Travel

Irina Lidskaya
Kiev
Ukraine
Interviewer: Ella Levitskaya

My family backgrownd   

Growing up

During the war

After the war

 My family backgrownd

     My name is Irina Yakovlevna Lidskaya. I was born on July 2, 1934 in Kharkov, where my parents lived at the time. When I was born my mother was 36 years old. My father was 33. I was the second child in the family -- when I was born my brother Yuri was 8. Soon afterwards my parents moved to Kiev.
     My father, Yakov Benjaminovich (later – Veniaminovich) Lidskiy came from an assimilated family that led a secular life. They lived in Mariupol. His father, Benjamin Lidskiy died from a severe disease in 1918. I can say very little about him, and I only know what he looked like from a picture. My grandfather was born in about 1875–1877 in Mariupol. I don’t know who his parents were, but the family was very well off. My grandfather graduated from the law department of the University and was assistant to a well-known lawyer; he had his own civil right cases. He married for love. He first saw my grandmother, then a 17-year old girl, at a ball,  and they got married soon after.
     My father used to tell how very different his parents were from each other. Benjamin was an intelligent, reserved and educated man, with a kindly sense of humor. My grandmother was a striking beauty when she was young.  I remember a big photograph of her, showing her wearing a fashionable dress of the time  and long braids. She remained beautiful as she got older, too. We have a picture of her and her husband and children, taken in 1913, when she was 30.  But despite her beauty, she was silly, mean-spirited, capricious and stubborn. My father told me that she always got what she wanted by screaming and shedding tears, even when she was wrong.  Her name was Sophia Ivanovna. I don’t know her maiden name or anything about her family. Grandmother Sophia was also born in Mariupol, in 1882. She got some education at home, but she wasn’t religious in her youth.
     She and my grandfather did not  lead a religious life, or even celebrate the Jewish holidays. They had two children: my father, born in 1901, and his younger brother Lev, born in 1904.
The family lived in an apartment in the center of Mariupol. I don’t know whether this was their own apartment or whether they rented it. I don’t know how many rooms there were, but I know that grandfather had an office in the flat. The boys could come in there every now and then, when their father was not working. Each boy had a room of his own. There was a living room and a dining room where the whole family got together at the table.  My father told me that those common meals  were unbearable for him and his brother, as my grandmother thought that the children were not supposed to speak while eating. There was painful silence during meals.
     The family was quite well to do. My grandmother took care of the house. Daily servants came in to help her. Russian was spoken in the family, which is why my father didn’t know Yiddish.  But my grandmother knew Yiddish.  After the war she lived together with our family with her second husband, and they used to speak Yiddish to each other.
     Both sons in the family finished secondary school. My father started school in 1910. He was smart, and it was easy for him to study. Lev and Yakov both studied music, too. My father played the piano well even in later years. .
     My grandfather was only 43 when he died, in 1918. I don’t know what he thought about the revolution. As far as I know, he never mentioned it. Perhaps he didn’t care any more – he was ill already. After his father’s death my father left his parents’ house. Lev stayed with their mother, who got remarried about a year later. Lev finished secondary school, but I don’t know whether he continued his studies.
     My mother's name was Dina Konstantinovna Itskovich. I don’t know very much about her parents.  I have no information about her father; my mother never answered any of my questions when I was a child, and she changed the subject abruptly when I would ask. My mother’s mother, Hana Itskovich, raised her four children by herself from 1906, but I don't know why. The family lived in the town of Artyomovsk in the east of Ukraine.
     Grandmother Hana was born in 1879 in Artyomovsk. She died from tuberculosis when she was 40. The family was very poor. There is a photograph of my grandmother Hana taken five years before she died. It shows her wearing a very poor dress with a white collar. My mamma looked very much like her. In winter she used to cover her head with a downy shawl. I remember this shawl. My mother kept it as a memento for many years. 
     There were three daughters and a son in the family. My mother was the oldest,  born in 1898. Then came her sister Beila (Bella), born in 1899.  Her brother Daniil (Dania) was born in 1901, and the youngest, Maria (Masha), was born in 1905. My grandmother was a seamstress, and she made bed linen. But her health broke down, and she earned less and less money. They lived in a small wooden house, the house where Grandmother Hana’s grandparents had lived. My mother remembered that each year her mother told her how good it would be the following year when they would refurbish their dwelling. The following year would come, and it was all the same. They had two small rooms and a little kitchen, a corner separated from one of the rooms. There was a well in the yard, and the children had to bring water from it and fill up a big barrel in the kitchen. There was a stove that was used for both heating the house and cooking. The older children looked after the younger ones. The couldn't afford to hire a housemaid.
     They were very poor and  didn’t have enough food. Mamma told me that she got her first new dress when she was studying at the Medical Institute. My grandmother wasn’t religious, and the children didn’t even know the basics of Jewish traditions, religion or rituals. Mamma told me that once her mother said to her in despair (my mother was a 12-year-old girl at the time) “Our Lord turned away from me and then I turned away from him.”  My mother remembered this phrase for the rest of her life.
     They only spoke Russian in the family. My grandmother thought that it would be easier for them to get adjusted, if they knew only the language of the country where they were living. Therefore, neither Mamma or her sisters or brother knew Yiddish.
     My mother was eager to study, however. At the time there were charity funds that paid scholarships to the most talented children from poor families. My mother studied by herself and in 1909, when she was 11 yeas old, she passed all the exams to get into secondary school  and got a scholarship. She did very well in her studies, and she also earned some money giving classes. She was paid very little, but it was enough to buy food for the family. 
      Mamma’s sisters and her brother also finished secondary school.
     There were pogroms against the Jews in Artyomovsk before the Revolution, my Mamma told me. My mamma’s face was the most typically Jewish of all the children.  During one terrible pogrom their neighbors, who were orthodox (Christians) hid Mamma and put an icon in the window. People who had icons in their windows sometimes avoided pogroms. But they all knew that if they found out that they were hiding somebody in the house, it put all the tenants in danger.  The neighbors covered Mamma’s head with a shawl and told her to remember that she was not Dina but Dunia. Mamma  managed to survive, but many Jews were killed. It wasn’t the only pogrom in Artymovsk, but I remember this story of my mother.  There were pogroms in Mariupol, too, but my father’s family avoided them.
     Mamma told me that in those years life hung on a thread. Besides pogroms, there was the Revolution and the civil war, when the town came under the changing control of one army after another: the white or the red, then the white again and the green. After the revolution there were many gangs. They killed Jews and also others. It was a terrible, cruel and difficult time.

     My mother had to work after school. She had to take care of her younger sisters and brother. I know that between 1918 to 1920 she was a doctor’s assistant in the town of Bakhmut.
     My parents met and fell in love when they were at the Kharkov Medical Institute. My mother enrolled in the Pediatric department of the  Institute in 1921 and graduated in 1927. My father had already enrolled in the Institute in 1919, in the General Treatment Department. He graduated in 1925.
     I don’t know what my mother and father thought about the Revolution. Mamma used to say that her sense of humor was very helpful. She said one couldn’t afford to express any critical comments at that time.  But then, I remember that they had an ironical attitude towards “revolutionary achievements" in the family.
      My parents started living together when they were still students. They didn't have a wedding and lived for a long time in a common law marriage.  Much later they needed a Marriage Certificate for some reason, so they went to a registry office to register their marriage. My parents used to recall their life as students with a smile. They lived in a hostel – it was cold and they never had enough food. Their scholarships were so small that they had to earn additional money. But my parents had many friends, and these friendships lasted their whole lives through. After graduation from the Institute my parents lived in Kharkov for some time. They rented a room. There were no conveniences. Life was hard. It was difficult to find a job. My father was hired as a doctor in the medical department at some factory. My mother was a teacher somewhere in the country that was quite distant from Kharkov. My older brother Yuri was born in Kharkov in 1926. He went to school there. I was born 8 years later. A year after my birth my parents moved to Kiev.
     To add to the picture of my parents’ life in Kharkov, I'll tell something about my mother’s brother and sisters. After finishing school, Daniil (Dania) moved in with his sister (my mother) in Kharkov. He studied at the Kharkov Industrial Institute. Upon graduation he worked as an engineer at a big Kharkov plant. In 1940 he became a chief engineer. When the war started, Daniil supervised the evacuation of the plant and its employees. He was supposed to leave the day after the evacuation was completed. But the Germans were already entering Kharkov, and his neighbors reported to the first of them that there was a "zhyd" in the town. My grandmother told us that he was brutally tormented to death. My mother and father said that Daniil was a very nice, kind and cheerful man. He had no family of his own.
     After finishing school Maria, the youngest sister, also came to Kharkov. Maria, like her mother before her, fell ill with tuberculosis when she was a young girl. After their mother’s death, Maria got very close to my mother. The doctors promised my mother that they would try to help Maria, but couldn’t guarantee anything. In the end, though, after a long time, she was cured completely.
It was in Kharkov that Maria met her future husband, my father's friend Abram Davydov.  It was love at first sight. She was already ill, and he knew that she had a contagious disease, but he never left her for a moment. At that time Abram studied at the Kharkov Industrial Institute. By the time he graduated, Masha was completely cured. Abram got assigned to work  at the heating power plant in Novosibirsk, Siberia. Abram and Masha got married and left for Novosibirsk. They lived together their whole life. In Novosibirsk, Masha entered a technical institute  became an engineer like her husband.  In 1926 their daughter Faina was born.  Abram died in 1976 and Maria in 1980. 
     My mother’s sister Bella (Beila) stayed in Artyomovsk. She met her husband Alexandr Vassiliev there. They got married in 1919 and moved to Alma-Ata. In 1924 their son Vladimir was born. Bella’s husband died in a tragic accident, and Bella had to go to work to raise her son. She found a job as a hospital nurse, and then, in the late 1930s she finished medical school. Bella and her son visited Kiev several times.  She never retired from her work. She worked until she died in 1976 at the age of 77. Bella lived her whole life in Alma-Ata, and her son is still living there. We write letters to one another.

