Tag #125716 - Interview #77962 (Victor Baruh)

Before the war I had a lot of Jewish friends - the poet Edi Arueti, Yosif Beraha, Zhak Danon. They all left for Israel after the war. Among my friends who left for Israel there were twin brothers, Haim and Solomon Mevorah, who used to live in my quarter, at the corner of Simeon Street and Antim I Street. They had Spanish citizenship. When one of them came from Israel as my guest, he wanted to see his father's shop along Pirotska Street and a dead-end street - I think it's called Bulgaria - and the Commercial High School in Lozenetz. I brought him there and he burst into tears - there was a balcony at the back of the building and he said, 'Our headmaster talked to us here.' And when the other one came to Sofia we went to see the place where they had lived - we went upstairs, we rang the bell, but the current owners weren't very kind and we didn't go inside. But they felt a great nostalgia - they were very excited when they came back to Bulgaria. In Israel they have an organization, some dance clubs, they sew traditional costumes, they dance the horo [traditional Bulgarian dances], sing Bulgarian songs and cry.