Travel

Bluma Katz
Mogilyov-Podolskiy
Ukraine
Date of interview: July 2004
Interviewer: Ella Levitskaya

Bluma Katz and her husband live in a one-bedroom apartment of a house built in the 1970s. Bluma is short and fat. She has signs of gray in her wavy hair cut short. She looks young for her age. She hardly ever goes out having to look after her severely ill husband and is very happy to have guests.  She speaks with a slight Jewish accent. She willingly tells me about her family and her life. Bluma is a diligent housewife. Though they have a visiting nurse from the Jewish community helping her about the house, Bluma prefers to do as much as she can herself.  She keeps her apartment clean and cozy. There are books on the shelves. They are mainly Russian classical books and Russian translations of Jewish authors. There are many agricultural books – it is Bluma’s profession. She worked at the agricultural machine building plant and is a well-respected person in Mogilyov-Podolskiy.

My family backgrownd

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Glossary

My famly backgrownd

My mother and father came from Ozarintsy town in Vinnitsa region [about 300 km from Kiev], which was Vinnitsa province at the time. Ozarintsy was one of many Jewish towns in Vinnitsa region that was within the pale of Settlement 1 in Russia.

The Jewish part of Ozarintsy consisted of about 200 houses. Ozarintsy was located in the beautiful area: there were woods, ravines and a river with clear water. There was a stream in the woods where water was ice-cold even in hot weather.

Here was a Jewish hospital and a pharmacy, a Jewish school and a cheder in Ozarintsy before the revolution 1917 2. There was a 2-stiried synagogue and a shochet in the town. There was a Jewish cemetery in the suburb of the town. Many Jews dealt in farming and kept livestock: cows, goats and sheep. There were vast fields surrounding the town. Everybody could rent at the owner of the ground, a rich Ukrainian merchant, as much lad as they could manage. They grew sheep for meat and wool. They made brynza – delicious sheep cheese getting ripe in marinade. There was a cheese making shop before and after the revolution of 1917 selling in at the markets in Vinnitsa and Khmelnitskiy.

Most of the houses were made of stone. There were solid stone porches. People got together to build houses. After the day’s work they sat to dinner together. Ozarintsy was one big family.  They celebrated weddings together and lived a common lie for small towns where all people knew each other. Jews spoke Yiddish to one another, but they also got along well with Ukrainians. They had Ukrainian friends. Many generations of Ukrainian and Jewish families lived side by side in the course of time. Ukrainians understood Yiddish and had no communication problems with Jews. Before the revolution and during the Civil War 3 there were Jewish pogroms in Ozarintsy made by gangs 5, or Denikin 6 troops. Local Ukrainians often gave shelter to Jewish families risking their lives.

All Jews in Ozarintsy were religious. Despite the struggle of Soviet authorities against religion 7 the synagogue in Ozarintsy was not closed until the middle 1950s. Jews celebrated Sabbath an Jewish holidays and observed Jewish traditions. Boys had brit milah and bar mitzvah after they turned 13. Of course, the time had its impact on the Jewish way of life. The generation of my grandmother wore wigs and kerchiefs and long dark clothes. Men had beards and wore hats or caps, but the following generations wore casual clothes, did not cover their heads, women did not cut their hair before the chuppah. On Jewish holidays all Jews went to the synagogue anyway. Many men went to the synagogue before work on weekdays.

There was a big market in the center of the village where Jewish and Ukrainian farmers sold their products. All Jews followed kashrut. Housewives bought living poultry to take it to the shochet.  There was a butcher’s store selling kosher meat. Farmers delivered dairy products to Jewish homes. All food was delicious. 

My paternal grandfather’s name was Endl Katz. I don’t remember my grandmother’s name: we called her ‘granny’. I think they were born in the 1850s. My grandfather was a shochet. After the revolution he kept sheep. My grandmother was a housewife. My grandfather was short, thin and had a gray beard. On weekdays my grandfather wore his work robes. On Sabbath and before going to the synagogue he put on his long black kitel.  At home grandfather wore a black silk yarmulke, and he put on his cap or black hat to go out. My grandmother was short and plump. She was duck-legged, but she moved around quickly. My grandmother wore a black kerchief, long skirts with gathers and long-sleeved and closed-neck blouses.  

There were five children in the family. My father’s oldest brother moved to USA before the revolution and there were no contacts with him. The rest of my grandparents’ children lived in Ozarintsy. I don’t remember their dates of birth. The oldest was my father’s brother Mehl, then came Moishe and my father Benumin, and their younger sister Bluma. Bluma died in the year when I was born. My father and his brothers went to the cheder. My father could read and write in Hebrew and Yiddish and knew prayers. They also finished the 7-year Jewish school. My father’s brothers helped their father with taking care of the sheep. After the revolution of 1917 my father went to study at the rabfak 8. After finishing it he went to work as an accountant in the Jewish kolkhoz 9 in Ozarintsy. My father’s older brothers went to work in the sheep farm in the kolkhoz.  They both had Jewish wives, whose names I don’t remember. Mehl had three sons and Moishe had two sons and a daughter. I don’t remember their names.

My maternal grandfather’s name was David Gass. My grandmother Bluma Gass died in 1919 and I did not know her. My grandfather was a tailor. My mother told me that grandmother had 9 babies, but only four survived. My mother’s older brother Gershl moved to USA during the civil War and I have no information about him. Her second son Borukh was born in 1898. In 1900 my mother Golda was born and one year later – her sister Haya. Borukh studied in the cheder. My mother and her sister had a visiting teacher, who taught them Jewish traditions and Hebrew alphabet to be able to read prayers. They were not taught to understand them since only boys were taught to translate from Hebrew. The family was religious. They celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays and followed kashrut. They observed all traditions.

The children finished a primary Jewish school and went to study in the 7-year Ukrainian school. After finishing school Borukh went to work for the forester and later became a forester himself.  His wife Riva came from Ozarintsy. They had two children. My mother and her younger sister Haya became apprentices of a seamstress. They worked as seamstresses before getting married. They made bed sheets, night gowns and women’s underwear. Haya had a prearranged wedding. She married a Jewish guy from Luchentsy village of Vinnitsa region. They had a traditional Jewish wedding in the bride’s home. After the wedding Haya moved to live with her husband. She was a housewife and had three daughters: Betia, Mania and Golda. 

I don’t know how my parents met. Since they both came from Ozarintsy where their families lived in the same street and my parents must have known each other. My parents got married in 1921. They had a traditional Jewish wedding. Mama said that there were tables installed along the street and the whole village celebrated their wedding. My parents lived with my father’s parents. My grandfather had a big house consisting of two parts. There were few fruit trees and a small vegetable garden in the backyard. There was a porch and fore room with three doors in it: one to the living room and two doors on each side to the different parts of the house. Each part had two rooms and kitchen. There were wood stoked stoves in the kitchens. The stoves heated the rooms. Housewives in Ozarintsy baked bread for their families, though there was a bakery in the village. My parents lived in one part of the house. My father worked as an accountant in the kolkhoz. My mother was a housewife. My parents observed Jewish traditions, but their appearances were no different from those of Ukrainians. Men didn’t have beards or cover their heads. Mama only wore a kerchief to go to the synagogue or on Sabbath and Jewish holidays.

Mama gave birth to three children. She didn’t go to hospital, when the babies were due. She had an assistant doctor and a midwife assisting her delivery. I was the first child. I was born in 1922 and was named Bluma after my mother’s mother and my father’s deceased sister. In 1928 my sister was born. She was given the Russian name of Lubov, Jewish Liebe. In 1930 our brother Boris, Jewish Borukh, was born. He was circumcised according to Jewish traditions. 

Growing up

Our parents spoke Yiddish to us. Of course, we also spoke Ukrainian. My parents celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays and were religious like all other Jewish families in Ozarintsy.  Before Pesach all Jews whitewashed their houses and fences. About a month before the holiday they started making matzah. Several Jewish housewives got together on one house to make matzah for this family. Each of them had her own responsibility: one made the dough, another one rolled it and the others did the baking. Next day they went to another house. There was no bread in Jewish houses during Pesach. All housewives had their own recipes for traditional food. There was plenty of it cooked for the holiday. Mama made read borsch, chicken broth, puddings, stuffed fish, and chicken neck with liver and fried onions. She also made strudels, honey cakes and star-shaped cookies  from matzah flour crushed in a mortar and sieved. Mama followed the kashrut. She had separate dishes for meat and dairy products. Every Jewish family had special crockery and utensils for Pesach that was kept in attics for the rest of the year. On the first day of Pesach my parents went to the synagogue. My parents took me with them, but left the younger ones in a Ukrainian farmer’s care. On our way back home mama went to this Ukrainian woman to pick my younger sister and brother. We, children, did not know Hebrew. Mama and papa read prayers in Hebrew and translated them into Yiddish for us. During seder each person had to drink four glasses of wine. Children sipped wine from little glasses. Then we all sang jolly songs. I don’t remember anything about Rosh Hashanah, but I remember Yom Kippur that followed the Rosh Hashanah. The family had a substantial dinner before the first star appeared in the sky. Then the fast began, which lasted till evening of the following day. On Yom Kippur all Jewish families conducted the Kapores ritual. Farmers sold white chickens before Yom Kippur. They knew that nobody would buy black or speckled chickens from them before Yom Kippur. Housewives bought white hens for girls and women and white rosters for men and boys. The chickens had their legs tied. One had to recite a prayer, take the chicken and turn it over one’s head pronouncing: ‘May you be my atonement’. Parents turned the chickens over their children’s heads. I don’t know what happened to this chicken afterward. My parents strictly followed the fast, but mama always cooked for the children to have food while they were at the synagogue. The children usually missed one meal to give tribute to the tradition. I remember asking mama to let me fast a whole day like all adults did, but mama didn’t allow me to do it. My parents went to the synagogue in the morning and spent a whole day praying. Younger children came to the synagogue for a short time. My younger sister also came to us at the synagogue for one or two hours. After Yom Kippur the Sukkot was celebrated. All Jewish families had a sukkah installed in the yard and decorated it with branches and flowers. There was a table installed in the sukkah where the family had meals and prayed. We also celebrated Chanukkah and Purim. All I remember is that on Chanukkah we had a chanukkiyah on the table and mama lit one candle every day.

We also celebrated Sabbath. We had two bronze candle stands where mama lit candles on Friday evening. She covered her face with her hands and prayed over the candles. Occasionally we celebrated Sabbath with grandmother and grandfather. Saturday was a day off since it was the Jewish kolkhoz that made Saturday a day off in Ozarintsy while the rest of the USSR had an official day off on Sunday. When they returned home, my father sat down to read religious books to us. He translated what he read into Yiddish for us. Mama had dinner ready, which she cooked the day before and left it in the oven to keep it warm. Adults were not to turn on the lights or stoke the stove on Saturday, while the children were allowed to do little chores. On Saturday we often visited uncle Borukh, my mother’s brother. His wife Riva made barley flour pancakes on Sabbath. We liked them a lot. The adults talked and we played with Borukh’s children. 

I went to the 7-year Jewish school in Ozarintsy where we studied in Yiddish. I had excellent marks in all subjects at school. I studied 3 years in Ozarintsy. In autumn 1931 my father was offered a job of director of the MTS [equipment maintenance yard – they repaired plant and equipment for kolkhozes in Vinnitsa region] canteen in Vendichany village near Ozarintsy. They promised him a higher salary and lodging.  My parents decided to move there. Jews constituted maximum 30% of the total population in Vendichany. There was a sugar factory in the village.

My father received a house for the family to lodge in it. It was a big stone house with a brick plastered fence around it. The house had three rooms and a kitchen. There was a stove in the kitchen. It also heated my parents’ bedroom. There were stoves in other rooms as well. My sister, my brother and I slept in one room, and the third room was a living room. There was a wood shed in the yard and apple trees near the house. There was also a well near the house.

Many women in Vendichany went to work. Mama began to make bed sheets at home. Her clients paid her with food products or money. We were rather wealthy at the time. In 1932 famine 10 occurred in Ukraine. Our family did not suffer from hunger, as after as I can remember. My father and his employees received rationed food and so did employees of the equipment yard. Also, residents of Vendichany could buy food products in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. The situation with food supplies was better in towns. At least, there were no victims of hunger in Vendichany.

One Jewish resident of Vendichany had a 2-storied house. Two rooms on the first floor served as a prayer house in Vendichany. There was a small window in the wall between the rooms for women to listen to the rabbi’s service. Men went to the prayer house on Sabbath and on holidays and women – only on holidays. Men wore kippahs or hats and women wore kerchiefs or beautiful silk scarves to go to the prayer house. All Jews celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays, but some younger people observed Jewish traditions no longer. We celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays like we did when living in Ozarintsy. My father brought matzah for Pesach from Mogilyov-Podolskiy. My parents fasted on Yom Kippur. We could not celebrate Sabbath following all rules, but mama lit candles on Friday evening, we prayed and had dinner. My father had to go to work on Saturday since the equipment yard was open and its employees needed to have meals. Mama didn’t sew on Saturday. There was no anti-Semitism in the village. We got along well with Ukrainians,. I remember that on Easter our Ukrainian neighbor brought us Easter bread and painted eggs and mama gave her family matzah on Pesach. People respected each other’s religion and traditions.

We spoke Yiddish at home as we were used to, and Ukrainian to our Ukrainian neighbors. I went to the 7-year Ukrainian school in Vendichany. My sister also went to this school later. There were quite a few Jewish students at school. There was no anti-Semitism – perhaps it did not exist before the war. I had Jewish and Ukrainian friends. We were taught to be internationalists at school. Nationality didn’t matter to me. We were told that we had one nationality – we were Soviet people.  I became a pioneer 11, and was very proud wearing my red neck tie. After finishing school my parents began to think about my further studies. They wanted me to enter a college which required a full secondary education. There was no place to continue education in Vendichany while there were higher secondary schools in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. My father went to Mogilyov-Podolskiy, found a job and our family moved to Mogilyov-Podolskiy.

My parents bought a small shabby house in the center of the town. During the German occupation this house happened to be within the boundaries of the ghetto. This was mainly a Jewish district. Mogilyov-Podolskiy was a Jewish town where over half of its population was Jewish. There were few synagogues, shochets and a Jewish school in the town. This was a lovely southern town buried in verdure. Jews resided in the central part of the town. They engaged in crafts and were tailors, shoemakers and barbers. Any Jews worked at supply agencies and owned stores. Mogilyov-Podolskiy stands on the Dnestr River. It lies between the Dnestr River on one side and the limestone hills covered with woods – on the other. There were cemeteries on the hills: a Jewish, a Catholic and a town cemetery. Bessarabia 12 lay on the opposite bank of the river. In 1940 this area was annexed to the USSR: Romania gave up to few ultimatums of the USSR, but before this happened Mogilyov-Podolskiy was a frontier town. Its streets were patrolled and there were special permits required to come into the town. Jews mostly resided in the central part of the town.  Their houses closely adjusted to one another. There were small backyards where only a little shed or a tiny vegetable garden could fit while in the suburbs residents had orchards, vegetable gardens and fields. They sold food products in the town. There was a loyal attitude to Jews in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. There was also Russian, Ukrainian, Moldavian and Greek population in the town. There were churches of all confessions, many of which were closed during the period of struggle against religion.   

We lived in a house made from air bricks – a mixture of cut straw and clay bricks dried in the sun - like most other houses in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. There were few stone houses owned by wealthier people. We certainly lived in better houses in Ozarintsy and Vendichany than the one we had in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. However, my parents believed it was more important for their children to get education than concentrate on certain discomforts. I went to the 8th form of a Russian school and my brother and sister later also went to this school. At first it was difficult for me to speak Russian. Many Ukrainian words slipped off my tongue. However, my Russian gradually improved. I studied well. I liked school and only had good and excellent marks for my studies. In the 8th form I joined the Komsomol 13. I studied a lot to get ready for the interview at the town Komsomol committee. We were to answer questions related to biographies of party and state leaders, political situation in the country and in the world, the history of Komsomol and the communist party of the USSR. I was excited, but I answered all questions well and obtained a Komsomol membership card and a badge. 

This was the period of persecution of ‘enemies of the people’ 14, arrests in 1937 and the following years 15. We had to remove our textbook pages with portraits of the state and party leaders that happened to be ‘enemies of the people’ and cross out their names. Like many other people I believed that those people were guilty.  We were raised to have no doubts in the infallibility of the party and Stalin. When newspapers wrote about denunciation of another enemy of the people, how could I have doubts … Nobody in our family suffered during the period of arrests. I remember that one of my father’s acquaintances or colleagues and my parents discussed this in the evening.  

In 1930 my mother’s father David Gass died. He was buried by the grandmother’s grave in the Jewish cemetery in Ozarintsy. The funeral was Jewish. Our parents went to the funeral to Ozarintsy, but left the children at home.  In the middle 1930s my father’s father Edl Katz died. My grandmother died one year afterward. They were buried near the gate to the Jewish cemetery in Ozarintsy.

I finished school in 1940. I wanted to study foreign languages and become a translator. My mother’s distant relative Yekaterina Spiegelman, who lived in Kharkov had graduated from the Philological Faculty of Kharkov University and worked in a publishing house. Her husband Vitaliy Cherviakov was Russian. He lectured at Kharkov University. My father went to Kharkov with me.   I passed exams and entered the Faculty of Translators of College of Foreign languages. There was no problem for Jews to enter higher educational institutions at that time. Admission was based on the marks and  origin Children of workers and peasants had more chances than children of non-manual workers.  I studied German and English. My father went back home and I stayed with Yekaterina and Vitaliy. They were atheists and living in their home I did not observe Jewish traditions. 

When I moved to Kharkov my parents and my younger brother and sister returned to Ozarintsy.  My father’s brothers Mehl and Moishe and my mother’s brother Borukh lived in Ozarintsy and my parents wanted to be closer to them. They moved into my father parents’ house. My sister and brother studied in the 7-year Ukrainian school in Ozarintsy. My father resumed his work as an accountant in the Jewish kolkhoz. 

During the war

I finished the first year in College. On 21 June 1941 I passed my last exam and the next morning I was to join my family in Ozarintsy. I had sent my parents a cable and was planning to do some shopping to buy presents on Sunday. On the morning of 22 June 1941 16 I woke up early in the morning and started packing. Yekaterina and her husband were not at home. I was about to leave, when Yekaterina ran into the apartment and turned on the radio. She had a scared expression in her eyes. The radio announced that the Hitler’s Germany attacked the USSR without announcement of the war violating the peace treaty. We froze with fear. Then Stalin spoke and I can still remember his words: ‘Our army will defeat the enemy, we will win the victory’.  Somehow this calmed me down instantly. We had been convinced that if somebody attacked the USSR, it would be a ‘blitzkrieg’ war and our army would beat the enemy on its territory. We sang songs: ‘If tomorrow is the war, if tomorrow we have to go to the war, if a dark force shall attack, our Soviet people will stand like one for our beloved Motherland…’, we watched movies where it took our army a week to beat the enemy’. We had no doubts about our victory. We were so sure about it that when evacuation of Kharkov began, we didn’t consider evacuation. I was convinced that only coward and those who did not believe in the strength of our army were running away. If Stalin said that we would win then it would be so. We listened to news from the front line and were concerned about our army retreating and incurring huge losses. Later there appeared rumors that fascists were exterminating Jews and taking them to ghettos. Yekaterina decided that we should leave Kharkov. We took the last train leaving Kharkov. The trip was fearful. Germans were close to Kharkov. German planes often attacked the train.  

We arrived at Timashevo village of Kuibyshev region and were accommodated in a local house. Al local residents sympathized with evacuated people and tried to help as much as they could. A metallurgical plant from the central part of Russia evacuated to Timashevo. Yekaterina, her husband and I went to work at the construction of this plant. I worked winch. In spring 1942 the plant started operation and I went to work at the shop manufacturing heads for cannon shells. We delivered rough blocks for cannon shell heads on carts and I removed wire edges from them with a file. We received workers’ cards 17, for bread. Of course, we had little food, but we could manage on it. I didn’t have information about my family till the very end of the war. I took an effort to find them through the evacuation search bureau in Buguruslan hoping that they managed to escape from Ozarintsy, but I got the same reply: ‘Not found in evacuation lists’. I listened to news on the radio. Our army kept retreating incurring big losses. Germans were advancing to Moscow and this was scary. I already understand about the war. I knew the war was different from Soviet movies and that it was going to take a while before it ended. There was a Komsomol committee at the plant. When we heard about admission to a course of radio operators, many employees applied to the course. I was one of them. There were over 100 attendants at the course. We had classes after work in the evening. We were trained to work with a telegraph unit. After finishing this course we were sent to military units near Oryol in Russia. We were to be radio operators. I became a telegraph operator at the regiment headquarters. We were accommodated in barracks and received military uniforms. We were privates. I stayed there for two months before the commandment issued an order releasing those who had studied in colleges before the war.

Almost all agricultural workers were recruited to the army. There was a demand in new personnel.  An Agricultural College opened at Kinel station near Timashevo. All former students were sent to study there regardless where they had studied before the war. There were no entrance exams. All we had to submit was a request. I became a student of the Faculty of selection and seed farming specializing in phytopathology, plant diseases. We were accommodated in a former school adjusted to make a dormitory. I didn’t have any clothes, but the uniform fufaika jacket, skirt and boots that I received in the army. Nobody cared about such things them. We received bread cards and had one meal per day at the college canteen. I shared my room with 5 other girls from various places of various nationalities. We shared everything we had: clothes, food and books. In the evening we talked about our prewar life, made plans for the future peaceful life.

In March 1943 I heard on the radio that the Soviet army liberated Vinnitsa region from fascists.  I wrote to Ozarintsy and mama’s sister from Luchentsy. There was no reply from them, but I received a letter from our Ukrainian neighbor. She wrote about the ghetto in Ozarintsy and that all inmates of the ghetto were killed in late August 1942. She did not say a word about my family, but I understood that my mother, father, sister and brother shared the fate of the other inmates of the ghetto. This was horrific news. I lost my hope to see my family again: I was alone in this world. I did not care any longer: I didn’t eat, didn’t attend classes, read or talk to friends. I stayed in bed crying. My friends helped me to recover and I began to attend classes. 

On 9 May 1945 the war was over. This was a happy day. People greeted each other and shared the joy that the war was over. There was grief about those who never lived to see this day. I thought about my dear ones. There was no place for me to go. Yekaterina and her husband went back to Kharkov. I decided to stay in college in Kinel. In June 1945 I passed my summer exams successfully and became a 4th-year student. I also finished the 4th year in Kinel and then the college moved to Kharkov. I studied my last year in Kharkov. I lived in the dormitory. Yekaterina and her husband supported me and gave me money. I corresponded with my school friend from Mogilyov-Podolskiy. She wrote me once that my mother, sister and brother were in the town. She gave me their address and I wrote them, though I could not believe they were alive. The day, when I got their response was the happiest day in my life. I couldn’t wait till I passed my graduate exams and could go to my family. After finishing the college I went to Mogilyov-Podolskiy. My family knew that I was arriving and were waiting for me. This was a happy family reunion. We kept talking – we hadn’t seen each other for so long. They told me that German troops occupied Ozarintsy on the first days of the war, fenced the Jewish district and made a ghetto of it. Later Germans left leaving the ghetto in the command of Romanian troops. Endless numbers of Jews from Moldova and Bessarabia began to arrive at the ghetto. They were accommodated in local houses. There were 6 other families besides my parents in the house of my father’s parents. Moldovan Jews could only speak Yiddish. Inmates of the ghetto were not provided any food and had to find it themselves. Risking their lives they left the ghetto earn or buy some food for their families. Mama and my younger brother Boris went to Vendichany to buy sugar that they were selling in glasses in the ghetto to earn some money to buy corn flour, potatoes and salt. Once German guards chased after them. Mama and my brother managed to hide away and the Germans passed by without discovering them.  In spring 1942 the ghetto was struck by a horrible epidemic of typhus. All members of my family had it, but they survived, fortunately. After having the typhus Boris fell ill with the Botkin’s disease. He was taken to the village hospital. He recovered, but he had liver problems for the rest of his life. My father older brother Moishe’s wife and daughter and my mother brother Borukh’s wife died from typhus.

After the war

In summer 1942 Germans lined up all men over 15 years of age, took them to the field where they had a pt dug out and shot them all. Many of them were wounded, but they buried them alive.  Ukrainian villagers said the earth stirred for a while, as f people were trying to get out of there. My mother’s brother Borukh, the forester and my father’s older Moishe Katz perished in this hooting.  My father survived. He was wounded in his chest. When the Romanian and German guards moved farther away along the line shooting at the people he crawled away to the nearby corn field. When everything was over few people from Ozarintsy came to the shooting spot looking for survivors. My father called them and they took them back home in the ghetto. My father was bleeding and needed medical assistance. Those same people brought a doctor from the village, but he could not help my father: the bullet stuck too close to his heart. My father bled to death in his presence. The Romanian guards of the ghetto allowed to bury my father in the Jewish cemetery in Ozarintsy, but no Jewish ritual was allowed. We installed the gravestones on my father’s grave and on his parents’ graves after the war. Every year on the anniversary of his death we came to his grave. My brother recited Kaddish for my father, grandmother and grandfather. There were more mass shootings afterward: there were raids in the ghetto – the captives were taken to the suburb of the village and killed. In March 1943 the Soviet army liberated Ozarintsy. Many Ukrainians were helping Jews in the ghetto even risking their lives. There are many Righteous men in Ozarintsy. Many people owe their lives to them. There are no more Jews left in Ozarintsy, though. The survivors could stay in the place associated with such terrible memories no longer, but we all come to Ozarintsy on the anniversary of the mass shooting to go to the cemetery. The rabbi recites a prayer and relatives of the deceased recite the Kaddish after their dear ones.  

Mama stayed in the village with the children for some time. In spring 1945 they moved to Mogilyov-Podolskiy. My sister and brother finished the 10-year Ukrainian general education school in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. My sister went to work as a secretary in the music school. Lubov met her future husband Ilia Lozover in Ozarintsy. His family lived nearby. Ilia is few years older than my sister. He turned 18 at the beginning of the war and was regimented to the army. He was severely wounded and demobilized as an invalid of the war in autumn 1944. He returned home and entered the extramural accounting department of Vinnitsa Financial and Economic College. Ilia and my sister got married in Mogilyov-Podolskiy in 1947. They had a traditional Jewish wedding with a chuppah. The rabbi from the synagogue of Mogilyov-Podolskiy conducted the wedding ceremony. Ilia went to work as chief accountant of Mogilyov-Podolskiy district consumer society. In 1948  their son Boris and in 1960 their daughter Svetlana were born. 

My brother Boris finished school with all excellent marks and entered Kiev Financial and Economic College. He lived in the dormitory and spent vacations in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. Boris finished the college with honors and could choose a location for his job assignment. He decided for Mogilyov-Podolskiy. He was offered a job of an accountant at the agricultural machine building plant named after Kirov. Soon he was promoted to chief accountant of the plant. My brother was a convinced communist and joined the party at the plant. He married Regina Samoilova, a Jewish girl from Vinnitsa, in the late 1950s. He met her in Kiev. Regina studied in Kiev Medical College. She followed her husband to Mogilyov-Podolskiy, where she was a cardiologist in the local hospital. They had a secular wedding.  Their son Viacheslav was born in 1963. My brother died young, when he was a little over 40. His liver problems that he had after the Botkin disease that he had in the ghetto resulted in the cirrhosis. The plant management arranged for my brother to go to the best clinic in Moscow, but there was nothing the doctors could do to help my brother.  Boris died in 1974. The cemetery is on a hill in Mogilyov-Podolskiy and workers of the plant carried my brother’s casket on their shoulders taking turns the whole way up the hill. Everybody loved him. The funeral was secular. Regina never remarried. She moved to Perm town in Russia where she had relatives. She worked and raised her son. Viacheslav finished the Faculty of Economy and Law of Perm University. He works as senior credit inspector in a bank. Regina is chief of the cardiology department of the hospital for invalids of the war.

My mother observed Jewish traditions after the war. My sister, y brother or I did not observe traditions at our homes, but we celebrated Jewish holidays with mama and occasionally got together to celebrate Sabbath on Friday evening.

When I returned to Mogilyov-Podolskiy I went to teach at the agricultural courses.  I worked there for a year. I got along well with my colleagues and students. I faced no anti-Semitism. I got married in 1949. Our neighbor had a relative in Chernovtsy, regional town of Bukovina [650 km from Kiev] who was single. She told me about him. When he visited her, she introduced him to me. Somehow the wedding arrangements were expedited and I didn’t even have time to learn more about my husband. Later I understood why his family was in such hurry. I don’t want to talk about this period of my life. I don’t even want to pronounce the name of my first husband. He turned out to be mentally retarded, but nobody ever mentioned this to me before the wedding. We had a short civil ceremony in the registry office, a small dinner party for the closest relatives in the evening and left for Chernovtsy.  Bukovina was annexed to the USSR in 1940, and Chernovtsy seemed a real European town to me. It was a very cozy and clean town with wide streets. Chernovtsy was a Jewish town: before the war the Jewish population constituted about 60% of the total population. There were fewer left after the war: some perished and the others moved to Romania and Palestine. However, many Jews stayed: they spoke Yiddish in the streets, synagogues operated and there was a Jewish Theater. I went to all performances. I liked the surrounding of reserved, polite and well-dressed people. Jews often went to the theater and all performances were sold out.  There were also non-Jewish theater goers, though all performances were in Yiddish, of course, but non-Jews could understand and even speak Yiddish well. I went to work as an agronomist to the kolkhoz 18 in Novoselitsy village near Chernovtsy.  Commuted to work by bus. My husband and I lived several years together being absolute strangers to one another. I divorced him and the management of the kolkhoz submitted a solicitation to the executive committee 19 for providing lodging to me. I received a small room in a shared apartment 20. I was happy to have a place to live.

I think anti-Semitism developed after the period of struggle against cosmopolitans 21, and the ‘doctors’ plot’ 22. When the period of struggle against cosmopolitans began I did not give much thought to what was going on. I believed that those people were guilty like I believed everything the communist party was doing and never allowed one doubt about them. At that time the Jewish theater and school were closed. When in January 1953 the period of the ‘doctors’ plot’ began and the first article was published indicating the names of the doctors who wanted to poison Stalin, my first thought was that this was nonsense, but many people took it very seriously. People refused to go to Jewish doctors and later they began to say that Jews could not be trusted anyway. Anti-Semitism was growing stronger. Jews were abused in the streets just for being Jews, but this was done by newcomers from the USSR. I never tied what was happening to the name of Stalin. I never thought he could initiate it. There were talks about deportation of Jews to Siberia or the Far East. At that time I thought this to be an evil fib of somebody, but later I understood that Stalin’s death prevented this from happening. There was nothing monster could not do! When Stalin died on 5 March 1953 we all cried. Everybody loved him and could not imagine life without Stalin. When at the 20th Congress of the party 23 Khrushchev 24 spoke about Stalin’s crimes, I was horrified, but I believed what Khrushchev said at once. I knew about the tragic fate of Stalin’s son Yakov Djugashvili and I did not doubt that a man, who could do this to his own son [During the war Yakov Djugashvili, a private of the soviet army, was captured and Germans offered to exchange him for a German general. Stalin said to this: ‘we do not exchange privates for generals’. His son perished in captivity], could exterminate people who were smarter and better than he. Stalin killed his most honest and devoted comrades, dedicated communists like Trotskiy 25, Kamenev 26, Zinoviev 27 and many others. His goal was ultimate power and he walked toward it over dead bodies of those who opposed him. He also exterminated common people far from politics or struggle for power. I understood how crafty and cruel Stalin was. However, the crash of my belief in Stalin did not alter my belief in Lenin 28. I still believe Lenin to be a great personality and admire him.

I worked in Novoselitsy until 1959. Then I got an offer of the position of a scientific employee in the All-Union scientific research institute of potato farming, its affiliate in Chernovtsy, where I worked in the department of potato farming till 1983. The institute had its experimental fields where I spent much time. Farming is hard work, but I liked my job. I didn’t face any anti-Semitism. I got along well with my colleagues. We were like a family. We celebrated Soviet holidays and birthdays together. My colleagues were my friends and my family. I always spent my vacations in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. I stayed with my mother and saw my brother, sister and school friends every day.  

In 1976 my mother fell severely ill. My brother’s death struck her hard and her heart condition grew worse. My sister and her family looked after her. My mother died in 1977. I came to see her in Mogilyov-Podolskiy before she died. She was buried beside my brother’s grave in the Jewish cemetery in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. Before she died mama asked us to bury her according to the Jewish tradition and we fulfilled her will. Older Jews, who knew all rules made all necessary arrangements. There was a rabbi from the prayer house at the funeral. 

In the 1970s  numbers of Jews began to move to Israel. Many of my acquaintances from Mogilyov-Podolskiy and Chernovtsy went there. I sympathized with those people. Every person must have the right to make his own choices. Of course, from the official point of view they were traitors, but common people thought different wishing them happiness and luck in their new life.  My mother’s sister Haya, her husband and their three daughters moved there. Haya and her husband have passed away, but their daughters and their families live in Israel. My colleague and friend moved to Israel. We corresponded before she left and we still correspond. Considering my health condition I am not going to move to Israel. My doctors said I should not change the climate. I would move there if it were not for this circumstance. I wish peace and calm came to Israel, this little beautiful country surrounded by enemies. 

I met my second husband Lev Gershenzon, his Jewish name is Leib, when I was on vacation in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. He was a teacher of chemistry at an evening school. Lev was born in 1914 in Shargorod town of Vinnitsa region [about 350 km from Kiev]. Shortly after Lev was born – before the revolution - his father Abram Gershenzon moved to USA. He didn’t have any contacts with his family. Lev was the youngest of all children. He had two older brothers: Moisey and Aron.  Lev’s mother died from typhus in 1918. Their relatives sent Moisey to a children’s home. Aron was raised in his uncle’s family and Lev was raised by his grandmother. Lev finished 8 forms of the 8-year Jewish general education school in Shargorod and went to Vinnintsa to continue his studies. He worked as a loader at the railway station during a day and in the evening he attended a rabfak school. He finished the rabfak with honors and was sent to the Chemical Faculty of Odessa University. He lived in the dormitory. To earn his living he unloaded railcars at night. Lev finished his college with honors and got a job assignment 29 to work as a teacher of chemistry and biology in the Jewish general education school in Chernivtsy Vinnitsa region [about 300 km from Kiev] where he married a local Jewish girl. In 1938 their daughter Sophia was born. My husband’s older brother Moisey lived in Shargorod where he worked as an electrician. He was married and had two children. Aron wanted to become a pilot. After finishing school he entered Kiev pilots’ school. When the war began, my husband’s brothers went to the front. Moisey was wounded in 1944. He was taken to a rear hospital. When he recovered he returned to the front line forces. He was in Czechoslovakia, when the war ended. When he returned he was a severely ill man. He never recovered completely from his wound. He died in 1946. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Shargorod. Aron was a military pilot. In 1943 he perished fulfilling his combat duty.

Lev and his family stayed in Chernivtsy. Soon after Chernivtsy was occupied Germans gathered all Jewish and Ukrainian communists, took them out of the village and ordered them to dig pits. When the pits were ready they buried people alive, left one young guard to watch the area and left. The villagers brought this guard gold and whatever valuables they managed to get to allow them to rescue any survivors. Some of those who were nearer to the surface, including Lev, survived. He could stay no longer in Chernivtsy for the fear of being reported to Germans and he left the village at night. Lev knew about the ghetto in Mogilyov-Podolskiy and thought he might go there to get lost among the people who did not know him. Some time later somebody reported on him that he was a communists. He was taken to interrogations where he was terribly beaten. It was fortunate for him that those were Romanians guarding the ghetto for Germans would have killed him for sure.  He was taken to hospital as if to get treatment after these beatings, but actually there were experiments conducted on its patients. It became known recently. My husband receives monthly compensation nowadays. The Soviet army liberated the ghetto in March 1943. Lev returned to Chernivtsy. His wife and daughter were in Chernivtsy and managed to survive. Lev went back to his work. The Jewish school of Chernivtsy was closed after the war in 1945. Lev and his family moved to Mogilyov-Podolskiy, where he went to work as a teacher of chemistry and biology in a Ukrainian general education and evening schools. Lev was highly valued at work. In 1947 his son Mikhail was born in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. In the late 1950s doctors discovered that his wife had cancer. She had a surgery, but it didn’t help. She died in 1960. His daughter entered the Faculty of physics and Mathematic of Vinnitsa University. Lev was raising his son. After finishing school Mikhail entered the Krasnodar Medical College in Russia. It was hard for Jews to enter colleges in Ukraine at that time, when anti-Semitism was growing stronger. When I met Lev, he lived alone. After finishing the Medical College his daughter got married. She and her husband moved to Balashikha town near Moscow. She worked as a doctor in a hospital and her husband was an engineer at a construction site. His son got married after finishing his college and stayed to live in Krasnodar.

I returned to Chernovtsy. Lev and I corresponded. When I came to Mogilyov on another vacation we got married. We were no young any more and we didn’t have a wedding party. We registered our marriage and had a small dinner in the evening. Our guests were my sister and he husband and my husband’s few friends.  I exchanged my room in Chernovtsy for lodging in Mogilyov-Podolskiy, and moved there in 1983. In Mogilyov-Podolskiy I went to work as a lab assistant at the quality assurance laboratory of the agricultural machine building plant and from there I retired in 1993. We didn’t celebrated Jewish holidays. We celebrated Soviet holidays at home: 1 May, 7 November 30 Soviet army Day 31, Victory Day 32, and New Year. We had guests at home and visited friends. My husband’s friends were his colleagues from school. His former students who remembered their teacher came to see him. Lev worked at school till 2002. He had turned over his retirement age, but he did not want to quit his job. In 2002 a car hit my husband. He had a craniocerebral trauma and he could work no longer. My sister and her family moved to USA in the early 1990s. They live in New York.  My sister and her husband are pensioners. Her son and daughter have their own families. They are doing very well. My sister sends me money and calls me. I am glad that she is well, but I would lie to have a close person nearby. My husband or I have no relatives in Mogilyov-Podolskiy.

At the beginning I felt indifferent about the perestroika 33, in the late 1980s initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev 34 Later, when enterprises were closing up and people started having financial problems, this indifference grew into aversion of what was going on. Perhaps, perestroika resulted in something good for some people, but we, older people, see no good in it. I still feel sorry about the breakup of the USSR that perestroika resulted in. I don’t think they had to destroy what the revolution created. It was a great and powerful state that cared about its citizens, while now we have a number of ‘independent’ states ruled by poverty and confusion. Common people want to be sure of tomorrow and need free medicine and education. There was no unemployment during the socialist period, but now, it seems, there are more unemployed than working people. Even those who have jobs have no stability. I don’t think this can last long. I think we should unite and restore the USSR. And I think this will happen in the near future.

The only positive thing in independent Ukraine seems to be the reviving Jewish life. A synagogue and a Sunday Jewish school for children opened in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. When Hesed 35 and the Jewish community started their activities, our life started improving. Hesed and the Jewish community help us to survive. Hesed provides food packages and the necessary medications. There are visiting nurses helping older people about the house. This is a great support and I don’t know how we could live without it. There are many Jewish newspapers and magazines issues. I read many of them and learn many interesting things from them. I used to take part in community life. There were good concerts of Jewish music and dances. People got together to celebrate Sabbath and Jewish holidays. Presently I cannot leave my husband for a long time and I cannot attend those events, but we can always have the care and attention we need. 

Glossary

Yevgenia Kozak
Bershad
Ukraine
Interviewer: Zhanna Litinskaya
Date of interview: June 2004

Yevgenia, a thin, absolutely gray, poorly dressed woman, with big and sad eyes, meets me sitting in her bed. She recently had an injury – she had a hip fracture and only recently began to get out of her bed slowly. Yevgenia’s apartment has two rooms full of light in her apartment and a kitchen. Her apartment is very poorly furnished: an old bed, dented crockery, but she keeps her apartment very clean. The furniture is plain and old: there are only the most necessary pieces of it.  Here is an old black-and-white TV by the window in Yevgenia’s room. In this room there is a table and a side board with medications and a meal delivered by Hesed on it. There are two beds and a chandelier in another room. Yevgenia gets a little embarrassed saying that she’s prepared this room for her sons in case they want to visit her. During our conversation Yevgenia stops her story crying and complaining of her life full of hardships and her loneliness. I try to comfort her as much as I can. At the end of the interview Yevgenia sings beautiful Jewish songs that she knows since her childhood: she does it on her own initiative. When I say ‘good-bye’ Yevgenia asks me to remember her and call every now and then. I leave her house feeling sad.

My family backgrownd

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Glossary

My family backgrownd

My maternal and paternal ancestors came from Bershad, a Jewish town in Vinnitsa province. Bershad was a bigger Jewish town: its population in the early 1920s was over 6 thousand Jews. Jews lived in small houses closely adjusting to one another in the central part of the town: there was no place for gardens available. There were cobblestone streets with cunettes on both sides of streets and bridges over them to each house. In spring they were filled with rain water and melting snow flowing into the Dohna River surrounding the town on three sides. Jewish men were craftsmen: tailors, shoemakers, potters, glass cutters. They earned their living to the best they could.  They spoke Yiddish (and so did we in the family), but they all knew Ukrainian, as well as Ukrainians spoke Yiddish. There was Pyatkovka village across the river where Ukrainians lived, and there was also a ‘katsap’ street in the town. Katsap was a jargon word for Russians. Residents of the town got along well and had good neighborly relationships.  Jews attended a beautiful synagogue near the market in the center of the town.  There were several smaller synagogues in the town. Ukrainians and Russians went to a big church over the river.

My grandparents died before I was born. All I know is that they were born to big Jewish families in Bershad, traditionally religious and observing all traditions. I believe my both grandfathers were raised Jewish: they studied in the cheder, but this was all education they got.  My maternal grandfather Shloime-Yoina Mitzel, born in 1870, was a high-skilled cabinet maker. Mama told me my grandfather made not only solid and usable, but also beautiful furniture. My grandmother Etl Mitzel (I don’t know her maiden name), my mama’s mother, studied midwife’s vocation and became a good midwife. Many babies in Bershad entered this world through her kind hands. She taught young mothers to bathe and swaddle their babies. She handled the navel string and taught mothers to take care of their babies. Granny Etl was always busy with either her midwife’s business or having to look after someone’s baby – it’s amazing how she managed to raise her own eight children: four sons and four daughters. I remember the names of my aunts and uncles, but not the years of their birth. My mother, born in 1895, was the oldest. Then came the sons: Sina, Motl, Abram and Haim, and after them three daughters: Golda, Mania and Riva. 

The boys studied in the cheder. Grandpa Shloime taught them cabinet making. His shop was one of three rooms in the house. The house was very much like other houses in Bershad: three rooms and a kitchen with a big Russian stove 1. Grandmother Etl baked bread and Saturday challit in this stove, and also kept Saturday dinners in it. My grandparents’ family strictly observed traditions, followed kashrut and honored Saturday. My grandfather was religious and always wore a kippah or a hat.  Every morning he went to the synagogue in the center of the town and started work after he came back from the synagogue. He never worked on Saturday or Jewish holidays. Grandfather read religious books aloud and the family took a rest listening to him. Grandpa died of some disease in 1924. He was buried according to the Jewish traditions in the Jewish cemetery in Bershad. 

Mama’s brothers worked independently before and during the NEP 2. After the NEP they worked for a furniture shop in Bershad. Fortunately, our family escaped accusations of being declared to be kulaks 3, like it happened to many wealthier families – grandfather Shloime’s family was rather poor. I can’t remember details of my relatives’ life. I know that my uncles had Jewish wives and children. Sina had three sons: Dod, Naum and Moishe. Motl had a daughter and a son, whose names I can’t remember. They were in evacuation during the Great Patriotic War 4 and returned to  Bershad after the war. My aunts and uncles have passed away, but I don’t know the dates. Uncle Haim lived the longest life. He died in Bershad in 1978. After he died his wife Raya moved to her sister in Israel. They had no children. 

Mama’s sisters Mania and Golda, born in the early 1900s, had no education. They were raised to be good housewives and raise children. They married Jewish men from Odessa in the 1920s through matchmakers and moved to Odessa 5. Mania’s husband Aron Biller was a tailor. He arranged for his cousin brother Isaac Breiman, also a tailor, to meet Golda, the youngest sister, and they also moved to Odessa. Mania had two children: son Semyon (the first boys in our family were traditionally named after grandfather Shloime, with the corresponding Russian name Semyon 6, and  daughter Lusia. Golda had two sons: the older one’s name was Semyon, but I can’t remember the name of her younger son. Riva married Rafail Podolskiy, an engineer at the distillery in Bershad. He was a communist. Riva, the youngest in the family, was the only one to get fond of revolutionary ideas. She was an active Komsomol member 7. During the Great Patriotic War fascists shot Riva in Bershad for being a messenger of a partisan unit.  Her daughter Lusia and son Semyon were raised in our family. Lusia lives in Israel now. The husbands of my aunts perished at the front during the Great Patriotic War. Golda died in  1965, Mania in 1974 in Odessa. All my mother’s sisters but Riva, observed Jewish traditions throughout their life.

Mama didn’t have any education – this was quite customary for Jewish families. She helped grandmother Etl about the house since her early age, as grandmother Etl had to travel even to the neighboring villages: people believed her to be better than any educated assistant doctor. Mama learned to cook traditional food: gefilte fish, thick broth with delicious kneydlakh, sweet and sour stew and chalet for Saturday. She also cooked Saturday dinners and was good at preparing the house for a holiday.  

This was a small tow where people knew each other well. Therefore, mama didn’t give much thought to frequent visits of her cousin brother on grandmother Etl’s side Abram Shafer at first.  She didn’t think more than of a relative of him and it was a great surprise for her, when he proposed to her. However, at that time marriages of cousins were quite common in Jewish families. 

Abram’s mother Surah Shafer was grandmother Etl’s sister. She was a few years younger than Etl.  I don’t have any information about Etl’s other brothers or sisters. Abram’s father Gershko Shafer, born in Bershad in the 1860s, was a leather tanner. He worked very hard steeping, handling and drying leather, but he earned well, and his family was better off than the family of my grandfather Shloime-Yoina Mitzel.

Besides Abram, there were two other sons and a daughter in the family. David, the oldest son, his wife and children, whose names I don’t remember, lived in Teplik village near Bershad. They didn’t evacuate in 1941 and perished. My father’s younger brother Mendel perished at the front during the Great Patriotic War. His wife Etl and daughters Sonia and Luba lived some place in Donetsk region after the war. Etl died in the early 1980s. I have no contacts with her daughters. My father’s sister Sima, who was about 12 years younger than my father, her husband and two daughters lived in Odessa. They didn’t evacuated during the war and were shot by fascists. 

My father Abram Shafer was born in 1888. He finished cheder and became a religious Jew. His father Gershko was even more religious than grandfather Shloime. He went to the synagogue every day, read the Torah and Talmud and raised his sons Jewish. David, the oldest son followed into his father’s steps and became a tanner. My father learned to make long and warm leather coats that were of great demand with Ukrainians. Coat craft was popular in Bershad: coats were also sold to neighboring villages. My father was not recruited to the army during WWI due to his hernia.  By the time he proposed to my mother he was a skilled coat maker and could support his family.

When a shadkhan came to Etl and Shloime’s house suggesting that they gave consent to her daughter’s marriage with Abram, they were happy to give it. Besides, the fiancé offered quite a lot of money for the girl and his father Gershko promised to cover all wedding expenses and buy the newlyweds a house. Since my mother’s was a poor family they couldn’t afford to give her any dowry.  Mama didn’t want to marry Abram. She liked a poor guy from the village, a grandfather’s Shloime’s apprentice, but she had to obey. Jewish families did not appreciate disobedience to parents.  

My parents got married in 1919 during the outburst of the Civil War 8, the time of devastation, hunger and diseases, when the power switched from one group to another in the town, and each time there was a pogrom 9. However, they had a traditional Jewish wedding. There was a chuppah in the most beautiful synagogue in Bershad, and musicians played at the wedding. Grandfather Gershko Shafer bought them a house where they moved in after the wedding, only grandfather Gershko and grandmother Surah died from typhus shortly after the wedding. Mama got pregnant. During pogroms mother and father took hiding in grandfather Shloime’s cellar. Mama said they always ran to her parents’ home: she believed her father could protect her from pogrom makers. Once, during a pogrom mama put on a wet shawl on her head and lied down and father put a ‘typhus’ sign on the door, and pogrom makers didn’t dare to enter the house.

Mama gave birth to a boy: the baby didn’t have arms and died soon. The girl, who was born next, died a few months after she was born. Then there was a boy, born in 1920: he only lived a few years. I was born on 29 December 1922. One day in 1924 mama and the children stayed overnight in grandfather Shloime’s house, when his house set on fire. Grandfather rescued grandmother Etl, mama and the children from the burning house, and fell ill. A few days later he died of pneumonia. My older brother also died from tuberculosis in that same year -1924.

Growing up

I was two years old, when this happened, and I know about it from what mama told me. I was named Sheindl at birth, but at home I was addressed  Zhenia, a more common name. When obtaining my passport at the age of 16, I had the full name of Zhenia – Yevgenia put down in my passport. I was a healthy child. Mama doted on me having lost three babies before. In 1926 my brother named Shloime after grandfather was born. In 1931 my younger sister Lubov (her Jewish name was Leiba) was born.

I remember our house in Oktiabrskaya Street adjusting to or neighbor’s house. It was small and there was no space for a garden. We bought meat, vegetables and dairies at the market. It was open every day, and on Sundays it even spread to the central street. Vendors came from neighboring villages to sell their products and there was a variety of colors in the street: red tomatoes, greeneries, orange pumpkins and striped water melons pleasing the sight. My father and I went shopping that I enjoyed very much. He knew many vendors and they greeted Shloime-the-coat-maker with hugs and kisses. Some of them stayed overnight in our house and my father used to stay in their homes, when traveling to take orders. There were little Jewish shops at the market selling everyday goods: tools, buckets, plain crockery and fabrics. However, this lasted till the end of NEP only. Though I was only about 6 years old, I remember how our neighbors were dispossessed. They were taken to the railway station, including old people and children. Later it turned out that they were all sent to the virgin lands of the Kherson steppes. Some of them returned to Bershad several years later and others disappeared for good.  I remember that men from kulak families were sent to the construction of the Dnieper power plant, the biggest in the USSR. When they returned, they told us that the conditions on this ‘socialist construction site’ were unbearable.

Our family was poor. My father earned to support the family and my mother was a housewife. We were not miserably poor, though. Mama always managed to make a special dinner on Saturday. We rarely had meat or fish, but she made delicious puddings, strudels with jam and challot.  Before Pesach and other holidays we bought poultry in advance and kept them in a shed in the backyard. My father took them to the shochet and we always had all traditional food on holidays. I wouldn’t say my family was that religious. My father or mother didn’t have their heads covered.  My father didn’t cover his head to sit at the table.  Perhaps, this was the sign of time. However, my father put on a kippah and my mother had a kerchief on to go to the synagogue every Saturday. I liked going to the synagogue with my parents. I liked the ceremonious mood embracing the town on Saturday: all Jews and their children dressed up (we also had fancy outfits) to go to the synagogue. I usually carried my father’s book of prayers - he was not supposed to do even this kind of work on Saturday. Mama and I went upstairs where women were supposed to do their praying, and my father stayed downstairs with other men. I continued going to the synagogue, when I became a pioneer 10, though pioneers were not allowed to attend it. I liked Jewish holidays even without knowing their history: I enjoyed the happy moments of my childhood, going out with the family and having delicious food. On Purim mama and grandma made delicious hamantashen filled with poppy seeds. I remember Sukkot  in autumn, when we had meals in the sukkah in the backyard, but my favorite holiday was Chanukkah, when we visited grandma, who gave us some money and we enjoyed nice doughnuts and potato pancakes. During Pesach my father didn’t conduct the seder – the family just sat at the table and enjoyed a special meal.  However, we had fancy silver kosher crockery that was kept in the attic. His crockery, the matzah that my father brought from the synagogue and traditional food – this was all that marked the Pesach in our house. Sometimes we visited grandmother Etl on holiday where we met with mama sisters Mania and Golda and their husbands and children who also visited grandma and arrived from Odessa. 

I studied in a Ukrainian school. I don’t know why my parents did not send me to the Jewish school in Bershad – probably because the Ukrainian school was quite near our home. There were many Jewish children in my school. My friends were mainly Jewish girls. Our teachers were Ukrainian, but they treated Jewish children well and did not discriminate between the children. I remember the famine in 1932-33 11. I can’t imagine how we survived: probably people were more sympathetic and supported each other then. I remember my father bringing some cereals and flour from his clients in villages. The situation was also hard in villages, but they at least had some vegetables gardens where they could grow something. Mama baked bread to sell it at the market and we only could have some leftovers. Villagers occasionally paid my father for his work with potatoes an other vegetables. We were given a bun and some soup at school. Fortunately our family survived while many other people died in Bershad.

I wasn’t quite fond of studying and had only satisfactory marks at school. Being the oldest child in the family I had many duties about the house. I helped my mother and looked after my dear little sister. In summer I went to the bank of the Dohna river to bather and lie in the sun with other children. My brother Shloime and little sister also went with me and I watched them there. I was proud of having to be responsible for them. In winter mama and I did our laundry in the river.  Sometimes I went to amateur concerts in the club in the central square of Bershad. I liked Soviet holidays. I went to parades with my school: we carried slogans, placards and flower garlands.  There were parties at school. We didn’t celebrate Soviet holidays at home, though.

In the late 1930s arrests began [Great Terror] 12, when party and Soviet officials began to disappear. Nobody in our family was arrested. We didn’t give much thought to what was happening. We believed that punishment was the right thing for the guilty ones. We also thought the situation in Western Europe and Germany in the early 1930s had little to do with us. From newspapers we knew about Hitler, who came to power, and about fascists, but neither newspapers nor radio mentioned anything about their attitude to Jews.  However, we watched the ‘Professor Mumlock’ 13 film that showed the prejudiced attitude of Hitler followers to Jews, but again nobody in Bershad gave much thought to it.

During the war

A few days before the Great Patriotic War began I finished the 8th form. Mama wanted to send me to my aunts in Odessa in summer – I was eager to see the sea, but this was not to be. On 22 June 1941 at noon our neighbors came to our home to listen to the radio – we bought it shortly before the war. Molotov 14 announced that the Great Patriotic War began. Mama started crying. Papa calmed her down saying that Germans were cultured people and were not going to hurt Jews.  At first everything stayed the same. My father’s shop began to make coats for the front. We were surprised they would need them: the radio kept saying that Germans were not going to be long in the country and that our army would chase them away soon, but the reality was different. In early July grandmother evacuated with her daughters Mania and Golda, whose husbands were at the front. We and aunt Riva and her 5-year old daughter Lusia and 2-year old son Semyon were in Bershad.  Her husband Rafael Podolskiy was at the front. On 22 July the first bombs fell on Bershad. They dropped bombs mainly to destroy the distillery, but one bomb hit a Jewish house and killed a woman. The next day mama, papa, my brother and sister and I left Bershad. Many Jews feared to leave their homes and thought that since Germans were quite civil during WWI, nothing bad was going to happen to them. This was what older people were telling the others. Grandmother Etl made my mother promise that we would follow them and evacuate before she left the town. There was no transport available and we left the town on foot. Riva and her children wanted to leave some days later.

My mother and father carried whatever little luggage we had: a backpack and a suitcase, my 13-year old brother carried a bag and so did I and my sister. It was hard to think of us as refugees – there were many others like us walking along the road and so were the troops of our dear Red Army retreating. I was struck at the sight of our soldiers: gloomy and silent. During air raids we took hiding in sunflower and corn fields. We also slept in the fields at night: the weather was still hot. We arrived at Novoukrainka, Kirovohrad region, 180 km from Kiev. We arrived at night soaked in the rain. A local Ukrainian family gave us shelter. We washed ourselves and had some food and slept in the house after a long time. The next day we took a train. We already knew that on 28 July our dear Bershad was occupied. We didn’t have any information about Riva.

The train was overcrowded. This was a train for cattle transportation. We had no food stocks left. We only had dried bread. When the train stopped, I fetched some boiling water in the kettle.  Occasionally we could get some soup or cooked cereals at stations, but this happened rarely.  During air raids the train stopped and we scattered around. Our trip took a month before we arrived in Ossetia in Northern Caucasus. The train stopped near Ordzhonikidze, Azerbaijan, and we were sent to a kolkhoz 15, in a village near Ordzhonikidze. We were given a warm welcome there. We were accommodated in a small room with a kitchen. A family from Kharkiv resided in the next-door room. Mama, my brother and I went to work in the field and my father went to work as a janitor in the kolkhoz granary. We received food products for work and in winter the kolkhoz provided wood for heating. The local residents gave us winter clothes and we managed through the winter.

In summer 1942 fascists approached the Northern Caucasus and we had to move on. The kolkhoz gave us a bull-driven wagon where we loaded our miserable belongings. We bid farewell to the locals and moved on walking behind the wagon. We reached Makhachkala [today capital of Dagestan republic within Russian Federation] and from there we crossed the Caspian Sea with thousands of other escapees. We arrived in Uzbekistan and were accommodated near Andijon. Shortly afterward aunt Mania found us. She lived with grandma and aunt Golda near Andijon. She wrote us and mama went to see grandma. This was the last time they saw each other. As for me, I didn’t see grandma Etl this time. She died shortly afterward. Mama told me she was buried in a common cemetery, but she was buried in cerements and with no coffin according to Jewish traditions.

Life was very hard. Mama and I went to work at the factory manufacturing cotton ropes. Mama and I were workers. Father also worked there as a janitor – he could not do hard physical work due to his hernia. My sister went to school. My brother Shloime (we addressed him Semyon and he adopted this name, when obtaining a passport) left and didn’t tell us where he was going.  He just ran away from home with a bag of dried bread and we didn’t hear from him for ten years. We received workers’ cards, but we didn’t get sufficient food and were starving. We lived in a little room in a clay house. Its roof leaked when it rained and we had to sleep in wet beds. Actually we slept on some grass on the floor. However, we didn’t complain. This was a common situation. I suffered from malaria terribly. I had attacks, felt cold, fever and couldn’t wait to leave Uzbekistan.  

In March 1944 we heard that Bershad was liberated and decided to go there immediately.  I wrote my friend in Bershad and she sent us a permit to come home. We didn’t even wait till our documents were processed. We paid a railroad man and caught a train to Ukraine. Our trip lasted long and we changed trains, but our hearts couldn’t wait till we got home. We arrived in Bershad in May 1944. Here we heard the horrible news: aunt Riva and her children left Bershad, but got in encirclement. She had to go back home and they stayed in the ghetto. Riva was a messenger for a partisan unit under command of Yasha Tahles, a Komsomol activist. Her home was their secret address. Fascists found out the truth and shot Riva in the central square of Bershad before everybody else. Fortunately Riva’s children Lusia and Semyon survived: the partisans managed to save them. Riva’s husband Rafael Podolskiy perished at the front. There were other people living in our house and we stayed in Riva’s house. Her children were with us. We lived together for a year. Life was very hard. Riva’s children were paid a pension for their father. Mama turned to the court to have our house back and it took her almost a year before she got one room where we moved in 1946. Riva’s relatives took her children. They also sold her house. Lusia went to live with her aunt Mania in Odessa. Aunt Mania treated her like her own daughter. Her son Semyon returned from the front, fell in love with his cousin sister and they got married a few years later. Riva’s son Semyon went to live with his father Rafael Podolskiy’s relatives.

After the war

The first postwar years were very hard. Father went around the neighboring villages fixing clothes, making coats and doing whatever job he could managed. People were poor and could only afford to alter or fix old clothes. He brought some food products from the village and this helped us to survive.  Mama baked bread and I sold it at the market. However hard life was, mama was happy to move back into our house. All of a sudden my brother arrived in 1952. My brother told us that he worked in mines in Donetsk region. He was grown up and independent. He was well-dressed and brought us gifts. My brother didn’t stay long. There was no job for him in the town. He went to Orenburg region in Russia. He married Galina, a Tatar girl. He just informed our parents after the wedding fearing that they might be against his marrying a non-Jewish girl. My parents felt hurt, but they didn’t show it. 

We faced anti-Semitism in those years. I cannot say there was much of it in Bershad  where the population was mainly Jewish. I never heard direct abuses, but Jews had problems with getting a job since there were Ukrainian officials holding the leading positions in the town. I couldn’t get a job anywhere, though I addressed all kinds of offices. Well, I actually had no education: whatever knowledge I got at school was lost during and after the war. I remember Stalin’s death in march 1953: my sister and parents were crying and there was a meeting in the central square of Bershad where all people cried.

However hard life was, we continued to observe Jewish traditions. My parents went to an old synagogue (the new one had been removed) but that one was all right. On Saturday father didn’t work and mama tried to cook something special: latkes, kugel, even there was nothing else, but flour that she had. Father always brought matzah from the synagogue on holidays, or sometimes we made it in the Russian stove. We fasted on Yom Kippur and I still keep fasting nowadays. On Chanukkah mama made buckwheat pancakes. My children also know this holiday – they always got a few coins for sweets on this day. 

I had to think about my personal life. My friends got married, but I didn’t even meet with anyone. Mama’s old acquaintance offered to introduce me to her distant relative. Next day he visited us and told us his story at tea. Meyer Kozak was born in Odessa in 1915. His ancestors came from Bessarabia 16, and Meyer knew Romanian since childhood. Before the war Meyer was a worker. During the war he was an interpreter for Romanians, who were Hitler’s allies. After the war he was sentenced to 10 years in Stalin’s camps of the Gulag 17, as a military criminal. He was kept in Magadan in the north. After he was released he moved to Bershad where he had distant relatives. Meyer swore on his honor that he was not a traitor and had never been involved in any action against Jews and that he just worked as an interpreter in the town office of Odessa to save his life. I believed him – I liked Meyer. Besides, if he had been guilty he redeemed his fault. We got married in 1953: we just signed under our names in the registry office. We didn’t even have rings.  

Meyer worked at the furniture factory and earned well. We lived with my parents: my mama and papa treated him very well. Life was getting better and I even thought that my fortune smiled at me, but it happened to be an illusion. On 11 February 1954 my son was born. We named him Alexey. Shortly afterward I got pregnant again. As for Meyer, he fell severely ill: this was an impact of 10 years of hard work in the north. When I was pregnant 5 months, Meyer died from tuberculosis in hospital in Odessa. I was struck with grief. Mama and I went to the funeral. My husband was buried in the hospital cemetery. On our way back my son got severely injured – his hand was squeezed by the door. He burst into tears and I finally started crying. Now I knew I alone had to raise our children. My second child was born in late 1955. I named him Mikhail after his father Meyer. 

