Travel

Sami Fiul
Brasov
Romania
Date of the interview: January 2004 Interviewer: Paul Tinichigiu

Mr. Fiul is a 78 years old man, who lives alone in a two-room apartment, on the 10th floor of a block of flats, on the outskirts of Brasov - it is the very last block of the town. He is a very gentle and friendly old man, with a rather athletic body for his age, and who wears thick glasses; he speaks in a low, calm voice and he is a born story-teller. His apartment is neat, with ready-made furniture, but he has a brand new TV and music trunk, a gift from his daughter's family, in Israel. He has a teddy bear called Miska, which he always hugs in the evening while watching TV and he always gathers bread crumbs for the pigeons that come to his window sill. He does all the house chores himself, he even helps his neighbor sometimes, a woman whose husband is paralyzed.

My family background
Growing up
The Jewish community in Bacau
My school years
During the war
Post-war
Married life
Glossary

My family background

All my family from my father's side came from Fundu Moldovei, from a place close to Campulung Modovenesc. My paternal grandfather, Mendel Fiul, was born in 1866 in Fundu Moldovei; he was an Ashkenazi Jew, just like everybody from my mother's side. He was a farmer, he owned a small piece of land and a few cattle; I remember the cattle were sent in the mountains during summers: my father, Bernard Fiul, used to tell me that he and his brothers had to take salt blocks to the cattle. My grandmother, Roza Fiul (nee Feingold), was born in 1868 in Fundu Moldovei, and she was a housewife; she was in charge of the household. They both spoke Yiddish between themselves, but of course they knew Romanian as well, they used it to talk to neighbors. They had a peasant's household, with a barn for cattle, for the cows, with a little garden around the house, like it is in the countryside. There was no running water or electricity back then. And there was no help, like a servant, heaven forbid, my father's sisters worked, and they worked hard.

Grandfather was a handsome man, and a modern Jew, he didn't wear payes or a suit; however, he wore a beard. I remember he wore the 'stramlah'[streimel], it was a little fur cap that was worn with some kind of cassock. Jews worked the land, and I remember seeing them at the plough, with the laps of the cassocks wrapped around the waist. Grandfather knew Hebrew; he was also a melamed and always found time for the morning and evening prayer. He held the religious classes in his house, usually there was just one child at a time, whom grandfather taught from the Siddur. I myself learnt a little Yiddish and a little Gemara from him, but not much. I remember he had a tallit, which he used during the prayers; he generally prayed at home. There was no synagogue in Fundu Moldovei, just a prayer house: it was in a room of a house owned by a thriftier peasant. Women could come in there as well, but I don't know who led the ceremony. There weren't many Jewish families in that village, but they gathered there on Rosh Hashanah, on Sukkot, on Yom Kippur or when there were family celebrations.

My grandparents weren't bigots, but they observed kashrut, that was a law: they kept separate pots for milk and meat. They also observed Sabbath, they didn't work, it was something holy, and so was the Friday evening dinner. Each Friday dinner had something special, you could feel it was a holiday, not a regular day, from the way it was celebrated;; and when the head of the family sat down to eat, all the others, the wife, the children, were already at the table, and nobody left the table before the head of the family, the eldest, did. And there were always blessings for the two challot we usually had or for wine at dinner. Later on, during 1937-1947, whenever our grandfather came to eat in our house, nobody left the table before he did, not even our father, his son. It was a law.

I remember I was there, in Fundu Moldovei, as a child, when one of my father's brothers, Iosif, got married. The wedding was in a village near Fundu Moldovei, and it was held in a house; it was a typical Jewish wedding, with chuppah in the courtyard, with a rabbi. I still remember how the wedding room was decorated: there were carpets on the walls and on the benches, and there was Jewish music, in Yiddish, played by gypsies; the gipsy bands could always play by ear any song they heard, and of course they could play Jewish songs as well. But what impressed me as a child was that I got to ride a dogcart with two seats. It wasn't a real custom, but somebody rented it for that wedding: it was a little fancy cart, with two wheels and a little bench for the driver, and a large armchair in the back. That was something only that well-off peasants had , and they rode it only on Saturdays and Sundays, to show that they are rich.

My father, Bernard Fiul, was born in Fundu Moldovei in 1899. My father had six siblings: there was David Fiul, born in 1900, who was a glazier and lived in Bucharest. He was married, but I don't know who his wife was; they had three children, Iosef, who lives in Israel now, in Kiryat-Ata; Becca, who also lives in Israel in Haifa and Tauba. David died in Bucharest in 1950. Then there was Iosef Fiul, born in 1906-I think, who was a farmer and lived in Bacau. He was married to Rasela, a Jewish woman, and they had two sons: Cerbu, or Eial, who used to be a professional boxer in Bacau, and who now lives in Israel, in Haifa and is an electrician, and Lupu, or Zeev, who is also in Israel and works as a bus driver. The third brother was Rubin Fiul, born in 1912, who worked as a tinsmith. He was married and had a child, but they both died in Auschwitz; I don't remember their names. He died in 1950. One sister was Reghina, who was married (I don't know her husband's name) and had twins: Iosef, a locksmith, who died in Israel in 2001, and Rubin, who lives in Israel and is a foreman. Reghina died in 1936 in Campulung Moldovenesc. Then there was Mina, who was married and had a daughter, but that is all I know about her. Fani Fiul (or Feiga in Yiddish) was born in 1905 in Fundu Moldovei, and died in 1937. She never married. All the sisters were housewives.

My grandmother Roza died before I was born, so I only know stories about her: she died in a very strange way; a stranded shell splinter hit her in 1916 [during World War I], while she was milking the cow. After she died, grandfather Mendel moved to Bacau, he came after his children. My father, who was considered one of the most capable of his sons and somewhat a leader, was already in Bacau, his brother, Iosef, was also in Bacau. There were also three of his sisters, Reghina, Nina, and Mari. So grandfather stayed with my uncle Iosef for a while. In those times, accommodation was a problem, more people lived crowded in the same room; that was the case with uncle Iosef: he shared only one room and a small hallway with his wife, two sons, two daughters and his father. Then grandfather moved in a little room on Postei Street in the same neighborhood, all by himself; I think it was his choice. I remember it was very chilly in there, and during winter I went to him to cut wood and make fire, that was all I could do at that age for him. It was only one room, with no kitchen, it wasn't something out of the ordinary. Back then, having more than that would have been something out of the ordinary. Grandfather had a small library with him: he didn't have many books, but the ones he had I think they were valuable: I remember he showed me Hummash, in leather binding, the Gemara. He tried to teach me, but I was stubborn, like all kids. I am sorry now that I didn't have more patience. He supported himself from what he taught children, as a lehrer. There also was usually one child at a time, in his home: he used to teach him from the Siddur.

My father only had four grades of elementary school; he studied in German, under the Austro-Hungarians, in Fundu Moldovei or Campulung Modovenesc, because I am not sure that there was a school in Fundu Moldovei. When he was only 17, the World War I started, and he couldn't go on with his studies. Father did his military service under the Austro-Hungarians, and it was a bit of a problem to get Romanian military papers when he returned to Bukovina; but it was fixed. I don't know if he fought during World War I, but I know he went as far as Czechoslovakia and Poland, and that he fell ill with typhoid fever and had to stay in the hospital. I remember he had a good friend, a Hungarian during World War I, I remember seeing photos of them.

Father worked as a forester in Tazlau, and then he became a factory laborer, he even tried to be a small trader. He worked as a forester in the 1920s, when he was still single, and he was very good at it, he loved nature. My sister and I, and our children, we all inherited I think his love for the mountains, for nature, for excursions. My father's work probably brought him to Bacau. His native tongue was Yiddish or German, but not Romanian. He learnt to write in Romanian later, he always wrote all the Romanian nouns with capital letters, just like in German. He had a beautiful handwriting, but not all correct because of this. He learnt Romanian and spoke it well when he was older, he even forgot most of his German, but mother used to tell us a funny story about father's Romanian, which wasn't so good when they were engaged: they were taking a walk in Bacau, and they stopped in front of a window of a pork-butcher's shop, and father exclaimed: 'Look at all this crap!' [Pun upon words in Romanian, caused by the confusion between the word 'porcarii', which means 'crap', which as the same stem as 'porc', which means 'pork', or 'pork products']. I don't know how my parents met exactly, but when they did, probably at some Purim ball, or other society event organized by the Jewish community in Bacau. It wasn't an arranged marriage; they just liked each other and fell in love.

I know my maternal grandfather David Herscovici's father was named Shimon Dov Herscovici, that he lived in Poland but I don't know where, or when he came to Romania. He worked as a furrier and died in 1890, Everybody from my mother's side were furriers or tanners, it was a tradition passed on from father to son. My grandfather David, was born in Bacau in 1849 and lived there. He was married to Feiga Herscovici grandmother, who came from somewhere in Bessarabia, I don't know the exact place. I remember that grandmother used to smoke, and she explained herself to us by saying that in Bessarabia all the women smoke, with some small clay pipes. Grandfather owned a furrier's shop near the central square of Bacau, and grandmother was a housewife.

My grandmother Feiga's parents were called Ana and Marcu Margulius. Ana was born in 1819, I don't know exactly where, and she died in 1924, and she was a housewife. Her age was a reason to be optimistic for all the family, because she lived to be 105 years old, and she wasn't the only one from the family to live so long. My mother used to tell me, that when she was 102- 103 years old, she still carried buckets full of water to the house, and I must tell you the house was up a hill, and she had to climb it with the buckets. My great-grandfather, Marcu Margulius, was born in Greece, but I don't know when he moved to Bessarabia; he worked as a translator for the Romanian railway company, because when he was alive there were railways being built all over the country. And there were foreign constructors, Germans, I believe, he knew the language and worked for them as a translator from German into Romanian.

My grandmother Feiga had a brother, Isidor Margulius, born in 1861; he died in 1932. He enjoyed a special position in the family, because he was a doctor, a pediatrist, and there weren't many doctors at that time, especially coming from poor families. So he was respected among us. For a while, in 1900s, he lived in Ploiesti and he was the town's doctor. He was also an officer in the army. After that he became king Carol's I 1 private doctor, he was in charge especially of his children. I think he must have been a very good doctor, to be appointed at the Royal House. He was married to a Sephardi Jewish woman, Eleonora; my sister is named after her, according to the Jewish tradition. They had three children: Marcel, who was in the army during World War I, he studied at Belle Arte in Paris and was a captain and a physician at the railway company here in Bucharest, Eugen (or Puiu, as we used to call him), who was an engineer studied engineering at Oxford, and Silvia, who studied at Notre Dame, in Paris. I know Isidor was a soldier during the World War I; but I remember Puiu also fought during World War I, and he was a liaison officer, and during the Marasesti campaign he came on furlough to Bacau with his peaked cap pierced by a bullet. He was lucky to make it! We kept his uniform and pierced cap for a long time.

I don't know what grandfather David looked like, he died in 1903, when my mother, Dorina, was very young and I never saw a photo of him; he died in very original circumstances. One summer morning, grandfather woke up, and told his wife, my grandmother, that he dreamt that two old men with white beards came to him and told him to get ready, because on the next Pesach Eve, he was going to die. He was perfectly fine when he dreamt that, he wasn't sick, and grandmother tried to comfort him, she told him it was just some sort of a dream. He, however, was certain that it was going to happen, and he started preparing for that: he let one worker and a couple of apprentices go, he started selling some of the sewing machines from the shop and so on. Pesach drew near. He was fine, as grandmother later told us. She even told him, 'See, you have tormented yourself over nothing, from a silly idea from a dream!'; and grandfather answered: 'There are ten days left.' And indeed, two or three days before Pesach, he started to feel bad. Grandmother was terribly scared, and she put him on the train to Bucharest, and she went with him: she wanted to go to her brother, Isidor Margulius, who was a doctor. But grandfather didn't make it, he died on the train, in Focsani. Of course the body was buried in Focsani, but I have lost track of the location of his tomb, unfortunately. But I am sure he was buried in a Jewish cemetery, he was a Jew and Jews were buried in Jewish cemeteries back then, there was no other way. From what grandmother told him about grandfather's pain, her brother, Isidor Margulius, established that grandfather died from an intestinal occlusion, or 'twisting of the guts', as it was called in popular terms.

Mother had five siblings: Berl Herscovici, born in 1886, who was a tanner and was married to Hai-Leea, a Jewish woman. They had lived in Bacau and had six children: David, who also became a tanner and died in Israel in the 1970s, Moritz, who was a printer in Targu Neamt, Max, also a tanner, Estera, who was a housewife, Zela, who worked in a confectionary laboratory and Anna, born in 1922. Berl died in 1966. Then there was Marcu Herscovici, born in 1880, who was a clerk at a brick factory. He was married, but I don't know his wife's name, and had a daughter, Claris Cobar (nee Herscovici). Marcu died in 1965-I think. John Herscovici was born in 1888, and he lived in USA, he was a draughtsman at a ready-made clothes factory; he was married and had a daughter, Fannee. He died in the 1950s. Lupu Hercovici, born in 1877, was a furrier and he was married to a woman named Feiga. He died in 1936. Sofia Dicman (nee Herscovici), born in 1889, was married to Iosef Dicman, a Jew from Cleja, and they lived in Israel. She died there in 1971. My mother was born in Bacau in 1895. Mother graduated elementary school, she could read and write, and she also did three years at a housekeeping school, it was something like a professional school, but I don't know if she finished it. Her native tongue was Yiddish.

However, grandpa David and grandma Feiga were my mother's natural parents, she was adopted later; the story of her adoption is the following: her natural father, David, died when she was very young, 8 years old. They were a poor family, and it was hard to earn a living: there was uncle Bern, my mother's brother, who worked as a tanner, but he was a socialist and he gave money to his fellow workers who needed it, who were unemployed, and he gave the family only what remained. So mother had to earn a living since she was 10, 12 years old. And the family thought of a way: they had some distant relatives in Bacau who kept an inn, and they had to work hard with their household,. They needed somebody to help them with the chores around the house, so my mother's family suggested taking her and adopting her, since they had no children of their own. I think they -Bubola Brana and Schmill - were rather old when they adopted my mother, and she was about 10 years old. This relative had been a postmaster, his inn was the place here every traveler could change his horse. His inn had a stable for horses, with manger and all that. It was for the mail coaches that connected Adjud, Roman and Suceava [approximately 158 km]. I think, Jews were always working with horses. The inn was well located, back then Bacau wasn't a town, it was a borough, and carters were coming from all over the country with merchandise. The house had four rooms, and one of them was used as a bedroom by those who stayed over night to let their horses rest. When the adoptive parents died, they left everything to mother; I was named after this adoptive grandfather, who died two years before I was born.

There was a very interesting incident that took place in 1864 I think, there at the inn, my mother knew it from her adoptive father and told me about it. A group of people came with the mail coach from Roman, and they struck my grandfather as well-brought up people, noblemen. They had money and they gave my grandfather a large purse with money and asked him to change their horses quickly. Guessing that they were special people, grandfather himself drove the mail coach to Adjud. He later found out that he was [Alexandru Ioan] Cuza 2 and his closest supporters, on his way to Ghines-Balanca and then to Germany. [Editor's note: The event must have taken place in 1866, when Alexandru Ioan Cuza ws deposed by a coup because of his despotic and corrupt reign ]

I knew grandmother Feiga well, however: she was a tall woman, straight as a fir tree, and judging by the photos and what everybody said about her, she was a beautiful woman, and all her children were like her too, we all brag about it! She didn't wear a wig or a kerchief, but I remember for example that she had a winter coat, called 'cataveica', with fur lining inside and velvet on the outside, it was very popular at the time in Moldavia.

For as long as I knew her, grandmother lived in a house on Precista Street, in Bacau. You had to go up two or three stairs and then go along a hallway with four doors. There were three other families living there, only grandmother lived alone - grandfather had already died. She lived in only one room that served as a bedroom, kitchen and living room. At the end of the hallway here was a little garden, which was terribly muddy when it rained. There was a chicken coop, and some fruit trees; I remember a plum tree we used to climb in and fall from! In her room there was a bed, a table with chairs, and a painting from her wedding, with her and grandfather in wedding clothes, tête-à-tête. The stove was made of bricks, and it had a kitchen range. On the bed there were cushions, one over the other, and I must tell you, they were used to keep the corn mush warm. She used to make it before hand - and it wasn't just grandmother who did this -, wrap it in a clean towel, and put it between cushions, so that it stayed warm until her husband (that is when grandfather was still alive) came back from work. She still did it when we were little and came to visit her; she took it out and cut it with a string.

My father married my mother, Dorina Fiul (nee Herscovici) I think in 1924, in December, mother used to tell me that it was very warm outside for December, and that she had just a bride's dress on, she didn't need a coat. I don't know if they got married in the synagogue. Mother had worked as well for a while, before she married, she was a cashier in a drug store; but after she married, she became a housewife. My parents used to talk Yiddish between themselves, so that we couldn't understand them. They only spoke Romanian to us; of course we caught on Yiddish as well, but I am sorry we didn't speak it also, I would have liked to learn it.

When father got married and moved to Bacau, in 1924,, he tried to find something more stable, so he got a job as a laborer in the corn industry; then he tried to set up a small shop of his own, but it didn't work out, so he went on being a laborer. He worked at a mill in afternoon and night shifts, and at a textile factory, owned by a Jew, Izvoreanu. My father's main characteristic was that he was extremely hardworking. I remember him working hard, from morning until late at night. He eventually opened a retail grain shop, which was the territory of richer Jews; his business was really small. And when my mother inherited the inn her adoptive parents had, they started taking care of that business.

My mother was a beautiful woman, she took after her mother, who was tall and well-built. She was also very hard working; she worked side by side with my father, and their greatest achievement wasn't that they got richer, but that they gave us a good example and taught us the value of hard work and study. She dressed modestly, there was money for luxury. I remember that when she went to the synagogue on the high holidays, she was always well-dressed, she wore a hat with a veil, and had her own prayer book, with Romanian translation, which I still have, and she had her own seat in the synagogue.

Growing up

My parents had a son, a boy who died at birth in 1925, and then me, on June 25th 1926. My sister, Eleonora, was born in 1930. My parents were busy with their work, and didn't have much time for education, but I think they had some pedagogical insight: my father never spoiled us when we were small, he was severe, stern, and unflinching when it came to working in the garden or the stables. Only later, when I grew up, he told me that he used to watch us sleep, and pet my hair and caress me. He did beat me, usually for pranks, not something worse than that, I was always taking uncle Bern on, because he was the funniest character in the family, and when mother found out, she always called for father to punish me: father had huge hands, the size of shovels, he would just spank me, then dust his hands and go back to work, without a word to me. Although mother was fair, and she always called for father to punish me when I did something wrong, she was the one to take care that he wouldn't hit my head or hit me too hard. Father taught us the value of hard work; when my sister and I were 11, or 12, my father told us: 'Don't expect me to support you like you were a pair of blind horses, you have to learn hard work and make a living!' Even our life at home was closely related to horses. My parents never had a holiday or a day off, for as long as they lived, and I regret it deeply; all they knew was work and more work.

The house we lived in was old, it had about 100 years back then. It had a porch, four rooms and no hallway. The roof was made of chap board, and I remember that I had to go in the attic with my father during the night sometimes, because it was raining and the chap board was old and pierced; we had to put old olives cans to collect the water and stop it from dripping in the house. By the time I was born, Bacau already had running water and electricity, but only downtown. Our house was rather central, so we had electricity and running water too. I still remember that the electric lamps were set on the old gas lamps: they took out the wick and put a fuss instead.

When I was about 7 years old, my parents wanted to build a [new] house, but they had no money for it, so they had to put a mortgage on the old house. And the custom was then, that you went to ask the rabbi for advice. And the closest [approximately 20 km] and most renowned rabbi was the one in Buhusi. He was an Orthodox rabbi, but I don't remember his name. So my parents went to see him, took my sister with them, and left me home, although I wanted to go as well. So after they got the advice they wanted, my mother, who was rather religious, asked the rabbi: 'Rabbi, this little girl always screams without any reason. What shall I do with her?' 'I shall say a prayer for her and she will be rid of this trouble!', the rabbi said. So he laid his hand on her head, said his prayer, and then the meeting was over. My parents were on the porch of that house with my sister, and all of a sudden she starts screaming as loud as she could! And my parents asked her, 'Girlie, why are you screaming, nobody did anything to you?!' 'Yes, but I just wanted to see if I can still scream after the rabbi's prayer!!'

After a while, father pawned the house and built another one, after the advice of the rabbi from Buhusi. One room was the kitchen, with a stove and a range; that was grandma's empire, I can still see her blowing in the noodles dough, which was spread as thin as cigarette paper. Then there was the parents' bedroom, where we kids also slept, and then the larger room, the inn, where travelers slept overnight, when they came for fairs with carts. Grandmother lived in the same house with us in her last years; she moved with us in 1932 or 1933 and stayed there until she died. Grandma Feiga took care of the household while my parents were at work, made all sorts of special dishes; the house specialty was 'studentbrot', as it was called in Yiddish, 'the student's bread'. It was delicious, something with nut and Turkish delight filling, all wrapped in French dough. I remember grandmother used to tell us stories, when we were small and sick, in bed, in Yiddish: I can still see her leant against the terracotta stove we had in our house - and which back then was a plain luxury- and telling us stories! I even have a memory about the day she died: she passed away in spring, it was March, in 1937, and I remember I was taking violin lessons. She was on her deathbed, and she asked for me, to come and play for her Jewish songs. I was very impressed.

There were no carpets in the house, just a wooden floor, which my father used to wash with a scrubbing brush. The kitchen had as furniture only a table with chairs, made with the ax. It is interesting, that the kitchen wall functioned as a chimney, the entire flue from the kitchen range went through the wall and then outside. Grandmother and us, kids, used to lean against that wall, because during winter it was always warm! We also had a deep cellar, built in rock, where we used to store the supplies for winter, the cabbage kegs, the pickles. As a matter of fact, father was an expert in pickles and the cellar was always full. Mother raised poultry, hens and geese: those geese were a wonder, some of them weighed as much as 10 to 14 kilos, mother used to say that they were of royal origins! At one point, we had two beautiful wolfhounds, which were our joy, my sister's and mine.

We didn't have any servants; my father, my mother and I took care of the horses, but mother had a woman who helped her in the kitchen: she had a lot to do because she was also cooking for the guests, so we had a girl from Transylvania, from Diviciorii Mici, who helped her with the chores and us, the children. We loved her like a second mother, Jeni Mustea was her name, but we called her Jenica. Jenica and her parents had left Diviciorii Mici and settled in Bacau. I think she was 15 years older than I, and she stayed in our house until she got married, My parents found her a husband named Dodu, a man from Bacau. Her father, a bony, huge man we all called old Ion, worked at factory called Letea, he was in charge of the oxen.

We had books in the house, especially after my sister and I went to school. Mother used to read Romanian literature, she liked reading and she did it until she was old, but father didn't read so much. And mother didn't have time to go to the library, but she asked others who went to get books for her. She read novels written by classics, mainly, and she was a huge fan of Dostoievsky 3. And we had religious books as well, in Yiddish and Hebrew, for prayers. Mother also used to read us kids loud, that was when we were still young and couldn't read; I remember a novel about the horrors of Siberia, we were very impressed by it. It wasn't something unbearable for children to hear, however, we found it exciting. Mother didn't advise me what to read, but she told me what not to read, and she punished me once for reading a book I shouldn't have: it was a book from 'Colectia de 15 lei' [Collection for 15 lei], by Petre Belu, and the action took place in Crucea de Piatra. [Ediotor's note: Crucea de Piatra was a famous brothel during the interbelic period in Romania, and a book about it must have been to explicit for a child.] I don't remember how that book fell into my hands, but she cut all my pretzel money, money she used to give to me weekly, I wasn't allowed to go to the cinema for two weeks! Reading in our house was severely checked. My parents read newspapers, but seldom, because there wasn't much time to idle.

Each Thursday, there were mashed beans for dinner, with fried onion over it, served with a bowl of sauerkraut brine and corn mush. Of course, the corn mush was served on a wooden platter, and cut with a string. It was a real feast! And one day in 1936/7, one of my mother's sisters came from Bucharest, and brought bananas, which weren't common in our little town. Apparently, paternal grandfather Mendel Fiul, who came to visit us rather often even if he lived alone, had never seen bananas before, because he was looking a bit curiously at them, from the head of the table where he was seated. So mother peeled a banana for him at the end of the table and gave it to him to eat. Grandfather Mendel had to or three small bites, then gulped it all quickly, and then grabbed the spoon and had two or three spoonfuls of sauerkraut brine. And mom, bewildered, said: 'Father, what are you doing? Why are you drinking sauerkraut brine after a banana?' -they spoke in Yiddish, but we understood that much-. And grandfather said: 'I'm just clearing my taste!' he wasn't used to bananas, in the countryside. This happened in Bacau, when I was about 8 years old.

Kashrut laws were observed in the house, Jeni didn't cook, grandmother and then mother were in charge of cooking. Speaking of kosher food, I remember that we had a wattle basket, where we let the salted meat for a while, to let all the blood come out of it. Mother and father didn't go to the synagogue on Sabbath, but we observed Friday evenings: mother lit the candles, and said the blessing. We always had that golden soup, it was called that because of all the fat, and home made bread - we had a large challah for dinner and other dishes. That challah was so good, I remember that people in Bacau used to say in Yiddish when they were happy: 'my heart is growing like a 'Piram colic', that means that their hearts were overflowing with joy like the Purim challah is growing! They had to work on Sabbath, but they did only that kind of work which was absolutely necessary, mother didn't wash, didn't clean the house.

My parents strictly observed all high holidays, however. Every holiday, that is before the war [World War II], we were happy that we could celebrate it properly - we had money for food, challah, and the like, and all the family was together-; that wasn't the case, however, after the war. My parents worked hard day after day all year round, from morning until evening. But even so, they observed the high holidays, like Purim, Chanukkah, Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah. We would go to the synagogue, or the 'schil' as we used to call it, in clean holiday clothes. The meals were special, of course, and we, the Jewish kids who studied in laic schools, were free as well, so that was one more reason to be happy about holidays. My parents always fasted on Yom Kippur, and I also fasted as a child, all day long: I remember I never longed more after apples or grapes than on that day.

In Bacau, when it was Purim, all the children were delighted in what is called in Yiddish 'solhamunas' [shelakhmones]: it meant that every Jew sent out to his neighbors, Jews or Christians, cookies or a platter, sometimes even a bottle of wine, or a sweet drink. We, the children, were thrilled to be sent to the neighbors with the cookie platter, covered with a nice hand embroidered towel, because wherever we went, we would get other specialties in return; every Jewish house had its own specialties, and it was a real celebration for us kids. And there was Jewish singing on Purim in our house, and grandfather read Megillat Ester; and we kids dressed up, in whatever costumes we could think of.

When I was a child, the Purim balls were truly Jewish, something to remember. Not only Jews participated, but Christians as well. They were held at the community, or in somebody's home. And we always had gipsy bands, who played Jewish music perfectly. We had a band in the first room, and another one in the last room, and father came with cups full with drinks. I remember it was at one of these Purim balls mother made for me for the first time long trousers, and I was so proud; but I danced to the music of the gipsy bands until I managed to tear them, I was so upset that time! And I remember uncle Bern, my mother's brother, who was a real party man, he was always up to some pranks: one time, he came with the masks, and he unbuttoned his trousers and started to take them off. I was stunned with shock, but he had another pair under them, and then another, and another, he was the delight of the audience, you can imagine! Or another time he came with frankfurters, which he served from a bedpan, and his wife held mustard near him; uncle Bern also had some sort of device, he kept a bottle under his coat, where nobody could see it, and he had a little hose that came out of his sleeve, and that is how he served the wine! He was quite a joker.

In our family, the Seder Eve was a real holiday, we had an Essebett, it is in Yiddish meaning 'bed for the meal': father sat on the bed, he had a pillow, and near him a little basin with water; he washed his hands from time to time, he observed all the ritual, recited mah nishtanah and we kids were usually inpatient, because we were hungry and we wanted to find the afikoman, and get our presents: we always thought the ceremony was too long! I was the prank master, I think I took after uncle Bern; you cannot imagine what I thought of doing one Seder Eve! There is this custom among Jews on Seder Eve, that the youngest of the children opens the door, so that Elianuvi [Mr. Fiul refers to Elijah ha-nevi] can come in. And we always had candles on the table, and in the draft that would form in April or March, the flames would flicker, and we kids used to say: 'Look, Elianuvi came in!' We kids also joked about Elianuvi, we said: `True, look at the wine in the glasses, it's less than before!' So, for the fun of it, I thought of something: I looked for two sticks, one longer and one shorter, I made some sort of a cross with them; then I searched for a bed sheet and I put it over the cross that was as high as a man. Then I took a big clay pot and put it on the dummy's 'head', then leant it against the door. I was outside, on the entrance of the cellar, and I was waiting for the moment when one of the guests would open the door. One girl who was invited opened it, and the dummy fell into the room, the pot broke in a thousand pieces, the women started yelling! In that panic, I started to realize that my joke hadn't been so good, because I could have hurt someone. Father rushed outside, and I started to run down the hill as fast as I could; I was a teenager by that time, but father ran after me and caught me by the collar, and dragged me up the hill again. It is true, he didn't beat me that time, but he lectured me about responsibility and making fun of the holy holiday, and I kissed my present good bye.

Our neighbors were more like family to us; a big part of our childhood was spent in their company, in their homes: we knew what dainties they made, they knew what dainties we made, each family had specific recipes and everybody enjoyed them. Most of our neighbors were Jewish. Our neighbors were on one side uncle Iosef, and on the other the Marcovicis -he was a house painter-, and we were all like family: we played with their children, in their courtyard, in their house, and they came in our courtyard and house; uncle Iosef had some great pear trees, and we kids were always 'stealing' pears from his garden. Of course he knew and didn't mind, but we liked to think that nobody knew we took them!

We had non-Jewish friends as well, mother was very sociable, but there wasn't much time for visiting or coffee breaks, we just helped each other when someone was in trouble. We lived near the hospital, and many of the staff there were our friends. Father helped the hospital administrator with the pickles for the hospital, and then there were the so-called 'sub surgeons' (something more than nurses today), who came in our house as friends or as doctors. Medicine was something else back then, I remember they used leeches for high blood pressure. One time, when grandmother fractured or sprained her leg, they called for the 'ursari', gipsy bear leaders [who are walking with a bear and make it play or dance]: grandmother put her leg on a threshold, and the bear sat on it once or twice. She stopped wailing after that, I believe the gypsies had some skills with the bear, because grandmother didn't have to wear a plaster or anything else. [It was a simple superstition of the peasants which wasn't forbidden for the Jews to practice.] Father was also a good friend with the Orthodox priest from the hospital's chapel, they were often chatting over a glass of wine.

I don't know much about my parents' political views, but I remember one scene in 1936 when there were national elections: father was going to vote and as he was heading for the door, mother told him (and we kids found it very strange): 'Take your hat, even if it's not that cold, maybe wind will broke out and you won't be cold! 'Mother cared more about the weather than she did about what father was going to do at the voting point! They weren't members in any political organization. Back then, women weren't allowed to go to vote. I remember, father later told us, that he voted for the liberals.

My parents didn't discuss politics, they knew nothing of it, they were simple people with no schooling; we didn't even have a radio in our house. Right before the [legionary] rebellion 4 , we bought one, which was immediately confiscated, so we were left without it. My parents didn't read newspapers, there was no time for that, and they worked from morning until evening. I only heard talks about the war when uncle Bern came to visit, because he was involved in socialist politics. He came with the so-called news and we listened. He didn't talk much about what was going on abroad, he was more interested in Cuzists 5, legionaries 6, anti-Semitism; I imagine he didn't read much either, and he definitely didn't have a radio, he couldn't afford it, he had children to support. He was poor and often unemployed. But I remember the terror, the fear that was in the air all the time, not the talks. There was terror of what was going on, and of what people thought was going to happen.

The Jewish community in Bacau

My parents were members in the Jewish community, they were paying their dues, and they were contributing whenever it was necessary for works at the synagogue, for example, and things like that. I wasn't a Zionist, and I am sorry now, although I participated in meetings and the like; my sister, on the other hand, was a member of Hashomer Hatzair 7.

The town I grew up in, Bacau, had a large Jewish community - all of Bacau's population was 35,000 and half of it was Jewish -, and very active: there were several synagogues. It is interesting, the synagogues were named after the guilds that went there: so we had the printers' synagogue, the shoemakers' synagogue, the corn dealers' synagogue - which was very large - and so on. I believe that on only one Jewish street, Leca Street it was called, there were eight or ten prayer houses, and the Rebe Strul synagogue, where my parents and we children went. Bacau had two large synagogues, and two smaller, aside from the prayer houses. One of them was the one of the corn dealers', which I think is the only one that still exists in Bacau nowadays. I remember there was a chazzan at the synagogue where we went, and a choir of children, aged between 6 and 14, who sang divinely. I didn't understand the lines, but I could hear the music, one of the most beautiful and touching songs for me is Kol Nidre. Even during communism, when I drifted away from religion, I still went on Yom Kippur Eve to the synagogue, just to hear Kol Nidre.

I remember with a lot of joy and respect about one of the rabbis in Bacau, Alexandru Safran 8. He was my religion teacher, and I went to his and his father's schil, which was not very big, every Friday evening, as a pupil. He was a very handsome man, thin, elastic, he must have been in his 30s when I knew him, and he had a beautiful well-trimmed red beard. He was a model among rabbis, and we were very proud of him, especially because of his rhetoric. He spoke such a beautiful Romanian, like few native Romanians did or do, you felt like pearls were coming out of his mouth when he talked. We, the children, always thought of him as a prophet. I remember him holding a speech in Yiddish at the schil where my parents went, Rebe Strul, two or three years before World War II and the Holocaust. I can still see him shaking as he said these words, words I will never forget: 'Alh sein blut!', that is 'I see blood!'

I know there was a cheder on Leca Street, which was one hundred percent Jewish, it was like a ghetto. The street was called Dr. Herscu Aroneanu during communism, until 1990, after a socialist Jew [who lived between 1881- 1920], who died under terrible torture in the basements of Bacau garrison, under the orders of a certain colonel Polzer, may God not rest his soul for what he did; I knew him, he lived near my high school. All this happened around 1923. [Editor's note: it is very probable that it happened in 1920.]. I know I heard talks in our house, uncle Bern, my mother's brother, and others, wanted to assassinate Polzer, to avenge doctor Aroneanu, who apparently died after his testicules were crushed. The politicians nowadays changed the name of the street again, which is a shame; it deserved that name. There wasn't a single house in that street that wasn't owned or rented by Jews, but not just well-off Jews: there were porters, ironsmiths, house painters, small traders, carters. But Jews lived scattered around the city as well: there was the commercial street, called Strada Mare [Main Street], where Jews owned most of the shops.

Most of the Jews were traders, but only some of them were worthy of the title, that is had larger shops in Strada Mare; but there were many who were just petty traders or door-to-door salesmen. Jews were very good with horses, therefore many were carters, there were also porters at cereal shops, a backbreaking job, there were Jewish servants. The textile, tanner and furrier industry in town was more or less sustained by Jews, be it that they owned textile factories, or that they were just small laborers, like my uncle Bern and all his sons. They worked in a kerchief -'casanga' in Moldavian talk- factory. Then many Jews were pretzel sellers, or bakers, and, from all I have seen, they were very good handicraftsmen. All the town's industry was based on textile factories, tanner and furrier factories; the factory owned by Filderman, another Jew, was renown in all the country.

There were cheders, mikves, yeshivot in Bacau, but I didn't go, we weren't Orthodox Jews. We, the kids, didn't go to cheder, but we had a lehrer, or a melamed, who came to our house to teach us how to read. I remember we ran from him sometimes, but I don't know why. But education had no pedagogical features back then: for example, we learnt how to read, but we had no idea what we were reading from the prayer book; I think it would have been normal, for a kid, to have some pictures near the text, a translation, something to incite him. Poor lehrer Moise, that was his name, was a kind man, and warm-hearted, he would have liked to teach us more, but we didn't want to learn. When he found us playing together, he would start teaching each of us separately. When we climbed in a tree, he came looking for us. We had a garden near our house, and we climbed in the one of the trees there, and giggled as softly as we could, so that he wouldn't hear us. One time I remember we hid in straws, around the household; and he came looking for us, and even stepped on us - that is on the straws that covered us, but we didn't say a word, we were that desperate to get away from the lesson. Another funny memory is from my first grade, when we had a vaccine shot. It had a crust that itched, and we weren't allowed to scratch it. So poor lehrer Moise had a rush straw with him, and he tickled the crust, he was that kind, he did everything so that we would read. Of course he got tired after a while, and when he stopped, we stopped reading as well! He started tickling us, we started reading, and that was the way the lesson was held! I suppose that's also the reason why we didn't learn much.

My school years

I went to kindergarten before I was 6, and then I started school. I went to a state elementary school, and I had two great teachers I will never forget, husband and wife, the Carjas. We studied two grades with him and then two grades with her. They were an elderly couple, in their fifties I believe; we addressed them with 'Mr. or Mrs. Teacher'. He was a very kind man, and she was a bit quick-tempered. I remember I was punished only once during elementary school, I had to stay on my knees, that was the standard punishment back then. I was in the fourth grade, and the teacher, Mr. Carja, caught me reading under my desk 'Doxes'. I was a collection, 'The adventures of Dox submarine', which came out weekly, and all the kids were dying to get their hands on them. Very popular were also the 'Bill Gazon' or 'Al Capone' collections. My parents gave me money to buy the leaflets, and I used to run to meet the postman five minutes earlier. In school I was usually the prank master, but I was a bit afraid of the teacher. One of my colleagues was Dolfi Drimmer, he is now the dean of the American-Romanian university. His parents had a ribbon factory near the school, and he was the best pupil in our classroom. He was a chubby boy, quiet and obedient, while we were more into football and running around.

I was faced with anti-Semitism as a child, in school; although most of us were good friends, one or two boys from a class of 30 happened to be anti- Semites. But I must tell you, one third of the class was Jewish. And these two colleagues were picking on the Jewish classmates, hitting them, usually the weak ones, because many Jews fought back. So they just picked on the weak ones, like Gold, I still remember him, he was a little slow and chubby, and they were usually after him, tormenting him, insulting him, and beating him if he replied. But everybody stood up for Gold and defended him, not just Jewish boys, but the others as well.

I was in trouble myself: when the Cuzists came to power, in 1936/7, they had their own headquarters in Bacau, a house painted in blue, the Cuzists' house, which we always went around in fear. I remember a newspaper seller, a man without an arm, who sold 'Porunca vremii' ['The command of the times'], the Cuzist newspaper, anti-Semite from the first to the last page. He was a scoundrel, a vagabond: whenever he met a Jewish kid, he kicked the kid in the back as hard as he could with his foot, and he was a grown-up - grown-up in matters of the body, not of the head, God forgive me!. But when the legionaries came to power, it got worse.

After I finished four years of high school and took my diploma, I was kicked out of the state schools because of numerus clausus [in Romania] 9, so I went to Bucharest. All this happened right before the legionary rebellion. In Bucharest there were famous trade schools, like Coicanul, where I studied: it was a Jewish industrial high school. I went there in 1939, and I remember that during the first year everybody studied locksmith's trade. And I remember that not only Jews came during the night classes, but also intellectuals, doctors, lawyers, who were also affected by the political situation. It was a boarding school as well, with high fortress walls, and a strong janitor guarded us during the night, we couldn't go where we wanted. I did sneak out, however, I was passionate about music and I went to operas and operettas. In 1940, in January, right after the rebellion, I remember machine guns being set up on the corners of the high walls, but I don't know what for. And that year, we went home for the Christmas holiday, and we never returned.

During the war

In Bacau, we lived the terrible fear, when armed groups of legionaries marched in the street, singing legionary songs and kneeling in the street. We hid in a garden, in a pit, so that they wouldn't see us. That fear didn't last for long, and some peace followed after that, but not for long: soon after that the fascists came to power. After the legionary rebellion I saw legionaries being shot dead in Florescu Square, it was near our schil, in 1937/8, and I saw them lying on the ground, in the rain, among candles that someone lit, a sign that even the governing party of the time didn't agree with their terrible ideas. I don't know much about the politics of the time; I was just a kid. All we kids knew was that they were to be feared and that we had to stay as far away from them as possible.

During Holocaust, in 1942, we were evicted and we had to live in a house on the outskirts of the town, in a suburb of Bacau, called Campul Postei; it was a house with a chiler, that's what we called in Moldavia a very low and tilted roof that almost touched the ground. We had to use gas lamps and to bring water from the well in buckets. Mother, who was a housewife, had to use clay to fix the cracks of the house, we used an oil lamp, and the fountain was in the street; and it wasn't one with a sweep, it was just a pole with a nail fixed on it, and there we put our bucket, let it fall in the fountain and then drag it all the way up until we could grab it again. The water was sometimes scarce, because the fountain would sometimes dry out, or it was muddy, but back then nobody worried about that.

Also, my father was taken to forced labor, from 1940 until 1944. I remember that in the beginning of World War II, when Jews could still be in the army and wear a uniform, father had to go at call-ups near the front line, at Bretcu. But son after that Jews weren't allowed to be in the army, and my father was drafted for forced labor, but he sometimes came home during the night to sleep. He worked at a mill as a porter, and sometimes, when I didn't have any work, I could go in his stead, that was allowed, and that way my father could rest a bit. The first two years of war I had to earn a living for those who were home, my mother and my sister. I was 14 years old when I started working, when I got a job, but I didn't have a written contract or official papers. I worked in constructions. The contractor, Alexandru Foit was his name, was good and lenient towards me, I hadn't turned 14 yet, and he let me work around an old mason, who was also kind. But work was work, there were no elevators for materials, pulleys: we carried the lime with stretchers and the bricks with the roof-batten. This was my first task, for the first construction I worked for, a two-storied house, to go up the scaffold with the roof-batten on my back. Then I worked in a little factory, and I was happy that I could be in charge of my own time. But working in constructions was possible only during summers; I was unemployed in winters. So I found a job in a small factory -there were only 6 or 8 workers-, which produced candles and grease for carts. We worked during summer only in our underwear, and we were full of fuel oil and tar from the head to toes. We had to wash ourselves after that with kerosene, otherwise the oil wouldn't go off, and our skin was full of blisters. I don't regret it, I earned my bread, I had some money to take home to mother. Every penny I earned I gave to mother, and she would give me what she thought she could spare, some money to go to the cinema on Sunday, or for a 'somera' ['somera' means 'unemployed' in Romanian], that was the name of a very small and cheap cake at the confectionary's.

I worked both shifts, night and day at the factory. We were only two during the night, and I worked with a woman, she was 20, or 30, a grown up, and she was pregnant during that time. We had to work together, to spin two wooden kegs with a crank; and from all the hard work, she went in the throes of childbirth. It was 10 o'clock in the evening, it was winter and dark outside, and I, as a child, was dead scared. The woman started to moan, and I went in the street to look for help, I couldn't help her in any way; I was lucky that it was just the time when people came out from the cinema, from the last movie, and seeing me that desperate, a man and a woman, probably husband and wife, came with me. I took them to the plant, they asked me for water and bandages, and the woman had her baby right then.

The plant had three owners: the one with the money was a lawyer, Cristian, who was very nice to me - after August 23rd1944 10, he even helped me finish my studies; there was another one, also not Jewish, who owned the plant on paper, and a Jew, Weismann, who was some sort of a technical manager. He was very skilled, and he knew some chemistry as well, he needed some formulae for the candles, for the grease. One of my neighbors, a girl who worked there, was attacked by one of them, I don't want to say whom, and I felt I had to intervene, I broke the door and came in, I couldn't leave her like that; I was only 14 or 15 years old. After that, the girl didn't show up, but I needed bread, so I went on working there. da. During winter, when work was scarce, I also taught violin classes for some kids, in private. One Jewish boy I tutored, Leibovici, I met years later, after August 23rd, in Galati, where he was a doctor. His father had been an accountant and he could afford to pay me something for his son's lessons; I was happy with whatever they paid me. Another family, the Kleins, who were related with this family, had a son, Avram, I also tutored for violin lessons; I was so pleased to hear that he is now a plane pilot in Israel.

My sister had a rather hard life because of the war; she was thrown out of school in the fourth grade, so she didn't even finish elementary school. I helped her study at home, but because of the family's material situation, she had to be bound as an apprentice at a dressmaker and then at a photographer. Being an apprentice back then didn't mean that you learnt the job, but that for 3 or 4 years, you were nothing but a servant for the master. She was a kid, only 12 years old, but she had to scrub floors, walk around with her boots tied with a string because the sole was falling off. Whatever she gained she gave to my mother, we needed it for food. And during the war, Jews were not allowed to go and buy bread before 10 o'clock am; of course that after 10 you didn't find any bread. So one day we were too hungry, and she went to stand in line for bread before 10, and somebody recognized her and started beating her, a 10 years old girl, in front of everybody, because she wanted to buy bread. The baker, a Mrs. Teodoru, had to help her, and she came home crying, with no bread.

My sister's ambition was to become a doctor. However, the school was too expensive back then, so in 1946 until 1948 she entered a leather school, where she was the first. But after that she managed to go to a nurse school in Bucharest, and she became a nurse. She worked as one for a while, but she still wanted more. So she studied two more grades of high school, it was necessary in order to go to university, and because all her grades were 10 plus [10 was the highest grade in the Romanian teaching system], she entered university of medicine in Iasi without any exam. She made many sacrifices for her dream, and that is why she married late, when she was 29, with Robert Horovitz, a Jew from Cernauti, and in 1960 she had a son, Emilian.

Post-war

After the war we could return in our house, in the spring of 1944,, some Germans had lived there. Our neighbors were happy to see us, not all of them had been evicted. My father had managed to build another house, next to the one that was left to us as a heritage, with three rooms and a kitchen. After the war, no one used the old house, it almost collapsed by itself, it was ramshackle and the roof with chap board had holes in it. And father worked at 'Izvoreanu ' textile factory, as renowned in Bacau as Fildermann's leather factory -Fildermann was famous on the political stage as a defender of Jews -. But there were several smaller leather factories, also owned by Jews like Davdovici, Abramovici. They gave work to a lot of people, including my mother's brother, Bern, who was a tanner and worked in Abramovici's factory.

After the war was over, I was in some sort of a crossroad; nobody had known when the war would end and how it would end. My sister had her fix idea with medicine, but I had no idea what I wanted to do; I liked music, and for a while I dreamt of making a career as an officer in the military music. With that dream in my head, I left for Bucharest, only God knows with what, because my parents had no money, and I joined the De La Pergola Conservatory -it was some sort of a university- , in the clarinet class. I got my idea with the clarinet before the war, when the Jewish high school was in big need of wind instrumentalists: they had piano, violin players, but no wind instrumentalists. And some of us guys said: 'Let's be wind instrumentalists'. One of my colleagues was Sergiu Comisioner, now Comisiona, who, back then, used to play the trumpet; I am happy to say he is a famous conductor in Spain now, and he often comes to the philharmonic orchestra in Romania to conduct. However, I haven't had the chance to meet him again. So I left for the Conservatory, but I had to come home: I needed money to pay taxes, I didn't have food, I didn't have a winter coat, and the winter was harsh, it was mostly because of the winter that I came home, I was too cold! So I returned home, and Cristian, the lawyer I mentioned before, who had a good heart and who was well-off, helped me finish my last two years of high school and then get into university. I finished the grades eleven and twelve in Bacau and I took the school leaving examination in 1945 in Botosani, at 'Laurian' high school, and Cristian helped me get into a faculty in Bucharest, subsidized by the Ministry of Transportation, the former railway company. But I was obliged that upon graduation I would have to work in the railway company.

I did think of making aliyah, but I was too caught up in the political whirl back then, and I was naive enough to think the Jewish problem can be solved through communism. The theory of socialism was excellent, but what came out of it wasn't what I expected. I was deeply mistaken. After I realized that, it was already to late for me.

After I graduated from university, I went in the army, in the 2nd regiment of the Railways, in Chitila. I liked the life in the army, but I did not like the lack of freedom, I was used to live a free life., I was the founder of the regiment's orchestra, I couldn't live in the army without music. So first I needed instrumentalists; there was one who played the violin, another who played the guitar, but they were not enough. So I asked the commander to let me pick the ones I needed one night, and I did so, no offense, after their color: whoever had the darkest complexion [here Mr. Fiul refers to gypsies] I would ask them: 'What do you really play?' 'Clarinet, Sir!'; 'what do you play?' 'Kobsa, or dulcimer!' But I still had no instruments; the sergeant told me that in one of the barracks' attics there were old instruments, because the regiment once had a fanfare. I went and I chose what we needed, a clarinet, a trumpet, then we sent them to be reconditioned, they had no luster. We found the drums, but there was no more leather on them, the rats had eaten it. So the company commander had a calf cut, and I found some tanners in the company, we tanned the skin and fixed the drums. We had a real orchestra in the end, and the company gave us uniforms, boots, like the officers had; we played for different balls and events. After I finished the army, I came back to Bucharest, a bit sorry to do so, because in the army I didn't have to give up music. I had to give up music eventually, I couldn't work and go on with the music, there was no time for that.

I was in the civil army after that between 1948-1949, it was called the National Guard: we had uniforms, we carried guns, but not real ones, just for the parade, and we always marched on November 7th [also known as October Revolution Day] 11 Meanwhile Grandfather Mendel died in 1949 in Bacau, and he was buried in the Jewish cemetery there; I believe it was my father who recited the kaddish, but I don't remember if it was a rabbi or just a chazzan at the funeral.

I met my wife when I was in the army, in the regiment of the Railways; we met in Bucharest in 1949, when I had furlough, at a cousin of mine, where she was also invited. I remember I was wearing my uniform then. Neti was from Galati, born there in 1928. She came from a Jewish family as well, and she had two brothers, Izu and Misu Marcus. I don't know what her father worked when he was young, when I knew him he was already retired. We fell in love, but we had to have an engagement first, those where the times. But the engagement took place without me, because I was in Chitila, with the regiment, and the winter was so hard, that I couldn't get to Bucharest. So the engagement was made in my absence, they only had a photo of me, and said: 'This is the fiancée, but he cannot come'. The engagement was held in her home, in Galati, and it was a religious one, a rabbi came to do it. We got married 3 or 4 months after that.

It was my second engagement, actually. I had been engaged once before, to another woman: Rifka (I called her Rifkuta) Brucker, a Jewish woman from Buhusi, one of the most beautiful women there. It was in 1946 when she died in my arms, because of a terrible tuberculosis: she worked in the Buhusi cloth factory, and the conditions there were terrible, there were no windows, so she caught a cold to her lungs and she didn't survived. I was only 24. I was deeply and madly in love with her, and still suffering when I got married. My wife, Neti, understood me very well: I used to have nightmares about my lost love, and I suffered. Neti was a true life companion, she helped the pain fade away. I think she suffered in her own way, but she understood me and comforted me. Even now, after 55 years have passed since Rifka died, I still go to her tomb in Buhusi.

Married life

In order to marry my wife in 1949, I had to be released from the army. The wedding was in June, and it was a real Jewish wedding, like you don't see very often today. It took place in Galati, in my father-in-law's house. My parents and her parents met, they established how to help us start a new life. There was a big party in the garden, all my relatives from Bacau, Bucharest, Moldavia came, and all her relatives from Galati. There were two schils in Galati, in the same courtyard, on Bernard Andrei street. One was the one of the handicraftsmen, and the other was a beautiful temple. We had or wedding in the schil of the handicraftsmen, which today is the canteen of the Jewish community in Galati. We were called out to Torah, then the ketubbah was written: we were at the table, my father was on one side, her father on the other, I felt like a prisoner, there was no way out! This is a joke, of course, I wanted desperately to be with that woman, who understood me so well... [he starts crying].

After returning to Bucharest, I sent my applications to some places; I did not care much where I would go, I just wanted to work and be able to earn a living. After 10 days, I was accepted at the Electric Energy Plant, and I was sent to the offices. I worked in the offices for a while, but I could not fit in there, I was used to real work, scribbling on a piece of paper wasn't work for me back then, although I realize now that it has its importance. So I requested to be sent to the plant in Grozavesti, where I was engineer on probation. At first, I wanted to get acquainted with the installations, to learn some blueprints, but there weren't any, so I started doing them myself. I drew the water circuit blueprint, the gaseous or liquid fuel circuit; in order to do them, I actually had to crawl through the canals, I knew the plant better than anyone. I had gained a certain reputation, anyone who wanted to know where a certain fitting was asked me for that information.

One night, I wanted to finish my blueprints, so after I finished my shift, from 6 in the morning to 6 in the evening, I stayed longer, until 9 or so. I had a huge paper on the floor, because it didn't fit on the desk, for the general blueprint. I had my shoes off, so that I could walk on the paper, I had rulers, pencils, a T-square. And it happened that the Minister of Energy at the time, Gheorghe Gaston Marin, came to inspect the plant; it was the largest in the country back then. And from the offices where he was, he saw light in the turbine room and someone there. He was curious who it was, and he came over with his men and found me walking in socks on that blueprint. I was stunned; he was a very imposing man, tall, handsome. He asked me: 'Who asked you to do this?' 'No one, I just wanted to know the pluming, there are always problems in the plant with the orientation, someone has to do it.' 'Are there?' 'Yes, sir.' 'Alright, lad!', he said and he patted me on the shoulder. By the way, I found out later that he was a Jew as well.

After that I was assigned to Targoviste, at Doicesti plant, I was in charge of the fuel - back then it was coal- division. By that time I was already married, I was happy that I got promoted, but sad that I had to leave my wife in Bucharest. But after three months of staying there, one of my colleagues, the chief engineer, comes to me and tells me: 'Fiule, get dressed, tomorrow morning you're on the first train to Bucharest to see the minister.' I was stunned, I had no idea why I had been summoned. So I went to see him, and he told me: 'You were the one doing all the blueprints of the plant, right?' Yes, comrade minister!' 'You know what? I trust you, I've seen you work. You will be in charge of the plant!' I was perplexed, I was only 26 years old, and I knew what a huge responsibility Doicesti was. I tried to refuse, but he wouldn't have t any other way, so I ended up running the Doicesti plant, which back then was the largest electric plant in the country. My wife stayed behind in Bucharest, but she came to Targoviste as often as she could to see me. It was a lot of hard work, with a lot of responsibility. I had to join the Communist party, there was no other way. I was in charge of Grozavesti plant for 17 years.

Back then, there was a great need for specialized staff, the schools couldn't keep up with the rate, the industry, especially the electric energy industry, was developing. So we, the Grozavesti staff, had to train all other newcomers. We were usually assigned to the plants that were about to open. There were three departments in working with electric plants, exploitation, maintenance, and repairs. I was working in exploitation. So I was sent from Grozavesti to Constanta, at Ovidiu 2 plant. There I was in charge of the boilers repairing department. The director was Popa Stoica, a very capable man, and he was reassigned to Bacau, at the Energo-Combinat 3, that was the name of the plant there, and he took me with him. I was happy, I could return to the places where I spent my childhood. I was in charge of the energy distribution department for Bacau, but again I couldn't put up with the work in an office, so I ended up running the Buhusi electrical plant -back then the largest electrical plant in Moldova- for the next three years. But then larger plants appeared, Comanesti, Borzesti, Sipoteni, the one in Buhusi had become rather unimportant, and the Ministry wanted me to go to Braila. I tried to refuse, because I didn't want to leave my family, but I couldn't, an order from the ministry was an order, it was like in the army. When I was transferred to Bacau, my wife came with me and stayed with my parents, and when I moved to Braila she came with me. I didn't regret going to Braila, it was the best part of my professional life, I had independence and the staff was the best. I say independence because we had autonomy from the Galati plant, we had the liberty to fix what we thought needed fixing, take the financial measures without asking for approval, and so on.

My wife only had a housekeeping school, which she did after primary school, girls didn't study much back then, religion or something like that, they just had to know how to read and write in Romanian. We had our child four years after we got married; back then, I was looking for work, I had to be the man in the house, provide, and my wife was a housewife. Rodica was born in 1953 in Bacau, I remember it was a harsh winter, the snow was up to my knees. I was proud, there was another Fiul member in our family! Back then I was still working in Bacau.

I can give you another example of how strong my father felt about hard work: I went with my wife on a vacation in Ceahlau mountains, and I left my daughter with my parents, she was 5 or 6 years old. When we came back for her, my father frowned at me and snapped: 'The girl is already 5 years old and she can't sweep, how did you raise her?!' He respected and loved hard work.

I raised my daughter to be a Jew, and her mother observed all traditions at home, she lit the candles on Friday evenings and said the blessing, and we had a traditional Friday and Saturday dinner. I had little or no time for properly observing the Sabbath, for example,I observed only the high holidays, but I enjoyed them. At home, I tried to lead the Seder Eve, but I don't think I measured up to the one my father used to lead. When I worked in Bacau, I spent Pesach with my parents, of course, and my father led the Seder Eve, like he did hen I was a child, but after I moved to Braila, it wasn't the same: we had afikoman, and matzah bread, but a part from the charm of the holiday was gone for me. We also had a Christmas tree, more for Rodica, who loved this custom. Rodica didn't have bat mitzvah, I think that's something more modern, I saw it done only in Israel.

During communism, my friends were my coworkers; I spent with them 14, 16 hours per day, sometimes even 24 hours out of 24. I had big professional satisfactions, but I neglected my family, which now I regret, but it is too late to remedy things. I think I was selfish in a way. For me the family was my refuge, the place where I ate and where I slept, so that I could go back to my work in the morning. And one time, when my daughter was 5 or 6 years old, I bought tickets for the theater, and of course we had a certain hour. I was at the plant, ready to run home; I did come home, but I was late. My wife was very understanding, but my daughter was very upset, and she told me: 'Daddy, you should have married a turbine and have a little boiler as a child, not a family like us!'

My daughter studied at the faculty of Electrotechnics in Iasi, she wanted to complete me, because I worked as an electro-mechanic. I used to take her to the plant on Sundays, she was very amused by the sound of the diesel engines, it caught on her. After she graduated, she started working at the iron and steel combined works in Galati. My daughter never had problems at work because she was Jewish. She met her husband, David (we call him Toni) Horning in Galati, in 1977, he is also a Jew and he worked as an engineer at Galati shipyard. My father introduced them to each other: I don't know how he met Toni, but probably he got to know the Jews in Galati when he came over there for my wedding, or on some other occasion, when he came to visit his in-laws., He was very concerned to se her married, with children, at her home! They married in the same synagogue where I married my wife. I have two grandchildren, a boy, Doron, who is now 23, and a girl, Anat, who is 24. My daughter decided to make aliyah in 1986; they decided it and I supported them, although the separation from them and especially from my grandchildren was very painful. But every real Jew has to live in Israel. They live in Haifa now, Toni is an engineer at Haifa shipyard, and Rodica works as an electrician at Haifa city hall.

In my own personal way, I tried to find a solution to the Jewish problem: I couldn't forget the four years of anti-Semitism only because of August 23rd , and the Socialist Party seemed like an answer, that was before it was gulped up by the Communist party in1945. Later I realized that communism wasn't at all what I hoped for, but I can't say exactly when, because I was so absorbed in my work: I had a huge responsibility, the energy deficit was immense, some people had to study with an oil lamp sometimes. My involvement in politics was that I had some courses to attend, some compulsory Marxist education. And I confess that I was and still am a believer in socialist, if not communist principles, that is I believe that the people who work hard are the ones that push the society forward. Socialism says that all people give what they can to the state, and what they get back is proportional with what they gave; in communism, all must give everything they can, but they get back a fix amount, like all others, no matter if they gave up more. I didn't have problems from the government because I was a Jew, not under Gheorghiu-Dej 12 or Ceausescu 13 but under Ceausescu I first felt the problems with food and heat. And I must tell you, capitalism scares me a bit, it is too savage, and socialism still seems more just to me. I personally didn't feel many restrictions under communism, simply because I didn't care about anything except my work: I knew nothing about politics. But I remember that I had to stand in a queue for a bottle of milk, my grandchildren were small, and it was hard to have something to put on the table. I never listened to Free Europe 14, or other radio stations, I was too busy with work.

I don't think communism had anything to do with my growing apart from religion, and, I am sorry now to say it, from my family: it was my job. Fate wanted me to have all these responsibilities in the energy plants, when the energetic system was just being built in Romania. We were solicited day and night, we forgot about holidays and religion. We took our jobs so seriously, we considered it a sacred duty to our country, and we were passionate about what we did.

My mother died in 1971 in Bacau. At my mother's funeral, there was a rabbi, a minyan, and I recited the kaddish; my mother used to tell me when she was alive: 'I love you because you are my kaddish!' She meant that she was grateful that I would be the one to cherish her memory after she passed away. My wife died in November 1973, rather unexpectedly. She was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Galati. There was a minyan, and I recited the kaddish, but we had no rabbi. [the memory upsets him and he doesn't want to linger on the topic] After that, I remained in Galati, I loved my wife's relatives as much as I loved my parents. Today almost all her relatives are in Israel. After my mother died, my father moved to Iasi and lived with my sister for a while, and then, because of his health problems, went to a home for the elderly. He died there in 1986; he was also buried in the Jewish cemetery. There were just 5 or 6 men at my father's funeral, we couldn't form a minyan, because it al happened very quickly. I could only sit shivah for two or three days after my parents and my wife, but I observed another custom: I had dust in my socks for a week.

The situation concerning the connections with the West or with Israel where the following: of course the Securitate 15 had its eye on you if you received letters from abroad, nothing else; and I had a managerial position in an industry that was a strategic objective for the economy. The problem was that all those who had relatives abroad were dismissed from managerial positions, army or administration. I wasn't afraid to write, but I was a bit reluctant, I didn't want to have problems with my work, I was too fond of it. I had family in Israel, my mother's sister with her husband, my brothers-in-law Misu and Izu Marcus, then friends, like Usher Klein, we knew each other since we were kids and we are still good friends. There are my cousins, Iosef, Eial and Zev Fiul, who live in Kiryat-Ata. Zev and Iosef left in 1946 I think, but Eian left later, in the 1970s. And all my family from my wife's side left for Israel, the only ones left behind are my sister and my niece, Gabriela Marcovici, from Tecuci.

When the wars in Israel started, I was very affected: I already had friends and family there, and my heart was there as well; the wars were for me real traumas, and I believe they are the same for all the Jews in diaspora. The war in 1967 kept me tensed for only 6 days; I celebrated when it ended with my family, I remember.

I was in Israel several times; the first time I went was in 1970, at Lud, but I visited Haifa, Nazaret, Knesset and Jerusalem. One of the things that impressed me was to hear in the street somebody cry out: 'hei sa bei iune'. In Yiddish that means warm pretzels. I was so touched to hear Romanians from back home; it melted my heart! And after my daughter left, I went to visit them every two years. I still believe that Israel is wonder country.

When the [Romanian] revolution broke out in 1989 16, I was already retired, and I lived in Tecuci. By that time I lived alone in Galati, and I went over to Tecuci to my niece Gabriela Marcovici, (Manase's daughter) who needed my help, she was alone with her mother. My niece worked in a school in a nearby commune, Movileni; I went to take her home, because it was winter, and when I went inside the school, we heard the news about Ceausescu going down at the radio. When we got home, we didn't go away from the TV for three days! It didn't mean as much as August 23rd meant for Jews: that was the relief that death wouldn't come the very next day, it was a liberation, even if the communists did it. But of course we felt in 1989 the possibility that we could finally get rid of queues, that we could make it day by day, that the society would change in its structure, which it did.

Immediately after I retired in 1986, I knew I had to find some activity, I couldn't deal with all that freedom all at once, after being solicited at the maximum all those years. So I became involved in the Jewish community in Galati: I was in charge of administration and of the canteen; the times were rough then, the food was scarce, it was still under communism. It gave me satisfaction, helping those in need, but I couldn't find the work I was used to, the technical part at least. But I also had a dream, that after all the work, I would go back to living like I did when I was a child, have a house in the countryside, a garden. So with everything I had saved, and something I even borrowed, I bought a little house and a garden of 1500 square meters in 1991 in Tecuci. I developed a real passion for gardening, I could grow everything I needed for me and my relatives in my garden. After three years, I had even wine from the vine I had planted. I made my own wine, I even had a still, I made plum brandy, I got along well with my neighbors, I was rewarding. But when I approached the age of 70, I realized that I won't be able to keep up with the work a neat house and garden requires, so I had to find something else. So I became passionate about hiking, I had friends in Brasov, and I took up hiking. But I couldn't do it like I once could, I got tired easily at climbing, because the descent was easy. So I said to myself, I have to find something else. And I found it here, at the Jewish community in Brasov. So I sold my house in Tecuci in 1996, and I got an apartment in Brasov, with which I am very pleased, I can see the mountains, I have fresh air, I can see the sky. But when I moved here, I didn't know that I would find something to do at the community, I came for the mountains and my friends. But in the community I found a new home, it is a refuge from loneliness. I am in charge of writing a monograph of the Jews in Brasov; I also work as a librarian. But it would be nice if I had more coworkers, because it takes a lot of work and I don't know if I will be able to finish it.

The religious life in the community here is not very good, there are no more kids, no cheder, the old people just meet one day in the week to pray, on Saturdays. I would like to see that we do more to preserve the old synagogues, I would like a Jewish museum here in Brasov. What we have is also good, but I cannot help not to be sad because of all the traditions that will be lost, because the old people die eventually, it is in the nature of things.

Glossary

Rachel Randvee
Tallinn
Estonia
Interviewer: Emma Gofman
Date of interview: March 2003

Rachel Randvee is not tall; she is an elegantly dressed lady with a lovely, open face. She is very friendly and hospitable and likes talking to people. She lives in a big apartment with her son's family and her daughter. Although she is not in perfect health, Rachel assumes all the domestic responsibilities - she goes grocery shopping, cooks for the entire family, and cleans the apartment. She is ever so optimistic and that makes it very pleasant to talk to her.

My father, Hirsh-Leib Tsivian, was born in the town of Kreizburg in Latvia. It was a small town on the bank of Daugava River; many Jews lived there at that time. My father's father, Yakov Tsivian, went around Latvian villages purchasing cattle and selling it to butchers. He died early so neither my elder sister, Riva, nor I ever met him. My father's mother, Grandma Haya- Sore, was left alone with a whole flock of children after her husband died. In order to maintain her family she started baking. She baked and sold challah for Sabbath, strudel and other delicious pies for Jewish holidays, and she also took orders for wedding cakes. This kind of business wasn't very profitable; her family was very poor and the children were often sick.

My grandmother had twelve children, but some of them died in infancy and some died later. In the 1930s only four of my grandmother's children were still alive - my father and his three sisters: Sofia, Dina, and Asne. At that time, Grandma Haya-Sore lived in Riga [Latvia] with the family of her youngest daughter Asne Fain, nee Tsvivian. My sister and I went there for our summer holidays on several occasions. Aunt Asne rented a room for us in a Jewish summer hotel at a Riga seaside resort so we would only eat kosher food. For Sabbath we always went to Riga to our grandma's and attended the synagogue on Saturday mornings. Our grandmother was very old, she could only walk with great difficulty. She told us that attending synagogue gave her strength.

Grandma Haya-Sore, her family, her children, and their families were very religious. They strictly observed the kashrut, kept Sabbath and celebrated all the Jewish holidays according to Jewish traditions. In our living room there was a portrait of Grandma Haya-Sore at a young age - she was wearing a wig in it. She didn't wear a wig in her old age, but I never saw her with her head uncovered. Even at home she always had a little lace cap on her head. In my grandma's house everyone only spoke Yiddish. I never heard her speak Russian or Latvian, although, I believe she knew those languages. Grandma Haya-Sore was pretty even in her old age, and she was an unapproachable beauty in her youth. She told us how long it had taken her to choose a husband and her father had been very annoyed by this. Every one of my grandma's sisters had families of their own at the age of 14 or 15, but she didn't marry until she was 18.

My aunt Asne Fain was also very beautiful. She had big blue eyes and gorgeous light golden hair. Her husband, Herman Fain, was a co-proprietor of a timber-trading company so their family was quite wealthy. Their only son, Yakov Fain, was a vocal student at Riga Conservatory in the late 1930s. He had a wonderful tenor and a future as an opera singer was predicted for him. In 1940 the Soviet regime was established in Latvia, and the property of the Fain family was nationalized. Yakov was taken off his last year at the conservatory and was sent to serve in a military performing group. Although the group was stationed in Riga and Yakov lived at home, he was outraged that instead of opera arias in Italian he was forced to sing military and sailor's songs in Russian. In the summer of 1941, when the German army instantly occupied Latvia, the entire Fain family and Grandma Haya-Sore remained in Riga and died in the Holocaust. The whole family of my father's second sister, Dina, also remained in Riga and died. She had three children - her daughters, Rachel and Golda, and her son, Maks. Both her daughters were married, Rachel had a young daughter, Aviva, and Golda was expecting a baby in 1941. The families of my father's cousins were also killed. A total of 47 of my father's relatives died in the Holocaust in Latvia. Unfortunately, the exact circumstances of their death are unknown to us.

Only my father's eldest sister, Sofia Israelson, nee Tsivian, survived the war. She and her husband moved from Latvia to St. Petersburg before the Revolution of 1917 1 and lived there - in Soviet Leningrad - until 1941. They had one son, Yakov, who graduated from a technical institute in Leningrad and worked there as an engineer. In 1941 he was drafted to the army and died in combat action in the first months of the war. Sofia and her husband remained in the blockade of Leningrad. 2. Sofia's husband died of starvation during the first winter of the blockade - the winter of 1941/42 - and Sofia, barely alive, was carried out of Leningrad across Ladoga Lake [see Road of Life] 3. She survived and returned to Leningrad after the war where she had no more relatives or friends. In the summer of 1949 I went to visit Aunt Sofia in Leningrad and saw how poor and lonely her existence was. I suggested that she moved to live with us in Tallinn because she had no more relatives except my father, my sister, and me. She agreed and spent the last years of her life near us in Tallinn. Sofia died in 1962.

My father was born in 1895. He finished cheder in Kreizburg; his mother tongue was Yiddish. He wasn't very proficient in other languages - Russian, Latvian, German and then Estonian. To help his mother he started working at a young age. At first, he was a salesman's apprentice in a shop in Kreizburg, and later he worked as a salesman in a fabric shop in Riga for several years. At the end of 1916 my father went to St. Petersburg [called Petrograd between 1917 and 1924], where his elder sister Sofia and her family lived. He intended to look for a job there. Petrograd was on the eve of revolution - there were mass-meetings, strikes, and plundering. My father didn't like this at all - he liked order in all things - and after a few months he decided to return to Latvia. On his way to Riga he stopped in the small Estonian city of Tartu. He liked the city - it was a quiet, neat place with a Jewish community and, which was essential for my father, it had a synagogue. One Saturday, while visiting the synagogue, a beautiful young lady attracted his attention. They were soon introduced to each other. That's how my father met his future wife, my mother, Hesse Heiman.

I don't know if my mother's parents were born in Estonia or if they moved here. At the end of the 19th century they were already living in the city of Tartu. My grandfather's name was Tevye Heiman, and my grandmother's name was Rohel-Leah Heiman, nee Klas. I never met them - they died before I was born. Grandfather Tevye traded in cattle just like grandfather Yakov did. The only difference was he went around Estonian not Latvian villages. During one of these trips, my grandfather was attacked by robbers and killed. This happened in the middle of the 1900s. All of my grandparents' children except my mother were adults by that time. Grandmother Rohel-Leah was taken ill with gangrene after this tragic incident; one of her legs had to be surgically removed. The doctors said it was the result of the nervous breakdown. From what my mother told me I know that my grandmother walked on crutches during the last years of her life.

My grandmother had twelve children, eight of whom survived. Yiddish was the language spoken within the family, but every one of the children could speak Russian, Estonian and German. The family closely observed Jewish religious traditions. This was carried on into our own family and into the families of my mother's brothers and sisters. Grandmother Rohel-Leah was very hard-working. Her hands were remarkably skilful - whatever household work she took up was done perfectly. This trait of hers was passed on to all her children and to many grandchildren. Every one of my grandmother's daughters could sew and embroider well; they could cook delicious meals and create a general feeling of coziness in the house. There was a saying in my mother's family - 'Heimans' hands'. Whenever one of the daughters or granddaughters succeeded in making a nice dress, a fashionable hat, or just mended something, it was said, 'No wonder! She's got Heimans' hands!' That was a top commendation. My mother's family was a united one; her sisters and brothers supported each other during their whole lives. Grandmother Rohel-Leah died in Tartu in the middle of the 1920s.

My mother's older sister, Berta Feiman, nee Heiman, born in the 1870s, died early; I never met her. Her husband, Haim-Shimon Feiman, owned a tannery in Tartu. Their only son, Tevye Feiman, born in 1905, graduated from university in Vienna in the middle of the 1920s with a physician's qualification; both before and after World War II he worked as a doctor in the town of Rakvere in Estonia. During the war Tevye and his family were evacuated to Russia; Tevye worked as a doctor in a military hospital. Before she was married, his wife, Gita, worked in a large jewelry store in Tallinn. Once married, she studied to be a medical assistant and then worked alongside her husband. Their daughter, Aviva, married a marine officer and went to live with him in Leningrad. Tevye Feiman died in the middle of the 1980s in Tallinn. Since his death Gita has been living in St. Petersburg with her daughter's family.

Rasse Fumanskaya, nee Heiman, born in the 1870s, was my mother's second sister. She married Meishe Furmanski, a very wealthy Tartu Jew. They had a big house and a clothing store in Tartu. Rasse's two sons were educated abroad. Her older son, Tevye, studied at Prague University. When he came back he brought a chemical engineer's degree and a Jewish wife along with him. In the late 1930s Tevye Furmanski lived in Tartu with his family and managed his own saw-mill. Rasse's second son, Isaac Furmanski, lived in Tallinn with his family and also had a business of his own. Rasse's daughter, Sofia Furmanski, graduated from Tartu University's department of law. She lived in Tallinn and worked as a lawyer.

In 1940 Meishe Furmanski died, and a year later the Soviet authorities nationalized the entire property of the Furmanski family. Sofia was prohibited from working as a lawyer. In 1941 the whole family with the exception of Sofia was deported [see Soviet Deportation of Estonian Civilians] 4. Isaac ended up in a camp in the Northern Urals, and everyone else in exile. In the camp, where Isaac felled trees, prisoners were issued their daily allowances of clay-like bread in the evenings after work. This bread had to be eaten slowly in small bits, otherwise the stomach could fail. One day Isaac forgot about this rule and ate his entire portion at once. A few hours later he had severe stomachache and my father, who was in the same camp, watched him die in his arms.

Tevye Furmanski and his family lived in evacuation in Tomsk region [approx. 3,000 km east of Moscow]. They remained there to live. The rest of the Furmanski family returned to Estonia after evacuation. At present, Isaac's children, Joseph and Miya, live in Israel, and Sofia's daughter, Bina, lives in Tallinn.

Haya-Fanny Smolenski, nee Heiman, born in the 1880s, was my mother's third sister. Before the war, she, her husband, Simon Smolenski, and their five sons lived in Tartu where they had a sewing workshop. Aunt Fanny could sew very well. After the war she lived in Tallinn with her youngest son, Boris, and worked as a cutter at a clothes factory. During the war three of the Smolenski sons were killed. Two of them, Meishe and Ammi, served in a fighter battalion 5 and died in the summer of 1941. Ruven Smolenski was a lieutenant in the Estonian Rifle Corps 6 and died in combat action on the Estonian island of Saaremaa in 1944. He was buried there in a common grave. Immediately after the war, as soon as Aunt Fanny returned from evacuation with her youngest son, Boris - her husband Simon died in evacuation - she started her attempts to obtain permission to bring Ruven's body to Tallinn in order to have him buried in a Jewish cemetery according to Jewish tradition. She reached the top military authorities and obtained the permit. Among hundreds of dead people Aunt Fanny recognized her son by his special feature - a tooth, broken when he was still a child.

Another one of aunt Fanny's sons, Tevye Smolenski, abandoned his studies at Tartu Univesity and went to Israel in the late 1930s. He became a naval captain. His wife, Miryam, was a German Jew; her parents lived in a kibbutz in Israel. Tevye and Miryam had three children and several grandchildren. After the war Tevye visited Tallinn on a number of occasions. In the late 1950s he brought his mother on board his ship to go for a cruise around Europe. In 1963 Tevye celebrated his 50th birthday in Tallinn. It was an unforgettable party, at which all the relatives who lived in Estonia then came together. The last time Tevye visited Tallinn was in 1991. He died in Tel Aviv four years later. Fanny's youngest son, Boris, now lives in the USA and works as an engineer. Aunt Fanny died in Tallinn in the late 1960s.

The fourth sister, who my mother was very close to, was Basya Mayofis, nee Heiman, born in the 1880s. She, her husband Leib Mayofis, and their children lived in Tallinn. Basya had a small millinery where she made hats. There were three children in her family - two sons, Mordukh and Tevye, and a daughter, Sima. During the 1930s Tevye Mayofis was one of the leaders of the Betar 7 youth Zionist movement in Estonia. In 1940 he was sentenced by Soviet authorities to serve ten years in camps [see Gulag] 8 for promoting Zionism. Out of all the Betar activists sentenced at that time he was the only one to survive the camps. After ten years of camps Tevye spent several further years in exile in Siberia. His girlfriend moved from Tallinn to live with him, they got married and had a daughter, Rosie.

In the late 1950s Tevye's family was allowed to return to Estonia. He had golden 'Heimans' hands'. A small car with 'Tallinn' painted across it, which he had made all by himself out of old spare parts, could be spotted in the streets of Tallinn by surprised pedestrians. In the 1970s, as soon as he had an opportunity, Tevye Mayofis and his family went to live in Israel. He is an honorary citizen of that country; his name is in the golden book for his contribution to establishing the state of Israel. His granddaughters are now adults. Tevye's entire family lives in Haifa.

In the summer of 1941, when fascists were approaching Tallinn, Basya and Leib Mayofis and their elder son, Mordukh, decided to stay although they still had a chance to escape and go east. Perhaps, they thought that there was nobody worse than the communists who had arrested their son. Fascists killed them in the fall of 1941. Leib and Mordukh Mayofis were executed in Tallinn prison. Today, one of its walls carries a memorial plate in honor of the Jews who died there. I don't know anything about the way Aunt Basya died. Their daughter, Sima, and her husband were evacuated to Russia and their family broke up there. At present, Sima and her second husband live in Israel with their children and grandchildren. They never returned to Estonia after the war.

My mother also had three brothers. One of them, Hirsh Heiman, born in the 1890s, died in the Estonian War of Liberation 9 in 1919. The name of the second brother was Samuel Heiman. He was born in the 1880s. When he was young he was a good mechanic; later he opened a shop in Tallinn where he sold kosher food. During the war he and his wife Gita were evacuated to Russia. While there, Uncle Samuel once again worked as a mechanic so his family wouldn't starve. After the war they returned to Tallinn, where Uncle Samuel worked as a manager in a small grocery store. Samuel and Gita Heiman died in Tallinn in the 1950s. Their daughter, Rasse Paturskaya, nee Heiman, went to live in Israel with her husband, Abram, and her son, Yakov.

Rasse and Abram lived and died in Natanya; their son, Yakov, is presently working there as a doctor. He was educated back in Estonia, at Tartu University. He occasionally visits Tallinn where many of his friends live. Uncle Samuel's second daughter, Leah Bolonov, and her husband, Israel Bolonov, lived and died in Tallinn after the war. Rina, their daughter, is living here at present.

My mother's favorite brother was Leib-Zelik Heiman, born in the 1880s. He and his family lived in Tartu. Leib-Zelik had some kind of chronic disease - he was unable to work for extended periods of time - so his family lived in poverty. My mother used to help them a lot. Leib-Zelik's elder daughter, Sarah, was an activist in the Betar movement. In the middle of the 1930s she was among a group of young Jewish people that went to Palestine to build up Israel. All of Sarah's relatives helped to equip her for the journey; Sofia Furmanski was of the most assistance buying her clothes and everything else necessary. At the train station, just before her departure my father, who disliked listening to words of gratitude, shoved a large pack of British Pounds down Sarah's pocket.

In June 1941 Leib-Zelik's two sons, Bentzion and Hone, volunteered for the militia and fought alongside the Red Army troops holding back the German forces at the Tartu frontline for almost a month. Both of them were killed in battle in the summer of 1941. Their names are inscribed on the monument commemorating Jews who were killed in Tartu while fighting the fascists. Because of his sickness Leib-Zelik couldn't follow his wife and daughter into evacuation. He remained in Tartu and died in the fall of 1941. Just like all the other Tartu Jews he was shot in a tank ditch on the city's outskirts. Later on, his wife, Gita Heiman, and his daughter, Leah Eidus, went to live in Israel. Gita has already died there, but Leah still lives in Tel Aviv.