 Growing up

     In 1935 our family moved to Kiev. My parents were offered jobs as lecturers at the Kiev Medical Institute. My father got a job in the Military Medicine Department.  In addition, my father lectured at the post-graduate training institute. He worked in the Medical Department his whole life. He was a colonel in the military medical service and worked in a hygiene and medical care organization. My mother lectured at the department of pediatrics. 
     In Kiev we lived in 15/17, Institutskaya street Apt. 4, until the beginning of the war. (Institutskaya street is in the prestigious part of Kiev, called Lipki. This neighborhood takes its name from the name of the Lipa tree - the lime tree.  In the 1850s the mayor ordered  lime trees planted around the Mariinskiy Palace. After the Revolution the main Soviet governmental bodies were located in the Lipki neighborhood. The street gets its name from the old Institute of Noble Ladies, which was located on this street, at the corner of Kreschatik street. After the Revolution the building of this Institute housed the Political Headquarters (GPU). Now this building is a cultural center and is called the October palace of culture. – Editor's note.) We lived in a separate two-room apartment. It was very comfortable, with central heating, running water, and there was a gas stove in the kitchen. Yura and I had our own room. Mamma thought that her children needed the biggest and brightest room in the house. We had some furniture and a piano -- a luxury at that time. We had a unique library of fiction, medical books and Russian classical literature.  The books were used to prepare lectures, and they never got dusted. Of the Jewish authors I remember Sholom Aleichem. He was the favorite author in our family. We also had the Russian translation of Perets Markish's poems. We had a radio, and Yura had a bicycle.
      As often happens in the families of doctors, what parents are afraid of happens to their children. I wasn’t a healthy child. I had diathesis (a condition that predisposes the body to various disorders). My mother was a good pediatrician and she knew that if she felt sorry for me I would become a chronic invalid. She was very strict with me. I had to have meals at a fixed time, and I was always hungry, as they gave me very little to eat. Regarding this, I will tell you a funny story from my early childhood.  My parents both worked, and they hired a nanny for me.  I well remember my Russian nanny Sasha. She was a very nice and kind woman, and she liked children. She was tall and very educated. She knew literature well and held me by my hand during our walks and read Pushkin’s poems to me. I adored her. Once she went to the store to buy some bread. She bought a loaf of brown bread and gave it to me to hold while she went back into the store. While she was there I began nibbling on this bread. It was great fun. When my nanny saw it, she was at a loss. She bought another loaf, but she told my parents what had happened. My mother was horrified because this wasn’t supposed to be in my diet. But nothing happened to me. I enjoyed it and felt full for the first time in my life. Still, due to my mother’s strictness I grew up a normal person. Unfortunately, Nanny Sasha didn’t stay log with us. Something happened in her own family that she had to leave us.
     At home we never celebrated any holidays except New Year and Victory Day. My parents even forgot their birthdays, as they were at work all day long. Sometimes it was so funny.  February 11 was the anniversary of their beginning their life together. One year, they left for work in the morning and Yura and I put flowers everywhere in the flat. They came back home and were surprised – why so many flowers? And then it occurred to them that it was quite an occasion. My parents had an ironical attitude towards the Soviet holidays. And as for religious traditions, I don’t remember any rituals or special food, etc. It’s a shame that I’m just beginning to learn Jewish holidays and their history.
     My parents had many friends, even after the war. They used to come from other towns, Moscow and Kharkov. There were even old school friends. Mikhail Hadzhinov, from Krasnodar, was a member of the Academy of Sciences, a famous biologist and a very interesting person. He was different and he had his principles. There was Mark Abramovich Kapilovich from Kharkov, a famous endocrinologist.  He was a great endocrinologist, and whenever our governmental officials had any problems they invited Mark Abramovich and his wife to Kiev. My parents’ friends were very much like them: very interesting people. Each of them was a whole world that was so different from all others. They felt at home in our family. Nationalities didn’t matter.
     Our family was doing all right in those years. However, we rarely traveled in the summer, mainly because my parents were always busy at work.
     In 1936, however, fear came into the life of our family and to many others. It was a time of repression that affected many of my parents’ colleagues and friends. Black cars would drive up at night and take people away. Nobody knew who would be next. Those were sleepless nights. My father always had his things ready, just in case.  But somehow he was spared this disaster.
     My brother Yura had a friend at school - Yura Fialkov.  Yuriy Arkadievich Fialkov is an outstanding chemist now, a talented scientist. He has a sister – Zhannochka. She is eight years younger. When they were at school, their father was arrested. Their mother, Anna Ruvimovna went to Moscow to prove to them that he was not guilty. She was arrested, too. These two children were left without any care. People at that time were afraid of their own shadow.  The teachers at school and neighbors turned away from these two children. Only my parents treated them as before. Yura Fialkov told me later that my parents were his parents. Fortunately Anna’s sister came from somewhere and she took care of the children until their mother was released in 1963. But their father was dead by then.
     In 1939 my Dad left the Medical Institute. Dad was famous in Kiev and some people couldn’t stand this. He wrote books. But when his first book was published his name was not even mentioned in the list of authors. There were other Ukrainian names. This happened several times. My father stopped writing, but his “co-authors” were outraged. The situation at his work also was growing unbearable. The same thing was happening at the Institute of post-graduate doctors’ training. My father left both jobs and went to work at the medical school. Both my mother and my father worked at this school until the end of their lives. 
     When I was a child, I didn’t have any friends. I only made friends after the war. During the pre-war years mass preparation for the war was a common thing. Even small children were preparing for the war and playing war-like games. Everybody knew that the “enemy shall defeated and the victory will be ours!”
     My parents knew that Hitler came to power. I personally wasn’t concerned, but I remember a widespread feeling of alarm. Rumors about Hitler’s attitude towards Jews reached us from Polish refugees. But at that time there was some kind of mass hypnosis in the Soviet Union. Everyone believed that we were the strongest and the best and that Lenin and Stalin were the wisest and most caring leaders. Children who were just learning to speak knew that besides their own grandparents, they had Grandfather Lenin and Grandfather Stalin. This is what they were taught. This hypnosis stayed with us for a long time. For example, I remember going on a trip to Czechoslovakia in 1964. I remember how proud I felt to say that I came from the Soviet Union.  Later this proud feeling changed to the feeling of shame, but that was later…