My parents helped me to raise the children. In 1958 I went to the town committee to ask them to help me with employment. My boys were with me. They gave me a job of a janitor and then I became a worker in the dyeing shop where I worked till I retired. They helped me to make arrangements for my older son to go to a kindergarten. Mama looked after my younger son. My work was very hard: there was no heating and it was freezing in winter. There were also hazardous vapors from paints, but I was glad to have this job. In the morning taking a slice of bread – my lunch – I ran to work and returned home late in the evening. I worked overtime to earn more. In the evening I did the laundry and fed my kids trying to give them whatever little bit of motherly care.

In 1968 my mother fell ill. When dying she begged my pardon for her leaving me with my kids alone. My father fell ill with cancer then and was bedridden for five years. Several months before he died he had duodenal obstruction. I was alone to cope with all this. My brother lived in Orsk and had his own life. He could hardly make ends meet himself.  My sister Luba married shoemaker Moshkovich, a Jewish man from Odessa in the early 1950s. She lived with her husband and son in Khust in Subcarpathia. In 1974 my father died. My sister Luba died from cancer in Khust in 1981. She was buried in the town cemetery there. She was 50 years old. My parents and sister were buried in the Jewish cemetery following all Jewish traditions. My sister’s husband and their sons Semyon and Felix moved to Israel in the late 1980s.

This was a period of emigration, when many Jews were leaving Bershad for Israel, USA and Germany. I didn’t even consider emigration: I didn’t have time to even look around. My older son Alexey had all excellent marks at school. His teachers praised him at parents’ meetings at school and thanked me for raising them well and I listened proudly. After finishing the 8th form with all excellent marks – and I was sitting in the presidium, when he obtained his certificate, my son finished the Radio Electronics College in Lvov and served in the army. Then he met Yelena, a Jewish girl from Leningrad, married her and moved to Leningrad where her family lived. From the very beginning I didn’t quite get along with my daughter-in-law. She probably thought I was an uneducated provincial Jewish woman and didn’t pay much attention to me. She didn’t even want to send her son Maxim, born in 1989, to Bershad in summer.

My younger son Mikhail injured his eye, when he was a child, and didn’t go to the army for this reason. He became a shoemaker after finishing school. He married Bronia, a Jewish girl from Bershad and lived with her and their son Boris in Bershad. I retired in 1985. In the early 1990s my son started talking about emigration: he decided to move to USA with his family. They also included me in their documents for emigration. We went to Moscow where we were given the status of refugees, but when my daughter-in-law told me that we were going to live separately in the USA, I burst into crying and told my son I didn’t want to spend my old age alone and in a strange country. I refused to go with them and they moved without me. My son and his family live in Chicago. He is an electronic specialist at a plant. Before leaving he bought me a two-room apartment in Bershad – this is where I live now. My daughter-in-law was against it, but my son insisted on his idea, and I can finally enjoy living in a good house.

Three years ago – I think, in 2000 my younger son and his family moved to Germany. I didn’t go with them – I don’t want to listen to the German language and get used to life in a different country at my age. I want to live the rest of my life beside my own people speaking Yiddish and Ukrainian and I want to be buried in my hometown where I’ve lived my life. My son lives on welfare. He rarely writes me. Visiting him is out of the question – we don’t have money for this and I am afraid I might never see any of my family again in my life. 

Of course, I felt sad. In the early 1990s a Jewish community was established in our town, and it helped me to overcome my sadness and find myself in life. I attended Sabbath and participated in celebration of all Jewish holidays. We began to speak Yiddish and talk about traditions. I was involved in preparation to the events. I cooked gefilte fish for Sabbath and baked strudels like mama did it. Jewish women still consult me on recipes. I am not a religious person, but I try to celebrate major Jewish holidays like we always did in our family. I have had a hard life and have always been hard up. I’ve never been interested in politics. All I’ve thought about was how to manage from one payday to another and how to provide food for the family. Therefore, it’s hard for me to say, when life was harder – during the Soviet period or in the independent Ukraine. But I can say one thing for sure – and that is that I’m grateful to our country for giving an opportunity for religious communities to develop and restore Jewish traditions and religion. I am ill now – I have a severe fracture and cannot attend the community, but they do not leave me. Curator of Hesed, chairman of the community, often visits me. They deliver meals to me at home and buy medications. If it were not for my disease, I would think I have a better life than I’ve ever had before. I asked my sons to visit me to see each other before I die, but they either cannot afford or don’t want to come. My brother does not write me. I know he has two sons, whom I’ve never seen and cannot remember their names. He has grandchildren, too. I feel very distressed and lonesome. When I feel sad, I hum Jewish songs that my mama taught me. They are sad songs: I sing them and cry: about my bitter fortune, hard life and lonely old age.

GLOSSARY:

Frida Palanker
Chernovtsy
Ukraine
Ella Levitskaya
June 2002

My father Nusim (Naum) Veprinsky was born in Korostyshev, Zhytomir region, in 1895. My mother Polina Veprinskaya, nee Shapiro, was born in Odessa in 1899.  

My grandfather on my father’s side Meyer Veprinsky was born in Korostyshev in 1859. In 1889 he married my grandmother Doba, nee Sheyer, born in 1862. I have no information about my grandparents’ family or where my grandmother came from.  My grandfather was the youngest son in his family. He was living in his parents’ house. He was a tinsmith and my grandmother was a housewife. They had four children that survived. Three other children died in their infantry. I don’t know their names. I knew two brothers and the sister of my father.  The only daughter in my father’s family was Rahil, born in 1892, and she was the oldest child. My father Nusim was the second child, born in 1895. Yakov, Yankel, born in 1900, was the third child. Their youngest son Simon was born in 1904. 

Their family wasn’t wealthy. The boys studied in cheder and Rahil received education at home. They only spoke Yiddish in the family.

Their family was religious. They observed Jewish traditions. My grandparents went to the synagogue on Saturday, celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays. My grandmother followed kashruth. She always wore a shawl when going out.

Korostyshev was basically a Jewish town. Jews constituted the major part of the population. Basically, inhabitants of Korostyshev were handicraftsmen and farmers. All tailors and shoemakers in Korostyshev were Jews. Jews also kept small stores selling food products, clothing and shoes, etc.

There were also Ukrainians in Korostyshev. There were no national conflicts. Ukrainians and Jews got along well. Jews and Ukrainians communicated in Yiddish and Ukrainian. Almost all Ukrainians in Korostyshev knew Yiddish. There was a synagogue and a church in Korostyshev. 

From 1914 and until the end of the civil war gangs used to attack Korostyshev. There were no big pogroms, but the gangs were beating people and they even burnt one house once, although they allowed the tenants to leave it before they set it on fire. Probably the reason was that those were smaller gangs and their main goal was to get food.

My parents used to take my sisters and me to Korostyshev for summer vacations. I remember my grandmother and grandfather – both of them were short, thin, active and very nice. They were hard working and kind people. They wore plain clothes – Korostyshev was a small town and there was no reason to wear fancy clothes. My grandfather used to wear dark trousers with a belt, a light shirt and a sleeveless jacket and a kipah to cover his head. He had a small beard and a moustache. My grandmother used to wear a long dark skirt and a light cotton polka dotted or flowered shirt and a light shawl on her head. They loved to have their grandchildren visiting them. They were so very kind and hospitable. My grandmother always cooked something delicious for us. She cooked Jewish dishes: sweet and sour stewed meat, chicken broth, pancakes that she called “latkes” – this was everyday food. I can’t say what kind of dishes she cooked for Pesach, as we only visited Korostyshev in summer. 

My grandmother and grandfather spoke Russian and Yiddish to us. They knew Russian well, but it was easier for them to communicate in Yiddish. However, they spoke both Russian and Yiddish to us - they wanted us to know our mother tongue Yiddish and made us speak it at home, too. 

I remember their house. They lived in the very center of Korostyshev. They had a big house with few rooms. There was a cellar in the house where they had food storage. There was a kitchen garden and an orchard near the house. My grandmother kept a cow and chicken. I remember the hayloft over the shed and we loved to get into the smelling nicely hay. There was a well in the street close to the house from where they used to take water for the house.

They had a stove where my grandmother cooked food and made baked milk in ceramic pots. This milk had a very delicious goldish skin. There were other stoves to heat the house. In summer my grandmother used to purchase wood to last for the winter. They kept this wood in a shed in the yard. 

My grandfather and grandmother didn’t do any work on Saturday. An Ukrainian woman, their neighbor, came to milk the cow and feed the chicken. On Friday morning my grandmother cooked food for Saturday. On Friday night my grandmother lit candles and prayed. I loved to watch her at such moments. They didn’t force us to pray and I don’t remember any traditional songs or prayers in Yiddish, although I heard lots of them when I was a child.  

My grandmother took me with her to do shopping at the market. We bought kosher products from Jewish vendors at the market. If it was chicken or a goose, we used to take it to the shoihet. He had his shop at the market to comply with kosher food requirements. The farmers were selling their products: eggs, sour cream, cottage cheese and vegetables. Many of them had their customers and they brought food to their homes. 

The children of my grandparents’ sons Yasha and Simon also came to visit them. Zlata, the wife of Uncle Yasha, brought her daughter Raya and son Moisey. Simon lived in Zhytomir and his two sons also visited my grandparents.  We spent time together playing, going swimming in the Teterev river and to the forest. We played “hide and seek”, “diabolo” and skipping-rope. We used to hang hummocks in the wood and sleep in them in the afternoon heat. Korostyshev was in 100 km from Kiev and many people from Kiev used it as a country recreation spot to spend their summer vacation. Many families built small country houses in their yards to let them to the holiday-makers. It was another source of income for the locals.

Aunt Rahil and her husband and children lived in my grandparents’ house in Korostyshev. I can hardly remember her husband and don’t know what he was doing for a living. Rahil was a housewife. She was a very hospitable and nice and kind woman. She had many children, but I only remember two of them: her daughter Doba and her older son Lyova. Lyova wanted to leave a small town for the bigger world and left for the far East when he was 14 or 15. We didn’t hear from him for a long while. When the war began he came to Korostyshev. There were only distant relatives left in town by then. They let us now that Lyova was there and that he had a family in the Far East. Aunt Rahil, her husband and children were killed by Germans in 1941 along with all Jews in Korostyshev. My grandfather died in 1939 and my grandmother died in February 1941.

My mother Polina Veprinskaya was born in Odessa. Her father Haim Shapiro died in 1913. I have no information about him.  After he died my grandmother Sura Shapiro and her two children moved to Kiev. The only information about my grandmother that I have is that she was born in 1861. 

My mother had an older brother Ion, born in 1890. They called him Mutsele, the little one, in the family, because he was very short. In Kiev Ion became a jeweler apprentice and became a skilled jeweler. He had a store in Podol during NEP. The authorities expropriated this store around 1925. He worked at the state jeweler store for some time. He was called several times to the NKVD office. They demanded that he gave away all his gold. This made Ion lose his love to the jeweler’s art. He became an apprentice of the tuner of musical instruments and worked as an engineer at the factory of musical instruments. Ion was married. His wife’s name was Revekka. They were very much in love with one another. From what I know they were not away from one another for one single day. They had four children. Their older son Haim fell ill with flu and died when he was 20. Revekka suffered so much from this loss. They had two sons and a daughter left. His daughter Maria was very beautiful and talented. She lived a long and happy life. Maria finished Acting Department at the Kiev Theatrical Institute. Before the war she was an actress of the Russian Drama Theater in Kiev. After the war Maria was a producer at the amateur theater. Later she graduated from the Department of Journalism at Kiev University and worked as a journalist for a newspaper. She was married to Ostromogilsky, a Jew. He was Hero of the Soviet Union. They had a son Efim. Maria died in 1991 when she was 76 and was buried at the Jewish part of Lukianovskoye cemetery in Kiev near her parents. Grigory (Gersh), the son of Maria and Georgiy, worked at the radio engineering plant in Barnaul during evacuation and stayed there after the war. In due time Grigory became director of this plant. He died in Barnaul in the 1970s. His wife and son live in Kiev. The younger son Iona Israil lived in Kiev and worked at the radio station. His wife Mara died in the  1970s and Israil and his two sons emigrated to America. Uncle Ion died in 1967 and Revekka died one year later.

I knew my grandmother Sura and loved her much. She lived alone in a small room on the first floor in an old building in Podol. She earned her living by baking bread and rolls and selling them. I still remember her delicious little rolls with no stuffing. My grandmother had her big stove in the same room where she lived, she made rolls at home and always had lots of customers in the house. The room was very clean. Her bakeries were very popular. All of her neighbors were her customers. They knew that my grandmother’s bakeries were kosher. She often received orders to bake rolls and pies for family celebrations. When I grew up I often went to visit my grandmother by myself. I took the funicular to get to Podol and from there I walked to her house. My grandmother was very religious. There was a synagogue not far from her house and my grandmother went there almost every day. She had a shelf with a curtain in her room where she kept her Easter dishes. She covered her head with a shawl before going out. I don’t remember her praying at home. On Friday she went to the synagogue after lighting candles and we tried to leave her alone at such moments. Everyone that knew my grandmother loved her. She was very intelligent, kind and honest. She always tried to help and support people before they had to ask her. She also taught me to offer help if somebody needed it, and they would always accept it. My grandmother’ influence in my upbringing was very significant. She worked until the last days of her life, even when she was ill. My grandmother Sura died in 1940. 

In 1915 my father came to Kiev to learn a profession. He became a tailor’s apprentice and then developed into a real good tailor for women’s gowns. He worked as a cutter at the garment factory before the war. My father was a born tailor. Then my father’s brother Yasha came to Kiev and my father taught him the profession of a tailor. Uncle Yasha lived nearby and often visited us. He was a very religious man. 

My parents got married in 1917. I don’t know how they met. My mother told me once that it was love from the first sight. Both of them came from poor families and their wedding party was very modest. But it was still a real Jewish wedding with the huppah and all wedding rituals. My parents got an apartment in Bolshaya Podvalnaya street in the center of Kiev. Our apartment was in the wing of a big 4-storied brick building. There were two rooms, a kitchen, a toilet and a hallway in this apartment.  There was no bathroom and we washed ourselves in the kitchen. There was no running water in the house. We had a pump in the yard and brought water from there in buckets. 

In 1919 my parent had their first baby. I don’t remember his name. He lived less than a year and died in 1919. I was born in 1921. My sister Eva was born in 1924. Genia was born in 1927 and my brother Mark was born in 1934. 

My father was a tailor and my mother was a housewife. She also learned to sew before she got married. She was an apprentice of a tailor and her specialty was making skirts. She didn’t work after she got married, because it was traditional for a Jewish woman to be a housewife. Although the family wasn’t wealthy my mother only made skirts for herself and her daughters. 

My sisters and I lived in one room and my parents lived in another. I remember a yellow leather sofa in our room – it was in fashion at that time. There was a shelf on the high back of this sofa and a mirror above. There were small leather pillows on both sides of the sofa. I slept on it. There was a piano beside my sofa. There was a wider sofa by the opposite wall where my sisters slept. We also had a wardrobe and a bookcase and a desk in our room. 

There was a nickel-plated bed and big mirror above it in my parents’ room. There was also a bookcase with many books in Yiddish and Russian. There was a big dinner table and a cupboard in the kitchen. My mother liked beautiful dishes. She had a set of dishes of blue color and beautiful silver utilities – Ion’s wedding present.  The rooms were heated by the stove tiled with white and pink tiles.

His brother Yasha often came to pick my father up to go to the synagogue together. During WWI Uncle Yasha was at the front. He froze his feet and had his toes amputated on both feet. He had a problem walking, but he still went to the synagogue two or three times a week. Uncle Yasha and his family were in Gorky throughout the WWII. Uncle Yasha’s son perished at the front and the rest of his family returned to Kiev after the war. Uncle Yasha died in 1990.

At Sabbath my mother lit candles and cooked delicious dinner. My father worked on Saturday, as Saturday was a workday. They celebrated Jewish holidays. I remember Papa putting Hanukkeh geld (small change) under his children’s pillows.  At Pesach my parents used to buy matsa at the synagogue. My mother crushed it in the mortar and then sifted the flour to make sponge cakes.  Mama cooked stuffed fish and made chicken neck with liver and fried flour and boiled chicken. We didn’t have bread in the house at Pesach. My mother had Pesach dishes that were used only on this holiday. It was set of dishes for dinner, casseroles and frying pans. My uncle Yasha and his wife and sometimes Ion and his family came to join us for the celebration Uncle Yasha, the oldest man in the family, read a prayer. At Yom-Kipur my father and mother fasted, but my mother made food for us, children, on these days. 

There was a Ukrainian school across the street from our school. I went to school when I was 8. My sisters also went to this school later. Ukrainian was a problem for me at the beginning – I didn’t know it, but I was making a good progress in it. About half of the children in my class were Jews. But there was no national issue at that time.  There were Jews among teachers as well. 

I became a young Octobrist and then a pioneer at school. Admittance to the pioneers was a festive ceremony held at the conference-hall at school. After they tied our neck ties the pioneer leader said “Be ready!” and we replied in chorus “Always ready!” (to struggle for the cause of the CPSU – Communist party of the Soviet Union). My responsibility as a pioneer was to help my classmate with his Russian grammar. He came to my home after classes and wrote dictations. I remember how proud I was when he received his first good mark for the dictation at school.

I liked history and literature, but I wasn’t quite fond of mathematics. When I was in the 2nd form my parents sent me to study at the music school to learn to play the violin. I had classes there twice a week. A piano was a second instrument that I was learning to play. 

1932 and 1933 was the period of horrific famine in Ukraine. I shall never forget this terrible time. There were swollen and half-dressed people in the streets: children, adults and old people. There were dead bodies on the pavements. They were the people coming to Kiev from the surrounding villages. This famine struck the villages basically. People also starved in towns, but to a less extent. We survived due to our father. He made clothes and was paid in food products. My father was the only one working in the family, but he provided for all of us. 

When I was to go to the 6th form a 10-year music school was established at the Conservatory. My teacher of music suggested that I took exams to enter this school. After finishing this school children were admitted to the Conservatory without exams. I passed exams and was admitted to the 6th form. This school was in Kreschatik street near the Conservatory. We studied general and special music subjects: musical literature, solfeggio and harmony. My violin teacher was Professor of Conservatory Bertie. There were many Jewish children in this school.  I remember one girl from the composer class for specifically gifted children. Her name was Didi Rzhavskaya. She was very talented and composed music when she was a child. Of my classmates I remember Yunia Budovsky - he became a concertmaster at the Opera Theater. I also remember Abrasha Shtern. I don’t know whether they are still alive. They were great musicians and laureates of musical contests. We admired them.

There were 10–15 children in one class. I can’t say that we were all friends, but there were no demonstrations of anti-Semitism. 

We celebrated all Soviet holidays. Schoolchildren and teachers went to the parades and carried flags and slogans. There were concerts at school after the parades.  At home we celebrated Jewish and Soviet holidays, because such was a tradition.  We also celebrated New Year and birthdays of all family members at home.  

I spent my summer vacations with my grandparents in Korostyshev. We went swimming and playing with other children. We enjoyed ourselves. My grandfather and grandmother were religious and went to the synagogue, but we, children, were not involved in any of these things. My grandmother cooked deliciously and we didn’t care a bit about whether it kosher or it wasn’t. Besides, there are no holidays in summer.  

We had performances to demonstrate our skills at school and often attended students’ performances at the Conservatory. I tried to attend all interesting concerts at the Philharmonic. We could only afford the cheapest tickets. 

Studying at the musical school took almost all of my time. I didn’t follow any political events or occurrences of that time. Of course, I knew that Hitler came to power in Germany and about the war in Poland, but I didn’t care. 

Repression of 1936 didn’t touch our family or the families of my acquaintances and so, I didn’t know much about them. 

In 1939 my friends and I formed a small orchestra. There were only girls there – the brass and the string group. There was also a singer – she was a student of the vocal class. We rehearsed at school. Our school teacher Magaziner, a Jew, was director of the orchestra. In about half a year we entered into the agreement with the director of the “Chance” cinema on the corner of Kreschatik and Proreznaya about playing in this movie theater.  Movie performances began at 4 and we came after classes and played at the lobby. We had costumes to wear on the stage. They were made from brown cashmere with a white inset on the chest and a bow tie.  We played popular pop songs and received money for our work. I was very happy to give this money to my mother. Mira Shenderovich, the violinist in our orchestra, was my friend. She lived in Podol, not far from where my grandmother Sura lived. We met with Mira after the war also. Later she went to Kishinev, got married and emigrated to Israel with her family. Her daughter lives in Austria now. She is laureate of international contests, violinist and great musician. Mira died in Israel. We were a team of people in the orchestra. We were united by what we were doing and our enthusiasm. Even  after we entered the Conservatory we continued to play in the orchestra.  

In 1940 after finishing school I was auditioned for my skills in playing the violin and was admitted to Kiev State Conservatory. Almost all of my classmates entered the Conservatory, too. My teacher of the violin mastership was the same Professor Bertie that had been my teacher at school before. This was an interesting time. We had students’ performances and all students were to attend them.  It was necessary to attend these performances to share the experience and to learn from the others. I had many friends. I began to meet with Fima Barsky, my classmate’s older brother. Fima was two years older than I. He was a very nice and smart boy. He came from the Jewish family of teachers. I liked him a lot. We were thinking of getting married in a year or two, but the war broke our plans. Fima was mobilized during the first days of the war and perished soon afterward.  

I remember the first day of the war, 22 June 1941. We heard about the beginning of the war from the official speech of Molotov on the radio. But even before his speech there were rumors about bombing of Sviatoshyno and Darnitsa, the outskirts of Kiev. Everything was such a mess and people were crying or panicking. We were confused and didn’t know what to do. My father wasn’t recruited to the army. At the beginning of the war only young men and professional military were summoned to the front and my father was 46 by the beginning of the war. He was left in reserve as well as other men between 40 and 50 years old. The reservists didn’t have a right to leave Kiev. They were supposed to wait for either recruitment to the front or an order summoning them to the labor front. So my father stayed and my mother, my sisters, my brother and I evacuated on 25 July 1941. It wasn’t an organized process. There was an announcement that those that wanted to evacuate were to come to the reserve railroad spur at Pechersk.  We took one suitcase with us and I had my violin with me. Our father took us to the railway station. He was afraid to go with us - he thought he might have been executed as a deserter. We said our good-bye to him and boarded the platform railcars. The trip was very long and people were starving to death or dying from diseases. During bombings we were getting off the train to run away. During the stops we had to get some food. We arrived in Kokand, Middle Asia. From there we were sent to a collective farm. We were accommodated in a little hut made of hay mixed with sheep manure.  There were ground floors in it. We made plank beds to sleep on them. We had a steel sheet on the floor where we made fire to cook and a tripod to hang the pot over the fire.  We put wood and dry branches of saxaul on the metal sheet to start the fire. Acrid smoke was filling the hut. All of us, except brother Mark that was 8 at that time, worked at the collective farm. We got miserable payment for our work that was too little to get sufficient food. We sometimes bought some food or changed our clothes for food at the market, only we hardly had anything to take to the market. Once I met our neighbor from Kiev. She  told me that I could work at the collective farm where she worked and that they were paying with flour and cereals for work. It was located in 30 km from the village where we lived. I went there and got a job. They gave flour, cereals and bread as payment for work. Once a week I went back home to bring them food. Mama was very weak, because she left all food that we had to her children. In spring 1942 my little brother starved to death and a month after him my mother died. My mother and my brother were buried in common graves. I didn’t have money to bury them decently. We didn’t hear from our father. We had no information about him until 1945, and we understood that he wasn’t among the living any longer, because if he had been alive, he would have let us know. When I was in the evacuation I was continuously trying to find out any information about my father, sending requests to the military recruitment office. Their response to me was that his name was not on the lists of the deceased.  That was all information I had about him. My sisters and other orphaned children were sent to a factory school in Sverdlovsk, Ural. The sisters were provided for by the state. Of course, it wasn’t quite sufficient, but they were not starving to death, on the other hand, and had some clothes to wear. Both of them learned to work on lathe units and worked at the plant manufacturing shells for the front.  

In some time I was offered a job in the orchestra of Uzbek theater in Kokand. The Uzbek music is different and I had problems at the beginning. Thus, we received food cards at the theater and it meant 400 grams of bread a day. I knew that Kiev Jewish Musical Theater was evacuated to Kokand. Before the war this theater was located in Kreschatik street. I can’t remember the details, but I met someone that worked at this theater, and they suggested that I went to work in the orchestra of this theater. I was auditioned by the conductor of the orchestra and was admitted. It is written in my employment record book that I was “employed by the theater as a musician at the orchestra. 10 August 1944 ».

I also got accommodation. I had little experience to play their complicated music. A famous Jewish composer Shteinberg composed music for their performances. I was rehearsing and studying a lot. Performances in the theater were in Yiddish. They only had one or two performances in Russian.  If the performance was in Yiddish they explained in Russian what it was about before the beginning for those that didn’t understand the language. There was different public, and they always cheered in appreciation of acting. There were problems related to approval of the repertoire. Everything had to be censored: God forbid if there was any deviation from the official ideology! There was strict selection of plays – they had to comply with ideological requirements of the time.  However, they managed to stage classics of the Jewish literature, like Sholem Alehem’s “Wandering stars”. All actors were from Kiev. I must tell you that I’ve never been in such friendly atmosphere, as was in the Jewish Theater. Of course, we felt togetherness because all of us had to live through the war and we faced the same difficulties and were survivors, but there was more to it than that… 

In the end of 1944 our theater came on a long tour to Fergana. We were told there that the theater was to move temporarily to Chernovtsy until the building of the theater in Kiev was completed. We went to Chernovtsy by train. The train stopped for a while in Kiev. All of us were from Kiev and we went to take a look at our home. I found our house in place, although the neighboring houses were destroyed. 

After I returned to Kiev in 1945 my neighbors told me what happened to my father. Some time before the war a German man moved into our house. He was a very polite and decent person. He changed when Germans entered Kiev. He walked as if he were too important to notice anybody or anything around. He gave away all Jews, including my father. My neighbors were afraid to hide my father. It was dangerous for them and their children. On 29 September a few policemen came for my father. They took him to the Babiy Yar and shot him. This German man left Kiev with the German army.

One evening I went to Kiev Theater of Musical Comedy. People came there to honor victims of the Babiy Yar. It was conducted by Mihoels that came from Moscow. I remember him making his speech holding a big crystal vase filled with ashes from the Babiy Yar. Then a girl that escaped from the Babiy Yar told her story. She was a young girl, no more than 20 years old, but her hair was as white as snow. Her classmate met her in the street and told Germans that she was a Jew. She was captured and taken to the Babiy Yar.  Columns of Jews were going to the Babiy Yar along Artyoma and Melnikova streets. People were shot in groups. They had to undress and their bodies were thrown into the ravine. The next group of people waiting for their turn to be shot buried dead or wounded people. The land was stirring up and breathing… This girl was wounded. She got out of the ravine at night came home. Her neighbors were hiding her for the rest of the war. I remember her story as if she told it yesterday…

Back to my story, we arrived in Chernovtsy in 1945. There were many vacant buildings there. This town joined the USSR in 1940. It belonged to Rumania before. After the war the local population was moving to Rumania and those that returned from evacuation could move into any apartment.  I wanted to live near the theater and I moved into the apartment sharing it with a neighbor. Each of us had two rooms, and we had a common kitchen, bathroom and a toilet. There was no anti-Semitism in Chernovtsy, and the attitude towards Jews was very loyal.

Our theater was called “Jewish Musical Theater named after Sholem Alehem». This was a very good theater with very good actors. One of production directors, Misha Loev lives in New York now. He wrote and published a book about Kiev Jewish Theater. Its title is “The last match”. It is a very detailed story of Kiev Jewish Theater: performances, actors and the true history.  

In 1945 my sisters Eva and Genia came to Chernovtsy. Genia entered a pedagogical college and Eva went to the medical college. My sisters and I were happy to be together.  

In 1946 I got married. I met my future husband at the hairdresser’s where I went to have my hair cut. He was a hairdresser. His name was David Palanker. He came from Rumania. He was born to a Jewish religious family in Bucharest in 1910. His parents were religious people, but David left his family when he was very young. He was an atheist, quite like me, but that’s about all information about him that I have. In his youth he finished a music school and played the clarinet in the orchestra. Later he moved to Beltsy, a Moldavian town.  Moldavia belonged to Rumania then. In 1940 Moldavia joined the USSR and he became a Soviet citizen. David was mobilized to the front at the beginning of the war. He was wounded, but returned to the front afterward. After the war David came to Chernovtsy. It turned out that we had a common acquaintance – Dats, a violinist from the theater. Dats also lived in Bucharest and the two of them were musicians in the same orchestra. David was much older than I. We were seeing each other for a while. To be frank, I wasn’t in love with him. I couldn’t forget Fima. But then I thought to myself that nobody wanted me, a lonely and poor woman.  I had only one dress that I used to wear to the theater. I didn’t even have a coat. I thought it would be easier if there were two of us. We didn’t have a wedding party. We had a civil ceremony. We were far from wealthy. My salary in the theater was low. My husband had a plan for the number of visitors per day. The number of people in this plan was higher than actual number of visitors, but it was his duty to comply with the requirements of the plan. So, he added his own money to the cash receipts of the hairdresser’s pretending that it was his clients’ payments.  

My sister Eva met her future husband Mitia Goltsman in the same hairdresser’s. He was a very strong, handsome, tall and a very nice Jewish man. They fell in love with one another. I tried to keep my sister from getting married. I knew what it was like to be poor and wanted a better life for her. But Eva said that they loved each other and nothing else mattered. They had a civil ceremony. Eva finished medical college and began to work as a nurse at the district hospital. Mitia was a hairdresser. They had 3 daughters: Rosa, Polina and Inna. The oldest Rosa graduated from Pedagogical University in Voronezh. In the early 1970s my sister Eva and her family moved to Israel.  Her husband worked as a hairdresser there and Rosa worked as a teacher at school. Their middle daughter Polina finished medical college in Israel and works as senior medical nurse in the hospital in Rehavot.  The youngest – Inna – got married in Israel, but her husband wanted to live in the USA and they emigrated there. Eva and her husband live in El-Kabot. She couldn’t get adjusted to the climate and started having heart problems. She had a surgery and a heart stimulator implanted. Two years ago she had her stimulator replaced. Her husband had a stroke and is not feeling well. Eva calls me sometimes. Unfortunately, I can’t afford to call her. 

My younger sister Genia finished the pedagogical college. She met Israil Lubovsky, a Jewish man, at this college. When they told us they wanted to get married my husband and I decided to arrange a real Jewish wedding for them.  This was in 1954 and it was not safe to have it at the synagogue or other public place due to the punishment that might follow (get fired from work as a minimum or get arrested and imprisoned for few years as a maximum for the propaganda of religious rituals). We made a huppah on the balcony and the Chernovtsy rabbi conducted the Jewish traditional wedding ceremony. Of course, our neighbors or just passers-by saw us, but they didn't report on us to the authorities. They knew that it was a big holiday for us. After finishing the college Genia and her husband went to Beltsy in Moldavia. Genia had a son. When he grew up a little she went to work at school and study at the Kishinev University of commerce.  She graduated from it receiving the diploma of an economist. Her son was a very talented boy. He finished musical school in Beltsy and then – Conservatory in Kishinev. Genia’s son emigrated to  Israel in the 1970s and Genia and her husband joined him there shortly afterward.  Genia’s son lives in Jerusalem now. He has three children. Genia lives in Ashkelon. Her husband died few years ago. Genia got blind recently and the surgery was no success. But she doesn’t want to return to Ukraine. 

When Eva arrived in Israel she put down our father’s name in the Book of memory at the Yad-Vashem museum. When I was visiting Israel at the invitation of my sisters I went to this museum and saw and turned few pages of this huge and heavy book. We put the necessary information about our father into this book and also wrote that he perished in the Babiy Yar.  It is the only monument honoring the memory of our father. 

I went on tours in Israel, admiring what I saw. I had the feeling of the Jewish history that was all around me.  And, on the other had, it is a very modern and nice country.

My husband and I haven’t been religious people. We didn’t go to the synagogue, pray or follow the kashruth. However, we did celebrate Jewish holidays.  We also celebrated Soviet holidays. We were young and enjoyed having guests for a celebration. Genia and her husband often arrived from Moldavia to be with us at Pesach and the 1st of May. We spoke Russian with them.  Later, when our daughter was born, we switched to Yiddish when we didn’t want her to understand what we discussed.  

In 1948 struggle against cosmopolitism began. The authorities began to destroy the Jewish culture and language. They closed the synagogue and the only Jewish school in Chernovtsy. They were persecuting Jewish writers and musicians. Once we came to the theater and were read the direction to close it. The building of the theater was to be given to house Medical University. Almost all employees were fired. They couldn’t fire me. I was pregnant and if they did, it would have been violation of the law. Therefore I formally remained an employee of this theater throughout the period of its elimination. The last day of existence of the theater is specified in my employment record book: «Resigned due to the elimination of the theater. 1950, 28 February». Later many actors of the theater left for Israel.  In 1948 we heard about the “accident” that happened to Mihoels. He “got in a car accident” and died.  But nobody believed it was an accident.

Our daughter Lilia was born on 11 September 1949. Her Jewish name was Leya. After the theater was closed I couldn’t find a job for some time. I decided to complete my music education. After my daughter was born I entered the Music College in Chernovtsy and got the diploma of violin player. In 1957 I became a violinist at Chernovtsy Ukrainian Drama Theater. I worked there for 41 years. I retired in 1998 working 20 more years after I reached the retirement age.  

«Doctors’ case» that began in 1953 kind of legalized the state anti-Semitism. Jews were fired. People refused to visit Jewish doctors. Nobody in our family suffered from it. Of course, many people understood that this whole process was slanderous. 

Stalin’s death wasn’t a tragedy for me considering elimination of the Jewish theater and the “doctors’ case”.  I did realize that he should have been aware of what was happening around. I didn’t care that he died.

My husband died in 1978. My sisters were calling me to Israel, but I never wanted to go there. I was afraid of the uncertainty that might be waiting for me there.  Young trees may grow well in the new soil, but the old ones may die. I think, I’m too old for moving. Besides, I shall be alone there. People don’t make new friends at this age.

I often went on tours with the theater. We went to towns, villages, even at farmyards or at the plants during their lunchtime. My daughter went to kindergarten. Once somebody hit her on the head, and the trauma resulted in injury of the speech center in her brain.  My daughter stopped speaking and was behind in her development. She could only study at a special school. Her speech habits restored in the course of years, but the consequences of the trauma have their impact even now. My daughter finished a Russian secondary school. In 1973 she married a young Jewish man. He was a relative of my acquaintances in Chernovtsy. He lived in Kiev with his parents and my daughter moved to Kiev, too.  She changed her last name to her husband’s name – Leht.  Her husband was a laborer at the motor-cycle factory in Kiev. In 1974 their daughter was born. She died from pneumonia in her infantry. In 1975 they had a son Vladimir.  After the disaster at the Chernobyl power plant in 1986 they moved to Israel with her husband’s parents.  My daughter divorced her husband. Her son stayed with my daughter’s mother-in-law. Now my grandson, his father and his grandmother live in Los-Angeles. My grandson finished college in the USA and is going to go to the University. My daughter lives in Israel. She doesn’t work and receives a pension.  

At the end of the 1980s the Yiddish language club was opened at the House of Culture. It was headed by a children’s doctor. He knew the language well. I could speak Yiddish, but I couldn’t read or write. I studied in this club for two years. 

In the recent ten years Jewish life in Chernovtsy has become very active. There are Jewish communities and we can read Jewish magazines and newspapers. Chesed and Jewish charity committee support us. They give us food and clothes and we have interesting activities there.  We celebrate Jewish holidays and Sabbath in the community. We can attend interesting lectures and concerts.  One a week I attend literature club, conducted by lecturer of Chernovtsy University. On Monday I attend our communication club. Quite a few people attend it. We have discussions and enjoy spending time together. 

I do some work as well. We have a program on Chernovtsy radio “Das yiddishe Wort”. I am an announcer in this program. It is of great use that I can read and write in Yiddish. We look for interesting materials about life stories of Jews. We receive letters from our listeners.  It supports me to realize that people need me and wait to hear “Good afternoon, my dears. We begin our program”. 

Nesim LEVI
Istanbul
Turkey
Interviewer : Miriam Sulam
Date of Interview: Jan.-Feb. 2007

Nesim Levi, who was born as the second child to a middle class family in Istanbul, and who grew up facing a lot of difficulties, is today 83 years old, and is one of the richest people I have ever met in my life. 

His wealth has nothing to do with money.  It is based completely on his moral values. The most important things in life for Mr. Nesim are his wife, his children and his grandchildren. 

The eyes of Mr. Nesim who has been residing in the Sisli neighborhood of Istanbul with his wife for fifteen years, light up at every question about his family members and he starts recounting with a trembling voice. 

The biggest happiness for Nesim Levi who experiences intense emotions, is following his daughters’ and his grandchildren’s happinesses and successes closely. 

Every corner of the house, starting with the walls, the counters and commodes in the livingroom, even the top of the refrigerator in the kitchen is covered with family pictures. 

It was my luck to have chosen him as the first person I interviewed, because he seemed to take pleasure in recounting even the smallest details he remembered or knew about his past.

Despite the painful events in Mr. Nesim’s life, like the death of his mother when he was very young, and losing his first son-in-law who he loved very much at a young age, you will notice how he embraces life fully and what a wonderful family he has, due to the power of love. 

Nesim Levi is a beautiful person with a pleasant demeanor, warm personality and a zest for life.

• Family background
• Growing up
• During the War
• After the War
• Glossary

• Family background

I unfortunately do not have much information about my roots.  Because I did not meet any paternal or maternal grandfather.  That is how the conditions were like before.  It was between two wars and their life spans were not very long.  It is rumored that my maternal grandfather died at 58, so did my paternal grandfather.  I did not know a maternal grandmother, neither a paternal grandmother.  Unfortunately, they had died before I was born.

They were normal, quite conservative families with Spanish roots.  My father’s father, Nesim Levi, dealt in glasswares.  Glassware used to be sold in the streets in the old times.
The name of my father’s mother was Reyna Levi.  They were both born in Istanbul, Haskoy and died there. 

Nesim Levi lived between the years of 1863 – 1921, his wife Reyna Levi, between 1867 – 1922.  They only spoke Spanish Ladino [Judeo Spanish] 1.  Women especially spoke Turkish very poorly, and I remember in my childhood, that I used to think, why can we not speak Turkish well, when we lived in Turkey.

Our elders did not talk about their past with us, because there was a lot of poverty then, and they struggled to earn a modest living.  We lived as a family who accepted poverty as a norm.  And we were not bothered by this at all.

Unfortunately... I had difficulty recalling even the names of my mother’s mother and father.  There isn’t even a picture left from them for us...  They lived in Haskoy.  I lived in Haskoy too till the age of 3.  Later on I moved to Bankalar Caddesi [Bank Street], and spent my adolescense moving between a few houses there.

We never had a house with a garden.  I even have a bad memory from that house that has been stuck in my mind.  I remember a sofa in the house in Haskoy.  I remember, when I was three years old, my sister’s coffin unfortunately leaving the house.  We had lost my sister who was a year younger than me to a childhood disease.

As far as I know, my father’s father lived bound by his religion.  Haskoy was the largest center in Istanbul where most members of the large Jewish community lived.  It was a very crowded area.  There was Balat, Haskoy and also Kuzguncuk where the Jews resided.

They observed the Sabbath seriously.  There was no smoking on those days.. because there were elders around, there was especially no smoking.  The men would go to the coffeehouses in the neighborhood after they came home.  Children would be fed dinner and put to bed.  The man would come home to eat in peace.

As far as I can remember, meat would be bought from kosher butchers.  During Passover especially, different plates, different pots would be used [called loksa - Judeo Spanish term].  Even fork and knife sets were separate.  These were kept in a big trunk.   The house would be cleaned thoroughly for Passover, it would even be painted.

On Saturdays and the holidays, we would go to the synagogues.  The synagogues were always filled up.  Not like today.  At the time, 150,000 Jews lived on the map of Turkey.  This is around the 1930’s, when I am about 6 years old.  They lived in various parts of Turkey. My grandfathers did not live then.  Even my mother had died in 1929.

My grandparents were people with limited means, I know that much.  Their earnings were quite low. They could not go anywhere for vacations, they only rested.  The way they dressed was also different.  They would come home in the evenings, they wore a long, dress-like outfit. 

They used these to feel comfortable.  The would sit in the yards of the house, chat with neighbors.   The women addressed each other as “Bulisa” [Judeo Spanish term], meaning “Madame” [Ma’am]... generally older men were addressed as “Monsieur”...  Both French and Spanish was spoken in the old times.  Furthermore, in wealthier families, the main language was French.  Ours was Judeo Spanish, meaning Ladino.

There were only wars recounted to us.  There were difficult days.  Life conditions were very hard then.

My father Samuel Kemal Levi was a man I loved more than myself.  My father was skillful but uneducated like me, he wasn’t very cultured, but he had a broad philosophy of life, life had taught him a lot.  He had endured long hardships, he had experienced 8-10 years of military service.  He had been in wars. 

In the Balkan War 2, World War I, from 1914 to 1918; he was wounded in wars, and taken prisoner.  When their closest friends died next to them in wars, they continued fighting next to the dead, as if it was natural.  There were bayonet wars then.  They hit each other, from 50 meters or 100 meters away. 

And my father unfortunately was terribly worn out during the Balkan War and World War I, while fighting the British together with the Germans.  8 years of my father’s life was spent in wars.  At the time, nonMuslims were given weapons too.  They were never discriminated from our Muslim brothers.

My deceased father had a vast horizon.  He had endured powerful blows, he had lost his long-awaited beloved (my mother) after a short while (during birth), he had a personality shaped by these tragedies.  He saw life as it was, he did not pay much attention to materialism.  He would say “Thank G-d” for a piece of bread.  That is how we grew up.  Poverty was very natural for us and we were very happy.

My father was not a tough person, but still he was a father I was very fearful of.  I even caused a lot of big mischief.  I was a child of the streets.  Since I lost my mother at a very young age, I grew up without a mother.  What I remember is that I was a lonely child.

My father was young and portly, he had red cheeks and he ate well.  He would consume 8-10 borekas [cheese or eggplant filled pastry - similar to empanadas] within one sitting, may G-d bless him.

I loved him a lot, but I feared him a lot too.  I feel pain while remembering [tears], because I lost him a short while after getting married. He saw three grandchildren, but they were very little.  My father was devoted to me, but he never showed it.  I don’t remember him holding me on his lap once.  Nor kissing me.

I did not experience a mother’s lap anyways.  They say that children were kissed in their sleep in the old times.  He probably learned this from his father. That was the custom.  I was very vary of him. I never received a beating from him except once.  Only once, I received a beating when my feet were bound and lifted, and beaten by a stick [as was the custom in the old times].

My father went to work every morning.. he would come home with some sort of food in the evening, he would prepare us something.  Life was very difficult for my older sister too.  Thankfully my aunts watched her back, we lived very close, and my older sister stayed at their homes from time to time.

My mother waited 10 years for my father to return from the military to be able to marry him.  According to rumor, they were neighbors already, and they reunited 10 years later.  My mother’s family was superior, culturally.  The people in my mother’s family were bankers or teachers. 

My father’s family on the other hand, belonged to the lower classes.  But he was a handsome, blond and blue-eyed man.  He was very lovable.  Young people congregated around him; he would tell stories.  They used to tell me that I took after my father.  I always loved talking and listening.  He could be considered cultured even though he did not have much of an education.

He wrote French very well.  He knew old Turkish too and he wrote it.  His calligraphy was good.  He used to write letters then, he had a sibling who I never met, living in the United States then.  He corresponded with them.  When I was in the military, he wrote me a few times too.

They were 7 siblings with my father.  Four boys and three girls.  My father was the second oldest after an older sister.

The only brother of my father I knew was UncleIzak.

One brother [Binyamin] had gone to the United States.  Uncle Izak lived close to my father in Haskoy.  He also had another brother, who had drowned when he was little.  Both his hands were malformed from birth.   His name was Yako.

One of my aunts is Gracia, the other Ojeni.  Gracia was my father’s elder sister: the firstborn.  Ojeni was the fourth child.  I met them.  We lived close.  We used to get together at our house during holidays.  My father always hosted them on Saturdays, especially after the services, in the yard.   I will never forget. I would ditch school and go play ball.  I buckled up later and studied a lot. I still love reading to this day.

We used to play ball in the street behind Saint George school.  We played soccer with a tennis ball.  I sometimes played barefoot so my shoes wouldn’t get worn out. We played with a paper ball too.  One day when eight of us were playing ball, the tennis ball went in front of the ground floor behind the bank with my kick. 

I was only able to get the ball by picking up a stone and breaking the glass a little more.  I was like a hero then.  Then all of a sudden, we see adults coming towards us.  I of course ran away like all the others.  They came home from the police station of course, they could not find me. 

When my father came home in the evening, he received the news that I was expected at the police station.  My only shelter then was my aunt, aunt Viktoria.  She lived in one of the streets around Yuksekkaldirim.  The street where Barinyurt 3 is now.  She had two sons and one daughter. 

She had heart problems, but she took care of me like a mother, fed me and put me to sleep sometimes.  That day I told her what happened and stayed there.  There was no telephone of course, and it was a big offense.  My father of course knew I had gone there; immediately he came to aunt Viktoria’s house, too. 

Even though my aunt said “he is a child”, my father said that he could not afford to pay for the window and he was very angry.  My aunt calmed him down and sent him home that night.  The next day my father said he wanted to talk to me and took me calmly. 

He sent my older sister and our neighbor outside.  And first he talked to me.  He said, if you continue to do these things, you will put us in more difficult situations.  You have to receive a punishment, he said.  There were brass bedframes then... he tied both my feet with a rope and attached it to the bed. 

He struck and I screamed... and I received a beating for the first time in my life.. and he taught me the philosophy of “doing anything I want without harming anyone”.  Even though I caused a lot of mischief after that, the damage was only to me.

There was a teacher in our school, Mr. Nurettin.  Every day one of us was in charge of bringing that day’s newspaper to school.  Burhan Felek had a daily column.. he made us read all of it.  One day he made me read it, later, he would make me read it most of the time.  I liked Turkish, I had an affinity for reading, but I ditched school too.  I was a very polite child of the streets.

My mother Sara Levi was pregrant a year after the death of my sister, when I was three years old, and unfortunately died during birth along with that baby.  I was the only boy among her four children.  There is also my older sister who is still alive.  

Her other two children who died were both girls.  They say that the baby suffocated its mother while being born.  My father did not take us to her grave a single time.  Around 18 years of age, I researched a lot, I went to the military in ’43, and I could not find a trace of my mother.  When new roads were built on the old location of Haskoy cemetery, the tombs were demolished too.  My mother died in 1929.. the graves were demolished around 1947...

Five years after my mother’s death, my father married another woman.  She was a very good woman but of poor health, Rebecca Araf.  She was from Ankara and a Jew of Arabic descent.  Her French was good, but she had had nervous breakdowns from time to time since her childhood. 

From what I hear from close relatives like my aunt, my mother was an introverted, inoffensive and very clean woman who spoke little, and who was self-sufficient.  She waited for years for my father so she could get married, she got pregnant four times, one after the other, she never complained.  My father was a man who enjoyed food, and meals set up on tables.   I am sure that my mother’s food was tasty.

My father was a handsome male.  My mother fell in love with him.  My mother was a thin, dark-skinned woman.  We took after our mother with our dark skin.  She spoke French, maybe she studied beyond elementary school.  They had the engagement ceremony at the age of 18. 

10 years later, when the wars were over, they were finally reunited.  They married in Haskoy in 1920 or 1921.  My older sister was born in 1922, and I two years later, in 1924.  I unfortunately never got to know my mother and could not shed tears for her.  Still, for as long as I have been able to, I observe her yartzheits every year, I light a candle...

I barely remember our house.  We had a sofa [a large area], and three or four rooms.  At first we lived with my grandfather.  We were crowded.  There were midwives at home then for sure.  I remember my father and my older sister sobbing in one room when my mother died.

There was running water inside the house.  That water was not drinkable.  We had gushing spring water close to every neighborhood for drinking water.  All of us, the children, we would fill up our earthenware water jugs one by one and carry them home.  The ones who had the means, would pay porters two pennies and have the water carried.  We started having canisters carried for two pennies later on.

We had a brazier at home.  It was small, my father bought a bigger one later on.

Before I went to the military, when I was 15 years old, a stove was bought for the house.  As far as refrigerators go, none... very few families had refrigerators.  There was no television then.  I used to listen to the radios in coffeehouses during those days. 

We heard about world news, events, wars this way.  Some had radios in their homes, but very few.  I followed what was happening in the world from the radio.  Only wealthy people took photographs then.  We only passed in front of the door of Photo Sureyya [one of the first and best-known photo studios].

I quit school when I was around 12-13 years old.  I regretted it that same year.  One day I had gone to Beyoglu Public House to watch a basketball game.  It was a public place, open to everyone.  I had a lot of friends, both Jewish and Muslim.  The public house had a sports center, table tennis and pool halls.  One day, one of my friends said, I am going up to the library.  That day, I went upstairs too, with my friend.  And after that day, he put the seeds of a great love for reading in me.

I started working too during that time.  I worked as assistant to a tailor, and to a launderer.  I was earning a little pocket money.  I used to get out a little early from work and go to the library.  My father knew this and did not say anything to me.  In addition, there were people who sold or rented old books in Yuksekkaldirim.  We rented books for ten cents a week. At the age of 16 – 17, I read romantic novels.

My father read the newspaper without fail.  He used to sell lace and tassels under the window coverings and muslin drapes that we call roller shades now.  He would buy big packages of strings, go to specific women and manufacture tassels according to demand. 

And I and my older sister put knots together in the house.  He sold ribbons of lace along with the tassels.  There was a market in every neighborhood every day.  In Fatih, in Sariyer, on Tuesdays in Karakoy, on Fridays in Kasimpasa, there were markets.  My father would gather up this merchandise in the evenings, put it in a trunk [he had his name on the trunk], and in the morning the trunk would go to the other place.  We worked on Saturdays too.  We went to the market in Besiktas.

We rested on Sundays.  Until 1929, the official holiday was Friday... until it changed and became Sunday.  My older sister Rejina started working at the tailor, and did housework on Sundays.

My father and I, on the other hand, would go somewhere.  We did shopping.  There was the synagogue of the Italians that we called “Kal de los Frankos” [the Italian synagogue].  It was on the hill behind Neve Shalom 4.  There were stores there from top to bottom [today it is called Ziyapasha Hill]. 

The kosher butchers were there too.  Seafood sellers, grocers.  There was even a big grocery store.  He sold oil by liters.  My father would take a tote bag with him [like the shopping bags of today, but made of fabric], and I would take one too.  We would buy the meat and other necessities.

On Friday nights, everyone came to our house.  Meat and fish were bought once a week... On Friday nights we dined all together.  In our house, it would be just me, my father and Rejina.  Once in a while, he recited the kiddush, not always.  He knew religion, but did not follow it much. 

“Leave religion to the religious”, he would say.  He did not criticize religion.  I sometimes went to the synagogue on Saturdays.  I always incorporated Judaism in my life and always felt proud about it.

I never had pets.  We did not have a house with a garden, only the people who loved flowers would put pots in their windowsills in the old times.

My father told us about his military memories, even if it was seldom.  One time, when a friend that they loved a lot had died, he recounted that they used him as a shield.  These were very sad stories.  People with their arms amputated, their legs amputated.  Horrible things happend.  He had talked because I insisted a lot. 

One day when he was changing underwear I saw three deep wounds on his back.  He had been hospitalized with three bullet hits.  In the Dardanelles.  Later there were small boats between Balat and Haskoy, he came to Haskoy with one of them.  They did not recognize him at home.  He was like an old wounded man with a beard.

Our neighbors were Jewish.  They were very fond of me.  After school, my older sister was generally not home.  She was either at my aunts, or working.  My neighbor Mrs. Roza: “Nesimiko [Judeo-Spanish for: little Nesim], did you eat?”, she would ask.  They spoke to me in Spanish. 

There was no heat, I could not use a gas stove, I could not heat food, that is why they would invite me to their home sometimes.  In general the neighbors around us were all Jewish.  We lived in a ghetto-like place.

I learned Turkish at school.  Around 8 – 9 years old, I spoke and read Turkish very well, and made fun of the adults because of their pronunciation.

There were a lot of Jewish ghettos dispersed in Turkey.  There were Jews speaking different languages in Maras, Gaziantep, Diyarbakir, Tekirdag, Bursa, Canakkale, Corlu, and Antakya.  The ones speaking Arabic, Georgian, the ones like us who came from Spain spoke Ladino [Judeo Spanish] mostly.

My uncle Izak worked at his father’s business.  He sold glassware at the market.  His work was more difficult.  He had five daughters.  His wife contracted tuberculosis.  She had worked very hard too.  When her husband was taken to the “20 military classes” 5, she continued in this business. 

It was very difficult for her.  My uncle was forced to go to the military.  And this woman, because she could not take care of five children, put her two youngest daughters in the “Orfelinato” [orphanage for children].  Fani Levi was a very smart woman from the lower classes, she was able to run the business. 

She was extremely clever, and she was the one who took care of her other three daughters.  Two years later, she removed them from the Orfelinato but she died from tuberculosis a short while later.  And Uncle Izak, in 1948, during the years when Israel was founded, immigrated to Israel with his five daughters, under very harsh conditions. 

But his second daughter Julya went before her dad.  She was 15 years old.  They call her Yudit now.  She lived in a kibbutz for two years... and they enrolled her in the military when she was 18 years old.

2-3 years later, uncle Izak and the other girls also went to Israel.  Julya [she became Yudit in Israel] had met her superior while she was in the military.  His name was Ruben Dahari, he was from Yemen and a wonderful boy.  They married in the later years, and then brought one girl and four sons after that into the world.  Yonit, Itshak, Raanan, Ofer and Moti.      

Uncle Izak settled somewhere close to Tel-Aviv.  He lived with his children. He never worked there.  They got along with the help the government provided.  All the children worked.  He married them off one by one.

I went to see him and my aunt, aunt Gracia in 1973, three years before he died.

Aunt Gracia was my father’s older sister... At that time [in the 1970’s], she was 80 years old.  She was senile by then... she was the one who lived the longest in the family.  She contracted Alzheimers.  She did not recognize most of us anymore.  Six months after I returned, she passed away too.  Her daughters had passed away before she did.

My father died in 1956. When the others left for Israel, my father preferred living here, in Turkey. In the summer of 1945 my older sister married and my father had grandchildren.

• Growing Up

I started school in Kasimpasa.  Kasimpasa Elementary school was very close to our home. I was a child of the streets and I ditched school very often to play. My favorite class was Turkish class. I loved reading a lot. My last teacher was Mr. Nurettin. We had a single teacher. There were classes such as geography, history, Turkish, social studies and math.  There were no religious studies or foreign language education then. I liked all my teachers a lot in general.

I never had a long-term friendship from my school years. When I was 11 years old, in last grade, I used to spend time together with the most beautiful girl in class, during lunch break.  I think her name was Beki.  We were usually together on the way to and from school too. But I did not see her again.  I did not have any news.

Only once did I have to change my school. That was in Yuksekkaldirim, when we moved.  I worked at different jobs after school... and at the age of 16, I worked at a business that I loved.  What we call “Garçon de bureau” [office boy] today. I worked with a distributor, manufacturer’s rep. 

I would go to banks, to the cambio and exchange departments all the time. These were in a building in Eminonu.  I used to go to Karakoy every day.  They would give me fare money for the tram to go there, but I would either hang on to the back of the tram or run, to be able to save that money. 

Tram tickets then were 3 pennies for one way, and 3 pennies for the return, it would add up to 20 pennies a week.  This was big money in my childhood.  I used to go to soccer games with this money, mostly in Taksim Station.

Galatasaray [one of the three major soccer teams in Turkey] was a club I supported, but I always loved soccer above and beyond a team.  When they are the champions, I feel great joy of course.  I still follow all the games outside the country today.  Today, three quarters of my life is spent watcing political speeches or sports news on television.

I worked all the time in my youth, including Saturdays.  I could get together with friends only on Sundays.   I wasn’t a member of any place at the age of 16 – 17, but I played table tennis at Beyoglu Public House, I watched basketball games.

I was an amateur player.  There was pool also but it was more expensive.  That is why I did not learn to play much.  I played very seldom.  I had a lot of friends that I met there.  In addition, I would put on a uniform and play soccer with the neighborhood team.

Around 18 – 19 years of age, I took up drinking beer. There was a beer house named Novotni in Tepebashi.  There was also the yard of the Beer Factory.  We would order beer in a big keg and drink it together with appetizers.

I never had an interest in cigarettes.  One or two with beer.  We used to sit close to the restrooms, because as we drank the beer, the need to use the bathroom would arise.

During that period, we used to talk about youth, sex and sports with my friends.  I was always interested in politics.  I supported all the political parties that were for the people.  Whether it is opposition or not.  I have voted since 1950.

I cast my first vote for the Democratic Party.  Adnan Menderes 6.  We were enthusiastic about them as a novelty.  And they accomplished a lot.  But there were some mistakes and there were some bad consequences.  They stayed in power till 1960.

The hanging of Menderes created a big reaction.  I remember the day of the hanging.  We always followed the trial on the radio.  The decision, right or wrong [it is a political event].  When two parties went head to head, the military did a coup, but now when these consequences happened, even the people who did not support that party were saddened.

I never drove a car.  I was never interested.  I still dislike long commutes and the car.   I did not use a motorcyle at all either.  I only used a bicycle.  We used to rent bicycles with money and used them, when we were children (12-13 years of age).  I learned how to ride a bicycle by myself; my friend helped a little too.  Falling down and getting up of course.  That did not last long either.  But I never regretted not driving a car.  I am someone who decides impulsively.  Being a driver is not my thing.

My sister Rejina who was born in 1922, apparently looks a lot like my mother.  Her coloring too.  She was a beautiful, dark-skinned girl. We had some separations during our childhood.  One of my aunts was old [Ojeni].  She stayed with her.  My sister went to the Jewish Highschool. 

She was her mother’s daughter.  She was a very good, organized student.  She started working with a tailor daily, after finishing elementary school.  She was already well known by the age of 20 and had become a skilled tailor.

She got married in July 1945, at the Zulfaris Synagogue 7, at the age of 25, my older sister.  I had taken a leave of absence from the military and attended the wedding.  They had taken a boat to Buyukada [the fourth and largest island in the Princess Island chains, south of Istanbul on the Marmara sea] that evening and stayed in a hotel.  

They brought two daughters named Chela [1947] and Sara [1956] into the world.   They are both fine and cultured today.  They studied well.  Until, their father died young.  He died in 1976, at the age of 52, my brother-in-law.  My older sister was widowed young.  And we always lived close. 

Her younger daughter was 10, elder daughter 19 years old.  The younger girl finished highschool and married early.  The older girl worked and married too, later.  Rejina on the other hand continued working as a tailor.  Her husband used to sell coats, she continued sewing coats on order. 

I did not have a bar-mitzvah celebration at the age of 13.  Meaning, there was no such thing like giving a speech like they do today, or sending invitations.  Renting a room was the work of rich people. Yet, one day my father told me, next week is your bar-mitzvah, you will don the tefillin, you will say the prayers in the synagogue, and you will take your first steps toward manhood.

I mean, I knew what a bar-mitzvah was.  I had worked with the rabbi Yako Nasi, who was the rabbi there, a couple of months before my bar-mitzvah, and had memorized all the prayers.  And we performed the prayers that are associated with a bar-mitzvah that religion dictates in what we called Apolon, in place of today’s Neve Shalom Synagogue.  That place became the sports center of Yildirimspor later on.  Apolon was in Sisane, one street before where the synagogue is situated today.

I was very excited the day of the bar-mitzvah.  My father held my hand.  After the ceremony in the synagogue, we went to Aunt Viktoria’s house.  We visited the other relatives too.  We took candy to all of them.  I visited them, kissed their hands; and they gave me presents for my bar-mitzvah.  It was a very happy day.  We did whatever was needed.  My father had carried out the religious traditions.

Among the Jewish holidays, I loved Yom Kippur a lot, because from the point of view of a child, I wondered how you could fast a whole day.  When I was 12 years old, I tried fasting for the first time.  Our elders bought quinces.  Cloves would be stuck on it and supposedly hunger was satisfied by smelling that.   This is how it was then...

I was successful with my first fast.  I didn’t even drink water.  And after that, I fasted every year, until I fell ill.  Now, because I am on medication, I cannot fast.  But, nevertheless, I go to the synagogue every Yom Kippur.  I go in the morning, I return home at noon for the minha service [prayers chanted for the dead].  I am there between 08:00 and 15:00.  I go in the evening too again and without fail listen to the shofar!

• During the war

During the period when the Holocaust was happening in Europe, there was an increase in antisemitism in Turkey. Unfortunately I have to talk about this.  Before the war started, fear and panic spread with the reputation of Hitler in 1936.  Nationalistic emotions were on the rise in Turkey. 

Turkish people always favored Germans.  They were together in the big war too, in World War I, but despite that there were no Hitler followers here, only the nationalists were with Hitler. I couldn’t figure it out, why do we, the Jews, have so many enemies?

As war approached, you could see antisemitism.  Especially outside of Istanbul and Izmir, whether it was in the Dardanelles, in Gelibolu, in Tekirdag or Anatolia, anti-Jewish protests started.  Slips of paper were pushed under the doors of the houses, “Go away” written on them. A current started from the provinces to Istanbul. 

Migration started from Edirne, from Tekirdag etc.  One of the floors of our house in Galata was empty.  A family from Gelibolu rented the house and settled there.  One boy was a year younger than me.  Three older sisters, the mother and father, all lived together.  And unfortunately the older girl, Roza, had died in 1943, when I was in the military, from tuberculosis.  They were the Kandiyoti family.  Now, I think most of them are dead.

They had told us then that they felt uncomfortable with some of the neighbors.  They had yelled things like “Go away, get the hell out of here”.  Of course not all the neighbors.. only some of them.

As it is well known, Hitler spread quickly. He crushed France. He invaded Rumania, Bulgaria and Greece. He almost was at the border of Edirne. The fear was great. The politics of Turkey was very good. They were using delay tactics.  England and France started this war as losers... because Russia was also with the Germans.  The Russians left the Germans toward the end of the war. They switched to the British side.

There was panic within us too of course, even if we didn’t show it. In the meantime, unfortunately there was another blow. Wealth Tax 8 was implemented. This destroyed a lot of families, unfairly. There was a lot of discrimination.  The applications were not fair.

My father worked at the market, he had an independent merchant card.  500 Turkish liras was the tax given to all Jews with this card.  The fear of Hitler already existed.  This was added on.

For us, for a person of modest means, this was big money of course.  My father had 450 liras saved.   He never withheld anything from the government.  There was the matter we called road money, it was 6 liras a year [money given to the government]... he always paid that too.  We paid 9 liras’ rent for the house we lived in.

They were sending those who did not pay the Wealth Tax to Ashkale to break rocks.  We tried to persuade our father fervently not to give it but he said, you cannot play games with the government and paid 500 liras to the government.   He had 450 liras, I gave 22 liras from my piggybank, and the rest, my older sister took it out of her piggybank and gave it.