My mother, Hesse Heiman, was born in Tartu in 1895. She was the youngest child and the favorite in the family. When Grandfather Tevye died my mother was 12 or 13 years old, and the elder siblings helped my grandmother to bring her up. For a few years my mother studied in some school in Tartu, I believe it was a cheder. When she was 15 she went to Warsaw to study sewing. [Editor's note: Before WWI Warsaw and much of Poland as well as Estonia were part of the Russian Empire.] My mother studied there for two years in a school that trained tailors of top qualification. She had a certificate confirming her graduation from that school; it was later posted on a wall in my mother's workshop.

In 1912 my mother returned to Tartu and worked there for several years in a privately-owned sewing workshop. In March 1917, when she came to the synagogue on a Saturday, she saw a strange young man who looked at her with curiosity. My mother was very pretty and, besides, she was tastefully and fashionably dressed. They started to see each other. My parents' wedding took place on 1st May 1917, in the same synagogue where they had first seen each other. A year later they had a daughter - my elder sister, Riva.

My parents were young and full of energy and they really wanted to start a business of their own. In the small provincial university town of Tartu the conditions weren't very favorable. After the [First] Estonian Republic 10 was established in 1918, Tallinn started developing rapidly - there were factories, a port, and state institutions. My parents decided that their future clients lived in the capital and moved to Tallinn in 1919. They rented a small flat there and opened a corset workshop. At first my mother worked there alone, but later, as orders flowed in, she hired several workers.

My mother was an excellent expert, she always followed the European fashion. Moreover, she was an extremely charming and friendly woman. She was proficient in Yiddish, Estonian, and Russian, and could speak some German, too. Her business was thriving. After I was born in 1929 my parents rented a larger apartment in the center of the city. I recall that the largest room contained six sewing machines, mannequins with finished products on them, and lots of fashion magazines lying around. For celebrations all this was pushed against the wall and the room turned into a living room.

In 1935 my parents rented yet larger premises in which they opened a corset shop. It was called 'Madame Tsivian.' Apart from my mother, it employed eight more workers. They produced corsets, brassieres, abdominal supports for pregnant women and for women after childbirth. At that time it was the most fashionable corset shop in Tallinn. Among the shop's numerous clients were wives of the highest Estonian state officials including the president's wife. In the 1930s our family was quite wealthy and the basis for our prosperity was earned by my mother's hands. Certainly, my father worked as well. He helped my mother by setting up the workshops, purchasing equipment and fabrics, maintained financial affairs, and then, in the middle of the 1930s, he opened a furniture shop of his own. They both built and sold furniture there.

After the corset shop moved to its new premises the apartment where we lived became much more comfortable. It was a well-equipped five-bedroom apartment - it had electricity, running water, and a central heating system. I remember very well the way it was furnished. There was mahogany furniture and blue silk tapestries on the walls. My father said our living room was 'Napoleon style.' My mother loved china and crystal, and there were delicate cut-glass figures and porcelain statuettes in a pretty little glass showcase. There was a separate row of busts of famous musicians - I knew them all by heart. We had black oak furniture in our dining room. There was a large round table, two cupboards, and leather chairs. In my parents' bedroom there was antique furniture: a king-size bed, a wardrobe, and a dressing table. In my nursery there were two beds - one of them belonged to me and the other one belonged to my governess - a writing desk and a corner full of dolls. My sister's room had stylish modern furniture from my father's shop. An expensive German piano was in there, too.

Our family was very religious. For his whole life, even in the hardest times, my father was a true believer. He started his morning by washing his hands and putting on his tefillin. He prayed at home several times a day, often went to the synagogue for evening prayers, kept the Yom Kippur fast, and attended the synagogue every Saturday and on holidays. We always had strictly kosher food at home. We only bought kosher food sold in special shops. There were three kosher food shops in Tallinn. In our kitchen there were two cupboards: one of them contained cooking ware, dishes, and cutlery for meat, and the other the same for dairy products. There was one stove.

My mother, supported by an Estonian servant, cooked the food. My mother knew many Jewish dishes and could cook them well. Unquestionably, we always observed Sabbath in our house. On Friday night the whole family gathered at the table, my mother lit Sabbath candles, and my father recited Kiddush. Our shops were closed on Saturdays.

There were always careful preparations for Pesach celebrations. My sister and I, my mother, and the servant cleaned and scrubbed. Pesach tableware was stored for the entire year in a locked box. Glassware that had been in use throughout the year was soaked in large wooden barrels for two weeks to make it kosher. My mother's sister, Basya, and her family would always visit for seder. And we always invited some single people to come. An Ivrit teacher, Gronimov, joined our seder celebrations for many years in a row until he got married.

For Rosh Hashanah my mother would make a round bun with a braid on top, and for Yom Kippur she made a ladder-shaped bun. On the morning of Yom Kippur my father used to swing a live white chicken over my head. It was supposed to drive all the troubles away from me. I was very scared of that chicken so my father changed the ritual - he used a handkerchief with some coins tied into it instead of a chicken. We baked hamantashen and gave presents to our relatives and friends for Purim. For Sukkot celebrations a shed was constructed in the synagogue yard and our whole family went there. When I was little I liked Simchat Torah. The synagogue was beautifully decorated and people danced and had fun. Children were given presents - large bags full of sweets and biscuits. My mother, my sister, and I went to the synagogue on every Jewish holiday.

Within the family we always celebrated my birthday to which my relatives and other children would come. We didn't usually celebrate birthdays of adults. Our house was always full of young men and girls who came to visit my sister. Riva was a very independent child. She never went to kindergarten because there were no Jewish kindergartens then. Our parents couldn't afford to have a nurse or a governess at the time. They were busy doing their work, and little Riva would wander around the building and visit the neighbors. Later, our parents often recalled the episode that happened when she was five. She went to the apartment next door, which was a privately-owned sewing workshop. There Riva found a beautiful brand-new beaded wedding dress. She cut the beads off the dress and, back at home, cut off a piece of a new curtain and started making a dress of her own. She was a lively girl, a tomboy even - all of her childhood friends were boys and she was their leader. She would gather all the boys from our street and lead them to a different street to fight. Later on, of course, she grew up and became more serious and quiet. In 1926 Riva went to the Jewish Gymnasium 11. Younger pupils studied Ivrit but all the other subjects were taught in Russian, whereas older pupils studied everything in Ivrit.

Riva started learning the piano when she was little, she had a talent for music, and she was taught by Tallinn's best music teachers. They thought that Riva could grow up to become an excellent pianist. In order to do that Riva had to spend hours practicing, but she was an outgoing, cheerful, expressive person. She wanted to do sports and spend time with her friends. However, we had a strict and asserting father, at times he simply forced Riva to the instrument. And when her friends came to visit her she played the piano and all of them sang wonderful songs in Yiddish and Ivrit. I can still remember some of those beautiful songs.

While Riva was still in high school she started studying at a conservatory. She graduated from high school in 1936. That was the tenth graduating class of the Tallinn Jewish School. The graduation ceremony was held in the school gym, which was decorated in an unusual way. Tablecloths, window curtains, and everything else were white and blue just like the flag of Israel. Many of my sister's classmates were leaving right after graduation and going to Palestine to build up Israel. Riva really wanted to go, too, but my father didn't let her. He believed that she had to finish her conservatory studies first and then decide whether she wanted to go to Palestine. Our family always donated money to every Jewish foundation intended for settlers in Palestine. A sign of this was the golden heart posted on our door.

I was born in 1929. I was named Rachel in honor of my grandmother Rohel- Leah who wasn't alive any more then. In my education my parents tried to correct their former mistakes. When I was two a governess was employed for me. Her name was Karoline Kins; she was from a Germanized Estonian family. She spoke German with me, and my parents also tried to address me in German. In those days many Estonian and Jewish families would send their children to be educated in Germany, and my parents wanted me to be able to speak German freely. They spoke Yiddish to my sister and to each other, and Estonian to the servant. Russian wasn't used in our family.

When I was four I was enrolled in a Jewish kindergarten. From my first day there I heard Ivrit being spoken. The songs we sang there were also in Ivrit. When I was six and went to the Jewish school I could speak and understand Ivrit quite well. In the school there were two first grades. One of them had Yiddish as the language of instruction, and the other one Ivrit. It was up to the parents to make a choice. I learned in Ivrit. Our class was very united. There were three sets of twins in it: two pairs of girls and a pair of boys. Those boys remained here during the war and were killed just like many of my other classmates.

In school I loved music lessons. Our music teacher, Gurevich, often complimented me for my musical talent. However, when my parents offered to sign me up for special music lessons I said no. Then my father told me, 'If you don't want to learn music then study something else.' I decided to study English. For several years I learnt English from a very remarkable teacher. She didn't teach lessons and we didn't read or write. We just talked - in the kitchen while she was cooking dinner, walking outside or visiting her friends. Her friends were a Russian countess, Sofya Volkonskaya, and the wife of the English ambassador, Lady Kingford. They walked with us through the park and engaged me in genteel conversations in English. As a result I mastered spoken English quite well.

When I was little I often fell sick, my lungs weren't strong enough and doctors were concerned about me getting tuberculosis. That's why almost every summer my parents rented a summer house in a community of Hiiu [island] near Tallinn. The houses were located in the middle of a pine wood - forest air was supposed to restore bad lungs. I stayed there with my governess. Occasionally Riva stayed with us, too, but our parents visited only for Sabbath and worked the rest of the time. Karoline, my governess, knew all the regulations of a kosher cuisine because back at home she always helped my mother around the house. Our parents brought or sent us kosher groceries and Karoline cooked food following the kashrut laws. That year, when Riva entered the conservatory, she and I spent the summer at the seaside in Haapsalu. To avoid any interruption of her music lessons a summer house with a piano in it was rented, and Riva's music teacher stayed there with us.

In 1937 my mother fell seriously ill. She got very nervous and some mental deviations were recognized. She reacted particularly inadequately to the news of spreading fascism and anti-Semitism in Germany. The doctors diagnosed her with schizophrenia, placed her in a hospital in Tartu and proposed an experimental course of treatment. My father gave his written consent for this. My mother spent eleven months in the hospital and was finally cured. Later they examined her, searching for the cause of her illness and found some alterations in her thyroid gland. In July 1938 my mother went in for surgery. Our family wasn't poor and my father insisted that my mother should have surgery in Switzerland where doctors had better experience. She refused because she didn't want to be away from her home and family. Although the surgery was performed by the best surgeons in Tallinn it was unsuccessful. My mother died right on the operating table.

It's difficult to imagine how we outlived her death. My mother was so kind and so sensitive. I remember how our parents came to visit us in the summer house that very last Saturday before the surgery. We went for a walk in the woods; my father was very nervous but my mother tried to appear cheerful. She held our hands and told us that everything would be fine because she had the best husband and the most wonderful children in the world. My parents loved each other very much.

Our life changed after my mother's death. My father couldn't live in the old apartment where everything reminded him of our mother. We moved to a different building. We rented a large apartment in a house owned by a Jewish family named Yaskovich. My sister gave up the conservatory although she had finished the complete course and only had to prepare for her graduation concert. She took my mother's place in the shop and became the manager. Surprisingly my father didn't object. With my mother's death my childhood was over. I began to think and reason the way adults do. I was the one lighting Sabbath candles. Our household was managed by Karoline and the servants.

In June 1940 the Soviet regime was established in Estonia and nationalization began. Someone suggested a resourceful idea to my father. In order to display his loyalty to the Soviet authorities my father gave both of our shops to 'spetstorg', that is to the trade network belonging to the NKVD 12. He continued working there - he just wasn't the proprietor any more. Our Jewish school was renamed into a secondary school with a number [see School #] 13 that I don't recall. In the USSR Ivrit was banned so it was subsequently banned in Estonia as well, but we could still use Yiddish. The house we had moved into was taken over by the Soviet authorities for some reason and all its inhabitants were ordered to leave within 24 hours. My father's friend, our gabbai Rakovski, came to our help. He let us have three rooms in his seven-bedroom apartment. We were cramped in there because we had a lot of furniture. But we were thankful to gabbai Rakovski for giving us shelter. A few months later we managed to move into a five-bedroom apartment close to the city center. The former owner of the apartment, an Estonian ship captain, somehow succeeded in moving his family to Sweden after the Soviet regime took over. We let one of our rooms to a Soviet pilot because it wasn't good to own such a large apartment.

My sister married in December 1940. Her husband, Yakov Kozlovski, also graduated from the Jewish school albeit four years earlier than Riva. Their wedding was quite modest with only close friends and relatives present. Some arrests and nationalization of property had already taken place in Tallinn by that time so it wasn't really a very joyful time. Meishe Furmanski, Aunt Rasse's husband, died just before the wedding, the funeral was held on the wedding day, and many of the relatives were attending that event. The wedding ceremony took place in the synagogue's registry office and was conducted by Aba Gomer 14, the chief rabbi of Estonia.

Yakov Kozlovski and some of his companions had a small necktie workshop. They wove necktie fabrics and made ties all by themselves. They had no hired laborers so they weren't considered exploiters and weren't repressed by Soviet authorities.

At night, on 14th June 1941, we were visited by several NKVD employees and presented the decree of our deportation. My father, my sister, and I were all on the list. We started gathering our things. The pilot, our lodger, wasn't at home at that time, but his wife, who had just come from Leningrad the day before, was there. She heard the noise and realized what was happening. She peeked out of her door, beckoned Yakov Kozlovski to come closer, and whispered her advice. She said that Riva couldn't be deported because she was married, considered a member of a different family and had a different last name. 'Don't be afraid, stand up for your wife!', the woman told Yakov. Yakov stepped up gingerly to an NKVD official and, stammering, told him all that he had just been advised. The official made several phone calls and my sister was released.

My father and I were sent to the station. When we were standing next to a train car holding our things, a person wearing a military uniform came up to us. He asked my father who I was going with and where my mother was. After my father replied that my mother was dead the man left. A little later he returned and asked if I had any relatives remaining in Tallinn. When he heard that my elder sister remained there he ordered to have me sent home. I believe that man saved my life because my father was sent to a camp and I would have gone to an orphanage and probably died there. When I was brought back home my sister and I realized in terror that our father had left carrying nothing and certainly without any food. All of our things and food were in one basket, which my father had passed on to me. My sister immediately called Aunt Basya who lived close to the train station. Aunt Basya's son, Mordechai, ran to the station to give a package of food to my father. The train was still there but Mordechai wasn't allowed through. My father left wearing a summer coat, light walking shoes, and without a morsel of bread. Since then I cannot rest if there is no bread in my house.

Early next morning Aunt Asne called from Riga and asked Riva one question, 'Is your father well?' Riva replied, 'He is sick.' Aunt Asne understood everything because deportation was under way in Latvia as well. We thought that our father's arrest influenced his sisters' decision not to go to the Soviet rear. The war started a week later. My sister and I instantly decided to evacuate because our father was somewhere in Russia and we hoped to find him. We packed our things and actually sent our luggage to Kuibyshev [presently Samara, Russia] because everyone around was saying that Germans wouldn't get as far as the Volga. Just like all men of call-up age Yakov Kozlovski wasn't permitted to evacuate. They were all called up to the labor army 15. Yakov managed to leave Estonia later. He and his brother escorted the Red Cross lorries that carried medical supplies and equipment out of Estonia.

My sister and I left on 5th July 1941, traveling east in a sleeping car. When we crossed Narva River - formerly the border between Estonia and the USSR - it turned out that our permit was missing some kind of stamp. We were ordered to get out of the train and sent back to Estonia. We walked carrying our things across a bridge that was being bombed by German aircrafts; it was very frightening. We obtained the stamp and were allowed to continue our journey. When we got to Leningrad, we stopped at Aunt Sofia's for several days. Our clothes made us look different from the local people, whose clothes were plainer and poorer, and Aunt Sofia was anxious that Riva could be taken for a German spy and arrested.

Then we traveled in a freight car for a long time with several transfers and during one of those transfers two of our suitcases were stolen. A certain Polish Jew did this. He had been traveling in the same car with us, spoke Yiddish and kept asking me what was in our suitcases. I told him everything. He offered to help us and made off with our things. At length we arrived in some town on the bank of the Volga with lots of churches; we were transferred to a boat and went down the river. At one landing stage someone called from another boat nearby. It was our uncle, Samuel Heiman, and his family. He wanted us to come to his boat so we could all travel together. Riva said no because she and her husband arranged to meet each other either in Ulyanovsk or Kuibyshev. Afterwards we regretted very much that we refused to go with Uncle Samuel because his 'Heimans' hands' could have provided not only for his own family but also for us. My father knew a Jewish saying which stated that whenever a person had something to do he was king.

Riva and I finally reached Ulyanovsk where we met the Kozlovski family. Yakov's parents and his two sisters were there. Yakov arrived after some time. With great difficulty we found and recovered our luggage. We stayed in Ulyanovsk for about a year, and, when the front line approached the Volga, we went on to Kazakhstan. It was winter time and I fell ill during the journey; I had pneumonia and a very high fever. At some station, where we had to change trains, we weren't allowed into the station building - people were concerned that I had typhus. I lay resting on our suitcases out on the platform. Then my sister and her husband took me to a first-aid post. The doctor looked at me and said that I wouldn't make it through another day. My sister started crying but her husband told the doctor, 'We will pay you good money if you can just save the girl.' When he heard this the doctor found a medicine called sulfidin; we had to pay 10,000 rubles for ten tablets. That was a lot of money. My sister went to the station and sold her and our mother's golden rings to buy the medicine. Those ten tablets saved my life.

In Kazakhstan we settled in a small place called Talgar, near Alma-Ata. Now it is a town. I went to school there. Before the war started I had finished six years of school in Tallinn but I spoke very little Russian so I had to do year six again.

Riva's husband, Yakov, was in the labor army. He worked at a tungsten mine in the mountains of Tian Shan. Yakov was a foreman and sometimes went to Alma-Ata on business. Soon after we arrived Riva gave birth to a boy who died a few days later. At the end of 1943, another boy was born and named Hessi in memory of our mother. We lived half-starving; the things that we had brought with us helped us survive. We would sell them or exchange them for food. Soon we had nothing left to sell. Because of malnutrition my sister was very weak and fell ill for a long time after her delivery. I rarely went to school as I had to nurse my sister and her baby; then I was placed to work in a clock repair shop. Yakov Kozlovski's father was the repairman, and my job was to receive and dispatch the orders; I was the cashier, too, and even fitted watch crystals.

Yakov Kozlovski's father was out of luck in evacuation. A person bearing the same surname had disappeared in Ukraine at the beginning of the war after lifting a jewelry shop. Both in Ulyanovsk and in Talgar the apartments where the Kozlovski family and we lived were searched. Everything was turned upside down, the old Kozlovski was arrested and questioned, and only after it became clear that he was the wrong man he was released. Several months later the whole thing repeated itself. Yakov Kozlovski fell very ill while in the labor army. He had typhoid fever with severe complications, and he was dismissed from the labor army. This happened at the end of the war.

Throughout this time my sister and I tried to get news about our father, but it was all in vain. It was only in 1945 that my former classmate, Brazhinski, sent me a letter, in which he told me that his father was in the Northern Urals in the same camp with my father. We wrote a letter there and the reply said that Hirsh-Leib Tsivian was sent off from the camp to settle in Omsk region [Western Siberia, 2,200 kilometers east of Moscow]. Soon we received his first letter.

In the summer of 1945 we returned to Tallinn after evacuation. I arrived barefoot since my only pair of shoes fell apart on the way, and I had a nightgown with a waistband on instead of a dress. I had no other clothes. We had no place to live in Tallinn so my sister and her child lived with her husband's family, and I was accommodated by my aunt, Haya-Fanny Smolenski. Later I lived with my uncle, Samuel Heiman. Although I had only finished seven years of school I found employment as a manager's secretary at a large factory. I entered the eighth year of a school for adults and had my classes in the evenings after work.

At that time Yakov Kozlovski's relatives resolved to have me married. My fiancé was a Jew and an old bachelor; he was 38 and I was 17. He was very fond of me; as for me I was tired of wandering about my relatives' apartments - I wanted to have a place of my own to live in, and my fiancé had a room. There was neither a synagogue nor a rabbi in Tallinn at that time but we did observe some of the Jewish wedding traditions. The wedding took place in Uncle Samuel's apartment. A chuppah was set up there; an old friend of my father's who was a very religious Jew recited the blessing, then the wine glass was broken. So I was married off in November 1946.

Yakov Gershanovich, my husband, had a small workshop. He was supposed to work there making half-stock for the shoe factory. But that was just show. In fact Yakov's business was speculation: he purchased and re-sold commodities that were in short supply. This was considered a grave criminal offence in the USSR. Yakov even tried to engage me in his affairs. He would send me to a bank to buy state bond certificates as he thought them more reliable than Soviet money. I went to the bank a few times but then I realized that this could get me in trouble and refused. That was our first great quarrel.

In the summer Yakov managed to get us two places in a health center in the resort town of Parnu. Everything was wonderful there but my husband kept disappearing from my sight for some reason. He turned out to be a reckless card player; he lost a fortune through gambling. We lived together for nearly two years; fortunately, we didn't have any children. Yakov Gershanovich was arrested in 1948, right in our room, and sentenced for speculation to eight years in jail. This marriage hadn't brought me happiness, but I still waited for my husband's return for three years. While visiting my friends in 1951 I met a young man from Riga. We liked each other, dated, and corresponded, but eventually drew apart due to some circumstances. However, I decided never to return to my first husband and obtained a divorce in the spring of 1952.

My father returned from deportation in 1946, just a few weeks before my wedding. He was present at the wedding. He didn't talk much about the camp. He said that it was horrifying and that human life was worth nothing there. My father believed that he managed to survive only due to his faith in God and to the prayers he directed to God. While in the camp my father and other Jewish believers calculated the dates of Jewish holidays and observed the traditions as best they could. On Pesach my father didn't eat bread even though there was nothing else to eat.

After his return our father worked as a manager in a sewing workshop. He had no place to live as he didn't want to trouble me or my sister and he couldn't afford to rent an apartment. For several years, until he was given an apartment, he lived in his workshop sleeping on the table where they cut the fabrics. Every day after work he went to repair the city ruins. He was actually awarded an honorary badge for his active work in restoring the city. Later he worked as a manager of a large department store.

In the summer of 1952 I went to stay at a holiday home in the resort place of Vosu, near Tallinn. The staff of Tallinn Polytechnic Institute was staying there at the same time. One of them, a tall athletic Estonian of about 40, started to pay his addresses to me. His name was Tarmo Randvee. He took me to the cinema, picked no one but me as his dancing partner, and accompanied me to the beach. He was constantly next to me and I didn't really like it. I had just been free after my divorce and now I was annoyed again. Besides, he was much older than me and not a Jew. However, one of Tarmo Randvee's colleagues, who stayed in Vosu at that time, turned out to be a former classmate of mine. He counseled me to take a closer look at Tarmo since he was an interesting and honest person. I followed his advice and realized that my classmate was right.

Tarmo and I dated in Tallinn for two and a half years. After that my father had got used to the idea of his daughter marrying an Estonian. We got married in 1955. I never met Tarmo's parents - they had died earlier. His father was a construction worker, and his mother was a housewife. They lived in Tallinn; their family was poor and they couldn't afford their son's education. That's why he worked at a building site and studied at the same time. Before the war Tarmo Randvee graduated from Tallinn Technical College and had a construction engineer's diploma. He married in 1939; in 1941 he was enlisted in a Soviet labor army and went to Russia. Later Tarmo fought against fascist forces in the Estonian Rifle Corps.

Hilda Randvee, his first wife, was a nurse. During the war she took a five- year-old Finnish girl out of a concentration camp and adopted her. The girl's parents had been shot by fascists in her presence. In 1949 Hilda died at childbirth; the baby died as well. Tarmo Randvee only had his adopted daughter, whom he had brought up and educated. When we got married Tarmo was working at Tallinn Polytechnic Institute; he had the academic status of a professor and was the head of the construction technology department. He was a man of versatile interests and had a sociable, open- hearted character. Among his friends were writers, actors, scientists, and athletes. We had a very exciting life. We went to theatres, concerts, exhibitions, and often received guests. We had a harmonious relationship.

Our daughter, Ene, was born in 1955, and our son, Riho, was born in 1958. I didn't work while the children were small. I decided not to waste time and went to university to study foreign languages. For an entire year I applied myself to serious studies at a university preparatory course, then successfully passed my entrance examinations. However, my application was refused. I was told that the foreign language department wasn't intended for children of public enemies [see enemy of the people] 16. It was extremely vexing.

When our son started school I went to work at the large book-store in the department of foreign literature. Before that, I was tested for my command of the German language. It was an interesting job, but a few years later my sister's relative, who managed a manufactured goods warehouse, persuaded me to change my work place. He was looking for an honest person to supervise a jewelry stockroom. I assented. The job was a very important one; in the stockroom there were great valuables that were later dispatched to all the jewelry stores in Estonia. I was in a constant state of nervous strain. After 16 years of this work the doctors advised that I should do a more tranquil type of job. For the last ten years before I retired I worked as an inspector at a knitting mill.

We have always lived in the apartment where I live now. During the 1950s and 1960s it was a communal apartment 17 accommodating three families - a total of 13 people. In the mornings, when everyone was in a hurry to get to work or school, we had to wait our turn to use the toilet or the bathroom. Gradually our living conditions got better; our family was the only one left in the apartment.

My father had a separate room in a building not far-off. He never remarried although he did have relationships with women. He was a religious and a secular man at the same time. On Saturday nights my father would sometimes go to a restaurant, order a glass of wine and a piece of cake, and sit there listening to music. He prayed three times a day; he had a tallit and tefillin. The floor paint on the spot where he used to pray in his room was rubbed away.

There was no rabbi in Tallinn at the time, but a synagogue was operating in a small old building. The visitors were mostly old religious Jews. My father often went to this synagogue. While my father was alive we celebrated every Jewish holiday - Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Chanukkah, Purim, and Pesach. My sister and I took turns hosting the celebrations. My family, my father, and I visited Riva for one holiday, and Riva, her family and my father visited me for the next one. After Riva's husband died all celebrations were held at my place. My husband and children knew all about these holidays. Before they sat down to eat my husband and my son put on their kippot. Everyone listened to the prayers that my father recited. My father often had lunch with us on weekends. On days like those I tried to observe the basic laws of the kashrut. The rest of the time my father had his meals at a dietary restaurant. Naturally, kosher food wasn't served there, but there was no pork.

My husband was on very good terms with my father; both of them were intelligent, kind and honest people and had respect for each other. The only matter they disagreed in was the Soviet regime and its policies. My husband, who grew up in poverty in bourgeois Estonia, could see many positive things in the Soviet policy, but my father, who had suffered by wrongly being in a camp, didn't support his view. They had frequent disputes. Despite all his sufferings in the camp, my father took Riva and me to a cafe every 14th June to celebrate the day of our deliverance. He said that unless he had been deported on 14th June 1941 our family would have remained in Tallinn with rabbi Aba Gomer and all of us would have died. My father died in Tallinn in 1984. Some time after his death I was issued an official document affirming that he had been subject to unlawful repression. [see Rehabilitation in the Soviet Union] 18

My husband wasn't religious so we never celebrated Christian holidays at home. But we did have a Christmas tree and Christmas presents for our children to enjoy. My children always knew that their mother, grandfather, and aunt were Jews; it was never kept a secret. They knew our holidays and our food because my sister and I often cooked it. But their father was Estonian, their first language was Estonian, they went to Estonian schools, and lived in the Estonian environment. That's why they never had second thoughts when they recorded their Estonian nationality in their Soviet passports. This was the choice suggested to them by life. They don't feel Jewish.

My daughter, Ene, graduated from the economics department of the Polytechnic Institute, then worked as a chief accountant for a large company for many years, and is now working as a manager at the same place. She isn't married. My son, Riho, graduated from a construction college, worked for construction companies, and then set up a company of his own. He is married and has two daughters - his first wife's daughter, Merilin, and his second wife's daughter, Jaanika. Merilin is a journalist; she speaks several foreign languages, and is married. Jaanika goes to school. Riho is now having serious health problems, and this makes me very anxious. All of us live together in our old apartment - Riho, his wife and daughter, Ene, and I. My children go to work, my granddaughter goes to school, and I do the housework. Tarmo, my husband, died in 1992.

My sister Riva's life took a different course. Our mother's death, the war, children and disease had all prevented her from becoming a piano player. After the war Yakov, Riva's husband, was the manager of a knitting mill, and Riva worked there as a seamstress. Later Yakov changed his job and worked at a theatrical society's industrial plant; Riva followed him. The department she worked in produced something from silk. Yakov was a handsome man and sometimes permitted himself to fall for women, but Riva was wise enough to disregard her husband's weaknesses. She maintained peace and harmony in her family. Yakov suffered from heart disease; he died at 62.

They raised three sons. Hesse, the eldest son, now owns a large business in Tallinn; he is a trustee of the Jewish Community of Estonia. He has a Jewish family; his daughter married a Jew and they live in the USA. Gabriel, his second son, has a mixed marriage, but his children are now interested in Jewish life. Pesach, Riva's youngest son, is a very sensitive and kind person. He always cared for his mother and helped her with everything. Pesach has always been near his mother, and, perhaps, that's why he is still single. Riva died in 2000.

When the Jewish Community of Estonia was re-established in 1988 I got involved immediately and became a member of WIZO women's organization. 19. We visited the elderly and sick members of the community, talked to them, brought them presents, and celebrated Jewish holidays with them. I was younger then and never refused any kind of work. For Purim celebrations other women and I baked enormous amounts of hamantashen, enough for everyone visiting the celebration. For Pesach we served potato pancakes [latkes] to everyone. Even now, as my health permits, I'm trying to participate in all community events. I love attending class reunions of the pre-war Tallinn Jewish School. Beginning from 1994, we've been getting together every month in the Jewish community center. About 15 to 20 people are able to come every time. We drink coffee, chat in Yiddish, recall our school years, and exchange news. Unfortunately, our news aren't always happy, and after these meetings I have both warm and sad feelings.

I am happy that Estonian independence was re-established in 1991 and that the country's citizens are able to travel abroad freely. During the last ten years, I've taken three trips to Israel, got acquainted with this beautiful land, and met relatives and friends of mine who live there. That gave me great moments of joy.

In January 2004 I will be celebrating my 75th birthday. I hope to see many of my relatives - not only the ones living in Estonia, but also those who will come from Israel, USA, and Russia. This will be a great joy to me.

Glossary

Mico Alvo
Thessaloniki
Greece
Interviewer: Paris Papamichos-Chronakis
Date of interview: October 2005-March 2006

Mico Alvo is an extremely lively 84-year-old man. He and his wife Mari live in a beautiful house in Panorama, Thessaloniki. Mico is not very tall; he has blue eyes and is always ready to enjoy good company.

In the past fifty years he has run one of the longest and most successful hardware and sanitary article businesses in Thessaloniki. Having retired in the early 1990s he is now busier than ever.

A member of two Jewish foundations, he commutes every day to Thessaloniki, while in the evenings he often goes out to watch a movie in the cinema or see a concert.

Mico is fluent in three languages: Judeo-Spanish, French and Greek. Such is his linguistic ease that he would often speak to me in Greek, to Mari in French and reply to his friend calling from Barcelona in Spanish!

A man of many worlds, Mico seems to perfectly combine a strong sense of Greekness with a pride for his Sephardic Jewishness. In this sense he is a true Jewish Salonican of the 20th century.

• Family background
• Growing up
• School years
• During the war
• Post-war
• Married life
• Post-war events in Israel and Greece
• Glossary

• Family background

My surname is Alvo and my first name is Haim. From Haimico it became Mico, and I use only Mico, even though it says Haim on my ID card. I was born on 28th June 1922, in Thessaloniki, which is where my parents and all my other ancestors were born, too. My family must have originated from Portugal. I know that because the name Alvo is widely used in Portugal.

Usually in Sephardic families the first child that is born would be named after the paternal grandfather and the second one would be given the name on the maternal grandfather. I got named after Haim Alvo, while my brother was named Danny after Daniel Saltiel.

The same procedure applied to the girls. In case the first child was a boy and the second one a girl, then the second one would take the name of the maternal grandmother. Each side of the family had the right of one name of the first born children.

My paternal grandfather was called Haim Alvo. I don't remember when he was born. I think he died when he was seventy years old, in 1937 or 1938. He went to both a Turkish and a Greek school, and the religious school where rabbis used to teach. It was called Talmud Torah. He spoke Turkish fluently.

My grandmother on my father's side was called Rachel and she died during the occupation. I think it was in 1942. I think that her paternal surname was Barzilay or Menache. My father, Simon Alvo, was born in 1889. His older brother, Joseph Alvo, was born in 1887. So, if my grandmother was seventeen years old when she first gave birth then she must have been born around 1870. She must have been the same age as her husband.

I think that in Rachel's family there must have been rabbis as well. They were not well known rabbis, but the ones from the smaller synagogues. Her family was middle class, or lower middle class, just like Grandfather's. What I mean is that they would have enough money to make a living, but that was it.

My grandmother was completely illiterate but had a practical mind. She had a great impact as the head of the family. In Jewish families the women were really the mater familias. They would run the place. Rachel knew a few Turkish words and Ladino 1. That was it. She later learned Greek because she had maids that were Greek. And she picked it up from her maids. Rachel started having a maid when she got too many children.

Grandmother got married very young, when she was around 13-14 years old, and she immediately had children. My grandfather used to tell me, one day his parents told him, 'You know, today you are not going to school.' 'Why?' 'We are getting you married today.' That's how it used to happen with weddings, the parents would arrange them. And the funny thing is that most of these marriages were successful. There were no divorces then, it was very rare to hear about a divorce.

Rachel's first son was Joseph. The second was my father Simon. I think that there must have been another one in the middle that didn't survive. Then they had a daughter, Olga, then it was Daniel, followed by another daughter, Rebecca, and the last one was Solomon. Olga was born two or three years after Simon. Daniel was born later on because again there was another one in-between that didn't survive. I know that the youngest one, Solomon, was born in 1901.

My grandparents Haim and Rachel were regarded as lower middle rather than proper middle class. They had some relationships with some Christians. All the residents of old Thessaloniki used to have good relationships with Armenians and Christians but not quite such good ones with the Turks.

My grandfather Haim Alvo started from scratch. He had a cart in Fraggon Street [one of the oldest commercial streets in Thessaloniki] and he used to sell various tools like screwdrivers, pliers, hammers. All kinds of iron tools. He continued working at my father's shop after 1913.

He used to come to the shop until about 1938. He would go around the shop and watch what the employees were doing. Whenever he would see someone lazing about, he would pat his back and ask him, 'What time should I wake you up?'

We had customers who used to come from Thrace, Turks. They usually sat cross-legged. I remember Grandfather with one of them, his name was Halil and he was from Komotini [city in the region of Thrace, 270 km east of Thessaloniki]. They both wouldn't sit on chairs, but on the counter, and they would order coffee and tell stories.

My father was in the office. He was occupied with the sales mostly, and less with the customers. His older brother would deal with the customers and, later on, when his other two siblings joined them, they were at first like employees with shares on the earnings.

Simon and Haim didn't intrude in each others affairs in the business. Haim wasn't involved with my father's part of the job. He would simply watch. He would watch, he would meet a couple of customers, when he would come down they would chat, but that was it. They loved him at the shop.

They used to call him 'tio' - uncle in Spanish. Tio Haim, tio Haim. This is how the employees would call elder men: Tio. Not only the employees would call him Tio, but also some customers and generally other people he knew.

Haim, like many others, didn't even know what entertainment meant. He didn't go to the 'kafenio' [café]. Maybe he would play a game of cards or backgammon. Backgammon had its glorious days then. My grandfather had six children. How could they bring them all up? There wasn't any time left for fun.

They would open the shop at 7 in the morning and shut it at 9 o'clock at night. They would work non-stop, except on Saturdays. But they also worked on Sundays. They didn't have enough time. The family would get together only on holidays.

My grandfather Haim had some good friends, but I didn't know them. I never met them because they weren't coming around to our place.

Grandfather was a short, slim man, had a beard and thin hair. He was sickly. I think he had pneumonia a couple of times. At that time things were really difficult with regards to medicine. They didn't have antibiotics like we do today.

And I remember my mother or one of her daughters-in-law would go help because Grandmother couldn't manage on her own. But even while being sick, he would still go to the shop. Until 1937- 1938 he used to go regularly. After that he stopped and stayed home. He would only come around every now and then for a visit.

He was a very pleasant man. He had a good sense of humor. He had the same kind of humor as Uncle David. He enjoyed me paying him visits and keeping him company every so often. When he stopped going to the shop, he read books. He was reading books in Spanish, in Ladino.

However, he didn't have many. When he had finished one book he would read the next one and when he had finished that one, he would get again the first one and start reading it again. I remember one of these books, 'Sotto il Ponte de los Suspiros,' which means 'The Bridge of the Sighs.'

He must have read it at least four or five times. He read it to pass his time, always with the same level of interest. He also read the papers. At that time he read the paper Aksion 2, which was published in Ladino.

I didn't ever see him dressed up traditionally or with a fez 3. He wore a normal hat, a Chapeau melon, a kind of Borsalino. He was always clean, shaved, simple and tidy, nice but simple.

Grandfather Haim didn't participate in Community affairs at all, as he wasn't one of the important members of it.

I cannot say that his was a religious family. Here things were loose. There were many that were religious, but there wasn't any fanaticism, none at all. Of course everyone would keep the Yom Kippur fast. Grandfather Haim might have gone to the synagogue every Saturday, because every neighborhood had a synagogue. And this way it wasn't difficult to go. Thessaloniki had about forty synagogues 4. The elders would go. Haim used to go to the synagogue Sarfati, on Gravias Street, because it was close to his house.

My maternal grandfather I remember used to get up at five in the morning every day. He would read until six and he would then go to work. Haim didn't do that. He was more liberal. Still, they kept all religious feasts. Other traditions that Haim kept, but my father later didn't, was that unlike my father, Haim ate kosher food, didn't mix milk with meat etc.

I don't know what my grandfather's everyday life was like. All I know is that when my grandmother was ill, he would come home and stay with us, or, again, if Grandmother went on a trip to some health resort, he would come and stay with us. He really liked to eat.

For example, we are not supposed to eat shrimps and things like that; well, he was crazy about shrimps. He would say to my mother, 'Adina, tell me when will you cook again these gouzanikos?', which means 'these little worms.' He really liked them. But he wasn't too much of an eater. And his health wasn't very good.

I remember the house where they lived after I was born. It was on Koromila Street at the fourth stop of the tram. They were renting it from an Armenian. It was quite a nice house. At the beginning, before the Great Fire 5, everyone lived down in the center of the city.

The Jews were the ones that suffered most from the fire because the area where they were living, from the White Tower 6 all the way to the city center, burned down. My grandmother and grandfather lived much better after the fire, even though it took them a few years to recover.

They used to tell many stories about the fire. First of all, in the way they would keep track of time: they would say, 'two years after the Fire,', or, 'three years before the Fire'. We say B.C. and A.D., back then it was before or after the fire. They regarded the fire as a starting point, or a turning point, because the whole city of Thessaloniki got ruined.

They all gathered in the houses of the few families that lived in an area that wasn't burned. If someone, let's say, had a house with four rooms, the relatives would come and he would put one family in each room. You can imagine how this was, and under what circumstances they had to live.

My grandparents on my father's side didn't live alone. Rebecca, my father's sister, was a bit neurasthenic and sickly. Since her husband [Sido Saltiel] didn't have a very good job, they lived together with her parents and her two little girls. There was also the younger brother, Solomon, who wasn't married.

They all lived together. My father's and his brother's business took care of their house expenses. They knew that every Friday they would get an allowance out of the shop for the expenses of the house.

To tell you the truth, I didn't really go to Grandmother and Grandfather Alvo's house. I used to go there only on holidays, for dinner. They had two tables, one for the adults and one for the youngsters. We couldn't all fit at one table. It was really nice at dinner, when there was one table with the adults, some fifteen to sixteen people, and one with the youth with more than ten children sitting around and teasing each other.

Grandmother Rachel did all the chores in the house, and she had a maid. She didn't leave the house because she was illiterate and didn't know how to read. When they were about to rent a new house she would ask for a house on a main road so that she could watch what was going on in the street. She would sit in front of the window and watch the people on the street.

I don't know if she did the shopping herself. They didn't go out to shop then, they would bring everything around to the house. The kid from the shop would knock on the door every day and say, 'Good morning, what would you like me to bring you today?'

Then the grocery man would come by with his donkey, then the butcher would ask, 'What do you want to get for tomorrow?' And the same with the fruit seller. She wouldn't go to the city center to do her shopping. She would go only to get other things there like shoes or clothes. And she wouldn't go with her husband, but with her daughter or her daughter-in-law. I know that my mother and my aunt usually escorted her.

Grandmother Rachel dressed the usual way, in European style. I don't know if she had friends. If she did have friends, it must have been someone from around the neighborhood. Grandmother stayed at home, she didn't go to the cinema or the theater.

She wouldn't have understood anything anyways, as she was illiterate and couldn't read the subtitles. She would go to a wedding, to a bar mitzvah, things like that. She was closer to tradition and religion than her husband. She would start shouting, for example, if Grandfather would go out and eat. Or, if he didn't want to keep the fast, she would tell him off. They did have religious books in the house, but on the other hand, I don't remember ever seeing her in the synagogue.

She was a gentle person. Gentle, but tough. She would rule the house. Even though she was illiterate, she would keep all the bills. Grandfather would bring the money, he would give all of it to her, and she would give him back pocket money. He didn't check up on her at all. She wouldn't allow it.

Grandfather Haim loved all his children. Grandmother had a preference for my father and Olga, who was born just after him.

Their eldest son, Joseph Alvo, first went to school at the Talmud Torah and later on, I think, he also went to the Alliance school 7. I don't know why he and my father were in the same grade at school despite the fact that Joseph was two years older. I could never figure this out. Did his parents send him to school later than the rest? Was he perhaps sickly and that's why they didn't send him straight away? I really don't know.

Joseph was my father's partner at work. They started the business together. At the shop my father was in charge of the supplies and Joseph was in the sales. One thing I remember - because we used to live in the same house, they lived on the top floor and we lived on the ground floor - was that at noon they would come home from the shop in a taxi to eat together, and then they would leave separately with the tram.

Joseph was a gentle character He got along really well with my father. They were very close to each other. There was never any tension between them. Joseph spent as much time at the shop as my father, that is, every day. But he was never as active as my father. My father used to go to the shop a bit earlier every day. I remember my mother complaining about this: 'Why do you leave earlier every day? Your brother goes only later, why don't you go later too?' But he was very punctual.

Family ties were very close. My father and my uncle lived in the same house. They built it together. Their wives would also see each other very often. And most importantly, when there was a health problem they would always support each other very much.

Joseph got married to Bella Amarilio. She was from Malta. Here, the Amarilios were well known in the market. They were importing iron, steel, and those kinds of things. They had quite a big company and one of the companies, SIDMA, is still in the stock market. It was based in Thessaloniki before the war and in Athens after the war. Bella was the oldest child. I know that she was slightly older than my mother, four or five years older. If we say that my mother was born around 1901, she must have been born in 1896 or 1897.

As I mentioned before, Bella was born in Malta, not in Thessaloniki. Her family was Maltese. She spoke English, because Malta was something like a British colony then. They were British citizens. Only much later did they come to Greece.

They survived [World War II] because they left for Israel [then Palestine]. Her other siblings though, who didn't go to Palestine and stayed here and opened a business, when we were at war with the Italians 8, the British ships came and took them to the Middle East since they had British citizenship.

Bella had three brothers. Leon was the younger one and the only one born here, so he automatically had Greek citizenship. Leon even served in the Greek army. He was a bit older than Marcel and they used to hang out together. In fact Leon's daughter got married to my cousin Nico Alvo, the son of my uncle Daniel.

Uncle Joseph and Aunt Bella had three children. One boy who was seven years older than me, Marcel - the name comes from the Hebrew Mazliah - and Renee, a name derived from Rahil or, more European, Rachel. She was about two years older than me, so she was born around 1920. The third child, the youngest one, was Julica. She was younger than us; she must have been born after 1925, around 1926.

Renee had a terrible fate. After she had gone to Palestine, she got married there to a man from Thessaloniki. When she gave birth in 1941, about a month before the Germans entered the city, she got an infection and because there wasn't any penicillin or any other medication, she died. She gave birth to a daughter. Her grandparents, Joseph and Bella, brought her up.

Joseph didn't participate at all in Community or public affairs. I don't know if he was even at B'nai B'rith 9. Joseph supported the Zionists. His son influenced him to go there.

Joseph never seemed to disagree with my father. I don't think that they had any arguments. They used to argue with their younger brothers that weren't partners in the business. They did participate in the business, but only in the earnings.

Joseph used to go to the synagogue. Not often, but occasionally. During the religious holidays he would often take me with him. He would say to me, 'You are coming with me.' On Rosh Hashanah, for example, he would take me with him, while my father wouldn't go. Joseph would go to the synagogue a bit more often than my father. Maybe he was a bit more religious, but not really much more.

Bella was very beautiful and my uncle was madly in love with her. That's what they used to say. There wasn't any friction between my mother and Aunt Bella, even though sisters-in-law often don't get along well, especially when they live so close to each other and watch each other's life closely. They got along fine. Most of all, you should have seen the way they supported one another when either one was ill. When Renee was ill and had to get some medicine and Bella couldn't make it, my mother would go up and give her the medicine. Sometimes when Renee would argue with her mother, she would go up and convince them to make up.

My mother and Bella had some common chores. They did the shopping together. They would go together and buy fabrics and go together to the seamstress. Bella was always asking my mother's advice on how to make a dress. My mother was more elegant than her and since Bella had realized this, she trusted her and always took her advice.

In 1932 Joseph left for Palestine. For one, because he wanted to avoid that his son had to do his military service, but also because his son was a Zionist. In fact, he used to say that he will go there and go to the school for agricultural studies. He didn't take agricultural studies there and went to a bank instead. In Palestine Joseph was working for a bank. I think he was a partner at the Recanati Bank.

He was still interested in the business in Thessaloniki without being present or working. My father promised him that his part of the business wouldn't be touched by anybody else. Each one owned half of the company. He would take part of the earnings, as usual. Until the Germans came, they would share everything. He would come and visit us in Thessaloniki at least once a year, but Father never went to visit him. Daniel went a couple of times.

Joseph settled in Tel Aviv. They rented a very beautiful house in a central avenue. They felt very lonely there. They didn't have the circle of people they had here. They didn't have their friends around or anyone from the family. Joseph wanted to drag with him someone from the family because he felt very lonely there. But he didn't succeed.

Daniel went and didn't like it at all, especially the water. 'What kind of water is that?', he was saying, 'This smells like a rotten egg. How do you drink this water?' In fact my father insisted very much on their coming back. 'What are you doing down there?', he used to tell them, 'come back and we will all live together.' Luckily they didn't come back and were saved by pure luck. Joseph died after the war, in 1965.

Marcel was a Zionist. He used to tell me sometimes, 'We will do this, we will do that.' That a state would be created, and the state of Palestine would become a Jewish state. He was a supporter of Herzl 10. We used to hang out with Marcel because he thought of us as his younger cousins.

We played chess together. He had a bicycle, and he would put us at the front sometimes and we would go around the neighborhood. Marcel also went to the school of the Mission Laïque 11. He didn't go to a Greek school at all. He really should have done this, because he never learned Greek like we did.

Olga's education was like my father's. She spoke Ladino, French, and Greek. Not really good Greek, like my father. Olga was married to an Ashkenazi, whose name was Bernard Landau. They got married here in Thessaloniki. They must have gotten married close to the time of my mother's and father's wedding, around 1920. He was a sales representative. He was fluent in German. And his sister was a midwife and she helped with the birth of all the children of the family. Her name was Karolina.

Olga lived in Thessaloniki opposite her mother's house on Koromila Street. They had their own house. Bernard stood quite well economically. He was a sales representative and was taking a commission that at the time was 5 percent. His job was very interesting and at the time you could get a lot of money by this profession. He knew many German brands as he was an Ashkenazi and fluent in German. They would travel to Germany and get the exclusivity of a brand and import it.

I suppose that Olga wasn't religious either, nor was her husband who was an Ashkenazi..

Olga had four children, two girls first and later two boys. The elder boy was called Victor who was a great mind in mathematics. Yvonne was her eldest daughter, who was a bit younger than me. And after her was Rachel. She was the same age as my brother. In fact, I used to play with Yvonne and my brother with Rachel. Victor was younger than both of them, and a few years later Mico was born, whose real name was Haim, too. He was given the name of Grandfather. We were going to the same school as the girls, to the Mission Laique. That was the only mixed French-language high school. Mission Laique had another school that was for girls only.

Rachel went to the girls' school, while Yvonne was in our school. Out of all of them, only Yvonne survived the war because during the occupation she got married to a guy who had Spanish citizenship and left for Spain. His name was Gattegno. And then she went to Israel.

Daniel, my father's other brother, was at the shop doing the accounting. Before working at the shop he worked at the Amar bank 12. It was a well known bank that mainly dealt with businesses. I think that they deliberately sent him to work there, to learn accounting. He was responsible for keeping all the books of the shop. He started working after I was born, between 1925 and 1930. He had gone to school at the Lycée. He spoke French very well and also Greek he knew better than all the others.

He got married to a girl from Volos. I think she was a Romaniote Jew 13 because she didn't know Ladino. She spoke only Greek and she learned Ladino later. Her name was Esther Matathia. We knew her as Roula. She was a great woman and a very beautiful one. When she lived in Volos, everyone knew her. Their marriage was an arranged one. Roula had an uncle here who was a notary, Samouilidis. He arranged it.

Daniel and Roula had one girl and one boy. The girl's name was Rachel. She was called Marie then. Because when they went to the mountain 14 during the occupation she changed it to Marie. And the son was called Nicos. He is my cousin and he lives here in Panorama, too. He still runs the business. Rachel was five years younger than me and Nicos was thirteen years younger than me.

In the business, Daniel was doing the accounting. He had a very good relationship with my father and their brother Joseph. We didn't have any problems. But he only received part of the earnings. They didn't have shares. They used to live on Vassilissis Olgas Street, in the 25th of March area, on the corner of Vassilissis Olgas and Marasli Street. The house was theirs. They bought it after it was built.

Daniel was always worried about his health, so he didn't eat much. He was slim and he ate little because he was afraid of his cholesterol level. When they would serve him a plate of food to eat, he would tip the plate so the fat would move to the side of the plate. And all the time he was saying that he was unwell.

Daniel's relationship with religion and tradition was a very distant one. I never saw him going to the synagogue. Maybe he went and I wasn't aware of it.

Rebecca lived with my grandparents. She was married to someone that sold shirts, who wasn't very stable in his earnings. His name was Sento Saltiel.

My father had a good relationship with Rebecca. He would get upset seeing her being neurasthenic. As I mentioned before, she had some health issues and was neurasthenic. They went to the doctor's very often; the doctors followed her state of health closely. I don't know, but I think that she was bit neglected. Maybe it was due to her health. They didn't regard Rebecca in the way they did Bella, for example. Rebecca was the younger one. You could say that she lived off my father and her uncle. They sustained her, even though she was married and had two girls.

Solomon, who was the youngest boy, went to school at the Lycée, and he knew French really well. When Joseph left, he was in charge of the sales in the shop. He was very educated, but very stingy. He didn't spend any money. He didn't get married; he didn't have children, nothing. And in the end, he divided up his money between twelve different institutes. And it was a lot of money, because he didn't spend any.

Before the war he lived with his mother. He didn't have any living expenses because Grandfather and Grandmother paid everything from the shop. Every Friday they would get money and they would pay the rent, the electricity, water, everything.

My father didn't approve of Solomon's way of life. Grandmother used to say, 'What is going to become of him? We should get him married, you should find someone for him, a wife, and get him married.' Grandmother used to say this to my father and Uncle Joseph. And sometimes they would try to speak with Uncle Solomon, but he would discourage them and say, 'It's my business and you shouldn't get involved, it is my own business what I do or don't do.'

In my father's family the two older brothers, Joseph and my father, were the heads of the family. When Joseph left all the family, the entire burden, fell on my father. One time they had a dispute with Landau. Landau had trading agencies of products that my father used to sell. And he complained that my father was buying from others and not from him. This dispute lasted a long time as Landau was very strict with people. He had a certain character.

In order to threaten them in a way, Landau didn't allow his wife to go to her mother's. Whenever Grandmother used to come and visit, she would cry and complain to Father, 'What will we do with Simon, please do him the favor and buy from him. It is a shame. I want to see my daughter.' Father didn't like this behavior. He was thinking to himself: 'why should he make me change my supplier that I do business with and force me to buy from him.' This lasted about three or four years.

My maternal grandfather was called Daniel. I think he died around 1949 and he was about 80 years old then. His first wife was Rosa. Her maiden name was Gattegno. Rosa died very young from kidney problems, when my mother was around 15 or 16 years old. It must have been around 1913-1914, at the beginning of World War I. His second wife was Rosa's sister, Mathilde. There was a big age difference between Rosa and Mathilde. They were nine siblings. Rosa was the third one. Mathilde was the eighth one. Mathilde was about my father's age. She died in Canada, in 1973. Her daughter had immigrated to Canada and she followed her.

Grandfather Daniel Saltiel went to school. He went to a Turkish school, but he probably learned more in the Jewish school.

Daniel's first business was to sell and place windows. He used to say that he had fit all the windows of the warehouses at the old railway station. He then changed his profession and became a lumber merchant. That was when I was around ten years old or maybe even younger.

When he grew older, he said that he couldn't carry glass and climb up anymore. So he started as a lumber merchant and did really well. He mostly brought wood from Romania and Yugoslavia, and the top quality wood they were bringing from Sweden.

Grandfather wasn't the first one in the business, but he was good. He worked hard; he would travel for business especially around eastern Macedonia. Many times he also went to Balkan countries for supplies. He would travel to Romania and Yugoslavia very often. His employees were an accountant and a porter. They were both Jewish.

He first opened a shop on Aggelaki Street. That's where his shop was. That area is where the brothels were, but also the wood suppliers. When Aggelaki Street changed and became a busy street, all the wood suppliers moved from that area to the old railway station.

The area used to be called New Xyladika [New Area for Wood] and it was near there that my father had his factory. They were almost neighbors. This must have been around 1930. In fact he was so close to the train station that every day when he went to work, he stopped at the station for his coffee.

He liked watching the trains go by. And when it was time, he would go and open the shop. He would go back home early. He was back at around seven in the evening. He always came home early. He never stayed out late, which was strange.

The lumber merchants were the first profession that worked without a lunch break. They worked from seven in the morning until four in the evening. They ate lunch at work. My grandfather, as it used to be at the time, had an usher in the shop who they used to call servant. He was an assistant, he would carry things, and go here and there, as there weren't any telephones at the time.

Daniel lived at the Constantinidis bus stop, where the School for the Blind is. So he would send this servant from Aggelaki Street to his house on a tram. Grandmother had three of these pans that fit inside each other. He was sending him there, and Grandmother would have them ready.

She would put in one of them the salad, in the other the food and in the third one the fruit. And he ate there, at work. And there was a couch there too where he would lay down for his siesta after his lunch.

Grandfather Daniel knew Turkish. He spoke a bit of Armenian and Hebrew, and he knew how to read too. I don't know if he spoke Hebrew but he certainly knew how to read it. He didn't know French very well. All the merchants and manufacturers spoke many languages. My grandfather learned Greek because of the business. He had to learn Greek because although he was working with Jews, he also had many other customers.

He mainly worked with the regions of Serres [city in northern Greece, 100 km north-east of Thessaloniki], Drama [city in northern Greece, 170 km north-east of Thessaloniki], and Kavala [city in northern Greece, 165 km north-east of Thessaloniki] where he always went by train. And he had a habit: He used to take many things with him on the train, food and the rest. He would eat and would offer something to the whole wagon. It didn't matter who he was traveling with.

Daniel didn't own a house, he rented one. He had a house in the 'School for the Blind' area, close to the Italian School. There was a house that was called Bensusan. The two houses had the same yard, and there was quite a large garden that had a little pond with red fish. They also had artesian water that was very good; it came from the Chortiatis mountain [mountain close to Thessaloniki]. In fact many from the neighborhood would go there and fetch some water, because they said it was good for digestion.

He later moved from this house. It was a very large house as he lived there with his three daughters and his son. His son got married first and later his daughters one by one, and that's when he moved to the old building that used to be an orphanage called 'Melissa' 15 on Vassilisis Olgas Street. He rented a place from a Greek doctor called Mr. Vassilakos.

Grandfather Daniel went to the cinema only with his grandchildren. He wouldn't take his wife and go to watch a film, no! Four or five friends would gather at the Almosnino [café-patisserie] and chat. They would joke around and play. They used to tease the women that were passing by. And they would eat a dessert. Daniel used to go there after he closed the shop. Because they were finishing early, they would meet up around five or five thirty at the Almosnino. They would sit outside in the summer and inside in the winter.

Daniel's friends were mostly Jewish. Where he lived, there were Christians on the ground floor. And he had great relations with them. They would go up to his house and have coffee, or they would go down and visit. They were called Hatzi, and the father was a tobacco merchant. During the religious holidays they wouldn't go around each other's houses. But if it was the name-day of one of them, they would go and congratulate them.

Daniel wasn't so religious but he kept the traditions. I remember that every day after he got up, he'd first have to read for half an hour. I don't know what he read, but it was before he had his coffee. And then he would get ready, drink his coffee and go to work. He bought kosher meat, that's for sure.

I don't know if he kept the kashrut, maybe he did at the beginning but later on, not as much. I don't remember them having separate dishes for meat and dairy products. But he definitely bought kosher meat. He never made a habit of going to the synagogue every Saturday. When it was a religious holiday he would go. He went to the Beit Saoul synagogue 16 because it was close to his house.

Grandfather gave money for the house, but he didn't give easily, he was strict and would check how it was spent, he wouldn't just give away money. He didn't participate in Community affairs. He was only at the B'nai B'rith. When they would organize some gatherings, he would also go. When such a gathering was organized a personal invitation would be sent to him, and it said 'Personal' on it, so no one else was allowed to open it. That impressed me, because I was thinking, 'Why is it personal, why?'

"Ah," he would say to me, 'this is from the committee, it's for a B'nai B'rith meeting.' You see, not everyone could join the B'nai B'rith. It was very strict. You had to be somebody in society. It didn't have to do with politics. It was rather an organization like the Freemasons.

I think that Grandfather Daniel voted in the Community's elections. He voted not the leftists, not the Zionists, but the liberals that were in favor of assimilation. I'm not absolutely certain, but I'm pretty sure that he supported them. At the national elections they would always vote for Tsaldaris 17, the Laikoi [Populists].

He read the French newspapers and he also bought the Aksion. He would either buy the Aksion or Indépendant 18, or Le Progrès 19, but he would always buy one newspaper. They were friends with a journalist who wrote for the Indépendant and signed with the initials I.N. He had a great sense of humor, and he wrote well.

In the house they never talked about politics. They would talk about their business affairs, and the Community. They would talk about Palestine. But I could see that my father was not in favor of going to Palestine.

Daniel had many brothers and sisters. I remember two or three. Because sometimes when I was young, he would take me out for a walk to visit them. They were all older than him, and we would always find them sleeping on a chair, or with their glasses on the side sitting in an armchair. Two of his brothers, Mentesh and Sabethai Saltiel, were also involved in the window- glass business. In fact, all the merchants that were involved in the iron business were their customers, too. We had customers in common. In fact, after the war, they had a shop, Afoi Saltiel [Saltiel Bros], on Vassileos Heracliou Street. But later they left for Palestine.

Daniel had two sisters. I remember one of them, who was younger than him. She was called Flor Saltiel. She was Dario's mother who married my mother's sister Lily. They were first degree cousins. The father of Lily and the mother of Dario were brother and sister.

They were very close to each other, but less with their siblings because they had children and grandchildren and there wasn't much time left for the others. When there was a religious holiday, especially on Easter, the whole family would go and visit the brothers, the aunts, and the cousins.

They were giving these haminados eggs [hard-boiled eggs with dried onion peels, salt and pepper] then. It was when they would really spend time together. Some would rent a carriage to go there, three or four of them together, in order to have more time to spend with the family.

Beniko Saltiel was the son of Grandfather Daniel's elder brother. Beniko was the first timber merchant of Thessaloniki, the richest and most successful one. He was in the fifty-member council of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Thessaloniki. He knew my father very well. They had a good relationship. They had built a house together at the Androutsou bus stop, and when he stopped living there, it became the Yugoslavian Consulate.

My father didn't do business with any of his relatives. He had a different job than anyone else. All of them were in the lumber business. But this was a great business then because after the Great Fire, the whole of Thessaloniki was being rebuilt, so they needed thousands of acres of wood. And there weren't that many traders. At the new timber area there were about four or five timber shops.

With his first wife Rosa, Grandfather Daniel had a son, Sento, and later my mother, Adina. Then there was another daughter, Lily, who got married to Dario Modiano, as I mentioned earlier. It was very common then for first degree cousins to get married. This was really bad. Their third daughter was Ida. And his second wife had a daughter from her first marriage, Daisy, who is still alive.

At some point Grandfather took his son Sento to work with him. First, Sento worked with his father-in-law, Gattegno, who had a jewelry shop at the corner of Tsimiski and Venizelou Street. After he worked there for many years, my father took him to work for him. I suppose that was after 1930.

He was a good merchant. He became very good especially after Daniel Saltiel had a problem with his eyesight. You see, when my grandfather was very young I don't know how, but he fell and he lost one eye. And he didn't have this eye taken out and put a glass one in, but he left it and this somehow infected his other eye, too. He had to go about ten times to Vienna for operations because he was slowly loosing his eyesight. One of the times that he went, my grandmother went with him and they stayed there for over two months.

My grandmother's sister Mathilde was the same age as my father. My father was born in 1889, she must have been born either in 1890 or in 1888, sometime around then. There was a big age difference with Daniel. Mathilde had a daughter from another marriage.

Grandfather was widowed, she too, and so they got married. It was then a custom to marry the sister of your wife, if both of you were left widowed. And even the Jewish religion suggests doing so. The religion says that if your brother dies and his wife becomes a widow, someone from the family should marry her in order to maintain her.

Mathilde Gattegno spoke Ladino really well and French fluently. She also spoke Greek, but not as well. She couldn't write in Greek, but she spoke it, especially because most of her maids were Greek. She didn't speak any Turkish. She went to school at the Alliance where she learned French.

Before she got married, during World War I, when the allies were here, she opened, or rather the family opened, a shop for her in which she sold souvenirs for the soldiers. And it did really well. She was pretty and she spoke French, which was something that the soldiers couldn't find everywhere.

At the time of World War I, many women started working out of necessity. They would sell things like that; they would do the easy work. After she became a widow, and maybe also before she got married, she worked at her brother's school, the Gattegno.

Mathilde used to speak about World War I while my mother didn't. I remember that they had in their house all sorts of flags, because once the English would come around, then the French, then the Italians, and then the Romanians.

She got married to Grandfather Daniel after the Great Fire. They were already married when I was born, because I remember they left me with them when I was one year old, and that they got married before my uncle and before my father. I think that my father was already married in 1920.

I don't think that her relationship with Daniel was very good, because he was a bit indifferent. Their relationship was more based on duty. It seems that Grandfather was very much in love with his first wife. His second wife was also very pretty and educated, but still he simply didn't love her as much as his first.

Grandfather Daniel wouldn't treat Mathilde the same way he treated his first wife. It was a different thing for him, and he also didn't take care of his daughter with her in the same way he did with the other children. That was Grandmother's complaint and her daughter Daisy's.

Mathilde would either eat alone at noon or with her daughter when she was around. In the evening, someone would come and visit or she would go and visit somebody. Grandfather would get home around seven or seven thirty and they would have dinner together. They had a nice courtyard that overlooked the sea. In the summer they would sit and eat outside and in the winter inside.

Mathilde read a great deal. She read those French magazines as well. I don't think that she read the newspaper. Maybe she would have a look at it. She also read literature, everything in French. She didn't buy books; they used to borrow them from lending libraries.

B'nai B'rith. There seems to have been a lending library where the B'nai B'rith was or the Alumni Association of the Lycée School. She would go out to get the books, or her daughter would go. She was a very educated woman. I had a great relationship with my grandmother. Many times, when the two of us were chatting, she would tell me about her worries and complaints. I loved her very much. She brought me up.

Mathilde didn't keep track of political or Community events. She only followed international news. Then she also had a radio. She didn't know Greek so she would listen to the French programs. She would listen to whatever they were broadcasting.

They got the radio very early on. Grandfather Daniel was the first one to put a telephone in the house in order to communicate when he was at the shop. He had a phone, because he was away from the house from early in the morning until late in the evening.

Grandmother Mathilde was involved in a couple of charity associations. I remember them coming around the house to collect the contributions.

She only went to the synagogue on special occasions or if there was a bar mitzvah. The men used to go more often to the synagogue, like grandfather did sometimes. Women went too, but in our family they didn't. I don't remember her reading a prayer in the house. In comparison with grandfather, I think that she was less religious than him, as she was also younger than him. She kept the kashrut, she would buy kosher meat but they would mix the pots and they didn't have separate plates.

There were these candles in the house which we light when there is a religious holiday. She would keep this tradition and light them. We always had a mezuzah. It has a small piece of parchment inside with a prayer written or the name of God, I don't know for sure. You have this in the house, every house has one. They had one on the front door, but they also had one in every bedroom.

She would go to the market to do her shopping and take the tram. She would go downtown alone, or she would take along one of her daughters. Usually, when she went shopping she would take along either one of the girls.. They were buying fabrics and they would make dresses out of them, at home.

Mathilde dressed in the European style. She wouldn't buy very expensive things, mostly plain clothes. She also went out. She went out much more than her sister. She never went to sit in a patisserie. That never happened. She would visit friends or relatives at home.

She also had her second or third degree relatives that she used to visit as well. The families were much larger then and had many members. She would go out once in a while to the cinema with her daughter. Mother or Aunt Lily would also take her out.

We didn't meet very often with my father's family. We met mostly with my mother's family. That happened because Grandfather Daniel would gather the girls very often on Sundays. He wanted all of us to eat lunch there. Later on, instead of eating together at lunch time, we would go around five and have ouzo and 'meze' [snacks] etc.

Haim and Rachel Alvo and Daniel and Mathilde Saltiel didn't socialize. Maybe on Easter they would go and pay each other a visit. My maternal grandmother didn't have any relations with my paternal grandmother. They couldn't, they didn't have any spare time, and everything used to happen inside the house.

I used to spend a lot of time at my Saltiel grandparents' house because my parents would leave me with them from the age of one when they traveled. So, from a very young age they left me with my grandmother Mathilde. They used to go to Europe, to Paris and Vienna.

So I had a very good relationship with my maternal grandparents. In fact, Grandmother was a teacher for a while when she was young, so she taught me how to count and how to read before I started going to school.

My mother had four siblings. One of them was Daisy, who was neither from the same mother nor father. She was Mathilde's daughter from her first marriage. The rest of the children were Rosa's: Sento, Lily, Adina and Ida.

Unfortunately, as I told you before, Grandfather treated Daisy differently and that really upset Mathilde. He never saw Daisy like the rest of his daughters. He didn't feel the same way about her. And the bad thing was that he also showed it. One may feel it, but shouldn't really show it. We would talk about it. While my parents loved Daisy like their sister, Grandfather made a difference.

Daisy was born in 1913. She now lives in Switzerland. She has quite a story. She was married to a Christian before the war and that's how she survived. You should have seen the trouble they caused by getting married. They got married when I had my bar mitzvah, around 1935.

His name was Demis, Demitris Komninos. His family was regarded as very aristocratic here. His elder sister had married Hatzigiannakis who was a deputy for Venizelos 20. Hatzigiannakis had the flour-mills and was a refugee 21. I think the Komninos family originated from Eastern Thrace and not from Asia Minor.

Daisy was very sharp. She was petite, pretty and very smart. She would go to various clubs. Komninos went frequently to the lawn tennis club. That was at Vasilissis Olgas and 25th Martiou and all the wealthy people of Thessaloniki used to go there.

I don't know how or why, but my aunt went there and that's where they met. They started meeting up to go for walks. The couples then would go to Nea Elvetia [area in eastern Thessaloniki], outside the city, and to Meteora. They loved each other, and got married. Daisy and Demis ran away together and got married at the Vlatadon Monastery. A priest married them there. She was baptized and converted, and until today she is a Christian.

This was probably one of the first mixed marriages. The papers wrote about it then. 'Makedonia' newspaper 22 wrote an article against the Jews. Daisy and Demis argued with the family and Grandfather disinherited her. He told her that he didn't want her again in the house, and that she should never come back again, which was a really bad thing, as things like that usually didn't happen. They were a well known family here, and people would say, 'What? The daughter of Saltiel went with the others?'

At the beginning the mother of Demis didn't want her either. But Daisy could manage anything. Very quickly, only six months after, she was the most beloved. And slowly, first my aunt Lily brought her back to the family, and then my mother and Ida started seeing her again. In the end I remember that when they brought her back to the family, she kneeled in front of Grandfather and apologized to him. She got back in touch with the family around two or three years after her wedding.

Demis worked at the Hatzgiannakis mills. Because his brother-in-law was the owner he had given him a job to work there. He was a good man, and had good manners. But he was a bit of a spender, quite a spender in fact. He had this idea that he came from a great family.

Sento was born around 1898. He went to Alliance as well. He finished high school in Alliance. He knew French very well; he also knew Greek and Ladino. I think he also attended German classes. Many of the Jews here spoke German at the time.

Sento got married when my father got married, around 1920. His wife's name was Mathilde Gattegno. The name of her father, his father-in-law, was Moshe Gattegno. The father of Mathilde, Moshe Gattegno, was the brother of my grandmother Rosa. So Sento and Mathilde were first degree cousins. The mother of Mathilde was from the Sadok family who were a very well known aristocratic family.

It was quite common to have marriages among relatives at the time. The other daughter, Lily, got married to another cousin, Modiano. And in fact they used to say that they will get them married since we were very young.

This way they used to influence one a great deal. There were financial issues as well. They were saying this in order to keep the money within the family. Not to let it go into other hands. Because they would give dowries then, they would have marriage agreements, which were taxed by the Community. I remember Grandfather Daniel gave 1,500 sovereigns for each of his daughters as a dowry. For the youngest one, Ida, he even gave more. He gave her 2,000 because she was the youngest, and his favorite. His sons-in- law would tease him and say to him that he cheated on them and gave them less money.

Sento and Mathilde had two children. One was Rosa who is exactly the same age as I and Flora who is five or six years younger. Rosa got married to a certain Nadjari. After the war they left for America. Her husband died and she came back to Greece. She got married again in Athens. The other one, Flora, got married to a Modiano. She is a painter.

Sento died after the war. After the war he started the lumber trade again. He became partners with Bilimatsis and they did really well. When they grew older, they both got their pensions and Sento went to live in Athens. His wife Mathilde died before him.

Lily was born around three or four years after my mother. She went to school at the Alliance or the Lycée, I'm not sure. Lily spoke Italian really well and Greek, too. Lily got married to an Italian Jew. His name was Dario Modiano and he was an Italian citizen. When I was born Lily and Dario were already married. Lily didn't work. She had two children: Toris, whose full name was Salvador, and a daughter, Rosa, who now lives in America. Lily had a maid, Katina, for 15 years who came from a village in Chalkidiki. Katina was protecting Rosa and was scolding Toris. Whenever they would argue, she would protect Rosa.

Dario Modiano worked for a German who was an agent of Deutsche Debarque line. He was an employee, but he was getting paid quite a lot of money. They sacked him because he was a Jew, and he left for Athens. There he opened a shop with his brother. The bad thing was that he gambled; he played cards. He used to go to the Club of Thessaloniki 23 then. He lost a lot of money. The fact that he was gambling always caused problems. My aunt would cry and get very upset. He would go to the Loutraki Casino [Loutraki: city in north Peloponnesus, 600 km from Thessaloniki]. He was supposedly going to the hot springs, but instead he would go to the casino. He never took his wife with him. She would sit with the children at home and he would go and have baths at the hot springs, drink fresh water and then go to the casino to gamble.

I used to hear these things from the elder ones when they talked about it. They were talking about this in front of us, in order to protect us. During the war Modiano served in the army as a pilot of the Italian air force. We had a picture that his daughter still has; with the pilot's uniform on, but what a pilot! He ruined an airplane once. How he managed to ruin a plane due to an emergency landing without getting himself killed, is a mystery.

Lily was contributing to charities. They fell out because he went to the Casino. She had many contacts. She would go with my mother to Shaiber's for gymnastics. Shaiber had a gym studio then. It was on the ground floor of his house on our street. Many Greeks would go to his gym. So they had met many people from the neighborhood. She was a very lively person and very pretty, she was full of life. Since there was only an age difference of three years between them, when my mother gave birth and didn't have a lot of milk, Lily would feed both children together. She would put one on each nipple. And she would be with my mother all the time. I'm certain that they saw each other every single day. They would speak about the happy and sad things that had happened to each other. She loved her sister. And Adina had a close relationship with Lily. As far as religion or tradition was concerned, their position was exactly the same.

Between Ida and my mother there must have been at least an age difference of ten years. She was my grandfather's favorite because she was the 'Benjamin' - the youngest one - of the family. She was so nice, so sweet, she didn't have any malice in her at all. She got married to Elie Molho. He was the general manager of the Bank of Thessaloniki 24. First he was the director but later he became the general manager and was sent to Athens. Molho was married for two years and lived with his in-laws at the time.

When we went to Grandmother's, and we used to go often, they had their room there. Ida got married around 1930, maybe even earlier. They used to get married when they were in their twenties back then. If you weren't married by the age of 22 or23, they would say that one was to be left on the shelf. Ida and Elie had a son, Jack.

When they moved from her parents' house they got a place on 25th Martiou Street, just next to my uncle Daniel's house. They were next-door neighbors. She had her mother-in-law there who was very nice, and they had a very good relationship. They didn't moan at all. They were getting along very well, the mother-in-law with her daughter-in-law. Ida died during the occupation, and they took away their son.

One uncle of mine was a senator. He was the president of the Jewish Community. He was my mother's uncle, the brother of Grandmother Rosa. He was the eldest in the family. Leon Gattegno had a school here in Thessaloniki, a French school that was called Gattegno.

From my maternal side, my uncles were distinguished people. There were Leon Gattegno and Moshe Gattegno, and there was also another brother of theirs Isaac, who immigrated to Paris. Uncle Isaac and his wife left for Paris long before the war. They suddenly left in 1925. They opened a printing house there. And since my father used to go to Paris very often for business, he would always visit them and they would have a good relationship.

The social and financial state of my mother's brothers and their families was the same as ours. It was only later that my father opened the factory and the business started to grow. Elie used to be an employee of his, but later he became the general manager of a bank with a very good salary. In fact, Grandfather was very fond of him, and that was the reason why he used to say that he gave him a bigger dowry, so he would have a general manager of a bank as his son-in-law.

Dario was also an employee. Sento was doing well in his own business. And later Grandfather gave his business to Sento. I'm not aware whether one of the sons-in-law was more active than the other in social clubs and such things. Some of them were at the B'nai B'rith. Sento was definitely a member. His father must have recommended him, and I think that Elie was a member, too.

They weren't very interested in politics. They were probably a bit more concerned about the city's affairs. All the Jews voted for Manos, Nikolaos Manos. Most of our own voted for Manos. I imagine that my father and my mother's sons-in-law, voted for him, too. But, before Manos, they voted for Aggelakis. They voted for Aggelakis because he was very well known. Aggelakis was great; he lived very near our house, at the same tram stop. He was a doctor. Aggelakis was with Venizelos, but they never really cared if he was in Venizelos's party. They voted for him as an individual. He originated from an old family from Thessaloniki, very well known, he was from Thessaloniki's aristocracy. With Manos, it wasn't the same.

• Growing up

My father co-operated with one of his relatives, the one at the bank. I mean he worked with the Bank of Thessaloniki. He had all his accounts there. Before 1930 all imports of goods would be handled through a bank.

My father's name was Simon. He was born in 1889 in Thessaloniki. He went to the Turkish school first; he knew Turkish very well. He also went to the Jewish school. Later he went to the Alliance school. He learned many things there.

He had the chance to study in the Alliance and that's where his later success was based upon. In fact, one of his teachers was Mr. Nehama. That's where he learned his French. The Alliance gave a great boost on the education of the Jews in Thessaloniki.

Very few of the Turks or the Greeks spoke French at the time. French was then the language of diplomacy and trade. All the trade correspondence was conducted in French. My father also spoke Greek, but not as well as French.

He finished the Alliance school and went straight to work. Our father's business was founded in 1913, a year after Thessaloniki was liberated from the Turks. It was called 'Afoi Alvo' - Alvo Brothers. He started the business when he was 18, and he was already in debt, because his father had sold things to someone on credit and had lent him money, and this person had cheated him. So my father went after him to get the money back. I don't know whether he managed to get it back, but when he started the business he was in debt.

It was difficult for him to create a business but the circumstances helped him. The war and the Great Fire helped him a lot. People were left in great need and there was no production in Greece. Everything came from abroad.

He knew many languages and this was his advantage, because he could communicate when he went abroad. He would go to Germany, to Czechoslovakia, to the Netherlands. He represented many trading agencies, and this helped him to work well. He brought goods from all over Europe, even from Latvia and from Lithuania, I remember, because I used to collect stamps at the time and he would bring me stamps from wherever he went. I had stamps from all the European countries.

This was what upset Mother mostly. He would leave at least four or five times a year to travel for business. He didn't go for a very long time, just for ten or fifteen days. He would make a deal there and then. Not through correspondence. He had a lot of correspondence anyway. I remember that on Sundays he would go down to the post office where he had a box, to take the letters that had come on Saturday. That was his chore on Sundays.

At the beginning they had a shop on Frangon Street. After the Great Fire, the Greek government started giving landed property to everyone as compensation. And on Ionos Dragoumi Street, which was then called Alexander the Great Street, at number 22, where the Eurobank stands today, is where they built the shop in 1922. It was a multi-story building with four or five floors.

Jacques Moshe was the engineer, he is the one who built Plateia Aristotelous [Aristotelous square] 25. He had graduated from the Ecole Centrale in Paris, and because it was one of his first buildings and he didn't know well yet the resistance of the concrete, he put double the quantity of iron that was recommended in the books. That's why during the big earthquake of 1978 the shop remained intact.

This shop was in the style of Galeries Lafayette [famous department store in Paris, founded in 1893], because my father had visited Paris many times and he had liked the Galeries Lafayette. The ground floor and the other four floors were open in the middle and no matter how warm it would get, as soon as the entrance door opened all the heat would go away. They were never warm.

The shop had around fifteen employees. We also had Christians. There were around two or three Christians and the rest were Jewish, and they were all men. No one had women working then. The only women that were working then were secretaries and typists, that was it.

My father later built a factory to produce barbed wire, chains, hinges, nails, but mainly barbed wire. He started the factory around 1932 to1933. He was an honest man of trade. The first thing was to keep one's promise.

Most of the deals were closed without papers or written agreements or anything like that; it was one's word of honor which counted. For example, say you sold your land and you would name a price and agree.

Now, if somebody else would come and offer you double the amount of money, it would be a big shame if you didn't keep your promise. They used to say that your promise is the contract. So trade was a fair deal then. And they didn't have any promissory notes either. The custom was to go and collect all the money every Friday.

These are the stories that my grandfather and father used to tell me. After the war, in the Old Greece, everyone used to say that there was no better trade than in Thessaloniki, which was a hundred times better than any other city, and that you didn't have to be afraid of a trader from Thessaloniki. In addition to the Jews, the Christians and the Armenians had to keep their promises, too. The Turks didn't conduct trade.

My father learned German by ear, because he traveled to Germany very often. The trade was then conducted by 'clearing' 26. Given that Germany bought tobacco from Greece, the traders here also had to buy things from Germany.

My father very often went to Germany on business trips. He would visit small cities, mainly Ruhr, Cologne, Hessen, these places. All the goods that we imported were concentrated there. He had many German friends that were his suppliers, and he had close relations with them. That's why when the Nazis came to power in Germany he said that he couldn't believe that it was possible that the Germans were doing things like that. He didn't have any Jewish suppliers in Germany.

Around 1934 to 1935 Father was the first one to bring electric cookers to Thessaloniki. Until then coal was used for cooking. We would get up in the morning and light the fire with the firebrand and the coal. And when we first started using an electric cooker, I remember Mother saying how much easier it was to have this, an electric cooker!