During the war

     I remember  June 22 (1941), the first day of the war. I remember everyone’s concern, panic, tears, yelling, and the noises all around. My father's school was evacuating to Sverdlovsk in August 1941, and our family left with them all. We left our apartment and everything in it. There was a joke in the family that the only thing Mamma took with her was my chamber pot. Our trip was long. The train was overcrowded, with people standing and sitting. At one station Yura had gone out to fetch some water, when the train started all of a sudden. Our parents were looking for him, they thought that he had missed the train. But he had jumped onto another carriage and it took him some time to join us. My parents’ hair grew gray before he found us. In Sverdlovsk we got some accommodation at Beryozovskiy Truct. It was something like  barracks with no comforts. This was the place where the families of the medical school employees were to live. The family of Pavel Ivanovich Gavros, the director of this school and a wonderful Russian man, also lived there. He was my father’s lifelong friend. In Sverdlovsk we heard that my grandmother and grandfather (my father’s mother and her second husband – my Dad’s stepfather) were also on the way to Sverdlovsk. They didn’t want to stay in Moscow with my father’s brother Lev; they wanted to join us in Sverdlovsk. In our room in this barrack we had two beds made from planks, one right next to the other. My grandparents slept on one, and we all slept on the other. They returned to Kiev with us and never left us until they died. 
     The school trained medical assistants then. The course was shorter than usual: either one  or one and a half years. They mostly took boys, as they sent them directly to the war. But there was one girls’ battalion. Those girls came from all parts of the huge country. They were full of enthusiasm and eager to defend their motherland. Dina Grebinskaya, a Jewish girl from Leningrad (she still lives today in St. Petersburg) remembers that when she came to the school, the entrance exams were already over. She managed to arrange an interview at the admission commission. Dina was a short girl. They looked at her and said “We can’t admit you, because your rifle will be taller than you."  Dina responded seriously, “You should be ashamed. You are an important commission, such huge war is going on, and we are sitting here and arguing about one centimeter of my height." She was admitted. Now she has a number of medals.
     Yura was 15 and continued his studies.  I entered second grade, as I could already read and count. I have only one memory of the school in Sverdlovsk – it is of our singing lessons. We sang one same song every day: 

We are the great Red Guard,
We are the wonderful Red Guard,
We have hard hats with a star on them and automatic guns in our hands ,
You, German soldier, beware of the heroes!
We, Red Guard, are the strongest,
We, Red Guard, are the bravest.
We don’t drown in the water or burn in the fire,
We shall chase Hitler and the fascists away.

     Our teacher in other subjects was Galina Zahezina. She was very young. She loved children and we loved her. We faced the sorrow of the loss for the first time when she fell in love with somebody and went to Rostov-on-the-Don to join him there.  We were heartbroken. We even wrote her a letter. In our class there were local children and evacuated children. Our relationships and attitudes were good. My favorite subject at school was Russian literature.
     We kids went to school together. The adults worked all day long and we would go to a nearby grove to pick nettles – we made soup from them and were very proud that we were feeding our parents. Once we went to the grove to pick some snowdrops for our parents, but we stayed there until dark. There was an uproar when we returned so late, and our parents punished each of us regardless of our good intentions. There were special food cards at that time. There were long lines to get food with these cards. Our parents didn’t have time to stand in those lines so it became  the children's job to do so.
There was hardly any food anyway, and the officials suggested to the tenants in our barrack to grow some vegetables on a little plot of land. Everybody tried to grow something, even those who, like my mother, had never done it before. But it worked and we had some additional food.
     I remember those winters. It was freezing, the temperature dropped to 40 below zero (Celsius). We didn’t have proper clothes, but we were always outside running around. I completed fourth grade in Sverdlovsk.
     My father became a Party member. He was convinced to do so, as it was better for his career as a teacher. But he was never an active communist. My mother never became a Party member.
     In 1942 my brother decided to go to the front. He was still under draft age, but he kept writing letters to the Moscow military college until he was admitted there as a cadet. My parents worried about him, but they thought he was old enough to make his own decisions.
     Abram, the husband of my mother’s older sister Maria, had asthma and wasn’t called to go to the front. Besides, the power plant where he worked was considered to be a military facility.
Lev Lidskiy, my father’s brother, stayed in Moscow working at his plant. He had a wife, Masha, and a daughter who was about the same age as I was.
     In evacuation we heard about the extermination of the Jews at Babiy Yar. Although it didn’t affect our family directly, my parents took it as their a personal tragedy.
     In 1944 Kiev was liberated and we returned home. We returned with the medical school that was evacuated to Sverdlovsk. We were excited to be back home. Upon our arrival Dad went to the militia office to confirm his rights to the apartment. But the authorities told him that a General Zheltov liked our apartment and there was no way for us to get it back. He said that if my father was going to fight for it we would have no place to live in Kiev. Daddy explained this problem to my mother and she told him to take things easy and agree to whatever apartment they offered to him. We received an apartment in Arsenalnaya street. It was a two-room apartment. My grandfather and grandmother lived in one room and the four of us in another. My mother said that the older people needed some peace, so they were given a separate room. 

