Matilda Israel with pupils from the Jewish school

Here we are on a picnic with our teacher Fortune, outside Karnobat in 1928. I was in the first grade then. We had a Jewish elementary school in Karnobat. I am the third from right in this picture. When I was seven years old and it was time for me to go to school, they enrolled me in the Jewish school in the town. There was one class in each grade - from first to fourth grade. We studied in two rooms, two classes in a room. We were around ten children in a class, the boys and the girls studied together, but in high school the boys studied separately from the girls. While the teacher taught one of the classes, the other students did written exercises. Our teacher was a young woman of Jewish origin from Kazanlak. Several years later, I don?t remember when exactly, the school was closed because there weren?t enough children there. This was also the time when the laws against us were adopted. All of us, the children who had studied in that school, had excellent marks later in high school. I remember many of my friends then - Sarah Konfino, Nora Konfino, who was my 'milk sister', because my mother suckled her too; Rashelina, Mari Behar, Benji, Miko and many others. Both the girls and the boys played together. We, the girls, played boys' games too. My father would often scold me for that.

Photos from this interviewee