My father was very careful with his work. He didn't take many risks. I think that the factory he built was a risk at the time that he built it, because it was quite a big business. The factory was at the lumber market in the Baron Hirsch area 27. He started with 35 workers only.

In the beginning he would produce only barbed wire. He then built another unit right next to it. I remember he had difficulties buying the land, because the man selling it was a lumber merchant. He had to give him a fair amount of money in order to get the space right next to the factory so he could join the two factories. In this way he expanded and started making chains and nails and hinges and other things like that. The name of the factory was 'Alvo Brothers.' It became an SA [Société Anonyme] company afterwards while in the beginning it was an ordinary partnership.

The main characteristic of our company, which I really tried hard to keep, was the good name of the business. We had a very good name in the market and were considered as very consistent and fair merchants. We were very consistent in the quality of our goods. They were always class A, very good quality at reasonable prices. And everyone used to say, 'Let's go to Alvo's to shop. We might pay a little more, but we will get top quality.'

This was the reputation of our name in the market. We also had a very good name with the banks. My father did business with the Bank of Thessaloniki because my uncle Elie Molho was the manager. But he also did business with the Italian bank and with Mosseri the Union Bank, which was owned by a professor of his. He also did business with the National Bank of Greece. He had really good relations with the manager of the National Bank, Varlamides. Whenever he would go to Varlamides's office, he would tell him to 'sit down and have a coffee, let's have a chat.' This was their relationship.

My father didn't think that after the liberation of Thessaloniki in 1912 things had changed, that they had become worse for the Jews, because he only started his professional career after 1912, so he actually benefited from that.

In the 1920s, relations between Jews and Christians were very difficult. It was very hard for the Jewish Community to find its place among the Greeks, because they didn't share a common background. But my father didn't find it difficult from his point of view, because he already had great relations anyway. And they really appreciated him, both Jews and Christians. Not all of them but mainly his customers.

We had great relations with our customers from the outer districts, because here there were more competitors. In Eastern Greece he had business relations with both the customers and the suppliers. His customer network covered an area all the way down to Crete. We had customers in Larissa [the main city in the region of Thessaly, 186 km south of Thessaloniki], Volos, and in the entire mainland. At Yiannina we had many good customers. The customers were developing gradually. As our business grew, the smaller businesses grew with it. Because then the whole of Greece was being rebuilt. The state was being rebuilt.

There were business relations between Christians and Jewish traders. Not many, but there were some. Very good friends of ours were 'Leon & Yiakos.' It was a big firm. They had an oil mill and a soap factory. The Leon family was a big family: they were eight or nine brothers and sisters. And Yiakos was from the Yiakos family. I remember their children. There was Manolis Yiakos with whom we were very good friends and about the same age, one or two years difference. We went to gymnastics together. Leon was Jewish. Yiakos was a Christian.

Companies as such wouldn't be any different than the Jewish and Christian traders. They co-operated really well. But they all used to be what I call 'old Thessalonikans' - original residents of Thessaloniki. People that were born in Thessaloniki, not people that came from other towns, those ones that Jews had lived together with for many years and had great relations with.

The younger brother, Daniel, was doing the accounting for the shop. I think he worked for some years at the Amar Bank, and he learned accounting there so he could write everything in Greek like they had to. We had hired another cashier and accountant that knew Greek very well, so we didn't have a problem from that point of view. He would write the bills in Greek.

As far as the Sunday rest 28 is concerned my father took it up. I don't remember it being an issue. Maybe it was earlier. I must have been very young when that happened but I don't think that he was very bothered about it, because he wasn't very religious anyway. In the beginning some shops were shut on both Saturdays and Sundays. My father didn't do that because he didn't have a religious education.

In terms of his business I remember that he was very annoyed when the revenue officers would come to check his books. Only the fact that they were asking for one thing, then for another, and I don't know what else, tired him. We had a very good lawyer, Mr. Nakopoulos, who would arrange everything.

Inside the business there was no difference in hierarchy between the one brother and the other. For example, with the employees they had the same relationship. The employees knew that my father was a bit softer than his brother. When they asked for something like a raise or a day off and Joseph wouldn't give it to them; they would go and ask my father, who they knew was more indulgent. They were family friends with some employees.

My father also had great relations with the workers. We had about three or four workers that were Christian, who were skilled workers because they did a kind of job that was more difficult than the others and they would get higher wages. Most of them were Jewish workers because we also regarded it as a duty to have Jewish workers. They would call from the Community and say, 'Look he has three children and he really needs a job, take him.' So we would take him. Sometimes he would turn out to be good and sometimes not. If he wasn't good we would have to fire him.

There were many communists and leftists then, mainly between the workers. And there were also others in the workers' union, the work inspectors, all of them. There were many problems like that before the war. Some years before the war, relations between workmen and employers were very fragile in Thessaloniki. I don't remember my father commenting about the communists or the leftists; I remember that he had some problems with some workmen.

There were many strikes. In fact when the events took place in Thessaloniki in 1936 29, they threw a stone and broke the sign of our shop, because my father was regarded as a rich man. My father helped his workmen with his personal money not even money from the business. He helped not only the workers, but he helped generally. For example, someone would come and say, 'My wife is sick,' or 'I really need this,' and he would take money out of his own pocket to give to them, so he wouldn't have any trouble with the others in the business. He also made to charity donations.

My father was a member of the 50-member Council of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Thessaloniki. I don't know when this was. It must have been until the war. Later on the Germans gave an order for all the Jews to leave. He was one of the fifty members of the Council because his was regarded as one of the most developed businesses in Thessaloniki. But I don't know why he wanted to be a member of the Chamber. Not that he needed them for any reason. He just wanted to get in. My father was chosen as a trader at the Chamber. Trade was considered more important than industry.

My father started from the trade. But the factory was his great love, so to speak, because he built the factory completely by himself without the help of his brother. At the time, his brother had already left for Palestine.

Our house was at the corner of Kritis and Papakyriazi Street [streets in eastern Thessaloniki]. My father built it together with his brother in 1922, before he got married. When he bought the land there, it was regarded as countryside, it was a countryside area. There were very few houses there then. When he built his house, there was only one more house on the same street. The land was 900 square meters of which the house occupied 200. It was on the corner of the two streets and the rest of the plot was a garden.

My father had an ardent passion for flowers. He had a gardener from the time before he got engaged, who remained with him after the war. He was a Christian from Asvestohori and his name was Charitos. The house had two floors. His brother lived on the top floor and he lived on the ground floor so he would be closer to the garden.

When he first built it, Grandmother and Grandfather lived on his floor. Later on, when he got married, because he didn't want to tell his parents to 'leave the house,' he rented a place for himself. Neither I nor my brother were born in the house that my father built. We were born in another house, again on Koromila Street. A couple of years later he said, 'Now that I have children I want to live in my own house. He then rented his parents a house, also on Koromila Street, where they lived with their daughter.

My father and his elder brother were very close to each other. Even though there was an age difference between them, they always went to school together and they were always together. They lived in the same house and the families were very close. The women, my mother and my aunt, were very close, too. We played with the kids, our cousins. And there were never any financial issues between them. They had those kinds of issues with the others, the younger ones. But they didn't have any issues in any business that they did together.

My father always left the house early in the morning. He would get up at 6 in the morning. He had to shave and have his shower. He almost had a mania about cleanliness. He would leave the house around 7.30am. He would take the tram and go down to the city center.

In the afternoon he would get a taxi and come home to eat lunch. The four of them would get one taxi together, and each one would be dropped where he lived. We ate around 1.30, because the shop shut at one, so they had half an hour to come back from the market; Father would be back around 1.30. After lunch he would always sit, drink his coffee, talk with his wife and leave again at around three, because at 3.30pm they would open the shop again until 8pm.

He would come and go twice a day on the tram, so he would take the tram four times a day. The tram was a great convenience for him at the time. He knew all the conductors so well that sometimes, if he didn't have change, they would say to him, 'It's ok, you can give it to me next time I see you.'

For dinner, at around 8.30, we would eat something light, usually a soup or a 'sfougato,' as we used to call it. We all ate together every night. My father was very fond of his parents, more so than his brother. He would go and visit them every Sunday. He would also pass by their place sometimes on the way back from work and say hello, and come back home after. I remember that very well. Especially when Grandfather, or his wife were ill, he would go around their house every day, to say hello, and he would come home later.

First and foremost, he had great respect for him, but he also loved him dearly. He spoke to him in the singular form and he would call him Dad, and he would call Grandmother Mom. When we had a religious holiday he would go around their house three or four times a week to see them. He was very caring, mostly with his mother.

My father loved literature and flowers. He imported flowers from Belgium and the Netherlands. He would bring bulbs from the Netherlands and rose bushes and dahlias from Belgium.

He read all kinds of literature. He read quite a lot, always in French. He would buy magazines like 'L'Illustration,' which was a great magazine with really nice pictures. He would buy 'Candide,' which was probably right- wing. He wasn't buying it because it was rightist, but for the information, to keep up to date. With regards to newspapers he used to buy 'Le Progrès' that was Modiano's. He would either buy 'Le Progrès' or 'L'Indépendant.' They read the papers mainly on the tram. His journey from the house to the city center would last an hour each way. He didn't buy any Judeo-Spanish newspapers. He knew some of the reporters.

My father was a member of the graduate association of Alliance, the Association des Anciens Eléves de l' Alliance Israélite 30. They had rented a place where they would all meet up. They had rented an apartment, which they used as their club. He was also member of the B'nai B'rith.

B'nai B'rith was a Jewish organization like the Freemasons. The members helped each other very much. They had invented some signals so they could recognize each other: they would put some sign in their signature and they would wave to each other in a certain way. When someone was a member of B'nai B'rith and would make a transaction with somebody else, they would instantly understand that they were both members.

They also used to organize meetings where they would talk about everything: life, society, and politics. At the end of each session, someone would go around with his hat and collect money from everyone, whatever each one could contribute to help. In fact, they also had the right if someone was in need, to take money from the hat to give him. That's what my father used to say. They would also help if, for example, someone in the market was about to go bankrupt. They always tried to avoid bankruptcy, as it was regarded as the biggest sin. I remember some that went bankrupt who killed themselves. Honor in the trade market was really important. And it was widely known that Thessaloniki was the 'cleanest' market.

My father was never involved in the Community. Only during the occupation they had him get a bit involved, because things were very difficult then. At that time great attention was needed and many connections. He wasn't involved with the Community because he didn't have an interest in it and, also, because he didn't have the time. He would travel all the time.

He would vote in the Community's elections. I don't know if he was with the Zionists or with the assimilationists. I don't know this because he never spoke about politics at home. I don't think that he would have been with the Zionists; he was probably with the ones in favor of assimilation.

Of course, at the time there was Keren Kayemet 31. They had these blue money-boxes. We had one in the house. I remember well that they would come around the house to empty the money-box.

On Rosh Hashanah, or on [Yom] Kippur my father would go to the Beit Saoul synagogue, which was a very large synagogue. That was it. He would never go on Saturdays. My father was very fond of tradition. It was a matter of tradition, the fact that he was a Jew and not a Christian like everybody else. He was a bit different from the others. So he kept that, the tradition. But to get into the logic that he shouldn't eat pork meat or that he shouldn't write on Saturday, he wouldn't do that. My father used to say that when you do something you should always trust your conscience, to know whether your consciousness approves of it or not. Not because God would punish you, but whatever your conscience dictated.

My father didn't have many friends, but he had some very good friends. He had Mr. Nehama, who was a professor of his. He was also friends with the brother of Mr. Nehama. He was a manager in a bank and he later married a Christian. He had some other friends that were called Hassid. They were family friends.

Because there were many brothers and sisters, they would meet up every Sunday in one house or the other. They didn't have any time during the week. They only went to the cinema, as they loved the cinema. At the time, the cinema was considered the best entertainment. My grandfather and grandmother didn't go, but Mother and Father would go at least once a week. There were four or five cinemas in Thessaloniki then. They used to say that the Dionysia was the best cinema and that it showed the best films.

Good films were being produced at the time. There were German films, too, which were quite good but Mother and Father preferred the French ones, as they could understand those better and didn't have to read the subtitles. They didn't bring any American cinematography to Thessaloniki at the time. We had French and German films and that was all. The most famous film was 'Imperio Argentina.' This film was not known only by the Jews, but all of Thessaloniki loved it. Of course, another big hit was Eduardo Bianco; he was the one that played the tango. Thessaloniki went crazy over his performance.

In the summer, my parents would go out to the 'Luxemburg' after dinner. It was on the sea side, close to the shipyards. They would go there, listen to music and dance. Sometimes they would also go to Flocas. Flocas was regarded as luxury restaurant. They would go to the White Tower when there was something playing at the theater. Some good plays used to be performed.

They would also go out and eat at the 'Olympos-Naoussa' and at 'Soutzoukakia.' When the 'Soutzoukakia' first opened, I remember, they took us there, too. They told us, 'You will see, we will go to a place that you will like very much.' And then they took us to the Soutzoukakia of Rogoti. And indeed we went and we liked it very much. They didn't take us, the children, out much; it would be the two of them going out mostly. They would leave us at home. They mostly went out on Saturdays, Fridays almost never, because my father opened the shop on Saturdays.

The families that we regarded to be on a higher social scale than us were the Mordoh, Fernandes, Morpurgo, and the Modiano family. And the Torres family that had ran the jute factory. We knew that they were richer, but this didn't really impress us. If my father spoke to Morpurgo or Fernandes, he would feel a little flattered, as those were more aristocratic families.

My father was of very low profile. He didn't like to stand out so much. He had a hearing problem. He lost his hearing when he was quite young. From around the age of 40 he couldn't hear well, so he didn't enjoy socializing much. He was too proud and he didn't want the others to know that he had a hearing problem. This was one of the reasons that he wasn't very sociable and wouldn't go out much.

As a character, I cannot say that he was very humorous. He was very rigid, you could do this but you couldn't do the other. For example, not to respect one's parents, or to treat somebody else badly, or to speak badly to someone who is helping you.

Mother was the same. Although we had two maids in the house, because the house was very big, things were not as easy as one would assume. She wouldn't let us tell the maids, do this or do the other; she would tell us, 'Do it yourself.' At night, when we would go to undress, she'd tell us: 'You will fold your clothes nicely on a chair. In the morning when you leave, your desk will be empty, clean; everything will be in the drawers and you will fold your pajamas and put your slippers under the bed.' And all that despite the fact that we had two maids! This helped me very much later. I went to the camp and everything seemed easy. I went to serve in the army and didn't have a problem.

In the 1920s and 1930s, I didn't hear any comments about immigrants. On the contrary, many were commenting on how much they were suffering. They came barefoot, they had lost everything. My mother and father spoke about them only when they were mentioning how much they were suffering.

There were refugees in the social circle of my family. All the family of Komninos and Hatzigiannakis were refugees. Komninos used to be an immigrant and minister with the liberals. My father was also a friend of Massimo Arigoni, who was married to the sister of Komninos. They had good relations because Arigoni was also in trade and he was an importer, too.

What the Greeks really didn't like at the time was that the Jews would speak Spanish and French to each other. And they used to say, 'But you are Greeks, why do you speak in another language?' And they couldn't understand that this is how they were brought up. They weren't Greeks; they suddenly became Greeks. They lived in Greece but Thessaloniki was then Turkish, it wasn't Greek, which the others couldn't understand. And the truth is that the Jews didn't know Greek. Since they hadn't been taught the language, how could they have known it? This brought some friction between them at the beginning.

Until 1940 relations between Christians and Jews were a bit tense. Not between the children, because the children that were going to school then started learning Greek anyway. The teachers were proud that the Jews were learning Greek. Then they started getting jealous because they would learn Greek better than the Christians. However, most of the tension was created by the generation of my parents. I could feel it. Many times on the tram I could hear two men speaking to each other in French and someone saying to them, 'Why are you speaking in French? Aren't you Greek?

You couldn't make them understand that when they grew up this wasn't Greece. My father spoke about incidents like that with my mother. There was a time when anti-Semitism grew, especially here in Thessaloniki. Not so much in other places in Greece, but mostly here in Thessaloniki. When the events took place. When Metaxas 32 came, everything stopped.

After the Campbell events 33 the only feeling left was fear. There were the Tria Epsilon - 3E 34. But we didn't connect the 3E with the immigrants. We knew that they were a right wing nationalistic group. The articles in the paper 'Makedonia' also made a very bad impression. They would often publish in their main article something against the Jews. But the issue was political. All the refugees were supporting Venizelos. They knew that 80 percent of the Jews were voting for Tsaldaris, so 'Makedonia' had political reasons why they were turning against the Jews.

In fact, there was a journalist, N. Fardis 35, who wrote: 'Why do we let the Jews govern us?' Because you see there were many of us, and we all voted the same. There were also some who were voting for Venizelos, for example Mari's grandfather, Abram Benveniste, strongly believed in Venizelos, and he had a picture of him in the house. But they were only a few. After the war there was a different movement and many went towards the liberals. I was among them.

In our family they would speak about the articles that the paper 'Makedonia' published. And they would get upset. The newspapers that my father used to buy, 'Le Progrès' and 'Indépendent' would comment on it. And when he would read it, we would chat about it. I would buy an issue of 'Makedonia' on purpose, to read what they had written in it. We would talk about it during lunch in the afternoon, because we mainly met our parents at the table. They would say that they had written this and that and they said wasn't correct, because of this and this reason. And we would listen. We mostly listened, we didn't speak much.

However, they would ask us, things like: 'How was school, what did you do today? They knew our friends. Not only did they know our friends, they also knew their families. We never spoke about politics with our friends. We had so much to say about school life. Because with the system that the Lycée had, with the two programs, one in French and one in Greek, we didn't have much time to talk about other things.

There was a time when many of the Jews left Greece to go to Palestine. That was around 1933 to 1934. Especially after the Campbell events took place, many left not only for Palestine but also for France: Paris, Marseilles. Many of the people we knew left. My mother's uncle immigrated to Paris with his whole family. He checked out things there, if he could find a job, and later he did very well indeed.

I don't remember whether they had political conversations with the rest of the family. Politics didn't really interest them at the time. My father used to talk about Palestine. His brother was planning to leave and immigrate there. I don't know if he would have talked about it, if his brother wasn't going to leave. My father didn't want him to leave and he told him so. Thankfully, he didn't come back. My father used to ask him, 'Aren't we fine here?' He loved Thessaloniki. He liked going for walks in Thessaloniki on foot, around our area, which used to be the countryside then, on Kritis Street and the cafés in Nea Elvetia. They would walk around the area where the Allatini brick factory was.

My mother was born in 1901 in Thessaloniki. She went to the Gattegno school, I think, or to the Alliance, or both. Maybe she went first to the Alliance and later to the Gattegno. She went to elementary and secondary school for twelve years. Maybe high school was fewer years back then - I don't know if it was six years then or three. She knew Ladino, French and Greek very well. She spoke French very well. She learned Greek by practicing it. Maybe they did learn some Greek at school.

I remember that we always had Greek maids. I think that their fathers trusted the Jewish housewives very much, more so than the Christian ones, for their girls to become maids. They trusted them in the sense that they wouldn't let them take the wrong direction, as we had very strict principles and they were treated fairly.

Mari says that Adina was her Jewish name; I thought that Adina was more of an Italian name. Anyway, there were many called 'Adina' in the family, because an aunt called Adina had died. The first brother of my maternal grandmother, Gattegno, had lost his first wife, whose name was Adina, and since then three or four girls that were born were named after her.

My maternal grandfather Saltiel was a Spanish citizen. My mother was Greek, but she had Spanish citizenship. When she got married to my father, because my father had Greek citizenship, she also became Greek.

My father Simon and my mother Adina got married around 1921 or 1922. A mutual friend had introduced them - he was a Jew and he wasn't from Thessaloniki. He was a refugee from Austria or Poland, I think. He was a German teacher in a school. And when he introduced them, a great love developed. They wrote letters to each other for a whole year. Despite the fact that they were living in the same city. I remember Mother having a big bunch of letters wrapped up with a nice ribbon that she would guard at all times, and these were the letters that my father had written to her before they got engaged.

They got engaged and a few months later they got married. At the time my father had built our house on Papakyriazi Street. He let his parents live there for a few years and later, when he had children, he told them that he wanted the house for himself to live in, and rented them a nice house.

My mother never worked apart from doing the housework. But at the beginning, because her mother had died, and before my grandfather got married again, she took care of her two sisters, who were younger than her. She brought them up. My mother loved her husband very much. I think that she loved her husband first and her kids after. Our sister Rosa, who was the youngest one in the family, was her weakness and this is why she didn't want her to leave with me when I left.

My mother had psychological problems and that's why a couple of times she got depressed. One time they left us at Grandmother's house and Father took her to a sanatorium in Switzerland. They stayed there for about twenty days, so she would recover a little bit.

From what I have heard, she was a very beautiful woman. I remember her, but I also remember what they used to say in the neighborhood. She was very shy. She wasn't a snob, she didn't show off, or move about. My mother was very modest. Modesty is the perfect word to describe her, and she was also a very good soul. She was very hospitable. She helped all the girls that were working in the house. We had two girls in the house. They regarded her as their own mother. She wouldn't let us ask them even for a glass of water. We had to do everything by ourselves.

The girls would do everything in the house, but they never cooked. My mother cooked. I don't know why, she didn't trust others with the cooking. The house was always tidy. Everything was in place and clean. And they didn't have any machines then for washing, everything was done by hand. When we had only one maid, when we grew up, a woman would come and help her with the laundry, and they would hang all the clean laundry in the garden.

Mainly Christians lived in the neighborhood. We didn't have Jewish neighbors. It was a wealthy area. It was full of detached houses of one or two stories, with very nice gardens, and they would be very competitive about who had the prettiest flowers. Three or four houses would have the same gardener, Charito.

We had really good relationships with the neighbors, with all the Greeks of the neighborhood. Their financial situation was about the same as ours, maybe slightly lower. We had really good relations with the family of Germanos, who also spoke French. It was an Athenian family, very aristocratic. Nikolaos Germanos was the one who founded the Thessaloniki International Trade Fair 36. I remember the first time that the Fair opened, the manager, Nikolaos Germanos, took along Mother and Father in the taxi. He went to the inauguration of the Fair in a taxi! His younger daughter, Alexandra, loved my mother very much and she would come around the house very often.

My father used to get up at 6 in the morning. I remember he would wake up and go around the maids' rooms and knock on the door and wake them up. My father was very careful with his personal hygiene. He would take a shower every morning. In most of the houses, the tradition was to have a good wash every Friday. On Fridays they would shower, and then, with the couples being clean, they would make love.

In the bathroom we had a water heater that worked with wood. The good thing was that when the water would get warm, the whole room would get warm, too. The maid would prepare the wood for the water heater the night before. When my father got up, he would light a match and light the spills. We would take many spills from the shop, because all the goods would come in wooden boxes and we used to distribute the spills to several people. We all used to take our bath. We would finish our homework and we would have a shower. But we would change underwear only once a week, on Fridays. The laundry woman came once a month, and by then there was a lot of washing piled up.

My father would have his shower and shave every morning and he would later leave the house. My mother would get up around six thirty or seven and they would have coffee together. They would always have coffee together and specifically café au lait. My father used to drink his coffee, eat a toast with it, and leave for work.

Mother stayed at home and first thing she would take care of us because we had to leave for school. Later she would cook and do the household chores. She would cook things that we eat today, like spaghetti or bean soup. But the food used to be heavier than it is today. For example the bean soup was not like it is served today. It was a thick stew with sausages. It was a custom to eat bean soup every Friday and a pie. You can imagine how our stomach would react to that.

My mother was a great cook and everyone in the family would say, 'Come to eat at Adina's, the food will be great.' Adina used to cook a lot of Sephardic dishes, just like Grandmother Mathilde and Grandmother Rachel did. They used to cook the way that they had learned from their mothers. She also tried new recipes. She had a book to learn new dishes, a so-called 'Tselemente' - a cook book. And she also made many other things like marmalades, sweets and all the rest. She also made pickles. They would prepare the pickles in the house at the time; they would make tomato sauce, sweets, marmalades - all home-made. That's why I keep mentioning that there was so much to do in the house. I wonder how she could manage with all these chores!

In the afternoon, the whole family would eat together. In the evening Mother would sit with us, or a teacher would come and help us with our homework. And we would have a snack in the evening, because back then we used to go to school in the morning and the evening. At elementary school we had classes only in the morning, but in high school we had classes both in the morning and in the evening. We would go around 8 in the morning until around 12 or 1, and would return around 3 or 4 o'clock and finish at 5pm. We didn't have much time left for our homework. Sometimes we would stay up till really late.

My mother read in the evening. It was the only time that she could read. Or a friend of hers would come and visit. There was the Germanos family and there were also the relatives. She would go and visit them and they would come and visit us, too. And our sister Lily, who also lived nearby, she would come very often. In fact, two months after my sister was born, Lily gave birth to her daughter. And they were both named Rosa. And because my mother didn't have a lot of milk and she did, I remember my aunt breast- feeding both babies. One baby was hers and the other one was our sister.

I don't know whether she had friends from school, maybe she did. She would see them every so often. We were then using the phone only if there was an emergency or something really important, we never used to pick up the phone to have a conversation, never. She had some close friends. One was Mrs. Hassid and she had a sister, who was called Covo. They were friends since school. They lived quite close to our house. The other one had children. Sometimes the couples would go out together. They would go to the countryside then. After Martiou Street it was all fields. They would go all the way to Elvetia.

My mother was a member of the children's asylum 37. She was also a member of Merimna 38 and 'Melissa.' They would come often to collect the subscriptions. They would also come from the Christian old men's home, the Hariseio 39. An old guy would come by, with a metal box, and we would put the money straight in the box. He would come every now and again.

We also contributed to the Matanot 40, which gave meals to the poor. She would go to the distribution very often. The distributions would take place at Fleming Street, where the Jewish school is today. But there were also distributions further away at the '151' neighborhood 41. She never went to the one that was at the Baron Hirsch, because it was very far away from the house. She helped with the serving of the food and the cooking. But that was after we had grown up a bit, after 1936. When we were younger she didn't have any free time left for this.

In fact, during the occupation, my mother used to cook and give meals to the children. At the Matanot she was taking part for reasons of charity, not from a religious point of view. And Matanot wasn't a religious organization anyway. It belonged to the Community and its main objective was to help the poor. She felt that she ought to offer her help. And she would also help many around the neighborhood, without saying anything about it. Not only Jewish people, for most of our neighbors weren't Jews anyway.

She would mention the children that were poor. She used to say, 'What, you don't eat your food?! You should go out and see how many children are starving. It's a shame to leave your food.' It was a rule, not to leave anything on the plate. If we would leave something on the plate that we didn't like, she would bring it out again in the evening, so we would eat it then. In other words, she didn't want to bring us up as spoiled children. My father was very modest, although he was very rich at the time. But he also didn't want us to behave as if we were wealthy or to believe that we were rich.

My mother went and had her dresses made at the best dressmakers in the city. She looked modest but had great taste. She looked after herself. She was very neat and very clean, and never, even early in the morning, would she get up with the 'penoire' [nightie] and such things. She had to be well dressed and well combed. She would make sure to put on only a bit of make- up. Sometimes she would criticize other women from the neighborhood that were a bit, well, let's say crazier.

If Father would bring the newspaper, my mother would have a look at it. 'Illustration' had some columns for women, she would read those. She would buy 'Marie Claire.' At that time 'Marie Claire' was being published only in French. And she would also buy another magazine that was called 'La Mode Pratique.' This magazine showed you how to sew and had ready patterns to use in it. My mother used to sew a lot and made things on her own. Mostly she knitted, and didn't sew, and she also made embroideries. She would knit us whole jumpers. After dinner in the evening, she would sit with my father and chat with him while she was knitting. They went to bed around -10.30 or 11 o'clock at the latest.

We were among the first houses to get a radio and we listened to it a lot. It's a bit like with television today, we couldn't help listening to the radio. We would switch to all the different frequencies and listen to various stations, because we knew both French and English. After dinner we would sit and listen to the radio and to music.

My parents really liked to listen to music; we also had a gramophone. We had a gramophone that was a piece of furniture, not like the ones that have a loud hailer. They listened to classical music. My father really liked the Greek songs, too. All these songs like 'Two seductive eyes' and 'Yaf youf, I don't want you anymore.' But they also liked classical music. Sometimes they would go to a concert. When there was a good one, they would go. At the time there was Loris Margaritis [Greek violinist, who had studied abroad, and was one of the most prominent musicians in Thessaloniki in the interwar period.], the Margaritis couple. He was married to a Jewish girl from Vienna, Mrs. Margariti. They used to give good concerts.

My mother played the piano. But she played very rarely. Aunt Lily knew how to play, too. The girls of well-to-do families, at the time, had to learn the piano. And Grandfather had all three daughters learn how to play the piano, so they would be regarded as good future brides. There were middlemen then, who were called 'middlemen for brides,' who would arrange to get a percentage of the dowry, in order to arrange the wedding. They would come to the father and say, 'I have a good guy.' They would go to the other father and say, 'I have a good girl, she went to school there and there and she knows how to play the piano.' Or: 'She knows how to play the violin.' Daisy played the violin; she studied for many years with a private teacher who taught her at home.

My mother was taking piano classes before she got married to my father. Afterwards she would play every now and again. But I don't think that she continued to take lessons afterwards. She used to have a piano teacher who was Italian, her name was Beatrice. She lived in some hut on Vasilissis Olgas Street, right opposite Alexander the Great, there were some grounds there where they had put up these huts. The Community had probably put them there. She was an old maid. It struck me that she had a beard. With Beatrice they remained friends and they would invite her over to the house and have her join us for dinner.

The customs and the mores were completely different then. There was a lot of compassion. The whole neighborhood knew each other. We knew everyone that lived in the neighborhood. When one left the house to go wherever, to work or to school, he would say hello to so many people. Even the conductors on the tram knew us; they would see us four times a day.

We didn't have any religious objects in the house, and we didn't say any prayers. Only on religious holidays we would go to the synagogue. My mother never went to the synagogue. She would fast, but she wouldn't go to the synagogue. She bought kosher meat, but we didn't have separate plates etc. They were brought up in the French manner, which suggested that religion is a matter of conscience; they had very good principles.

My mother used to tell us stories about the Great Fire. How it happened, what happened after and how they all gathered. They went through two or three very difficult years, because there weren't enough habitable houses. We spoke about the Great Fire with Grandmother Saltiel, too. She was telling us how they lived, all gathered in one house. The Great Fire was something to talk about because it was a big thing.

Something that never happened in our family was to talk openly about sex, as if it didn't exist at all. I had a complaint about that because we grew up without knowing anything. About the condoms, that we ought to be careful, etc.; they didn't tell us one thing. I don't think that there were other families that spoke about things like that either, it was a big taboo. And that kind of harmed us because later, when we grew up, we still didn't know how these things worked. When I went to South Africa and saw the freedom that they had there, I couldn't believe it.

My mother didn't speak much about the Community. They talked about Nazism, when it started; they talked a lot about it.

I remember when the Campbell events took place. I still remember watching the flames from my house, even though they were so far away. We had a neighbor who was a policeman, and his name was Kalohristianakis. He was an acquaintance and he had told us not to worry, and he had given us some whistles and said, in case anything happened we should blow them and the gendarme guarding the neighborhood would come.

After the Campbell events my parents were wondering about the facts. I cannot say that we restricted ourselves in any way, because the government took measurements straight away then. Then Metaxas came and everything stopped, because no one dared joke with Metaxas. We used to say that Metaxas was the ice bucket; he had put things on ice.

My younger sister was called Rosa. My first grandmother, who was called Rosa, had died and since then all the girls were named after her. My sister was born in 1929. Because she was the youngest one in the family, my brother and I had her under our protection. I was seven years older than her. After she was born, she first slept in our parents' room. Our parents also had some weakness for her, just like the youngest in a family are always treated. She was a very nice, very kind girl. A neighbor of ours, Tahiaos, who lived close to us and saw her at school, was somewhat in love with her. Whenever he sees me now, he says, 'Oh this Rosa, your sister, oh this Rosa, your sister.' He always says that.

She knew French very well, and a little of Judeo-Spanish. She knew perfect Greek, for one, because she had Christian friends, and for the other, because she also learned it at school. She was very good at writing essays. We, the children, would speak in both French and Greek with each other. We would start talking in French, continue in Greek and in the end we would finish up with Spanish. We spoke less Spanish, but we did speak it with our grandfathers. Our mother tongue was both French and Greek. We learned both languages at the same time. We would never start a conversation and speak only in one language. It was the same with our friends.

Rosa went to elementary and secondary school at Schina's. She didn't go to the Mission Laique. I don't see any reason why she should have changed school. It was near the house, and she had learned French already at home. Anyway by that time, in 1942, France had fallen and the Mission Laique didn't exist. There were only Greek schools around. Rosa's friends were from her school. She had Jewish and Christian friends. At Schina's there were many Jewish students because it was a Jewish neighborhood.

Rosa had her own room in the house. I shared one with my brother. My parents had one room, and the maids had the other one. The houses used to be built like this: the lounge in the middle and the bedrooms around, dinning room and kitchen separate. The cookers used to work with coal. There was no electricity, we cooked with charcoal.

Rosa used to go to the movies with my parents or with her friends. Or she would go with the maid. If there was a children's film on, the maid would take her to watch it. She was such a coquette when she was little. She liked being dressed nicely. My mother was strict in that regard. One time when she went to the movies she wore a nice dress and my mother got very angry and told her to take it off and wear something simpler. She would say, 'You should be ashamed, just because you will go to the cinema today, you want to dress up?!' This happened when she was still very young, around six or seven years old. Everyone wanted things to be simple, not pretend that you are someone special. And both my father and mother were very low profile.

Mother used to take Rosa with her to do the shopping. She would give her a hand with carrying the groceries. Before the occupation the grocery boy would come by the house and ask you what you wanted, and he would deliver what you had ordered. Sometimes they used to go shopping downtown to get some shoes or a dress. They would go to the market on the tram. Rosa had dolls she played with, books she read, she also painted or would go around to the neighbors. She didn't learn any musical instrument. Apart from the fact that we no longer had a piano, because the Germans had taken it, when she was little, they had tried a couple of times and she didn't really like it. She wasn't a music lover.

I was born at home. Even my sister, who was born seven years later, she too was born at home. We had the sister of an uncle of mine who was a midwife and she would help in every birth to deliver the baby. That was her job, she was a midwife. Her name was Karolina. She was well known in the Jewish Community because she could help to deliver the baby in the house. They used to boil a lot of water and have clean sheets and deliver the new born. They usually didn't have any complications, or very rarely.

At the birth only women would be in the room, the men were never in there. The close relatives would be in the room, her mother, her sister or her aunt, three or four ready to help at any time. That's what Grandmother Mathilde used to tell me. I remember when my sister Rosa was born. My brother and I were downstairs and we could hear them going up and down to the kitchen to get pots of boiling water. They used to say that for the next forty days the mother and baby shouldn't leave the house but this wasn't always kept. Some people kept it and some didn't.

They were breastfeeding. My mother did. They would breastfeed the baby from the beginning until they ran out of milk. It was a widespread custom, when the milk would finish, they would hire a woman to breastfeed the baby. It didn't matter if she was Christian or Jewish, a friend or an acquaintance.

I know that many Christians were hiring Jewish women to breastfeed their babies. Even at the Agios Stylianos Foundling Hospital 42 they had Jewish girls that went and breastfed the babies who needed it. They were poor and as any other service they would do this, too. They had started to add concentrated milk for babies, like Nounou. And they also had fruit cream, Farin Lacte, which was a kind of flour, enriched with vitamins and milk and they would add water to it, they would warm it up, and give it to the baby with a dummy.

The boys would have their circumcision within the first week of birth. And the doctors had to check and make sure that the boy is strong and can go through the procedure. The surgeon was Jewish; he was like a special doctor, specialized in circumcisions, and he was the one that also slaughtered the animals, so that the meat would be kosher.

So a specialist would perform the circumcision. He wasn't a rabbi, but he was probably of the clergy, because he was learning things. Sometimes it would be the rabbi himself, and he had the special tool, it was a small and very sharp knife.

After the circumcision, a big celebration would follow. The circumcision I watched was my cousin Tori's, my aunt Lily's son. It seemed to me very strange: a baby there screaming and shouting. The circumcision was a very festive celebration.

Some of the rich would even hire bands to play music in the house, to play the violin. The mother would sit on the bed and the relatives would come by to congratulate her. And after the circumcision they would take the baby back to his mother. During the circumcision someone was holding the baby; it was usually the grandfather or the father. In Spanish he was called 'kitador.' That means: he who takes out the baby.

The procedure would be done really well and really quickly. In the beginning they would get the baby dizzy with a bit of wine, but of course when they cut, he would scream. The whole ceremony would last a whole morning, about three or four hours. Friends and relatives would come around and congratulate the family. It was a very joyous event.

Until I went to school my mother took care of me at home. At home we used to have a woman who was like a teacher, a governess, as we used to call her. She used to come at around ten in the morning and leave at night. We had one for two years; others had one for more years than we did.

I remember, for a couple of years we had a maid who was very poor. Her name was Smeralda. She knew only Spanish. That was when we were a bit older, seven or eight years old, in the first grades of elementary school. She used to take us out for walks, to her fiancé's workshop that had a loom.

That really impressed me. She never played with us. I would play with my brother and she would keep an eye on us. Later on, when we grew up, he was coming around the house and told her, 'Take the kids and go to the school that is nearby.'

We went to the Roi Georges school, where the High School at Kriezotou stands today, by the coast. It was an old building that was called Roi Georges because it served as the residency of King George when he came to Thessaloniki [after the First Balkan War].

We grew up learning three languages. Our maids were usually Greek, and they were the ones that we would speak Greek with. We spoke French to our parents and they spoke Spanish to each other. With Grandmother and Grandfather we spoke Spanish. With both the grandfathers, but Grandfather Daniel also knew French. Not well, but he spoke it. While my paternal grandfather Haim didn't know French at all. We mostly spoke in French. I started developing my Greek when I went to elementary school.

You cannot imagine how many Greeks, Christians, spoke Ladino better than me! They couldn't work in trade if they didn't. Even the high society spoke Ladino, not only the employees, but also the shop owners.

Our mother was strict. I used to fight with my brother when we were young, because we were jealous of each other. If Mother came out, she wouldn't ask whose fault it was, she would give us both a couple of slaps and that was it, we would sit down and be calm.

She was very tender when we were younger. And we felt great love for both our father and our mother. Our father used to take us on his lap and play with us. Even though he came back so late from work, he would play with us for a little while. We didn't see Father a lot.

He would leave at 7.30am, come back at 1pm, leave at 3pm and come back around 8.30pm. We weren't so much in contact with him. With Mother we were closer. But also Mother would go out in the evening quite often and leave us with our teacher.

I used to treat my mother and father exactly the same way. My father was a bit softer with us because he spent less time with us. Mother was stricter. At the time we had a room in the house where we would spend most of the day, and the lounge where one would receive people.

I shared a room with my brother. We played in our room. Our room faced the north side and it was quite cold. When we were in bed at night and the Vardaris [northern wind stemming from the river Axios or Vardaris] would blow, we could hear the wind whistling and would hide under our blankets.

When my mother had things to do in the kitchen, we would play in our room. We didn't have many toys then. We had some books and we had started to read. But we didn't have many toys. Later, when we grew up we had a Meccano set, which was a very interesting toy.

We would go and spend time in the garden with our cousins. When we were around ten years old, our life was happening in the garden. There was a basement in the garden, quite big, where the gardener used to store his tools and the pots that he didn't want to leave outside during the winter. We kind of took over this place and turned it into our own spot, like our room, and we put boxes there with newspapers and pillows on top of them. And mother was shouting at us, because we had taken the pillows and we had transformed the basement to a small house. My cousin Renée used to come down, from the first floor and we would take the gardener's trolley and play.

• School years

I went to school when I was seven years old. But when I went, I already knew how to read. I knew the Latin alphabet and the numbers; my grandmother had taught me. I don't remember my mother ever sitting down to teach me.

At the French school my parents were paying fees both for our elementary and secondary schooling. When we had Smeralda she used to take us to school. Or my mother would take us. It was very close to the house, at the same bus stop.

We would just walk down Papakyriazi Street, cross the road, and the garden of the school would be right opposite. I went to school with my brother. We started going to school together; I don't remember ever going on my own. I went to the first class and he went to the nursery.

The school was a 'préparatoire,' which means preparatory and which is what we now call elementary school. I went there until the third grade. We had small tables with small chairs where we would all sit. We had a French teacher who was specialized in small children. I remember her, her name was Madame Doze. She was very competent with young children. How she managed to hold our interest and teach us things in there for so many hours, I don't know.

All the lessons were being held in French. There were about twenty of us in a class, boys and girls, and we had the same teacher for all the different subjects. In the beginning when we were all little and until the third grade, we would have classes from 9 in the morning until 12 or 1 in the afternoon, or something like that, I don't remember the exact time schedule.

We would have classes on many different subjects, as they do in elementary schools. To learn the language, the letters and the alphabet, they would ask us to write whole pages with 'a' or 'b', or numbers. They didn't teach us Judeo-Spanish at all.

The French school wasn't a religious one. There was no Hebrew or religion being taught. We didn't have a morning prayer; the first time that we had a morning prayer was when I went to Schina's School. Most of my classmates were Jews. Out of the twenty students, only four or five were not Jews.

We didn't celebrate any national holidays except 14th July, which was a French national holiday and we didn't have classes then. [Bastille Day, the French national holiday, commemorates the storming of the Bastille, which took place on 14 July 1789 and marked the beginning of the French Revolution.]

I remember we also celebrated the day of the end of the war, which was on 11th November, I think. [The armistice treaty between the Allies and Germany was signed on 11th November 1918, and marked the end of World War I on the Western Front.] We celebrated that at school. They would gather us all together, and some children would have poems to deliver.

I really disliked poems, because I couldn't remember them. We celebrated 25th March [both a Greek national (revolution against the Turks) and religious holiday (Annunciation)], and we would put up flags. I don't remember celebrating Saint Demetrios Day [the patron saint of Thessaloniki, celebrated on 26th October].

When I finished the third grade, this law came out, that all children had to have an elementary school certificate from a Greek School. Only children of foreign citizens were able to go to a school that wasn't Greek. So in the fourth grade I changed schools and went to Schina's, which was very near my house. And my brother and I went to school on our own because we no longer had to cross the main road, and we went through the small streets to get there.

There were many Jews there, too. Mrs. Schina had many students that were Jewish, girls and boys. Because we were weaker than the rest of the students, our teacher would come home in the evening and give us private lessons in order to reach the level of the rest of the class. Throughout the fourth grade, we had help from Mrs. Mary.

Her father was one of the partners that owned the Olympos-Naoussa restaurant. Her house was on Romanou Street, close to the White Tower, I remember on her name-day we went around to congratulate her.

In elementary school we wore uniforms. We all wore a blue apron with a white collar that had the initials P.P. written on it, which stood for 'Protypon Parthenagogeion' [model girl's school]. Even though there were boys, too. The building had two floors, and each class had a name like 'the little sparrows,' 'the little swallows,' etc.

In our class we were about thirty or thirty-five students, boys and girls mixed, and we would sit at the desks two or three together, mixed. Our desks had either two or three seats. Most of the students were Christians. I didn't make any friends in this elementary school. Later on, in high school, I made some friends. In the fifth grade they elected me as chief of the class.

After Mrs. Mary, in the fifth and sixth grade, we had Mr. Dourgouti and Mrs. Evridiki. We had two teachers because we were taught more subjects by then. I remember that Mrs. Evridiki was a spinster and she was very strict. She used to beat us with a ruler.

Mr. Dourgoutis was someone that I will never forget. He was an amazing teacher and he had great communicative skills. When he gave the lesson, he would speak and we would all listen. He would write a couple of things on the blackboard that we copied in our notebooks. Based on that, we would read at home, and the next day we would go to the class and he would ask us questions.

He was teaching us many different subjects, but mostly mathematics, physics and chemistry. He also taught the class of gymnastics. He taught gymnastics to all grades. When we would go to a parade, he would be the leader of the parade, the one that gives the signs. I think that he was the only male teacher in this elementary school, the rest of them were women.

We would get tired having his class. He would tire us because we paid so much attention. And he would make us write and write. I learned very good spelling then. When I finished elementary school I could spell very well. I learned spelling from Mr. Dourgoutis and I cannot stand reading texts that have spelling mistakes. All the kids respected him and no-one dared to say a word.

He had taken part in the Smyrna Campaign 43, he was an old officer. And many times he would narrate stories from the expedition in class, without wasting too much time from the lesson, just as a small break. Since he was the one that was narrating, we would be upset that Greece lost. But he never spoke about retreat; he only spoke about forward march.

Many years later, when I was an adult, completely out of chance, he came and rented a house opposite ours on Kritis Street, and he would see me. In fact he had found out that there was a Jewish old people's home and he used to tell me, 'Mico, would it be possible to put me in the Jewish old people's home, too? After all, I raised so many Jews.'

We would get to school around 8.30 or 9 o'clock in the morning. First we had the morning prayer. We listened, and sometimes we said the prayer, too. But we never crossed ourselves. None of the children had a problem with that. I remember the Lord's Prayer and other prayers. That really didn't upset me at all. We had one break, every hour. We would go down to the school yard and play 'aiyuto, tchilica chomaca, quinacka,' we would exchange, 'you take the red and I'll take the blue.' We played football with stones but also with a ball. The boys and the girls used to play separately.

At Schina's school, when we were a bit older, the teacher would hit us. Dourgoutis was the one that would punish one of us for everyone: 'hold out your hand.' We were very naughty, and if you bothered others in the class, he would tell you, 'Get out of the class!'

And the worst thing ever was to take you to the principal's office, to Mrs. Schina. 'Let's go to the head office.' That was it... Thankfully, it never happened to me. My brother and I were quieter; we didn't have to go through things like that.

At the Greek school, there was a class of Religion. I remember that we had that hour off in the first years. There were other classrooms that were empty and one could go there and read and write one's homework, but we weren't allowed to leave the school. They said that whoever wanted to stay in class and listen, could do so, and I did. Why not? I didn't do anything bad. We asked at home, should we sit and listen to the lesson? They told me, 'yes, why not?' Because there were many Jews in the school, Mrs. Schina later got us a Hebrew teacher. The teacher was Jewish. She would teach us Hebrew letters but not religion and the lesson was in Greek. This happened when I was nearly finishing school.

I liked mathematics and physics the most. We also had Greek history. I liked history. We started from mythology and went through many different periods of history. In the third and fourth grade we had mythology. Then we did the Byzantium and later the Greek Revolution. What I didn't like so much was Byzantium. All these stories about Vassileios II. and the rest of it. [Editor's note: The interviewee is referring to Basil II, a Byzantine emperor from the Macedonian dynasty who reigned from 10 976 to 1025 and was also known as the Bulgar-slayer.]

The Revolution really impressed me. The fact that they wanted to be liberated was really very interesting. I imagined the Turks like killers, all of them, especially when they were telling the stories of Karaiskakis 44 and Rigas Feraios 45. I never thought of learning the history of the Jews in Greece, because for us it was something taken for granted. The Jews had been there for over 500 years.

We would celebrate all the national holidays. In elementary school we didn't go to the parades, but we still celebrated. In the evening they would gather us and someone would speak about the Revolution and the Liberation of Thessaloniki. And we read poems. We all took part in the celebrations. The most important thing for us at the time was that we didn't have school that day. That's what we liked most.

A parade would take place in the city. There would be both a student and a military parade. I remember going a couple of times. We had some relatives that lived on the road where the parade took place. We would go to their house and carry flags. I think it was on Tsimiski and Vasilissis Olgas Street [two of the main roads of the interwar period in Thessaloniki].

The parade didn't really impress me. The army was different then. I remember, for example, many times military units marching from our house on Kritis Street. After they were gone, the smell was very strong. One could tell that hygienic conditions in the army were really bad. When I went to the French High School I used to take the tram, and we paid less because we had a student card, but we could only go to the second wagon, not the first. You would get in the wagon and it stank. Our parents used to tell us to be careful, when we get in the wagon not to sit close to a soldier because we might catch flees. And we did catch them a few times.

We knew that in the downgraded areas of Thessaloniki like '151' or 'Reggie' there was great poverty. For example, we had a woman that would come when we had to do the laundry. She would come on foot from Vardari to our house, which was four stops. She would start walking around 6 o'clock in order to be at our house at 7.30. She would work all day and walk back home again, so she wouldn't have to pay for the tram. And that was common.

To the settlement No. '6' 46, which was near our house, I used to go sometimes because we knew maids that lived there. I could see how they lived there, four or five people in one room, in shanties. Those were shanties of the Allies. That's why it was called number six. The women would sit outside. Their sole entertainment was when they didn't have work to sit outside and chat with their neighbors.

My parents never used to tell us to be careful when we went there, or not to go there. It wasn't anything harmful. We never heard of anything happening there. On the contrary, they used to tell us, 'Wherever you can help, you should.' Many people would come around our house. They would say, 'I'm in great need, I don't have milk for my baby' And other such things.

The religious ceremonies were the bar mitzvahs and the weddings. The girls didn't have a bat mitzvah as they do today. I remember my bar mitzvah. I was thirteen years old. As soon as you are thirteen you can have your bar mitzvah. Some do it later. I remember I had a teacher from the time when I turned eleven and he would come to our house for two or thee hours a week. He first taught me the Hebrew alphabet and later what I had to read. For every single week out of the 52 weeks of the year, there is a part in the Old Testament that you read. I can still read Hebrew, but I cannot understand it.

I never learned Ladino or the Rashi alphabet 47. Some others learned it. My father knew how to read in Rashi. I wasn't interested in learning it. No one in the family told me to do so. So why should I have done it? It was already out of date. It wasn't even Hebrew. Rashi was being read here in Greece, Bulgaria, and Turkey, where the Sephardic Jews were. The language quickly disappeared, but in the book those that went to the synagogue had to read many parts that were in Rashi, so they read them in Spanish.

I had my bar mitzvah in the Beit Saoul synagogue. The ceremony was like this: you go to the synagogue and read. You read and then you give a small speech. You say: From now on I am an adult Jew. I can participate in the ceremonies and I can be one of the ten men that are needed for a minyan.

You would read, and all the time someone would get up and sit next to you. He would pretend to check whether you were reading correctly and when he would go down, he would give his donation, to honor the family. There would be friends and relatives getting up. First it would be the grandfather, then the father and after them all the rest.

They were donating money to the institutes. The Jewish Community had many different institutes. Usually they would firstly donate money to the synagogue and the rabbi and after that to other organizations of the Community.

The bar mitzvah ceremony took place early in the morning, at the time that the daily ceremony starts. It usually starts just after sunrise, let's say at about 8 o'clock. The bar mitzvah would start around 9. Its duration varied. If there were many people that wanted to get up on the stand, it would last longer.

When there weren't so many that wanted to get up and read, then the rabbi would read faster. But usually after your speech, the rabbi gives a speech and tells you that you should now be a decent human being, as you are now an adult, you should follow your religion, the rules etc. At around 11 or 11.30 the ceremony was over. In my case, it lasted about that long.

Then we went home where we had a meal that the closest relatives attended. And later people would come and visit, with many presents. I remember everyone that came had a present. I then got my first bicycle as a present from my father. I also remember a nice school bag that my uncle Joseph brought me. They used to bring quills. And they also used to bring sweets. They would send flowers to the synagogue or to our home. One of the best presents that I got was the big Meccano. I got the biggest one, number 7. It started from number 1 and it went up to number 7. The number 7 really was a full course of mechanical engineering and it interested me very much.

I also got a small electric motor, with a transformer so that it wouldn't be dangerous, with which you could create movement on anything you made. A common present was the Larousse encyclopedia, which was seven volumes and it was very expensive.

Two or three members from the family would put money together and give you a group present, because these presents were very expensive. My brother still has it. After the war, he found the encyclopedia which they had given him for his bar mitzvah, and he still has it. They would also buy you dictionaries, Greek-French or English-Greek.

And there were a lot of dinners. For two or three days, we would have guests and dinners. These dinners held after a bar mitzvah weren't anything special, anything different. They used to give you sugar plums like they do today at baptisms. My parents were pleased, especially my father.

His friends would come around and his customers. Christians would also come to ceremonies like this. Not many of course, but they would come, at least about ten of them. The ceremonies were completely open, and friends and customers would come to the synagogue, because they would be invited. 'On this day we will celebrate the coming of age - the adulthood -..." You see, they didn't call it a son's bar mitzvah.

I went to a wedding, too. I remember when Aunt Ida got married. I was a bit older then. The wedding didn't take place at the synagogue; it was at the Matanot Laevionim. Matanot means 'presents' and Laevionim 'to the needy,' so presents for the poor.

There was a special room for ceremonies. You would pay and with the money they would maintain the establishment. After a wedding there would usually be a dance. The dance would be at the Matanot, and if the wedding was at the synagogue, the dance could still be at the Matanot. Because it was a very large hall and could accommodate many people. It had an orchestra with a piano and violin. They used to dance the waltz, tango, foxtrot, dances of the time.

The married couples would always go on a honeymoon trip. And many times, in the wagon the loss of virginity would take place. Many used to go to Constantinople [today Istanbul, Turkey] and Vienna and Paris. Those were the favorite destinations.

Uncle Daniel went to Paris after he got married. I remember his wedding, too, because we had a large house and my uncle used to live upstairs and we used to live on the ground floor, and the bride left from our house. She was from Volos and they had brought her to our house. And she left from our house to go to the synagogue where she was going to get married.

From my uncle's wedding I remember that we really liked the sister of our aunt. She was younger than her sister but she still seemed very old to us. She too was very beautiful. There wasn't any difference, like they say now, for example, that at a first class marriage all the lights of the synagogue will be turned on and the large chandeliers, and if it's a second class marriage there would be fewer lights lit. No.

There was only one way and the wedding lasted the same length of time. In the end the rabbi gave the newly-weds wine to drink, and the bride, I think, or the groom that steps on the glass, I cannot remember. It is a quick and very joyful ceremony, and there are many songs.

In order to have a rich wedding and to have a social event, one had to have more flowers. Also, there were many synagogues at the time and depending on the wedding it would take place in a certain synagogue. In other words, not everybody could get married in the Beit Saul synagogue, because it was more expensive. There were smaller synagogues where the ceremony was simpler. What they read was exactly the same, it would take less or more time, it would be identical.

The bride wore a wedding dress, of course. And it would be a great story, how the wedding dress was made. And Father would get a new suit or a tuxedo. The whole family would be restless, to make their dresses and the men's clothes and the rest of it. The bride had a very nice wedding dress and a great flower bouquet that the groom would give her. This wedding dress was white, similar to the Christian wedding dress. And they had small children holding the tail of the wedding dress.

We don't have best men, we have witnesses. They sign, too. They used to say that if the bride was a virgin, then the wedding ring had to be all gold. The rabbi used to show the ring to one of the witnesses and say 'gold ring' no matter if the bride was a virgin or not.

I remember my aunt Daisy's friend, who was very naughty, and would go to the doctor all the time so he would sew her up again, and at some point the doctor tells her, 'What will we do with you, put a zipper and stop.' If they had lost their virginity they had to sew it up, so that on their wedding nights they would appear to be virgins. So they would go to the gynecologist, who would do that. In fact, I can even remember on some occasions that the wedding would take place and the day after there would be a divorce because the bride was not a virgin. And that was a serious reason for a divorce. You can imagine the shame for the girl and her whole family.

I remember two or three occasions like that. The whole society would speak about it. We wouldn't hear of incidents like that in poorer families. But when it was people that we knew: 'Oh God,' the one would say, 'you know so and so that left for the wedding trip on the train? They got back in three days time because the groom said that the bride was not alright.'

The parents would speak between them and we would listen, they didn't hide things like that. Their position varied depending on how close our relationship with them was. If it was people that were close relatives, they would say, 'Oh no, bad and shame has come upon our family.' And depending on the relationship they had they would either take the groom's or the bride's side. They would say, 'He is crusty, so we don't believe him. Maybe this is his chance to say that he has regretted it, or maybe the dowry is not big enough for him.' And things like that.

Anyway, the divorce wasn't an easy thing. I remember one of our employees at the shop, who wanted to divorce his wife. My father got in the middle, took him to his office and talked to him and told him it wasn't right to leave your wife and children, and then took him to his home, and convinced him in the end not to divorce her. He was Jewish, too.

The funerals would be exactly the same as the Christian funerals used to be. At the time the coffin would be carried by horses. Four to six horses would be up the front and draw the coffin. They also used to dress the horses with something mournful on their heads. The people would follow on foot until the end. They would start the walk from their house and they would all go together. Right behind the hearse the closer family would follow and further back the friends. There were usually many people. I went to Grandfather Alvo's funeral. I went at the back. They wouldn't allow women to be at the burying ceremony. Sometimes women fainted only because of their sorrow.

After the war they would often start from the synagogue, especially in Athens. But here things are very different. As soon as death is certified you contact the funeral office, they come with the hearse, take the dead man and put him in a cooler. Two or three hours before the funeral, they take him out. Before they put him in a coffin, the cleaning of the dead takes place. There are some men and some women that do this job. The men wash the male corps, and the women the female corps. They wash them very well and they rub them with something and in the end they wrap them in a sheet. The dead man is wrapped in a white shroud and put in the coffin.

Then they take him to this venue in the cemetery. The venue is quite small and it doesn't fit many people. Only very close relatives go there, and the people that come to the funeral go and greet the relatives, and some close friends sit there, too. A ceremony is held during which the rabbi reads for not longer than twenty minutes. Then they leave the venue. They take the coffin on their shoulders and move it where the burial will take place, to the grave that has been opened in advance.

Then the burial takes place and the dead is taken out of the coffin. When they place him in the grave the head goes inside a hole and the rest of the body goes on the earth. Before the war, the same thing must have been taking place. I remember going to a funeral before the war, but I don't remember being at the burial.

The old cemetery used to have graves here and there. Now, in the new cemetery, it is not the same, it's completely different. You get the impression that you are in a military cemetery. All the graves are the same; one is not allowed to make a richer grave than others. Here in Thessaloniki, that is, because in Athens it's a different story. They make the graves as they like there. We say that at least in death, there should be no difference. At the old cemetery there were differences.

Death used to be regarded as a much more natural thing than it is today. Due to the fact that they didn't have so many medicines back then as we do today, or as many doctors, it was something much more normal. Deaths rarely would take place in hospitals; they were taking place almost always at home.

I remember members of the family going to the cemetery to visit the graves. There are certain days in our religion when one should go and visit. Until the time that they start to shear the sheep, one shouldn't go, from Passover until then.

I don't remember my father and mother visiting the cemetery. Grandfather Saltiel maybe went to visit his first wife. I didn't hear of anyone else going. Grandfather had moved the grave of his first wife who died very young. When the Germans destroyed the cemetery here, and later gave the land to the university, they assigned a place in Stavroupoli [neighborhood in eastern Thessaloniki], which is the cemetery where we bury the dead down to the present day.

Although a lot of time had passed since her death, my grandfather still loved his first wife very much. The Germans had given them a deadline to move the graves. And Grandfather went and moved her. He also kept a place next to her for his own burial. They were the first graves. It wasn't only Grandfather who did that, many people did. Many were buried in group graves, of three or four or five; they would put them together in one grave and say so on top of the grave.

Thessaloniki was the only place where the Germans destroyed the cemetery. It didn't happen anywhere else. That's why many people had whispered that it was arranged to take place. Because it is strange that it didn't happen anywhere else. They did what they did, but they were all the same afraid of graves and the dead.

I graduated from elementary school and then went to high school. The school was called Mission Laique Francaise 48, or the Lycée, as they used to call it. They had two buildings. One building was on Stratou Avenue and Evzonon Street, in the corner. This was the mixed school. There was another building that was a girl's school only. They didn't do their 'Baccalaureate' there; they would go for the 'Brevet.' The 'brevet élémentaire' is a diploma that they used to give you when you finished the third grade of high school. I went to that school in the same building that is still there today, on Stratou Avenue and Evzonon Street.

My father preferred to send us to the Mission Laique because we mostly spoke French at home. A French spirit was prevailing in the house. So it was no question where we would go. To the Lycée, of course. And obviously they regarded it as the best because we would get the Baccalaureate diploma. The second Baccalaureate was a ticket with much potential. Those who had the second Baccalaureate would get into university without taking exams.

I took the classical direction, but there was also a business direction that lasted less time. It was for three years and they would teach you business law and accounting, how to keep your books right and things like that. I didn't go to the business school because my father wanted me to go to university. With the business diploma you couldn't get into university. My father wanted to send me to university in order for me to become an engineer at the factory we owned.

At the Lycee schooling lasted six years. And then you would take the Baccalaureate diploma. Those who wanted to carry on would study for the second Baccalaureate. And at the end of each year, one would take exams in front of a committee.

The committee didn't have any teachers from school, it was completely neutral. All the teachers were foreign, they would either come from France, and they would call them examiners, or they would hire them. One of the ones that asked us the questions in the oral examination of mathematics, Mr. Teloglou, was a manager in an electric company. He would examine us in mathematics and physics. They did that so that you would acquire a diploma without any favoritism, fairly. That's why they hired people that had nothing to do with the school; you didn't know them at all.

The Lycée was a very good school. We studied all the French subjects and all the Greek ones. The others thought that it was a very good school. But it also had competition. The Frères 49 were regarded as a very good school, too. And especially in mathematics and in physics they were regarded as a great school. I don't think that the Alliance existed at the time; I don't remember hearing of it. But there were so many French schools; there was the Gattegno School and the Altcheh School. There were four or five schools that were Italian. There was the German school 50 and later the American school 51 opened, too. There were so many different schools that I don't know if Alliance would have had much of a chance to survive, especially because it was regarded as slightly more religious. All these schools were very good. The German school was very strong, and it had a lot of discipline.

We were about 25 to 30 children in a class, mostly Jews. Some would come from Albania. The children that came from Albania, lived on the school grounds, I remember. There were about 15 to 20 boarders.

The Lycée had mostly boys, as there was another building that was for girls only. It was something like 60 percent boys and 40 percent girls. Some of the girls were among the top students. I have to admit that I was always coming third or fourth and the first and second would be girls. My brother always came first. He was great.

All the children were middle class, children of traders, manufacturers, commercial representatives. I remember many classmates of mine. One I still have a close relationship with is Florentin, who now lives in Israel, in Tel Aviv. Another one is Charles Pessah. He was in Barcelona after the war and because he knew Spanish, they took him at the Greek consulate. Another classmate of mine was Vladi Saporta, who now lives in Athens.

We just started coupling with girls. Not anything serious, really, coupling with girls simply meant that we would leave school together and take the tram together, and maybe arrange to meet on a Saturday to go to the cinema. Maybe to hold hands, but nothing else; we were very modest. That's what our parents had taught us. And I think that this was a bad thing. They used to tell us that if you couple with a girl it is a sin and the rest of it; generally this was the spirit. No one would dare to go out on a date and do something, have sexual intercourse with the girl. The best case scenario would be to go to watch a film, sit in the back seats, and maybe touch her a little bit, nothing more than that.

We paid fees at school, pretty high ones. They did have many expenses though. They were also giving scholarships. My relationship with these children, who had scholarships, was not any different, we didn't even know that.

Apart from the teachers, there would also be the 'le surveillant general.' He would give us our student's pass for the tram for which we paid. They used to give us four tickets every day that were dated and were valid only for that day. The one that had one line on it was valid only for the return, not to get there. Two were for the morning and two for the afternoon.

We went to school six days a week and Sunday was a holiday. We had school on Saturdays, too. We didn't have classes on Wednesday and Saturday afternoon. The rest of the days we did. We would go to school at 8 o'clock in the morning. We would have classes until 12 or 1 depending on the schedule of the day. And in the evening we would go around 3 until about 5 or 6. At 6 we would leave from Evzonon to get home and start studying until 9 or 10 at night. Sometimes when I would get dizzy and tired, I would take my bicycle and go for a ride before starting my evening reading.

We had both male and female teachers. In the first grade of high school we had Mme. Moissonier. In the second, we had Mme. Millet, but she didn't teach all the subjects, I think we had a different teacher in literature and mathematics. From the third grade onwards it was all separate.

There was one teacher for each subject. They also had a laboratory, 'the lab,' as they used to call it. The Lycee had a great lab for physics and chemistry. We also had a 'salle des cartes.' We had a classroom that had all the maps, and that's where we used to have our geography class.

Mathematics, physics, chemistry, we were being taught in French. We had French and Greek classes. For example, we studied French literature and Ancient Greek. What the law suggested. The same was the case with history and geography, we would study the geography of France that was of little interest to us, and we would study the geography of Greece, as the law suggested. We had a Greek teacher who taught us Greek and we also had a French teacher who taught us French. So, literature, history and geography we would have in both languages. For your Baccalaureate you had to take the exams in French, and it didn't matter whether you had studied in Thessaloniki or Dijon or in Marseilles. It was exactly the same everywhere and that's why it was so recognized everywhere.

My favorite subjects were always the same. I especially liked physics. I was really interested in electricity, sound, the radiation, the speed of sound. In fact, I had a book by Mr. Hondros, who was a professor at the university in Athens, a physicist. I read it with great interest.

I didn't like geometry. In algebra I was quite good, and I did alright in trigonometry but in geometry I couldn't manage. I didn't like subjects like literature and philology, but I was good at them. I was good at writing essays. We wrote essays in both French and Greek. One bad thing was that in this school we didn't take term exams. We would take an exam on two subjects every week. So apart from all the reading that we had to do daily, we also had to prepare for exams. They would tell us: 'next week you will have the history and mathematics exam and next week the geography.' And this happened in both French and Greek. You can imagine how difficult that was.

They would give us grades at the end of every semester. We had the 'carnet des notes,' where they wrote down all the subjects, in Greek and French. One page was for the French and the other for the Greek. And each teacher would give you a grade. In this little book that they used to give us they also wrote your absences and your conduct evaluation. Our parents would sign the book and we would return it to the school signed.

My parents never came to school. They were satisfied with the grades that I got so there was no reason to do so. My mother used to come to the elementary school. And she spoke with the teacher, but she never came to the high school. They weren't even interested. They trusted us because they saw the grades. I was usually the third or fourth best student in the class. My brother was always the best student. So why should our parents have come to school, really? To ask what?

In elementary school Daisy would come and help us with our reading in French. She mostly taught us grammar. For my Baccalaureate I had someone to help me with mathematics.

In high school I don't remember if we went to parades or not. I think we did. But to raise the flag? No, that didn't happen. Not even in Greek high schools would they raise the flag in the morning back then. The only thing that they had and we didn't, was the morning prayer. It wasn't compulsory to attend religion class. We didn't have this subject. But even the Christians didn't, because it wasn't compulsory in a public school. We had classmates that were Christians at the Lycee. Not many, around three or four. I remember we had a reservist officer that used to come to class. He was called 'auditeur,' listener. He would come to the classes and listen but he didn't take exams. He simply came out of interest.

We didn't have a uniform. Not even hats, which were compulsory in Greek high schools then. In Greek high school they would cut your hair and you had to wear a cap. We were dressed normally. It was the time that golf was very popular and we wore golf style trousers. I think that in the first and second grade we still wore shorts with a shirt and a jumper. I don't remember wearing a tie at school. The clothes that I wore at school were chosen by my mother.

We had two pairs of shoes, one for every day use and one for going out. Many times we couldn't find shoes that fitted well, we ordered them. And for some reason, they would always make them smaller and our feet would hurt.

The girls paid great attention to their dressing. We had two or three lovely girls at school. Everyone wanted to approach them. I didn't have any relationships at school. With girls I mean. They didn't really attract me, and the ones that did attract me were all taken anyway.

I had friends. I had some very close friends. We were a company of five. One was Maurice Errera, who was an orphan on the father's side. He lived close to Faliro, near the school. Then there was Alberto Kazes, who now lives in Paris. He was exactly my age, and a French citizen. His father was a physician, a general practitioner. He lived at the Georgiou stop. We lived up the road and he lived close to the coast, in Kriezotou. He was sickly, all the time. Even though his father was a doctor, most of the time he was ill. He went to the concentration camps and he survived, even though he was sickly.

Then there was Raul Abastado. His father was making jutes and sacks etc. With tobacco there was a great need for them. He imported them and sold them. He lived right next to the house where my grandmother and grandfather used to live, at the Costantinidi stop. The fourth one was Dick Hasson. His father had a flour factory.

This was the gang. We went everywhere together. We would get together during the breaks at school, in winter and summer. Some parties used to take place which were called 'après midi.' They started around 4 in the afternoon and they would finish at about 9 or 10, at the latest. We would gather there, dance a bit, eat something, drink a cup of tea, and things like that.

When you had your bar mitzvah you would invite the whole class and all your friends. The parents would celebrate separately and we would celebrate by having an 'après midi' party. They would come to your home and we would offer them sweets and snacks and we would dance a bit. We danced the tango, waltz etc. There was a clockwork gramophone. One would be in charge of setting it.

When we were in the third grade of high school, we bought a 'plava.' A plava is a boat with a flat hull. The five of us put a fifth of the money in each and bought a boat. There was a shipyard in Aretsou [one of the best known seaside locations in eastern Thessaloniki during the interwar and post war years.]. We went and sailed from there. I remember that the price for the boat was 3,000 drachmas and we bought it. They gave us 50 drachmas weekly, so we saved up and bought it. Then we started maintaining it. We put up a sail and a tent. We used to row to Perea. We were four so one of us at the time would row.

We told our parents, and they weren't excited that we had bought it. They were worried. But we all knew how to swim really well. Then we got a cutter. We had a great longing. I was crazy about sailing. In the summers we would spend a lot of our time at the Sailing Club. We maintained the boat on our own. The boats were made out of wood. You had to scrape it, put stucco, paint it and put it in the water again. And we did all that ourselves.

We used to go out to the cinema. We would go to any movie theater if we the film that was on. All the films were very modest. You didn't see any nude shots, ever. It had to be suitable for our age, otherwise we weren't allowed to go. We used to go early, either from 5pm to 7pm or from 7pm to 9pm, not later than that. And what we really enjoyed was to walk home afterwards. We really liked walking.

We would also go on Sunday walks in the evening, we would go up to Arsakli [village on the outskirts of Thessaloniki], or towards the road that led to the farm school 52, or towards Karabournaki [cape on the opening of the Thermaic Gulf] in Sofouli. We were all friends. If someone wanted to say something to somebody else, he would walk next to him and talk. We would occupy the whole pavement. We walked a bit clumsily.

We spoke mostly in French with each other. It was only after the war that the Greek language prevailed. When we were at the Sailing Club we would speak Greek. What I mean is that we spoke Greek to each other, depending on where we were. We would switch to the language because we didn't want others not to understand what we were talking about. We didn't have a preference or any difficulty with either language, really. It would be all the same to us.

One time, when I was on the tram, there was an incident. Someone said, 'Why don't you speak in Greek? Since you are in Greece, why don't you speak Greek?' We started being more careful after that. When we reached the third or fourth grade in high school, we spoke only Greek in public places.

I was going for gymnastics at Mavroskoufis, twice a week. I would leave the house late around 8pm or 9pm and I would go around Konstantinidis Street, around Raul's house, pick him up and we would go to the YMCA, that's where the gymnastics took place. It was a closed gym court, very nice and they had showers, so you could have a shower after the gym. We did some very good gymnastics with Mr. Mavroskoufis, who had studied in Switzerland. Three quarters of the hour we would do gymnastics, and afterwards we could play basketball.

We had some political conversations with my friends. We were influenced by the left, of course, socialism. We used to say, 'Equality, there shouldn't be differences, support the working class.' Sometimes we would read the newspaper. The newspaper that Father would buy, if we had some time, we would have a look at it. We had conversations with our teachers, many times.

We were lucky, when we were in the third grade, to have Pelopidas Papadopoulos to come to teach at school. He had just finished university, and we were the first class that he taught. They hired him at the Lycee for the class of Ancient Greek. He taught Ancient Greek and Greek literature to us. He was a bit older than us, four or five years older. We got along really well with him and sometimes we would go out on Sundays together. People from the whole class would come. Ten or fifteen of us would get together. He was a really good guy; we kept in touch with him after the war. We spoke a lot about politics with him. He was very liberal.

At the time, in 1936, many events took place in Thessaloniki. They killed workmen, they broke our shop glass sign: the workmen threw stones when they were passing by. All these events influenced us. Later Metaxas came, but Metaxas didn't take Jews from here at the EON 53. That was our complaint. We wanted to participate, too. He would take Jews from all the other places in Greece, except here.

The fact that I was a liberal had nothing to do with my father. We only spoke theoretically about it. What is right and what is not right. Without taking into account our personal interest. Why should there be so many class differences? For example, why should someone get 70 drachmas as a daily wage? We used to say that there shouldn't be differences like that.

However, we never got into communism. We would talk about communism, what it is etc, but we would call ourselves socialists and not communists. A communist would be someone who would let the government arrange everything. That one could no longer have his own property. Everything was to be shared. While the socialist would say, to be equal in all classes and depending on each person's work everyone will own their earnings. I don't remember where we learned what is communism and what is socialism.

We were very influenced by the history of the French Revolution, where they used to say, 'liberté, égalité, fraternité.' Our French teachers influenced us a lot, as they were influenced themselves, and they were trying to pass on to us the spirit of the French Revolution. Because they were saying that was the greatness of France. We didn't talk about politics at home. Especially Mother was really not interested. She was interested in the house, whether we were alright or not, and did our homework. We didn't buy books on these issues. Everything we knew was from our conversations, the four or five of us would gather and talk about it and each one would express his opinion.

We would also talk about the relationships between Christians and Jews. I remember when we went for walks in Kalamaria [settlement in eastern Thessaloniki]. Kalamaria was considered to be in the countryside. There were small houses with a garden at the front. Some would hear us speaking French and they would throw stones, especially there, because the area was full of refugees.

When the five of us would meet up, we would talk about everything. First of all we would talk about school, especially when we were close to the Baccalaureate diploma. This interested us very much, because it was very difficult to acquire it. The exams were difficult and there was quite a lot of material to study. We would talk about school, then about politics and then a bit about girls.

None of us was in Maccabi 54. I remember Maccabi took part in all the parades because of their music band; they always used to win some prize. They had the best orchestra out of all the scout organization. They were very organized. Our parents never even suggested to us to take part. They regarded it as waste of time, and that we should be more devoted to our studies instead.

It doesn't mean that whoever was in Maccabi was a Zionist. There was another organization that was called Betar 55, which was clearly Zionist and strongly Zionist in fact. It was a youth organization. Betar was the right wing of Zionism. They would gather at my grandmother's and grandfather's house. There was a mid-basement that had been rented out to them. That's where they would meet. They used to say that we should understand that we would go and build the state of Israel.

There were other organizations, too. There were the old graduates of the Alliance, the Association des Jeunes Juifs 56. It was a youth club, mostly to meet people, to dance, meet girls etc. We weren't signed in anywhere. We didn't really have the time anyway, because when we finished school the war started. The only union that I was signed in with was the YMCA, where we used to go for the summer camp and at the Sailing Club. I went to the YMCA summer camp in 1934 and 1935 in Ai Giannis [village in the region of Thessaly, 270 km south of Thessaloniki]. We didn't have a problem at all with the fact that the YMCA was a Christian camp, none at all.

My grandmother Alvo was either a cousin or an aunt of David Florentin, who was a Zionist. [Editor's note: David Florentin was a leading Zionist functionary in Thessaloniki. In the late 1920s he purchased land from Arabs and settled in Palestine.] The first people that left from here and went to Palestine, left with him. In fact there is an area in Tel Aviv that is called Florentin. We knew each other. He sometimes went to visit my grandmother. I would hear my parents talk about him in the house. But my father had a completely different opinion. The Community was then divided between the Zionists and the assimilationists. My father totally swore to assimilation. But he was never involved with the administration of the Community. He was well known, he used to help out - mainly financially - but he was never involved with the Community.

All the years that I was in high school they were giving me a weekly allowance, which I think was 50 drachmae a week. The cinema cost between 8 and 10 drachmae, and we would always buy something extra. I was fond of stamps and I used to buy them. I was a stamp collector and I used to spend some money on stamps too.

I didn't buy any magazines. We would have magazines in French like 'L'Illustration,' 'Grégoire,' 'Candide.' The 'Grégoire' and the 'Candide' were right wing. But that is not why my father bought them. Many times they would have articles against the Jews, especially the 'Grégoire.' My father used to buy it because it had really good literature; it was written in perfect French. It also had really good reports on the news. And also because by buying it once a week, he could read the news of the whole week. He subscribed to it. Many times I used to read it, too. If there was an article against Jews or the leftists my father would show it to us. There were the Croix-de-Feu 57 as they called them.

There was an Italian Fascist organization that Jews were also members of before the anti-Jewish measures 58. All those Jews that were Italian citizens were compelled to become members, since it was supposed that everyone was a fascist. That is, they were fascists not out of conviction but out of duty. If you weren't a member of a fascist organization they wouldn't give you a passport. Only men could go sign up in fascist organizations and their children, girls and boys. And they would have celebrations where they had to wear their uniforms.

They used to call the little ones 'Balilla' 59. If you went to the Italian school you had to be a member of the 'Balilla.' Other Jews, apart from the Italian Jews, weren't in any local fascist organizations. I don't think that you could anyway. There were many students who were Jewish in the Italian school but didn't have Italian citizenship. They didn't take part in the 'Balilla.' I remember my uncle Dario being so full of himself, that he was an Italian fascist etc. He even had the sign of fascism on the 'boutonnière' [French for 'buttonhole'], the fascio. Not that they cherished their beliefs. They just regarded it as something special that the others didn't have. I remember mocking them. At the Lycee we were very liberal, so completely the opposite.

The Italian Jews themselves weren't any different. They didn't have their own synagogue; they would come to the Beit Saoul synagogue, which was the largest one and the most modern. They used to go to the Italian embassy if there was an Italian national holiday. They used to invite them all at the embassy. Before the time that they were put aside, discriminated, that is.

While I was a teenager and a student I used to read literature. I really liked one book by Dickens, but I forget which one it was. I read many books by Jules Romain as well: 'Les Hommes de bonne volonté.' . This was about twenty volumes. My friends were also reading it and often we chatted about them. [Romains, Jules (1885-1972): born Louis Henri Jean Farigoule, French poet and writer, founder of the Unanimism literary movement. Among his best- known works are the play 'Dr. Knock,' the cinematographic tale 'Donogoo- Tonka ou les miracles de la science,' and a cycle of works entitled 'Les Hommes de bonne volonté' (The Men of Good Will).]

My parents took us on holidays only a few times. But with the Sailing Club, we didn't need anything else. I think they took us only once to Edipsos [spa resort on the island of Euboea, 330 km south of Thessaloniki] because my mother had to go to the hot springs. My mother suffered from rheumatism and arthritis. We had a great time there. It was a very nice hotel with great food. We ate in the morning, afternoon, and evening.

My parents were traveling together without us, too, but not for holidays. My father had to go for treatment in France, at the Mont d'Or, because he had a problem with his ears and nose. Sometimes he would go alone and sometimes he would take his wife with him. Sometimes they were taking our sister, too, and they would leave us behind with Grandmother. That was when we were younger.

From the third grade of high school my father told me in the summer, 'You will rest for one month, and the other two months you will go to the factory and work.' He would have me wear a blue uniform that the workers wore, we used to call it 'retsina' then, and said to me, 'Sit down and learn all the machines one by one, how they work, inside out.' And I learned. I quite liked it as well, and this is what my father wanted me to do, to go and study at the university in Zurich. That's why he made me learn German. I was learning German at school and I had a private teacher at home.

The International Trade Fair of Thessaloniki would last three weeks and it was a great event. This was the only fair at the time; there weren't any other specialized fairs. The fair at the time was like a festival. Aunt Daisy used to take us when we were little. It was a chance for her to meet up with her friends. Later, when we grew older, we used to go on our own. We mostly went to the exhibition because of the games that they had, the little cars and the big wheel. Many, many people used to go to the games. We had to queue to get in. The fair was so successful because of the children that were going to the games. The adults would go, too.

We would also go around and visit the different stands. The best and bigger stand was the one of National Agricultural Production that showed you all the agricultural and cattle products. A very interesting stand was the one of the Carpet Manufacturing Association which had really tasteful things. All these hand woven carpets. They were one nicer than the other one. My father loved carpets very much, he was a collector you could say, and he would buy one carpet every year from there. Unfortunately they are all gone. We only have one left.

There would be many celebrations at the fair. To catch people's attention they would even bring acrobats. One of the things they had brought was 'the barrel.' It was a very large surface in the shape of a barrel inside which a motorcycle was moving. Another one was jumping from 30 meters into a barrel of water. They would have fireworks every year, and really nice ones. Not only at the end of the fair. Sometimes they would have fireworks on the weekends, too, because there would be three weekends during the time that the fair lasted. We could see them from our house, far away. It really was a cheerful time, a feast for Thessaloniki.