After the war

     Kiev was ruined. Life was very hard, there was no food or clothes. But the people thought more of public life than their private lives. We were used to the idea that the life of one person was of no importance. This was what a few generations of people were convinced of.
     In 1945 Yura returned from Moscow. He had graduated from the military college there, but he didn’t want to stay in the army, so he retired.  In Kiev he entered the Philological Department at Kiev University. He passed exams for the first year of studies and was admitted into the second year course. My parents continued to work at the medical school and I went to the fifth grade at school #78. The building of the school was half-ruined, and it was soon closed down. Our class was transferred to school #51. I didn’t like the school. It was a girls' school. Its director, Anna Ivanova,  didn’t really like people with Jewish names. She was a rude person – that’s what I remember about her; I remember her with repulsion. There were many Jewish pupils in this school, but there were more Ukrainian and Russian children.  We had two favorite teachers – Yakov Iosifovich Aizenstadt, who taught mathematics (he was one of the most talented mathematicians in Ukraine), and Raissa Efimovna Leskova, who taught Russian literature. She is 80 now and we still visit her. The other teachers were just boring.
     When I was at this school I became a pioneer, but I have no memories of it.  I almost had problems with Komsomol There were many things that I didn’t quite understand, but I, as I hesitated becoming a member. By  the beginning of the tenth grade, all the other students had become Komsomol members. I was called to the director on a daily basis. They kept asking me over and over when I would join. My answer was always the same -- that I was not quite ready for it. We had long discussions, and they told me that it would be a problem for me to enter the Institute if I were not a Komsomol member. In the end I went to the district Komsomol Committee and obtained my Komsomol membership card.    
     The Soviet holidays were celebrated very pompously back then. Both at school and at the Institute, everybody went to parades with flags and flowers on May 1 and November 7. It mandatory for teachers and children to attend those festivities. I always found it obnoxious and boring.
     Upon our return to Kiev we felt immediately how the attitude towards the Jews had changed. The only person in our family with distinct Jewish features was my mother, and wherever she went there she faced anti-Semitic incidents. On public transport and in the street, people called her "Jew" and shouted insults, sometimes saying that Jews were the enemy and had to be destroyed.
     I finished school in 1953. I wanted go into a profession that had something to do with literature, but  I was told that in Kiev it didn’t even make sense to try to enter the University. My parents’ acquaintances advised me to go to the Kharkov Library Institute. I passed my entrance exams, but I wasn’t admitted. This was the time of widespread anti-Semitism, the time of the "Doctors' Plot" and the struggle with "cosmopolitans." It didn’t affect our family, perhaps, because my parents weren’t practicing doctors. But I did hear somebody saying in a hospital “Don’t go to a Jewish doctor. You know how they murder people”. 
     Stalin died in 1953. I was ill and staying at home at the time, when a classmate called and told me about it. I put on my clothes and went to school. I didn’t quite realize why. It wasn’t sorrow or anything like it. One mourns when one loses someone close. It was like a mandatory event. The class got together, and one ought to be there. There were no tears shed in the family. Mamma even allowed herself some humorous statements in the family circle. After the Congress (the 1953 Communist Party Congress when Khruschev publicly debunked the cult of Stalin and lifted the veil of secrecy from what was happening in the USSR during Stalin’s  leadership – Editor's note) a part of all that had happened became known (that is, repression, arrests, forced famine and millions of innocent victims – Editor's note). It took many years to digest all this information and I still remember how horrifying it all was.
     In 1954 I entered the Dentistry Department of the Kiev Medical Institute. I didn’t have a calling for medicine, but I was eager to live the happy life of student.  Besides, it was important to have a higher education. I did well in my studies, but it took a lot of effort. In my group there were two other Jewish girls. They became my friends. During my studies I didn’t face any anti-Semitism. Upon graduation in 1959 I received an assignment in Lugansk.  Dad wanted to help me find a job in Kiev, but at the time I thought that one had to perform one’s duty. I didn’t work long in Lugansk, though. It was an awful clinic with a terrible Chief Doctor. Her name was Anna Alexandrovna Polovinchenko. She was filled with malice and anti-Semitism. She didn’t even conceal it. But I always tried to do my job well, and it was hard to find fault with me. My father rescued me from Lugansk.  He found a job for me in Borispol, and I worked eight years there. I became a real specialist.  But it was a terrible, long commute from Kiev. I went there by bus. It was always full of people, baskets and sacks. I always came to work exhausted and tired. But I have very warm memories of this time. We had a very nice shift: two male doctors and I. We were all Jews: Boria Tabachnik, Sasha Gutman and I. There were also two Ukrainian girls. They were both country girls, but they were very well mannered. They treated me very well. And this was during a period that was terrible and fearful. In the yard there was a board of honor, on which photographs of the most distinguished employees were displayed. It was even hard for Ukrainians to earn this honor. Nonetheless, within a few years, my own photograph was posted on this board. I worked very hard.
     We were not paid very much. My mother used to say “Ah, your salary? Just enough to go from Pechersk to Podol (from one district to another in Kiev) and to buy a box of matches.” But I lived with my parents and this helped a lot.
     After eight years, I got a job in Kiev, first at the Kalinin hospital and then at a clinic in Lenin street. I worked there until my retirement.
     In the 1950s my father’s stepfather died. My grandmother died in 1966 from gangrene.
     My older brother Yuri became an English teacher at the Medical Institute after University. A few years later he defended his dissertation and was invited to work at the Academy of Sciences. He taught English to post-graduate students.  He got married in 1954. His wife Irina (Ira) is not Jewish. Her family is a mixture of the Russian, Polish and Ukrainian.  My parents always liked Ira. She is also an English teacher. In 1961 their son Mikhail was born. He is my beloved nephew.
     We were happy and proud to hear about the foundation of Israel. However far we were from identifying ourselves as Jews, we always followed what was going on there. We sympathized with the people moving to Israel, although back then it was considered parricide. As for us, my parents were old already, and they couldn’t go. I couldn’t leave them: children were supposed to take care of their aging parents. Yura and his family lived in a separate apartment and my parents lived with me.
     I am single, although there were men who wanted to marry me. I think now that I compared all men with my father subconsciously and nobody could compete with him. Well, it is too late for regrets. It was only when  I started thinking about moving to Israel 20 years ago that my single status became an obstacle .  My parents had died by then. They worked until their last days, with a clear mind and lots of energy.  My father died in 1978 and my mother died two years later. I was afraid to go to another country all by myself.  I wouldn’t have had all these doubts if I had a husband beside me. 
     My brother and his family did move to Israel. Misha, my nephew, wanted to study biology and decided to enter Kiev University. But at 16, when he was getting his passport, he insisted that item 5 say that he was of Jewish nationality. By doing this he lost his opportunity to enter the University. His answers during entrance exams were "excellent", but the teachers only gave him "good" grades. He wasn’t admitted. At Yura’s advice he agreed to go to the Agricultural Academy to get a degree.  By that time Misha had already decided he would move to Israel, but Yura convinced him that it was better to go there with a diploma. Misha studied in the Academy for three years. Then he gave up his studies and submitted his documents for departure to Israel.  His parents followed him. This was in 1991. They live in Tel-Aviv. They have a good life. My brother and his wife found  jobs at the Tel-Aviv University,  Ira as an English teacher and Yura in scientific work. They are retired now, but the University employs Ira several months a year. Misha has become a journalist and works for Russian language publications. He also became a professional photographer and published a photographic book called  "Israel 2000: Contradictions & Metaphors." He immediately got offers to compile catalogs of museums in Israel and Europe. He had to take photographs of art works and write about artists.  He got married in Israel. His wife is from St. Petersburg. They love each other and, I hope, they will be happy.
     In 1994 I visited my brother in Israel. I found this country amazing. There is history in every stone there. I traveled a lot around the country. I was overwhelmed with impressions. I am proud of the people who could construct beautiful towns in the desert, grow gardens and preserve ancient monuments. This was unforgettable. It is my dream to go to Israel again. 
     In the past 10 years much has changed in Ukraine. I knew there were changes when I saw a huge portrait of Sholom Aleichem in Proreznaya street. It was during our first President Kravchuk's administration. There was a jubilee for Sholom Aleichem.  This would have been impossible in previous years. I think anti-Semitism is in the past already. There are splashes of it, but they mostly come from older people, not the young ones.
      There is Jewish life in Kiev. The Jewish community arranges concerts, plays and lectures. Hesed helps us a lot to survive physically. It is moving and sad to realize that Israel is taking care of us, although we haven’t worked a day for this country or given it anything. And the country where we lived our whole life and to which we gave all our energy couldn’t care less about us. At the Hesed I always read Jewish newspapers and magazines. I always look forward to getting the next issues.  I’m glad I’ve lived until this time. I’m sorry my parents didn’t.

Шимон Данон

Пътят на моя род по бащина линия, след кръстоносните походи и испанските гонения, минал през Средиземно море и Турция. Прародителите на моя баща [Ешуа Данон] уседнали в град Одрин. Станалите войни - освобождението на България, създали нови – по-благоприятни условия за живот. Икономическото положение, отношенията с властващите, това, че българите до “вчера” са били под робство и затова можели по-добре да разбират евреите, накарали една голяма част от еврейското население на Тракия, живеещо около Одрин и Люле Бургас, да се пресели в българската част на Тракия. Били са предимно занаятчии, макар че може някои от тях да са били и търговци.

Дядо ми по бащина линия [Шимон Давид Данон], чието име нося, е бил занаятчия – кожар. Знам това, макар че той умира преди моето раждане – по време на Европейската война [Първата световна война]. Баба ми по бащина линия [Симха Данон] умира по същото време. Били са силно религиозни, защото идват от Испания, където гоненията са били на религиозна основа. По време на инквизицията всеки, който не изповядва християнството, е трябвало да напусне границите на страната. Трябва да отбележим, че това, което скрепява еврейската общност, е традицията. По разкази на баща ми [Ешуа Данон] знам, че в неговия род силно са спазвали традицията – особено шабат. Кипур, който е един празник на всеопрощението, е бил считан за по-голям празник от всички останали. Считали са, че от този ден започват отново да живеят, след като опростят всичко лошо, което са направили. Традицията им е внушавала един по-добър начин на живот, не толкова на поминъка, колкото на отношенията в семейството и извън него.

Къщата на дядо ми и баба ми [Шимон и Симха Данон] беше кирпичена, с турски керемиди. Стаите бяха изрисувани с разни шарки. Влизаше се от стая в стая. В спалнята спяха всички деца. Семействата на майка ми и баща ми са били многолюдни. В семейството на баща ми са били 3 братя и 2 сестри  - 5 души. На майка ми – 3 братя и 3 сестри – 6 души. Баба ми и дядо ми по майчина линия [Нисим и Дуду Асса] са имали (преди моето раждане) къща, която не помня. После направили нова, в която живееше много голям род – семействата на дядо ми и неговия брат. Жените им носели едни и същи имена [Дуду Асса]. На тяхно име били имотите, върху които е построена къщата. Когато се раждало дете в едното семейство, не по-късно от 6 месеца се раждало дете в другото семейство. Майка ми [Естер Данон] съответства на леля ми Фортуна [Асса] и т.н. Ако тук има 6 деца, нама съмнение, че и там има 6 деца.

Еврейската махала в Пловдив (където беше къщата на дядо ми Нисим Асса) имаше много по-ясни и твърди очертания от тази в Пазарджик. На около 50 м. от къщата на дядо ми беше т. нар. “кортизо”. На испански това значи “двор”. В това вътрешно пространство бяха наредени къщичките на около 50 семейства. Там нямаше български семейства и всички се грижеха за съхранение на националните интереси на евреите.