My father gave me the money and said go to the tax office, and pay this money.  This duty was given to me, I did it and brought the receipt to my father.   I was around 16-17 years old.

I did not know the ones who went to Ashkale, but in general they were people who were rich, for example there was the lawyer Franko, Barzilay’s, important shipowners, sellers of sundries and notion, manufacturers...  And a short while after we paid this money, this tax was repealed.  500 liras was granted an exception. 

After the 1940’s, it was a period when the Germans were advancing rapidly.  The government needed money of course, time of war.  Sukru Saracaglu was prime minister in those days.

We were following what was happening to the European Jews from the radio.  Thousands of Jews were going to the gas chambers, to the camps.  Their pictures were shown in the newspapers.  It was a big, historic event.  There was no television then, we heard it on the radio or read about it in the newspaper.

During that time there were a lot of newspapers like Tan, Cumhuriyet, Sabah and Ikdam.  I read Cumhuriyet usually.  In reality, I read quite a few newpapers in one day. One newspaper cost 5 pennies.  If I read it at home during the day, I would go to the corner to return the newspaper, and buy a new one for one penny.  I read a lot, during the time of war, and later on too.

In the meantime, when I was getting ready to go to the military, conditions had changed against Hitler.  Because Russia had switched, a leader like Churchill had arrived in England.  He had said ‘’I cannot promise you anything but blood and tears, for now’’ to his public.  A big front shaped up against the Germans.  Terrible massacres had taken place in Italy against the Jews.  It was the time of Mussolini.

Some of the German Jewish professors in Europe immigrated to Turkey.  They found acceptance in the universities here..  Of course there were those who could not escape too.  European Jews were not very religious.  Even though they were Jewish, they were German.  We had a neighbor who had come from Poland, they came to Turkey before the war.  They immigrated to Israel, before it was founded, by various means.

World War II had shown its great effects on our economy too.  Some basic staples like bread and sugar were rationed for a long time.
 
I remember the Struma 9.  It was a Rumanian boat, it carried immigrants.  They had waited at the dock one whole day, without food or water.  And unfortunately, with pressure from the Germans, they had not accepted them into Turkey, and returned them to sea.

The head of United States, Roosevelt was paralyzed, and he had come to Adana like that, four leaders congregated.  Churchill, I think it was General de Gaulle from France, they spoke with Inonu 10.  The allies, the British and the Americans had turned the course of the war favorably to themselves.  Us, the Jews, breathed easy, with the good policy of Inonu. 

We were going to be saved from violence finally.  The Germans had destroyed everywhere.  We can comfortably talk about this because we did not enter the war, thanks to Inonu.  If not, which one of us would be alive today?!  Even though, you could encounter attitudes against the Jews in Turkey among the public in some circles, these attempts had not resulted in deaths, thank G-d.

There were baseless articles and caricatures in some newspapers and especially comic magazines about us Jews.  The weekly comic magazine Akbaba would have caricatures insulting us, as cover.  In such magazines, unfortunately, the stinginess of the Jews, their long noses and dirty attire would be satirized and this would upset us a lot.

Again during these years, there were signs of “Citizen, speak Turkish” 11 on boats and trams, on the streets and in the windows of stores.  This has caused everyone, us and our other nonMuslim children to have Turkish as our mother tongue.

I do not remember the arrests of nonMuslims in the year 1943.  That year, I was sent a summons to go to the military.  Either by radio or 6 months ahead there would be inspections.  They held us in the barracks in Haydarpasha for a few days, then they moved us to Malatya.

I became a soldier in April of 1943.  I had just turned 19 years of age.
I was in a division for working in the airports of Malatya.  There, there were a lot of nonMuslims and we were treated quite well.  The military meant discipline.  I had put myself under discipline too. 

And this military service had a lot of benefits of course.  I served in the military close to four years.  Not only in Malatya, I did my service in different cities like Adana and Kayseri too.  The captains treated us very well.

There was no discrimination among the soldiers.  My duty there was pouring concrete on the airport field.  I worked in the supplies department too.   I did different jobs too.

My rank did not go up in the military.  I was a private till the end.  There were no high-ranked soldiers among the nonMuslims anyways.  Except for doctors.  When they became private soldiers, they continued as lieutenants.  But our relationship with our superiors was very good.

Furthermore, before a Yom Kippur day, an orthodox Jew among us had gone to our colonel and procured permission for the Jewish soldiers to perform their religious worshipping, meaning being able to fast.  And a week later, on Yom Kippur day, we congregated in a place with the order of the colonel, recited our prayers, a fasting meal was prepared for us and we fasted the following day.  Very smoothly, we experienced the warmth that the soldiers could not receive in Europe, in our own military organization.

• After the War

I was discharged in January of 1947.  I had taken a leave of absence once; for the wedding of my older sister.  I was on leave for exactly fifteen days.  I think it was at the end of 1945 or beginning of 1946.  I had one older sister in my life and it was very important to me to be present at that wedding.

During these military years, malaria happened frequently, and I contracted it during my period of apprenticeship.  Fever goes up to 40 – 41˚C, but the next day there would be no fever whatsoever.   We would lie in the infirmary for a few days, and there were medicines like quinine, and antiprin, I would take them and get along. 

Of course I lost quite a bit of weight during that time.   The military served me as a major lesson in my life.  I forgot about being a child of the streets, and learned about obeying given orders, that is to say, I learned discipline.  Everyone would be wearing the same uniform, and treated the same way, and I benefited a lot from the military.

I was 23 years old when the military service ended.  At first, I wanted to do a business that I liked.  I was in the business of representation and commerce before the military.   I took care of banking for an importing firm.  However, on my return from the military, I learned that the firm had closed. 

I entered the ladies’ and gent’s ready-made clothing business, which later became my own business, with the help of an acquaintance.  Nebabish worked on outer wear like raincoats and overcoats.  The owners were two Jewish brothers.  Their names were Nesim Behar and Viktor Behar.  I learned about the business slowly working with them.  That year, because of this job, I started paying more attention to what I wore.

I progressed in my business.  My salary had gone up too.  My first paycheck was something like 80–90 liras.  This was good money in the 1947’s.  I used to help my family, my father’s health was failing.  My older sister also was working in a sewing workshop as a skilled tailor.

In 1958, I started a business on my own, with partners.  They put the capital, and I put my work experience.  We didn’t earn huge amounts of money, but we had a better situation than before.   We left a house with two bedrooms and moved to an apartment flat in Sisli.

There was a retail store named Mayer on Istiklal street that I often stopped by.  We worked with them for a long time.  At one point, they went on sale, and asked for my help, thinking it would be crowded.  While working there for 15-20 days, I met my dear wife Fortune who worked there [during the 1950’s].   She was the daughter of a good Jewish family.

Even though I am not very religious, I always observed certain things.  I go to the synagogue and say my prayers, I recite the Kiddush on Friday nights and still do certain things like that all the time.

One day, there was a conversation about the theater.  I asked Fortune if she could come to the theater with me.   At first she didn’t give a clear answer.  Flirting was very difficult in those days.  You had to get permission from the mother and father first.  She struggled a lot to get permission.

I did not have the means to get married.  Finally, we went to that theater and our dating lasted three years.  We dated for 1.5 years, and were engaged for 1.5 years after that.  Going to each other’s houses started during that time.  Her family was a conservative family.  My wife’s maiden name was Kastoryano. 

She was an only child, her mother Viktorya was from Kuzguncuk, her father Izak was from Haskoy.  They lived in Tepebasi then.  After we were engaged, they moved to Kuzguncuk.  They asked about me to friends and neighbors, they believed in my intentions and they accepted me.  My mother-in-law, because her father’s name was Nesim too, and because they did not have a son, was very fond of me.

I had started earning 300 – 400 liras by then.  We found a house on Kumbaraci Hill.  It had a rent of 115 liras.  We rented the house 1.5 months before we got married.  I always had the attitude of being against dowry.  We did not speak about anything pertaining to money.

On March 1st, 1953 our wedding took place.  A week earlier was the civil marriage.  We were married in the Zulfaris Synagogue in Galata.

We have a sad memory related to our wedding day.  The husband of the older sister of my mother-in-law, Lazar Franko [his wife Rashel Franko] unfortunately died a day before the wedding due to a sudden cardiac problem.  Of course we did not tell Fortune or my mother-in-law. 

Only my father-in-law knew.  When none of the family members from that side showed up at our wedding, we attributed this to the weather being gloomy and rainy.  We ate at the Taksim Municipality Casino that evening.  I remember, there was a good singer who sang the first pop songs in Turkey, Celal Ince.  He left for the United States later on.  We listened to him, and stayed in the house we rented, that night.  And I told my wife about the sad news the next morning.

A month after getting married, I went to Diyarbakir [a city in southeastern Turkey] for business.  We were separated for one week.  Anyways, my lady gave birth in the twelfth month.  Fortune was a salesgirl in the ladies’ section in the store she worked at before getting married.  It was a shame to have women work after getting married then. 

She was supposed to raise children.  In any case, six months after we were married, my father had to move from from his house because it was going to be demolished.  That is why we took him in with us.  My father was a cardiac patient.  They came to us together with my stepmother.  Those were stressful days because two families were a little difficult to manage in that small house.

We had a wood stove, we kept quite warm with that, actually.  I used to go to Galatasaray Hamam once a month, sometimes I would stop by the one in Kapalicharshi [Closed Bazaar].  My wife on the other hand would go to Pangalti Hamam once in a while.  Fortune got along well with my stepmother, she even managed her well. 

My stepmother was a very good person, but she was very sick, she had nervous breakdowns once or twice a year.  She did not thrash the place but she would show childish behavior.  When she was very sick, we even interned her in La Paix Hospital [mental hospital in Istanbul] for 15 days when our budget allowed.  She treated me very well, but she behaved like a classic stepmother with my older sister.

My older sister had gotten to know my mother longer than me and never grew to love my stepmother.

Our first daughter, Sara was born on the 29th of December in 1953.  We named her after my mother, as was my wish always.

On January 30th, 1956, our second daughter Viki was born.  She got her name from my mother-in-law, Viktorya.  She, the deceased, was upset, saying my name is Viktorya, why did you name her Viki.  And we, as a joke, said if the third one is born, we will name her Viktorya.

I spoke Turkish with my daughters from the day they were born.  Even when their mother spoke in Spanish sometimes, the children always answered her in Turkish.  My daughters’ mother tongue was Turkish.

When my stepmother and father came to our house, more Spanish was spoken in the house and in this way, my daughters’ Spanish improved by listening.  Unfortunately, my father died at the end of 1956.  Viki was only eleven months old.  My stepmother moved in with her older sister.

During those days, we lived in Tunel, on Kumbaraci Hill, in a two and a half bedroom house.  That house still exists but I do not remember the name.  As the children grew, the expenses grew too.  We did not even have a refrigerator then.  Everyone had a wire cupboard.  Food was kept there. 

Pots were put in there too.  That was objectionable.  It had to be closed by wire.  We were only able to own a refrigerator in 1959.  I think our first refrigerator’s brand name was Arcelik.

In 1965, when my situation had improved, my daughters were attending Jewish Highschool, in the First Co-educational Elementary school.  Sara was in 5th grade, Viki in second.

Sara finished school that year and entered Saint Pulcherie Middle School [French Catholic school].  We transferred Viki to 19 Mayis [May 19] Elementary School.  It was 50 – 100 feet away from our house.

We moved to Sisli in 1965.  The official rest day was Sunday, but later when banks started closing on Saturdays too, we were taking two days off.  We used to go to work on Saturdays before... we stopped that later.  We improved the business a little and moved to a 3 bedroom, one livingroom house with a bathroom and balcony, full of light, in a good location in Sisli. 

It was in a location close to everything.  And slowly our social life took off.  I used to go to soccer games on my own.  One time, I took my wife too but she did not like the game, and she did not come with me again.  Their luck was in having formed good friendships from a very early age.

There were two movie theaters then, Site and Kent.  We used to go there all together.  We had season tickets.  We used to go to exhibitions too.  In addition, pop music had started then.  There was Ajda Pekkan [one of the pioneer pop stars of Turkey].  We used to go and listen to her.

We took our first family trip when Viki graduated from 19 Mayis and Sara entered Saint Benoit Highschool [French Catholic school], to Ankara.  We had a whole week’s vacation during a holiday.  Four couples as friends, we wamted to see the museums in Ankara and Anitkabir [tomb of Ataturk 9], with our children.  We went to theaters too.  We had gone by bus. 

As soon as we arrived in Ankara, we rented a minivan.  Every day, we went around in that.

We went to hot springs in Yalova once, too.  But, trips outside the country, my wife and I took it alone.  We went to Israel in the 1970’s for the first time for both of us.  We went by boat to Haifa, cruising through the whole Mediterranean.  We also disembarked in Cyprus (Cyprus was under British rule then). 

Turkish money was very valuable in those days, and we would get two Greek drahmas for a Turkish lira.

The reason I went to Israel was to visit my relatives.  Because there were people who immigrated from here in 1948.  They lived in Batyam and its surroundings, we used to correspond with letters.

My older sister’s children and my girls are the same age.  They used to go to the movie theater together in Sisli.  However, during the summer months, even when we lived on Kumbaraci Hill, we started going to Buyukada [largest one in the chain of islands called Princess Islands, south of Istanbul, on the Marmara sea]. 

At the time, Greeks were more prevalent on the island.  There were Jews too of course.   A lot of languages were spoken.  In the 1960’s..  There were a lot of languages like Greek, Spanish, Italian, and French.  The Greeks on the island were happy people who loved nightlife, and having fun.  Even when they were returning home, at night time, they would sing songs as a group.

The atmosphere was very cheerful.  Later on, when they left, Turkish started to become the main language. Of course, their absence was felt. Now there is no nightlife on the island. The young people prefer Istanbul.  It is nice for older people and young people with babies.

There weren’t as many houses as there are now, of course, we had rented a house made of wood.  This house was close to the boat dock, on the hill that goes to Anadolu Club, and belonged to a Greek woman. There was no view of the sea.  The rent was approximately 700 – 800 liras. The kids were little.

We used to go to Sedef island [fifth and smallest one on the Princess Islands chain] to swim in the sea, sometimes we went to Yorukali beach.  We carried meals from home too sometimes. On the weekends we would go to Dil [translation: Tongue, part of Buyukada that sticks out like a tongue] with our daughters for a picnic. 

We would prepare meatball sandwiches from home.  The island was always beautiful.  We had a lot of friends.  We would get together, have a lot of fun amongst ourselves.  There were open-air movie theaters, 2-3 of them, there was Cambaz in Lalahatun (today it is a clinic), the girls used to go there a lot to watch movies. We sometimes got together in friends’ houses and played cards. We were fond of card games. Bezik, Blum, Pishti [names of games], sometimes Poker. 

We used to play lotto.  We conversed.  We had fun, as you can see.

There were no Jewish organizations then, and even if there were, my kids were happy with their own friends and did not feel the need.  They had six to seven close friends since they were 7 years old, and their friendships continue till today.

Nevertheless, I always raised my daughters according to Jewish traditions.  I do not really support mixed marriages.  Because conflicts arise later on.  This is a big luxury in my opinion.  Our population is very small anyways.

We socialized very often with my older sister.  They lived very close to us.
There were also relatives of the wife in Kuzguncuk.  My wife’s uncle, Izak and Camila Salerno and children: Nesim who went to Israel while he was a student, Sabetay, Pepo; and they had a daughter named Estreya [they called her Yildiz too], she immigrated to Israel too when she was married.

We used to go visit them too.  Lazar-Rashel Franko’s family also lived there. Once in a while when I went to a soccer game on that side, they went to Kuzguncuk too.

We used to go to Shishli Synagogue 12 with my daughters.  Especially on Yom Kippur evenings, I used to take them to the synagogue to listen to the shofar.  There were no bat-mitzvah celebrations then.  That’s why when they reached 12 years of age, we did not have bat-mitzvahs.

We always paid special attention to Passover.  Seder is held two nights.  We eat matzohs all week.  We do not have a separate Passover kitchen, but we eat traditional meals during the Passover week without fail.  We always eat leek meatballs, lamb dishes and special Passover meals like these.

My wife cooks Jewish dishes.  My favorite is navy beans with spinach.  My wife’s dolmas [refers to dishes labeled “stuffed”] are delicious too.  She prepares very good dolmas.  Both stuffed grape leaves and cabbage rolls.  My wife learned how to cook first from her mother, then from my older sister.  Because my older sister’s husband was fond of good food, my sister used to cook very well.

My father is in Haskoy Jewish cemetery.  At my father’s funeral, we fulfilled whatever our religion dictated, with a rabbi.  I did not go to work for 8 days.  I went to temple every day. We recited the kaddish.

I still observe the yartzheits of my mother, father, mother-in-law [Viktorya] and father-in-law [Izak].  I recite the kaddish myself.  Even if we cannot observe the yartzheit, we do not neglect lighting a candle at home in the evening.   We recite the beracha [religious prayer] without fail.  I have the death dates of all of them registered.  I lost my father at the end of 1956 anyways, my father-in-law around 1967, and three years later we lost my mother-in-law.

Most of my friends were Jewish.  Some of our friendships still continue: Pepo - Ester Tovim, one of their sons is Jak, the other Sami.  Jak Memi and his wife Alegre Memi.  Around the time of his son Sami’s bar-mitzvah...  There was Albert Adato, his wife Sofi and son Moris.  The name of my partner was Albert Kucukbahar.  His wife Elmas and two daughters, Meri and Suzi.  My partner was 15 years younger than me.  We socialized once in a while.

Once a week, we went out to dinner with friends without fail..  We used to go to a restaurant on the Bosphorus or to the steak houses in Cekmece.  I sometimes did not attend lunches because of games.   I had season tickets, when there was a game of Galatasaray, I went to watch it without fail. 

Before the game, we used to take the children to one of the meat restaurants in Kucukcekmece.  There were big play areas, the girls had fun there.  After the girls turned 15, they stopped going out with us.  Viki attended Robert College 14.  Sara was studying in Saint Benoit.  They were going out in groups with their own friends.

In 1948, when the nation of Israel was founded, an embassy was opened in Istanbul.  When the flag was raised there for the first time, we went and savored the emotion like a lot of Jews did.   The founding of Israel was very important for us.  If it had been founded earlier, maybe Hitler wouldn’t have been able to accomplish all the things he did.

There were no special celebrations at homes, but cocktail parties were given at the embassy.  The newspapers wrote about it too.  We felt great happiness of course.

When my daughters finished their education, first Sara got married on January 30th, 1977.  The name of my son-in-law was Mimi Yakim Sarfati.  They met in a group of friends. After dating for 1.5 years, we had the engagement ceremony in our house.  I and my in-law put the rings that were on a plate in front of the young couple, on our children’s fingers.

Sara had not attended university because of political events, but she had a good job.  She worked as the secretary to the import manager in the firm Henkel.  In 1979 my deceased son-in-law became jobless and they immigrated to Israel in 1980 when they had a job offer from a relative there.

My in-laws were Aron and Fani Sarfati.  Aron Sarfati died about 25 years ago.  His wife Fani on the other hand lives with my daughter Sara currently.  In Gayrettepe.  The woman is very old.  In summers she lives with her daughter Leyla Arditi and her husband Yavuz Arditi in Burgaz [Second one in the Princess Islands chain on the Marmara Sea].

Viki finished Industrial Engineering in Bosphorus University the same year and was working at El-Al, and would fly to Israel once in a while.  She used to visit her friends from college who were in Jerusalem University.  On one occasion, she met my current son-in-law, Yuda.  Yuda Lerden was born in Istanbul. 

The names of his mother and father are Ester and Ibrahim Lerden.  Yuda had immigrated from Turkey around 15 years of age, and attended highschool and university there.  I, as a father, did not know much about Yuda.  I learned about it last.  I had principles.  Viki had once told me “Dad, we cannot do anything against your wishes, you brainwashed us so much.  So just relax”.

One day, in the beginning of 1979, she had not graduated yet, and she told me a friend was coming from Israel and that she would come home late.  Apparently it was Yuda...  I asked my daughter, what are your intentions with this guy?  I am thinking of getting married here, and living in Israel, she said.  And we married Viki to Yuda in 1979 in Neve Shalom Synagogue.  We had the celebration in Tarabya Hotel.  Yuda’s father is now deceased, yet his mom still lives in Jerusalem today.

Sara married first.  Then Viki.  But Viki left for Israel before her.  Sara and her family first went to the Ulpan in Ramat Aviv, meaning to Beit-Milman. She started working in a real estate firm.  We suddenly found ourselves in a strange predicament. 

Both our daughters were in Israel, and I have always been someone who finds happiness with my family.  That’s why I started disengaging from my work. I always had them on my mind.  It wasn’t so easy to connect with the telephone then either.  And in 1981, we decided to go there.  Unfortunately I broke up with my partner.

We went to Beit-Milman in June of 1981, six months later rented a house in Ramat-Hasharon.  My deceased son-in-law Mimi Sarfati was working in a French firm.  Because I was with my children, adapting to life there was very easy.  There were a lot of Turks around me.  I was 57 years old.  First I went to a language school for 3 months. 

Hebrew is a very different language for us.  And I persevered, went for 5 months and learned enough to be able to converse.  I started working in the ready-to-wear business for half a day.  I worked as a sales person. 

Afterwards we were with our children and grandchildren all the time.  I had three grandchildren from Viki, one after the other, one boy, and two girls.  Eyal was born in 1981, Efrat in 1985, Shira in 1987.  We were with them at every birth.  Sara gave birth to her second son there.

We had other relatives who made their aliyah.  Usually they lived around Batyam.  They had also gone either because of their children or because of their jobs.
There were others who made aliyah after us, including young people.

As bad luck would have it, there were conflicts in the business of Sara’s husband, my deceased son-in-law.  They offered him a managerial position in Turkey in a zipper factory, and they decided to return to Istanbul.  After living there for four years, they returned to Istanbul in 1984.  In this situation, Sara’s sons continued their education in Nisantas Boys’ Highschool 15 in Istanbul. 

Both of them graduated from there.  When my older grandson Roni was about to graduate from middle school, we lost his father, meaning my son-in-law, from a bad illness in the year 1992.

We stayed in Istanbul, on the island in summers for 3-4 months anyways.  When Sara was left alone in 1992, we decided to return.  Sara continued in the business her husband started.  And I started going to work every day to help her.  We rented this house in Sisli.  Roni went to university in Tel-Aviv when he finished highschool. 

And he studied economics there.  He had a lot of help from his aunt.  Viki left her work at El-Al. And started helping out in her husband’s business and they expanded the business.  They have three children.  One of them is Eyal [born in 1981], Efrat was born in 1985, and Shira in 1987 [today she is 20 years old and is doing her military service]. 

Efrat finished his military service and went to South America.  Eyal on the other hand is studying economy at university and is in his father’s business.  Roni works there too.  The business has expanded.  My son Yuda is usually on trips.

My family visits with us very often, at different times and on different occasions.

In 1986, during the Neve Shalom massacre 16, we were in Israel.  We lost some acquaintances.  We were all panicked then.  It was an event that we did not deserve. It is very sad for people praying in a synagogue to die of course.

Last month we lost my older sister Rejin [we had to take a break from our interview because of this] and I went to the synagogue every day.  She suffered for eight months.  She has two adult daughters and five grandchildren.  One of them had gone to Israel around 1978.  Her daughter Cela.  Her husband Mondi
Cakir.   Chemical engineer.  He is a very valuable person, very cultured, speaking three or four languages.  Sara Reyna and her husband Yasar Reyna.  They have one daughter and one son.

Both of my older sister’s sons-in-law are very respectful, good sons-in-law who love their spouses.  Cela even has a great-grandchild.  Her older son is married too.  Both my sister and I had five grandchildren each. We get together very often.  Like during Passover or Rosh Ashana.

We lived the bombing in Levent in November of 2003 17, moment by moment.  They immediately showed it on television.  Unfortunately.  I can not understand how we, the Jews, are the recipients of so much bad will in the world.

We did not encounter any problems here after the war of ‘67 18 in Israel.
There were antizionist articles in newspapers of course, but I did not experience anything personally.

In the years 1955 and 1964, Jews were harmed also during some revolts against Greeks.   Unfortunately, sometimes the innocent suffer alongside the guilty.  Nothing happened to our store.  But they demolished Beyoglu.  All the Greek stores were targeted.  There were rumors that Ataturk’s house in Salonika was bombed and the public revolted because of this.  The stores where the Greeks were the majority, were destroyed.  The national wealth was trashed.  Of course some Jewish stores also were gone in the meantime. 19

There was a Greek carpentry shop across the house we lived in.  One night they destoyed that place too, rolls of fabric and refrigerators were strewn on Kumbaraci Hill.  It was unforgettable.  There were no preventive measures, I think.

I do not personally use the internet to correspond with my family in Israel.   I have nothing to do with technology.  My girls correspond every day, they talk constantly; we receive the news about everything right away.

Finally, I wish to impart my secret to all young married couples.  Marriage does not depend on two people getting along absolutely well.  I and my wife are very different and despite that we have been together for 57 years.  The secret is not to be mad.  My wife would be silent when I was angry sometimes. 

When it was nighttime, without fail she would lean her face towards me in bed.  We never went to bed angry.  And I am very grateful to my spouse.  I can never forget all the sacrifices she made.  Respect, sacrifice and understanding are very important in the institution of marriage.

• Glossary:

​1 Ladino: also known as Judeo-Spanish, it is the spoken and written Hispanic language of Jews of Spanish and Portugese origin. Ladino did not become a specifically Jewish language until after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 [and Portugal in 1495] - it was merely the language of their province. 

It is also known as Judezmo, Dzhudezmo, or Spaniolit. When the Jews were expelled from Spain and Portugal they were cut off from the further development of the language, but they continued to speak it in the communities and countries to which they emigrated.

Ladino therefore reflects the grammar and vocabulary of 15th century Spanish. In Amsterdam, England and Italy, those Jews who continued to speak ‘Ladino’ were in constant contact with Spain and therefore they basically continued to speak the Castilian Spanish of the time. Ladino was nowhere near as diverse as the various forms of Yiddish, but there were still two different dialects, which corresponded to the different origins of the speakers:

‘Oriental’ Ladino was spoken in Turkey and Rhodes and reflected Castilian Spanish, whereas ‘Western’ Ladino was spoken in Greece, Macedonia, Bosnia, Serbia and Romania, and preserved the characteristics of northern Spanish and Portuguese.

The vocabulary of Ladino includes hundreds of archaic Spanish words, and also includes many words from different languages: mainly from Hebrew, Arabic, Turkish, Greek, French, and to a lesser extent from Italian. In the Ladino spoken in Israel, several words have been borrowed from Yiddish. For most of its lifetime, Ladino was written in the Hebrew alphabet, in Rashi script, or in Solitro. It was only in the late 19th century that Ladino was ever written using the Latin alphabet.

At various times Ladino has been spoken in North Africa, Egypt, Greece, Turkey, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, France, Israel, and, to a lesser extent, in the United States and Latin America.

2 First Balkan War [1912-1913]: Started by an alliance made up of Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia, and Montenegro against the Ottoman Empire. It was a response to the Turkish nationalistic policy maintained by the Young Turks in Istanbul. The Balkan League aimed at the liberation of the rest of the Balkans still under Ottoman rule.

In October, 1912 the allies declared war on the Ottoman Empire and were soon successful: the Ottomans retreated to defend Istanbul and Albania, Epirus, Macedonia and Thrace fell into the hands of the allies. The war ended on the 30th May 1913 with the Treaty of London, which gave most of European Turkey to the allies and also created the Albanian state.

3 Matan Baseter Bikur Holim / Barinyurt: Literally ‘Secret Help Care for the Sick’; a Turkish Jewish community institution that looks for the needy in the community and helps them. It supports children in school and health related issues, sends needy families all necessities for the Jewish holidays, and looks after the sick. All expenses are met by donations and sponsorships inside the Turkish Jewish community. In its building, called Barinyurt, the old and the needy are looked after.

4 Neve Shalom Synagogue: Situated near the Galata Tower, it is the largest synagogue of Istanbul. Although the present building was erected only in 1952, a synagogue bearing the same name had been standing there as early as the 15th century.

5 The 20 military classes: In May 1941 non-Muslims aged 26-45 were called to military service. Some of them had just come back from their military service but were told to report for duty again. Great chaos occurred, as the Turkish officials took men from the streets and from their jobs and sent them to military camps. They were used in road building for a year and disbanded in July 1942.

6 Menderes, Adnan [1899–1961]: Turkish prime minister and martyr. He became one of the leaders of the new Democratic Party, the only opposition party in Turkey in 1945, and prime minister after the elections in 1950. He was re-elected in 1954 and 1957 and deposed in 1960 by a military coup, lead by General Cemal Gursel. He was put on trial on the charge of violating the constitution and was executed.

7 Zulfaris Synagogue/Museum of Turkish Jews: This synagogue, recorded in the Chief Rabbinate archives as Kal Kadosh Galata, is commonly known as Zulfaris Synagogue. The word is derived from the former name of the street in which it is located: Zulf-u arus, which means Bride’s Long Lock.

Today the street is called Perchemli Sokak which means Fringe Street. There is evidence that this synagogue preexisted in 1671, when Haim Kamhi was Chief Rabbi, as the foundations date from the early 15th century Genovese period.

However, the actual building was re-erected over its original foundation, presumably in the early 19th century. In the 1890s, repair work was carried out with the financial assistance of the Camondo family and in 1904 restoration work was conducted by the Jewish community of Galata, presided over by Jak Bey de Leon. (Source: www.muze500.com)

8 Wealth Tax: Introduced in December 1942 by the Grand National Assembly in a desperate effort to resolve depressed economic conditions caused by wartime mobilization measures against a possible German influx to Turkey via the occupied Greece. It was administered in such a way to bear most heavily on urban merchants, many of who were Christians and Jews.

Those who lacked the financial liquidity had to sell everything or declare bankruptcy and even work on government projects in order to pay their debts, in the process losing most or all of their properties. Those unable to pay were subjected to deportation to labor camps until their obligations were paid off.

9 Struma ship: In December 1941 the ship took on board some 750 Jews – which was more than seven times its normal passengers' capacity – to take them to Haifa, then Palestine.

As none of the passengers had British permits to enter the country, the ship stopped in Istanbul, Turkey, in order for them to get immigration certificates to Palestine but the Turkish authorities did not allow the passengers to disembark. They were given food and medicine by the Joint Distribution Committee and the Jewish community of Istanbul.

As the vessel was not seaworthy, it could not leave either. However, in February 1942 the Turks towed the Struma to the Black Sea without water, food or fuel on board. The ship sank the same night and there was only one survivor. In 1978, a Soviet naval history disclosed that a Soviet submarine had sunk the Struma.

10 Inonu, Ismet [1884-1973]: Turkish statesman and politician, the second president of the Turkish Republic. Ismet Inonu played a great role in the victory of the Turkish armies during the Turkish War of Independence. He was also the politician who signed the Lausanne Treaty in 1923, thereby ensuring the territorial integrity of the country as well as the revision of the previous Treaty of Sevres [1920].

He also served Turkey as prime minister various times. He was the ‘all-time president’ of the CHP Republican People’s Party. Ismet Inonu was elected president on 11th November 1938, one day after Ataturk’s death. He was successful in keeping Turkey out of World War II.

11 Citizen, speak Turkish policy: In the 1930s–1940s, the rise of Turkish nationalism affected the Jewish community as well. The Salonican Jew Moise Cohen (1883-1961), who had been in close contact with the young Turks in his home town in the years preceding the restoration of the Constitution, took the old Turkish name Tekinalp.

He led a campaign among his fellow Jews to encourage them to speak only Turkish to integrate them fully into Turkish life, declaring that ‘Turkey is your home, so you should speak Turkish.’ In the major culture however, the policy of ‘Citizen, speak Turkish’ was seen as pressure put on minorities to speak Turkish in public places. There was a lot of criticism and verbal attacks and jeers on those who did not comply with this social rule.

12 Ataturk, Mustafa Kemal [1881-1938]: Great Turkish statesman, the founder of modern Turkey. Mustafa Kemal was born in Salonika; he adapted the name Ataturk [father of the Turks] when he introduced surnames in Turkey. He joined the liberal Young Turk movement, aiming at turning the Ottoman Empire into a modern Turkish nation state and also participated in the Young Turk Revolt [1908]. He fought in the Second Balkan War [1913] and World War I.

After the Ottoman capitulation to the Entente, Mustafa Kemal Pasha organized the Turkish Nationalist Party [1919] and set up a new government in Ankara to rival Sultan Mohammed VI, who had been forced to sign the treaty of Sevres [1920], according to which Turkey would loose the Arab and Kurdish provinces, Armenia, and the whole of European Turkey with Istanbul and the Aegean littoral to Greece.

He was able to regain much of the lost provinces and expelled the Greeks from Anatolia.

He abolished the Sultanate and attained international recognition for the Turkish Republic at the Lausanne Treaty [1923]. Under his
presidency Turkey became a constitutional state [1924], universal male suffrage was introduced, state and church were divided and he also introduced the Latin script.

13 Sisli Beth-Israel Synagogue: Istanbul synagogue, founded in the 1920s after restoring the premises of the garage of a thread factory. It was rebuilt and extended in 1952.

14 Robert College: The oldest and most prestigious English language school in Istanbul since the mid-19th century providing education to the elite of Turkey as well as other countries in the region.

Robert College was born in 1863 in the village of Bebek by the Bosphorus, when Christopher Robert approached Cyrus Hamlin with his desires and found a receptive audience. Hamlin, an American schoolmaster, had been running a school, a bakery and a laundry in Bebek at the time.

Robert was a wealthy American industrialist desiring to establish in Turkey a modern university along American lines with instruction in English. These two men, an educator and a philanthropist, successfully collaborated to found Robert College.

Until 1971, it included two campuses: the actual Robert College exclusively for boys and the American College for Girls. In 1971, the American College for Girls and the Robert College boys school united and co-education started under the name of Robert College at the previous American College for Girls campus.

At the same time the Turkish government took over the boys’ campus, which became Bogazici University [Bosporus University]. Robert College and today’s Bogazici University were and still are the best schools in Turkey. Through the years, these schools have had graduates occupying top positions in Turkey’s business, political, academic and art sectors.

15 English High School for Boys: Founded in 1905 in the district of the Galata Tower by the British Consulate, primarily to provide comprehensive education for the children of the British colony in Istanbul.

In 1911, Sultan Mehmet V gave the British Embassy a 5-storied wooden building in Nisantasi for exclusively schooling purposes.

The school gained the status of high school in 1951 and also became coeducational. In 1979 it was nationalized and renamed as Nisantasi Anatolian Lycee.

16 1986 Terrorist Attack on the Neve-Shalom Synagogue: In September 1986, Islamist terrorists carried out a terrorist attack with guns and grenades on worshippers in the Neve-Shalom synagogue, killing 23. The Turkish government and people were outraged by the attack. The damage was repaired, except for several bullet holes in a seat-back, left as a reminder.

17 2003 Bombing of the Istanbul Synagogues: On 15th November 2003 two suicide terrorist attacks occurred nearly simultaneously at the Sisli and Neve-Shalom synagogues. The terrorists drove vans loaded with explosives and detonated the bombs in front of the synagogues.

It was Saturday morning and the synagogues were full for the services. Due to the strong security measures that had been taken, there were no casualties inside, however, 26 pedestrians on the street were killed; five of them were Jewish. The material loss was also terrible. The terrorists belonged to the Turkish branch of Al Qaida.

18 Six-Day-War: The first strikes of the Six-Day-War happened on 5th June 1967 by the Israeli Air Force. The entire war only lasted 132 hours and 30 minutes. The fighting on the Egyptian side only lasted four days, while fighting on the Jordanian side lasted three.

Despite the short length of the war, this was one of the most dramatic and devastating wars ever fought between Israel and all of the Arab nations. This war resulted in a depression that lasted for many years after it ended. The Six-Day-War increased tension between the Arab nations and the Western World because of the change in mentalities and political orientations of the Arab nations.

19 Events of 6th-7thSeptember 1955: Pogrom against the ethnic Greeks in Istanbul. It broke out after the rumour that Ataturk’s house in Salonika (Greece) was being bombarded. As most of the Greek houses and businesses had been registered by the authorities earlier it was easy to carry out the pogrom.

The Greek (and other non-Muslim communities) were hit severely: 3 people were killed, 30 were wounded, also 1004 houses, 4348 shops, 27 pharmacies and laboratories, 21 factories, 110 restaurants and cafes, 73 churches, 26 schools, 5 sports clubs and 2 cemeteries were destroyed; 200 Greek women were raped. A great wave of immigration occurred after these events and Istanbul was cleansed of its Greek population.

Roza Benveniste
Athens
Greece
Interviewer: Alexis Katsaros
Date of the interview: May 2007

Roza Benveniste was born in Thessaloniki in 1919. She lives in an apartment in the center of Athens. She is a woman that is involved in many activities such as working as a volunteer at the Jewish Museum of Athens three times a week. In addition, she is a woman of many talents since she speaks five languages fluently and is a talented painter. Her artwork decorates most of the walls of her warm home.

Family background

Growing Up

During the War

After the War

Glossary

Family background

About my great-grandparents I know very little. My paternal grandfather was still alive when I was born. He was a money-exchanger. He originated from Larissa where he lived for most of his life. My grandmother was a quiet old lady with whom we didn’t have much contact. My grandparents spoke to each other in Greek and in Judeo-Spanish 1 but with a Greek accent.

My family was quite cosmopolitan and didn’t wear traditional clothes, with the exception of one of Mother’s aunts. She came to visit every now and then and she used to bring us the traditional tajicos 2 made from dough.

My father’s parents had settled in an apartment in Thessaloniki. I remember we used to go on Saturday night to listen to my grandfather say the prayers. He didn’t leave the house often, so I don’t think that he attended the synagogue. I don’t know anything about their life in Larissa.

I didn’t meet my maternal grandfather, so I don’t know much about him. I met my maternal grandmother, Belissia, who was very nice and used to tell us stories all the time. I am afraid that she died because of me. I had a cold one day and my mother couldn’t stay with me because she had to go to a funeral. My grandmother looked after me instead and she caught my cold. A little while later she died. She didn’t have a house; she used move around between the houses of friends and family. Everyone loved her very much and when she died my father mourned greatly. They had a very good relationship. I remember Father used to joke with her all the time.

My mother didn’t know Greek, we taught her the language. Her reward to us was to buy us ice-cream from the ice-cream man who used to come around the neighborhood. My mother had lived for a long time in Paris, where a cousin of hers used to live. She knew French very well and used to wear long green dresses.

My father had gone to Paris to learn couture for men’s and women’s clothes. At some point he returned to settle in Thessaloniki. My mother had come back from Paris with a European style. They met at a dance. My mother was wearing one of her long dresses. When my father saw her he was very impressed. My father was a quite short, while my mother was a stunningly beautiful woman.

My mother used to read a lot, but my father didn’t have much time for reading. She read mainly literature and newspapers, in French and Spanish; she was able to read Greek only later.

There were many Greek newspapers in Thessaloniki, and some where in Judeo-Spanish, written in Latin characters. There were newspapers in Rashi 3 and newspapers in French like Le Progrès 4, L’Indépendant 5.

My father owned a shop called ‘Com fete’ that sold clothes and trench coats. The shop used to have the nickname ‘The Trench Coat Source.’ My father was a very difficult man. He was very strict. He wanted the towels to be very well ironed, and if they weren’t he would say, ‘What is this?’ in an angry manner. When I think of what we had on the table everyday… We had to have a variety of salads as well as boiled vegetables that weren’t very common at the time, like greens.

Because my father originated from Larissa, my mother’s relatives made fun of him. They were ‘a la Franca’ [of French culture] and knew their French etc. I remember one time on his birthday, one of my mother’s sisters brought him a bouquet of fresh carrots and celeries. He was the only one in the whole family who used to eat raw vegetables just like that. All the others were very refined.

My father always kept a note pad next to his bed. This way, if he remembered something during the night he would make a note of it. These notes were the duties of each of his employees, for the next day. In the morning one of his employees would come from the house to pick up the notepad and take it to the shop.

Before the war he had established a shop that was very original, with goods from Paris. He had brought machines from Paris to waterproof the trench coats. We had a room in the house where he would store the coats while they were being made. He worked with agencies around Greece and he had a contract with army officers’ cashiers. The officers would shop at my father’s shop.

My father attended a Jewish school and he knew Hebrew and Rashi. In fact, I have a card of his written in Rashi. He would travel to France for medical treatment because he had asthma.

My father wasn’t very religious, he always worked on Saturdays. Our food was kosher anyway, because we bought the meat from the Jewish butcher. My father would go to the synagogue only on religious holidays. I don’t know anything about his personal political views.

We spoke in Judeo-Spanish and in French in the house. The Greek language entered our house much later.

We were a very large family so we didn’t have much contact with other Jewish families.
Thessaloniki was the only city where the majority of the population was Jewish. I was born two years after the Great Fire of 1917 6. Many Jewish buildings and synagogues were ruined by the Great Fire, and many were emigrating. Even though many synagogues had burned down during the fire, quite a few remained. There were many small ones, because it was forbidden for a synagogue to be any bigger than its nearest mosque. There was Beith Shaul synagogue in the posh area of Las Campagnas or Exohes, which was a very luxurious one, but there were many other smaller and simpler ones.

I remember Thessaloniki full or trams. I used to go to school by tram.

In my neighborhood we had only one rabbi. We lived in a mixed area where both Jews and Christians lived together. An Armenian doctor lived right opposite and I used to play with his son.

We were one of the first houses to get a radio. I remember it was huge and it came in many pieces. We were also first to get a bath that could be heated up with wood. The water would go through the stove and hot water would run in the bath. We used to bathe in the bath, not simply shower.

The house was heated by a cast iron stove. It was painted outside in a pale color with golden ornaments, and it stood in the corner of the living room. There was a space inside that could be used as an oven. I was very sensitive to the cold, so I would sit on my knees next to the stove with my book on top of it. My father however, couldn’t stand it and he would shout to open the windows and get some fresh air.

The staircase to our house led up to a large tiled entrance hall. We lived in a detached house. On one side of the entrance hall there was the door to the living room and on the other a large door to the kitchen where there was also a big window looking out on the garden. The kitchen also had fireplace where we would cook, which was common at the time. We would light the fire under the fireplace where there was also a place to boil clothes. We had a lady coming in help with the washing whom we used to call Miss de Colada.

We had a housemaid who lived in our house. Since we were Jewish, naturally we had a Jewish maid. The maids usually came from neighborhoods like ‘151’ 7.

We would wash our clothes with lye, which was the ash that we gathered from the fireplace. We would hang them to dry in the courtyard. These clothes smelled so wonderful.

There was a corridor from the kitchen leading to the toilet and the bathroom. At the end of this corridor were the dining room and living room. Our veranda was quite large and it was the place where we spent most of the summer. We didn’t sit in the living room very much. We usually sat in the dining room because the radio was there. From the living room there was one small corridor that led to my parents’ room and to the room I shared with my brother. They later split my brother and me up, and I moved to the room opposite.

There was a coal stove in the dining room which had a large stove pipe, and another one in the living room. We had a brass brazier which my father loved. We used to put small pieces of coal in the brazier and close the door at night, and in the morning, when we woke up, the room would still be warm. We didn’t have heating in the bedrooms. I remember my father, first thing in the morning he would wake up and go to break coal in small pieces. The brazier was wooden and had a brass can and I have a very faint memory of it.

We had a garden outside the house which also had a greenhouse. We didn’t grow anything inside the greenhouse; we used to put all the plants inside in the winter so they wouldn’t freeze. Later, the Germans put pigs in there. They even took the shutters when they left.
We weren’t a very religious family, and didn’t go to the synagogue very often. My mother was a ‘libre penseur’ – a free thinker. Of course we celebrated the religious holidays. I had this teacher at my uncle’s school who taught us the Haggadah, the whole story from the time of our exodus from Egypt. We never really learned it because we would just repeat everything without paying much attention to it.

The Zionist issue was quite big at the time of my birth. There where many unions like the AJJ Association Jeunes Juifs 8. They had given out these boxes and every month they would come around the houses and collect money which was sent to Palestine to buy land from the Arabs that they didn’t cultivate. The earth had become so sterile. After some time, when the Arabs realized what was going on, they raised the prices much higher. With these savings is how Israel was created. I would put all the change from the shopping in the box.

Growing Up

There were even more serious and dynamic unions like the one of Theodor Herzl 9 and some others more fanatic. I only remember the two unions that I just mentioned; I was a member of Theodor Herzl’s. We didn’t really have any specific political beliefs. We would gather, chat, and dance. It was a way for us to meet and hang out together. Sometimes we would even go on daytrips. I didn’t get to go to many places, because I was quite young and I got married very young too.

There were many Jewish schools which were founded by Alliance Israelite Universelle 10. They had founded schools everywhere. There were also many schools from different nations in Thessaloniki, like the German school, the American and the Italian. When I was very young, I went to a kindergarten that a cousin of my uncle owned. This uncle had a school for Jews only. The others had schools for their own people. There were so many Jews in the city anyway.

My uncle’s school was called the Ecole Franco-Allemande, because he taught French and my other uncle taught German. My uncles’ school offered a high level of education. With this knowledge I took exams and got my degree from the Lycée Francais.
At my uncles’ school, we were taught Hebrew. We didn’t really learn the language, but we learned some prayers that I can still remember. Then they thought that this wasn’t a very efficient way of teaching, so they got us a teacher from Israel who taught us literature and another one who taught us Rashi – that is the Judeo-Spanish written from left to right. I learned English at Anatolia College 11.

I didn’t learn Greek properly, because at my uncles’ school we didn’t really learn Greek, and after, at the Anatolia American College, we did everything in English, which was good because we practiced the language more this way.

The American school was mixed. It was for girls only but it had girls from a variety of different nationalities. There were many foreign students in the school who lived in the dormitories inside the school. One girl was from Albania, another one from Turkey whose name was Talat. The headmistress was called Miss Morel. We had two Armenian girls, whose fees were lower because of how they had been treated by the Turks. The girls who lived in the dormitories helped out in serving the food and many other tasks.

I didn’t live in the dormitories. I was with four Greek Christian girls and the Abbot sisters. I was also with two Jewish girls. I don’t know what happened to the one of them, but the other one married Molho, who had the bookshop in Thessaloniki. One of the Christian girls was Eugene. She was a very close friend of mine who had an old mother and no father. I heard that during the occupation she was taken to Germany. Why she was taken to Germany I still wonder.

Most of my schoolmates had gone to another school first like the Lycée Francais. My uncle’s school shut and I went straight there too; I was the youngest one in the school. We had a great teacher at school who taught Ancient Greek in translation and I was a very good student of his. He had this Olympian look to him, with blue eyes and a big forehead. We were all crazy about him. He had written schoolbooks and was very educated.
In our free time from school, we would meet for tea. We would invite boys for tea and they would invite us too. In our last year the girls who were one year younger than us invited us for tea to bid us farewell. They even made up these lyrics for us. The one about me said: ‘Here comes Blondie Roza with her serious ways but she is also a coquette; now she is full of sorrow because she will miss the president’s position.’ I was the president of the school when I graduated.

It was a tradition for the graduates’ class to go on a trip to Athens in order to visit the ancient sites. The Abbot Sisters had contacts with embassies and ambassadors and they had this idea that we could go to Italy. ‘How are we going to go to Italy,’ I asked them, and they replied that we would write a letter and send it to the embassy. So we did, and waited for their answer. As all this happened in 1938, the answer took a long time to come, so we had already gone to Athens. But when we came back, arriving at Thessaloniki’s harbor, our headmistress was waiting there for us and said, You know, Roza, there is a letter for you from the Italian Embassy.’

The letter we had written said how much we admired Italian art, which we had been taught about at school, and that we would like to see the originals. So they replied, accepting our request, and so we could go. They explained where we would stay and that we would have 75 percent off on all train tickets around the country. Basically, we would pay for the trip, but for wherever we would go the youth union would receive us.

Some of the girls didn’t have enough money for this second journey. We all needed to exchange money and with Metaxas 12 at the time, it was very difficult because he wouldn’t allow any exchanges. We split in two groups: one to find who would exchange money and the other to convince our headmistress to find an escort to take us. Because, how else would girls travel on their own especially all the way to Italy? It was unthinkable.

So I would go to the headmistress and each time I thought that I had managed to convince her, she would come up with some excuse, not to find us an escort. The other girls went to the banks but they didn’t manage to exchange any money. At some point one of the banks’ employees said to the girls: ‘But girls, aren’t you from the American School, don’t you have dollars on the side?’ So we managed to exchange some money. In the end the Abbot Sisters found an older girl whom they persuaded to escort us.

We went on the ferry boat from Thessaloniki’s harbor with the Tsiteris company. We had arranged with the company to take care of our mail to our families too. So we got to Brindisi or Bari, I don’t remember which. But no one was waiting for us there, not even a reception group, nothing. Our escort took charge and she found a solution. We went to Milan, Lago di Como and Venice. The day that we arrived, Mussolini 13 was also in town and we would joke and say that they were expecting us.

It was common in the films in the cinema to watch Venice with the gondolas and the couples in love kissing, on them. As I was a young girl at the time, this is the image that I had. I felt quite the opposite when I was there because they had nothing to do with the image that they projected in the films. At some point I stopped and said, ‘This is the gondola that I want.’ So the girls turn around to me and say, ‘But this one looks like a hearse, its all with black and white.’ I hadn’t noticed that it was actually black and white as it was richly decorated and that’s what had dragged my attention most.

In Rome, they showed us around and took a picture of us for the local newspaper. Florence was the city that made the greatest impression on me with its aristocracy.

My mother would shut me in the house around Easter time. There was a greater anti-Semitic wave during those days. This story was that I, being Jewish, killed poor Jesus so they had to kill me too. After Easter they would forget it again and everything would go back to normal. We would all hang out together.

The first time that I actually felt so bad that I was Jewish was on this trip to Italy. We had gone to Rome and many students had come to show us around the city and one of them who was closer to me and was showing the city to me says to me at some point, ‘See this shop? It was owned by a Jew and now we took it over.’ So I instantly asked him why, and he replied, ‘Because now they are ours.’ So I turn back to him and with no shame what so ever I reply, ‘I am Jewish.’ ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘we want Jewish women; we want them in one and only one way though…’

That was the first bite that I ever felt, the first sense of what was about to follow. From that moment, I started being homesick. I described the incident to the girl who was escorting us and she said that it was forbidden from now on, to tell anyone else that I was Jewish.

I didn’t have a lot of free time, because I was having private piano lessons, phonetics, music, painting, and these paintings over here [the interviewee is pointing at the paintings in her living room, which she drew] I did.

I had an art teacher, Miss Zukofki. I thank God for the good teachers he has given me. She was from Belarus, and her husband was an army general. The tsar baptized him. While she was in Thessaloniki she taught at the Lycée Francais. She would come to my fathers’ shop to buy clothes for her husband. At school I really liked to take a piece of paper and make portraits of my schoolmates. My father took my drawings and showed them to her, and she told him that I had a talent, so she started coming home to teach me. She taught me drawing and pyrography [art of decorating wood or other materials with burn marks by applying a heated object.]

I made a small shovel with its brush like the ones we have for the table, on top of which I had put some leaves. I also made a few things from leather. I liked them very much and so did the Germans because they took everything that we had left in the house. I made this board, which was a basket with strawberries, and it was a very successful piece.

There was a shop in the market, which belonged to Mr. Bourzopoulos, who everyone liked very much, and all his fabrics were imported from other countries. We were well known. Madam Cohen with Miss Cohen, Mrs. Vital Cohen. I didn’t go out to the market because the boy would come and pick up from the house to take to the seamstress anything we needed. At the time they wouldn’t even let me carry a single box.

My mother would give the shopping list to my father every Thursday. If she needed anything extra in the week she would buy it from the salesmen who would come around the neighborhood with their carriages of fruit and vegetables. Some of them we knew for years. At the time, the okras we would buy from Gypsy [Roma] ladies coming round, and they would come to the door and show us big bags full of okras. They where quite small in size, and they would sell them by the piece. They were so delicious. One of the grocers would come by and shout out the name of my mother. This is how well we knew them.

I had an older brother, Alberto, who was born in 1916, and whom we nearly lost during the mobilization because he was acting as if he was going to save Greece on his own. All of a sudden they came and took them and put him in a hospital that had a wing where they treated malaria patients for free. It wasn’t very much like a hospital, it didn’t have any medicine and he kept saying to everyone to be patient.

When my brother got married, he didn’t want to stay here and hide, so he and his wife decided to escape to Israel through Turkey. Silly of him, he took some gold liras with him and hid them in his boots. But he didn’t wear those boots; instead he had tied them up at the sack that he was carrying. The guy they had paid to take them took the money, took them to the island of Evoia and told them to wait there. A boat was supposed to come to pick them up. They waited and waited, but the boat wasn’t coming, so they understood that he had fooled them.

They started searching for another captain to ferry them over to the other country. They found someone, who took on his boat as many people as he could. But when they sailed, he realized that the boat was overloaded so he took the luggage and threw it one by one into the sea without saying anything to anyone. This way my brother lost his boots and his money with them, and even if someone found them they wouldn’t have known that money was hidden in them.

Eventually he got to Turkey with his wife, completely penniless. Luckily, there was an organized welcome by the Jews of Israel, then Palestine. The Turkish Jews took care of them and sent them to Palestine, where Jews already had set up their unions and they where trying to build their own army and create their own state. They took my brother as a postman. He later had two girls. A whole community of Greek Jews later on settled there.

My brother Albert fell in love with a girl that wasn’t of our class, you could say, but because he had gone through so much by then, and we thought we might lose him, we didn’t make a fuss about it. In the meantime there was the war going on, so we wouldn’t pay attention to such details.

His wife was the only one that didn’t go to the concentration camps. She was saved by her family. Her younger sister had gone to the concentration camps and came back, but unfortunately, due to the beating, she was deaf when she came back. I know that she later went to Israel, but I don’t know whether she is still alive or not.

My husband Rene came from Kavala [city in North-East Greece] and he had lost his mother and sister to World War I. They didn’t have a refuge, so the whole family was together, but I don’t know where. Anyway, when they got in, my husband hid in the corner. His father went to take him from the corner to be with the rest of the family. At that moment a bomb fell and all the others turned into ashes, and only the two of them survived. His father Nisim married a relative of his mother Siniorou, with whom he had a son named Pepo, and so my husband had a new brother. My husband came to Thessaloniki with his father and brother.

My husband worked in Thessaloniki, and his father knew an uncle of mine of whom my grandmother used to say, ‘I gave birth to all my children, but this one I must have taken from Paris.’ He really was ‘sui generis.’ He was very cheerful.

He would get up in the morning and sing his songs. One day the two of them went out in Thessaloniki to play billiard. So my uncle asked him if he was planning to get married or not. He said, ‘Yes, but I have to find a good girl.’ So my uncle told him, ‘I have a niece; I will introduce her to you.’ By the way, I really disliked things like that. I had contacts with other Jews from Unions, but nothing was happening there.

I had an aunt, Mathilde, who was one of my mother Flora’s sisters. She was more modern, and sometimes we would go out together to the cinema to watch a movie. One day she comes and tells me about this good movie that was playing in the cinema, and whether I would like to go. So I say, ‘Yes, let’s go.’ It was a cinema by the seaside; it doesn’t exist anymore.

So while I am ready to go out, my mother starts off at me saying how am I going to go out with this coat? I started getting a bit worried, because she was acting strange. I had many clothes that were assorted with their hats, as it was unthinkable for a lady to go out without a hat.

My aunt came to pick me up, and supposedly because it was a nice day, we went on foot. The weather wasn’t so good, but I accepted. On the way, she started telling me about this guy, so I started introverting, and I was thinking, who knows what he is like. So we get to the cinema and they weren’t there yet, which really surprised me. They came in after the movie had started, and my aunt waited until the movie had ended and the lights were on, in order to speak to them.

After the lights were on, we decided to walk back home, even though it wasn’t a very good night. The walk from the White Tower to the house wasn’t very long, but at the time it was very dark at night in Thessaloniki because there weren’t many lights, and we could hardly see each other. Any time that there was light on the way, you could see both our heads turning just to catch a glimpse of each other.

I was quite upset with my mother, who hadn’t told me anything about it. So when I came back home, she asked me how it went. ‘Fine,’ I reply and so does my aunt. My mother wanted to learn more, so she got my aunt and started asking her. ‘It went well,’ she said again.

On his side, he was trying to make up ways so we would meet again. He started being friendly with my brother and the three of us would go out together. One day he says to my brother, ‘Hey Albert, why don’t you leave now because we have a few things to talk about,’ and this is how our relationship moved on. Later, I got ill and he sent me so many flowers and cakes and then phone calls and everything, but he wouldn’t dare to come around the house.

Once he rang his father in Kavala and said to him, ‘Bring your wife and come to Thessaloniki because I am getting engaged.’ His father thought that he was joking at first, so he told him again and said that he was not joking and told him who he was going to get engaged to, his friend’s daughter. And then he believed him. We had our engagement at his place and we kept an open house for three days.

The ring, as you can see, had a different setting, but at some point, when we were staying in Switzerland, there was a huge dog where we were staying. One day, when we came back from our walk, the dog jumped on me and ruined it. They felt very bad; it was made from onyx, so they took it to their goldsmith to have it fixed. At another point, I lost that stone too. My husband had an obsession with the pendulum with which you can find water or metals. He read a lot about these things.

We lived in a house in Kalithea [suburb in the south of Athens] where there was a small room from which you could go through some small stairs to the maid’s house. I went up there one day to get a mattress and as it seems the little teeth that were holding the stone opened wide and it broke. My husband took this thing and started looking everywhere for the missing rock. He says, ‘It is over here,’ and there it was. My mother and my brothers-in-law were making fun of him, until he found it where he said it would be.

We got married at the Matanot Laevionim 13, which was an organization that gave food to poor children and a synagogue at the same time, and they did weddings. Things started looking quite ugly. Initially, we were going to leave for abroad, but Metaxas wouldn’t allow people to exchange any money, so we went to Athens and from there to Corfu. There my father sent us to one his agents, Mr. Dede, in order to help us out. We stayed in a hotel in Kifissia when we were in Athens, one that still exists.

When we got to Corfu, the first night we stayed in a hotel and the second one we went out to find Mr. Dede to help us out. We got our coach and went there, but first my husband went to check if they were there and if they would take us in. I waited outside. My husband rang the door and a little while later he came down with a fat lady, who came straight towards me to hug me and said, ‘Roza my child, you came back?’ I thought that she was crazy. Anyway, she kept hugging me and wouldn’t let me go.

There was a tripod there, as you entered, which had a painting and it had written something underneath, which I think was ‘Et rose elle a vécu ce que vivent les roses, L'espace d'un matin.’ [Editor’s note: Famous line from the poem Consolation a Duperier by French poet, critic and translator Francois de Malherbe (1555-1628)] They had married quite old, and they had a little girl, who they named Roze, and who died very young. She thought that her girl had come back.

I couldn’t tell her anything while I was there. I had everything I asked for. She would come by the hotel every morning and ask me what I would like to do. It was a very moving situation. Her husband was called Sabbie, and they both had this rhythmic accent like the Italians do.

They had a bone fan, and accidentally I said I really liked it, so they gave it to me straight away. After that I was very cautious of what I was saying. Many times, I look at the pictures and I wonder what on earth happened to all these people.

During the War

I got married young and I wasn’t a great housekeeper, but my mother was. I came to Athens with my husband in 1939. We stayed in Kallithea, near the Sivitanidio School [Public School of Arts and Crafts]. It was convenient for my husband because it was easy for him to get the train to Piraeus where he worked. The Commerciale [tobacco company] was located in a large field where a big hospital of Piraeus is now. I was already five months pregnant.

After the ship ‘Elli’ was sunk [the sinking of the ship ‘Elli’ precipitated Greece entering WWII], they called my husband and all his class for retraining. At some point I wanted to see what my husband was doing so I went to Kavala and met with him between two alarms. After that I returned to Thessaloniki to be close to my parents.

That day we were all at home, my husband was about to leave for his retraining when the phone rings. It was the Head of General Staff who called my father to tell him that we were invaded by the Italians and to warn him to take measures. My father woke us up and told us what was happening. So we took what we could, whatever we could take from the whole place. We also made fabrics with gold liras sown into them that we put around our waist, so in case we split up, each one of us would have some money on him.

My father rang one of my mother’s sisters’ husbands, who he had a good relationship with, to warn him too, but he couldn’t understand what my father was trying to tell him on the phone, so he told him that they would speak the next day. He was a wood trader.

My father had great foresight and, othr than all of us, he also saved another fifteen relatives, by paying a man to go and pick them up by car and take them to Athens. My brother was so single minded that all the employees of my father had moved to serve in Athens, and my brother wouldn’t allow this and was doing his army service as designated. He had forbidden my father to get in the middle. When he got ill and my father found out, he got someone to go and bring him back. Before he went to the army, he was a fearless man. Because of his illness, he got so thin that he came back half his weight.

In the meantime my brother was in love with a girl in Thessaloniki who wasn’t really of our class, which wasn’t acceptable in those days. Her name was Stella, and at some point she came to Athens to get married. We couldn’t afford to have a proper wedding reception, but our parents invited everyone for dinner, and one of the ministers’ assistants was invited there too.

My mother had kept her long dresses for receptions and formal dinners so she thought, since it was her son’s wedding, it would be nice to wear one. She had this stunning brooch with rubies and diamonds that she wore it with.

Anyway, the minister assistant, when the war started, told Father to go and stay around his place. By that time our house was under requisition because of its position, next to Sivitanidio, and they had sheltered doctors there because they didn’t have enough houses to put them. Our house was built by a Greek-American lady and it was very comforting and modern. We used to ring the bell that was in the living room for the maid, and our parents would think that it was someone at the front door, and we would joke around. Together with the house, they took the furniture too.

In Thessaloniki things were even worse, so we didn’t get a house, even though the government was obliged to give us one. This way we would get straight on their lists, so we thought that wouldn’t be a very wise move. We took some furniture to our neighbors to keep it for the time that we would be gone, and, luckily, we had the opportunity to get fake identification cards so we took on the name of Vamva. I kept my name Roza, as it was used as a Greek name too, but my husband, whose name was Rahamin, and got the nickname Rene at the Lycee Francais, was now called Yannis Vamvas.

After that we went to Pagkrati where we stayed opposite a large building plot that was used for executions. They would shoot in the night and after the shooting everything was dead quiet, like you were in the dessert. Later in the morning, you would find little papers saying who they shot, for example they would say: ‘The Germans shot this one who was a communist.’ And if the Germans didn’t do it themselves, then the Gudarades did; that’s what they used to call the people working together with the Germans.

One day someone in the street recognized my father-in-law and everyone was very scared, but thankfully this person proved to be a good man. We also had to be cautious with my child because he was circumcised and everyone was telling him to be careful when he pees. Every morning the father, grandfather and brother would say farewell to the child and go to work. Their job was to go to the 1st cemetery, which was close to where we lived. The child was very friendly with a boy who lived across the road and his name was George, but the called him Bouli.