The time of the fair was a time when there would be a lot of business in the city. This was because it had so many visitors and it would last for quite a long time. I remember that if it rained in September, they would cry. They would rent out the spaces in an auction and the poor guys that were renting for restaurants or cafes: when it rained it would ruin their business.

Also, something that existed only at the exhibition was black beer. One could only find it at the fair, as well as the frankfurter sausages. There were many places out in the open that would sell black beer and frankfurters. They would give you some mustard in a small piece of paper separately, and it would be a feast. Everyone would go to the exhibition, men and women, especially on weekends there were so many people that you couldn't get in. I remember one time when there was so much pushing around at the door to get in, it was unbelievable!

Sometimes my father took part at the fair, but not many times. I remember about four or five times. He had some agencies, so had to show the products. My father didn't have his own stand. He was renting a space inside somebody else's stand. An employee would stay there. He would sometimes take orders. There were many different stands where one could buy what one wanted there and then. We didn't have anything similar, we just exhibited the products. If someone was interested to make an order, we would take the order and deliver it after the fair ended. My father took part at the fair from about 1930 to 1935. After that they stopped. They didn't need to anymore.

Before the war, when I was a student at the Lycee, I supported Hercules 60. Hercules was the oldest team. We used to say at school: 'Up for Aris 61 and Hercules, down for PAOK 62, the wasters.' Waster in the sense of someone who is not alright, no good, does tricks. My friends didn't support Hercules.

Here nothing would happen with girls. In Thessaloniki there were brothels before the war. There was one in the '105' area, where the old fair ground used to be. There was a house there that was regarded as a luxurious one. You would pay 100 drachmas and five for the condom. I went there. With my friends, of course, not alone! Not all five together, I think two or three of us went. The girls were Greek, There weren't any Jewesses.

It was quite natural to go to a house as such in order to have a sexual experience. You didn't have any other choice. It was really difficult to go ahead with a girl that was the same age as you. You were afraid. Unless you were, I don't know what. Because you would have to speak not only with the parents of the girl, but also with your own parents. The parents were very strict. You never talked about it at home.

I remember they used to give you these books in French. It used to be called: 'ce que tout jeune homme devrait savoir' [French for: everything a young man should know]. It was a book, half scientific let's say, that explained the whole issue of sex. How it worked. What kind of protection one had to take etc. Because you know, Father would never come in, sit down with you and tell you. They gave me a book like this on my bar mitzvah. Someone brought it, and my parents were not pleased, I could tell. 'What is this now? Are you going to read this?' Etc.

The first time that I went to such a house, was before taking my exams for the Polytechnic. I was quite old. My father, of course, didn't know that I went. For each one of us it was our first experience. We all decided one day. To go and see what it is all about. The house had a lounge where all the girls were sitting around. They had a bulletin board with the pictures of the ones that had their period, in order to avoid them. Or they had a red ribbon.

In any case, it was a thing that really didn't satisfy you at all. It was a mechanical act without any feeling at all. You would only go to release the tension, that was all. We would chat about it with my friends afterwards. After the war that we continued going more often, we even had our preferences. 'Let's go there and see if she is in,' we would say. Those were girls that cared about you a bit more.

I graduated in June 1940. I had passed my second Baccalaureate, or bachot as they call it. The first bachot is like a high school diploma. The ones that want to study further, they specialize. They take the Science Baccalaureate, which consists of mathematics, physics, chemistry and cosmography. Others that want to take the philosophical direction would take the Philosophy Baccalaureate, which is suitable for lawyers or literature.

I had chosen the Science Baccalaureate because I wanted to go to the Polytechnic and my father wanted to send me to Zurich. But when the war ended he didn't have any money to send me there, even though Zurich, or rather Switzerland, remained a neutral country. He said, 'Ok you can go to the Polytechnic.' And I went and stayed in Athens for the whole summer.

There weren't any tuition centers at the time, except the one in Athens of Kanelos. Kanelos was an assistant professor and the owner of the tuition center, which was the only place where you could take classes for the exams to enter the Polytechnic. And indeed he was very good at it.

Together with a friend, who was taking exams at the Polytechnic, too, Raul Abastado, I went there in the summer and rented a room with him in a hotel at the corner of Ermou and Voulis Street, and we studied all day. We would go and eat breakfast, until the room service would have cleaned our room. We would have coffee and croissants. Then we would return to our room and study all day. In the evening we had three or four hours of classes. We would get on the bus and go, we didn't use taxis. When we would leave the class, we would go to a restaurant and eat. Later on we would get back to the hotel and read again.

I didn't miss Thessaloniki. Athens seemed very nice to me. It was an ideal city for me then, I used to say that it was the best city in the world. It was a very quiet city, with pleasant neighborhoods with small taverns. We went very often to the theater to see revues; there were many at the time. It was in Zappeio [Exhibition space in the centre of Athens ], Aigli and Oasis. Oasis was the restaurant and at the same time you would watch the play.

In the summer I was there, there were Traiforos and Vembo 63. It was great to sit down under the trees, listening to music outside and listening to Traiforos and Vembo. We also used to go to the Champs de Mars [In Greek 'Pedio tou Areos': park in the center of Athens.]. There was a restaurant there and live music. I don't know why, it was a very easy-going life in Athens. Raul and I used to go out every night, just the two of us. With the other ones from the class, we didn't go out. There were only one or two other people from Thessaloniki.

It was the first time that I spent time away from home. I really liked that, the independence. Even though we didn't do anything special, as we didn't have time to do anything. I used to call home, once a week, on Fridays. We would go out to the central post office which was in Syntagma [main square in the centre of Athens], and we would call from a telephone there.

I never spoke with them for more than six minutes. It was very expensive. At that time we would speak for three minutes and pay 25 drachmas. It was a lot of money. A daily wage was 50 drachmas then and we would pay 25 drachmas for three minutes on the phone, so that really was a lot of money. They weren't very worried about what I was doing. Today, in the family, the children come first. In our family it used to be, the father, the mother, the sister and then my brother and me. That's how the hierarchy was.

I took exams for the Department of Engineering and the Department of Chemical Engineering. I didn't pass in the first one, but I passed in the second. I passed at the Department Chemical Engineering, which was very strange because 100 people would pass at the first department but only 30 in this one. So I got into the Department of Chemical Engineering department, with a long-term plan to finish it, do one more year and from there transfer to the Department of Engineering. The exams were taking place in September and the results would come out in a month's time. I took the exams and went back to Thessaloniki. The results for the Department of Chemical Engineering were published on 26th October.

I saw the results in the paper. We knew that they were being published on 26th October. My brother heard the paper boy in the morning. The paper boy used to come around the houses and sell the paper. As soon as he heard him, he went out, bought the paper and came to wake me up. He said to me, 'Mico, I've brought the papers, come and have a look.' The results would be published in the Jewish newspapers and the 'Makedonia' and others.

I ran to my parents, and told them that I had passed. My parents went crazy, they were really pleased. The whole family would call each other on the phone and chat about it, 'Mico has passed, Mico has passed.' We had a phone at home, an automatic one, for a couple of years already. This was one of my happier moments in life. That day, on 26th October, everything was shut in the city. I got my results on Friday; on Saturday I got my things ready and on Sunday I left. My friend Raul and I left, we didn't have a chance to celebrate. We weren't in the mood to celebrate; after the war how can one be in the mood? We all had lived with the fear that the war might reach us.

• During the war

When the war started in Europe, the general atmosphere in Thessaloniki was charged with fear. Fear for the future, and of what was going to happen. The destruction of France was a terrifying event. We were astonished. Especially at school, when they told us that no one was able to cross what they called the Maginot line 64. When France fell, the school closed. It was the end of the term for the summer anyway.

Everyone was in mourning. In Thessaloniki there were many that were really pro-German, and were talking about the Germans. What they did wasn't right and how could there be peace. We used to hear things like that in the shop or in the tram, where one could hear conversations. Many used to speak quite loud and one could follow the conversations.

We were worried. And our parents were very worried. They were worried that they might attack Greece, and what would we do then? They were worried that they might attack Greece because there were many Jews here. We knew about the concentration camps, where people were incarcerated at the time, the way people were being tortured and what they did in general. When they seized a country like Czechoslovakia, and then France, we knew that the people there suffered a lot. We knew from France, that under the occupation, the first thing that was going to be missing was the food.

When the war was declared, I was very impressed. What impressed me more than anything was the people's enthusiasm and their eagerness to go and join the army. And how organized everything was. I heard about the war at 7 in the morning while I was having my morning shave, because I used to shave at 7, and at 8 I had to be at the Polytechnic. It was the first day of the classes for the chemists. The rest of the classes had already started.

So while I was shaving I heard the sirens. 'What is going on?' I thought. We were at war. We were stupefied. I don't remember how the rest of the day passed. What I remember was the way we were impressed at night, seeing all the people hanging from the trams, and everybody running to go and join. And everything happened in great order. This excitement on the night of the 28th October in Athens was something that really made one move. And we waited.

On 28th October we didn't have any classes. I shaved and went there and they told us that the Polytechnic was closed. Whoever wanted to join the army should go and join. You had to be 21 years old then. They gave us ID cards, we subscribed and I had the ID card of the Polytechnic. It helped a lot along the way. When they would stop us, I used to show them the ID card of the Polytechnic.

On 29th October we didn't do anything. We couldn't do anything. We were moving around aimlessly. We would meet up at the park in Zappeio, in the Royal Gardens; we would discuss what to do. We were afraid that we might run out of money. They had blocked all the bank accounts.

I think that I stayed in Athens until the end of November. I couldn't get back, because there was no way. We heard about the bombings in Thessaloniki and were very worried. There were many bombings. In fact an Italian plane had fallen on the Olympion [hotel] and a balcony had broken down and collapsed. We had great air defense. There was one guy here, who was in Votsi at the air defense. He shot down three airplanes.

When the war started, there was fraternization between Christians and Jews. Because when the war started, the Jews were fighting not only for their homeland but against the Axis, who were the fascists and that's why they had one more reason than the Christians to go and fight. While they were saying that the Jews are fearful in the war and who knows what else, they proved to be the complete opposite. Especially the men from Thessaloniki who were the first ones to go in the front line, such as those in the 50th regiment, which was the closest to the border, and where more than half of the men were Jews.

I remember the death of Mordehai Frizis 65. All the newspapers in Thessaloniki and Athens wrote about it. They would discuss it and say, 'all the Greeks are fighting together for freedom.' It was written that he was the first officer of a higher rank that got killed. Then it was mentioned that Muslims in Thrace had died, too. It also said that all united, with no difference of religion or ethnicity, were fighting for freedom and the country. I remember that well.

This was quite a positive thing to hear after the situation with Metaxas, who didn't recruit Jews in the EON. He would recruit them in other cities but not in Thessaloniki. Everybody wanted to get in the EON. We mostly wanted to get in it because we didn't want to be any different from all the rest of the people. Not that we were fond of fascism and the rest of it. Because Metaxas, one the one hand, had a really excellent attitude on account of the war, but on the other hand, what he did with beating people up and stuff like that was another story. We knew from the security police what the people who were regarded as communists went through. The word was spreading around. They were sending them to islands into exile. And many were Jews who were leftists. We knew that fascism was fascism. But then everyone had changed in favor of Metaxas.

At the time I lived in the hotel. And we had many alarms, and many times we would go to the basement to hide. I didn't think of going to join as a volunteer. They didn't recruit others than the ones that were of the right age at the time. Even the ones that were of the right age, in case they weren't fit, they would only use them in the civil services. Not in action.

We were talking all day about what was going on. There were others from Thessaloniki, who where also at the university, and they, too, were bound. We knew each other, we would all get together and go to cheap restaurants. We were all afraid that we would run out of money. I was scared, not optimistic or pessimistic, just afraid of what was going to happen.

In order to go to Thessaloniki, we rented an old car and we got there. It took us three days to get there. We were all Jews. There were another four that were from the university, too. I remember three of us sat at the front, the taxi driver and another two, and three more at the back. We hired a taxi to go together. Because, first of all, we started wondering what were we doing in Athens? We should go and be with our parents. That was the main reason. We were better off in Athens, because it had been announced that the city was not in danger because it had been confirmed as an undefended city, but we had to go, to be near our parents.

We went through a lot during the journey home. We ran out of petrol on the way, and we couldn't find petrol anywhere. We bought some from a soldier driver. The only road that was alright was from Veroia [city in Northern Greece, 76 km west of Thessaloniki ] to Thessaloniki. The rest of the road was a dirt road. The car broke down once on the way, so we had other adventures. We got to Axios Bridge [a river south of Thessaloniki] and they wouldn't let us pass. We slept in the car. At 6 o'clock in the morning, they let us pass and we got home.

Our parents weren't expecting us; they didn't know that we were coming as we hadn't told them anything. When I got home my parents were very pleased. They were pleased because they felt bad that I was far away from the family. The families had to stick together then and go through whatever difficulty united, all together. That was the spirit.

They had made a shelter in the house. My father had built it quickly, during the war. In the dinning room they had put sacks with sand, to make it more secure. When there would be an alarm, people from all around the neighborhood, as many as could fit, would come to hide in our refuge.

Everyone was celebrating and getting excited with the victories of the Greek army in Albania. The bells were ringing, people were out on the streets. Especially when they took Koritsa 66, that was another site. Excitement and celebrations, with church bells ringing, sirens, whistling- buoys of the boats in the harbor wailing. I haven't seen more excitement than when they conquered Koritsa.

It was the first defeat against the Axis. Until then the Germans had moved as they liked. No one had ever stopped them. But then they held down their horses. And we were expecting that the Agioi Saranta 67 and Elbasan [city in central Albania] would surrender. But they wouldn't, because they wouldn't take the decision to go for a major attack. They seized Koritsa and then they stopped. They didn't try to advance further into Albania, because they didn't want to challenge the Germans.

The conditions had changed in the house. No one was making unnecessary expenses. Nothing posh, no one was buying new suits or clothes, or any luxuries. There was nothing like that, it was complete simplicity. One could still find food during the Greek-Italian war. During the occupation we could no longer find food. Many people we knew were sent to the front line. But none of our relatives. We didn't have anyone who was of the right age to be sent, as they were all older. They were acquaintances from various other families. We would hear that someone came back with frostbites, someone else got killed.

At the time, all women were knitting for the Soldier's Undershirt 68. They were knitting gloves, thick socks, because the shoes weren't very good and most of the soldiers were getting frostbites. Many of our relatives were knitting: my mother and others. That was the Soldier's Undershirt.

When I came back, I was mostly in the shop rather than the factory. I remember many officers coming by: from the revenue office of war material, the 9th car division etc. I was writing the invoices. And my brother was studying alone for his baccalaureate. He had taken my books and he was reading them by himself.

We weren't going out at all at night. We would meet up with friends, but earlier and at 9 o'clock we would be at home. We would talk about how many alarms there had been the night before. When there was an alarm we would go to the shelter and many others from the neighborhood would come. Sometimes they would arrive earlier than us. The shelter had a corridor to get in, which was like a maze. It didn't have a direct exit; this was in order to avoid that a bomb thrown outside the shelter, would get in. When we heard the bombs falling, even though we were in the shelter... We would hear a bang and the whole house and the shelter would be shaking.

As soon as the war started, the factory started working for the army. Day and night. And they had exempted all the workers from the army service. There were 35 workers. They released them all. Because they were in need of our products and the whole production was going to the army. The barbed wire, the chains for the cars, the hinges, the nails; they needed everything.

My father had some goods that had to go through the customs in order to have some supplies. And he was trying to have them go through customs. It was really rare at the time to have goods sent to you because one couldn't bring anything in. We were very lucky to have the goods arrive at the time.

My father was really worried in that period of time. He was worried about the war, and of what was going to happen. We had beaten the Italians, but wouldn't the Germans come to help the Italians? That was the big question. Unfortunately, he wasn't thinking of leaving Thessaloniki. He kept saying, 'I don't want to.' Because he had seen the refugees that had come. So he was telling us all the time, 'Should we become refugees, too? Leave our house, and become refugees?' At the time one could no longer leave for Palestine. They wouldn't allow anyone to go anywhere in Europe either. They wouldn't permit you to leave. He never even thought about it. No one could have imagined that the worst would happen.

Metaxas died, and three or four others followed, and we wondered if it was a curse or if someone else was inciting those moves. We felt like we had lost our protector. Not our protector, but our governor, our leader. These were really dark things, and we were very worried about the war, and I think our worries were justified. Not that we ever thought that we would be in greater danger after Metaxas's death. We never thought about it. The situation seemed bad enough already. When we heard that the Germans had attacked Greece, we thought that's it, we have lost. We were afraid that if the Germans would come, they would do the same things here as they were doing in Germany. And so it happened. As far as Jews were concerned, we had no doubt.

Just before the Germans entered, many wanted to leave for Athens. Even we did, Father wanted us to go. He wanted to at least send us. But it was very difficult to get a train ticket. And even though we knew the manager of SEK [Greek State Railways], Mr. Dimitriou, we didn't leave. Our father wanted us to leave but only half-heartedly. And he didn't want to leave and abandon the shop.

By the time we knew that the Germans would be coming in the next day - we knew it the night before - the Greeks that were retreating had set the fuel tanks on fire. The fuel was all in the Behtsinar area. Everyone opened their warehouses for the people to get supplies. Near us was the Allatini flour mill 69, which was working solely for the army. I remember they would go and get bread from there. They also used to carry, I don't know from where, jerry-cans of olive oil. I don't know from which warehouses they were getting it.

I can say that after the Greek army had retreated and for the two following days that it took the Germans to come, it was pillage and plunder. From my family no one went to get bread. But I remember neighbors coming with ten loaves of bread. They were carrying them in sacks. I also saw that they were carrying jerry-cans of olive oil. We could see the smoke and the fire. They had blown up some bridges, before leaving the place. They thought that they could keep the Mount Olympus line, but they didn't.

When the Germans came to Thessaloniki, a friend of mine, a school friend who used to live nearby, and I thought, just out of curiosity, 'Let's go out and walk to the White Tower to see what is happening.' We would walk as far as we could. The first Germans that came to the White Tower square were some motorcyclists. They had trucks that were following with machines that were printing out the occupation marks [paper money issued by the German authorities]. I think that one mark was fifty drachmas. And when they paid you with this currency, you were obliged to accept it. That's what they called occupation marks. Because they were saying that the country that has been occupied should maintain the armed forces that had come here to protect it. That was the first thing that made an impression on us. I think that they were giving sweets to the children, as propaganda.

When the Germans came in, they started making up orders. They ordered the Jews and afterwards everyone else, to give in all the radios and all the bicycles. They pretended that they needed them. The radios, so we could no longer listen to the news. We were listening to the BBC then. They forced the Sailing Club to turn away all the Jews. From the Marine Club, too. Less from the Marine Club because it was more reserved, but there were many Jews at the Sailing Club. The Germans told them there, 'You will throw them all out.' Alright. Then they went and they seized all the boats.

As soon as the Germans came in, they put signs up in many stores 'Jews are not welcome in this shop.' Mainly in patisseries such as Flocas. Some store owners put them up. It was something that the Germans wished, but not all the store owners put them up. This didn't last very long though. In a month's time they had taken them all down again. They thought that it was compulsory, but when they saw that it wasn't they all took the signs down again.

Two days after the Germans entered, a paper from the 'Kommandantur' [commandant's headquarters] arrives, saying that our house was seized. The Germans had chosen around 50 or 60 houses, the best ones in Thessaloniki, for the officers of the higher division to move there. In many families they occupied one room, where one or two officers would live and one would have to take care of them. Not to feed them, but to keep their rooms clean and tidy. Of course all this for free, nothing in return.

Our house was one of the nice houses. They took it because we were Jews. They told us, 'We give you four hours to empty it, take with you only your personal belongings, nothing else, and leave.' Where furniture or anything heavier was concerned, we couldn't take any of that. My mother went really mad, because for a housewife, the most important thing is her house. She didn't know what to take and what to leave behind. And the poor woman never saw her house again. They turned our house into an officers' club, an officers' mess. Because it was such a nice house, it had a piano, a garden, furniture, everything.

Grandfather Alvo had already died, only his wife was still alive. Grandmother Alvo died during the occupation from natural causes. I think it was in 1941 or 1942. She was ill, she had cancer. They already knew what kind of illness cancer was. We all lived in our own houses. We hadn't all gathered in one house. Two or three days after the Germans came in, we left our house. At the beginning we went and stayed at my aunt's, my mother's sister, Lily. We were a bit crammed there.

Afterward, we moved into the apartment on top of where my aunt lived; it was for rent so we rented it out. That was the house on Skopelos Street which was the parallel street to Papakyriazi. We stayed there until they turned it into a ghetto. They forced us to go and live in the ghetto. The ghetto was introduced in February 1943. From April 1941 until February 1943 we lived in this house on Skopelos Street.

In the new apartment lived my mother and father, my sister, me and my brother, who was studying for the Polytechnic. He studied in 1941 to take exams to get in. There was hunger then. There was nothing around in the summer. I went to the shop at Ionos Dragoumi Street, my brother stayed in the house and was studying, and my sister went to school.

Until February 1943 my father was running the shop. At the time we had some transactions but there were difficulties because they would come and take by force whatever they wanted at the price they would name. Because I knew German, I was acting as the interpreter there. And they always told you, 'Don't you agree? Let's go to the Kommandantur and we will solve the problem there.'

The ones that were coming were Germans or German interpreters. They always came escorted by Germans in uniform. The interpreters were sometimes getting the goods this way, to prove their smartness to the Germans. Sometimes the things they needed they took for themselves. These interpreters were Greek Christians that knew German or Germans that had lived in Greece. They called them the 5th column.

The Germans, who already knew that they were about to declare a bigger war, had sent agents to all the countries that they considered they would occupy later on. The embassy here had a few of them. One of them was one of our neighbors. He was the secretary of the German Embassy before the war. He lived a little further up from our house. My father knew him. Sometimes, when Father needed a certificate for his goods, he would go to him.

My father very often used to go to a liquor shop that was at the corner of Vasilissis Olgas and Kyriazi Street, where our house was. Its name was 'Anatoli' - East. They sold wine there, but they also had little glasses to taste the wine before buying it. Many times my father would give me the flagon and tell me, 'Go and get wine for the house.'

This secretary was sitting there pretending to taste the wine. He knew Greek, he had learned Greek because he had lived here for so long, and he was making propaganda on behalf of the Germans: the Germans are here and will do a great good, they will civilize you and they will teach you new things etc, and you shouldn't be afraid of them. He would gather a few people around him. This secretary was called Paulus. He was here for many years. He was a Chancellor. That's how they are called. His children went to the German school. When the Germans left he vanished, we never saw him again.

I also went to work to the factory then. I knew how because I had learned to work there. I was a workman in the factory. I did the job of a workman but I had learned to do the lists for IKA [Social Security Service], and the wages' lists. I worked a bit in the office and a bit as a technician.

In October of 1941, classes in the Polytechnic started regularly. I went down to Athens to follow the courses. I had rented a room in a family house. In Syntagma on Xenophondos Street. It was a rich family but with the war they were drained and left with no income. In fact, they didn't even have any heaters. They were warmed by a brazier.

At the time you couldn't find food even in restaurants. We had a customer from Larissa, who did some transactions with the Italians and he would sometimes bring us bread. Just like this, without me paying for it. He would call me and say, 'I have two Italian loaves of bread to give you.' Things were really hard. But we went to our classes at the Polytechnic in the morning and in the evening.

Then the winter came, and what a horrific winter that was. The ones that weren't from Athens suffered a great deal. Even the ones from Athens were suffering. They had no heating, no food, nothing, because you couldn't find anything else than cabbage leaves. It was horrid in Athens in the winter of 1941. It was cold, really cold. I saw in front of me a man collapse and people taking him away in a coach. The Polytechnic was closed again because of starvation. When it closed, I came back to Thessaloniki again, this time on the train. I came back around March 1942.

In 1943 they took over our factory and then they arrested me and my father. Until then we were working at the factory. Because there was no electricity we worked there only at night. And we were trying to get hold of raw materials. We had five or six workers working of the thirty that we had in the beginning. Anyway not all of the machines were working anymore. We didn't have the raw materials; we didn't have any moving power. We didn't have petrol. We had gas with wood. We would start the motor on wood.

The products of the factory were in great demand. We didn't produce all the products. We produced nails and a few other things. I remember the nails were made out of wire. But because we had no wire, this is what we did: We went to the junkshops and the old warehouses; we bought barbed wire that was available in large quantities. We would buy it, we would untangle it and take the prickles off and we would turn it into normal wire, which we then took and cut to nails. You can imagine how much that would cost. Even so, we still had a margin for profit. We sold that at the shop, the Germans weren't taking this for their army needs.

Apart from that, we had set up a wheat mill at the factory. Because starvation had started and there was already great shortage. They would come and we would put the wheat on the mill and make flour, for people to make bread at home. They never paid you. You wouldn't accept a payment but you would get a small percentage for the milling. I don't remember what percentage we were getting for the milling.

During the occupation they had recommended to me some secret houses [non- registered brothels]. These were much cleaner and nicer, and one could find nice girls. Many girls went there out of pure necessity because they didn't have any money. And it was completely different from what we knew from the professionals. I remember at Proxenou Koromila Street there was Mrs. Pipina. She had really nice girls and a nice environment. It wasn't like you had to go to the lounge and choose. Sometimes I would be on my way from the factory and I would get in the mood, and go. That time of the day you wouldn't find anyone there and it was...

I don't remember traders in the market to be regularly in the black market. Whoever was wasn't doing it all the time. The regular traders couldn't do such a thing, because there was also a market inspection. And they were after you and one had to be very careful. In what price you are selling etc. There were the jumpers as well. The kids that would jump in the German cars and unload them. They would throw the sacks from the top of the truck. The black market was basically for the ones that were in great need and had no other choice.

The shop worked with the goods that it had. It couldn't get any new supplies so it was selling stored goods. It was selling every day. There was money, but it couldn't get exchanged. Because the traders couldn't replace the goods and bring new ones and they were trying to turn their assets to sovereigns. Something that was forbidden but one could find some in the black market. I don't know any names of the black market traders. Because everything was very secretive.

At the time they had also brought from Italy the 'nylon' sovereigns that weren't authentic. These ones, even though they had the same quantity of gold, they sold cheaper. They sold them and no one would buy them. Even the Bank of Greece when they were getting them, they were saying they were nylon and that they were not real sovereigns. They had Queen Victoria or King Edward on them and the right quantity of gold, and they still called them fake. And they used to do this other trick; they would put them in acid and lower the weight.

My father was trying to turn all his assets to gold sovereigns. All the traders did, too. Because the drachma was loosing its value. Day by day it would drop lower and lower. When they gathered us, the downfall started. From there on, every day was a new drop.

Here in Thessaloniki we didn't starve. One could still find things. But what? For example one would go to Halastra [village 20 km south-west of Thessaloniki] and buy one or two sacks of wheat. You would bring them back and grind them. One of our neighbors was going to Halastra, Staninos. He was Greek, but he originated from Italy and he was a Catholic. He would go on a boat with someone else. He would buy a few sacks and come back and sell them, with a profit, of course. They were selling meat, once again secretly. They may have given us cats instead of lamb sometimes.

Others were going to the villages. The villagers had picked up everything and had supplies! You would see a piano that they had taken to go and deliver on a cart, one of these village carts. You would see the most amazing things owned by villagers. It was a golden season for them.

In that period of time Mother was trying to find food. She was trying to get anything from friends or from neighbors: 'So and so brought this, do you want some, and should I send you some?' This all turned out to be the black market because one couldn't go to the market. There was nothing there, one couldn't find anything. To go to the butchers and buy meat? But one could find everything in the black market.

It was then that the Community helped, because of the prices that were very high and the starvation. My mother used to go and distribute. The Community would buy whatever they could and my mother would go and distribute the food. She would put soup in cups or they would give corn bread, anything they could get.

At the time, because one had to be home early, and since no one was working, people would gather in the afternoons, friends and relatives would gather and talk about the situation. We would gather quite often. And everyone was pessimistic. The people didn't know what to do anymore. They were saying, whatever is to happen will happen. Most of the ones meeting up were Jews, but I remember two or three Christians, too. As they were neighbors they would come, too, and tell their side of the story.

There was the Charsi radio, as it used to be called. There would be a news release. Charsi is Turkish and means market, so the news that we heard spread by word of mouth. We used to listen to Charsi from the time they had started the war with Russia. It was in the Stalingrad area where the Germans didn't succeed. We would say one day, 'we had this victory,' and then the next day another thing would happened. Or they sunk so and so many British boats. At the beginning all the news was horrifying and defeat was mentioned all the time.

My brother went down to Athens to take his exams for the Polytechnic in June 1942. They called us all to gather at Eleutherias Square 70 on 1st or 11th July, I don't remember the exact date. There many things happened... It was the first call for forced labor: to go and be drafted for labor. And the Germans transformed it into a feast. They had people photographing all around the balconies of the buildings that they had occupied. They would make you do gymnastic exercises; they would beat you up, two or three died from the beating. And they also had the women soldiers that were called 'Blitzmädchen.' This is a compound word: 'Mädchen' means lady and 'Blitz' means thunder. When we saw this happening we called my brother and told him, 'Don't come back to Thessaloniki.' And from that time on he stayed in Athens.

With our customers in the region we had great relations. When the persecutions started we sent them all our goods to store for us. A couple of them proved to be useless and kept them for themselves but most of them kept them safe for us.

They had taken my uncle to forced labor, close to Katerini 71. They had taken all the Jews there for the new railway and the road they were building. Our customers from Katerini were bringing him food. We had customers that we knew from before the war, and they were bringing him food. My uncle worked until they paid the ransom. For a couple of months. Then many of the doctors became involved by giving you a certificate that you were unsuitable to work. They issued such certificates. I think this is why Solomon could leave. He managed to get a certificate stating that he was unable to work.

From my family no one else went to the local forced labor camps. I worked in a factory. There was an occupied factory that was making wooden boxes. It was close to the railway station. It belonged to a Jew; I think his name was Cohen. At Santarosa Street, they were making embrasures. There were many factories making embrasures at the time. They didn't make any plastic ones then; they were all made out of wood. I worked for about a month and a half. Until the Community had to pay the ransom.

My job was to cut and nail crates. They were crates for fruit. A kind of a carpenter's job. We would start early in the morning. Sometimes the tram was operating and sometimes it wasn't. When we knew that there was no tram coming the next day we had to get up an hour earlier to walk from the 4th stop of Martiou to get there, and an hour to get back. We would go there, we would get some food to eat, and we would finish. We would start at 7:30 to 8 in the morning and we would finish around 5 in the evening. The working day would last eight hours.

The factory didn't have many Jews. German cars were coming to load things up. We were supervised by both Jews and Greeks. Their behavior was good, normal. Both younger and older people worked there. To work in a factory like this at a time when there was forced labor, you had to have a way in, that is, you had to pay. In comparison with the railway tracks, this was a piece of cake. I don't know how my father arranged it. He knew someone in there, maybe he was a customer of his, and he chose the workers. He said, 'I want this one.' I don't know how it happened, but it was regarded as great luck.

Later, in February 1943 the persecutions started. They came one day at the shop and took my father and my two uncles to the 'Kommandantur' that was down Agias Sophias Road. I was at the factory that day. Around that time I went to the factory every day. They picked them and kept them there. They didn't allow them to come back. And I was at home with my mother and sister that night. Danny was in Athens. We were scared because Father hadn't come back and neither had any of the uncles.

They sent a gendarme to the house, who said, 'The son should come with us and bring the keys of the factory with him.' So I went, too. They waited for us there, they took the keys to the factory and they sent us to the transportation department, escorted by gendarmes. That maybe was the worst experience. What was going on at the transportation department was beyond one's imagination. The dirt, one on top of the other, some pot heads smoking, crazy, and all together. I don't know how my father could take it. But the poor guy didn't even know what was ahead of him.

We slept on the ground. They gave us some blankets, or perhaps I had brought blankets from the house, I don't remember. Next to us there were criminals. The next day they sent us to the Pavlou Mela Barracks where the prisons were 72. We stayed there for three weeks:. my father, my two uncles and I. And they had taken in many more merchants. Benrubi who had a glassware manufacture and other merchants that were dealing in iron goods like us.

A parenthesis: There was a cell chamber with 400 Greek communists. And each time that there was a case of sabotage they would take a few from this chamber and shoot them. Many times they would come at two in the morning. Two or three times I remember something like that happening during the night. A German guy would get in the chamber while everyone was asleep and he would say a few names. They were the ones to be executed the next morning. As a punishment because of the sabotage that had taken place. They took us out of there by paying an amount of gold sovereigns to Papanaoum 73. He was a German collaborator. He was working with the Germans, the infamous Papanaoum and a couple of others of his band; they were sharing the loot with the Germans.

They took us to the 'Kommandantur' in order to empty the shops. As soon as they had sent us to Pavlou Mela, the very next day, the emptying of the shops started and it lasted for three weeks. They were emptying shops morning and night. There were these very large Schenkel trucks then, Kroup I remember, they would take away the things. And they threw them out of the windows. They were taking things and throwing them straight out of the windows. They didn't leave anything behind. Not even shelves or counters.

This all happened in February 1943. After they had emptied the whole shop they gave it to someone called Karatzas. He was the one that was collecting all the fruit and agricultural products from northern Greece. He would store them in our shops, and then give them to the Germans at prices that were already prearranged. But he also bought them at very low prices from the farmers and the merchants. In other words, he was collecting all the food for the German army. Maybe they were sending them to Germany, too, where there was a great shortage. When the Germans left, Karatzas left for Germany, because he was afraid of being accused as their collaborator. He never came back to Greece.

In February 1943 74 they put all Jews in a ghetto. One couldn't live wherever one wanted in the city. You had to live in certain neighborhoods, the ghettos 75, which Greek gendarmes were guarding and they had put civil guards on duty, too. It was the area around the Community offices. This area started at Androutsou Street and went further than where the Community was, to Evzonon. Everyone was in that area because that was an area where many Jews lived already. They had taken an area and guarded it so that no one could get out.

Besides that, we were all wearing the stars. Later, when I left, I found out that it was the easiest thing to take off your star and throw it away and get up and leave. No one would say anything to you. The Germans were very smart and associated everything they did with fear. The only measure that they were taking was to make sure you were scared. They said that if anyone tried to leave they would shoot them in cold blood. That was enough for no one to even try. If you were to take your star off and the gendarme saw you, he wouldn't come and ask you for your ID. Because there weren't only Jews in the ghetto, there were also Christians. Whoever was living there hadn't been thrown out of their houses, and they didn't ask them for papers or anything. So the terrorization of the Germans was based on fear.

Some Jews left the ghetto. The ones that could just left. It happened two or three times that someone saw them and killed them on the spot. Among them was a good friend of mine, Maurice Errera. At the cemetery there is a grave of six chaps, who were the same age as I, who they caught during their attempt to leave. They weren't caught by the Germans, someone gave them in. And they caught them and executed them straight away. That was enough to terrify all the rest of us.

I was living in the ghetto. We were at Miaouli Street. The Germans wouldn't let you go. They would make us do many things. Everyone had to declare all their assets. They ordered some young men to collect all these declarations, and I was one of them.

They set up an office for us at a school nearby. And people would come to fill in their declarations, and we were helping them to fill them in correctly.

The Germans had made lists of forty or fifty of the most distinguished members of the Community and they said that they were going to be their hostages. Among them was my father. They said, 'If any of these people leave, we will kill as many.' Their mentality was threatening. And my father thought, 'Twenty young people to be killed because of me?'

At the time my father and his brothers couldn't even go to the shop. They had occupied the shop then. They went to the Community every now and again. There were thirty or forty distinguished members of the Community that would gather there every morning and talk. They were taking decisions on how they should help. This was because they had to worry about all the rest that weren't working and had to be fed. My mother and sister were at home. It was the most difficult period of my life.

While I was in the ghetto we never thought of getting in touch with the resistance. We didn't know that it was easy to get in contact with them. We knew of EAM 76, because, I remember, we used to have a maid in the house, for many years who later married a doctor, and she came and brought coupons for EAM. And we gave money to EAM. We gave money to EAM but we never tried or even thought that they might be able to help us leave.

Everyone was saying that we should go into hiding in a nearby village. And they were afraid what could happen without an ID, if they ask to see your ID on the way, etc. Unfortunately, very few people sought refuge with the help of EAM. I don't know why. It wasn't widely known then. We didn't know what action to take, who they were. EAM was at its very beginning then, it wasn't yet organized. There were also other organizations like EDES 77. They were saying that they were nationalists, and the others were communists. But we knew very little about the resistance then, either rightists or leftists. If it had only been a year later...

After that the deportations started 78. They started in February. There many deportations had already been accomplished. Our turn hadn't come yet. My parents were devastated, especially my mother. But unfortunately no one could have imagined what would happen. I was a rebel. I didn't want to accept it. I was saying, 'I will go out and fight, I'm not going to sit here and wait.' I couldn't accept this passive attitude. We can go and throw a bomb and burn the whole Community so they won't have any files, or anything etc. Because they are governing us through the Community, the Community is giving a hand for such a thing to happen! And I said, I would try.

My mother and father wanted me to be saved, but they were also scared that I might be caught. Also because there had been this incident with the six young men that we knew got caught. And when Mother would hear those things... But when she realized that the situation was becoming very difficult she told me, 'Go.' I told her that I should take my sister with me when I was to leave, but my mother didn't want to be separated from her. She didn't let her go, so I left alone.

Daisy and her husband had influenced me a lot in my decision to leave for Athens. He had acquaintances there. This railway man that took me, I think, was Demis's godchild and worked at the SEK [Hellenic State Railways]. He told me, 'I will take you.' You see, the main problem was to pass through the control at Platamonas [village 140 km south of Thessaloniki] because the border line between the Germans and the Italians was at Platamonas. If you could pass through, then you were in the Italian zone, so you were alright.

I would leave from my aunt Daisy's house; she lived in a side road of Kolokotroni Street, near the School of the Blind. There was a river bed there and the house was located there. Before I went around the house I bid my parents goodbye. My mother was crying, my father was very skeptical and he said, 'Be careful my child,' and continued, 'I don't know if we will meet again.' And indeed we didn't meet again. Those were tragic days.

Aunt Daisy's house wasn't inside the ghetto. It was on the ghetto's borders, at the water front. The railway man came to fetch me at night, took me to his house and I spent the night there. He was living with a friend of his. It was a house in the Xyladika area near the railway station. And I stayed there all day. No one knew me.

In the evening, when he had to go and work, he had me wear a railway uniform, gave me a torch to hold and a hat like they used to wear, and took me with him. When I was leaving an old workman that I knew - because this was near my father's factory at Baron Hirsch - saw me and waved at me from far away.

We went to the train station and got on the train. At the train station the railway man didn't face any problems to have me pass. It was the easiest thing for someone to leave. He put me in a wagon. He put me where the breaks were, they had hand breaks then. He said to me, 'You will sit here and you will not move at all. If anyone comes, pretend that you are sleeping.' And this is how it happened. When we got to Platamonas they stopped the train for the control. You had to have an 'Ausweis' [German for 'ID' or 'permit'] to pass. The German inspector came and I pretended to be asleep. He patted me on the back and said, 'Schlaf, schlaf,' meaning, 'sleep, sleep.' The controls were over, the train started moving again and we breathed a sigh of relief.

A bit later, after two or three hours, we got to Larissa. I got off there. We had customers there and I went and found them. The Economidi Brothers were there, who had a metal store in Larissa. And I asked them to get me a ticket to go to Athens. And they got me the ticket. They knew people, and I left aboard the train the same night.

I got to Larissa in the morning and on the same day, at night I got on the train to Athens. There were about six or seven Jewish families in the same wagon in which I was, not to mention all the Jewish families in the rest of the wagons. The train started moving. And at every stop it would stop for a long time. The next morning we started heading for Lamia [city in the mainland of Greece, 332 km south of Thessaloniki]. The train wasn't going through Lamia, it was going though Lianokladi.

Before we got there, they bombed a bridge; it was this great explosion that took place, at the Gorgopotamos. [Editor's note: On 25th November 1942 the railway bridge of Gorgopotamos was bombed by the partisans of EDES and ELAS under the supervision of the British Commandos.]. And we got stuck there, five days on the train. Stuck there with no food, nothing. I had some money on me. At some point, a villager came by with some chicken that he had cooked and he was selling them very expensive. I bought a chicken and ate all of it. Thankfully we had water.

Then we all got off and walked for a long time around the bombed bridge. We found busses opposite. We got on the busses and they took us to the nearest station that the train could reach. I don't remember what place it was.

Then we had to face the same problem when we arrived in Athens. We were going through control again, when we left the station. They asked you for your papers etc. By pure chance a railway man, whom I didn't know, seemed to like me. I told him, 'Look, I don't have papers,' and he said to me, 'Don't worry you will come with me.' Wherever one would pass through control, there was a soldier with a gun asking you for your papers. This railway man showed his papers and said, 'Come on, my child, my child,' and this way I passed and got to Athens. I arrived in Athens in April 1943.

When I got there, my brother was already living at the house of our friends Nicos Latronis and Antonis Papahrisanthou. They were cousins and friends even though Latronis was slightly older than Papahrisanthou. Nicos Latronis was one of our customers, who had his shop in Patra [city in north-west Peloponnesus, 460 km south of Thessaloniki]. But they had opened another one in Piraeus. Latronis was a very good friend of Uncle Solomon. He also knew Father. And Solomon was a very good friend with his brother, Thanos Latronis, who had once been the mayor of Patra.

Danny, who had gone to Athens to study at the Polytechnic, had stayed in Athens. Latronis met him accidentally on the street. He told him, 'I hear that in Thessaloniki things are not going well. You should know that you have no problem. When you feel that you cannot make it, just come to my house. You will come to me, understood?!' And instead of my brother going on his own, he brought me along with him. When he heard that I was coming to Athens, he called Latronis. He told him, 'Look, my brother is coming, too.' 'Alright,' he says, 'Come with your brother.'

Nicos Latronis had us as his guests in the house of Papahrisanthou. I remember my first impression when I got there. They lived in Pangrati [a neighborhood in Athens] in a very nice house that overlooked the 2nd cemetery. The house was on a hill and we could see all the way down to the airport. I remember the eve of Easter. That's when I first met Antonis Papahrisanthou. He cooked intestines. We celebrated Easter, went to church for the Resurrection, where they introduced us as their cousins.

The house was very big. My brother and I shared one room. Latronis with his wife Dina had another room, and Antonis had another room. At the time his sister lived there, too. She was called Ourania. But she later left; she didn't stay until the end.

Later we got ID cards that Evert [Angelos Evert, Athens City Police Chief] was giving out. Proper ID cards because, you see, the ID cards were done in relief then, so one couldn't just make fake ones. So what did they do? They were taking other people's birth certificates. In a very simple way: they would go to the Town Hall and get them. I was called Konstantinidis Kostas and my brother Konstantinidis Vassilis. They were taking these birth certificates and with two witnesses one would go to the police station, and there they would give you the proper ID card. The only difference was that they had someone else registered in the same name of an existing person.

We had a really good time with them. Latronis had an employee, who was also his girlfriend. She was a beautiful woman, very beautiful, and she was from Patra as well. Because she got pregnant, he decided to marry her. After a couple of months they got married. The wedding took place in the house. Only we and a few close friends were present.

Latronis and Papahrisanthou didn't think that they were risking anything at the time. But that's how it was. There were many like him. Latronis was very religious, he would go to church every Sunday and he felt it was his duty to help anyone who was in danger. I am certain that this is how it was. He probably also helped us because of the friendship that he had with my uncle.

Later on, my uncle Solomon came, too. Suddenly he rings and he says, 'I am in Athens.' And Antonis says, 'We've been hit by a bomb.' Because one could tell my uncle, as he didn't speak Greek well. He spoke Greek, but with a bit of an accent... Besides that, he had been in Athens before. And some people around the neighborhood knew him. Uncle didn't have an ID card, he hadn't yet gotten one. I think that he got one later on. Uncle Solomon stayed hidden in Athens until the end of the war.

Sometimes we would go out at night, to a little tavern to have a glass of retsina. We would go to the open air cinema or theater hall in Zappeio. But we generally avoided walking around much. We had money on us. We had brought money and we had sent many goods to Latronis to keep. My father had sent them. He sent about 60 boxes of metal ware. The most valuable, either in weight or in size. At the time having goods was like gold. It was even better to have goods rather than gold. They trusted Latronis. Sometimes they would open one box and sell it. There were neither imports nor any production here.

During the months that we were hiding in Athens, there was no single occasion when our Christian friends, who were helping us, got scared. Then we decided that because our uncle was known in the area, we should rent another place near by. We were in Pangrati, on Marko Moussouri Street. Close to Plastira square we rented an apartment. Down there, no one knew us. But we didn't use it very much, because we soon left. Latronis used it afterwards. Later his brother Thanos stayed in that house.

Throughout the time we were in Athens we didn't meet one Jew. Sometimes we saw one, but from far away. Two or three times we came across someone, one time at the cinema. But this happened very rarely. We didn't walk around a lot and if so, we mostly went out at night. They didn't even have many lights then, it was pitch black, and you couldn't be seen.

I had no contact with people; I didn't know anything about the resistance organizations in Athens. First of all, our friend Papahrisanthou was completely against EAM because he was an officer. And we didn't talk about it. Unfortunately, because had we known...

I had stayed in Athens since Easter 1943. It must have been about May or April. A month later Antonis already started to tell us that there would be a team of officers who wanted to leave for Cairo 79. Antonis was second lieutenant: not a combat one, but of the Logistics Unit. They had hired him from the Military Pension Fund [MPF] of the Air Force to keep their books, because he was a graduate of the School of Higher Business Studies.

Many officers were coming to get paid at the MPF, and they started stirring things up, since they knew that the rest of their colleagues had gone to Cairo and had all climbed the ranks. So they were saying that we should not be left behind. It was a team of about twenty from the air force, ten from the navy and two or three from the infantry. And they bought a boat. We would go to a beach in Euboea [an island north-east of Athens, 450 km south of Thessaloniki] where the closest port to cross over to Turkey is, and the boat would come and take us.

Antonis had told us to go with him. Antonis didn't have money. We financed Antonis, but the two of us didn't go together. I went alone, because we thought that I should go first and if it worked, Danny would follow on the same path. We paid 30 sovereigns, I think. That was a lot of money at the time. With two gold sovereigns you could feed a family for a month. Because the way the system worked was that you would buy the boat and it would come and pick you up and it would get you over but after that the boat would stay with the captain. For every journey the captain would get a new boat.

We passed from the mainland to Euboea, and all night we walked through Euboea until we reached the other side. The small port where they were coming to pick us up was called Akeoi. I don't know why, but we waited for about 15 days. The boat didn't come to pick us up. I remember the time when we stayed there for fifteen days: I washed my clothes in sea water. We didn't have much water or soap or anything like that.

At the same port, the boat that was regularly doing the transport between Greece and Cairo came by. It was one from the Greek secret police. The 2nd office of the Greek government in Cairo owned it. They had it as a liaison. For us it was very good because this ship was very fast, it had really good engines and it was armed. I heard that on another journey they made, the German speedboats approached it. These were checking en route. One time that they came for inspection they let it come very close and they threw grenades and sunk it.

I remember it was 15th August 1943 when we got on the ship. We had with us a known Greek spy who was going back and forth for the English. She had done it several times and in the end the Germans got her and shot her. I don't remember her name, but she was well known. She was with us.

They put us on the boat and they put us down in the hold. We couldn't stay on the deck because airplanes were going by, and they had put up the Turkish flag. Thankfully that night a great storm was raging. It wasn't just our team. There were many other villagers who were leaving: for the adventure, to go and fight. The villagers that came with us knew nothing about the sea. And they started throwing up.

At four in the morning we got to a beach in Tchesme [Turkish harbor, right opposite Chios island] at the opposite side, in Turkey. He left us and the Turks received us. They undressed us first taking away whatever we had on us. They mainly wanted watches, fountain pens, and matches. Matches or lighters weren't allowed then. After they had taken everything, at the beginning they said, 'We will turn you in, in Mitilini. We will take you to Mitilini and turn you in to the port authority, to the Germans there.' And we would reply, 'No, take this, take that.' So we were offering our things to them ourselves in a way.

After they got everything and knew that they hadn't left us anything they said, 'Let's go to the Greek embassy.' They brought busses and took us to Tchesme, the city, and they locked us up in an inn. That's where they decided to put us until we had papers to pass through the control. Later on they came from the Greek consulate in Izmir and took us.

In Izmir, again, they put us inside an inn. There was a control and then they put us on the trains. It was the Greeks now, the allies. We had to get on the train to go to Aleppo. Aleppo is in Syria, the nearest place to the Turkish border. In Aleppo others received us. There they kept us too, for two reasons: one, to go through the control for spies and second, to check whether we had any illnesses. We were in quarantine.

We stayed there for three or four days. There was a lot of food. Everyone fell over the food and because we ate out of gluttony we spent all three days being sick. I had the luck that the one who questioned me was an Englishman from Thessaloniki, he was called Donaldson. He had a shop with fine liquor and food etc. It was like a grocery shop with luxury goods: black caviar, fish roe and champagne. And he knew my father. Well, when he heard my name...

Then we had to go through the recruitment. Since I was with all the folks from the air force, who were anything from group captains to pilot officers, they told me, 'You will come with us to the air force.' And for as long as I served in the armed forces I was everyone's favorite kid. From there they told us that we would go to Gaza. There was an army camp in Gaza for all the Greeks of the air force who wanted to do the first training, the infantry training, there. There were ground officers who were training us.

My uncle Joseph was in Tel Aviv. As we passed through Haifa there were many people from Thessaloniki working at the docks. And I heard them speaking in Spanish. I called out to one, 'Come here' in Spanish, and he replied 'What, what is?' 'I just wanted to let you know that I've just come from Greece, from Thessaloniki.' 'From Thessaloniki, from Thessaloniki?' he uttered in amazement. Upon which I asked him, 'Please, can you find out the telephone number of my uncle in Tel Aviv? He is called Joseph Alvo. Can you inform him that I've come through here and that I am with the Greek air force in Gaza?' And he did. Straight away.

Around three or four days later, while I was there, at the army camp in Gaza, I saw a car arrive in the morning with my uncle in it, my cousin Marcel and a Greek officer from the provost marshal's office of Tel Aviv. Since my cousin knew him, and he was told that I was there, they took him with them to help me get a permit. And even though I hadn't taken an oath yet, they gave me a permission to go for four days to Tel Aviv to be with the family, and tell them everything that I had to say to them. Afterwards I came back. All this happened in October 1943.

When we got to Tchesme we sent a message to Danny. We sent him a message saying that we had arrived and that we were alright. So he decided to take the same route and come, too. But they were more unlucky than us. I left in August. He left a month later. They stayed a long time up in the mountain in Euboea. There was only one hut on the beach. This was a hut for the shepherds to live in the winter. When they went there, it was abandoned. My brother stayed for much longer there. He arrived in Gaza about three months later, in December 1943 or January 1944.

When my brother arrived, many others arrived with him. My brother arrived in Gaza and went through the same training that we had when we first arrived. He later went to Cairo where he passed his medical tests. I think we met just before I was leaving for South Africa. He was in Cairo, while I was waiting for my turn to come to leave for South Africa. I passed my tests etc. My brother and a friend of his had just arrived in Gaza. We were able to get a permit to leave, because we had contacts through Papahrisanthou, and they came to Cairo. We all gathered there with Papahrisanthou and two of his colleagues that had come with the mission that I went with, and we had a photograph taken of all of us together.

Danny had to take the same route. The first stage was the Bulawayo School [city in Zimbabwe, formerly British colony of Southern Rhodesia]]. After he had passed his tests as an operator he went to Salisbury. It was then the capital of Rhodesia [today's Harare, capital of Zimbabwe]. That's where the third stage ended. When the war ended, he was in Salisbury.

Everything was finishing naturally and we had to go through the OTU, Operational Training Unit. There they make you fly with the type of airplane that you were going to be using in the missions. Neither of us had the time to do this, because the war had ended and they gathered us in Egypt, wherefrom they put us on the boat and we returned to Athens. I came back in December 1944. My brother came back much later. We were all from the same unit. And we did nothing at all. Later Papahrisanthou took my brother to work at the ministry, where he was working himself and wherefrom he retired.

My uncle Solomon didn't go through many adventures. He hid in Kolonaki in a family house which Latronis had found for him. The owner's name was Mr. Tsikros; he was a very good gentleman, an old Athenian. One was pleased to see him passing by, he was already of advanced aged at the time, but he was always clean and neat, so when we opened a shop in Athens, we hired him as a manager.

From the rest of the family members only those that were Spanish had managed to leave. The Saltiels were Spanish citizens. After the deportations in Thessaloniki had come to an end, they gathered all the Spanish citizens in the synagogue and told them, 'You have two hours to take your personal belongings and come here. The train is ready. Come back here. We will send you to Spain.'

Sento, his father Daniel and his wife Mathilde left together. First they took them to Bergen-Belsen 80. From there, on the train they passed through the whole of occupied France and got to Spain, where they stayed for around 20 days in Barcelona, and from there they took them to Morocco, to Casablanca, where the allies, the Anglo-French had already entered. They first put them in an army camp where there were many children from other countries and Greeks from other countries. In the camp, they had Mathilde Saltiel teach small children because she knew French very well. In fact, when we left, they gave her a diploma for the conclusion of her duties, thanking her for being such a good teacher. Later, through Morocco they went to Gaza and then to Tel Aviv, where they had relatives.

Sento's wife remained hidden and didn't turn up when all the Spanish were gathered. She managed to get to Athens and hide there. But she suffered. The Spanish that left from Athens weren't taken to Spain like it had happened with the first deportation. They took them to Bergen-Belsen. So she thought that she would be doing better than her husband and hid on her own but she suffered much more. She did survive though, and so did her two daughters.

Moshe Gattegno was with the Spanish. When the Spanish were liberated from Bergen-Belsen, he got eruptive typhus.

Aunt Lily survived, too. She had gotten married to Mario Modiano who was Italian. When the deportations started, the Italians put all the Italian citizens who were in Thessaloniki on an army train and moved them to Italian land. They didn't let the Germans take them. The Italian embassy helped many people. They gave out many certificates with fake citizenship. If, say, you had a grandfather or an uncle or someone, they would give you a certificate saying that you, too, are Italian. And they would send you on their own army train. So, this way they came to Athens and went into hiding.

When Italy fell and surrendered, Aunt Lily was in hiding in Athens with her two children. Her husband went to the mountains, with the partisans. They helped him to go and hide there with his two brothers and his eldest son, Tori. They didn't fight; they were old then, about fifty years old.

Aunt Ida married a Greek Jew. And they were all deported. She didn't survive.

My mother didn't have Spanish citizenship, because she was married to a Greek. My parents left during the last but one deportation to the camps. While she was at Baron Hirsch, my mother had tried to commit suicide by jumping into a well, but they managed to stop her. We heard of this from others that were there and returned.

My mother had psychological problems. She was a bit... I don't know why because she was living happily with my father. They didn't have many arguments. However, she had lost her mother very young and she took over to look after her brothers and sisters. She was about sixteen or seventeen when her mother died. Maybe that created psychological problems. Or maybe it was hereditary. Because I see that my brother has similar problems. My mother had fears. I don't know exactly what it was, but I know that my father had taken her two or three times to Semmering in Austria, to an institution, for treatment. Maybe that explains her suicide attempt. Her nervous system was already weak. And maybe she thought, it would be better, it would save her from it all.

My father's brothers were not on the list. I mean the list of those people that were not allowed to leave, or otherwise, they would execute the rest. Since they managed to leave it was for the best. My father didn't tell them anything. Nothing at all. Everyone was free to do as they thought was best. At the time they used to say like they say in French, 'sauve qui peut.' That means: Whoever can, let him be saved.

You have to understand that no one was thinking that they were going to die. They thought that they would take them there and put them in forced labor to work. We would go and buy good hobnailed boots and warm clothes and things like that. People hid the money in the shoes and the belts in order to have money to spend. The Germans had also done the other thing: you would give them drachmas and they would change it to zloti, which was a worthless piece of paper.

My father really appreciated German science, but not the culture. Because we already knew from World War I in France, that they had done a lot. He appreciated the industry and with many suppliers he had excellent relations. He couldn't have imagined that the Germans would get to this point. My father thought it was compulsory to follow the orders of the Germans. He thought that by having a good behavior towards the Germans, their luck might be different from the others. I think that if they had known that they going for certain death, at least half of them would have left.

What I found out is that when they got to Auschwitz, my sister and my father didn't go straight to the ovens [crematoria]. They worked for a while in forced labor. My father lasted three or four months. He, who was used to getting up in the morning and having his shower and go to the office. I can only imagine what he went through. My mother went [to the crematorium] straight away,, and my sister lasted only a very short time.

Olga was the wife of Bernard Landau, who was put in prison by the Germans because they regarded him as a spy. He knew how to speak German better than the Germans. He was an Ashkenazi. In the family they considered him a little bit as an outsider. He left with the last transport to the concentration camps because he worked at the Community. But neither he, nor Olga or his children survived. Only his older daughter, Yvonne, who got married to a Spaniard and got the Spanish citizenship made it. She survived and later went to Palestine.

Rebecca left with her husband and two daughters and went to Auschwitz. My uncle Daniel lived in the ghetto at the time. Nevertheless he managed to get out of the ghetto with his wife and his two children, Nico and Mary. It seems that when the deportations started a number of people left. Only a few though. Roula's mother, who was from Volos, sent someone to take them and bring them to Volos on a boat. Then, when the Italians surrendered, they went up to the mountains of Karditsa.

Daisy's husband thought that it was better to leave and go to Athens. He had friends there. Daisy had no problem to go to Athens because she had married a Christian. They had excluded the ones of mixed marriages, but those were very few.

In the Middle East I started finding myself again. I felt free. I felt like a human being again: I felt that I was of some value, that I could be of use, because I have to say that everything came easy to me. I had no problem with colleagues or trainers or teachers. I was getting along very well with others. Especially in the air force I had the protection of those we had fled with. I didn't need any protection, but anyway. I remember that when I went to the camp of Ai Giannis I never had a problem to adjust. And down to the present day I don't have a problem to adjust. I adjust to all situations easily.

In Gaza we stayed for as long as we had to, in order to finish our training: four months. I remember when I took a leave for Tel Aviv. I went as often as I could, I would always go to my uncle's house. They gave me a leave when he first came and visited me with a marshal from Tel Aviv. Later on, before I left for Egypt, they gave me permission for a week, I think, or ten days, because I was leaving.

We were crossing the borders from Egypt to Palestine on the train. We would go through customs in Kaltara. The name of the place where the customs were was Al Kaltara. It took about twelve hours on the train. And all the trains were army trains. I stayed at Uncle's Joseph house. He lived in a very nice area: at Rothschild, Boulevard Rothschild. I ate with them, we would go out together, and my uncle took me to buy me some clothes because I had nothing.

In the beginning, when I found my uncle in Tel Aviv, I felt great love and trust towards him. He treated me really well. Uncle Joseph was a landowner in Tel Aviv. He would buy land and construct buildings. He also worked in the Discount Bank, which was one of the largest banks. But because he and his son didn't get along with the rest of the associates, they had withdrawn. It was one of their biggest mistakes in life, because later on the bank became an international bank.

I don't remember if Grandfather and Grandmother Saltiel were already there when I went to the Middle East. I met them in Palestine every time that I would get a permit to go out. They lived in Tel Aviv. I used to visit Grandfather and Grandmother when I went to my uncle's Joseph. They rented a room. They had brought some money with them. Not a lot, but Grandfather had some.

I didn't know Hebrew, but this is what was happening. At the time, the first immigrants that had come were from Germany, and they all spoke German. For example, just like they speak English in Palestine now, back then it was the German language. In any shop that you would get in, if you spoke German, they would understand you.

I was more interested in the fact that I was in a family environment again. I appreciated that very much. I couldn't see any difference in that I was with many other Jews. I wasn't aware that it had to be Jewish land. And I didn't imagine that it could happen either. I knew that many Jews lived there. I didn't feel more at home, I never felt that there. I could only feel the difference between being under occupation back home and being free there. I was quite proud that I was wearing an air force uniform. I didn't have any conversations on this subject with Uncle Joseph. He never suggested that I should stay there. He had his interests there and he hoped that he would keep having his interests there.

When I arrived, I was the first one to arrive from Thessaloniki. There were many people from Thessaloniki in Tel Aviv. And I told them what had happened here, without knowing what happened afterwards. We knew that they had interned people and took them to Poland. But what was going on in Poland we didn't know at the time.

When I was in Gaza there was a sergeant major of the infantry, who was called Vamvakas. He was from Paliouri and he was an apiarist. We became friends and when I would get a permit to go out on Sunday's we would go out together and chat. All of us from Northern Greece got together and went out on Sundays and sometimes had a beer together. My uncle had given me some money then because I didn't have any.

When we were done with all this, they started asking who wanted to go as a volunteer to fly, to go to the air force. I was the first one who went to register. But to do so, you had to go to Heliopolis, which was an outskirt of Cairo. This is where the hygiene offices of the English were, where they would put you through a very thorough health check, especially on the eyes. They would exclude two out of three people because of their eye sight. But until our turn came, we had to stay in Cairo for around 15 to 20 days. They had put us in a unit there.

I got to Cairo at the beginning of 1944. I got a permit again and came back to Tel Aviv. My uncle was very upset that I had registered with the air force and that I was going to get my training down there. He wouldn't forgive me for this. He was very afraid of danger.

We would go from Heliopolis to Cairo on the train. Because we lived in Cairo but all the health tests were in Heliopolis. The tests would last two or three days. One would have to come and go, come and go.. There were others together with the English. There were Serbs and Poles; Cairo was international at the time. And one could see there Greeks, many Cypriots, Yugoslavians, Poles, Canadians, in short, people from all over the world. There were also many from New Zealand and Australia. Thankfully, I passed my tests and I was judged to be suitable. They told me, 'Now you will wait for your turn to be sent to Rhodesia.' My first training was in Rhodesia, in Bulawayo.

All this time that we had already spent in the Middle East, in Cairo and Gaza, maybe afterwards in Bulawayo, it was the first time that we realized what the leftists were working on. They told us for the first time when I was in Cairo. At the end of 1943, a movement was created 81, in which the navy was taking part and some from the infantry. The English had sent the ones from the infantry behind bars, in Ethiopia, where there were also Italian prisoners. I don't know if they let them go free afterwards, because they didn't trust them at all, especially the English. Thankfully, the air force didn't take part, only the navy did.

We would hear these things; news would travel by word of mouth between us. We knew that they were behind bars. The called it, 'wires.' To tell you the truth, I felt a bit ashamed. I was thinking: We came here to fight, and we immediately turned things into politics and did exactly the opposite thing. They wanted to have the Cairo government fall. The Prime Minister was Tsouderos 82. I don't remember hearing anything in the air force about communist propaganda.

There was a Greek woman [prostitute] in Egypt that all the officers used to go to. Papahrisanthou, our friend, took me to her, too. She was a very nice girl. She served all the officers. At the time in the army, but also when we went out, we didn't have any female company of the same age that we could go out and entertain ourselves with.

About twenty days later, they loaded us up on some small airplanes with two engines. Inside the airplane there were twenty of us, ten by ten we sat. We left Cairo and we had to land every two hours to get supplies again. Our journey lasted three days. The first night, I remember, we stayed in Khartoum. We messed around with women there. We went to women, we all went together. It had been months that we hadn't been even close to a woman.

The second night we got off in a place that was called Ndola. Given that the weather was really bad, we had to stop our journey and land in Ndola. Ndola was in Northern Rhodesia [today Zambia]. I remember that airport there; the guards had mosquito nets in front of their faces. There were so many mosquitoes! We stayed there for one night. In fact in the hotel where we stayed, a Greek guy, who was a barber, came, because the hotel manager had notified him and he came to keep us company for a bit. I can say that wherever I went during all these journeys, I didn't find a single place that didn't have Greeks.

Next morning we left early and got to Bulawayo. The ITU was there, the Initial Training Unit. We started having theory classes there, where they taught us a bit of everything. I knew very little English, but I learned it there, because in my class at the beginning we were only three Greeks, the rest were English and South Africans. And also they didn't like each other, the English and the South Africans. They would fight and punch each other.

We learned all the theory about flying. How does the airplane fly, for what reason, how the engines work, everything. We stayed at Bulawayo for three months. In the first stage, I think, we did our first flights, because everyone regarded themselves as pilots. And it is there that I was rejected as a pilot because I didn't pass where landing was concerned.

Later on I registered for the position of a navigator, because air navigation is all about trigonometry, and we were going to the second part of the training for a special aeronautical course, in East London, South Africa. We went to East London at the beginning of 1944. Every training - there were three stages - lasted three or four months. In East London we specialized in air navigation. With the radio or with the stars you knew where you were, and were flying. That was right at the end before we went to Cape Town.

East London was a nice city. A small city, but very pleasant. There were British there, and blacks, too. In Rhodesia it was the first time that we faced the segregation between the whites and the blacks. This actually made a great impression on us, a very bad impression. We would go for a walk in the park and they would have a sign saying, 'Europeans only.' We couldn't understand it. Later on, when we had stayed there for a little longer, we partly found out - not completely but partly - that they were right. They really were people of a much lower intelligence than us. But why were they lower? Because they didn't allow them to be educated!

After East London we went to Cape Town. In Cape Town we mainly had practice on air navigation, which was very interesting. On the plane. The English were so organized in everything, they were great! Of course, we didn't have many real Englishmen. Most of them were Welsh and Scottish. The Scottish were the best. What I liked most was their discipline. For example they would teach you about the machine gun of an airplane and how to dismantle it and turn it to screws and nuts, and then put it together again so it can be used again.

Our trainer for the armaments was a flight sergeant. We had students in the class that were flight lieutenants and higher positioned. They were sending them, too, because they were people that had fought and now wanted to join the air force and because they were very good. You should have seen when the flight sergeant was giving the lesson, how the flight lieutenants sat in front of him. At the time it didn't make a difference, he was the professor. One could fly and have as a pilot a non-commissioned officer and an officer as a seaman, but still the non-commissioned officer would be in charge of the aircraft.

There were many women soldiers in the army then. English and South African. I had a proper [sexual] relationship with a girl in South Africa. What impressed us was that when we went to South Africa we found the ethics there to be as they are here today. The girls there were completely free. Some that were smart realized it quickly. For me it was something that I couldn't imagine.

I went out with girls from the army and others. You would get in a shop, for example, to buy something, and you would start a conversation. And you would go out at night with them. But I never imagined that we could take it further. Because we still had the attitude that you will dishonor the girl. But they were different. In South Africa they regarded that girls seventeen or eighteen years old could have sex without getting married. So we would go out and kiss and hug and make out a little sometimes, but that was it. Nothing more. Although they were available! They must have thought that we were fools. Because we thought that if you had sex with a girl, you had to marry her straight away. That was the attitude at the time. You had to go and sort it out afterwards.

I remember there was a friend of ours that was seriously wounded. He was a seaman bomber, and he was teaching us how to hang the bombs under the airplane. He made one move that he shouldn't have made, and the bomb exploded. And it burned his whole foot, all of it. He stayed in hospital in South Africa for five or six months. With the nurses there he had a great time, even though he looked terrible. He was a handsome man. He was very masculine and handsome and had really good manners. When he came back he told us all about the great time he had with the nurses in the hospital.

The English and the South Africans really disliked each other although they were allies. Especially in Pretoria, where there were many Boers, there would be battles. In the bars and wherever else. The Greeks avoided trouble, they didn't mix.

Something that made an impression on me when I went to South Africa was that I found there Greeks from the Sailing Club. They had left from here as refugees and went to Johannesburg and opened a tea room and made a lot of money. Their tea room was open all night. There we were told that most of the tea rooms were Greek owned anyway.

At the end of 1944 we finished the training. We weren't fit to fight yet. One had to do the OTU, which was the Operational Training Unit. They trained you on the airplane that you were going to fly with. We didn't do the OTU. We didn't do our OTU, because by that time Greece was liberated and they sent us back.

At the end of October or beginning of November 1944 I went back to Cairo. We waited for our turn, to return to Greece. Things in Greece were still very complicated, but they gave me a permit. They gave me the permit while we were at war, and the war ended and I took it and came with an army airplane to Athens, where I stayed for a week. Thanks to the officers they brought me on the official airplane. And I went to visit Aunt Daisy, who was then in Athens. I hadn't informed her, and she didn't know that I was coming. She was lying there on her bed reading. And suddenly she sees the door opening and I get in. This week in Athens went by and then I returned to my unit, and waited for the time to get back.

They brought us back on a ship: the 'Aksou.' I met a Cypriot girl there and we had a little romance, which was very nice. She was a very nice girl. She was from a good family; her father was a district attorney. We wrote to each other for a while afterwards. Later she came to Athens to study there.

They brought us back after the December events 83, the so-called 'Dekemvriana,' at the end of 1944. They didn't bring anyone back from the Middle East while the December events were taking place. Later on they took us to Athens, to the end of Patision Road. That's where our unit was.

They sent us to the Air Force Ministry, to perform a service which was giving the officers clothing passes. It was a clerical job. In fact the non commissioned officer who was with me was Karazisis whom I knew from the YMCA summer camp. For three months we had a very good time together.

I had a girlfriend in Athens when I was still working at the Air Force Ministry. It was something strange. There was a kiosk just opposite. And inside the kiosk was a very beautiful girl. I was with Karazisis, just the two of us. He was the supervisor. When we didn't have work we would hang about. She was looking at us, too. We slowly started smiling at each other. We were supposedly going to the kiosk to buy the newspapers and we finally met, and had a relationship in the end. That was a real relationship. It lasted for as long as I stayed in Athens.

We didn't have bachelor's rooms, they didn't exist back then. You couldn't go to a hotel, except if you went to disreputable ones, so we wouldn't go anywhere. At night we would go to the park. When it was dark, in Zappeion. Zappeion had many places for couples to hide. We also had the Department for Morals back then. Sometimes as we were sitting there in the dark someone would come holding a lantern etc. But I was in uniform, and I told him to leave me alone, not to disturb me.

In the beginning we were flirting; later she admitted that she was married. And that's when we carried on with the relationship since there no longer was an obstacle. That disappointed me then, it was a disappointment. She came from somewhere around Thiva. The fact that I was a Jew and she was a Christian never played a role in our relationship. She was younger than me, much younger. How could I have imagined that she was already married? I was around 22 or 23. She must have been around 19-20. She was a pretty girl. She was a village girl.

We finished issuing passes, and after that they sent me to the Air Force Police Office. It was on Academias Street, where I was very often the officer on duty. I had to change the shifts at night, but right behind the offices it was where Aunt Daisy lived. I slept in the office, but whenever I was free I would go there, as soon as I would finish my duty, I would go home. I ate at home. This was at the beginning of 1945.
Later Danny came back, too, and he went through the same procedure. He happened to become a pilot. He was a pilot and flying a twin engine air craft.

• Post-war

I don't remember the day that Germany surrendered. I don't remember, for a start, if I was in Greece when the war ended. I suppose I was in Greece.

Once my brother asked himself what he was doing there, in Athens. He wanted to be dismissed. First, you had to go to the duty officer. He knocks on the door and tells him, 'Mr. Personnel Manager, why do you keep me here? What am I doing here? I am doing nothing. While I am in great need to go and work... Our shop is ruined. We want to build it up again etc...' He looks at him strangely and he shouts at the minister officer, 'Give him a dismissal certificate.'

I stayed in Athens for almost a year. I was dismissed in 1946.

The first time I came to Thessaloniki was soon after I arrived in Greece. My brother was not there yet. I came to see my uncles. I had come on a ship. One could also travel on a truck. The train transport wasn't working yet. I remember that period very well. I first came wearing the air force uniform. I was walking around in the streets to see what had become of the city. And everything that I saw was so sad. Even though Thessaloniki was liberated, everything went on at a very slow pace. It seemed like it was deserted. The market was deserted; they had nothing to sell. Where the Jewish neighborhoods were, everything was deserted. There were many empty houses. But I don't really have a clear picture of that time because I only stayed for two or three days.

In 1946, while I was still a soldier, my brother was already at the shop. I didn't waste my time in Athens though. I was helping the company from there. It was at a time that imports were conducted here. They would send me goods and I would sell them to traders. I went to sell and I also provided them with goods here. My uncle had come back from the mountains and they had already opened a shop at Agiou Mina Street [Saint Mina Street: one of the commercial roads of Thessaloniki], which was our uncle's property. So we started from there.

When the Germans left and abandoned our shop on Ionos Dragoumi Street, the partisans took over and turned it into their commissariat. When the partisans were gone, the English took it over and turned it into their canteen. They paid us a symbolic rent. And only later on were we able to get it back.

The first time I came back to Thessaloniki I went to see our house, which had been taken over by people stricken by the partisans. And when I saw it...well, of course they looked at me in a hostile way. But there was nothing to be done. In every room there was a whole family, how could one evict them?

The house had two stories. I would have had to evict five and five, ten families and two living in the basement, twelve families all together. I did not dare and didn't wish to do such a thing.

These people had left their villages in Eastern Macedonia due to the activity of ELAS. We called them. They were referred to as the 'partisan stricken.' The General Governorate of Macedonia, acting through the Ministry, gave them rooms in our house. They lived there with provisional papers.

Many started a legal procedure in order to have them vacate their houses and shops, etc. Thankfully we didn't have to sue anybody. I used my little-by-little tactics. In the end we became best friends with all of them.

I got the house back but it took me a long time. First I vacated one floor. Some among the tenants wanted to get back to their villages. They would come and say to me, 'Give us enough money for the journey and we will leave.' I emptied the first floor and went to live there with Daisy's mother and grandfather. It is there where we first stayed.

As soon as I stepped inside the house, I started negotiating with the ones on the ground floor. Slowly I 'persuaded' them to leave our house. At the time one could buy a piece of land very cheap, almost for free. Think that with just ten thousand drachmas one could buy the land and build oneself a shanty to live there.

At the end of 1946 I was released from the army. That was three years later than I should have been released. For two or three months I lived in the house of my uncle Daniel and Roula. I later rented a house in front of the Analipsi [Ascension] church, that belonged to someone I knew.

My grandfather Daniel and grandmother Mathilde came to Thessaloniki after me. They had gone to North Africa. From North Africa they were sent to Palestine. When they were liberated and things became smoother, they returned home by boat from Haifa. They first came to Athens. In fact, at the time, there was only one Turkish ship doing the trip between Athens and Palestine, the 'Aksou.' The Greek ships didn't do international transport, while the Turks did.

At the time, to come from Haifa by boat the journey would take three to four days, because the ship stopped everywhere. It would leave for Haifa then head to Suez, from there to Alexandria, from Alexandria to Cyprus, and from Cyprus to Piraeus.

Grandfather Daniel and Mathilde went straight from Tel Aviv to Haifa on a ship and arrived in Athens. In Athens, they stayed in a hotel. They were with their son Sento, who was on his own, without his family. I think that about a month or so later his relatives came back, too. They went from Athens to Thessaloniki. When they went to Thessaloniki, Grandmother and Grandfather came to stay with me.

So I lived with Daisy's mother and my Grandfather Daniel. They lived downstairs and we had rented out the top floor. My grandfather's son lived separately. My grandmother had a brother who was a Spanish citizen, and he had survived. He was younger than her and he was called Saltiel Gattegno. He came with his sister and stayed with us.

There was another young man, too. His name was Maurice Florentin. He was the brother of a friend of mine, a bit younger than me. He was saved because he was in the mountains. He was with the partisans. He was wounded in a battle and his one leg was quite a bit shorter. He had to wear shoes one of which had a thicker sole, so his legs would be the same height. He was on his own, too. His brother had left secretly for the Middle East. He had lost his parents. We took him in with us, too, because the house where we went to live was big enough. Grandmother and Grandfather had one room, I had one room, her brother and Maurice had one room. Maurice stayed for one year and later left and went to Athens.

Uncle Sento and his family, who had arrived in the meantime, also rented a house. He started the lumber trade again. He went into a partnership with someone that he knew, an old lumber trader. His name was Bilimatsis, which a well-known name. They co-operated and their work went really well.

They managed very quickly to make the shop prosper again. It was the golden age of trade then, after the war ended and we were liberated. First of all, the merchants were making quite a lot of money, then the manufacturers and the artisans. And, finally, the building contractors. It was those three... That's how business developed after the war.

When I came back to Thessaloniki, I found the business already set up. So, I got into the business. I didn't have time to see what was happening around me. When we started working we didn't have any employees. We did everything on our own. First thing every day when I got to the shop was to put the rolls up and pick up the broom and sweep the pavement outside the shop.

We had to start from scratch, me, my brother and my two uncles, Solomon and Daniel; they, by the way, didn't received us in a nice way. Even though they used to be only employees at my father's and uncle's business, they supposedly did us a favor by accepting also us in the business.

Even Uncle Joseph, who loved my father very much, when things came down to business, he would react differently. There was, however, a mentality we grew up with, that one should respect the elder and the parents. And we didn't understand that they didn't want us....We only understood all this later on, after many years.

Some of our old suppliers helped us. And it was through this that we realized what the difference between Americans and Europeans was. We had the exclusivity of rasps of an American trade mark, Nicholson. They were of very good quality. People found out and were asking for them insistently.

After the war, they told us that our exclusivity had expired and that they would assign another representative. In Greece, we were completely unfamiliar with this idea. And though we had been the exclusive representatives of these products, that was it, it was over just like that.

We had another brand's exclusivity; that one was from Italy. When we wrote to them, telling them that we had re-opened the shop, they replied to us, saying that they would provide us with whatever we wished. They asked us if we wanted to get some of their goods to start off. So that was the difference in the attitude of a European in comparison to an American.

Same thing with the sickles from Austria. In no case would they take our exclusivity away. Some of our colleagues would go to them and say, 'Alvo doesn't exist anymore, he is ruined, there is nothing he can do for you, now it is we that are available.' Nothing changed, and we kept it up, even until today. That is, we've had exclusive import for more than seventy years. While with the Americans, business is business.

Our old customers were helping us, too. You see, we had a network all over Greece, and when they heard that we re-opened... I remember the first customers. The oldest one, one from Drama that we had, a certain Zafeirios Iliasis, another one from Soufli [city in western Thrace, 410 km east of Thessaloniki], Mermigkas, and another one, Sakellaridis.

They came up to see us, the last two together. They hadn't suffered at all, because they were from Soufli. Not even from lack of food or from the occupation or anything else. They came to visit us and we started the trade. We later expanded to other areas, too.

About our parents we heard from people that had come back to Thessaloniki. We didn't know then... We knew what had happened there, but we had some secret hopes, although very few hopes. We later found out what had happened from people that were there and had come back. Actually, some people didn't come back for quite a while. After the liberation, it took some people three to four months to return. The father of Lela Salem, who was a distant relative, he returned. He was there when my father died, and he told me so.

It was a very difficult period, because no matter how decent you are, it is very difficult to give back something that you had in your possession. So there were many court cases all the time. There were evictions from houses and from shops.

Properties had been taken away arbitrarily and if you found them you had to claim them and prove that they were yours. For three to four years there were many conflicts between Jews and Christians; but only with those that had collaborated and had taken the Jewish properties, not the rest. Luckily we didn't face such conflicts.

Our goods had been confiscated by the Germans themselves. Thus we didn't have any goods to claim. We had given goods to people who lived outside Thessaloniki to keep for us. We had also given many of our things to representatives and neighbors here in Thessaloniki. We had a good neighbor, Stasino, to whom we had given carpets. He kept two of them for us. He also took care of my stamp collection.. He gave it back to me when we returned.

My uncle had given goods to his representative, Mr. Tahiao. He did a lot of business with Jews. He was great, a remarkable man. My uncle had also given goods to a well-known lawyer, Mr. Nakopoulos. He returned all the goods to him, too. Thankfully, we got back everything we had given to people to keep.

We were lucky and we didn't encounter any cases of unreturned property. From the goods that we had sent to the countryside only two, one from Volos and another one, whose name I cannot remember, kept them and didn't return them to us. All the rest gave us back everything. One of them, in fact, didn't even ask us for money for the transport of the goods to the warehouse.

This way we could reopen the shop and start again. Do you know what it is like to get 100 or 150 boxes in an empty shop? There were others that were saying that the Germans had taken their goods. This didn't happen to us. Because you have to understand, in difficult times, and when there are interests involved, even the best people sometimes, well...

About the events that took place after the December events [the terror that led to the Greek Civil War], I had no opinion. I followed them, but I was neither leftist nor rightist. I was neutral and I just followed them and watched. There was a period of time right after the events, when they would keep a file for everybody at the Security Police on whether you were a communist or not.