Дядо ми по майчина линия [Нисим Асса] беше религиозен фанатик. Той знаеше, че трябва да се моли и не изпускаше никаква молитва. Беше от евреите, които са така привързани към религията, че и сутрин, и вечер отиват в синагогата да правят молитви. Трябваше голямо събитие – например болест, за да пропусне ходене в синагогата, но отиваше по силата на навика. Спазваше каноните на религията без да влага дълбоко разбиране на същността й. Баба ми по майчина линия [Дуду Асса] беше религиозна до толкова, до колкото можеше, защото много рано се парализира и 1/3 от живота си прекара на стол. За нея трябваше да се грижат. На базата на фанатизма налагаше спазването на всички традиции и норми, за което трябваше да се погрижи дядо ми.

Изключително голямата взаимопомощ е помагала на евреите да не се отклоняват от еврейството. Например когато се правят дарения, те не се правят на определена личност, a за подпомагане на по-бедните. Преди Кипур се прави жертвоприношение със заколване на птици, за здравето на всеки член от семейството. За мъж се коли петел, а за жена – кокошка. По времето преди да се роди малкият ми брат [Шемуел Йешуа Данон, роден на 19.10.1943 г.]. Заколвахме към 4-5 кокошки, но не можехме да ги консумираме. Беше задължително част от това месо да се дава на по-бедните. Отделните евреи, поканени в синагогата да произнесат встъпителната молитва – “кидуш”, впоследствие правят “матана”, което значи “подарък”. Прави го този, на който е оказана честта да се качи на амвона на синагогата. Имаше още много други форми, с които се осъществяваше всеобща взаимопомощ. Всички бедни евреи учеха в еврейското училище безплатно. На всички деца от бедни семейства задължително се шиеха дрехи за нова година – Роша Шама. За по-бедните през зимата трябваше да се осигурят обувки, топли дрехи и най-важното – храна. В еврейското училище, в което учех аз, имаше организирана трапезария за бедните деца. Всяко от тях трябваше да получи на обяд топла храна. За всяко по-заможно семейство имаше определен ден, в който съпругата да трябваше да осигури храна за трапезарията. И нашето семейство имаше такъв ден. Надпреварвахме се да осигурим по-добра храна, най-малко такава, каквато ядяхме всеки ден у дома и дори да дадем нещо повече.

Еврейската общност в Пазарджик наброяваше около 900 до 1000 души. Имаше около 350 семейства, средно по 3-4 души. Евреите живееха на определени улици. На нашата имаше само 2 арменски семейства, на съседната само едно българско. Не е вярно, че у българите не е имало антисемитизъм. Имаше и страх от евреите, и завист към тях, дори ако щете, защото взаимно се подпомагат. Непрекъснато се внушаваше на малките българчета, че евреите се хранят с “кръв”. Не бяха редки случаите, когато ставаха спречквания между еврейчетата и българчетата от съседните махали.Все се намираше някой да се провикне: “Защо пиете вие християнска кръв? Защо колите християните?” и т.н.

Когато завърших 3-ти прогимназиален клас (сегашен 7-ми) и отидох в гимназията, съучениците ми казваха: “Абе, ти не приличаш на евреин. Ти си добър. Ти не лъжеш. Защо всички евреи не са като теб?” Това бяха обикновени разговори на момчетата от селата, защото аз, като евреин, учех в класа на селските, а не на градските момчета. И докато техният антисемитизъм беше наивен, защото не беше на базата на някакъв материален интерес, то този на градските момчета беше по-силен, защото бяха синове на търговци и занаятчии, които се конкурираха с евреите. Съществуваше завист. В семейството ми казваха: “Хубаво, учи се, бъди сред първите, но недей да бъдеш първи ученик.” Баща ми казваше: “Нищо, че няма антисемитизъм. На тебе винаги ти пиша една единица в повече, защото когато те оценяват, ти намаляват една единица заради това, че си евреин. “ Сред евреите беше дълбоко насадено чувството, че ние сме пренебрегнати в общата оценка на нашите възможности. Не можеше евреин и в най-добрите времена да бъде лансиран във войската, полицията, финансите. Въпреки, че заемахме да кажем 1/20-та част от града, ние нямахме нито един полицай евреин, нито един, който да работи в системата на войската, нито един чиновник в общината. Това подбуждаше ционистични интереси и спокойно можем да кажем, че град като Пазарджик беше със силно ционистическо влияние.

Баща ми [Ешуа Данон] беше много интересен човек. Беше “габай”, това е нещо като старейшина – първия човек след свещеника. Към него се обръщаха като към общественик. Габайят трябваше да устрои всеки човек, който посещава синагогата, по всеки въпрос, който го интересува. 99% от свещениците, които четяха молитвите, не знаеха какво четат. Те произнасяха думите на базата на запаметяването, без да знаят съдържанието им. За разлика от тях, моят баща разбираше това, което четеше.Той превеждаше молитвите на латино [ладино], тъй като това беше говоримия език за евреите. Особено по семейните празници молитвите първо се произнасяха на иврит, а после на испански, което ги правеше разбираеми за всички, които присъстваха. Баща ми не беше религиозен фанатик като дядо ми по майчина линия [Нисим Асса], той влагаше разбиране, правеше религията разбираема. Осъвременяваше я. Беше прогресивен. По едно време беше придобил леви разбирания. Дори имаше пряко участие в септемврийските събития [септемврийското въстание от септември 1923 г.], за което беше определен от властите за ликвидиране.

Майка ми [Естер Данон] беше човек със свободни виждания, въпреки че вътрешно беше дълбоко религиозна. Например – пред нея не стоеше като ограничение изискването да не се яде свинско месо, но случеше ли се нещо, веднага търсеше помощта на господа. Майка ми беше типична еврейска жена, която трябваше да се грижи за децата си.

Дворът на бащината ми къща в Пазарджик не беше голям, но имахме плодни дръвчета и курник, в който винаги се гледаха 15-20 кокошки. Баща ми (не само в религиозно отношение) проявяваше интереси, които тикаха напред към по-съвременно развитие. Пазарджик беше селскостопански регион, нямаше почти никаква промишленост. За да има поминък на населението, трябваше да има  развитие на селото. Баща ми се занимаваше непосредствено с тази работа. Организираше отглеждането на копринени буби. Трябваше да се засадят черничеви дръвчета, трябваха специални помещения и съдове… Вярно е, че нищо съществено не излезе от тази работа, но той постави началото, основата. С бубарство след това започнаха да се занимават 200-300 семейства. Баща ми отглеждаше ориз, наемаше земи, организираше хора, защото оризарството не е традиционно за Пазарджик (там се отглеждаше жито) и изискваше специален начин на работа. Правеха се “килийки” за напояване. Технологията беше много по-различна от тази на традиционното земеделие. Баща ми беше един от първите в пазарджишкия край, които въведоха оризарството, нищо че не стана кой знае колко по-богат от това. После организира отглеждането на коноп. Всички тези инициативи не идваха от селското население, а от група предприемчиви хора, един от които беше баща ми. Отглеждането на конопа беше много тежко. Трябваше да се жъне, изчуква, прави на влакна… Колкото и да звучи неправдоподобно, баща ми имаше и стадо овце. Той искаше да промени старото недоходно овцевъдство. Спомням си, че един от овчарите, които беше наел, просто го ограби. Всеки път, в който идваше, на въпроса “Какво става с овцете?”, отговаряше “Мрат.” В къщи имаше лекарства против метила и други болести по овцете. Баща ми искаше да използва цялостно овцете. Например, руното им да се обработва от фина вълна, за да не се произвеждат само груби аби. Баща ми опитваше много неща, но ползата от това опитване беше не толкова за него, колкото за другите, които виждаха, че новото може да носи по-добри доходи от традиционното. Той носеше авангардност в мисленето си. Не стигаше до това, което е установено, отиваше напред.

Баща ми владееше писмено и говоримо френски език, без да го е учил никъде, просто от интереса да може да чете. В нашата къща се четеше. Не мога да кажа, че щом станем сутрин сме се хващали за книгата и сме чели до вечерта, но бяхме будни, следяхме новото. По време на войната ние имахме карта, на която отбелязвахме събитията. Всичко се знаеше, всичко се приемаше, всичко се обсъждаше. Колкото и парадоксално да звучи, баща ми не си лягаше вечер без да пусне радиото, да чуе “Интернационала” и да се разплаче. Той имаше чувството, че с “Интернационала” идва освобождението на всички народи на базата на зачитането на националните им интереси и равенството между хората. Той имаше нуждата да бъде зачетен като равен с всички хора по света, затова като чуеше “Интернационала”, така се въодушевяваше, че винаги имаше сълзи в очите. [Бащата на Шимон Данон е слушал тайно емисиите на радио “Москва” по време на II Световна война].

