Synagogue was built for the then huge sum of 300 000 liras and opened on 25 March 1951 on the location of the Aragon Synagogue, which had been built by the first Sephardic Jews who arrived from Spain in the 15th century] Prof. Selim Kaneti, the lawyer [Professor of Law at Istanbul University.  Prof. Kaneti was very well-liked by his colleagues and his students.  He died in 1992, when he was only 59].  Besides them, we also had very important merchants.

My father wasn’t alive when the Wealth Tax Law [see Wealth Tax] was passed. I was a high ranking white-collar laborer.  They wanted 750 liras from me. I was able to afford it. But on the other hand, they wanted 350.000 liras from my boss. That was a great fortune. He sold his house, and all of his belongings, but he wasn’t able to gather this amount of money.  The officers came, and he was sent to Askale. [work camp in Eastern Anatolia]. He stayed there for 5 or 6 months.

The World was witnessing World War II then. Inonu’s 15 political strategies had saved us from entering the war.  However, Britain and the States were putting a lot of pressure on us to enter the war against the Germans. During these negotiations, there arose the topic of the non-Muslims that were sent to Askale. Having them “set free” became a current issue, and thus they were set free. The ones who could return home, did so. Some of them died over there.  I don’t remember the names of the ones who couldn’t return. The businesses and the shops of the ones who went to Askale, were all closed down. They came back, started their lives again with a new strength. Most of them became successful businessman. The Wealth Tax had depressed us a lot, but later on we improved. Nowadays we live comparably more peacefully, as if antisemitism is over!

During World War II, thanks to Ismet Pasha’s [Ismet Inonu] correct politics, we didn’t enter the war. According to the rumors, ovens had been prepared in Kasimpasa. I did not see them, but there was such a rumor. We were following what was happening in Germany and in other European countries very closely, from the radio, and from the newspapers [we knew about those]. We were very scared. Foreign press newspapers came to Istanbul from Europe, even though there was war. We knew about the Kristallnacht, and the trains on which the Jews were put, and the camps. We were again drafted between 1941 and 1942, as civilians. Within the ones who were drafted, all were non-Muslims.  God created a miracle and protected us. 

My wife Suzan

My wife, Suzan, is also from Istanbul. Her father Stefanya Akkoen, married Mme. Rebeka in 1905.  ( I don’t know my mother-in-law’s maiden name). They had settled down in Kuzguncuk and had always raised their families there. [Jewish district on the Asian side]

Her father was a hard-working and a very clever man. He was engaged in the customs business. During those times most of the customs officers were non-Muslims [they typically knew trade and languages better]. Later on my father-in-law rented a hall on the Kuzguncuk pier, and ran a club operating as a casino during weekdays, and a cinema on weekends. My father-in-law was also a skilled enough bridge player to become the Bridge Champion of the times. Unfortunately, he was poisoned by something he ate, became sick, and lost his ability to speak. Naturally, we closed down these businesses slowly when he got sick.

Her mother, Rebeka was a very good housewife. They had four children, including my wife Suzan. They educated them very well. My wife had two brothers and a sister.

The eldest brother, Lazar Akkoen, was born in 1909 in Kuzguncuk. He was very religious. He married Sara (her maiden name was Aksiyote) from Kuzguncuk. She was a very good housewife. They had three children named, Rifka, Medi and Ishak. Lazar was working as a vice president at the Deutsche Bank in Istanbul, when he was raising his family. During World War II, in 1942 all the Jews working at German companies were dismissed from their jobs, on an order that came from Germany. Lazar, who became jobless over a night, got very sad, and emigrated to Israel [Palestine] with all his family. They struggled to survive there for a long time. Finally, Lazar found a job at the Discount Bank, and became the president of the bank in time. They had a very good life. Their children received a very good education and are all working at very good places. They married off all of their children. They have many grandchildren. Now, they even have children from their grandchildren. Unfortunately, Lazar died in 1984 and was buried in Israel.

My wife, Suzan’s brother, Moiz Akkoen, was also born in Kuzguncuk. He grew up there. He married Seli Alfandari. They had two sons, named Seyfi and Avi. He worked at an import company called “Porsemay Glassware”, in Tahtakale [a neighborhood], Eminonu [commercial district on the European side] for long years. He became a partner of the firm later on. They used to import porcelain dishware, crystal glassware, and crystal chandeliers from abroad, especially from Czechoslovakia, and Germany. Their life was very pleasurable and happy. During the events of 6th  and 7th of September in 1955 16, their stores were ruined, all their items were broken and looted. This sad event affected Moiz very much. He emigrated to Israel with his family. He opened up a “Faux Bijouterie” [French for “imitation jewelry”] workshop there. Later on, he also exported this jewelry to Europe.  He worked at this job for a long time. He retired and closed down his business later on. He has seven grandchildren from his sons.  Though they have aged a lot, they are full of life. Seli has been receiving treatment for osteoporosis, for a long time. Moiz has some slight sicknesses, but they manage.

Their sister Ester Akkoen, was also born in Kuzguncuk, and she grew up there. Ester used to work at a firm owned by a very rich man named Ahmet Diliboz, who had come from Russia. This man brought with him a lot of pearls, when he was escaping from Russia. He sold them here and founded this firm. This is the way he used to tell us. This firm was engaged in export and import business. Ester worked as a secretary in this firm, for a few years. Later on she married Albert Eskenazi.  They had three children named, Rifka, Suzi, and Moiz. When their children grew up, they emigrated to Israel.  Ester and Albert also emigrated to Israel in 1966, after their children.

Rifka chose to be a housewife after she got married. On the other hand, Suzi worked at one of the branches of the Discount Bank in Tel Aviv for long years. Later on she got married, and had children, but continued working in spite of having had children. She became a Division Manager. She still continues working for this bank. She also had grandchildren. Their son Moiz, on the other hand, became a total vagrant. Unfortunately, he became the black sheep of the family. He usually disappears for a long a time, then comes back. The family becomes very miserable upon each of his returns home. Unfortunately we lost Albert in 2002; he is buried in Israel.

All the siblings, including the very religious Lazar, are all liberals.  All the siblings have close ties with each other and love one another. We always liked spending time with each other, and we’ve always been like siblings. We still talk at least twice a week on the phone with each other and meet once a year.

We lived together with my mother-in-law for long years. When my wife’s siblings emigrated to Israel, she also went to stay with them, during certain periods of the year. And she died when she was with them in Israel and was buried there.

My wife’s English was very good, because she was a graduate of the British School in Istanbul (see English High School for Girls).  Besides this, her French was also very good. Like I said, we were working at the same firm. We met and went out together. Her mother didn’t want me, because of my low income, when we decided to get married. Nevertheless, against everything, we got married in the synagogue in Kuzguncuk, in May 1935. (not the one that is in use today, there was another one on the upper part of Kuzguncuk. I forgot its name.)

At those times, the weddings were not celebrated like today’s ostentatious weddings. In the afternoon, as the whole family we went to the Novotni Garden, across Union Francaise in Tepebasi. We ate our dinner, and sat outside, as the season was favorable. It was very nice. We all returned home together and went to work the next morning.

After we got married, we rented a flat from the apartment named “Belvu” [from the French “belle vue” meaning “nice view”] on Bankalar Street. These flats were so large that we rented it together with our closest friends, David Eskenazi and his wife.  They had not had any children, so they loved ours as theirs.  They had two rooms, and we had two rooms and a living room. We shared the kitchen and the bathroom. As a result of the solution found, paying the rent was not that hard.

After we got married, Suzan always gave her family what she earned. Her family came to live with us when her father got sick. Later on, when the financial situation of Moiz, Suzan’s elder brother, improved, he took care of his parents. When my father-in-law died, my mother-in-law started living with us. Later on in 1957, she went to Israel with her younger son, Moiz, and died there in 1967.

I was working at Koc, when the Struma Ship 17 Tragedy took place. There were Romanian Jews on the ship.  With the help of our friend Altabev and Vehbi Koc, we were able to convey food aid to the ship.  We took the 2-3 people, who were saved from the ship near us, and gave food to them. ( I don’t remember their names). They were sheltered at the Orphans Protection Association. We arranged their passports at the Israel Consulate, and sent them to Israel. Nisim Palti and Mr. Brot were within the organization, and they arranged such things. Brot used to give the visas. Even my former boss had wanted to send me to Israel. I had gotten my visa from Mr. Brot  in 24 hours. But my family’s character was not suitable for this. I had to stay here. Mr. Brot was a Zionist. He was the owner of the shop called “Mayer” (the first multi-storeyed shop in Beyoglu). The ones saved from Struma told us how the ship had been bombarded. They had stayed on the sea for 4-5 days, and had suffered a lot of difficulties. Unfortunately there were 700-800 people in the ship, but only 2-3 people were saved.  It was a very big tragedy.

Then, Izak Altabev [was elected to the National Assembly in 1957.  He was tried at Yassiada after the military coup on 27 May 1960] wasn’t a member of the Turkish Parliament yet. We only had two parliamentary members, as Jews. One of these was Altabev, and the other was Abrevaya. During the Menderes period 18  Altabev was one of the people who was sent to Yassiada [an island on the Marmara Sea, 16 km south of the Bosphorus.  It is the smallest of the series of islands known as the Princes’ Islands.  After the foundation of the Republic, some naval facilities were built on this vacant island.  During the military coup of 1960, all politicians who were arrested, were taken to these facilities and tried there]. Izak Altabev was saved from hanging, but unfortunately got sick and had a stroke. He was examined by a neurologist who came from Israel when he returned to Istanbul. He struggled for his life for a month but died. He had a family, but I don’t know what happened to them.

My neighbor and friend, the lawyer Eli Behar, is actually from Thrace.  In 1933, there was a rumor spread about the Jews, claiming that they were cooperating with the enemy. [19 see Thrace Events] Because of these slanders, a lot of anti-semitic movements took place. As a result, the Jews sold their possesions for nothing and either emigrated to Istanbul or somewhere else. Eli is one of these families. He completed his education in Edirne, became a career man there, and came to Istanbul. He was the lawyer of the first firm named Niyego, which I worked at. This was the way we met. 

Family life

I returned from my second military service in 1941. We had been married for six years, then. We could have a family. Of our children, Selim was born in 1943, and Seyfi in 1945. We had been living in Talimhane, Taksim since 1942, and raised our children there. We moved to Sıracevizler, Sisli in 1958 [a neighborhood on the European side].

We used to go on picnics on weekends after we became a family. Sometimes on Sundays, we ate kebabs at the “Bursa Kebapcısı” in Harbiye, for 30 liras for four people. We went to the fish restaurant sometimes in Kilyos.

On Saturday nights, season tickets were bought for cinemas. In this way, we both used to watch the film, and the had the chance to meet friends. We used to go to Konak [in Harbiye] and Yeni Melek [in Beyoglu] cinemas.

We had our sons’ circumcision [brit milah] ceremonies at the hospital they were born in. (I think it was the American Hospital). That year I was the president of Matan Baseter [a local Jewish institution to help the poor]. For that reason the chief rabbi of the time, Rav David Asseo, was among the guests.  There were friends, family and relatives at the ceremonies.

Suzan took care of Selim and Seyfi very well. We never went on trips, leaving them to someone to care of them. Only when they grew up, she felt comfortable about leaving them behind, and thus we went abroad. We had the children’s Barmitzva [bar mitzvah] ceremonies at the Bnai Brith hall.

We used to speak French and Spanish, with my late wife. Of course we also spoke Turkish. We usually spoke Turkish with the children. In this way, the children became acquainted with these two languages when they were small.

We were able to give a good education to our children. Selim went to the primary school at Yeni Kolej. [Literally New College, it is a private Turkish school that has a reputation of being very easy to finish] He then finished secondary high school in Saint Michel [French Catholic school], and the high school in Saint Benoit [French Catholic school]. [In the Turkish education system, primary school was 5 years, then came 3 years of secondary school and then another 3 years of high school or lycee] He started the Faculty of Law of Istanbul University, and graduated from there. He is working as a lawyer. He married Verjel Abuaf, whom I love very much, and regard like a daughter, at the Neve Salom Synagogue, in 1971. They had two sons, from their marriage. In 1973, my first grandchild, Eytan was born. He was a very good student. He finished Robert College 20. He then finished Business Administration at the University of Istanbul. He started his working life. He married Sibel Almelek, in May 2004.  They moved to Izmir [third biggest city in Turkey] and settled down there, because of their businesses. My youngest grandchild, named Koray (Selim’s second son) is 17 years old, and still studying at the Jewish High School in Ulus.

On the other hand, Seyfi finished the primary school in Yeni Kolej, the secondary high school in Saint Michel [French Catholic school], and the high school in Ata Kolej. He then went to Israel for a year. Upon his return from Israel, he studied to become a dentist in Istanbul. Now he’s continuing on with his career, as a good dentist. He married Suzetta whom I regard as a daughter, and love very much, in 1975. In 1979, my granddaughter, Nisya was born. Nisya, finished Bilgi University. She is now the manager of the Jewish Museum. Hopefully, we’ll have Nisya married in June.

My elder son Selim, had a mild asthmatic condition. Upon the doctor’s advice, we went to Uludag [National park, south of Bursa] for one or two weeks, in summer. But it was not of much use.

We have become residents of Burgaz [one of the Princess Islands] since 1945. We had everything within reach there. The sea, the sun, friends, and the entertainments at the clubs. We used to spend our summers in this way. We didn’t fancy going to Bodrum and etc like nowadays’ families. We didn’t feel such a need.

In 1955, the 6th and the 7th of September events [see 6th and 7th September Events] occurred, which shook Istanbul.  We were in Burgaz at the time. We had bought the land of our present house then. Many looters who came to the island on freight ships, attempted to step ashore. But I witnessed the armed police, at the shore, 5-6 in number, did not let them do so. I went dowtown, with the first ship in the morning. Our firm [Koc Firm] was Turkish, so nothing had happened to it. But Karakoy, Sishane, and Beyoglu were all disasters. All the non-muslims’ shop windows were broken, their goods thrown on the streets, their safe boxes thrown out of the windows, their white goods thrown out of the windows, thorn rolls of fabric on the streets… I can not tell you what more horrible scenes there were. There were the stores of the Greeks in Karakoy, and they were usually engaged in the dye business. All of their goods were ruined and looted. A very big emigration on the part of the Greeks and also the Jews from Istanbul took place, after this event.

When we were raising our family, we especially always celebrated Pesah and Hanuka [Chanukkah]. We took a lot of care to do as required. I still recite the Shema in the mornings and at nights. I always wanted my children to go the synagogue more often. But it didn’t happen that way. My elder son Selim, was a student of Saint Michel, and there was school on Saturdays then. I had sent Selim to Mahazike Tora 21. Nisim Behar was his teacher there. When he said “Oh! How can you go to school on Saturdays”, my son Selim lost his interest in the synagogue. Now, he only goes to the synagogue when it is required to do so.

Seyfi learned how to read and write in Hebrew when he was in Israel. He is a little bit more interested. But he also only goes to the synangogue when it is required to do so. On the other hand, I go to the synagogue every week on the island. During winter, I sometimes go to the Sisli Synagogue. I always said to my children to teach Judaism to my grandchildren. Thanks to my daughter-in-laws, they did whatever they could have done about it. Because they themselves do not care too much, the grandchildren don’t either. But thank God, all of them are aware of their Jewishness and are proud of it.

We were very proud of the State of Israel when it was founded. But nevertheless we never spoke about Israel and its politics, with the major public.  We never thought of emigrating to Israel while our children were educated and married here, though I have Zionist ideas.

My first car, was a Vauxhall with 6 cylinders, in 1951, a British car brand. The gears would not function properly, the car itself and its wheels were high. When I drove at 70 km/hour, I thought I was flying. Later on I bought an Opel for 25.000 liras. I sold that one for 40.000 liras and bought a bigger Opel. Later on I bought a Captain Opel, at 6000 km, for 57.000 liras, from a Chief of Police. I sold it for 90.000 liras and bought one of the cars we were producing at Koc Holding [the biggest business holding in Turkey dealing in banking, construction, automotive, all sorts of production, energy, trade sectors.  The business started with the small grocery shop opened by the patriarch Vehbi Koc in 1917. Today, it is a huge business holding] called Dogan. [Turkish representative of the Italian Fiat cars] In spite of my children being angry at me, I’ve been driving for 51 years.

We went to Europe 2-3 times, when we had our car. We also went abroad 1 or 2 times by plane.  We went all around Switzerland, France and Britain, with Suzan and Leon Alaton (very close friends). We spent very cheerful holidays.

Risar Hazday and Rabenu Aruete, both my classmates and neighborhood friends, had emigrated to France. During our first trip to France, with my wife, I searched for Rabenu and found him. He had become the representative of “Barletta” motorcycles. [an Italian make motorcycle.] He used to import them to France and sell them.  He had become a very important and a very rich man. I had to get permission from three people in order to reach him. He was very happy to be with us, he took very good care of us. He had changed his name to “Benoit Aruet”. I wasn’t able to find my other friend, despite all the search I did for him.

When my elder son, Selim, graduated from high school, we took him with us and went around Europe. On another occasion, we went to Switzerland with the lawyer Eliya Behar and his wife, Rejin. (both our neighbor and close friend). Rejin’s brother, Isak Menase, was living in Switzerland. We stayed at a hotel, and they stayed over at their siblings’. We went around together every day. They were very hospitable. They didn’t let us spend a penny. We went to Britain from there. The trips I liked most, were the ones we made to Israel. I t is always nice to be with my late wife’s siblings. We like each other a lot, because we are like a very big family.

We celebrated our 50th marriage anniversary, with our family and close friends, at Bizim Tepe [the association of Robert College graduates, a club with a Bosphorus view.] We were around 50-60 people, it was a very special and a very pleasurable night. The video show, which my son Seyfi had prepared, made us and our friends spend a very nice time. It was very good that we had prepared that night.

Unfortunately, my wife Suzan got very sick, and though we did everything to save her, we couldn’t. She died in 1989, and was buried in Arnavutkoy. [The sephardic cemetry in Ulus was always called Arnavutkoy]. I miss her so much that, I go to visit her very often, and talk to her from heart to heart.

I never experienced any anti-semitic event, targeted at my family or myself. There was the issue of “Citizen, speak Turkish”, which scared us. 22 Like I said, our families at home barely knew any Turkish. They were harassed by people on the street, who heard them talk. Our Turkish had started with the foundation of the Republic, when the education at school started being in Turkish. Naturally, we were very much affected by the Wealth Tax and the slogan “Citizen, speak Turkish”. The Jews’ accents almost always differed from the Turks, due to the upbringing they had at homes, and due to the way their families used to speak. They used to make fun of us slyly. They would make remarks such as “Hoow are youuu, arre youu okaaay?’.  Another remark that was made, for me and my wife to be, Suzan, when we were going around in Kuzguncuk: “Sooo, now arre youuu goiing to Tarlaabasiii?”. Naturally we were sad, but these events were not as destrucrive as The Wealth Tax.

During the attack of the Neve Salom in 1986 23, I was in Burgaz. We came to Istanbul at once and did whatever we could do. Those days were horrible.

I like the opinions of the today’s government, anyways. They did no harm to us. He [Prime Minister Erdogan] visited the chief rabbi at his home, after the attacks to the synagogues on 15th of November in 2004. [see Bombing of the Istanbul Synagogues] 24 I was in Abant with a big group, on a tour organized by the Protecting the Poor Association. [Bnai Brith]. We heard the news there and came back immediately.

Also, from the hostile acts against the Greeks in 1955 and in 1964, a few Jewish families of Greek origin, had also been harmed. They were exiled from here. As far as I can remember, the Azuz family and the Nahmiyas family left Istanbul, at once.

I don’t know of any “Selaniklis” or “Donmes” 25 I know one or two Karaite 26 families. One of them is Leon Coskun. I once went to their synagogues, for a funeral ceremony. The structure and pattern of the prayers they were chanting, were like the ones we chanted at Kipur. It wasn’t different from ours at all.

I did volunteer work for the community in the years of 1958 and 1959. I first worked at Matan Baseter Birkurholim. 27 Later on I did different jobs at the Associations of Protecting the Orphans, and Protecting the Poor, and the Kizba. 28

When I was the Vice-President at Matan Baseter, we would determine the poor families, would do research about the ones who had applied, then we would take food and the financial aid to them. There was everything in the packages, required for a festival, at the time of the Pesah Festivals.

We would help the children of the families, who were in need, at the Association of Protecting the Orphans, in Ortakoy. Rone Somak was the president, and I was the Vice-President. Some of the families would give their Friday, Festival or family dinners here. We would meet the needs of the children, with the money we earned from these organizations. The office of the chief rabbi, would support us, whenever there was a need. Our expenses were too much. As you know, we would take care of the children in Burgaz, in the colony, in summer time [this is a place where the children are taken care of all throughout the summer, we can call it a summer camp]. This place was not chic and well equipped till now. The total number of children which was 60 in the beginning, fell to 25.  Emigration to Israel played a role in this. Besides, some were old enough for marriage, and they got married. We worked for long years, till the place of the Association Protecting the Orphans was closed in Ortakoy (I don’t remember the date). They rented this place to a firm which was selling medicine supplies, for a very cheap price. Later on, the Community wanted an increase, but the other side didn’t want to increase the rent. So we ended up at court. Finally, they got out of the building. This building is still empty today. Naturally it wasn’t well kept, and now it’s old and shabby. I moved this institution with Albert Yanni, to the old building of Alliance Israelite [The old Alliance school at Yazıcı Street, a neighborhood on the European side]. The school was closed anyways. We turned the classes into dormitories. Only one or two classes were left as they were. They came to Burgaz during summer time. We gave the remaining children, who were small, to families, in exchange of their care charges. We always kept on eye on those children. We were responsible for them. The families, who were taking care of the children, both received financial and moral help. In this way, children also lived in a family atmosphere. Due to this situation existing, the institution got closed. It exists today, but I don’t know what they are doing. We took these children to a villa in Burgaz, which was donated to the institution by a citizen from our community. (We call this villa either a “summer camp” or a “colony”). We used collect money from philanthropists, in order to cover for the expenses of the place. I had put a lot of work into this issue. With this money, food for children was bought, the cook was paid, the head-mistress’s salary was paid, and the other daily expenses were paid. The head-mistress was at the same time the head-mistress of the Orphelinat, in winter. Only the head-mistress, from the personnel was Jewish. Later on, they said: “Don’t collect any money, we established a coordination, from now on, they will manage the money business”. The children of the Orphanage and the Association, of Protecting the Poor, benefited from these facilities on the island for two months. The children of the orphanage would stay in the school building, before coming to the colony, and thus get bored. They became happy in an unbelievable way when they came to the island. Every family in Burgaz would make donations here. Most of them would dine here. A lot of activities were prepared, and expenses of the place were tried to be covered in this way. Today the colony expenses is always a big problem, as everything is much more expensive. Anyways, as you know, during the last years, we also serve our old folks here. Against all the difficulties, everyone receiving service from here, is very happy.

I became a member of Bnai Brith in 1965.  Then I worked as the president in the colony, for 6-7 years. I did different jobs at the Bnai Brith.  Presidency of Local Commissioning, was one of them. We had organized great balls with the late Lazarro Franko [the owner of the first many storeyed shop in Beyoglu] during the Purim Festivals, either at our building or in Hilton. We did twice in Hilton. We had earned real good income. Like today, we payed close attention so that the food served was Kasher [kosher].

Of my sons, Seyfi, was engaged in community affairs a little bit, he worked in the various departments of the Bnai Brith and organized many parties both for kids and for adults in Purim.  Selim, however, was’t involved at all.

I’m 91 years old today and have certain sicknesses. The major one these days is the liver cancer I have.  At the moment the treatment is going well, but you never know. I’ve had many operations. Nevertheless, I thank God for today.

I live together with my youngest son Seyfi in summer and live in the same apartment building in the winters. We are always together. We exchange calls with my elder son and visit each other. I was never intrested in the computer since it was not possible for me to learn after this age. As you know, I’m almost 92 years old. I meet my friends every day in the summer, and once or twice a week in winter time. We sometimes chat, sometimes play backgammon. 

Glossary

Avram Merkado Natan
Sofia
Bulgaria
Interviewer: Stephan Djambazov
Date of interview: March 2005

Avram Merkado is an energetic and active man. A former mountaineer, even now he still continues to go on excursions and mountain treks. In the mountains he also met his former late wife Nina and his present wife Simha, who is 15 years younger than him. They both live in Borovo (one of the nice residential districts in Sofia) in a two-room panel flat owned by his wife. He gets very upset when he speaks about the time he spent in the camp in Somovit on the Danube in 1943, from where the deportation of the Bulgarian Jews should have started. He says that he suffers from nervous breakdowns since then and starts crying while talking about that. He likes more the times before 1989 when democracy came to Bulgaria, although he did not agree with all activities of the ruling Bulgarian Communist Party, of which he was a member. Now he does not complain of poverty thanks to the aid of the Jewish organizations 'The Claims Conference' and 'American Joint' [1] and he regularly takes part in the life of the Jewish community in Sofia, which adds meaning to his life, although he is not religious.

My ancestors came to the Balkan Peninsula from Spain in 1492 during the time of the Ottoman Empire. [2] Then the Turkish authorities welcomed them because there were a lot of intelligent people among them – physicians, merchants... They settled throughout the Balkan Peninsula. My paternal grandfather's family is from Karlovo and my grandmother is from Tsarigrad [Istanbul]. I do not know how they met. My paternal grandmother did not know Bulgarian very well – she spoke Spanish [Ladino] and Turkish. I do not know my grandfather Mois Natan – he died early. He was a confectioner and as far as I know he had a workshop for confectionery, which he sold to various coffee shops. He lived in Varna and died there. I don't think my grandmother Sultana (Duda) worked – she gave birth to 13 children, but a lot of them died. When she gave birth to my father, he was taken out of the house and into the yard according to some old Jewish tradition. A cousin of theirs passed along, tossed a coin and bought him in this way. That's why my father's name is Merkado (bought) and his name written in the municipality records is Eliezer. That is a tradition typical for the Sephardi Jews. [3] I will try to explain it. Before Merkado there were other children who had died. At that moment he was the only child and the only son. There is a ritual in the Jewish tradition that the relatives should 'buy' the child so that they would all take care of him and he would live. This is some kind of guardianship, which increases his chances of survival even if his parents are very poor. According to the ritual the child lives with his parents but they do not buy him anything until he himself would ask them to do it. That is done to keep the children. After my father four more sons were born.

I do not know where exactly my grandfather Mois and my grandmother Sultana lived. They did not have their own house. They paid rent in various places. They spoke mostly Spanish, which we now call Ladino – an old Spanish dialect. [4] They also knew Turkish. My grandmother understood a little Bulgarian. They did not have any maids. I do not know if my grandfather was religious, but my grandmother was not very religious. My grandfather had three brothers: Nissim, Haham, Haim and one sister Ernestina. I know only her, as she is the youngest. She lived in Plovdiv. Once I went on a business trip there and my father asked me to find her and greet her. My grandmother had one sister who lived in Varna. She had two daughters and one son and during the Law for Protection of the Nation [5] in 1941 they were forced to leave Bulgaria because they were Turkish citizens, as was my grandmother. They were from Istanbul. I was in Varna visiting my grandmother when they left for Turkey. [6] Her name was Roza and her children – Beka, Lili and Alfred. I do not know how my grandfather dressed by my grandmother wore plain clothes.