There were some that were really communists. Some of the Jews, however, that were up in the mountains, with the resistance movement, in order save their life, got in trouble because they were deemed to be communists. They were characterized as leftists, while in reality they had just gone there to be saved. They had to sign affidavits to prove their repentance 84. All these were very unpleasant things. The only thing that we were afraid of was not to be considered as part of the left block.

Needless to say, that the Greek Civil War 85 affected our life a lot. All of the entertainment halls were forbidden and were closed. They thought there can't be people fighting and dying, while you're going out at night to entertain yourself. That's how it was, we were very limited. We would hear in the morning that the partisans had gotten to Naoussa [city in northern Greece, 90 km west of Thessaloniki] and burned down this and that and did this and that etc.

I remember we had a really good customer from before the war from Ptolemaida [city in northern Greece, 163 km west of Thessaloniki] whose name was Karahisarlis. They went there and burned his shop. Just after they burned his shop, I called him up and said, 'Stelio, don't worry. Come here and I will give you goods to start over again.' And indeed he came, and we gave them a long-term credit. The man was really alright, and he started all over again.

During the civil war we had a lot of work. The army had great needs. They would buy many things. The fact that there was a civil war going on didn't complicate things with our customers or their orders or the transport to the countryside. We didn't have difficulties, none at all. They had burned Naoussa and Ptolemaida. Less damage had been done in Eastern Macedonia. Our customers' network wasn't influenced by the events. So because there was great need in the market and also for the army, we had loads of work. As long as one had goods to sell there was no problem in selling them.

Many Jews served in the army during the civil war. I was lucky enough that every time that they would ask for soldiers, they would exclude the ones that had served in the Middle East. But some that had re-started their businesses and got married and had children they didn't exclude.

One was Benforado, who had come back from the concentration camps and started his business again from scratch. After he started his business, they took him to the army. Luckily, he had an intelligent wife who was keeping the shop while he was serving at the army.

Marcel Nadjari, who married my cousin Rosa, had the same story. He was called to serve in the army a year and a half after he had come back from the concentration camps. Even though he was in a deplorable state they summoned him and he had to serve as a soldier in the army. And many others, and quite a few got killed.

At that period of time we didn't consider outrageous the fact that Jews who had returned from concentration camps were conscripted to serve in the army. I, for my sake, didn't consider it strange when I saw my friend Marcel Nadjari being a soldier. We didn't think twice about it. Because there is no doubt, that if they had asked the Community, they would have been excluded. But they didn't exclude either the Jews or any others. Many others came back from the concentration camps, too.

Marcel Nadjari didn't react at all. He went and served in the army as if it was the normal thing to do. I don't think that he thought that it was unfair. He didn't complain. On the contrary, he would tell us incidents that happened there. He was an excellent guy, always full of jokes.

After the liberation, many were digging. They were looking for the treasures that the Jews had hidden before they left. What else should the Jews have done with their belongings? They dug holes and hid them. They would dig a hole in the ground in their back yard or inside a wall and they would put their personal belongings inside. We did the same. Thankfully, we found them after the liberation. We had hidden gold sovereigns. Many that were looking and digging up weren't relatives or anything.

They knew that in a certain house there used to live a Jewish family, and they would look around. Some found things. Many found things when the rebuilding started. As the bulldozer was digging, it would bring things up to the surface.

During the occupation they were selling out, and my father was accumulating money. There were two things one could do with the money: Either change it into gold sovereigns or buy real estate property. Many were selling their land because they were in great need.

As for us, we had bought a piece of land opposite the Military Academy that went all the way down to the sea. We bought that from Mr. Varlamidis, who was the manager of the National Bank of Greece. He knew my father and they had really good relations. He had already retired from the bank and was on a pension when he told my father, 'I have this piece of land, come and I will sell it to you.'

According to the law that cancelled all buying and selling transactions that took place during the occupation, you either had to give the difference that the person that sold it to you was asking and then keep it, or it would be cancelled and he would give you back the money that you had paid him and he would take his property back. That was the law.

Because they estimated that most of the people that sold things at the time were in great need and didn't sell things at the right price. So if you had bought it at a lower price, you would have benefited from the difficult situation.

My father did many transactions at that time. I remember there was a big tobacco warehouse on Antigonidon Street, which we bought for about 300-400 sovereigns. We bought it from a Christian, whose name I don't remember at the moment, but he was a rich man. They gave us our money back and that was it. Others asked us to give them the difference and we compromised and that was that.

I learned how to drive after the war with the help of a taxi driver. We didn't have driving schools yet. I went to him together with friends and asked him, 'Will you teach us how to drive?' 'Alright,' he replies, 'I will teach you.' I decided to learn how to drive, because I really liked driving. And at the time there weren't many people that knew how to drive.

What kind of cars did we have? After I learned driving, I bought a jeep from DYSI [Public Service of Collected Material, a service of the state, handling confiscated material]. It was a real disaster, but they didn't sell cars at the time. The car trade was not permitted.

The only thing that you could do was to buy from DYSI what was regarded as useless and beyond mending. I had bought an army jeep. I put doors and a tent on top of it and seats inside. I turned it into a limousine. We overhauled the engine completely, reconditioned the cylinders, put new pistons etc. So it turned out to be a good car. I was one of the first people that owned a car. From my friends only one other had a car, which was owned by the factory and was a utility van.

In 1950 I went to Paris for the first time. It was my first journey after the war. I went to enjoy myself. I was only a young man then. Everyone used to go to London, Paris and Italy. I went in the winter because it was the time when we had less business. This is because during winter our work had a low season, as due to the weather all the construction sites would stop operating for a while and the farmers didn't have much work either. Work started again intensively in March.

So I thought that I should go for a journey, alone. I went for Danny's wedding in Tel Aviv and from there, instead of coming back to Thessaloniki, I went to Paris. Given that I had studied in a French high school and I knew many things about it, I really liked Paris. Because everything that I saw there, would remind me of where I had read about it, in this book or the other. All these things reminded me of my childhood years. And we had a lot of fun: you would go out at night and it would be crazy.

When in Paris I found Kazes. He was an old school friend of mine, who had lost all his family in the war, and since he was a French citizen he didn't come back to Thessaloniki at all. He went straight to Paris. He had some uncles there, who sent him to university and he became an architect, and a good one at that. He was married to a girl from Thessaloniki, who also happened to be in Paris at the time. He knew her from school. She was at the Lycée girl's school. I knew where she lived and we used to write to each other.

One Sunday morning I went to his place, knocked on the door and when he opened and saw me, he nearly fainted. When we were at school, he was a sickly person etc. How did he survive in the concentration camps? I don't know, it's a miracle. We hung out together in Paris. I had another acquaintance, a friend of Daisy's, who showed me around, took me to the museums. I stayed there for ten days.

On my way back I went to Italy. A friend of mine lived in Milan and I stayed with him for another two or three days. His name was Tazartes. He was an old school friend of mine. Both he and his brother were Italian citizens.

They used to go to the Italian school, but when Mussolini 86 was elected and he announced his anti-Jewish laws, they also came to the Lycée. His brother left for the Middle East with the Greek battalion. During the occupation he was hiding in Athens, in Kolonaki [upper-class neighborhood in Athens], somewhere in a house.

After the war and before leaving for Italy, Tazartes worked in our shop for a little while. But after a while he didn't like it here. He went to Italy, to work in a firm owned by someone from Thessaloniki, a big firm, and he did really well.

In 1951, a month after I got married, Danny went to Canada. He left from Greece because of his great fear that Greece might get part of the Eastern bloc. Our fear was that if the government changed, we would have a more difficult time because we were traders. We thought we might as well have another foothold somewhere else. As soon as he got there, Danny got Canadian citizenship, but without losing his Greek citizenship. So that was the reason why Danny left. His wife was already pregnant and we thought that it was best for her to give birth in a country more...

In the first years, the business developed very rapidly. In the meantime they had vacated our shop on Ionos Dragoumi Street and we moved there. It took us three months to fix it, because my father had initially built the shop like the Galeries Lafayette in Paris: offices all around and empty space in the middle.

In this way the shop could never be kept warm. As soon as someone opened the door, the cold air would get in and gather at the top. I remember we had a very large anthracite heater which we used in order to get warm. Many times we wore our coats inside the shop. Later on though, we needed more space so we did a general refurbishing.

The factory didn't exist anymore. The Germans had emptied it completely. I don't know why they had ruined all the machines. The things that weren't so heavy were sent to Germany by railway. Others that were heavier, they had dismantled, probably in order to take them in pieces. But they didn't get the chance to take them and put them back together.

Later on we found them in a great mess. When we came back, we didn't even know how to put them back together again.

Then, Darik from Chalkida [city on the island of Euboea, 456 km south of Thessaloniki], who was producing the same things, came and bought them very cheap. Almost for free. As a result we then sold the land. That was a very bad move because later on the land became very valuable.

We claimed compensation for everything the Germans had taken from our factory. I have three huge folders this thick - of all the compensations we claimed. The brother of Professor Constantopoulos was in Germany, living in Hamburg. He had changed his name to a German name and had turned it to 'Constant.' He had a lawyer's office there which dealt solely with claims for compensations from Greece. Even though many claims were taken to court, we didn't manage to get one drachma back. We only got this minimal sum that the Germans gave to everyone.

After the war there was no solidarity between the Jewish merchants. Nothing at all, we simply knew each other.

Work went really well because of the reconstruction. There was a lot of work to be done, plenty of work. My uncles weren't very daring. We could have done much better.

After the war we sold metal ware, tools for metalwork, farming equipment, industrial tools. Then we introduced hygienic products in which we didn't deal at first. Before the war we represented a couple of hygienic products' firms. But what kind of things were we selling?

The simplest things: white bathroom tiles, toilet seats, wash basins, taps, just the most ordinary things. Later, when the reconstruction started, all these goods became luxury goods. And we were trying to get the exclusivity of the products. We brought goods mainly from Italy and from Germany. In time, as the demand got higher, they occupied a bigger part inside our shop. We were mainly known for the metal ware.

Many Jews had left during the occupation and didn't come back. They stayed in Athens because their business was going well. One of them was my father- in-law. He had come back from Palestine, he set up his business and he did really well.

I can tell you that the same number of Jews that used to live in Thessaloniki, were now living in Athens, or maybe even more. Athens was really picking up at the time while Thessaloniki wasn't. Especially Piraeus with the trade was picking up a great deal on the expense of Thessaloniki. The Government Ministries were closer, so they managed to get import permits more easily than us. At the time, if you didn't have an office in Athens, there wasn't much you could do. Trade was not free at the time. Everything depended on permits issued by the Ministry of Trade. If you didn't have someone to run around for you in Athens, you couldn't do business.

We had to open an office there, too, so we opened a branch. It didn't have the same variety of goods that we had in Thessaloniki, it was much more limited. This branch would help us to channel certain products that we wanted, but also facilitated the whole procedure of importing. We opened in Mitropoli. We got Latronis to go and arrange things with the licenses etc. Later, before leaving for Canada, Danny went there, too. Danny stayed there from around 1948 until 1951. Latronis stayed there until he got his pension.

My father worked both with representatives of companies and on his own. He would go and visit the firms that he had found on his own and he would arrange with them to have the exclusivity of their products. For example: he had the exclusivity of this brand in Austria, in Tyrol, which was producing sickles for cutting grass. And they had made a trademark called 'the two hearts.' Each one had two hearts hammered on them. They were of outstanding quality. We were importing this product for over 60 years, and the villagers would come to the shop and say, 'Give me an 'ace of hearts' sickle.'

So when it was the time for the sickles, I would travel around Thessaly [region in central Greece] and Epirus [region in north-western Greece] where they were widely used. Until the 1970s they were on great demand. I remember when the time was ripe we brought up to 40 thousand pieces.

The customers were a mix of people from before and after the war. The ones from before the war didn't all survive; it was the ones that had survived who returned. When they heard that we opened again, they all started coming again. You should have seen how moving the letters of our old customers were when we first came back. I remember especially in Thrace and West Macedonia we had really good customers. We had a lot of support from our customers, especially in the countryside, more so than in the city, because many of our competitors were here, too.

There was a trader who didn't like us at all because he was a competitor from before the war: Economidis, who had a metal ware shop in Egnatia. Nicos Economidis and Sons. He was our greatest competitor before the war. He would say to our customers, 'Why do you go to buy from a Jew?' And our customers would come and tell us afterwards. That was too bad for he harmed himself since it usually made a bad impression on the customer, who would criticize him. With his children, our relations were a bit better. We didn't face any problems with the rest of the people. As time went by, we did better. In the end they had listed me as a representative in the metal ware traders club. We weren't trying to poke each other's eyes out.

We used to visit our customers. Before the war we had two very good employees that used to travel around the whole of Greece, all the way down to Crete. But after the war I took over this job. I would travel around three times a year, from Florina [city in Northern Greece, 166 km west of Thessaloniki] and Orestiada [city in western Thrace, 460 km east of Thessaloniki] to Thessaloniki and Lamia, and many times I used to visit Agrinio [city in Central Greece, 487 km south of Thessaloniki] and the southern part of Peloponnesus. We always used to go around Epirus and Yiannina because we had really good customers there. We had three salesmen that used to travel and bring us the orders. And later we would send them the goods.

We very rarely lost money in the business. We never lost money from people in Macedonia; where does from Thessaly were concerned, we did, not to speak of the Peloponnesians... When I went traveling my most important aim was to take new orders, but also to close old accounts. I remember they all had this same habit; as soon as I would get in they would ask me to first open the books and tell them what they owed us. They would pay their bill first and after that they would place a new order.

After the war the whole business was organized around the shop in Ionos Dragoumi. Later, when we developed the bathroom goods division, for which we needed quite a bit of space, we had to get a warehouse. So we got a basement that served as a warehouse on Lagada Street, right opposite the cemetery of the allies. That happened between 1970 and 1975.

Even though we had taken this space to serve just as a warehouse, we found out that it was quite busy there, too. At the time the whole of Neapolis [settlement in western Thessaloniki] was being built, a part of the city that today has around 70,000 to 75,000 residents. So it was really busy. They were building and they were saying, 'Why should we go all the way to the city center, when we have everything we need around the corner?' At the beginning our competitors were mocking us saying, 'Alvo has gone up there to the cemetery to do business with the dead.' However, later on more of them came and settled there and a new market was created. We did really well there with the bathroom products, both in retail and in wholesale with the building constructors.

We didn't believe in advertising. Only when we got this entire bathroom range and my brother had come from Canada, where advertising is a priority, and told us, 'You are fast asleep here' we did start advertising. Before the war there were very few advertisements. We were counting on the wide network of customers.

I enjoyed working. In general I enjoyed the contact we had with our customers. Either from the city or from the ones coming from the countryside into the city to shop, I was the first one to be in contact with anyone that was coming. We had good relations with our customers and the local ones also, even if they were buying only retail. I met a lot of different people. People would come and go.

Later on, as time passed, we realized that Ionos Dragoumi couldn't survive anymore. First of all, we couldn't load on the road, it was impossible. That's why we got the warehouse. Also the customers wouldn't come and buy in retail because they could not park; as soon as they would leave their car, the policeman would come and tell them 'leave.'

That was one of the main reasons why we decided to sell it. We didn't even think of renting it out to a bank, which would have been a very good opportunity. That was our worst business move, to sell it. We sold it because it wasn't all ours. Fifty percent of the building our cousins owned, the children of my father's brother who were in Israel. They wanted to sell it because they wanted the money.

But what was the situation at the time? At the time there was an exchange control. For example, if someone lived abroad he couldn't take his money with him outside the country. Except, if a Greek, who lived abroad, had money available that he didn't have to bring into Greece. We found a buyer with these characteristics, Koskotas, who bought the shop. He opened a branch of the Bank of Crete there. But we did a stupid thing in making such a move. It was a good opportunity for our cousins to take the money - we didn't want to deprive them of this opportunity.

We had a really good name in the market. We had a great name in the market especially around 1973. I don't know what happened but the prices of all the goods had gone sky-high. They went up by 60 to 70 percent. There was a money-currency readjustment.

We used to get orders from our customers, mainly building constructors, that when they would close a deal they wanted to be sure about the materials and they would come around to book the materials. They would come to the shop and say, for example, 'You know, I am building a building at this and that place, on this and that road. I will need this many wash basins and this many baths and toilets etc.' That would be a great amount of money. He would then say, 'Because I want to be certain, I want to pre- book them now. I will give you a certain amount and I will book them.' 'How much are you thinking of giving me?' 'I will give you half the money upfront.' That used to happen in most shops.

In 1973 when this very large inflation happened, we were maybe the only ones that sold our goods at the prices they had been booked at. For example: A bathtub that was made in Greece at the time cost 7,000 drachmas, the price went up to 10,000 drachmas. All the others couldn't deliver it at its initially agreed on price. But for us - this was mainly something that I wanted - when I would close a deal with a building constructor and he would give me half of the money, my first concern was to be sure to place the order and stock it at the warehouse. So whenever he would ask for his goods, they would be there. So I was able to deliver it to the initial price, even though the prices had gone up. That move remained famous in the market: that only the Alvos had kept their word and the goods were really delivered.

In the beginning we did whatever our uncle's were telling us. We knew nothing. When we started learning the business, we started being competitive. Solomon especially, because he could see that the customers preferred me. He was jealous of me because he could see that I was calmer with the customers, more peaceful, and I used to meet their demands.

Danny left for Canada in 1951. He stayed there for twenty years and after that he came back. So I was in an awkward position. I was alone against both of them and I couldn't really manage. And especially with Solomon's jealousy, because he didn't have a family and he would get really upset and hurt by issues like that. That's how a great competition had arisen which was very unpleasant. Sometimes we had difficulties, but this happens all the time.

The jobs inside the business were divided as follows: My brother was in logistics, following the orders, the payments in the bank, the prices etc. He had come from Canada and was quite experienced with things like that. As we had many different products he would print out from the computer a list for all the products that we brought, calculating the profit margins and he would tell us at which price we should sell each product. Uncle Daniel was fully occupied with the accounting books. He was old by then, he couldn't manage very well. Solomon was busier with the foreign correspondence. I would give them a list of what we needed to order and Solomon would arrange where to place the orders.

I can't say that my uncles had more power in the business. The important decisions that we had to take all together were: 1) whether to hire a new employee. Usually Solomon arranged that. 2) What to do when we wanted to acquire a new warehouse. These were important decisions. Or when we wanted to give extra money to our employees, we would make this decision all of us together. It was at the time, when the business was going well, that we used to give them a 14th salary as a bonus. While they were already getting the 13th salary for Christmas, at New Year's Eve we would give them the 14th. They were delighted.

Apart from that, we had an extra insurance from the National Bank of Greece. In addition to the insurance at the Social Security Service we had a private insurance fund. When we were to give more money, we wouldn't find much resistance from Solomon. He usually agreed because he didn't have many expenses. He didn't care so much.

Sometimes we had difficulties with raising the salaries. Not only because we didn't agree, but we had difficulties with the employees, too, because they were envious of each other. One time this guy, who wasn't happy with his raise, got to the point of saying to us, 'Why did you give him such a high raise and gave me only this raise? Did I ask you for a raise? You shouldn't' have given us a raise at all.' He got to this point!

None of our employees was from before the war. I remember how we first started, very slowly. At the beginning we didn't have any employees. We were doing the packing on our own and we would open the cases of goods upon arrival on our own. We would arrange them. Then, when a customer would come, we would sell, pack it, deliver it, etc. We hired the employees one at a time according to our needs. We had only one who was Jewish and who later left us. He went to Athens and he opened an agency office. His name was Hugo Frances.

Among other things, we had the children of our customers who used to come to us as apprentices and for training. They used to say, 'We don't want you to pay them, only to teach them the business.' We had one from Kozani [city in northern Greece, 141 km west of Thessaloniki] who later became well known. We had girls, too, not just guys. We had one to run to the bank. The cashier always used to be a woman. They would issue the invoices, keep the accounts. We got to the point of having thirty employees.

What we would take more into consideration when we hired a new employee would be the impression he/she made upon us. Firstly it was their appearance. And we always hired from acquaintances. Someone would come and say, 'I have a niece, why don't you take her?' Then our employees would bring us their friends and relatives. We never had to put an advertisement in the newspaper to hire personnel. We were lucky. We always had really good personnel. That was because we also treated them very well, me especially, I was very liberal. If we were pleased with them, apart from treating them very well, I also wanted to pay them accordingly.

My father wouldn't only be interested in the business. He would talk to his employee also about other, more personal things. I developed this attitude even further. In the 40 to 45 years that I was in the shop, I can say that we were all like a big happy family, and they recognize it now. Some didn't understand it at the time, but some that went to work for others, they would later come and tell us, 'Bosses like you, we haven't found anywhere.'

I had really good relations with the staff of the shop. They used to say, 'At Alvo's no one from the staff leaves.' In fact, we had some good employees whom our competitors were trying to lure away from us, but they never managed to do so.

A specific incident: Our grandmother had a maid, Sofia, who was from Aivati [today Lagina, a village 10 km north-east of Thessaloniki]. She took her from a very young age and she had her there all the time. During the war, she got married. After the liberation, as she was going with a cart from Aivati, a car accident took place and her husband got killed. So she remained a widow. We helped her then because she couldn't work with three young children. She had two boys and a girl.

As soon as the boy was fifteen years old, he came to the shop wearing short trousers, and we took him in the business. Well, and guess what: he came to the shop when he was fifteen years old and he left when he got his pension. His name was Christos Matis. We later took his brother, too, Stergios his name was. And all that was done because Sophia was our mother's maid.

When our uncles died, the business passed from our uncles' to our hands. Even though they were four or five years apart in age, they died within a year. One of them died in July 1983. Daniel, the poor guy, died in the toilet, alone. He had a difficult time; he was old. Neither his wife nor his children were in the house. Only a woman that was looking after him was there. It was Sunday and everyone had gone out to eat at the tavern. The woman called me up, urging me, 'Mr. Miko come quickly, Mr. Daniel, I think he is dying!' I went around and found him sitting there.

Later Solomon died, too. He wasn't married and he lived in a hotel. He used to live in Villa Ridge when Vila Ridge was still a hotel. Later he rented at the Mediterranean Hotel [one of the best known and most luxurious hotels in Thessaloniki]. After the earthquake, when the Mediterranean Hotel was ruined, he went to Macedonia Palace Hotel. He had a room there paying by the month. It wasn't strange that he lived in a hotel. He was on his own. Otherwise he would have needed to find a house and an escort to look after him. He was very stingy - tight, he thought that it was cheaper to live in a hotel and eat out. Solomon donated to charities the 20 percent of the business that he owned.

My brother and I went on and created a share holding company, SA [Société Anonyme] in order to be able to take decisions by majority, so we kept the business unhindered. We used to say, 'If we don't have an SA we will break up.' We created the SA Company around 1970. It used to be a privately owned [personal] company and we transformed it to an SA. We both used to say: "When we will be left alone, and our relative partners will die, we want to know that we will be the bosses.'

In the meantime we had hired our cousin Nico, the son of Daniel, who was married to the daughter of Amarillo and worked initially for them at SIDMA, which was his father-in-law's business. Later on, when his own children grew up and the business wasn't going so well, they fired him - with a good compensation, of course, as he was the son-in-law. So we told him, 'Come to the shop, too.' It was a bad move because he was an engineer and he should have continued his work. He joined the business and took his father's share. His father had 22-23 percent. In the end he was the one who kept the business.

After the war the business was doing really well. It began not to do so well just before we were going to retire. The competition was too high. Especially from the ones who were selling domestic products and were buying in very big quantities and selling at lower prices. I could see that the business wasn't going so well, and since my daughter was not interested, and Danny's children were in Canada, I thought: why should we wait? It is best we leave.

We never thought of expanding our business further. My uncles never thought of it. They were old and they had no reason to expand. Our cousin didn't have a business brain at all. My brother and I could both see that it was going under. So we thought of selling it. We didn't want to get in new sectors that we were not familiar with.

When we decided to leave and get our pension, we said to Nico, 'We should sell the business.' We will sell it, and we will make a very good profit.' There was a big demand for such businesses. It was just after we became a member of the European Union. They weren't looking for very profitable companies. The foreigners, in order to buy, they were looking for two things: clientele and a good name in the market. We had both. We had around 1,000 wholesale clients, all over Greece. We had a really good name with the banks and we could sell at a very high price.

Our cousin didn't agree so we proposed, 'If you don't want to sell it, then you should buy our shares.' We didn't want to have a share in a company where we weren't working anymore. So he bought it and we got our pension. In the end we all lost.

My brother and I got out of the business in 1991 and retired. I worked for 46 years and so did my brother. And everyone used to say, 'Don't go into retirement, you will be bored, you won't know what to do.' I don't have enough time, that's the strange thing. There are so many things that I still want to do, but I don't have the time.

For two or three years I was the president of the metal ware merchants' association. We only had one or two meetings every year. A couple of times, when we had problems, we would get together and make a decision. We would forward our requests to the Ministry or the Chamber of Commerce. I wasn't very active there. I became the president because the others wanted me to. This was due to the fact that I had great relations with everyone and they proposed to me because we had such a good name in the market. Initially Yannis Yessios was voted. But the smaller companies didn't want him and preferred me.

I was on good terms with everybody. We were never competitive with the others in the business. We knew each other, especially Bacatselos [one of the most known merchant and businessman in the post war period in Thessaloniki]. Our relationships were over the business. First of all we had prohibited our staff to say anything negative about the other providers, when they would be talking to customers. To say, for example, 'Don't go to him, he is not good,' or anything along these lines. It was prohibited.

With Bacatselos we had a personal relationship and helped each other. We had been sharing the same brand name, 'STANDARD,' which had the best porcelain. In the beginning it was only us and them, there was no one else in Thessaloniki. For the time when it was just the two of us in the market, we would arrange together the prices. We would have one pricelist, normal prices, that we would both sell at.

Maybe one would give a customer a lower price, according to how good and regular the customer was, but we never faced this thing that is happening today that one wants to gouge out the other's eyes, and force them to close the business.

Then, if he would have some item missing from the stock, he would call and say, for example, 'Can you give me a green wash basin and I will give you a pink one?' 'Ok, send it.' That's how we worked with a double stock, because we could also use Bacatselos's stock. We didn't face any problems because we were Jews, on the contrary. We had very good relationships with both our customers and our competitors. The only one, who had a big mouth, was Economidis.

Later another president was elected for the association of the metal ware merchants and they placed me in the 50-member Council of the Chamber of Commerce. The Merchants' Association and the Chamber of Commerce founded the Bank of Macedonia & Thrace, and we used to say: 'We will have a pure Northern Greece bank.' And indeed all the businessmen put some money in, everyone got some shares; we and everybody in the shop got about 1,500 shares each.

The shares were going down all the time, because the government had put its hand in it as well as the Post Office saving's bank. While it started as a private Northern Greek bank, the government put its hands in, too. And the shares really weren't doing well. I had enough in the end with all those intrigues so I sold mine. We had bought them at around 1,000 drachmas each and we sold them at around 850 drachmas taking a 15 percent loss.

• Married life

Before Mari, I had some other relationships. The girls we would go out with would join us at the Sailing Club. Later on, we didn't go to the Sailing Club anymore. After the war, some of us, in our company of friends, lived around the Analipsi area and used to be members of the Sailing Club.

Together we founded the 'Friends of the Sea Club.' I am one of the founders of this club. We made a shed where we put our sailing boats. Cutters, boats and other things. It was located on a big piece of land.

At some point I used to be the cashier, because I used to cover up for any shortages. We had hired a guard, and slowly the club developed. At that time the club was very small. Everyone used to come there, our girlfriends, too.

After the war, I had a small cutter and my friend Freddy Assael and I would take it and embark into the sea. I also had a second degree cousin of mine, a Saltiel, whom I knew from school, too. Our fathers were first degree cousins.

He had gone to Athens University to study medicine and served in the army, too. At the time, the first women school for officers, nurses etc. had been founded in Chalkida. From the first lot that graduated they had sent here three girls, to the 424 Military Hospital.

He knew them so he brought them for company on the cutter. We would go round on the boat. On Sundays we would leave in the morning and go to Peraia. [Editor's note: One of the best known sea front settlements on the Eastern part of the resort area of Thessaloniki during the interwar and after the post liberation period.] We would have a difficult way there but on the way back the wind was on our side.

I remember the time when we went to Moudania [town on the Chalkidiki peninsula, 60 km east of Thessaloniki] together on an excursion, men and women, on a boat all together. I had the jeep, too, and we would really enjoy the company. The three of them and the two of us. The three girls were Christians so things were a bit more difficult. All three of them were really nice girls. I didn't flirt with any of them, it just didn't happen. It was pure friendship, nothing more. Sometimes we would go out at night, dancing etc., but nothing more, we were just friends. I think they came mostly for the ride in the boat.

I got married when I was 28. That was the age that people were getting married at back then. I wasn't thinking of getting married. If I hadn't met Mari, I don't know if I would have gotten married. Meeting Mari was what made me marry. I knew that I was going to have a family, but I had never defined it or had set myself a goal along the lines of: 'When I will be this age, I will get married.' The plan was that I would whenever I would get the chance.

I never gave it a thought whether I would get married to a Jew or a Christian. And unfortunately my parents were not alive to stop me. I wasn't preoccupied with things like that. If there had been a Christian girl that I would get attached to, I would marry her. Of course if she was a Jew, things would have been easier, smarter and more convenient.

Before I got married, when I was in Thessaloniki, no one from the family was interested in whether I would get married or not. Maybe I was influenced by my brother's wedding which was completely unexpected. My brother had gone to Tel Aviv to arrange some business issues that we had with my uncle. They arranged a meeting with him and his first wife. My brother liked her and things moved on quite quickly. He went there in September 1950 and at Christmas time the wedding took place.

Suddenly he returned home, the place where I still lived with my grandmother. He says to me, 'I got engaged in Israel and I will get married before Christmas.' His wife was still serving in the Israeli army. Her name was Sarah Romano, but everyone called her Rita. Her parents were from Thessaloniki and had left after the occupation as we had done, too. They went and stayed in Israel and didn't come back. They had relatives there and relatives in Izmir. By that time, her father was quite old to go back and start a new business, so they stayed there.

Mari's father was called Moshe Benveniste. Before the war he had a cashmere shop at Agiou Mina Street, where the tram used to take the turn. He was a well known trader and he worked together with his father, Abraham Benveniste, who was from Izmir. Many came from Izmir at the time and settled in Thessaloniki. Abraham Benveniste came before 1922. He was a fanatic fan of Venizelos. He had the picture of Venizelos in the lounge. I don't know why he came here. Mari's father, who was born in Izmir and later came here, went to the same school as Onassis [Aristotle (1906?-1975): Turkish-born Greek financier and shipping magnate who pioneered the use of oil supertankers]. While his brother, Mari's uncle, who was younger than him, was born in Thessaloniki.

Mari' mother was called Bertha, and she was of the Salmona family. They were from here, from Thessaloniki. Moshe Benveniste met Bertha here in Thessaloniki. She was a very elegant lady. She died around 2000-2001, at the age of 98. Her husband had already died in 1978. Initially, she lived in Athens on her own. Then she fell in the theater once and started not feeling so well. We forced her to come here, but she didn't want to come. She lived alone in her apartment in Faliro. My father-in-law had bought this apartment from his winnings at card games.

Bertha and Maurice Benveniste were in Athens. They left during the occupation. My father-in-law was smart enough to hire a truck after the Germans came in. He put all his goods on the truck - cashmere doesn't take up so much space - and took them down to Athens. He stored them in a warehouse. Later he found a shop on Leoharous Street and he opened a shop there which he kept until his last days. He had one employee only and kept his shop until he died.

Before the war I didn't know the family of Abraham Benveniste and Bertha Salmona. The Salmona family we didn't know at all. Abraham Benveniste, the grandfather of Mari, him I remember. When we were small children we used to go swimming in the sea together at the bay. We had a boatman with a small boat who would take us swimming, and after our swim we would go fishing. We would eat and we would fish. I remember that Abraham used to come to the same spot where we were fishing and would fish there, too. Mari used to tell me that he loved fishing. We knew that his name was Benveniste. We would see him at the Sailing Club, too. He had his boat anchored at the Sailing Club. He would come and pick it up from there. He had a tent and sometimes he had a friend accompanying him.

Mari was 18 years old then. We have a ten-year age difference. She had just finished her studies in Switzerland. She was in an English boarding school there. She finished both Gymnasium and Lyceum studies in Switzerland. And she had come to Athens where her parents lived. She worked in a trading agency, because she wanted to earn some pocket money. In fact, I think that her parents wanted to marry her off to her boss's son, but in the end I married her.

Here is how I met Mari. Aunt Lily lived in Athens and was friends with Mari's parents. They played cards together a few times a week. Lily must have known Mari's parents from Thessaloniki. I was really close with Aunt Lily. When I was in Athens I wouldn't stay in a hotel, I would stay in her house. I had a room there in which she would accommodate me.

One time after the war, around 1949-1950, I was on a journey outside the country, in Europe. It was the first time that I had gone to Paris. Coming back from there, I passed through Athens. Aunt Lily had a daughter, Rosa. She had her friends there; I was alone in Athens, just passing by. Rosa tells me one day, 'Tonight I'm going out with my friends.' All her friends were Christian. 'You can come, too, if you want.' And she had also invited, without a certain reason in her mind, Mari. That's how we met. We went out. I stayed for two or three days, and we went out with her one more time.

Then they came to Thessaloniki for Easter: Mari's mother with Mari and another girl of Benrubi, the daughter of the one that has the glass business here. They brought their daughters here because they knew that there were potential grooms here. After that we started writing to each other more often. We went out a few times before we got engaged. Not many though, because we were not together.

Mari got my attention from the first moment I met her. She was a beautiful girl. We started chatting and found out that we agreed on many issues. She was a bit different from the girls that we knew here. She had acquired more of a European flair. She was different. We started chatting about books and poems etc. We wrote to each other for a few months and I went to Athens many times. Other friends of mine had met girls who they were interested in, and they were in Athens, too. At the time I had bought a jeep. I would take all the friends and we would drive to Athens.

I got engaged to Mari a short time after I met her. We met at the beginning of January and we got in engaged in May. I don't remember if I proposed to her to get engaged. I remember that we were chatting and we decided it. We got engaged in Athens. The only family that I had here was Uncle Daniel and Roula, I didn't have any others. In the meantime Grandmother Mathilde had moved to Canada. She went to be close to Daisy. After we got engaged I used to go to Athens every weekend. They already knew me at the TAE aviation company [the first Greek aviation company]. The air hostess would see me and say, 'Ah, you are going to your fiancée in Athens.'

What did we use to call flirting at the time? Well, at the beginning chatting and compliments on both sides. A little romance, but we wouldn't go further. Later I got engaged to Mari and when I was going to see her we would sit in her room, Bertha would ask the maid every now and again to come and open the door so she can see what we are doing. What I mean is that it was hard to go further even when you were engaged. It was only kissing and cuddling, nothing more. Especially when it was a girl from a family you knew.

We got married in 1951. I had gone to Athens. It was April, a nice season. Mari and I went out that night, we went to eat somewhere and we decided to get married. We went back to the house and waited for her parents to come, in order to tell them. We waited and waited but they were playing cards and wouldn't finish before two or three in the morning. We thought, well, never mind, we will tell them tomorrow.

So next day I went there and of course they were pleased. They were a bit upset that we hadn't asked for their permission first, but they had no objection. Because they knew my family well and my father had such a good name in the market. Mari's family wasn't as well known as ours was. As I mentioned earlier, Benveniste had a cashmere shop. They weren't the first ones; there were many shops that were bigger than theirs.

I got engaged to a girl whose family was not as well known as mine was. But economically we had lost all our fortune. The only things that we had left were the shop that we set up again and some real estate property, which wasn't even completely ours. Only parts were ours. So there was no social difference. Mari's father didn't believe in real estate property at all. He started believing in it only when he bought the apartment in which he was living. After that he bought another one. But until then he didn't believe in real estate at all, he only believed in trade.

We got married on 1st July 1951. My brother was due to leave for Canada because his wife was pregnant. And we wanted to get married before he had to leave. Otherwise, who knows, maybe we would have delayed it.

We had our wedding in the synagogue in Athens. The relatives from Thessaloniki came, Daniel and Solomon. We had a very simple marriage. The synagogue here in Thessaloniki is different than in Athens. We didn't even have a celebration dinner, nothing, and the relatives from here were upset. We had rented a room in Ekali [an upper-class suburb of Athens], at a hotel there, and that's where we went after the wedding. I had the jeep and we stayed in Athens.

For our honeymoon we went to Rhodes, to 'The Hotel of the Roses.' We stayed in Athens for two nights because there was a strike at the air company and one could only go to Rhodes by boat. So we had to wait for the date that a flight was scheduled. We had a great time in Rhodes, because there were strikes and thus there weren't so many people there. Rhodes wasn't very developed back then. Apart from the hotel, which was really nice, we went to the Valley of the Butterflies and around all the sights. We had a taxi driver who had a small Morris car. We would arrange with him to come to the hotel and pick us up every day, take us where we wanted and bring us back afterwards.

After our honeymoon we came back here. It wasn't a whole month; it was more like 15 days. We came back to Thessaloniki and settled in the house on Papakyriazi Street, on the top floor, because on the ground floor we still had refugees living. We started to get them out one by one and started planning. We called Karazisis, who was an interior decorator. I knew him from the camp and had really good relations with him and his wife. We made the plans and changed the house quite a lot and also put in central heating and radiators which was a novelty.

At the time we hardly spoke about the war. No one did. Everyone wanted to get it out of their minds. They were very sad memories. Even with my Jewish friends I spoke very rarely about it. I was friends with many Jews but very rarely spoke about the occupation and things like that. With Mari, of course, I spoke about it. Because when we went to the house where we would later live, I would tell her, 'This was my parents' room, this was Danny's room, and this was my sister's room.' She told me her story of how they survived, and I told her all my misfortunes and how they took our house etc.

I've been married for 55 years; we've had a very good marriage. Of course, as we get older, our personalities change. So as the years go by, instead of thinking in the same way, we react to problems in different ways. We sometimes talk about someone, for example, and Mari would say to me angrily, 'See what he did?' And I would say, 'It's alright. What do we care? Don't worry about it.'

We didn't have any conflicts all the time we were married. First of all we had our friends and our jobs, because Mari was working, too. She had a shop on Mitropoleos Street. Together with Danny's wife Rita they formed a partnership with a sanitary articles business from Athens, Amarilio, which was very well known. They had a shop on Mitropoleos Street just opposite the Metropolitan Church. We opened it around 1972. In fact, I founded this shop. There wasn't any other shop with these products in the area. Later on, some more shops of this kind opened.

We created this shop because Mari liked these products. She likes anything that has to do with the house, household etc. and she has a great taste. The Athenian guy offered us the business, because in our shop we had only average and low-priced goods. He had luxury goods. And there wasn't a similar shop in Thessaloniki yet. He came and offered us to do it in partnership and we agreed.

However, we created a separate company and our uncles never forgave us for the fact that we opened a shop without them. So I told them, 'We didn't open it, our wives did.' I encouraged Mari to open it. First of all I thought that it was a great idea to open a shop with this kind of luxury goods. In fact, the best customers were not from Thessaloniki but from the provinces. Because in the provinces there is great competition about who has the best house.

Mari liked the job very much. She didn't spend all day at the shop, she would go there at around 10am. And they used to work only until 3pm.

We would go together to visit the exhibitions and then choose new products. There was an annual exhibition in Bologna, specializing in toilet products and accessories, tiles and porcelain. Every year we would find something better to bring. We went to Bologna every year; I didn't always go but Mari would. There was no competition between the shops since we sold different products. We were selling useful products at low prices, while she was selling luxury goods.

The shop did very well. After Rita's death, Mari kept it on her own with one employee for a few years. This employee later left and opened his own business. He opened a shop right opposite ours. He was the manager of our shop, and he went and opened a new shop with his children. Finally, four or five years later, Mari got bored and we sold it to Amarilio. He kept it for three or four years and later sold it to this other guy.

After we got married Mari didn't work. She got really bored because she didn't know people from Thessaloniki and our Jewish friends then were quite a bit older than her and she didn't enjoy it. Later we met more people of our age.

The first people we spent time with were Clio Natsi and George, her husband, because we had land right next to each other, near the 'Farm School.' We hadn't bought this land, but my father had, during the occupation, from Varlamidis. After the liberation, Varlamidis came with his family, we made an agreement, paid the difference and it was settled. The front part was the property of the National Bank of Greece. We bought the front part, too, in order to have the land starting from the road, all the way down. Clio Natsi and George had the land next to that which went all the way down to the sea. When the road was widened they had to get compensation from the Ministry of Public Works.

George studied at the Polytechnic school and was taking exams at the same time as my brother did, and that's when we had first met. One day he came up to me and says, 'I have this and they have that. Would you like to take action together?' So I reply, 'Of course, why not?' We called a lawyer. His brother-in-law, his wife's brother, was a lawyer. So we handed the matter over to him. We realized that we were the same age.

So one day we said, 'Why don't we all go out together, you with your wife and me with mine...' So we all e went out one night and Mari and Clio got on very well. I can say that we were the best of friends. Our best friends were the Natsi couple. We went on very nice excursions together. We went on long journeys in our car because they didn't have a car.

After the war I managed to vacate the whole house. In the beginning we lived upstairs. But in the end we managed to get out all the refugees without taking any of them to court. In fact, we gave them work afterwards. One of them was a carpenter, Mr. Nicos. He made all the shelves for the shops and later we introduced him to a friend of ours and he made all the cupboards for her house. We gave their daughter, Vassoula, who was a very nice girl, a job in our shop. We had her working as a cashier for three or four years.

Around 1953, we moved to the ground floor, while we had some general repairs made in the apartment on the top floor and then rented it out. When we were repairing it an old lady came. She was just passing by; she rang the bell and asked us, 'I see that you are repairing the apartment on the top floor. Are you by any chance thinking of renting it out?' 'Of course,' I replied. 'Oh,' she says, 'look, we are big family and I'd be interested in renting it for my son. Could you please give us a ring when it is ready?' It turned out she was Grandmother Kazazis from the well known Kazazis family who owned the factory. Kazazis was a partner with Angel.

A month later the apartment was ready. We called her and her daughter-in- law, Sophia Kazazis, came to see it. She liked it very much, we agreed on a price and we rented it to them. They stayed in the house for thirteen years. We became very good friends. In the winter they would come down very often because we had a fireplace downstairs. They would come, we would light a fire, have a cup of tea, and we really enjoyed each other's company.

Later we introduced them to the Natsis. They all had the same way of thinking. These two groups of friends then became a bigger one. They had other acquaintances that also came. So one would invite the others, once in one house and then in somebody else's house. We would eat, have feasts, celebrations, and we also danced very much.

In the period after the war we went to the cinema a lot. We would go to concerts when there was something good on and to the theater every now and then, but mainly to the cinema. We didn't have any subscriptions anywhere, for example, at the National Theater of Northern Greece, where you could go and watch all the plays. When we were interested in a play we would just go. But with these friends we would get together many times in our houses. Or we would go out and eat together in a tavern.

As I said before, Mari and I got married in 1951. The adoption took place in 1964, thirteen years later. My brother, who had married around the same time, had already three children. Mari would be very upset that she would see my brother with his wife having three children and us not being able to have any. We went to Israel and underwent some medical tests, because in Jerusalem there was a very good gynecologist, very well known. He was doing tests for artificial insemination, but it didn't work.

We both wanted to have a child. In fact, we both wanted to have a girl. I wasn't very interested in the continuity of our name. I thought that a girl is closer to her parents. So we decided to go for an adoption, even though adoption at the time was considered as a great taboo. There would be adoptions but with tricks from the doctors who would declare the baby to be someone else's: the other would put a pillow on her tummy to appear as if she was pregnant, or they would buy babies, too. I wanted to adopt two together, but Mari didn't.

Mari's parents didn't really approve of it, they were against it. 'Why do you want to get into all this trouble?' They had a completely different mentality than us. They regarded children as trouble: 'They don't allow you to live your life as you want it.' That's why they didn't live with Mari for very long. Only the first years of her life until she was in the first grade of the Gymnasium, she was living with her parents. When she was young, she lived three or four years in a boarding school in Jerusalem. Later they sent her to Switzerland. She came back when she was around 17 and she got married when she was 18. She had spent very little time with them.

That's when Mari started getting involved with the Municipal Foundling Hospital, having in her mind that if we found a baby girl, we would be able to adopt her. There was the Council of the Friend's of the Foundling Hospital. Mari was in the committee, too, and she went very often to help the nurses. They had many babies then, around 70 to 80 babies. All the staff loved her very much.

One day Mari comes back home and announces to me, 'I've found our child.' 'How did you find a child?' 'This morning,' she replied, 'in the incubator.' 'Today they left us a baby and as soon as I saw it, it conquered my heart.'

There were many foster families, who, without adopting the child, would take it to their house and raise it. We thought we would take a baby as a foster family. But it was obligatory that if the federal nursery would ask for it to be returned, one had to return it. We accepted those terms.

Later on, after we had had the baby for a while we thought of going for the adoption. When you said that you'd like to adopt a baby, normally the procedure was that they would send a social worker around the house to come and check out the family, and the house, where the baby would live in and the living conditions in general. When this social worker came around after the second meeting with Mari, they became very good friends. Because she saw the environment that we lived in and she also saw the family, and that we had a very good name in the city, she reported back very quickly with the best comments about us. So then we decided to go for the procedure.

Adoption was being arranged in court. For the adoption to be absolutely valid you had to go to get the approval of the court. That was a silly law at the time that later on was abolished. It said that if one was younger than fifty years, one wasn't allowed to adopt in case any sexual relationships would develop. Because even the judges thought that it was a silly law, they didn't ask you for your identification card to see your age but instead they would ask you to present some witnesses.

We had a professor at the Lycée, Pelopidas Papadopoulos was his name, who was teaching for the first time. He had just graduated from university. And because we were around the same age, we became very good friends, not only he and I, but with the whole class. He would come around the shop after the war and have a coffee with us, as a friend. I asked him, 'Can you come as a witness and say that I am over 50 years old?' 'Of course I will come, and I will even tell them that you were a student of mine.'

When the first court hearing took place he came, and I had put some face- powder on his hair to make it look whiter etc. Our social worker didn't come because there was one that was assigned from the Ministry that came. She had to come in support of the baby's side in order to say, 'I consent.' Because the judge would ask, 'Do you consent?' and she had to reply, 'I consent.'

The social worker was from the Department of Welfare and posted to the Municipal Foundling Hospital. When they found out that there would be a court case, the Welfare had instructed her to not agree. 'You won't agree because the Bishop of Mitilini does not agree etc.' There was an organization at the time called 'The Christian Light' or something like that. 'You won't agree because otherwise we will fire you.' So she came and told us before the court, 'I am really sorry, but I cannot agree because if I do, I will lose my job.' So our lawyer says to us, 'Since things are not going our way, maybe we should not appear in court.'

When I gathered that they were going to take the child back, I said to Mari, 'I wasn't afraid to leave and hide from the Germans. I will take the child and let them come and find me.' I had a very good friend and lawyer, Mr. Athanasiadis, Sakis. When he heard that - he had a very liberal mind - he got very angry. 'You will see what I will do to them. I will sort them out.' He was a very well known lawyer and a friend of the judges. So he goes to the manager of the District Attorney who was a friend of his and tells him what had happened. 'Don't worry,' he replies, 'because the court has assigned this woman, this social worker. I will stop her.' He issued an order and turned her away, and in her place he put the assistant of my lawyer to say, 'I consent.' The assistant was not in the Department of Welfare, but the head of the District Attorney had assigned him as a guardian of the child.

So the court hearing eventually took place. Professor Papadopoulos comes and says, 'I know him, he is an old student of mine and I know that this is his correct age.' 'Do you consent?' they ask the lawyer's assistant. 'I consent,' he replies. The funny thing is that all the lawyers that were in court, waiting for their court cases to start, were all gathered there and they shouted all together, 'We all consent.' All the lawyers together. Because they understood that it was for the benefit of the child. And the verdict was positive, and no one could bother us anymore.

But at the time I was the only one who adopted the child as Mari couldn't due to her young age. So we went through the same procedure again later. The second time we didn't face any problems. The law had changed and they did this really nice thing for us in the registry office. The law had changed and the records had been erased that the child was from the Foundling Hospital and in the registry office they naturally wrote that it was our child.

All our friends took it really well. When we brought her back to the house as her foster family, they all came to pay us a visit with presents. At the time, as I have mentioned before, 98 percent of our friends were Christians. And, in fact, Clio Natsi was the godmother of the child.

We opened a new road for adoption and everybody started adopting. Adoption used to be a great taboo. It was a great shame if you couldn't have children. But when they saw us..... Five more couples went for adoptions, all Christian. They probably thought: if Alvo could do it, why can't we? They forced us from the Foundling Hospital to baptize her while we were still the foster family. They said, 'If you don't baptize her, we will take her back,' because they had instructed them to do so.

They used to have a very good manager at the time. Every now and again he would call us and say, 'Here is what you should do. I got this new court order today. I am telling you to warn you. Make your move, do what you can.' This man helped us so much. Later I gave a donation to the Foundling Hospital. I gave them bathrooms for the babies.

Didi, our daughter, was baptized before the court hearing for the official adoption took place and she remained baptized. We thought, 'why should we change it?' If she gets married to a Jew she will change her religion anyway. If she gets married to a Christian Orthodox, she will be ready and she won't face any problems. And that's what happened. In her first marriage, Didi got married to a Christian Orthodox from Thessaloniki.

We named Didi, Constantina. We had to give her a Christian name, but we also called her Adina which was the name of my mother. And it fitted very well, Constantina, Adina. The decision was mutual. Mari never got on so well with her mother, so she didn't want to name her daughter after her anyway. And I, on the other hand, I had one more reason to do so because I had lost my mother.

The grandparents didn't accept the fact that the child was baptized, especially Mari's mother: 'Why do you want a child that is not yours, not knowing what will come out of it?' The same with Grandfather. But later on, when we visited them and Didi would come with us and would cuddle him, he would go crazy over her.

Maybe the fact that Didi was baptized was a spark for many conversations in the Jewish circles. We didn't get involved at all, because I wasn't even in the Community and we hardly had Jewish friends. We had acquaintances but not real friends, not like our Orthodox friends.

In the first years, our life changed a great deal because of Didi. We were nearly separated from our friends. We didn't go out anymore. We couldn't follow them in celebrations like we used to, because we stayed at home. We were very attached to the child.

I think that if someone adopts a child he feels even more for it than if it was his own. Besides, sometimes one may have a child that one doesn't necessarily desire, but when one adopts a child one wants it consciously. Especially in our case, when we had to face so much trouble, we got really attached. She turned out to be a great person. The funny thing is that especially when she was young she looked like me. She had my characteristics, she was blond and white.

Before Didi went to school, I was very busy. My life was like that: I would leave the house in the morning and go to the shop. I would come home in the afternoon for lunch and then return to the shop until 8 o'clock at night, and then go back home. We also worked on Saturdays. When she was young, by the time I came home in the afternoon, she usually would have eaten already and would be asleep. Later she would sit with us. When I had a little bit of time I would take her out.

Mari brought her up. She had to take her out every day. She would take her out even when it was very cold. She would wrap her up, put her on a carriage and take her out. We had a garden and that helped very much, too. She would take her out in the garden and she wouldn't worry. Because we had a garden, the children of the neighborhood would come and play with her.

Initially we had a maid to take care of her. Later on we brought a maid from France, when Didi was around two or three years old. We didn't pay this maid. She simply lived with us, so we provided her with food and shelter. The French one stayed for two years and this is how Didi learned French really well. After the French girl left we got a girl that had just graduated from the kindergarten teacher's school in Ioannnina. She lived in the house for two years.

Didi went to the YMCA kindergarten, because it was opposite our shop's warehouse. Mari would take her there in the morning and the employee from the shop would go and pick her up in the afternoon. She would take her to the warehouse and in the afternoon, after I shut the shop, I would go and pick her up from there.

Later on we took her to school. The first school that she went to was the Pedagogiki Academia [the school of the Teachers' Academy]. It would have been better if she had gone to the Rigas Feraios School, because it was a better school. But the Pedagogiki Academia was regarded then as the best school and there would be a draw to get in. While we had registered her at the Rigas Feraios, they rang us and said, 'You know, you have been drawn and you can send you daughter here.' She had a great time there but she would have got a better education in Rigas Feraios. Rigas Feraios was then regarded as the best school.

We had a piece of land right next to the sea, opposite the Military Academy. It was called the Varlamidis land. I had planted around 1000 fruit- bearing trees there. I would come back home around 2pm and the shop reopened at 5pm, so I had some time in between to go to the field. Many times she would tell me, 'Take me with you, daddy.' And because she didn't have to study all that much then, I would take her with me.

Didi went to the Calamarie high school 87. We wanted her to learn French. The gymnasium at the time was for girls only. She was an average student and she needed a little push, especially in mathematics. Until the Lyceum she studied on her own. Didi was of the generation that had to take exams to enter the gymnasium. To get into Lyceum again she had to take exams. Thankfully, she passed her exams.

We had really good relationships with the teachers, too. In the end though, in the last two years of school, the mathematician would come to our house and give her some private tutoring. She was a smart girl though, because later on she was working for an airline company and she excelled in computers.

When Didi was a teenager, we faced the change, as all parents do. She was not as difficult as Alexandra, my granddaughter. It was very easy for her to make friends. We found it reasonable that Didi had an affair and was going out. The customs had changed. It wasn't like the first time when we went to South Africa, where we thought that we were in heaven.

She had a friend who was a very nice guy. His name was Stavros and he used to come around the house, too. He had a motorbike and he would come and pick her up from the house. One time we were going to Panorama and a motorbike passes us, and we see Didi was seated at the back. When I saw that, I panicked. From then on, when he would come around the house on his motorbike, I would tell him, 'You came with your motorbike alright? Now that you will go out with Didi, take the key of my BMW, go out and when you get back, you can take your bike back.' That was when she was in Lyceum.

When Didi had graduated, I don't know how, but we got the idea that she should go and study hotel management in Switzerland. There is a very good international school there at Glion, which is near Lausanne. It wasn't the same thing, but you were being taught how to behave towards strangers. You see, with Didi there was no hope that she would enter university. She didn't want to and she wasn't interested. She was more interested in this school. I understood that it wouldn't happen. We knew the situation really well. We knew that the child had potential. So why should we set our mind on something that would just not happen? Same with Alexandra now, she doesn't even want to take exams to enter university. Alexandra does not even want to try. She has a different way of thinking.

Didi stayed in Switzerland for a year and a half. She came back and started working at airline companies. Her school certificate helped her to work there. She started working for Yugoslav Airlines which later closed down. In the meantime Didi had married and gone to Athens. Nicos, her husband, was an aircraft-engineer. He worked at the Greek Aircraft Industry. She still wanted to work in an airline company. She applied and went to work for Pan American.

We never tried to convert Didi. We thought that it wasn't correct. She went to church-events at school. Since we knew that she was Christian Orthodox, we knew that she would go. We didn't want to do things in an unacceptable way. She never expressed the wish to be more religious, to read or say a prayer before she went to bed. We never thought that it would happen, because we weren't religious with regards to Judaism either.

Didi knew when it was a Jewish holiday. For example, at Passover, the family would come and we would have dinner together and she participated, too, but nothing more than that. It was more of a social event rather than a religious one. We still keep gathering at Passover and Socrates and his children come, too, and we read through the Exodus. Socrates has been living with Didi for many years now. He has two children, a boy and a girl. They all live together but he and Didi are not married.

Didi would ask us about our lives. Sometimes we would have conversations like that. We told her about the concentration camps from a very young age. We had conversations about it when she was in Lyceum. Later when she had come back from Switzerland, where she studied, we didn't have a lot of spare time. Lately, she has been thinking of converting to Judaism. After all these events took place and the Holocaust issue became a movie subject and popular talk, we talked a lot about it. She is a member of the Council of the Association Greece-Israel and everybody there loves her very much. She is very active.

We weren't the first ones to tell Didi that she was adopted. Her cousin told her. We told her when she was really young but she erased it from her mind. She learned it by accident and that harmed her. She heard it from my brother's son when he came to visit and they were chatting. This took place when she was at the 1st or 2nd grade of Lyceum. We were at the neighbors' and Robert was here and they were chatting. And I don't know how, it slipped out of his mouth. He says, 'We are not blood related.' 'How come?' Didi asks. So he understood his mistake.

She called us to come back from the neighbors, and we came straight back. Of course it was a shock for Didi. We were talking about it from eleven o'clock until the next morning. She got over it in a week.

Didi has a really good approach to various things. All the time that she worked for the airline company, she knew many languages and everyone loved her very much. The customers would bring her presents. Especially because she could speak Spanish, French and Italian and she would speak to them in their mother-tongue.

As Didi was growing up she learned Greek, French and English. She learned English at school. Spanish she learned by speaking to her grandparents. Mari's parents were speaking Spanish, so she learned it, too.

We would visit Mari's parents when we went to Athens. When her parents lived there we went to Athens quite often. We had the shop there and Mari wanted to visit her father with whom she was really close. He was crazy about Didi. He would get up late in the morning and have his breakfast in bed. When we were in Athens, Didi would go to his bedside and have breakfast with him. He didn't have any hair, he was bald, and Didi would stroke him on his head.

In the summers, when we had Didi we would all go to the countryside together. We went to Ai Giannis very often. Sometimes we went to the islands. We went to Mitilini, Limnos and two or three times we went around Athens. We went to Zakynthos once where a friend of hers with her parents came. She was already quite a bit older then. When Didi was in school and she had a three-month summer break, she would spend all this time in Thessaloniki with us. I could leave the shop for 15 days. We would close the shop for 15 days and we would go.

We never left Didi without at least one of us staying with her. We kept her very close to us, so either Mari would go, or I would go. Two or three times in her life we both had to leave and we left her with her grandparents. Thankfully, she is very close to us, too. She is the queen of daughters. She calls me 'Daddy.' I think that if she hadn't been adopted we wouldn't have been so close. Of course, there is great response from us, we love her very much and we give her anything she can wish for.

Daisy is still Christian even though in her second marriage she got married to a Jew in Corfu. He didn't even say that he was Jewish. His name was Besso and he immigrated to Egypt. There he opened a big knitting and dying factory. When Nasser 88 came to power, he managed to take his fortune and go to Montreal and open a factory there. My aunt Daisy was in Athens. Her husband had a very good friend in Athens who was a refugee. He was a fabric trader, an importer and he knew Besso because of the business, so he met them. It was at a time when he wanted to leave for Canada and he didn't want to leave on his own, so he got married. In the meantime she had split up with Demis. They split after the occupation because Demis had many girlfriends etc.

Rosa Modiano got married to an American marine. He was a captain in the navy. He was here and was working on the establishment of AHEPA Hospital. He stayed in Athens and in Thessaloniki for two years. That's how they met. I don't know how he met Rosa. They got married and left for America. They traveled a lot because of his job in the navy. They stayed in Iraq for four or five years and the same in Brazil. Wherever the Americans helped with hospitals, they would send him.

Later when he stopped traveling and stayed in America permanently, Daisy got a job. They had taken her on to read the newspapers and the magazines and wherever they wrote something about America she would separate those articles and write an interpretation, because she knew many different languages. She learned Farsi which is Iraq's local language. She learned Spanish better than Ladino. She also learned Portuguese when she was in Brazil.

Danny thought of going back to university to study. He decided it because he really had many advantages. He was very good at studying and taking exams. He had decided that before he would get married, he would finish his studies. He had decided to do so. I don't know why, he changed his mind in the last minute. I think he started dating a girl and that's why he didn't want to leave afterwards. I didn't think of going to university at all. We couldn't both go. We used to say that at least one of us should go. Our uncles supported that idea but for their own benefit, because they thought it would be better to be two against one.

Danny left for Canada in 1951. He invited me to go over there afterwards. I had the right to go and immigrate to Canada but I didn't use this right. At the time you couldn't go to Canada just like that, only if someone invited you there. Danny was invited by Daisy and her husband. He had opened a factory there and he told her, 'I will invite him because I need him for work.'

Danny stayed in Canada for 20 years. His job didn't go well there, he was getting very tired there and he came back. He didn't have much luck here.

In 1970 he came back and around eight years later, he lost his wife. The strange thing was that his second wife, who was the sister of his first one, died of the same disease that her sister had died of. This was our fear, that it might be something hereditary. His son died from the disease, too. The only difference was that his first wife died when she was 40 years old, while his second died when she was 70. Danny's first son died when he was 52 years old.

Danny had three children. One was the one that died. The second one, Jack, lives in Toronto and has three children with his wife. He is married to a German, which is strange. I asked Danny, 'How did you face each other when you first met her parents?' He replied, 'At the beginning it was a bit weird.' His third son, Robert, married a French-Canadian. They have a daughter together. They split up afterwards, but he sees her every now and then.

From the moment that Danny returned to Greece in 1970 he came to work in the business. For me it was a great relief because I had to face our uncles all alone until then. He had a very organizing spirit. He was great in organizing. That's why he didn't succeed there. He had a retail shop there which he couldn't manage.

Danny was taking part in the Community's committee for welfare and the summer camp for the young. He was also in the old people's home committee and he worked really hard there. When he went out on a pension, he spent his time there and arranged all the salaries etc.

Danny and I had a good relationship. Up to the age of seven we used to fight a lot. We would beat each other up. The funny thing was that our mother would come and she never asked whose fault it was, she would just slap both of us and that would be it. After this age we had a great relationship. We didn't even exchange one bad word with each other. Not even with regards to financial issues or anything like that at all. Our relationship was fair. Grandfather used to tell us, thinking the way they used to think to at his time, 'You should respect your older brother.' Even though we only had one year age difference.

I had a great relationship with my granddaughter. She has distanced herself a little bit now, but she is close to her grandmother. When she was a baby, I used to take her out for walks etc. We had her around our house very often. She had her own room; I would take her for walks, to see the ducks and the dogs... Now she has distanced herself a little bit. I do mind a little bit, but what to do?

Alexandra never asks us about our lives, or our experiences. I tried telling her a couple of times but she didn't want to listen, not for the time being at least. Not even when it comes to Didi. She never asked about her mother. She is too busy with her own problems.

We kept the three main religious holidays very systematically when Didi was a child: Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah and Pesach. Didi found it completely natural. I mainly like tradition but I don't like all these silly things. You will not eat this or you will not eat the other. I find these things very silly. They say you shouldn't use the phone on Saturdays. Well, what kind of silly things are these? All these things that rabbis did to empower themselves, I really detest them.

I didn't get involved in sports at all, not even football or basketball. I never watched football at all. I only went once when Doxa Dramas was playing because one of our employees was a player there. It was raining very much and we got soaked, but our team won that match. I don't like football. I like basketball very much but I watch it only on TV.

• Post-war events in Israel and Greece

After the war, we followed all the events that were taking place in Israel, especially during the Six-Day-War 89 and the Yom Kippur War 90.

When Israel was founded in 1948 91, we were very afraid, because 200 million Arabs wanted to fight against 3 million Israelis. We were afraid of what was going to happen. I was pleased when it became a state, because a state had to be created. We knew from the start that not all the Jews were going to live there, because it was very small and this was impossible.

Nevertheless, it was important that a state be created and we then were very proud about the fact that they managed against 200 million and the others got scared and left. They left on their own, no one kicked them out, they just left.

The Diaspora Jews were secretly sending money to Israel. Everyone was contributing some money and the government knew it and tolerated it because they didn't want to cause any problems. I contributed some money, personally, too.

Not only did I give some money, but I was also one of the people who were collecting the money. At the time of the war everyone gave something because things didn't look well at all. We were wondering whether Israel would survive. Wherever you went you would have conversations about it with the other Jews. We talked about it with other traders from our neighborhood, too.

At the beginning, just after the war, we heard about the situation in Israel via the radio. We talked about it with other Jews but not with Christians because they were all pro-Palestinian. They thought that we went there and kicked them out of their state. Our friends never said things like that to us, or at least when they would talk about it with us they wouldn't say such things.

Generally, the country was in favor of the Arabs. That happened because there were many Greeks living in Arab states and they didn't want to put them in an awkward position. That was the main reason.

We were scared during the Yom Kippur War. When the Six-Day-War happened we didn't have enough time to be afraid. It happened in an instant. We were scared before though.

To tell you the truth, I didn't like the way that the Israelis treated the Arabs, that is, in this very arrogant way. That harmed Israel very much. This has been my opinion for years now. That time especially with Sharon when this thing happened in Lebanon. It wasn't Sharon, who did it, but surely he should have intervened and stopped them and things would have been very different. Because in that case the Palestinians would have him..., while he remained cold-blooded, in my opinion, and allowed this to happen.

He didn't interfere, when he had the responsibility to do so. I am talking about the attack of the refugee army camps in Beirut, at Sabra and Shatila 92. I had enough of him then, I mean I never liked Sharon after this. Even when he became the Prime Minister, I didn't like him at all.

We didn't have any business relationships with Israel at all. After the liberation I went to Israel a couple of times. I can't say that I was impressed the first time that I went there. I didn't like the Israelis either, to tell you the truth, because they were rude.

They had this pride and arrogance: 'You see, we fought this war and we won.' And they regarded everyone below them. Because they were saying things like, 'You sit there and while we are fighting all you want to do is make money.' Alright I agree, but could you have done it without the help of others?

I went with Mari to Haifa on a holiday once. We went up to the Carmel 93, to a very nice hotel. We could see the sea, the city etc. There were many others there on holiday, too. When they found out that we weren't Israelis but... and we nevertheless talked, but they had this very arrogant look. That really bothered us.

After the war, the first time when elections took place 94, they had all the Jews vote together in the same polling-station at Halceon Street. And the Jews did not vote. Later on it became an issue because the communists had not voted either. So the security police would tell you, 'Let me see your booklet, have you voted? You didn't vote. Why didn't you vote?' And we replied, 'Because they had us all vote at the same place. They should have provided separate polling-stations and we would have voted.' It would take them some time to understand that and in the meantime they would list you as a communist.

Until the Colonels' Junta interfered, the Jewish Community's management was really in the hands of people who were taking advantage of it in a terrible way. All the people that were righteous didn't want to get involved because they would say, 'They are all thieves in there, trying to see who can get more in his pocket.' We were very busy, too. When you have to go to the shop in the morning and the evening you don't have time to get involved in other things such as communal affairs. We had good friends and great friends. I can say that most of them were Christian.

When the colonels came 95 there was one of them that must have been a Jew who had left the army by then and was in the same class with Papadopoulos. He was from Yiannena [city in the region of Epirus, 370 km west of Thessaloniki] or Chalkida, I don't remember exactly which one.

The colonels, when they were about to get involved in the Community - because they put their hands into everything - asked him,: 'Who do you think should we put in charge there in order to have a good management?' He gave them a few names, mine was among them. Suddenly I get a notice saying that I am assigned to be a member of this committee for the Community. That's when I started getting involved with public affairs, and I have been since then and up until today.

At the beginning I was a member of the Landed Property Committee, together with three or four others, all of them business people. We did quite a good management not only with the Community's landed property, but we also looked for the landed property that was not yet in our possession, which we owned but which hadn't been regained yet.

We had two lawyers who were involved solely with these issues. We managed to find quite a few. Things were quite confusing but we managed to clear them up. I stayed there from 1970 to 1972.

When the colonels left and we had elections, the electoral body chose 20 members for the general assembly of the Community. Elections take place every four years. At some point after the communal general assembly, I was assigned a post as advisor of the Community Council which consisted of five people. I was the cashier. Later, after four years, I was elected president of the General Assembly.

Around 1990 I became a member of the Landed Property Committee. I served as its president for eight years. I wasn't working anymore so I had the possibility of going around every day, looking into the problems, the issues of the day, and to try to solve them if possible.

During these eight years, and I am not trying to boast, I managed to triple the earnings. First of all because things were being handled legally. Also, because the law had changed and the moratorium for rents had been abolished. I managed because I applied my system, always handling things in a gentle way, and without ever getting into a fight with any of the tenants. Even so the earnings tripled.

In the end, when I resigned they didn't want to let me go. I didn't agree with the spirit anymore. There were now many young people in the Council. I like to discuss things with people before making decisions. They had a different attitude. And so I took my hat and left.

It is now more than ten years that I've been at the Covo Foundation. I am also at the Nissim Foundation. I think we are assigned in these committees for life. They would replace us in case one retires or dies and then the Community suggests somebody else.

There was a school on Aristotelous Square, the Alliance. Upon liberation this was the club of the gendarme officers, their association. Later, when they left, the arcade was built. [Editor's note: The interviewee is referring to the Hirsch arcade in which the offices of the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki are located today.] When the Community got compensation from the Germans - because the Community did get some compensation - there were two claims.

One claim was by the Alliance for the landed property there. The other one was from the Jews of Thessaloniki that stayed in Israel and never came back. They considered that since they were also from Thessaloniki they had the same rights. Finally, they got part of the compensation.

The bigger claim was the Alliance's, for the land there. From the time of the Turks one couldn't own land, if one wasn't a Turkish citizen. That was the law. That's why the Alliance had to buy this land in the name of the Community. Later, when the Community built on it, they claimed it. They said, 'This land was ours.' They managed to block the money that the German government was about to give to the Jewish Community. The Community couldn't collect the money. In the end the Community and Alliance came to an agreement: 'From the money that we will get, we will give you half of it now and the rest we will slowly return to you.'

The Community took the money, but they said... In fact, someone who was really involved was again a Greek, Nahmias. He had come here and visited us, especially in order to claim the money from the Community. The president at the time was Dick Benveniste, who was completely against it. 'These thieves stopped us and didn't allow us to take our money etc.' After Dick died, I was at the Community Council at the time too, I told them, 'Guys, what we are doing is not fair.

Don't forget what we owe to the Alliance. We promised them some things and we will keep our promise.' And that's how things happened in the end. While I was still there, we paid them back. We owed them a few last payments, which we gave them.

The first time that the Community was subsidized was after the earthquakes. I was in the council then so I know. When the big earthquake took place the Community's offices were seriously damaged and especially the main synagogue. So they said that we should repair it because it had become very dangerous. One couldn't get in.

The Minister of Public Works was a guy from Thessaloniki whom I knew very well because he used to be a customer of the shop. The Community didn't have much money at the time. So two members from the committee, I and another guy, went to ask him for a loan so we could repair the synagogue. He looks at us and says, 'You must be kidding, the Ministry will repair it!' And so it happened. They did the whole repair without asking for one penny from the Community. He was an old resident of Thessaloniki, and knew the Community. Nevertheless it really impressed us. It was the first and maybe the last time the Community was subsidized by the state.

After the war, and after the State of Israel was founded, there was no pressure in the community, nor any preaching on behalf of Israel in the synagogue. They never talked about such issues in the synagogue. They wouldn't mess with politics. The only thing they would to is that one week after the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust, there would be the commemoration of the day of the foundation of the state of Israel. That was the only thing.

On the anniversary of the State of Israel there would first be a ceremony, a Kaddish, for the ones that died fighting for the state. That was the first thing. Then, someone would hold a speech about how it happened, how it started etc. Every time it was a different person. The ceremony would finish with the two national anthems, the Greek and the Israeli one. Unfortunately not many people participated, and most of them were the elder ones. Even today there aren't many young people that participate.

They have been celebrating the Remembrance Day [the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust] in Thessaloniki for many years now. All the authorities would come, the representative of the Metropolitan Church, of the 3rd Army Force, of the Navy, the Police Force, the Fire Department and many others. The synagogue is full, I must say. There is not enough space either on the ground floor or on the balcony.

This is what used to happen at the first anniversaries after the war. There were some authority representatives but not as many as there are today. But we always had some people representing the authorities. At least the municipality would always send someone. On the Day of Remembrance they first recite a Kaddish for the 65,000 local Jews that were killed. Then we light the six candles for the six million that got killed, one candle for each million. It is usually someone that was in the concentration camps that lights them up. Then someone holds a speech. Most of the times a Christian Orthodox holds the speech. In the evening they go to the cemetery and they put flowers on the monument.

One of the first people that comes to attend the Day of Remembrance is the German Consul. I He always comes to the cemetery, too. What I can see is that as time goes by we have more non-Jewish people from the authorities coming than we have Jews.

In the beginning they completely ignored the role the Jews in Thessaloniki had played in the city. They didn't even say that they existed. People don't know about it. They ask me, 'Alvo, where do you come from?' So I reply, 'Maybe your father came from Drama, while my ancestors have been here for 500 years.'

I didn't go to the synagogue so often after the war. Now, that I have to go every day for the whole week for my brother, because we do a memorial service every day, I find it very hard. I get bored. You sit there, they read, without you even understanding what they are reading; it is silly. The ceremonies in the synagogue are very repetitive. They say the same thing ten times, over and over again.

I never got involved in politics. Initially, most of the Jews here voted for ERE 96 and later for N.D., New Democracy 97. I think that the son of the Head of the Police, Evert, played an important role in that. Rumor had it that it was the Jews who had voted for him. He had protected many people by publishing fake identity cards etc. One cannot say that 100 percent was voting for the right. They started to vote for the Center, too.

I turned to ERE initially because I was a trader and they seemed good. After the war and the partisans, we had suffered a great deal and we were very afraid. That's why Danny had left for Canada. We were afraid that they might prevail and the land would then turn to the Communist Block. I had more liberal ideas.

While I was initially voting for ERE, later, in the 1960s, I chose to vote for the Center Party. I started voting Enossis Kendrou 98, because they [ERE, the rightist party in power] had started to shift a lot towards the rightists and we didn't like it. They were becoming extremists. All these doings such as when they were after the leftists and forcing them to sign repentances etc. were events that I really disliked. They would take you down to the police station, for really minor things, you know!

They never took us to the police station to check our political beliefs, but I know many people, ours too, that they would drag there because they had been up on the mountain with the partisans. Where should they have been? Should they have been sitting at the table with the Germans?! And they would drag them around after the war as leftists, just because they had been up on the mountain.

The fact that after the war there was a restraining climate with a great emphasis on the Orthodox Church and Christianity, Greek nationalism, for me being a Jew from Thessaloniki, I cannot say that it really bothered me. When there were national holidays or the mayors were elected or some of the officials that would talk at the International Fair and they would speak about Greece or Thessaloniki, the Byzantine and Christian, we would not say to ourselves, 'I have been here for the last 500 years.' No, we never thought about it, we would listen and be completely indifferent.

After the political change from the Junta, I voted for N.D. It happened that later I voted for Synaspismos 99. I went a few times to listen to Kirkos. I listened to him a couple of times in Aristotelous Square and I thought, 'Why shouldn't I vote him?' So I did. Not out of conviction but because I liked what he was saying. I voted for PASOK [100] a couple of times in the past few years. I liked the former Prime Minister, Simitis. The others could say so many things about this political party, but not about Simitis. About Simitis they couldn't say anything.

I was never a member of a political party; I was a simple voter. Sometimes they would send us some coupons. We would buy coupons from the one, and we would buy from the other, too. That was before and after the dictatorship. They keep sending us some, without me being registered anywhere; they still send us things home or sometimes they call. They inform us about meetings or gatherings, but I never go.

I never participated in pre-election assemblies before the dictatorship. I didn't have any spare time to go. I went to listen to Kirkos a couple of times. I went to some others a couple of times, too, just to listen to what they had to say. We heard them on the radio.

I read the paper. I used to buy the 'Makedonia.' Sometimes we would buy the Athenian papers. When I used to buy them, which was a long time ago, I would either buy the 'Kathimerini' or the 'Vima' in order to have a wider opinion poll. Now I buy only the local paper and only on Sundays, because you read the local news, who died and whose memorial service will take place. I would buy foreign news magazines. Not the French ones, I would get the English-language 'Newsweek.'

• Glossary:

Miklos Braun
Budapest
Hungary
Interviewer: Dora Sardi and Eszter Andor

My father, Zsigmond Braun, was born in Regocze. Today it is called Rigyicza. but then in those days it was still the southern part of Greater Hungary. Now it is Slovakia. My father's father was called Ignac Braun.  But I didn' not know him. All I know about him is that he had two grocery stores. One of them was run by Julcsa, one of my father's older sisters, Julcsa.

My family background
Growing up
During the war
Post-war

My family background

My father, Zsigmond Braun, was born in Regocze. Today it is called Rigyicza. In those days it was still the southern part of Greater Hungary. Now it is Slovakia.

My father’s father was called Ignac Braun. I didn’t know him. All I know about him is that he had two grocery stores. One of them was run by Julcsa, one of my father’s older sisters. In the other, my grandfather and my father’s two other siblings, Karoly and Bella, worked. Karoly was quite a heavy drinker and people said that there was something wrong with him. He was a very warm-hearted man, and if someone came into the shop when he was alone, he would shower them with all kinds of things as presents. When my grandfather discovered what was happening to his stock while he was out buying goods, he beat Karoly soundly with a hoe and drove him away, and subsequently closed down one of his shops. He kept the one that was in the same building as their house. 

My father was six years old when some thieves dug their way in under the shop wall and took everything away on a cart. In the morning the shop was empty and that is when the family moved to Szeged.

My father’s mother married three times, each time to a widower, and she was left a widow herself each time. There were a lot of children from all her marriages. Once I tried to count them, but I gave up at fifty. I didn’t know any of my father’s family personally; they lived in Vienna, and half-siblings and step-siblings were dispersed throughout the world. My father was raised by a nurse because his mother was very ill. He had only one full sister. Her name was Janka Braun and she was crazy about films and theatre. She worked as the film star Pal Lukacs’ maid, among other things. She didn’t care what job she had—attendant, dresser, or whatever—she just wanted to be involved in the theater, near the stage.

My father graduated from secondary school in Szeged after the family moved there. He went to a trade school. He became a bookkeeper, then later a licensed auditor after he got his university degree at the age of fifty. Actually this major had just started then, and he went there in its very first year. He even had a patent. My father was a bookkeeper for various larger firms. He left several of them because he was not willing to do false bookkeeping, as the bosses requested, so he got involved in lawsuits. He always lost, of course, because he didn’t have the money, so he had a hard time maintaining the family.

My father had a great talent for drawing. At the age of fifteen he drew pictures that we have preserved to this day. He borrowed theatre tickets, copied them and used them to get into the theatre. Dad was a well-educated man. He spoke several languages: German, French, English, and some Italian. He spoke German fluently and English very well too. He made a lot of drawings at home, but I don’t really know about them because he gave them away. There were a few very nice pictures of his at my brothers’ place but they were lost. He painted a lot and wrote beautiful poems, he even published a book of poems. Beside these, his war diary has been preserved. And he also played chess and taught us to play. He was a very passionate player and he had permanent chess partners. My father got married in Szeged in 1903.

My mother was born in Torokkanizsa in 1882. Her name was Aranka Buchhalter. This name means bookkeeper in German, but the interesting thing is that her family didn’t have anything to do with bookkeeping up until her marriage with my father. She was from a family of craftsmen and her father was a tailor. My mother did not study any trade, but stayed at home and dealt with the household throughout her life, bringing up three children. 

Growing up

My maternal grandmother lived with us. I don’t know where she had come from or what she had done, I can recall only that she had lived with us for as long as I can remember and that she was a widow. She died in 1931, when I was just preparing for the final exam in secondary school. Grandmother used to make strudel with potato, if she wanted to get on well with me, or if she wanted me to do something for her. There were family suppers, birthdays, and holidays too. That’s all I know about, apart from the fact that she was quite religious. I think she also prayed on Fridays and lit candles.

My father was called up for the army in Transylvania in 1914. He was there for 53 months. He was a captain, the commander of the railway in Transylvania. So the whole family went together to Brasso, because at that time, officers were allowed to take their families with them. (Brasso is now Brasov, Romania.)

My mother managed to look after the three children practically alone throughout World War One. We went to Gyimesbukk afterwards – which was the former Romanian border – and from there, we escaped when the invasion came. It was a mess there, explosions and other things. I can remember only the trenches because I was quite young at the time. We came back to Budapest in 1917. My father had six war medals, and had been wounded twice. That is why he received thirty forints disability pension for a while, plus one forint as child support. That was my monthly pocket money.

When we came back to Budapest, we lived in a big apartment building in Lonyai Street up until 1935. The flat was a two-room apartment overlooking the courtyard. The building had two courtyards and we lived on the fourth floor of the second courtyard. The children were in one of the rooms and the adults in the other. For a while we had a servant. It is interesting that we lived in an apartment building where there was a mixed crowd. Jews who were at the same financial level as us had servants, while Christians didn’t. It’s interesting.

I got along well with my siblings despite the fact that there was a big age difference between us. I am ten years younger than they are and because of this, they were already going out and having fun when I was still learning to write. 

