Tag #123506 - Interview #78516 (Eshua Aron Almalech)

In March 1943 we learned that we were to be sent to the Nazi death camps, and more specifically to Treblinka. (We had information about the Nazi death camps, because at that time Bulgarians could listen secretly to foreign radio stations, such as the BBC. There was also an illegal Bulgarian radio station, ‘Hristo Botev’, which broadcast from Moscow. Some of the Jews had relatives, who lived in other European countries and who informed them of the latest news.) At that time I was still a student in Plovdiv. My father called me at the college immediately to tell me to go back to Stara Zagora, because our family was among the first 12 families to be deported. My father had friends, railway workers, many of whom visited regularly our shop, and they had warned him that they were ordered by the government to prepare a cargo wagon for 55 people or 8 horses with two barrels inside – one full of water, the other empty… The railway workers had been ordered to lead the Jews into the wagon and seal it, but they themselves did not know its destination [The workers did not know the concrete final stop, but they knew to what place the people would be transported. The Bulgarian Jews had many Bulgarian friends, who had information and who warned them. At that time even the deputy Speaker of Parliament Dimitar Peshev and the leadership of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, knowing what was happening to the Jews in the other countries occupied by Germany, informed the people and defended the Jews before the Bulgarian government.] When I heard this, I went to the Jewish school in Plovdiv, in the Jewish quarter called ‘Ota Mezar’, where I had many friends. They told me that 100 families from Plovdiv had been listed to be deported to Treblinka.