My maternal grandfather's name was Avram Geron and my grandmother – Simha. He had a business with leather – he went from village to village, collected leather, processed it and sold it. I remember him. I was six or seven years old when he died and my grandmother died later when I was a university student. They also knew only Spanish [Ladino] and Turkish. They lived in Razgrad, but they did not have their own flat. They had three daughters – Rebeka, Ester and Rashel, and one son Yosif Geron. He was the eldest. During the [First] Balkan War [7] and World War I [8] my uncle and my grandfather enlisted as soldiers. Then the family moved to Ruse and my mother, who was the eldest of the sisters, worked as a seamstress to support her mother and sisters. They did not live in their own flat there either. They dressed in plain clothes. My maternal grandparents were religious, went to the synagogue and we celebrated with them the high holidays like Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. My uncle was also religious but his sisters were not. My grandparents did not go on vacations and they did not have maids.

The Jewish community lived in the Jewish neighborhood which was outside the center of the town. It consisted mostly of one-floor houses and not only Jews lived there. The place where I lived from 4-5 years of age until 13 years of age had four houses in one yard. Jews lived in two of the houses and Bulgarians in the other two. Throughout the years we kept in touch with the children of our Bulgarian neighbors. The mother in one of the families died young and my mother also looked after the children. Turkish people also lived next to us. [9] All the children from the nearby houses gathered together and played games. Our house had three rooms and a kitchen. The four of us – my parents, my brother and I lived there. My grandmother and my uncle paid rent in another house. We had a toilet, a bath and electricity.

There were two synagogues in Ruse –one of them was owned by the Sephardi Jews. It was big and beautiful. The other one was owned by the Ashkenazi Jews. There were two or three religious officials in the Sephardi synagogue and one chazzan in the Ashkenazi one. The rabbi is something like the bishop. He is more of a teacher than a preacher. There was also a shochet and a slaughter house at the synagogue. We brought there hens and chickens. Around 50 000 people lived in Ruse at that time. The Jewish community was around 3 000 people. There was a Jewish primary school. I graduated that school and so did most of the Jewish children. The school was a one-floor house in the Jewish neighborhood. Besides the big synagogue in Ruse there was a smaller one – midrash. The Ashkenazi synagogue is nowadays a club of the Shalom organization [10]. After 9th September 1944 [11] and the emigration of the Jews [12] it was turned into a gym. The walls of the old synagogue are more or less one meter thick. There was one enormous chandelier brought probably from Austria. I do not know if the synagogue is working now, because it is in a decrepit state. The smaller synagogue was demolished when the street to the river was constructed before 1944. The club of the lobby 'Bnai Brith' was next to that synagogue. Weddings, balls and parties were organized there because there was a big hall. It was a very elegant house and opposite it there was another big house, whose first floor was taken by the organization 'Malbish Arumim' (meaning 'dressing the poor') [Jewish women’s charity organisation. It was registered in 1912 in Ruse and in 1920 in Sofia.] On Sundays the merchants went there to play cards and mingle. The chazzan was also a shochet. There was a small brick building in the yard of the old Jewish school. There were hooks on its wall from which the birds slaughtered by the shochet for the Yom Kippur holiday were hung. That school was demolished in 1940-41 after the earthquake in Vrancha, Romania [Vrancha is an area in the Carpathian Mountains in Romania, famous as an area of strong seismic activity. Here earthquakes take place in 8-14 years, with an epicenter 100 km deep, which determines the great length of the seismic wave. The greatest earthquake in Vrancha was recorded in 1940 and has a magnitude of 9.5 on the Richter scale. The next big earthquake is in 1977 and has a magnitude of 7.2, in 1986 – 7.00 and in 1990 – 7.2] and we were not allowed to access the buildings of the Hashomer Hatzair organization [13]. There was also a canteen for poor children in the yard. The Jewish school was with 20-25 children in each class and a junior high school – four years of primary school and three years of junior high school. Most of the Jewish children first studied in the Jewish school and then in a Bulgarian high school or technical school. We also studied religious subjects. We studied Jewish literature, Jewish history and Jewish religion – Tannakh. On Friday evenings we were taken to the synagogue and the older students read the prayer. My brother Mois was one of the chazzans there when he was in the third grade. He is still religious and goes to the synagogue. He read the prayers and tried to follow the prescriptions.

At that time there was a variety of Jewish professions. There were rich merchants, street vendors, craftsmen, porters, factory owner such as Avram Ventura. He owned the 'Zhiti' factory, which manufactured bolts, rivets and nails. There were also Jewish workers, but there was also that very nice organization of the Jewish community 'Malbish Arumim', which raised money from the rich and gave breakfast and lunch to the poor children in the Jewish school. It was founded by the Jewish municipality. In the autumn they also bought clothes and shoes for the poor Jewish children. At that time we did not feel anti-Semitism towards us. We were very tolerant to each other. We always took part in the parades and national holidays.

My brother and I took part in the sports organisation 'Maccabi' [14]. On all holidays we went out in uniforms, carrying a drum and a flag. We were part of the parade as were all people in Ruse. We sang various songs – 'Maritsa Rushes' [15], 'Quiet White Danube' [16] – the songs all sang. Of the Jewish songs we knew about Trumpeldor [17]. In fact, we were educated in Zionism. That was done by a Jewish nationalistic organization. There were a number of Zionist organizations – 'General Zionists' [18], 'Poalei Zion' [19], 'Revisionists of Jabotinsky' [20] and youth organizations such as 'Hashomer Hatzair' and 'Maccabi'. 'Maccabi' was a sports organization. We had a very nice gym where we gathered daily and twice a week we did exercises with a gym instructor. My father was in the leadership of 'General Zionists', which was a centrist organization. The other one, 'Poalei Zion' was a leftist, social democratic organization, and the Revisionists founded by Jabotinsky (a Polish Jew) had a right orientation and were more radical about the liberation of Palestine. Each organization had its youth formations. The Revisionists had 'Betar' [21] – they organized manifestations in the Jewish neighborhood dressed in brown shirts and black trousers. The others were 'Hashomer Hatzair' – they studied hard Ivrit and in the organization 'Ken' (nest) they spoke only in Ivrit and were getting ready for an aliyah (leaving) for Israel – to work in the kibbutzim there. And 'Maccabi' was also a Zionist sports organization – follower of the 'General Zionists'.

Apart from education, every family received the so-called steel money-boxes used to collect donations. They were called 'Keren Kayemet le’Israel' – these were money to buy land in Palestine. These money-boxes were regularly taken to the municipality, all the money was collected and sent to the Consistory. Thus, the first Jewish settlements in Israel were created – the Israeli lands were bought from the Arabs and the kibbutzim and villages were built.

Friday was a market day – my mother did the shopping – mostly fish from the Danube, vegetables, agristada [Traditional Jewish holiday dish prepared from fish with sour egg sauce, oil, salt and lemon, which is served on Rosh Hashanah.], vegetable marrows, andjinara [Traditional Jewish dish made by pickled vegetable marrows, oil, salt and wild plums, which is served on Rosh Hashanah.]. My father worked and my brother and I went to help carry the bags. Usually villagers came to the market selling their produce. I was sent to buy only yogurt from a Jewish dairy shop. My father bought butter, cottage cheese, cheese and yellow cheese from a Whiteguard – Nikolay. In 1938 some cousins of ours emigrated to Israel and left us their house, but later they sold it to another family. I do not know their names, they are from the Geron family on my grandmother' side and the house was sold through some middlemen to Nikolay and Olga Spasovi. They did not have any children. They were communists, at that time my brother also joined the Union of Young Workers (UYW) [22] – the youth organization of the Bulgarian Communist Party. We did not have a radio because we did not have the money to buy one. But they did and we all listened to the news and knew what was going on. We discussed the developments and talking with Nikolay and Olga, my father who was a Zionist and a religious man, became a communist and a supporter of the partisans. We hid in the house some of their illegal friends.

My father Merkado Mois Natan was born in 1893 in Varna. Then he lived in Dobrich. He took part in World War I at the front in Dobrudzha and he was wounded there. After the end of the war he escaped from Dobrich in a carriage because the Romanians wanted to arrest him for fighting against their army. Then he settled in Varna with his parents. His two brothers Aron and Albert stayed in Dobrich even when the town was annexed by Romania [23]. My father has four brothers. They are younger than him and their names are Aron, Albert, Marko and David. He also has a sister – Belina. My father studied until the third grade, which is equal to present-day seventh grade, and since the family was large and my grandfather could not support it, my father started work in a tobacco factory. The chief accountant of the factory was a socialist, who liked my father and taught him to do accounting. And until the end of his life my father worked as an accountant. The factory was owned by Turkish nationals who lived in Vienna. Later they closed the factory. My father was already married and my mother and he came from Varna to Ruse.

My mother Rebeka Avram Natan (nee Geron) was born in Razgrad in 1897 or 1898 – we could not find out the exact date. And we always joked with her that we could not celebrate her birthday because we did not know her date of birth. She had a primary education. At home my parents spoke mostly Spanish [Ladino], but when our neighbors came, they spoke Bulgarian. My mother knew Bulgarian because she had worked as a seamstress in a Bulgarian company and she could read in Bulgarian. My parents met in Ruse – my father was on a business trip there and a cousin of my mother's and a friend of his introduced them to each other. They engaged, then they had a religious wedding and went to live in Varna. They dressed in clothes typical for the times. My mother says that my father was a dandy and had a Bohemian lifestyle. When they lived in Varna and my father had a job, they were well-off. He had a big salary, but when my brother was born, my mother got sick and at one moment all the money was gone, even their savings. Then they had to move to Ruse, where my uncle offered my father a job. In Ruse we were never well-off, because only my father worked and my mother was often sick. We lived quite frugally.

We lived in rented premises. We moved a lot – we changed about five or six houses. We had water, electricity and an inside toilet in every house. We usually had two rooms and a living room. We had a bathroom only in the house of Nikolay Spasov, the water-heater used wood and coals. Then we lived at the house of a Spanish consul in Ruse – a well-off Jew. After the Law for the Protection of the Nation was passed, he realized what the situation was and decided to leave for Spain. He asked my father to move into his house – it was big – four or five rooms and a big living room. That happened in the autumn of 1941. His name was Aftalion. I do not remember anything else about him because I was a child then. He locked the furniture in one of the rooms and let us use all the others. It had a big yard, it was a rich house. We did not pay rent. He only wanted us to keep his house. We spent a year there and in the winter of 1942 the police evicted us. The state confiscated the house and threw us out. My mother had burnt her leg and was lying in bed – they shoved her in a wash-tub and threw her out. We were sheltered by some very close friends of my parents'. They let us use a room with a small corridor and we lived there until October 1944.

Everyone in Ruse had small gardens. My mother planted flowers, parsley, dill. There were no animals in the yards. We had servants only for a year. My mother was seriously ill then and we took a very nice girl from the villages. Her name was Kina. We had books at home. My parents loved reading. When we got older, we also read the books. They were in Bulgarian. We had 'The Dreyfus Trial', books in aesthetics and ethics. My brother and I read the novels by Karl May, Mayne Reid, Jack London, Maxim Gorky [24]. We also had prayer books, which my father used. I also knew Ivrit from the Jewish school. My brother still remembers it, but I have forgotten it. I did not buy newspapers, even now I do not like reading newspapers and I do not remember if my parents read them. My father was a religious man. He went to the synagogue, knew all the prayers. He knew Ivrit. He studied until the third grade, but he was very clever, he spoke French, Turkish, Ivrit, Bulgarian and could write in French. We visited my uncle on holidays and usually my father read the prayers. My uncle also read them although he did not know Ivrit so well. My other uncles (my father's brothers) were not religious. On the high holidays we gathered at the house of grandmother Simha.

My parents were part of the Jewish community. My father was in the leadership of the Zionist organization 'General Zionists'. My mother was not interested in politics. They were Zionists, but later under the influence of Nikolay and Olga they started sympathizing with the communists. After 9th September 1944 my father became a member of the Bulgarian Communist Party and my mother remained 'non-party communist'. My parents got on very well with their neighbors. When the mother of Tosho and Boianka died, the two children were twins, my mother looked after them. They lived in the house next to ours with their father Bai [uncle] Ivan, who was a tailor. They had an elder brother Lyubo who was the age of my brother, while the twins were one year older than me. We played together. Most of my parents' friends were Jews. There was a family, with whom they were very close and when they gathered together, they laughed all the time.

They were very merry people. They were the ones who sheltered us when we were thrown out of the big house. They had three children. One of them died recently in Israel – he was a famous conductor and composer there – Izhak (Ziko) Gratsiani [there is no further information about him]. I cannot remember a lot about him, because I was five years younger than him and did not go out with him and his friends. But Ziko was the leader of the high school orchestra, he even established a Jewish jazz band in Ruse – he was very talented from an early age. I knew his sister Mati, who was only one year older than me. Their family was very easygoing and when they gathered together with my parents, they never spoke about their problems, but they always tried to cheer the atmosphere, especially after the anti-Jewish laws were adopted.

My father worked all his life without a day off. He took money as a compensation for his entitled holidays so that we would make ends meet. When we were children, we were sent to our grandparents in Varna for the summer. Like my father, my mother also did not go on holiday. When my father retired and came to Sofia, we took him to a vacation home in Bankya. [Bankya is a small town near Sofia, famous for its nice air and healing properties and with its healing mineral water. There are a lot of vacation homes in Bankya. During totalitarian times the state leader at that time Todor Zhivkov had a residency there]. My mother was at a sanatorium at that time. And my father said, 'It turns out it is very nice to have a break'. My mother's sisters kept in touch all the time. Our cousins and we grew up together. My uncle did not have children and looked after all of us. There was even a tradition – on Sundays, our uncle would hire a carriage, pass by all the sisters and take their children for a walk. My father had a sister who was not married and four brothers. Two of them lived in Dobrich and I have visited them. Their names were Aron and Albert and after 9th September 1944 they moved to Israel.

I was born on 10th July 1929 in Ruse. There were no kindergartens then and my mother looked after us. We started the Jewish school at six years of age. The first year was something like a preparatory class and then we continued in the school. We played in the yard, on the street and mostly in 'Maccabi'. We joined the organization at six years of age and were divided into groups according to our age. We played gymnastics, children' games, I grew up there. In the Jewish school I was good at maths, geography. Our teacher was a very kind and delicate woman – Mrs Kamilarova. Her son is a famous Bulgarian violin player, Emil Kamilarov. I also loved literature because the literature teacher was also a very interesting woman. The subject I most disliked was Tannakh. Our teacher was the headmaster Ben Avram and when he entered the room he put me and my friend Aron Kapon (he died in Israel years later) in the opposite ends of the classroom so that we would not make noise. I thought that all the legends about Avraam, Izhak, Yakov did not sound real enough and I could not understand them. That is why, we made noise during the classes.

There was no anti-Semitism during those times. I did not go to private classes. My school friends were Jews and in the neighborhood we played with Tosho and Nikola Korabov (a famous Bulgarian cinema director) [25], because he lived nearby. We kicked the rag ball, played hide-and-seek, walked in the vineyards around the town. When we were older, we went to the river. Games were our hobby – we played 'ashitsi', marbles. There was a gym in 'Maccabi' in the Jewish neighborhood. There were around 200 children there. Various people were instructors in it – Aron Alfandari, Jacques Kapon – brother of my friend Aron and others. There was also a nice volleyball playground, a little football field and in the gym there were gym apparatuses. 'Maccabi' also organized tourist excursions – we went outside the town in the 'Sveta [St] Petka' cave. It was 5-6 kilometers from the town in some limestone slopes near the Lom River. We went there on foot, had lunch, and went back. We also went to a monastery for a walk.

Our parents did not have the money to take us anywhere and we did not go anywhere with our friends. Yet my father tried not to deprive us of anything. On Sunday evenings we sometimes went to the neighborhood pub. It was visited by Jewish, Bulgarian and Armenian families. During the week only the men went there to drink rakia [brandy]. Our father ordered kebapcheta [gilled oblong rissoles] for us in wooden plates and lemonade. They gathered with other families and it was something like a ritual for us. We did not go there every Sunday, only when we had money.

When our parents got together with their friends, they did not play cards. They usually gathered after dinner to talk (there was no TV then), usually they told each other jokes and had fun. My father did not play cards. He knew how to play but did not do it in order to protect us from becoming gamblers. My brother Mois and I grew up and studied together. Then he left for Czechoslovakia and I remained in Bulgaria. We had mutual friends. My father went to the synagogue, but not regularly. When the time for my bar mitzvah came, the Law for Protection of the Nation was already adopted and we all lived in one room. My brother had his bar mitzvah. At that time we lived in the nice house of Aftalion. My father threw up a great party then – invited all relatives and friends. Of all religious holidays I was impressed most by Yom Kippur, when you fast and ask for forgiveness. Purim was a merry holiday. We, the children, were dressed in fancy clothes, and acted out some performances. On Yom Kippur we did not eat all day and waited for the evening to come in order to eat. In fact, the men were in the synagogue the whole day and the prayers were told there. In the evening we laid the table with the typical Jewish dishes. For Purim we prepared some masks at school, but I do not remember what they were.

The first time I felt serious anti-Semitic attitude towards me was after the Law for Protection of the Nation was passed in the end of 1941 and the beginning of 1942. My father was left without work. Before that my uncle Yosif had opened a bookstore selling to wholesalers and had taken my father to be his associate. My father was an accountant, a traveling salesman, everything, because my uncle did not understand how to do business. He was involved only with his capital. They even imported goods from Germany – pens, rubbers etc. But under the Law for Protection of the Nation the bookstore was closed. My uncle took all the goods in it. My father remained without salary and any money. So, my parents started selling our possessions to make ends meet. We were also evicted from the big house.

We had an uncle married to the sister of my mother, Ester. He was a glazier – very enterprising and with a technical inclination. His only problem was that he was lazy. He earned a little money and then he closed his workshop and rested. His name was Simo Tsimerman. He offered my father to make table mirrors. They were made with tin frames, carton paddings and then the glass was cut. He and my father cut the glass, because my father had learned that after the big hailstorm in Ruse, which broke a lot of windows. Then my father went to help uncle Simo, because there was a lot of work and he could not cope alone. Now when uncle Simo saw that we were desperate, he offered us to make those mirrors. I also took part. We worked illegally and sold them to Bulgarian companies. My father bought a small manual press and I worked in the small room which our uncle Fiko Grasiani gave to us. I graduated junior high school in the Jewish school but under the Law for Protection of the Nation we were not allowed to study in a high school. It was 1942, I did not go to school and helped my father. We did not have working hours, but we worked all the time and there were a lot of orders.

We put on the yellow stars [26] and we were not allowed to walk in the center of the town. We walked only in our neighborhood. There was a curfew from 9 pm to 7 am, when we were not allowed to go out at all. We could not study, could not work and most of the Jews dug trenches, because the American and the English planes passed above the town on way to Romania. The Jews were also hired for laying on cables, in other words, for heavy labor. My brother Mois went underground. He was a UYW member. I was not a member yet, only a sympathizer. Some classmates of mine and I gathered and discussed these issues, but we were not allowed to become members, because we were still young. My brother and his friends went underground and hid around the Ruse region until they were caught. We knew nothing about them and my mother got sick from worry, not knowing if he was dead or alive.

When they were caught, we knew at least that he was alive. But my mother, washing his clothes soaked with blood, when we got home from the police station, cried a lot. Because it was evident that they had been beaten a lot. And after two or three months we were taken to Somovit. There was a Jewish concentration camp there, created firstly for Jews from Sofia. On 24th May 1943 [27] the Sofia Jews organized a demonstration together with the rabbi harbi Daniel [28], the police dispersed them and arrested whoever they could – only male Jews. They took around 300 people to the school in Somovit [29]. This is a small village near the Danube with a port – very beautiful. Then we were also brought from Ruse – families of communists, whose members were in jail or arrested for communist activities. We were the three of us – my mother, my father and I. At first they told us to prepare only hand luggage, but later they confiscated it and never gave it back. We were left with only our clothes on our backs, all our money was taken too. We were 38 people and we traveled by ship all night; in the morning we were in Somovit. 325 Sofia Jews were already there, only men. They also had nothing else except their clothes on.

After us a small group from Plovdiv, very rich families, was also brought to the village. It turned out that the Plovdiv municipal chief gathered them and told them to give him 50 000 levs each. Whoever did not give him money would be sent to Somovit. The people who paid in Plovdiv remained there. Those who refused were brought to Somovit. When they saw the situation, they wired someone right away, maybe they made a deal with the provost marshal. They spent only one night with us and were released the next day. Only one family remained with us – with two young children. The man said, 'I will not give money to fascists.' But his wife was crying all the time, the children were only 4-5 years old. It was horrible there. Everyone was telling him, 'Pay the money, because we would not get out of here alive, save at least your children and your wife!' And he would say, 'I will not give any money to them!' But in a week, he was not so sure any more. He offered his wife to pay for her and the kids. But she said, 'I am going nowhere without you!' So, in the end he agreed, paid the money and they were all released.

There were families with young children from Kyustendil and Dupnitsa in the camp. At one time two Jewish girls arrived – prostitutes from Salonika, Greece. One of them lived with a Bulgarian officer and the other one with a Greek. But when the deportation of the Greek Jews began, they hid them. But after a while they came out, the authorities arrested them and brought them to Somovit. Later a Jew from Skopje arrived, then another one from Kavala or some other town on the Aegean Sea. [30] They all told us about how the Jews had been deported. So we all realized that the same fate was awaiting us too. We arrived in the camp on 16th July 1943. The chief was a beast and on arriving he found a coin of 5 levs in my pocket. I had forgotten it there. He slapped me twice and brought me to the ground. Every night before the roll-call he beat someone. At first he began with insults and dirty words. Then he brought a man in front of all and beat him up. Depending on his mood he would beat one or three people on one evening. Their only fault was that they had found some bread or fruit thrown by the villagers passing by. 'Who eats bread?' would ask the chief. The man would step forward and he would beat him up. That happened in the yard of the school where we lived. We slept in common rooms on the floor and we were allowed to go out only in the evening. We stayed in the yard the whole day. And the villagers passed and pitied us. And they would throw us something. We were not allowed to go out and stood in the dirt there. Only one man went out – bai Sinto Eshkenazi, who was a very good tailor. When the marshal provost found that out, he would send for him to make clothes for him. Sinto went there with a policeman. Three or four policemen guarded us. There was a high fence on one side and a hill on the other. If someone stood on the hill, he would see everything. There was nowhere to escape.

The Jews in the camp were around 520 people. We ate beans soup and a piece of bread – morning, noon and evening. There was a streamlet behind the toilet where we could wash. We did not have any soap. We were full of lice. One of the Jews was a doctor, but we did not have any medical examinations. We had no drugs, no hygiene. We slept on the floor, one next to the other. If you wanted to turn around, you had to get up, turn and lie down again. The tailor in the village was a very nice man, a communist. Through him bai Sinto got in touch with relatives of ours in Ruse. The post clerk in the village was also very good man. And not only they – all the villages felt sorry for us... I am overwhelmed with emotions...

One evening when bai Sinto returned, he told us that two barges were getting ready at the port for us. And the next day a German officer with soldiers came. We knew what had happened to the Aegean Jews and realized that we would be deported. We could not sleep the whole night. The next day, however, we were not told anything. A policeman came, took bai Sinto to the tailor's workshop. We were waiting. In the evening bai Sinto came back and said, 'We are staying here, the barges left.' We started singing and dancing with joy. At one time we even danced a horo. The policemen who guarded us, started clapping. The villagers also gathered to look at us. We felt as if we were living a second life!

By the way, I do not know how in one night the villagers sent a message to Sofia about our deportation and it was blocked from there. Probably through the post office clerk and the local party organization. If we were deported from Somovit as first group, probably many Jews from Bulgaria would have been deported after us. But since our deportation was blocked, all the Jews remained in Bulgaria. We were the first group, which they intended to deport silently from Somovit – a small village, so that there would not be mass protests. After these events, with the help of the deputy speaker of the Bulgarian Parliament Peshev [31] in March 1943 when the deportation was canceled, the authorities tried to organize another deportation in April. It failed again. After the demonstration on 24th May in Sofia the authorities had decided to make Somovit the base, from which Jews to be deported. I do not know what happened but it is a fact that the two barges were at the port, the Germans came to take us, but we stayed. I think that the villagers called Sofia and the people there took action so that we would stay. When I am asked who saved us, I answer – the Bulgarians saved us. I do not know any names.

That happened in the end of August 1943 and things started changing. At one time that beast, the chief, was replaced. A kinder chief was assigned in his place. I do not remember his name. Almost every week we were taken under guard to the Danube to wash ourselves. We would sit under the willows and take out the lice, we felt human beings again. Firstly the men were taken to the river, and the next day the women. The chief did not beat us or insult us. In September, the children had to start school and we were taken above the village, where we started building sheds, a faucet and toilets. Around 15th September we moved to live there. There was no fence, but there were guards – the policemen. And we could escape nowhere.

Around 10th October the provost marshal ordered us to fall in and read us a release order. There was a lot of joy. First, the Sofia Jews were released, because then they were taken to labor camps [32]. In two-three days a group of people was released. On 16th October all Jewish families were released. Earlier Avram Ventura and 2-3 richer families were released. Probably they paid someone in Ruse. Avram Ventura's daughter Ana was killed by the police. [33] She had gone underground and was a secretary of the town committee of the UYW in Ruse. After that Avram Ventura was sent to Somovit. Then we were all released. We traveled by train to Pleven and there the Jewish community took care of us. We received food and shelter and the next day we left for Ruse.

My brother Mois was already in prison. Even in Somovit we knew that he was sentenced because we received letters from his through the tailor. We returned to Ruse and started making mirrors again. We continued to live in the house of our parents' friends. Mois was in the Ruse prison – in 1944 when the bombing started they were transferred to the Pleven prison. Even though we earned very little, we brought him food. We could see him once a week – we brought him clothes and food. We also brought food for the other 4-5 boys with whom he was imprisoned – some of the boys were from the town and the others were from the villages.

On 8th September 1944 the Soviet forces entered Ruse and we welcomed them. It was great joy. Firstly, we saw one car and communications troops installing a cable. Then we went to watch how they made a pontoon bridge over the Danube. And the first car – an open jeep with an officer inside – suddenly flew in the air – the people lifted it and carried it. The officer got embarrassed. 'Tovarishti, pozhaluista!' [From Russian: Comrades, please!] Then we went on a demonstration singing and the policemen hid away. The Germans had withdrawn their troops. After ten days Mois and his friends also returned form the prison in Pleven – they had stayed in the town in order to overthrow the fascist authorities. At that time the power in Ruse was also taken by the people – some of the policemen from State Security were arrested, others killed. I was already a member of an illegal UYW group – four boys and I had formed it in 1944. We collected money for the prisoners, for the people underground – we stole, we did everything we could to help. We were still boys – 14-15 years old.