My sister Klari was born in Szeged in 1908. She got married when she was quite young, to a man from Fiume (also known as Rijeka), a Croatian city by the Adriatic Sea. Her husband, Francesco Nauman, was a merchant, descended from a rich merchant family. They had a large shop and I think they also owned the building it was in. They sold fancy leather goods, clothes and all kinds of accessories. They were quite religious. In 1943, when Germans occupied Italy, they were taken away along with their children. They were transported through Hungary in 1944, but we could not meet them. At the time I was not even at home anymore. We don’t know anything more about them. They were probably killed in Auschwitz, if they ever made it there at all.

My brother, Ferenc, was born in Budapest in 1906. At the time my parents were living here, in Pest. He was a textile agent. He got married but didn’t have any children. He married a woman older than he was, Vilma Goldner, who was born in 1900, but I think they got along well. He traveled quite a lot; he never liked to sit still. He continued to be a traveler even after the war so that he could be on the move all the time. He had chess partners in many parts of the country. He was a passionate chess player and had learned the various tactics from our father. He wrote poems too, and I think he also had a talent for that. After the war they lived in Zuglo. He often visited us, and he used to play with the children. He died at the ripe old age of 92, in 1998, after being a widower for a long time.

I went to the elementary school on Lonyai Street for four years, then I completed four years of Realschule (secondary school where emphasis is on the sciences and languages) on Horanszky Street. From there I transferred to the upper trade school on Vas Street. I graduated from there in 1931. 

Whether or not one was Jewish was not a consideration when making friends, nor was it important when choosing one’s wife. But the school and the times were such that one sensed who was Jewish and who wasn’t. As a result, one did not dare to make friends with just anybody, not to mention founding a family. If I remember correctly, there was nothing special on that subject at elementary school. There was only mild anti-Semitism, which I could put up with.

Passing the final exams was hard for me because a few of us received serious warnings from the director of the school and were almost expelled. About six or seven of us went to the Hungarian Socialists, or whatever they were called—illegal communists went to these meetings too. One of my classmates was the leader. His uncle was a Social Democrat representative, and his father worked for Nepszava, a leftist newspaper, so he was sympathetic to their cause and he got us to join. All of us in this group were Jews, I think, with one exception. Before elections we “lollipopped”—put up posters in prohibited places—and we had private seminars. Here we discussed literary questions, introduced books one at a time, and surveyed the works of writers. There were a couple of quite talented kids among us, most of whom died in the war. This whole thing somehow came to light in the school, and then the six or seven of us were taken to the director. 

And then there was Levente training (Levente was a right-wing quasi-military organization which gave compulsory military training to secondary school students). We were rebels, we threw our guns away. Somehow we managed to get off with just a warning from the director, so we were allowed to take the final exams.

I always did a lot of sports. I swam and I played table tennis, I was good at skating, and I also played water polo. I used to go to Uncle Komjadi, to whom Hungary owes a debt of thanks for all he did for the sport of swimming. He was always wet—always around the water. Uncle Komi was a very good soul. Then there was hiking, which we often did with our father. We’d get up at dawn, at two or three in the morning, and leave—we didn’t take the tram or anything like that—and by 9 or 10 o’clock we’d be in the mountains. We also used to go to the open-air pool in Csillaghegy in the summer.

We did not go on holidays very much. I was six years old when my father had a meeting with someone, somewhere around Lake Balaton, I can’t tell you whether it was in Boglar or in Lelle. I ran after him and asked him to take me along because I had never seen Balaton before. So I saw Balaton for the first time then. I used to row a lot; we had a shared second-hand boat and went rowing on the Danube in it. On some occasions, we took a tent and went for a longer period.

My father was not a very religious man but he showed us everything and observed everything. So Pesach was kept. There was Seder night, for example, which, my father conducted. We read the Haggadah and I asked the ma nishtanah, the Four Questions, and I looked for the afikomen (a matzo hidden for the children to find). I don’t remember having a set of dishes used only at Pesach; the house wasn’t kosher anyway. We didn’t go to the temple on Fridays. I don’t know whether my father went, but I went with the school. My religion teacher was the famous Hungarian rabbi Scheiber and I had my bar mitzva in the Nagyfuvaros Street Synagogue. (editor’s note: Sandor Scheiber is best known for having remained in Hungary after the Holocaust, where he convinced the Communist authorities to allow him to continue running a shrunken, but still active, conservative rabbinical seminary. He died in the mid-1980s).

My father was of the opinion that he would show and teach everything to his children, and allow them to decide for themselves. Well, none of us decided in favor of religion. I have special views on this because I believe one can pray anywhere, not only in the synagogue. I don’t visit the cemetery either because one can remember anybody anywhere.

After graduation, I worked in one of the branches of the Coffee Importation Company of Fiume. I must have been about twenty years old when it was arranged, with the help of a lawyer, to have me officially declared of age, so that I could become a shop manager and have a liquor license registered in my name. Of course it wasn’t that kind of a liquor shop, but they sold all kinds of drinks in corked bottles there, so the regulations required us to have a license and it had to be in the manager’s name.

Actually, now I come to think of it, it is interesting that Jews worked for Fiume and Christians for Meinl (editor’s note: Julius Meinl was and remains Vienna’s best known coffee importer). It was not a rule, but it happened that way, just like Jews always going to class “C.” It was like that in every school: it was just another unwritten rule. They always said it was necessary in order to allow for religion classes, so that Jews could go to the same class. Well, what sort of teachers were actually assigned to these classes, that’s another matter and really doesn’t belong here.

Vera Wexler, who later became my wife, worked in an office at the Electric Motor Factory on Csengeri Street. There, a girl sat in front of her who kept telling her that she herself had had a suitor who was handsome and was a gentleman and all. Although they had broken up, she always remembered him fondly. This gentleman happened to work in a branch of the Coffee Importation Company, a big corner building on Szent Istvan Boulevard. Well, that was me. 

Vera lived on Sziget Street and on her way to work she passed in front of the shop, so we took quite a good look at each other. And one time she came in to buy something. Then I asked her out, she agreed, and that’s how it began. This was in 1941. I had already been drafted into forced labor once and had been sent to Transylvania. 

During the war

On the 19th of March, 1944, the Germans came in, and on the 15th of April we got married, feeling that nothing mattered anymore. We went to the registry office between two air raids. We had only a civil wedding, and didn’t have one in the synagogue. (We are going to celebrate our sixtieth wedding anniversary in a synagogue. That’ll be in three years’ time.)

By that time I was working as an unskilled worker in the factory where Vera worked. I had been fired because of the anti-Jewish laws in 1944 and I entered the manual labor staff of the factory and became a semi-skilled worker. I balanced revolving engine parts on machines.

But let’s go chronologically. I was drafted in January 1942 and I got back home in November 1943. I had been at the Don River Curve (not far from Stalingrad in Russia) and all kinds of “good places”; my best friends died, and I survived by chance. For a year we were in Sianki, on the Northern side of Polish Carpathians, which was Polish territory. When we went there, we still had our uniforms. Then in October 1943 an order came that civilian clothes should be sent to us from home. We were not soldiers any more, we were simply prisoners, slaves, or whatever you want to call it. I was able to survive only because I was transferred from the work company to the motorized unit because I could drive trucks. When the front at the Don River Curve was broken through, we towed the truck away with a tractor, and after an adventurous journey in it we arrived in Kiev. 

Then, in May 1944, I was drafted again. There was a motorized-unit army post on Ezredes Street and I was sent there. I went home regularly from there to 40 Sziget Street, a yellow-star house that my whole family had been transferred into. Once I wanted to cross Margit Bridge and I was caught at the gate by a filthy sergeant major and he ordered me back. Ten minutes later the bridge blew up. When Governor Horthy came, we believed everything was going to be all right, but the Arrow Cross (Hungarian Fascist, or Nyilas) men came in the evening and the army post was closed. Then we were put in trains, crammed in wagons at the railroad station of Jozsefvaros. We had to get off at Pozsony Ligetfalu and we went to dig tank traps. From there I escaped with a friend of mine, and after a few days’ illegal loafing around we got into a printing shop called Ervin Metten. The pay-books for German soldiers were printed there in some twenty languages. We obtained illegal papers there but we were caught and imprisoned. From there I was taken to the Lichtenwort concentration camp and I was still there when the Soviet troops arrived. 

When there hadn’t been any news about me for months, my wife said to herself, “If he is alive, he’ll come back on our first wedding anniversary.” That was on the 15th of April. I had had typhus at the time and had just recovered, more or less, and it wasn’t until the 16th of April that I staggered into Sziget Street, frightfully thin.

During the war my mother and father were together in a yellow-star house in the ghetto. Then a few days before the liberation, my father went to fetch water, because there wasn’t any water in the house at all. When he was just in front of the gate, he was hit and killed by shrapnel from a grenade. So my mother was left a widow. She lived alone afterwards; I asked her a few times to live with us but she preferred to stay alone. I visited her quite often. I think my mother used to go to the temple, perhaps not every week but regularly, anyhow. She died in 1960. I can’t really remember any more.

My mother had a younger brother, named Jozsef Buchhalter. He was a textile merchant. He married the daughter of a provincial property-owner and they lived in Budapest. He was on the Italian front at Isonzo during World War One. Then after that he had a textile shop on Vilmos Csaszar Avenue in Budapest. During World War Two he was shot into the Danube but he swam away and then lived on for quite a long time. (Editor’s note: after the Arrow-Cross takeover in October 1944, their vigilantes ravaged Budapest and drove many Jews to the shore of the Danube, where they were shot so that their bodies fell into the river.) He wrote a book which begins with the phrase, “I was born twice.” 

Post-war

When we were liberated we moved back to the building we had lived in, not into our old apartment, but into another one we found empty. Forced laborers taken by the Germans had lived in this apartment and they had taken everything they could carry when they left. The apartment was empty and full of bedbugs, but we were happy we could go back. 

After the liberation I was asked back to my former firm, the Coffee Importation Company of Fiume, where I had previously worked for more than ten years. I didn’t go back because I felt that I didn’t want to be an employee any more, and so I set up my own shop. For a short time before that I became a partner in a stationary shop but I quarreled with my boss, so we set up our own business on Hold Street. There I got acquainted with a man whose father was at the National Bank. We obtained a space from them and we ran this small shop for about four years, dealing in stationary and office machines. Then we gave it up and found jobs. I worked at the official Schoolbook Publishing Company, then I went to various companies, one after the other. We dealt with the nationalization process. Every time I nationalized a private company, I handled the records and moved on, leaving somebody there to become the director. Finally I nationalized the goose market on Klauzal Square, and this is how I entered the food trade. I worked in food stores, in delis and for the FEKER (Food Trade Company of the Capital), which was a company that ran the markets.

STEFAN STRELECKY
Kosice
Slovakia
Interviewer: Edward Serotta

I was born in Lubieto in 1913. At that time, it was in Austro-Hungary.
There were five Jewish families in my town and no one survived - no one
except me. I had two sisters. One was killed in 1942 and the other in
Kremnicka. The Germans killed everyone else in 1944.

My father was Moritz Strelinger. I changed our name later. Our family had a
store, and both my parents worked there.

My grandfather was Jakob Strelinger. He was a teacher, and he spoke a great
many languages. He was born in 1843 and he died at 92 years of age in 1935.
When he was born, there were no birth registers in the village. He
volunteered for the Austro-Hungarian army, but they sent him home because
he was too young.

My mother was Malvina Straus. Her parents had a hotel in Sliacpa; it had a
kosher restaurant. No one from her family survived. I was the only heir of
her family's property.

I attended the Hebrew and German high school in Brno. It was called the
Jewish Reform Real Gymnasium, from which I graduated in 1934. The school
had an excellent reputation. The instruction was all in German. There were
around 300 students there. Among the teachers was Dr. Epstein; he was a
friend of President Masaryk.

Pan Henryk Prajs jest radosną i otwartą osobą. Uczestniczy w działaniach różnych organizacji zrzeszających weteranów, jest też członkiem klubu seniorów warszawskiego TSKŻu. Spotykamy się z nim w jego domu w Górze Kalwaria pod Warszawą, gdzie mieszka sam. Jego miasto rodzinne jest mu bardzo bliskie. Pan Prajs mówi bardzo dużo, ale często gubi główny wątek rozmowy i pogrąża się w dygresjach. W czasie naszego spotkania wielokrotnie podkreśla swoją polską tożsamość i liberalne poglądy. Kilka razy poprosił mnie, żebym przerwała nagrywanie, bo nie chciał dzielić się niektórymi wydarzeniami publicznie.

Historia mojej rodziny
Dzieciństwo
W armii
W czasie wojny
W ukryciu
Po wojnie
Ostatnie lata

Historia mojej rodziny

Moi rodzice przyjechali do Góry Kalwaria 1 z okolic Kielc. Wiem na pewno, że rodzina mojego ojca mieszkała w Górze Kalwaria na ulicy Piłsudskiego już w 1850 roku. To tam mieli swój niewielki dom. Teraz już go nie ma: został rozebrany przez Niemców. Dziadek ze strony ojca nazywał się Majer Bejer Prajs. Pracował jako pośrednik: skupował nabiał, mleko czy śmietanę a następnie dostarczał je do Warszawy. Tylko dla Żydów, bo wszystkie produkty były koszerne. Zapamiętałem go, jako żwawego staruszka z siwą brodą i "krymówką" na głowie [okrągła, czarna czapka z niewielkim otworem na oczy]. Majer Bejer Prajs zmarł w 1930 roku - nadal mam akt jego zgonu. Moja babcia miała na imię Golda, ale nigdy jej nie poznałem. Wydaje mi się, że umarła zanim ja się urodziłem.

Moi dziadkowie mieli wiele dzieci. Bracia mojego ojca nazywali się Nusyn i Mojsze. Nusyn nie miał wyuczonego, stałego zawodu. Dorabiał zbierając jabłka i pomagając tam i ówdzie. Wśród żydowskiej biedoty było wiele takich jak on. Mojsze miał dorożkę i zarabiał przewożąc ludzi. Miał stałych klientów: woził na przykład sędziego do sądu. Miał dwoje dzieci Josla i Goldę, którzy to z kolei mieli córki o imieniu Golde, nazwane tak po babce. Mojsze mieszkał ze swoją rodziną w drewnianym domu w Górze Kalwarii, zupełnie jak my. Biednie, nic specjalnego.

Siostry ojca nazywały się: Kaila, Malka i Chana. Herszek Bogman, mąż Kaili, był szewcem. Mieli dzieci, ale ich nie pamiętam. Było ich wiele. Hudeska, Gilka i chłopiec, Mosze.

Młodsza siostra ojca miała na imię Malka. Jej mąż, Dawid Szyniawer, był soferem: przepisywał Torę. Wiecie, pisał na pergaminie żydowskie [hebrajskie] litery od prawej strony do lewej. Musiał to być pergamin ze specjalnie przygotowanej skóry cielęcej, bardzo cienki. Tylko taki, inne były zakazane. Malka miała dużo dzieci: Mojsze, Szulima, Eta, Mendela, Josela, Ele, i Gedale. Pamiętam wszystkie, bo mieszkały niedaleko i były w moim wieku lub nieco starsze.

Ciocia Chana miała mały sklep z materiałami. Jej mąż miał na nazwisko Szoskiel, ale nie mogę sobie przypomnieć jego imienia. Może Dawid? Ciocia Chana miała dwoje dzieci: córkę Golde i syna Ele.

Dziadków ze strony matki w ogóle nie znam. Rzadko rozmawiało się o nich w domu, nie był to ważny temat. Rodzina mamy nazywała się Frydman. Mieszkali na wsi, niedaleko Góry Kalwaria, mieli posiadłość w Koniewie. Niewielką działkę, ogródek i mały dom. Przed wojną w 1937 lub 1938 roku przeprowadzili się do Góry Kalwaria. Nie widywaliśmy się wtedy zbyt często, bo byłem wówczas w armii. Dziadkowie byli bardzo religijnymi Żydami.

Moja mama też miała wiele rodzeństwa. Najstarsza z jej sióstr miała na imię Frajda, potem była mama, Szulim, po nim Chana, potem Glika, po Glice Icek, po Icku Fajga, a po Fajdze Sura. Frajda miała męża i mieszkała w Piasecznie (15 km na północ od Góry Kalwarii). Dlatego nie mogę nic o niej opowiedzieć, nic nie wiem. Szulim miał rodzinę w Górze Kalwaria, jego żona miała na imię Czarna. Mieli czworo dzieci: Herszela, Joseka, Gine i Rachel. Szulim był krawcem i robił tak zwaną "tandetę", kiepskiej jakości ubrania. Takich jak on nazywano "tandeciarzami", bo szyli najtańsze ubrania najgorszej jakości. Normalnemu krawcowi trzeba było przed wojną zapłacić jakieś 25 złoty za samo uszycie garnituru. Tandeciarz brał 23 złote za wszytko, łącznie z materiałem. U tandeciarzy kupowała biedota z miast i wsi. Szulim sprzedawał swoje kiepskie towary na targu. Odbywał się on raz w tygodniu, chyba we wtorki.

Siostra mamy, Chana, była gospodynią domową. Jej mąż nazywał się Mosze Warym. Mieli restaurację na rynku Góry Kalwaria, na rogu ulicy Piłsudskiego i Pijarskiej. Mieli chyba troje dzieci: Motka, Gedale i kolejną Ginę.

Glika była starą panną i nie miała dzieci. Pracowała jako szwaczka, ale szyła tylko bieliznę, damskie i męskie podkoszulki. Icyk miał w Warszawie sklep z nabiałem na ulicy Sowiej 4. Radził sobie doskonale. Nie pamiętam imienia jego żony. Mieli troje dzieci. Jednym z nich była Gina, na którą wołano Genia. Reszty nie pamiętam, bo to były malutkie dzieci.

Sura też była starą panną, nigdy nie wyszła za mąż. Była szwaczką. Była też Fajga, również szwczka, szyła tylko męskie spodnie. Umarła dwa tygodnie przed wypędzeniem Żydów z Góry Kalwaria w 1941 roku. Odeszła w spokoju. Pochowano ją zgodnie z żydowską tradycją. To dziwne, ale wszyscy jej zazdrościliśmy. Zmarła z przyczyn naturalnych i nie musiała oglądać tych wszystkich strasznych rzeczy. Pamiętam mniej więcej, gdzie ją pochowaliśmy, ale tam nie ma już jej nagrobka.

Jak pochować zmarłego zgodnie z żydowską tradycją? Trzeba to zrobić jeszcze w dniu śmierci. Nie sprawdza się czy to może nie śpiączka. Jest normalny grób, a żydowska trumna składa się z siedmiu desek. Po dwie z każdego boku, szerokie na 20-30 centymetrów, bez gwoździ. Świat jest otwarty, więc trumny nie można zamknąć ani zbić gwoźdźmi. Ciało kładzie się na ziemi i przykrywa trzema deskami. Tak wygląda tradycyjny pogrzeb żydowski. Odprawia się jeszcze modlitwy.

Moim rodzice urodzili się między 1890 a 1893 rokiem. Ojcu było na imię Jankiel, a matce Estera. Poznali się, zgodnie z panującym wówczas zwyczajem, dzięki swatce. Mama była bardzo atrakcyjną kobietą: średniego wzrostu, z okrągłą twarzą i pięknymi oczami. Oczy mam właśnie po niej. Mama nie nosiła peruki, miała ładne włosy. Ojciec był wysokim blondynem, bardzo "nieżydowskim". Brakowało mu palca. Odciął go sobie sam, żeby nie musieć iść do carskiej armii. Potrafił pisać tylko w jidysz, po polsku nie. Po rosyjsku potrafił się tylko podpisać, tak jak mama.

Mama była szwaczką. Ojciec handlował sadami. Chcę przez to powiedzieć, że wynajmował je od rolników, korzystał z nich, opiekował się nimi, podlewał i sprzedawał owoce. Często kupował też dojrzałe owoce, a potem je sprzedawał. Czasami handlował kurczakami i gęsiami. Był mało znaczącym kupcem, nie miał swojego straganu. Zawsze brakowało nam pieniędzy. Pochodzę z biednej rodziny. Moi rodzice byli bardzo uczciwymi, pracowitymi ludźmi, ale na pewno nie bogatymi.

W domu rozmawialiśmy tylko w jidysz. Rodzice ubierali się po europejsku. Przestrzegaliśmy zasad religii, jedzenie zawsze było koszerne. Ojciec nie chodził do synagogi zbyt często, na pewno nie w każdą sobotę. Mama do synagogi chodziła tylko raz w roku, na Jom Kippur. W Górze Kalwarii były dwie synagogi. Jedna należała do kahału, reformowanej gminy żydowskiej, a druga do cadyka [Rabbi Awraham Mordechai Alter lub Imrei Emes, 4 rebbe z dynastii Ger, ostatni z dynastii, który mieszkał w Polsce]. Rodzice chodzili do reformowanej synagogi.

Ja urodziłem się 30 grudnia 1916 roku jako Froim Fiszel. Miałem jednego brata oraz siostrę. Siostra miała na imię Golda, po babci. Była ode mnie starsza, urodziła się w roku 1914. Była piękną dziewczyną z ciemnymi włosami. Była bardzo dobrą uczennicą, jedną z najlepszych w klasie. Ukończyła siedem klas polskiej szkoły podstawowej. Kiedy miała 16 czy 17 lat przeprowadziła się do Warszawy i została księgową w małej fabryce mydeł na ulicy Radzymińskiej 12 na Pradze. Płacili jej całkiem dobrze: 120–130 złoty miesięcznie. Nie było to zbyt wiele, ale dało się przeżyć. Chleb był wtedy bardzo tani: 25, 30, 50 groszy. Bułki kosztowały 2–5 groszy.

To był mały warsztat w podwórku i sklep. Pracowało tam 6 czy 7 osób, produkowali i sprzedawali różne mydła oraz inne artykuły do mycia. Siostra mieszkała z Hirszhornami, właścicielami sklepu. Byli Żydami. Przed wojną byłem w Warszawie dwa może trzy razy, kiedy miałem przepustkę z wojska. Mieszkałem wtedy z siostrą.

Mój brat Dawid urodził się w 1919 roku. Ukończył sześć klas, też był dobrym uczniem. Był przystojnym i wysokim mężczyzną. Wzrok miał doby, ale miał małego zeza. Jego lewe oko zawsze uciekało trochę na bok. Po ukończeniu szkoły został rymarzem. Wyrabiał siodła, uprzęże i chomąta. Obaj byliśmy członkami organizacji młodzieżowej Frajhajt partii Poalej Syjon Prawica 2. Brat nie był w armii, jego rocznik nie został jeszcze powołany (zanim wybuchła wojna).

Mieszkaliśmy w Górze Kalwaria. Miasto założył poznański biskup Stefan Wierzbowski. Miało przypominać Jerozolimę [od redakcji: projekt i nazwa miasta miały przypominać Jerozolimę z czasów Jezusa. Na początku nazywano je nawet Nową Jerozolimą.] Dlatego nie mogli tam mieszkać dysydenci (nie-Katolicy). Zakaz zniesiono dopiero w czasach Napoleona i Królestwa Kongresowego [od redakcji: było to wcześniej, w 1787 roku. Kongresówkę utworzono dopiero po upadku Napoleona, w 1815 roku].

Żydzi zaczęli osiedlać się w Górze Kalwaria w 1802 roku. W 1930 roku mieszkało tam już 3000 Żydów i 3500 Polaków. Było to wtedy bardzo prymitywne miasto. Nie było kanalizacji, tylko rozpadające się studnie. Po wodę trzeba było iść kilkaset metrów. Dopiero w latach 30. XX wieku burmistrz Dziejko kazał wybudować rury na każdej ulicy i wodę można było czerpać obok własnego domu.

Co prawda elektryczność pojawiła się w Górze Kalwaria w latach 20. XX wieku, ale w biednych domach zainstalowano ją dopiero tuż przed wojną. My na szczęście mieliśmy elektryczność, bo mama była szwaczką i potrzebowała światła, żeby pracować. Wszyscy dobrze wspominają burmistrza Dziejko, bo był świetnym gospodarzem. Zrobił bardzo dużo dla miasta, a część z tych rzeczy dzięki żydowskim pieniądzom. Kiedy Żydzi przyjeżdżali odwiedzić cadyka, burmistrz pobierał od każdego z nich po złotówce. Pieniądze przeznaczano następnie na potrzeby miasta.

Cadycy przybyli do Góry Kalwaria z Przysuchy i Kocka [Ichak Meir (Icik Majer), założyciel dynastii Alter, był uczniem cadyka Simchy Binem (Bunim) z Przysuchy i Menachema Mendela z Kocka (Kocker Rebbe)]. Odkąd przyjechali do miasta napływało coraz więcej Żydów, głównie ortodoksyjnych. Cadyk z Góry [Yiddish: Gerer Rebbe] nie miał wielu zwolenników w samym mieście.

Żydzi z Góry Kalwaria uznawali raczej cadyka z Kozienic, a nie tego z własnej miejscowości [od redakcji: w Kozienicach nie było wtedy cadyka. Pan Prajs odwołuje się do tradycji Maggida z Kozienic lub Israela Ichaka Hofsteina (Hapsteina), 1733-1814.] Jego zwolennikami byli głównie przyjezdni. Przybywali z całej Polski, z wyjątkiem może województwa poznańskiego. Z całej południowej oraz wschodniej Polski: z Krakowa, Rzeszowa, Łodzi, Warszawy, Lublina oraz mniejszych miast. Przyjeżdżali w czasie wielkich świąt. W żydowski Nowy Rok (po hebrajsku Rosz Ha-Szana), Jom Kippur, Szawuot: wydaję mi się, że zazwyczaj jakieś 2000 Żydów przyjeżdżało do Góry Kalwaria. Pokoje wynajmowali od miejscowych Żydów. Mama także wynajmowała pokój, żeby zarobić trochę dodatkowych pieniędzy.

Cadyk był bardzo znany. Widziałem go parę razy. Zwykły Żyd z brodą. Nigdy nie byłem jego zwolennikiem. Nie był dla mnie żadnym mędrcem, tylko człowiekiem, który dobrze znał Torę. Ale musiało w nim być coś niezwykłego, skoro miał tylu zwolenników uważających go za cudotwórcę. Szanowali go nawet Polacy. Bardzo wymowna była wizyta kardynała krakowskiego [Aleksander Kakowski, 1862-1938, arcybiskup warszawski, kardynał, polityk] w Górze Kalwaria w 1933 lub 1934 roku. Specjalnie z tej okazji wybudowano łuk triumfalny, pod którym kardynał został powitany przez wszystkich, w tym również przez Żydów wraz z rabinem. Ale cadyk nie poszedł przywitać kardynała, przyjął go w swoim domu. Wymienili się podarunkami.

Dzieciństwo

Mieszkaliśmy u mojego dziadka Majera. Jego dom przy ulicy Piłsudskiego był drewniany i ubogi. Cała rodzina gniotła się w jednym pokoju, który był dość duży, jakieś 10 na 6 metrów. Było w nim wszystko: warsztat mamy, miejsce do spania, stół, na którym jedliśmy i odrabialiśmy prace domowe, ale do lekcji mogliśmy zasiąść dopiero wtedy, kiedy mama kończyła pracę. Łóżka stały w rogu, maszyna do szycia przy oknie, które było obok drzwi i miało cztery albo sześć okiennic. Po lewej stronie stała skrzynia do przechowywania różnych rzeczy. Łóżka były za parawanem. Piec kuchenny był z cegły, połączony z kominem rurą. W domu zawsze było bardzo czysto, bo mama dbała o porządek. Klienci bardzo to doceniali, kiedy do nas przychodzili.

Na naszym podwórku mieszkały trzy polskie i trzy żydowskie rodziny. Dogadywaliśmy się bardzo dobrze, jakbyśmy wszyscy byli rodziną. Nie było tam antysemityzmu. Nasi polscy sąsiedzi nazywali się Woźniak, Rytko i Jarosz, a żydowscy Bielawski i Kielman. Kiedy pani Woźniak piekła świąteczne ciasta przychodziła do mojej mamy i dzieliła się z nami: "Dla twoich dzieci, Estero." Za to kiedy my mieliśmy mace, mama przynosiła ją pani Woźniak i Zosi Jarosz: "Dalej Zosiu, weź trochę macy".

Moimi przyjaciółmi byli głównie Polacy: Mietek i Władek Zetak, Janek Bialek, Wojciechowski, Woźniak, Stasiek Rytko, Maniek Jarosz. Dorastaliśmy razem. Razem spędzaliśmy czas na podwórku grając w piłkę nożną, zbijaka itd. Udawaliśmy, że jesteśmy żołnierzami. Byłem trochę starszy, więc byłem dowódcą. Z kawałków puszek robiliśmy szable. "Marsz. Raz, dwa, trzy. Raz, dwa, trzy!"

Obchodziliśmy wszystkie żydowskie święta: Pesach, Rosz Ha-Szana. W czasie Pesach wszystko w domu musiało być koszerne. Nie mogliśmy mieć nic, co zawierałoby zakwas. Tego dnia ojciec chodził zawsze do synagogi, a matka przygotowywała śniadanie. Jedliśmy po powrocie. Śniadanie było nieco lepsze niż zazwyczaj. Tak samo świąteczna kolacja: jedliśmy rybę, rosół i tym podobne dania.

Śpiewaliśmy rożne pieśni religijne, psalmy odpowiednie na dane święto. W Rosz Ha-Szana modlitwy w synagodze kończyły się po północy dźwiękiem szofaru albo rogu. Działo się tak na pamiątkę otrzymania Dziesięciu Przykazań przez Mojżesza. Z kolei w Jom Kippur pościło się cały dzień. Chanuka i Purim nie różniły się niczym specjalnym od zwyczajnych dni. W biednych rodzinach pozostawała tylko modlitwa. Jeśli ktoś był bardzo religijny, wieczorem szedł do synagogi wysłuchać modlitwy Estery, bo w to święto wspominało się cud Estery. [Księga Estery lub Megilat Ester jest odczytywany w czasie Purim.] Ale nie było to święto.

W piątki po pracy po prostu jedliśmy kolację. W soboty pracowałem lub chodziłem do organizacji [Pan Prajs był najpierw członkiem dziecięcej organizacji Skif, a później Frajhajt]. Nie przestrzegałem Szabatu zbyt rygorystycznie, a potem nie przestrzegałem go już w ogóle. Smuciło to mamę, ale byłem postępowy i w ogóle niereligijny. Nawet przestałem się już modlić. Nie czułem takiej potrzeby. Jadałem też u pani Woźniakowej. Nawet w młodości nie przestrzegałem kaszrutu. Mama nigdy się nie dowiedziała. Nikt o tym nie wiedział, broń Boże! To byłoby nie do pomyślenia! Od razu odseparowaliby moje naczynia i nie używali ich więcej. Takie są zasady, żydowska tradycja.

Co gotowała mama? Lubiłem rybę po żydowsku. I nic innego. Oto jak mama przygotowywała rybę: najpierw ściągała z niej skórę, potem siekała trochę cebuli, dodawała jajo, szczyptę soli i pieprzu i wszystko mieszała razem ze sobą. Wypychała tym skórę i gotowała przez dwie godziny.

Co jeszcze jedli Żydzi? Cóż, czulent. Czulent jest bardzo ciężki, zapychający i zupełnie nieinteresujący. Trzeba było mieć gliniany garnek. Wypełniało się go ziemniakami, jęczmieniem, jakimś tłuszczem - oliwą czy czymś podobnym – i porządną porcją mięsa, na przykład łopatką wołową. Garnek był potem szczelnie przykrywany. Wkładało się go do pieca na całą noc. Czulent piekł się do rana. Potem zabierało się go do domu i jadło po modlitwach. Bogaci Żydzi wkładali jeszcze jeden garnek do pierwszego. Nie musiał być gliniany, mógł być zrobiony na przykład z metalu. Napełniali go wyszukanymi przysmakami. Ten garnek też trzeba było zakryć, żeby potrawy się nie pomieszały. To był kugel. Rodzaj puddingu, taki deser. Kugel jadło się w sobotę po modlitwach. Tylko wtedy.

Znam żydowską religię i jestem z tego dumny. Rodzice posłali mnie i brata do chederu. Wśród Żydów nie było analfabetów, bo dzieci koniecznie musiały iść do szkoły, kiedy kończyły 5 lat. Cheder można było założyć w jakimkolwiek żydowskim domu. Mógł uczyć w nim każdy Żyd, jeśli tylko wiedział coś o religii. Nie musiał być ekspertem. Na lekcję zbierał się jakiś tuzin chłopców w wieku od 5 do 12-13 lat.

Mój nauczyciel nazywał się Majer Mesjng. Cheder znajdował się w domu na ulicy Kilińskiego. Sam budynek już nie istnieje, wyburzono go po wojnie. Uczyliśmy się żydowskiego (hebrajskiego) alfabetu, jak pisać imiona Abraham, Jakub, Izaak, Dawid. Nauczyciel pokazywał nam wschód, zachód, północ i południe. Mówił nam, że Izrael leży w Azji i tłumaczył czym jest Afryka. Do chederu uczęszczałem przez pięć lat, od 5 do 10 roku życia. Znam Misznę i Gemarę. Do dziś mówię po hebrajsku i w jidysz.

Moi rodzice nie byli wystarczająco bogaci, żeby wyprawić mi bar micwę. Kiedy skończyłem 13 lat poszedłem do synagogi razem z ojcem i musiałem przeczytać na głos kilka wersów Tory. Trzeba wypowiadać je w odpowiedni sposób, dobrze rozkładać akcenty. Poradziłem sobie świetnie. Ojciec był ze mnie dumny. Wróciliśmy do domu a mama przygotowała świąteczną kolację. Za tak ładne odmówienie modlitw dostałem 5 złoty. I tyle. Bar micwa mojego brata wyglądała dokładnie tak samo. Ale on nie przeczytał Tory tak dobrze, jak ja.

Mając siedem lat poszedłem do polskiej podstawówki. Od 7 rano do 13 lub 14 byłem w szkole, a potem chodziłem do chederu. W szkole uczyłem się polskiego, matematyki, geografii, muzyki i, od czwartej klasy, niemieckiego. Żydzi i Polacy uczyli się razem, ale Żydów było mniej. W mojej klasie było jakieś 36 osób, a tylko trzech Żydów: ja, (w szkole nazywali mnie Heniek, nie Froim), Uszer i Josel Mesing. Znałem już polski, bo wraz z Polakami mieszkałem na jednym podwórku, ale to w szkole nauczyłem się zasad gramatyki i poprawnej polszczyzny. W szkole byłem bardzo popularny. Lubiłem nauczycieli i lubiłem się też uczyć. Miałem dobre oceny: same A i B [piątki i szóstki], oprócz matematyki.

Z nauczycieli wymieniłbym panią Karniewską, która uczyła niemieckiego. Była klientką mamy. Często prosiła, żebym coś jej przyniósł albo zrobił coś dla niej. Ale żadnych innych przysług. Pamiętam jak w szkole świętowaliśmy 3 maja 3. Uczniowie z całej szkoły zbierali się rano i śpiewali "Niech żyje maj, trzeci maj, dla wszystkich Polaków raj" Wieczorem odbywał się pochód. Strażacy, żołnierze i uczniowie przechodzili przez całe miasto. Zawsze brałem udział w obchodach.

Kiedy miałem 12 lub 13 lat, dołączyłem do Skifu 4, czyli Socjalkinderfarband (Związek Młodych Socjalistów), połączonego z Bundem. Bund był partią socjaldemokratyczną, walczącą o emancypację i równość Żydów. Jako "skifista" byłem delegatem Góry Kalwarii na pogrzebie Bejnysza Michalewicza, przywódcy Bundu, (Józef Ibicki, 1876-1928, od 1905 aktywny w Bundzie, dziennikarz, współzałożyciel sieci szkół CiSZO). Pogrzeb na Okopowej w Warszawie był ogromny. Przemawiali tam oczywiście przedstawiciele Bundu: Wiktor Alter, Jakub Pat, chyba Henryk Ehrlich 6 i jeszcze kilku innych. Było wielu ludzi z całej Polski. W końcu wszyscy odeszliśmy ze Skifu. Oni chcieli emancypacji Żydów [a nie budowy państwa żydowskiego], co było niemożliwe. Ostatecznie w Skifie zostały tylko dwie osoby: Krupka i jeszcze ktoś inny.

Ja wolałem dołączyć do żydowskiej [tu: syjonistycznej] organizacji, bo uważałem, że musimy stworzyć własne państwo. Dlatego dołączyłem do Poalej Syjon Prawica. Ponieważ nadal byłem dzieckiem, miałem 14 lat, dołączyłem jako harcerz. To była socjaldemokratyczna, robotnicza partia. Chciała wyzwolić Palestynę, żeby stworzyć własne państwo, gdzie partie socjaldemokratyczne będą mogły się rozwijać. Było nas około 50 w Górze Kalwaria [członków Frajhajt]. Wynajmowaliśmy pokój na ulicy Piłsudskiego. Miał jakieś 10 na 7 metrów. Była tam biblioteka i w ogóle wszystko czego potrzebowaliśmy. Wynajem opłacaliśmy ze składek członkowskich. Wszsytkie przedwojenne organizacje były finansowane ze składek członkowskich, chyba że jakiś bogacz z zagranicy podatował 100 złoty. Przed wojną to było ogromnie dużo pieniędzy.

Często się tam spotykaliśmy. Zawsze w dni wolne, w soboty lub niedziele. Organizowaliśmy dyskusje i przechadzki. Rozmawialiśmy o kulturze, o świecie, o tym co się działo, jak sprawy się miały się w Indiach, Chinach, Warszawie, na całym świecie. W skrócie ekonomia, wojny i tym podobne. Jeśli wiedziałem coś na jakiś temat, przygotowywałem krótkie wystąpienie. Czy pamiętam jakieś? Walczyliśmy o wolność, demokrację, związki… innymi słowami o równe prawa, przeciwko wyzyskowi. Trzeba było cytować gazetę, „Robotnik” [gazeta PPS] albo jakąś żydowską gazetę. Było ich wiele: Bund wydawał „Folks-Sztime” [Od redakcji: zapewne Folks-Cajtung; Folks-Sztime publikowano po Drugiej Wojnie Światowej], był też „Hajnt” 7, a później Żydzi ortodoksyjni zaczęli wydawać własną gazetę. Parę pism wydawali też syjoniści. Wystarczyło jakąś gazetę zacytować i wygłosić wystąpienie.

Nie jeźdiliśmy na wycieczki. Nie mieliśmy pieniędzy. Chodziliśmy za to na spacery po lesie w sobotnie poranki w maju. Chodziliśmy do Kępy, teraz to pastwisko kilka kilometrów od Góry Kalwaria. Był też tak zwany Las Klajnowski czy Karolin. Jeśli pogoda była dobra, czasem chodziliśmy też nad Wisłę. Zawsze był z nami prelegent, który wygłaszał jakiś wykład.

Prezesem Poalej Syjon w Górze Kalwaria był Mojsze Skrzypek. Był też naszym prelegentem. Mieliśmy, tak zwane w jidysz, "kestelgesprech". Pytania były zadawane anonimowo, a prowadzący musiał na nie odpowiedzieć. Skrzypek mówił na przykład o literaturze. Oczywiście w jidysz, może 10 osób w Górze Kalwarii mówiło po hebrajsku. Mojsze Skrzypek był inteligentny. Nie pamiętam, jak zarabiał na życie. Może pracował w biurze: w mieście była fabryka mydeł Zajdemansa, bank. Może był tam księgowym, nie wiem. Moimi przyjaciółmi w ruchu byli Chaskiel Goldsztajn, Mendel Cukier i Chane Gotlib. Pamiętam ich wszystkich. Wciąż widzę ich twarze.

Nie miałem wiele wolnego czasu. Żeby trochę zarobić chodziło się zbierać porzeczki lub pomóc komu. Kiedy było ciemno chodziliśmy w wolnym czasie popływać, zazwyczaj w soboty. Ale też dużo czytałem. Pamiętam książki o Łokietku, Kazimierzu Wielkim, Zygmuncie Starym. Pamiętam też paru żydowskich autorów: Pereca 8, Sholema Alejchema 9, An-skiego 10, Asza 11, Bergelsona 12. Rzadko kupowałem książki, nie miałem pieniędzy. Czasem dostawałem je w szkole, jako nagrodę. Większość wypożyczałem jednak z biblioteki.

W Górze Kalwaria były trzy biblioteki. Biblioteka Pereca, gdzie spotykała się żydowska młodzież, zarówno prawicowa, jak i lewicowa. To pierwsza. Jeśli chodzi o dwie kolejne to bundyści mieli własną, tak samo jak syjoniści. Każdy z nich miał książki tylko związane ze swoimi poglądami, bo wierzyli w różne rzeczy. Bundyści byli wolnomyślicielami, więc nie myśleli nawet o książkach religijnych. Wspierali literaturę współczesną. Chodziłem do biblioteki syjonistycznej, do Poalej Syjon. Mieli to nie była duża biblioteka, aczkolwiek mieli trochę książek.

Czytałem też różne gazety, zarówno żydowskie jak i polskie. Z polskich "Kurier Codzienny" [Kurier Codzienny 5 groszy; gazeta prorządowa, wydawana w latach 1932-1936], „Oblicze dnia” [tygodnik socjalistyczny wydawany w 1936 roku], czasem przeglądałem nawet antysemickie „ABC” [tygodnik ONR, publikowany w latach 1926-1939]. Kiedy kupowało się gazetę? W soboty. Były dosyć drogie. „Hajnt” kosztował 1,20 złoty, a „Moment” 13 1,50. Inne były w cenie 40-50 groszy. W domu czytaliśmy „Hajnt”. Mój ojciec był członkiem żydowskiej organizacji rzemieślników Handwerker [Centralny Związek Żydowskich Rzemieślników w Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej] 14 i wszyscy tam czytali „Hajnt”. Zostali nawet wybrani do sejmu [związek należał do Bloku Mniejszości Narodowych, który w 1928 roku uzyskał 17 % głosów]. Ale ogólnie rzecz biorąc, mój ojciec był apolityczny.

Odkąd tylko Hitler doszedł do władzy w 1933 roku 15, ludzie byli coraz bardziej przekonani, że zbliża się woja. Wszyscy, którzy mieli taką szansę uciekli do Izraela [od redakcji: do 1948 roku była to Palestyna]. Poza tym oni byli patriotami. Chcieli budować własne państwo i postąpili jak należy. Emancypacja to jedno, ale stworzenie nowego kraju to ciężka praca. Wielu moich przyjaciół wyjechało przed wojną, wśród nich Mojszele Rawski. Zanim wyjechali byli halucnikami 16. Łączyli się w zespoły i podejmowali się najtrudniejszych zadań, bo chcieli być gotowi na to, co czeka ich w Izraelu. Na budowę nowego państwa. Wiedzieli, że początki są zawsze najtrudniejsze, więc uczyli się jak uprawiać ziemię i pracować w tartaku. Poznawali sztukę kamieniarstwa. Wiele nieprzyjemnej pracy.

W Górze Kalwaria były dwa kibuce. Jeden należał do prawicowych syjonistów [Ogólni Syjoniści] 17, innymi słowy do demokratycznych syjonistów Grinbauma 18. Kibuc ten znajdował się w domu na rogu ulic Polnej i Dominikańskiej. Mieli dla siebie całe górne piętro. Wśród nich było wielu utalentowanych ludzi: na przykład malarka, która tworzyła pejzaże. Drugi kibuc był na ulicy Księdza Sajny, prowadzącej do rzeki. Nie pamiętam do kogo należał.

Moja organizacja, Poalej Syjon Prawica, nie prowadziła kibucu w Górze Kalwaria. Jeśli ktoś z nas chciał dołączyć do kibucu musiał pojechać na wschód kraju. Sporo ludzi przygotowywało się do tego, ale wątpię, żeby ktokolwiek z nich naprawdę wyjechał. Ciężko było tak po prostu zostawić ojca, matkę, brata i pojechać. Nie brałem udziału w działalności kibucu. Nie myślałem też o wyjeździe do Izraela. Jak tylko skończyłem szkołę podstawową zacząłem uczyć się na krawca. Moim pierwszym mistrzem był Izrael Cybula. Pracowałem dla niego w pracowni na ulicy Piłsudskiego 15 przez dwa lata. Za darmo, w zamian za naukę. Potem miałem egzamin w Jaszeńcu obok Warki. Była tam jakaś rzemiślicza korporacja, tak zwana gildia. Zdałem egzamin, otrzymałem certyfikat i mogłem rozpocząć pracę, jako krawiec. Czeladnik może wykonać samodzielnie garnitur lub parę spodni. Praktykant uczy się, ale czeladnik powinien być w stanie zrobić to samodzielnie. Mistrz uczy innych, musi więc wiedzieć wszystko o swoim fachu.

Później pracowałem dla różnych krawców, żydowskich i polskich. Dla Cybuli, przez miesiąc czy dwa, kiedy miał dla mnie pracę, dla Ryszarda Góreckiego, Jasińskiego, Jaworskiego, Pelca, w wielu różnych pracowniach. Nie zarabiałem dużo: 15-20 złoty tygodniowo. Kwota wahała się, bo nie zawsze była dla mnie praca.

Byłem członkiem Związku Zawodowego Krawców, do którego należeli i Żydzi i Polacy. Byłem sekretarzem oddziału w Górze Kalwaria. Sekretarz wojewódzki miał biuro w Warszawie, na ulicy Lesznej. Związek [oddział] miał własną siedzibę, wielkości tego pokoju. I tyle. Taboret na środku, nic więcej. Co mogę powiedzieć o takim związku? Kiedy była taka potrzeba to organizowaliśmy jakieś wykłady i tym podobne. Nie mogliśmy przeprowadzić strajku. Było bezrobocie, ale nie tak duże jak teraz. Trzeba było mieć szczęście, żeby dostać pracę u szewca czy krawca.

Związek finansowały składki członkowskie, nie dostawał pieniędzy pańtwowych. Miasto też nic nam nie dawało. Wspierało bezrobotnych kilka razy do roku kwotą około 5 złoty. Polacy dostawali 90%, Żydzi może 5%.

Żydzi byli przed wojną głównie rzemieślnikami, krawcami, szefcami, rymarzami, kapelusznikami. Tego typu zawody, głównie usługi. Ilu naprawde bogatych Żydów było w Górze Kalwaria? Poloniecki, Rapaport, Wajnsztok, Mardyks, Doktor Rozenberg... najwyżej dziesięciu. Głównie handlowali zbożem, mieli własne domy. Mogli mieć aż 2000, 3000, 10 000 złotych. Około 40% Żydów należało do klasy średniej, a 50% było biedne [od redakcji: dziesięciu bogatych Żydów wskazuje na mniej niż pozostałe 10%]. Byłem jednym z, cóż, nie bardzo biednych, ale biednych. Zanim zacząłem pracować jako czeladnik, klepaliśmy biedę.

To właśnie biedni cierpieli najbardziej w czasie antysemickich rozruchów 19. Ponieważ każdy bogaty Żyd miał jakiś polskim przyjaciół, którzy mówili: "Możesz pobić każdego Żyda, którego spotkasz, ale trzymaj się z dala od mojego Mosze". W Górze Kalwaria nie było inaczej. Na jarmarku w dniu świętego Antoniego [13 czerwca], kupcy rozstawili swoje stragany i handlowali. Ludzie z Falangi 20 przyszli, rozbili stragany i pobili kilkoro żydowskich kobiet i mężczyzn. Zaczął się chaos, przyjechała policja, ale było już po wszystkim. Tak było w 1936, 1937 roku Nie wiem, jak było później, bo poszedłem do armii. To nie były pogromy, a jedynie bójki, awantury.

Falangiści przyjeżdżali z Warki, Karczewa, Otwocka [miasta położone kilkanaście kilometrów od Góry Kalwaria]. W Górze Kalwaria była organizacja endeków 21, ale oni urządzali awantury poza naszym miastem. Burmistrz Dziejko i szef policji Bolesław Janica nie pozwoliliby na to. Dzięki nim było spokojniej. Kiedy zaczynali się awanturować, Janica powiedział Żydom: "Ludzie, brońcie się, a ja zajmę się resztą". I tak powstała samoobrona, w której byli syjoniści, komuniści, bundowcy: cała żydowska młodzież. Zwłaszcza robotnicy, woźnice, ci którzy byli twardzi. Uformowali samoobronę i bronili się przed atakującymi.

Janica i Dziejko byli obiektywni. Mówili: "Tak, on jest Żydem. Pozwólcie mu nim być, mnie to nie przeszkadza". Podczas, gdy w innych miastach w radzie miejskiej nie było Żydów, u Dziejki było dwóch. Pamiętam, że ostatnimi byli Szyje Kaufman i Aron Poznański.

W armii

Powołano mnie, kiedy miałem 21 lat. Był to zwyczajny pobór, wszyscy chłopcy urodzeni w 1916 roku zostali powołani w listopadzie 1937 roku. Służyłem w 3. Pułku Szwoleżerów Mazowieckich Jana Hipolita Kozietulskiego w Suwałkach. W Polce były tylko trzy pułki elitarnej kawalerii. Pozostałe to Pułk Józefa Piłsudskiego stacjonujący w Warszawie i pułk Dwernickiego w Stargardzie Gdańskim. Zostałem tam przydzielony, bo byłem lojalnym, niczym niesplamionym obywatelem, który nigdy nie był członkiem organizacji przeciwników Piłsudskiego 22. Moim dowódcą był pułkownik Edward Milewski, a oficerem prowadzącym Borys Zaryn.

Jaka była armia? Cóż, byłem krawcem, którego nagle zamieniono w kawalerzystę. A zawsze bałem się koni. Widziałem jak ciągną wozy i tak dalej, ale to co innego. To wtedy poraz pierwszy wsiadłem na konia i nauczyłem się jeździć. I to jak! Rekruta szkolono przez kilka miesięcy, a potem dawano mu karabin. Jakoś sobie z tym poradziłem.

W 1938 roku skierowano mnie do szkoły podoficerskiej, jako że skończyłem wcześniej siedem klas szkoły podstawowej. Nie było to częste, wielu rekrutów nie potrafiło pisać. Sam pisałem dla nich wszystkich listy. Zaczynały się "Niech będzie pochwalony Jezus Chrystus", a kończyły "Czekam na Twoją odpowiedź, teraz i na wieki wieków, amen". Dobrze radziłem sobie w szkole, bo byłem uzdolniony. Byłem drugi z 85 w kursie wiedzy o Polsce. Pierwsze miejsce zajął jakiś Mastalerz z Warszawy. Awansowano mnie na kaprala. Dobrze radziłem sobie warmii. Nie mogę powiedzieć, że byłem uprzywilejowany, ale traktowano mnie sprawiedliwie. Nie mam się na co skarżyć.

Przed wojną w polskiej armii, w każdej jednostce było paru Niemców, trochę Żydów, kilku Ukraińców i Białorusinów. Ukraińcy, których nazywaliśmy Rusinami, byli dobrymi żołnierzami. Wszyscy byli sprawni fizycznie. Byli też najlepszymi jeźdcami. W czasie sobotniej lub niedzielnej musztry oficer wołał: "Wszyscy wyznania żydowskiego, krok do przodu. Luteranie, krok do przodu. Prawosławni, krok do przodu." Jeśli chciałeś się modlić, mogłeś to zrobić.

W armii zaprzyjaźniłem się z Eliezerem Gellerem [1918-1943, członek Gordoni (organizacja syjonistyczna), żołnierz warszawskiego ŻOB, walczył w Powstaniu w Getcie Warszawskim, a potem się ukrywał. Zginął najprawdopodobniej w Auschwitz]. Pochodził z Opoczna na Mazowszu. Był w moim wieku. Często chodziliśmy razem do synagogi i rozmawiailiśmy ze sobą.

Był bardzo inteligentnym i przystojnym chłopakiem. Blondynem. Był lewicowym syjonistą, tak samo jak ja. Nie wiem kim był z zawodu. Wydaję mi się, że ukończył gimnazjum, więcej niż siedem klas szkoły. Nie wysłano go jednak do szkoły podoficerskiej. Nie wiem czemu, może po prostu tego nie chciał. On był w drugim szwadronie, a ja w czwartym, więc po wrześniu [1939] już nigdy go nie widziałem. Potem był w Warszawie. Nie wiem, jakim cudem się tam znalazł. Byłem pewien, że zginął w Powstaniu Warszawskim.

Służba wojskowa trwała dwa lata, więc moja miała zakończyć się w roku 1939. Zamiast wrócić do domu, pojechałem na wojnę. Walczyłem w Kampanii Wrześniowej 24. 14 września zostałem ranny w czasie bitwy pod Olszewem [niedaleko Brańska i Lapy, w województwie białostockim]. Nadal jest tam izba pamięci, a w niej moje zdjęcie i opis bitwy. Zranił mnie szrapnel. Miałem kilka ran. Nie byłem w stanie walczyć, więc przydzielono mnie do regimentu transportowego [?].

W czasie wojny

17 września wkroczyli Rosjanie 25 i wzięli nas do niewoli. Zostaliśmy internowani do miejsca zwanego Negroloc, jakieś 40 kilometrów na wschód od Mińska. Nie traktowali nas źle. Musieliśmy pracować i jeśli wypełniliśmy określony przydział, wszystko było w porządku. Jedzenie również było do zaakceptowania. Każdej soboty mieliśmy kąpiel, którą nazywali "bania". Nie dano nam żadnych ubrań na zmianę. W grudniu [1939] nastąpiła wymiana więźniów. Rosjanie wypuścili Niemców i Polaków. Byłem w tej grupie i wróciłem do Góry Kalwaria.

Wszycy myśleli, że zginąłem, bo nie dawałem znaku życia od września. I tak to się zaczęło. okupacja. Gehenna. Powiedziano mi, że kiedy Niemcy wkroczyli do Góry Kalwaria, pierwszym Żydem, którego zobaczyli był Pinio Rawski, który wychodził z synagogi. Zastrzelili go. Powiedziano mi też, że żydowski chłopiec, Mojsze Cybula (jego ojcem był mistrz Cybula, dla którego kiedyś pracowałem), podniósł kilka okruszków chleba, kiedy Niemcy kazali chłopcom pracować, został za to zastrzelony. Powiedziałem sobie: "Boże, jako istota ludzka, nie wpsominając o narodowości, przetrwam tę wojnę. Będę symbolem, opowiem, co tu się wydarzyło". To był mój obowiązek.

Na samym początku Niemcy zarekwirowali wszsytkie frontowe sklepy [których wystawy wychodziły na ulicę]. Żydom w ogóle nie pozwalano na handel. Getto w Górze Kalwaria utworzono w maju 1940 roku 26. Działo się wtedy bardzo źle. Wysiedlono Żydów z przedmieść Góry Kalwaria. Getto było w samym centrum miasta: w jego skład wchodziła ulica Piłsudskiego, Senatorska i mały kawałek Pijarskiej. Musieliśmy się tam jakoś zmieścić.

Mojej rodziny nie wysiedlono, bo mieszkaliśmy na ulicy Piłsudskiego. Opuszczanie getta było zabronione, pod karą śmierci. Mama i ja nadal szyliśmy. Przychodzili klienci, trochę Polaków. Zamawiali ubrania, a my mogliśmy zarobić trochę pieniędzy. Tyle, żeby przeżyć. I nadal mieliśmy trochę zapasów, ciągle coś sprzedawaliśmy. Tak. Ale co to było za życie? Wegetacja, na nic nie było nas stać. Cały czas tylko ziemniaki. Zupa ziemniaczana, nic więcej.

Kiedy rozpoczęły się przesiedlenia do getta [w maju 1940] prezes gminy żydowskiej w Górze Kalwaria przyszedł do mojego polskiego sąsiada Rytki i zostawił u niego Torę i inne święte księgi. Rytko był porządnym człowiekiem i przechował je bezpiecznie w czasie wojny. Kiedy wróciłem po wojnie dał mi je, jako swojemu sąsiadowi. Wysłałem je potem do Izraela, do mojego wuja Moszego. Spakowałem je do paczki, poszedłem do Profesora Tylocha [Witold Tyloch, 1927-1990, filolog hebrajski i biblista, profesor Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego], żeby wydał mi certyfikat, że nie mają wartości historycznej. Wysłałem je pocztą, zupełnie legalnie. To były lata 60. XX wieku. Tora jest teraz w Izraelu, w Netani.

W 1940 roku w Górze Kalwaria pojawiła się grupa bojowników ŻOBu 27 [od redakcji: ŻOB jeszcze wtedy nie istniał]: Lajbl Frydman, Horowic i jakaś kobieta. Frydman był członkiem Bundu, Horowic był z Poalej Syjon, kobieta natomiast nie wiem. Chcieli stworzyć jednostkę bojową składającą się z tych, którzy służyli wcześniej w armii w celu samoobrony. Przyjmowaliśmy tylko tych, do których mieliśmy zaufanie. Cała 25 zbierała się u Arona Nusbauma. Nie mieliśmy żadnej broni, ale był w nas duch walki, chcieliśmy się bronić. Ale nic się nie wydarzyło.

25 lutego 1941 roku deportowali Żydów z Góry Kalwaria do getta w Warszawie. Moja siostra już w nim była, nie wróciła do Góry Kalwaria, kiedy wybuchła wojna. Mama nie myślała nawet o ucieczce. Ja też nie: chciałem jechać do getta, razem z moją rodziną. Sąsiedzi przychodzili do mnie i mówili: "Dalej, uciekaj, idź. Nie wyglądasz, jak Żyd, może Ci się uda". Słyszałem, że w Magnuszewie [miasto położone 25 kilometrów od Góry Kalwaria] wciąż byli Żydzi i że nie zostają deportowani: nawet w czasie wojny działała poczta pantoflowa. I tak uciekłem wieczorem, po rozmowie z mamą. Nie wiem, co stało się z moją rodziną. Tego dnia straciłem z nimi kontakt. Zniknęli bez śladu. Tylko mój brat później do mnie przyszedł. Wielu opuściło wtedy getto, wszyscy próbowali się nie poddać.

Z Góry Kalwaria do Maguszewa jest dwadzieścia kilka kilometrów, w dodatku to była zima, więc raz na jakiś czas zatrzymywałem się na podwórkach, pukałem i prosiłem: "Dzień dobry, proszę pana. Jestem Żydem, uciekłem, proszę mi pomóc". Jeśli trafiłem na dobrego człowieka to mnie wpuszczał, jeśli nie krzyczał tylko: "Odejdź, odejdź!". Żydzi zostali w Maguszewie do maja lub czerwca 1942 roku [Maguszewskie getto zlikwidowano w październiku 1942]. Nie miałem o tym pojęcia. Pracowałem po prostu jako krawiec: ludzie przychodzili i zlecali mi coś do uszycia, a ja to robiłem. Wystarczyło, żeby przeżyć.

Dwa miesiące przed deportacją stworzyli getto i wcisnęli tam wszystkich, a potem kazali im przenieść się do Kozienic [miasto około 20 km od Góry Kalwaria, 80 km od Warszawy]. W Kozienicach wybrali młodych mężczyzn i zabrali ich do Chmielowa [wioska 5 km od Maguszewa], żeby kopali kanały irrygacyjne. To był obóz pracy dla Żydów, a ja byłem jednym z tych, których tam zabrali.

Zostaliśmy tam do grudnia [1942], a potem rozpoczęła się deportacja i wróciliśmy do Magnuszewa. Miałem już wtedy wielu przyjaciół wśród tych, dla których szyłem. W drodze powrotnej do Chmielewa mój polski przyjaciel, Janek Cwyl, wyciągnął mnie z kolumny, kiedy policjant stracił na chwilę uwagę. Zabrał mnie ze sobą, ocalił mnie.

W ukryciu

Jakoś udało mi się dotrzeć do Góry Kalwaria. Poszedłem do mojej sąsiadki, pani Wasilewskiej. Natychmiast zaczęła planować, co zrobimy. Razem pojechaliśmy do Osiecka [miasto 15 km od Góry Kalwaria], do proboszcza. Nazywał się chyba Kuropek. Wydał mi akt urodzenia. Później załatwiłem też kenartę 28, na nazwisko Feliks Żołądek. Trzeba było do tego pomocy przyjaciół i ich przyjaciół, bo ksiądz dał mi oczywiście akt urodzenia, a nie kenkartę. Kolega wziął ten dokument, poszedł do jednego z tych, którzy zajmowali się szemranymi interesami [ludzi, którzy podrabiali dokumenty] i kazał im wyrobić kenkartę dla mnie. Tak to się odbyło.

Mieszkałem na wsi u różnych rolników, dla których szyłem. Jeden mówił drugiemu, że zna krawca i tak to szło. Niektórzy wiedzieli, że jestem Żydem, domyślili się, ale cóż, przetrwałem. Mieszkałem w jednej wiosce, wracałam do innej i trochę się ukrywałem, kiedyś musiałem uciekać. Zawsze szukało się kryjówki.

Miałem wielkie szczęście. Mówili mi: "Heniek, Ty w ogóle nie wyglądasz na Żyda". Mówiłem też w miarę poprawnie po polsku. Znaczy, miałem odpowiedni akcent, bo błędów gramatycznych chłop i tak by nie zauważył. Miałem stosunkową pewność, że nikt mnie nie rozpozna. No i byłem żołnierzem, byłem odważny. Dlatego podejmowałem ryzyko, którego inaczej pewnie bym nie podjął, tak jak inni. Mogłeś zostać zabity w każdej chwili i to nie tylko ty, też ci, którzy cię przechowywali [od redakcji: 15 października 1941 roku wprowadzono w Generalnym Gubernatorstwie karę śmierci za ukrywanie Żydów]. Teraz to nie wyobrażalne.

W 1943 roku spotkałem się z moim bratem [Dawidem], nie pamiętam czy to był styczeń czy grudzień. Przyszedł się ze mną zobaczyć do wioski, do Ostrowa [3 km od Magnuszewa], wiedział, że mieszkam tam u rolnika. Rozmawialiśmy, ale nic nie mogłem dla niego zrobić. Nie mogłem! Rolnik przyszedł o 5 rano, żeby go obudzić i kazał mu uciekać. Tak też zrobił. Też się ukrywał: przenosił się z jednego gospodarstwa na drugie, dawali mu jakąś pracę, robił chomąta. Gdzieś pod Machcinem jacyś rolnicy wydali go Niemcom, a oni zabili go na cmentarzu w Górze Kalwaria.

Najdłużej zostałem w Podwierzbie niedaleko Żelechowa [Gmina Podłęż, Powiat Gawroliński] u pani Pokorskiej. Była znajomą albo kuzynką pani Wasilewskiej [sąsiadki pana Prajsa]. Żyło tam wielu porządnych ludzi. Na przykład Pyzowie, Polacy, Marciniakowie. Nawet sołtys mnie bronił. Jeśli chodzi o chłopów część wierzyła, że jestem Polakiem, a część nie. Po wojnie powtarzali mi nie raz: "Zaintrygowałeś nas. Mieszkałeś tam, w tym biednym domu i nikt Cię nie odwiedzał, nie wyjeżdżałeś na Boże Narodzenie. Przyglądaliśmy się Tobie, przystojnemu chłopcu." Sami nie wiedzieli, co o mnie sądzić.

Raz poszedłem na potańcówkę, ale zdecydowałem nie pokazywać się tam więcej, bo się bałem. Raz poszedłem do kościoła, ale tam też się bałem, że ktoś mnie rozpozna. Ale nikt mnie nie wydał. Prawdziwy dar niebios. Po wojnie poszedłem do kościoła i zamówiłem mszę dziękczynną dla wszystkich mieszkańców wioski.

Nie dziwi mnie, że ludzie nie chcieli ukrywać Żydów. Wszyscy się bali, w końcu kto ryzykowałby życie rodziny? Można oskarżać tych, który ukrywali Żyda, wykorzystywali go finansowo, a w końcu wydawali lub zabijali. Oni są mordercami. Ale nie można winić zwykłego Polaka. Nie wiem czy ktoś byłby bardziej przyzwoity. Czy jakiś Żyd byłby bardziej przyzwoity.

Pewnego dnia do pani Pokorskiej przyszło kilku Niemców. Twarzą w twarz rozmawiałem z gestapowcem. Zapytał: "Weser das Mantel ist? [niepoprawnie po niemiecku: "Czyj to płaszcz?"], a ja odpowiedziałem "Nie mój". On kontynuował "Du verstehst Deutsch?" [Znasz niemiecki?]. Zaczynało robić się niebezpiecznie, więc zmieniłem temat: "Proszę się rozjerzeć, wszystko się tu wali, proszę spojrzeć na dach. Może mógłby pan napisać do Kreishauptmanna [zarządcy okręgu].

To zszokowało gestapowca. Pochodził ze Śląska, znał polski. Widział, że ja tu nie pasuję. A ona [pani Pokorska], powiedziała, że jestem jej synem. Pytał ją i mnie kilkanaście razy czy jestem jej synem. Ja mówiłem "mamo", a ona "synu". I jeszcze raz "mamo- synu" Miałem akt urodzenia na nazwisko jej syna Stanisława Pokorskiego, więc powiedziałem "Mam akt urodzenia, ale brakuje mi pieniędzy, żeby pojechać do Garwolina i wyrobić dowód" Nie chciał nawet na niego spojrzeć. I tak jakoś się udało.

Mógł powiedzieć po prostu: "Ściągnij spodnie" i cała rodzina zostałaby rozstrzelana. Dzieci, matka, wszyscy. Pani Pokorska była bardzo dobra. Ale jakiego sprytu, jak żelaznych nerwów potrzeba, żeby zachować spokój i nie popaść w panikę. To są straszne rzeczy, o których nie powinno się rozmawiać; wtedy życie psa czy kota miało większą wartość niż życie człowieka, tylko dlatego, że ten był Żydem.

Raz musiałem się ukryć przed naszymi [Polakami]. Linia frontu była już blisko, niemal na Wiśle. NSZ 29 albo WiN 30, sam nie wiem, skazał mnie na śmierć. Poznałem nich przypadkiem, jako krawiec. Szyłem dla nich, musieli mnie polubić, w końcu spędzaliśmy razem tyle czasu. Przerabiałem to, co gdzieś ukradli. Jeden z nich nie zgadzał się z tym wyrokiem, powiedział do mnie: "Heniek, uważaj, schowaj się, bo jest "tak i tak". Historia NSZ ma więc niezbyt imponujący rozdział:postawa względem narodu żydowskiego. Kiedy Armia Czerwona opanowała ten teren, zabili [żołnierz NSZ] dwóch czy trzech Żydów. Potem wszyscy przyszli do mnie i przepraszali kilka razy. Nie chcę więc wracać do tego tematu, bo wybaczyłem im wszystkim.

Po wojnie

Wioska Podwierzbie leży na prawym brzegu rzeki, wyzwolono ją więc sześć miesięcy wcześniej niż brzeg lewy. Było to latem, w czerwcu [od redakcji: latem 1944 roku Armia Czerwona zatrzymała się na wschodnim brzegu Wisły. Trwało wtedy Powstanie Warszawskie, którego przywódcy liczyli na wsparcie Sowietów. Powstanie skończyło się porażką Polaków 2 października. Armia Sowiecka kontynuowała ofensywę dopiero od stycznia 1945].

Wybrałem się na spacer i stałem na nadbrzeżu, kiedy zobaczyłem pierwszego "razwiedka" [rosyjski: patrol zwiadowczy] z Armii Czerwonej. Byłem zupełnie przytłoczony. Zapytali: "Kim jesteś?", a ja się przestraszyłem, ale po chwili odpowiedziałem, bo mówiłem trochę po rosyjsku przez to, że byłem internowany do ZSRR w 1939: 'Ya Yevrey, ya Yevrey, zdes spratalsya, Yevrey' [rosyjski: "Jestem Żydem, ukrywam się tu"]. Dowódca też był Żydem. Podszedł do mnie, uradowany, i zaczął mówić do mnie w jidysz. Powiedział: "Słuchaj, zgłoś się do dowódcy wojskowego, a on się tobą zajmie". Tak też zrobiłem i zacząłem dla nich pracować.

Zatrudniono mnie do pomocy, ale nie w armii, a w ich obozie. Dotarli do Wisły latem i zatrzymali się, ofensywy nie wznowiono aż do stycznia. Szyłem dla nich, a potem nie miałem już nic do roboty, więc zostałem w wiosce jakieś sześć miesięcy, w końcu jako wolny człowiek. Wszyscy w wiosce wiedzieli o mnie i mówili: "Cóż, Heniek, udało ci się." A dziewczyny za mną szalały!

Zakochałem się tam w dziewczynie, ale miałem już swoje zobowiązanie. Ta historia jest bardzo typowa i trochę zabawna. W czasie wojny pani Wasilewska powiedziała mi: "Słuchaj, Heniek, pomogę ci, ale pamiętaj, kiedy skończy się wojna, poślubisz jedną z moich córek". Odpowiedziałem jej: "Pani Wasilewska, jeśli przetrwam wojnę, to czemu nie, w końcu to bardzo ładne dziewczyny". Wróciłem więc do Góry Kalwaria i szybko ożeniłem się z najmłodszą.

Jestem dumny, że jako pierwszy upamiętniłem poległych. Furtę z płotu synagogi umieściłem na cmentarzu żydowskim. Dalej nosiła na sobie ślady po kulach, którymi Niemcy strzelali do Pinia Rawskiego. Zatrudniłem znajomego Cieplaka, żeby zbudował płot naokoło cmentarza. Zostało tylko cztery lub pięć macew. Niemcy i Polacy zabrali resztę [macewy z Góry Kalwaria były używane przez Niemców do budowy dróg i chodników. Niektóre nagrobki zostały skradzione przez Polaków].

Panował tam ogromny chaos. Zacząłem porządkować cmentarz. Ludzie zgłaszali się do mnie, jeśli znaleźli jakieś nagrobki, a ja zbierałem je, przewoziłem na cmentarz i ustawiałem. To przedwojenne macewy, ale nie stoją na dawnych miejscach. Wielu z tych ludzi znałem osobiście, nawet 80%: Szternfelda, Rozenbluma, Skrzypka, Mesinga. Ale nie mogłem sobie przypomnieć, gdzie dokładnie zostali pochowani. Nie chodziłem na każdy pogrzeb.

Grób cadyków jest prawdziwy. Pochowano tam dwóch z nich: założyciela dynastii, Chidusza ha-Rema, inaczej Arie Lejba oraz jego wnuka Sfasa Emes [Chiduszei ha-Rim, inaczej Ichak Meir Alter, 1785-1866, założyciel dynastii Ger; Sfas Emes, inaczej Jehuda Arieh Leib Alter, wnuk Meira, Trzeci rebbe z dynastii]. Ohel został zniszczony w czasie wojny, ale nikt nie dostał się do środka, więc to prawdziwe miejsce pochówku. Kilka lat temu Chasydzi z Izraela czy Ameryki, wyznawcy dynastii Ger, postawili nowy ohel. Często odwiedzają grób cadyków.

Tylko jeden członek z mojej rodziny przetrwał wojnę: wuj Mosze. Wyliczyłem, że straciłem 36 członków najbliższej rodziny, wliczając w to wujostwo i ich dzieci. Wuj Mosze cudem ocalał gdzieś na Sandomierszczyźnie. Tak jak ja, mieszkał u rolnika, a przynajmniej tak słyszałem. Nigdy go o to nie pytałem. Jego żonę zabito. Po wojnie ożenił się jeszcze raz, w Łodzi. Z drugą żoną osiedlił się w Górze Kalwaria. W 1950 roku razem przeprowadzili się do Izraela. Mieli syna, Dawida. W Izraelu wuj Mosze został farmerem: miał trochę ziemi, sad, gęsi. Zmarł w maju 1972 roku.

Po wojnie mieszkałem w domu przejętym przez Państwo na rogu Dominikańskiej i Polnej. Wcześniej należał on do Niemców, ale jego właściciele wyjechali. Dostałem tam mieszkanie od magistratury. Kiedy się ożeniłem, mieszkaliśmy tam razem z żoną. Dopiero w 1960 roku zbudowałem własny dom.

Pobraliśmy się w 1949 roku. Moja żona nazywała się Czesława Maria Wasilewska. Była ode mnie młodsza o osiem lat. Byliśmy dobrą parą, spędziliśmy razem 41 lat. Była katoliczką, ale nie przeszkadzało mi to ani trochę. Mieliśmy tylko jedną córką, Małgonię, żona nie mogła mieć więcej dzieci. Nigdy nie ukrywałem, że jestem Żydem, ale w domu nie widziała mojej żydowskości. Razem obchodziliśmy katolickie święta.

Rodzice mojej żony mieli na imię Jan i Helena. Mój teść służył przez pięć lat w carskiej armii. Żona miała czworo rodzeństwa. Mieszkali w Górze Kalwaria. Byli rolnikami, mieli trochę ziemi w okolicy.

Jeszcze przed ślubem zmieniłem imię na Henryk w urzędzie powiatowym w Grójcu. Czemu miałbym nie mieć polskiego imienia skoro jestem Polakiem. Tak, żydowskiego pochodzenia, ale wciąż Polakiem. Nigdy nie miałem potrzeby wyprzeć się swojej narodowości. To żaden wstyd, ale też żadne wyróżnienie. Taki się urodziłem, taki jestem i taki będę.

Nie można zapominać o swojej narodowości i wstydzić się jej. Każdy człowiek ma prawo żyć: to żadna różnica czy ktoś jest czarny, jest Cyganem czy Niemcem. Nawet wobec Niemców nie mam już żadnych pretensji. Niemiec o imieniu Kulc przechowywał mnie przez trzy miesiące. Miałbym mieć do niego pretensje, nie uścisnąć jego dłoni? Zrobiłbym wszystko, żeby pomóc temu człowiekowi, bo on pomógł mnie, wiedząc, że jestem Żydem. Nie ma we mnie żadnego miejsca na szowinizm, nacjonalizm czy rasizm.

Zaraz po wojnie pracowałem sam, a potem w spółdzielni krawieckiej. Zarabiałem żałośnie mało: 2000 złotych. Po siedmiu latach otworzyłem własny krawiecki interes. Później skończyłem technikum i zająłem się ogrodnictwem. Ojciec sprzedawał produkty sadownicze, więc już coś o tym wiedziałem, a mój teść i szwagier byli rolnikami. Pomyślałem więc, że sam się tego nauczę i tak też zrobiłem. Zasadziłem parę drzew, które wspaniale zaowocowały, miałem piękne owoce. Wybudowałem dom. Żona pracowała najpierw w sklepie, potem w spółdzielni gminnej, sprzedając węgiel, a w końcu jako zastępczyni kierownika w restauracji w Górze Kalwaria. Potem przeszła na emeryturę. Umarła, moje biedactwo, w 1990 roku. Mamy troje wnucząt: Mateusza, Olę i Julę. Pracowaliśmy ciężko, wyszliśmy na swoje, byłem i jestem do dziś szanowany. Mój dom jest otwarty: jeśli zapuka do drzwi Żyd, wpuszczę go, jeśli będzie to ksiądz, również go wpuszczę. Nasz proboszcz jest moim dobrym przyjacielem, rozmawiamy jak ojciec i syn. Szanuje mnie, a ja szanuję jego.

Sprowadziłem rodzinę Pokorskich do Góry Kalwaria i przekazałem im mały kawałek ziemi w Koniewie obok Góry Kalwaria, który należał do mojego dziadka. Postarałem się dla nich o medal "Sprawiedliwych Wśród Narodów Świata" 31 Yad Vashem 32. Niestety już nie żyją.

Wydaję mi się, że tylko około 30 Żydów z Góry Kalwaria przeżyło wojnę. Wrócili, ale szybko uciekli. Większość przeprowadziła się do Izraela, ale część wyjechała też do Skandynawii, do Szwecji, Danii, Holandii. Żydzi byli tam mile widziani. W Polsce sytuacja Żydów nie była na początku zbyt dobra: już w 1946 roku miał miejsce Pogrom Kielecki 33, a później wydarzenia 1968 roku. 34.

To straszne, że podobno socjalistyczne państwo wymyśla historię o piątej kolumnie i tym podobne [w mowie z 12 czerwca 1968 roku Władysław Gomółka oskarżył osoby pochodzenia żydowskiego o działania pro-izraleskie, które uznał za zdradę stanu. Użył pojęcia "piąta kolumna", które pojawiło się podczas wojny domowej w Hiszpanii. Określano nim też niemieckich dywersantów w czasie ataku Hitlera na Czechosłowację i Polskę]. A mimo tego wszyscy, Żydzi i nie-Żydzi, pracowali, tworzyli, pomagali w odbudowie państwa. Jak można było nakazać osobom pochodzenia żydowskiego opuścić kraj? Czy tak być powinno? Nie można winić tych, którzy wyjechali. Ja nigdy nie chciałem wyjeżdżać.

Pretensję mam tylko do tych z władz z Góry Kalwaria, których znałem. Kazali mi przyjść do urzędu i zdeklarować czy jestem obiektywny, czy jestem dobrym Polakiem. Powiedziałem im: "Co to ma znaczyć, co mam zdeklarować? Znacie mnie bardzo dobrze, walczyłem w polskiej armii, byłem ranny, zapłaciłem krwią. Czego ode mnie chcecie?" Odwróciłem się i wyszedłem, bez pożegnania. To było idiotyczne, czym miał być ten "dobry Polak", mieszkam tu, jestem obywatelem, znają mnie, jeśli mają coś do mnie to istnieją sądy i kary. Czy wszyscy Polacy są dobrzy?

Ostatnie lata

Jako, że przed wojną służyłem w armii byłem członkiem ZBoWiD, Związku Bojowników o Wolność i Demokrację 35. W latach 90. XX wieku ZBoWiD został zamieniony na Związek Weteranów i Inwalidów Wojennych. Jestem teraz członkiem jego filii w Piasecznie. Niedawno otrzymałem medal, złoty medal Związku Inwalidów Wojennych, za udział w bitwie pod Olszewem, gdzie zostałem ranny.

Jestem członkiem TSKŻ 36 od jakiś 50 lat, czyli od jego utworzenia. Chodzę do klubu seniorów w Warszawie parę razy w tygodniu. Mam tam przyjaciół: Kawkę, Janowskiego, Wajnryba, panią Szymańską, panią Kaczmarską. Wszyscy to starsi ludzie, niektórzy starsi nawet ode mnie. Opowiadamy sobie różne historie, opowieści o naszym życiu, mówimy o młodości i o tym, co było później.

W Izraelu byłem dwa razy, w 1965 oraz 1990 roku. Nie było w tej wyprawie nic specjalnego, poprosiłem o wizę i ją otrzymałem; za pierwszym razem odmówili, ale potem zmienili zdanie. W 1965 roku Jerozolima była wciąż podzielona, więc nie mogłem pojechać do grobowca w Betlejem [grób Racheli pod Betlejem], również Ściana Płaczu była po drugiej stronie, ale dało się ją odrobinę zobaczyć. Żyło tam wtedy około miliona Żydów, może półtora miliona, nie więcej. Ilość imigrantów zwiększyła się po wojnie w 1967 roku 37.

Co teraz z antysemityzmem w Polsce? Przeciwko komu jest skierowany, skoro Żydów nie ma? Wymyśla się własnych Żydów. Kiedy rozmawiam z takimi ludźmi mówię: "Dobrze, pokaż mi żydowski sklep w okolicy, ludzi mówiących w języku żydowskim, no dalej, chcę to zobaczyć. Skoro mówisz, że Żydzi rządzą krajem, to pokaż mi tych żydowskich władców. Każdego kto jest choć trochę obiektywny nazywają Żydem, idioto." Mam przyjaciela i jako, że bardzo się lubimy, nazywają go Żydem.

To jest tak: z jednej strony są ci antysemiccy chuligani, wiecie – "o, Żyd!', a z drugiej strony są przedwojenni intelektualiści, Endecy, całe rodziny: Giertychowie, Dmowscy; to silna grupa, antysemici od zawsze i koniec, nie da się ich przekonać do zmiany. Trzeba być liberalnym i obiektywnym, myśleć logicznie. Tak wychowałem moją córkę, a ona tak wychowała moje wnuki.

Centrum Góry Kalwaria, ulice Dominikańska, Pijarska były zamieszkane przez Żydów. Polacy mieszkali głównie na przedmieściach. Na Pijarskiej był cały rząd domów cadyka. Teraz jest tam sklep gminnej spółdzielni. Jest też Alter Szul, Stara Synagoga. Oficjalnie nie należy do Żydów, ale można wejść do środka. Jest pusta. Zarówno żydowska, jak i nieżydowska, w połowie żydowska, a w połowie nieżydowska. Chasydzi 38, którzy przyjeżdżają z Izraela odwiedzają cmentarz, synagog i grób cadyka.

