Tag #125902 - Interview #98885 (Bitoush Behar)

We keep in touch with the Jewish community. Its activities after 9th September expanded very much, the ‘Sholom Aleichem’ Chitalishte was created, which didn’t exist before that. The Jewish singing union was restored and while I am in Plovdiv I keep in touch with the Jewish community all the time. After 1957 – 1958 it became a state property but the name remained unchanged. The Jewish holidays were still celebrated but they became somewhat more European. For example, from Purim we have kept mainly the carnival, Chanukkah was turned into a celebration of bravery. And people aren’t that much focused on religion any more but it seems to me that at the time when I was working at Gorubso, there weren’t so many people going to the Jewish Chitalishte, the flow of people going there diminished greatly. That was in the period between 1957 and 1962.