We founded our own UYW club. We shouted on the streets – songs, agitation. We started courses in Marxism – Leninism. I enrolled in the high school in Ruse. I had one grade officially recognized as a person affected by the Law for Protection of the Nation – I enrolled in the fifth grade but I had to catch up with the material. We helped the Soviet troops in Ruse. The high school turned into a Soviet military hospital. We studied in the cinemas – as well as one could study there. We were only taught and not examined. Those were revolutionary times. We were asked to guard and to look for fascists. Once they gave me a gun. We were gluing posters all night and since one girl had been shot by fascist recently, they gave us one gun when we were working. When we finished the job, we returned it. We did agitation, propaganda, we did not feel like studying. It was not a time for studies. We were full of enthusiasm and we mixed with the Bulgarian youths. That lasted 5-6 months. Then we realized that we had to study and I graduated from the high school in 1947. I was a secretary of the UYW in the high school and deputy chairman of the United Youth School Union. We tried to attract more of our classmates. In my class all students were UYW members, except two boys who were sons of rich villagers. They did not mingle with us. We were friends with all the rest even after we graduated.

When we finished high school we went on a brigade [34] to build the Hainboaz pass – this is one of the national construction sites, in which the socialist youth contributed to the construction of the road – digging, etc. In the evenings we gathered around the camping fire and sang songs. We slept in tents. In 1947 I started studying in the Higher Technical School in Ruse. At first I did not want to go to university, because my brother was already studying and my father had a small salary – he was an accountant in the commissariat. Then he became chief accountant in the company 'Clothes and Shoes'. I wanted to become a worker, because I shared those ideas and wanted to help the family. But one day my father and brother persuaded me that the country needed not only workers, but also engineers. So, they convinced me to continue my education. I spent two years in Ruse. Then the Higher Technical School was closed and I was transferred to Sofia where I graduated the Higher Machine Electrical and Technical Institute in 1952.

I started working as an engineer at the construction site of the present-day Danube Bridge, which was then called the Bridge of Friendship [35]. I was the technical leader of the assembly brigades. My mother was seriously sick and my father was deep into debt in order to support our studies. I had to work one year to pay the debts. My father was also working, but it was impossible to support two students and our very sick mother with only one salary. So, he had taken loans from friends, he had not paid the rent, and because they knew him, they did not evict him. I started work and gradually I started paying the debts back. Then I transferred to Sofia in a military design organization – we designed hiding places, I designed the ventilation and other installations. I also did my military service there – that was in the summer of 1954 when we finished the bridge and I was conscripted to Boychinovtsi station [Montana district] where I spent two months. Then I went to the design organization. It was housed in the Jewish Home [36] in Sofia. I worked there a year and a half. I did not stay any longer because I did not like all the secrecy. Then I worked a year and a half in ‘Mashproekt’ and then in ‘Himmetalurgproekt’ [design institutions in machine construction, chemistry and metallurgy, designing plants in these sectors]

Meanwhile, many Jews started emigrating to Israel. All my uncles and aunts left. Only we remained together with a cousin – Avram Pinkas. My father's brothers also left and so did their mother Sultana. My other grandmother Rebeka died in Bulgaria. Her son Yosif Geron died here too. Our ideas and education were different. We felt good here, we had jobs. We said nothing to those who left – there were even members of the Bulgarian Communist Party who emigrated. There were political prisoners and a former partisan from Ruse who left. When their families decided to leave, they left with them. That was not a question of ideology or understanding. After the tortures and the sacrifices, which the Jews experienced during World War II, the people thought, 'Let's go to our own country.' That was the main reason why they left. At one time I also thought about leaving. It was when I experienced a serious disappointment at my work place. I was given a very big project – a furnace for carbide for the plant in Devnya [37]. That is a very explosive substance, because the carbide melts at a temperature of 2 000 degrees C by means of an electric arc with the capacity of 24 000 kilowatts. The whole furnace weighed 700 tons and contained three electrodes, each electrode weighed 45 tons. Everything was cooled by water. The project was very difficult and I invested a lot of effort and nerves in it. And then I was accused of importing foreign bricks and spending a lot of dollars, while I could have done it with Bulgarian bricks. I was under a lot of stress until I convinced them that those bricks were of a better quality.

When the furnace was started for the first time, it was sheer luck that we survived. The furnace had to be drilled with an electrical arc electrode. We started the furnace, but the workers could not make the hole for one whole day. At the same time the lava was filling the tub of the furnace. According to the design plans there is a steel crane where the worker with the electrode is, which is cooled by water because the temperature is very high. That water passes through some hoses. On the third day when the worker made the hole, the flow of lava turned out to be very strong because of the high pressure which had built up inside. It poured on the floor and the hoses melted from the high temperature and the water inside them poured out too. Water and carbide make acetone, which explodes. But the mist was so dense that there was not enough oxygen for an explosion. We all survived by mere coincidence.

We stopped the water, the mist cleared, but the carbide was being cooled in a revolving drum 102 meters long, over which water is poured. A colleague of mine had designed it, but he had calculated the volume of necessary water on the basis of the data for the output, which I had given to him. Yet, that output turned out to be 6-7 times higher. The drum started getting red. If it were torn, everything would explode in a second. Dmitriy, the consultant on the project from the Russian side and I sat there and waited until the flow subsided and it was certain that the drum would hold. If the drum exploded, the staff and we would be dead in an instant. No mistake about that. Maybe when the workers built the furnace, they made it more difficult to be drilled. Dmitriy was a very nice boy at my age. He was from Karaganda [an industrial city in central-eastern Kazakhstan – at that time part of the USSR]. There were a number of such furnaces in Karaganda. He said to me, 'I have done that a lot of times and never has such a thing happened to me.' Our first white hairs are from this experience. But once the furnace was started, there were no more problems with it. It worked without failure for nine years. That furnace is in the plant producing polyvenilchloride in Devnya.

We returned to Sofia and instead of being thanked for everything, some incompetent and gossipy person was promoted to chief engineer. I was group leader of the machine construction department in ‘Himmetalurgproekt’. That was in 1964. The chief of the department was a very good friend with that man Petko Hristov and brought him from Dimitrovgrad to Sofia. Probably Petko had been a very good engineer in Dimitrovgrad, but he was not a good constructor. So, he started making intrigues. All of the group leaders including me resigned. Only Marin Ivanov Marinov remained working for him and Petko started gossiping against him too. At that time, in 1965 I wanted to emigrate to Israel. I have a nerve condition ever since Somovit.

My nervous system is shattered and I had a nervous breakdown again. My physician advised me to change the atmosphere. I quit the job and became a teacher in an evening technical school in Sofia. I applied for emigration, my wife also agreed. I was already married and had children. But the authorities refused to let me go. Later I found a way to discover the reason – it was because I had designed installations for the military plants in Sopot, Kazanlak and Karlovo [38] - furnaces, in which ingots, which are later used to produce shells. My group made designs for the military plants and that was why I was not allowed to emigrate.

I met my wife in the Vitosha Mountain. I am a tourist and I still go to the mountain. Once my chief in ‘Himmetalurgproekt’, Marin, his wife Atanaska and I decided to go to Vitosha. It was February 1958 and we went skiing. There we caught up with a group of young people and together with them went to the ‘Fonfon’ mountain hostel. I got acquainted with my future wife, the next day we went skiing together and then we started on our way back together with Milka, a friend of my wife. I taught them how to ski and helped them, but I fell down and sprained my ankle. When I got home, my leg was swollen. And Nina Perets, my future wife, told Milka, 'Let's go and see him.' Nina is a Jew and Milka - a Bulgarian. But Milka was too shy, so Nina came alone to see me. Then we were living in a rented flat in the Banishora residential district in Sofia. In 1956 my parents and I changed the rented flat in Ruse to one in Sofia. That is how our friendship started. Nina and I married on the same day with my brother - 12th December 1959. At that time my wife's aunt and uncle from Moscow were visiting her. They were political emigrants. [39] Their names were Solomon and Rebeka Goldstein. Rebeka is a sister of Julieta, Nina's mother. The Goldstein family has lived in Moscow since 1918. They also spent some time in Switzerland where they met Lenin, who invited them to the USSR. Julieta and Josef Perets lived in Sofia. They were interned to Montana. That is why, at first we lived for one month at my father's place (my mother had already passed away) – my father was in one of the rooms, my brother and his wife, Yanka, in the other and Nina and I – in the kitchen. When Nina's relatives returned to Moscow we went to live at Nina's parents – we lived in one of the rooms and her parents – in the other.

Next year our daughter Beka was born – on 14th August 1960. My brother's son Merkado was born the same year. Three years later our second children were born – on 28th June 1963 Joze [Josef] waz born, and my brother's son Alfred was born the same year. We raised them – my wife was working as a technician in a laboratory measuring electrical appliances, and I worked as a designer. My wife died in 1976. In 1973 she was operated from breast cancer, she lived three more years, but she had metastases and she died. She was born in 1934. Before she got sick, we went trekking every year (a group of tourists start walking from mountain hostel to another, sleeping in different places and following a fixed route usually in Rila, Pirin or Stara Planina [The Balkan] Mountains). We also brought our children with us. I married again in 2004. I've been together with Simha Aladjem (her father's name) for ten years. We also met in the mountain. I have known my second wife ever since she was a child – she was born in 1944 in Ruse and her parents, especially her father, were great tourists. So, we met in the mountains. Her father Solomon Aladjem (upholsterer in a company) and her mother Rayna Aladjem (hairdresser) had been interned to Ruse and they met there.

My job as a teacher was very light, but low-paid. And I loved designing, so I quit the technical school and started work in ‘Vodproekt’ in 1969. I was chief engineer of the Machine department – we prepared designs for dams, pumping stations, pressure pipelines. My employers offered me to go and work in Cuba. So, in January 1979 I left for Cuba with my son. My daughter stayed in Bulgaria to study, she was already 18 year old and lived by herself. My brother and his wife helped her. I worked in Cuba for three years and a half. I was in a plant producing hydraulic installations for dams and pumping stations. I was happy there. I got along very well with the Cubans. I can say a lot about Cuba. At one time the Mexican Foreign Minister arranged a meeting between the USA State Secretary and Fidel Castro's adviser. The Americans said that they would lift the economic blockade, turn over Guantanamo and restore diplomatic relations with Cuba if the country withdrew its forces from other countries and stopped interfering in their internal affairs. Cuba had military missions in Angola, Mozambique and other places. But the Cubans declined and there was a lot of coverage on that.

Fidel Castro organized a demonstration. He spoke three or four hours and said that he did not make deals with the revolution and his ideas. So, the American Congress adopted a decision for serious measures against Cuba and was inclined to attack. Cuba raised into combat readiness all its arms on the coasts and mobilized half the men. One morning I went to the plant and the director told me that we were going to the site. We produced hydrotechnical installations for dams and pumping stations and we hired assembly brigades to install them. We got into the Volga [a car manufactured in the USSR] and left. After a while we reached a military base. The director told them our names and they let us in. I am a foreigner, but they did not want to see my documents, nor did they ask me anything. A lieutenant colonel welcomed us and showed us their lines or armaments – tanks, cannons. He told us that we should cover them so that the Americans would not see them. I said, 'Okay, what materials do you have?' We had never done anything like that before. 'We do not have any materials,' the army official said, 'Take materials from your plant.' There were such materials in our plant. So, the director, who was a turner, said, 'Well, Avram, you will be using tubes.' 'But the tubes are for water. We need planks for the supporting structure,' I said. 'Well, we do not have any planks, so you will make it with tubes,' they said. The next day we had to start working.

I was wondering what to do the whole night. We had rims and we soldered the rims to the tubes to make something like a supporting plank. The next day we loaded the tubes, took the brigade and started working. We worked for one month – without designs. They gave us food there, I got home dirty and dead-tired. Meanwhile my daughter married and had a baby. My son graduated the Bulgarian school in Cuba and returned to Bulgaria to do his military service. My daughter needed me – she was studying machine engineering with a baby on her hands. My son was a soldier and no one had the time to visit him. So, one day I told the director that I wanted to go back to Bulgaria. We went to the site and he said to the lieutenant-colonel, 'You know, the Bulgarian wants to go home.' And he said, 'No way, he knows too much. He will go nowhere until the end of the war.' It was the winter of 1982. I told them, 'I am alone here,' and the lieutenant-colonel said, 'We will find you a wife!' 'But I also want a lover,' I answered and the lieutenant-colonel burst out laughing, 'You have become a real Cuban!' In Cuba everyone has a wife and a lover. The Cubans are warm people, with a sense of humor, but life is hard and they are isolated. But the war did not take place and I returned to Bulgaria.

I came back in April 1982 and started work in the Hydrotechnics and Melioration Institute. I headed a section for the design and assembly of installations for automation of the water distribution. The work was interesting and creative. My colleagues were nice people and we achieved some very good results – we produced a lot of inventions and patented some of them. I worked there until February 1990 when I retired. The director asked me to stay and work on a contract. I did not want that very much because my children wanted me to help them. So, worked six months more. Then democracy came [40] and the institute no longer had money for salaries and fees. So, I quit. I founded a private company for the design of sites for purification of waste waters. My inventions are mainly in the area of water industry. But I was not much successful as an expert in hydrotechnics and melioration. I had two more inventions, but there was no market for them. I closed the company, the institute had also closed down and so had most of the institutes in the country. That was the end of my creative work. I am the author of nine inventions in water industry. I was offered to patent the last two. I tried to sell them to companies, but neither the state, nor the private ones were interested. I saw no point in paying taxes without putting them into practice and I decided not to patent them.

My children have degrees in machine engineering. My daughter worked in the Institute at the Plant for Metal Cutting Machines and my son became a technologist in the same plant. When the institute was closed down, my daughter Beka was left unemployed. My son was also laid off. He was offered to be a turner, and he accepted but he could not support his two children with that job and his wife was on a maternal leave. He quit the plant and worked in a private construction company, doing all kinds of work. In the end, he decided to emigrate with his family to Israel. His wife Mariela is a Bulgarian, an accountant. They moved in 1996. They have two children – a boy and a girl. Avram and Maria – pupils. My daughter Beka has a son Albert. She tried to find another job, for a while she worked in some shops. Then she enrolled in university again. She graduated psychology and worked for two years as a psychologist in the kindergarten of the Jewish organization 'Habat'. Now she is no longer working there. She is writing a dissertation in psychology at the Sofia University 'St. Kliment Ohridski' and she teaches classes there. Her husband is a Jew – Maxim Varonov. He is a programmer, a computer expert. Their son also has a degree in computer technology and already has a job.

I did not raise my children in the spirit of Jewish traditions because I did not have the time, especially after my wife died and I had to work, do the shopping, cook and look after them. And since one salary was not enough I started working on innovations. In the evenings when the children were asleep, I was writing and calculating in the kitchen. Then I started making inventions and I had no time educating them in that respect. The times were also different. We did not go to synagogues. Moreover, I am not a religious person. Even when I was a child and I was studying the Tannakh in the Jewish school, I was not interested in it. Now, we follow the traditions, not because we believe in them, but because they are traditions.

Most of my friends are Bulgarians, but my wife's relatives are Jews. We organized a Jewish tourist club in 'Maccabi'. Now it still exists, although 'Maccabi' is no longer active. Everyone who wants comes to our club – Bulgarians, a Greek, two Armenians and a Russian woman came with us. We walk in the mountains. In the winter we go to Vitosha. In the spring we go to the Lozen Mountain, Plana Mountain and other places [all of them are mountains near Sofia]. We go out on Saturdays. Before I was a mountain guide – I knew the routes and organized groups to walk in Pirin, Stara Planina, Rila. Now, I go to the mountains with close friends, Bulgarians, whom I met 32 years ago on a trek in Rila Mountain. We still keep in touch and get together. Some time ago we went to the mountains a lot, but now not so often because one of our friends Georgi has the Parkinson's disease. Every Monday and Wednesday we play bridge in the Jewish cultural home. We are a group of four people, and one man who plays with us when someone is missing. We usually play backgammon the other days.

As for my relatives I keep in touch mostly with the cousins of my wife Simha. I meet my brother sometimes, but he is very busy, because he has to take care of his wife Yanka. I also call my cousin Avram Pinkas. But most of my relatives are in Israel. I went there before 1989. In 1965 I went to Israel with the Bulgarian national football team – we were in one group with Israel and I went there for two days and a half. It was then that I decided to emigrate. I am not such a great football fan, but I had helped the son of a friend of mine, who was a student. My friend had connections and arranged my trip as a way to thank me. So, I agreed to go there for a couple of days to see my aunts and uncles. I had never been to Israel before that. My cousin and his friend there offered me to emigrate and convinced me that I would have a nice job. But I could not do it, and I already explained the reason. I was alone on my trip and in the end of 1989 I went for a week to celebrate the New Year's Day – the first year after the changes. In 1997 Simha and I went together – her daughters also emigrated to Israel – they have families and two children each. Their names are Adela and Luiza. Adela is a nurse and Luiza works in a bank. I had to help my son and his wife, because she was studying. He works in a construction company and she is an accountant so I had to look after their children. Simha was at her daughters'. We stayed there for three months.

I did not accept everything before the changes unconditionally, but the things we did – building plants, creating jobs for the people, I think that was something positive. Yet, we also made many mistakes – we imported old technologies, implemented bad economic projects which turned out not to be profitable. We built everything in a hurry. That angered me the most. For example, in Pazardzhik we built a plant for accumulators using an old Czech technology. Also, the plants for heavy machine construction in Chervena Mogila and in Ruse. We live in a small country, which is not rich in resources or in electricity, and yet, we built such enormous plants. Those were mistakes, which we as engineers and technicians in line with the contemporary tendencies in the world noticed. But I did not feel limited in my work and my personal disappointment was of another nature.

Out of the political events in those times I remember Stalin's death [in 1953], which took place while I was working at the site of the bridge over the Danube. There was a Soviet expert monitoring every engineering activity. When they heard about Stalin's death, all the Russians started crying. I was wondering how such responsible and high-level people could cry so easily. But they believed in him! I also thought that Stalin was a great leader, but then I was disappointed by him. In 1958 I was on a business trip to Moscow – we designed a department producing ball-bearings. Nina's uncle, who had been in the USSR since 1918 and was twice sentenced to exile in Siberia, told me how many people were sacrificed – whole groups of emigrants – Germans, Polish, and the Bulgarians were spared only thanks to Georgi Dimitrov, those were his words. I was positive about the April Plenum of the Bulgarian Communist Party in 1956 when Bulgaria similarly to the USSR criticized the distortions of the cult to Stalin's personality and his Bulgarian follower, Valko Chervenkov [the then Bulgarian Communist Party and state leader]. But when Boyan Balgaranov came, who was one of the leading communist figures in Bulgaria, to introduce us to the decisions of the Plenum and when he hit the table with his fist in answer to the criticism of some of the people, I knew that nothing good will come of it.

Nobody harassed me because of my Jewish origin. But I was very angered by the attitude towards the wars in Israel in 1967 [41] and 1973 [42] and the breaking of the diplomatic ties with Israel. That was a policy of the Bulgarian Communist Party, which disappointed me a lot. Because I had been to Israel and I had seen how they worked and how people became real men there. There was no industry in Israel yet, people were building with primitive technologies. Their settlements were green gardens and between them – deserts. People had a lot of enthusiasm. So, I could not accept the idea that they were aggressors. A colleague of mine, Tihomir Stanev, met me at that time, one or two days after the war in 1967 ended. He hugged me, kissed me, and said, 'Avram, I heard that you were wise people, you are a handful of people and you scared so many Arabs.' That was the only man who greeted me warmly, but the propaganda was unpleasant. The other colleagues did not change their attitude towards me. They were very tactful about the war in 1967.

I did not have problems keeping in touch with my relatives in Israel. My uncle David, who was the youngest, came to visit me in Bulgaria. I only had some problems when I returned from Cuba. My former director, Marin, with whom I went on excursions, offered me a job. He worked in the Institute for casting using anti-pressure of Academician Angel Balevsky [43]. But the institute was secret at that time. And Marin's condition to employ me was that I should not keep in touch with any foreigners. I had to sign a declaration. I told him that I had so many relatives in Israel and I had to keep in touch with them. So, I went to another institute – the Hydrotechnics and Melioration Institute. And my relatives continued to visit me. After the changes in 1989 I was disappointed – the mistakes which were made before that were exaggerated. That fierceness between the parties was very unpleasant.

The pension I received after I retired in 1990 was more than enough. I even managed to help my children financially. But after the inflation in 1996-7 my pension decreased significantly. We did not live in misery because my wife Simha worked in the Institute of Communications at the Bulgarian Telecommunications Company and had a good salary. We have been living together for ten years and she has never said anything about the fact that she receives a high salary and I – only a small pension. So, we live as well as we could and we do not deprive ourselves of the basic things. Now we receive a pension from the ‘Claims Conference' and we live comfortably. When our pensions were low we received aid from ‘Joint’. Three years ago we received aid in dollars from Switzerland but we already spent it. Now we take an active part in the community of the Jewish Home in Sofia. The women gather on Mondays and Wednesday morning - they do gymnastics in the health club. They listen to lectures, dance, cheer up. They also learn songs and do Jewish and Spanish dances twice a week. We also have our male dance club and there are women in it too – they are even more than the men. Overall, we are never bored.

Translated by Ivelina Karcheva

Glossary:

[1] Joint (American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee): The Joint was formed in 1914 with the fusion of three American Jewish aid committees, which were alarmed by the suffering of Jews during World War I. In late 1944, the Joint entered Europe’s liberated areas and organized a massive relief operation. It provided food for Jewish survivors all over Europe, it supplied clothing, books and school supplies for children. It supported the establishment of cultural meeting places, including libraries, theaters and gardens. It also provided religious supplies for the Jewish communities. The Joint also operated DP camps, in which it organized retraining programs to help people learn trades that would enable them to earn a living, while its cultural and religious activities helped re-establish Jewish life. The Joint was also closely involved in helping Jews to emigrate from European and Muslim countries. The Joint was expelled from East Central Europe for decades during the Cold War and it has only come back to many of these countries after the fall of communism. Today the Joint provides social welfare programs for elderly Holocaust survivors and encourages Jewish renewal and communal development.

[2] Expulsion of the Jews from Spain: The Sephardi population of the Balkans originates from the Jews who were expelled from the Iberian peninsula, as a result of the ‘Reconquista’ in the late 15th century (Spain 1492, and Portugal 1495). The majority of the Sephardim subsequently settled in the territory of the Ottoman Empire, mainly in maritime cities (Salonika, Istanbul, Smyrna, etc.) and also in the ones situated on significant overland trading routes to Central Europe (Bitola, Skopje, and Sarajevo) and to the Danube (Adrianople, Philipopolis, Sofia, and Vidin).

[3] Sephardi Jewry: Jews of Spanish and Portuguese origin. Their ancestors settled down in North Africa, the Ottoman Empire, South America, Italy and the Netherlands after they had been driven out from the Iberian peninsula at the end of the 15th century. About 250,000 Jews left Spain and Portugal on this occasion. A distant group among Sephardi refugees were the Crypto-Jews (Marranos), who converted to Christianity under the pressure of the Inquisition but at the first occasion reassumed their Jewish identity. Sephardi preserved their community identity; they speak Ladino language in their communities up until today. The Jewish nation is formed by two main groups: the Ashkenazi and the Sephardi group which differ in habits, liturgy their relation toward Kabala, pronunciation as well in their philosophy.

[4] Ladino: also known as Judeo-Spanish, it is the spoken and written Hispanic language of Jews of Spanish and Portugese origin. Ladino did not become a specifically Jewish language until after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 (and Portugal in 1495) - it was merely the language of their province. It is also known as Judezmo, Dzhudezmo, or Spaniolit. When the Jews were expelled from Spain and Portugal they were cut off from the further development of the language, but they continued to speak it in the communities and countries to which they emigrated. Ladino therefore reflects the grammar and vocabulary of 15th century Spanish. In Amsterdam, England and Italy, those Jews who continued to speak ‘Ladino’ were in constant contact with Spain and therefore they basically continued to speak the Castilian Spanish of the time. Ladino was nowhere near as diverse as the various forms of Yiddish, but there were still two different dialects, which corresponded to the different origins of the speakers: ‘Oriental’ Ladino was spoken in Turkey and Rhodes and reflected Castilian Spanish, whereas ‘Western’ Ladino was spoken in Greece, Macedonia, Bosnia, Serbia and Romania, and preserved the characteristics of northern Spanish and Portuguese. The vocabulary of Ladino includes hundreds of archaic Spanish words, and also includes many words from different languages: mainly from Hebrew, Arabic, Turkish, Greek, French, and to a lesser extent from Italian. In the Ladino spoken in Israel, several words have been borrowed from Yiddish. For most of its lifetime, Ladino was written in the Hebrew alphabet, in Rashi script, or in Solitro. It was only in the late 19th century that Ladino was ever written using the Latin alphabet. At various times Ladino has been spoken in North Africa, Egypt, Greece, Turkey, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, France, Israel, and, to a lesser extent, in the United States and Latin America.

[5] Law for the Protection of the Nation: A comprehensive anti-Jewish legislation in Bulgaria was introduced after the outbreak of World War II. The ‘Law for the Protection of the Nation’ was officially promulgated in January 1941. According to this law, Jews did not have the right to own shops and factories. Jews had to wear the distinctive yellow star; Jewish houses had to display a special sign identifying it as being Jewish; Jews were dismissed from all posts in schools and universities. The internment of Jews in certain designated towns was legalized and all Jews were expelled from Sofia in 1943. Jews were only allowed to go out into the streets for one or two hours a day. They were prohibited from using the main streets, from entering certain business establishments, and from attending places of entertainment. Their radios, automobiles, bicycles and other valuables were confiscated. From 1941 on Jewish males were sent to forced labor battalions and ordered to do extremely hard work in mountains, forests and road construction. In the Bulgarian-occupied Yugoslav (Macedonia) and Greek (Aegean Thrace) territories the Bulgarian army and administration introduced extreme measures. The Jews from these areas were deported to concentration camps, while the plans for the deportation of Jews from Bulgaria proper were halted by a protest movement launched by the vice-chairman of the Bulgarian Parliament.

[6] Nansen Passport: It is named after the scholar, statesman, diplomat and winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace Fridtjof Nansen, a Norwegian (1861 – 1930). After the end of World War I until 1921 he worked as a chairman of the World League of Nations. All his efforts were directed to protect the interests of the minorities and the small nations. He contributed to the organization of the repatriation of 450 000 prisoners of war from 26 countries. He also worked to settle the legal status and economic independence of refugees. The first legal document on the legal protection of refugees was adopted in July 1922 and later endorsed by 52 countries worldwide. That is the so-called 'Nansen Passport' which established the status of the refugee. All his life the humanist Fridtjof Nansen worked for the establishment of a common international status of the refugees, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. In 1954 the League of Nations established an award in his name.