My father together with his brothers owned a whole building. The corner shop was a shoe maker who had in the basement a dried up well where they had hidden the leathers. This is where they caught the older brother, who then had a son and a daughter. One sister was saved from the concentration camps. The other sister was having a bath when the Germans came in the house, so she heard them and she jumped out the bathroom window and ran away.

She went to some neighbors with whom we had good relations. They kept her safe for a while but when they got scared they turned her in to the Germans. The car that came to take her in passed right from the center. In the car it was only her and the driver. At some point the driver stopped at a kiosk to buy some cigarettes, someone saw her and gave her a signal to get out of the car. The little one got out and left. She didn’t know where to go because we were all hidden in secret places and people didn’t know where we were. A friend of my father bumped into her on the street and asked what had happened. He took her with him and he somehow managed to get in contact with my father.

My father got in touch with a friend of his, who was lawyer, and they hid the girl. My father was paying them of course. At the time, if a Christian family hid someone in the house, then you would cover all their house expenses as a payment. Things were awfully expensive. All the money was coming from where we had hid it. My father had many acquaintances, one of who was the minister of transport, before he was in hiding.

My son was called Alberto and we would call him Taki. But we had to teach him now that he wasn’t called Alberto Benveniste but Taki Vamva.

When we lived in Kalithea, in this house that was built by this Greek-American, it had four apartments. A couple that didn’t have any children was living in one of them. We became good friends and the lady really loved our child. When it was really cold and we couldn’t warm up all the apartments, we would warm one of them and be there all together. The lady would call my son many times to come over to their apartment and he would go, but after a while he would get bored and come and cry out, ‘Mum did you call me?’

One day we were at their place and they asked him what his name was, so he replied Takis Vamvas. So they ask him, ‘Do you know an Alberto Benveniste?’ And he said that he was gone. Later in the house my son asked me, ‘If we go back to our old house, will Alberto come back?’

My father-in-law was a goldsmith and clocksmith in Kavala. He had all these tools that the little one really liked and he had asked his grandfather to give them to him. One day the little one goes to his grandfather and asks him, ‘What is God?’ So the grandfather replies, ‘God is the father of all.’ ‘Even Grandfather’s father?’ ‘Yes, even Grandfather’s,’ he replies. So the little one thinks about it for while and says, ‘When God dies, I want to be God.’

The house in Pagkrati was owned by a pistachio seller. You would enter the house and you would enter the dinning room and we had the same furniture that you see here today. We had our comforts in the other house in Kalithea, we had gas for warming the water for the bath, which was very convenient for the baby. And then we went to Pagkrati where there was only one work surface in the kitchen and a small toilet with only a curtain. We passed through some difficult times there.

Right opposite us there where living two brothers who were also Jewish. One of them was a French teacher, but he had lost all his papers, even his school certificate from the Lycee Francais. My husband really helped him because he managed somehow to get the proof that the boy had graduated from the Lycee Francais to the French Embassy, and he got a teaching license.

We used to have a speaking trumpet to make announcements. One day they came and called all the men of a certain age to present themselves at a place which they used to call ‘The Widows Café.’

There were two rooms in the house where we lived. In one of them was my mother-in-law with her son, and we had the other room.

My husband had some money on him and he didn’t know whether to take it with him or not. We were in a quite poor neighborhood. We would also see the men wearing masks who would turn people in, and no one was sure of anything, that is, who they were going to turn in next.

So all the men left, and I took my mother-in-law, who didn’t know any Greek, and put her in bed and told her not to speak at all, not even move. She couldn’t remember any names, she would ask my son to remind her of people’s names.

As I told you before, our house was right opposite the building plot which was used for executions. One day a young man was running because he was late, and they stopped him on the way. They asked him why he was late and said that he was writing on the walls so they shot him right there. You weren’t allowed of a second chance about anything.

My son was watching that from the window. That same day an army general comes in and asks us where we keep the guns. ‘We don’t keep any guns, you can look everywhere and check,’ I reply. So he looks in front of him and sees this sideboard here and looks at the glasses and the things inside, things that weren’t common for that area.

So he asks me, ‘Where do you come from?’ ‘From Kavala,’ I reply. So he asked me if I knew a man called Yannis in Kavala. So, I asked him if he knew Kavala, and he replied that he had served in the army there. So I say to him, ‘Look our father was very poor and he was selling clothes by the sea to raise us’ – and I was thinking, poor father if you hear me now, what am I saying about you.

When we came to Athens my father had taken measures. He had a shop at Nikoloudi arcade where he was hiding the goods that he brought from Thessaloniki. He also left his head accountant in Thessaloniki to wait for him to come back. Initially, Athens was taken over by the Italians so we were treated the same way as the Christians. One day the shop owner suddenly decided that he needed the shop and asked my father to leave. So my father took everything and came to Athens.

He had the shop with an associate and his name wasn’t showing at all. In Thessaloniki all the Jewish customers would come and the Christians would go to their own well known names of couture. When the shop opened in Athens, no one knew that it was a Jewish shop, and the name was Christian. They would admire the clothes, and they would say to each other, ‘Athens you see…’ So my father wouldn’t say anything until they would buy and afterwards he would tell them, ‘You had the same in Thessaloniki, but you had to come to Athens to buy it.’

Later they occupied the shop too, and my father again opened a shop together with a Christian, this time on a very popular street, the name of which I cannot remember. When things started getting out of hand, he hid the goods under a friend’s name in the State Warehouse.
Sometimes my father would take goods from the State Warehouse, and he would sell them. At some point a nasty old man understood what was happening. This resulted in the Germans finding the goods and the Christian going to prison. The goods were sold to firms that are still well known today. My father was telling me that even after the war he could see in the shop windows things that he had brought himself from France. Thankfully, my father’s friend was set free.

This minister’s assistant and his wife, had put it in their mind to take everything that we had, and then turn us in to the Germans. After that I suddenly got a heart problem. I don’t quite remember what happened but I was down in the bathroom and I couldn’t go back up. I crawled on my knees back to the room, that I remember. Thankfully we had these good friends in Kalithea ad the man took me to the doctor and he said it was my heart. Since then I have had three operations.

Around the end of the war, my parents lived in a house at Ilisia, where an Army General’s wife was living. She had a son who she couldn’t sustain with the pension she was receiving alone, so that’s where they were staying at the time of the liberation.

I had become really tiny, I had lost a lot of weight and my parents were giving me food to get stronger, and I was going out sharing it, so eventually they took me with them to get me back to normal.

I remember on liberation day, Papandreou 15 came out on Syntagma square and all the women were dressed in army clothes and the people were shouting, ‘Government by the people,’ and he came out and said, ‘We believe in a government by the people.’

Then the Dekemvriana 16 came and we suffered very much. We were living in a socialist area where they would gather men so they wouldn’t take them as soldiers in the army. We didn’t have any food, and also had with us my father- and my mother-in-law and their son.
The community at the time was donating – contributing things. One day, we got up with my uncle and went to get the things from the community, which was at Thiseio, where the synagogue is today; it was being built at the time. On the way we could see many destroyed houses, which had been bombed. While we were walking a bullet came towards us and passed just between us and the wall. We could see bodies everywhere, but I didn’t pay any attention to that.

We passed by a grocer with his donkey on the way there, and I was trying to get some fruit from him. My brother-in-law got very upset with me. When we got to the synagogue, there were some corpses there of people who got killed accidentally from bullets. We got home and gave the food to my parents-in-law and headed off to go to Kalithea, to my parents.

Some brat from the resistance stopped us on the way and made us sit on our knees, and we were begging him to let us go. We got to a certain point, but we got stuck because it was tea time, and at tea time all English soldiers would stop anything they did to have their tea on time. In the end we got there.

The owners of the house in Kalithea had a chicken called Birbilo, and the woman was so soft hearted that it wouldn’t even cross her mind that we might eat the chicken. But you can imagine, how, at a time when there was no food all, the thought of having chicken seemed like… Her husband went and strangled it, and later we ate the chicken. The woman didn’t even take one bite.

Many times I sit and think: What if we had done things differently? … Like one time when the general came into the house and, after he asked if I knew Yannis from Kavala, went straight up to my room. He found money on the furniture and I winked at him to take it. So he replied to me, ‘Madam we are not thieves’, and I said, ‘Who said such a thing?’. He took the money and left, without bothering with the other rooms of the house at all. I was so upset that I sat at the sewing machine to get my tension out. A little boy comes in then and tells me, ‘Mr. Yannis went to work,’ meaning that there was a big piece of land and they got some people out. It later turned out that they were Jewish too. So we thought that next time it would be our turn.

There was a woman doctor living opposite our house who was working at I.K.A [Social Security Service] at Piraeus and she was from Crete. She was sometimes coming around ours to hide. Only if she knew… She was a pediatrician too, and when our little one was ill we wanted to take him to her to examine him, but we were afraid that she would see that he was circumcised. In the end we took him, and she didn’t understand a thing. I gave her English classes in return. She would come and check up on him, and we would give her something to eat.

When the war ended, I made a nice cake and called a little boy to take it to the doctor’s house. I could see the little boy from the window taking the cake and giving it to her. I had to go around a bit later for the English lesson. When I went she told me, ‘Someone sent me this cake; it is tasty.’

I had told the boy to tell her that it was from Mr. & Mrs. Benveniste, so I asked her who had sent her the cake. She replied that she didn’t know, some foreigners; she obviously hadn’t caught the name. I asked her if she liked it, and she replied, ‘Very much.’ She had already eaten half of it.

So I got up and presented myself and said to her, ‘My name is Roza Benveniste.’ She was at a loss of words, she didn’t know what to say. She was a very nice and very active woman, I later lost track of her, I don’t know why.

I went back to Thessaloniki in 1948, when Sarah, our daughter, was one year old and my father died.

My father went back to Thessaloniki to see what had happened. He also went to Israel to see his son, my brother. As I said earlier, my father was a very insightful man. He had a nephew who was the son of his sister. She lived in Palestine for many years, and her son was an architect. My father had then bought a plot of land in Rehavia, the most aristocratic area of Jerusalem. With the war ending, we had to pay all the taxes for the years that had passed so we had quite a debt. My brother wanted to sell it too, so we did, which wasn’t very wise, as it had a great value. My brother wanted to extend his business and to buy a house, so Father went there and arranged everything for him.

Later he came back to Thessaloniki, where he died, and I went there with one-year-old Sarah in 1948. We traveled on the plane and as my mother-in-law had told Sarah to wave at her from the sky when the plane took off, my little one was waving from the window.

The house was taken by the Germans. In the greenhouse they had put pigs. Some Bulgarians had taken over the shop, and all the engines and everything in there was wrecked. The shop was at 15 Venizelou Street [central street in Thessaloniki]. Some refugees were in the house, and there was one family living in each room. The shop is where Kodak Counio is today.

Unfortunately my husband, who was very sweet and nice, didn’t have a clue about trade, he was an accountant. Anyway, we spent my entire dowry during the war to survive, we sold the house in Thessaloniki and made it into an apartment building, and we sold the shop to Counio. He had a small shop between ours and my uncle’s.

It’s like I wasn’t Jewish, I didn’t know anything about trade, nor does my daughter, Sarah. When I finished school and before I got married, my father took me to the shop to work for him. He had old goods and newer ones. My father had a reward system for all the salesmen if they sold the older things, so they would get a profit too.

So I go to the shop to work and a girl comes to get fabric, you could tell that she didn’t have much money. So she called me and asked me if this fabric suited her, I replied no, this one suits you better. The employee next to me said that if the shop had me instead of my father running it, it would shut. ‘Why?’ I wondered. That suited her and you could tell that she didn’t have much money; I couldn’t lie. So you can gather that the trade wasn’t really my thing.

Later I got engaged and married. When I was pregnant anything I would eat, I would throw up later. I got to the point that I was in bed and couldn’t get up. We had these clay jars in the kitchen and my mother would make various pickles from cabbage and peppers and other things. One day she comes to my bed and says, ‘Roza taste one to see if they are done.’ I didn’t usually eat spicy peppers, because I didn’t like them. I ate one or two, and I started crying because they were so spicy. But somehow I didn’t throw up.

That became an issue. What had I eaten and did not throw up? So my mother replied, ‘I know she ate some peppers.’ From there on, I stopped throwing up and before that my husband used to go to get me the most expensive fish roe. I would get up in the morning and instead of milk, eat spicy peppers, and let the tears flow.

I had come down to Athens with my husband before the war because they had re-assigned him from work for Commerciale where he was working. After ‘Elli’ sunk and he was reassigned, my husband went back to Kavala and I took the child and went to Thessaloniki to be closer to my parents.

I remember that we celebrated the religious holidays, not so much the Christian ones, but sometimes we would visit some Christian friends. We used to celebrate Saint Johns – Ai Yanniou when we were hiding. Because my husband had the name of Yannis Vamvas and because we were in a loud neighborhood, we would celebrate it too, just like everybody else. And I remember him saying, ‘Come it is my name day too, come to celebrate,’ and we would wish that it would be the only time that we had to do this.

We didn’t go on vacation much then. My mother had arthritis so she would go somewhere outside Thessaloniki, to some hot springs. One time that I was with mother there, they had this dancing contest for couples, and I was awarded the title of ‘Miss.’ I was the ‘Miss of the dance floor.’

When the Zionistic movement had started in Thessaloniki there were unions like the AJJ that where organizing balls and excursions. These were just day-trips, of course, because our parents wouldn’t let us sleep outside the house. We also visited Prespes Lakes. My aunts used to go on vacation and sometimes they would invite me over; they had younger children so I would go to keep them company.

My maternal cousins were older than me so I didn’t go out with them. I had many friends from the American School, but they were mainly Christians. I didn’t even go out with Rene, who we were also related to, because she had an uncle who was married to one of my aunts. Her name was Rene Saltiel and she later became Molho. We didn’t hang out together much because they were three sisters and they had a circle of friends from the Lycee, and I didn’t know anyone from the Lycee.

I had another schoolmate I hung out with, Antigoni was her name, and she had six sisters. Her father worked at the tolls. Because he had a job at the municipality, one of the daughters went to work there too. She had already finished school when she came to the American College, as most of the girls had. Her stop was Papafi, but we would get off the bus at my stop, which is where the King was killed, at Agia Triada Church. That’s how we became closer. When her father died, she was very sad, so I kept her company and she used to come around the house, or we would go to the cinema with my brother. Antigoni knew how to read coffee cups and cards; she was familiar with both fortune telling rituals.

When I got married and my husband knew that he was re-assigned to work in Athens, she was around the house, but I hadn’t told her anything. So she reads the cards for me and says, ‘Roza what’s going on, I see Rene going on a journey.’ ‘No,’ I reply, so she reads the cards again and says, ‘What you are talking about, you are already there.’ I believe in card reading because I have seen it come true many times. All this was happening just before my son was born. So when she said that, I got upset, started crying and told her to leave. I had some other incidents with cards in my life.

After the War

After the war I went to Thessaloniki where many families were living in our house. In one of the rooms lived a girl from Crete; Miss Carina, whose job was to maintain the toilets of the National Theater of Thessaloniki. She was a coffee reader.

At the time one of my mother’s sisters had married for the second time. She got married to an uncle of mine, who was a widower too, and had three children; my aunt only had one daughter. She was a Spanish citizen, and during the war she was taken to the concentration camps from where she thankfully returned.

My aunt lived somewhere else with my uncle whose health was fine, but he usually didn’t come around the house so much. When my father died she came around the house and my mother knocked on the floor and called Miss Carina to read the coffee. She came up and started telling my aunt that she had one daughter, who lived far away. And indeed she lived in America. Then she told her that she had a husband, who was not ill but was going to die in three or four…

My aunt didn’t know anything about coffee reading, so she asked her what did that mean, and she replied it wasn’t years or months, but either weeks or days. So my aunt was wondering because everything else Miss Carina had told her was true. When she left, I was sitting there with Mother, thinking about what she had told to our aunt. Anyway, three days went by and all of a sudden we found out in the morning, that Uncle had died although he wasn’t sick at all. So we freaked out, and we thought of the coffee-reading… That’s why I am telling you, I believe it.

One other time we had gone over my brother-in-law’s house, the one who was from Kavala. He had come over Thessaloniki to study, but he didn’t study in the end, as he worked in his father’s shop, where everything was wrecked from the war. So Miss Carina came for a coffee reading.

He was about to go to report to the army, so she said to him that he didn’t have any roots there. He knew that he had to go to Alexandroupoli [city in Northeast Greece at the border with Turkey], and he was wondering whether he was going to permanently stay there, and get married and have children there. What Miss Carina was telling him sounded very strange to him.

A law came out then, which said that any Jews who want to can take the Israeli citizenship and resign from their Greek rights, which meant they would be relieved of their army duties and that they would immigrate to Israel. So he took advantage of this and went. Now, how could she have known that? He didn’t even know. You see, sometimes people say that through the questions they tell you the reading, but this one with my uncle, no one could have known.

One of my mother’s sisters lived close to our house and her husband used to teach us German and was a work associate of my uncle. Her house was architecturally Turkish and had a Turkish bath. We had the European-style bath in our house, the water would heat up and would fill the bath, only it wasn’t a built-in bath, it was a free standing one with little legs. That’s what was common at that time. My mother really liked the Turkish bath so she would take me and we would go around to my aunt’s house.

This aunt of mine was fat and had very large breasts. Her husband liked to joke, and when I was becoming a lady he would tease me and I would blush. He would also say to me that soon I would fall down the stairs and be full of blood. By that he meant my period. But, of course, I didn’t understand what he meant back then, so I kept replying to him, that I was careful and I wouldn’t fall.

My aunt had a son and a daughter. Her daughter was married and had two children. None of them came back [that is, didn’t survive World War II]. Her son didn’t marry because he really liked me. I didn’t like him but I was discreet. He went to the concentration camps too and never came back.

My uncle who had that school I mentioned earlier was married twice. He was widowed by his first wife with whom he had a daughter and a son. His daughter had a great voice and had gone to Paris for recordings. She even had a very artistic name; she was called Roza di Fiore. When she came back she became a music teacher. She was very beautiful. My uncle remarried and had another daughter, who was a great girl but wasn’t pretty because she had a problem with her neck.

When I got engaged to my husband, I could see that everyone around me had three grandmothers. The same was the case with my husbands’ family. So I used to say that I will die and he will remarry. I had even chosen who it will be, but these things are up to God.

I was the only daughter in the family. My father owned a shop and cooperated in many other businesses that held balls to reinforce their unions. There was this very beautiful hotel by the sea, the ‘Mediterranee,’ which was the best hotel at that time.

My brother had studied to become a mechanical engineer in France, so he associated with the state. When they declared war, he served as an army officer. He specialized as a minesweeper. He did all the plans for the Thessaloniki station.

My brother got married to an English Jew, who came to offer help after the war ended. They later left for England, and in fact, when I had my first heart operation, we stayed at their house in London. He was offered work in America and Israel. His wife was a Zionist so she grabbed the chance and they went to Israel. I used to be escorted by him at balls while he was an army officer.

This clock over here was given to me by the head accountant who was taking care of our shop at the beginning of the war; my daughter Sarah is much attached to it.

We had no idea what had happened in Thessaloniki during the war. Later, after the war ended, we found out what had happened with our families and friends. We even thought of going back because we saw people from Kavala coming to Athens, where we were starving, and they seemed in a better situation. At some point my husband was thinking of taking goods to go and sell them and bring back food. But something happened which stopped him, which was better because he wasn’t cut out for trade.

During the civil war 17 we had no participation, we were already in a bad position to get involved. Both my brother and my brother-in-law had gone to Israel.

When my father died, my mother came to Athens. We lived in Kalithea at the time. That’s where Sarah grew up and went to school. We later moved to Kipseli [highly populated residential area of Athens] and lived in a house on Kipselis Street, on the square. It was a nice, large house, and below it was the Rex Café. We later moved to Alexandras Avenue. It was the apartment of a friend of ours. He lived nearby. Below our house was a sweet shop.

One time we went to Switzerland on holidays with the kids, but my husband wasn’t very keen on going on vacation.

After the war we made many new friends, both Jewish and Christian. In Thessaloniki I had two friends, who were both working as secretaries at the university, Adigoni and Mary. I used to call them Maya and Yoyoni. They were my closest friends. They would come around the house for a visit. I didn’t have Jewish friends that I was so close with. Later, in Athens, there where so few Jews and we lived so far away from one another that again I had Christian friends there too. In our first neighborhood in Kalithea, we got very close with that couple that I mentioned before who didn’t have any children.

Sometimes we still speak in Judeo-Spanish with my Jewish friends. I have one friend who always wants to speak the language with me, and another one who speaks it only when she doesn’t want other people to understand what she is saying.

As I told you earlier, my husband was working at the Commerciale, but one of his friends convinced him to open a business with him, so he left his job without any compensation, at his own will. So he opened a business with his friend, who didn’t do business in a very clean way. My husband wasn’t used to dirty business, they had an argument and he left. But he wasn’t the kind of person who would go out looking for a job, so he didn’t work for a year and we were spending our savings.

He later became an associate of a distant relative who had a tourist booking agency. He put some money in and he liked the work. But his associate was planning to leave for America, so he left him. My husband wasn’t cut out to work in trade. He wanted to be correct in everything. Unfortunately he got into the trade business.

Greece was in an awful situation at the time, there was no money coming in, no tourism. When the dictatorship started in 1967, they were coming from the large hotels in town, asking us if we had someone to send them, while before that we had been asking them for shelter. In the meantime my husband had broken his leg and had surgery, which went wrong and as a result he was paralyzed. I had heart problems, so every now and then I would faint in the middle of the road. I was responsible for picking up the foreigners from the airport and transporting them to their hotels.

Sarah had passed her exams at the pharmaceutical school in Thessaloniki; she didn’t think she would. She had applied in many different schools. She was very excited that she had passed and decided to go. At the same time my second grandchild was born in Paris, so I had to go and help my daughter-in-law.

My son finished elementary school here. We were planning to go to Israel. There was a school in Israel and we decided to send him there. In the summer he had gone to this summer camp and in a contest he had won a tallit. We went to the school with my husband to the supervisor to give her my son’s clothes, so he takes the tallit out and asked me, ‘Ma ze?’ – What is this? I lost it and thought, we’re in Israel and my son doesn’t know what a tallit is. I couldn’t get over it. Anyway, I explained to her that he had won it in a contest, and he put it back inside.

It was the school of agriculture that organized these camps, and the children were learning other languages there too. My son had finished elementary school and he already knew French and English very well. He learned English there. The school was located in the border region, and every now and then Arabs would come by and there would be stabbings, so we were very upset. We couldn’t calm down. They were also teaching them how to hold a gun in order to be able to defend themselves.

We decided to bring him back, but he had already lost two years of school, so we sent him to a school in Lozenge, which was for very rich people. He probably thought that his father had oil companies or something because he kept asking for money to go skiing, etc.

We found out later that he wasn’t doing so well, so we brought him back here and he went to the French school here to obtain the Baccalaureate. Later he went to study in France, and in order not to send him to Paris, we sent him to Caen, that was in 1956. My husband had an uncle in Paris, his mothers’ brother, and we first went there and later to London, for my operation.

At the same time, my son met this girl that he was crazy about, and he said that he didn’t want to study anymore. Suddenly he stopped replying to our letters and only asked for money. So my husband, as he always did in difficult situations, sent me over to see what was going on. I went but didn’t find him where he used to live, at the university campus. I asked around and they told me that he hadn’t come around for days, so I burst out crying and went back to the hotel.

At one point, through a friend, I found out that he was ill and that the parents of the girl were taking care of him, so I sent word to him.

He said to me that he really wanted to marry her, so I was asking how they were going to live on their own. He said they were going to live in one of the French settlements, and with having the Baccalaureate he will become a monitor. She had gone to a commercial school and had become an accountant. You can imagine what I went through. He was the only man in the family, and I was crying for days, but in the end I was forced to agree. I met her in the end, and her parents, and gave her my consent to get married to my son, and decided to see what they were going to do next.

My husband broke his leg once and was at a Jewish hospital. The name was Cohen and he did physiotherapy and recovered. But after a while he broke his leg again. One day, when it was raining heavily, one our employees called him and said that he had a customer who wanted to buy a ticket for multiple destinations, and he didn’t know how to do it. So my husband got up regardless of the rain to go there.

At the time I was getting ready to go to Israel. At some point the phone rang and they tell me that my husband is at the Social Security Service, I.K.A., and that he is injured. As he was walking down Alexandras Avenue and was crossing over to Mistoksidi Street, at the corner, an army bus that a soldier was driving carelessly ran by, hit him and left him there.

My husband, instead of turning the driver in and saying that it was his fault, said it was bad timing, that it wasn’t the boy’s fault. The lawyers didn’t use the facts very well either. This second time that he got hit, he got a bad infection. Olympic Airways offered to transfer him, as they knew him from doing business with him. They made a bed and we went to Israel. There was this Jewish organization that covered all the medical expenses, but the infection was getting worse, and in the end they had to cut his leg off. He eventually died.

I go to the Jewish museum only three times a week now. I usually go on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. I don’t cook anymore, the girl that helps me does. I don’t cook kosher Jewish food, but I make eggplant with cheese.

I play scrabble with Zaklin. She is a special case. She is from a village in France on the border with Germany. She got married to one of my husband’s friends from childhood. His name was Morris Inkra. They were very close with my husband; they went to the Lycee together, I met him when we got engaged.

When the war started he got caught and was a prisoner of war. When Mussolini fell, they went to Switzerland and as they were prisoners of war they received packets from the Red Cross. He was one of very few people who knew French. They used to send him to get the packets from the Red Cross, and he got his bride from there too, so to speak.

He wasn’t very religious but he told her, to marry her she would have to change her religion and become Jewish. She agreed and they went to the rabbi in Geneva. So he said to him, ‘Look I am Jewish, and I want to marry her, but she is Christian. I want you to make her a Jew so I can marry her.’ ‘What?’ he said, ‘look I have three daughters, choose which one you want and marry her.’ But he wanted her, so they went to another city, I don’t remember where, to find a rabbi who would teach her and turn her into a Jew. She knows the religion better than me because she was even given exams on it.

When they came to Greece, they stayed in our house in Athens. He left his wife with us and went back to Thessaloniki to find out what had happened to his assets. When he got there, he knocked at a neighbor’s door. When she opened and saw him, she immediately tried to shut the door in his face. He had caught a glimpse of some of his own furniture in her house, and he managed to put his foot in the door, so she couldn’t shut the door.

So the woman tells him, ‘What do you want here? How come you weren’t made into soap by the Germans? And why do you come to us asking for things, I have nothing.’ When he heard that, he lost it and left. He broke down crying. As he was leaving, he heard a voice coming from the basement calling him, and he went towards the voice. ‘Hey young man, weren’t you living in this house?’ ‘Yes,’ he replies and gives him a tea pot with a cup of tea.

These things are in the museum now. In situations like this you see what people are really made of. So we have been great friends from the first time we met. Then we lost trace of each other. Each one of us had their own problems. We had many, she had some too. Then my husband died, and then hers did too.

Glossary

Margarita Yakova Kohen (nee Selanikyo)
Plovdiv
Bulgaria
Interviewer: Svetlana Avdala
Date of interview: April 1996

Margarita can most precisely be described as a kind person. While talking to her, a person feels eager to touch her, to caress her. If you look at the pictures carefully, you’ll notice her seducing buxom forms, chubby cheeks which still look the same on her face. When she was young she was wooed a lot – she had received tens of letters from young men who were in love with her. Today, in spite of her being ill and despite the fact that she is ninety years old, she is constantly visited by people who look for her company… And for that there is a reason much more serious. Margarita isn’t selfish. She doesn’t place herself or her sufferings into the center of the world – that was the case in the past and that is the case now, more than ever. The twists of fortune hadn’t changed her for the worse. She is looking at you docilely, wisely, understandingly. Sclerosis has been merciful to her brain, but age is already gnawing at her flesh. When I was calling on the phone to make clarifications, she, no matter how difficult the previous night had been, was always patient enough to tell stories and to make matters clear. She never showed irritation or impatience.

Family Background

Growing Up

During the War

After the War

Glossary

Family Background

My name is Margarita Yakova Kohen, nee Selanikyo. I was born on 12th April 1917 in the town of Gorna Dzhumaya [present-day Blagoevgrad, southwestern Bulgaria]. I live in Plovdiv 1. My husband’s name is Shemuel Samuil Kohen (1906 – 1988). We have two children – Samuil (1940) and Solomon (1950).

I have finished a secondary school and have worked as an assistant dental mechanic, librarian, receptionist in hospital. My mother tongue is Spaniol [Ladino]. I have a brother Bouko (1912 – 1948) and a sister – Matilda Albalakh (nee Selanikyo). I am an orphan. My father Yakuti Liyachi Selanikyo (1885 – 1917) died during the Second Balkan War 2 in a military hospital due to pneumonia.

I am a Sephardi Jew 3 both on mother’s and on father’s side. My maiden name Selanikyo shows that my father’s kin came from Solun [Salonika]. In Spanish Solun was called Selanik and that’s why the people who were from the town were called selanikis – the people from Solun. This is the etymology of my surname.

My mother’s maiden name is Kohen. I don’t know where her ancestors came from but I want to tell you that the people from her kin were very dark-skinned and black-eyed. That was what my mother looked like and her brothers and sisters too. They looked like Jews from Yemen and my uncle Eshua even looked like a black man.

I don’t remember my father Yakuti Liyachi Selanikyo because when he died I was six months old but his mother, my granny Ouroucha’s complexion was a little fairer so we the children – her grandchildren – I, my brother and my sister – were dark-skinned, but not that much.

In Gorna Dzhumaya, where I was born, I lived until the age of eight. Afterwards I went to study at a school in Sofia and lived in an orphanage there. Later, my family moved to Plovdiv and I’ve been living in that town since then.
Now, when I come to think of it, Gorna Dzhumaya from my childhood was a big village – houses with gardens. In most houses the toilets and the fountains were outside, in the gardens. The streets were paved or not paved at all. In most of the houses gas lamps were used. The most important natural site, which I remember even now, was the river. [The name of the river is the Blagoevgradska Bistritsa]. Not long ago, three years ago, I visited Gorna Dzhumaya and expected to hear the babble of the river, an invariable part of the background noises, but the noises of the town were completely different. I wrote a letter to Israel, to tell them [i.e. her relatives there] about my visit. I told them that neither the hill was the same, nor the babble of the river… And you know, in those times we were even able to understand when the river was swelling – all the ducks, which were swimming in it, started quacking and we immediately moved away from the banks. That happened because the water was coming from the mounts in the Rila Mountain with great force. [Rila National Park – highest mount – Mousala – altitude of 2925m, lowest point – Blagoevgrad – altitude of 800m] It was even said that once the water dragged a house with a mother and a baby inside. The mother died but the baby survived…We used to spend our time in the garden, or in the streets all the time and along the river. Yes, the river – there we were playing different games, leaping from stone to stone…Good fun… great pleasure…

Both my mother’s kin and my father’s kin used to have their own houses in Gorna Dzhumaya. Initially all my mother’s kin Kohen – my great-grandfather, great-grandmother, my grandparents and their children together with a servant, my mother’s brothers and sisters were living in a big house belonging to a Turkish administrator in the past. The house was at the foot of the Gornodzhumaisky Hill, near the bridge and the trade center. It was surrounded by a small garden in which there was a fountain and a plum tree. It was a two-storey house. There were also some cellars. On the first floor there were three rooms with a closet and a parlor. On the second floor there were two smaller rooms and a very big parlor with nine windows. There were two entrances to the house – one of them central, the other one leading to the hill and that’s why a lot of revolutionaries, Macedonian rebels, ‘komiti’ 4 used to hide in the house of my grandfather and great-grandfather. I recall there was a tiny room, something like a stock room. And when we were trying to go there, granny would chase us away, so that we wouldn’t hear a noise and betray somebody. Later my mother told me that Todor Alexandrov 5 used to hide there but I haven’t seen him personally. I remember that the house was richly furnished – there were a lot of window sofas and a gramophone that belonged to my aunts.

Opposite that former Turkish house lived my father’s kin – Selanikyo. My parents saw each other and met – being neighbors. Later, the Selanikyo family built a new house – in the center of Gorna Dzhumaya – opposite the military club in the town – near Macedonia Square and moved to live there. The Kohen family also built a new house, surrounded by a big garden of four decares. The house was next to the railway station. In the garden there was another small house in which the four of us used to live – I, my mother, my brother and sister. I recall that in the garden there was a tobacco storeroom, mulberry trees – white and black, a nice vegetable and flower garden. In our house, the small house, we used to have hens. Yes, mum was looking after hens and even in Plovdiv she used to have hens in a house which had a cellar. Whereas my grandmothers were not used to look after any animals in their houses – neither the one, nor the other.

Before that, until I turned five, my mother, brother, sister and I lived in a place that belonged to the state which my mother received being the widow of a soldier who had died in the Second Balkan War. It was near the mosque and the spa, next to the Turkish quarter and after that we started living with the Kohen family because it was impossible for my mother to take care of three children on her own.

My mother’s family – Kohen – was very religious and wealthy. I remember my maternal great-grandfather. His name was Bentsion Kohen and he was one of the honorary citizens of the community in Gorna Dzhumaya. He was the chairman of the Israelite Spiritual Council. He was a ‘sarafin’ by profession [a merchant of securities; a stock-broker]. He used to have a black beard and was constantly playing with some coins in his hand – he was tossing them so that everybody would know what his job was and would go to use his services. And everybody in the town knew him and called him grandpa Bentsion. My great-grandmother’s name was Dounoucha. She used to give birth every seven years, which was something rare at the time [the practice at tha time was to have children every two or three years and to have a big family]. That’s why she had only three children – grandpa Bokhor, his sister Reyna and his brother Haim.

My maternal grandfather's name was Bokhor Kohen (1871 – 1923). He had studied at Alliance Francaise 6 and was a merchant, money-exchanger, shareholder at ‘Pirin’ Mines by profession. He used to deal with dairy products and skins. He used to export and sell them in Greece, in Salonika. As a man who had finished the Alliance in the town of Samokov he was well-educated and showed enterprise in his work. He used to even have shares at ‘Pirin’ Mines. My grandpa, my mother’s father, was wealthy, from a wealthy family, they were far from poor. I don’t know how my grandparents had met, who engaged them and how and why they got married. They had thirteen children out of which nine survived – three sons and six daughters – Bouka, Ester, Victoria, Roza, Matilda, Rebeka. The three sons had names from the Bible – Mois or Moshe, Eshua …and Yakov/Zhak, which is another proof that the family was very religious. Mum was the first-born child – the oldest of them all and that’s why her name was Bouka – Bekhora, which means ‘First’. Grandpa was a very religious man. Until recently I was keeping here some books which my mother had given to my father on the day of their wedding. They were brought to her by her father – my grandfather and they were bought during his commercial trips. They were very beautifully decorated with metal and ivory. They were in Ivrit about the Jewish holidays – Haggadah for Pesach, for Rosh Hashanah and for [Yom] Kippur. Later I gave them to my grandchildren. I also had a bible in Spaniol and Ivrit. It was very old – from about 1870. It was bought in Vienna probably by my grandfather again. And additionally it served my mother as a textbook in Spaniol.

Grandpa Bokhor was an intelligent man, he was thinking about the future and was quite practical, he was in pace with the times. He realized that every man and every woman should have a vocation. He sent my mother to Dupnitsa [in southwest Bulgaria, 49 km from Sofia], beyond the border. The border was in Kocherinovo village and Boboshevo village. Dupnitsa was in Bulgaria whereas Blagoevgrad or Gorna Dzhumaya was still within the Ottoman Empire [Status of Macedonia] 7 and grandpa sent her to Dupnitsa to learn sewing. The second and the third daughters were sent to learn knitting, the fourth one became an embroider and he bought her an embroidery machine; the fifth one became a seamstress too; the sixth one – she even had a secondary education – learned to make fillet-works… the fashionable networks which were becoming popular everywhere. I mean that all the daughters had learned a craft. And not all of them, as he used to say, to stay only with a bracelet in hand. But he gave his children not only these crafts, but education as well. My mother was the oldest and she remained illiterate but with time each one of the children was getting a higher and higher degree of education. Ester and Victoria had primary education, Roza and Eshua – junior high school education, that means a finished third grade and the youngest even received high school education. In that way, depending on the times and their age, the education was better and better.

My maternal grandmother's name was Tamar Kohen (? - 1950s)  My grandma is from Dupnitsa. She had seven sisters and several brothers but I don’t know all their names. I remember the names only of the ones who lived in Gorna Dzhumaya. Three sisters got married in Dupnitsa but lived in Gorna Dzhumaya and that’s why I remember their names – Masal, Linda and granny Tamara. My granny was religious too and that’s how she was bringing up her daughters and grandchildren. I recall something that had turned into a law in the family. Yes, if I tell you what it was you’ll be astonished – when the daughters or the granddaughters were in menstruation, granny wouldn’t allow us to touch anything in which food was stored – plates, pots, water decanters. We weren’t allowed to touch and she said that everything had to be clean enough and we were ‘ikoniada’ – which means we were not entirely clean at that moment, so touching was banned – that deep was granny’s faith. She was not only a believer but a house-proud woman as well. I recall that before Pesach all the cutlery was disinfected through boiling. And not only was she very house-proud but she was a great gourmet, too. She was cooking for sixteen people. My mother’s brothers and sisters also lived in the big house of the Kohen family. We were often visited by relatives from Salonika. We were also visited by acquaintances of my grandfather who was selling them dairy products and in those cases cooking was even a greater adventure. My mother told me that when there were guests the children, I mean the younger brothers and sisters – 9 in total, were gathered in a separate room so that they wouldn’t make noise. My mother was in charge because she was the oldest. She entertained them by telling them stories. And all the guests used to say – so many children and it is so quiet… Usually the guests were entertained in a parlor on the first floor. A lot of different people were visiting – my grandpa’s customers and respected people from the town, I had also visited that home often because mum used to go there often with her three children in order not to be sad and bored all the time – she was a widow after all. In my granny’s house kosher was a must. There were separate dishes and plates for the different foods. The animals were slaughtered by a shochet in a special place in the yard of the synagogue.

Apart from her children, husband and wife, mother and father-in-law there were always guests and a servant who helped with the farm work and who was carrying the products from the shops to the house. There were no other servants. I recall that the daughters – mum and her sisters helped granny. She used to get up at 3 a.m. and at 4 a.m. she would say: ‘Come on, daughter, come and help me with kneading this bread, to cook something for the family.’ In the evening the whole family used to gather. I remember that grandpa Bokhor used to put me in his lap and asked me to sing. ‘Come on, Marga, come on, sing a little…’ Grandpa used to always pat me on the head, he used to be very kind with us all. He was more… in the evenings, the evenings, when we were around the table. He was very kind but he was grieving so much about the loss of my father that he caught heart tuberculosis and at the age of fifty-two he left this world.

My paternal grandfather Liyachi Selanikyo (1855 – 1940) was a shoemaker by profession and a merchant of weaving yarn, which he used to sell in a tiny shop. His kin were from Salonika, afterwards they lived in Sofia for a while and then they settled in Gorna Dzhumaya. He was illiterate and very religious. He attended the synagogue regularly and kept all the rituals. I knew that he liked helping my granny with the cooking, he was always around her. I remember he was a good and soft chap.

People from the whole district would come to buy from him. I recall that every morning he took there a can of milk and boiled it and whenever one of his grandchildren entered the shop, he would pour milk on some bread morsels and wouldn’t let us go until we had eaten everything. That was a habit of his. He liked to give his grandchildren little balls of sugar. He would even get up in the middle of the night and while we were sleeping would place a little sugar in our mouths while we were still half-asleep: ‘Eat sugar, little children!’ He was a good and soft chap. He wasn’t particularly jovial, he was more serious but otherwise he loved his grandchildren immensely and we used to have very good time together. My granny and grandpa loved each other very much and were living in utmost agreement. Grandpa had been a prisoner of war during the Serbian – Bulgarian War 8. When granny found out about that she decided to make them release him. At that time she was pregnant with her second child, she took her son and started for the camp. When the officers saw her they took pity on her and released my grandpa. My granny was a woman of character.

My paternal grandmother Ouroucha (? – 1948) was a healer and a midwife. She assisted at the child-birth of all the women in the town. Not a single woman would give birth without her. She was a healer too, she was able to heal lots of wounds, to fix twisted bones, to treat bruises… Her yard was always full of people from the whole district – from the town of Gotse Delchev or Nevrokop at that time, from the Balkan, from Petrich district, people from all kinds of places were coming for treatment from granny Ouroucha. I don’t know who taught her to heal, I can’t say that, but she was unique in that respect. She didn’t take money from her patients but when they returned after having fully recovered one would bring a chicken, another – eggs, whatever they had… In contrast to the other women granny didn’t like housework very much, she preferred to deal with social activities instead.

Although she wasn’t sparing her efforts she used to find some time for us as well. That was usually in the evening. Then, in our grandparents’ room she used to tell us fairy-tales and sing. And we, her grandchildren, liked to sleep there very much, we would lay mattresses on the floor and she would stand in the middle, imitating the fairy-tale characters while we were gaping at her. She was very artistic – much more open-minded in comparison with my other granny…

I remember one of the tales but I can’t quote the name. It was about a little girl who went by the well to take some water and there she was seen by a man with a drum. He stole her and hid her inside the drum but that cunning girl in order to let her parents know that she was in the drum started singing, ‘I went into your drum when I was at the fountain and there I left something – two little bracelets, on the fountain I hanged them.’ That was a child song. Granny was singing but her brother Bokhor was singing better. It was said my father used to sing a lot of songs. Only Spaniol was spoken in the houses of my grandparents. In Bulgarian, to be more precise – in Macedonian dialect they used to speak with their neighbors and acquaintances.

My first cousin in Israel Zhak Salan also has a wonderful voice and when they moved to Israel the first thing he did was to go to the old people institutions and to sing songs to the old people. You can see how he inherited from his grandmother not only the beautiful voice, but also the attitude towards the people. In return granny Ouroucha was a highly respected woman and when going to the synagogue, as she was living on the opposite bank of the river, until reaching the bridge, she would probably nod to a hundred people. ‘Good morning! Good morning!’… Everybody greeted her and she greeted them in return.
As you can see from the locations of the houses of my grandfathers and grandmothers the Jews were living everywhere in Gorna Dzhumaya but most of them were in Varosha. [’Varosh’ means a town, a town with a fortress; the word comes from the proto-Bulgarian word ‘var’ – to keep safe. At the moment the word is used in Bulgaria as a name of the renascence quarters in the center of certain towns]. There was the synagogue, the church, the Jewish quarter, well, that’s why we could say that the Jewish quarter was there.

There were Turks, Tsintsars, Wallachians 9. Well, now, Tsintsars and Wallachians, I don’t know what the difference is – some are of Greek origin, some – of Romanian or not, I don’t know exactly but all I can say that we all lived well.

I recall that at granny Ouroucha’s new house my cousin Zhak Salan was being circumcised. I was probably four or five at the time. There was everybody present – I had the feeling all the inhabitants of Gorna Dzhumaya were there, Bulgarians included. I remember, for example, that there were those very nice people – grandpa Angel and grandma Sevda who liked children very much and were our neighbors. And as their house was surrounded by a big garden all the children would often play there together. They were wonderful, kind people. The Jews in town were most often merchants and craftsmen, there were also quilt makers and most of all tobacco merchants.

In Gorna Dzhumaya there were mineral springs. I recall that I know a story in relation to that. I was always crying that my sister was going to school and I wasn’t yet. And one day, absolutely on purpose, I fell in a puddle out of anger that she wouldn’t take me to school with her. I went back home and then mum, since we used to have warm mineral sources in town, in the end nicely ‘scalded’ me in the fountain, which was in front of our house, so that I would never forget falling in puddles was not a nice thing to do.

I also remember the mineral public baths. It was out of the question to skip bath on Friday. We were all washed, combed, to meet Sabbath. We used to put a white table-cloth for Erevsabbath and everything was according to the tradition. The little glass of rakia 10 was a must for the grandparents but the one we are used to drinking – anise-flavored rakia, eggs were always on the table, and meat obligatorily for Erevsabbath and Yom Sabbath [the day of Sabbath]. On the other days we could eat dishes without meat. Traditions were of utmost importance.

The men – my relatives would go to the synagogue for Sabbath. We, the children would go there only on holidays – for Rosh Hashanah, for weddings… The children went there separately from the adults – with the friends, with the cousins. My sister was two years older than me and my other cousin was her age whereas I and the other Marga – a cousin who was my age, used to go behind the older girls. They didn’t like us around very much, the fact that we were tagging at their heels but we were not supposed to go anywhere alone – so we were always running after them.

I remember the synagogue too. The main hall was big according to my childhood memories. It had two floors. The women were always on the upper floor. It was wonderfully lit. The windows, if I remember correctly, were all on one side. There was a nice yard, very neat and tidy and very green. There were some wooden benches on which the old people were sitting and talking in summer. I remember there was a woman who was cleaning the synagogue. Her name was Tamar. She used to live in the building of the school, which was also in the yard of the synagogue.

How solemnly were all the people dressed! – in their best clothes. The women with veils on their heads. They were standing in another place - that’s how it is with us… And how the men were singing. Uncle Bokhor was singing, he liked singing very much… And so, I was looking at the women who were dressed up, nicely dressed, one – with an interesting scarf, with all the jewels, with decorations…

On the holidays in Gorna Dzhumaya like Purim, Rosh Hashanah, Pesach we used to gather with my grandparents, more often with the Kohen family. I recall that for Purim we used to sing a lot of songs.

And as I wanted to start school as soon as possible, after grandpa insisted on that, I started school earlier – at first I was only a listener but afterwards I directly enrolled in the second grade. There was no need to repeat the year because I knew more than the students in the first grade. And that’s how I spared a year. I remember that the Jewish school, which doesn’t exist now, was near the trade center and Varosha, near the hill. The students were distributed into two rooms – the first and second grades in one of them, the third and fourth grades – in the other. We were learning Ivrit and Bulgarian; we were singing lots of songs. I recall some of my teachers – Miss Douda Perets in Ivrit, Mrs Kashtanova in Bulgarian, Mrs Vasilka.

My mother Bouka Bokhor Kohen (1892 – 1961) was a strong woman and an exceptional person, a heroine. She was swarthy with long black hair and big black eyes. She remained a widow at the age of 25 – alone with three children. She didn’t have education, she was self-educated and learned alone to write in Spaniol. Later, when we moved to Plovdiv she used to write letters to our relatives in Gorna Dzhumaya in Spaniol. I can’t write in Spaniol, I can only speak. My mother could write – I don’t know how she had learned. I remember that at home we had an old bible in Spaniol and Ivrit. That was probably mama’s textbook. Probably grandpa – her father helped her with her studies. I had even asked her to teach me to write but I memorized only a few phrases with which I could inform her I was OK in my letters. When she remained alone she started sewing in order to make a living. That formed her behavior to a great extent. But for her cleaning was never that crucial as it was later for my mother-in-law. We were cleaning together – my mum and us – the children – once a week. For her the main concern were the children. In order to be near us all the time and look after us she invited all the friends, acquaintances and classmates here at home. She created good atmosphere and mood. Our house was always full of people. But I can’t say she had a lot of friends, she just didn’t have enough time, to keep her own contacts, conversations and visits. She was able to sew and to do manual labor but not for the fun of it – she used to scrape a living. She sewed our clothes too. She was cooking very well. I learned recipes from her that I later prepared for my husband.

My grandparents used to help us a lot but the main burden was falling on her. Although she had taken the full responsibility for us she had never put restrictions or forbidden us to do one thing or another so that she could feel not so worried about us. I remember that later in Plovdiv when I wanted to go to conferences in different towns along the Jewish organization lines she never stopped me. She always understood the young people and always gave us wonderful advice but at the same time she was holding the reins with a firm hand. She never cried - just the opposite – she was always ready for action. She wouldn’t shed tears in vain… When she saw that we were sad because of something or we were suffering she would take out the playing cards and we started playing. There was a prize for the winner – boza 11…

My brother, as he was a boy and heir of the family, was in danger of being spoilt by our grandparents on both sides. Mum realized that and decided to send him to Sofia in 1922, to an orphanage, a Jewish boarding house that existed there at the time, which I joined three years later.

She separated with him and when he finished his primary education in 1926 or 1927 she made him learn a craft – dental mechanics. And he became an exquisite dental mechanic. Her life wasn’t easy because she had to bury not only her husband but her son as well because he died at the age of 35, before getting married and then mum was 56.

Growing Up

Mum wanted to send my sister to a Jewish boarding house as well but she didn’t want to and was crying all the time and once while watching her I told mum: ‘Mum, if my sister doesn’t want to go, send me.’ So mum decided to send me to a Jewish boarding house in Sofia. I was 8 years old at the time and had already finished the second grade at the Jewish school in Gorna Dzhumaya…

So I lived in a boarding house in Sofia for four years. The old orphanage was in ‘Patriarkh Evtimii’ on the way to Aleksandrovska Hospital and then it moved opposite ‘Slavia’ Playfield, in the building where later ORT 12 was situated. We went to classes in the Jewish school, where now is the Rila Hotel. [In the past next to the tiny church ‘St. Nikolay’ in the center of Sofia was situated the Jewish school but around 1909 it was moved to some other place.] Every morning a teacher would take us there and we walked in lines. I remember some of the teachers from the school. For example, Miss Gertsovich who was teaching us History and Geography, Miss Petkova – in Literature and Bulgarian. She was extremely strict but we learned the language well because of that. My favorite subject was Literature. I went there when I was eight and a half years old. I wasn’t nostalgic. I was a calm child, much calmer than my sister. I used to be a good student and the teachers were surrounding me with love so I wasn’t in need of love and affection.

We had spare-time regime too. We were allowed to go out for an hour or two for a walk, to the shops or to visit relatives, if there were such. That’s how I visited my aunt Roza Ninyo. My aunt’s family – my father’s sister – used to live in Sofia at the time. That was the way to be in a cozy, homely atmosphere for a while.

At the junior high school trips were organized. They used to take us there, for some holiday like 1st May, for example, where now is Ivan Vazov quarter. There were lots of brooks and we would go to the first brook, then – to the second, to the third and so on. I managed to make some friends – with Sara Betsarel, she went to live in Israel later, with Victor Mandil.

While at the boarding school and the orphanage I managed to attend an anniversary, the 70-year anniversary of Ekaterina Karavelova 13, the wife of Petko Karavelov 14. I was supposed to give her a bunch of flowers on behalf of the boarding house. I moved closer to her and I was already on the stage I looked at her face and she was only blinking, blinking, blinking… I saw something I wasn’t supposed to see. And what do you think that was – she was blind. She had had a lot of worries with her two daughters. You’re already familiar with the tragedy of Lora Karavelova – Yavorov’s wife [she commited suicide in 1913; the other daughter Viola Karavelova was married to the famous journalist and writer of Jewish origin Josif Herbst, killed in the political repressions in 1925] [Peyo Yavorov] 15. Ekaterina Karavelova went blind but she was said to be the neck, which says which direction the head will turn… She was the most intelligent of them all.

I watched the opera ‘Gergana’ by Maestro Georgi Atanasov [(1882-1931) - a conductor, a composer, a pioneer of Bulgarian opera creative work, Pietro Mascani’s student] in the military club. I saw what opera was for the first time, until that time my favorite place for entertainment in Gorna Dzhumaya had been the river and now, all of a sudden, a river on stage and I went nearer and saw that the fountain they had been talking about was trembling a little. So I moved quickly to ask what that fountain was and the people around me started laughing…

We celebrated the Jewish holidays both at the orphanage and at school. For Purim we learned a lot of songs. For Pesach rich Jewish families would come and would take us to spend the whole eight days at their homes – for Pesach and then they returned us. I used to have relatives in Sofia but that was the organization. Each family would choose one of us. I remember the Baroukh family. The father was a representative of ‘Berakha’ Chocolate Factory in Sofia. I ate heaps of chocolates in that house. And not only at Pesach. They had a daughter who was as old as me. Her name was Nedka. In their house I saw a dressing table in the bedroom for the first time in my life and there were also chandeliers, splendid furniture. Once there was something of a misunderstanding. A first cousin of my mother’s whose name was Mari Chelebi Leveya wanted me to go to them for the holidays but by mistake I was taken to another family with the same name in Konyovitsa. [One of the oldest quarters in Sofia nowadays is Dras Mahala – near the freight depot and the other old poor quarter is Konyovitsa.] They were two nice old people, so kind, so cordial and dedicated to me although they were living rather poorly. They had a one-storey house in the middle of a big garden and there were houses in a line in the yard and every family lived in a separate house – like the gypsies. The old man would bring me a chocolate bar every day and said to me: ‘You’re such a midget, eat, eat.’ Such good people was this old couple, they were taking pity on me. So, after that, my mother’s cousin went to the principal and asked: ‘What happened to out girl, why didn’t she come to us?’ ‘What are you saying, I sent her to you!’ ‘Very far from the truth, she didn’t come to us…’

When I was in my second year at the orphanage my brother was already learning his craft in Sofia. They found a master for him whose name was uncle Boyan [a Bulgarian] with whom he studied dental mechanics. That master didn’t have children and they accepted him as their own child. He was taking my brother everywhere with his family – to the mountain or to the seaside. Whenever there was work for dental mechanics – there was my brother, together with uncle Boyan.

When we were in the third grade a lady from Plovdiv, a Jew, came to us, I can’t remember her name and she came to propagate, to instill in us the idea that we had to enroll in the Hashomer Hatzair organization 16. That was my first meeting with Zionism, for the first time we found out what this and that meant.

When I finished the third grade I returned to mummy in Plovdiv. I didn’t have the right to stay in the boarding house anymore. My mother had moved to Plovdiv with my sister as early as 1926. An aunt of mine whose name was Ester had asked her to do that so that she wouldn’t be alone anymore. ‘Let me have a sister at last, you don’t have a husband to be in your way, come if you want, Plovdiv is a bigger town, the children will feel better.’ After that in 1926 -1927 my brother went to her and continued with the dental mechanics. And that was how our migration took place. I finally moved to Plovdiv in 1930.

I don’t know but I underwent the change of the climate and water in Plovdiv. In Sofia and in Gorna Dzhumaya the climate is more mountainous. I was staying in Plovdiv while I was still at junior high school in the summer holiday and I remember that I was ill all the time. I was feeling so bad that the illness changed my body and when I came back the housekeeper asked me: ‘Are you a new girl?’ ‘No, madam, it’s me – Marga.’ ‘But I send you to your mother, not to an evil stepmother…’ Such were her words. I was so changed from the weakness and exhaustion, from the disease. Afterwards, I got used to the climate little by little.

Plovdiv in 1930s was a small town. There was no traffic. The streets were covered with stones. This street, in which now is the Jewish center, was a center for the children in winter. They were making slopes and used sledges. There was a Jewish quarter and there lived mainly poor Jews who had come from Odrin [Edirne, Turkey]. They didn’t know Bulgarian well and the dialect they used was extremely ugly. Otherwise, they were hard-working. Some of them were carrying baskets full of different foods and would sell them in the streets, others would sell tomatoes on stalls. They used to make pastry themselves and sold them, but culture was a concept unknown to them.

At first our rich relatives from Gorna Dzhumaya helped us financially but eventually my mother was forced to start work as a worker on wage. She started work at Haim Adroke’s factory ‘Akte’ and was making stripes for the military uniforms, silk chevrons and ribbons. The accountant of the factory was Aladzhemov who had visited the Kohen family in Blagoevgrad. He had visited the rich house and when he saw mum he got startled. ‘You, madam, aren’t you from Gorna Dzhumaya? What are you doing here?’ In other words – you don’t belong here as an ordinary worker. And mum told him: ‘Look, now, I’m not in Gorna Dzhumaya, I’m here now and that’s different?’.

At first our family was living near the Jewish quarter, near the church St. George. My mother had hired a room and a parlor, which was just next to the staircase. My sister and I used to sleep in the parlor and we could hear and see how the people from the upper floors were passing by but that didn’t bother us. Little by little we stepped on our feet. Mum was working, my brother in 1930 or 1931 started his own business as a dental mechanic and had regular customers and employees in his dental workshop. My sister left us because she got married in 1932 to the Jew Leon Albalakh and left for Chirpan. [The town of Chirpan is situated in the Upper-Thracian Lowland, in the southwestern part of Stara Zagora Region]. At that time about twenty Jewish families lived in Chirpan. Their houses were near the synagogue in the center of the town. I haven’t been to the synagogue and have no personal impressions of it. It seems to me there was a Jewish school but I’m not sure. Jews were also living in the village of Gradina, Purvomay Region. There lived a family that was attending the synagogue at Erev Sabbath and the other holidays. Most of the Jews from Chirpan were merchants. There was a family I knew – Basan – who were knitters. The Jews in Chirpan were very united. They were always in touch and helped each other. My sister was very much loved by them. The house that my sister and her husband Leon built was near the synagogue too. They had two children – Isak and Zhak. The Jewish children were different from the Bulgarian children. My sister’s children and the other Jewish children were always dressed up to the fashion in town. They regularly came to Plovdiv to buy or have clothes tailored for them in the big city. We could afford to rent a much better flat in ‘St. Kliment’ street and that’s what we did.

I started studying at high school. At that time the rules were as follows – there weren’t any grants for orphans no matter that I had good marks and an excellent diploma. If the orphans wanted to receive a grant they had to enroll in the Commercial High School or the vocational schools because you were an orphan and you had to become good at a certain craft for three years so that you wouldn’t burden the state. But I told mummy: ‘I’m not going anywhere, I want to study at the high school.’ And on top of that I had passed the entrance exam in Sofia for the Girls’ First High School. But mum turned out to be very practical. She went to the directorate – I don’t know which one, the one that this depended on and said: ‘You know, Mr. Director, my child will commit suicide if I don’t let her study at the high school.’ She gave a very serious reason and they made everything possible so that I could get a grant. I got the grant in the end. Can you see what one lonely widow can do? So I got the grant. There were 900 schoolgirls in the school and only four of us had received grants – two Jews and two Bulgarians. The grants were paid monthly for clothes and books.

Until that moment I had studied only in a Jewish environment and now I had to be in a mixed environment every day but that period wasn’t difficult for me from an emotional point of view, there weren’t consequences, I didn’t feel that. There were 30 schoolgirls in my class, five of which were Jews. I didn’t have any problems at high school connected to my origin, I didn’t feel any different. Just the opposite – I was immediately appointed chairperson of the class. As such I was responsible when the teachers were away. When we were left alone I was dealing with my classmates by telling them stories or singing songs. I was often an arbiter in different disputes and participated in the successful solution of some conflicts.

There was such a thing at the time. I was the chairperson for two years in a row. For the third I asked them to change me but I was chosen again. ‘Nothing like that, Margarita – you’re going to be chairperson again.’ I recall that in 1932 – 1933 a classmate whose name I can’t remember came to our class and started delivering speeches in which she was talking against the tsar. That was unacceptable then. The teachers found out about that and we were interrogated afterwards. I was the first because I was the chairperson of the class. ‘Tell us, Margarita, what did you hear and did you do as a chairperson?’ But I was very happy with the things the girl had said. I wasn’t very much against these things I should say. But I told them that at school we shouldn’t talk about politics, that wasn’t the right place. I wasn’t punished. As a whole, I succeeded in coping with my schoolmates.

I used to love Literature and History. I respected the teachers of these subjects. At first my teacher in History was Mrs. Stefanova. She wasn’t young at all but her lessons were extremely interesting. In the last grade she was replaced by another teacher but there was nothing in common between them. All of a sudden things became so schematic. The new teacher was dictating some plans all the time and we were only supposed to write them down in our notebooks – first point, second point… I stopped studying, I lost my interest completely. And do you know what she told me? ‘I saw in the register book that you, Margarita, had always had excellent marks in History. I know why you don’t study and are not an excellent student. Because you don’t want to study Bulgarian History.’ She was, how shall I put it, unnoticeable, plain… She couldn’t be compared to my other teacher. I didn’t get an A in the end, I got a B.

Apart from going to school every day we also visited Hashomer Hatzair. At the beginning we didn’t have uniforms but later we got them. Hashomer Hatzair was instilling a different culture in us and was introducing the spirit of Zionism. And I became a Zionist, I was always telling mum: ‘Do you know mum, I’m going to leave for Israel?’ and she replied ‘I have been looking after you since you were a piece of meat. Are you going to leave me now?’ and I was thinking of going to Israel - to do what the organization was lecturing us to do.
In the summer during the holidays Hashomer Hatzair organized camps. In the evening by the bonfire we would recite poems by Smirnenski 17, poems in Ivrit. The people from Sofia were very distinguished with their culture… The people from Ruse were different and they were even nicer. We were all women, you know the girls from Plovdiv and we did what we could in those performances. I remember a Bentsion from Ruse who was singing so nicely, opera arias. I wouldn’t have become a part of all that, if I had remained in Gorna Dzhumaya. All this could happen only in a big city.

I remember an evening in Tsigov Chark – an area between Rakitovo and Batak – we went out for a walk but we got separated from the main group and couldn’t find our way back. So what were we going to do now? There were some shepherds whom we met on our way, if they had been bad people they would have attacked us or at least start mocking us. There wasn’t anything like that. We lost the way – suddenly Rashka, a friend of mine, with whom we were classmates from the boarding school said: ‘Marga, those electric poles pass by the camp as well. And we started following the poles finding our way like that. And there was such alarm because of us being missing.

Once I poured gas into the salad instead of oil. And we had to eat salad with gas. In Plovdiv in our spare time we were again together with the other members of Hashomer Hatzair. I had two very good friends from the organization – Meriam and Debora. Both of them left the school because they wanted to learn a craft because they would need that later in the kibbutz in Palestine. Meriam became a seamstress, Debora – a shoemaker. I wanted to become a midwife and asked mum to let me enroll in the courses in Sofia but she didn’t agree because she wanted her children to be around. That’s why I had to finish the high school but my mother asked me for forgiveness at the end of her life because she hadn’t let me make that wish come true. We were particularly close with Meriam. I remember that when my brother caught typhus in 1932 I lived at her place for six months. We were together all the time, we were going to school. Meriam left for Israel and I visited her just before her death. Debora on the other hand was living in Bounardzhik [a quarter in Plovdiv, which is situated on one of the seven hills (tepeta), a symbol of the city]. I used to go to her house and call her, she showed on the window and I remained downstairs. So we used the Morse code to talk. She left for Israel too but I can’t say what happened to her. We didn’t keep in touch.