По време на Холокоста, около ‘41-ва година, първо запечатаха, а след това ни задължиха да предадем радиото. Все едно нещо изчезна от нас. Баща ми имаше орден за храброст от Балканската война. Представяте ли си, един евреин да има орден за храброст, след като навсякъде се разправяше, че евреите са най-страхливите хора и “бъзлив” евреин беше прозвище. Баща ми бил ефрейтор на батарея (6 души на едно оръдие), която била обкръжена на подстъпите на Одрин. Фелдфебелът, който ги ръководел, за да покаже родолюбие, извадил сабята, изревал “Напред за майка България!” и турците отсреща го убили. Баща ми останал сам с оръдието и 6-те войничета, които поискали да се предадат. Баща ми видял, че се свечерява и повдигнал духа им: “Дръжте се, докато се стъмни.” Огледал местността и видял, че има дол, където имало прикритие и можели да се изтеглят. Поел отговорността за батареята и наредил как да става изтеглянето – едни да поддържат огъня, а с останалите разглобили оръдието и го разпределили помежду си. Успява да се изтегли през този дол и така спасява 6-те войника и оръдието. Изкарват го пред полка и го награждават с орден за храброст, като дават примера за фелдфебела, загинал в безцелен патриотизъм и баща ми, който спасил батареята и тези 6-ма души, които сто на сто са щели да загинат или най-малко да паднат в плен. На базата на този орден баща ми беше поставен малко по-привилегировано по отношение на другите евреи. Докато всички носеха значки (включително и аз), баща ми носеше жълт бутон, което показваше, че фашистката държава се счита малко задължена към този човек.  

Майка ми и баща ми едва ли са се оженили по любов – в ония времена и с 13 години разлика. Заради войните от 1913 до 1920, баща ми се оженил късно – 1921 г. Баща ми беше личен ергенин, франт, по дрехите, по модата. Майка ми беше обратното. Баща ми гледаше да постави в къщата скулптури, художествени картини. Майка ми като че ли по-малко обръщаше внимание на тези работи. Тя обичаше повече да чете романчета. Баща ми търсеше музикалната класика. В къщи имаше грамофон с плочи и ние слушахме ариите на най-известните певци. Най-голямото негово удоволствие беше да изкараме грамофона и да слушаме “Риголето”, “Травиата”… Тия работи бяха чужди на 99% от хората в един град като Пазарджик.

Сестрата на баща ми [Роза Сизи] беше женена за един по-предприемчив от баща ми човек – Бохор Сизи. Той беше първи по всичко ново, което можеше да има в града. Той беше първия, който имаше радио. В неговия двор (забележете, в двора на един евреин, който не е селскостопански деятел) имаше плодни дръвчета от смокиня до бадем. Там имаше такава лоза, че от нея можеше да храни семейството си. Когато влизах в двора му, все едно че влизах в рай. Той нямаше ратаи или други работници. Сам поддържаше двора си. Дори сам си режеше дървата. Беше си направил за тази цел специално приспособление. Шегуваше се, че вместо да прави гимнастика, ще разреже две дървета. Само на базата на собствената си предприемчивост той беше един от най –богатите хора в града. Владееше страшно добре френски език. Четеше класиците в оригинал – Юго, Йожен Сю. Нямаше по-осведомен човек от него. Помня колко се учудвах като дете, щом го видехме да слуша радио – с едни такива огромни слушалки. Когато в Пазарджик нямаше къща, по-висока от два етажа, той имаше 30-метрова антена, която личеше из целия град. Той ни предаваше какво се слуша от Брюксел, Париж, особено около Мюнхен 1939 г. и Чехия. Получаваше вестници и списания от чужбина. Четеше ги направо и ни ги превеждаше. Забележете, той не отиваше никога на кафене, но в къщи имаше моникс за игра. Отиването в неговата къща беше особено събитие. Беше човек, който може само в роман да бъде описан. Не знам дали по пътя на наследствеността, но неговия внук Алкалай след това бе предложен за Димитровска награда – направи машина за засаждане на тютюн, която придоби известност в целия свят, тъй като засаждането на тютюн е една много трудоемка дейност. Това издигна България във висините на селското стопанство. Когато Тодор Живков посещаваше Пловдив, първо посещаваше Алкалай, за да види какво ново той ще представи за развитието на селското стопанство.                                      
                                         
Завършил съм основно и прогимназиално образование в еврейската прогимназия в Пазарджик. Гимназия завърших също в Пазарджик, но българска – по това време в България нямаше еврейска гимназия. Еврейското училище в Пазарджик беше много интересно. Там имаше една учителка гиверет Семо [“гиверет” на иврит значи “учителка”], която живя повече от 100 години. Изсели се в Израел. Когато навършила 100 години всички нейни ученици от Пазарджик, които били в Израел, направили голямо тържество. Имало наистина много хора – сега в Пазарджик има 30-тина души евреи от над хилядата, които живееха там. Гиверет Семо беше много интересен човек. С всички ученици говореше само на иврит. Преподаваше иврит и независимо дали учениците я разбираха или не, им говореше само на иврит. Това нейно “настояване” много помогна на тези, които заминаха в Израел, защото отидоха с познания върху езика.

В еврейското училище всяка година се правеха продукции с пиеси, които се изнасяха на иврит. С тях се внушаваше еврейщината. Помня една пиеса, в която участваше сестра ми Софи [Симха Моше]. Пиесата беше поставена от български режисьор. В негова чест бе дадена прощална вечеря, на която бяха поканени всички артисти. Беше грандиозно събитие за евреите в града. В пиесата ставаше дума за погромите над евреите в Полша. Беше около ‘39-та – ‘40-та година, малко преди да започнат гоненията на евреите в България – в навечерието им, тъй като вече се говореше за закони за ограничаване на дейността на евреите. Това сцепляваше еврейската общност. По време на представлението, за да представят изгарянето на еврейските къщи, зад сцената въртяха запалени вестници и факли. Наблизо имало прозорец и огньовете хвърляли отблясъци в двора на един от най-богатите евреи. Той изкупуваше тютюн от околията и в този двор бяха складовете му. Работниците му наскачали да гасят пожар. У евреите по това време вече се зараждаше чувството, че трябва да се изселят другаде. Около ‘41-ва година на път за Израел потъна една гемия, в която имаше доста хора от Пазарджик. С потъването на кораба се удави и Мишел Памуков, един от най-известните еврейски младежи, който ръководеше еврейската младежка организация в Пазарджик. Той създаде доста хора с националистически настроения. Знам, че сега го почитат в Израел. В помените, които се правят, името му се споменава като един от създателите на еврейската държава.

По времето, по което трябваше да стана гимназист, вече бяха в сила антиеврейските закони, но аз записах гимназия, защото баща ми имаше орден за храброст от Балканската война. Тогава законът даваше възможност децата на наградените с орден за храброст евреи да учат, докато всички останали не можеха. Когато в началото на първи гимназиален клас трябваше да седна на чина си въпреки всичко, а бях в един клас със селските момчета. В класа имаше не повече от един-двама пазарджиклии и то набедени хора, които не ги искаха в другите класове. Тогава вече имаше и бранници, и легионери. Това са приказки, че в България е нямало фашизъм. Беше си много надъхано, с всички шовинистически приказки за Велика България, България над останалите балкански народи и т.н. Селянчетата в тогавашната образователна система бяха поне на половина под възможностите на градските деца. Селото беше доста изостанало в сравнение с града (не че градът е бил кой знае колко напред). Имаше деца, които идваха в училище без да са виждали електричество и си светеха в къщи с газеничета. В Пазарджик имаше и електричество, и вода, и кина, и театри - не беше чак толкова изостанал в културно отношение град. Селата бяха на светлинни години назад, въпреки, че имаше деца много будни и интелигентни, надарени с възможности по-големи от тези на градските деца. Така например от нашия випуск, от “селските” класове излязоха двама министри – Тодориев, на енергетиката и Серафим Милчев – на мините. България дължи много на Тодориев, той е разионализатор. Всичките електроцентрали по “Марица-Изток” работят по неговите схеми за горенето на лигнитните въглища.