[7] First Balkan War (1912-1913): Started by an alliance made up of Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia, and Montenegro against the Ottoman Empire. It was a response to the Turkish nationalistic policy maintained by the Young Turks in Istanbul. The Balkan League aimed at the liberation of the rest of the Balkans still under Ottoman rule. In October, 1912 the allies declared war on the Ottoman Empire and were soon successful: the Ottomans retreated to defend Istanbul and Albania, Epirus, Macedonia and Thrace fell into the hands of the allies. The war ended on the 30th May 1913 with the Treaty of London, which gave most of European Turkey to the allies and also created the Albanian state.

[8] Bulgaria in World War I: Bulgaria entered the war in October 1915 on the side of the Central Powers. Its main aim was the revision of the Treaty of Bucharest: the acquisition of Macedonia. Bulgaria quickly overran most of Serbian Macedonia as well as parts of Serbia; in 1916 with German backing it entered Greece (Western Thrace and the hinterlands of Salonika). After Romania surrendered to the Central Powers Bulgaria also recovered Southern Dobrudzha, which had been lost to Romania after the First Balkan War. The Bulgarian advance to Greece was halted after British, French and Serbian troops landed in Salonika, while in the north Romania joined the Allies in 1916. Conditions at the front deteriorated rapidly and political support for the war eroded. The agrarians and socialist workers intensified their antiwar campaigns, and soldier committees were formed in the army. A battle at Dobro Pole brought total retreat, and in ten days the Allies entered Bulgaria. On 29th September 1918 Bulgaria signed an armistice and withdrew from the war. The Treaty of Neuilly (November 1919) imposed by the Allies on Bulgaria, deprived the country of its World War I gains as well as its outlet to the Aegean Sea (Eastern Thrace).
[9] Bulgarian Minorities: Some of the larger Bulgarian minorities are Turkish (800,000), Roma (300,000), Armenian (13,500), Tatar (4,500), Jewish (3,500). These are rough figures, based on a 1994 census. Further minority groups are the following: Gagauz (1,500), Orthodox Christians who speak a Turkish dialect, and have a home territory in Gagauzia, Moldova. Karakachan (5,000) are a Greek speaking ethnic group. There is also special minority going by the name of Pomak. These are Bulgarian-speaking Muslims, who are not properly identified in the national Census, but who are said to number between 150,000 and 200,000.
[10] Shalom Organization: Organization of the Jews in Bulgaria. It is an umbrella organization uniting 8,000 Jews in Bulgaria and has 19 regional branches. Shalom supports all forms of Jewish activities in the country and organizes various programs.
[11] 9th September 1944: The day of the communist takeover in Bulgaria. In September 1944 the Soviet Union declared war on Bulgaria. On 9th September 1944 the Fatherland Front, a broad left-wing coalition, deposed the government. Although the communists were in the minority in the Fatherland Front, they were the driving force in forming the coalition, and their position was strengthened by the presence of the Red Army in Bulgaria.
[12] Mass Aliyah: Between September 1944 and October 1948, 7,000 Bulgarian Jews left for Palestine. The exodus was due to deep-rooted Zionist sentiments, relative alienation from Bulgarian intellectual and political life, and depressed economic conditions. Bulgarian policies toward national minorities were also a factor that motivated emigration. In the late 1940s Bulgaria was anxious to rid itself of national minority groups, such as Armenians and Turks, and thus make its population more homogeneous. More people were allowed to depart in the winter of 1948 and the spring of 1949. The mass exodus continued between 1949 and 1951: 44,267 Jews immigrated to Israel until only a few thousand Jews remained in the country.

[13] Hashomer Hatzair in Bulgaria: ‘The Young Watchman’; A Zionist-socialist pioneering movement established in Bulgaria in 1932, Hashomer Hatzair trained youth for kibbutz life and set up kibbutzim in Palestine. During World War II, members were sent to Nazi-occupied areas and became leaders in Jewish resistance groups. After the war, Hashomer Hatzair was active in ‘illegal’ immigration to Palestine.

[14] Maccabi World Union: International Jewish sports organization whose origins go back to the end of the 19th century. A growing number of young Eastern European Jews involved in Zionism felt that one essential prerequisite of the establishment of a national home in Palestine was the improvement of the physical condition and training of ghetto youth. In order to achieve this, gymnastics clubs were founded in many Eastern and Central European countries, which later came to be called Maccabi. The movement soon spread to more countries in Europe and to Palestine. The World Maccabi Union was formed in 1921. In less than two decades its membership was estimated at 200,000 with branches located in most countries of Europe and in Palestine, Australia, South America, South Africa, etc.

[15] ‘Maritsa Rushes’: a national anthem of the Kingdom of Bulgaria from 1886 to 1944. The author of the text is the Veles teacher Nikola Zhivkov. In 1912 the text was edited by Ivan Vazov. Firstly it originated as a song of the Bulgarian National Revival period sung by rebels of Philip Totyu's band. Later, during the Russian-Turkish Liberation War it was sung by the Bulgarian volunteers in the battles at Shipka and Sheinovo. During the Serbian- Bulgarian War in 1885 it was sung as a battle song by the Bulgarian soldiers. In 1886 it was adopted as a national anthem.

[16] 'Quiet White Danube': a poem by the poet Ivan Vazov praising the heroism of Hristo Botev's revolutionaries, which is still sung today as one of the most patriotic Bulgarian songs of the Bulgarian National Revival.

[17] Trumpeldor, Joseph (1880-1920): Soldier and early pioneer-settler in Erez Israel whose life efforts to organize the military defense of the Jewish settlements in Erez Israel and whose heroic death in a battle at Tel Hai in the north of the country became an inspirational symbol to pioneering youth from all parts of the Diaspora [see: Betar].
[Source: http://www.jafi.org.il/education/100/people/BIOS/trump.html]

[18] General Zionism: General Zionism was initially the term used for all members of the Zionist Organization who had not joined a specific faction or party. Over the years, the General Zionists, too, created ideological institutions and their own organization was established in 1922. The precepts of the General Zionists included Basle-style Zionism free of ideological embellishments and the primacy of Zionism over any class, party, or personal interest. This party, in its many metamorphoses, championed causes such as the encouragement of private initiative and protection of middle-class rights. In 1931, the General Zionists split into Factions A and B as a result of disagreements over issues of concern in Palestine: social affairs, economic matters, the attitude toward the General Federation of Jewish Labor, etc. In 1945, the factions reunited. Most of Israel’s liberal movements and parties were formed under the inspiration of the General Zionists and reflect mergers in and secessions from this movement.

[19] Poalei Zion: Leftist Zionist movement, founded in the late 19th century in Russia that combined Zionism with Socialism. The early Poalei Zion found its expression in the organization of trade unions, mutual aid societies, and Zionist groups of workers, clerks and salesmen. These groups emphasized the need for democracy within the Jewish community. The Austro-Hungarian branch of Poalei Zion differed markedly from the Russian one. Its ideologists maintained that the Zionist movement was an expression of the entire Jewish people and transcended class interests. It maintained that the position of the Jewish worker and commercial employee was different from that of the non-Jew, since the Jew had to face both exploitation and discrimination at the same time. It warned the Jewish workers against following the teachings of the Social Democrats in Austria-Hungary who denied this fact. It negated the socialist solution unless it were combined with a Jewish autonomous territory. Instead it stressed the need for the conscious direction of the migration of the Jewish masses to Palestine. The Poalei Zion groups in other countries followed in their ideology either the Russian or the Austrian models. Poalei Zion in Romania and Bulgaria adhered to the Austrian school. In 1907 a Word Union of Poalei Zion was founded. In 1920 the movement split over the attitude toward the Socialist and Communist Internationals, the Zionist Organization, and the place to be accorded to the movement’s activities in Erez Israel. Left Poalei Zion sought unconditional affiliation with the Third International (Comintern); by 1924 it had abandoned this attempt and reorganized itself on an independent basis. The other faction, the Right Poalei Zion, merged in 1925 with the Zionist Socialists.

[20] Jabotinsky, Vladimir (1880-1940): Founder and leader of the Revisionist Zionist movement; soldier, orator and a prolific author writing in Hebrew, Russian, and English. During World War I he established and served as an officer in the Jewish Legion, which fought in the British army for the liberation of the Land of Israel from Turkish rule. He was a member of the Board of Directors of the Keren Hayesod, the financial arm of the World Zionist Organization, founded in London in 1920, and was later elected to the Zionist Executive. He resigned in 1923 in protest over Chaim Weizmann’s pro-British policy and founded the Revisionist Zionist movement and the Betar youth movement two years later. Jabotinsky also founded the ETZEL (National Military Organization) during the 1936-39 Arab rebellion in Palestine.

[21] Betar: (abbreviation of Berit Trumpeldor) A right-wing Zionist youth movement founded in 1923 in Riga, Latvia. Betar played an important role in Zionist education, in teaching the Hebrew language and culture, and methods of self-defense. It also inculcated the ideals of aliyah to Erez Israel by any means, legal and illegal, and the creation of a Jewish state on both sides of the Jordan. Its members supported the idea to create a Jewish legion in order to liberate Palestine. In Bulgaria the organization started publishing its newspaper in 1934.

[22] UYW: The Union of Young Workers (also called Revolutionary Youth Union). A communist youth organization, which was legally established in 1928 as a sub-organization of the Bulgarian Communist Youth Union (BCYU). After the coup d’etat in 1934, when parties in Bulgaria were banned, it went underground and became the strongest wing of the BCYU. Some 70% of the partisans in Bulgaria were members of it. In 1947 it was renamed Dimitrov’s Communist Youth Union, after Georgi Dimitrov, the leader of the Bulgarian Communist Party at the time.

[23] Тhe annexation of Dobrich: the agreement in Krayova or the so-called Krayova Treaty signed in the Romanian town Krayova on 7th September 1940. According to that treaty Bulgaria officially receives back South Dobrudzha taken from the country under the Treaty of Neuilly in 1919. The Treaty of Krayova was officially recognized by the USSR, Germany and France as well as the consecutive treaties on the exchange of population and financial consequences. According to that treaty the Bulgarian troops entered Dobrudzha and Dobrich on 21st September 1940 and annexed the treaty.

[24] Gorky, Maxim (born Alexei Peshkov) (1868-1936): Russian writer, publicist and revolutionary.

[25] Korabov, Nikola (b.1928): a Bulgarian cinema director born on 7th December 1928 in Ruse. He had a degree in cinema directing in Moscow in 1956. After he returned to Bulgaria he started work in the Studio for Feature Films. His filmography includes 'Dimitrovgradtsy’ [Dimitrovgrad people] (1956), 'Malkata’ [The young one] (1959), 'Tyutyun’ [Tobacco] (1962), 'Vula' [Bull] (1965), 'Svoboda ili smart’ [Freedom or Death] (1969), 'Ivan Kondarev' (1974), for which he received the special award of the festival in San Remo – Italy, 'Yuliya Vrevskaya' (1978), ‘Orisiya’ [Destiny] (1983), etc.

[26] Yellow star in Bulgaria: According to a governmental decree all Bulgarian Jews were forced to wear distinctive yellow stars after 24th September 1942. Contrary to the German-occupied countries the stars in Bulgaria were made of yellow plastic or textile and were also smaller. Volunteers in previous wars, the war-disabled, orphans and widows of victims of wars, and those awarded the military cross were given the privilege to wear the star in the form of a button. Jews who converted to Christianity and their families were totally exempt. The discriminatory measures and persecutions ended with the cancellation of the Law for the Protection of the Nation on 17th August 1944.

[27] 24th May 1943: Protest by a group of members of parliament led by the deputy chairman of the National Assembly, Dimitar Peshev, as well as a large section of Bulgarian society. They protested against the deportation of the Jews, which culminated in a great demonstration on 24th May 1943. Thousands of people led by members of parliament, the Eastern Orthodox Church and political parties stood up against the deportation of Bulgarian Jews. Although there was no official law preventing deportation, Bulgarian Jews were saved, unlike those from Bulgarian occupied Aegean Thrace and Macedonia.

[28] Daniel Zion: Rabbi in the Sofia synagogue and President of the Israeli Spiritual Council, participant in procession on 24th May 1943.

[29] Internment of Jews in Bulgaria: Although Jews living in Bulgaria where not deported to concentration camps abroad or to death camps, many were interned to different locations within Bulgaria. In accordance with the Law for the Protection of the Nation, the comprehensive anti-Jewish legislation initiated after the outbreak of WWII, males were sent to forced labor battalions in different locations of the country, and had to engage in hard work. There were plans to deport Bulgarian Jews to Nazi Death Camps, but these plans were not realized. Preparations had been made at certain points along the Danube, such as at Somovit and Lom. In fact, in 1943 the port at Lom was used to deport Jews from Aegean Thrace and from Macedonia, but in the end, the Jews from Bulgaria proper were spared.

[30] Annexation of Aegean Thrace to Bulgaria in WWII: The Treaty of Neuilly, imposed by the Entente on Bulgaria after WWI, deprived the country alongside with its WWI gains (Macedonia) also of its outlet to the Aegean Sea (Aegean Thrace) that had been a part of the country since the Balkan Wars (1912/13). King Boris III (1918-43) joined the Axis in 1941 with the hope to be able to regain the lost territories. Bulgarian troops marched into the neighboring Yugoslav Macedonia and Greek Thrace. Although the territorial gains were initially very popular in Bulgaria, complications soon arose in the occupied territories. The oppressive Bulgarian administration resulted in uprisings in both occupied lands. Jews were persecuted, their property was confiscated and they had to do forced labor. Although the Jews in Bulgaria proper were saved they were exterminated in the newly gained territories. Over 11.000 Jews from the Bulgarian administered northern Greek lands (Thrace and Macedonia), mainly from Drama, Seres, Dedeagach (Alexandroupolis), Gyumyurdjina (Komotini), Kavala and Xanthi were deported and murdered in death camps in Poland. About 2.200 Jews survived.

[31] Peshev, Dimitar (1894-1973): Bulgarian politician, former Deputy-Chairman of the National Assembly. Peshev was the leader of the group who opposed to deportations of Bulgarian Jews. According to Gabrielle Nissim, author of the book ‘The Man Who Stopped Hitler’: ‘He was the only politician of high rank in a country allied with Germany who broke the atmosphere of complete collective silence with regard to the Jewry's lot.’

[32] Forced labor camps in Bulgaria: Established under the Council of Ministers’ Act in 1941. All Jewish men between the ages of 18–50, eligible for military service, were called up. In these labor groups Jewish men were forced to work 7-8 months a year on different road constructions under very hard living and working conditions.
[33] Ventura, Ana Avram (1925-1942): Bulgarian anti-fascist fighter of Jewish origin, born in the Danubian town of Ruse, a daughter of one of the richest industrialists there. She was a member of the communist youth organization of The Union of Young Workers and one of its leaders in Ruse and in 1942 also of the Bulgarian Workers’ Party. She was killed in an underground flat on 22nd February 1944.

[34] Brigades: A form of socially useful labor, typical of communist times. Brigades were usually teams of young people who were assembled by the authorities to build new towns, roads, industrial plants, bridges, dams, etc. as well as for fruit-gathering, harvesting, etc. This labor, which would normally be classified as very hard, was unpaid. It was voluntary and, especially in the beginning, had a romantic ring for many young people. The town of Dimitrovgrad, named after Georgi Dimitrov – the leader of the Communist Party – was built entirely in this way.

[35] Bridge of Friendship: also known as Danube Bridge. That is the main road from Bulgaria over the Danube in the area of Ruse – Giurgiu. It was opened on 20th June 1954. The author of the project is architect Andreev. The bridge was built in two years – from 1952 to 1954 with the help of USSR experts. His length is 2.8 km and his height – 300 meters above the water. It was built in two levels – for trains and for cars. Its middle part can be lifted so that ships may pass along the Danube. In this area the river is 1 km wide and its depth reaches 10 meters.

[36] Bet Am: The Jewish center in Sofia today, housing all Jewish organizations.

[37] Plants construction with the help of the USSR: Devnya is a town in Northeast Bulgaria near Varna and Beloslav Lake. It has a population of 12 000 people. Due to its proximity to the Black Sea and the port of Varna-west and due to its natural resources, the town was turned into an industrial center. In 1954 it had the status of a national site. Soviet experts helped start the construction of a plant for the production of light and heavy soda, nitric acid and ammonia. The strategic location of the town led to the construction of other sites of national importance – a cement plant, a sugar plant and a polymer plant. During socialism the industrial sites in the town provided jobs for a lot of experts in the chemical industry.

[38] Military plants in Sopot, Kazanlak and Karlovo: They are also known as Vazov Machine Construction Plants, whose production is in the sphere of explosives. They are located in the small towns of the Bulgarian rose. Due to the participation of Bulgaria in the Warsaw Treaty those towns became sites for plants of the military industrial complex of the Bulgarian army. The headquarters of one of Bulgaria's divisions is also in Karlovo.

[39] Bulgarian political emigrants: Bulgarian Political Emigration in 1947: those are the processes, which started after the adoption of the Dimitrov constitution in 1946 when the Bulgarian opposition was persecuted. The Soviet model of governance is gradually adopted in Bulgaria and the Communist Party takes up the leadership of the nation. Trials start against the leaders of the opposition – Nikola Petkov (Bulgarian Agricultural People's Union) is declared to be an American agent and killed in the end of 1947, and so was Krastyo Pastuhov (Bulgarian Workers' Social Democratic Party). Other opposition leaders were also persecuted. A major part of the opposition members were forced to leave the country illegally. Among them was also the agricultural leader G.M.Dimitrov. One of the last trials condemning the people, who thought differently, was against one of the leaders of the Communist Party itself – Traicho Kostov, which took place in 1949.

[40] 10th November 1989: After 35 years of rule, Communist Party leader Todor Zhivkov was replaced by the hitherto Prime Minister Peter Mladenov who changed the Bulgarian Communist Party’s name to Socialist Party. On 17th November 1989 Mladenov became head of state, as successor of Zhivkov. Massive opposition demonstrations in Sofia with hundreds of thousands of participants calling for democratic reforms followed from 18th November to December 1989. On 7th December the ‘Union of Democratic Forces’ (SDS) was formed consisting of different political organizations and groups.

[41] Six-Day-War: The first strikes of the Six-Day-War happened on 5th June 1967 by the Israeli Air Force. The entire war only lasted 132 hours and 30 minutes. The fighting on the Egyptian side only lasted four days, while fighting on the Jordanian side lasted three. Despite the short length of the war, this was one of the most dramatic and devastating wars ever fought between Israel and all of the Arab nations. This war resulted in a depression that lasted for many years after it ended. The Six-Day-War increased tension between the Arab nations and the Western World because of the change in mentalities and political orientations of the Arab nations.

[42] Yom Kippur War: The Arab-Israeli War of 1973, also known as the Yom Kippur War or the Ramadan War, was a war between Israel on one side and Egypt and Syria on the other side. It was the fourth major military confrontation between Israel and the Arab states. The war lasted for three weeks: it started on 6th October 1973 and ended on 22nd October on the Syrian front and on 26th October on the Egyptian front.

[43] Academician Angel Balevsky (1910-1997): a distinguished and internationally known Bulgarian scientist and public figure. He was one of the creators of the Bulgarian higher technical education, establishing and developing together with his collaborators the metal science and technology of metals in Bulgaria. One of the greatest achievements in that field is the worked out by Academician Angel Balevsky and Corresponding member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS) Ivan Dimov ‘Gas counter pressure casting method’, which is a scientific and technological novelty worldwide in the production of light alloy castings of high accuracy and high mechanical and technological characteristics. Academician Angel Balevsky was co-founder (together with Correspondent member Ivan Dimov) of the Institute of Metal Science (1967), which is now bearing his name. He was also Rector of the Machine Electro-Technical Institute (now Technical University) in Sofia and long Chairman of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, as well as member of a number of international scientific and humanitarian organizations.

Mois Merkado Natan
Sofia
Bulgaria
Interviewer: Stephan Djambazov
Date of interview: January 2005

Mois Merkado Natan becomes 80 this year. He is a lively and schooled man. He expressed his interest in a book that he couldn’t find and we helped him:: ‘Jews, the World and Money’, ‘An Economic History of the Jewish People’ by Jacques Attali. This shows Mr. Natan’s profound interest in the Jewish history and fate. His flat, as he described it, is large compared to the usual Bulgarian home – four rooms and a kitchen. He lives there with his wife alone, but I failed to persuade him to pay him a visit, because of his wife’s illness (she is almost paralyzed) and also there is an overhaul being carried out in their block of flats. We met in a cozy café-gallery near his flat.

My ancestors came from Spain and in Bulgaria they first lived in Karlovo. [Expulsion of the Jews from Spain] [1] My paternal grandfather’s brothers settled in Plovdiv while my grandfather Mois headed to Varna and Dobrich. There he ran a shop and a trading company where he worked together with my father and his other sons. My paternal grandmother, Sultana Natan, had two sisters and a brother. My maternal grandfather Avram Geron and my grandmother Simha Geron lived in Razgrad and were in the trade with animals – sheep and cows – they used to buy them from the nearby villages and sell them to other villagers or sell them for processing. He had three or four brothers, too, but I don’t know of any sisters. Then they moved to Ruse from Razgrad.

My paternal relatives were traders. I don’t remember my paternal grandfather because when I was born he had already died. I remember my paternal grandmother Sultana. She was living in Varna with one of my uncles and she was letting nice flats during the summer. My grandmother used to rent two rooms and because her house was near the Seaside Garden, she always had tenants. They were predominantly Bulgarians who were on holiday, but there were also Poles. It was there, when I first went to the theater - there was a summer theater in Varna and my uncle, David Natan, was a theater critic. I used to go to the comedies of St. L. Kostov, mainly – one of the classic Bulgarian playwrights s who mocked the love of power and the self-seeking of the politicians of the time.

My maternal grandfather Avram Geron was also a tradesman of animals and very religious, too. As the eldest grandson I had to attend services at the synagogue on Friday evenings. That was in Ruse because my mother’s family had moved to live there in the 1910s because their business dwindled. All the Jews from that generation were very religious, but not orthodox. On Rosh Hashanah and the high holidays they used to close their shops and go to synagogue. My grandfather Avram used to go to synagogue every day. They used to buy only kosher meat. They observed that. At home, all holidays were observed when the whole family gathered. They lived well. I know that my grandfather Avram Geron was a very good man. He used to carry 10-lev bank notes in his pockets so that he could give them if he happened to meet a poor man. [This sum was equal to the money one needs for food for a day, it is also comparable to two and a half tickets for cinema.] He had a purse full with white bonbons for the children. My grandfather used to wear bowler hat and all others were dressed in the way normal citizens did – in Western style. They spoke broken Bulgarian, Turkish and Spaniol, which is Ladino [2], while my grandfather in Dobrich spoke also Romanian. [Dobrich is located in the region of Southern Dobrudzha that belonged to Romania from the Second Balkan War (1913) until World War II.] They had nice houses both in Ruse and Varna – they had running water, electricity and toilet inside the houses. My granny in Varna had a housemaid, and my grandpa and granny in Ruse hired a housemaid for the winters.

My grandmother Sultana had two sisters – the first of them, Roza, was married to the tradesman Pinkas who had a trading company jointly owned by my grandmother’s brother, Yosif; after that they went to Istanbul. I don’t know exactly when but the reason was he had relatives in Istanbul. Roza had two daughters, Becca and Lily, and a son Fredi – they moved to live in Turkey, and Lily went to Israel after that. The second sister was called Luna who had two sons. The sisters died long ago. My grandmother had five sons and a daughter. Three of them, Aron, Albert and David went to Israel where they died; my father stayed in Bulgaria, while the fifth son, Marko, moved to Ecuador together with his family. The name of the daughter was Belina and she also went to Israel, where she died. I remember one of my grandfather Avram Geron’s sisters, but I have forgotten her name. Her husband’s name was Prezenetti, while their children (four sons and a daughter) were owners of the ‘Fazan’ [Pheasant] textile company in Ruse. I know a story about my grandpa Avram. Once he went on business to Varna, but he missed the train back and when he was told that there was a train at the same time only the next day, he set off on foot for Razgrad (where he lived then) and came home one hour before the arrival of the train in question (the distance between the two cities is 137 kilometers).

My mother Rebeka Natan was a housewife. She was born in Razgrad in 1896 or in 1897. She had primary education and she was a dressmaker. During World War I she was the one to earn the living of the family because my uncle was mobilized. [Bulgaria in World War I] [3] She used to make clothes and earn money for the family. She went to live in Ruse before the war. They moved to Ruse because the family business declined. Mum had two sisters, Ester and Rashel, and a brother – Yosif. Rashel had a high school education and Ester – primary. Both of them were housewives and lived in Ruse. Ester has a son, Rashel – two sons and a daughter, as well as two step-children because she married a widower.

My father Merkado Mois Natan was born in 1893 in Varna and had four brothers and a sister. Merkado means ‘bought’ [in Ladino] - this is an old Jewish custom of selling the eldest son to relatives when he remains alone; they take care of him until he himself asks for clothes from his mother and father. [According to the Sephardi tradition if all brothers and sisters of a child die he is ‘sold’ to some relative, so they take care of him and this way he may survive. According to the custom, the child continues living with his parents but they do not buy anything for him.] So they called him Merkado, because he was bought by relatives in Varna. His elder brothers and sisters had died and he remained alone. Our relatives took care of him, they loved him. According to the tradition, he lived with his parents but they didn’t buy him anything until he asked for something from them. I don’t know exactly the name of this Jewish tradition – but it was most probably developed for the survival of the oldest son, the continuer of the family. I don’t know how many elder siblings he had, but after him came Aron, Albert, Marko and David. My grandfather could afford to take care of him and pay for his expenses, but that was the custom. My father used to speak Bulgarian very well because he studied in a Bulgarian middle school.

My father’s youngest brother David was 12 years older than me. His brothers (Aron, Albert and David) all died in Israel between 1983 and 1988. I don’t know where the other brother Marko died. Aron had a daughter who also died of natural death. Albert had a daughter who is alive and we keep in touch on the phone from time to time. Marko had two daughters. David was not married and didn’t have children. Belina was not married, too and she didn’t have children. Albert and Marko studied in a college in Romania. David had a high school education – he was a theater critic – this was his passion, while the others were tradesmen.

During the World War I my father hired a cab and illegally moved to Bulgaria where he served in the army. That was in the period when Dobrich was in Romanian hands. He was wounded in his hand – not seriously – but he served as a nurse. [The matter in focus is about the military service of the father as a young man – yet before he married.] After that, already during the World War II, he was too old to be taken to the forced labor camps [4]. So he didn’t serve in the army.

Together with my mother they had an arranged meeting where they liked each other. They had a marriage (religious and civic one) in 1923 in Varna. They dressed very fashionably - my father was a dandy. He had 12 suits in the wardrobe.