Additionally, in Hashomer Hatzair there were both boys and girls and we started looking at each other and started some relationships. It was a habit of ours after the activities to walk home with my friend Meriam. And one and the same young man was accompanying us every time. ‘I’ll take you home, I’ll walk home with you.’ Meriam and I were wondering who he was actually interested in – me or her. It turned out it was me… And little by little a friendship began that continued for two or three years. In the end when we turned 19 the people started asking: ‘Haven’t you got engaged?’ And one day I decided to ask him: ‘Tell me what I should tell them. Should I go on accepting their congratulations or not?’ He only told me: ‘Well, now… my sister is at home.’ And when I heard that I put an end – that was it. In fact that meant that he couldn’t take a girlfriend or a bride, whatever, home, he couldn’t… Later I found out that his mother was against because I was an orphan. May be she was dreaming of having a wealthy daughter-in-law. This way or another, afterwards a classmate from Sofia visited me and asked me: ‘What are your intentions? Do you plan to continue your relationship?’ I told her – no, that was the end. I went home and said: ‘You’re not going to accept him anymore, because…’ My brother, sweet thing, immediately suggested ‘You’ll come to me, to my company, don’t you worry…’ And that was what happened. The year was 1935.
I finished high school in 1935 and had matriculation exams only in two subjects; I didn’t have to sit for an exam in the other five subjects. My brother and my future husband knew each other because they were working for the Jewish conspiracy but in that same year there was a failure and my brother, Sharlo and 14 or 15 other people were arrested after a manifestation, I don’t know what that manifestation had been. At that time I was preparing for my matriculation but I was very upset indeed and was thinking about that all the time because I was bringing food to the arrested and I could see they were pale, tortured, beaten. I passed my exams with the lowest possible marks which, of course, influenced my final results but didn’t have any significance in my future life.

I had seen my future husband Sharlo [Shemuel Samuel Kohen, 1906-1988] with my brother. First they released him together with two or three other guys, on bail, but my brother was still in custody. They kept him there for six months and during the trial the prosecutor wanted many years prison for him but my mother intervened – through a cousin of hers she influenced the prosecutor’s wife, she influenced the prosecutor and my brother was released. Meanwhile, I bumped into Sharlo and a friend of his and told him that it was not fair that they were walking about like that and be free while there were others who are still in prison. They obviously realized what I was trying to tell them and came to take me from home and accompany me on a walk so that I wouldn’t be alone and sad. Afterwards I left for Chirpan to visit my sister. I recall that they came there to visit me and we came back home together by train. When I was getting off the train he reached out his hand to help me and embraced me so that I could feel his masculine strength.

So step by step we started dating and were getting to know and like each other more and more. My future husband Sharlo had finished the Jewish junior high school. After that he had enrolled the high school and had started studying there but his parents couldn’t afford it and he couldn’t finish it, he dropped out. He started work first as a carpenter, then he became a clerk and in the end, just before getting engaged, he started helping his parents. It was very nice to be with him, he was good company. He wasn’t picking on people, he was very tolerant and later, in marriage, he remained the same – very open-minded, easy-going and with great sense of humor – man with spirit. In fact, the choice was mutual but it seems to me his father liked me very much too. His parents were in the grain trade. When we met they were building the third floor of the house in which we are now. They were forced to mortgage it in order to complete it and they invested all their savings. We had already decided to get married, we had decided on the day for the wedding. My brother wanted his little sister to be happy so he paid the whole mortgage. And what did my brother ask me one day before my wedding – he caught my cheeks like that: ‘Tell me sister, what else do you want?’ ‘Me – to want anything!? I think I got more than I deserve.’

We first got engaged. So many guests came! The grandmothers, my brother-in-law, all of them came to visit us in ‘St. Kliment’ Street. After that the wedding took place in their house, not in the synagogue because my mother-in-law had apoplexy and couldn’t move. So the wedding was in the presence of a rabbi here on the third floor in 1939.

After the wedding we were living in my husband’s house with my mother-in-law, father-in-law, my brother-in-law Zhak who a year and a half later married the Jew Dora. We, the whole family Kohen, were living on the second floor and the first and the second were rented out. On the ground floor there was a shop which was also rented out. My mother-in-law was quite a dame and very house-proud. As a young bride she used to wake me up at five in the morning: ‘Come on, come on, let’s start cleaning!’ Mum would say: ‘My God, are you wearing aprons on Saturday?’ My mother liked cleanliness too but not as much as my mother-in-law. My mother-in-law’s behavior wasn’t very normal. She liked doing the same things every single day, and that turns into a routine, becomes very boring, but I couldn’t do anything. In fact, that cleaning was mainly my task because she couldn’t do it – she was paralyzed.

My husband Shemuel Samuel Kohen was born in 1906 in Samokov. He was a Sephardi Jew. He had three brothers – Leon, Mois and Zhak. My husband was the youngest – the fourth child. As a young man he studied for a carpenter but later he finished evening courses at the Trade School, he finished some accountancy courses and became an accountant. Afterwards, when the shop needed an accountant, instead of hiring somebody else, he quit the accountancy and started helping his father and brother. After 1944 he finished planner courses and worked as a planner at machine tools enterprises like ‘Balkan’ and ‘Madara’.

My son Samuil Kohen was born in 1940 on my mother’s insistence. We didn’t want children at that time yet but she had written in a letter to my sister that I had to give birth because anything could happen. She used to even come to our house to dare me to get pregnant. ‘Marga, how is the family, dear?’ She was asking about this and that. ‘I’m fine, mama.’ ‘Do you know that there are a lot of childless families? A lot of them bathe in the warm waters.’ And she described the situation to me. ‘And what about you?’ ‘Mama, I say, I’m still very tired of all the arrangements around the wedding, let us have some rest...’ ‘Come on, if you have a child, you’ll have a rest afterwards...’ After that when my son was born in 1940 mum used to help us a lot in his bringing up.

During the War

The war started in 1941. According to the Law for the Protection of the Nation 18 the authorities seized our shop and used it for fifteen or twenty years after that. Afterwards they returned it to us. They replaced our tenants with other people. On the first floor started living the judge on the Jewish issues Mr. Morfov and on the third – colonel Stoev and his wife. The colonel was a kind person. Whenever seeing that some of us was carrying a bucket with water, he grabbed it and helped us – a great big colonel, but his wife – ‘God forgive me!’ – was such an evil. She used to take me upstairs to her, to sleep at her place when her husband was absent so she asked me to sleep in her bedroom because she was afraid that someone would attack her and she didn’t want to be alone. And I agreed because when I visited her I could eat as much as I wanted – even cheese, and I could take for the child, and I was hungry too – so there was cheese, and yellow cheese, and sausages, there was everything on her table. So when she called me I would go because of the food and how can a person refuse – I don’t want to sleep at your place, I don’t know… After all he was chief of staff in the army. During one air-raid when the Americans were bombarding he started throwing me nasty looks: ‘Those Americans!’ – as if I had made them come.

I remember that the mayor was living opposite us at that time, his name was Velchev, together with his family. I used to go out on the balcony with my sister-in-law’s baby in hands and next to me was my little boy. His wife shouted at me: ‘Hey, you, Jew! Get out of there! Get inside, you don’t have the right to get out on the balconies.’ Another case – a milkman who used to bring the milk in the morning. His name was Stoyan. People used to pick on him: ‘Hey, you, why do you give milk to the Jews?’ But Stoyan replied: ‘Are you the master of my fortune! I’ll give to whoever I want to give!’

It was a really nasty situation. My husband had to leave for the forced labor camps in Mihalkovo, Ihtiman, Yagodovo 19. They were holding them there for eight months and then they were released. I remained alone with a 2,5-year-old child, with the in-laws. The hunger was unimaginable. My husband was away and couldn’t earn anything, my father-in-law was in the toilet all the time – to urinate – he was already seventy-something. And there were restrictions for our getting employed. I didn’t have anywhere to take money from and our shop had been seized and we didn’t get any rent from the tenants. I remember that I sold my wonderful silk nightgown, which I had never worn for food.

I have never been very interested in politics, I’ve never been a member of UYW 20 and never joined the [communist] party. My husband became a member of the party in 1936. I don’t understand anything about politics and when people are talking about it, it is as if I had gone deaf but one day I heard what my father-in-law was telling in the café: ‘Bad times are approaching-prepare bags with bread.’ He was neither speaking about politics a lot at home, nor giving any explanations. We never fully believed that something very bad was going to happen and they had confiscated our radio so that we wouldn’t receive any information. We were allowed to go out for only two hours a day. That was an additional factor for limiting our means of finding food and our contact with the world. There was that Bulgarian guy; his name was Spas. He was a very good-willed man – he used to buy curds from the shop and gave it out to the Jews. I couldn’t stop thanking him.

In 1943 there came seven people who started banging on the door persistently. Prepare. They took my mother-in-law and father-in-law first. I suggested immediately: ‘Let us, the young people, go. Where are you taking them, they can hardly walk.’ ‘You be quiet, you shouldn’t talk that much.’ After that they took us as well – me, my husband and my sister-in-law – who was pregnant in the ninth month and my brother-in-law, her husband. They took us to a police department  [Plan for deportation of Jews in Bulgaria] 21. Then bishop Kiril 22 came, who was still metropolitan at the time, and told us: ‘Be strong, brothers, we won’t let you down.’ We were also helped by other organizations and dignitaries such as the Lawyers’ Union and Dr. Kableshkov [The most eminent member of the Kableshkov family was Todor Loulchev Kableshkov 23] His grandson Nedyalko Kableshkov – you saw him yesterday – is my physician. He comes every day to check on me and doesn’t want any money. He is such a good chap – you can see. The first present I bought from Israel when I was there for the first time was for him. We were detained for several hours and released afterwards.

When the regular bombardments started the colonel and his wife were evacuated to Peshtera where there were barracks. And the ones who were living downstairs moved to Sofia little by little.

I almost tore my hair out of joy when I heard that the Soviet Army had entered Dobrudzha in 1944. [The Soviet Army crossed the Danube on 5th September 1944]. The families who were occupying our lodgings moved to some other places and we started living there again – my mother- and father-in-law, my brother-in-law, his wife and their children out of which only two had survived. In 1948 there was an epidemic of abdominal typhus. My brother-in-law got infected and died. My brother, who had come to visit us, also caught it. We lost both of them within a month. My brother who was getting ready to get engaged and mama remained alone at the age of 56. We buried them both in the Jewish cemetery following the traditional ritual. In 1950 my sister and her family left for Israel. I didn’t forget my plans to go to Israel but I couldn’t leave my mother alone here. And, because I knew she was grieving too much, I decided to have a second child – so that she would have what to do, to occupy her thoughts, so that she wouldn’t fall down into sad thoughts. That’s how in 1950 I gave birth to our second son Solomon. She was of great help with bringing up both children.

After the War

We were raising our kids in a Jewish spirit although my husband was a communist and atheist. They are both circumcised. Sami was an excellent student at school. He had received excellent marks and certificates. Whenever I was at a parents’meeting the teacher didn’t miss the opportunity to compliment me that I shouldn’t go there at all. Outside school he was playing the piano and had a tutor in French. He even enrolled in the Musical School but he gave up and dropped out. He enrolled in an ordinary school. My husband, who was a very clever and practical man, used the holidays to teach him how to tune pianos so that he would have a vocation. My biggest desire was for him to study medicine because that was my unfulfilled dream. But he chose his own path – he graduated from the Law Department in Sofia. As an award for his graduation I decided to sponsor his move to Israel. So in 1965 he went to his aunt in Israel and lived there for thirty years. In 1968 he got married there – to a sabra. His wife’s name is Lea. I couldn’t attend the wedding because at the time the relations between Bulgaria and Israel weren’t good and the authorities wouldn’t even let us travel to there [Severing the diplomatic ties between the Eastern Bloc and Israel] 24. In Israel he had worked as a piano tuner. He has two twin sisters – Margarit and Tamar and a son – Eran – who committed suicide. He returned to Bulgaria in 1993 and now he is unemployed here.

My younger son Ouri has only primary education. He got meningitis, which the doctors discovered at a late stage, and it transformed into schizophrenia. We did everything possible to deal with the disease. We even sold part of the house – we were all the time spending money on doctors but it was irreversible. Now he is in the mental institution in the village of Petkovo.

Both of my children were raised in Jewish self-awareness. They knew what Pesach was, we celebrated Purim. We weren’t meticulous about sticking to the ritual but we celebrate the holidays and still do. I even remember that once I was alone with my younger son at Pesach. My older son was already a student in Sofia and my husband was in the town of Hisarya because of the mineral baths there. No matter what the circumstances were I had ordered and put everything according to the ritual because of Ouri, so that he would know what that was, and – all of a sudden – my husband came back home and we were very happy and had great fun. We have always kept in touch with the Jewish community although, apart from Hashomer Hatzair, I hadn’t been a member of any organizations. The cuisine at home is also typically Jewish. My husband liked indjinarika very much – marrows with sour sauce. First, you cut the marrows in big pieces so that they wouldn’t become squashy. They are boiled into oil. You out salt in the end so that they get ready quickly. After that you put lemon juice and a little sugar. It is served cold and it is very delicious. I used to make agristada very often too – flour gruel with a lot of eggs, broth and oil. It is very important to dissolve the flour into cold water or broth. The broth is most often from hen or brains. Afterwards you pour the sauce over the boiled meat. Mum, on the other hand, used to prepare a very delicious meal from aubergine. Firstly, you bake the aubergine. After that you peel them and put them into cold water so that they wouldn’t go black. Then they are sieved through a thin piece of cloth, cut into slices, rolled into flour and egg and fried in butter. That dish is called ‘imambayaldu’. Some people consider it to be a Turkish dish but I know it from my mother. Another thing I prepare is cabbage with minced meat instead of meat.

As a Jew I had never had problems at my workplace because of my origin. When I was a young girl I worked as a clerk and I was also assisting my brother with the dental mechanics. Until 1952 I was only a housewife. Afterwards I worked for a while as a librarian at ‘Balkan’ State Company and then, until 1965, as a receptionist in hospital. I have to tell you that in my last job as a receptionist I had a serious conflict with my only colleague who was a Jew. I couldn’t get on with her and quit. At that time my younger son fell ill and I didn’t want to work anymore. I retired with only 14 years work experience due to illness. I remember only that at one stage I was in danger to be interned because I knew Ivrit (during the cold war with Israel). They believed that if I knew Ivrit it meant we were Zionists. Somebody had whispered this information to the authorities. I know Ivrit from the Jewish school and I think that this is not a sin but, this way or another, that story is already a part of the past.

Otherwise, I have always been and will remain a Zionist. I think that the state of Israel must exist and I have always kept in contact through letters with my relatives there. I remember that during the war for the Suez Canal [she means actually the Six-Day-War] 25 my son was already there. In order not to think, not to go crazy I unknitted all the socks that I had and knitted the counterpanes and the pillows which you can see here. My husband was ill at the time and I was sitting next to him – knitting and listening to the little radio to find out where the military actions were and I was thinking about Sami all the time, about what was happening to him. I visited Israel twice - in 1961 and in 1989.

My mother died in 1961. We buried her according to the Jewish ritual in the Jewish cemetery. My husband died in 1988 but we didn’t bury him in the Jewish cemetery but in the Bulgarian one because they were building a highway, which was supposed to pass through the Jewish cemetery.

I met the changes since 1989 26 with mixed feelings. I wanted for the transition period to pass to see what will happen but it turned out to be really long. I thought it would last for only five or six years. My son returned in 1993. Now my life is hard. We gave up the comfort at home. Some of the premises of the houses we rented out and now everybody is living in their own den. I and my son live in two tiny rooms. That was what happened during the Holocaust but now it is somewhat different because we opted for that situation. And in the past we were forced to do things.

I used to visit Shalom 27 regularly. I met a lot of friends there. But not anymore because my feet hurt. I am a member of the club for disabled people. I am very grateful that they help us financially and in any other possible way. They give us a free lunch every day. Well, they actually give us 24 levs, which I spend on food. I am grateful that I have a pension and I am not fully dependent on my son.

Glossary

ZELDA ERS
Istanbul
Turkey
Interviewer: Yusuf Sarhon
Date of Interview: February 2006

Zelda Ers was born in 1934 in Istanbul. She has been living alone in a flat in Gayrettepe for the last 10-12 years since she lost her husband. Since her older son  Salvo lives in the building right next door, she is not lonely. She is a very warm, pleasant  and cordial person. I have to say that she is also very hospitable. The day I went to interview her, I was invited to lunch along with her son Izzet who is my friend, we had lunch all together. My work with her took place in a very pleasant atmosphere.

Family background

Growing Up

During the War

After the War

Glossary

Family background

From what I’ve been told my great-great grandfathers were all from Balat, I do not know where they came from and who they are before that. I don’t have stories about them. I just know that they were very very honorable people.

Among my grandparents, I did not know any on the paternal side, I don’t have much information about them. My paternal grandfather’s name was Izak Levi. My maternal grandmother’s name was Zimbul Levi. I do not know her maiden name. I know they lived in Istanbul, spoke Ladino 1, and that they were religious.

My maternal grandfather, Smuel Behar was a rabbi, he was either the rabbi of Apollon or Zulfaris, he was a great rabbi. He was a person with great power. My maternal grandmother was Lea Behar. I do not know her maiden name or their birthdates. They were from Balat. The financial situation of my mother’s father was very good. They earned their money from the rabbinate. Their life changed after World War 2, their sons  Albert Behar and Vili Behar left for the United States and took their mom and dad with them. Only my mother remained here. They used to speak Ladino.

I did not meet them, they left before I was born. From what my mother told me they were very respectable people. My mother’s dad was a respectable, knowledgeable person who always helped the people around him as much as he could. He was not a person who told jokes, he was a serious, quiet, esteeemed person, he rarely laughed. They were always involved in the synagogue, their constant job was learning, obtaining more knowledge. His real job was an antiques dealer but I don’t know if he had a store. They talked Ladino amongst themselves. They also spoke French because they studied in the schools of Alliance 2.

At the time they wore old-fashioned clothes. I saw this in pictures but later I have no idea where my mother put these pictures. My grandfather had both a moustache and a beard. He used both a yarmulke and a hat. Yarmulke underneath, the hat over it. My grandmother did not wear a wig like orthodox ladies, she always wore a scarf, both at home and outside. She wore old-fashioned clothes, she did not have a special hat or any  jewelry.

I do not have any information about a house or flat that they owned because they had already moved away to the United States when I was born. They observed religion piously since they were a rabbi’s family. They applied the Jewish traditions completely. Certainly they observed the rules of kashrut and the Sabbath. Since he was a rabbi, there is nothing to say. They continually went to the synagogue. They celebrated the Jewish holidays at home.

I do not know the political views of my grandfather. I don’t think he belonged to any political party or organisation. But because they were very civilized people, maybe they belonged to a social or cultural club.

Their relations with their neighbors was very good. Their relations with everyone was good. My grandfather was someone who always helped out, he would host people who could or could not afford celebrating, in his home during holidays. Passover etc. And feed them. Of course I am talking about things I have heard.
Their neighbors were Jewish, I don’t have information about their friends.

I did not get to know my father, Yesua Levi, since he died when I was young. I am guessing that since the family was from Balat, that is where he was born. I know he was 2-3 years older than my mother, so he could be born in 1898. From what I have been told, my father was a very smart, wise and talkative person. He was very understanding and mellow. His education level was midddle school. There was a Maccabi school then, he was from Maccabi. His mother tongue was Ladino. I don’t know how religious he was. My father was a tailor. He was a great tailor. He would saw pants for officers. My mother tells me that he would go to the military and saw silk-lined suits for them. My father always lived in Istanbul and died in 1934 in Istanbul.

My mother Janti Levi (Behar) was born in Istanbul in 1901. She was smart like my father, talkative, she was not serious or quiet. My mother used to be mellow, she hardened later on. She had a good rapport with her neighbors, even though she worked all day, she was a person full of love. She would worry about feeding her children.She made sacrifices so her children could live well.

She lost a child in a traffic accident. My older brother was 36 years old. My brother Izak was married, had two daughters. He had a very very successful business. He sold glassware and china. They were 3 partners, I was newly married then. He opened a store for my husband and my other older brother. So they could have jobs. My brother was very rich. My mother was like a queen in my brother’s home, they lived together. My brother had everything. At the time, (he died in 1960, a little before the hanging of Menderes 3), he bought flats, bought a car, noone had a telephone then, he bought one, crystal chandeliers, he was that rich. One day his car breaks down, at the time Vatan caddesi (street) was being newly built, an Israeli firm, Soley Bone was constructing the street. He gets up and goes all the way there, takes his car to a repairshop. He had a clerk, he says “come with me, we will go and come back together”. But the clerk declined. He goes alone. He takes the car to  Vatan caddesi. And there he hits a tractor trailer. The steering wheel hits his heart. He gets out of the car, he is fine, he was talking. He walked to Capa, he went to the hospital walking. As soon as he entered the hospital, “save me, I feel very bad, I had an accident, my car stayed there, help me” he says. They kept him there till the evening. While waiting he had internal bleeding and died there.  He was 36 years old, he left behind two girls. One was 10 years old, the other 6. My mother was very distressed and became agitated, cranky after this. She developed diabetes and other diseases.

My mother’s education was very good. There used to be a school in Kasimpasa, If I remember correctly, Alliance. French was spoken there all the time. She studied in that school. Her mother tongue was Ladino, in addition she spoke French, German and Greek. My mom was a woman who knew about everything. She was also very religious because her father was a rabbi. She applied all the Jewish traditions. She observed kashrut rules. Every Friday, every holiday and every Saturday morning she went to the synagogue. She had holiday celebrations at home. We would combine our food with neighbors and such and celebrate together.

My mother was a tailor, she helped her husband. She sewed at home while my father was alive. I do not know how my mother and father met, I was never told, probably they must have married by a matchmaker because that is how it was then. They married in Istanbul around 1918-1919, in the Zulfaris synagogue.

The financial situation of my family was mediocre. The house we lived in had one room.  Our house was like a large commercial building. When you went up one flight of stairs, there were lots of rooms. Every family lived in one room no matter how many people.  There was no bathroom, no kitchen, there was a hallway, let me call it a corridor. There was a shared space there for all the rooms, and we would cook our food there.

There was a Turkish style toilet on the first floor, we shared it. The bathroom was a neighbor’s, we went to her house to use the bathroom, we shared it. We did not have running water. We carried it in buckets from the fountain. We carried water to clean the bathroom. Cleaning was done by turns, everyday one of the neighbors did it. There were huge huge mice in the bathrooms, we would make noise, bang on the door so they would scurry away and we could go in. There was a big tree right across our house and there was a source of water around this tree, it wasn’t a fountain, it was like a stream. Because we lived together with Turks, they always had their turn first, the Jews were last. But they would feel pity that I was so young, they would give me permission to fill the buckets.  This water was only used for cleaning and the bathroom. We bought water for drinking and cooking from the water-seller. We heated up bucketfuls of water to bathe. We poured water with a bowl over our head. For heating, there was a stove, a brazier, we used coal.  That is how it was many years ago. There was poverty then.

We did not have a garden. Our neighborhood was a poor neighborhood, there were no luxuries. We lived alongside Turks. The Turks loved us, we loved them back.  We would visit them on holidays, they would visit us on our holidays. We had no pets in our home.  We did not have helpers like servants, maids, nannies or laundry women.

We had books at home. We had religious books and French books. My mother was partial to French novels, usually she read romantic novels. She liked reading. She would recommend books to me, she wanted very much for me to read. I used to read. When my mother became ill, I could not continue. At the time the middle one of my older brothers was in the military and sent a letter. For whatever reason, he asked for 30,000 liras as emergency money. I was around 8 or 9 years old then, I don’t remember well. My mother found a way to find and send the money but she was so scared that the fear paralyzed her legs, she couldn’t walk. There weren’t many doctors then. There was a pious woman then, she healed with prayer and said to my mother “I will cure you but you cannot leave the house for 9 days, noone can see you”. I don’t remember what she did, but I was obliged to leave school and stay in that room. They would bring us food from the outside. The neighbors would bring us meals and no one saw my mother for those 9 days. On the ninth day she got up in the morning, went to the hamam and returned home walking.

We didn’t read newspapers at home. They did not have the habit of going to the library either. They did no have active duties in the community. The poor ones, they struggled to earn enough money to live on . My mother struggled to raise us.

I don’t have information about the period of my father’s military service. But I have information about my father-in-law’s. My deceased father-in-law, Eliyazer Ers, was a very knowledgeable, educated man. He studied in Allience like my mom. He was a wise and well-read person. He would always tell us: “I went into exile. They sent me to the Russian border for military service. There was a war then”. I think that was around World War 1. “I only had a mother, no one else” he says. “I had a sibling, he starved to death”, he always told us that. He starved to death, he died here. My father-in-law’s family was all from Balat. He says that he had 4.5-5 years of military service. “We were in Russia. Then I could not return to Turkey. I stayed in exile. I had no money, nothing, I could not return” was what he explained. This happened during military service. He always told us that. Because I had not known the love of a father, I had a very good relationship with him. He had a lot of good qualities, he would come and tell me: “We came to Turkey with a convoy, I did not have a penny. My military service was supposed to be two years but I could not return even though World War 1 had ended. I went back to my neighborhood, I could not find my mother or my sibling. They died of poverty and starvation. I was alone”.
My deceased mother-in-law, Anetta Ers, was a little ignorant, she was a peasant woman. She would say: “Friends and neighbors got together and married me to him. I did not have a spectacular life. My father-in-law’s job was to inscribe on tombstones things like poems. He was a sought-out person.

My father had two siblings named Fortune Levi and Albert Levi. The only thing I know about his older sister Fortune was that she would cook for a royal British family. She had great knowledge about food. She had a daughter named Deyzi, when her daughter grew up, she decided she couldn’t provide a dowry for her since she has lost her husband, so she left for Israel around 1975 and died there. Her daughter currently resides there.

His brother was a tailor. He had a daughter and a son named Sara and Pepo. He died around 1975-1980. I have no further information about them.

My mother had two siblings named Albert and Vili. My uncle Albert was in the business of wholesale nuts in the United States. I don’t have many details about them because I never met them.

Vili was in the carwash business in the United States. He married Seydi Behar who was an American citizen. He had three children named Leonor, July and Sami. I know he died in 1960.  I met all the children when we went on our trip to the United States.

Both my uncles were studying in Istanbul, in the Maccabi. The name of the B’nai Brith school was Maccabi then. This was happening at the time of Hitler. They saw that the situation was very bad, my mother was married then. My uncles ran away from school, they went directly to Spain. From there they emigrated to the United States. They both found a woman each, to be able to stay in the United States. Both passed on. Their life there was wonderful. At first they struggled but then their situation improved. They lived in Miami. They remembered their sister 40 years after they left, my mother. They tried calling by phone, couldn’t locate her, they called the community, they said we are looking for such a person, they couldn’t. They couldn’t reach us. Finally one of them gets up and comes to Turkey, I had just given birth to Izzet then.

My younger uncle came, found my mother and it was a big event. In reality my mother contacted them through the American consulate. That is how my younger uncle came here. Then he took my mother to the United States. My mother lived with them for a while. She lived well but returned with yearning for her children. In the meanwhile my uncle became a cardiac patient after he married his son and told his son Semi Behar: “you will take care of my sister and the children” as a last request. “If necessary, bring the whole family here” he said. Appropriately, my older brother applied to the American consulate to become an immigrant. But his immigration paper came after he died. In the meantime my uncle died and his son, as soon as he married Deni Behar, -I don’t know her maiden name-, came to visit Turkey around 1970’s and found us and my mother. We had pleasant days with them, and for about 10-11 years, they came every year. They stayed with us, we did not let them stay in a hotel, we opened our house.

One time, they said it is our turn, they invited us to settle there, first come and see they said, and arranged everything, up to the airplane tickets. And we went there and lived there for 40 days. We stayed in New York for 15 days and in Miami the rest of the time. I loved it there and I wished a better life for my children, I wanted to settle but my husband did not want it. If you keep me here I will die he said. In reality he was right, it was a very calm and quiet place. The place was full of villas. There wasn’t much to do. At best, we went out on a motorboat on the weekends to fish. My husband did not want this lifestyle.  But they insisted and said “you are coming” and arranged a house for us, a carwash business, and a language school for my son Izzet so he can learn and direct the family. He prepared everything. But they did not let Izzet. The ambassador did not let him. They wanted a house, they wanted money in the bank. They even called and said I will send a permit, I will provide everything he said. But neither he was able to do it, nor anyone gave a viza to Izzet. How could we leave Izzet  behind we said and we couldn’t go, we stayed.  What a pity that we had everything ready.  It wasn’t to be.

My older brother Izak Levi was born in Istanbul Sishane, in 1921. He studied in the Jewish highschool, completed junior high. He did not go to highschool. He raised himself since he was a smart and active person. He worked in Taksim in a textile factory at the age of 17. The owner in the textile factory was a Druze, named Cikvasvili. He worked there until he went to the military. While working there he got engaged to a girl named Merkada Eskenazi. The person who became his wife later on, Korin Leon lived above us and was very much in  love with my brother. She heard that he got engaged and was very upset. She sends her mother over and says to my mom: “why were we not made aware, whereas Korin loves Izak very much”. My mom relates this to my brother. After a while, they weren’t getting along with Merkada and they separated. Following this my brother got engaged to Korin, they stayed engaged for 7 years. Since they were engaged so young, their engagement lasted a long time, in the meantime he went to the military. He had a good military service in Ankara. They marry a while after he got back. She was a very good woman. She loved me like a sister, took care of me when my mom wasn’t there, we lived in the same house. She was 10-12 years older than me. They had a daughter named Janti a year after they got married, and 4 years later another daughter, Suzet. He was very successful at his job during this time. His job was boxmaking in Eminonu. He had a lot of acquaintances in the market. He had a friend, Albert Morhayim, and there was another one, the son-in-law of a pharmacist at the kal de los frankos (ashkenazi synagogue), I don’t remember the name, they became partners in the glassware business. They obtained a big warehouse in Eminonu. At the time the crystals from Chekoslovakia were famous, they were selling those. They became incredibly rich. When they were married they lived in Kuledibi, they attracted attention because of their wealth. They bought a house, they bought a car, they had everything. Ten years pass and the accident happens.


My other older brother Albert Levi was born in Istanbul Sishane in 1925. He also completed junior high in the Jewish highschool and started working. There wasn’t much studying then. After finishing school he became an ironworker until military service.  Later he did his military service in Malatya. When he returned, he opened up a business of children’s bicycles. He maried someone named Sara Bicaci from Tekirdag. She was a very good woman. They had two daughters, Jaklin and Meri. They lived in the 6th flat.  With time the girls grew up. After the events of September 6-74, emigrating to Israel was common. First let’s send the oldest girl so she can learn the language, then we will follow he asid. The older girl Jaklin left in 1962, they went in 1964. They currently live there. Now he is retired. We still communicate but we are not close because of beatings  that happened when I was young.

I tried to forget these events, I had a lot of therapy, with time I forgot all of it. After my brother left in 1964, my mother went to stay with him in 1968. Our financial situation wasn’t that good. We were struggling to raise our kids. My husband’s business wasn’t that good and he also needed to take care of his parents. My mother wanted to go there. At the time the Israeli government would provide a house for the immigrants, they would provide money. And she went there. My oler brother said “I will take care of my mother, do not give her a house, give  me the money”. My mother settled in my brother’s house. She lived there but couldn’t get along and left to rent. The situation became so bad that my mother took to crying in the streets, lying on the benches. I was going crazy reading the letters. In 1977 I told my husband that I had to go take care of this no matter what. I left and went there. Truly, I found my mother in a deplorable state. I went to my brother and said “I am not in a position to talk, you are more powerful than me”, I boosted his ego. “I have two sons at home, my husband, his parents, who should my spouse take care of first. My mother has not been well since the death of my brother, anyways, she needs a doctor, she needs medicine, I cannot afford all that. Please treat her well, who knows how many years she has left, it is a pity” I said. In the meantime my older son Salvo has an accident with our car, and my husband writes me a letter and calls me back immediately. I left everyone and went back. Later I received a letter from my mother: “What did you do to these people, you put them in line, my granchildren are coming to see me, my son comes, my daughter-in-law comes” she was telling me. I told her that I took care of it using kind words.  My mother was very happy that I had taken care of the situation and prayed to me. But a short while after everything was o.k., my mother died.

Growing Up

I, Zumbul Ers (Levi) was born in Istanbul in 1934. I never went to preschool, my mother and siblings raised me, there was no such things as nannies with us. I was mostly alone through my childhood. After my father’s passing, my mother started to go out to work. She was a tailor. She worked and I stayed alone in the house. My childhood was very bad, I had a very bad childhood. All this stayed in my subconscience, I had a lot of therapy after my husband died. The psychologist revealed that it all was because of my childhood.

I was someone afraid of the dark, who went to bed hungry, then. I would fall asleep before my mom got home. The younger of my older brothers, Albert was a harsh person, I suffered because of him. He was very strict, he beat me up a lot. These beatings created psyhological problems for me. My older brother left for the military after a while. My mother would prepare green beans for me when I was 6 and say you will cook the green beans. My sister-in-law lived upstairs, the fiancee of my older brother and her parents.  I would go to them and beg them to show me how to cook it. They would tell me do this this way and that, that way, they would instruct me. I would cook coals on top of a brazier to cook food, and when it wasn’t done, my brother would come and beat me. My mother who could have stopped him would come home late, and when she did, I was asleep.  We did not have running water, I would pour water over his hands with a bowl, he would slap me with the back of his hand and blood would pour down my face. I was around 7 years old or younger. The neighbors would intervene “what are you doing, you will kill this girl”. It was as if he was exacting revenge on our poverty. I don’t know what to say. All this created psychological problems with me with time. I became a girl who cried constantly, who never found pleasure in anything. At the time, the children, girls and boys, we would all sit outside our doorsteps, a little conversation, a few laughters, a little singing, we would pass the time like this. Because there was nothing else to do then. In the meantime I grew up, started working. I put on airs about having grown up. I started having self-confidence. My older brother returned from military service. He was a very good person. He acted like a father to us. In the meantime the younger brother went to the military, I reached puberty at the age of 12. Of course, I flourished, I am walking with girl and boyfriends, I am talking to them, I forgot about the past. In the meantime the neighbors are telling my older brother what the younger one had been doing. One day my younger brother came from the military. My friends were calling me from downstairs, 
Zelda, come out to the door so we can talk a little bit. My brother immediately stopped me saying where are you going. And I replied that I was already grown up, that he couldn’t tell me what to do anymore, to go mind his own business. How dare I talk back, he starts hitting me and hitting me. My older brother hears the sounds from upstairs. Right away neighbors gather to check the commotion and my older brother beats my younger brother with a stick in his hand and this was the last time. He could not touch me again. But these events had an effect on me, they stayed in my subconscious. For a long time I could not enjoy anything, I will not forget that.

I went to the second coeducational school, this was a Jewish school. My favorite class was mathematics. Ask me today I will answer you rightaway. I liked math and Turkish a lot. In the classroom, I remember, the richest kids sat in front, the poorest in the very back. The teachers arranged the seating system. However, the ones in the very back were more successful than the ones in front. I liked all the teachers in general but we had a teacher named Madam Benyakar, she was very tough, she would always beat us with a ruler. But not me. She beat the ones who couldn’t answer, she would hit thir fingers with the ruler, right on top of their knuckles. That is why I did not like her but I liked the rest. I was so well-behaved that I would get presents like notebooks and pencils, the school would clothe me and feed me.

I could only attend third grade in primary school. That year my mother was very sick and one of my brothers was a soldier. I had lost my father at a young age. My mother was very ill, her legs became paralyzed, she wasn’t able to walk, I think her legs became immobilized from fear and she was unable to walk. That is why I stopped going to school after 3rd grade so I could take care of my mother. I started working at 9 years of age, I started caring for my mother at 9 years of age. There was a pantyhose factory in Kasimpasa belonging to some Druzes, I started working there. First I started working in the weaving, I would attach labels. Then I would make straps for bras. We paid the rent with the money I earned. One of my brothers was a soldier, the other had just returned and did not have a job.

I had a bad childhood, I could not get an education. Whereas I was a hardworking student, in third grade, after I quit school, a committee from the school came to my home to ask that I return. To ask why you are not sending your daughter to school. They saw my mom’s situation, my mother was sick. I couldn’t go. In the meantime there was a government law stating that it was mandatory to finish elementary school. Because of this they would permit me to leave work at 3 o’clock and I would go to night school after that. I finished elementary school this way. I got my certificate. Then I continued working.

During the War

In my childhood I do not know the population of Jews in our neighborhood, Bedrettin Mahallesi but the majority was Jewish. I think there were around 50 families. The Turks on the other hand lived one street behind. Our vicinity was all Jewish. It was mostly like a ghetto. Kuledibi was a ghetto. The area we lived in was also a ghetto.

At the time we did not have anything to do with the community, that is to say we did not have any relationship with the community officials. There were 2 synagogues where we lived. Apollon and Zulfaris. Here there were 3-4 rabbis.  There were religious members such as usher, cantor etc. There was a mikvah, Talmud Torah, a Yeshiva.

When we were young, celebrating events such as noche de shabbat(Friday evening), attending synagogue on Shabbat morning, kashrut, holidays, were all done together with our neighbors and relatives.

We attended synagogue like everyone else, my mother would take us on every holiday, every Shabbat, every Selichot no matter what. The upstairs floors of the house we lived in were all Jewish. Besides, the future wife of my older brother and his in-laws were all our neighbors, we were always with them. They were so religious that we would get together at night, towards dawn and go to the synagogue to pray. I learned everything concerning my religion from them. I learned piety, kashrut, everything I did or applied, I learned from them. Other than them, I learned Hebrew and religious studies in school. In addition I went to Mahazike Tora 5,  there was Nesim Behar [a very eminent rabbi at the time who educated nearly all the children of his time. In later years he went to live in Israel and died there.] then, I learned religion from him. As far as holidays are concerned I like all of them.

The Jews here had different jobs. But then the rich and the poor live in the same area and had the same conversation. There was no separation. Some of them were factory owners, some grocery store owners, butchers, water sellers, produce sellers. These would come to our door, that is how we did our shopping. There were merchants. Printers of cloth would come to our home. My mother prepared my dowry from a Jewish printer, she bought sheets, comforters, fabrics and underwear.

Payments were done weekly. I was young, I remember, my dowry was in the closet, it was ready. There was a dark-colored and a light-colored suit, a black and a light silk dress and a lot of everyday skirts and blouses in my dowry. The dowry would be hung on ropes in the house a week before the wedding, and displayed with pots and pans on the floor close by. First the mother-in-law and her family, then the neighbors would come and look. Showing this was mandatory then.

There were horses and vehicles in our neighborhood. The trashman would pass in a vehicle. When I was young we would run after the horse carriages, we would get on them. I remember, we were about 2-3 years old then.

We did not have electricity or running water in our house at all. We had a gas lamp in our house. My mother was a tailor, she would sew in the light of the gas lamp hanging on the wall at night. We didn’t have running water either. There was a tree across the house, there was a big fountain there. We would go there and bring bucketfuls of water home. I remember when we went to the fountain to get water the Turks also came. We mingled well with them, there was no discord among us. But later someone would come out and say “dirty Jew” in one of our best moments. In reality we got along well but if something went awry, they would say dirty Jew. But some among them would instantly protect us.

There was a hamam in Kasimpasa. We would go to the hamam with our mother. We would go once every 15 days or once a month. We couldn’t go more often because our pockets didn’t have much money. We would go, bathe, and in the very end, we would throw 41 bowls of tevila. Every time we went, after we bathed, the tub would be cleaned thoroughly, refilled , and we would pray by throwing 41 bowls of water  and we would get out. We  learned this from the rabbis.  This was a tradition, [actually a wrong and superstitious practice that had nothing to do with religious practice] that’s how it was then.

In our neighborhood, the military parades, special celebrations or independence days would be celebrated in Sishane caddesi(street). Turkish Independence Day 6 would be celebrated, there would be military ceremonies. I remember, there was a fire department in the Sishane plaza, there was an amusement part next to it, and Sari Madam(Yellow Madam) next to that. Sari Madam was a coffee house in Sishane and two thirds of it was Jewish. My mother would bring food on the weekends to Sari Madam and we would eat that with tea or coffee. That was our biggest pastime. People would meet up here, and chat. On Independence Day, columns would be placed in front and there would be official parades. My mother would take me and my older brothers to watch these.  I even remember the death of Ataturk 7, I was around  4-5 years old, we went to sishane meydani(plaza), we all bawled. I remember it as if it was today, there was noone without tears. They brought the coffin from Dolmabahce. They took it from Dolmabahce to Sishane and from there to Taksim. I don’t know how far we went with my older brothers, we followed them, sometimes on someone’s lap, sometimes holding their hands. I remember it as if it happened today.

I had a lot of friends from school. The majority were Jewish. I still have friends that I visit with. Emeli Haleva, Sarika Azuz, Suzi Filiba. We currently meet and visit each other with them. Apart from the school, I had friends from the neighborhood also. I don’t remember them much. Our biggest pastime was a rope. We would jump rope then, we would play ball.

In my spare time, I’ve had a lot of projects, a lot of hobbies. I raised myself, I would cut my old dresses and make blouses. I started these when I was 6 years old. I would put corks on the ends of my mother’s hairpins and I would knit. I would knit scarves at the age of 6. In this way I knit  a lot of things now. Sewing, knitting became my hobbies. I did not go to school but life educated me. Today I am someone who knows all there is to know, I don’t lack for anything. Today I have a lot of friends who are graduates of college, you won’t believe me but I am superior. I raised myself. I raised myself by reading.

I liked walking as a form of exercise.  I used to walk a lot.
I never went to a club or social association.
Until I got engaged I never did anything on Saturdays. I don’t know if it was because of religion but we never went out on Saturdays with friends, it wasn’t permitted.

On Sundays, there wasn’t much to do, we would go out to the street, we would play ball, jump rope, there wasn’t anything else. When I was young there was no such thing as pleasure trips, eating out at restaurants. Our most important event was for adults and children to gather in a house on Saturday evenings. Songs would be sung, games would be played with coffee cups. This was how this game was played; something like a coin would be put inside one of a lot of upside-down cups, whoever found it would win who knows how many pennies. This was called coffee cup game. Lotto was played. We would play as a crowd, with adults and neighbors. These were our pastimes.

After the War

I got in my deceased brother’s car forthe very first time. He took us touring, it was superb. My first car ride was around 1945. My mother also took us around on train, she would take us to Florya. She would take us to the sea in Kucukcekmece. We would pack food in baskets along with the neighbors, get on the train from Sirkeci and go to the sea.

It was my mother who went to the bazaar in our house. There was a special butcher, greengrocer, printer she shopped from, she always bought from them.

I remember the wealth tax 8 from my youth. After my father died, my mother continued with the business, she would sew pants. They would bring her items for her to work on, they would take it after she sewed. If I am not wrong she received a wealth tax of 500 liras because she did this. The smallest wealth tax was 500 liras. My mother quit the business because she could not pay it. “I cannot afford to pay this, i don’t have money”  she objected. We had a coalman in or neighborhood, our mukhtar. One day I went to buy coal, I had just started elementary school. There was a woman, an informer, she lived above the mukhtar. “E, Zumbul, what are you doing?” “Nothing”, I said, “I am going to school”. I was only 7 years old. “What does your older brother do” “My brother is an ironworker, he works” I said. “Your oldest brother?” “He is a soldier” I said. “Your  mother?” “My mother is at home” I said. This woman tells all of this to the mukhtar. And the mukhtar sues us. Why? Because at the time they would pay a salary to the family of the person who was a soldier, either 150 liras or 200 liras. But of course in order to get this money there shouldn’t be anyone working in the house. All of a sudden we receive a summons saying you have someone working in the house. The day came when the trial took place, they made me testify. But they were wrong about one thing. My working brother was Avram. Instead of writing Avram, they wrote Zumbul. They took me to the courthouse. We did not have a lawyer or anyone, only the lawyer appointed by the government. They asked my mother, do you work, she said no, I was, but I quit. They asked my sister-in-law she said I don’t work, I stay home. They said to me you work. No,  sir, I said, I attend the Ikinci Karma [2nd coeducational] Jewish school. “What grade are you in?” “I am in 3rd grade”, I said. “O.k., give us the address of the school”, they said, and they went to the school, they asked, “yes”, they said, “she attends the school” and in this way we won the lawsuit. We had received a fine of I don’t know how much. We didn’t have a single penny to pay this. We left the place and at first we didn’t know if we won the lawsuit. My mother asked the attorney what happened. The attorney said “You are lucky, there was a mix-up with the names, you won in the court”. And so we won the lawsuit.

There was a lot of poverty at the time of the wealth tax, we used to buy bread with a ration card It was wartime at the same time. I remember, I slept with my mother, we had something like a small cloth bag under our pillow. In it we kept our birth certificates, important papers, 1-2 pieces of underwear. The lights would go out at midnight. Our curtains were dark blue roller blinds, light should not be seen from the outside. Airplanes would pass over, sirens would be heard immediately. I wasn’t going to school then, I was about 4 or 5. We would all leave the house and run to a shelter a little further down from  Sishane. We would all wait there, we would all gather one on top of another. Whenever the whistle ended, that is when we returned home.

My spouse Nesim Ers was born in Istanbul in 1928. He finished elementary school. His mother tongue was Ladino. His father’s name was Marko Eliyezer Ers and mother’s name was Anetta Ers. My husband had 3 siblings. His older sister Suzan Ers (Mizrahi) had 4 children: Sara, Eliyezar, Klara, Smulik Mizrahi. His older brother Izak Ers had 2 children: Eliyezer and Moiz Ers. His younger brother Sami Ers never married, did not have children. All 3 siblings passed away.

When I was around 15, they settled in the flat underneath us as a family. My spouse’s mother and father, Anetta and Marko Eliyezer Ers had left for Israel around 1948. When they couldn’t manage there, they returned within a year. When they came back they were looking for a house. They knew my mother and my mother told them there is an empty flat underneath us, come and take a look. They came, they looked and decided to rent the house and started living here. We did not see each other with my husband then. He would go to work, I would go to work. My husband had close friends in the neighborhood. He did not socialize with us. We never talked or anything. One day, a friend of his named Albert comes to our house and says to my mother: “we are going to gather in my house on new year’s eve, girls and boys, is it possible for your daughter to attend, we are short one girl?” My mother says “listen, if my sons hear about it, they will be angry” and the kid says “don’t worry, we are very close anyways, we will just have fun together, keep it a secret, nothing will happen”. My mother finally gives permission. I wasn’t even 16 then. I went to that meeting that night. I had a very nice evening, we ate, we danced. The place we went to was in Kurtulus. At night to return home, since we are neighbors, my husband accompanies me and brings me home. I felt the electricity at that meeting. Two months passed. We used to go to the same place for work, to Eminonu.  There weren’t a lot of vehicles at the time, we would walk. We always walked both directions then. One morning, as I was going to work, there was a newspaperman in  Sishane, he would sell newspapers on the floor. My husband is waiting in front of the newspaperman. As I am about to pass him, he stops me and greets me. In reality, we had already met but it was evident that he wanted to become friends with me. But I was in love with another young man, Jano Alkabes, but he was much older than me. I was 16, he was 27. But I was very much in love with him. But they were about to emigrate to Israel as a family, I had to separate. By separate I mean, we didn’t socialize much but we had an intimacy. He was the friend of one of my friend’s older brother and we would meet every Sunday and dance. Truly, I don’t know if it was puppy love but I loved him a lot.  When my husband appeared that morning we went to work together chatting all the way. At the time my deceased brother also went to work in Eminonu. Sometimes we went together, sometimes we met on the way, we would return together. Our work places were close anyways. If needed, I would go and come back with him. Next morning, I see my husband is there again. Again we went to work talking all the way. This went on for 1-2 weeks. Gossip spread right away then. I had cousins, they immediately informed my mother. Zumbul is constantly going with someone, who is this, they asked. My mother was a smart woman, she was aware that I was walking with the neighbor but she did not say anything. This lasted almost 3 months, we started returning together from work in the evenings as well as mornings. One evening, after work, we spent too much time walking around and I got home at 9 instead of 7. I said I cannot enter home, who knows how my mother will confront me. He said don’t worry, I am here. Just as I entered the house my mother confronts me with a stick. As soon as she said: “May you be cursed, where have you been?”, my mother-in-law appeared, “don’t worry, she comes and goes with a Jew, what is wrong with my son, does he lack anything?” she said and shut my mother up. Later on my mother said: “they are going to be engaged this week, this subject is closed”. And that is how it happened. We married in the Zulfaris synagogue in 1953.


We got ready early in the morning on the wedding day. There was a lot of snow that day, it was the 15th of March. We went to the synagogue, we got married. We came home after the synagogue. There was a hotel in Tepebasi, Park hotel, I think it is still there, we stayed there one night. The next day, my sister-in-law used to live in Tunel, we went to her house and ate together. In the evening we went to our home. At the time we married in poverty. We found our house a month before our wedding. My mother had given 1,000 Turkish liras as dowry then. We furnished our house with that money. The house had 2 rooms. We used one as a sitting and bedroom, the other as the livingroom. We had a large divan and a table in the livingroom. We also had a big radio, it was very valuable at that time. We had a bathroom but no kitchen, I had converted the hallway into a kitchen.

My husband was a textile worker first, then he started commerce. He worked in the business of dry goods for a while, then started working on his own. He was in the same business. He would buy goods, take them to the vendors in the bazaar on his motorcycle. He started earning well. We moved to a beautiful house, thank G-d, he provided me with a good life. We were much better compared to before.

At first, when we just got married, we were friends with his older brother.  His brother had 2 apartments, when I gave birth to my older son, we moved to one, they moved to the other. We had a very close relationship with them and the neighbors. In the meantime my husband bought a car, we had such wonderful days with that car. Our days passed with wonderful, sweet conversations, with songs, with strolls. My sister and brother-in-law were talented in vaudeville. Those laughters were life-affirming. Our husbands worked on Sundays too. We women had a great time, we would prepare tea, cakes, everything for our husbands when they came home. There was no financial discord among us. The in-laws were rich, we were so-so but we got along well. We lived in their apartment. Much later on, there appeared a lack of harmony among siblings. Things like I want to go to this place, I don’t want to go to that place. My husband suggested taking a break and not socializing as friends so that the brotherhood would not be affected. After these events we had another circle of friends. We had lovely days and evenings with them also. We always went to the movies, theatre, and concerts.

We spent our summers in Buyukada [the largest one of the Princess Islands]. We had a house there, we went every year. Later on, we had to sell it due to the illness of my husband. We had wonderful days until he became sick. Many years ago he had jaundice when he was young. He had to be on a strict diet after this but he did not pay attention.  Whenever he was under the weather he never asked for a doctor and he never went to see one. 8 years before he died, one day, when he was getting dressed to go out, he had blisterlike things on his legs. These blisters opened up and started to ooze. Let’s go to the doctor, I said, he told me nothing happens and shut me up. This went on for a while.  We decided this couldn’t go on, my daughter-in-law Arlet, wife of my son Salvo, devised a plan. She invited us for a visit, and also there was a doctor Mesullam, she invited him too. And he examined my husband in the home of Arlet. This is important he said, he prescribed tests. We did the tests later on, and the diagnosis was liver disease. If it is not taken care of properly, it will turn into cirrhosis, they said. Therapy was mandatory but he did not take care of himself and it became aggravated. Later we took him to Balikli hastanesi (hospital) for a check-up. They did all his tests. And they discovered that it was cirrhosis. He has five years left they said. G-d knows how we suffered for 5 years. He died on September 14th, 1994. My husband was interned in the Ulus Jewish cemetery with a religious ceremony. There was a rabbi at his funeral of course, Kaddish was recited.  We have his yartzheit every year on the anniversary of his death.

My older son Salvator Yesua (we call him Salvo for short) was born in Istanbul in 1955 along with his twin. When Salvo was born, he was 1.7 kg., the other one was 2.8 kg.  Salvo’s twin lived for 4 months. One day I put both in their stroller and took them to Tozkoparan to get some fresh air and to feed them their formula. He died suddenly until we reached home. We called a doctor, he said “teila amen”, there was no cause, he was fine. Some said it was because of evil eye. The fat one died, the thin one lived. Because Salvo was very thin, he couldn’t be circumcised after either 1 month or 3 months, only 6 months later was it possible. His weight was not sufficient, we had a lot of difficulty. His weight was checked every month. When he was up to his normal kg., then he had his circumcision. We celebrated Salvo’s bar-mitzvah in a ballroom that was under Site sinemasi(movie-theater). There were no hotels and such then.

He studied in the 11th elementary school in Sishane. He went to B’nai Brith for junior high. Then he went to night school for English. We sent my older son to Nesim Behar to learn religion. But Nesim Behar put a lot of pressure. He was a child then, religiously children should not be pressured. On Saturdays you will not touch money, you will not walk, you will not turn on the radio, you will not play ball, you will not go out, and so on and so on. In the end the child rebelled, now he has nothing to do with religion.

When Salvo was 18 years old, he met Arlet Munteanu. They came from Romania, rather from Romania to Israel, and from there to Istanbul. My son and Arlet formed a friendship. When my son reached 19, just as he entered 20, he was supposed to be called to military service. But Arlet and her family wished fervently to have a civil marriage just so she could stay here. Consequently she wasn’t able to stay in Turkey. They were calling her to military service in Israel, or she should be enrolled in university. She then studied here in university. One day Salvo brings Arlet to me, the families haven’t met yet. Listen mom, I am leaving for the military on Monday, I am entrusting Arlet to you, we got engaged between ourselves, but we will make the final decision after I complete the military service, and he left. In the meantime I would call Arlet for my son’s sake, we would take her out to eat on Sundays. Later she would return home to study. Two months hadn’t gone by, one day her mother calls me: “I am Arlet’s mother, if I invite you over for coffee, would you come?” I said thank you very much, let me consult my spouse, I will let you know. We accepted the invitation, met them, had coffee, conversed. In the meantime Arlet’s father comes up and says what do you want for dowry. How am I going to talk in my son’s place, I said, my son hasn’t made his final decision yet, don’t pressure me. Let my son return from the military, let them decide, then we will talk about the dowry. They talked already, he said, you promise me, are you giving your son to us. I am giving 600 dolars now, until they get married this money will be saved and we will give all of it, he said. I did not say yes or no. Our father did not talk, he was always the quiet type. I came home, I wrote my son a letter. You entrusted this girl to us, but you cannot entrust, this is their only daughter. They want to bring this to its finality, they pressured me I said, he could not say anything. The very next week, father and daughter and my husband went to Amasya to see my son. Later on, my son came on leave before his service was finished, and immediately we had the civil cerremony because Arlet was completing 18 years of age. They got married so she didn’t have to go to Israel for military service. The wedding happened after the military service. They got married in Neve Salom 9 . He had two daughters, named Elza and Raiza. Elza went to Bilge ilkokulu(elementary school) in Maslak, and Lala Hatun ilkokulu in Nisantas. Later she enrolled in Robert Lisesi (highschool) 10 having won first place in Turkey in the entrance exam. Then she went to university in France. She studied art, she’s done, now she is still there, both to improve her French and to have a career. Raiza is studying in  Koc lisesi(highschool), she will finish and go to the United States.

My son separated from his wife Arlet in April of  2000. One Passover night, when he was over here, he said he doesn’t want to go home anymore. I said o.k. Anyways they weren’t getting along for a while, he constantly came to me. He would go to play ball, then he would stop by, o.k. one night is fine, 2.night is fine also, 3rd. night again, then I said, come talk to me openly, what is happening. You weren’t someone who came here every night. Mom, we decided with Arlet to separate, don’t get upset, he said. I said o.k. And a month later he left home. He wanted to stay in a hotel, I did not let him, I said you will come and stay here. He stayed for 1-1,5 years. He met Zeynep, became friends, said I will marry Zeynep. Zeynep wasn’t Jewish, she was Muslim. At first I refused, but later on after I met her, I liked her and I said my son’s happiness is more important and I accepted. And he got married a second time.

Izzet was born in Istanbul in 1961. Izzet had a normal circumcision. There was Istanbul Hastanesi (hospital), I gave birth there. We had his circumcision 8 days later. We had a nice b’rit mila with neighbors, friends and our Turkish friends.

Izzet studied in Kurtulus Kuvayi Milliye ilkokulu (elementary school) the first year, then finished in sisli 19 Mayis ilkokulu. He went to junior high there too.

Izzet did not want a bar-mitzvah outside. Spend the money you would have spent on me, he said, and we got him a new bedroom set and had a reception at home for about 30-40 people. Of course he wore tefilim in the synagogue. It was summer then, the month of June. The tefilin ceremony was in the synagogue in Buyukada. Then we waited for the end of the summer season. On our return to  Istanbul we had the reception at home.

Izzet went to the military when he reached 20. When he came back from the military he met Perla Benveniste, they dated for a while. Then the families met, talked, the decision was made and we hade the engagement. They were engaged for about 2 years, then got married. At first they rented a house in Bomonti and lived there, then they moved to Sisli.  They had one child, Igal Ers, his circumcision was in Divan. When they become one month old, kucaras de plata(silver spoons) are given, we had the pidyon. That day the rabbi came, he was given the silver, and he asked "A baby arrived. I will take the baby, I will give you the silver, what do you say, do you want the silver or the child?". We said  "we want our son". At this point the rabbi said: "look, the silver is more valuable, I suggest that you take the silver". We said "we want our baby”and we took the baby, left the silver with the rabbi. Naturally we followed our traditions. Of course later the silver is returned but this is what is done for tradition. 3 years ago the bar-mitzvah was done in  Neve Salom synagogue. It was a snowy day. First a very nice ceremony was done in the synagogue, then the celebration happened downstairs and food was served. It was quite crowded and it went well. Now he studies in Koc lisesi, he is a very successful student.

We always talked in Turkish with our children, tried to raise them according to Jewish traditions, celebrated the Jewish holdidays all together. In the first years of my marriage, all of the mothers and fathers and siblings, we would have a wonderful evening all together. We would gather at my home or my sister-in-law’s home. We would gather in  my home the first night, at my sister-in-law’s the second night.

My children only went to the synagogue on holidays. But my younger son Izzet now goes continually. He started going continually after his father’s death. The older one never goes anymore.

I cook sephardic foods, I cook Turkish foods also. Currently I am cooking more Turkish foods, the children prefer this. But I cook sephardic foods too because there are low calorie meals among them, there are vegetables, poached foods, I prefer that. But when they come to visit, I cook mostly Turkish food. My favorite foods involve vegetables. Turlu(mixed baked summer vegetables), apyiko(cooked celery roots), these are good for old people like us. And my favorite traditional sephardic foods are roasted lamb and peas, I also like koftikas de pirasa(leek meatballs), koftikas de patata(potato meatballs).

This is how you make koftikas de pirasa: You boil 1 kg. leeks, squeeze the water out of them. You boil 1-2 potatoes, puree them, add salt and pepper. You add 200gr ground beef and mix up the leeks,  potatoes with one egg and make meatballs out of that. First you dip them in eggs, then flour and fry them in hot oil.

The subjects of Judaism and Israel would be discussed with friends from the vast community. For example we were quite upset and saddened by the war in 1967 11. Same thing with the Yom Kippur war 12. We would constantly follow the news from the agencies, how is Israel, what is happening there. Even today whenever we hear bad news about Israel, our sorrow is infinite.

I did not notice an increase in antisemitism in Turkey during the time when the Holocaust was taking place in Europe. Sometimes there might have been minor events. We were close with the Turks. Our life was very nice with them. They had even taken my mother under their protection, all the neighbors. We lived a long time with Turks. But at the smallest provocation, for example when we went to the fountain, they would put me to the end of the line. There have been times when they said dirty Jew. The same people would get along well and at the same time behave like this. But these were minor things. We did not experience a big evil or such.

I also remember the events of September 6-7, 1956. 13 I had twins at the time of Salvo’s birth. As soon as I delivered, I came home. We were close with the Turks, we had a good relationship. There was a cofeehouse in Sishane, in our neighborhood, it belonged to the Greeks. I was aware that something was being mentioned in our house. My mother, my brothers, my father-in-law were all talking about something. I was asking what happened, they wouldn’t tell me anything. In the evening, I was in bed, I was recovering from childbirth, all of a sudden, there was a loud noise, a demolishing noise. They destroyed the coffehouse of Yorgo. I felt afraid, took the children next to me. What did our Turkish neighbors do, they got small flags, came in front of our door and protected me. At the time I was living in a small house like a villa. They came all the way to the door, asked are there Greeks here, are there Jews. No, this is a Turk’s house they said and protected us. My mother turned off the lights from fright. We waited in the dark. I started shaking from fear, my husband left around 9 or 10 to save his store. When he came back he said that nothing happened to his store. But they destroyed my older brother’s glassware store, they broke everything and threw it to the streets. The store was in disarray. They messed up everything. All the curtains, fabrics, refrigerators, machines were all over the streets.  That is what people were telling, I was recovering from childbirth.

My brother restored his store later on. Not even a week passed when they took my husband to the military service for a second time for one month. There was the draft then because of the Cyprus problem. He went to Hadimkoy. My brother took me and my children to his home. I lived with them for a month until my husband returned. I don’t remember the name of this, it was a preparation of drafting us in case of war.

There was the politics of “Citizen, speak in Turkish” 14at one point. We always talked in Turkish. My Turkish was very good, you could not differentiate. We talked constantly in Turkish until getting married, until my children grew up. Much later, when my father and mother-in-law came to visit we started talking in the Jewish idiom to converse with them. We would even warn people talking in Ladino, talk in Turkish so there won’t be a problem. Of course the older women could not speak Turkish well, they spoke it flawed.

We were very happy with the birth of the Israeli nation. I wanted very much to do an aliyah there, to live in Israel, I thought a lot about it, but my husband did not want it, we could not agree as a family. When my husband was sick and we went there and saw the place my husband said I wish I had listened to you. He liked it a lot there.

My second older brother lives there. He has daughters, they have a very good life, one of them works in the municipality, the other takes care of children in a college. They all have homes, cars, they have everything. My brother has a home, superb, his life is wonderful. My sister-in-law, my husband’s older sister lives there. Her daughters live there. I went to Israel 6 times, I always stay at the home of my sister-in-law’s daughters. They are like my own daughters.

I do not have much involvement with the Jewish community nowadays, I am not a member of any organisation or club. I used to go help Misne Tora a lot before. The inside there used to be all stone, marble. It was so cold, that it made me ill and I pulled back. Now they improved that place and it became very comfortable.

Again, before, I used to attend Haleva’s seminars about Judaism in Yildirimspor.
Today I do everything that is religiously necessary. I celebrate the holidays, I observe kashrut. I don’t go to the synagogue very often any more. I only go on the holidays. I am able to go for weddings.

I did not have any problems with my children as far as raising my grandchildren according to Jewish traditions. I still gather the family and cook food.

I have a lot of friends. But I have a problem, they smoke a lot. Because I suffer from cardiac problems smoking bothers me quite a bit. I used to socialize a lot but I had to pull back. But I still see them but not as often as before. I couldn’t live without friends.

We were in Buyukada in 1986 when the massacre in Neve Shalom 15 happened, we heard about it, we were devastated, we didn’t know what to do. There was nothing to do anyways but we were very upset. It was either the eve of Yom Kippur or Rosh hashana. We had a miserable holiday.

