Reception of a greeting address from the District Council on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of Aron Ishakh

This is a reception of a greeting address from the District Council on the occasion of my 60th birthday in Ruse, in 1982.

I received greetings from the District Council in Ruse, the Electronic Center and by the Ruse community. The address was given to me by Dimitar Avramov, secretary of the District Council. He was mayor of Ruse for many years.

As head of the administrative department of the City Council in Ruse, I was one of the leading specialists in the country. From 1969 until 1973 I experimented in Ruse with a new system of citizens' registration, and adopted the Unified Citizen's Number. I followed the experience of Czechoslovakia, Austria and Hungary and created our own, Bulgaria’s new system of citizens' registration, which is still in use throughout the country. At that time, delegates from Germany and Mongolia came to learn from our experience. Then I started working in the District Council as chief specialist.

I was a member of the leadership of 'Shalom' for 30 years, from 1961 until 1989. I was also deputy chairman of the organization for some time in the last few years. I remember that, during the totalitarian regime, all our properties were confiscated, the reason given to us being that a cultural and educational organization should not own property. The leadership of the ‘Shalom’ center in Sofia supported us. We received 2,000 – 3,000 levs per year, with which we paid the rent on the hall we used in the building on 6 Gurko Street. We had our own building taken away and we had to pay rent to ‘Zhilfond.’ We were not allowed to perform Jewish activities. We had to organize events together with the Fatherland Front. We were afraid to organize anything. The aim of the Central Committee of the Communist Party's policy was to assimilate the Jews faster and painlessly. They also wanted to assimilate us with mixed marriages – they agitated us to have mixed marriages, so that we would change our names and abandon the traditions of the Jewish family. That was a bad period for us.