My father worked as a procurator in a Turkish tobacco company – he was in charge of the finances. The owners respected him and his salary was 12,000 Bulgarian levs – very good for that time. However, the Turkish company went bankrupt and he returned in Ruse where he became the accountant of my uncle’s company.

When my family moved back to Ruse, they were not so well-off, but we still had a normal standard of living. My father was the accountant at my uncle’s company – they used to buy tobacco and process it. They were partners in Ruse. We lived in a rented house and my mother ran the household work.

I don’t remember where we lived in Varna, but the house in Ruse was a decent small one and we lived on the ground floor. After that we moved from there to a bigger house with two rooms and a kitchen; this house shared the same yard with the old one. Then we moved to live in the center of the Jewish neighborhood where we had two rooms, a living room and a kitchen. We had a toilet inside the house and a bathroom, too – it was heated on firewood from outside as a Turkish bath. We had electricity, but we used firewood and coal for heating. We were four of us – my mother, my father, my brother and I. After that we lived in other similar houses. The reason for moving so much was that we were seeking for better living conditions for the growing family. Besides, one of the houses was in the Bulgarian neighborhood, while later we managed to find a better one in the Jewish quarter, where we moved to. We used to change houses every five years or so.

I was born in Varna in 1925. We moved to Ruse when I was two. I don’t remember Varna from this period, I remember it from the period when I started visiting my grandmother in Varna. Ruse had a very strong Jewish community - around 3,500 people. [Ruse had the third largest Jewish community in Bulgaria after Sofia and Plovdiv, numbering 3,134 people in 1926.] The town had its own Jewish school, which was true only for Sofia, Plovdiv and Pazardzhik these days. There was no Jewish middle school in any other Bulgarian towns. Ruse had then between 50,000 and 60,000 inhabitants. The Jewish community was very united – there was a Jewish municipality, led both by the synagogue and the school boards of trustees. There were several Zionist organizations – General Zionists [5], Poalei Zion [6] and Jabotinsky’s revisionists [7], as well as the youth’s organizations Hashomer Hatzair [8] and Maccabi [9]. Maccabi was the sports organization – we had a very good gym hall where we gathered every day and two times a week we made exercises under the supervision of a gymnast. My father was in the administration of the General Zionists, who were centrists. The other organization, Poalei Zion, was a bit more leftist, social democratic, while the revisionist fraction that was created by Jabotinsky [10] were rightists and a bit more radical as far as the liberation of Palestine was concerned. Each organization had a youth’s subdivision. The Revisionists’ one was Betar [11] – they used to have manifestations in the Jewish street dressed in brown shirts and black pants. The other ones were Hashomer Hatzair – they studied Ivrit rigorously and in their organization ’Ken’ [Hebrew for Nest] they used to speak only in Ivrit so they prepared themselves for the Alyah to Israel - to work there in the kibbutzim. Maccabi was also a Zionist organization – followers of the General Zionists, mainly devoted to sports.

In Ruse there were two synagogues: the Ashkenazi one and the Sephardi one. There was a chazzan, too. Haribi [rabbi] Naftali was the chazzan at the first one and haribi Tuvi was servicing the second one. There was a shochet, too – there was a chazzan and a mezamer. The chazzan was the chief one and mezamer was the one, who accompanied him, his assistant to the service. Bar mitzvah was made in both the synagogue and home. Mine was at home. A chazzan came with plenty of relatives and friends. He read and gave me the maturity certificate. This was the routine in Ruse, [which was possible because Bulgarian Jews were not extremely religious and certain rituals had been adapted to the situation in Bulgaria] and I can’t say anything more. Marriages were performed in the synagogue only according to the traditional ritual – the prayer was read and the respective certificate was issued [Ketubbah].

There was one Jewish school – a secondary school where we studied all the subjects taught in Bulgarian schools in Bulgarian language; in the primary school – up to the fourth grade Ivrit was taught. In the middle school we also studied Ivrit, Toldot [Hebrew for history], and Tannakh. There were Jewish children who were not sent to study in the Jewish school, because it was more difficult there – we studied in the mornings and in the afternoon. But when we reached the high school level we were completely prepared for it. I have a brother, Avram Merkado Natan. My brother is four years younger than me. He studied in the same schools as I did, but couldn’t graduate from high school, because the Law for Protection of the Nation was introduced and he was not allowed to go to school. He couldn’t graduate until 1947, after which he studied at the Technical University in Sofia.

The Jewish neighborhood was around David Street and the Jewish school. Almost all Jews lived there. There were also some Bulgarian families. In Ruse there were many Jewish tradesmen, successful ones. The trade with books was almost the whole in Jewish hands: the companies ‘Sam Patak’, ‘Moisey Melamed’, ‘Rozanis&Co’ and others. There were also many traders of haberdashery, clothes, and glass products. Beniesh had a large bookstore in the city center. Many doctors, and good ones, too, were from Jewish origin: Dr Menachem, Dr Versano, Dr Ovadia. One of the most famous dentists in the town was Dr Isakov, there were pharmacists, and druggists, too. Many lawyers were also Jewish, as well as some musicians. However, most of them were not professionals, they were amateurs. There was a ‘David’ chorus at the synagogue. In Ruse three musical comedies with a purely Jewish cast were performed – among them were ‘Carmusinella’ [no information available] and ‘The Love of Schubert’, based on musical compositions by Franz Schubert [12], as well as the ‘The Bells of Cornville’ [an opera-comique in 3 acts, 4 scenes; Music by Robert Planquette; adapted and arranged by Max Morris, first staged in 1877 in Théàtre des Folies-Dramatiques, Paris]. I can’t remember anything about the authors and the contents, because they were light ephemeral operettas – perhaps brought from abroad, Vienna maybe, which may be known only to the experts in operettas. There were attempts for Jewish theater performances with young people from Hashomer Hatzair – they played ‘It’s Hard to be a Jew’ (‘Shver Tzu Zein A Yid’) by Shalom Aleichem [13]. I can’t remember anything about that, too, except for the topic was the Jewish life. It was probably also a foreign product, because I remember a Negro appearing, but I can’t say anything more as far as the author and the content is concerned. They played in Bulgarian, too. There was a Jewish jazz band also, led by Albert Ventura who was a banker and a violinist. In summer they used to go and play in Varna – to have fun, because they were rich boys. A great musician was born in Ruse: Isak (Ziko) Gratsiani, who became the conductor of the Israeli military chorus later. I can’t add any further information. I don’t know any details about his life, because he left for Israel after 1944 and our paths separated. [There is no information available on him].

The Jews had a good standard of living. Almost everywhere they had running water and electricity. In several slums for the poor people they had everything outside their houses, but such houses were a very rare thing to see. A big Jewish organization, ‘Malbish Arumim’ [14] was in charge of providing food and clothes to the poor people. In autumns they used to buy them winter clothes and shoes, there was also a communal canteen. There was no anti-Semitism before the introduction of the Law for Protection of the Nation [15]. But there was no anti-Semitism after this law, too – I mean – declared and rude one. [Editor’s note: He probably means although the anti-Semitic laws were introduced it was still little felt in the every day reality.] There was one pro-fascist organization ‘Country Defense’ [16], as well as ‘Ratnik’ [17], but nobody offended me because of my Jewish origin while I was a schoolboy in the high school, even after we had to wear those yellow stars [18]. None of my classmates has ever insulted me, because we were good students. They respected us. There wasn’t any anti-Semitism among the people in Bulgaria. The anti-Semitism was on an institutional level – stemming from the laws and regulations. But even in the period when we had to wear those yellow stars – there wasn’t any negative attitude to us.

My mother always had me accompany her while she was to go shopping, so that I might carry the baskets. Tuesdays and Fridays were the market days. Ruse was a big industrial town. Outside the city there were many gardens so we used to buy fresh fruits and vegetables. My mother used to buy only kosher meet. There was only one seller that she would buy meat from. In the Jewish neighborhood there was a confectioner – the Turk Tahir Nuri, where we, the young people, used to go; our parents visited this place in the evenings, too. Pastries and cakes were offered there and in winter they made halva [19]. If you sit in there they would bring you a plate with pastries and you’ll have to choose. From this period I remember 19th May 1934 [The military coup d’etat after which King Boris III established a totalitarian regime, the Parliament was dismissed and all the parties were banned.]. I was 9 years old then. I remember the martial law, the mounted police. I remember also the entry of the German allies in Ruse through Romania– it was in March 1941. [On 1st March 1941, the Government of Bogdan Filov signed the protocol under which Bulgaria joined the Axis. On 6th March the dislocation of German troops on the Balkan Peninsula began and it started from Romania to Bulgaria via Ruse.]

My parents used to read also newspapers, mainly Jewish ones, and from Bulgarian newspapers they preferred ‘Utro’ [Morning] [20] and ‘Zora’ [Dawn] [21] [popular newspapers without any particular political focus]. Dad could speak Hebrew, because he read the prayers in Hebrew. In Ruse there were two clubs where the libraries were located, but I haven’t borrowed books from there because I used to buy them. I read ‘Captain Dreyfus’, the five volumes of Victor von Falk [‘Auf ewig getrennt? Oder Kapitän Dreyfus und seiner Gattin ergreifende Erlebnisse, Schicksale und fürchterliche Verbannung. Sensationsroman von Victor von Falk’ (On eternally separately? Or Captain Dreyfus and his wife moving experiences, fates and dreadful banishing. Thriller by Victor von Falk) (Berlin: A. Weichert 1898) - a novel in five volumes by Victor von Falk, considered to be a pseudonym of several authors] – my mother read them, too, as well as the novels by Victor Hugo: ‘The Miserables’, ‘The Hunchback of Notre-Dame’, all of them. Dad used to give me 20 levs a week and I saved it. In Ruse there was a famous bookshop ‘Simeon Simeonov’, where I could find the book I liked.

My father was in the administration of General Zionists. He was a member of the board of directors of the Jewish bank ‘Avoda’ Bank. [There is no further information on it]. There were several accountants in it, several tradesmen and several industrialists. My parents had Zionist political views – they were not in the politics because the Jews were out of the political institutions then. We had not only Jews for neighbors – there were Bulgarians, too. We got on well with them, and with their kids. However, my parents made friends more easily with Jews. My father attended the Jewish Bet Am [22]. After World War II he used to work with Bulgarians only.

My parents respected the Jewish traditions – they observed kosher, but not Sabbath – because we had to work. However, they did close the shops on Pesach, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot. We would go to synagogue on every holiday. We had a pupils’ synagogue on Sabbath – on Friday nights and Saturday mornings. [Organised attendance of Jewish pupils to services at the synagogue on Saturdays at Sabbath] There was a small and a big hall in the synagogue. The synagogue services for pupils were held simultaneously in the small hall – the prayers were read by the pupils themselves so that they might learn them. We had a famous teacher – we used to call him uncle Bucco – Bucco Delarubisa. He was a teacher in the middle school, his two sisters were teachers, too, as well as his wife. He once was the teacher of my mother, too. We learned many things from him. He was our Math teacher, but we learned a lot more from him – many sayings, for example, which famous people were Jews, he also taught us about the Jewish life and traditions. It was he who took us to synagogue on Friday evenings and we made our ‘pupils’ synagogue’ in the small hall of the synagogue. After I had my bar mitzvah I started taking part in the prayers – I used to read them. We observed the high Jewish holidays at home, too. We would lay the table for the respective holiday, kindle the candles and read a prayer. Just simple observing of the traditions, without putting much passion into it. We would always buy matzah for Pesach. Purim was marked in its own way – we were given money and sweets. At Chanukkah we used to kindle the chanukkiyah at home.

My parents seldom went on holiday. I remember that one year we came to Sofia’s Ovcha Kupel with my mother (there is a mineral water spa there) because of her illness. My mother and I used to visit my grandmother in Varna. My parents used to gather with their brothers and sisters as well as with my mother’s cousins in Ruse. In 1933 and 1934 all my father’s brothers gathered in Varna to visit my grandmother: Aron and Albert came from Dobrich [Romania at the time], Marko – from Milan (Italy).

We didn’t have a garden, but we had a big yard in one of the houses, shared between four other buildings and we played there. My mother was ill because she had two hard births (mine and my brother’s). She had problems with her physical condition and so we used to hire a housemaid from the neighboring villages Dimitrovden and Gergyovden for the winters. [The villages are named after Bulgarian Orthodox holidays. Dimitrovden is St Dimitar’s Day, while Gergyovden stands for St. George’s Day.] The housemaid had a bed in the kitchen.

We had both religious and mundane books, but I don’t remember their titles. My parents did read, and especially my father, because my mother didn’t have the time for it. Dad used to read contemporary novels. I remember that when I was 12, he brought home the ‘Brown Book’ [Editor’s note: Probably a reference to ‘Brown Plague’ in the sense of Nazism.] against Hitler and I understood from it that Hitlerism persecuted Jews and communists. It was an international issue, it read also about the Leipzig trial [Georgi Dimitrov] [23], for the Kristallnacht [‘The Night of Broken Glass’: the pogrom against German Jews. On the nights of 9th and 10th November 1938, gangs of Nazi youth roamed through Jewish neighborhoods breaking windows of Jewish businesses and homes, burning synagogues and looting. In all 101 synagogues were destroyed and almost 7,500 Jewish businesses were destroyed. 26,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps, Jews were physically attacked and beaten and 91 died (Snyder, Louis L. Encyclopedia of the Third Reich. New York: Paragon House, 1989:201)].

I haven’t had a nanny, but for one year I attended the ‘Gan Yeladim’ kindergarten at the Jewish school. It was one year before I started school. ‘Gan’ means garden in Ivrit, while ‘yeladim’ stands for ‘children’. After that I studied in the Jewish primary and secondary school. I was very good at mathematics. When uncle Bucco made us do sums, he would always ask me first what the answer was. This teacher whom we learned a lot of things from was a mathematician. From him we learned many sayings, many things, for example that the great violinist Bronislaw Huberman was a Jew. [Huberman, Bronislaw (1882-1947): a great violinist of the 20th century, born in Poland. He was highly acclaimed for his strongly individual interpretations.] We learned which famous people were of Jewish origin, he used to tell us about the Jewish lifestyle and traditions. He was a great man, a great pedagogue; for us he was not only our teacher in mathematics. His classes were exceptional. Later, every time I was in Ruse after the war I visited him until he passed away.

I haven’t had private lessons in music, nor in foreign languages; I studied French at the high school. My friends at school were Jews and Bulgarians, especially after I entered the Union of Young Workers (UYW) [24]. That happened after the war on the USSR was declared on 22th June 1941. I was in the sixth grade in the high school two years before graduation. However, the next year I was expelled from school. We were locked up within the Jewish neighborhood and we didn’t have any out-of-school contacts. We used to gather in Tahir’s confectionery before the curfew hour. At weekends we gathered in someone’s house – we used to organize jours [i.e. youth parties] then as we used to call them. We gathered boys and girls, danced a little, but most of the time we discussed things and had arguments – we were already members of the UYW. We didn’t drink alcohol, we listened to music only if there was a gramophone or a radio at the place where we gathered. We used our free time to study and read.

I did sports at ‘Maccabi’ – there were various competitions there. We used to play volleyball, table tennis, and two times a week we did gymnastics. I had a friend who used to come home and stayed with us for the night. From 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. we prepared our lessons. At 9 a.m. we were at ‘Maccabi’ where we played until 11:30. After that we used to have lunch before we go to school. The Jews in Ruse were not communists regarding their social status - we were rather intellectually attracted by the idea. As I already told you I read the ‘Brown Book’ and I knew the Hitlerism persecuted Jews and communists. In Ruse there were between 70 and 80 people, living in the Jewish street, who were organized in the UYW. I remember that we asked for special permission from the State Security Service to perform chamber concerts in the Jewish school. And when the day of the first one came we shuddered with fear because the head of the State Security Service and three or five agents came to listen to our music – but it was because in Ruse there was no other place to listen to music then. That was one of the most significant cultural events in the town during the war. Apart from gathering to someone’s house for a party the other thing to do was to go together with our parents to eat kebapcheta [traditional grilled meatballs] in the evenings – in our street there was a kebapche eatery, that was owned by Jews. The eatery was not kosher.

We couldn’t go on summer holidays after 1941 any more. Before that I hadn’t gone on holiday with my friends, because my father didn’t allow me to go on trips – he was very strict and meticulous in this respect, he always wanted to know where we were. Anti-Jewish laws were introduced in 1941 – the yellow star and the curfew hour. Now there are some disputes as to whether we lived in a ghetto or not – well we were in Ruse and 9 o’clock was the curfew. We could go out of there only for two hours a day – from the beginning it was not so strictly observed, but later the situation grew tenser. During the day we were allowed to go to the market, in a café and in a confectionery’s in the Jewish neighborhood, but we were not allowed to go to the other parts of the town. In 1942 a policeman liked the apartment where we were living and he drove us out from there. We used to live in the house of the Spanish ambassador Aftalion, who left and asked us to keep his home. He was a Jew, however, so the state confiscated the house and kicked us out. [No information for such person is available. In the same year, chief of the Spanish mission to Sofia was Julio Palencia i Alvaces (11.12.1940-27.10.1943). He is known for his active efforts for freeing dozens of Jews, as Spanish citizens, from compulsory work and civil mobilization in Bulgaria during the years when the anti-Jewish legislation was in force. He actively assisted the process of issuing Spanish passports and handled the emigration issues of Bulgarian Jews, who went to America through Spain. In order to save a Jewish family in Plovdiv, Palencia even adopted their child. As of 27th October 1943, Ramon Maria de Pudjadas was the plenipotentiary minister of Spain to Bulgaria. Aftalion was most probably a Spanish consul, but the name of the town he went to was not mentioned – most probably this was Kavala, where the Spanish consul was Jew against whom Germans undertook repressive measures.]

A friend of my father’s accommodated us at his place - he gave us a room and a store-room where we all lived. My father was jobless – we started selling all our furniture and possessions, because we didn’t have any savings by then. When they started renaming us – they didn’t change my name, but they did change the name of my father, because Merkado was not in the list of the Jewish names. [25] So he took his birth name – Eliezer. My mother remained Rebeka. My father’s name, changed to Eliezer, was written in all documents. That was the period when I studied at the high school, but in 1943 I was expelled from it because there were too many Jews there and some of them had to be expelled. I was expelled on the suspicion that I was a member of the UYW, and I was a Jew, too.

In March 1943 when a probable deportation of the Jews was discussed for the first time openly, seven friends on mine (two girls and five boys) decided to go illegal so that nobody could send us to concentration camps. We all were Jews, and one of us turned out to be the secretary of the town committee of UYW, so he got in touch with the underground revolutionaries. It was the period when Ana Ventura [26] was also illegal – the famous Ana Ventura – Jewish, daughter of one of the largest and richest industrialists in the town; she died later. On 19th March 1943 we decided to go illegal. Not only communists concealed us – there were also people who were anti-fascists and democrats. A humble villager offered us a shelter for a month, after which we moved to hide in a cave near Cherven village. We were not ready for such kind of life. We had almost no weapons, only a Turkish gun and two pistols. So we were just staying there and waiting. I went once or twice to the neighboring villages in order to make connection with the partisans - we expected to be relocated in the Balkan Mountains together with them. But the man who controlled the illegal activity in Ruse had us stay near the town for two months. His name was Nikola Popov, a former participant in the Spanish Civil War [1936-1939] and immigrant to the Soviet Union.

An accidental revelation happened when we were hiding in the caves: a child shepherd saw the youngest of us while he was at his post. This happened on 10th May and we scattered. The leader took with him a girl from our group, the other one managed to escape and I had to take the others out of that place because I knew the area. I led them to Svalenik village first – to one supporter of the partisans. We passed right through the center of the village – the police officers were in the tavern as we walked past them. And we did find the supporter of the partisans. He took us to a neighboring village – Katselovo. Meanwhile, our group leader left Tinka Dzhain [Born as Ester Sabitai Dzhain. She was an anti-fascist fighter of Jewish origin, a political commissioner of the Cerven’s guerilla detachment. She was killed after the detachment was discovered in 1943.] to the care of one of the supporters in Bozhichen village, but he gave her away to the police and they killed her there. We remained three or four days in Katselovo, but the man who was concealing us got scared and he said he would take us to another place, so he started guiding us, but disappeared in the middle of nothing. This happened at night. We hadn’t realized that the whole region was blocked and as we were moving forward we just came across the blockade. Guns went off several times and we hid ourselves in the nearest forest. During the night some of us wanted us to surrender, but a guy and I didn’t accept it, because we didn’t know whom we might come across and what they would do to us – they could kill us. We waited until the morning, came out of the forest and stepped in the hunting posse. So they caught us and arrested us. One of us – Salvador Papo, was stouter than the others and cocky, too – so he got the first thrashing because they thought he was the leader of the group. I was a skinny schoolboy - I weighed only 45. So we were taken to the police were we were detained for 45 days. We had a perfect ‘brainwash’ there – beating, beating as much as a human being could bear. Some of us couldn’t endure it any more and they confessed they were members of the Union of Young Workers, but I never confessed it. We said we decided to run away because we didn’t want to get deported.

In July we were brought to court and I was sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment. I was accused of taking part in a Jewish communist group. I was taken to the Ruse’s prison, but during the bombardments we were moved to the jail in Pleven. I stood there until 8th September 1944. During that period my father, mother and brother were interned to the town of Somovit [Internment of Jews in Bulgaria] [27]. The Jews from Ruse, Vidin and Pleven were not interned to other Bulgarian towns but they were prepared for deportation. So, my family lived in Somovit and they were awaiting their deportation. In the dress making unit of the camp there was a friend of my father’s who approached him one day and told him: ‘Bad news, they’re going to move us from here’, because a German officer had told him so. But on the other day, uncle Sinto (that was the name of the dressmaker) went to work and was told that everything bad had blown over. When he came back to the camp and broke the news, the people in the camp started celebrating that they were not going anywhere. This happened in September or in October 1943. There were many Jews in Somovit – some of them from Plovdiv, some – from Sofia and especially those who got arrested during the demonstration on 24th May [28]. My parents and brother lived in Somovit for three months. After that they came back to Ruse and lived in the same room and store-room in the house of that friend of my father’s. My father then used to make frames for mirrors together with one of my uncles, so that they could earn their living.

I got out of the prison in Pleven on 8th September 1944. We broke the jail, the police started fire on us, but we, the prisoners, slashed the cordon. There was a victim or two. After that we ran to the vineyard where we spent the night. In the morning everything was calm and we went back to Ruse. After that I worked for a year in the police I was an intelligence officer at the State Security Service for a year. But after that I followed my father’s advice – to complete my high-school education and to go to university. So I graduated from the high school and enrolled in the Ruse’s Technical University. Later I applied for studying in the USSR. But then they played a trick on me – they hid my documentation. A member of the youth communist organization hid them, although he was in charge of submitting them. The reason was a simple envy – after which he confessed the fact to senior executives, but all the same - the deadline had passed. Аfter that they sent me to Czechoslovakia as compensation, where I studied mechanical engineering. I learnt Czech language. My brother, after they closed the Ruse’s Technical University, moved to Sofia, where he graduated from the Mechanical Electro-Technical Institute. My father worked in Ruse as a chairman of ‘Clothes and Shoes’ until he retired.

I studied in Prague from 1949 to 1952. There I lived in the Jewish hostel in 25 Belgicka Street. There were two Jewish hostels in Prague, indeed – one for boys and one for girls. They were maintained by Joint [29] and were built especially for families that suffered from the Holocaust. Even the staff in these hostels was of Jewish origin. There was a great concern for the students in these hostels – they fed and dressed us for almost nothing. I studied in the Czech Higher Technical School and I was impressed by the level of culture of the Czech people at that time. I was pleased with the education.

I came back and I was given a job in the Metal Cutting Machines Plant in Sofia. I wanted to work in Ruse, but I was told that there were too many engineers there and I got a refusal. They offered me to go to Haskovo, or to Vidin, but I told them that if I was to move to another town, that should be Sofia. So I got a job in Sofia. I was vice-technologist at the Metal Cutting Machines Plant in Sofia. I was not given an apartment, I was accommodated in a rented flat. Later we had a dispute with the director of the plant and in 1955 I resigned and found a job with the Institute for Rationalizations [30]. I was an engineer in chief there and in 1956 I became a lector in Resistance of the Materials - Mechanics at the Military Academy. I was a civilian - that was my wish. My parents and brother moved to Sofia in 1956. We changed our rented flat in Ruse for one of a military man in Sofia who was to move to Ruse.

My mother died in 1958. She was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Sofia, but she didn’t have a Jewish funeral because her husband arranged the funeral for a Saturday, when no Jewish funerals are carried out. He didn’t want to wait because of the heat. So we remained my father, my brother and I. I met my wife Yanka, a Bulgarian, in 1957 at the Institute for Rationalizations. She was a librarian after which she became a telephone operator there. We got married in 1959.

It happened to me to have problems because of my Jewish origin. In Czechoslovakia I studied aviation engineering – well, I graduated and when I came back a friend of mine introduced me to the Personnel Department at the Air Force, where I wanted to work. However, I was received there very coldly. Later, when I was working for the Metal Cutting Machines Plant, I learnt that all our Jews had been expelled from the Interior Ministry. At the Military Academy, I had a very intelligent man for director - colonel Kalanov – whose opinion was not influenced by my origin, because he had been a partisan together with Jews. So, he welcomed me very warmly at the Military Academy – and when I told him I wanted the position but as a civilian – he said: ‘O.K, we’ll have a civilian at the position.’ This was after Israel was constituted. And the attitude to us was connected with the security problems under the influence of the USSR. This is not a question of anti-Semitism – it was an institutional problem. After the Suez Crisis in 1956 they became more fastidious to Jews. Then the Hungarian events of 1956 [31] came in focus, it was said that the Jews had organized them, and institutions became more suspicious towards us. I was a member of the Bulgarian Communist Party, but there have always existed suspicions against me.

When I came back from Czechoslovakia and started work in the Metal Cutting Machines Plant, the doctors’ plot [32] in the Soviet Union started. While I was still in Czechoslovakia, in Bulgaria started the trial against Traicho Kostov [33]. I was in the Pleven’s jail together with him, our cells were on the same floor. We used to walk together and we would often go to him to listen to his lectures. I knew Traicho Kostov in person and that turned into just one more suspicion against me. After I came back from Czechoslovakia, the trial against Rudolf Slansky [34] began – he was the general secretary of the Czechoslovak Communist Party. Soon after it, in Romania was initiated the trial against Ana Pauker – one more strike against the Jewry. [see Ana Pauker-Vasile Luca-Teohari Georgescu group] [35] So – there was a certain negative reaction against the Jews on an international level. Almost all my friends moved to Israel after it was set up. I felt awkward about leaving, because I was sent to Czechoslovakia as a scholarship holder of the Bulgarian Government, so I decided to stay here. I also wanted to gain experience here.