I lived through very difficult times in the bombing events of November 200316. That Saturday morning I was in the kitchen and I was washing dishes when I suddenly heard a sound like boom, I thought someone had a flat tire. A few minutes passed, a friend of mine called. It was 10.30 a.m. “Did Izzet go to the synagogue?” I was immediately worried, “why are you asking me this, he goes to the synagogue every Saturday”, I said. “What happened, did something happen, please tell me, don’t hide it from me”, I said. “See, a bomb exploded”. I heard about the bomb, I started hitting myself in the head. I called Salvo rightaway. Zeynep answered, the second wife of Salvo, she told me she heard it on the television, “don’t be afraid” she said. But I could not stay still, because my son Izzet was inside. Zeynep woke Salvo up immediately, I got dressed, and rushed out to the street, one shoe on one foot, the other bare, Salvo met me to ask where are you going. I yelled that I was going to Sisli. I was so agitated I didn’t know what to do. My son calmed me down. “If you behave like this it will be worse, let’s wait a little and find out what happened and what didn’t”. We immediately turned on the television. I do not know what I did, what I lived through, what kind of crisis I was in during those moments. In the meantime we called Izzet’s store, Izzet would go to his store to work after the synagogue. His neighbor answered, I excitedly asked about Izzet.  “Don’t worry, Izzet just came but took a wounded person to the hospital”. I told him to have him call  me when he returns, I want to hear his voice, only then will I breathe easy. At any rate when Izzet came to the store he called me rightaway. “Mom. Don’t worry about me, I am fine” he said but I was still trembling all over. Later on he came here. Following him, friends, relatives all came to say: sorry, hope you will recover soon. That was a miserable day.

GLOSSARY

SUZI SARHON
Istanbul
Turkey
Interviewer: Yusuf Sarhon
Date of interview: January 2005
 

Suzi Sarhon is a very kind-hearted 78-year-old housewife who is always ready with a smile.  She has devoted her whole life to looking after her family, children and grandchildren, always supporting them in their hour of need both physically and psychologically.  She is a very active woman but her activities have been cutailed in the last few years because of her heart problems.  Suzi Sarhon can get along with practically anyone, as she is sincere, affectionate and understanding.  That is why she is liked by everyone she meets.  She lives in a flat at an apartment building in Gayrettepe with her husband.  She spends certain days of the week meeting her friends to play cards and chat.

My family background

Growing up

During the War

After the War

Glossary

My family background

My father’s father, Avram Danon, was from a very good family.  They were 3 siblings but I do not know anything about them.  I do not know what my grandfather did for a living.  He was a well-educated and talkative person.  He was quite tall apparently.  He had died a long time before I was born so I do not have much information about that side of the family except that they were very religious.  As I never met my father’s father, I do not really know how he used to dress. I was told that they were quite well-off and that they used to speak French and Ladino.

My father’s mother, Sultana Danon had 4 siblings but I do not know their names.  This grandmother died of cholera.  I do not know when and where, but apparently there was a kind of epidemic and she died.  My grandfather then remarried (I do not remember the name of his second wife) and had another son called Beno Danon.

My father’s side of the family was from Istanbul.  I do not know exactly where they lived, but it might have been in Ortakoy because my father was from Ortakoy [a district where Jews used to live on the European side of the Bosphorus].

My mother’s side of the family had all come to Istanbul from Salonica.  The whole family on that side was from Salonica.  I know that they arrived in 1910, but I do not know why they moved here.  I do not have much information about them except that they were very religious, just like my father’s side of the family.

My mother’s father, Hayim Benmayor, (I do not know his birth or death dates) was a very nice man.  He was from the best of families.  When I say “the best of families” I mean “rich and educated”.  They were quite a big family.  He had two other siblings about whom I know nothing.  Hayim Benmayor studied in Salonica because he was born there.  He was a well-educated man and quite talkative.  He was tall and dressed very fashionably in clothes that were the highest fashion of the time.  I do not know what he did for a living.  My mother’s side of the family spoke French and Greek because they had all been born and raised in Salonica.  They all spoke Greek perfectly.

I never got to know my mother’s mother, Sara Benmayor (nee Faraci).  She was a sick woman.  She had a very high degree of diabetes and went blind consequently.  She had 3 more siblings but I do not know anything about them.  My grandmother used to wear long-sleeved dresses of her time.  She used to wear jewelry and had a “kolana” [Ladino term for “long gold chain”] which laterbecame my mother’s.  She would wear her jewelry when she went out to go somewhere; not that they would go on outings very often.  They had a lot of family, cousins, sisters, brothers, and they would gather in one another’s homes.  One other thing I remember about grandmother Benmayor is her going into a depression after her son Jak Benmayor went to the USA to settle there.  She died when she was 52-53 years old. 

When my mother’s father, Hayim Benmayor came from Salonica they settled in Bakirkoy [an old Jewish district on the European side of Istanbul].  My mother and her brothers, Avram, Mishel, Jak and Daniel all grew up there.  When my grandfather came from Salonica, he bought 4 houses there. 

The houses had wells in their gardens.  There was no tap water then and they used to get their water with a pump from the wells.  According to what my mother told me, they had two maids in their home, so I guess they were quite well-off.

My mother’s side of the family was quite religious. They practised all the Jewish traditions.  They bought kosher meat for example.  Then when Pesah [Pesach] came, they would change all the kitchenware.  They did all this for a very long time.  They used to go to the synagogue every Friday.  The Jewish religious holidays were celebrated at home.  When they lived in Bakirkoy, my grandfather was the president of the synagogue there.

My mother’s family had very good relations with their neighbours.  The neighbours were Jewish, too.  There were a lot of Jews in Bakirkoy.  They used to call this district “Makrikoy”.  The Greeks who lived there used to say that “Makrikoy” meant “little village”.  The name later changed into “Bakirkoy”.

My mother and her brothers grew up in Bakirkoy, then the years went by.  My eldest uncle, Alber Benmayor went to Germany on business and he lived there for years.  Then some years after my grandmother had died, my grandfather went to live with his son in Germany.  My uncle bought a beautiful house in Germany, a house with 6 floors.  He was in the razor blade business. He had a factory.  My uncle, Alber Benmayor, (I don’t know his birth date) died in Istanbul in 1951.  He was married to Lidya Benmayor and had a son, Mario Benmayor.  Mario was born in Germany in 1929 and came to Turkey when he was 8 years old.  Here he studied at a British school [probably English High School for Boys]. 1  We did not use to frequent them.  His father had a textile business in Mahmutpasha [a business district in the Euopean side of Istanbul].  When my uncle died, Mario took over the business but he was not successful and quit.  Then I remember he went into the automobile spare parts industry.  He married a Christian German girl here, and had 2 sons but I don’t have any more information as we did not use to see them.  I think Mario died recently.

During the holidays, they gathered within the family and would visit each other in their homes.  There were a lot of cousins, big families on both sides.

My father Jozef Danon, I don’t know his date of birth, was born in Istanbul.  My Dad was a very good man, and he did a lot of good deeds for people.  His sister, Viktorya Danon (I don’t know her birth and death dates) married Rober Schilton and went to live in Bursa.  A few years later, they returned to Istanbul.  I do not have much information about her.  I just know that she was older than my father and that my father sent them sacks full of food because their economic situation was not very good.   My father looked after both our family and hers.  He was always doing good to people in need.  He exhausted himself trying to help people.  He was also a member of one of the charity organizations of the Jewish community, called “Sedaka u marpe” [charity and healing].  He used to take a lot of things there, like hats.  I distinctly remember him taking them hats, I don’t know why or what they were doing with those hats but hats it was.  He worked very hard for this organization of the community and tried very hard to help. 

My father was a very talkative person.  He was skillful and hardworking.  I remember, when we went to my uncle’s (my mother’s brother) for the New Year celebrations, it was my father who prepared the table and organized the food etc...

On Sundays my father would set the table beautifully and he would make us all coffee with milk and call us to the table.  He would do all that so my mother would not get tired; not because she was ill or anything, just because he loved her so.  He would prepare everything and then he would say: “Come on Tutuni, the table is ready”.  My father called my mother “Tutuni” instead of “Fortune”.

My father had a hardware shop.  He was the only one then; there were no other hardware shops around.  He used to do a lot of business with Anatolia and his business was very good.  We were very well-off.  I grew up with a nanny and we had a maid, too.  Unfortunately my dad died in January 1936.  I was 9 at the time.  He had a heart disease.  In fact, when he and my mother got married, he already had heart problems.  He was not very young when he got married.  I used to see him feel uncomfortable and open the window to get some fresh air.  He would breathe deeply to relieve his distress.  “What’s the matter, Jozef?”, my mother would ask him at those times and he would reply, “Oh, nothing, it’s nothing”.  He wouldn’t tell her anything.  He just exhausted himself running around for other people.  One day he had a heart attack.  The doctor warned him: “Mr. Danon, you will not bend down to even tie your shoes, let your children tie your shoes.  Don’t tire yourself and don’t go out”.  But in the meantime my father’s business was not going well because he used to gamble with his friends and neighbors every night till morning.  He ruined his business in that way.  He and my mother would have fights about this gambling of his.  He would even go to neighbors in our apartment and not come back for hours on end.  In that way, the shop and the business was ruined.  When he died, he had a lot of money owed to him because he had sold a lot of goods to a lot of people but we did not know anything about the business and how were we to find those people?  So we couldn’t collect any of those debts.  No one came forward and said anything.  He had a lot of clients in Anatolia and they all disappeared.  If we, the children, had been older, then we could have followed and dealt with these problems but we were all so very young and we did not have anything.

My father had 5 siblings: 2 brothers, Izidor, Sami; and 2 sisters, Viktorya and Sara from my grandfather’s first wife and another brother, Beno, from my grandfather’s second wife.  Beno still lives.

Izidor left Turkey (I don’t know when or why) and went to settle in the USA.  He married someone there and had a child but we never had a lot of information on him.  After long years, he came here once to see us.  Apparently he had a hotel, a gambling hotel, in Las Vegas.  He had one son only.

When Viktorya Danon got married, she became a Schilton.  Her husband’s name was Rober Schilton.  Rober was of Italian nationality and he came from Bursa.  They got married in Bursa, then they came to Istanbul and lived in Tunel [a popular neighborhood in which the Jews lived].  When I was a little girl, I used to go to my aunt’s a lot.  I liked Rober Schilton very much.  He used to work at an insurance firm.  Their economic situation was not very good but he was a very good man.  They had 4 children: 2 girls, Sara and Suzi; and 2 boys, Alber and Sami.

My father’s other sister, Sara Danon married another of the Schiltons but I do not remember his name.  She married a brother of Rober Schilton’s.  They lived in Paris and had 3 children, with the same names: Alber, Sami, Suzi.

I do not remember anything about the other brother, Sami.

I do not know when the last brother, Beno was born.  He grew up and got married and had a son, Albert Danon.  He lives in Istanbul, in Sisli.  I do not have any other information about him.

We mostly visited my aunt Viktorya with my mum and dad.  I would see Beno there when he came for the holidays to visit my aunt.

My mother, Fortune Danon, (I don’t know when she was born), was born in Salonica.  She came to Istanbul when she was 13.  My mother was a quiet person, she did not speak too much.  She spoke Greek very well and French, too.  She had studied in Greek in Salonica.  Then here, she studied in French, I don’t know which schools, maybe there was a French school in Bakirkoy.  Her French was very excellent.  She was very intelligent. 

She was not a very authoritarian mother.  She raised us all with great economic difficulties after my father died.  After being really well-off with maids and nannies, it was douby difficult for her to raise 4 children.  She did it all on her own.  My uncles also helped of course, moneywise.  My grandfather (mother’s father) had 4 houses in Bakirkoy, 4 houses for each of his 4 children.  When my grandfather went to Germany to live with his son, he rented out those houses.  When my father died, my grandfather was no longer alive.  My mother had 2 brothers in Germany and they immediately wrote to her and said: “we do not want our share of the rents of the houses”.  The brother who was living here said the same thing and they made it possible for my mother and us to live on these rents.  She would go to Bakirkoy every month to collect the rents, and the tenants would sometimes give her the money and sometimes not.  My uncles in Germany would send her money from abroad, too until Hitler came.  When Hitler came, they came back here.  I do not remember exactly when they came back but it must have been a little before the war.

My mother had 4 brothers:  Alber, Mishel, Jak and Dani (Daniel), all of them born in Salonica.  Two of them, Mishel and Alber Benmayor lived in Germany until Hitler came. 

Alber Benmayor had gone to Germany when he was 16.  He studied there, then he started a business.  He opened a razor blade factory there. Then when he came back he lived very close to our house in Kurtulus.  Here he opened a jersey cloth factory.  He was quite well-off.  He had a son, Maryo Benmayor.  Maryo was 8 when they came to Turkey.  Here he studied at the English High School 1 and then at Robert College 2.  I do not know what he did after that.  My uncle Alber died here in Istanbul in 1950.

Mishel was also born in Salonica of course, like all the others.  I do not know when, but he also went to Germany when he was very young both to study and then to do business.  He was in business with his older brother Alber and then came back here when Hitler came.  After the war was over, he went to Paris.  There he married a woman whose surname was Behar and whose first husband had been killed by the Germans.  He went in to the textile business in Paris.  He died in Paris, but I do not know when.

My other uncle, Jak Benmayor got married here and then went to Los Angeles with his wife.  I do not remember when he went or who his wife was.  We were told he had 2 daughters.

My fourth uncle, Daniel lived in Istanbul and married an Italian girl called Emilia Kilkus.  They did not have any children.  He was in business with her father.  I think they had a hardware shop.  Later on, when the business did not go well, he took his share and left.  He bought two flats with that money and lived on the rent of those flats.  He did not work.  Daniel died in 1957.

Both my father and my mother studied in French.  In those times, most people studied in French.  My parents’ mother tongue was Ladino, they learned Turkish later on but they could never speak it like we did.  My father was alittle better but my mother spoke very little Turkish.  She spoke Greek, French and Ladino.  My parents spoke Ladino with each other.

My parents met through a matchmaker but I do not know the details.  They never told me anything about it.  Just that the matchmaker proposed my mother as a very eligible young woman of very good family.  Then they got married, I do not know when or where.  They probably got married at the synagogue, I don’t know.  After the wedding they lived at a house opposite Pera Palas [a very old and famous hotel in Tepebasi, very close to the Grand Rabbinate in the European side of Istanbul].  My father’s business was in Tahtakale [a business district in the European side of Istanbul].

My father always wore suits and his shoes had laces always.  They were some kind of boots with laces.  He also wore a hat called “republique”. [top hat] But before that, the men used to wear the fes 3 before Ataturk 4 and his reforms 5.  My mother had kept my father’s fes, with which he used to go out.

My mother used to read a lot.  That is why there used to be a lot of books in our home.  She used to read books in French, all sorts of books.  After my father died, she started reading books about diseases.  She got obsessed with illnesses, heart diseases, other diseases.  She would read these all day long and would not go out.

Growing up

I was born in the house opposite Pera Palas, but then they moved to a house in Tunel.  I was too young to remember when.  When you went into that house, there were 3 rooms downstairs, you went up a flight of stairs and there were 2 more rooms and then you went up again and it was the attic.  It was a beautiful house but quite tiring.  We had a big stove downstairs and another one upstairs.  We used to sit upstairs, near the stove and watch the people coming and going in and out of the underground, and others getting on and off the tramway, because Tunel was the last stop.  We used to entertain ourselves watching all these people.

We did not have a garden.  We could not have a pet because my mother did not like pets and would never permit such a thing.

I remember my father bringing home some fruit like dates.  I can’t remember its name now.  He brought those and then hung them.  My brothers and I would go and pick the fruit before it was done.  They weren’t dates but some yellow fruit.  They would hang them and then they would dry and we would eat them.  When they were done they got red.  We would eat them before they got red.  My father would hang them at a place that got a lot of sunshine.  I thought they were called “ziruelikas” [a Ladino word meaning “plums”] but they weren’t.

My mother used to do the shopping.  She would go to the open market to do her shopping.  There would be sellers who came to the door of course, but she preferred to go to the open market.  Sometimes she would take me and my brothers, too and we would carry everything back.

My parents were religious but not fanatical.  They did all the Jewish holidays and never did anything on Saturdays.  On Saturdays, we would either sit down and read books or go and visit my aunt.  They were careful with kasherut.  They did not go to the synagogue every Friday; just on the holidays or when somebody got married or for funerals. My mother also had the “loksa”.  She had these beautiful special kitchenware for Pesah [Pesach].  When Pesah was over, these would be put into a special chest used only to keep the “loksa”.  Then when my father died my mother did not have the will to go to all this trouble and she left all this.

Neither my mum nor my dad were members of any political party or any social or cultural organization.  Just my father worked as a volunteer at the charity.

My family had Jewish neighbors now and again.  There were a lot of Jews in Tunel.  When I was 5 or 6 we moved to Osmanbey [a district in the European side of Istanbul].  Thre were Jews there, too.  We had Jewish neighbors there, too.  My father used to go and play cards with them.  There were 2 Jewish families at that apartment.  One family was called Behar, the other I don’t remember.  They all used to play together, either at their homes or at ours, but more often than not they would go and play outside, where I don’t know.  My mother did not go because she did not know how to play cards.

My parents are buried in the Jewish cemetery in Ulus [a district in the European side of Istanbul].  They were buried with a religious ceremony.  And of course there was a rabbi and a hazan [chazzan] at the funeral.  The sons of the family sang the Kadish and I always do their “meldado” [yahrzeit] every year.

I had 3 brothers, 2 older than me and one younger.

My brother Alber was born in Istanbul in 1917.  He had meningitis when he was 5. One day he was visiting our grandmother (my mother’s mother).  He was jumping on the cushions and then he hit his head on something.  My grandmother put him to sleep and he slept till morning.  When he woke up, he couldn’t speak.  My Dad took him to the doctor, and the doctor said: “you will not tire this child; he will start to speak very slowly”.  After a couple of years, we had a cousin in Tunel, Viktorya Danon, my father asked her: “Please, let Albertiko come to you for a while, you have cats”.  So Alber went to stay with her for a while and indeed he started to speak there.  He did not go to school.  There were teachers who came to the house to teach him French.  He would beat the teachers, he was sick really.  He actually started to speak when he was 10.  What a pity, because when he was little he was one of the smartest kids ever.  Now, the doctors tell us not to put a child to sleep if he takes a fall or hits his head etc...  But my grandmother did not know that.  When my grandfather came home that night she even told him: “Please, Hayim, do not make any noise, Albertiko took a fall” and she had him sleep till morning.  And he got meningitis.  But later on, he grew up and he even did his military service for 2 years.  Then, when my uncle came back from Germany and opened his jersey factory, he took Alber to the factory where he worked until my uncle died in 1951.  Then he went to work for the Kastro family as an office boy and retired from that job.  Then when my mother died, we took him to the Old People’s Home 6 in Haskoy.  He lived there for 10 years, then took a fall and died in 1999.
  
Vitali was born in Istanbul in 1922.  He studied primary school and the secondary school until my father died.  He was 14 when my father died, and had to start working.  He worked for a florist in Osmanbey near our home, and brought home some money.  He would take flowers to clients.  Later on he worked at a big shop in Beyoglu [very famous district, otherwise called “Pera”, in the European side of Istanbul], called “Galeri Kristal” as salesman.  They sold glassware and crystalware there.  When he was 14, Vitali met an Armenian girl called Adirne Donaloglu, who lived in Ferikoy [a district between Osmanbey and Kurtulus, where a lot of non-Muslims, especially Armenians used to and still live].  They fell in love and later got married.  The families did not want this marriage of course but while Vitali was doing his military service, he came on leave once and they got married secretly, by civil marriage only of course.  The families did not know but I did because Adirne was my friend.  They had two daughters, Linda and Rita.  Linda was born in 1949 and Rita in 1954.  They studied in state schools. Linda married an Armenian, Simon Kokyan and she became Armenian, which means she became a Christian.  They had two daughters as well, Karolin and Karin.  Rita, on the other hand, married a Moslem boy, Emin Kaplan and she converted and became a Moslem.  They had a son called Akin.  Vitali died in Istanbul in 1982.  His wife, Adirne, died many years before him, I don’t remember exactly when.

My third brother Sami was 1.5 years younger than me.  We grew up together and we were in the same school.  After he finished primary school, my mother sent him to Saint Michel [a French Catholic high school in Osmanbey].  I do not know why, but he did not finish St. Michel.  Then he started working and later he opened a perfume shop with a partner.  Then he got married.  He married Fortune Algazi.  They had two children, a girl, Sara and a boy Yasef.  Sara was born in Istanbul in 1956.  I do not know where she studied but she got married in her early twenties.  Then after 18 years of marriage, she got divorced.  She never had any children.  Yasef was born in Istanbul in 1962.  He also got married and then divorced.  He has a daughter.  My brother Sami always worked in the same job.  Then he had heart problems and then one day, one Friday in 1989, he was coming home from Sirkeci [a business district in the european side of Istanbul] in a taxi and he had a heart attack and died in the taxi.  The following day was the Bar-Mitzvah of my grandson, Izel and we were preparing for that.  It was a terrible time for me. On the one side I was grieving for my brother and on the other side there was the happiness of the Bar-Mitzvah of my only grandson.  It was a terrible clash of emotions.  On the Saturday night, we celebrated the Bar-Mitzvah among the family members but it was entirely spoiled for me.

None of my brothers are alive today.

My parents were going to have another sibling actually.  When we were living in Tunel, I was 5 at the time, my mother got sick.  She got the flu and was coughing terribly.  We had a Jewish maid and she gave her the wrong medicine.  Instead of the cough syrup the doctor had given her, she gave her an enema to drink!  She did not realize it was the wrong medicine and my mother was 8 months pregnant at the time.  The medicine killed the baby inside her.  My mother screamed for 3 days and 3 nights.  There were no gynaecologists then.  My father called the midwife.  The midwife said the child had died inside anyway and then she made my mother give birth like a normal birth.  They pressed on her tummy and made her give birth.  She was in such a lot of pain.  I cannot forget her screams for days after that.  If the baby had lived, she would have been 5 years younger than me.  They were going to name her after my mother’s mother, too.  She died because of the maid’s mistake.  In spite of this, the maid continued to come and work for us.

I was born in an apartment building called “Gul Apartimani” [Rose Building] opposite Pera Palas, in Tepebasi in 1927.  My mother kept a record of all the births.  At that time people could get their identity cards whenever they wanted, not like now, that you have to leave the hospital with a birth record paper. Then, children were born, and after a while they would go and get their identity card.  I got my sister’s identity card.  I had a sister who was born before me in 1925.  She was born on 7th July.  She died when she was 13 or 14 months old from some sort of illness.  My mother told me she had died when she herself had been one month pregnant to me.  Then when I was born, they gave me that other one’s identty card but my mother recorded my birth in one of her books: “Suzi. Elle est née 24 janvier 1927” [in French: “Suzi: Born on 24th January 1927”].  There was no need to get another identity card.  No one checked anyway.  Her name had been “Sultana”, so I got that name as well.

We moved to Tunel from Tepebasi when I was very young.  We lived on the top floor of an apartment building.  We had both electricity and tap water as far as I remember.  I also remember the tram.  There were trams on the roads but I do not remember any cars.  The roads were asphalted then.  There were big stones.  No cars.

There were a lot of Jews in Tunel then but we did not have much contact with them because our family was quite extensive and we usually met with them.  The Jews would usually gather in Sishane [very near the Galata Tower].  They used to speak in Ladino in the streets.  There were fisherman, street sellers etc... who would shout in Ladino in the streets.  There were people of every trade; hat makers, shoemakers etc...  My father had a cousin, Viktorya Danon, who had a big shop (I don’t know where) where she sold and repaired paintings.

My mother raised me.  At first I had both my Mum and my Dad.  I had a governess and a maid.  The governess would teach us French, had us play games and taught us poetry.  The governess would teach and the maid would do the cleaning and the housework, that’s how it was then.  The governess was Jewish and she left in the evening.  We used to sleep with the maid. 

We had all the Jewish traditions in our home when we were kids.  Kipur, Roshashana [Rosh Hashanah] were great celebrations in our home.

There was a synagogue in Tunel then, before coming to the Neve-Shalom synagogue.  [It was opened in 1923 in the location of the previous Apollon cinema. Although it was officially called the Knesset Synagogue people kept on refering to it as the Apollon synagogue.] It does not exist any more. [it was completely burned down in a fire in 1941] I don’t remember what it was called.  Well, haham, hazzan, shohet, they all existed then.  When my sister was stillborn, my father went to the synagogue to have a rooster sacrificed, in case something else terrible happened to the family. 

The day we liked best was Roshashana [Rosh Hashashanah].  It was the new year and my mother bought us new clothes and we would wear our new clothes.  We had new and clean shoes and we would all dress up.  We would have a very good breakfast that  morning and we knew it was Roshashana [Rosh Hashanah].  There would be a lot of guests.  My mother’s cousins would come, my aunt (my father’s sister) would come to visit.  Or we would go and visit them.  We were a big family.

Apart from Yom Kippur and Roshashana, we also celebrated Pesah [Pesach] and “beraha las frutas” [Ladino term for Sukkoth].  My mother would do a lot of cleaning before the holidays.  We even painted the house before Pesah.  Even I did some painting in the house before Pesah. 

When I was a young girl, a friend of mine and I would go to the Sisli Synagogue 7  at Yom Kippur.  We would go near the time it would be finished.  We went to see who was at the synagogue.  We went up to the women’s place and watched the people.  I don’t remember my friend’s name, but she lived near us and we would go to the synagogue on foot of course.  We rarely took the tram.  Not if we could walk.

My father first sent us to some sort of preschool.  The law that said we had to study at a Turkish primary school 8 had not started yet.  So Vitali and I went to St. Benoit for a couple of years.  There were nuns at this school and I had a round cap.  Then the law was passed and I went to the state school called “44. Ilkokul” [44th Primary School] in Bomonti [a district very near Osmanbey].  There weren’t many private schools then.  All my brothers and I studied in that school.  Of my classes, I liked Turkish best of all.  We also had history, geography and citizenship classes.  It was inetersting because we would learn about all the things that Ataturk had done.  The I went to the “Arts and Crafts School” where I learned sewing and household management.

There was a teacher I did not like in primary school.  Why didn’t I like her?  Well, it was like this: in our school they used to give lunch to the poor kids.  One day, there were chick peas for lunch.  I asked for some and they gave me a plate but I saw some stones in the food.  I told my friend: “the people here are very dirty”.  She immediately went and told this to the teacher whose name was Nahide.  “Sultana said this about you”.  So the teacher called me and asked me what the problem was.  I said it was nothing but from that day on she disliked me.  We would go out into the garden and if anything fell or was dirtied she called me to pick things up or cleans things up.  Then when we were in fifth grade, we had finishing exams [to get primary school diploma].  This teacher asked me the most difficult questions so she could flunk me but my own teacher did not let her do that.  He protected me and I passed.

We had music and gym classes, too but no language classes.  I did not feel any antisemitism on the part of my teacher or my friends.  There were very few Jews in that school, most of them were Turks.  I had some very good friends among them.  I remember one girl called Remziye for example.

What I most remember of those days were the military parades, special national days and independence days [Turkish Independence Day].  9 We would go to Taksim square on 29th October or 23rd April [The Turkish National Assembly and Children’s Day] 10 to see the parades.  I had even memorized the marches.

The most colorful memory I have of my childhood was having seen Ataturk himself in the flesh.  I saw him in Florya [a sea side resort on the European side].  My uncle Daniel used to take me to the beach in Florya.  As my uncle and his wife did not have any children, they loved me very much.  And my mother, as the kids were very naughty, would say, “please come and get Suzi” and I woıuld go to my uncle’s.  His wife would dress me in beautiful clothes and I would stay with them.  In the summer, they would take me to florya to swim.  We used to hire a cabin and spend the day swimming.  Ataturk had a house in Florya then and we would see him.  One day, when I was 7, we saw him walking on the beach.  He was dressed beautifully.  He had a little girl with him, I think it was his adopted daughter, Ulku.  She was very sweet.  I used to see her there, too.  Anyway, I went to him and gave him my hand.  He shook my hand and said “my dear child”.  This was quite a memory.

I had many greek friends outside school.  We were very very good friends.  After Osmanbey, we moved to a house in Kurtulus when my father died.  My uncle wanted us to live close to him.  I continued to go to the same primary school because there were no schools in Kurtulus then.  We used to walk from Kurtulus to Bomonti [a ten-minute walk].  I had wonderful friends in Kurtulus and I learned to speak Greek perfectly from them.  We often went to each other’s homes.  I remember one of my friends’ parents had a pharmacy and we would go to the pharmacy to help when they were open one night every week.  The pharmacy was close to our home.

My best friends were Greek.  There was Zorka, for example.  They lived in my uncle’s apartment.  There was a big vacant lot at the end of the Kurtulus Street where we played ball, jumped ropes and had a good time.  The Greeks were so lively, we would often hear music coming from the hand organ.  After we finished our homework, we would go out together or play with dolls at home.  One of my friends had a piano and we would go to her house to listen to her playing the piano.  They were rich, that’s why she had a piano. 

I have many meories from the times I spent at my uncle’s home.  For example, I remember that my uncle’s wife’s brother, Atilyo Kilkus and his wife (I can’t remember her name now) had had a baby.  The name of the baby was Romano.  There were 10 years’ difference between us. So when I went to stay with my uncle I would play with little Romano.  The 14 months later Covani was born. They lived in my uncle’s apartment, too.  So I was with them all the time I stayed at my uncle’s and I stayed with them a lot.  They used to call me “Suzika”.  They loved me very much.  Romano and Covani Kilkus were of Italian nationality.  Romano Kilkus was born in 1937 and Covani Kilkus in 1938.  Both of them studied primary school in the French Catholic school called “St. Esprit”, then they went on to St. Michel for secondary and high school. [French Catholic School]  Romano worked for a Jewish businessman and Covani was in household appliances spare parts business.  Neither of them is alive today.

Another nice memory from Kurtulus is my friendship with the famous singer Ayten Alpman [Turkish jazz singer].  We met through a fried who introduced us and we became friends.  I was 15 at the time.  We went out together and she used to sing.  We used to go to each other’s homes a lot.

Apart from this, we didn’t usually eat at restaurants when we went out but there used to be a cafeteria called “Hay-Layf” [High Life] beside the Tan Cinema in Pangalti [a district very close to Osmanbey and Kurtulus on the European side of Istanbul]; and my brother and I used to eat cakes there.   We liked that place a lot and we went there a lot. 

When we wanted to go to a place we usually took the tram.  There were trams in Kurtulus.  We got on trains a lot as well when we went to Florya with my uncle.  Apart from these I do not really remember there being any cars.  My uncles did not have cars.   The first time I got into a car was when I got into my husband’s car in 1949.

During the War

During the Second World War, we used to cover our window panes with dark blue blinds.  The alarms went on when night came and everyone would go into their houses and cover the windows and nobody would go out.  No light could be seen from the outside because the blinds we put were very dark.  We were also asked to turn the lights really down so no light could come out.  In those days, they sold everything with certificates.  My poor brother Alber would get into long queues to buy bread, margarine, sugar etc...

We heard what was done to the Jews in Europe afterwards.  During the Holocaust in Europe we did not notice any rise in antisemitism here in Turkey.  When my uncle Michel came back from Germany, he told us about the terrible treatment of the Jews in germany.  As he was of Turkish nationality, they did not do anything to him.  The Turkish consul told him: “you had better leave as soon as possible; I will give you a passport as you are of Turkish nationality and you must get away immediately”.  My uncle came back in 1938, just before the war started.

During the war, the Wealth Tax 11 did not affect me or my family.  We did not have any shops or anything.  Uncle Michel was taxed but I don’t know how much.  He had a shop in Eminonu [a business district in Istanbul] then.  No one else from my family was taxed.  But of course, a lot of people were taxed quite alot of money. My uncle Daniel was called for the 20 military classes.  12   They took him but none of the others. 

After the War

I remember the 6-7 September 1955 events. 13  That day, my elder son Sami  was at his grandmother’s (my husband’s mother).  My husband had gone to pick him up.  By the time they came home, the streets were full of looters and people attacking shops and houses.  I remember them coming home terribly frightened.  Our landlord was Greek then.  It was an apartment building of two storeys.  The landlord and his family lived upstairs.  They came down to us, terribly frightened.  Also there were two Greek grocers at the corner of our street.  When there was a shortage of sugar or coffee these would not sell anyone these goods.  So now, that day, the angry mob came to these shops and threw all their coffee and sugar into the streets shouting: “Hey, Kocho, no coffee eh?!”  The poor men hid in the basements of their shops.  Kurtulus was in a terrible state.  We stayed at home quite afraid.  Then it stopped.  Everywhere was ruined.  After that all the Greeks in Istanbul started to run away, to Greece most of them. 

Then I remember this policy of “Citizen, speak Turkish”.  We actually needed to speak Turkish.  14 They used to call us “Jews”.  For example, when we walked in the streets, they used to say: “Don’t speak in ‘the jewish language’, speak Turkish”. [The word for Ladino in Turkish was for long years “yahudice”, meaning “language of the Jews”].  Then, when we studied the primary school in Turkish, we were able to speak in Turkish after that.

When we lived in Osmanbey, there was a “donme” 15 family from Salonica, who lived above us.  They were “Selanikli”s [from Salonica: meaning donmes] but they converted to Islam and became Turkish.  They spoke Ladino very well.  My mother knew them well but I don’t remember their names.  I only remember that they and my mother used to speak in Ladino. 

My husband, Izak Sarhon, was born in Ortakoy, in 1914.  His mother tongue is Ladino and he speaks French, too.  My in-laws were very nice people.  I met my husband through an acquaintance.  That person told us there was somebody (my husband) so and so and when we said “OK”, we met at the Hay-Layf café in Pangalti.  My uncle and my brother Vitali came, too.  We saw each other for the first time there.  We chatted a little, then we ate something and then he left.  Then, the person who introduced us went to talk to his father and they said “OK”.  Then his father called my uncle and they talked about what was necessary to talk about [probably about the dowry], and then they said “OK”.  Then Izak came to visit us one evening and then we got engaged in 1948.  We got engaged in my home.  My uncles, my in-laws, and my sister-in-law all came to my home and we had a family dinner.  There were a lot of flowers.  My in-laws brought me a ring.  And my family gave my fiancée a gold watch as a present.  Of course, the fact that my fiancée was Jewish was an important factor in our decision for marriage.

In 1949, one week before the wedding, we had our civil marriage ceremony in Tunel .  The civil marriage was at the registrar’s hall and it was quite crowded.  I wore a tailor-made suit and my husband wore a dark suit.  My witness was my uncle Daniel and my husband’s witness was a cousin of his mother’s, the lawyer Selim Danon.  After the ceremony we went to my father-in-law’s house and there was a kind of cocktail.  There were about 30-40 people present.  We talked and listened to music on the radio, there was nothing else in those days. 

One week later, on a Sunday, on 10th July, I got married at the Zulfaris Synagogue 16 in Karakoy at 6:00 p.m.  I don’t know why we got married so late in the day, probably because there was no other free hour.  I bought my wedding dress from a shop, I did not have it made especially for me.  On that Sunday morning, we got up early.  My uncle and his wife, my friends, all came to my house.  The hairdresser also came and did everybody’s hair.  Then we got dressed.  At 10 minutes to 6 we went to the synagogue all together.  My cousin Sami Schilton gave me away and he and my mother got on the “teva” with me.  I also had a little bridesmaid and an older one who accompanied Sami Schilton later on.  After the wedding ceremony, we went to my husband’s parents’ house.  We changed there and then went to the Belvu Hotel [the turkish version of the french expression “Belle Vue”].  We did not have a party that night.  We stayed at that hotel for 4 days.  It was raining hard all the time so we spent the whole of the 4 days inside the hotel.  We did not go out.  Then we went to Caddebostan [this district on the Asian coast of Istanbul used to be a summer resort.  It is now a residential area.].  We rented a house for the summer.  Our friends also rented a house and we spent the whole summer together having fun.

When I got married, my husband was in the import-export business. He had a place in Karakoy [a business district in the european side of Istanbul].  The business did not go well, so after a while my husband started working at the shop of my cousin Alex Samuel.  This was a cloth business and my husband was a clerk there.

We had 2 sons.  The first, Sami, was born in 1951; and the second, Yusuf, was born in 1958.  Both were born in Istanbul.

When they were young, we used to speak French with our children.  However, when they reached the age of 6, we started speaking Turkish with them.  They were going to go to a turkish school so we did not want them to have problems at school with the language.  At that time we spoke only French in the family and that’s the language they heard, not Turkish.  So then we had to revert to Turkish when their time to go to school came.

We had a Greek neighbor who lived below us at the apartment building we lived in and they had a daughter the same age as my son Sami.  They used to play together and Sami had even learned how to speak Greek from them.  I used to take the kids everywhere, to the cinema, the theatre everywhere, with other children and their mothers of course.

Every summer we went to Caddebosta for the summer.  There we would hire a boat and go swimming with the kids.  When we came back, we went back home in a horse carriage.  We had a lot of friends.  I can give you their names as far as I remember: Ceni Jak Rutli, Esti Mordo Peres, Zelda Yomtov Behar, İzi Süzet Levi.  They were very intimate friends.  We were a big group and during the day we went swimming together.  Then in the evening we would meet again with the kids.  The children would play together, we would prepare food and eat all together.  Sometimes we would go out.  My husband had a car and we would go for rides.  We were together with our friends every weekend.  And when summer came, we would all rent houses near one another so we could be together all the time, both during the week and at weekends.  During the day we would go swimming and in the evening we would either go to the cinema or gather at one house.

When the children grew up a little, we sent them to the Mahaziketora. [Talmud Tora]  In summer, they would go to the Mahaziketora in Caddebostan, and in winter they would go to the one in Sisli.  We wanted them mto learn about their religion, especially before their bar mitzvahs.  After the lessons, there were quite a lot of activities at the Mahaziketora, like games and dancing.  They would stay for those activities as well.  Then both my sons went to the Jewish youth clubs.  Sami was a member of the “Kardeslik” [“brotherhood”] club in Kurtulus, and Yusuf was a member of the Dostluk [friendship] club in Osmanbey.

We raised our children according to the Jewish traditions.  They knew all the holidays and they started fasting at Yom Kippur when they were very young.  I used to take them to the synagogue whenever it was festival time, so that they could see and learn.  At Simhat Tora for example, they used to take the Sefer Tora’s out, and there were alot of songs, and I would take my sons so they could watch all this.

My father-in-law was very religious.  We went to their home whenever there was a holiday and we kept all the traditions.  On Shabat, we did the “hamotsi”, drank wine, did the prayers, and at Pesah we read the Agada two nights.  All this was celebrated at my father-in-law’s house.

We celebrated Sami’s bar mitzva both at the synagogue and at home.  He made a speech both at the synagogue and at home.  It was a beautiful bar mitzva.  There were 90 guests in our home afterwards.  We had a big house.  We had musical instruments, and a big feast with waiters.  Sami had an accordeon teacher who brought all sorts of instruments, especially percussion instruments.  We had a lot of fun with those instruments.

My younger son, Yusuf, did not want to have a lot of fuss.  So he had his “tefillin” ceremony on a Thursday morning and then we came home.  Again there were waiters and a lot of sweets and cakes for the guests, but he did not want to make a speech or have another ceremony on the Saturday morning at the synagogue.  So we just had the Thursday morning ceremony for him.

I learned how to cook from my mother and my friends.  There are certain very traditional Sephardic dishes that I like making very much.  The one I like best is “tomatoes filled with cheese”.  I used to cook those and they would like it at home.  Then we would make tomatoes again, this time filled with meat and cooked with a lot of sugar.  Also we have “almodrote de berendjena” [baked aubergines].  You take the aubergines, boil and peel and then squeeze them.  Then you add white cheese, “kasher” cheese [Turkish name for kosher yellow cheese, popular among both, Jews and non-Jews], a little bread, a little flour and an egg.  You mix all this and put it in an oven dish and bake it.   Then we have “bulemas”.  You take the “fila” dough, put cheese in long strips of the fila, then roll the strips into rose shaped “bulemas”.  You put them all on an oven tray, put grated cheese and egg yolk on them and then bake them.  Then there are the “bumuelos” for Pesah.  To make bumuelos, we soaked 3-4 matzot, then squeeze the water out.  We add one egg for each matza and a little salt.  We mix all this and then fry little balls of it in the special bumuelo pan.  They can be eaten with powdered sugar afterwards.

We had Jewish friends in Kurtulus and we saw them frequently.  During the week we used to play cards.  The husbands played poker and the wives played “relance” [a card game where the aim is to make sequences of at least three cards and finish the cards in your hand].  All our friends were Jewish.  They were all very good people of good families.  We also used to go to the cinema or theatre as a group as well.  When summer came we would often go to Buyukdere [a district on the Bosphorus, near the Black Sea] and swim.  I would say we had a “medium” social life.

My elder son, Sami, finished his secondary school at “Tarhan Koleji” [a private Turkish school founded in 1959 by Turkish statesman and educator Mumtaz Tarhan] in 1967.  He then went to Israel to study high school there.  It was fashionable those days; everyone was sending their kids to Israel to study.  Sami also wanted to go, so we sent him and he left with a few of his friends.  He went to study electronics there.  He studied for one year but he was not happy because they taught him not electronics but carpentry.  So after a year, he came back.  He finished the lycée at Tarhan Koleji.  Then later, he was able to get into university and he studied economics at the Iktisadi Ticari Ilimler Akademisi [Economics Academy in Osmanbey].

My sons grew up, they became young men, they had friends, they came they went.  My elder son, Sami married Ceni Levi in 1974.  In 1976 they had a son called Izel.  Izel studied in the Jewish High School 17.  He did not go on to university.  He did his military service and since he came back he has been working in the textile business.

In 1980, my elder son had a daughter called Sandy.  She finished “Kadikoy Kiz Lisesi” [private Turkish high school on the Asian side of Istanbul].  Then she studied tourism and hotel management at the University of Istanbul.  She has been working at the Swiss Hotel since she graduated.

My younger son Yusuf studied at the Saint Benoit [French Catholic high school] school.  He also started studying Economics at Istanbul University 18 but he couldn’t finish it because there was a lot of terrorism at the universities at that time 19.  So he went to do his military service.  In 1992, he married Karen Gerson and in 1996 they had a daughter called Selin.  Selin studies at a private primary school where she learns both turkish and english.

The foundation of the state of Israel had made us very happy.  I remember being very happy that morning when we heard the news and nothing else.  We never thought of doing our aliya there because we were content here.  Of course we had friends and family who went and settled in Israel.  My husband’s aunt, Fani Saranga for example was one of the first to go and settle in Israel with her family.

We do not have too many relations with the jewish community today; what I mean is, we are not members of any club or organization.  We try to follow our religious traditions and go to the synagogue at weddings, funerals, bar mitzvas and less frequently during the holidays.

Our children are not as religious as we used to be, nor have they raised their kids in the traditional way, but we have not had any conflicts about this with them.  We did not interfere.  Today, it is our children who gather the family and do family dinners.  We are tired and can’t do it any more.

We still meet with friends once a week.  I meet with my women friends: Jinet Behar, Zelda Matalon, Hayat Kubilay, Suzet Molinas, Margo Arditi and Zelda Behar.  We have been seeing each other for the last 20 years and we still go on.  We used to see each other outside the card playing days too but we can only meet once a week nowadays.  My husband also meets his friends for poker once a week.  When we come together as couples, the men play poker and the women play bridge.  That is all really.

We used to go on holidays until 3 years ago.  We went to places like Marmaris [a seaside resort on the Aegean], Ayvalik and Sarmisakli [seaside resorts on the Marmara].  We haven’t been able to go for the last 3 years because basically there is no one to go together with.

In the 1986 Neve-Shalom massacre we were at home and heard the news on TV 20.  We felt terrible and were extremely sad of course.
 
We got terribly upset when we heard the 2003 bombings, too 21.  We heard that on TV too.  We were really scared.

When we are alone with my husband we speak Ladino; with our friends we speak both Turkish and Ladino, but with our children we speak Turkish only.

Glossary

Enrico Modiano
Istanbul
Turkey
Interviewer: Rose Modiano
Date of Interview: May-July 2005

After his beloved wife Ester Modiano’s strange, tragic accident, Enrico Modiano tries to communicate with other people as much as he can – usually with a poignant smile on his face – and to go through this painful process as best as he can with patience and love. Enrico Modiano lives with his wife Ester in an apartment building named Edes (No.90) in Siracevizler, Sisli. He retired last year from the insurance business. He has an attendant helper, who comes over fives days a week to take care of the groceries, cleaning, etc. Every Saturday morning, Enrico Modiano goes to the synagogue for Shabbat prayers – except when the weather is terribly bad or if he experiences a health problem. When we look at his style of speech, he usually likes to stress on each and every word. For example, he stretches the word ‘1900.’. He is probably doing this to intrigue others or maybe to test their patience, because when you hear the beginning of the word, you start wondering if he means 1950 or 60 or something else. He likes using older Turkish vocabulary in his speech. Enrico Modiano is 79 years old. His outlook on life is one of hope even though he is experiencing some health problems. Although his wife - during her healthier days - was not too happy with his casual style of fashion, he prefers to wear both formal and casual clothing depending on the setting. He likes to listen to classical music with his wife as well as reading books about the Jewish religion and its history.

Family background

Growing Up

During the War

After the War

Glossary

Family backgound

I know that my family is of Italian, Livorno origin, and that they had originally settled in Salonika. The name Modiano comes from Modigliona; it changed over time to Modiano, and has continued to this day. My great grandfathers knew both Italian and Ladino, but they often spoke Greek when they were living in Salonika. 1

I considered my paternal grandmother’s father, Gabriel Yakoel, as my own grandfather. He was a respected man in Salonika. He was a very good-hearted man. According to what my family told me, he even had a Midrash [small synagogue] in his name, and he used to open its doors to the public for worship during important Jewish holidays.

My paternal grandfather, Mario Modiano was born in Salonika in 1858. I never had the chance to meet him. He passed away at such a young age; my father and his brothers were just kids at the time. I believe my father was 9 when it happened. After my grandfather passed away, my grandmother had to take care of the family financially. She did get occasional financial support from relatives though. I also know that my father had to start working at a very young age in addition to going to school. I was told that my grandfather died in 1896, and that he was never interested in politics.

My paternal grandmother was Reyna Modiano. Her maiden name was Yakoel. She was an extremely tranquil-natured, introverted, respectable woman. She became a widow at a very young age, and took care of her daughter and three sons with utmost care and compassion. She also made sure to educate her children on appropriate manners of behavior.

I did not really see her so much as to remember her sense of fashion. This is because when I first met her, she was already in her 60’s. She was a house-wife; she did not go out much. She spoke only Ladino, and apparently the family also spoke to each other in Ladino. Family names have remained the same since then… I remember that my grandmother had beautiful, whitish hair that reminded me of a princess’s.

My grandmother first lived in the Beyoglu neighborhood in Istanbul, and then Taksim and Nisantasi. I remember having been to her houses in both Taksim and Nisantasi. She used to live with her daughter Ester Yakoel, who was single. The house my grandmother and Ester lived in during the ’50s and the ’60s was a big, comfortable place. They used a gas furnace for heating purposes, like most people did back then. I do not remember them ever having problems with running water. They did not have a garden.

I remember my father telling me about a 15-year old girl named Palomba Asayas. She was originally from Edirne [Andrinople, a city in the northwest of Turkey], and was adopted by my father’s family. In reality, it might not be correct to call her adopted, since adoption occurs when the person in question does not have parents. Palomba, however, did have a mother and a father. They were so poor that they lived in a broken-down house, and led a very difficult life. My father and his brother felt very sorry for the family, and offered to take her in. They took care of Palomba as if she were an adopted daughter or sister. She stayed with my father’s family until she got married. My father’s sister, Ester Yakoel, took care of the cooking for the entire family.

My paternal grandmother was born in Salonika, and lived there for a long time. She then moved to Istanbul, where her two sons, Gabriel and Isaac, lived. She did not read the newspaper much. She was not a very knowledgeable, educated woman. She deeply cared for her religion though; she always practiced and observed the rules of Jewish traditions. She kept Kosher, but did not go to the synagogue much – especially after moving to Istanbul. They usually celebrated Jewish holidays at home. She was extremely meticulous about food preparation during the Holidays. She had her own recipes for some foods and deserts. Every year, when Pesach approached, she would buy new sets of pots and pans from a month before, and would fill them with vinegar and peeled walnuts. A couple of days before Pesach eve, she would begin cooking a very specific kind of fish. I do not remember what it was called, but she served it to us every Pesach.

I remember my grandmother’s house in Nisantasi [a district in the European side of Istanbul]; it was a two-story house. She lived on the ground floor with her daughter. On the upper floor lived my grandmother’s brother Hayim Yakoel and his wife Loret. My grandmother did not have many friends, but her family visited often. She did not go on vacation much; she preferred to stay home most of the time.
She had one brother named Hayim Yakoel. Hayim was also born in Salonika, and went to school there. Actually, he was classmates with Ataturk. 2 When he later relocated to Istanbul, he worked at the Bank of Salonika for a while. He then began working at the Deutsche Bank as an accountant; he worked there until World War II, and hence, the Holocaust began. Unfortunately, he was intentionally fired from that job because he was Jewish. He was a very good accountant, and with the help of some of his friends, he was able to secure an accounting position at the Sultanahmet Vakko . He worked there until he retired. He has a son named Gaston Kohen. I still have many relatives today from Gaston’s family. One of my cousins from that side, for example, is Elyo Kohen. My parents did not give us a lot of information about their parents. My father, actually, does not remember too much about them and their elders.

My father had two brothers and one sister. He was the eldest of all siblings. The eldest son after my father was Gabriel Modiano. He was born in 1890. He was the Managing Director of the Bank of Salonika. He passed away in 1963. He was married to Eleonora Modiano. They had a son and a daughter together, both of whom lived in Italy. Actually their daughter, Linetta, still lives in Rome today. I occasionally speak to her on the phone. Gabriel and Eleonora’s son, Morio Modiano, passed away two years ago.

My father’s sister, Ester Modiano, was born in 1892. She passed away in Switzerland in 1982. She was married to Raphael Yacoel, and they had a son named Gabriel. I know that Gabriel has been living in Milan until recently, but we have not heard anything about him over the past couple of years.

My father’s youngest sibling, Isaac Modiano, was born in 1894. He was the Managing Director of the German Deutsche Oriente Bank’s Salonika branch. During the Second World War, he too was forced to resign from that post. Later on, he got a job at the newly founded Turkish Credit Bank as a Vice President. When the Bank became bankrupt, he decided to move to Switzerland. He had two daughters. One of them, Giovanna Modiano, unfortunately passed away at a very young age in 1984. She used to conduct academic research on law before passing away. Their other daughter, Renata Modiano, still lives in Switzerland today. She is a teacher of Italian Literature. Isaac Modiano passed away in Switzerland in 1985. He was married to Maria Pardo. Maria’s father, Josep Pardo, actually was Ismet Inonu’s French tutor.  3

My father, Saul Modiano, was born in Salonika in 1887. He passed away in Istanbul in 1970. My mother, Ester Modiano [her maiden name is Kohen] was also born in Salonika in 1894, and passed away in Istanbul, in 1979. My parents are both buried at the Italian-Jewish Cemetery in Sisli, Istanbul.

My father was of medium-height, and was slightly overweight. He had whitish hair. He had glasses, but only used them when he was reading. He did not wear a tie around the house, but he always wore one when he was outside. He always wore clean, fashionable clothes. My mother, Ester Modiano, was also of medium-height and was slightly chubby. She had a very reserved personality. Her hair was medium-length. She wore casual clothing both inside and outside the house. She usually wore lipstick, and used nail polish.

My father was a very serious, introverted kind of man. He did not speak much, and when he did, he spoke with utmost care – as if he was weighing each word. He was a reserved man just like my mother was. My father was also very smart and perceptive. He did not have a lot of time to read, but he followed all major news of the day. My mother did spend a lot of her time reading. She graduated from a French school in Salonika.

My parents both went to school in Salonika. The school my father attended was called ‘Idadiye’ back then. It was a special kind of Italian school. My father’s native tongue was Italian, and my mother’s was Spanish. They spoke in Spanish and French between each other and their own parents.

When he lived in Salonika, my father used to work as a regular employee at a firm. Later on, when he came to Istanbul, he founded his own business. He became a commissioned representative for some factories located in Europe. He also provided those European companies with insurance expertise, and handled their insurance needs. My mother was a French teacher until she got married. She later became a stay-at-home mom.

My mother had three siblings. Her oldest sister, Pava Kohen was married to Benjamin [I do not remember his last name]. They had three sons together; Marko, Suzan and Izidor. Another one of my mother’s sisters was named Suzan, who passed away at a very young age. As for her other sibling, she had a brother named Jak Kohen. Jak had a keen interest in hunting. The weather was apparently terrible during one of his hunting trips, and, as a result, he caught pneumonia. He passed away soon after. Unfortunately, medicine was not as advanced back then as it is today. Jak also had two children. Marko still lives in Rome today, and his brother Ivon, unfortunately passed away during the Second World War. Soon after the Germans invaded Rome, he caught pneumonia because of the poor living conditions surrounding the city, and passed.

My mother went to a Greek school, but the educational language of the school was French. She later attended a French school. I can say that both of my parents had good educational backgrounds. When my mother was attending high school, she was able to secure a scholarship to study at the Alliance Israelite Universalle. 4  She was going to go to France in an effort to further her French skills. But, my father, being her groom-to-be, talked her out of it. He actually did not let her go there. As a result, my mother took a job as a French teacher in a Greek school. French was a very popular language back then; students would begin learning French starting from elementary school.

My parents had, what I would call, an arranged marriage. My mother’s brother, Jak Kohen, happened to be my father’s best friend long before she and my father met. Starting from when my father was 14-15, he would go over to her house all the time to see Jak. My father and mother became very close over time. They got married when my father was 31. I would not call that a young age to get married because my father actually never attended the military when he was supposed to – during the Balkan Wars of 1912-1914. 5 6 During the Balkan Wars [Back then, Salonika belonged to the Ottoman Empire], Italians living in Salonika were expelled because the Ottoman Empire was at war with Italy. My father temporarily had to relocate to Italy. He lived in Milan for six months - until the War came to an end. His brother Isaac Modiano also went with him to Italy. As far as I know, they both worked in Milan for a while, but they did not have to stay there for too long. In the meantime, the War came to an end, and Isaac moved to Istanbul.

During the War, my mother actually managed to stay in Salonika. In 1914, soon after my father had come back to Salonika, the First World War broke out. They got married in 1918 – just before the War ended. When my father was living in Salonika, his mother was living in Istanbul. His two brothers, Isaac and Gabriel were also living in Istanbul. They were the Managing Directors of the German Deutsche Orient Bank, and the Bank of Salonika, respectively. They were both in-house managers, groomed to the management level within their own companies.

During the First World War, my father wrote a letter to my maternal grandmother, and asked for her permission to marry her daughter. My mother, Ester Modiano [Kohen] was living in Salonika at the time. Actually, it was not even necessary for my father to ask for permission to marry my mother, because he spent everyday at her house. Since my father was also a good friend of Jak’s, they all spent time together. My father was considered a member of their family.

Back then, official marriages did not exist, so they married at a synagogue. Marriage ceremonies at the synagogue were a rarity back then; most couples had their weddings at their parents’ houses. This was probably because most houses had huge gardens, and were sufficient to hold the ceremonies. Everyone would sit right next to each other; the weddings were celebrated just like the ones that took place in big Turkish villages. My parents also had a wedding ceremony at their parents’ house with all the relatives. We were a middle-class family, and we had a very modest lifestyle.

As far as I know, houses in Salonika were heated using coal furnaces. My parents owned our house. Our house had a garden, and our doors were always open to everyone. My mother’s brother, Jak, had an interest in hunting. He also had a dog named Fido. He got married in Salonika, and continued to live there with his wife. They had two children there. After he passed away, his wife and children moved to Rome, Italy.

We did not have an attendant in the house; my mother took care of all the housework…

In 1921, when my brother, Mario Modiano was only six months old, we moved from Salonika to Istanbul.

My mother loved to read. My father, on the other hand, did not have much time for that although he did enjoy reading. All I remember my father reading is the Journal D’orient newspaper published in French. 7 He read it everyday. My mother also read the paper as well as French novels. They did not regularly go to the library. My parents did not give me many suggestions on books; I chose the books I wanted to read according to my own taste. I had a library in my room.
 
My parents were both religious people, but they did not spend all their time at the synagogue. They did, however, observe all important Jewish Holidays, and specific traditions according to each Holiday. My father placed a special importance on keeping Kosher. He would always go to the synagogue on Friday evenings, Saturday mornings and on Holidays. My mother, on the other hand, would only go during the Holidays. Seats would be reserved for my parents at both the Buyukada and the Italian Synagogues. We did not get a chance to eat out much since keeping Kosher was very important for my father.

My parents, my sister Reyna, and my brother Mario were all members of the Misne Tora Association. I became a member as well, when I was 15. In her work with Misne Tora, my mother was responsible for distributing lunch to the students of Karma High School. In addition, she was responsible for collecting and distributing clothing for Karma students once a year. My mother also served as the Dining Hall Manager and as the President of the Women’s Commission at Misne Tora. My father served as a member of the Board of Directors there, but not in an official capacity because he was an Italian citizen. He would attend all major events and activities though.
 
This is the motto I would use to summarize my parents’ political perspectives:  “En los meseles del hukumet el ahali muestro no se karishtireya” in Ladino or “Our people do not get involved in the business of politics and government.” 

My father had significant responsibilities at Mishne Tora. He was also an active member of the Italian-Jewish Community. He represented the Italian-Jewry in Turkey at the Chief Rabbi’s office. At Mishne Tora, he participated in end-of-the-year activities every year. During these activities, a number of different shows were put on, including a play put together by the Youth Commission.

My father did not serve in the Turkish military because he was an Italian citizen.

Many of my parents’ neighbors in Salonika and Istanbul were Jewish. They all visited each other often. When I was one years old, we moved to the Galata neighborhood in Istanbul. We stayed at a 12-story apartment building, but the 12 apartments seemed to me like they were one because everyone was so close to each other. I remember that the apartment building was located at the Serdar-i Ekrem Yazici Street, and that it was No. 64. It was initially called the ‘Varon and Benardete’ apartments, but after the Wealth Tax was implemented, it was changed to ‘Lebar’ apartments. 8

My parents had many friends; Turkish and Jewish alike. I can however say that they had more Jewish friends. The street we lived on was mostly occupied by the non-Muslim population at the time.

My parents did not take many vacations; they did not need to because we owned a summer house in Buyukada. In some years, on the last day of Pesach, a couple of families from the community got together, and had a picnic at the Camlica Hill - provided that the weather was favorable. We would eat eggs, feta cheese, lettuce, etc. The families frequently visited each other.

My brother, Mario Mair Modiano, was born in Salonika in 1921. When he was only six months old, my parents decided to move to Istanbul. He began studying at the French St. Benoit High School when he was six. He had to transfer to an Italian high school when he was at the seventh grade because of the 1932 Mussolini official notification. He completed his education at the Italian Lycee, and graduated with a degree in Commerce. After high school, he attended the Istanbul University’s Business and Commerce School. He graduated from the university with a degree in Commerce.

In 1942, he and one of our neighbors in the apartment became partners, and opened a wholesale dried-goods store. This continued until 1950, when he resigned because of irreconcilable differences with his partner. That was when he and I started working together. We founded our own store, and named it the ‘Terakki House of Dried-Goods – Mair and Eriko Modiano.’

We worked together until 1958. That year, my brother decided to move to Canada. He had gotten married to Nina Eskinazi in 1948. He became diabetic because of all the stress he endured during his last partnership. The disease later spread to his eyes, and he unfortunately lost his sight. I always thought of him as a very brave person for undergoing eye surgery only two years after losing his sight. After the operation, one of his eyes regained about 25% sight. He had this operation in Canada.

He was a very alert-natured person. He always liked responsibility and being busy with something. This is probably why, after he lost his sight, he enrolled at a local university and became interested in photography. He studied the art of photography at the university. After he regained 25% sight on one of his eyes, he took many beautiful photographs. I remember him going through really hard times when he first moved to Canada, but he did not give up. He worked as a regular employee at several different companies. After a while, he became partners with a friend of his, and the two of them founded an import business for men’s and women’s shoes. For the business, they imported a wide variety of shoes from East Asia, Italy and France.

He had a son named Sonny Modiano. Sonny completed his education in Montreal, Canada. After gradation, he initially began working with his father, but he was not entirely interested in the job. Therefore, he decided to move to Detroit in the United States with his wife and two children. Today, he still lives in Detroit, and operates a successful yoghurt manufacturing business there.

My brother got really sick after catching a virus. He passed away despite all efforts to save him. That was in 1992.

My sister was born in Istanbul in 1923. She attended both elementary and middle school at the Saint George Austrian High School. She later attended the American Robert College for high school, but she had to drop out because my father’s financial situation had steadily deteriorated. 9 She got married to Edgar Tabah in 1946. Her husband’s job was not going too well, and therefore, their financial situation was not too comfortable either. In 1975, they were forced to immigrate to Israel to start a new life.

Their son, Albert Tabah, had already immigrated there some time before. He had served in the military, and fought during the Six-Day and Yom Kippur Wars. 10 11 Because of wartime conditions, he decided to move to Canada – near my brother. Later on, the two of them ended up moving together to California, United States. My sister’s daughter, Marcel, ended up staying in Israel. She got married, and gave birth to a daughter and a son.

My sister passed away in 1983. Unfortunately, my sister and I did not really get along well because of some monetary problems. As to my relationship with my brother, we always treated each other with respect and compassion. Anyway, my sister and I did not have the best relationship, and I did not get to see her one last time before she passed… So much so that I did not even want to do her Keriya when I got news that she had passed away. Everyone put a lot of pressure on me to do it; that is why I did her the honors. I would not have done it on my own.

I still feel very offended and hurt when I think about her. She actually took all of my parent’s assets – whatever they owned – with her to Israel. In a way she stole them, and took my parents with her promising to them that she would take care of them with that money once they were living there. But, she ended up sending my parents back home only after three months.  The timing was such that my father had to undergo prostate surgery…

The apartment building I spent my childhood in was located in Yazici Street, in Galata. The building was renamed ‘Lebar’ apartments after the Wealth Tax was implemented. I lived there until I got married in 1953. The building’s residents were all Jewish. We were all like a one, big, happy family. Specifically on Saturday nights, our doorman Mehmet, would buzz every apartment. For example, we were living in apartment No. 6. Mehmet would say “Apartment No. 8 is expecting everyone tonight.” That night, all parents in the building would go over to apartment number eight. They would talk, gossip and play various games with each other. While this was going on, we the children would also get together at another neighbor’s, and play. When we heard movement within the apartment, this meant that our parents were coming back, so we would quickly return to our apartments. At that time, I was around 13 or 14 years old.

If I were to give you exact directions to the apartment building, there was a photo shop, Foto Sureyya in the Tunel Area back then. One would have to go straight downhill from the shop to find the German Lycee. Our building was right across the street from that hill. It was at the end of the street that used to house the Registry Office. My wife and I actually got married at that Registry Office [that building is now Tarik Zafer Tunaya Cultural Center, and it belongs to the municipality of Istanbul].