Не искам да кажа, че имам някакъв спортен талант, но бях развит, добре поставен и бягах добре на къси разстояния, особено на 100 м. Биваше ме в тия спортове. Награждаван съм. Имам 7-8 [награди] от спортни прояви на еврейските организации. Членувах в “Макаби” - това е еврейска спортна организация. За едно градско състезание по бягане на къси и дълги разстояния трябваше да се състезаваме аз и първенеца класа на градските момчета – “бранниците”, за това кой ще представи гимназията. Разбира се, учителят никога нямаше да ме пусне, но този път нямаше как – аз бях първенецът на нашия клас. Бранникът така и не можа да се примири, че евреин го е победил.

Когато влезнах за първи път в класа, тъй като аз закъснях докато уредя въпросите около влизането ми в гимназия, бранниците станаха и казаха: “На нас ни е забранено да сядаме на един чин с евреин.” Прие ме да седна до него най-богатото момче от с. Мало Конаре, чиито брат беше партизанин и политкомисар на отряда в Пазарджишкия край. Казваше се Рангел Караиванов. По-късно стана професор по зоология. Докато останалите граждани получаваха 300 гр. хляб, на евреите даваха 150 [Шимон има предвид дажбите по време на II Световна война] Дълги години всяка сутрин Рангел ми подаваше под чина половината от своята филия за закуска. Правеше го не от страх, а за да не урони достойнството ми. Когато почина казах (и на други места съм го казвал), че в Израел трябва да се посадят дръвчета именно за такива хора, а не за онези които произнасяха гръмки фрази, за тези, които в ежедневието помагаха на евреите. Самият Рангел по това време беше в още по-тежко положение, поради това, че неговите родители бяха изпратени в лагер (защото брат му беше партизанин), а той самият беше следен да не извършва някаква антифашистка дейност. (Той си я вършеше, разбира се.)

Аз имам един брат [Шемуел Ешуа Данон] и една сестра [Симха Ешуа Моше]. И двамата са научни работници. Сестра ми е старши научен сътрудник по медицинска хигиена. Брат ми е в раковата болница. Доскоро беше заместник-директор, а сега води държавния регистър на болните от рак в страната – една доста отговорна работа. Брат ми се роди в края на Холокоста. Роди се благодарение на Холокоста, защото цялото ни семейство беше събрано в една малка стая. Цялата ни къща беше препълнена с изселници от София. Роди се 1943 г., когато аз бях на 16-17 г., а сестра ни - на 20. Аз и сестра ни имахме малка разлика - 4 години. Грижехме се за брат ни. Бяхме в твърде неудобно положение – сестра ни сама можеше да има деца. Майка ми роди, смятайки първоначално, че има тежка болест. Ракът, който и предвиждаха, излезе дете.

По време на Холокоста ние бяхме в Пазарджик [не са били изселени]. Тук искам да кажа, че съществува една невярна представа, че българският народ е спасил евреите. В това отношение аз имам малко по-различно разбиране. Евреите в България започнаха да се чувстват по-сигурни за своето бъдеще не въз основа на българското общество като цяло. Не мога да отрека, че имаше доста българи, които подпомагаха евреите по различни съображения. Всъщност голямото стъписване на тези, които преследваха народа ни идваше от загубите на германците на Източния фронт. Колкото повече Червената армия наближаваше границите на страната ни, толкова повече хора се чувстваха “близки” на своите съграждани  и съседни евреи. След Сталинградската битка у тези хора се появи страх, че ще бъдат възмездени за нещата, които вършеха, а вършеха просто страшни неща. Аз си спомням как една вечер бранниците (все млади хора) натоварват каруци с павета и камъни и тръгват по нашата улица. Нали бяхме все евреи. Българско семейство нямаше. Имаше само две арменски къщи, в началото и по средата на улицата. Разбиваха систематично черчеветата и стъклата. Пропуснаха само арменските къщи. Хвърляха първо едно голямо паве, за да разбие черчеветата, а после камъни – като градушка. В нашата спалня едно цяло паве разби стъклата. Всички легнахме под леглата, защото падаха стъкла и камъни, имаше опасност за живота ни. Същата вечер направиха погром в еврейския дом.Всичко беше разбито и ограбено. Имаше един – Гого Дългия, който ходеше с бич. Можехме да излизаме само от 4 до 6 следобед. Само тогава можехме да си напазаруваме. Този, който даваше работа на евреи, трябваше да получи специално разрешение.

По линия на майка ми [Естер Данон] семейството ни даде много сериозни жертви. Моята леля [Фортуне Асса] загуби двамата си сина. Макар и с леви разбирания, те учеха в английския колеж в София. Една вечер при чичо ми дошли бранници – легионери и го заставили в срок от два часа да им даде няколко милиона лева. Тъй като той не могъл да им ги предостави, още същата вечер убили децата му. Паметникът, който им построиха е разрушен от сегашните фашисти – съвременните български фашисти. Да се представя, че сега в България няма фашизъм е глупост. Сега в България се продава свободно “Моята борба” на Хитлер. Продават се книги, които отричат изцяло, че е съществувал Холокоста, които говорят за еврейството като за мафия, която унищожава народите и т.н. Международният език на фашизма, това е антисемитизмът, който сега съществува в големи размери. На стените на френската гимназия [в София] пише: ”Евреите на сапун.” - след всички станали събития, след като загиват 6 милиона евреи. Има скинари, които обявяват пред телевизията, че ще унищожат евреите. Ако изселването на евреите продължава, то причините за това са, че след обявяването на демокрацията антисемитизмът продължава с нови темпове. Аз бих твърдял, независимо от пропагандата дори на някои еврейски агенции, че по времето на комунизма положението на евреите е било лошо, че то не е било такова тогава, а сега. Вярно е например, че имаха едно наум за роднините на някои евреи в чужбина и ги ограничаваха да заемат определени постове в държавния апарат. Доста се ограничаваше приемането на евреи в органите на държавна сигурност. Но аз бях достигнал до най-високите органи на властта. Аз бях заместник-главен прокурор на България. Това означава, че завеждах отдел в главна прокуратура. Няма град в България, който да не съм посетил. Няма прокурор в България,  който да не ме е познавал. Излизал съм десетки пъти пред целия народ по телевизията и радиото и то с пълното си еврейско име Шимон Ешуа Данон.А сега – ето наример, евреите в България не са получили официална реабилитация за това, че са им взети имуществата и че през Холокоста са били използвани от други хора. Напротив, в момента се провежда линия, не без помощта на известни еврейски среди, че видите ли, в България никога не е имало фашизъм, което е една абсолютна лъжа. Едновременно с това казват “ние сме ви спасили от фашизма”. По принцип, еврейската организация съществува, когато има нужда от нея. Аз имам чувството, че сега тя е по-силна с подчертаване на понятието “еврейство” в самата организация, именно защото се чувства нужда от защита. Наскоро присъствах на събрание, където мои сънародници, в присъствието на израелския посланик и други официални лица, казаха, че в България продължава да се засилва антисемитизма. Има автори, вестници и предавания по телевизията с явни антисемитски настроения. Казват, че няма закони да се противопоставят на това. Аз съм юрист и ви казвам, че в нашия кодекс има текстове, които преследват профашистката дейност и расовата ненавист, а те си затварят очите, защото на ръководни постове в СДС стояха хора с профашистки разбирания.                        

Февруари 2002 г.
Интервюиращ: Майя Николова   

Г-н Шимон Данон е изпълнен с активност – физическа, социална, политическа. Стреми се всячески да мотивира събитията, за които разказва. Да изтъкне причините, довели до тях. Да убеди събеседника си в логиката на идеите си.

Забележка: Коментарите на г-н Данон са автентични и, макар че на места интервюто е преструктурирано с оглед на по-гладкия му “хронологичен ход”, не съм си позволила да променя смисъла или да цензурирам изразеното от него мнение. 

Shimon Danon
Sofia
Bulgaria
Interviewer: Maiya Nikolova
Date of interview: February 2002

My family background
Growing up
During the war
Post-war
Glossary

My family background

The path of my paternal family, after the crusades and the Spanish persecutions, passed through the Mediterranean and Turkey. The ancestors of my father Eshua Danon settled in Odrin [Turkey]. The aftermath of the wars for the liberation of Bulgaria from the Turkish yoke 1 created better living conditions. The economic situation, the relations with authorities, the fact that Bulgarians had recently undergone the hardships of the yoke – and this made them more tolerant and understanding to Jews who had similar fate – made most of the Jewish population that lived in the area of Odrin and Lyule-Bourgas move to the Bulgarian part of Thrace. Many of those Jews were primarily craftsmen, or eventually became traders.