My wife Yanka comes from Stara Zagora and her parents are from the town of Radnevo. She has uncompleted university education in a faculty of law. During the period the Jews were persecuted, her parents Dinka and Prodan Ovcharovi moved to Plovdiv to save the shop of a Jewish family. Prodan Ovcharov was a tradesman in Radnevo – a bit strange, Tolstoyist, vegetarian.

After I got married, we lived in a small rented flat that was destroyed later, and we were given an apartment, which we shared with other people. Then we moved to another place and finally I managed to buy a flat of 150 sq.m. (four rooms and a kitchen) from a friend in Maria Luisa Street in 1972. We still live there. My friend was fed up with this apartment, because there were tenants in it. We managed to move in 1975, but we continued with the law suits against the last tenant for three or four more years, because he didn’t want to move from there. Now only two of us live here – my wife and I - because my children have their own places now. One of my sons lives in Bulgaria, but has a separate flat, while the other is in Canada. My older son is Merkado – named after my father – he was born in 1960; the younger is Alfred and he was born in 1963 – both of them in Sofia. My son Merkado Mois Natan (this is the full name of my father, in the same way I carry the full name of my grandfather) is a lawyer and lives in Sofia. He has a family and a son, whose name is Mois Merkado Natan (that is also my name) and has just turned 17. His wife is a Bulgarian, and is also a lawyer. My younger son Alfred lives in Canada. He studied for two years at the Mechanical Electro-Technical Institute in Sofia and decided to move to Israel, and he set off for there without completing his university education in 1990. I didn’t agree that he should leave without finishing his education, but he did it. He was married to a Bulgarian in Sofia and he has a daughter from her, but he divorced and left for there. Four months later he came back, married his girlfriend and moved to live in Israel with her. After that they emigrated to Canada in 1993. He has two sons from his second marriage, the first one is 10 years old, the second one is 7. He attended a course for dental mechanics and now works as a dental mechanic. Both his children from the second marriage were born in Canada.

Until my father was alive he used to tell everything about the Jewish tradition to my sons. He used to tell them things, take them to the Bet Am or the synagogue. He told them about the Jewish history and the religious holidays as a way to observe traditions.

Then I had two jobs – and I had classes at the Mechanical Electro-Technical Institute, so I didn’t have much time. They are brought up as Jews and that’s how they feel themselves. They had Jews for friends even when it was not allowed for Jews to gather in Bet Am before the changes of [10th November] 1989 [36]. They used to gather at home – because we had a big flat and they had their own rooms. I used to go to synagogue only on high holidays before the changes. I am from those few people who know Hebrew and can read prayers. Now we mark all the holidays. I go to synagogue on Friday evenings, I am there on Saturday mornings, too. Besides, I worked for four years at the synagogue – I was vice-chairman of the Religious Council. My friends are Jews and Bulgarians. There are now no relatives left with whom we may keep in touch – neither in Sofia, nor in Israel.

As far as the wars from 1967 [Six Day War] [37] and 1973 [Yom Kippur War] [38] are concerned and the cancellation of the diplomatic relationships with Israel – I had expected these events, because we were deep into our relations with the Arabic world, which was dictated by the Soviet Union. I am a supporter of Israel and my attitude to the Arabic problems is negative. Firstly – because the Palestine question is not a Jewish question. The Palestine question is a problem of the Arabs. In 1948 when the War for Liberation was being led, Israel was attacked by all Arabic countries. The West Bank that was to become a Palestinian state, under the decision of the United Nations was occupied by Jordanians. Golan was occupied by Syria, while Sinai Peninsula was controlled by Egypt. That is to say that this is a purely Arabic question. It was not earlier than 1967 that Israel occupied the West Bank, expelling Jordan and winning the war. That is why the problem with those camps is artificially created - and it is quite clear for every Jew. Every time I explain these matters to somebody I say that the Palestinian question has nothing to do with Israel. It is an Arabic one because they didn’t allow another Arab country to be set up from the very beginning. However, after the wars started and the diplomatic relations with Israel were cancelled, I didn’t feel any change in the attitude of my friends and co-workers in Bulgaria. All the more – when I was teaching at the Military Academy we used to discuss these matters rather theoretically.

I have been to Israel once - in 1982. I gathered with my old friends there as if we hadn’t been separated at all. I visited all my classmates and friends whom I used to live in Bulgaria with many years ago. Then I had relatives there – they were alive; my aunts and uncles, too. I haven’t been there after that first visit, because as a poor relative of theirs I felt awkward about visiting them again. Now my aunts and uncles are dead. My wife wanted to go there very much, but it simply didn’t happen. My uncle David used to come to Sofia every two years or so. We communicated through letters, telephone calls. Now I have only one cousin there, other two of my cousins are living in Ecuador, but I don’t keep in touch with them. Unfortunately, I don’t know any further details about them.

The democratization of the country after 1989 had a negative effect on me. The way we live here now is the worst that ever happened to Bulgaria. We live in an insecure society. People are scared when they come back home from somewhere – people are afraid even when they are in their own homes. Because of that criminal deed, that Bulgaria has never experienced before. I’m speaking not only about the socialist period, but also of the times before it when we were wearing yellow stars and were in conspiracy activities. Even then we felt safer than we feel now. There was order in the country. Now – this democracy that we are now living in is no democracy at all, it is rather DAEMONcracy. And if I have to explain this situation to myself – it is perhaps because there hasn’t been such a phenomenon in the human history before. We know how capitalism stems out of the feudalism, how capitalism became socialism – but this phenomenon – from socialism to go back into capitalism we experience for the first time here. [Editor’s note: A reference to the perception of History along the lines of Marxist ideology. According to dialectical and historical materialism, official and exclusive in Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe before 1989, the structure of society is in continuous development in the scene or World History, starting from the primitive prehistory, reaching the most developed and socially advanced Communism through the stages of Antique Slavery, Feudalism and Capitalism.] I call it DAEMONcracy because of the daemons – because people live in fear. Its is a stressful situation.

After 1989 my life didn’t change much with regard to the Jewry. I get on well with my wife on these questions – she has lived with Jews. But I feel that now the anti-Semitism is stronger than before. I can see the books on Slaveykov Square [the largest open book market in Sofia]: Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’, the books by Volen Siderov [Bulgarian journalist, radical nationalist, and Holocaust denier. Among his publications are ‘The truth about the six million Jews’ and ‘The Boomerang of Evil’.] and others. However, these are separate books - people do not share these views and feelings. I have always said that there wasn’t any anti-Semitism among people in Bulgaria. There were certain instances – sometimes they were provoked, sometimes they were paid, but as a whole they were marginal cases. However, the instances of anti-Semitism are instances of anti-Semitism. The publisher of ‘Mein Kampf’ in the Czech Republic was sentenced to four years of imprisonment. I think that every country deserves its Jews. After the changes from 1989 in Bulgaria a certain impetus to the Jewry was given, but the initial excitement of not being choked has passed and now the life takes its normal routine. The club ‘Golden Age’ was set up, and we meet with friends, acquaintances. [The Golden Age club was formed in 1999. In the Bet Am there are separate programmes for people of different age – this is the club of the elderly people] There is also a club were one can study Ivrit, Ladino – these are nice things. I receive aids - from ‘Joint’ I receive a small sum on heating – it is around 20 levs. [20 levs are equal to some 10 euros ]. The Swiss organization helps us, as well as this ‘Claims Conference’.

However, there is another thing - as if something in the mentality of the local Jews went wrong together with these changes. All of us here lived intensive lives, we had certain positions in the society, we were respected. Now we came to a situation to wait for somebody to help, because we live in need. This has its influence on our psychics. We are asking each other – did you receive this, did you get that? Earlier we could manage it with our own strength somehow. For example, when I bought the flat I started working more intensively, I developed projects, I had private students. Deeply in our hearts we cannot accept that we are living out of aids. On the other hand – the repressed by the socialism got between 20 and 50 levs in additional monthly pension, whereas before that the active fighter against the capitalism and fascism received such bonuses. And what should one say – have we, the Jews, not been repressed? We are the most repressed people: from 1941 to 1944 we had to wear yellow stars, there was a curfew hour, many houses were destroyed during the process of internment.

Translated by Alexander Manuiloff

Glossary

[1] Expulsion of the Jews from Spain: The Sephardi population of the Balkans originates from the Jews who were expelled from the Iberian peninsula, as a result of the ‘Reconquista’ in the late 15th century (Spain 1492, and Portugal 1495). The majority of the Sephardim subsequently settled in the territory of the Ottoman Empire, mainly in maritime cities (Salonika, Istanbul, Smyrna, etc.) and also in the ones situated on significant overland trading routes to Central Europe (Bitola, Skopje, and Sarajevo) and to the Danube (Adrianople, Philipopolis, Sofia, and Vidin).

[2] Ladino: otherwise known as Judeo-Spanish, is the spoken and written Hispanic language of Jews of Spanish origin. Ladino did not become a specifically Jewish language until after the expulsion from Spain in 1492 - it was merely the language of their province. It is also known as Judezmo, Dzhudezmo, or Spaniolit. When the Jews were expelled from Spain and Portugal they were cut off from the further development of the language, but they continued to speak it in the communities and countries to which they emigrated. Ladino therefore reflects the grammar and vocabulary of 14th and 15th century Spanish. In Amsterdam, England and Italy, those Jews who continued to speak 'Ladino' were in constant contact with Spain and therefore they basically continued to speak the Castilian Spanish of the time. Ladino was nowhere near as diverse as the various forms of Yiddish, but there were still two different dialects, which corresponded to the different origins of the speakers: 'Oriental' Ladino was spoken in Turkey and Rhodes and reflected Castilian Spanish, whereas 'Western' Ladino was spoken in Greece, Macedonia, Bosnia, Serbia and Romania, and preserved the characteristics of northern Spanish and Portuguese. The vocabulary of Ladino includes hundreds of archaic Spanish words, and also includes many words from different languages: mainly from Hebrew, Arabic, Turkish, Greek, French, and to a lesser extent from Portuguese and Italian. In the Ladino spoken in Israel, several words have been borrowed from Yiddish. For most of its lifetime, Ladino was written in the Hebrew alphabet, in Rashi script, or in Solitro. It was only in the late 19th century that Ladino was ever written using the Latin alphabet. At various times Ladino has been spoken in North Africa, Egypt, Greece, Turkey, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, France, Israel, and, to a lesser extent, in the United States and Latin America.

[3] Bulgaria in World War I: Bulgaria entered the war in October 1915 on the side of the Central Powers. Its main aim was the revision of the Treaty of Bucharest: the acquisition of Macedonia. Bulgaria quickly overran most of Serbian Macedonia as well as parts of Serbia; in 1916 with German backing it entered Greece (Western Thrace and the hinterlands of Salonika). After Romania surrendered to the Central Powers Bulgaria also recovered Southern Dobrudzha, which had been lost to Romania after the First Balkan War. The Bulgarian advance to Greece was halted after British, French and Serbian troops landed in Salonika, while in the north Romania joined the Allies in 1916. Conditions at the front deteriorated rapidly and political support for the war eroded. The agrarians and socialist workers intensified their antiwar campaigns, and soldier committees were formed in the army. A battle at Dobro Pole brought total retreat, and in ten days the Allies entered Bulgaria. On 29th September 1918 Bulgaria signed an armistice and withdrew from the war. The Treaty of Neuilly (November 1919) imposed by the Allies on Bulgaria, deprived the country of its World War I gains as well as its outlet to the Aegean Sea (Eastern Thrace).

[4] Forced labor camps in Bulgaria: Established under the Council of Ministers’ Act in 1941. All Jewish men between the ages of 18–50, eligible for military service, were called up. In these labor groups Jewish men were forced to work 7-8 months a year on different road constructions under very hard living and working conditions.

[5] General Zionism: General Zionism was initially the term used for all members of the Zionist Organization who had not joined a specific faction or party. Over the years, the General Zionists, too, created ideological institutions and their own organization was established in 1922. The precepts of the General Zionists included Basle-style Zionism free of ideological embellishments and the primacy of Zionism over any class, party, or personal interest. This party, in its many metamorphoses, championed causes such as the encouragement of private initiative and protection of middle-class rights. In 1931, the General Zionists split into Factions A and B as a result of disagreements over issues of concern in Palestine: social affairs, economic matters, the attitude toward the General Federation of Jewish Labor, etc. In 1945, the factions reunited. Most of Israel’s liberal movements and parties were formed under the inspiration of the General Zionists and reflect mergers in and secessions from this movement.

[6] Poalei Zion: Leftist Zionist movement, founded in the late 19th century in Russia that combined Zionism with Socialism. The early Poalei Zion found its expression in the organization of trade unions, mutual aid societies, and Zionist groups of workers, clerks and salesmen. These groups emphasized the need for democracy within the Jewish community. The Austro-Hungarian branch of Poalei Zion differed markedly from the Russian one. Its ideologists maintained that the Zionist movement was an expression of the entire Jewish people and transcended class interests. It maintained that the position of the Jewish worker and commercial employee was different from that of the non-Jew, since the Jew had to face both exploitation and discrimination at the same time. It warned the Jewish workers against following the teachings of the Social Democrats in Austria-Hungary who denied this fact. It negated the socialist solution unless it were combined with a Jewish autonomous territory. Instead it stressed the need for the conscious direction of the migration of the Jewish masses to Palestine. The Poalei Zion groups in other countries followed in their ideology either the Russian or the Austrian models. Poalei Zion in Romania and Bulgaria adhered to the Austrian school. In 1907 a Word Union of Poalei Zion was founded. In 1920 the movement split over the attitude toward the Socialist and Communist Internationals, the Zionist Organization, and the place to be accorded to the movement’s activities in Erez Israel. Left Poalei Zion sought unconditional affiliation with the Third International (Comintern); by 1924 it had abandoned this attempt and reorganized itself on an independent basis. The other faction, the Right Poalei Zion, merged in 1925 with the Zionist Socialists.

[7] Revisionist Zionism: The movement founded in 1925 and led by Vladimir Jabotinsky advocated the revision of the principles of Political Zionism developed by Theodor Herzl, the father of Zionism. The main goals of the Revisionists was to put pressure on Great Britain for a Jewish statehood on both banks of the Jordan River, a Jewish majority in Palestine, the reestablishment of the Jewish regiments, and military training for the youth. The Revisionist Zionists formed the core of what became the Herut (Freedom) Party after the Israeli independence. This party subsequently became the central component of the Likud Party, the largest right-wing Israeli party since the 1970s.

[8] Hashomer Hatzair in Bulgaria: ‘The Young Watchman’; A Zionist-socialist pioneering movement established in Bulgaria in 1932, Hashomer Hatzair trained youth for kibbutz life and set up kibbutzim in Palestine. During World War II, members were sent to Nazi-occupied areas and became leaders in Jewish resistance groups. After the war, Hashomer Hatzair was active in ‘illegal’ immigration to Palestine.

[9] Maccabi World Union: International Jewish sports organization whose origins go back to the end of the 19th century. A growing number of young Eastern European Jews involved in Zionism felt that one essential prerequisite of the establishment of a national home in Palestine was the improvement of the physical condition and training of ghetto youth. In order to achieve this, gymnastics clubs were founded in many Eastern and Central European countries, which later came to be called Maccabi. The movement soon spread to more countries in Europe and to Palestine. The World Maccabi Union was formed in 1921. In less than two decades its membership was estimated at 200,000 with branches located in most countries of Europe and in Palestine, Australia, South America, South Africa, etc.

[10] Jabotinsky, Vladimir (1880-1940): Founder and leader of the Revisionist Zionist movement; soldier, orator and a prolific author writing in Hebrew, Russian, and English. During World War I he established and served as an officer in the Jewish Legion, which fought in the British army for the liberation of the Land of Israel from Turkish rule. He was a member of the Board of Directors of the Keren Hayesod, the financial arm of the World Zionist Organization, founded in London in 1920, and was later elected to the Zionist Executive. He resigned in 1923 in protest over Chaim Weizmann’s pro-British policy and founded the Revisionist Zionist movement and the Betar youth movement two years later. Jabotinsky also founded the ETZEL (National Military Organization) during the 1936-39 Arab rebellion in Palestine.

[11] Betar: (abbreviation of Berit Trumpeldor) A right-wing Zionist youth movement founded in 1923 in Riga, Latvia. Betar played an important role in Zionist education, in teaching the Hebrew language and culture, and methods of self-defense. It also inculcated the ideals of aliyah to Erez Israel by any means, legal and illegal, and the creation of a Jewish state on both sides of the Jordan. Its members supported the idea to create a Jewish legion in order to liberate Palestine. In Bulgaria the organization started publishing its newspaper in 1934.

[12] Schubert, Franz (1797-1828): a famous Austrian composer known as master of song whose works bear the spirit of Romanticism. He composed over 950 works (approximately 600 of them are songs).

[13] Aleichem, Shalom (1859-1916): born in Russia as Solomon Rabinovitz, he is a Yiddish literature's clasical writer. He is best known for his unique humorous style, ’laughter through tears’. His works include five novels, many plays, and some 300 short stories. Among them are: ‘Adventures of Mottel, The Cantor's Son’, ‘The Adventures of Menahem-Mendl’, ‘Tevye the Dairyman’, etc.
Source: http://www.bialik.netaxis.qc.ca/yiddish/aleichem.htm, http://www.sholom-aleichem.org, http://www.encyclopedia.com

[14] Malbish Arumim: Jewish women’s charity organisation. It was registered in 1912 in Ruse and in 1920 in Sofia. Organisations ‘Malbish Arumim’ are women’s charity ones, aimed at offering material support to poor Jewish girls and enhancing the popularization of Jewish culture in Bulgaria. Its activity was canceled with the introduction of the anti-Jewish Law for Protection of the Nation (1941) which liquidated all social, enlightenment, cultural and trade enterprises and organisations]

[15] Law for the Protection of the Nation: A comprehensive anti-Jewish legislation in Bulgaria was introduced after the outbreak of World War II. The ‘Law for the Protection of the Nation’ was officially promulgated in January 1941. According to this law, Jews did not have the right to own shops and factories. Jews had to wear the distinctive yellow star; Jewish houses had to display a special sign identifying it as being Jewish; Jews were dismissed from all posts in schools and universities. The internment of Jews in certain designated towns was legalized and all Jews were expelled from Sofia in 1943. Jews were only allowed to go out into the streets for one or two hours a day. They were prohibited from using the main streets, from entering certain business establishments, and from attending places of entertainment. Their radios, automobiles, bicycles and other valuables were confiscated. From 1941 on Jewish males were sent to forced labor battalions and ordered to do extremely hard work in mountains, forests and road construction. In the Bulgarian-occupied Yugoslav (Macedonia) and Greek (Aegean Thrace) territories the Bulgarian army and administration introduced extreme measures. The Jews from these areas were deported to concentration camps, while the plans for the deportation of Jews from Bulgaria proper were halted by a protest movement launched by the vice-chairman of the Bulgarian Parliament.

[16] Country Defence (Rodna zashtita): Proto-Fascist militant organization, founded in 1923 by retired army generals and led by Ivan Shkoynov. It declared fight against the political ‘left’ in general and the freemasons in particular. Members wore paramilitary uniforms and introduced the fascist salute. In 1930 the ultra right part split and gave birth to the Bulgarian Legions. In 1931, Country Defence merged with another extreme-right organization Kubrat (named after a proto-Bulgarian khan) and gave support to the party formation Democratic Union. After the 1934 coup d’etat the organization officially ceased to exist.

[17] Ratniks: The Ratniks, like the Branniks, were also members of a nationalist organization. They advocated a return to national values. The word ‘rat’ comes from the Old Bulgarian root meaning ‘battle’, i.e. ‘Ratniks’ ­ fighters, soldiers.

[18] Yellow star in Bulgaria: According to a governmental decree all Bulgarian Jews were forced to wear distinctive yellow stars after 24th September 1942. Contrary to the German-occupied countries the stars in Bulgaria were made of yellow plastic or textile and were also smaller. Volunteers in previous wars, the war-disabled, orphans and widows of victims of wars, and those awarded the military cross were given the privilege to wear the star in the form of a button. Jews who converted to Christianity and their families were totally exempt. The discriminatory measures and persecutions ended with the cancellation of the Law for the Protection of the Nation on 17th August 1944.

[19] Halva: A sweet confection of Turkish and Middle Eastern origin and largely enjoyed throughout the Balkans. It is made chiefly of ground sesame seeds and honey.
[20] Utro: Meaning Morning, it was a Bulgarian bourgeois daily, issued between 1911 and 1914. It was founded by St. Damyanov and the first editor-in-chief was St. Tanev. Utro published sensational both local and international news, supporting the policy of the Government, especially during the World War II, as well as Bulgaria’s pro-German orientation. Its circulation amounted to 160,000 copies.

[21] Zora: Meaning Dawn, it was a Bulgarian daily published between 1919 and 1944. It was owned by ‘Balgarski Pechat’ (Bulgarian Printing) publishing house and its editor-in-chief was Danail Krapchev. Zora was primarily affiliated to the rightist Bulgarian Democratic Party, but later it took a more neutral position and fought for national union. It defended the interests of the occupied Bulgarians from Thrace, Macedonia, Dobrudzha and the Western Outlying Districts. It published political, economic, and cultural information. After 9th September 1944, it stoped being published. Its editor-in-chief was convicted and executed.

[22] Bet Am: The Jewish center in Sofia today, housing all Jewish organizations.

[23] Dimitrov, Georgi (1882-1949): A Bulgarian revolutionary, who was the head of the Comintern from 1936 through its dissolution in 1943, secretary general of the Bulgarian Communist Party from 1945 to 1949, and prime minister of Bulgaria from 1946 to 1949. He rose to international fame as the principal defendant in the Leipzig Fire Trial in 1933. Dimitrov put up such a consummate defense that the judicial authorities had to release him.

[24] UYW: The Union of Young Workers (also called Revolutionary Youth Union). A communist youth organization, which was legally established in 1928 as a sub-organization of the Bulgarian Communist Youth Union (BCYU). After the coup d’etat in 1934, when parties in Bulgaria were banned, it went underground and became the strongest wing of the BCYU. Some 70% of the partisans in Bulgaria were members of it. In 1947 it was renamed Dimitrov’s Communist Youth Union, after Georgi Dimitrov, the leader of the Bulgarian Communist Party at the time.

[25] Forced name change of Jews in Bulgaria: As a part of the anti-Semitic legislation ‘Law for Protection of the Nation’, introduced in December 1940 and followed by a further governmental decree in August 1942, Jews were not allowed to possess the Bulgarian ending of family names (-ov, -ev, -ich, etc.) and the Ashkenazim were forced to change their first names too.
In the fall of 1940, interior minister, Petar Gabrovski, submitted to Parliament a draft bill called Law for Protection of the Nation. The bill contained four chapters: 1.On the secret and international organizations; 2. On the persons of Jewish origin; 3. On anti-national and suspicious actions; 4. Special provisions; and the whole legislative text was divided into 50 articles. The second chapter focused on people from Jewish origin with article 15 defining the legal term ‘Jew’ while the following 14 articles imposed severe limitation on Bulgarian Jews’ civil and political rights. According to the requirements of this act, the Jews were forced to declare their origin with the due documents at the municipal authorities and police offices, removing the traditional Bulgarian endings –ov, -ev, -ich from their surnames. They were not authorized to be Bulgarian subjects, to vote, be elected to public bodies, enterprises or organizations, they were forbidden to occupy state, municipal or other positions in the public governing system or in private organizations. They were not allowed to be members of the organizations ruled by the interior ministry, to marry Bulgarians or own any open-land estate. Apart from that, their enrollment to education institutions as well as their right to practise freelance jobs, trade, industry and crafts were limited. All Jews were required to register their place of residence, which they were not allowed to change without prior permission, they were also asked to declare their properties. The restrictive measures of this chapter were connected with the personality, properties and professional activities of the Jews. On 24th December 1940, this bill was voted and passed by the 15th National Assembly. On 1st March 1941, the Government led by Bogdan Filov signed the protocol under which Bulgaria joined the Tripartite Pact and German troops entered the country.

[26] Ventura, Ana Avram (1925-1942): Bulgarian anti-fascist fighter of Jewish origin, born in the Danubian town of Ruse, a daughter of one of the richest industrialists there. She was a member of the communist youth organization of The Union of Young Workers and one of its leaders in Ruse and in 1942 also of the Bulgarian Workers’ Party. She was killed in an underground flat on 22nd February 1944.

[27] Internment of Jews in Bulgaria: Although Jews living in Bulgaria where not deported to concentration camps abroad or to death camps, many were interned to different locations within Bulgaria. In accordance with the Law for the Protection of the Nation, the comprehensive anti-Jewish legislation initiated after the outbreak of WWII, males were sent to forced labor battalions in different locations of the country, and had to engage in hard work. There were plans to deport Bulgarian Jews to Nazi Death Camps, but these plans were not realized. Preparations had been made at certain points along the Danube, such as at Somovit and Lom. In fact, in 1943 the port at Lom was used to deport Jews from Aegean Thrace and from Macedonia, but in the end, the Jews from Bulgaria proper were spared.

[28] 24th May 1943: Protest by a group of members of parliament led by the deputy chairman of the National Assembly, Dimitar Peshev, as well as a large section of Bulgarian society. They protested against the deportation of the Jews, which culminated in a great demonstration on 24th May 1943. Thousands of people led by members of parliament, the Eastern Orthodox Church and political parties stood up against the deportation of Bulgarian Jews. Although there was no official law preventing deportation, Bulgarian Jews were saved, unlike those from Bulgarian occupied Aegean Thrace and Macedonia.

[29] Joint (American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee): The Joint was formed in 1914 with the fusion of three American Jewish aid committees, which were alarmed by the suffering of Jews during World War I. In late 1944, the Joint entered Europe’s liberated areas and organized a massive relief operation. It provided food for Jewish survivors all over Europe, it supplied clothing, books and school supplies for children. It supported the establishment of cultural meeting places, including libraries, theaters and gardens. It also provided religious supplies for the Jewish communities. The Joint also operated DP camps, in which it organized retraining programs to help people learn trades that would enable them to earn a living, while its cultural and religious activities helped re-establish Jewish life. The Joint was also closely involved in helping Jews to emigrate from European and Muslim countries. The Joint was expelled from East Central Europe for decades during the Cold War and it has only come back to many of these countries after the fall of communism. Today the Joint provides social welfare programs for elderly Holocaust survivors and encourages Jewish renewal and communal development.

[30] Institute for Rationalizations: It was set up by a law passed by the 15th National Assembly in 1941 upon proposal of the Bogdan Filov’s cabinet under the name of Institute for Economic Rationalizations at the Council of Ministers. This institute merged the existing by then Bulgarian National Scientific Organization and Bulgaria’s Standardization Institute. It was a state authority and a legal entity according to the legislation of the period. The aim of the Institute for Economic Rationalizations during these years was to co-operate for the economic strengthening of the state through applying the principles of rationalization. Its relations with the Bulgarian-German Chamber of Commerce and the Germany’s Institute for Standardization and Economic Rationalization are apparent. After the end of the WWII it was closed down in 1948 when it was transformed into Institute for Rationalizations. It had two main departments: Inventions and Proposals for Rationalizations and Standards.