There was a small vacant lot and a slightly larger one adjacent to the building we used to live in. During summertime, right after schools closed and before went to the islands, our doorman would take all the kids with him to the first lot so we would have a safe play to play instead of playing on the streets.  He would not let us go to the second lot, which was mostly covered with bushes. We the kids would try and convince him to take us there, but we were never successful.

Later on in my life, I came to learn an interesting fact about that vacant land. I was reading a book by Avram Galante. It was called “Historie de Juif de Turquie” [A History of the Turkish Jewry], and was published in French. In the book, Galante mentions that the vacant land from my childhood is actually a Karaite cemetery. 12  When the Karaites first came here during the reign of the Ottoman Empire, they settled in the Karakoy neighborhood. Back then, the neighborhood was called ‘Karay Koy,’ which stands for Karaite Village in Turkish. Over time, it was renamed as ‘Karakoy’, which can be translated as Dark Village. The Karaites, apparently, had their own synagogue around the area. In order to be closer to their synagogues, they had rented the vacant land adjacent to it, and turned it into a cemetery. I do not remember seeing tomb stones there, but it was probably because they were hidden by all the bushes. On top of that, the front of the bushes was covered with a wooden sheet. I do not remember seeing any sign that mentioned the area was a cemetery.

The streets in my neighborhood were clean, and were made of pavestones. Every apartment had a doorman, who would always keep the entrance of the apartments clean. Since the area was mostly occupied by non-Muslims, cleanliness was very important to everyone. The street we lived on was not too busy a street; I remember that automobiles did not pass very frequently, but that the street was often frequented by grocery salesmen, who carried their fruit and vegetables on horse carts.

It would probably be correct to say that about 90% of the people in my neighborhood were Jewish. Adjacent to our apartment building laid a cemetery, and next to the cemetery was a large commercial building. Back then, it was called the Kamondo Apartments. Its named was later changed to Boton Apartments, and when the Yapi Kredi Bank acquired the building, its name was changed to the Dogan Apartments. The building was composed of four different sub-buildings. It had a very large entrance, and was surrounded by apartments on all sides. It also had a tennis court, where most of the neighborhood Jews interested in tennis played. That tennis court has been there for as long as I can remember – from when I was six years old in 1932 until I moved away in 1953.

Most of the Jewish families in our neighborhood were middle-class. Everyone was close to each other. There were not many rich families back then. Even if they were rich, they would not show it off. They would lead a modest life. There were not any synagogues in our neighborhood. But, our neighborhood was in proximity to the Kuledibi neighborhood, where an Ashkenazi Synagogue on Yuksek Kaldirim Street as well as a Knesset [Apollon Synagogue] was located. Back then, the Neve Salom Synagogue had not been built yet. 13 The Italian Synagogue was located on Sair Ziya Pasa Hill, Bankalar Avenue. It was called Kal de Los Frankos at the time.

I personally went to the Italian Synagogue. When it was first founded, the Synagogue’s first rabbi was Rabbi Akal Algazi, the famous tenor. He later moved to Mexico. After Algazi, Eliya Eskinazi became the Synagogue’s rabbi. He was of Bulgarian origin. He served as the Rabbi for our synagogue for a couple of years, after which he transferred to the Buyukada Synagogue. Rav David Asseo, whom we referred to as ‘Maare Ata,’ became the new rabbi for the Italian Synagogue. The Italian-Jewish Community sent him to Rhodes to get educated in Jewish Religion and Affairs, taking care of all his educational costs. He graduated from the Theology University there.

Today’s 500 Years Foundation [500 Yil Vakfi] building was the Zulfaris Synagogue back then. All weddings would take place there. On Sunday morning, children of the Jewish families in the neighborhood would go there to attend Religion classes. My brother, at the time, taught the Torah in Hebrew, since he was one of the founding members of Auvar Ahim.   

The middle-class Jewish population of the time generally preferred living in Jewish neighborhoods such as Yazici Street, Kuledibi, Tepebasi, Kasimpasa. Families, who had a stronger state of finances, would live in the Taksim area while families, who might be called ultra-millionaires, lived in the Sisli and Nisantasi areas.

The Jewish families in my neighborhood held a wide variety of jobs including businessmen and craftsmen. When I say craftsmen, I am talking about being a hairdresser, carpenter, shoemaker, ironworker, etc. In our neighborhood, we did not actually have a Jewish hairdresser, but our hairdresser was a very interesting man. Sevket was his name. He had black hair, and a very dark, black beard. We would all go there for a shave. I remember being very afraid whenever I saw his beard; this was when I was really young. I would not want to go in his shop.

Across the street from our apartment building was a grocery store. Its owner, Yermiya, was Greek. We took care of all our grocery needs from there. I remember my father buying a box of Nestle chocolate from the Yermiya store every Saturday morning (some of the chocolate boxes came with prizes inside). He had actually made a deal with the owner; he would say to him “Listen, I am taking this box of chocolate, and I am going to start eating them until I win a prize. When I do, I will come back here and pay you only for the chocolates I have eaten, and you will agree to take the remaining ones back.” And, the owner Yermiya? He had accepted this!

Every Sunday morning, my father would summon his three children, and we would open the chocolates one by one until one of us located a prize. It was very interesting in that we did get to find the prize every Sunday. We found find a card in the chocolate that had the prize. One of the prizes, for example, was an Ataturk statue made from plaster. Another time, it was an ink-pen, and yet another time we found a camera. This really stayed with me as one of those significant memories I have with my family… I also remember finding photographs of movie actors in those Nestle boxes. Catalogues were given to the buyer with the purchase of the box. Whenever we found a photograph, we would place it in the catalogue. When the catalogue was complete, we would take it to the Nestle store down on the street, and the store owner would give us a present. 

I remember always having electricity in the apartment. We always had running water…

During my childhood years, I remember there being only one political party, Cumhuriyet Halk Party. This was until 1950, when Turkey adopted a multi-party system with the arrival of Adnan Menderes to the political scene. 14  Later on, political parties that we know today, were founded one by one.

I do not remember having to endure any type of anti-Semitism. I believe that one should separate the issue of anti-Semitism into two categories; the first is the anti-Semitism from the perspective of Turkey and the other from that of Italy. We, the Turkish-Jewry did not have to endure any type of anti-Semitism. The only event that comes close was the implementation of the Wealth Tax. As for the Italian anti-Semitism, it began when Mussolini’s Italy became allies with Germany, and the two countries began a war of anti-Semitism against Jews.

I went to an Italian school. I completed elementary school in the Galatasaray neighborhood, at the building behind the Galatasaray Lycee. Mine was an all-male school. As for high school, I attended the Italian Lycee, and graduated from there at twelfth grade.

Italy had celebrations and holidays very specific to its culture. For example, all Italian children in my school between the ages of six and twelve were members of the Figlio de la Lupa, which can be literally translated as the offspring of the wolf. This was a special group of youngster boy scouts. Between the ages of twelve and eighteen – until all of us graduated from high school – we belonged to a higher class of the boy scouts called Ballila. Ballila was, in a way, the Figlio de la Lupa’s Fashist arm. One category higher than the Ballila was a group named Avant Guardista, and yet another category was the Capo Centuria [captain]. I remember my brother reaching as high as the Cadetto class. Every class had its own uniform. For example, people who belonged to Cadetto, had to wear black shirts, green golf pants, jackets and boots. The children would wear their tokens of success on their jackets. These were awarded to them based on their success as a student and as a boy scout.

Both national and religious holidays were celebrated in Italy. During important religious holidays such as Christmas or Easter, we would go to the Casa D’Italya club wearing our uniforms. The club was located at the Tepebasi neighborhood. Today, it is known as the Italian Cultural Center. We also had the chance to attend religious ceremonies. Back then, the 24th of May was commemorated as the Independence day of the Italian Republic, and that day was celebrated through a variety ceremonies just like we commemorate the 19th of May holiday for the Youth of Turkey here. In those days, the 24th of May was always commemorated on a Sunday even if it fell on a different day of the week. We would get together in the backyard of the Italian Cultural Center and practiced gymnastics. We would all be wearing our uniforms on that day. I was the one chosen to carry the flag. Since my brother was older than me, he was in a higher class, and so he was responsible for carrying a larger flag.

The only Turkish holiday we celebrated as students in the Italian Lycee was the Holiday for the Foundation of the Turkish Republic. It is commemorated on the 29th of October of each year. That day, all students would get together in school. We would then join other students from the Galatasary Lycee, and go to the Taksim neighborhood together. Like every year, armed forced would be present in the area for the parade. Following the passage of the armed forces, students from all schools would pass through the parade in honor of the Holiday. Since I was the boy-scout responsible for the carrying the school flag, I would also carry the flag during the 29th of October holiday. During the parade, Turkish flags were the first to be carried through. Then followed the Turkish schools’, and finally foreign schools’ flags [such as the German Lycee, the French Lycee, etc].

I was at the sixth grade when Ataturk passed away in 1938. I remember that his coffin was put on the mausoleum in the Dolmabahce Palace. All students from my school had gone to the Palace to mourn Ataturk’s loss.

I have forgotten almost all of the anthems I learned as a kid.

Back then, students had to go to school on Saturdays as well – but only until lunchtime. In the afternoons, I would either stay at home or go out with my parents to visit my grandmother – depending on my age. When we went to my grandmother’s house, she would always give us a big hug, and ask us: “What can I get for my beautiful grandchildren?” She was always so thoughtful. She always made sure to give us some pocket money. As I got older, the pocket money would come in handy, because I would get my friends together to play cards or go to the movies. After 18, my friends and I started meeting girls. I remember getting together with our girlfriends as a group, and throwing a house-party every Sunday.

We did not have a neighborhood bazaar, but there was a store that sold fruits and vegetables (i.e. greengrocer) rather close to where we lived. I remember my mother calling out to the grocery store across the street from us. She would call out to the owner from the window “Yermiya!” She would say in Greek “Could I get a loaf of bread and a kilo of sugar?” She would then descend a basket all the way down to the ground floor. She would go the greengrocer’s, or send our attendant. 

My father had a keen interest in collecting things. He would sometimes buy things for himself, or he received them as gifts from friends. He would collect them, and later on, when he deemed the time was right, he would take them from his hiding place, and give them out. For example, he would bring home dried fruits and nuts. He did not want us to consume too much, so he would occasionally hide them – but with utmost secrecy.

My father took care of the shopping for the house. Back then, there was a big shopping arcade in the area where the Odakule neighborhood is today. The store was called the Karlman Arcade. Its owner was a Polish Jew. One could find everything he/she was looking for in his store – like today’s Migros Supermarkets. The owner had a unique sales tradition. Once every month, he would label all his goods in multiples of eight – eight cents, eight liras, eighty-eight liras, etc… [He would label each good he sold in multiples of eight depending on the specific good]. He sold glassware, pots and pans, clothing, scarves, etc…

As to my feelings towards important political events I remember, I believe that one of the most important of these is the expulsion f Jews from Spain, and the following immigration of Spanish Jews to the soils of the Ottoman Empire in 1942. 15 This is a very important event as we all know. In addition, many scientists and respected, educated men and women in their fields were forced to take shelter in countries such as Turkey, as a result of the negative pressure and anti-Semitism inflicted toward the Jewish population in Germany and other allied countries. These people became professors in universities based on their expertise. Another event I remember is that, during World War II, the Turkish Government allowed Jewish people from a variety of countries to pass through its soil on their way to Israel. Unfortunately, the Struma incident was a truly unpleasant one. 16  In my house though, these types of events were seldom spoken of.

Growing Up

I was born in Istanbul in 1926. When my mother was pregnant with me, my father’s sister’s husband had passed. His name was Rafael. My father’s sister apparently told him “if it’s a boy, I would like you to name the baby Rafael.” At the same time, my mother had a brother named Jak. He was very interested in hunting. After one of his hunting trips, he caught pneumonia, and he too passed away. After this event, my mother also told my father “If this baby is a boy, I would like to name him Jak.” When I was born, my parents apparently had to struggle with giving me a name for a while. My father suggested “Why don’t we name him something in between Jak and Rafael?” They named me ‘Iko,’ which combines the last syllables of ‘Jakito’ and ‘Rafaeliko.’ So they began calling me Iko…

Well, when it was time for me to enroll in school, my parents had to enlist me at the Italian Consulate. My father did not want to hurt anyone, and so he listed me as Giacomo Rafaello [both Italian names]. He also came up with the name ‘Enrico,’ which would still be a name that included Iko, my original name. Therefore, my official name was listed as ‘Giacomo, Rafaello Enrico Modiano’ at the Consulate’s official records and on the Italian passport I later received. The name Iko was not included within my official name, and therefore, in the Consulate’s official records.

Both my parents supported the family financially, and took care of the children during my childhood years. We also had an attendant in our house. She was a Greek woman named Elefteriya, and was originally from the Imroz Islands [Back then, the Imroz Islands were occupied by the Greeks]. She worked in our house – day and night – for a long time. Because of her, my two siblings and I learned how to speak Greek.
When we were living on Yazici Street, my sister was attending the Australian Elementary School located in the Kuledibi neighborhood. When I was five and a half years old, I also started attending pre-school at the Australian Elementary School. I have a memory from those years… We had Sisters in our classrooms as teachers. They would give us cardboards with holes in them, and we were supposed to create different shapes by way of passing thin ropes through those holes. I would sometimes create animal figures, sometimes flower shapes, etc…

I really liked the Austrian School, so I wanted to go there as well for elementary school. In 1936, right when I was about to begin elementary school, Mussolini passed a new law that affected me and my family members. According to this law, all males, who were Italian citizens, had to study at Italian schools worldwide. If not, they risked losing their citizenship when they became eighteen.

Italy was ruled by a Fashist regime in those days. At the boy scouts group, we had our own uniforms with black shirts. We had to wear dark blue khaki pants, black shirts, and triangle-shaped scarves. The scarves had Mussolini’s emblem carved onto them. On top of these, we had to wear black hats, which also had Mussolini’s emblem at the front. The hat had a pompom hanging down from its right side – just like the ones on the fez [old hats worn during the reign of the Ottoman Empire]. Every Wednesday and Saturday afternoon, the school would be out of session, and so we would go the Casa D’Italia Locale, wearing these uniforms. 17

There were many theatrical activities in Casa D’Italia. I first went there in 1939. In 1943, when Italy signed a partnership agreement with Germany, the Jewish students were no longer allowed to be Fashist boy scouts. We could still attend the Locale even though we were Jewish, but we were not allowed to be boy scouts. Nor were we allowed to participate in the Locale’s activities. We were only allowed to continue being students after that year.

As a matter of fact, my brother, who was studying in middle school at the St. Benoit Lycee, had to drop out. He later transferred to the Italian Lycee to complete his education. As for me, I attended the Italian Lycee for elementary school, middle school and high school. The elementary school building was behind the Galatasaray Lycee building. Starting from the sixth grade, I started attending the Lycee on Tomtom Street – located next to the Italian Consulate.

There, I met and became best friends with Nesim Behar, whom I still work with today in the same Jewish organizations and associations. We sat together all through elementary school, but separated at the sixth grade. This was because the sixth grade was divided into two sections; Science and Accounting. I chose to study Accounting.

Accounting was my favorite course. I graduated with six students, one of whom was a female. We all received accounting diplomas. I liked all of my teachers, most of whom were Italian. Students and teachers were very close to each other. I did not study English at school.
I do not remember witnessing any anti-Semitic behavior neither from the students nor from the teachers. After 1943, Jewish students were banned from the Fashist regime’s manifestation at Italian Schools: the boy-scout group. I must say though that we were not being brainwashed in these groups except for the behavior of one teacher. He acted as if he was truly sent here to propagandize for the Fashist government, and to become a gymnastics teacher for the boy scouts.

I graduated from the Italian Lycee in 1948. I had taken violin lessons for eight years – wile I was at school. I could play a variety of musical notes, but I, unfortunately, discontinued my lessons after graduation. Today, I cannot even remember the notes…

As to my childhood friends, I do not remember a lot about my friends in elementary school. I ended up seeing many of my friends from high school after graduation. I still meet up with some of them to this day. One of those friends is Nesim Behar, who happens to be the vice-chair of the Italian Jewish Community. I have been friends with him since elementary school.

I was very close with two friends outside of school. One was Nesim Behar, and the other was Bensiyon Cukran, who unfortunately passed away recently. We always got together in a mixed, co-ed group. We had some Catholic students in our school as well. For example, the famous script writer Giovanni Scognamillo was my classmate in high school. He was very interested in movies - even at that age – especially in horror movies and literature. His father was a mechanic in the Elhamra movie theatre.

Outside of school, we would get together with friends on Sundays, throw parties and dance…

During my years in elementary school, and the first couple of years in middle school, I was very interested in playing with maquettes. There was a store in the Yuksekkaldirim neighborhood, and its owner was Mr. Friedman [his son’s name is Dario Friedman]. Mr. Friedman sold maquette and scale model components, and other items related to the constructing of the maquettes. There were different shapes in blue printed on pieces of paper. There were white carvings on top of them. I would make a dough-like substance using water and flour, and then spread the dough on top of the pieces of paper. I would glue these together using plywood, and wait until they were completely glued. There was also a tool to create small holes; I would open holes on the pieces that were still white. I would then get a bristle and pass this through the hole. Using a handsaw, I was able to create different shapes between the blue and white pieces. Sometimes, I would use natural raisin to stick different shapes together. I remember making a horse, an ink holder and once a blue wooden tray that was red on one side. I would love to find these maquettes today. No one had taught me how to make these; I had learned it myself.

I remember buying pieces of aircraft maquettes from a store right at the beginning of Akaretler Avenue. I would construct the maquette using a cardboard by gluing the pieces together – one by one. The craft’s propeller had a rubber towards its ending. After flattening the rubber, I would turn the propeller using my hand, and the craft would start flying.

I had another passion, which, unfortunately, I did not continue. I had taken seven years of violin lessons, but stopped after graduating from high school…

I had yet another passion when I was a teenager. There was a place called the Luxemburg Palace in Istanbul. This place was a three-story building, and had several pool tables. I loved playing pool there with my friend Jak Mitrani.

I was a member of both the volleyball and basketball teams at school. I did not participate in political activities much. As for cultural activities, I read a poem for the Etifani Holiday when I was in fifth grade. In order to prepare for my presentation, my father and I went to the Sumerbank store to buy some new clothes and shoes [Etifani Holiday is a Christian holiday, during which a cross is placed in the Holy Water].

I spent most of my weekends with my parents. There was an Italian Youth Camp, which was located in Italy. The school sent some of its successful students there. My brother, for example, went there three times. I also was given the opportunity to go once in 1938, but War was about to break out, and my parents did not let me go.

In my childhood days, we did not have to use cars for transportation on a regular basis; actually there was not a big need for it. We would use the tram instead. I would walk from home to school and back because it was very close. I did not own a car when I was a teenager. I actually had a hard time in trying to get a driver’s license. I had started taking driving lessons with a Renault 4. It was a small car. Back then, the Kagithane neighborhood was filled with greenery as far as they eyes could see. I would take my driving lessons there. One day, I was sitting at the driver’s seat and everything was going fine at first. Well, until a buffalo came running onto the street. I made a quick maneuver, but, unfortunately, the car’s front bumpers crashed into a wall, and were slightly damaged. All it took was five liras to make it all good.

I remember getting on the train with my parents to go to Yesilyurt…

I spent my childhood in Buyukada…

As for my memories with my brother, I can go all the way to his engagement. He was about to get engaged to Nina Eskinazi. The first time he brought her to meet with us was pretty interesting. Back then, I was taking violin lessons, and I had started to play some good musical notes such as the Turkish National Anthem. As a coincidence, I was playing the Anthem right at the moment she walked in to meet with us. This added the event a wave of ceremonial meaning – unintentionally of course. It had stayed with all of us as an interesting memory. Whenever we get together, she tells everyone “He welcomed me with the National Anthem.”

My father hit me only once in my life, and he once hit my brother…

The reason my brother got beaten up: We were in Buyukada. He must have been about 17 or 18 years old. He was playing backgammon with a friend of his, who is now deceased. My grandmother was seriously ill at the time. My father had reminded my brother “Go see grandma, and let me know how she is doing.” My brother, however, lost track of time playing backgammon, and so forgot to visit her. My father asked “Did you go and see grandma?” My brother said “Yes I did.” “How is she doing?” “Umm, she is doing my better.” “Was she standing up? Is she able to walk around?” “Yes she was” replied my brother. My father said “Fine.”

The next day, he went to see my grandmother. Of course, she is still in bed, and cannot walk. He asks her “Why are you still in bed?” “Yes, I never left.” “But, didn’t Mair come, see you yesterday?” “No, he didn’t” she says, but later perceives what is going on. ‘Yes… he actually did visit, I am forgetting,” she says. My father, of course, is aware of what is going on. My grandmother had lied to him to save my brother.

When he came home later, he asked my brother “Did you or did you not go see your grandmother yesterday?” “Yes, I did.” “How was she?” “She was fine.” “Was she walking around?” “Yes.” “OK, you go, lay down on the bed now,” he said to my brother, and began hitting his back with his hands.

My story… Well, there was a different reason: I was about fourteen or fifteen. One Sunday afternoon, my parents had to go to a wedding. Something came up, and they were not going to be able to attend. So, my father wrote a note to the couple in a telegram. He told me “Go, post this telegram from the Galatasaray Post Office.” I went there, and posted the telegram. If I remember correctly, they charged me 13 cents for it, and gave me a receipt. I have no idea why I acted that obtrusively, but I guess I wanted to keep five cents to myself, and so I changed the number 13 to 18. I came home. My father asked “Did you post the telegram?” “Yes,” I said. “Where is the receipt?” he asked. I gave it to him. My father looked at the receipt. On top of it says eighteen (one could probably tell it was changed from thirteen though), but at the bottom it says thirteen in writing. He asked me again: “How much did you pay for this?” “Eighteen cents” I replied. “You come over here” he said. “How much did you pay for this?” He began hitting me on my back saying “You really did pay them eighteen cents? Give me my five cents back.”

In my family, all traditions mandated by our religion were strictly followed. Holidays, Pesach and the Seder of course, Rosh Hashanah… My mother would make all kinds of puddings during Shavuot. During Purim, she would make a variety of pies made with honey or “Orejas de Aman” as well as “Borekitas del muez” [quiches]. In order to make orejas de aman, she would prepare some dough first. She would then roll it out, cut it in two pieces, and fry it with vegetable oil. We would eat it with margarine and melted honey or granulated sugar.

After graduating from high school, I started going to the Italian Synagogue with my father every Saturday morning. My brother also came with us. Since then, it has become a tradition for me to go the Synagogue every Saturday morning and during important holidays. When I was a kid, I remember going to the Buyukada Synagogue every Friday evening. This was during summertime of course. I went there from when I was eight to sixteen. The chief rabbi there, Rabbi Eliya Eskinazi was a close friend of my father’s. He taught me so much. I remember saying the Mirha and Avit prayers every morning back then. Rabbi Eskinazi had also put together a chorus group, which I was a member of. We sang during some prayers read on Friday evenings and Saturday mornings. I would only go to that synagogue during summertime because it was very close to our house in Buyukada.

I received schooling on the Jewish religion when I was a kid. I also studied very hard to learn Hebrew, but unfortunately, I could not. Today, Hebrew is a widely-used language, so I regret not having learnt it.

I went to the Mahaziketora, whose name was Aavam Tahim back then. Today, the building is the 500 Years Foundation [500 Yil Vakfi]. 18 I used to take classes at Midrash on the building’s ground floor. The upper floor was a synagogue, where many wedding ceremonies took place. During summertime, there were many courses at the Midras on the Jewish History and Religion. I also learned to observe important holidays from my parents. My father and I would pray on Shabbat evenings, and study the Torah…

During the War

Unfortunately, I did not get to have bar-mitzvah ceremony because the date of the ceremony fell on September 16th-17th. World War II had broken out on the 1st of September, 1939. And, therefore, all our bar-mitzvah preparations went in vein. We were supposed to celebrate it in Buyukada. After a religious ceremony at the Buyukada Synagogue, we were planning on celebrating it on Sunday at home with my family and friends. Many people had gotten invited. I specifically remember that food was going to be served as an a-la-carte buffet. Unfortunately, everything fell through with the beginning of the War. I put on my tefilim on a Thursday, and was asked to go to the synagogue on Saturday for a prayer. That was it.
 
I liked almost all religious holidays. After all, all holidays meant fun and celebrations. During holidays we celebrated at school, for example the Epifani holiday, we would all go to Casa D’Italya. We would celebrate the Holiday with theatrical activities, and everyone would give presents to each other. We also celebrated holidays such as the 24th of May or the 19th of May Youth Holiday…

When the Holocaust was taking place in Europe, my family and I were in Turkey. Since we were Italian citizens, we did not come across any manifestation of anti-Semitism. Italy and Germany had signed a peace agreement with Turkey so as not to go to war with it. Therefore, Jews in Turkey were not affected much by what was going on in Europe at the time. I can say this tough; a wave of negative feelings and behavior toward non-Muslims had started growing steadily in Turkey. As a result, the kinds of anti-Semitic laws that we all know about were passed. These include the 20 military classes and the Wealth Tax. 19

At school, until 1942, all students continued to be a part of the boy-scout groups, and wear black-shirted uniforms. When Italy joined the War next to Germany, the Jews in these groups were banned from being a boy-scout, and participating in the activities. But, my education at school continued as usual.

I do not have many memories about wartime. All I remember is that many foods were distributed based on a ration system. Everyone, for example, had a right to have half a loaf of bread daily. This was distributed with a ration ticket for bread. Coffee was also distributed based on ration tickets. Everyone one had to get their tickets as well as an official communication of demography and residence from the village headmen.

We had heard here that the Holocaust was taking place against European Jewry, and that the Jews were being sent to death camps. There was not a lot of news in the papers about that. We were following the events from the radio.

Actually, I had some relatives, who had managed to escape from Europe. They were initially living in the city Plovdiv in Bulgaria. One of my relatives had wanted to escape to Israel by ship. The ship, El Salvador, had arrived in Turkish waters, and stayed at the port for a period of 24 hours. Unfortunately, after that, the Turkish posts forced the ship and its passengers to vacate Turkish waters. The ship got destroyed due to a terrible storm close the Silivri Island, and sank. Most of its passengers, unfortunately, drowned. One of my wife’s relatives, Elvira Yahni [Yahni is her maiden name], however, managed to survive. She apparently was traveling with her boyfriend on the ship. When the ship started sinking, they managed to hold onto a piece of wood, and survived. She later returned to Bulgaria, and immigrated to the land of Israel afterwards with a different ship.

We received news about the Struma ship as well, and that it was one of the ships that sank in open waters. Its destination was also the land of Israel, but it, unfortunately, never arrived there.

When the Wealth Tax was implemented, the Government imposed a tax of 22,500 Liras for our family. My father could only pay 2,500 Liras, and he deposited this amount at the Treasury. His financial situation did not enable him to pay any more than the amount he had already paid for. Of course, since we were Italian citizens, my father decided to talk to the Consulate about this matter. He officially declared that he could not pay for the entire amount he was taxed. The Italian Consulate, in turn, forwarded this information to the Treasury Department. They were able to lower the tax from 25,000 Liras down to 10,000 Liras.

This was the best my father could hope for, but he still could not afford to pay this much money. He resisted payment as much as he could. But, one day, people came to our house and told us they came to seize all our belongings. My father was extremely disappointed. To this day, I do not know how he came up with the money, but on the 15th of March, 1944, he deposited 10,000 Liras to the Treasury, and paid his debt. That night, we heard on the radio that the Wealth Tax was abolished. I think that my father paid that 10,000 Liras just so the Government could not seize our house in Buyukada. It was his family’s home, and it had a huge significance for him. He never told us how he came up with the money…

I remember one more thing about the Wealth Tax; all the other non-Muslim families living in our apartment building were sent to Askale. Our now deceased doorman, Mehmet, was a person who loved and cared about all families living in his building. There was a laundry room and a grain cellar all the way on the top floor of our building. Our doorman took his son with him, and – without any hesitation – moved most of the families’ valuable furniture such as bedroom furniture, living room furniture, couches, etc up to the grain cellar. They did this every night at midnight. In this way, he was able to save so many of the families’ belongings from seizure. Still, the Government seized so much furniture. Since we were Italian citizens, my father was not sent to Askale because this law did not apply to non-Turkish citizens.

I do not have a lot of information about the 20 Military classes. I did not have serve in this unit since I was an Italian citizen. As far as I know though, they sent 20 military classes to Anatolia to supposedly work on construction projects.

As far as I remember, the “Citizen, Speak Turkish” policy was propaganda initiated by the then President, Ismet Inonu. They were forcing everyone to speak Turkish. So much so that if they heard someone speaking another language on the street, they would warn him/her: “Citizen, Speak Turkish!” Walls were covered with campaign posters. 20

I do not exactly remember the Thrace events… 21

I do remember the Events of 6th-7th of September very well for I had just returned from the Izmir Fair on the 6th of September. 22 When I came back to Istanbul, I went directly to my drapery store. I had an employee there named Suleyman. My wife was staying at her mother’s place in Sishane with my elder son. That night, I was going to go over to my mother-in-law’s house after work, take my wife and son, and go back to our house in Sisli. My employee, Suleyman, however warned me “Mosyo, I don’t think it is a good idea for you to go to your house in Sisli tonight. Go directly to your mother-in-law’s house, and whatever happens, do not leave her house.”

In fact, I began hearing loud noises and clatter coming from the street around eight o’clock in the evening. People were screaming and running in herds. As all this was going on, I remember Suleyman knocking on the door and saying “It’s me, open up.” He came in, and climbed the stairs. He advised “Turn off the lights, do not go into the balcony, and act as if you are not at home. I will be guarding the front door. Please do not even look out from the window.”

There was a bakery called Andon across the street from my house. The insurgents broke all the store’s windows, and threw everything outside including the baked goods. Actually, at one time, the insurgents tried to break the windows of a bakery store one floor below from us. Thankfully, Suleyman intervened and said to the insurgents “This is my store, and I am a Muslim. You cannot touch this store.” They did not cause any damage to the bakery.

Suleyman had also phoned my brother and sister, who both were in Buyukada at the time to warn them. He told them to put up their flags, turn off all the lights, and not leave their apartments.

When we woke up the next morning, everything and everywhere was in ruins. Every store’s goods were on the streets. There were even refrigerators and washing machines out on the streets. The insurgents did destroy many stores and their goods in Buyukada as well. They especially caused a lot of damage to Greek stores in Buyukada.

My wife, Ester Modiano, was born in Plovdiv, Bulgaria in 1927. She was born seven months old, and the doctors did not have much hope for her to live. Her maiden name is Yahni. As far as I remember, her mother was born in Haskoy, Istanbul.

Since Ester was born in Bulgaria, her native tongue in Bulgarian. At the same time, she speaks French very well because she studied at a French school. She also had the opportunity to learn Hebrew while she was in Bulgaria. She finished elementary school at Saint Joseph in 1937. She was a very successful student. Unfortunately, she had to drop out of school at seventh grade because of the War. She had to leave Bulgaria. 

I am not sure as to how my wife’s father first settled in Bulgaria. I know that he had three siblings, and that they were all working in a toy and artificial flower plant, where thirty other Turkish employees were working. I know that Ester’s father also had an import business. Once, a shipment of goods he ordered from Germany was sent to Istanbul by mistake. They were supposed to arrive in Bulgaria through ship having passed through the Danube River and the city of Varna. Ester’s father went to Istanbul in an effort to track down the shipment. While he was In Istanbul, he visited his aunt, who had a talent for embroidery. There, he met my mother-in-law, Luna. Luna earned her living by embroidery after her father passed away. Anyway, the aunt tells Ester’s father “I have found you a very nice girl.” As soon as he laid eyes on Luna, he fell in love with her. Before he asked her parents’ permission, he wanted to learn her opinion about moving to Bulgaria, and living there.

Well, they got married in three months. Avram and Luna Yahni began living in the city of Plovdiv in Bulgaria. They had three daughters named Dorette, Ester and Suzi, all of whom were born in Bulgaria. Dorette was going to a French school just like Ester. She was later awarded a scholarship to attend Sorbonne University. The political conditions in Europe because of the War, however, prevented her from attending. Dorette was nine years older than Ester, and was born in 1918. She used to present conferences at school on French Literature. She got married when she was only 19, and she gave birth to a son. During the War, my wife Ester came to Istanbul from Bulgaria with her family. Dorette, however, was unable to travel because she had meningitis. She had to stay in Bulgaria with her husband and son (Albert). She must have passed there, because my wife tirelessly searched for her after the War, but she could not come up with anything. I believe Albert later became an aircraft engineer in Israel.

Suzi is Ester’s younger sister. She was born in 1938. She had to drop out of school in Bulgaria, because her family moved to Istanbul during the War. She attended the Karma High School in Istanbul for a while, but she caught asthma at a very young age due to the high level of humidity present in Istanbul’s air. She suffered from asthma all throughout her life. She did not get married. When I got married to Ester, Suzi started living at our house. She lived with us until she got into a diabetic shock in 2001. We transferred her to a retirement center in the Haskoy neighborhood after that. She passed away in 2004.

When my wife was attending third grade in elementary school, anti-Semitic waves had started becoming a reality in Bulgaria. The Jewish people were forced to wear the six-edged, yellow Star of David on their chests so as to identify who they were. The Turkish Consulate-General in Bulgaria was a very nice, whole-hearted man. Ester does not remember his name. Since Ester and her family were still Turkish citizens, he summoned them to the Consulate one day, and told them that they needed to urgently leave the country, and that it was not possible for them to survive the death camps once they were there.

Being a 13 or 14 year old kid, just starting to get to know life, and wanting to become a French teacher in the future, Ester, had to leave behind all her wishes and hopes in Bulgaria. She went to Turkey by train. Three months after she arrived in Istanbul, her parents and her sister, Dorette, arrived in Istanbul as well (I believe that was in 1940) [Her family spent their first couple of days in Istanbul at a hotel in the Sirkeci neighborhood.] Ester’s father, who was quite wealthy in Bulgaria, suffered great financial troubles during the period he lived in Istanbul. He could not accept this situation, and he committed suicide a year or two after his arrival in the country. I believe it was the second day of Shavuot in 1948…

Ester’s mother, Luna, suffered a panic attack in 1960, during my son Alberto’s circumcision ceremony. She was actually carrying Alberto from the maternity room to the ceremony hall downstairs when it happened. Luckily, my sister was bale to save Alberto at the last minute. Unfortunately, however, my mother-in-law suffered a cerebral hemorrhage, and was immediately taken to the French Hospital. She lived for another week, maybe ten days, before she finally passed. My sister-in-law, Suzan Yahni, stayed with us from that day to the day she passed.

Anyway, back to when Ester’s family first came to Istanbul… After living in Sirkeci for a couple of days, her mother’s younger sister gave the family two rooms in her house to sleep in. They lived there for a couple of months. Afterwards, they moved to an old house on Mektep Street in the Sishane neighborhood. The money they had brought with them drained very quickly. They went through tough times financially. In all this while, Ester had started comprehending Turkish. She also started working because the family’s financial condition was quite rough. She first got a job at a stationary store. When the owner of the store sexually harassed her, however, she immediately quit that job. Luckily, she was able to locate a job through a friend at the Odeon Company’s Accounting Department. She worked there until we got married.

She became very good friends with a lady named Rachel Adato while she was working there. She also became the star of the department, and was quickly recognized by the owner of the Company. They began trusting her with secret Company information. My wife was taking care of most of the workload for the Department. She was working at the Company’s headquarters location. Odeon had three branch offices; in Kadikoy, Sirkeci and Beyoglu. She was controlling all incoming and outgoing goods to and from these branches, and trying hard not to make a mistake. As an accountant, she also had the opportunity to provide financial services for many famous persons such as Munir Nurettin Selcuk, Zeki Muren and Muzeyyen Senar.

At the time, I was governing Misne Tora’s [an association founded to help support poor school children] Youth Commission, and there was a wave of new candidates applying to become members of the Association. I, of course, had a secretary working with me - given my status as the President. Whenever a candidate wanted to apply, my secretary would have him/her fill out a form, and include a picture on his/her application.

I remember joking about it with my secretary when my wife-to-be’s application form arrived on my desk. I said to her “What is this, are we going to open up a school here or what?” because the picture my wife submitted with her application form was one that was taken when she was a student. My secretary said to me “You accept her membership, and then we can deal with it later.” My wife actually became a member 15 days after that. The first meeting she attended was during a Purim ball. She was sitting by herself on one corner of the ballroom. I asked my secretary “Who is this lady sitting over there at the corner?” She responded “That would be your student.”

As a coincidence, we were supposed to have our Association’s 50th-year meetings in a week’s time. A bunch of us decided to take the day off, and go somewhere. Some of us were going to Yesilkoy, and others were going to go to Tarabya. I was actually going to meet a lady friend at 3:00 PM in Tunel. I remember waiting for her until 3:30 PM, but she never showed. Well, I decided to go over to Tarabya to meet my friends there. My wife-to-be was there as well. This was my opportunity to see her in a closer manner. After Tarabya, my friends decided to go over to the municipal casino in Taksim, where the Ceylan Hotel stands today. I invited my wife there as my friend. We started dating shortly after.

My wife and I were dating around the same time she was working at Odeon. We were not sure as to whether we both wanted to get married. Plus, my family did not have a final decision. In an effort to get to know Ester better, my father went over to her workplace with an excuse for wanting to buy a three-wheeled bicycle for his nephew. He was also very close with Ester’s managers. There, he had an opportunity to see her and talk to her even though it was not too comprehensive a talk. Her managers, meanwhile, had given for her excellent references. In the end, my father decided that Ester and I should get married.

After the War

We got engaged on the 28th of May, 1952. We stayed engaged for about a year, and then got married on the 31st of May in 1953 at the Italian Synagogue. My father was a member of the Governing Board for the Italian Jewish Community in Turkey. This is probably why our wedding was really crowded and colorful. At the same time, my father was a member of the ‘Fakirleri Koruma Dernegi [Support Center for the Poor]. 23 So, all members from there attended our wedding with their significant others. Our whole family was also a member of the Misne Tora, and so all members from the Association attended our wedding as well. Actually, members of the Misne Tora put together a ceremony team for the special day. It was composed of ten male and ten female schoolchildren dressed in clothing specifically prepared for our wedding.

The 24th of March, 1999 fell on a Wednesday, and we had a meeting that day at the house of the Italian Jewish Community’s President. When the meeting was over, I came back home. That was when I learned that my wife had been in an accident. Like every week, that Wednesday, my wife was supposed to get together with her friends to play bridge. They had set the table ready for teatime at 5:00 PM. At about 3:15 PM, the electricity went out, and she wanted to go downstairs to open the apartment door so that other friends arriving could come in easily. Just as she was going down the stairs from the third floor towards the second, she fell and hit her head. She suffered a brain trauma. She was bleeding everywhere…

Dora Adut, her neighbor from the third floor, immediately took her to the Etfal Hospital. She had lost so much blood. By the time they reached the hospital, she had developed a cloth to her brain because of all the bleeding. That night, she was urgently taken to the emergency room for surgery. Her surgery took about five hours.

After the surgery, she continued to be kept at the emergency room of the Neurology Department for an additional two days. The hospital’s respiratory machines were, unfortunately, not sufficient for my wife’s condition, so she was transferred to the emergency room at the Cerraphasa Hospital’s Neurology Department in an ambulance. Her doctor there was Moiz Behar, who happened to be one of the most talented doctors in the Jewish community. Her 26-day emergency room stay passed as if she was in a vegetative state. She was later transferred to a regular room within the hospital, where she stayed for two more weeks. After that, she was transferred for a third time to the Balat Or Ahayim Hospital. 24 She continued receiving medical attention there for 26 more days. Only after that was she able to return home. Unfortunately, one year after this terrible accident, she broke her hip bone. Today, she can take care of all her needs herself…

I co-owned a drapery business with my brother between 1950 and 1958. We frequently did business in Anatolia. At the same time, I did some factory representation as well as helping my father with his insurance business. After my brother left for Canada, I began focusing solely on representation and exporting work. I did continue helping my father with the insurance business though. In later years, insurance brokerage became my main line of business. I retired last year, and sold my insurance agency to a friend because of financial difficulties.

At the beginning of the 60’s, I was trying to operate the insurance agency I took over from my father. According to the insurance laws in Turkey, a foreign national could not operate an insurance agency. That is why the agency was under my wife’s name. I wanted to become a Turkish citizen myself so that I could transfer the agency to my name. I submitted a request, but I was told that I had to bring a document with my application stating that I was no longer an Italian citizen. Once I completed this step, I had to submit a petition to become a Turkish national. I asked the government office “When do you think I can officially become a Turkish citizen?” They did not, however, give me a positive response. All I knew was that – depending on the result of the petition – this could take anywhere between six months and three years.

Moreover, when the petition is approved, my case was going to go to the Council of Ministers for processing. First, the Ministers’ approval is needed. After that, the President officially declares that a case is approved, and the approval is declared in the official newspaper. I asked “What citizenship am I supposed to hold in the meantime?” I was told that I could be given a temporary passport until then, but it was not going to be a Turkish passport. I did not want to be a person with this regular a passport, so I decided to continue being an Italian citizen.

My kids do not work in the insurance business. Nor do they want to learn anything about the business. My biggest desire was to be able to work with my children, and to transfer my business over to them someday. This did not happen though. Every one of them has different jobs today.

I have three children. One of them, unfortunately, passed in 1958 – eight days after he was born. He passed when a neglectful nurse was carrying her from the hospital to the salon, where he was going to be circumcised. Since he was only eight days old and was not yet circumcised before he passed, we could not give him a name. He was buried without one. One of the rabbis in the Italian Jewish community took our baby with him to an Italian Cemetery, performed his circumcision, and buried him there.

All my three children were born in Istanbul. Saul was born on the 15th of December, 1954. My son, who passed was born in 1956. My younger son, Alberto, was born on the 20th of November, 1960. Ester and I usually speak to the children in Turkish though both know Spanish, French and English.

My wife was the one who usually took care of the children. I would go to work early in the morning, and come home late. On weekends, however, I would take care of them, and we would usually go out together as a family. I believe that I have shown them the compassion a father should be able to show his children. I always tried helping them with their studies. Even though my wife had to drop out of school at seventh grade, she managed to continue educating herself at home, and augment her knowledge.

We have been living in the same apartment since my wife and I got married.

We used to go to the movies, plays and concerts together – as a family. At one time actually, we became members of the Konak Movie Theater in the Harbiye neighborhood. We went there every Sunday to see a movie. Before my wife had the accident, she used to go to the concerts that took place at the Ataturk Cultural Center every Saturday morning. I would come home on Saturdays after the morning prayer at the Synagogue, and read the paper or a book. We would go out together in the afternoons. On Sundays, we usually got together with three other families. The women played bridges together, and the men usually watched TV or chatted.

We went to Buyukada every summer. We had our own house there, so there was no need really to take a vacation and go somewhere during the summer. Only after selling that house in 1995, we began taking week-long vacations to Europe or different cities in Anatolia such as Cesme with some friends.

I used to frequently travel for business – mostly to Europe. I went to Italy, France, Belgium and Israel. My wife and I also took many trips to Europe with another couple.

The vacations I spent in Buyukada can be classified into several different periods - my childhood years, my teenage years, years when I was single and older, and finally my married years… When I talk about my childhood years in Buyukada, the first thing that comes to my mind is that we were four close friends back then. In fact, one of them recently passed away. His mother had a large dishwashing sink, which we used as a rowboat in the sea. I remember that once we almost drowned using that.

None of my children went to a Jewish school here, but they did go to the synagogue regularly when they were teenagers in order to attend Hebrew classes. They became members of the Arkadaslik Yurdu Dernegi [Friendship Center and Association] when they were teenagers, and participated in many activities there. I raised my children according to Jewish traditions. My children do not regularly go to the synagogue nowadays, but they do try and go on Yom Kippur or on some Saturday mornings – if they have the time.
    
The bar-mitzvah ceremonies for both my children were held at the Italian Synagogue on a Saturday. I remember them putting on the tefilim on a Thursday. On Saturday evening of the same week, we gave a cocktail party for friends and family; we cut the Bar-mitzvah cake…

I remember the berit-mila [circumcision ceremony] of both my children. In fact, my mother-in-law got sick during the circumcision ceremony of my younger son. Thank God, we were able to hold the ceremony as we wanted.

As for the important Holidays I celebrate, I love celebrating Rosh Hashanah and Pesach, both of which are Seder holidays. I also used to celebrate the Tubisvat Holiday for fruits and nuts so that my children would grow up knowing what it is for, but I do not celebrate it anymore.

My wife was a very good cook on her healthier days. She cooked a wide variety of foods, and all of them very well. She used to bake delicious cakes. I like all her cooking delights, so I cannot really choose one food over the other.

My parents were both religious people. They raised us so that we learned how to observe and behave according to important traditions. My kids are interested in their religion today as a result of experiencing my parents’ and my religious behavior.

Both my parents are buried in the Sisli Italian Cemetery as part of the Italian Jewish Community. My wife’s parents are buried at the Haskoy cemetery. I had the opportunity to read the Kadis prayer during their burial ceremony. My mother passed away one day before the Aasara Betevet Tubishvat Holiday. My father, on the other hand, passed on the fourth night of Pesach.

Almost all of the friends I have had to this date are Jewish. We used to get together with them at a couple’s house every week; the women played bridges and the men either chatted or watched TV. When I got together with my friends, our subjects of conversation were Israel, the fighting over there, and how the Country could grow. We used to exchange opinions on these subjects.

Both my children live in Istanbul today. My elder son, Saul, studied at the Sisli Ondokuzmayis Elementary School, at the Saint Benoit Lycee for middle school and at the Beyoglu Commerce Lycee for high school. He graduated from there at 18. He served in the military between 1979-80. He worked in a variety of businesses including insurance, tourism and textile businesses. Last year, he retired (officially) from his work as the Import-Export Manager of a firm that sells baby products, but he is still considered the Import-Export Manager of the firm today.

My younger son, Alberto, also went to the Sisli Ondokuzmayis Elementary School. He later began attending the private Hurriyet Lycee, and graduated from there. He served his military term in Van [a city on the Eastern side of Turkey] between 1982-83. Before he served, he was managing a cosmetics and perfume store in Buyukada with his mom. After he completed his military service, he began working as an accountant in a cargo business. He later took a job as the Accounting Manager of an international firm. He had been an accountant for seventeen years when my wife got into that terrible accident. This was when his occupation as an Accounting Manager came to an end. During the period in which he was unemployed, he got interested in photography. He was able to become a successful professional at a job he once viewed as a hobby. He is now working as a photographer for the Chief Rabbi’s Office and the Neve Salom Foundation. He has become quite successful. Whenever there is a ceremony or a party during which the services of a photographer will be needed, my son is there. He is also a researcher of photography.

The founding of Israel gave me tremendous pleasure and excitement. That day, I remember going over to the Consulate of Israel in Taksim, and watched as they hanged up the flag. I was so incredibly excited during that ceremony. My wife and I always try and follow important news about Israel. 

I did not really consider Aliya, or immigrating to Israel because of both my work here in Turkey and my age. But, I have visited Israel on many occasions, and seen many of its cities. My wife has some relatives there. My sister also immigrated there with her son a while back. I have so many friends, who have immigrated there. I try to keep in touch with some of them today. Some of them visit me when they come to Istanbul. Most of these people are my wife’s old friends and relatives. I do not remember having any problems here after the 1967 Six-Day-War.

I have a 42 year history at the FKD; the Association for Protecting the Poor. In fact, I was given an award when I completed my 40th year there as a member. I have also been a member of the Governing Council for the Italian Community since 1972. I have always tried to be an active participant in several other associations and support centers.

I have participated in many conferences. I remember giving a speech at the Kneset Israel Synagogue. That day, a ceremony was being held in honor of the FKD’s 50th-year anniversary. As the President of the Youth Commission, I gave a speech covering the activities of the Commission.

In 1975, I became a founding member of the Beyazit Lions Club, and started participating in several of the Club’s activities. I worked there for approximately 15 years as the President of a variety of Commissions within the Club. I retired from my volunteer work because of my age. I have also become a member of the Turk Yukseltme Vakfi [Turkish Ennobling Foundation], and volunteered there for a couple of years before retiring.
  
I always try and keep up with my religious duties. My favorite pastime and biggest desire is to go to the Synagogue on Saturday mornings and during important holidays.

I do not use e-mail or the internet.

My wife used to take care of the cooking in our house until she had that terrible accident. After the accident, we had to hire an attendant to help with the cooking and other housework. She cooks all our food nowadays.
 
Unfortunately, because of my wife’s medical condition, we do not get to see many of our old friends anymore. But, some of these friends call us to see how we are doing every chance they get. In this way, we are able to keep in touch with some of them.

I do not have a lot of political perspectives. I do not feel really bound by any political perspective because of my foreign citizenship.

I was at the Buyukada Synagogue, praying, when the 1986 Neve Salom massacre happened. 25 I actually happened to be sitting right next to the phone. The person sitting next to me answered the phone when it rang, and received the terrible news. None of us was really able to fully comprehend what had happened. I can say that we were quite shocked.

When the 2003 bombings took place, I was at the Italian Synagogue I always go to. 26 The Italian Synagogue happens to be just a few blocks away from the Neve Salom Synagogue, which was bombed. When I heard the explosion, I felt as if the Synagogue’s building I was in shook just a little bit. Thank God, there was not any damage to the building. I remember leaving though in the middle of the prayer’s, and passing through the Bankalar Street in trying to get home as soon as possible.

My wife and I speak French, Turkish or Spanish between each other. We speak Turkish, and sometimes French with our kids.

GLOSSARY

Avram Merkado Natan
Sofia
Bulgaria
Interviewer: Stephan Djambazov
Date of interview: March 2005

Avram Merkado is an energetic and active man. A former mountaineer, even now he still continues to go on excursions and mountain treks. In the mountains he also met his former late wife Nina and his present wife Simha, who is 15 years younger than him. They both live in Borovo (one of the nice residential districts in Sofia) in a two-room panel flat owned by his wife. He gets very upset when he speaks about the time he spent in the camp in Somovit on the Danube in 1943, from where the deportation of the Bulgarian Jews should have started. He says that he suffers from nervous breakdowns since then and starts crying while talking about that. He likes more the times before 1989 when democracy came to Bulgaria, although he did not agree with all activities of the ruling Bulgarian Communist Party, of which he was a member. Now he does not complain of poverty thanks to the aid of the Jewish organizations 'The Claims Conference' and 'American Joint' [1] and he regularly takes part in the life of the Jewish community in Sofia, which adds meaning to his life, although he is not religious.

My ancestors came to the Balkan Peninsula from Spain in 1492 during the time of the Ottoman Empire. [2] Then the Turkish authorities welcomed them because there were a lot of intelligent people among them – physicians, merchants... They settled throughout the Balkan Peninsula. My paternal grandfather's family is from Karlovo and my grandmother is from Tsarigrad [Istanbul]. I do not know how they met. My paternal grandmother did not know Bulgarian very well – she spoke Spanish [Ladino] and Turkish. I do not know my grandfather Mois Natan – he died early. He was a confectioner and as far as I know he had a workshop for confectionery, which he sold to various coffee shops. He lived in Varna and died there. I don't think my grandmother Sultana (Duda) worked – she gave birth to 13 children, but a lot of them died. When she gave birth to my father, he was taken out of the house and into the yard according to some old Jewish tradition. A cousin of theirs passed along, tossed a coin and bought him in this way. That's why my father's name is Merkado (bought) and his name written in the municipality records is Eliezer. That is a tradition typical for the Sephardi Jews. [3] I will try to explain it. Before Merkado there were other children who had died. At that moment he was the only child and the only son. There is a ritual in the Jewish tradition that the relatives should 'buy' the child so that they would all take care of him and he would live. This is some kind of guardianship, which increases his chances of survival even if his parents are very poor. According to the ritual the child lives with his parents but they do not buy him anything until he himself would ask them to do it. That is done to keep the children. After my father four more sons were born.

I do not know where exactly my grandfather Mois and my grandmother Sultana lived. They did not have their own house. They paid rent in various places. They spoke mostly Spanish, which we now call Ladino – an old Spanish dialect. [4] They also knew Turkish. My grandmother understood a little Bulgarian. They did not have any maids. I do not know if my grandfather was religious, but my grandmother was not very religious. My grandfather had three brothers: Nissim, Haham, Haim and one sister Ernestina. I know only her, as she is the youngest. She lived in Plovdiv. Once I went on a business trip there and my father asked me to find her and greet her. My grandmother had one sister who lived in Varna. She had two daughters and one son and during the Law for Protection of the Nation [5] in 1941 they were forced to leave Bulgaria because they were Turkish citizens, as was my grandmother. They were from Istanbul. I was in Varna visiting my grandmother when they left for Turkey. [6] Her name was Roza and her children – Beka, Lili and Alfred. I do not know how my grandfather dressed by my grandmother wore plain clothes.

My maternal grandfather's name was Avram Geron and my grandmother – Simha. He had a business with leather – he went from village to village, collected leather, processed it and sold it. I remember him. I was six or seven years old when he died and my grandmother died later when I was a university student. They also knew only Spanish [Ladino] and Turkish. They lived in Razgrad, but they did not have their own flat. They had three daughters – Rebeka, Ester and Rashel, and one son Yosif Geron. He was the eldest. During the [First] Balkan War [7] and World War I [8] my uncle and my grandfather enlisted as soldiers. Then the family moved to Ruse and my mother, who was the eldest of the sisters, worked as a seamstress to support her mother and sisters. They did not live in their own flat there either. They dressed in plain clothes. My maternal grandparents were religious, went to the synagogue and we celebrated with them the high holidays like Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. My uncle was also religious but his sisters were not. My grandparents did not go on vacations and they did not have maids.

The Jewish community lived in the Jewish neighborhood which was outside the center of the town. It consisted mostly of one-floor houses and not only Jews lived there. The place where I lived from 4-5 years of age until 13 years of age had four houses in one yard. Jews lived in two of the houses and Bulgarians in the other two. Throughout the years we kept in touch with the children of our Bulgarian neighbors. The mother in one of the families died young and my mother also looked after the children. Turkish people also lived next to us. [9] All the children from the nearby houses gathered together and played games. Our house had three rooms and a kitchen. The four of us – my parents, my brother and I lived there. My grandmother and my uncle paid rent in another house. We had a toilet, a bath and electricity.

There were two synagogues in Ruse –one of them was owned by the Sephardi Jews. It was big and beautiful. The other one was owned by the Ashkenazi Jews. There were two or three religious officials in the Sephardi synagogue and one chazzan in the Ashkenazi one. The rabbi is something like the bishop. He is more of a teacher than a preacher. There was also a shochet and a slaughter house at the synagogue. We brought there hens and chickens. Around 50 000 people lived in Ruse at that time. The Jewish community was around 3 000 people. There was a Jewish primary school. I graduated that school and so did most of the Jewish children. The school was a one-floor house in the Jewish neighborhood. Besides the big synagogue in Ruse there was a smaller one – midrash. The Ashkenazi synagogue is nowadays a club of the Shalom organization [10]. After 9th September 1944 [11] and the emigration of the Jews [12] it was turned into a gym. The walls of the old synagogue are more or less one meter thick. There was one enormous chandelier brought probably from Austria. I do not know if the synagogue is working now, because it is in a decrepit state. The smaller synagogue was demolished when the street to the river was constructed before 1944. The club of the lobby 'Bnai Brith' was next to that synagogue. Weddings, balls and parties were organized there because there was a big hall. It was a very elegant house and opposite it there was another big house, whose first floor was taken by the organization 'Malbish Arumim' (meaning 'dressing the poor') [Jewish women’s charity organisation. It was registered in 1912 in Ruse and in 1920 in Sofia.] On Sundays the merchants went there to play cards and mingle. The chazzan was also a shochet. There was a small brick building in the yard of the old Jewish school. There were hooks on its wall from which the birds slaughtered by the shochet for the Yom Kippur holiday were hung. That school was demolished in 1940-41 after the earthquake in Vrancha, Romania [Vrancha is an area in the Carpathian Mountains in Romania, famous as an area of strong seismic activity. Here earthquakes take place in 8-14 years, with an epicenter 100 km deep, which determines the great length of the seismic wave. The greatest earthquake in Vrancha was recorded in 1940 and has a magnitude of 9.5 on the Richter scale. The next big earthquake is in 1977 and has a magnitude of 7.2, in 1986 – 7.00 and in 1990 – 7.2] and we were not allowed to access the buildings of the Hashomer Hatzair organization [13]. There was also a canteen for poor children in the yard. The Jewish school was with 20-25 children in each class and a junior high school – four years of primary school and three years of junior high school. Most of the Jewish children first studied in the Jewish school and then in a Bulgarian high school or technical school. We also studied religious subjects. We studied Jewish literature, Jewish history and Jewish religion – Tannakh. On Friday evenings we were taken to the synagogue and the older students read the prayer. My brother Mois was one of the chazzans there when he was in the third grade. He is still religious and goes to the synagogue. He read the prayers and tried to follow the prescriptions.

At that time there was a variety of Jewish professions. There were rich merchants, street vendors, craftsmen, porters, factory owner such as Avram Ventura. He owned the 'Zhiti' factory, which manufactured bolts, rivets and nails. There were also Jewish workers, but there was also that very nice organization of the Jewish community 'Malbish Arumim', which raised money from the rich and gave breakfast and lunch to the poor children in the Jewish school. It was founded by the Jewish municipality. In the autumn they also bought clothes and shoes for the poor Jewish children. At that time we did not feel anti-Semitism towards us. We were very tolerant to each other. We always took part in the parades and national holidays.

My brother and I took part in the sports organisation 'Maccabi' [14]. On all holidays we went out in uniforms, carrying a drum and a flag. We were part of the parade as were all people in Ruse. We sang various songs – 'Maritsa Rushes' [15], 'Quiet White Danube' [16] – the songs all sang. Of the Jewish songs we knew about Trumpeldor [17]. In fact, we were educated in Zionism. That was done by a Jewish nationalistic organization. There were a number of Zionist organizations – 'General Zionists' [18], 'Poalei Zion' [19], 'Revisionists of Jabotinsky' [20] and youth organizations such as 'Hashomer Hatzair' and 'Maccabi'. 'Maccabi' was a sports organization. We had a very nice gym where we gathered daily and twice a week we did exercises with a gym instructor. My father was in the leadership of 'General Zionists', which was a centrist organization. The other one, 'Poalei Zion' was a leftist, social democratic organization, and the Revisionists founded by Jabotinsky (a Polish Jew) had a right orientation and were more radical about the liberation of Palestine. Each organization had its youth formations. The Revisionists had 'Betar' [21] – they organized manifestations in the Jewish neighborhood dressed in brown shirts and black trousers. The others were 'Hashomer Hatzair' – they studied hard Ivrit and in the organization 'Ken' (nest) they spoke only in Ivrit and were getting ready for an aliyah (leaving) for Israel – to work in the kibbutzim there. And 'Maccabi' was also a Zionist sports organization – follower of the 'General Zionists'.

Apart from education, every family received the so-called steel money-boxes used to collect donations. They were called 'Keren Kayemet le’Israel' – these were money to buy land in Palestine. These money-boxes were regularly taken to the municipality, all the money was collected and sent to the Consistory. Thus, the first Jewish settlements in Israel were created – the Israeli lands were bought from the Arabs and the kibbutzim and villages were built.

Friday was a market day – my mother did the shopping – mostly fish from the Danube, vegetables, agristada [Traditional Jewish holiday dish prepared from fish with sour egg sauce, oil, salt and lemon, which is served on Rosh Hashanah.], vegetable marrows, andjinara [Traditional Jewish dish made by pickled vegetable marrows, oil, salt and wild plums, which is served on Rosh Hashanah.]. My father worked and my brother and I went to help carry the bags. Usually villagers came to the market selling their produce. I was sent to buy only yogurt from a Jewish dairy shop. My father bought butter, cottage cheese, cheese and yellow cheese from a Whiteguard – Nikolay. In 1938 some cousins of ours emigrated to Israel and left us their house, but later they sold it to another family. I do not know their names, they are from the Geron family on my grandmother' side and the house was sold through some middlemen to Nikolay and Olga Spasovi. They did not have any children. They were communists, at that time my brother also joined the Union of Young Workers (UYW) [22] – the youth organization of the Bulgarian Communist Party. We did not have a radio because we did not have the money to buy one. But they did and we all listened to the news and knew what was going on. We discussed the developments and talking with Nikolay and Olga, my father who was a Zionist and a religious man, became a communist and a supporter of the partisans. We hid in the house some of their illegal friends.

My father Merkado Mois Natan was born in 1893 in Varna. Then he lived in Dobrich. He took part in World War I at the front in Dobrudzha and he was wounded there. After the end of the war he escaped from Dobrich in a carriage because the Romanians wanted to arrest him for fighting against their army. Then he settled in Varna with his parents. His two brothers Aron and Albert stayed in Dobrich even when the town was annexed by Romania [23]. My father has four brothers. They are younger than him and their names are Aron, Albert, Marko and David. He also has a sister – Belina. My father studied until the third grade, which is equal to present-day seventh grade, and since the family was large and my grandfather could not support it, my father started work in a tobacco factory. The chief accountant of the factory was a socialist, who liked my father and taught him to do accounting. And until the end of his life my father worked as an accountant. The factory was owned by Turkish nationals who lived in Vienna. Later they closed the factory. My father was already married and my mother and he came from Varna to Ruse.

My mother Rebeka Avram Natan (nee Geron) was born in Razgrad in 1897 or 1898 – we could not find out the exact date. And we always joked with her that we could not celebrate her birthday because we did not know her date of birth. She had a primary education. At home my parents spoke mostly Spanish [Ladino], but when our neighbors came, they spoke Bulgarian. My mother knew Bulgarian because she had worked as a seamstress in a Bulgarian company and she could read in Bulgarian. My parents met in Ruse – my father was on a business trip there and a cousin of my mother's and a friend of his introduced them to each other. They engaged, then they had a religious wedding and went to live in Varna. They dressed in clothes typical for the times. My mother says that my father was a dandy and had a Bohemian lifestyle. When they lived in Varna and my father had a job, they were well-off. He had a big salary, but when my brother was born, my mother got sick and at one moment all the money was gone, even their savings. Then they had to move to Ruse, where my uncle offered my father a job. In Ruse we were never well-off, because only my father worked and my mother was often sick. We lived quite frugally.

We lived in rented premises. We moved a lot – we changed about five or six houses. We had water, electricity and an inside toilet in every house. We usually had two rooms and a living room. We had a bathroom only in the house of Nikolay Spasov, the water-heater used wood and coals. Then we lived at the house of a Spanish consul in Ruse – a well-off Jew. After the Law for the Protection of the Nation was passed, he realized what the situation was and decided to leave for Spain. He asked my father to move into his house – it was big – four or five rooms and a big living room. That happened in the autumn of 1941. His name was Aftalion. I do not remember anything else about him because I was a child then. He locked the furniture in one of the rooms and let us use all the others. It had a big yard, it was a rich house. We did not pay rent. He only wanted us to keep his house. We spent a year there and in the winter of 1942 the police evicted us. The state confiscated the house and threw us out. My mother had burnt her leg and was lying in bed – they shoved her in a wash-tub and threw her out. We were sheltered by some very close friends of my parents'. They let us use a room with a small corridor and we lived there until October 1944.