Człowiek nazwiskiem Karpman i ja mamy klucze do cmentarza. Jeśli na cmentarzu trzeba coś zrobić, wynajmujemy odpowiednią osobę. Płot został ufundowany przez Fundację Nissenbaumów. Przyjeżdżają tutaj całe grupy, wiele grup, żeby odwiedzić dziadków i pradziadków, bo wielu Izraelczyków wywodzi się z Polski. Często przychodzą się ze mną zobaczyć, proszą o informacje, a ja z przyjemnością z nimi rozmawiam. Ale nie obchodzą mnie już tak bardzo, nie mam już siły. Ale dobrze, że mój umysł jeszcze działa i wciąż mam moje wspomnienia.

Słownik

Mazal Asael
Sofia
Bulgaria
Interviewer: Dimitar Bozhilov

Family background
Growing up
During the war
Post-war

Family background

My ancestors came to the Balkan Peninsula after the persecutions in Spain
five centuries ago. My mother's family lived in the town of Nis that is situated in Serbia now.
They moved to Sofia, Bulgaria at the beginning of the 20th century.
My mother Delicia had four sisters and two brothers but one of her brothers drowned in a river while they were still living in Nis.
All my mother's sisters and brothers were born in Nis, where there was a
big Jewish neighborhood. My mother's family members spoke mostly in Ladino.
They also spoke Serbian because they had lived in Serbia. My mother knew a
lot of songs in Serbian and she sang very well. I suppose that there was a
certain reason that made my mother's family move from Nis to Sofia. The
fact that one of her brothers drowned in a river near Nis might have also
influenced their decision to leave.

My maternal grandfather, Bohor Beniamin, made his living as a pastry-maker.
My maternal grandmother Lucia Beniamin was a very nice woman and she was a
housewife. They settled in the Jewish neighborhood named Iutchbunar after
coming to Sofia. This quarter was to the west of the center of Sofia and
the poorer Jews lived there. The richer Jews in Sofia lived in the center
of the town. My grandfather opened his own pastry shop on Pozitano Street
and he used to make the best pastry in the whole neighborhood. I suppose
that the pastry he made was kosher. Most of the Jews in the Iutchbunar
Quarter bought kosher food. They would buy live hens and take them to the
shochet in the synagogue to kill them. My mother's family's economic status
was not good and they didn't have their own house - that is why my
grandparents used to live paying rent in the house of their youngest
daughter Mazal. My mother and her sisters and her brother were still young
when they came to Sofia and none of them was married then. They all got
married in Sofia. My grandfather Bohor had a beautiful tallith and books in
Hebrew from which we used to read on holidays. My grandfather Bohor was a
religious man and he went to the synagogue regularly.

My mother's sisters and brother already had families at the time that I
remember them. My mother's oldest sister is named Bucha and she has three
sons who live in Israel. My mother's other sisters are named Lenka, Mazal
and Blanka, and her brother, Marko. My mother's youngest sister's husband
was a housepainter. His name was Leon. His father had been a chazzan at the
synagogue and people in the quarter respected him very much. They had six
children. One of their sons became a hero in Israel later on. Aunt Lenka
had two children who also lived in Israel. My Uncle Marko was a barber.
Aunt Blanka went to Belgrade in 1939 and married a Bulgarian Jew there. She
were told that she was sent to a concentration camp during the Holocaust
and killed. We did not get any message from her after the invasion of
Serbia by the German troops. Aunt Blanka had one son, who lives in Israel
now. My mother's youngest sister lived on Bregalnitsa Street with her
husband who had his own house, and my grandparents lived there with them
for a time. My mother's other sisters and her brother lived in rented
places in Iutchbunar.

My mother Delicia was a hairdresser. I remember that there were special
curling irons at home that she used in her work. She had worked as a
hairdresser before she got married. I suppose that she learnt this trade
while she was living in Nis. She went to school in Nis up to the fourth
class.

My father's family comes from Sofia. My father Mehanem Eshkenazi has one
sister, Ester, and four brothers. One of his brothers, whose name was Leon,
went to America when he was very young and we have no information about him
since then. Another brother of his, Israel, left for Tzarigrad (now
Istanbul) in the 1930s. He owned a hemp goods factory and his material
status was very good. He had a big family, six children - two sons and four
daughters. One of his sons, Robert, lives in Israel and the other one,
Nisim, in England. My father's oldest brother was called Rahamin and he was
a tailor. We used to keep in touch all the time until 1943 when we were
interned from Sofia. My paternal grandmother lived for some time in
Tzarigrad in the house of the youngest brother Israel. So I practically
never saw her. My paternal grandfather had died before my grandmother went
to Tzarigrad to live with her richest son.

My father was born a short time after the liberation of Bulgaria from the
Turkish yoke in 1878 and there wasn't a Jewish school then so far as I
know. I guess that he went to a Bulgarian primary school. He had been a
hired laborer before he got married. My father probably fought in the
Bulgarian army during the Balkan war in 1912. During WWI he was captured in
1918, but I don't know where.

My father had been married to another woman but she died very young. It was
a coincidence that my mother had been a bridesmaid at their wedding. My
father's first wife knew my mother and that is how my parents met each
other. My mother Delicia and my father Menahem married in 1920. My parents
got married in the synagogue. Civil marriage did not exist at that time and
all Jews married in the synagogue. My father worked as a hired laborer for
many years at the fruit and vegetable shop of a friend of ours on Sveta
Nedelia Square in the center of Sofia. I remember that every evening my
father used to come home very tired from work and he would send me to the
nearby pub to buy some anisette for him. I used to taste a little from it
every time, and that's why it's the only drink I like, even now.

Every Saturday my father used to go to a Jewish café on Pozitano Street in
the center of Sofia and play cards and backgammon there. I remember that
they played for chocolate bars, and we little kids used to go to the café
to check if our fathers had won chocolates so that we could take some of
them.

Growing up

My home was on Opalchenska Street. It was a run-down, two-floor brick house
where we lived together with some other families. We had electricity in the
house. All the occupants were Jewish. We had a neighbour who breast-fed me
after I was born because my mother couldn't, and our neighbour had a baby
at the same time. This house no longer exists. A new one was built in its
place and the children of the previous owners live there now. All my
maternal and paternal relatives lived in the Jewish neighborhood.

I don't know how long I lived in the house on Opalchenska Street for we
moved while I was still a very little girl. We lived at many places until
1943 - on Ovcho Pole, Odrin, Slivnitza and Naicho Tsanov streets. I suppose
that my parents were really poor and they had to move very often. We lived
on Odrin Street for the longest period of time, in two different houses.
These houses no longer exist and there are big blocks at their place now.
My brothers and I were already grown up when we lived on that street. My
brothers were taken from there to the labor camps in the 1940s. We lived
together with Bulgarians in Odrin Street but I never felt a negative
attitude towards us though one of them was a member of Brannik. (Brannik
was a pro-fascist youth organization. It started functioning after the
National Defense Law was passed in 1939 and the Bulgarian government formed
its pro-German policy during WWII. Brannik's members regularly maltreated
Jews.) In every house we lived we had a little space and it was never
enough for our big family.

There were two Jewish schools in Sofia, one in the center of the town and
one in our neighborhood. The children of the richer Jews who lived in the
center used to study in the central school. I went to the one on Osogovo
Street. Everything in the school was free of charge for us. The textbooks
were free and sometimes we were even given shoes and clothes. I went to the
Jewish school until the third grade (equal to today's seventh grade); up
until then, I had studied there for four years. We used to study all day at
the Jewish school: general subjects in Bulgarian in the morning; and the
same subjects, such as reading, writing and mathematics, in Hebrew in the
afternoon. In the upper classes we started studying Jewish history, too.
One of the subjects we studied was Tanach. We studied the history of the
Jewish people and the Five Books of Moses. We also had religion class,
taught in Hebrew.

The Jewish school organised excursions and summer camps. There was a Jewish
summer camp in the town of Berkovitsa where we used to go on holiday.
Children from the poorer families were accepted in that camp. My mother
went to this camp to work as a cook so that my brother Beniamin and I could
both go on holiday there. I remember that one summer I fell into a deep
pool and had to be rescued. I have very pleasant memories from those
vacations and also many good friends with whom I keep in touch even today.

We had various organizations in the Jewish school: Maccabi, Akiva, Hashomer
Hatzair. Maccabi was a sports organization that organised international
competitions and Hashomer Hatzair was a scout organization and we used to
learn Hebrew there. We used to stay after school and play different games
or learn Jewish dances; we would try to speak only in Hebrew. These
organizations had a very positive educational influence on us, teaching us
to be very well organised. While I was studying in the Jewish school all my
friends were Jews. They were mostly my classmates and we were all members
of Hashomer Hatzair. The Jewish organizations existed until 1943 when
internments from Sofia began. The Bulgarian government banned them when the
National Defense Law was passed in 1939, but they went on functioning
illegally. (The National Defense Law was a law against Bulgarian Jews,
featuring detailed regulations. According to this law Jews did not have the
right to own shops and factories. The Jews that lived in the center of
Sofia were forced to move to the outskirts of the town. The internment of
Jews to certain designated towns was legalized. This was in preparation for
the deportation to the concentration camps.)

I did not have the possibility to continue my education after I graduated
the third class of the Jewish school and I started work at an upholsterer's
atelier. I worked until 1943 when the internments started. I continued my
education after 1944. I graduated from the evening school in Sofia. Because
our financial status wasn't stable, I used to work every summer. As a
student I used to work in an umbrella workshop on Dondukov Boulevard. I
also worked for a friend of my mother's who sewed corsets. One summer
holiday I worked for a Bulgarian lady who had a millinery workshop.

My parents were not very religious and they didn't go to the synagogue very
often, only on the high holidays. I used to celebrate most of the holidays
in the Jewish school when I was a student. We all gathered at home together
with our neighbors on Pesach. Sometimes we gathered with some relatives in
the house of an aunt of my father's who lived far away from our house. We
used to lay a big table with matzo and boio (bread balls made of water and
flour without any salt and yeast); there was only kosher food on the table.
My mother took care of the whole household. She had separate dishes that
she used on Pesach only. Tinkers used to pass through the Jewish
neighborhood every year and tin the copper dishes so they always looked as
good as new ones. We did that also in order to make sure that the bread did
not have any contact with the dish. After the holiday we put away the
dishes until the next year.

When Pesach was coming, the chocolate factory in Sofia would bake matzo,
which we would buy for the period of eight days when we did not use any
other bread. We always got new shoes for Pesach, though our family was very
poor. I had cousins older than me and I wore their old clothes. There was a
synagogue next to the school in our neighborhood and there were a chazzan,
a shochet, and some clerks there.

We made a Pesach Seder. There had to be seven special dishes on the table
and they had to be arranged on one plate. We made a special dish of ground
walnuts, sugar and apples. We laid that on a leaf of lettuce, and we called
it maror. We did tanit for Yom Kippur: on that day we didn't eat anything
till evening when the shofar was sounded at the synagogue.

We didn't work on Saturdays and that is how we observed Sabbath. We didn't
turn the lights on until a certain hour then. We observed the rest of the
Jewish holidays also. The holiday of fruits, Frutas, is in February. Purim,
the day of the masks, is in March, and Pesach is after that. The most fun
holiday for the children, Lag Baomer, is forty days after Pesach. We used
to go to the field then and gather grass. There was the holiday of
fruitfulness, Succoth, when we built a special small straw cottage at the
synagogue and arranged all kinds of fruits and things gathered after the
summer labor.

During the war

I came into a Bulgarian circle of friends in the late 1930s. I was already
a left-winger then. We had to trade in our ID cards for new pink ones in
the 1940s, and some of us had our names changed. (Repressive measures
against Jews were taken after the National Defense Law was passed in 1939.
Their ID cards were replaced by pink ones so that they differed from the ID
cards of other Bulgarian citizens. Many Bulgarian Jews were moved to
designated towns where they had the right to leave their lodgings at
certain times only.)

The names of some Jews were changed to typically Jewish ones so that our
Jewish origin was clear to the other citizens. My name was from Matilda to
Mazal.

We had to wear yellow badges that showed our Jewish origin but I hardly
ever wore mine because I was living in a mostly Bulgarian circle. Anyway I
was always ready to show it when necessary.

On May 24, 1943, Slavic Script and Bulgarian Culture Day, there were sudden
protests among Jewish youth against the authorities' decision to forcibly
move our families out of Sofia. Many of our families had already received
notices for a forced internment. In 1943 the removal of the Jews from their
homes started in order to organize their deportation to concentration camps
abroad. Because of the sharp reaction of the Bulgarian population and of
some of the members of Parliament, the deportation was stopped at the last
moment. I was a member of the Revolutionary Youth Union by then. Both Jews
and Bulgarians were members of the RYU, a pro-Communist and anti-fascist
youth organization. My parents couldn't prevent me from taking part in the
RYU's activities during WWII, as I did not let them know exactly what I was
doing. My father was a liberal man but he didn't take part in politics. My
brothers didn't have a particular political orientation either. I was the
only one in the family who participated actively in anti-fascist
activities. That's because of where I worked-- at a bazaar on Klementina
Street where there were many workers - cooks, tailors and others - and that
is how I came into contact with left-wing youth who were members of the
RYU.

We gathered at the synagogue in our neighborhood that May 24. My neighbour
Solomon Leviev, a member of the RYU, spoke before the Jewish people and
called on us to go on a protest march to the center of the town where Tzar
Boris III was going to congratulate Sofia's citizens on the May 24th
holiday. So we went in that direction. We were walking on Klementina Street
(now Alexander Stamboliiski Boulevard). Suddenly mounted police intercepted
us and started to arrest people at random. I managed to escape together
with Solomon Leviev to the village of Kniazhevo (now a neighborhood of
Sofia).

Right after these protests, on that very day, arrests at our homes started.
The father of the boy with whom I had escaped was arrested and sent to a
labor camp. We lived underground in Sofia after this and we hid from the
police. I did not want to move out of Sofia but had to anyway. My family
got a notice that we had to leave for the town of Dupnitza and my parents
made me to go with them. Both my older brothers were in labor camps at that
time. My family left for Dupnitza at the end of May. I went back to Sofia
the next day. My parents did not know about that. They suspected that I
would join an armed anti-fascist guerrilla squad and didn't want me to go
back to Sofia.

I went back to Sofia with a fake ID card with a Bulgarian name on it, which
I got from my friends in the RYU. I lived in the lodging of a friend of
mine, Boris Brankov. After that I moved to the underground group in the
Lozenetz Quarter. We decided to join a guerrilla squad but the head of our
organization was arrested and so we failed. I was also arrested in June
1943. Someone had disclosed the fact that I was Jewish and I was sent to
Sveti Nikola, a concentration camp near Asenovgrad in South Bulgaria. These
camps were built as prisons for the anti-fascists but not especially for
Jews. I was sent there because of my anti-fascist activities, not because
of my Jewish origin. I stayed there until it was closed in November 1943.
The Bulgarian government changed that year. Ivan Bagryanov's government
came into power and he closed all political prisons but also founded some
new ones such as Sveti Kirik. When I came back to Sofia from the camp I
didn't have any identification again and I hid in the home of some friends
of mine. I understood then that my parents had been moved to the town of
Mihailovgrad, which was named Ferdinand then.

My maternal relatives were also forcibly moved from Sofia during the
Holocaust. My mother's older sister Bucha and her family were interned in
the town of Pazardjik. My mother's other sister Mazal was interned to Ruse
together with her big family and six children. They were all interned
except Blanka who went to Belgrade; unfortunately, she was sent to a
concentration camp there. I remember that my maternal grandfather died just
after the internment in 1943 and we did not even manage to put a tombstone
on his grave. My father's relatives were also interned. My father's
sister's children had already grown up and were sent to forced labor camps.
One of my father's brothers, Josif, was interned together with my father in
Dupnitza. My parents spent only a few months in Dupnitza and after that
they moved to Ferdinand (now known as Montana).

I went after them and joined the Jewish section of the local RYU
organization in the town of Ferdinand. My parents were suffering terribly
during the internment in Dupnitza and Ferdinand. My parents, my younger
brother Samuil and I lived in one small room. My older brother Beniamin was
in Sveti Vrach in the South near the town of Gotze Delchev. He worked
building roads there. My other brother, Eliezer, was sent to a labor camp
near the town of Svoge and he was also a road construction worker.

I tried to work while I was in Ferdinand to help my family. I sewed for the
neighbors so that we could buy some food. I was not a professional
dressmaker but I mended clothes. In Ferdinand I also looked after children,
made bricks, dug in the vineyards. All that was illegal and I did it
without the knowledge of the police as we had the right to go out of our
homes for only three hours a day. I worked as an assistant in the shop of
some friends of my parents. I used to hide my badge while I was at work,
and when the police found out that I was a stranger in town, and that I was
working illegally, they didn't know about my Jewish origins. So I managed
to leave town before they discovered my identity. I used to hide my badge
all the time and the police didn't know that I was a Jew.

I joined the Hristo Mihailov guerrilla squad in August 1944 together with
35 people from the town. All our actions were strictly organised and
disciplined because the authorities were after us and we lived underground.
We had leaders who decided who was suitable to join the squad. We went 40
kilometers during the first night after we joined the squad and crossed the
Serbian border. The police were chasing us the whole way. We met the local
guerrillas there - our squad was in touch with them all the time. On
September 5 we learned that the Soviet army was near the Danube and was
about to enter Bulgarian territory. Then we came back to Bulgaria. We
passed through the town of Ferdinand and on September 8-9 we were in
Berkovitza and we established the government of the Fatherland Front there.
(September 9th 1944 was the day of the communist coup d'etat in Bulgaria.
It meant the beginning of a new era in the history of Bulgaria, that of the
totalitarian rule of the Bulgarian Communist Party. The Fatherland Front
was the most popular anti-fascist and pro-Soviet organisation in Bulgaria
that existed formally during the whole period of the Bulgarian Communist
Party's rule.)

The situation changed and the guerrillas started to chase their
persecutors, mostly the so-called "desperados" who were famous for their
cruelty to guerrillas. The desperados had been authorized to persecute and
kill the guerrillas in Bulgaria. Many guerrillas had been executed in 1943
and 1944. We established the people's rule everywhere we went. Local people
knew their persecutors and the people who had maltreated them. All the Jews
in the squad, however, were from Sofia.

Post-war

I stayed for a few days in the town of Berkovitza after September 9 and I
went back to Ferdinand after that. Together with a cousin of mine, I went
to Sofia to look for a lodging for our families. We found one on Naitcho
Tzanov Street and we called our parents. My brothers came back from the
camps. We lived at that place until my parents and my brothers left for
Israel. My brother Beniamin left first and he spent two years at a
transient camp in Cyprus. The British blocked the emigration of Jews to
Palestine because Palestine was an English dominion at that time. My
brother managed to move to Israel only after the establishment of the
country. I did not want to go with them because I thought my place was in
Bulgaria and I had to take part in the building of the new political and
economic system under the guidance of the Bulgarian Communist Party.

In 1948 we received clothes from the "Joint," the American Joint
Distribution Committee, a Jewish relief organization. We had a Jewish
organization in Sofia after 1944. We also had a Jewish hospital on Pozitano
Street and a relative of mine used to work there. This hospital is a
cardiac clinic at present.

We went on observing Jewish holidays until my parents left Bulgaria in
1948, gathering for the holidays and going to synagogue. After my parents
and my brother left for Israel, my husband and I didn't observe Jewish
traditions so strictly. I used to work on Saturdays, as it was a working
day in Bulgaria for a long time. Jewish traditions lost their meaning
gradually because my husband Mois Asael and I were both very busy with our
work. We used to work full-time, six days a week.

My family and I had to leave many precious belongings and books when we
were interned in 1943. That is why I don't have many souvenirs from my
relatives. My family had many beautiful books in Hebrew with velvet covers
and the Star of David embroidered on them, but we had to leave them. I have
kept a small carpet from my mother that is over a hundred years old. I have
also kept special clothing that my mother used to wear when delivering her
children and some special sheets also. The clothing that she wore was made
of a silky material - something like brocade. It was rosy with golden and
silver threads in it. Unfortunately those things of my mother's got lost
during an exhibition at the Jewish Cultural Home.

I have three brothers. The oldest one, Eliezer, is from my father's first
marriage. He used to live together with my mother and father. After that
his maternal grandmother took him to live with her. In 1941 he came back to
live with our family. My two other brothers are Beniamin and Samuil. They
all graduated from the Jewish school in Sofia. My two older brothers left
for Israel together with my parents.

My parents settled in the town of Jaffa. My brother Samuil still lives
there. My father became a peddler after they settled in Israel and my
brothers did dirty jobs. Only my brother Beniamin managed to do well for
himself. My other brother, Eliezer, who married there and had a big family
with five children, was a retail merchant. My youngest brother Samuil
worked in a film studio. I have one brother and many nephews in Israel now.
My maternal relatives also settled in the town of Jaffa. My aunts settled
in Jaffa, Bat Yam and Rechovot.

I have been to Israel about ten times. All my relatives on my mother's side
live there. Only one cousin of my paternal side lives there now. She is a
daughter of my father's oldest brother Rahamin. Only my mother managed to
come to Bulgaria after they left in 1948. She came here to see my daughter
in 1971. My brother comes almost every year. I keep in touch with him, as
the situation in Israel is very hard at the moment.

In 1944 I went to work in the militia as an operative officer. I worked
there till 1952 when a decision was made that Jews should be dismissed from
leading positions. A trial against doctors started in the Soviet Union in
1952. The Jews were accused of working against the Soviet authorities. As
Bulgaria was subordinate to the Soviet Union, all Jews were dismissed from
work at the militia. There were many Jews in the militia hierarchy at that
time, especially in my department, which dealt with the press, cultural
societies and schools. People who were fired were highly qualified, for one
had to speak foreign languages to work in my department. I couldn't find a
better job after 1952 because of my Jewish origins. I had to accept
whatever I was offered. I found work in the personnel department of the
City Management of the People's Health Administration after I was fired.
The Administration existed only for a short period of time and after that I
went to work in the personnel department of Material and Technical Supply
at the Ministry of Construction, from which I retired later.

After 1952 it was difficult for Bulgarian Jews to visit their relatives who
had left for Israel. I managed to go to Israel with great efforts in 1957.
I went with the special permission of one of the undersecretaries of the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Only a few Jews went on working as operative
officers in the hierarchy of the MFA after 1952, and they used to teach law
and criminology. I kept in touch with my parents regularly at that time.
The Ministry told me that I couldn't do that anymore if I worked there. I
chose to keep in touch with my parents and that is why I was dismissed with
the explanation that I had an "unsuitable environment" for a ministry
officer. That "unsuitable environment" was in fact my connection with
Israel.

I worked in the Ministry of Construction in 1956. I was working in
Personnel and it was my duty to keep an eye on the workers' inclinations so
that we wouldn't repeat, in Bulgaria, what had happened in Hungary the same
year. This was carried out through stronger discipline at the work places.
The ministries took steps to avoid any kind of anti-Soviet inclinations in
Bulgaria.

After my parents went to Israel in 1948 I moved to a better lodging that
was in the apartment of some Jews who had already left for Israel. I had
the right to live in one of the rooms there. I met my future husband in
that lodging. My husband Mois Shemaia Asael was born in the town of
Dupnitza. He is an optician. He graduated from the Optics Institute of the
Ministry of Health in Sofia and he has worked as an optician for more than
40 years. His family didn't go to Israel but bought a house on Sofronii
Vrachanski Street where I lived with my husband for almost twenty years,
until 1970. After that we moved to the Mladost Quarter, a suburban
neighborhood in Sofia, and we still live there.

It was good for us Jews that the Bulgarian Communist Party was governing.
This gave us the chance to take part and work in state institutions. Before
1944 we did not have the chance to do that; we were deprived of our rights.
We didn't have the chance to study even if we wanted to. I supported the
official party position regarding the political developments in Hungary in
1956 and in the Czech Republic in 1968 during the whole period of BCP rule.
I myself was a member of the BCP and now I am a member of its successor,
the Bulgarian Socialist Party.

My daughter Regina was born in 1968. She wanted to go into her father's
profession and she went to study at the optics technical school. She chose
to deal with laser optics there. She used to work in UchTehProm, a laser
technology factory, but when the orders from the Soviet Union ceased after
the political changes in Bulgaria in 1989, she was dismissed from work. Now
she works at Social Care Centre in Mladost Municipality. My daughter
married a Bulgarian and she has two children, Simona and Martin.

I used to go on vacation with my husband every year in the 1960s. I took my
daughter to the seaside every summer in the 1970s. We had work then and we
had the financial ability to go to resorts. When my daughter started school
she used to go on vacation during the winter, the spring and the summer
holidays. We lived well until 1989. Now, after the political changes in
Bulgaria that began on November 10th 1989, we don't live well.

We have a group in the Jewish Community Center where we gather to talk in
Hebrew. There is a group for Ladino speakers also. I take part in both
groups. I graduated a Jewish school 65 years ago and I can speak Hebrew.
There are other groups where they teach Hebrew to those who want to go to
Israel. I do my best to help my daughter's family now. I observe all the
Jewish holidays and I go to the synagogue regularly. I have a special
chandelier for the Jewish holiday of light, Hannukah. I recently organised
a Bat Mitzvah for my granddaughter Simona at the central synagogue. 120
people attended the ceremony. My granddaughter had prepared a speech that
she read before the audience. It was a great festival. We treated the
guests to kosher food.

Elizaveta Valueva
St. Petersburg
Russia
Interviewer: Anna Nerush

I was born on January 25, 1936, in Mariupol, Ukraine. My mother, Anna Samuelovna Blinderman, was born in 1914 in the village of Buki, Cherkassia region, Ukraine. My father, Pavel Alekseevich Valuev, was born in Russia, in the village of Kashidra, Moscow region, in 1910. I studied in Moscow at the Institute of Energy from 1953 to 1958. After graduation I married Anatoly Pavlovich Nikolau. He was born in 1934, and died in 1987. With him I returned to Mariupol, where I lived until 2000. After the deaths of all my other relatives, I was alone, and I moved to St. Petersburg to live with my son. In Mariupol I worked as the head of a department of Ukrgypromez, the Ukrainian Institute of entrepreneurial planning for black metallurgy, from 1968 to 1974. From 1974 to 1990, I was the head of a department of the Central Scientific Research Laboratory of black metallurgy. I am now retired.

My family background

During the war

After the war

My family background

My son, Sergei Anatolievich Nikolau, was born on December 1, 1960. He is a neurologist and works at a hospital in St. Petersburg. I have three grandchildren: Pavel, who is 17; Yekaterina, 9; and Polina, 9 months.

My family, the Blinderman-Valuev family, without exaggeration, could be considered a model of unity between representatives of two nations, in this case Russian and Jewish. My father and my spouse not only respected, were devoted to and loved their Jewish wives, but also, through the course of their lives, took care of many of their wives' Jewish relatives. After World War II and because of the difficulty with housing, my mother's relatives lived in our apartment until they received lodging, and my mother's spinster sister, Klara Blinderman, lived with my mother's family for 23 years. When my mother had trouble getting over the death of her husband, my husband, Anatoly Nikolau, spent the most time with her. Every evening he took her out for a walk, obtained everything needed for her handiwork so that she could take her mind off painful memories, and so on.

The harmonious, respectful and warm atmosphere of the Blinderman-Valuev family is not only tolerance between nations, but more of a national compatibility, formed so that both I and my son - whose passport says his "nationality" is "Russian" - could feel close to the Jewish nation. Because I have Slavic features, I would not be associated with having a Jewish background. At every new place of work, I immediately mentioned my Jewish roots on my mother's side, to forestall any incidents of anti-Semitism in my presence.

Me and my son's feelings toward Judaism are worth mentioning because neither I nor my son received a religious upbringing. Rather, we lived, one could say, amid a Soviet upbringing. Thanks to the harmonious relationships between the older generations of both the Jewish and Russian sides of our family - for me the happy marriage of my parents, and for my son the wonderful relationship between me and my spouse - my son and I - especially me - having lived our adult lives in the second half of the 20th century, had a unique opportunity to create our own family barrier against anti-
Semitism, which had been growing in the Soviet Union over many decades, to the level of governmental politics and therefore was constantly at the everyday level.

We were able to form this barrier against the governmental and everyday anti-Semitism by talking with our older relatives. They shared their memories of the world before the war. My mother's parents were Brana Peisekhovna Shavulskaya, who lived from 1888 to 1975, and Shmul Josefovich Blinderman, who lived from 1888 to 1942. Grandmother was courageous, hardworking, kind, enduring, a soul strong, moderately commanding. Grandfather was quiet, taciturn, mild, indistinctive in the best sense of the word.

They lived in the Ukrainian village of Buki in the Umanskovo sector of the Cherkassia region in the Ukraine, and their way of life was dual to a certain extent: While remaining Jewish in their religious worldview, in outward appearance - clothing and the presence of some local dialect in their spoken language - they became to a certain degree like the Ukrainians. Grandmother, from her youth and until the end of her days, wore a long and broad skirt, a cardigan, and tied a shawl around her head. Outwardly, she didn't differ from the Ukrainian women of her village.
In the 1960s, my mother, Anna, gave her a wool jacket as a gift, and Grandmother wore this with unusual pride. I remember Grandfather in a dark jacket and always a dark shirt. He had neither a beard nor moustache.

Neither Grandmother nor Grandfather obtained any sort of education; a fact that was quite understandable given the position of Jews in a Ukrainian village at the turn of the century. They lived in chronic destitution.

They had six children. Grandfather sewed hats in the small Ukrainian town of Shpola; the family moved there from Buki. Grandmother did day labor as a field worker. She gave birth to one of her six children right in a field. There was only one svitka for the entire family; because of this, the children went to school during the cold time of year in turn.

Grandmother was more observant than Grandfather. She got together to pray with other inhabitants in Shpola. After the war, in Mariupol, she regularly attended the prayer house that took the place of a traditional synagogue in that city.

During the war

During the civil war, Grandmother lived through fires in her own clay house that were set twice by bandits. During one of the pogroms, the Makhno bandits killed three of her brothers before her very eyes, and the fourth - Moishe - was badly hurt. Grandmother was able to save Moishe and care for him. In 1919 Moishe left for the United States with other relatives - I don't know their names - and Grandmother's sister, Klara, emigrated to Palestine that same year.

Fleeing from the Makhno band during one of the numerous Jewish pogroms during the civil war, my pregnant grandmother ran barefooted with her children in her arms over a field to an acquaintance who was not Jewish and who hid her and her children in a bundle of hay. The bandits, with cries and threats, threw themselves at the homeowner, demanding to be told where the runaways were. The owner made the bandits believe there were no strangers on his property. After poking the bundles of hay with spikes and thankfully not piercing Grandmother or her children, the bandits disappeared. It seemed that the Almighty himself protected that exceptional woman and her children. The strength of soul and kindness of Brana Peisekhovna couldn't help but bring sympathy and respect from her non - Jewish neighbors who, as I have already said, came to her aid. In saving her and her children, these people regularly risked their own lives.

After the beginning of World War II, when she had not had any chance to make evacuation plans, Grandmother, in my opinion, did another heroic feat, although she herself thought that she was just doing her duty as a wife and grandmother. After loading her ill husband, suffering from a lacerated stomach ulcer, into a wheelbarrow, she and her 3-year-old granddaughter set out on foot on the many-kilometer path to the Dniper River. After crossing the river on a raft, she found her daughter Fira, the granddaughter's mother, in Kharkov and they were evacuated together. She received a pension after the war, because of her son's death at the front, and she regularly gave her portion to the Jewish prayer house to help those families who had also lost their provider.

From the stories of relatives and my conversations with her, I place Grandmother in the ranks of unique personalities in terms of soul, strength, self-sacrifice to the point of self-denial, relationships to her husband, children and comrades in faith. Unbelievable bravery and optimistic belief in a happy ending, it seems, gave her the strength to fight for the survival of her family, both during the evil years of the civil war in Russia and during the years of indigence and oppression that accompanied the anti-Semitism of the Soviet period. It gave her the strength to live through even the years of the Holocaust. The Russian part of our family - my father, spouse and their relatives - loved and respected our grandmother, admiring her as much as her close Jewish family.

The only Jewish holiday that was celebrated at home during my grandmother's life and after her death was Passover. Already living in Mariupol after the war, Grandmother would buy a chicken at the market long before Passover and feed it on the balcony. Then, not long before the holiday she would take the chicken to the butcher. There was no synagogue in Buki, in the settlement of Shpola, where my grandmother and her family lived before the war, or in Mariupol. Matzot were baked at home by practicing Jews. Brana Peisekhovna enlisted all the females of our family for this ritual - adults and girls. Two types of matzot were baked on two wooden benches, with eggs and without. On Passover, a celebratory dinner was held, to which not only Jews, but also Russian Orthodox relatives were invited, as well as neighboring non-Jews.

I have always had a feeling of deep gratitude to my parents for the atmosphere in our family of national harmony between Jews and Russians, for the patience and tolerance with which they lived through difficult times and the unavoidable problems connected with civil cataclysms. Great love was the solid foundation not only for their marriage, but also for our Jewish-Russian clan. In the post-war housing crisis, my parents had seven people living in our little, two-room apartment.

My father graduated from the Moscow Institute of Agricultural Electrification and worked his whole life at the Azovstal factory, first as an engineer and then as the assistant head power-engineering specialist and head of the central laboratory. He worked enthusiastically, giving his all to his beloved work. During the war he was released from the draft because he was sent to Siberia, to the city of Stalinsk, to organize the defense industry there.

After finishing diplomatic school in Kiev before the war, my father refused a prestigious post in New Zealand, explaining that he "couldn't stay for long without the guardianship of the many Jewish relatives of my wife." Father was an atheist, which didn't stop him, a Russian, from respecting the religious passion of his mother-in-law and the people that surrounded her. Father died in Mariupol in 1968, mourned by all of us, both his Russian and Jewish relatives.

My mother was born in Buki. She first got on a train when she was 15, in 1929. Mother graduated from a pharmaceutical institute in Dnipropetrovsk. She lived in a dormitory in very difficult conditions, up to 30 people in one room. The years of my mother's study coincided with the period of complete famine in the Ukraine, and students who couldn't be helped by their parents were hit particularly hard. Before the war, from 1935 to 1941, and after the war, until 1968, Mother worked in pharmacies in Mariupol. During the first post-war years, she traveled by cart to all nearby villages to put the village pharmacies in working order.

After the war

Those who lived in the Soviet Union in the beginning of the 1950s, and those who only heard or read about this frightening time can imagine the condition of my family during this time, when my mother - a pharmacist by profession - was discriminated against simply because her nationality was the same as the nationality of those high-ranking doctors who were part of the "Doctors affair." The suffering of my mother and all our family was intensified by the atmosphere of mistrust and unproven accusations against any doctor or pharmacist with Jewish traits as well as the slanderous verbal attacks that malicious residents directed toward them.

Remembering atheism - an intrinsic and unavoidable part of the ideology preached by the USSR - I recall with some sadness how my mother, not long before her death, came to realize her belief in God, openly lamenting that it occurred so late in her life.

The history of all generations of my family, both sides: Jewish and Ukrainian, is permanently connected with the city of Mariupol, where the older generation spent most of their lives, and my generation and our children spent our whole lives. Mariupol is a very unique city compared to other Ukrainian cities. This is because it was founded by emigrants from Greece. Even in the 20th century, a portion of the residents were Greeks.
I don't know the statistics; I can only say that Jews in the city, before and after the war, were numerous. Jews first came to Mariupol following the Greeks, drawn by the trade opportunities and the relative proximity to Odessa and other ports in the Black Sea.

Pre-war Mariupol was a typical provincial town. Residential buildings were mostly two stories. My parents said that before the war there were only two five-story buildings in Mariupol. Horses and carts were the usual mode of transportation, even in the post-war period, after the city was liberated from the fascists. In pre-war Mariupol, there was no electricity, no piped water or sewage system. Candles were used for lighting. During the period of famine, from 1932 to 1934 and after, people baked their bread themselves from poor quality grain. After the war, when there was both electricity and water, I, and members of my family who were my age, often complained about the difficulties, the constant deficit of foodstuffs. My wise Jewish grandmother would cut off our complaints and we fell silent. "Don't complain!" Grandmother would say, "You have piped water, and you don't need to carry a yoke with buckets. You have electricity and you don't live by candlelight. You buy bread in the store and don't have to bake it from discarded grain."

My closest relatives, including my mother, couldn't remember the appearance of anti-Semitism before the war. If they did encounter it, then it was only sporadically, and most often, the people around them sided with them.

In the post-war period, Mariupol transformed its look and status, becoming an industrial city, thanks to such giants as the Azovstal factory. All ofthis couldn't help but influence the spread of culture, education and changed in the relationships between the citizens of Mariupol.
Having been raised by my family in a spirit of tolerance of other nationalities, but at the same time being proud of my connection to the Jewish nation on my mother's side, when I was 15 I met a young Russian - Anatoly Nikolau. We became friends, and eventually, when, in the late 1950s we both finished the Moscow Institute of Energetics, we married and moved back to Mariupol. During the 29 years of our marriage, and after my husband passed away in 1987, I thanked fate for the fact that I, in my youth, had made the right choice. My spouse was devoted not only to me and our son,

but also to my parents whom he treated like his own closest relatives. He was diagnosed at the age of 37 with stomach ulcers; he suffered the chronic pain in silence, afraid to worry my mother and me. Mother was so grateful to my husband for the support that he gave her after the death of my father that she traveled with me to Donetsk, where Anatoly was facing difficult surgery. My Jewish mother kept watch at her Russian son-in-law's bedside for a month.

Because I formed my identity in a Jewish family, with acquaintances, colleagues and neighbors of other nationalities, observing Jewish traditions seemed to me to be an essential attribute of my international family. And when changes in our country's life began in the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s, connected with a greater openness and respect for the other faiths, except Russian Orthodox, we all - Jews and half-Jews, culturally Russian and Ukrainian residents of Mariupol - welcomed the opening a few years ago of the first synagogue in the city, not minding that it was in a mere two classrooms of one of the city schools. I regretted the fact that my religious grandmother hadn't lived to this blessed time, when she could have regularly and openly attended synagogue. It is possible that even my mother would have come to believe in God not at the end of her life, in 1998, but much earlier had a legally functioning synagogue existed in the city. And it goes without saying that her correspondence with her close relatives who had emigrated to the USA and Palestine in 1919 would have been carried out not only by Grandmother, hidden from us, but also by my mother and myself - the younger generations of the family. The correspondence would have eagerly opened for us, possibly, a completely new world.

In the last decade of the 20th century, the religious life of the Jews of Mariupol blossomed, although unfortunately there were noticeably fewer Jews in the city. The synagogue drew in both elderly Orthodox and young believers, and the organization of a local Hesed and the Sochnut created the possibility for educational and entertainment events for the Jews and non-Jews. Volunteer work has also been set up.

Jews emigrated to Israel, the USA and Germany. Many young people left Mariupol to study in Israel. Jews traveling from Mariupol to Israel to visit and Israelis to Mariupol played a specific and positive role - there was a rise in interest in life in Israel. Often one could even see how non- Jewish residents eagerly questioned those returning from visits to Israel, and didn't hide their admiration.

Vladimir Olgart
Kiev
Ukraine
Interviewer: Ella Levitskaya
Date of Interview: October 2002


My father, Mordko Olgart, was born in a small town near Warsaw in 1870. At that time this area was part of the Russian Empire. I know very little about my father's family. His father, Leizer Olgart, and his mother died before I was born. I don't remember my grandmother's name. My grandfather was paralyzed and confined to bed for a long time. My father had two older sisters. At the end of the 19th century they moved to the US, and we had no contact with them. Some time after 1905 my father's family moved to Skvira [about 150 km from Kiev]. I don't know why they decided to move. My father told me that he finished cheder and received religious education.

Unfortunately, I know even less about my mother's family. I have no information about her parents. They both died before my mother, Neha Olgart, turned 15. My mother was the youngest daughter. My mother's parents lived in Volodarka, a small town in Kiev province. My mother was born in 1887. She remained alone in her parents' house after they died. Her older sisters and brothers had moved out by that time. I don't know how many brothers and sisters she had. I knew her older brother Dudik. He was a shoemaker and lived in Skvira with his family. Later he moved to Kiev.

My mother got married to my father when she was 17. My father was much older than my mother. He was over 30 when they got married. I think my father didn't get married at an earlier age because he had to take care of his father. My mother was an orphan and had no dowry. She and my father were married by matchmakers. They had a traditional Jewish wedding with a chuppah and a rabbi in Skvira.

My parents rented a two-bedroom apartment. It was part of a two-storied house. Their landlords also had tenants on the second floor. The rooms were always shaded by lilac bushes growing near the house. My mother cooked on a big stove in the kitchen. They didn't have running water or a well in the yard. Water was delivered to the houses by a water-carrier in big barrels loaded on a horse-driven carriage. He was driving slowly along the streets shouting 'Water! Water!' The water-carrier delivered water twice a day: in the morning and in the evening.

My father was a barber. I don't know where he learned his profession. He was very skilled and had quite a few clients. He owned a barber's shop, but he was the only one working there. My mother was a housewife. My parents didn't have children for some time. They went to see a very wise rabbi who was well known in Skvira and beyond the town. It was the custom to seek advice from a rabbi. People asked him all kinds of questions related to everyday life or business. I don't think he took money for giving advice. People made contributions to the synagogue anyway. He told them that in four year's time they would have their first baby, and from then on they would have a child every second year. It was true. My parents got married in 1904 and in 1908 my older brother Mikhail was born. He was named Moshe at birth. In 1910 my sister Riva was born and I followed on 15th December 1912. I was named Velvel at birth, but later my family began to call me Vladimir. My younger sister Sonia was born in 1914.

Jews constituted 90% of the population in Skvira. They got along well with the Ukrainian population. Jews were mainly craftsmen: shoemakers, tailors, barbers, and traders. There was a big two-storied synagogue in Skvira and a Jewish lower secondary school. When we were 6 my brother and I went to cheder. An old melamed with a gray beard taught us Hebrew, religion and the history of the Jewish people. My sisters studied there, too. It was closed in 1919. My brother and I then studied in a Russian secondary school; the majority of pupils were Jews, but there were Ukrainians as well. It used to be a grammar school before the revolution, and after the revolution it became a Russian lower secondary school. We had wonderful teachers. And the school building was very beautiful, with sculptures on the façade.

My parents were religious people and raised us accordingly. We spoke Yiddish at home, but we also spoke fluent Ukrainian and Russian. Every Friday my mother cooked for Sabbath. She baked challah in the Russian oven, made stuffed fish and boiled chicken. It wasn't allowed to cook or heat food on Saturday. On Friday evening our family got together for a prayer. My mother lit candles and we sat down at the table for a Saturday meal. Our Ukrainian neighbor used to light our kerosene lamps and make fire in the stove on Saturdays in the winter. My father prayed at home on Sabbath and he read a chapter from the Torah to us, and then we had guests over. My father's cousins lived in Skvira and so did my mother's brother Dudik before he moved to Kiev in the 1920s. They visited us with their wives and children. They all had big families. We had a lot of fun. We had tea, cookies and sponge cakes that my mother made. We sang Jewish songs, recited poems and danced. My parents had a record player and records with Jewish songs and dance music. We used to dance Jewish folk dances: sher, freilakhs and skotchna. We also got together at birthdays. My parents went to the synagogue on holidays. There was also a choral synagogue in Skvira. Men prayed downstairs and woman were on the 2nd floor. There was a cantor in the synagogue and often other cantors came on tours. I remember cantor Pinch from Odessa. I went to the synagogue to listen to him when I was a small boy. Many people had tears in their eyes listening to him. He was majestic. Jewish theatrical groups often came to Skvira on tours. My older brother was very fond of theaters and attended every performance. Actors were poor people and often couldn't afford to pay for the hotel. Mikhail brought them home and they slept on the floor, on the tables and even on the stove in the kitchen. And we went to their performances for free. I can't remember what we watched, as I was too young. A group of Purimshpils came on tours at Purim. They performed in a big wedding hall. We all went to see Purimshpils. They often performed "Ahashverosh-shpil" and I also remember "Selling Joseph". At Purim my mother used to make gomentashy - triangle pies with poppy seeds and raisins. Parents bought their children wooden rattles. The melamed explained to us that their sound scared away the evildoer Aman, one of the main characters in Purimshpils and the evil would stay away from our homes.

I remember the celebration of Pesach at home. On the eve of Pesach we searched for chametz with a candle and a chicken feather. We had to sweep every breadcrumb onto a piece of paper with the feather to have them burnt later. There was a special bakery in Skvira where they made matzah. We bought enough matzah to last through Pesach. Every member of the family bought some new clothes before Pesach. The boys got new shirts, and the girls got new dresses. My mother bought a few chicken to have chicken and chicken broth on the table every day at Pesach. She bought the chickens and took them to the shochet. She also made delicious stuffed fish, strudels and cookies from matzah flour. We followed the kashruts in the family. My mother always cooked kosher food. She liked cooking and was very good at it. We kept special dishes that we only used at Pesach in the attic. On Pesach morning the family went to pray at the synagogue. In the evening we had the first seder. I asked my father questions [the four questions] in Hebrew, and he told us about Pesach. On other days of Pesach we often had guests. It was lots of fun. At Yom Kippur the whole family fasted, even children over 5 years old fasted the whole day. We also celebrated Rosh Hashanah. We didn't celebrate Sukkot but I don't know why not. I don't remember anybody in Skvira building a sukkah.

At Purim my mother used to make hamantashen - triangle pies with poppy seeds and raisins. Parents bought their children wooden rattles. The melamed explained to us that their sound scared away the evildoer Haman, one of the main characters in Purimshpils, and the evil would stay away from our homes.

Jewish theater groups often came to Skvira on tours. My older brother was very fond of theater and attended every performance. Actors were poor people and often couldn't afford to pay for the hotel. Mikhail brought them home to our place, and they slept on the floor, on the tables and even on the stove in the kitchen. In return we went to their performances for free. I can't remember what we watched; I was too young. Purimshpil groups came on tours at Purim. They performed in a big wedding hall. We all went to see Purimshpils. They often performed 'Ahasuerus-shpil', and I also remember 'Selling Joseph'.

There was also a choral synagogue in Skvira. Men prayed downstairs and woman were on the gallery. There was a cantor in the synagogue, and often other cantors came to visit. I remember cantor Pinch from Odessa. I went to the synagogue to listen to him when I was a small boy. Many people had tears in their eyes listening to him. He was majestic.


There was a big market in Skvira where local farmers used to sell their products. But there were only Jewish butchers at the market. They always sold kosher and non-kosher meat [for Ukrainian customers]. The majority of Jews were poor people. Sometimes they didn't have money to pay for the meat they were buying, and butchers allowed them to pay later. There was plenty of fruit and vegetables at the market. Farmers delivered milk and dairy products to the houses every day. They also brought eggs and chicken.

There was a special wedding hall in Skvira owned by a man named Tulchik, which was called 'At the Tulchik's'. All weddings in Skvira took place in this hall. My parents had their wedding in this hall, too. Tulchik's son was a musician, a klezmer, and had an orchestra that used to play at weddings. I went to watch wedding ceremonies. There was a chuppah covered with crimson brocade, and the bride and bridegroom were taken underneath it. Klezmer musicians were playing and a cantor sang 'Kalene, kalene, veyn, veyn' ['Cry, cry, you bride']. It meant that the bride had to cry for the life she was leaving behind and for leaving her parents' home. I remember brides crying.

Then the rabbi approached the bride and bridegroom. He was also the chazzan. He said the blessing, and the bride and bridegroom exchanged rings and drank a glass of wine. They broke the glass. Then the music played and klezmer musicians sang Jewish wedding songs. There was a tenor in Skvira - many people came to listen to him. Then all guests sat down at the tables. The food was cooked by special wedding cooks. They were called 'servieren'. Every cook had a special dish that she was best at cooking. It was convenient to have them cook all food especially considering the number of guests at a traditional Jewish wedding. There were always two crews: one to cook food and another one to make pastries. Guests danced Jewish dances. They all enjoyed freilakhs. Poor people were sitting next to rich people at weddings - they were all equal, enjoyed the wedding and had lots of fun.

Before and after the revolution of 1917 Denikin gangs [the White Guards] 1 often came to Skvira. A Russian landlord used to give us shelter in his house on such occasions. He was my father's client and had a lot of respect for my father. We used to hide in his closet. He put a big lock on the door to create the impression that there was nobody inside. Denikin officers often asked this landlord to send them a barber, and he recommended my father. My father went there, and they were all pleased with the job he did. Denikin troops didn't harm poorer people, as a rule. They forayed the houses of rich Jews demanding money and valuables from them. My father's cousin was killed during one of those raids. There were wooden shutters on the windows at that time. My father's cousin went out of the house one morning to close the shutters and was killed by a stray bullet. No gangs ever tried to break into the synagogue. These raids were robberies and didn't have any anti-Semitic character.

My father wasn't recruited to the army because of his hernia. He took no interest in politics. Jews were enthusiastic about the revolution and had hopes for a better life. During the fights between the Red 2 and White 3 armies almost all stores in Skvira were closed, and people were trying to stay in their houses. After the revolution the stores opened again, and people returned to their daily routine. This lasted until the end of the NEP 4 period in 1924 when the expropriation of people's property took place within a few weeks. The state took away all people's property: houses, stores, cattle, and so on. Jews from Skvira who had lost their property moved to bigger towns in search of jobs. There was a short period in 1924 when people were allowed to move to the US and Canada. My father's sister mailed an invitation to him from the US, but my father didn't want to leave his country. He loved his motherland.

When I was 13 I had bar mitzvah. A rabbi came to our house, a big celebration was arranged, and there were lots of guests and presents. I received a tefillinw and felt like an adult.

My older brother completed 5 years of Russian secondary school. He decided to learn a profession. He was apprenticed to a locksmith who repaired clocks, sewing machines and bicycles. In 1926, when he turned 16, Mikhail moved to Kiev and became a locksmith apprentice at the Arsenal Plant [biggest military plant in Ukraine]. My older sister Riva followed him shortly afterwards. She got a job as a cashier at the canteen of the Smirnov-Lastochkin garment factory. Riva rented a room in Podol 5, not far from the factory.

I completed 8 years of Russian secondary school in Skvira. During my studies I began to learn the barber's profession from my father. I assisted him after my classes.

I had a cousin in Moscow: the son of my mother's older brother Dudik. When I turned 16 and obtained a passport I decided to go to Moscow. My relatives invited me to come there. Besides, I found it exciting to go to the capital. In Moscow I got a job as a barber. I rented a room. There were three other tenants in this room: three Jewish guys from Belarus. We became friends. At work I became a Komsomol 6 member; I was fond of the idea of 'building communism', just like so many other young people. My friends and I often went to the Jewish theater. I watched several performances featuring a well-known Jewish actor, Solomon Mikhoels 7. Sometimes we attended Jewish concerts. Religion was no longer popular among young people. We didn't go to the synagogue and didn't celebrate Jewish holidays. However, I went to the synagogue on Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah, but I didn't fast on Yom Kippur any longer. After I became a Komsomol member I left religion behind.

Winters in Moscow were cold. We didn't have enough warm clothes, but we were young and we didn't really get cold. We had meals there during the day in a cheap café and in the evening went there to eat, dance and listen to music. We didn't drink alcoholic drinks. There were a few girls in our group. They were Russian girls from Moscow.

My friends and I celebrated Soviet holidays. We enjoyed watching parades. Entrance to the Red Square was restricted, therefore, we sneaked in before 5 o'clock in the morning. To avoid militiamen we hid in building entrances before we could come out to watch the parade. I saw Stalin quite a few times. Once I saw Kalinin 8 buying something at a kiosk. Leaders of the country went out without any guards. People loved them a lot.

From 1932-33 a famine 9 hit Ukraine in 1932-331. I was living in Moscow, and there was no famine there. My relatives in Skvira also survived, because my brother and sister were supporting them from Kiev. The situation was easier in bigger towns. Besides, my brother was working at a military plant where food supplies were regular. I also sent parcels with dried bread and cereals to my parents in Skvira. They didn't starve.

In 1933 Hitler came to power in Germany and newspapers wrote about this event. [Editor's note: In 1933 Hitler became chancellor, in 1934 president and supreme commander of the armed forces.] Ordinary people also discussed it. I went to the synagogue on Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah, and Jews there discussed these events, but they only discussed official information that was published in Soviet newspapers. We didn't know all the facts about the actual situation, but we realized that there was nothing good for Jews in Hitler's policies and his appeal to the purity of the Aryan racewere. By 1938 we were well aware of the German attitude towards Jews.

By that time my brother and sister were both married. Mikhail married a woman from Kiev. She was a Jewish girl named Dusia. They had a son and a daughter. Riva married a Jewish man named Bateiko. I don't remember his first name. He was a dressmaker and a very interesting man. He came from Chernigov. His parents had 13 sons. They all passed away. Riva and her husband had three daughters. Riva quit her job after their first baby was born and became a housewife. Sonia, their younger daughter, got married in Skvira. I don't remember her husband's last name. His Her husband's name was Efim; he was an accountant. They had a son and a daughter. Sonia and her husband bought a house in Skvira after they got married, and my parents moved in with them.

Mikhail and Riva were asking me to come to Kiev. I moved there in 1936. In the beginning I stayed with Riva and her husband. I met my future wife, Betia Chornaya, in Kiev. She was born in Skvira in 1912. Our families knew each other. Betia's father died at a young age, and her mother raised all the children; I believe there were eight of them. Betia finished lower secondary school in Skvira and decided to move to Kiev. She lived with Riva and worked as a secretary at the plant. We dated for a short time and then decided to get married. We didn't have a wedding party. We had a civil registration ceremony, and that was it. I got a job in a big barber's shop. We rented a room in Podol. We lived there for a short while until I bought a small house in Irpen, on the outskirts of Kiev. I had some savings from Moscow. We moved to Irpen in 1937. My wife worked as a secretary at the Irpen town council, and I continued working in Kiev. Commuting to Kiev and back home was a problem. There were no buses or local trains that made commuting very comfortable. I got to work via long-distance trains. I didn't want to lose a good job. We spoke Russian in our family. We identified ourselves as Soviet people.

In 1937 our daughter Mara was born. My wife quit her job and dedicated herself to raising our child. I wanted to move to Kiev so much and finally got the opportunity. My colleague and I obtained permission to build an annex to a small two-storied building in a suburban street in Kiev. Each family had two small rooms and a kitchen in this annex. Water and toilet were in the yard. This could hardly be called a dwelling at all, but many families lived that way at the time; it was the usual thing. We moved to this annex in 1938.

I took no interest in politics. Everything was fine and quiet in my small world: my beloved family was well, we had a place to live, and I had a good job in one of the best barbershops in Kiev. I knew about the arrests of people [during the so-called Great Terror] 10 and the war in Poland and Finland, but it was all so far away from my life.

In 1940 I got a job in the military residential neighborhood in Sviatoshyno. I had a higher salary, and it was easier to commute to work.

On 22nd June 1941 11 I was working. I was going to work by tram. It was early morning and I heard explosions all the time. Of course, I had no thoughts about a war. There were frequent military trainings at that time. When I came to work my colleagues told me that German planes were bombing the Post-Volynskiy railway station and a plant in Sviatoshyno. The commissar of the military unit offered me to join their military unit, but I refused and went to our district military office. I received a subpoena on 24th June. My daughter turned 4 that day. The following day I went to the recruitment office. I was sent to the 38th army of the South Western Front chief sanitary storage facility. We obtained medication in the hospital in Pechersk and began to form a sanitary train. I had enough time left to send my family into evacuation. It didn't matter much where they went to as long as the location was far from the war scene and out of reach of the fascists. I put my wife and daughter and my wife's mother, who came from Skvira, on a train. I didn't know where it went.

We moved our medication storage facility to Poltava [350 km from Kiev]. From there we went to Lyski station, Voronezh region, and then to Stalingrad. We were following the front line picking up the wounded and supplying medication to field hospitals. This lasted for two years. In 1943 we stopped at the town of Krasnaya Sloboda, near Stalingrad, only on the opposite bank of the river Volga. Stalingrad was already on fire. We had hardly any food. Several people had to share one piece of dry bread. We didn't have enough water. The river was covered with a thick layer of oil from oil storages blasted by the Germans. One evening the chief of headquarters told four of us to cross the Volga and bring bandaging material from the storage facility. The Volga was on fire. We crossed it and stayed overnight at the storage facility. We found a lot of bandaging material, loaded it on the boat and went back. I was awarded a 'medal for courage' for this mission. Stalingrad was a turning point in the course of the war. We proceeded to Konigsburg and further on. We were continuously on the front line. I used to take medication directly to the front line. On 9th May 1945 I was on a train heading to the Far East. It took us 30 days to get there.

I didn't have any information about my family. During the war with Japan 12 I was in Kharbin, Manchuria. In autumn 1945 the war was over and we got on our way back. We were stationed at Grodekovo station near Ussuriysk [about 3,500 km from Kiev]. From there my manager sent a letter to the evacuation agency in Buguruslan requesting information about my family. We got a response from them saying that my wife and daughter were in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. I wrote to my wife and got a response from her, in which she said that she had married another man. She probably thought that I had perished having had no information about me for almost six years. My wife and daughter didn't want to come back. It was a blow to me. My wife had a new husband and they had a good life together.

I once faced anti-Semitism in the Far East. I was supervisor at a storage facility. We were getting ready for mobilization and waited for soldiers that were to replace us. They were young people born around 1927. One of them didn't take notice of me and said to his comrades, 'These zhydy [kikes] stayed in the rear and didn't fight at the front. Hitler would have done better with them ...'. I hit him in the face before he could finish the sentence. This was the only time in my life when I faced anti-Semitism.

We returned to Kiev in autumn 1946. The storage facility was unloaded at the Kiev-Tovarny station and we returned to the city on a horse-driven cart. My relatives were already in Kiev. My brother Mikhail was at the front. His family returned from evacuation in Novosibirsk. They moved into their apartment. Mikhail found a job at the barber's shop. Riva and her family had been in evacuation in Novosibirsk. Her husband had been wounded at the front, but survived and returned home. My sister Sonia, her husband, her children and our parents were in the Ural. They returned from evacuation and settled down in their house in Skvira. Fortunately, the Babi Yar 13 tragedy didn't hit our family. Only the parents of Sonia's husband perished there.

My house hadn't been destroyed, but it was housing a kindergarten. I rented the same room in Podol where my wife and I used to live after we got married and got a job as a barber. However, everything in Kiev reminded me of my family life, and I decided to start my life anew. I moved to Leningrad in 1953 and lived there until 1956. I rented a room and got a job as a barber. But I didn't feel at home in Leningrad. I felt homesick and returned to Kiev.

After the war there was only one operating synagogue in Podol. I went there on Pesach, Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah. There were so many people that many of them had to stay outside the synagogue, and the whole street was crowded on holidays. Going to the synagogue became a need to me.

Stalin died in 1953. I was in Leningrad at the time. People didn't go to work on the day of his death. Everyone was crying. They were saying that it was the end of the world and that they were lost and confused. I didn't feel anything like that. I felt slightly concerned about who was to become the new 'tsar'. It was Khruschev 14. I believe that he did a lot of good for the country beginning with his denunciation of the cult of Stalin at the Twentieth Party Congress 15. Khruschev released inmates of the camps, and people had more freedom during his rule. Many houses were built under his leadership.

My father died in 1956. We all got together in Skvira. My father was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Skvira, according to Jewish rituals. My sister Sonia and her husband sold their house in Skvira and moved to Kiev with their children and our mother. My mother fell very ill. She had problems with her vessels that were incurable at the time. Sonia inherited this disease from her as it turned out later. Sonia bought a small house in the outskirts of Kiev. She got a job at a department store. My mother brought Jewish traditions back into my life. We all got together at Sabbath. My mother always cooked for Jewish holidays. We couldn't get all the necessary products, and our dinners were much poorer than before the war. It wasn't kosher food, but there was always stuffed fish. My mother also got matzah for Pesach. Mikhail and Riva came with their families; I was on my own. I was introduced to Jewish women, but I didn't think of marriage. My wife's betrayal hurt me deeply, and I was afraid of being hurt again.

In the early 1960s my mother had her leg amputated. She had gangrene. My brother and I were helping Sonia to look after her. My mother died in 1967. We buried her in the Jewish section of Baikovoye cemetery according to Jewish tradition. There was also a rabbi from the synagogue at the funeral. The Jewish cemetery in Kiev had been destroyed by that time.

In the 1970s Jews began to move to Israel. Riva's husband died unexpectedly in 1970, and her daughters insisted on emigrating to Israel. My sister left with her daughters. She died in Jerusalem in 2000. I had no thoughts about leaving my country. I had a place to live, my friends and my job. I didn't feel like changing anything. I thought that it was for younger people to change their lives. I was about 60 at the time. I might have moved if I had had a wife and children. But I didn't. Unfortunately, I have never been to Israel. I wish I could go, but I'm far from being well enough to travel.

The 1970s were a time of loss to me. Soon after my mother died Sonia got the same illness that my mother had been diagnosed with. Within three years she had both legs amputated. She died in terrible pain in 1976. My sister remained religious until her last days. She always tried to celebrate Sabbath. She prayed and fasted according to the Jewish laws. Sonia's son and daughter live in Kiev. In 1977 my brother Mikhail died of a heart attack. His older son died in 1982. His daughter moved to Israel.

I often saw my daughter Mara. She graduated from the Energy Insitute at Kiev University and married a Russian man named Teslenko. Mara's husband is a very talented economist and professor. They have two daughters, born in 1976 and 1979. Mara used to lecture at the Energy College. Later her husband was offered a position as head of the Economics Department at Chernigov University, and they moved to Chernigov. Mara's older daughter moved to Israel and her younger daughter lives in Kiev. She has a 4-year- old daughter, my great-granddaughter. Regretfully, I rarely see her. Mara visits me once a year on her vacation.

I got married again in 1976. My second wife and I have been together for 26 years. We met by chance and never parted since that time. I believe I owe it to my wife Lubov [nee Bezrukova] for living such a long life. She is Russian and was born in the village of Novaya Khoperka, Tambov region in 1923. Her father was a convinced communist. He perished in one of the Gulag camps 16. There were no specific accusations against him, but he was sentenced to death and executed. His wife raised four children. Lubov's mother worked all the time and her grandmother looked after the children.

My wife was fond of sports. She was recruited to the army and studied at the flight training school. She studied there for a year and became a military pilot on a night reconnaissance plane. She was at the front in Regiment 346, 17th Air Force Army, 3rd Ukrainian Front, from 1942 until the end of the war. Their commander was a prominent Soviet pilot, Marina Chechneva. They flew at night. They had optical equipment in their planes enabling them to mark the location of German troops on thee map. On the front she met an artillery lieutenant, Joseph Goldberg, a Jewish man from Kiev. They fell in love with each other and got married. They didn't see each other for two years, but they wrote to each other.

After demobilization in 1945 Lubov came to Kiev. Her husband's aunt was living there. Joseph returned from the front. His right leg was amputated at the front. But Lubov was happy that he was alive. They stayed with Joseph's aunt, Clara. Lubov studied at the Pedagogical College. Their first daughter, Clara, was born in 1946, their second daughter Zhenia followed in 1949. Joseph's aunt liked Lubov a lot. She was like a mother to Lubov. Clara was a religious woman and told Lubov a lot about Jewish religion and traditions. She celebrated Sabbath and all Jewish holidays. Lubov always helped her to cook for festive dinners. She observed Jewish traditions, and they went to the synagogue together. At first she did this to make Joseph's aunt happier but gradually she felt the need to observe traditions.

After finishing college Lubov began to work as a drawing teacher. Joseph got a job as a designer. The city authorities gave him a car as he was a war invalid. Unfortunately he was hit by a truck in 1961 and died. The truck driver was drunk. Lubov dedicated herself to the children. Her daughters received higher education and got married. Joseph's aunt died in the late 1960s. It became difficult for Lubov to work at school, and she became a design artist at an art factory some time before we met.

Lubov brought warmth and care into my house. Besides, she is a deeply religious woman and observes all Jewish traditions. She helped me to return to my origin. We pray every evening. She says we have to thank God for this life and for the days that we have lived in love and peace. On Friday she cooks for Sabbath. On Friday evening she lights candles and we pray. We go to the synagogue on all Jewish holidays and celebrate them at home. Sometimes we go to celebrate holidays at Hesed.

Jewish life in Ukraine has revived within the last ten years. Hesed assists people and helps them to communicate with each other. We have many new friends. Twice a week we have lunch at Hesed - this is called 'warm house'. There are 14 old people in our group. They are all very nice people. We feel very comfortable at Hesed. It's very important for older people to feel support and communicate with one another. I feel terrible looking at miserable old Ukrainian and Russian people. Our old people receive assistance. We get food packages and medication. We are very grateful for it. Our children can't support us. They can hardly feed their own families. But they love us and care about us. We are fine, thank God. My wife and I ask for peace here and in Israel in our prayers. I also thank God for giving me Lubov. We are together and that means a lot to me.


Glossary

1 White Guards: A counter-revolutionary gang led by General Denikin, famous for their brigandry and anti-Semitic acts all over Russia; legends were told of their cruelty. Few survived their pogroms.

2 Reds: Red (Soviet) Army supporting the Soviet authorities.

3 Whites: Tsarist forces defending the monarchy in Russia.

4 NEP: The so-called New Economic Policy of the Soviet authorities was launched by Lenin in 1921. It meant that private business was allowed on a small scale in order to save the country ruined by the October Revolution and the Civil War. They allowed priority development of private capital and entrepreneurship. The NEP was gradually abandoned in the 1920s with the introduction of the planned economy.

5 Podol: The lower section of Kiev. It has always been viewed as the Jewish region of Kiev. In tsarist Russia Jews were only allowed to live in Podol, which was the poorest part of the city. Before World War II 90% of the Jews of Kiev lived there.

6 Komsomol: Communist youth political organization created in 1918. The task of the Komsomol was to spread of the ideas of communism and involve the worker and peasant youth in building the Soviet Union. The Komsomol also aimed at giving a communist upbringing by involving the worker youth in the political struggle, supplemented by theoretical education. The Komsomol was more popular than the Communist Party because with its aim of education people could accept uninitiated young proletarians, whereas party members had to have at least a minimal political qualification.

7 Mikhoels, Solomon (1890-1948) (real name Vovsi): Great Soviet actor, producer, pedagogue. He worked in the Moscow State Jewish Theater (and was its art director from 1929). He directed philosophical, vivid and monumental works. Mikhoels was murdered by order of the State Security Ministry.

8 Kalinin, Mikhail (1875-1946): Soviet politician, one of the editors of the party newspaper Pravda, chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Soviets of the RSFSR (1919-1922), chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR (1922-1938), chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (1938-1946). He was one of Stalin's closest political allies.

9 Famine in Ukraine: In 1920 a deliberate famine was introduced in the Ukraine causing the death of millions of people. It was arranged in order to suppress those protesting peasants who did not want to join the collective farms. There was another dreadful deliberate famine in 1930-1934 in the Ukraine. The authorities took away the last food products from the peasants. People were dying in the streets, whole villages became deserted. The authorities arranged this specifically to suppress the rebellious peasants who did not want to accept Soviet power and join collective farms.

10 Great Terror (1934-1938): During the Great Terror, or Great Purges, which included the notorious show trials of Stalin's former Bolshevik opponents in 1936-1938 and reached its peak in 1937 and 1938, millions of innocent Soviet citizens were sent off to labor camps or killed in prison. The major targets of the Great Terror were communists. Over half of the people who were arrested were members of the party at the time of their arrest. The armed forces, the Communist Party, and the government in general were purged of all allegedly dissident persons; the victims were generally sentenced to death or to long terms of hard labor. Much of the purge was carried out in secret, and only a few cases were tried in public 'show trials'. By the time the terror subsided in 1939, Stalin had managed to bring both the party and the public to a state of complete submission to his rule. Soviet society was so atomized and the people so fearful of reprisals that mass arrests were no longer necessary. Stalin ruled as absolute dictator of the Soviet Union until his death in March 1953.

11 Great Patriotic War: On 22 June 1941 at 5 o'clock in the morning Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union without declaring war. This was the beginning of the so-called Great Patriotic War.

12 War with Japan: In 1945 the war in Europe was over, but in the Far East Japan was still fighting against the anti-fascist coalition countries and China. The USSR declared war on Japan on 8 August 1945 and Japan signed the act of capitulation in September 1945.

13 Babi Yar: Babi Yar is the site of the first mass shooting of Jews that was carried out openly by fascists. On 29th and 30th September 1941 33,771 Jews were shot there by a special SS unit and Ukrainian militia men. During the Nazi occupation of Kiev between 1941 and 1943 over a 100,000 people were killed in Babi Yar, most of whom were Jewish. The Germans tried in vain to efface the traces of the mass grave in August 1943 and the Soviet public learnt about mass murder after World War II.

14 Khrushchev, Nikita (1894-1971): Soviet communist leader. After Stalin's death in 1953, he became first secretary of the Central Committee, in effect the head of the Communist Party of the USSR. In 1956, during the 20th Party Congress, Khrushchev took an unprecedented step and denounced Stalin and his methods. He was deposed as premier and party head in October 1964. In 1966 he was dropped from the Party's Central Committee.

15 Twentieth Party Congress: At the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956 Khrushchev publicly debunked the cult of Stalin and lifted the veil of secrecy from what had happened in the USSR during Stalin's leadership.

16 Gulag: The Soviet system of forced labor camps in the remote regions of Siberia and the Far North, which was first established in 1919. However, it was not until the early 1930s that there was a significant number of inmates in the camps. By 1934 the Gulag, or the Main Directorate for Corrective Labor Camps, then under the Cheka's successor organization the NKVD, had several million inmates. The prisoners included murderers, thieves, and other common criminals, along with political and religious dissenters. The Gulag camps made significant contributions to the Soviet economy during the rule of Stalin. Conditions in the camps were extremely harsh. After Stalin died in 1953, the population of the camps was reduced significantly, and conditions for the inmates improved somewhat.



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Makhlia Khalzova
Lvov
Ukraine
Interviewer: Ella Orlikova
Date of interview: December 2002
 

We, I and Alla, the older daughter of Makhlia Khalzova, who accompanies me, are climbing up a spiral staircase to the second floor. We find ourselves in a tiny and very cozy and clean apartment. We are getting a hospitable reception. Makhlia treats us to delicious chicken neck stuffed with nuts and mushrooms. Makhlia is very pleased about a possibility to tell the story of her life. Her daughter Alla takes an active part in our interview adding details to her mother's story. Makhlia has no education. She cannot read or write, takes no interest in political events and doesn't watch TV. However, she has a vivid memory and expressive speech habits. She speaks a mixture of Ukrainian, Polish, Russian, Yiddish and some Hungarian, I guess. She used a mixed language with words from several languages while the main language she speaks is Russian. Since she has no education it's hard to say that she really speaks another foreign language. She is the embodiment of solid philosophy and wisdom of life.

Family background
Growing up
During the War
After the War
Glossary

Family background

My father's family came from Lvov, an industrial and cultural center at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. It had a population of 300,000 people: about one third was Polish and about the same number Ukrainian and the rest of the population was Jewish, Romanian, gypsy and Moldavian. Jews resided in the central neighborhood of Lvov. They were involved in trades and crafts. There were poor and rich Jewish families. There were several synagogues, cheders and yeshivot. Lvov belonged to Poland until 1939 and life there was quiet and wealthy.

My paternal grandparents were born in Lvov some time around 1850. My father's mother Laya Ostrover inherited from her father a jewelry store in the center of the town. She was the head of the family. She was a fat arrogant woman with a strong character. She had no education, but she was good at counting and could always take advantage of her skills. Her husband Leib Ostrover was about 10 years older than my grandmother. He was a Hasid 1. He wore payes and never cut his beard. He was far from his wife's business life. He spent days praying, or having long discussions on religious subjects with other Hasidim. My father was a small boy - he only remembered that several Hasidim came to see his father.

My grandparents spoke Yiddish in the family and observed Jewish traditions. However, if business required working on Saturday or other Jewish holidays Laya did what she had to believing that God would forgive her. My grandmother's store was in the same house where they lived. There are still such houses in Lvov that are called 'Polish' since they were built for Polish lords. My grandparents' big dark apartment was luxuriously furnished and decorated with mirrors and carpets. There were housemaids from poor Jewish families. On Saturday and Jewish holidays Ukrainian girls came to do the housework. They were a wealthy and well-known family in Lvov and I saw the house where they lived, but I don't know any details about their life.

My grandparents had two children: a daughter Golda and my father Yoino. Since my grandmother had no education herself she didn't find it necessary to give education to her children. She thought that the melamed that came to teach the children Yiddish and Hebrew was sufficient. She believed that making money was more important in life than any education and that reading books was a sheer waste of time. Laya found a match for her daughter Golda to marry through a shadkhan. Her husband was a rich merchant of Guild I 2 from Moscow. They had a traditional Jewish wedding with a chuppah in Lvov. A rabbi from Moscow came to the wedding. After the wedding Golda, who for some reason changed her name on her wedding to Genia, moved to her husband in Moscow and I have no more information about them. After my grandfather died before World War I Laya moved to her daughter in Moscow. In 1918 Lvov and Kosov, where my father lived later, were located beyond Russia and the families couldn't be in touch. In 1940 the Soviet troops came to the towns and my father tried to find his family, but failed. In June 1941 the Great Patriotic War 3 began. I never saw these people.

My father was born in Lvov in 1873. He got Jewish elementary education at home. An old melamed from cheder taught him. He wore a yarmulka. From the day he came of age my father wore a wide-brimmed hat, a typical hat worn by Hasidim, and payes and grew a beard. My father learned to play the flute and horn and could sing Jewish songs very well. My grandmother Laya hoped that her son would take over her business in due time, but my father took more interest in books and music. However, he had to obey his mother and he got involved in business, though unwillingly. My grandmother also wanted my father to marry a Jewish girl from a wealthy family, but she couldn't find a decent fiancée for him.

My mother Leya Schwarg, if my memory doesn't fail me this was her name before marriage, was born in the town of Bobrka near Lvov in 1877. Her mother died when my mother was two years old and her father Sender Schwarg died of typhoid when she was twelve. My mother remembered that her father owned a small store, but she couldn't remember what kind of goods he was selling. They were a poor family and lived in a small lopsided house in Bobrka.

My mother's older sister Esther was born in 1872. She was 17 when their parents died. She probably couldn't provide for my mother and my mother had to go to work as a nanny for a Ukrainian family. Esther married a Jewish man, who was visiting his relatives in Bobrka, a worker from Lvov, and they had three daughters: Zocia, Lyusia and Lisa, and a son - Stanislav. Stanislav became an actor in the Jewish theater in Lvov. Esther died from a disease in early 1930. Her husband lived with Stanislav and was a sceneshifter in the Jewish theater. His daughters were married and lived in Lvov with their families. They all perished during the Great Patriotic War in Yanovski camp 4.

My mother told me that she even was a laborer in a church for some time before she came to work for a Ukrainian family. My mother said that this family treated her nicely. She lived with them for several years. [Editor's note: Makhlia cannot explain how a Jewish girl came to serve in a Ukrainian family when it was more common that Jewish girls worked for Jewish families.] She did the hardest work in the house and lived in a storeroom and the family wasn't interested in her outlooks. My mother was smart and she learned to read and write from teachers that came to teach the Ukrainian children. She also had some knowledge of French and German. She was eager to study and always stayed in the room during classes. She ate what she was given and during Jewish holidays she was allowed to go to Jewish families that observed the kashrut and Jewish traditions.

When my father was 22 he went to the small town of Bobrka on business. Ant there he met this 17-year old Jewish girl who worked as a nanny for a wealthy Ukrainian family: my mother. She was very pretty and my father liked her a lot. My father knew that his mother would never give her consent to this marriage since the girl came from a poor family and had no dowry. My father kept visiting her in secret. He arranged for a wedding to be conducted by a local rabbi. He needed money for the wedding, which he took from his mother without telling her. My parents had a traditional Jewish wedding with a chuppah. When my father brought his wife home his mother just said, 'You've married her - now live with her where you want and how you want'. She disinherited her son and never again took any interest in him and his family. My grandmother was the head of the family and grandfather didn't have a say.

In 1894 my mother and father settled down in the village of Pistyn near Kosov, 150 kilometers from Lvov. [Editor's note: Pistyn village was located on the bank of Pistynka River, a tributary of the Prut]. The native population of the village, the Hutsuls [an ethnic group of Ukrainian people living in the Carpathian Mountains] and Jews lived side by side peacefully and their cultures intertwined with one another. Hasid songs and folk dances have tunes and patterns similar to hutsul 'kolomyika' tunes [a quick duple-time Polish dance].

My parents rented a house in Pistyn. They never had a house of their own since they were a poor family. They rented a typical house for that area: it was a big wooden house with two verandahs, a kitchen in the yard in a separate building, a kitchen garden and a well. My father paid the rent of 50 rubles per month. My father worked at the wood cutting facility that became a factory on a later date in the town of Sniatyn, 20 kilometers from Pistyn, where he rented an apartment with other workers. There were ten to twelve workers in a room without any comforts. They slept on plank beds. They worked from 7am till 7pm. My father got very tired.

Growing up

The owner of the factory was a religious Jewish man and his employees were mostly Jews. They didn't work on Saturday or Jewish holidays. My father stayed in Sniatyn on weekdays, but came home on Friday evening and brought us little gifts and herring that we all liked. My father washed himself after he came home and put on clean clothes to start the celebration of Sabbath. My father said a blessing to the children and Holy Saturday, and my mother lit candles and said a prayer over them. My mother made a festive dinner: stuffed chicken neck, chicken broth and potato pancakes. After dinner my parents sang Jewish songs. We, children, loved this time of warmth and coziness. Ukrainian women came to stoke the stove on Saturday. My parents never even struck a match. We went to the synagogue with our parents on Saturday, where my parents prayed. I used to sit beside my mother. I asked her, 'Jews were the first people, weren't they, Mother?' and she replied, 'That's right, girl. Jews have no land of their own now, but it will be different in the future. There will be a frightening time, but there will be a time when there will be only Jews on Earth and there will be one king. The Lord has sent Moses to save the people and Moses will complete his mission'. That was what my mother told me. There were no guests invited for Sabbath dinner, we had no relatives and our neighbors didn't often come to see us. We ate and rested. There was only our family. My parents took a rest on Saturday.

The first girl in the family, Olia, born in 1897, died when she was two years old, but I don't know what caused her death. My parents said she was a very pretty girl. The next child Khaya, born in 1904, finished the local grammar school for Jewish and Ukrainian children. Khaya became a dressmaker. She married Zeilek, a Jewish man and they moved to Kalush near the town of Stanislav [Ivano-Frankovsk at present], 200 kilometers from our village. They had two sons: Shleima and Pasyu. Khaya's husband was a communist and was involved in the underground movement. He struggled for the Soviet power in Western Ukraine. He had heart problems. When the Germans came in 1941 he died of a heart attack on that very day, I guess, it was an infarct. Khaya buried him and decided to get to the town of Stry where her husband's friends lived. All we found out from their neighbors was that they had to go through a forest that they entered and disappeared.

My brother Alter, born in 1908, came of age at 13. He prayed with his tallit and tefillin on and observed all Jewish traditions strictly. He finished the local school and became a very good tailor. He worked at a shop in Kosov owned by a Jew. He was handsome and intelligent. Alter brought home pictures of Lenin and Stalin and was hopeful for a better life. Alter looked forward to the time when Soviet troops came into town in 1939.

My second brother Idlei, born in 1912, was handicapped: his left arm and leg were underdeveloped. Our father taught him at home after work when he could. Idlei was a very kind and loving boy.

I was born in 1914. I was called Makhlia in the family. Shortly after I was born World War I began and my father was recruited to the army. He had his payes cut. He was a horn player in the troops of the Dual Monarchy. I remember my father coming back home from the war in 1917. My mother kept crying waiting for him. She asked me, 'Makhlia, will Father be back from the war?' and I replied 'Mother, my father has dropped his stick - I meant his horn - and is coming home to us. He will bring us challah'. I spoke Yiddish and didn't have enough words in my vocabulary to express my thoughts, but my mother understood and began to kiss me. Father returned home on that very day. He brought home tinned horsemeat and two small loaves of brown bread. The bread was so hard that my mother wondered how my father could have eaten it - she always baked delicious bread. 'I ate what they gave me', my father replied. When he saw me he exclaimed, 'God, you've grown big!' I hugged and kissed him. I didn't remember him since he went to the war shortly after I was born. I sat on his lap and said 'Dad, show me your teeth. I hope you haven't lost any blowing your horn'. I remember how happy I was to see him. My father was glad to be eating kosher food again, observe Jewish traditions and go to the synagogue. He couldn't do this when in the army. I don't remember whether he told us anything about the war.