[31] 1956: It designates the Revolution, which started on 23rd October 1956 against Soviet rule and the communists in Hungary. It was started by student and worker demonstrations in Budapest started in which Stalin’s gigantic statue was destroyed. Moderate communist leader Imre Nagy was appointed as prime minister and he promised reform and democratization. The Soviet Union withdrew its troops which had been stationing in Hungary since the end of World War II, but they returned after Nagy’s announcement that Hungary would pull out of the Warsaw Pact to pursue a policy of neutrality. The Soviet army put an end to the rising on 4th November and mass repression and arrests started. About 200,000 Hungarians fled from the country. Nagy, and a number of his supporters were executed. Until 1989, the fall of the communist regime, the Revolution of 1956 was officially considered a counter-revolution.

[32] Doctors’ Plot: The Doctors’ Plot was an alleged conspiracy of a group of Moscow doctors to murder leading government and party officials. In January 1953, the Soviet press reported that nine doctors, six of whom were Jewish, had been arrested and confessed their guilt. As Stalin died in March 1953, the trial never took place. The official paper of the Party, the Pravda, later announced that the charges against the doctors were false and their confessions obtained by torture. This case was one of the worst anti-Semitic incidents during Stalin’s reign. In his secret speech at the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956 Khrushchev stated that Stalin wanted to use the Plot to purge the top Soviet leadership.

[33] Kostov, Traicho (1897-1949): born in Sofia. After he graduated from the high school he enrolled in the National Service Academy. Later he started studying law at Sofia University. He took part in WWI. He made friends with officers who were narrow socialists under whose influence he adopted socialist ideas. In 1920 he became a member of the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP). After the anti-fascist September uprising of 1923 he joined BCP’s apparatus. In 1924 he was caught and convicted to 8 years imprisonment. He was granted amnesty in 1929 and immediately after that illegally left for the USSR. He worked at BCP’s foreign office and was a member of the Executive Committee of the Communist International. He returned to Bulgaria in 1931 to direct the ideological activity of BCP and the Workers’ Party parliamentary group. For the period from 1932 and 1936 he emigrated to the USSR three times. He went underground in the summer of 1940. As a secretary of the BCP’s Central Committee he was one of the initiator’s and leaders of the armed resistance led by BCP during WWII. In 1942 he was arrested and convicted to imprisonment for life. He was released on 7th September 1944 from the Pleven’s jail. In 1945 he was elected general secretary of the BCP’s Central Committee. In 1949, following Stalin’s example for seeking enemies among the party members, he was accused of anti-party and anti-state activities and sentenced to death after a public process. He was posthumously rehabilitated.

[34] Slansky Trial: Communist show trial named after its most prominent victim, Rudolf Slansky. It was the most spectacular among show trials against communists with a wartime connection with the West, veterans of the Spanish Civil War, Jews, and Slovak ‘bourgeois nationalists’. In November 1952 Slansky and 13 other prominent communist personalities, 11 of whom were Jewish, including Slansky, were brought to trial. The trial was given great publicity; they were accused of being Trotskyst, Titoist, Zionist, bourgeois, nationalist traitors, and in the service of American imperialism. Slansky was executed, and many others were sentenced to death or to forced labor in prison camps.

[35] Ana Pauker-Vasile Luca-Teohari Georgescu group: After 1945 there were two major groupings in the Romanian communist leadership: the Muscovites led by Ana Pauker, and the former illegal communists led by Gheorghe Dej. Ana Pauker arrived in Romania the day after the entry of the Soviet army as the leader of the group of communists returning from Moscow; the Muscovites were the major political rivals of Gheorghe Dej. As a result of their rivalry, three out of the four members of the Political Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party were convicted on trumped-up charges in show trials in 1952. The anti-Semitic campaign launched by Stalin in 1952, which also spread over to Romania, created a good opportunity to launch such a trial – both Luca and Pauker were of Jewish origin. Georgescu was executed. Luca was also sentenced to death but the sentence was changed to lifetime forced labor. He died in prison in 1960. Pauker was released after Stalin’s death and lived in internal exile until her death.

[36] 10th November 1989: After 35 years of rule, Communist Party leader Todor Zhivkov was replaced by the hitherto Prime Minister Peter Mladenov who changed the Bulgarian Communist Party’s name to Socialist Party. On 17th November 1989 Mladenov became head of state, as successor of Zhivkov. Massive opposition demonstrations in Sofia with hundreds of thousands of participants calling for democratic reforms followed from 18th November to December 1989. On 7th December the ‘Union of Democratic Forces’ (SDS) was formed consisting of different political organizations and groups.

[37] Six-Day-War: The first strikes of the Six-Day-War happened on 5th June 1967 by the Israeli Air Force. The entire war only lasted 132 hours and 30 minutes. The fighting on the Egyptian side only lasted four days, while fighting on the Jordanian side lasted three. Despite the short length of the war, this was one of the most dramatic and devastating wars ever fought between Israel and all of the Arab nations. This war resulted in a depression that lasted for many years after it ended. The Six-Day-War increased tension between the Arab nations and the Western World because of the change in mentalities and political orientations of the Arab nations.

[38] Yom Kippur War: The Arab-Israeli War of 1973, also known as the Yom Kippur War or the Ramadan War, was a war between Israel on one side and Egypt and Syria on the other side. It was the fourth major military confrontation between Israel and the Arab states. The war lasted for three weeks: it started on 6th October 1973 and ended on 22nd October on the Syrian front and on 26th October on the Egyptian front.

honIzak Sarhon
Istanbul
Turkey
Interviewer:  Yusuf Sarhon
Date of Interview: December 2004

Izak Sarhon is an extremely intelligent and talented 90-year-old man.  He and his wife live in a flat at Gayrettepe, Istanbul; a spacious apartment in an apartment building where a lot of other Jewish families live.  Mr. Şarhon is slim, not very tall, has blue eyes and is always eager for a good joke.  He is extremely orderly and likes to keep old papers and documents in perfect order.  Painting is his hobby and he still makes copies of paintings that take his fancy.  He worked as an account until last year, when he decided to retire at the age of 89.  He is now working on the rashi-to-latin transliteration of the Meam Loez (the greatest literary masterpiece of the interpretation of the Torah written in Ladino), a project he is helping his daughter-in-law, Karen Sarhon, coordinator of the Ottoman-Turkish Sephardic Culture Research Center, with.  He likes jokes and collects them in writing. His Turkish is not very good so it was extremely difficult to reorganize his sentences into correct Turkish.  He normally prefers to speak either French or Judeo-Spanish.

Family background

Growing Up

During the War

After the War

Glossary

Family background

There are no stories or legends that I remember from any of my ancestors.  As to my grandparents, I only know about my mother’s side of the family.  I don’t know anything about my father’s parents, Avram and Sinyora Sarhon.

My mother’s father, (Nesim Danon) was a very serious man.  He must also have been a highly informed [he uses the expression “cultured” when he means “a man of the world who is informed, can speak many languages and has also had more years of schooling than the average person of the time, especially if that schooling was done at the Alliance schools”] man because he was doing trade (I don’t really know what kind of trade because I was very young at the time) with England at that time.  He used to go to England on business, and at that time this was done by ships because there were no planes then.  I do not remember his face or anything about him; I just remember the day he died.  On that day, they did not let me see him when they were about to take his body out of the house because he died in the house.  I was very young at the time, that is all I remember.  I assumed he was an educated man afterwards when I learned about what he had been doing as business.

As to my maternal grandmother, Mazalto Danon, I do not remember anything original about her either.  She was a normal woman.  She used to live with my parents in Ortaköy because she was a widow.  Then when her daughter, Fani Saranga, emigrated to Israel [Palestine] in the early 1930s, she went to join her and she lived with her after that in Israel.  She died in Israel but I do not remember the date.  I never heard of any sisters or brothers so perhaps she did not have any.

My grandparents did not have different neighbors from ours as they used to live with us.  They did not have friends they met socially either.

My father, Samuel Sarhon, was born in Istanbul.  I don’t remember when he was born, but he died in 1960.  As far as I know, he lived in Ortakoy most of his life.  In the early 1940s, they moved to Talimhane and then later in life to Harbiye [these are all different districts on the European side of Istanbul]. 

My father had three brothers.  The first was Bohor Sarhon.  He was a “cow shohet”.  He also used to give lessons to students about how to slaughter animals.  No one could become a “shohet” without his permission.  His wife was Grasya Sarhon and they had five children: Alber, Liz, Ojeni, Viktorya and Sara.  Most of them lived in France. 

My father’s second brother was Yaakov Sarhon and he was a “chicken shohet”.  His wife was Rebeka Sarhon and they had 2 children: Rober never married.  Ojeni married someone with the surname Aluf.  Apart from these two, my father had another sibling who lived in Cairo but I have no information about him.

My father, loved making jokes.  Whenever we were at family or social gatherings, he would tell jokes and he would also play jokes on people.  At that time the coachmen who drove the horse carriages used to wear uniforms, long overcoats with big, shiny buttons and hats etc...  Well, my father had a uniform like that and one day he played a joke on his sisters.  He went to visit them in this coachman uniform of his!

My father first worked as manager at a clothing store, then one of the biggest of the time, called “STEIN”.  The store was in “Istanbul” [this generation called the region of Eminonu-Sirkeci, actually the old city, “Istanbul”], in Eminonu.  Then he worked at “MAYER”, another big textile store in Karakoy, which then moved to Beyoglu.  The building where this Mayer store was situated belonged to the municipality and the municipality wanted them out of that building.  They even sued Mayer, but Mayer won in the end.

My mother, Ester Danon, was born in Istanbul.  She studied at the Alliance school, but I don’t know which one. She always lived in Istanbul and died in 1971.  She never worked, she was a housewife.  Her native language was [Judeo] Spanish, Ladino.

My mother had one sister, Fani Saranga.  As far as I remember, Fani was among one of the first who emigrated to Israel, at the beginning of the 1930s.  It was Palestine then, of course.  She settled there.  She had 4 children; 2 girls (Alegra and Fortune) and 2 boys (Ruben and Nisim).  Her daughters went and settled in France.  One of her daughters, Alegra was deported by the Germans in France.  The other daughter, Fortune, was all right, nothing happened to her.  One of her sons, Ruben, died in Israel during the war with the Arabs.  Her second son, Nisim, died a few years ago in Israel.

My mother was a very serene person.  She wasn’t frivolous or anything.  She spoke calmly.  The novels she read were never frivolous, they were always serious, and always in French. When she went to the cinema, it was to see historical films only. She was a serious woman and liked serious things.

Both my parents were born in Istanbul.  I don’t know which schools they went to.  What I do know is, they both read in French.  They bought the “Journal d’Orient”.  1 Their native languages were French and Ladino.  They spoke to us, their children in “Espanyol”, Ladino.  They spoke French amongst themselves.  I remember being very young and tell them when I heard them speaking French “avlaremos en ‘oui’” [”avlaremos en” are words in Ladino that mean “let us speak in” and of course “oui” is the French word for “yes”].  I didn’t know French but as “oui” was a word I had heard frequently I told them I wanted to speak in “oui”.  I wanted to learn this language.

I do not know how my parents met.  The only thing I know is that my mother did not like any of her previous suitors until she met my father, whom she liked immediately.

My parents were quite modern people.  Even before the Republic [the Turkish Republic] was founded they used to wear European clothes, mainly because my father worked at a European clothing store, STEIN, like I said.  We never wore the “fez” [the old Ottoman headgear for men].  We did not have to of course, so we never dressed “a la turka” [in the Turkish style].  We had European made dresses, coats, shoes, everything.  There were people, including Jews, who wore the “fez” at the time but we never did.  Our family was famous for it actually. My brother and sister and I always had European made clothes, even though our economic situation was mediocre.

We had a cleaning woman who came to clean our house once a week.

I was born on 23rd March 1914 in Ortakoy [a Jewish district at the beginning of the 20th century on the European coast of the Bosphorus.  The Ortaköy Synagogue is still a very active synagogue in Istanbul], Istanbul. 

Growing Up

I was the last child of the family.  I had an older brother, Albert Sarhon and an older sister, Anjel Sarhon.  There had also been another brother before me, Nisim Sarhon, who died.  I do not know anything about him.  Our eldest, Albert left for France when he was 20, came back for his military service, then left again and settled in France.  He got married there and died there.  When World War II started, he was in France; and then the Germans invaded France.  He was in danger and had to hide.  He couldn’t write anything to us at that time.  There was a girl he knew there, a Christian girl who lived in Avignon.  She took him out of Avignon, to a village where her relatives were.  She hid and protected him throughout the war.  When the Germans came, even the little children in the village came to warn him to hide and not be seen walking around.  My brother was saved thanks to that girl.  He spent all the years of the war in that way.  Then after the war, he married that girl, Raymonde Charhon. [Charhon is the french spelling of the Turkish Sarhon] He owed his life to her.

My brother used to sell textile products at a market place in France.  They used to sell coats and things like that.  They owned a tent at that market place.

My brother had two children, Patricia and Alain.  They all live in France.

My older sister, Anjel, lived in Istanbul all her life.  She went to a French, catholic school, but I don’t remember which one.  She then worked at a firm called “Arditty”.  She used to do office work there.  She got married, then separated.  She never had any children.  None of my siblings are alive today.

The house I was born in was on the main street.  There was a street that went to the pier.  I remember the times when there were fires in the district.  When there was a fire, the “tulumbadji”s [water pumpers] came.  They came all the way from Eminönü or Kasımpasa [two districts that are at least half an hour’s drive from Ortaköy today].  Wherever the fire was, they used to come running.  4 of them would be holding and pulling the water pump, and the others would just come running shouting and screaming.  They would ask: “Where’s the fire, where’s the fire?”.  At that time, they used to put up notices on the walls of the police stations about the locations of the fires if there were any.  These water pumpers always went by the main street in front of our house to go to the places along the Bosphorus where there were fires.  They got wind of these fires somehow and then the groups of water pumpers would fight amongst themselves : “Our group will put out this fire, don’t interfere” one group would yell at the other.

I remember, when I was quite young, there was war.  After World War I 2, there was the Turkish War of Independence 3.  I was about 6 at the time.  They had recalled my father to the army.  He was at the military base in Selimiye.  My mother used to give him vinegar to drink every day so he would be too ill to go to war.  She succeeded in making him ill enough to get a medical report saying he was too weak to go to war, and he didn’t.

Our home was on the main street in Ortakoy, on the corner of a little street that went to the pier.  It overlooked both the main street and the sea.  It was a 3-storey house.  We lived on the first floor.  Somebody else lived above us.  We rented our flat.  However, we used to find the people who were to rent the upper floor.  The owner of the house, who was Jewish, would never rent his house to people we did not approve of.  We had another room on the top floor.

There did not use to be any bathrooms then.  Just toilets, and the toilets were “a la turca” [a hole on the floor with two stones on each side to put your feet on and squat] and not “a la franga” [European style].

We had normal types of furniture.  Actually, if we still had them today, they would be considered as having antique value.  I remember a console with a mirror that was covered with colored stones.  It was very beautiful.  We also had a big, beautiful tile stove in our living room. 

As far as I remember, electricity came to Ortakoy when I was still quite young, I don’t remember exactly when .  And when they did give electricity to Ortakoy, not everyone had it.  There was a shop on the ground floor of our apartment building and we drew an electrical line from the shop to our house.  However, I do remember the days when we we used big gas lamps for lighting.  We did have running water in our home.  There was also a “hamam” [Turkish bath] nearby.  My mother used to take me but I didn’t like it.  I used to cry.

We used big, round “mangal”s [brazier] for heating and also of course stoves to burn wood in.  We had two sorts of braziers; one made of copper and the other of sheet iron.  We had stoves in 2 of the bedrooms and in the living room, and we had a brazier in the living room.  There were 3 rooms downstairs and another room on the top floor.  On Shabat [Sabbath] of course, we never lit the stoves or the brazier.  Somebody would come to light them for us.  He was Turkish of course, couldn’t be Jewish.  He used to make the rounds of all the houses.  He came round once or twice in the day to check the stoves.   That was his job.

We did not have a garden but we had a cat and once we had a dog, too.  A very small one.  My mother used to look after it, gave it baths etc...  My mother was very serious about cleanliness and she took special care of the cleanliness of the dog, so nothing would happen to us.  I remember taking him out in the inside pocket of my coat.  The cat was always there.  I also liked birds but my mother always let them free because she believed it was a sin to keep a bird in a cage.  “It flew away, it flew away” she would say.  She never wanted us to keep birds.

There were a lot of books in our house.  I used to read a lot.  Actually everyone in our home read a lot.  When I went to “Kapalı Carsı” [the closed bazaar in Eminönü] for shopping, I used to go to the second-hand book sellers and buy 8-10 books at a time.  I used to read books by Michel Zevaco,  and others like “Les Pardaillans” [by Alexandre Dumas].  I liked detective novels.  We used to read a lot even in bed.  When we went to bed at night, we used to read under the quilt with a torch.  We also read newspapers of course.  There was the “Journal d’Orient” and also a Jewish newspaper in Ladino that appeared once a week “El Jugueton”, which we always had in our house. 4

My family was quite religious.  My parents used to practise their religion and that must have been because they had seen and been trained in their respective homes by their own parents.  They used to practise all the traditions:  kasherut [Kashrut], shabat [Sabbath] , Pesah [Pesach], everything.  They had different sets of kitchenware for Pesah [Pesach] even.  [everything that was not made of glass was changed for Pesah] All the kitchenware used to be changed in Pesah [Pesach].  They called this different set, “loksa”.  I also remember that my father used to say his “tefila” [morning prayers] and put on his tefillim [tefillin] every morning.

My father used to read religious books.  He was very serious about his morning prayers.  When I was very young I used to do the same, but when I went abroad I “loosened up”.

For example, when Pesah [Pesach] came, the night before there was a ritual of leaving bread crumbs in the darkest corners of the room.  Then the next day, there was an in-depth cleaning and all the crumbs were found and the house was purified.  That is a tradition we had.

Then of course, we were careful with kasherut rules [kashrut].  All meat was bought from the Jewish butcher. 

My father couldn’t go to the synagogue every day because he was working but any day that he did not work and on all the holidays he would go to the synagogue.

Our neighbors and the people we socialized with were mostly Jewish.  We had a neighbor, Agop Terziyan.  He was Armenian and was a dentist.  He had a notice on his door that said “diplomée de Paris” [degree from Paris].  At that time most such notices were in French.

One member of our family was the mukhtar [the administrator of the smallest administrative area] of Ortaköy.  He had used to be a teacher or the headmaster in one of the schools in Besiktas, and then he became the mukhtar of Ortaköy.

My parents used to socialize with the neighbors upstairs and those opposite our house.  At that time people did not use to go out to dine to restaurants.  They used to gather in homes.  They chatted and had dinner together.  Once, we prepared the dinner table and my father brought a plate of something to the table.  Everyone tasted it and asked what it was.  It was “tarama” [a spread made of fish eggs and olive oil].  My father had learned how to make it from a Greek colleague at his workplace and this was a first.  No one knew about this “tarama” before that.

One more thing I remember from the time of my parents is that during the war [WWI],  Istanbul was under siege, there were a lot of English and French soldiers in Ortaköy.  We used to sit in the dark in our homes at night so nobody would see us, because these soldiers would get drunk and start shooting at random, not to kill, but just for the hell of it; we were frightened some accident would happen so we just sat in the dark.

The French soldiers stayed in a place they called “Petit Paris” [little Paris].  There was a slope, called “Portakal Pasha”, that went up beside the stream with an empty lot.  That’s where the French soldiers had their camp.  There were also soldiers from Algeria there.

These soldiers used to treat us well because we spoke French.  But we still closed up our curtains at night.  There were a lot of drunken soldiers.  There was a nightclub opposite our house, where the English soldiers gathered at night.  We even had a relative of ours who had come here from England as a soldier.  (My grandfather, used to do business with England.  He was probably doing business with relatives of ours, who at one time or other had emigrated to England.) As he played the piano, he would play and sing at this night club and entertain all these English soldiers.  As to the French soldiers, we used to visit them in the summer and sing songs together.

Our relative, Vitali Aseo, who was the mukhtar [administrator] of Ortaköy, also had a nightclub.  He worked as the mukhtar in one room and the other side of the building was the night club.  Every night “ince saz” [Turkish classical musicians] would play there.  A friend of my father’s, who lived in Kuzguncuk [a well-known Jewish district on the Asian coast of the Bosphorus] played the Oud and he was part of the “ince saz”, too.  As they were late playing music every night, he could not return to his house and would come and stay in our house.  When he came to our home, they used to give him food and he would play for the family.  I was very young at the time, and even though I wanted to, I never got the chance to listen to him play because I was fast asleep by the time he came.

My parents are both buried in the Jewish cemetery in Ortaköy.  My father died in 1960 and my mother in 1971. They had a Jewish funeral and we do the services, a “meldado” [a reading of the Mishne and the Zohar for the dead; the equivalent of yahrzeit] every year.  The rabbi “throws the ashkava” [says the name of the dead person and prays for his soul to be in heaven] and we chant the “kadish” [Kaddish].  We do this every year.

When I was a little boy, we had horse carriages in Ortaköy as a means of transportation.  We had trams then, no buses.  The synagogue was right beside our house anyway.  Our house was at one corner and the synagogue on the other.  It still stands there today.  At that time there was also a “midrash” [bet midrash] in there.

I cannot tell you about the population at the time, but Ortaköy was quite crowded.  There were a lot of Jews living there, too.  There was a “normal” [with all the necessary institutions] Jewish community there.  There were two “shohet” [shochet] s in my family.  I remember that all sorts of meat we ate had to have been slaughtered by the “shohetim” [shochetim].  The community also had a “mikve” [mikveh], Talmud Tora [talmud torah], Yeshiva [yeshivah], etc...  We had everything.

The Jews lived in various places in Ortakoy, not in a specific area only.  Jewish areas were according to “district” only in Istanbul.  For example,  Galata, Balat, Haskoy, Kuzguncuk and Ortakoy of course.

The Jews who lived in Ortakoy all had different jobs.  There were careers of every kind: bankers, grocers, greengrocers, all sorts...

As to the political events during my childhood, I remember the Greeks.  We were against each other with the Greeks at that time.  There were a lot of Greeks in Istanbul at that time.  They were our “enemies” [he means “adversaries].  One of the Greek districts was “Tatavla”, whose name was changed to “Kurtulus”.  [it is interesting to note that the meaning of the word “kurtulus” is “saved”.  It could be that the place had been “saved” from the Greeks after they had been forced to leave]  Whenever a Jew went to Tatavla, there was always a fight.  I also remember a youth club called “Maccabi” [World Union] 5.  They used to fight with the Greeks, too.  “Maccabi” was both a sports club and a social club.  I do not have a special memory of these events but I remember that whenever you were with the Greeks there was always a fight.  I do not know anything of the kind happening with the Armenians.  I only know that no Jew could go and live in Tatavla until a certain date.  Just Greeks could. 

I do not remember any other political events in my childhood.  I only remember a bomb falling on the roof of a neighboring house during the war [World War I].  It came from a plane and fell on a house near the dock. Nothing much happened.  The bombs at that time, you know, they weren’t much!  I also remember that one night they said “your Dad is coming home from the military”, and we lit the lamp and waited for him to come home.  That’s all I remember.

I started school when I was 6-7.  Before that, we used to go to the rabbi’s home in Ortakoy.  There were a few of us, and the rabbi would teach us how to read and write in Hebrew and also religious things.  He gave us a religious education.  Then I went to the Alliance [Israelite Universelle] 6 school in Ortakoy.  I studied in French.  After studying there for a few years, I continued my studies at the new Alliance school in Galata.  At that time the classes went from 6 to 1, 1 being the highest class.  I studied until grade 1, then went to St. Jean Baptiste school.  This was a Catholic school run by monks.  I went to that school because first of all it was free, or very cheap, and secondly, my cousins also went to that school and we knew it was a good school.  Plus the language of instruction was in French and I had studied in French until that time.  There were 2-3 Jews in my class, and when it was time for the Christian students to have their religious classes, called “catechism”, we used to leave and go home.

There were only Jews in the first school I went to.  They also used to teach us about Judaism, religion and Hebrew in the Alliance schools.

I studied in French.  I also went to the Berlitz school [a private school that offered German language courses] to learn German.  I studied German for a while, but learned little.  Near my workplace there was a button factory called “Korozo”.  Their engineer was German.  I practised with him a little.  Then, when I went to Israel, all my friends were Ashkenazim,  and they all spoke German.  I practised with them a lot.

I never had any talent for music.  My real hobby was painting.  There was a kind of painting that was called “decorative painting” and it was not done with brushes.  I had a tutor that taught me how to do this.  I applied all that I learned at a job, when I went to Spain and made a living out of it there.  I used to paint/ decorate ties.  They gave me unicolored silk ties and we would paint them, dry them and return them.   We would paint the ties by the dozen.  I would show them the patterns I could paint, they would choose and I would paint the ties accordingly.  At first I was working for luxurious stores, but their orders were always very small.  Those ties were very exclusive.  Then I started doing wholesale work.

If we go back to my childhood, I used to spend all my spare time with this kind of painting.  I painted cushions and handkerchiefs.

I had a lot of good friends in Ortakoy, who remained friends until they died.  When we were little, we used to play with marbles or go out together.  There was Atiyas, Avigdor, and Sages [these are all surnames].  Then there was Halit, my friend.  He was my cousin Belkıs Aseo’s husband.  Belkıs was the mukhtar’s daughter.  She married Halit and settled in Ankara.  Halit was Moslem.  He was from Ortakoy and I knew him from an early age.  He had a sister called Halide.  Belkıs did not have any problems marrying a non-Jew because at the time both her parents had died.  They were 3 sisters: Sara Aseo, Belkıs, who had been Beki and then became Belkıs [she changed her Jewish name, Beki to a Turkish one, Belkıs, after she married Halit, who was a Moslem], and Vera Ventura.

Moiz Atiyas, my best friend ever, was born in 1330 [hijri calendar], which means 1914.  He was born in Istanbul.  He used to live on the opposite corner from our house in Ortaköy.  He went to the Italian school as a child.  Then after he finished school, when he was 17-18, he started to work at a transportation firm in Sirkeci.  He worked there all his life and retired from there.

We were always together from our childhood on.  We used to play football together, then as young men we went out together.  We did our military service at the same time, we even served in the 20 classes in the same place.  We were even staying in the same tent.

We went on going out in the same group after we finished our military service.  He married a friend of ours, Elvir Barzel in 1947.  They never had any children.  His wife worked at a pharmacy in Karakoy but she was not a pharmacist herself. 

Our friendship continued until Moiz died.  I don’t really remember what year he died in. His wife also died a few years ago.

All of my friends were from Ortakoy.  We used to live very close to each other anyway.  Most were Jewish and we only had Halit as a Moslem.  We used to play football in the empty lot across our house.