Everyone in Ruse had small gardens. My mother planted flowers, parsley, dill. There were no animals in the yards. We had servants only for a year. My mother was seriously ill then and we took a very nice girl from the villages. Her name was Kina. We had books at home. My parents loved reading. When we got older, we also read the books. They were in Bulgarian. We had 'The Dreyfus Trial', books in aesthetics and ethics. My brother and I read the novels by Karl May, Mayne Reid, Jack London, Maxim Gorky [24]. We also had prayer books, which my father used. I also knew Ivrit from the Jewish school. My brother still remembers it, but I have forgotten it. I did not buy newspapers, even now I do not like reading newspapers and I do not remember if my parents read them. My father was a religious man. He went to the synagogue, knew all the prayers. He knew Ivrit. He studied until the third grade, but he was very clever, he spoke French, Turkish, Ivrit, Bulgarian and could write in French. We visited my uncle on holidays and usually my father read the prayers. My uncle also read them although he did not know Ivrit so well. My other uncles (my father's brothers) were not religious. On the high holidays we gathered at the house of grandmother Simha.

My parents were part of the Jewish community. My father was in the leadership of the Zionist organization 'General Zionists'. My mother was not interested in politics. They were Zionists, but later under the influence of Nikolay and Olga they started sympathizing with the communists. After 9th September 1944 my father became a member of the Bulgarian Communist Party and my mother remained 'non-party communist'. My parents got on very well with their neighbors. When the mother of Tosho and Boianka died, the two children were twins, my mother looked after them. They lived in the house next to ours with their father Bai [uncle] Ivan, who was a tailor. They had an elder brother Lyubo who was the age of my brother, while the twins were one year older than me. We played together. Most of my parents' friends were Jews. There was a family, with whom they were very close and when they gathered together, they laughed all the time.

They were very merry people. They were the ones who sheltered us when we were thrown out of the big house. They had three children. One of them died recently in Israel – he was a famous conductor and composer there – Izhak (Ziko) Gratsiani [there is no further information about him]. I cannot remember a lot about him, because I was five years younger than him and did not go out with him and his friends. But Ziko was the leader of the high school orchestra, he even established a Jewish jazz band in Ruse – he was very talented from an early age. I knew his sister Mati, who was only one year older than me. Their family was very easygoing and when they gathered together with my parents, they never spoke about their problems, but they always tried to cheer the atmosphere, especially after the anti-Jewish laws were adopted.

My father worked all his life without a day off. He took money as a compensation for his entitled holidays so that we would make ends meet. When we were children, we were sent to our grandparents in Varna for the summer. Like my father, my mother also did not go on holiday. When my father retired and came to Sofia, we took him to a vacation home in Bankya. [Bankya is a small town near Sofia, famous for its nice air and healing properties and with its healing mineral water. There are a lot of vacation homes in Bankya. During totalitarian times the state leader at that time Todor Zhivkov had a residency there]. My mother was at a sanatorium at that time. And my father said, 'It turns out it is very nice to have a break'. My mother's sisters kept in touch all the time. Our cousins and we grew up together. My uncle did not have children and looked after all of us. There was even a tradition – on Sundays, our uncle would hire a carriage, pass by all the sisters and take their children for a walk. My father had a sister who was not married and four brothers. Two of them lived in Dobrich and I have visited them. Their names were Aron and Albert and after 9th September 1944 they moved to Israel.

I was born on 10th July 1929 in Ruse. There were no kindergartens then and my mother looked after us. We started the Jewish school at six years of age. The first year was something like a preparatory class and then we continued in the school. We played in the yard, on the street and mostly in 'Maccabi'. We joined the organization at six years of age and were divided into groups according to our age. We played gymnastics, children' games, I grew up there. In the Jewish school I was good at maths, geography. Our teacher was a very kind and delicate woman – Mrs Kamilarova. Her son is a famous Bulgarian violin player, Emil Kamilarov. I also loved literature because the literature teacher was also a very interesting woman. The subject I most disliked was Tannakh. Our teacher was the headmaster Ben Avram and when he entered the room he put me and my friend Aron Kapon (he died in Israel years later) in the opposite ends of the classroom so that we would not make noise. I thought that all the legends about Avraam, Izhak, Yakov did not sound real enough and I could not understand them. That is why, we made noise during the classes.

There was no anti-Semitism during those times. I did not go to private classes. My school friends were Jews and in the neighborhood we played with Tosho and Nikola Korabov (a famous Bulgarian cinema director) [25], because he lived nearby. We kicked the rag ball, played hide-and-seek, walked in the vineyards around the town. When we were older, we went to the river. Games were our hobby – we played 'ashitsi', marbles. There was a gym in 'Maccabi' in the Jewish neighborhood. There were around 200 children there. Various people were instructors in it – Aron Alfandari, Jacques Kapon – brother of my friend Aron and others. There was also a nice volleyball playground, a little football field and in the gym there were gym apparatuses. 'Maccabi' also organized tourist excursions – we went outside the town in the 'Sveta [St] Petka' cave. It was 5-6 kilometers from the town in some limestone slopes near the Lom River. We went there on foot, had lunch, and went back. We also went to a monastery for a walk.

Our parents did not have the money to take us anywhere and we did not go anywhere with our friends. Yet my father tried not to deprive us of anything. On Sunday evenings we sometimes went to the neighborhood pub. It was visited by Jewish, Bulgarian and Armenian families. During the week only the men went there to drink rakia [brandy]. Our father ordered kebapcheta [gilled oblong rissoles] for us in wooden plates and lemonade. They gathered with other families and it was something like a ritual for us. We did not go there every Sunday, only when we had money.

When our parents got together with their friends, they did not play cards. They usually gathered after dinner to talk (there was no TV then), usually they told each other jokes and had fun. My father did not play cards. He knew how to play but did not do it in order to protect us from becoming gamblers. My brother Mois and I grew up and studied together. Then he left for Czechoslovakia and I remained in Bulgaria. We had mutual friends. My father went to the synagogue, but not regularly. When the time for my bar mitzvah came, the Law for Protection of the Nation was already adopted and we all lived in one room. My brother had his bar mitzvah. At that time we lived in the nice house of Aftalion. My father threw up a great party then – invited all relatives and friends. Of all religious holidays I was impressed most by Yom Kippur, when you fast and ask for forgiveness. Purim was a merry holiday. We, the children, were dressed in fancy clothes, and acted out some performances. On Yom Kippur we did not eat all day and waited for the evening to come in order to eat. In fact, the men were in the synagogue the whole day and the prayers were told there. In the evening we laid the table with the typical Jewish dishes. For Purim we prepared some masks at school, but I do not remember what they were.

The first time I felt serious anti-Semitic attitude towards me was after the Law for Protection of the Nation was passed in the end of 1941 and the beginning of 1942. My father was left without work. Before that my uncle Yosif had opened a bookstore selling to wholesalers and had taken my father to be his associate. My father was an accountant, a traveling salesman, everything, because my uncle did not understand how to do business. He was involved only with his capital. They even imported goods from Germany – pens, rubbers etc. But under the Law for Protection of the Nation the bookstore was closed. My uncle took all the goods in it. My father remained without salary and any money. So, my parents started selling our possessions to make ends meet. We were also evicted from the big house.

We had an uncle married to the sister of my mother, Ester. He was a glazier – very enterprising and with a technical inclination. His only problem was that he was lazy. He earned a little money and then he closed his workshop and rested. His name was Simo Tsimerman. He offered my father to make table mirrors. They were made with tin frames, carton paddings and then the glass was cut. He and my father cut the glass, because my father had learned that after the big hailstorm in Ruse, which broke a lot of windows. Then my father went to help uncle Simo, because there was a lot of work and he could not cope alone. Now when uncle Simo saw that we were desperate, he offered us to make those mirrors. I also took part. We worked illegally and sold them to Bulgarian companies. My father bought a small manual press and I worked in the small room which our uncle Fiko Grasiani gave to us. I graduated junior high school in the Jewish school but under the Law for Protection of the Nation we were not allowed to study in a high school. It was 1942, I did not go to school and helped my father. We did not have working hours, but we worked all the time and there were a lot of orders.

We put on the yellow stars [26] and we were not allowed to walk in the center of the town. We walked only in our neighborhood. There was a curfew from 9 pm to 7 am, when we were not allowed to go out at all. We could not study, could not work and most of the Jews dug trenches, because the American and the English planes passed above the town on way to Romania. The Jews were also hired for laying on cables, in other words, for heavy labor. My brother Mois went underground. He was a UYW member. I was not a member yet, only a sympathizer. Some classmates of mine and I gathered and discussed these issues, but we were not allowed to become members, because we were still young. My brother and his friends went underground and hid around the Ruse region until they were caught. We knew nothing about them and my mother got sick from worry, not knowing if he was dead or alive.

When they were caught, we knew at least that he was alive. But my mother, washing his clothes soaked with blood, when we got home from the police station, cried a lot. Because it was evident that they had been beaten a lot. And after two or three months we were taken to Somovit. There was a Jewish concentration camp there, created firstly for Jews from Sofia. On 24th May 1943 [27] the Sofia Jews organized a demonstration together with the rabbi harbi Daniel [28], the police dispersed them and arrested whoever they could – only male Jews. They took around 300 people to the school in Somovit [29]. This is a small village near the Danube with a port – very beautiful. Then we were also brought from Ruse – families of communists, whose members were in jail or arrested for communist activities. We were the three of us – my mother, my father and I. At first they told us to prepare only hand luggage, but later they confiscated it and never gave it back. We were left with only our clothes on our backs, all our money was taken too. We were 38 people and we traveled by ship all night; in the morning we were in Somovit. 325 Sofia Jews were already there, only men. They also had nothing else except their clothes on.

After us a small group from Plovdiv, very rich families, was also brought to the village. It turned out that the Plovdiv municipal chief gathered them and told them to give him 50 000 levs each. Whoever did not give him money would be sent to Somovit. The people who paid in Plovdiv remained there. Those who refused were brought to Somovit. When they saw the situation, they wired someone right away, maybe they made a deal with the provost marshal. They spent only one night with us and were released the next day. Only one family remained with us – with two young children. The man said, 'I will not give money to fascists.' But his wife was crying all the time, the children were only 4-5 years old. It was horrible there. Everyone was telling him, 'Pay the money, because we would not get out of here alive, save at least your children and your wife!' And he would say, 'I will not give any money to them!' But in a week, he was not so sure any more. He offered his wife to pay for her and the kids. But she said, 'I am going nowhere without you!' So, in the end he agreed, paid the money and they were all released.

There were families with young children from Kyustendil and Dupnitsa in the camp. At one time two Jewish girls arrived – prostitutes from Salonika, Greece. One of them lived with a Bulgarian officer and the other one with a Greek. But when the deportation of the Greek Jews began, they hid them. But after a while they came out, the authorities arrested them and brought them to Somovit. Later a Jew from Skopje arrived, then another one from Kavala or some other town on the Aegean Sea. [30] They all told us about how the Jews had been deported. So we all realized that the same fate was awaiting us too. We arrived in the camp on 16th July 1943. The chief was a beast and on arriving he found a coin of 5 levs in my pocket. I had forgotten it there. He slapped me twice and brought me to the ground. Every night before the roll-call he beat someone. At first he began with insults and dirty words. Then he brought a man in front of all and beat him up. Depending on his mood he would beat one or three people on one evening. Their only fault was that they had found some bread or fruit thrown by the villagers passing by. 'Who eats bread?' would ask the chief. The man would step forward and he would beat him up. That happened in the yard of the school where we lived. We slept in common rooms on the floor and we were allowed to go out only in the evening. We stayed in the yard the whole day. And the villagers passed and pitied us. And they would throw us something. We were not allowed to go out and stood in the dirt there. Only one man went out – bai Sinto Eshkenazi, who was a very good tailor. When the marshal provost found that out, he would send for him to make clothes for him. Sinto went there with a policeman. Three or four policemen guarded us. There was a high fence on one side and a hill on the other. If someone stood on the hill, he would see everything. There was nowhere to escape.

The Jews in the camp were around 520 people. We ate beans soup and a piece of bread – morning, noon and evening. There was a streamlet behind the toilet where we could wash. We did not have any soap. We were full of lice. One of the Jews was a doctor, but we did not have any medical examinations. We had no drugs, no hygiene. We slept on the floor, one next to the other. If you wanted to turn around, you had to get up, turn and lie down again. The tailor in the village was a very nice man, a communist. Through him bai Sinto got in touch with relatives of ours in Ruse. The post clerk in the village was also very good man. And not only they – all the villages felt sorry for us... I am overwhelmed with emotions...

One evening when bai Sinto returned, he told us that two barges were getting ready at the port for us. And the next day a German officer with soldiers came. We knew what had happened to the Aegean Jews and realized that we would be deported. We could not sleep the whole night. The next day, however, we were not told anything. A policeman came, took bai Sinto to the tailor's workshop. We were waiting. In the evening bai Sinto came back and said, 'We are staying here, the barges left.' We started singing and dancing with joy. At one time we even danced a horo. The policemen who guarded us, started clapping. The villagers also gathered to look at us. We felt as if we were living a second life!

By the way, I do not know how in one night the villagers sent a message to Sofia about our deportation and it was blocked from there. Probably through the post office clerk and the local party organization. If we were deported from Somovit as first group, probably many Jews from Bulgaria would have been deported after us. But since our deportation was blocked, all the Jews remained in Bulgaria. We were the first group, which they intended to deport silently from Somovit – a small village, so that there would not be mass protests. After these events, with the help of the deputy speaker of the Bulgarian Parliament Peshev [31] in March 1943 when the deportation was canceled, the authorities tried to organize another deportation in April. It failed again. After the demonstration on 24th May in Sofia the authorities had decided to make Somovit the base, from which Jews to be deported. I do not know what happened but it is a fact that the two barges were at the port, the Germans came to take us, but we stayed. I think that the villagers called Sofia and the people there took action so that we would stay. When I am asked who saved us, I answer – the Bulgarians saved us. I do not know any names.

That happened in the end of August 1943 and things started changing. At one time that beast, the chief, was replaced. A kinder chief was assigned in his place. I do not remember his name. Almost every week we were taken under guard to the Danube to wash ourselves. We would sit under the willows and take out the lice, we felt human beings again. Firstly the men were taken to the river, and the next day the women. The chief did not beat us or insult us. In September, the children had to start school and we were taken above the village, where we started building sheds, a faucet and toilets. Around 15th September we moved to live there. There was no fence, but there were guards – the policemen. And we could escape nowhere.

Around 10th October the provost marshal ordered us to fall in and read us a release order. There was a lot of joy. First, the Sofia Jews were released, because then they were taken to labor camps [32]. In two-three days a group of people was released. On 16th October all Jewish families were released. Earlier Avram Ventura and 2-3 richer families were released. Probably they paid someone in Ruse. Avram Ventura's daughter Ana was killed by the police. [33] She had gone underground and was a secretary of the town committee of the UYW in Ruse. After that Avram Ventura was sent to Somovit. Then we were all released. We traveled by train to Pleven and there the Jewish community took care of us. We received food and shelter and the next day we left for Ruse.

My brother Mois was already in prison. Even in Somovit we knew that he was sentenced because we received letters from his through the tailor. We returned to Ruse and started making mirrors again. We continued to live in the house of our parents' friends. Mois was in the Ruse prison – in 1944 when the bombing started they were transferred to the Pleven prison. Even though we earned very little, we brought him food. We could see him once a week – we brought him clothes and food. We also brought food for the other 4-5 boys with whom he was imprisoned – some of the boys were from the town and the others were from the villages.

On 8th September 1944 the Soviet forces entered Ruse and we welcomed them. It was great joy. Firstly, we saw one car and communications troops installing a cable. Then we went to watch how they made a pontoon bridge over the Danube. And the first car – an open jeep with an officer inside – suddenly flew in the air – the people lifted it and carried it. The officer got embarrassed. 'Tovarishti, pozhaluista!' [From Russian: Comrades, please!] Then we went on a demonstration singing and the policemen hid away. The Germans had withdrawn their troops. After ten days Mois and his friends also returned form the prison in Pleven – they had stayed in the town in order to overthrow the fascist authorities. At that time the power in Ruse was also taken by the people – some of the policemen from State Security were arrested, others killed. I was already a member of an illegal UYW group – four boys and I had formed it in 1944. We collected money for the prisoners, for the people underground – we stole, we did everything we could to help. We were still boys – 14-15 years old.

We founded our own UYW club. We shouted on the streets – songs, agitation. We started courses in Marxism – Leninism. I enrolled in the high school in Ruse. I had one grade officially recognized as a person affected by the Law for Protection of the Nation – I enrolled in the fifth grade but I had to catch up with the material. We helped the Soviet troops in Ruse. The high school turned into a Soviet military hospital. We studied in the cinemas – as well as one could study there. We were only taught and not examined. Those were revolutionary times. We were asked to guard and to look for fascists. Once they gave me a gun. We were gluing posters all night and since one girl had been shot by fascist recently, they gave us one gun when we were working. When we finished the job, we returned it. We did agitation, propaganda, we did not feel like studying. It was not a time for studies. We were full of enthusiasm and we mixed with the Bulgarian youths. That lasted 5-6 months. Then we realized that we had to study and I graduated from the high school in 1947. I was a secretary of the UYW in the high school and deputy chairman of the United Youth School Union. We tried to attract more of our classmates. In my class all students were UYW members, except two boys who were sons of rich villagers. They did not mingle with us. We were friends with all the rest even after we graduated.

When we finished high school we went on a brigade [34] to build the Hainboaz pass – this is one of the national construction sites, in which the socialist youth contributed to the construction of the road – digging, etc. In the evenings we gathered around the camping fire and sang songs. We slept in tents. In 1947 I started studying in the Higher Technical School in Ruse. At first I did not want to go to university, because my brother was already studying and my father had a small salary – he was an accountant in the commissariat. Then he became chief accountant in the company 'Clothes and Shoes'. I wanted to become a worker, because I shared those ideas and wanted to help the family. But one day my father and brother persuaded me that the country needed not only workers, but also engineers. So, they convinced me to continue my education. I spent two years in Ruse. Then the Higher Technical School was closed and I was transferred to Sofia where I graduated the Higher Machine Electrical and Technical Institute in 1952.

I started working as an engineer at the construction site of the present-day Danube Bridge, which was then called the Bridge of Friendship [35]. I was the technical leader of the assembly brigades. My mother was seriously sick and my father was deep into debt in order to support our studies. I had to work one year to pay the debts. My father was also working, but it was impossible to support two students and our very sick mother with only one salary. So, he had taken loans from friends, he had not paid the rent, and because they knew him, they did not evict him. I started work and gradually I started paying the debts back. Then I transferred to Sofia in a military design organization – we designed hiding places, I designed the ventilation and other installations. I also did my military service there – that was in the summer of 1954 when we finished the bridge and I was conscripted to Boychinovtsi station [Montana district] where I spent two months. Then I went to the design organization. It was housed in the Jewish Home [36] in Sofia. I worked there a year and a half. I did not stay any longer because I did not like all the secrecy. Then I worked a year and a half in ‘Mashproekt’ and then in ‘Himmetalurgproekt’ [design institutions in machine construction, chemistry and metallurgy, designing plants in these sectors]

Meanwhile, many Jews started emigrating to Israel. All my uncles and aunts left. Only we remained together with a cousin – Avram Pinkas. My father's brothers also left and so did their mother Sultana. My other grandmother Rebeka died in Bulgaria. Her son Yosif Geron died here too. Our ideas and education were different. We felt good here, we had jobs. We said nothing to those who left – there were even members of the Bulgarian Communist Party who emigrated. There were political prisoners and a former partisan from Ruse who left. When their families decided to leave, they left with them. That was not a question of ideology or understanding. After the tortures and the sacrifices, which the Jews experienced during World War II, the people thought, 'Let's go to our own country.' That was the main reason why they left. At one time I also thought about leaving. It was when I experienced a serious disappointment at my work place. I was given a very big project – a furnace for carbide for the plant in Devnya [37]. That is a very explosive substance, because the carbide melts at a temperature of 2 000 degrees C by means of an electric arc with the capacity of 24 000 kilowatts. The whole furnace weighed 700 tons and contained three electrodes, each electrode weighed 45 tons. Everything was cooled by water. The project was very difficult and I invested a lot of effort and nerves in it. And then I was accused of importing foreign bricks and spending a lot of dollars, while I could have done it with Bulgarian bricks. I was under a lot of stress until I convinced them that those bricks were of a better quality.

When the furnace was started for the first time, it was sheer luck that we survived. The furnace had to be drilled with an electrical arc electrode. We started the furnace, but the workers could not make the hole for one whole day. At the same time the lava was filling the tub of the furnace. According to the design plans there is a steel crane where the worker with the electrode is, which is cooled by water because the temperature is very high. That water passes through some hoses. On the third day when the worker made the hole, the flow of lava turned out to be very strong because of the high pressure which had built up inside. It poured on the floor and the hoses melted from the high temperature and the water inside them poured out too. Water and carbide make acetone, which explodes. But the mist was so dense that there was not enough oxygen for an explosion. We all survived by mere coincidence.

We stopped the water, the mist cleared, but the carbide was being cooled in a revolving drum 102 meters long, over which water is poured. A colleague of mine had designed it, but he had calculated the volume of necessary water on the basis of the data for the output, which I had given to him. Yet, that output turned out to be 6-7 times higher. The drum started getting red. If it were torn, everything would explode in a second. Dmitriy, the consultant on the project from the Russian side and I sat there and waited until the flow subsided and it was certain that the drum would hold. If the drum exploded, the staff and we would be dead in an instant. No mistake about that. Maybe when the workers built the furnace, they made it more difficult to be drilled. Dmitriy was a very nice boy at my age. He was from Karaganda [an industrial city in central-eastern Kazakhstan – at that time part of the USSR]. There were a number of such furnaces in Karaganda. He said to me, 'I have done that a lot of times and never has such a thing happened to me.' Our first white hairs are from this experience. But once the furnace was started, there were no more problems with it. It worked without failure for nine years. That furnace is in the plant producing polyvenilchloride in Devnya.

We returned to Sofia and instead of being thanked for everything, some incompetent and gossipy person was promoted to chief engineer. I was group leader of the machine construction department in ‘Himmetalurgproekt’. That was in 1964. The chief of the department was a very good friend with that man Petko Hristov and brought him from Dimitrovgrad to Sofia. Probably Petko had been a very good engineer in Dimitrovgrad, but he was not a good constructor. So, he started making intrigues. All of the group leaders including me resigned. Only Marin Ivanov Marinov remained working for him and Petko started gossiping against him too. At that time, in 1965 I wanted to emigrate to Israel. I have a nerve condition ever since Somovit.

My nervous system is shattered and I had a nervous breakdown again. My physician advised me to change the atmosphere. I quit the job and became a teacher in an evening technical school in Sofia. I applied for emigration, my wife also agreed. I was already married and had children. But the authorities refused to let me go. Later I found a way to discover the reason – it was because I had designed installations for the military plants in Sopot, Kazanlak and Karlovo [38] - furnaces, in which ingots, which are later used to produce shells. My group made designs for the military plants and that was why I was not allowed to emigrate.

I met my wife in the Vitosha Mountain. I am a tourist and I still go to the mountain. Once my chief in ‘Himmetalurgproekt’, Marin, his wife Atanaska and I decided to go to Vitosha. It was February 1958 and we went skiing. There we caught up with a group of young people and together with them went to the ‘Fonfon’ mountain hostel. I got acquainted with my future wife, the next day we went skiing together and then we started on our way back together with Milka, a friend of my wife. I taught them how to ski and helped them, but I fell down and sprained my ankle. When I got home, my leg was swollen. And Nina Perets, my future wife, told Milka, 'Let's go and see him.' Nina is a Jew and Milka - a Bulgarian. But Milka was too shy, so Nina came alone to see me. Then we were living in a rented flat in the Banishora residential district in Sofia. In 1956 my parents and I changed the rented flat in Ruse to one in Sofia. That is how our friendship started. Nina and I married on the same day with my brother - 12th December 1959. At that time my wife's aunt and uncle from Moscow were visiting her. They were political emigrants. [39] Their names were Solomon and Rebeka Goldstein. Rebeka is a sister of Julieta, Nina's mother. The Goldstein family has lived in Moscow since 1918. They also spent some time in Switzerland where they met Lenin, who invited them to the USSR. Julieta and Josef Perets lived in Sofia. They were interned to Montana. That is why, at first we lived for one month at my father's place (my mother had already passed away) – my father was in one of the rooms, my brother and his wife, Yanka, in the other and Nina and I – in the kitchen. When Nina's relatives returned to Moscow we went to live at Nina's parents – we lived in one of the rooms and her parents – in the other.

Next year our daughter Beka was born – on 14th August 1960. My brother's son Merkado was born the same year. Three years later our second children were born – on 28th June 1963 Joze [Josef] waz born, and my brother's son Alfred was born the same year. We raised them – my wife was working as a technician in a laboratory measuring electrical appliances, and I worked as a designer. My wife died in 1976. In 1973 she was operated from breast cancer, she lived three more years, but she had metastases and she died. She was born in 1934. Before she got sick, we went trekking every year (a group of tourists start walking from mountain hostel to another, sleeping in different places and following a fixed route usually in Rila, Pirin or Stara Planina [The Balkan] Mountains). We also brought our children with us. I married again in 2004. I've been together with Simha Aladjem (her father's name) for ten years. We also met in the mountain. I have known my second wife ever since she was a child – she was born in 1944 in Ruse and her parents, especially her father, were great tourists. So, we met in the mountains. Her father Solomon Aladjem (upholsterer in a company) and her mother Rayna Aladjem (hairdresser) had been interned to Ruse and they met there.

My job as a teacher was very light, but low-paid. And I loved designing, so I quit the technical school and started work in ‘Vodproekt’ in 1969. I was chief engineer of the Machine department – we prepared designs for dams, pumping stations, pressure pipelines. My employers offered me to go and work in Cuba. So, in January 1979 I left for Cuba with my son. My daughter stayed in Bulgaria to study, she was already 18 year old and lived by herself. My brother and his wife helped her. I worked in Cuba for three years and a half. I was in a plant producing hydraulic installations for dams and pumping stations. I was happy there. I got along very well with the Cubans. I can say a lot about Cuba. At one time the Mexican Foreign Minister arranged a meeting between the USA State Secretary and Fidel Castro's adviser. The Americans said that they would lift the economic blockade, turn over Guantanamo and restore diplomatic relations with Cuba if the country withdrew its forces from other countries and stopped interfering in their internal affairs. Cuba had military missions in Angola, Mozambique and other places. But the Cubans declined and there was a lot of coverage on that.

Fidel Castro organized a demonstration. He spoke three or four hours and said that he did not make deals with the revolution and his ideas. So, the American Congress adopted a decision for serious measures against Cuba and was inclined to attack. Cuba raised into combat readiness all its arms on the coasts and mobilized half the men. One morning I went to the plant and the director told me that we were going to the site. We produced hydrotechnical installations for dams and pumping stations and we hired assembly brigades to install them. We got into the Volga [a car manufactured in the USSR] and left. After a while we reached a military base. The director told them our names and they let us in. I am a foreigner, but they did not want to see my documents, nor did they ask me anything. A lieutenant colonel welcomed us and showed us their lines or armaments – tanks, cannons. He told us that we should cover them so that the Americans would not see them. I said, 'Okay, what materials do you have?' We had never done anything like that before. 'We do not have any materials,' the army official said, 'Take materials from your plant.' There were such materials in our plant. So, the director, who was a turner, said, 'Well, Avram, you will be using tubes.' 'But the tubes are for water. We need planks for the supporting structure,' I said. 'Well, we do not have any planks, so you will make it with tubes,' they said. The next day we had to start working.

I was wondering what to do the whole night. We had rims and we soldered the rims to the tubes to make something like a supporting plank. The next day we loaded the tubes, took the brigade and started working. We worked for one month – without designs. They gave us food there, I got home dirty and dead-tired. Meanwhile my daughter married and had a baby. My son graduated the Bulgarian school in Cuba and returned to Bulgaria to do his military service. My daughter needed me – she was studying machine engineering with a baby on her hands. My son was a soldier and no one had the time to visit him. So, one day I told the director that I wanted to go back to Bulgaria. We went to the site and he said to the lieutenant-colonel, 'You know, the Bulgarian wants to go home.' And he said, 'No way, he knows too much. He will go nowhere until the end of the war.' It was the winter of 1982. I told them, 'I am alone here,' and the lieutenant-colonel said, 'We will find you a wife!' 'But I also want a lover,' I answered and the lieutenant-colonel burst out laughing, 'You have become a real Cuban!' In Cuba everyone has a wife and a lover. The Cubans are warm people, with a sense of humor, but life is hard and they are isolated. But the war did not take place and I returned to Bulgaria.

I came back in April 1982 and started work in the Hydrotechnics and Melioration Institute. I headed a section for the design and assembly of installations for automation of the water distribution. The work was interesting and creative. My colleagues were nice people and we achieved some very good results – we produced a lot of inventions and patented some of them. I worked there until February 1990 when I retired. The director asked me to stay and work on a contract. I did not want that very much because my children wanted me to help them. So, worked six months more. Then democracy came [40] and the institute no longer had money for salaries and fees. So, I quit. I founded a private company for the design of sites for purification of waste waters. My inventions are mainly in the area of water industry. But I was not much successful as an expert in hydrotechnics and melioration. I had two more inventions, but there was no market for them. I closed the company, the institute had also closed down and so had most of the institutes in the country. That was the end of my creative work. I am the author of nine inventions in water industry. I was offered to patent the last two. I tried to sell them to companies, but neither the state, nor the private ones were interested. I saw no point in paying taxes without putting them into practice and I decided not to patent them.

My children have degrees in machine engineering. My daughter worked in the Institute at the Plant for Metal Cutting Machines and my son became a technologist in the same plant. When the institute was closed down, my daughter Beka was left unemployed. My son was also laid off. He was offered to be a turner, and he accepted but he could not support his two children with that job and his wife was on a maternal leave. He quit the plant and worked in a private construction company, doing all kinds of work. In the end, he decided to emigrate with his family to Israel. His wife Mariela is a Bulgarian, an accountant. They moved in 1996. They have two children – a boy and a girl. Avram and Maria – pupils. My daughter Beka has a son Albert. She tried to find another job, for a while she worked in some shops. Then she enrolled in university again. She graduated psychology and worked for two years as a psychologist in the kindergarten of the Jewish organization 'Habat'. Now she is no longer working there. She is writing a dissertation in psychology at the Sofia University 'St. Kliment Ohridski' and she teaches classes there. Her husband is a Jew – Maxim Varonov. He is a programmer, a computer expert. Their son also has a degree in computer technology and already has a job.

I did not raise my children in the spirit of Jewish traditions because I did not have the time, especially after my wife died and I had to work, do the shopping, cook and look after them. And since one salary was not enough I started working on innovations. In the evenings when the children were asleep, I was writing and calculating in the kitchen. Then I started making inventions and I had no time educating them in that respect. The times were also different. We did not go to synagogues. Moreover, I am not a religious person. Even when I was a child and I was studying the Tannakh in the Jewish school, I was not interested in it. Now, we follow the traditions, not because we believe in them, but because they are traditions.

Most of my friends are Bulgarians, but my wife's relatives are Jews. We organized a Jewish tourist club in 'Maccabi'. Now it still exists, although 'Maccabi' is no longer active. Everyone who wants comes to our club – Bulgarians, a Greek, two Armenians and a Russian woman came with us. We walk in the mountains. In the winter we go to Vitosha. In the spring we go to the Lozen Mountain, Plana Mountain and other places [all of them are mountains near Sofia]. We go out on Saturdays. Before I was a mountain guide – I knew the routes and organized groups to walk in Pirin, Stara Planina, Rila. Now, I go to the mountains with close friends, Bulgarians, whom I met 32 years ago on a trek in Rila Mountain. We still keep in touch and get together. Some time ago we went to the mountains a lot, but now not so often because one of our friends Georgi has the Parkinson's disease. Every Monday and Wednesday we play bridge in the Jewish cultural home. We are a group of four people, and one man who plays with us when someone is missing. We usually play backgammon the other days.

As for my relatives I keep in touch mostly with the cousins of my wife Simha. I meet my brother sometimes, but he is very busy, because he has to take care of his wife Yanka. I also call my cousin Avram Pinkas. But most of my relatives are in Israel. I went there before 1989. In 1965 I went to Israel with the Bulgarian national football team – we were in one group with Israel and I went there for two days and a half. It was then that I decided to emigrate. I am not such a great football fan, but I had helped the son of a friend of mine, who was a student. My friend had connections and arranged my trip as a way to thank me. So, I agreed to go there for a couple of days to see my aunts and uncles. I had never been to Israel before that. My cousin and his friend there offered me to emigrate and convinced me that I would have a nice job. But I could not do it, and I already explained the reason. I was alone on my trip and in the end of 1989 I went for a week to celebrate the New Year's Day – the first year after the changes. In 1997 Simha and I went together – her daughters also emigrated to Israel – they have families and two children each. Their names are Adela and Luiza. Adela is a nurse and Luiza works in a bank. I had to help my son and his wife, because she was studying. He works in a construction company and she is an accountant so I had to look after their children. Simha was at her daughters'. We stayed there for three months.

I did not accept everything before the changes unconditionally, but the things we did – building plants, creating jobs for the people, I think that was something positive. Yet, we also made many mistakes – we imported old technologies, implemented bad economic projects which turned out not to be profitable. We built everything in a hurry. That angered me the most. For example, in Pazardzhik we built a plant for accumulators using an old Czech technology. Also, the plants for heavy machine construction in Chervena Mogila and in Ruse. We live in a small country, which is not rich in resources or in electricity, and yet, we built such enormous plants. Those were mistakes, which we as engineers and technicians in line with the contemporary tendencies in the world noticed. But I did not feel limited in my work and my personal disappointment was of another nature.

Out of the political events in those times I remember Stalin's death [in 1953], which took place while I was working at the site of the bridge over the Danube. There was a Soviet expert monitoring every engineering activity. When they heard about Stalin's death, all the Russians started crying. I was wondering how such responsible and high-level people could cry so easily. But they believed in him! I also thought that Stalin was a great leader, but then I was disappointed by him. In 1958 I was on a business trip to Moscow – we designed a department producing ball-bearings. Nina's uncle, who had been in the USSR since 1918 and was twice sentenced to exile in Siberia, told me how many people were sacrificed – whole groups of emigrants – Germans, Polish, and the Bulgarians were spared only thanks to Georgi Dimitrov, those were his words. I was positive about the April Plenum of the Bulgarian Communist Party in 1956 when Bulgaria similarly to the USSR criticized the distortions of the cult to Stalin's personality and his Bulgarian follower, Valko Chervenkov [the then Bulgarian Communist Party and state leader]. But when Boyan Balgaranov came, who was one of the leading communist figures in Bulgaria, to introduce us to the decisions of the Plenum and when he hit the table with his fist in answer to the criticism of some of the people, I knew that nothing good will come of it.

Nobody harassed me because of my Jewish origin. But I was very angered by the attitude towards the wars in Israel in 1967 [41] and 1973 [42] and the breaking of the diplomatic ties with Israel. That was a policy of the Bulgarian Communist Party, which disappointed me a lot. Because I had been to Israel and I had seen how they worked and how people became real men there. There was no industry in Israel yet, people were building with primitive technologies. Their settlements were green gardens and between them – deserts. People had a lot of enthusiasm. So, I could not accept the idea that they were aggressors. A colleague of mine, Tihomir Stanev, met me at that time, one or two days after the war in 1967 ended. He hugged me, kissed me, and said, 'Avram, I heard that you were wise people, you are a handful of people and you scared so many Arabs.' That was the only man who greeted me warmly, but the propaganda was unpleasant. The other colleagues did not change their attitude towards me. They were very tactful about the war in 1967.

I did not have problems keeping in touch with my relatives in Israel. My uncle David, who was the youngest, came to visit me in Bulgaria. I only had some problems when I returned from Cuba. My former director, Marin, with whom I went on excursions, offered me a job. He worked in the Institute for casting using anti-pressure of Academician Angel Balevsky [43]. But the institute was secret at that time. And Marin's condition to employ me was that I should not keep in touch with any foreigners. I had to sign a declaration. I told him that I had so many relatives in Israel and I had to keep in touch with them. So, I went to another institute – the Hydrotechnics and Melioration Institute. And my relatives continued to visit me. After the changes in 1989 I was disappointed – the mistakes which were made before that were exaggerated. That fierceness between the parties was very unpleasant.

The pension I received after I retired in 1990 was more than enough. I even managed to help my children financially. But after the inflation in 1996-7 my pension decreased significantly. We did not live in misery because my wife Simha worked in the Institute of Communications at the Bulgarian Telecommunications Company and had a good salary. We have been living together for ten years and she has never said anything about the fact that she receives a high salary and I – only a small pension. So, we live as well as we could and we do not deprive ourselves of the basic things. Now we receive a pension from the ‘Claims Conference' and we live comfortably. When our pensions were low we received aid from ‘Joint’. Three years ago we received aid in dollars from Switzerland but we already spent it. Now we take an active part in the community of the Jewish Home in Sofia. The women gather on Mondays and Wednesday morning - they do gymnastics in the health club. They listen to lectures, dance, cheer up. They also learn songs and do Jewish and Spanish dances twice a week. We also have our male dance club and there are women in it too – they are even more than the men. Overall, we are never bored.

Translated by Ivelina Karcheva

Glossary:

[1] Joint (American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee): The Joint was formed in 1914 with the fusion of three American Jewish aid committees, which were alarmed by the suffering of Jews during World War I. In late 1944, the Joint entered Europe’s liberated areas and organized a massive relief operation. It provided food for Jewish survivors all over Europe, it supplied clothing, books and school supplies for children. It supported the establishment of cultural meeting places, including libraries, theaters and gardens. It also provided religious supplies for the Jewish communities. The Joint also operated DP camps, in which it organized retraining programs to help people learn trades that would enable them to earn a living, while its cultural and religious activities helped re-establish Jewish life. The Joint was also closely involved in helping Jews to emigrate from European and Muslim countries. The Joint was expelled from East Central Europe for decades during the Cold War and it has only come back to many of these countries after the fall of communism. Today the Joint provides social welfare programs for elderly Holocaust survivors and encourages Jewish renewal and communal development.

[2] Expulsion of the Jews from Spain: The Sephardi population of the Balkans originates from the Jews who were expelled from the Iberian peninsula, as a result of the ‘Reconquista’ in the late 15th century (Spain 1492, and Portugal 1495). The majority of the Sephardim subsequently settled in the territory of the Ottoman Empire, mainly in maritime cities (Salonika, Istanbul, Smyrna, etc.) and also in the ones situated on significant overland trading routes to Central Europe (Bitola, Skopje, and Sarajevo) and to the Danube (Adrianople, Philipopolis, Sofia, and Vidin).

[3] Sephardi Jewry: Jews of Spanish and Portuguese origin. Their ancestors settled down in North Africa, the Ottoman Empire, South America, Italy and the Netherlands after they had been driven out from the Iberian peninsula at the end of the 15th century. About 250,000 Jews left Spain and Portugal on this occasion. A distant group among Sephardi refugees were the Crypto-Jews (Marranos), who converted to Christianity under the pressure of the Inquisition but at the first occasion reassumed their Jewish identity. Sephardi preserved their community identity; they speak Ladino language in their communities up until today. The Jewish nation is formed by two main groups: the Ashkenazi and the Sephardi group which differ in habits, liturgy their relation toward Kabala, pronunciation as well in their philosophy.

[4] Ladino: also known as Judeo-Spanish, it is the spoken and written Hispanic language of Jews of Spanish and Portugese origin. Ladino did not become a specifically Jewish language until after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 (and Portugal in 1495) - it was merely the language of their province. It is also known as Judezmo, Dzhudezmo, or Spaniolit. When the Jews were expelled from Spain and Portugal they were cut off from the further development of the language, but they continued to speak it in the communities and countries to which they emigrated. Ladino therefore reflects the grammar and vocabulary of 15th century Spanish. In Amsterdam, England and Italy, those Jews who continued to speak ‘Ladino’ were in constant contact with Spain and therefore they basically continued to speak the Castilian Spanish of the time. Ladino was nowhere near as diverse as the various forms of Yiddish, but there were still two different dialects, which corresponded to the different origins of the speakers: ‘Oriental’ Ladino was spoken in Turkey and Rhodes and reflected Castilian Spanish, whereas ‘Western’ Ladino was spoken in Greece, Macedonia, Bosnia, Serbia and Romania, and preserved the characteristics of northern Spanish and Portuguese. The vocabulary of Ladino includes hundreds of archaic Spanish words, and also includes many words from different languages: mainly from Hebrew, Arabic, Turkish, Greek, French, and to a lesser extent from Italian. In the Ladino spoken in Israel, several words have been borrowed from Yiddish. For most of its lifetime, Ladino was written in the Hebrew alphabet, in Rashi script, or in Solitro. It was only in the late 19th century that Ladino was ever written using the Latin alphabet. At various times Ladino has been spoken in North Africa, Egypt, Greece, Turkey, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, France, Israel, and, to a lesser extent, in the United States and Latin America.

[5] Law for the Protection of the Nation: A comprehensive anti-Jewish legislation in Bulgaria was introduced after the outbreak of World War II. The ‘Law for the Protection of the Nation’ was officially promulgated in January 1941. According to this law, Jews did not have the right to own shops and factories. Jews had to wear the distinctive yellow star; Jewish houses had to display a special sign identifying it as being Jewish; Jews were dismissed from all posts in schools and universities. The internment of Jews in certain designated towns was legalized and all Jews were expelled from Sofia in 1943. Jews were only allowed to go out into the streets for one or two hours a day. They were prohibited from using the main streets, from entering certain business establishments, and from attending places of entertainment. Their radios, automobiles, bicycles and other valuables were confiscated. From 1941 on Jewish males were sent to forced labor battalions and ordered to do extremely hard work in mountains, forests and road construction. In the Bulgarian-occupied Yugoslav (Macedonia) and Greek (Aegean Thrace) territories the Bulgarian army and administration introduced extreme measures. The Jews from these areas were deported to concentration camps, while the plans for the deportation of Jews from Bulgaria proper were halted by a protest movement launched by the vice-chairman of the Bulgarian Parliament.

[6] Nansen Passport: It is named after the scholar, statesman, diplomat and winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace Fridtjof Nansen, a Norwegian (1861 – 1930). After the end of World War I until 1921 he worked as a chairman of the World League of Nations. All his efforts were directed to protect the interests of the minorities and the small nations. He contributed to the organization of the repatriation of 450 000 prisoners of war from 26 countries. He also worked to settle the legal status and economic independence of refugees. The first legal document on the legal protection of refugees was adopted in July 1922 and later endorsed by 52 countries worldwide. That is the so-called 'Nansen Passport' which established the status of the refugee. All his life the humanist Fridtjof Nansen worked for the establishment of a common international status of the refugees, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. In 1954 the League of Nations established an award in his name.

[7] First Balkan War (1912-1913): Started by an alliance made up of Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia, and Montenegro against the Ottoman Empire. It was a response to the Turkish nationalistic policy maintained by the Young Turks in Istanbul. The Balkan League aimed at the liberation of the rest of the Balkans still under Ottoman rule. In October, 1912 the allies declared war on the Ottoman Empire and were soon successful: the Ottomans retreated to defend Istanbul and Albania, Epirus, Macedonia and Thrace fell into the hands of the allies. The war ended on the 30th May 1913 with the Treaty of London, which gave most of European Turkey to the allies and also created the Albanian state.

[8] Bulgaria in World War I: Bulgaria entered the war in October 1915 on the side of the Central Powers. Its main aim was the revision of the Treaty of Bucharest: the acquisition of Macedonia. Bulgaria quickly overran most of Serbian Macedonia as well as parts of Serbia; in 1916 with German backing it entered Greece (Western Thrace and the hinterlands of Salonika). After Romania surrendered to the Central Powers Bulgaria also recovered Southern Dobrudzha, which had been lost to Romania after the First Balkan War. The Bulgarian advance to Greece was halted after British, French and Serbian troops landed in Salonika, while in the north Romania joined the Allies in 1916. Conditions at the front deteriorated rapidly and political support for the war eroded. The agrarians and socialist workers intensified their antiwar campaigns, and soldier committees were formed in the army. A battle at Dobro Pole brought total retreat, and in ten days the Allies entered Bulgaria. On 29th September 1918 Bulgaria signed an armistice and withdrew from the war. The Treaty of Neuilly (November 1919) imposed by the Allies on Bulgaria, deprived the country of its World War I gains as well as its outlet to the Aegean Sea (Eastern Thrace).
[9] Bulgarian Minorities: Some of the larger Bulgarian minorities are Turkish (800,000), Roma (300,000), Armenian (13,500), Tatar (4,500), Jewish (3,500). These are rough figures, based on a 1994 census. Further minority groups are the following: Gagauz (1,500), Orthodox Christians who speak a Turkish dialect, and have a home territory in Gagauzia, Moldova. Karakachan (5,000) are a Greek speaking ethnic group. There is also special minority going by the name of Pomak. These are Bulgarian-speaking Muslims, who are not properly identified in the national Census, but who are said to number between 150,000 and 200,000.
[10] Shalom Organization: Organization of the Jews in Bulgaria. It is an umbrella organization uniting 8,000 Jews in Bulgaria and has 19 regional branches. Shalom supports all forms of Jewish activities in the country and organizes various programs.
[11] 9th September 1944: The day of the communist takeover in Bulgaria. In September 1944 the Soviet Union declared war on Bulgaria. On 9th September 1944 the Fatherland Front, a broad left-wing coalition, deposed the government. Although the communists were in the minority in the Fatherland Front, they were the driving force in forming the coalition, and their position was strengthened by the presence of the Red Army in Bulgaria.
[12] Mass Aliyah: Between September 1944 and October 1948, 7,000 Bulgarian Jews left for Palestine. The exodus was due to deep-rooted Zionist sentiments, relative alienation from Bulgarian intellectual and political life, and depressed economic conditions. Bulgarian policies toward national minorities were also a factor that motivated emigration. In the late 1940s Bulgaria was anxious to rid itself of national minority groups, such as Armenians and Turks, and thus make its population more homogeneous. More people were allowed to depart in the winter of 1948 and the spring of 1949. The mass exodus continued between 1949 and 1951: 44,267 Jews immigrated to Israel until only a few thousand Jews remained in the country.

[13] Hashomer Hatzair in Bulgaria: ‘The Young Watchman’; A Zionist-socialist pioneering movement established in Bulgaria in 1932, Hashomer Hatzair trained youth for kibbutz life and set up kibbutzim in Palestine. During World War II, members were sent to Nazi-occupied areas and became leaders in Jewish resistance groups. After the war, Hashomer Hatzair was active in ‘illegal’ immigration to Palestine.

[14] Maccabi World Union: International Jewish sports organization whose origins go back to the end of the 19th century. A growing number of young Eastern European Jews involved in Zionism felt that one essential prerequisite of the establishment of a national home in Palestine was the improvement of the physical condition and training of ghetto youth. In order to achieve this, gymnastics clubs were founded in many Eastern and Central European countries, which later came to be called Maccabi. The movement soon spread to more countries in Europe and to Palestine. The World Maccabi Union was formed in 1921. In less than two decades its membership was estimated at 200,000 with branches located in most countries of Europe and in Palestine, Australia, South America, South Africa, etc.

[15] ‘Maritsa Rushes’: a national anthem of the Kingdom of Bulgaria from 1886 to 1944. The author of the text is the Veles teacher Nikola Zhivkov. In 1912 the text was edited by Ivan Vazov. Firstly it originated as a song of the Bulgarian National Revival period sung by rebels of Philip Totyu's band. Later, during the Russian-Turkish Liberation War it was sung by the Bulgarian volunteers in the battles at Shipka and Sheinovo. During the Serbian- Bulgarian War in 1885 it was sung as a battle song by the Bulgarian soldiers. In 1886 it was adopted as a national anthem.

[16] 'Quiet White Danube': a poem by the poet Ivan Vazov praising the heroism of Hristo Botev's revolutionaries, which is still sung today as one of the most patriotic Bulgarian songs of the Bulgarian National Revival.

[17] Trumpeldor, Joseph (1880-1920): Soldier and early pioneer-settler in Erez Israel whose life efforts to organize the military defense of the Jewish settlements in Erez Israel and whose heroic death in a battle at Tel Hai in the north of the country became an inspirational symbol to pioneering youth from all parts of the Diaspora [see: Betar].
[Source: http://www.jafi.org.il/education/100/people/BIOS/trump.html]

[18] General Zionism: General Zionism was initially the term used for all members of the Zionist Organization who had not joined a specific faction or party. Over the years, the General Zionists, too, created ideological institutions and their own organization was established in 1922. The precepts of the General Zionists included Basle-style Zionism free of ideological embellishments and the primacy of Zionism over any class, party, or personal interest. This party, in its many metamorphoses, championed causes such as the encouragement of private initiative and protection of middle-class rights. In 1931, the General Zionists split into Factions A and B as a result of disagreements over issues of concern in Palestine: social affairs, economic matters, the attitude toward the General Federation of Jewish Labor, etc. In 1945, the factions reunited. Most of Israel’s liberal movements and parties were formed under the inspiration of the General Zionists and reflect mergers in and secessions from this movement.

[19] Poalei Zion: Leftist Zionist movement, founded in the late 19th century in Russia that combined Zionism with Socialism. The early Poalei Zion found its expression in the organization of trade unions, mutual aid societies, and Zionist groups of workers, clerks and salesmen. These groups emphasized the need for democracy within the Jewish community. The Austro-Hungarian branch of Poalei Zion differed markedly from the Russian one. Its ideologists maintained that the Zionist movement was an expression of the entire Jewish people and transcended class interests. It maintained that the position of the Jewish worker and commercial employee was different from that of the non-Jew, since the Jew had to face both exploitation and discrimination at the same time. It warned the Jewish workers against following the teachings of the Social Democrats in Austria-Hungary who denied this fact. It negated the socialist solution unless it were combined with a Jewish autonomous territory. Instead it stressed the need for the conscious direction of the migration of the Jewish masses to Palestine. The Poalei Zion groups in other countries followed in their ideology either the Russian or the Austrian models. Poalei Zion in Romania and Bulgaria adhered to the Austrian school. In 1907 a Word Union of Poalei Zion was founded. In 1920 the movement split over the attitude toward the Socialist and Communist Internationals, the Zionist Organization, and the place to be accorded to the movement’s activities in Erez Israel. Left Poalei Zion sought unconditional affiliation with the Third International (Comintern); by 1924 it had abandoned this attempt and reorganized itself on an independent basis. The other faction, the Right Poalei Zion, merged in 1925 with the Zionist Socialists.

[20] Jabotinsky, Vladimir (1880-1940): Founder and leader of the Revisionist Zionist movement; soldier, orator and a prolific author writing in Hebrew, Russian, and English. During World War I he established and served as an officer in the Jewish Legion, which fought in the British army for the liberation of the Land of Israel from Turkish rule. He was a member of the Board of Directors of the Keren Hayesod, the financial arm of the World Zionist Organization, founded in London in 1920, and was later elected to the Zionist Executive. He resigned in 1923 in protest over Chaim Weizmann’s pro-British policy and founded the Revisionist Zionist movement and the Betar youth movement two years later. Jabotinsky also founded the ETZEL (National Military Organization) during the 1936-39 Arab rebellion in Palestine.

[21] Betar: (abbreviation of Berit Trumpeldor) A right-wing Zionist youth movement founded in 1923 in Riga, Latvia. Betar played an important role in Zionist education, in teaching the Hebrew language and culture, and methods of self-defense. It also inculcated the ideals of aliyah to Erez Israel by any means, legal and illegal, and the creation of a Jewish state on both sides of the Jordan. Its members supported the idea to create a Jewish legion in order to liberate Palestine. In Bulgaria the organization started publishing its newspaper in 1934.

[22] UYW: The Union of Young Workers (also called Revolutionary Youth Union). A communist youth organization, which was legally established in 1928 as a sub-organization of the Bulgarian Communist Youth Union (BCYU). After the coup d’etat in 1934, when parties in Bulgaria were banned, it went underground and became the strongest wing of the BCYU. Some 70% of the partisans in Bulgaria were members of it. In 1947 it was renamed Dimitrov’s Communist Youth Union, after Georgi Dimitrov, the leader of the Bulgarian Communist Party at the time.

[23] Тhe annexation of Dobrich: the agreement in Krayova or the so-called Krayova Treaty signed in the Romanian town Krayova on 7th September 1940. According to that treaty Bulgaria officially receives back South Dobrudzha taken from the country under the Treaty of Neuilly in 1919. The Treaty of Krayova was officially recognized by the USSR, Germany and France as well as the consecutive treaties on the exchange of population and financial consequences. According to that treaty the Bulgarian troops entered Dobrudzha and Dobrich on 21st September 1940 and annexed the treaty.

[24] Gorky, Maxim (born Alexei Peshkov) (1868-1936): Russian writer, publicist and revolutionary.

[25] Korabov, Nikola (b.1928): a Bulgarian cinema director born on 7th December 1928 in Ruse. He had a degree in cinema directing in Moscow in 1956. After he returned to Bulgaria he started work in the Studio for Feature Films. His filmography includes 'Dimitrovgradtsy’ [Dimitrovgrad people] (1956), 'Malkata’ [The young one] (1959), 'Tyutyun’ [Tobacco] (1962), 'Vula' [Bull] (1965), 'Svoboda ili smart’ [Freedom or Death] (1969), 'Ivan Kondarev' (1974), for which he received the special award of the festival in San Remo – Italy, 'Yuliya Vrevskaya' (1978), ‘Orisiya’ [Destiny] (1983), etc.

[26] Yellow star in Bulgaria: According to a governmental decree all Bulgarian Jews were forced to wear distinctive yellow stars after 24th September 1942. Contrary to the German-occupied countries the stars in Bulgaria were made of yellow plastic or textile and were also smaller. Volunteers in previous wars, the war-disabled, orphans and widows of victims of wars, and those awarded the military cross were given the privilege to wear the star in the form of a button. Jews who converted to Christianity and their families were totally exempt. The discriminatory measures and persecutions ended with the cancellation of the Law for the Protection of the Nation on 17th August 1944.

[27] 24th May 1943: Protest by a group of members of parliament led by the deputy chairman of the National Assembly, Dimitar Peshev, as well as a large section of Bulgarian society. They protested against the deportation of the Jews, which culminated in a great demonstration on 24th May 1943. Thousands of people led by members of parliament, the Eastern Orthodox Church and political parties stood up against the deportation of Bulgarian Jews. Although there was no official law preventing deportation, Bulgarian Jews were saved, unlike those from Bulgarian occupied Aegean Thrace and Macedonia.

[28] Daniel Zion: Rabbi in the Sofia synagogue and President of the Israeli Spiritual Council, participant in procession on 24th May 1943.

[29] Internment of Jews in Bulgaria: Although Jews living in Bulgaria where not deported to concentration camps abroad or to death camps, many were interned to different locations within Bulgaria. In accordance with the Law for the Protection of the Nation, the comprehensive anti-Jewish legislation initiated after the outbreak of WWII, males were sent to forced labor battalions in different locations of the country, and had to engage in hard work. There were plans to deport Bulgarian Jews to Nazi Death Camps, but these plans were not realized. Preparations had been made at certain points along the Danube, such as at Somovit and Lom. In fact, in 1943 the port at Lom was used to deport Jews from Aegean Thrace and from Macedonia, but in the end, the Jews from Bulgaria proper were spared.

[30] Annexation of Aegean Thrace to Bulgaria in WWII: The Treaty of Neuilly, imposed by the Entente on Bulgaria after WWI, deprived the country alongside with its WWI gains (Macedonia) also of its outlet to the Aegean Sea (Aegean Thrace) that had been a part of the country since the Balkan Wars (1912/13). King Boris III (1918-43) joined the Axis in 1941 with the hope to be able to regain the lost territories. Bulgarian troops marched into the neighboring Yugoslav Macedonia and Greek Thrace. Although the territorial gains were initially very popular in Bulgaria, complications soon arose in the occupied territories. The oppressive Bulgarian administration resulted in uprisings in both occupied lands. Jews were persecuted, their property was confiscated and they had to do forced labor. Although the Jews in Bulgaria proper were saved they were exterminated in the newly gained territories. Over 11.000 Jews from the Bulgarian administered northern Greek lands (Thrace and Macedonia), mainly from Drama, Seres, Dedeagach (Alexandroupolis), Gyumyurdjina (Komotini), Kavala and Xanthi were deported and murdered in death camps in Poland. About 2.200 Jews survived.

[31] Peshev, Dimitar (1894-1973): Bulgarian politician, former Deputy-Chairman of the National Assembly. Peshev was the leader of the group who opposed to deportations of Bulgarian Jews. According to Gabrielle Nissim, author of the book ‘The Man Who Stopped Hitler’: ‘He was the only politician of high rank in a country allied with Germany who broke the atmosphere of complete collective silence with regard to the Jewry's lot.’

[32] Forced labor camps in Bulgaria: Established under the Council of Ministers’ Act in 1941. All Jewish men between the ages of 18–50, eligible for military service, were called up. In these labor groups Jewish men were forced to work 7-8 months a year on different road constructions under very hard living and working conditions.
[33] Ventura, Ana Avram (1925-1942): Bulgarian anti-fascist fighter of Jewish origin, born in the Danubian town of Ruse, a daughter of one of the richest industrialists there. She was a member of the communist youth organization of The Union of Young Workers and one of its leaders in Ruse and in 1942 also of the Bulgarian Workers’ Party. She was killed in an underground flat on 22nd February 1944.

[34] Brigades: A form of socially useful labor, typical of communist times. Brigades were usually teams of young people who were assembled by the authorities to build new towns, roads, industrial plants, bridges, dams, etc. as well as for fruit-gathering, harvesting, etc. This labor, which would normally be classified as very hard, was unpaid. It was voluntary and, especially in the beginning, had a romantic ring for many young people. The town of Dimitrovgrad, named after Georgi Dimitrov – the leader of the Communist Party – was built entirely in this way.

[35] Bridge of Friendship: also known as Danube Bridge. That is the main road from Bulgaria over the Danube in the area of Ruse – Giurgiu. It was opened on 20th June 1954. The author of the project is architect Andreev. The bridge was built in two years – from 1952 to 1954 with the help of USSR experts. His length is 2.8 km and his height – 300 meters above the water. It was built in two levels – for trains and for cars. Its middle part can be lifted so that ships may pass along the Danube. In this area the river is 1 km wide and its depth reaches 10 meters.

[36] Bet Am: The Jewish center in Sofia today, housing all Jewish organizations.

[37] Plants construction with the help of the USSR: Devnya is a town in Northeast Bulgaria near Varna and Beloslav Lake. It has a population of 12 000 people. Due to its proximity to the Black Sea and the port of Varna-west and due to its natural resources, the town was turned into an industrial center. In 1954 it had the status of a national site. Soviet experts helped start the construction of a plant for the production of light and heavy soda, nitric acid and ammonia. The strategic location of the town led to the construction of other sites of national importance – a cement plant, a sugar plant and a polymer plant. During socialism the industrial sites in the town provided jobs for a lot of experts in the chemical industry.

[38] Military plants in Sopot, Kazanlak and Karlovo: They are also known as Vazov Machine Construction Plants, whose production is in the sphere of explosives. They are located in the small towns of the Bulgarian rose. Due to the participation of Bulgaria in the Warsaw Treaty those towns became sites for plants of the military industrial complex of the Bulgarian army. The headquarters of one of Bulgaria's divisions is also in Karlovo.

[39] Bulgarian political emigrants: Bulgarian Political Emigration in 1947: those are the processes, which started after the adoption of the Dimitrov constitution in 1946 when the Bulgarian opposition was persecuted. The Soviet model of governance is gradually adopted in Bulgaria and the Communist Party takes up the leadership of the nation. Trials start against the leaders of the opposition – Nikola Petkov (Bulgarian Agricultural People's Union) is declared to be an American agent and killed in the end of 1947, and so was Krastyo Pastuhov (Bulgarian Workers' Social Democratic Party). Other opposition leaders were also persecuted. A major part of the opposition members were forced to leave the country illegally. Among them was also the agricultural leader G.M.Dimitrov. One of the last trials condemning the people, who thought differently, was against one of the leaders of the Communist Party itself – Traicho Kostov, which took place in 1949.

[40] 10th November 1989: After 35 years of rule, Communist Party leader Todor Zhivkov was replaced by the hitherto Prime Minister Peter Mladenov who changed the Bulgarian Communist Party’s name to Socialist Party. On 17th November 1989 Mladenov became head of state, as successor of Zhivkov. Massive opposition demonstrations in Sofia with hundreds of thousands of participants calling for democratic reforms followed from 18th November to December 1989. On 7th December the ‘Union of Democratic Forces’ (SDS) was formed consisting of different political organizations and groups.

[41] Six-Day-War: The first strikes of the Six-Day-War happened on 5th June 1967 by the Israeli Air Force. The entire war only lasted 132 hours and 30 minutes. The fighting on the Egyptian side only lasted four days, while fighting on the Jordanian side lasted three. Despite the short length of the war, this was one of the most dramatic and devastating wars ever fought between Israel and all of the Arab nations. This war resulted in a depression that lasted for many years after it ended. The Six-Day-War increased tension between the Arab nations and the Western World because of the change in mentalities and political orientations of the Arab nations.

[42] Yom Kippur War: The Arab-Israeli War of 1973, also known as the Yom Kippur War or the Ramadan War, was a war between Israel on one side and Egypt and Syria on the other side. It was the fourth major military confrontation between Israel and the Arab states. The war lasted for three weeks: it started on 6th October 1973 and ended on 22nd October on the Syrian front and on 26th October on the Egyptian front.

[43] Academician Angel Balevsky (1910-1997): a distinguished and internationally known Bulgarian scientist and public figure. He was one of the creators of the Bulgarian higher technical education, establishing and developing together with his collaborators the metal science and technology of metals in Bulgaria. One of the greatest achievements in that field is the worked out by Academician Angel Balevsky and Corresponding member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS) Ivan Dimov ‘Gas counter pressure casting method’, which is a scientific and technological novelty worldwide in the production of light alloy castings of high accuracy and high mechanical and technological characteristics. Academician Angel Balevsky was co-founder (together with Correspondent member Ivan Dimov) of the Institute of Metal Science (1967), which is now bearing his name. He was also Rector of the Machine Electro-Technical Institute (now Technical University) in Sofia and long Chairman of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, as well as member of a number of international scientific and humanitarian organizations.