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Our internment was painful. We were each given the right to carry with us only 30 kilograms of luggage. We left for the railway station in order to catch the train to Shumen, where we were to be interned. It was my mother, Vinka, Jina and me. The other two sisters, Ester and Sara, had already been married: in Stara Zagora and in Sofia respectively; while my brothers were sent to forced labor camps [13]. When we arrived in Shumen, several hundreds of Jews, we among them, were accommodated at the local school’s gym-hall. And a commune cauldron of food was installed there.
In that confusing situation, we were sitting desperately, my mother, my sisters and I, in the gym-hall’s crowd, when Vinka, who was 20 then already, took the initiative and said, ‘Mum, we won’t live here.’ And we started asking for lodgings. So we came across some Turks who lived near the Tumbul mosque [the main mosque in Shumen, built in 1744, also the largest in the Balkans]. It was just opposite the local Jewish school. Well, these Turks told us they could accommodate us in one of their rooms upstairs. We were six of us in that room: my mother, we, the three sisters, and one of my mum’s cousins with her daughter.
In that confusing situation, we were sitting desperately, my mother, my sisters and I, in the gym-hall’s crowd, when Vinka, who was 20 then already, took the initiative and said, ‘Mum, we won’t live here.’ And we started asking for lodgings. So we came across some Turks who lived near the Tumbul mosque [the main mosque in Shumen, built in 1744, also the largest in the Balkans]. It was just opposite the local Jewish school. Well, these Turks told us they could accommodate us in one of their rooms upstairs. We were six of us in that room: my mother, we, the three sisters, and one of my mum’s cousins with her daughter.
Period
Year
1943
Location
Shumen
Bulgaria
Interview
Milka Ilieva