On Saturdays, we had to go to “kal” [“synagogue” in Ladino] because it was Shabat [Sabbath].  But we did not spend the whole day at the synagogue.  We used to go out with friends and play.  I remember when it was time for the Selihot [Slichot], we got up in the middle of the night, went to the “kal” for prayers.  I loved to go with my Dad because when we came out of the synagogue there was always a “sahlep” [hot drink] seller and we always drank “sahlep”.

There were no cars.  There were some taxis in our street.  I do not remember when I first rode in a taxi but I do remember that the taxis came after the horse carriage era was over.  There was a taxi station in our street.  The taxis used to queue there.  When a customer came, s/he used to get into the first taxi in the line, and the others would move to the head of the line.  I used to sit in one of the taxis at the back of the line so I could ride in them when they moved to the front of the line.  I used to sit beside the driver of course.

I also remember that there was a shop that sold sweets below our house.  The man sold “akide” sweets [almonds wrapped in white sugar], “lokum”s [Turkish delight] etc...  I used to collect all the empty boxes of chocolates or sweets that our guests brought.  Then I would go and sell the man downstairs those boxes.  Once he took the boxes and said: “I will give you 8 kurush for them”.  I said, “I want 7.5 kurush”!!!  I did not know what “8” meant then.  I kept hearing “2.5, 5 and 7.5” and thought I was getting a good bargain.

During the War

I would go on a train to go to Florya [in those times a beach resort on the shores of the Marmara, today a residential area].  I vaguely remember our going to Florya.  There used to be French soldiers there [during WWI], and the trucks of the French army.  They used to offer us tea when we went there.  The Florya of that time was not like the Florya of today.  There used to be a long sandy beach there.  All we had to do was take off our shoes and walk barefoot on the beach.

At that time, people used to go to the Bosphorus or to see the city on their free days.  There was no other form of entertainment.  We used to take boat trips on the Bosphorus. 

We did not use to go on holidays then.  We would go to the cinema, or gather in homes with friends.  There never was holiday we went to with my family.  During the weekend holidays, which was either Saturday or Sunday, I don’t remember which,  we used to go to this very famous place called “Altınkum” after Kavaklar [the very northern point of the Bosphorus] or to the two spring water places in Sariyer [again a district in the north of the Bosphorus], called “Hunkar” and “Chirchir” [these used to be very famous picnic places because they had clear and cold running spring waters.  People went there both for picnics and also to drink from those wonderfully healthy waters that were provided by nature itself].  These were very famous places.  Everyone went there.  We used to carry bags, food everything.  We used to go to Sariyer by boat and then we took horse carriages called “talika”s.  I remember once, we were going in a horse carriage like that and I saw a little boy running after us with a sack on his back.  I drew the attention of my parents and told them “look, this boy is running after the carriage”.  And then my parents told me: “you are going in a carriage but this boy has to make a living by running after us so that when we come to the picnic place and get down, he will carry our bags to the café at the top of the hill and make some money”.   We used to eat at those picnic places, we put the watermelons in the springs, in the ice cold water so they would cool.  We used to bring our food and buy tea and coffee at the cafés. 

I don’t remember exactly when the French, the English and the Italian soldiers left after the War of Independence was over [1922] but I remember that we used to speak, read and write in old Turkish [Ottoman Turkish, before the language reform Turkish contained a lot more Arabic and Persian words and it was written by Arabic letters] and then Ataturk 7 passed a law that said we had to use the new alphabet [in 1928 a law was passed in the Turkish parliament of the new Turkish Republic that abolished the old Arabic alphabet and installed the new Latin alphabet for the official language of the country].  Everyone had to learn this new alphabet.  I of course, knew this alphabet from school.  But they opened schools for grown-ups, and for everyone so they could learn.  There were even night schools.  Everyone took lessons and everyone learned this new alphabet.  I remember a poem from that time on “Brotherhood”:

Durdugumuz bulundugumuz bu sevimli topraklar
Oyleyiz ki baba nedir kardes nedir dinlemeyiz     
Eger oglum sen sen isen bunları cigne ez             
O duygular hic olmazsa aramıza sokulmasın, kardesligi kovmasın 
Elele ver yasadıkca sev, sevil bunu dusun bunu bil
Lakin bizler bir anadan bir babadan yetistik         
Onun icin ayrılmayız ne buyuktur kardeslik.       
Oyle koksun bahcedeki sıra sıra agaclar              
Bora kopar ruzgar eser de onlara                         
Birbirini korurlar birbirinden ayrılmazlar            
Ve kır ciceklerini severek korurlar.                     

These sweet lands we stand on
Are such that we don’t know what father is, what brother is
My son, go and walk on these lands
Let not enmity come between us, let it not throw our brotherhood away Hand in hand, love as long as you live, be loved and know it, think it
We were raised by one mother and father
That’s why we can’t separate, that’s how  great brotherhood is
Let the trees in the garden smell that way
When the storm starts and the wind blows
They protect each other and never separate from one another
And they protect the wild flowers with their love.               
             

I went to Spain when I was 20.  How did I decide to go to Spain?  Well, when I finished school I started working at an office writing letters in French.  This was quite a big firm that was doing ‘commission importation’.  It was called Rotterman.  That was my first job.  I was doing the correspondence in French with firms abroad. There was another friend there, Jak Behar, from Kuzguncuk [a district on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus where Jews used to live] who was doing the correspondence in German.  One day, we were talking and thinking out loud:  “shall we go somewhere? Where can we go?  Where shall we go?  Shall we go to France? Where?...”  We were dreaming of travelling.  Then one day my friend came and said: “Shall we go to Spain?” and I said: “Yes, let’s go”.  So we decided to go to Spain, find a job there and settle down.  Of course, our families started protesting: “Why do you want to go there? You don’t know anyone there etc. etc.”  But we were decided and did not budge.  Then one day my friend came and said: “Hey, look, they are putting a lot of pressure on me at home, let’s not go”.  However, this was the 1930s and everybody was talking about an imminent war and that Turkey would also go to war; so everyone was afraid really, and that’s how I managed to convince my own parents.  My friend’s father did not give up though; one day he came and told us: “My boys, where are you going? What are you going to do there?  Come, let me find you a good job.  Come with me, there is a tin can factory; I’ll buy it for you, and then you won’t have to go”.  We said “No”, then my friend’s father said: “Come, there is a fabric knitting atelier on sale, I’ll buy it for you, don’t go”.  But I said: “No, my mind is set, I’ll go”.  So he had to accept our decision.  There was another Jewish family from Kuzguncuk, who had already gone to Spain.  We said we would go to them and that is how we were finally able to convince both families.  I went to get a passport, but I was a bit scared that maybe they wouldn’t give me a passport, but they did. 

We left for Spain in 1934.  We went to Barcelona.  We went by boat.  We had the address of a restaurant with us.  It was in fact, a kind of café and they served lunch and dinner.  The owner of the restaurant was a Jew from Greece, I think from Salonica.  So we went to this restaurant and told the owner that we had just arrived and needed somewhere to sleep.  He called someone called Joseppe and told him to go and ask a certain lady if she had rooms available.  Joseppe went and came back saying that she did, so we took our bags and took the rooms in that hostel.  That’s how we started to stay there.  As for money, I remember that I went to Spain with 50 liras.  One peseta was then 50 kurush [100 kurush is one lira], so 50 liras was not a lot of money but it was OK for a while.

At first, we started to sell textile products at open markets and observed what others were doing.  Most people were doing this kind of business, so we learned it too, and started doing it.  Then I started doing painting work.  I was painting ties.  My friend couldn’t do this work, so he returned to Turkey after one year.  I was alone then.  I stayed in Spain for 2.5 years.  Then there was a revolution during Franco’s time [Spanish Civil War, 1936-39].  Franco was in the government and the communists started a revolution.  This revolution lasted long years.  At first they weren’t doing anything to the people.  I remember that at that time the Olympic Games were going to be in Barcelona [1936], and my business had been thriving because I was painting ties for the Olympic Games.  I was painting the 5 circles, the symbol of the Olympics on the ties.  Then in Barcelona, the revolutionists won, the Olympic Games were cancelled, all business stopped and I had to leave.  I went to France on a British ship.  The British had sent warships to Barcelona to get all the foreigners out.  They only took the foreigners who wanted to leave, but they did not take the Spanish.  That is how I was able to leave.  The ship was going from Barcelona to Marseilles.  So I packed my bags and went to the port.  I presented my passport and went on board.

Let me tell you about a small incident that happened while I was on that ship.   When I first boarded the ship, I went to the dining room of the soldiers, or rather sailors.  I sat at a table and a sailor came and asked me something in English.  I didn’t know English at that time.  I thought he was asking me if I wanted something to eat, so I said “Yes”, one of the few words in English that I knew at the time.  Then I waited and waited and there was no food.  So then I realized that he had asked if I had already eaten!  Thankfully, they then said “Tea”, and brought some tea.  I went to sleep after that.  In the morning I woke up to complete silence on the ship.  I got up quickly and looked for my bags, but they had disappeared, and so had everyone else.  I saw that while I was sleeping another ship had come by and everyone had gone on that ship.  Thank God it was still there so I was able to board it, too.  Can you imagine, if I had slept a bit more, I would have been left behind.  However, I lost one of my bags in that melée.  It just disappeared.  I don’t know what happened to it.  The ship set off and arrived in Marseilles.  My elder brother was in Marseilles then.  When we arrived at the port, I heard someone calling “Izak Sharhon, Izak Sharhon”.  I was very surprised.  I had just arrived, who could know me there?  Then I learned that the British government had let the Turkish Embassy know that one of their citizens was on board that ship and had told them to come and pick me up.  So two officials from the consulate came looking for me, “Izak Sharhon”.  I went to them and they asked me: “Are you Izak Sharhon?  Come, let’s go”.  I was given my suitcase (the one that was not lost) and my passport.  Then the men from the consulate took me to the consulate in a taxi.  Inside the taxi, they asked me how things were in Spain.  As we were in France I spoke to them in French.  They took me to a hotel near the consulate and I stayed there that night.  I sent a telegram to my brother and told him I was in France.  A few hours later I received a reply that said: “Don’t move, we are coming to get you”.  When he said “we” he meant him and his partner.  The men from the consulate asked if I had any money and I said that I only had Spanish money.  They changed that money into francs.  By the way, unfortunately, because of the revolution the Spanish peseta had lost all its value and all the money I had made during the years that I had worked there came to be worth near nothing.  I lost everything because of the revolution.  They also gave me some cards so that I would be able to board any trade ship that went to Turkey, but when my brother came in the morning, he took me to Avignon, where I stayed for a year.  I didn’t do anything there.  There was no work.  So I waited for news from Istanbul.  When my time for military service came, they let me know and I returned in around 1937 and did my military service.

Actually, my military service doesn’t really count as having done military service at all because I served only for 6 months and paid to be exempt from the rest of the time.  I served at the construction department of the army corps.  My job was to type letters in old Turkish.  I knew old Turkish of course.

My family was not affected too much by the Wealth Tax in 1942. 8  I was affected because I was working then.  I do not really remember about my father.  He wasn’t a businessman, so they probably taxed him as a “worker”, like they did me.  The Wealth Tax did not affect those who were not businessmen too much.  They taxed me for a certain amount and I paid, but it wasn’t too much as I did not own a shop or anything.  However, I know that they asked exorbitant amounts of money from those who owned businesses.  And they sent those who couldn’t pay to work camps in Eastern Anatolia.

What can I tell you about the 20 military classes 9?  Well, the Turkish government did not trust its minorities, the Jews, Greeks and Armenians.  They were scared that in the event of war, these minorities would turn traitors.  So they gathered all of them in the guise of serving in the military, but we weren’t really soldiers.  They made us build roads.  They gave us brown uniforms, which were not soldier uniforms.  These were special uniforms for us.  I did not present myself until the last day we were supposed to give ourselves in.

Anyway, they called these road builders the ‘Nafia’, which meant “road building”. They sent all of us to different places.  I was sent to a place near Balıkesir.  They called in 20 classes, and I was in them.  There were even fathers and sons going together as it was 20 classes.  They were all given these brown uniforms and asked to build roads.  It lasted about 2 years.  We worked in building roads, but we did not do a good job really.  In fact, we did a terrible job.

During World War II, there was antisemitism in Turkey, I think.  They used to say that the Turks had built some “crematoriums” [nazi death camps] but these were rumors; I didn’t see them myself, nor do I know anyone who actually saw them.

At that time there was this law that enforced the speaking of Turkish.  [this was actually a political campaign that started on 13th January 1928 to ensure the language homogeneity of the Turkish people] When people heard you speak in another language they would warn you: “Citizen, speak Turkish”.  For example, when the consulate officials in France were taking me to the consulate and I spoke to them in French, one of them told me: “Hey, when you go to Istanbul, if you don’t speak Turkish, you will be beaten up”.

I knew what had been done to the Jews in Europe because I was in Israel [Palestine at that time] during the war.  I was in Turkey at the beginning of the war.  In the middle of the war I went to Palestine.  I worked as a cinema operator at the British army, and every night they showed films about what was happening in Europe.  I saw everything that was done to the Jews live in films at the cinema.

I met people who had escaped from those nazi camps in Israel.  Some of them had been able to escape from the ghettos in Greece when the Germans came.  They told me things like, they would go to the bathroom to wash accompanied by German soldiers.  They told me how they had to collect crumbs in order to eat.  Then they had been let free because they had been of Spanish nationality. [Some of the Sephardim had been able to acquire Spanish nationality and therefore had Spanish passports]  That’s how they had escaped.

Meanwhile of course, our cousins, Allegra Saranga and her whole family, who had been living in France perished in the camps.  I don’t know how, we just got the news that they had died in the camps.

Let me tell you how I went to Israel in 1944.  The British were there at that time and there was something called the “Quota”. [The British, who ruled Palestine until 1948 took measures against the waves of Jewish refugees by applying a monthly quota.  They would allow only a certain number of Jews to enter Palestine every month and refused entry to the rest.]  This meant that they gave only a few entrance visas to Jews who wanted to go to Palestine.  Only this many [certain number of] Jews could enter Palestine in one month.  The Jewish Agency [Sochnut] 10 organized the visas for the Jews who wanted to go from Turkey.  They did it in such a way that a whole family, however many they were, could go with one visa.  That is why, they preferred married people for a visa because then they would be able to send more people.  So they recommended us, the young people to get married and use one visa for at least two people.  Both single boys and girls were applying for visas, so they put us in contact with each other.  They said: “marry this girl and we will send you to Palestine”.  They said the same thing to me too.  I was given the name of a girl who by coincidence I knew from a group we had.  So we got married and went to Palestine.  She went to a kibbutz and I went to Tel Aviv.  We met only once after that and got divorced.  We applied to the Turkish consulate for a divorce and were thus free again.  That was my first marriage.

After the War

Then by coincidence again I found the job at the British army as a cinema operator and worked there for 3 years.  After 3 years, I got really bored and decided to return to Turkey.  I returned in 1947.

I remember when the state of Israel was founded.  It was barely a year after I had returned from there.  I remember the first Israeli consulate was in Taksim [square] and the first day the put up the Israeli flag, my then fiancée (later my wife) and my mother and I went there to watch.  We were terribly excited and it was a very emotional experience.

We never thought of making aliya because we had our jobs here.  Our families, friends were all here.  There have been relatives who emigrated of course.  My mother’s sister, my aunt, was one of the first to go before Israel was founded even and I had stayed at her house when I went there myself.

When I returned to Turkey, I opened a bureau of “comission importation”.  My cousin Mordo Perez told me a friend of his, Jak Rutli was looking for a partner in business and so Jak Rutli and I became partners and opened the business.  We imported lots of different products.  I did the correspondence side of the business and my partner did the sales part.  Then the import business did not go well, so we closed the business and I started working as an account.  I worked as the accountant of a firm that produced cloth, and called “Yuntip” until 1980.  Then I worked as freelance accountant with a partner until I retired.  After I retired, I continued to keep the accounts of a firm until last year [2003].

My wife Suzi Sultana was born in Istanbul in 1927.  Her native language is [Judeo-] Spanish, like us.  I never knew her father because he died when she was very young.  I knew her mother.  She was a “passive” woman. She didn’t socialize, nor did she have many friends probably because she had been widowed so young. My wife had 3 brothers: Sami, Vitali and Alber Danon.  Alber and Vitali were older and Sami was younger than my wife.

Her older brother Alber, born in 1917, had meningitis when he was 5 so his mental faculties were never normal.  He started talking very late and did not go to school.  A private teacher taught him certain things including French but it was never much.  However, he grew up and even did two years of military service.  When their uncle returned from Germany just before World war II, he took Alber to work at his jersey factory.  Alber worked there until their uncle died in 1951.  Then he worked as an office boy for the Kastro family until his retirement.  He had been living with his mother but when she died in 1989, my wife decided it would be best for him to live at our Old People’s Home in Haskoy.  He lived there for 10 more years and then one day he fell down and died in 1999. 

Her second brother Vitali, who was born in 1922, couldn’t study much because their father died when he was very young.  As a young boy he worked at a florist’s in Osmanbey.  Then when he grew up, he worked all his life as a salesman at the big china shop in Beyoglu, called “Galeri Kristal”.  Vitali had met an armenian girl, called Adırne, when he was 14.  They used to play together in Ferikoy, where they lived.  Then they decided to get married.  The families were against it of course, but when Vitali came on leave during his military service they secretly got married.  They had 2 daughters, Linda and Rita.  When Linda grew up she married an armenian and so became armenian herself, whereas Rita married a moslem and became moslem.  Vitali died in 1982 from a heart attack.

My wife’s third brother, Sami was younger than her.  He was born in 1928.  He studied at the St. Michel French school [catholic school] but he didn’t finish it.  He opened a drugstore that sold perfumes and things like that.  He then married Fortune Algazi and they had 2 children: a girl, Sara, and a boy, Yasef.  Then he got a heart disease and one day as he was coming home from Sirkeci in a taxi he died inside the taxi in 1989.

An acquaintance introduced us [Suzi and me].  There was a sort of café called “Haylayf” in Harbiye [a district in Istanbul between Sisli and Taksim]. We met there.  This was one year after I came back from Israel, in 1948.  Then we met and decided to get married.  She was Jewish of course, because this was a normal thing then.  We got married at the Zulfaris Synagogue [the building of the Jewish Museum of Istanbul today] in 1949.  There was nothing extraordinary about the wedding.  It was a normal synagogue wedding.  It was summer, and after the wedding we went to the house of my parents in Taksim.  A couple of our friends and relatives came.  We had drinks and ate sweets.  In the evening, at around 8:00 p.m., we went to the Belvu hotel in Fenerbahce and stayed there for 2 or 3 days.  Nobody came to the hotel with us that night.  We were alone.  After that we went to a summer house we had rented in Caddebostan [a summer resort, now a residential area on the Asian side of Istanbul].  After the summer, we went to live at my parents’ house in Taksim, Abdulhak Hamit street.  We lived with my parents and sister, Anjel for four years because of economic reasons of course.  Then, after four years, it had become a bit difficult to live with the parents, and my wife did not get along with my sister, so we moved out and rented our own house in Kurtulus.

It was not important if our friends were Jewish or not, but our friends turned out to be mostly Jewish.  We used to go to the cinema or the theatre or we would go for outings.  I remember, when we were young, we would be a group of 20 and we would hire motor a boat for the day.  Then we would go to the Prince’s Islands or to the Bosphorus, we would eat nice food and enjoy ourselves immensely. We would also go to the cinema in Harbiye, called Konak.  You could buy seasonal subscriptions to this cinema, so every week we had a film to see. 

We had two sons.  Sami Sarhon was born in Istanbul, on 3 March 1951 and  Jozi Yusuf Sarhon was also born in Istanbul on 5 May 1958.  Nowadays we always speak Turkish with our children but when they were little we used to speak to them in French.  Then when they started school, they had some difficulties with Turkish so we started speaking Turkish, too.  We did not want them to have a difficult life in school because they did not speak Turkish properly.  So it was Turkish after that.  That is why they do not know the language that we also use, Ladino, very well.

When the kids were young we always went to Caddebostan in summers.  The sea was clean then and they swam a lot.  We used to hire rowing boats every day and go out to the sea to swim.  There were also horse carriages and the boys would always race after swimming to see who would get to sit beside the coachman on the return journey home. 

What I remember most about my sons when they were little is how beautifully they ate: ‘mashallah’ [may God praise them] they wouldn’t finish eating in 3 hours!  We used to run after the younger one with a meatball in our hand!  As for the older boy, when we told him stories, he would forget about everything and open his mouth.  The younger wouldn’t open his mouth for nothing, not even for the best stories in the world.

My sons did not go to a Jewish school.  My older son finished a Turkish lyceum  and then the university.  My younger son studied at one of the French [catholic] schools, St. Benoit, and then started university but couldn’t finish it because of the terror at universities in the late 1970s. 11

Both my sons were active in community activities.  They went to Jewish youth clubs.  Sami went to Kardeslik Dernegi in Kurtulus and Yusuf went to Dostluk Dernegi in Osmanbey.  [Both Kardeslik Dernegi, which closed at the beginning of the 1980s because of lack of members, and Dostluk Dernegi, which still continues its activities, are Jewish youth clubs.  They are institutions that the Grand Rabbinate supports financially.  Their activities aim to attract Jewish young people, who come and socialize and take part in social, cultural and philanthropic activities.  The main aim of these clubs is to bring Jewish youth together and thus prevent assimilation]  They did activities like the theatre, dancing etc... They would go to these clubs every night after dinner, either because they had rehearsals for some performance they were preparing or just because they wanted to be with their friends.  Yusuf was very busy with theatrical performances in Dostluk Dernegi.  He once wrote the scenario of Leon Uris’ book called “QB VII”, directed and acted in the play he also called “QB VII”.  Dostluk Dernegi, at the time had a president called Jojo Eskenazi, a very charismatic man.  They used to collect money at the performances and then look after 100 poor families with that money.  We were happy that our sons were involved in this kind of thing and that they were going to these clubs, because there they were also with Jewish girls.  Actually, that is where Yusuf met his wife, Karen, at Dostluk Dernegi.  They were involved in a play together and during the rehearsals they started going out together.

My sons do not go to the synagogue often but not because they have left Judaism or anything.  They both observe all our holydays but they did not grow up like I did.  I grew up doing my tefila [tefillin] every morning, doing what my father was doing, until I was 18.  Then when I left these practices when I went abroad, my sons did not see me doing them, so they didn’t either.  So the fault is mine really.

Both my sons had their bar mitzvahs of course.  I still have the speech my older brother read at his barmitzvah.  It is in [Judeo-] Spanish of course, and written in the old alphabet [rashi].  It starts with the words: “Sinyoras i sinyores, ya es savido ke la persona es de dos fuersas. La fuersa de la entelijensia i la fuersa korporale...” [Ladies and Gentlemen, it is a known fact that a human being is made up of two forces.  The force of the intelligence and the physical force...]  Both the barmitzvas of our sons were celebrated at home.  For Sami my eldest son, we had two kinds of ceremonies.  First, on a Thursday morning, I don’t remember the exact date but it was in 1964 of course, we went to the Sisli synagogue for the tefilin ceremony.  That morning, my son wore the tefilin for the first time and there were prayers.  Then the following Saturday morning we had another ceremony at the Sisli synagogue, this time with guests.  My son read a traditional barmitzva speech and some prayers.  Then we came home and in the afternoon there was a party.  Friends and relatives came.  We hired waiters and food from a baker’s shop, cakes, chocolates, biscuits etc...  That was all.  We had a good time because the house was full of guests.  For Yusuf, my second son, it was a bit different as he hates all kinds of ceremonies.  We did the Thursday morning tefilin ceremony and then as Yusuf refused to memorize and read a speech infront of an audience we did not have the Saturday morning ceremony.  On the Saturday however, we did have the home party, which was the same as the party we gave for my older son. 

My sons both have families and children of course.  They continue their lives as Jewish families in the same way we did.  They are not as religious as I would have liked them to be, but they keep the traditions: Pesah, Roshashana, Kipur etc...  Unfortunately, Jews do not live close to one another nowadays.  Everyone lives far away from others.  My elder son lives on the Asian side with his two children, Sandy (25) and Izel (28).  My younger son lives in a new suburb that is called Kemerburgaz, which is really far away.  They all speak Turkish best.  My grandchildren do not know Judeo-Spanish at all.  

Today I always go to the synagogue on holy days.  My whole family keeps Pesach for 8 days.  We fast at [Yom] Kippur and celebrate all other important religious days.  My daughter-in-law, Karen, undertakes the gathering of the family for the holy days.  We gather in her home an have a meal together.  At Pesah, she used to read the Agada [Haggadah] in Judeo-Spanish, but now we read it in Turkish so the young ones can understand.  Then we sing Pesah songs, usually in Judeo-Spanish.

I have three grandchildren, two from my older son Sami, and one from my younger son, Yusuf.  Sami has a son, Izel and a daughter, Sandy.  Izel was born in 1976 and Sandy in 1980.  Izel finished high school and then started working.  He is working as a salesman at a cloth store.  Sandy studied tourism and hotel management at university and is working at the banqueting department of the famous Swiss Hotel.  My son Yusuf’s daughter, Selin was born in 1996.  She is studying at a bilingual private primary school where she is learning English, too.  I am friends with all my grandchildren and I love them dearly.  
As for Jewish activities, the youngest one, Selin, sings Ladino songs in a children’s choir.  My older grandchildren used to frequent the Jewish youth clubs.

When we meet with our friends, the Matalons and the Behars nowadays, we usually chat as we are now quite old.  We talk about politics, illnesses and we play cards a little bit.  The men play poker and the women play canasta.

We used to go on holidays in the summers until 2 years ago, but I don’t enjoy that as much any more.  We used to go to the Aegean coast mostly.  We used to travel by bus to these resorts and it was quite tiring actually because even when you go to the Aegean, the bus trip takes at least 12 hours.  We usually went if one or more of our friends went, too.  I enjoy a holiday if there is good company.  Nowadays however, I have grown too old to enjoy swimming and going on long trips to the Aegean or the Mediterranean.

I remember the 2003 bombings 12 very well indeed because I was in the street at that moment.   We didn’t know where the noise came from but then we learned from the news that it was our synagogues.  We were terribly upset by these events and we were glued to the TV for days. 

Nowadays I spend my days doing some work for my daughter-in-law, Karen, who is running the sephardic research center in Istanbul.  We found out one day that I could read what she kept calling “the rashi letters” 13.  I never knew they were called that.  We always read the passages written in the prayer books with these letters automatically and never questioned what they were.  Then one day, Karen brought me a text and I immediately started to read.  She was so happy.  She has embarked on this big project of transliterating the Meam Loez [the greatest literary work written in Judeo-Spanish.  This is a series of books, which consist of the interpretation of the Tora.  It was started by Rabbi Yaakov Hulli of Istanbul in 1730 and continued by other rabbis after Hulli’s death until the last book in 1930.] and I am helping her in this.   I love being useful, and this work has become an addiction.  I spend long hours at my old and outdated typewriter and this makes me happy.
 
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