My father went back to work at the wood cutting factory. Then, in 1919, my younger sister Itta was born. She was everybody's favorite. She studied well at grammar school. When the Soviet power was established in 1939 Itta went to work as a clerk at the fire department in Kosov.

My mother was a great cook. She bred chickens and took them to the shochet that lived near the synagogue. She only cooked chickens slaughtered by the shochet. Beef became kosher meat only after it was checked by the rabbi. My mother made chicken broth and meat balls from beef. Sometimes she added kolble and sometimes dumplings into chicken broth. On Friday mother made challah. She plaited them very skillfully like no one else. She also made 'Magdeburg pudding' from ground potatoes and she baked pies with nuts and honey and strudels with apples. My mother also made lokshen, very thin noodles. My mother cooked in ceramic pots on a wood stoked stove with an oven that had a tin lid. We ate food with wooden spoons.

We had special fancy dishes and utensils for Pesach. My father made fire to kosher all kitchen utensils and if something went wrong he burned that piece. The rabbi gave his permission to us to keep cereals and the rest of the leftovers were also burnt. I remember only two days in the middle of Pesach when it was allowed to do some work. I remember our family sitting at the table at Pesach. My father gave each of us a piece of matzah with jam and nuts on it and another piece with horseradish. Then he said a prayer standing. My mother put on a dark shawl and lit candles. We sat down for a meal and my father sang songs. It was beautiful. [Editor's note: this is what Makhlia remembered, although it is common knowledge that women do not light candles at seder and wear light colored shawls.]

Father made a sukkah at Sukkot. He made it from planks and we had meals there. Our Jewish neighbors that didn't have a garden made sukkot for their families in our garden. There were usually three or four sukkot in our garden. My father put on a long jacket and a black hat and said a prayer. My mother had her shawl on and boys wore small caps. We had meals in the sukkah through the whole period of Sukkot regardless of the weather.

There was a beautiful stone synagogue in the town. Women were sitting separately from men. At Chanukkah children got money. At Purim money was given to children and acquaintances. Purim was full of joy and fun. At Simchat Torah women and men began their dance at the synagogue in separate areas and then continued dancing together in the yard. There were processions with torches in the village - 'Let them know how Jews enjoy themselves. We are not afraid of anybody'.

Life was quiet and there were no conflicts. Ukrainians called Jews 'zhydy' [kikes] but there was no abuse: this was just the Ukrainian word for 'Jew'. [Editor's note: The word 'zhyd' is abusive in Russian, but not in Ukrainian. In Ukrainian villages 'zhyd' was the definition for a Jew and no other words for Jewish people were known.] My friend Catherine was a Ukrainian girl, my neighbor. We were like sisters. She liked to go to the synagogue with me. We studied at the Polish grammar school together. Half of the pupils were Jewish. There were no Jewish schools in the village, and Kosov, where there was a Jewish school, was seven kilometers from us and that was a little bit too far away. [Editor's note: there was a Jewish vocational school in Kosov that was established in 1898 sponsored by Baron de Girsh and there were Jewish schools where children studied in Hebrew].

Girls were taught Hebrew and Jewish traditions at home and boys studied at the synagogue in Kosov. In grammar school we had classes with a Catholic priest. We sang Ukrainian songs with Ukrainian children and they sang Jewish songs with us. The soul belongs to its people and has its own consolation. However much fun we had at school I didn't enjoy studying. My mother even went to ask my teacher to help me catch up with my studies, but the teacher replied, 'How can we help her if she doesn't want to study and runs away from school'. I didn't like school, but I enjoyed reading Polish love stories. My schoolmates from the Polish school gave me books. I left school after five years of studies. I was an obstinate girl and always did what I wanted. I didn't have any special plans for the future. I wanted to live with my parents and help my mother about the house.

When I was ten I fell and broke my collarbone. Nowadays doctors help with such problems, but at that time my bone knitted in a wrong way and I had my bone sticking out. I felt uncomfortable about it and wore high-necked clothes. I was short and thin and never gained weight no matter how much I ate. I thought that my problem made me different from others and that I was going to stay with my parents for the rest of my life. My brother Alter lived in his master's house in Kosov. I often went to see him and helped him with his work: I stitched buttonholes and sewed on buttons. Sometimes I stayed there longer, though I didn't quite like it there. My brother Alter lived in a small room on the second floor. There was a dirty common toilet at quite a distance from the house or a bucket in the room. His master was Jewish and the attitudes were loyal.

In the 1930s Zionist activists from Palestine arrived and tried to convince my parents to move there. I said to my father, 'Let's go there - why sit here?', but he replied 'No, I can't go there since I have no profession and there are no jobs for laborers there'. My father wasn't young any longer while they needed young employees in Palestine. They invited girls in particular. There were probably not many girls in Palestine. One young Jewish man even wanted to marry me to go to Palestine, but I refused since I didn't want to leave my family. I didn't want to get married either. Besides, we got assistance provided by America: clothing, food and some money that my father received. It was said to be provided by Joint 5. We knew little about it, we just thought that wealthier Jews were helping poorer ones. We didn't know about Zionism or other Jewish movements.

There were Polish executives in Kosov and neighboring areas. They treated Jews well and had Jewish assistants. During a short period Jacob Gardner, a Jewish man, was mayor in Kosov. On the other hand, the Polish population didn't trust the Ukrainian one to hold any key positions in the town. Hutsuls, local Ukrainians, were very good at woodcrafts and carpet weaving. There was a loom in almost every Ukrainian house. Besides carpets they also made sheep wool blankets - 'lizhnyki'. Some Jews also took over carpet making. There was a Jewish carpet making shop with about 40 employees. [Editor's note: Kosov still is a center of Ukrainian folk crafts today.]

We had a loom at home. My mother and I wove carpets and I also liked making picture wall carpets. When my brother brought pictures of Lenin and Stalin and said that they were leaders and we had to keep them in secret I wove their portraits on carpets and hid them. We didn't have information about what was going on in the outer world - in the Soviet Union, in particular. There was only one radio in the village that broadcast programs in Russian that only very few people could understand. However, we had some knowledge about the communist society from newspapers in Ukrainian that were distributed secretly. We believed this was the realm of wealth and justice where all people were equal and there were no rich or poor. Many people looked forward to the establishment of the Soviet power in our area hoping for a better and happier life. Poor Ukrainians and poor Jews looked forward to the coming of the Soviet army. I took no interest in politics and believed my brother Alter who told me about a happy life in the Soviet Union.

Young people were very enthusiastic when the Soviet troops came to where we lived in 1939, while my father and mother were less excited. They were getting older and were afraid of new developments. Shortly afterward Alter was recruited to the army and my mother was so concerned that she even fell ill. I took my carpets with pictures of Lenin and Stalin to the recruitment office and they let my brother go home. They only told him to stay away from anyone who could report on him to higher military authorities. Our town became a district center [Editors note: administrative unit in the Soviet Union]. There were many young military men and there were dancing parties arranged in the evenings. I didn't go to those parties while my sister Itta liked them a lot.

During the War

We lived two quiet years [from September 1939 through June 1941] with the Soviet power. There were no disturbances of Jewish life in Kosov and we went to the synagogue and celebrated holidays as before. My mother and I did the housekeeping and my father was a pensioner. Since I gave portraits of Stalin and Lenin to the military authorities our family was referred to as one of those that were loyal to the Soviet power. Besides, we didn't own any business or get involved in any social activities. Wealthier Jews lost their stores or shops that were expropriated by the state, but we didn't suffer from any suppression. We were in no hurry to even join a collective farm 6.

We didn't have any information about the situation in Europe since we didn't understand radio programs in Russian. That the war began on 22nd June 1941 was a surprise. My father or mother never took any interest in politics and we used newspapers for kindling our stove. Refugees from Hungary, Romania and Poland began to come to Kosov telling horrible stories about German brutalities against Jews. People could hardly believe what they were told, besides, it seemed to be so far away from us. There were a few German families in Kosov - very nice people, and we could never understand for what reasons Germany attacked the Soviet Union and why there had to be a war. We were scared. My mother decided to get food stocks. A few days after the war began my mother gave me 50 rubles to go to my sister Itta, who worked as a clerk in Kosov, to buy sugar. To get to Kosov I had to cross a bridge over a mountainous river. I crossed it and climbed a hill when I heard a terrible roar. I looked back and saw the bridge fly up into the air after it was bombed by a plane. At that moment I realized that I had lost my mother and my mother had lost me. The river parted us forever and there was no way for me to return home. I cried and wailed, but there was nothing to do about it.

Itta and I learned about what happened to our parents after we returned to Pristyn from evacuation in 1945. Our Ukrainian neighbors told us the sad story. When Romanian troops came to the village some local Ukrainian villagers began to rob and abuse their Jewish neighbors Even Romanians came to protect Jews from abuse. In September 1941 the Germans came to the village. On 16-17 October 1941 they captured almost half of the Jewish community of the village to take them to execution in the vicinity of the village. Our father, mother and Idlei hid in the cellar. A 'bukharka' - slang for 'drunkard' - Galia, a local Ukrainian, saw them and began to shout, calling the Germans to 'come here immediately: there is a 'zhydivka' hiding'. The Germans pulled my mother outside by her hair and my father by his beard. Idlei was running after them yelling in Yiddish, 'Don't touch my mother or I will kill you', but the Germans only laughed at him. When they reached the shooting ground the Germans forced my father to bury those Jews that had been shot there. I'm still terrified to think what my father must have felt while burying his Jewish neighbors and acquaintances. Then the Germans put my father, mother and handicapped Idlei into a gas chamber truck and left the truck somewhere. When they were dead, their bodies were thrown out some place - nobody knows where. The rest of the Jews were taken to Kolomyia where they were gradually exterminated. Our neighbors told us this story when we visited Pistyn after the war. They witnessed what happened.

When I reached my sister Itta at the fire department in Kosov in the summer of 1941, they were all preparing for evacuation. This was a military fire unit and my sister was a civilian hired to work there. At that time nationality didn't matter at all. They evacuated and took their people with them regardless of nationality. My sister helped me obtain permission to evacuate with them. I had no documents or clothes with me. We reached Kharkov where I went to work as an attendant in a hospital and Itta worked in the hospital pharmacy. I did all the hard work washing and carrying wounded soldiers, washed blood stained bandages and cleaned the wards and surgery rooms until they began to shine. We were staying in the hospital since we didn't have a place to live. We had to forget our kosher habits and ate what we could get. We stayed in Kharkov until October 1941. The front was getting closer and the hospital moved to a settlement in Krasnodar region [150 kilometers from Kharkov]. I worked day and night in this hospital. The doctors, nurses and patients treated me well.

We often went to the frontline by sanitary train to pick up the wounded. Once we had a wounded German soldier and nobody wanted to help him. I washed him and applied a bandage. When others asked me why I was doing that I replied, 'All soldiers deserve treatment. He must shoot, he has no choice - if he doesn't shoot he would be shot at. You know, he is a German, but he is a soldier and you are solders. Hitler is Satan'. I never kept it a secret that I'm a Jew and I do what I think is right. People appreciated my kindness and told me that I would live to turn 100 years. They called me 'Manechka' like my mother did. Nobody cared that I had no education or that I spoke poor Russian. There were representatives of various nationalities in hospital; nobody cared about nationality issues. There were only thoughts about victory over the Nazis.

I found it interesting to look in the microscope when I came to the laboratory. One Jewish doctor said once, 'We need to employ Makhlia to do testing in the laboratory rather than wash floors. She must do blood testing'. The director of the hospital, a major, liked this idea. I was given 20 hours of training. I had to remember everything by heart since I could hardly write. My trainers said that I was smart since I passed my exam successfully. I learned to do blood testing very skillfully. Our patients always asked for me to take their blood tests. There was another nurse that also took blood tests. Soldiers complained that it hurt when she took their blood, but there were no complaints when I did it.

Vassiliy Khalzov was an attendant and then a medical nurse in this same hospital. He was a Tatar man who came from the Volga area in Russia. He was born in 1919. He was very handy, and he was a great storyteller. We were friends and he proposed to me several times. I couldn't understand whether it was a joke or he was serious and replied that I wished to be a spinster. I hoped to meet a Jewish man, but where was I to find one? So many Jews perished either during the occupation or at the front. Vassiliy often went on trips to the frontline or to escort a patient home. When he came back he used to say, 'Don't be afraid of me, I'm a Jew, too', meaning that the two of us had to stick together and that we were alike in some respect. I was raised in such manner that developed a conviction in me that Jews had to marry their own kind and I wasn't used to thinking about a man of a different nationality.

After the War

The war was coming to an end. We worked 15 hours per day in the hospital, had meals and slept there. Ukraine was liberated in the winter of 1944. Our hospital moved to Lvov in the spring of 1945. I shared a room with my sister Itta in the center of the town. We still had many patients from the frontline. In 1945 my brother Alter, who was demobilized after he was severely wounded, found me. He told me that when the war began Maria, a Ukrainian woman from Kosov, hid him. She was in love with him and would have done anything for him. She even threatened to kill her own husband, who was a policeman and worked for the Germans. Alter ran away from her, crossed the frontline and joined the Soviet army. He was wounded several times and participated in the liberation of Ukraine, Poland and Czechoslovakia. In 1946 Alter married Sonia, the daughter of a rabbi from Wroclav in Poland. I don't know how they met. They had their wedding in Lvov; it was a traditional Jewish wedding with a chuppah and a rabbi. My sister and I made traditional food: gefilte fish and everything else our mother had taught us.

The husband of Sonia's sister was a tailor and my brother became his assistant. In 1946 Soviet authorities permitted the Polish population to return to Poland and my brother and his family moved to Wroclav. Alter always observed Jewish traditions except during his service in the army. My brother had two sons born there. They moved to the US in the 1950s. They live in Chicago now. I never saw Alter again, and he didn't describe what he thought about his life in Chicago. When my brother turned 80 [in 1988] he decided to have a bullet, which he had had for 50 years, removed from his body. He passed away during the surgery. On the day he died his grandson was born and named Alter after my brother. In the early 1950s Maria, the Ukrainian woman who rescued Alter, found me to get information about Alter. I told her that I didn't know where he was as my brother asked me to do. She began to cry and said that she would be praying for him.

My sister Itta married Vershkin, a Russian man, a military, in 1946. They lived not far from us in Lvov. After the war Jews tried to switch to Russian names [common name] 7 to avoid teasing or mocking. Itta changed her Jewish name to Lida, a Russian name. She has three children. Her son Victor lives in Lvov and her daughters married Ukrainian men and moved away: Tania lives in St. Petersburg and Klava lives in Zhytomyr. Itta lives in the vicinity of Lvov. We seldom see each other. Her husband died in the 1980s. Itta has been ill since then.

Vassiliy kept proposing to me, but I just cracked jokes in return. When my brother returned and met Vassiliy they became friends. My brother said to me, 'Makhlia, he is not a Jew, but he is a good man. He won't let you down'. Vassiliy told me that he was also circumcised. [Circumcision is also customary with Tatar people.] Vassiliy always made a good impression on people. I don't know where he studied, but he seemed to know everything. He could discuss any subject and was great company.

My brother and Vassiliy convinced me to marry Vassiliy. Actually, we didn't have a ceremony - we just began to live together in a room in the hospital. I got pregnant. In 1946 I gave birth to three girls. Vassiliy was away taking some patients home. The doctors gave me only one girl: she was the tiniest of the three and weighed only 900 grams. I didn't even see the two other girls and have no idea what happened there, the doctors probably gave them away for adoption for money. What could I do being a weak, hungry and helpless woman with no education? I didn't even know where to get help. There were many childless families after the war. Women wanted children, but couldn't bear them due to the hardships that they went through during the war.

The doctors came to explain the situation to me. They said that Vassiliy was far away and might not come back and I was too old to raise three children. They said the girls were in good hands and would have a good life. This was true - Vassiliy was far away and I didn't even know where. There was a woman doctor - she tried, but was childless for ten years. She begged me to give her my little girl. She was such a tiny little girl, but when I took her to feed she grabbed my breast so greedily. I didn't give her away. I decided to raise her by myself. I named her Leya after my mother, but someone told me that this Jewish name would spoil her life. So I gave her the Russian name of Ludmila, but for myself I called her Leya. Her full name Ludmila is written in all her documents. At home we affectionately called her Leya. Later I also began to call her Ludmila. When Vassiliy returned home he got mad from what he heard. He ran to the maternity hospital demanding his girls. The obstetrician there calmed him down, 'She will have so many children that you wouldn't know what to do with them. The girls are no longer in town. One went to a general's family and the other one to the family of a colonel'. Nobody would tell us where to look for the girls anyway.

That same year, in 1946, Vassiliy and I registered our marriage in a registry office. We didn't have a wedding party. I took my husband's last name - Khalzova. Vassiliy demobilized from the army and began to work at the flour mill factory; he was a mechanic there. He didn't allow me to go to work. I was to look after the children. That doctor was right: our daughter Valentina was born in 1949 and Alla followed in 1953. My husband wanted a boy, but we didn't have one. I didn't want to have many children and had seven abortions.

Vassiliy was a very skilled mechanic and had a lot of work to do. He picked up any work to make more money for the family. Vassiliy was very hardworking and thought that 'a hundred rubles was better than a hundred friends'. [Editor's note: he reversed the Russian saying 'A hundred friends are better than a hundred rubles'.] He was very smart at work and his colleagues said about him, 'he is smart as a zhyd'. Common Ukrainians used to call smart people 'zhydy', there was even some envy to this word. He told me to stay at home and used to say that he would find out how to provide for us. I took good care of our girls: I made clothes, embroidered them and they were always dressed like little dolls.

I didn't celebrate any Jewish traditions after the war - it's not that I forgot them, but somehow I didn't observe any. My daughters weren't raised Jewish. We spoke Russian at home. I just told them about my mother and about our life in the village. When we visited Itta we sang songs that Itta and I remembered since we were children. I cooked the way I was used to. Vassiliy didn't eat pork either. We didn't specifically follow the kosher laws, but we kept meat products separately from dairy products. I might hear the abusive 'zhydovka' while standing in line to buy something, but, as I say, I know how to answer for them to leave me alone. And frankly, I didn't pay much attention to any such demonstrations of anti-Semitism. Life was difficult and common people blamed Jews for their problems, but I always reacted in such manner that they never made another attempt to hurt me.

We lived our life and didn't care about our political surroundings. I remember Stalin's death [March 1953]. I liked him since I was making his portrait - he was a handsome man with a moustache. I cried after him. Vassiliy said when he came home and saw me crying, 'Stop crying; he is not your husband or brother, is he?' I thought that if Stalin had known the true state of things he wouldn't have allowed Jews or Russians or anyone else to be suppressed and offended. Jews and Russians were suppressed in similar ways, and my husband was always ready to come to anybody's help. But Vassiliy said to me that he was there to protect me, not Stalin. He did everything for the family, that's true.

During the rule of Khrushchev 8 there were problems with bread. [Editor's note: in 1962-1963 bread was released to people for special coupons since there were no crops of wheat and they had to stand in long lines for two to three hours to get some bread. This was low quality bread mixed with corn flour.] There wasn't enough bread and it was very low quality baked from corn flour, but I had no problem whatsoever. Vassiliy repaired equipment at the flour mill and we always had flour. I baked bread like my mother taught me. Vassiliy didn't like living in the center of town where there were few trees. He didn't like asphalted streets. We changed our apartment to a house in a quiet green neighborhood. Vassiliy made cages for rabbits. He slaughtered them and I cooked rabbit meat. I tried to tell him that it was sinful to slaughter rabbits that we raised, but he had his own law: it was sinful to steal or kill, but one could eat what was good. He did everything for the family, but he had his own rules that the family had to make up with. My husband worked a lot and we didn't have much free time. We didn't go to theaters. Sometimes my daughter and I went to the cinema; we liked Indian films.

Our girls studied well at school and I decided to go to work. I became a cleaning woman in the nearest polyclinic in 1961. When my husband heard about it he beat me with his belt since he wanted me to stay home. This was the only time he behaved like that; he just got furious when he heard that I wished to go to work. However, I had my own character and I explained to him that our girls were growing up and needed new clothes and shoes and that I was going to make some money for them to have what was necessary. My husband provided everything necessary, but our girls wanted to have nice clothes or shoes, which again Vassiliy didn't quite understand due to his rough character. I wanted to earn some extra money for our girls. I need to say that I always felt comfortable in the family and had a feeling of being protected and the feeling of stability. When I got my salary for the first two weeks I bought my husband a bottle of vodka and he agreed that it was all right for me to go to work. He came to the polyclinic to help me do my work saying, 'I feel uncomfortable that you have to work'. Vassiliy loved me. He died in 1972 - he came home from work, lay down and never woke up. I don't know what happened to him, but he drank a lot. He worked hard and drank hard.

Ludmila finished school and a college. She worked as an accountant at a meat factory. She married Vladimir Voronin, a Russian man. I didn't have any objections to her marriage - he loves her and they get along well. Ludmila has a daughter, Tania, and a granddaughter, Martusia - my great granddaughter. Martusia goes to the Jewish school. She is a very pretty girl. She performs at concerts and studies Hebrew. She says, 'I'm not Ukrainian, I'm a Jew'. Tania laughs, 'I'm also a Jew and so is my mother - we are all Jews'. Ludmila is a pensioner; she goes to Hesed and is interested in Jewish life. She goes to concerts and celebrations. She knows more about traditions than I do. In Hesed they attend classes where they study Jewish traditions, the history of the Jewish people and Jewish literature while I have forgotten most of it.

Valentina finished school and didn't want to continue her studies. She went to work as a clerk at a passport office. She married Zarovskiy, a Polish man. His mother was a cleaning woman at a synagogue and treated Jews with understanding and sympathy. He got a good education to become a lawyer. They have a big apartment in the center of Lvov. Their daughter Irina is a nice girl and very cheerful. She is also a lawyer. Their son Vladek is a student at Lvov University. He lives alone.

My children live in Lvov. They come to see me and help me with the housework. Lvov is a small town and it only takes them 20-30 minutes to get to my place.

I live with my younger daughter Alla. She has a higher education - she graduated from polytechnic college and worked as an engineer at a TV factory, but who needs engineers nowadays? All industrial enterprises in Lvov have been shut down and many engineers have lost their jobs. The state doesn't finance big enterprises. Their equipment is obsolete and they cannot survive in the conditions of market economy. Alla works as a cook in the administration of Jewish organizations when representatives of Joint or other associations visit them - representatives of Jewish communities from other towns. There are also visitors from Israel or USA. She makes delicious Jewish traditional food. She had bad luck at the beginning when she married a Ukrainian man that tortured us. He stole money from us, beat us. He is in prison for assault now. Alla has a wonderful son, my beloved grandson Alexei. He is 26. He works as a manager in a private company in Rovno and is a very respectable man. He comes on a visit with his fiancée every now and then. Alla lives with another Ukrainian man - Misha. He is a very nice man and loves Alla dearly. He helps her to wash bed linen and floors. He is kind to me. He tells me that I shouldn't do anything, but I simply need to do some work. I move about the house, but I don't go out - I will be 90 soon.

We don't observe any Jewish traditions or celebrate holidays at home. I go to Hesed when I get an invitation and when it's warm. I like to be examined by doctors, but I don't need free dinners - Alla makes better food at home. I like seeing other Jews at Hesed. We have a lot to talk about. We enjoy celebrating holidays and singing old songs. When we lived in the center of the town I had Jewish friends, but here there are only goyim. I don't feel like even talking with them. One neighbor here threw stones at my dog - and she is such a lovely and nice dog. I reprimanded him and he said, 'Why is a zhydovka speaking here? You don't have the right to talk here'. I didn't say anything in response. I'm glad that there are Jewish organizations in town that support us. This is due to perestroika 9, when many things changed for the better. People know more about the suffering of our people and their attitude changed for the better.

You know, Jews have always been persecuted. Now there are Arabs living beside Jews. They shoot at our children and hunt for us everywhere. I'm 90 and when I see how they fight with our men I may have a heart attack. What do they want? They want this land, but Jews worked hard to get this land. If I lived in Israel I would have a heart attack. I shall not move from here. My children say they feel all right here. They are half-Jews and don't have this strong spiritual bond with Jews in Israel. As for me, I shall always be where my children are.

I hardly ever see my sister Itta, although she lives in Lvov. We talk on the phone. Only when her children come to visit her we get together. Her daughter Tania tells us how Jews are supported in Leningrad and Klava tells me about Zhytomyr. Jewish communities support their members. They began to learn Jewish traditions when Hesed offices were established in various towns. This was something new and interesting for them. Since my sister and I always told our children about the life of our parents they were prepared to perceive this information with interest and their families show support and understanding of their needs.

I feel that I will die soon - my mother comes to me in my dreams. She says, 'Manya, I'm taking you with me. You've had enough hardships in life. You'll be in paradise with us, it is better here. You will die - you will not suffer, just hear an echo and this will be the end'. Misha, Alla's husband, says to me, 'You don't need to leave this life yet, you have to live longer to look at the sun and people'. Perhaps, I will wait.

Glossary

Bella Zeldovich
Odessa
Ukraine
Interviewer: Alexandr Tonkonogiy
Date of interview: December 2002

Bella Zeldovich is a nice gray-haired, elderly woman. She was willing to give this interview, but she preferred to talk about others rather than herself. Bella keeps her house clean and cozy. She lives with her daughter, who is married and does all the necessary housework. The apartment is furnished with furniture bought in the 1980s. There are many tiny things such as vases and statuettes in the house.

My family backgrownd

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Glossary

My family backgrownd

My grandfather on my father's side, Solomon Zeldovich was born in Vilno [today Vilnius, Lithuania] in 1860. All I know about my grandfather is what my father told me. My grandfather's parents passed away when he was small and he was raised at the municipal children's home in Vilno. In the late 1860s some childless relatives of his took him to Nikolaev where they lived. They must have been wealthy people since they could afford to give him a good education. My father said that my grandfather finished a grammar school and studied at Novorossiysk University [after 1919 Odessa University].

My grandfather supplied timber to the shipbuilding yard in Nikolaev. He owned a big storage facility and five residential buildings in the center of Nikolaev where he also leased apartments. My grandfather's family lived in one of these houses near the timber storage facility. They were religious. They followed the kashrut and my grandfather went to the synagogue on holidays. He had a beard and moustache and wore clothing typical for merchants. My father told me that there were Jewish self- defense 1 units during the 1905 pogroms 2 in some streets in Nikolaev and those neighborhoods didn't suffer that much. In my grandfather's neighborhood there was also a self-defense unit and their Russian neighbors also helped them. My grandfather's property didn't suffer from pogroms.

My grandfather died of a heart attack in Nikolaev in 1915 at the age of 55. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Nikolaev. After the Revolution of 1917 3, when the synagogue didn't operate for some time, my grandmother Leya Zeldovich, nee Lichtenzon, leased one of their houses to the Jewish community to serve as a prayer house for Jews.

My grandmother was born in Nikolaev in 1864. She came from a religious family and was religious, too. She always lit candles on the Eve of Sabbath. She wore a wig that she only took off before she went to bed. When I came to her room in the evening I didn't recognize her and always asked my parents, 'Who's this old woman sitting in our room?'. They explained to me that it was my grandmother who had taken off her wig. My grandparents got married in 1879 when my grandfather studied at university. They were very young when they got married. No doubt, they had a traditional wedding. My grandmother's oldest daughter was born in 1880 when she was 16.

My grandmother was a housewife. From the time I remember her she could hardly walk and her condition got worse with age. In 1930 she moved to her older daughter in Odessa. Since she was paralyzed she needed special care and my parents couldn't afford to pay for a nurse. My grandmother died of a heart attack in Odessa in 1930 at the age of 66. She was buried in Odessa. My grandfather Solomon and grandmother Leya had seven children: Rosa, Elizabeth, Boris, Leo, my father Samuel, Aron and Manya. All of them except for Boris were born in Nikolaev. The family was wealthy and all children got a good education.

My father's older sister Rosa was born in 1880. She finished grammar school and medical school. She worked as a medical nurse. She was married. Her husband's name was Natan and he was a Jew. Rosa had two children: Munia and Nyuma. They were much older than I. I don't remember if Rosa's family observed Jewish traditions. Rosa and her family moved to Odessa in the late 1920s. Rosa's husband and children perished at the front during the Great Patriotic War 4. Rosa perished in the ghetto in Odessa in 1941.

Elizabeth was born in 1882. She finished grammar school and the Medical Faculty of Novorossiysk University. In Nikolaev Elizabeth met a Jewish man from Lodz, Poland. She and her husband moved to Lodz before the Revolution of 1917. She worked as a doctor there. She had a daughter called Ella. My parents corresponded with Elizabeth. When World War II began in 1939, Elizabeth's family moved to Belgium. When Germans occupied Belgium in 1940 they wanted to move to England by boat. The ship was bombed by German planes. Elizabeth and her family perished. My parents only got to know about their death after the Great Patriotic War.

My father's older brother Boris was born in 1884 in Saint-Petersburg, where my grandparents lived temporarily during some business. He finished a grammar school in Nikolaev and then an art school in Saint-Petersburg. Boris was an artist, a painter. He was married and had two children: Lilia and Rafael. He died in Saint-Petersburg in 1910. I have no information about his wife and daughter. His son Rafael was a painter, too. He died in Leningrad in 1992.

My father's second brother Leo was born in 1886. After finishing grammar school in Nikolaev he graduated from the Shipbuilding Institute in Saint- Petersburg. He worked as an engineer at the shipbuilding yard in Nikolaev. Leo was married, but had no children. He died in Leningrad in 1930. I have no information about his wife.

My father's third brother Aron was born in Nikolaev in 1890. Aron finished secondary school and a technical college in Moscow. During World War I he served in the tsarist army and was in captivity in Austria. He told his family that Germans treated him well when he was in captivity. He returned to Russia in 1918. Aron got married in 1921. His wife's name was Sarah. They had a son called Lyoma. In the 1930s Aron and his family moved to Odessa where he was superintendent in a shop of the garment factory. During the Great Patriotic War Sarah and Lyoma were in evacuation in Tashkent. After the war Aron continued to work as a shop superintendent at the garment factory. He died in Odessa in 1957. His wife and son moved to Australia in the early 1970s, and, after a few years, further on to the US. His wife died in the 1980s, and his son works as a doctor in America.

My father's younger sister Manya was born in 1892. She finished a grammar school. She was married. Her husband's name was Semyon. Manya moved to Odessa in the 1930s. After the war she moved to Moscow with her family. She was a housewife and had a daughter called Ella. Manya died in Moscow in 1976. I have no information about her husband. Her daughter Ella lives in Israel and works as a doctor.

My father, Samuel Zeldovich, was born in Nikolaev on 20th September 1888. He finished a grammar school in Nikolaev and then a commercial college in Vienna. In 1914 my grandfather sent my father to Palestine to get familiar with our historical Motherland. At that time World War I began and all young people subject to recruitment were ordered to return to Russia. So my father returned to Russia. He was recruited to the tsarist army in which he served until the end of World War I. He returned to Nikolaev in the early 1920s.

My mother's father, Avrum Chernenko, was born in the village of Zultz [since 1945 Veseloye], Nikolaev region, in 1864. It was a German colony 5, although there was a German, Russian, Ukrainian and Jewish population in this village. I don't know what my grandfather Avrum did for a living. His family wasn't wealthy. They rented a house in the village. My grandfather was deeply religious. He went to the synagogue several times a week and prayed at home regularly with his tallit and tefillin on. He wore a beard and a kippah at home. He was a very handsome and tall man, and very intelligent.

During the Civil War 6, when pogroms began, a nice German family helped my grandfather's family to move to Nikolaev. Later, some Germans visited us in Nikolaev and then in Odessa. I don't know who arranged the pogroms, but my parents said that they took away everything they could lay their hands on. White Guards 7 came and there was a pogrom and when the power switched to red troops [Reds] 8 there were also pogroms and it was difficult to make a difference between these gangs 9. In Nikolaev my grandfather's family rented an apartment and my grandfather worked as assistant in some shop. In 1932 he moved to Odessa and lived with my parents. My grandfather refused to evacuate during the Great Patriotic War and perished in 1941. He didn't believe that Germans would do any harm to Jews. He was shot in the village of Dalnik 10 at the age of 77.

My grandmother on my mother's side, Ella Chernenko, was born in Zultz in 1865. I don't know her maiden name. She was educated at home; her father taught her to read and write in Yiddish and to pray in Hebrew. She was a housewife. My grandparents got married in 1883. My grandmother died of a stroke in Nikolaev in 1927 or 1928, at the age of about 62. I was very young back then and don't remember her at all. My parents told me that she was buried in accordance with Jewish traditions. Kaddish was recited at the funeral and my grandfather kept sitting on the floor for seven days after her funeral. My maternal grandparents had four children: Isaac, Israel, Clara and my mother Sarah.

My mother's older brother Isaac was born in 1884. He studied at cheder in Zultz and finished the commercial school in Nikolaev. I don't know what he did for a living in Nikolaev after he finished school. In the 1930s he moved to Odessa where he worked as a shop assistant in a haberdashery store. He got married to a woman called Bella and they had a son called Leonid. At the beginning of the Great Patriotic War Isaac said, 'You may leave if you feel like it, but we shall stay here. I don't believe that Germans will do us any harm. It must be propaganda'. Isaac and his son Leonid were shot in Dalnik, like my grandfather, in 1941. Isaac's son Leonid was only 11 years old.

My mother's brother Israel was born in 1888. Like his older brother he finished the commercial college in Nikolaev. Israel was married; his wife's name was Rachel. They didn't have any children. In 1932 he moved to Odessa where he worked in the same store as his brother Isaac. He was a shop assistant. During the Great Patriotic War Israel and his wife stayed in Odessa. When Germans occupied Odessa they arrested him immediately. I don't know how he perished. His wife was hiding in a Russian family. I don't know whether they were their friends or neighbors. In 1943 somebody reported on her and she perished, too.

My mother's older sister Clara was born in Zultz in 1890. In the 1930s she moved to Odessa with her family. Clara was a housewife. She was married and had a daughter named Katherine. Katherine was finishing her 1st year of studies at the Chemical Faculty of Odessa University when the Great Patriotic War began. Clara and her daughter evacuated to Aktyubinsk [Kazakhstan]. Katherine went to study at Moscow Medical Institute which had evacuated to Tashkent. Upon graduation she moved to Leningrad. She got married there in 1946. Her husband was Russian. He was sentenced to imprisonment in 1949 and was at the wood-logging site in Omskaya region, Siberia. Katherine followed her husband with her baby. They returned to Leningrad after four years. Katherine died in Leningrad in the 1960s. Clara had returned to Odessa where she died in 1947. I don't know what happened to her husband.

My mother was the youngest in the family. She was born in Zultz in 1902. I don't know where she studied. My grandfather taught her Jewish traditions and prayers. Grandmother Ella taught her housekeeping and cooking. She made traditional Jewish food: gefilte fish, chicken and strudels. My mother lived with her parents in Nikolaev before she got married. She helped her mother about the house.

My parents never told me how they met. I guess they met when my mother's family moved to Nikolaev. They got married in 1924 and only had a civil ceremony. They lived in my grandmother's house, which had a number of rooms. They also had housemaids. I don't know what my father did for a living. He might have been a businessman. My grandmother had a room of her own, and my parents had a few rooms for themselves. I had my own children's room. We had meals in the big dining room. The house was nicely furnished. My grandmother had a woman who took care of her. There was also a housemaid.

Growing up

I was born on 13th September 1925. My brother Leonid was born in Nikolaev on 1st September 1932.

My mother was a housewife. My father and mother came from religious families. They went to the synagogue on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and fasted on Yom Kippur. I remember a general clean-up of the house before Pesach and the removal of chametz from the house. Fancy dishes were put on the table. There was matzah and other traditional food: gefilte fish, chicken broth, maror (horseradish), charoset and kosher wine. Grandfather Avrum visited us on Pesach. He conducted the seder. I, and, later my brother Leonid, asked our father the traditional four questions [the mah nishtanah]. Our grandfather hid afikoman in the room and we had to find it.

I can't remember any anti-Semitism in Nikolaev. I remember our Russian neighbors, who were as wealthy as Grandfather Solomon. They treated us very well.

In November 1932 our house and belongings were confiscated. It was the end of the NEP 11. My parents, Grandfather Avrum, my little brother and I moved to Odessa to escape the persecutions of the authorities. We lived in a communal apartment 12 in Paster Street in the central, rich neighborhood of Odessa. We occupied two rooms: 23 and 16 square meters. There was another room with other tenants. We had a common kitchen, running water and a toilet in the apartment. There was a stove to heat the apartment with either wood or coal.

My father was a superintendent at a haberdashery shop. My mother was a housewife. My father spoke Russian and sometimes Yiddish to my mother. He also had a good knowledge of German since he had studied in Vienna. My mother spoke Russian, German and Yiddish. I understand Yiddish because I heard my mother and father speak it.

There was a Jewish theater in Odessa before the war. My mother and I often went to watch performances there. As far as I remember, there were plays by Sholem Aleichem 13 on the schedule. My mother and I really liked the performances of the Jewish actress Lia Bugova. [Famous Jewish actress in Odessa, after World War II she performed at the Russian theater in Odessa.] My father never went to the theater.

In Odessa we continued to celebrate Sabbath, Pesach and other Jewish holidays. My grandfather Avrum said a prayer on the Eve of Sabbath. My mother lit the candles. Grandfather Avrum blessed the children. He and my mother tried to observe Sabbath, but my father couldn't have a rest on Saturday because he had to work. My grandfather also conducted the seder on Pesach. Our relatives and friends visited us - there were usually about 20 guests. Our gatherings were very ceremonious. We usually bought matzah at the synagogue or at Jewish bakeries. We had traditional Jewish food on Pesach: fish, matzah and other delicacies. My grandfather and my parents went to the synagogue in Peresyp 14 near our house on Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah. When my grandfather was still alive our family fasted on Yom Kippur. After he died only my mother observed the fasting. She always took chickens to the shochet to have them slaughtered there.

In 1933 I went to a Russian school. We studied chemistry, physics, mathematics, Russian and Ukrainian. I know German, Russian and Ukrainian. The majority of our teachers were Jews. I was fond of mathematics. I had Russian and Jewish friends at school. I became a Komsomol 15 member at school. I also attended dancing classes and had piano lessons at a music school. My brother Leonid went to the same school.

1933 was the period of a terrible famine in Ukraine 16. My family didn't starve. The husband of my father's sister Manya worked at the windmill in Peresyp. He received flour for his work and shared it with us. We baked bread and ate it.

1937 was the year when arrests began in Odessa and all over the country [during the so-called Great Terror] 17. People were arrested at night. There was a hospital and a medical institute across the street from our house, and many doctors and professors lived in our house. Many of our neighbors were arrested at night and their families had to move into the basement of the house. Our family didn't suffer from arrests.

My younger sister Lubov was born on 3rd April 1939. In the same year World War II began. We had discussions on this subject in our family and were very concerned about the situation. [Editor's note: All the information Bella's family had was from Soviet papers.] My father's sister Elizabeth lived in Poland and we didn't hear from her.

During the war

On 22nd June 1941 the Great Patriotic War began. It came as a surprise to us. We were afraid, of course. When the war began my father was 57. Regardless of his age he volunteered to the army and went as far as Berlin. My father was a very patient and reserved man. He never complained about the hardships of the war. When asked about that time he usually answered, 'It was a hard time for all of us, so, what can I say - thank God it's all over'.

Odessa had been bombed since July 1941, but the stores and the market were open. Many of our relatives didn't plan to evacuate from Odessa. My mother

hesitated for a long time and only decided to go when our neighbors brought her all the necessary evacuation permits and insisted that she took us, children, out of the house. These neighbors may have known how Germans treated Jews.

We left Odessa at the end of August or beginning of September 1941 I can't remember the exact date. We went by train and our trip was hard and long. My sister Lubov was two and my brother Leonid was nine years old. We had a small package of food and when we ran out of it my mother bought some or got some in exchange for clothes. It took us two weeks to get to the town of Mineralnyye Vody, Stavropol region, [1,100 km from Odessa]. From there we got to Georgievskaya station, near Mineralnyye Vody. After three months, when the frontline moved closer to the collective farm 18 where we worked, they evacuated us by tractors with trailers to the Caspian Sea. There we boarded a boat in November 1941. We crossed the Caspian Sea and got to Aktyubinsk, Kazakhstan, [2,000 km from Odessa]. We changed trains to get to Aktyubinsk and the trip took us about two and a half months. Whenever the train stopped at a station my mother asked our fellow travelers to get us some food or water since she didn't want to leave us alone. People were helping us. In Aktyubinsk we went to my mother's sister Clara, who had evacuated three months before. We stayed with her for some time until we rented a room from a Kazakh woman in the same house, where my mother's sister lived. There were two rooms and a kitchen in that apartment.

I worked during the day and went to a secondary school in the evenings. Many of our teachers were Jews. I finished school with a gold medal in 1943. I went to work at a military plant, in evacuation from Moscow that manufactured bombs. I had friends at this plant. One of my friends was a local girl called Aisha. We went for walks and to the local club for dance parties. I still correspond with her.

My mother stayed at home to take care of my sister and my brother Leonid, who was in the 3rd grade back then. We were in evacuation for almost three and a half years. We weren't used to the severe climate in Kazakhstan: minus 40 degrees in winter, and extremely hot in summer. Local people helped people who were in evacuation and supported them as much as they could. We never faced any anti-Semitism. We didn't observe any Jewish traditions though. We corresponded with my father all the time.

We returned to Odessa in April 1945, two weeks before the war was over. On 9th May [Victory Day] 19 we heard about the victory on the radio. Everybody was overwhelmed with joy. My father returned home - he was an old man and subject to immediate demobilization. We couldn't move into our apartment. The house had partly been ruined during the war and some family had repaired it and moved in. There was no way to get it back. Later we received a two-bedroom apartment with a kitchen in the same house where we had lived before the war.

My father was superintendent in the shop of a haberdashery factory. My mother was a housewife. My brother Leonid studied in the 7th grade. My sister Lubov was the youngest in our family and everyone's darling. In 1946 she also started school and my brother and I took turns to take her to school in order to help my mother.

A coupon system was introduced after the war. There were things to buy at the black market after the war, but the prices were too high - 200 rubles per loaf of bread while the average salary was 400 rubles. Nobody could afford to buy things there. The standard rate of bread per coupons was 400 grams for a child and 800 grams for an adult.

After the war

After the Great Patriotic War the synagogue in Peresyp opened. On Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah my mother and father went to the synagogue. It was possible to hear Yiddish in Odessa in those days. Jews were gradually returning from evacuation. In my opinion Jews weren't treated very well in Odessa after the war. Maybe the reason was that when Jews wanted to move into their old apartments, Russian families that occupied them were ordered to move out.

I got a job as an assistant accountant at the Financial College. In the evening I attended classes at the evening department of the Credit and Economy Faculty of Lomonosov Institute. Since I had finished school with a gold medal in Aktyubinsk I was admitted without exams. There were no restrictions for Jews to enter higher educational institutions. There were many Jewish students and Jewish lecturers at the institute - I don't remember the exact number. We didn't pay any attention to issues of nationality at that time. I had Russian and Jewish friends and didn't face any anti-Semitism.

Upon graduation in 1949 I got a job assignment 20 in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. I worked as a credit inspector in the main bank of Armenia for three years. It was a good job and a good location. There were only Jews that had been in evacuation in Armenia and there were no synagogues. I didn't observe any traditions while I lived in Armenia - it was a very difficult post-war time. I was glad to have survived the war. I had gotten the job assignment in Armenia along with a friend of mine and we rented a room in a communal apartment together. There were no comforts in the apartment. It was heated with wood or coal. In 1949 the campaign against cosmopolitans 21 began. The Jewish and Armenian population was worried and concerned about the situation. After I completed the term of my job assignment I returned to Odessa.

In 1948 Israel was established. I was very enthusiastic about it, just like all other Jews. After such a horrific war, in which so many Jews had been exterminated, our people were happy to have a home country. However, the situation in Israel is rather severe and still our people are being killed. I've never thought of moving to Israel since the issue of moving to another country never interested me.

During the postwar period there were no restrictions for Jews to enter higher educational institutions as long as they were clever enough to pass their entrance exams. Those that finished school with a gold medal were admitted without entrance exams. My brother Leonid entered Odessa Polytechnic Institute and my sister Lubov entered Odessa Pedagogical Institute. All my cousins have a higher education, too. Difficulties for Jews that wanted to enter higher educational institutions began in the 1960s. [Editor's note: Iin reality, beginning from the early 1950s, admission of Jews was significantly restricted from the early 1950s and this limitation was authorized by the highest authorities as an expression of state anti-Semitism.] It was also difficult for Jews to get a job - Russians or Ukrainians were given priority. I believe it was a state policy; people of other nationalities had nothing to do with this segregation.

My brother Leonid finished school in 1948 and entered the Mechanical Faculty at Odessa Polytechnic Institute. He graduated in 1953 and worked as a mechanical engineer. In 1955 Leonid married Svetlana, a Jewish woman. They have a daughter called Marina. My brother has always had more Jewish friends. After he got married my brother and his family lived in a three- bedroom apartment. Leonid left for America three years ago. He lives in New York. He doesn't work any more - he's already 70 years old. His wife Svetlana looks after elderly people. His daughter Marina works as an economist in Odessa. She goes to the synagogue on Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah.

My sister Lubov finished school in 1955 and graduated from the Physics/Mathematic Faculty of Odessa Pedagogical Institute in 1960. She worked as a teacher at a secondary school. She got married in 1964. Her husband's name was Efim Yarmunik. He was a Jew. He was production manager at the Centrolit Factory. She has two sons; Igor and Sasha [Alexandr]. Igor graduated from the Agricultural Institute and got married. His wife's family moved to America, and Igor and his wife also decided to move there. My sister followed her older son. She left for America in 1990. Her husband died on his way to buy plane tickets, three months before their departure. He died at the age of 53. Lubov lives in New York now. She looks after elderly people. Igor and Sasha work as programmers.

I got married in 1951. My husband, Esay Germer, is Jewish. He was my schoolmate and we were neighbors. He was born in 1923. Esay was an only child. His father, Abram Germer, was arrested in 1937. He was sentenced to a term in the camps in Arkhangelsk. After Abram returned from exile he was murdered at the entrance to his house. We never found out who did it. Esay's mother was a housewife. She perished in the ghetto in Odessa during the Great Patriotic War.

In 1940 Esay entered a military school and in 1941 he went to the front. He finished the war in Berlin. After the war Esay served in Germany and we corresponded. In 1951 he came on leave to Odessa and we got married. We registered our marriage at a civil registration office.

After we got married Esay got an officer assignment to serve in Saratov where we lived for three years. I was an economist at the radio plant. We rented a room on the 3rd floor of a communal apartment. Our co-tenants were the family of my husband's colleague. We had central heating, water and a toilet in this apartment. We also had a common kitchen. There weren't many Jews in Saratov at that time. We mostly socialized with my husband's colleagues. They were military and there were hardly any Jews among them. There was a beautiful synagogue in Saratov, but I only went to look at it.

The Doctors' Plot 22 began in 1952. My daughter Katia was born on 26th January 1953. My doctor was a Jewish woman. She was very worried about the situation. There were rumors that Stalin wanted to deport Jews to the North and the Far East [Birobidzhan] 23. Thank God Stalin died and this didn't happen. When Stalin died in 1953 I and my family, along with many other people, were in grief and thought that there could be no life or justice without Stalin.

In 1953 my husband demobilized from the Soviet army with the rank of major. We didn't have any relatives or close friends in Saratov. Our family was in Odessa. Since our daughter Katia was only four months old I couldn't go to work. So we moved to Odessa. We lived with my parents, brother and sister. My sister Lubov was in the 8th grade and my brother Leonid was a student at an institute. We didn't have enough space in our two-bedroom apartment, but we got along well. My mother helped me with the baby and Lubov also enjoyed spending time with Katia.

My husband went to work as a polisher at the Poligraphmash Plant and went to study at the Evening Department of Odessa Polytechnic Institute. Upon graduation he worked at the Special Design Bureau of the plant. He was a mechanic engineer. He worked at the plant for many years. Esay was very valued at the plant. There were representatives of many nationalities at the plant but he never faced any anti-Semitism there. My husband wasn't a party member. He went to the synagogue on Yom Kippur. His relatives perished in Odessa during the war and he left a note with their names at the synagogue so that prayers would be said for them. We didn't observe other traditions.

In 1954 I went to work at the Mechanic Plant in Kvorostina Street. I worked as an economist at this plant until 1996. I worked in the area of Moldavanka [poor Jewish neighborhood on the outskirts of Odessa]. There were Russian families there, too, and they understood and spoke Yiddish. Ever so often, when two people talked in Yiddish, it was difficult to say who was Russian and who was Jewish. Once I asked my colleagues at the plant, 'Why do you all call this guy Mosha when he doesn't even look the least bit like a Jew?' They replied, 'He lives in Moldavanka. His neighbors are Jews and they call everybody in a Jewish manner'.

I worked 42 years at this plant. I had many friends there and still keep in touch with them. I was supposed to retire in 1980, but the management of the plant offered me to stay at work a little longer. I worked there for another 16 years. We were not poor; but we had neither dacha, nor car. However, my husband and I traveled a lot all over the USSR, visited the Caucasus, Latvia, Estonia and Uzbekistan.

Katia began school in 1960. She was successful with her studies. She was fond of mathematics and English. I associate the 1960s with my daughter's childhood and her teens. Katia had quite a few Jewish and Russian friends. They often came to visit her at home. Every year we arranged birthday parties for her at home. I liked watching her and her friends grow up and fall in love for the first time. Katia spent her vacations at a pioneer camp at the seashore. We traveled to the Crimea with the whole family several times. Katia finished school with a silver medal and entered the Faculty of Economics of Lomonosov Technological Institute. She had problems being admitted to the institute, which, I believe, was due to her nationality. She had to take entrance exams, although she had a silver medal. But she passed them and entered the institute. Upon graduation Katia worked as an economist at a design institute.

She got married in 1977. Her husband, Dmitriy Gershengorn, is a Jew. He graduated from the Mechanical Faculty of Lomonosov Technological Institute. He worked as a designer at a design institute. In the 1980s, during perestroika, this institute was closed and Dmitriy went to work as a foreman at a heating agency. My daughter works as an economist/accountant with a private company. My daughter's son Sergey was born in 1978. My husband and I became grandparents. I spent all my time with our little grandson. He was a great joy for me. I didn't quite notice how Sergey grew up and finished school. He is 24 now. Sergey graduated from the Mechanical Faculty of Odessa University. He works as a programmer at a bank. He doesn't go to the synagogue.

In 1975 my father died of a heart attack. My mother died in 1988. She had a brain tumor. They were both buried according to the Jewish tradition near the entrance to the Jewish cemetery. My husband died of rectum cancer in 1987. He was also buried in the Jewish cemetery.

Many of my acquaintances and relatives have recently left Odessa. The people that were leaving were treated with sympathy by others. Everybody understood that people had a right to live where they preferred to live. Only my niece remained in Odessa. I think it's a very brave decision of people to move to another country. I remember I couldn't wait to come back to Odessa when I had to stay a few years in Yerevan. Odessa is like a Promised Land to me.

At the end of the 1980s Jewish life revived in Odessa. The synagogue in Osipov Street was opened and the building of the main synagogue in Yevreyskaya Street was returned to the Jewish community . There are two Jewish schools, kindergartens, the charity center Gemilut Hesed and an Israeli cultural center in town. We receive Jewish newspapers and watch Jewish programs on television - all in Russian. There is a kosher store in the yard of the synagogue in Richelievskaya Street, and a slaughterhouse in Stolbovaya Street that supplies kosher meat to Jewish organizations and kosher stores.

I've lived with my daughter's family since my husband's death. I have many friends of different nationalities. I've been friends with some of them for 52 years already. My daughter and her husband go to the synagogue very seldom, but we have matzah on holidays and my daughter and I cook traditional Jewish food that our grandmothers used to make: gefilte fish, chicken and other delicious things. I buy matzah at the synagogue in Osipov Street. I hope that my grandson will go to the synagogue on holidays and remember us.

Glossary

Sima Shvarts
Kiev
Ukraine
Date of interview: January 2002 Interviewer: Zhanna Litinskaya

My name is Sima Markovna Shvarts. I also have a Jewish patronymic - Yankel- Mordkovna Shvarts. I was born in the town of Rzhischev, Kiev region, on 19th January 1914.

My mother's parents, my maternal grandparents, were Ilya and Chaya Vainstein. Grandfather Ilya was a teacher. He died before my birth, but my mother told me a lot about him. He was a highly educated man, but I don't know what institution he finished. I know that he taught grammar and arithmetic. My mother said that my grandfather also knew French. At their house he had a special big room equipped for teaching children. There was a big wooden table. Children would come, sit around that table, and grandfather would sit at the head of the table. This is how he taught. During the break, grandmother would give them something to eat, then they rested, and then grandfather would continue teaching. He taught in Yiddish. Grandfather was totally involved in his teaching work. He gathered poor Jewish children from his town; he found around 30 of them. He taught them free of charge. I can't even tell you exactly where the family got money from - my mother never discussed this question with me.

My grandfather died unexpectedly in 1912. At that time his children already lived in different cities: in, Dnepropetrovsk, Kiev, and Zhitomir. On Passover grandfather always invited all of his children to his house, both married and single ones. On the day he died they also came to his house, and the house was richly decorated by my grandmother. The whole town went to see how Ilya's children came to visit him. So, everything went wonderfully during the day. That night they all went to bed, and grandfather had a stroke and died. Grandmother Chaya was a housewife: she cooked, cleaned the house, took care of the children and kept order.

They had seven children: one son and six daughters. I don't remember when they were born, but I can name them all. The eldest daughter was Etya, then came their son Naum, then Dvoira, then my mother, Risl, then Chaika, Rakhil, and Fruma.

At that time, even though our family was not rich, none of the women worked outside the house. When they got married, their husbands provided for them. The year before my birth, only two elder sisters and the brother was married. Those who were younger than my mother were still single. They were seamstresses. Two of them lived in Dnepropetrovsk and one in Kiev.

My mother Risya Shvarts was born in Rzhischev in 1885. She only completed a Jewish junior school. Her family was very poor and didn't have the money to pay for the education of their children. Besides, my mother had to help grandmother with the housework and take care of her younger sisters. Later, when she got married, she couldn't study because she was busy. I was born in 1914 and my father was called up to the army at the beginning of World War I.

My father, Yankel-Mordko Shvarts, was born in Rzhischev in 1883. I never knew my father because he was killed in the war. I know that he worked as a roofer. I still have a silver spoon that he once brought for me. Once when he was working on the roof of a house, he found this spoon in the attic. He brought it home and said: 'Our little daughter should eat only from this spoon until she grows up'. So, I still have this spoon.

My parents got married in 1913. They lived together for only one year. When the war broke out, my father was called up to the army and stayed in Rzhischev for some time. He was wearing the army uniform, but had a chance to see his friends and wife. I have some pictures of him from that period. Later, when he was sent to the front, he wrote to my mother, but then his letters stopped coming and he didn't return from the war.

In Rzhischev we lived in my mother's parents' house. I can vaguely remember that house because I was only four years old in 1918, when we moved to Kiev. I remember that there was one big room and two bedrooms. As I mentioned before, grandfather used the big room to teach children. There was also an attic where they kept winter clothes and shoes, as well as the kosher kitchen utensils [for Passover].

According to my mother's stories, my grandparents were very religious and strictly observed the kashrut, Jewish traditions and holidays. But I don't remember any of these things. I know only that on holidays, especially on Passover, grandfather tried to get all his family together under the roof of his own house.

My father's parents had a better life financially than my mother's parents. My father's father owned a business that dealt with the loading and unloading of goods to and from ships that docked in Rzhischev. Grandfather's name was Mordko Shvarts, and grandmother's name was Rakhil Shvarts.

My father was the eldest child in the family. He had brothers, Ruvim and Naum, then a sister Manya, then brothers Shmilek and Menachem, and then sisters Etya and Liza. I am not sure if they were born exactly in this order, but I think so. The brothers helped their father in his business. They also had a store and sold things there. Women certainly didn't work outside the house. Before getting married they helped their mother, and after getting married their husbands provided for them - this was a tradition in all Jewish families.

I remember the house of my father's parents because mother took me there for the summer holidays when we were already living in Kiev. There was a large thoroughfare in Rzhischev that led to the market, and the main square in the town was a market, where all people came together. Grandfather's house stood in a small street right next to that thoroughfare.

I have a photo where all grandfather's grandchildren are together. He gathered all of them for summer holidays. They had a big house with an orchard, and children were delighted to spend their summer holidays there. Of all the children I was the only girl who went to school. The rest were too young, as far as I remember. Grandfather gathered not only his grandchildren, but also his daughters and daughters-in-law, who brought their children to him. There was enough room for everyone.

He had a very good orchard. Grandfather loved us very much, so he allowed us to pick the flowers and eat all the fruit. I remember that we felt wonderful at his house because both grandfather and grandmother were very kind people.

My father's parents were also religious. They kept the laws of kashrut and always celebrated Sabbath. I remember how grandmother lit candles [on Friday night] and grandfather prayed. When they had to go to the table, he also went to the dining room and prayed there. Even though he taught us to believe in God, we often mocked him and laughed, unfortunately. That is why he would turn his back on us, pray looking in the other direction, then sit at the head of the table with all of us around the table, and grandmother would bring food.

My grandparents always went to the synagogue - it was like a law for them. I know that grandmother said she had to go up to the second floor where all the women prayed, while grandfather stayed on the first floor. I also remember that I told her that it was unfair, that grandmother should stay on the first floor because it was easier for her. And they laughed at me. The synagogue was a sacred place because mostly Jews lived in that town.

Grandfather always wore a yarmulka. He also had a tallit that he put on during the prayer and tefillin that he put on his right hand and head according to the Jewish tradition. My grandmother was rather fat, but very active. She had time to do everything around the house. She wore a wig and sometimes a kerchief because, according to the Jewish tradition, all married women are always supposed to cover their heads.

When I came to visit them in the 1920s, my grandparents no longer worked. Some Ukrainian girls came to help them take care of the garden, the fruit trees and flowers; my grandparents always told them that their grandchildren would come in summer and they would want to 'eat something tasty'.

At that time relations between Ukrainians, Russians and Jews were wonderful. I know it because later in Kiev my mother told me that every time she heard somebody saying the word 'zhyd' [kike], she always said, 'How can they! For so many years we lived with wonderful people, Ukrainians, in Rzhischev. They even said our names in Yiddish.' For, in those times if someone was called Chaim, it was pronounced as Chaim [the Jewish way of saying it], and not as Efim or something else. So, my mother was outraged by the fact that people could change so quickly: you have wonderful relations with someone and suddenly these relations are broken.

The Ukrainians who lived in Rzhischev highly respected the Shvarts family because they were very kind people. Their house was always open to whoever wished to come in. Sometimes old, poor people would come in, and grandmother would never throw them out, no matter what their origin was (Jewish or Gentile). First of all she would feed them at the table. That is why our families were so highly respected in the community.

I remember almost nothing of our life in Rzhischev before we moved to Kiev, but I can vividly remember the Jewish pogrom. Maybe I remember it so well because I was in stress because of the fear. One night, when the light was put out (there was no electricity then) and we went to bed, suddenly we heard whistles, noise, and clatter. Bandits came to the town on horses. I don't know if they went to every house, but they knocked at our door. When nobody answered, they broke the window, opened the door, entered and asked, 'Who lives here?' When nobody answered them again, they set fire to somebody's blanket on the bed and it began to burn. I remember my mother was terribly scared. She asked them, 'What do you think you're doing? Can't you see that a child is sleeping here?' I don't remember what happened next because I was very scared. Mother took me to another room. I think the adults gave the bandits some money, and they left and went to another house.

This was one story. Another one of this sort took place during the day. I mean, nobody gets really scared during the day. People go outside if they need to. And the streets were very narrow then, so that people could come to one another's house easily. So, one Jew was walking down this street. A bandit caught up with him from behind on a horse, took out his sable and hit the Jew on the head with his sable. The man's head flew away, while his body made two more steps forward and only then fell down. It was a terrible picture that is still before my eyes. I was 3 or 4 years old, but I can still remember it vividly. Fortunately, none of our family suffered during the pogroms or the Civil War 1.

In 1918, when mother realized that my father had died and she was left alone, we went to live in Kiev. Mother had to earn her living, and it was impossible to find a job in Rzhischev. When we first moved we didn't take my grandmother. She joined us later because she couldn't stay alone. In the beginning she managed to live alone because her children, mother's sisters, came to visit her all the time. We thought they would take her to live with them. But they didn't do that, so my mother said, 'Please, she will live with us here.' On the one hand, it was very good that grandmother lived with us because I loved her very much, but on the other hand, our life was hard because only my mother was working in our family.

My mother's good friends had children living in Kiev. They lived in Rzhischev, and when their children grew up, they moved to Kiev. We took a ship to Kiev along the Dnepr River. These friends met us and took us to their house. They had a little house with three rooms. They gave us one room, where my mother and I, and later grandmother Chaya, lived. These people helped my mother find a job. At that time underwear was not sewn at factories, but at home. My mother was very good at this, even though she never studied how to sew. But she could sew a good shirt or a bed-sheet. So, these people found her clients, my mother would go to their homes and get orders. There she was fed, received money and food for her work. This is how we could make ends meet.

We paid nothing for our flat. My mother simply helped the landlords around the house, washed for them, cleaned the house, but they didn't want us to pay. I don't know where they worked, but I'm sure they worked somewhere. Their house was small with no electricity. The toilet and water was outside. There was another flat in the house where a Ukrainian family lived. I don't remember them well, but I remember that we had friendly relations with them.

I was often ill, maybe due to lack of food. I had huge furuncles all over my body. That is why I went to school only in 1921, a year later than I should have. It was a Russian school. I don't know whether there were any Jewish schools around. At home, mother and grandmother spoke Yiddish. (Back then I understood everything they said, but didn't speak much Yiddish. Now, regrettably, I've forgotten everything.) But then my mother said that I should study only in a Russian school, so that I would later be able to study at a university and find a job.

The school I went to was a mixed school, both boys and girls studied there. There were Ukrainian, Russian and Jewish children there. But I don't remember that anyone would offend anybody else for national reasons. Most of our teachers were Russian or Ukrainian, but they treated Jewish children very well; they treated me even in a special, warm way because I was fatherless.

My favorite school subject was mathematics. I also liked physics and literature. I liked to read a lot, even though we didn't have many books at home, but my friends brought me books; we also went to the children's library. I was a Young Octobrist 2. Then I was a pioneer. I remember one interesting situation. Back in Rzhischev, mother pierced my ears and bought me small golden earrings. I wore these earrings all the time. But when I joined the pioneers, we would go to the Pioneer House and children would tease me, saying that a young pioneer should not wear golden earrings. I came home in tears and told my mother that I shouldn't wear the earrings. Mother told me, 'If you began to wear them, you should continue'. But I lost one earring soon after that. I didn't want to lie to my mother, but I was afraid to go home. Finally, I came home and said, 'Mom, I lost one earring'. She said, 'You didn't lose it, you did it on purpose!' No tears, no arguments of mine, could persuade her that I really lost it accidentally. I took off the other earring and the children stopped teasing me. Later, when a special system for changing gold for clothes and food was set up in the USSR, my mother sold my earring and bought me a sweater. [the interviewee is referring to the Torgsin stores.] 3

Grandmother came to Kiev when I was in the 3rd grade, that is, in 1923. Grandmother was religious, so after her arrival we began to celebrate all the Jewish holidays at home. We had no kosher kitchen utensils [for Passover] and were not able to boil it long enough to make them kosher. But my mother would wash them carefully, then hide them and take them out right before the holiday. On Passover we always bought matzah. There was a small basement not far from us; it was very deep, so its windows were below street level. Matzah was secretly baked in that basement and sold through one of the windows. My mother and I would go to buy matzah there. During the 8 days of Passover mother would not allow me to eat regular bread at home. She would say, 'If you really want to eat bread, go to your friends' house, but you can't eat bread at home'.

I remember once the day before the fast on Yom Kippur, when our family was going to have a good dinner in order to fast the next day, I went for a walk with some girls. Mother told me, 'Don't forget, you need to be home for dinner in time'. Well, I was late, and neither my mother nor my grandmother had a chance to eat dinner. They were both nervous, and I was punished. I remember it for my whole life. I also remember that mother and grandmother celebrated other Jewish holidays as well. But they didn't light candles because we had no money to buy them and no place to put lit candles. We lived very poorly.

On Saturday mother never went to work. She didn't go to her Jewish or even Russian clients, but she always warned them, 'I'm not coming tomorrow - it will be Saturday'. At home she also tried to do nothing on that day, only what was necessary, but on Saturdays we always had good lunches. Even though our life was poor, mother always tried to save some food for a good Saturday lunch.

When I was older, my school friends would often visit me, and mother's sister, Basya, who lived in Kiev then, took grandmother Chaya to live with her, because our flat was too crowded. But grandmother didn't live long after that. She died soon after, around 1928.

We had a good company at school. We all liked going to theaters and museums. We went to the Russian and Ukrainian drama theaters. We also celebrated every Soviet holiday: 1st of May, October Revolution Day 4, etc. On those days we had no classes at school, so we would go for a walk. Every family tried to fix a good lunch and invite guests. We also liked going to demonstrations on these holidays.

Among my mother's siblings Rakhil, Basya, Chaika and Fruma were also in Kiev. Fruma was still single. She got married a few years later and her husband took her to Moscow.

After finishing the 7-year school I entered the cooperative technical college. I studied at the department for library studies for three years. At that time we never thought of people's nationalities. At our technical college there were Jewish students and students of other nationalities. But this question never worried us. I only remember we had a Ukrainian student who always spoke Ukrainian, so all the teachers always told him to speak Russian. All teaching in our college was done in Russian.

At that time we lived in another place. The husband of my mother's sister Rakhil was a high-ranking party worker. At that time there were many private houses. So, this man told us that there were several flats owned by somebody called Parkhomovsky in Zhilyanskaya Street. And Rakhil and her husband had no flat in Kiev. So, he went to Parkhomovsky, intimidated him with something and said that if he didn't give him the flats, they would be confiscated from him. So, Parkhomovsky gave him two flats - their family stayed in one, and my mother and I, in the other one. They had two sons, Boris and Mark Kamenkovich. They were younger than I but we were good friends. We remained friends for life.

When I went to college, there was a military unit right across the street from our college. We went to dance at each other's clubs: we girls went to dance at theirs, and they came to dance at ours. This is how I met my future husband. I was 19 years old then, and he was 26. He was from a Jewish family. My husband's family comes from Gomel in Belarus. At that time they were living in Kiev, and my husband served in the army. His name was Litman Veksler. His father worked at the construction site of the Kiev central train station. My husband's parents were very good, wonderful people. They received me very nicely and made friends with my mother.

They had five children. They were born into a very poor Jewish family, in a some small shtetl called Gomel in Belarus. My husband's parents were religious, kept all traditions, and went to the synagogue. My husband was the eldest son; he had a sister Roza, brother Grisha, a sister Sonya and brother Izya. Only Izya is still alive today. He lives in Kiev. He celebrated his golden wedding, the 50th anniversary, last year.

When I finished college he went to my mother to ask for permission to marry me. It was very solemn. He brought flowers - he knew that both my mother and I loved flowers very much. To have at least two small flowers in a vase was like a law for us. Even though we were poor, having flowers at home was our hobby. So, after that we got married. It was in 1933. There was no wedding ceremony or anything like that. He came from work, told me to wait for him. Then we went to the registration office, from there we went to his parents, who cooked a regular lunch. We had no wedding rings, no special dresses. Everything was very simple. I think we did it in such a way because we were very poor.

My husband was still serving, but very soon, in the autumn, he was demobilized. He was given a room in a communal apartment 5. We had a big room in a communal flat. We had three neighbors, a common kitchen and a toilet, but we got used to living with neighbors. My husband only had secondary education, but he was a highly educated man. He worked at a woodwork factory as the chief of the shift. Then he was transferred to work for the city executive committee as chief of some department. We continued to live in our room, even though my husband would have been able to get a flat adequate to his office. But he was very modest and considered it indecent for a party member to ask for the improvement of his living conditions. His mother told him, 'Litmanke (she called him Litmanke), why don't you take care of getting a new flat?' And he answered her, 'Mom, I shouldn't do that now. The time will come when I'll get one, but not now.' That's how it was.

My husband wasn't paid much. He received the 'party maximum' - the sum that was the maximum limit for him to earn as a party member. The sum was not very large, but we didn't demand much, so it was enough for us. He had been a member of the Communist Party since the 1920s, so he was a man who believed in communism. Throughout his whole life he believed in the ideals of communism. He didn't know, and didn't want to know, what really happened in our country, and thought that everything happened because it was meant to.

I entered the Kiev Construction Institute. When I finished the 1st year I gave birth to our daughter Mira, whom we called Lyalechka, in 1935. But I didn't quit my studies because my mother and mother-in-law helped me and this way I could continue my studies.

At this time political repression and arrests [the so-called Great Terror] 6 started. I knew all about it. There was one situation. My husband's friend, Iosif Kaplunov, a Jew, occupied a high military office. Then he was accused of doing something illegal. My husband's friends told my husband, 'Stop talking to Iosif because you will suffer too'. But we were friends with the Kaplunov family. So, my husband was warned that he shouldn't visit him any more. But he still continued to meet Iosif's wife in some deserted streets in order to learn something new about Iosif's fate after his arrest. Iosif was released soon; he didn't spend too much time in prison.

In general, we certainly knew that people around us were arrested, but my husband never discussed such questions with me. He said I was too young and I had other things to take care of. I think he simply wanted to spare me. I was a Komsomol 7 member and trusted everything I heard, absolutely everything.

We celebrated all Soviet holidays. Our favorite holidays were 1st of May and October Revolution Day. My husband's friends and colleagues would come with their spouses, and we would throw a party, sing songs, listen to the gramophone, and dance. We didn't keep any Jewish traditions, we didn't even think about it. My mother lived with us, and she continued to buy matzah every Passover, but I don't even know where she got it. We didn't have any kosher kitchen utensils [for Passover] at home and kept bread on Passover, but my mother always had matzah.

We knew that there was fascism in Germany and that the war broke out in Europe. But we believed that the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact 8 guaranteed that our country would never be engaged in a war, so we were not ready for the war. For us, just like for the millions of Soviet people, the beginning of the war was absolutely unexpected.

So, in June 1941 my husband rented a dacha for us outside Kiev, in the village of Ukrainka. It was not the first time we rested there. On Saturdays my husband came to visit us. He had a special car that served him from work, and he spent Sundays with us. But on Saturday, 21st June my husband didn't come to the dacha, and we were waiting for him all Sunday morning. We had no radio at the dacha; neither did we receive newspapers there. Later, dacha landowners came home very sad and somewhat lost. We were in a wonderful mood and I turned to them with a smile, asking what happened. They told us that war had broken out. I ran to the Dnepr shore to find a boat that would take us to Kiev. We immediately gathered our belongings and went to the boat, but the boats were already gone - instead there was a great crowd of people who wanted to leave.

My husband came then. He had already been mobilized and had a paper that said, 'called up on the first day of the war', but he didn't wear his military uniform, and came to take us. So, we went home, he put on his military uniform and went to the military enlistment office. However, he stayed in Kiev for a long time. He worked at the pontoon-bridge battalion. They defended approaches to Kiev from the Dnepr River. He called us every day. But a short time later, about a week-and-a-half, my husband came home and said we needed to evacuate.

By that time I had already graduated from university and was working (I found a job right before the war). I worked at the Kiev highway construction department. I evacuated with this organization. In July we left by regular train. I evacuated with my daughter and mother. We were taken to Dnepropetrovsk. My mother-in-law (my father-in-law was no longer alive) remained in Kiev and evacuated with the family of her other son. When we reached Dnepropetrovsk, we were told that we couldn't go any further because the railway had been heavily bombed.

My mother's elder sister, Etl, lived not far from the train station in Dnepropetrovsk. When we arrived there, one of my mother's sisters, Chaika, was already there with her daughter. Our mood was awful, we were crying. We spent only two or three days there, then bombing raids on Dnepropetrovsk began. Etl's husband put us on a ship and sent us further on. He remained in Dnepropetrovsk because he was deputy director of a major plant. We went eastward together with aunts Etl and Chaika. I can't remember all the details of our evacuation now, but I remember that it took us more than two weeks, first by ship, then by different trains with long stops. We were often bombed. It was horrible, but I was young and I felt responsible for my mother and my daughter. That's why I did my best to keep myself under control. Finally we arrived in the town of Kokand in Central Asia.

When we arrived in Kokand [Uzbekistan] we were received nicely. We were immediately settled in different flats. We didn't have any jobs yet, but our living conditions were quite satisfactory. Very soon I wrote to my husband to our home address. His unit was stationed in Kiev and he was able to visit our flat sometimes, hoping that I would write to him. He received my letter, wrote me back to Kokand and thus we established communication, which, unfortunately, was short because I stopped receiving letters from him in the winter of 1942.

When I learned that Kiev was occupied by the Germans, it caused me great sorrow. My husband was still alive, I was still receiving letters from him, but this news brought me a lot of sorrow. There was a loudspeaker at the central square of Kokand, which looked like a big black plate, and all the people ran there to listen to the latest news. I would often run there too. That's where I heard that Kiev was occupied. I didn't listen to it any more, but ran home crying, 'Mother, Lyalechka, Kiev has been surrendered, Lyonya is no longer alive', even though my husband was still alive. I think I had that terrible feeling that he would die soon. And my little daughter told me, 'Mom, don't worry. You will become my mother and father together'.

My husband was killed somewhere in Sumy, Ukraine. There were a lot of units of the Soviet army there, and they were all bombed, even without fighting. I received a paper that said that my husband 'is reported missing'. I realized that he was killed because otherwise he would have found us after the war.

We were in Kokand in evacuation during the whole war. The attitude of the locals towards us was very warm. I was working at the office of the canteen because they needed literate people. We ate at the same canteen. We didn't starve, but I had a feeling of insecurity, when there was no husband behind my back, when everything was bad. As soon as Kiev was liberated, we received an invitation for the three of us that we could go to Kiev. At that time it was impossible to go home from evacuation without a special invitation. We came to Kiev but had no place to live. The very next day after the Germans entered Kiev, bombs left by our soldiers began to explode all over the city. Kreschatik, the main street of Kiev, was blown up, and our house was blown up - one of the first because a German office was located next to it.

Boris Kamenkovich, the son of aunt Rakhil, with whose family we had lived, came to Kiev at that time. Before the war Boris (who danced very well) had been taken into a famous dancing band and spent the whole war in it. They went to every front and performed there. After the war the band stayed in Moscow. As soon as Kiev was liberated, all the Kiev residents in that band went to their native town for a few days. That's when we saw Boris. He came to our house, wearing his uniform and looking very important in it. Other people were living in the flat and all our furniture was missing. They got so scared when they saw him! Boris asked them, 'Tell me, who took our furniture. I need to get it back before my parents come back to Kiev'. And he was able to collect a wardrobe, a bed, chairs and a table - a lot of furniture. He took it back to his flat. We settled there and lived there until his parents came back.

Then the department that I was working in gave me a room. We settled there, but the very next day there was a knock on the door - its former residents came. I didn't let them in for several days; we didn't go out for several days so that they would not occupy it in our absence. Then we were given a room in Pechersk, but the same story was repeated there. Our department was given a plot of land in Gorky Street for construction, and I was given a room there. But until the construction of that building was finished, I lived with the secretary of our party organization, Viktor Korshenko. He was an extremely kind man, who had pity on my daughter and me.

In the autumn of 1947 we finally moved into our own flat. By that time, almost all of our relatives who had lived in Kiev before the war returned to Kiev: my mother-in-law, mother's sisters Rakhil and Chaika.

My husband's brother Izya fought in the war, then fought against Japan, and then he stayed in the Far East. Samuel also remained alive, but their third brother died defending Moscow.Practically all the members of our large family were evacuated and then returned to Kiev. Only the husband of Klara, Chaika's daughter, Leva, didn't want to evacuate. He said, 'I speak German well and I will make friends with them'. So, he stayed and was killed in Babi Yar 9. He alone from our large family was so self-confident that, as a result, he was shot in Babi Yar.

I continued to work in the highway construction department. It was then turned into a ministry. I worked there for the rest of my life till my retirement. In 1945, I joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. It was entirely my wish: my husband was a real Bolshevik, I was a Komsomol member, and so it was my sincere desire.

The attitude towards the Jews changed everywhere - in Kiev and not only in Kiev. But I think I was lucky in this regard. A man called Mikhail Dovgan was my boss; he was a very good man and I experienced no anti-Semitism at work.

I remember Stalin's death very well. We lived in a communal apartment, and the two other rooms in that flat were occupied by the family of a general who returned from the front. When Stalin died, the general entered my room. He was a little drunk and very upset. He asked me, 'Sima Markovna, how are we going to live now without Stalin?' And even though I took Stalin's death calmly, I also sensed his anxiety.

So, we lived with my mother and my daughter. My daughter went to school. They had a class of mixed nationalities and they never had any problems; relations between children and teachers' attitude to Jewish children were wonderful. My daughter was very good friends with our neighbor's daughter, who was Ukrainian. It was a whole Ukrainian family, but our relations were good. These neighbors were the first in our house to buy a TV set, so everybody else would go to their flat to watch it. They would often come and invite my mother too.

Until her last days my mother kept Jewish traditions to the best of her abilities. She didn't go to the synagogue because it was too hard for her, but she had a prayer book at home and she tried to do nothing around the house on Saturday: she would prepare everything on Friday evening. On Saturdays we always had a special dinner. On Passover we always had matzah.

When my daughter finished school, she didn't really want to enter the Road- Transport Institute. But at that time it was hard for Jews to enter universities. So, the secretary of the party organization, Korshenko, at whose house we once lived, helped us - he went to the director of the Road- Transport Institute and asked him to accept my daughter. She passed her exams with not very good marks, but she was privileged because her father had been killed in the war, so she was admitted. Sometimes I think it would have been better for her not to have entered there.

My mother died in 1956 and my daughter in 1957. She was a very good student, she liked her studies; she finished the first year and then the second year. Everything went well and she was very happy. Then she went to the third year. After the third year she and other students went to practice. Their practice was near Odessa, where the Kiev-Odessa highway was built; it was closer to Odessa. At that time I was in a health resort outside Kiev - I just took advantage of the fact that my daughter was at the practice. A few days later, Korshenko came to pick me up by car. 'Sima Markovna, let's go to Kiev!' And he looked very energetic. I told him immediately, 'What happened to my daughter?' He said, 'Nothing serious!' I demanded, 'Tell me immediately!' I couldn't move. So, he put me in his car and took me to Kiev. On the way he told me that my daughter had been hit by a car and was now at the Institute of Neurosurgery. When I came to Odessa my daughter was no longer alive. In Odessa she was put into a coffin and the coffin was put on a truck. So, I took my only daughter, my only joy and meaning of my life, to Kiev. I buried her next to my mother, and I always think about how good it was that my mother had not lived to see the death of her granddaughter. I was left alone. I never married again. I devoted all my life to work and fellowship with a few friends.

I have already told you about my cousin, Boris Kamenkovich. He became a very famous man in Kiev's theaters - he was the chief ballet master of the Opera Theater and of the Ukrainian Drama Theater. He was married to a stage director, famous in her circles, Irina Molostova. Everybody treated him nicely in the theater. Last year, when he celebrated his 80th birthday, a special celebration was organized in the theater in his honor - many Ukrainian workers of culture were invited; his son came from Moscow (he works there in a theater, too). Unfortunately, Irina Molostova died several years ago. When my cousin Boris introduced me to his friends he always said, 'This is my cousin Sima - an iron lady'. Boris died very recently, and I was left absolutely alone. His brother Mark lives in Germany.

My parents' brothers and sisters died a long time ago. My cousin Bronya Shvartser lives in Israel; Hannah, in America. Some other relatives live around the world. Only my husband's brother Izya still lives in Kiev.

Many of my relatives and friends moved to other countries for good, but I had made up my mind on this question a long time ago - the remains of my dear daughter are buried here and I will always live here. 'My daughter, you are a part of me', says the inscription on her tombstone.

Recently, it became possible to communicate more with the Jews, to take part in Jewish life. While I was relatively healthy I often visited the Jewish charity center, the Hesed, attended Jewish concerts, read Jewish newspapers. Today I need more help, and Hesed helps me and takes care of me. In conclusion I would like to say that despite the fact that my life has been very hard, I am a person who has never looked at the material side of life, and I believe I was very lucky in this life to meet many good people, both among my friends and among my relatives. I've never felt really lonely.

Glossary