My paternal grandfather, Shimon David Danon, whom I was named after, was born around 1853/55 in Odrin and died in Pazardzhik in 1918/19. He was a craftsman – a leather-worker. I know this, even though he died before my birth, during the European war [WWI]. My grandmother, Simha Danon was also born in Odrin around 1858/59 and died around the same time, also in Pazardzhik. They had both been strongly religious because they came from Spain where the persecutions had been mostly religious. During the Inquisition everyone who did not profess Christian faith had to leave the country. Therefore tradition was the thing that really ‘sealed’ the Jewish community. My father told me that in his family they very strictly observed Jewish tradition, especially Sabbath. Yom Kippur was considered a more important holiday than all the rest. They believed that [every year] from that day on they would start a brand new life, having been forgiven all the bad things they had done. Thus, tradition had a great impact on the relations within the family and outside it, accounting for a better way of living.

Grandpa and granny’s house was made of sun-dried bricks with Turkish roof-tiles. [These are curved tiles, unlike the Bulgarian ones, which are usually flat.] The rooms were painted with various patterns that continued from one room into the other. All the children used to sleep in the bedroom. Both my father’s and my mother’s families were large: there were three brothers and two sisters in my father’s family, and three brothers and three sisters in my mother’s family.

My maternal grandpa Nissim Assa was born in Stara Zagora around 1871/72. I don’t know where and when my granny Dudu Assa was born. They lived in Plovdiv. They had a house before my birth that I don’t remember. Then they built another one, in which an enormous clan used to live – the families of my grandfather and his brother. Their wives had the same names [Dudu Assa]. The land on which the house was built was their property. Whenever a child was born in one of the families, a newly born child in the other family usually followed within 6 months – my mother Ester Danon, born in 1898, matched my aunt Fortuna Assa and so on. If my grandpa’s family had 6 children, doubtlessly my grand-uncle’s family would have 6 also. My grandma died in 1939/40 and my grandpa at the beginning of the 1960s.

The Jewish quarter in Plovdiv, where my grandfather’s house used to be, had a much clearer and firmer distinction than the one in Pazardzhik, where my maternal grandparents lived. About fifty meters away from grandpa’s house was the so-called ‘cortiso’, which means ‘yard’ in Spanish. The houses of some fifty families were situated within that inner space. There weren’t any Bulgarian families there, and Jewish integrity was taken care of.

My maternal grandfather was a religious fanatic. He knew he had to pray and never missed a prayer. He was of those orthodox Jews who were so devoted to religion that every morning and evening they visited the synagogue to pray. There had to be something really unavoidable – some great event – for example, illness, for him to miss his usual visit to the synagogue. He observed the canons of religion without actually understanding its core, without delving into its deep meanings. My grandmother observed religion as far as she was able, as she got paralyzed very early and spent one third of her life in a chair. She had to be looked after. There wasn’t anything particular in the way my grandparents used to dress. They wore normal clothes, nothing especially connected with traditions. 

The strong sense of mutual aid had motivated Jews never to deviate from their Jewishness. For example, when endowments are made, they are not intended for one person only but for the support of poor people in general. Before Yom Kippur, a sacrifice with the slaughtering of birds was performed for the sake of each family member’s health – a cock for men, and a hen for women. [The interviewee refers to the custom of kapores.] In the years before my brother Shemuel Eshua Danon’s birth we used to slaughter 4-5 hens but we couldn’t consume them. It was obligatory for us to give part of this meat to poorer people. Jews who were invited to the synagogue to say the kiddush, were supposed to make matanah after that, which means ‘a gift.’ It was made by the one who had been honored to go up to the almemar. This mutual aid had other material forms. All poor Jews used to study free of charge in the Jewish school. It was also a common practice for all children of poor families to receive clothes that were sewn especially for them for Rosh Hashanah. Shoes, warm clothes and, above all, food had to be provided for the poorer people. There was an organized soup kitchen for the poor children in the Jewish school where I used to study. Each one of them had to receive warm food at lunch. There was an appointed day for every wealthy family, on which the housewife had to provide food for the soup kitchen. Our family was also allotted such a day. There was some kind of a competition for providing better food, or at least food of the same quality that we ate daily at home.

The Jewish community in Pazardzhik numbered some 900-1,000 people. There were about 350 families with 3-4 persons on average. There were streets known as Jewish streets. There were only two Armenian families in our street and one Bulgarian in the next one. It is not true that there wasn’t any anti-Semitism in the Bulgarian circles. There was fear of Jews, as well as envy for the support that we gave each other. The notion that Jews are ‘blood-drinkers’ was constantly imposed on Bulgarian children. [The interviewee refers to the century-old blood libel accusations.] Fights between Jewish and Bulgarian children from close neighborhoods happened quite often. There was always someone who shouted, ‘Why do you drink Christian blood? Why do you slaughter Christians?’ and so on.

My father, Eshua Danon, was a very interesting person. He was a gabbai – this is something like an elder - the first man after the rabbi. People addressed him as a public figure. The gabbai was responsible for solving any problem that proved interesting to visitors of the synagogue. 99 % of the rabbis who read the prayers were not quite aware of what they were actually reading. They used to say the words only by heart, without knowing their meaning. Unlike them, my father knew what he was reading. He used to translate the prayers into Latino [Ladino], as it was the spoken language among Jews. Especially during the family holidays, prayers were usually first said in Hebrew and then in Ladino, which made them clear and understandable for the people present. My father wasn’t a religious fanatic like my maternal grandfather. He made religion somehow close and comprehensible. He ‘updated’ it. He was a progressive man. At one time he even had left-wing convictions. He even participated in the September events [Events of 1923] 2, after which he was wanted by the authorities.

My father’s courtyard in Pazardzhik wasn’t big, but we had fruit trees and a hencoop, in which some 15-20 hens were looked after. My father had various interests, which definitely enhanced the modern development of the village. Pazardzhik was an agricultural region, and there was hardly any industry. In order to improve village life, there had to be some way to make a living. My father took care of this. He organized the breeding of silkworms. Mulberry trees had to be planted, special rooms and pottery also had to be provided. It is true that nothing effective came out of it, but my father was, so to say, the founder of the whole initiative. After that, some 200-300 villagers started do breed silkworm.

My father also cultivated rice, he rented land, hired people, because rice growing was not traditional for Pazardzhik (wheat was usually grown there), and it required a unique approach. Special irrigation ‘cells’ were prepared. The technology that he used was different to the one used in traditional agriculture. My father, who was one of the innovators of the Pazardzhik district, actually introduced rice growing – even though he didn’t make much profit from it.

Later on he started hemp cultivation. All these initiatives didn’t come from the village people, but came from a few enterprising people, one of whom was my father. Hemp growing was very difficult; it had to be reaped, forged out, stapled.

Although it sounds rather unlikely, my father also had a herd of sheep. He had some ideas about changing the old mode of non-profitable sheep breeding. I remember that one of the shepherds he had hired simply robbed him. Every time he came, he responded with the simple ‘They died’ to the question about what had happened with the sheep. At home we had medicines against all sorts of sheep-diseases. My father wanted to make full use of the sheep: for example, to process their fleece into fine, not rough, wool for cloaks. My father, who saw that innovations could bring greater profit than tradition, enthusiastically experimented with lots of things, even though he didn’t benefit much himself. He was an avant-garde thinker.

My father had a good knowledge of French – he could write and speak well, without having studied it anywhere, just due to his own interest. My father never went to bed without turning on the radio to hear the International. And he always cried at it. He imagined that the International would bring the liberation of people all over the world, with equality and respect to their national interests. He also wanted to be seen as an equal among others; therefore, whenever he heard the International, the inspiration usually brought tears to his eyes. At the time of the Holocaust, around 1941, the radio was first stamped and later on we were obliged to give it away. It was as if something had been torn from us.

My father had a medal for bravery from the Balkan war [1912-1913]. Can you imagine a Jew having a medal for bravery, when everywhere Jews were denounced as the most cowardly people – and a ‘faint-hearted’ Jew used to be a byname? My father was a corporal in a battery – 6 men for 1 gun – that was surrounded during the war at the pass of Odrin [in Turkey]. The sergeant major in charge pulled out his sword and cried: ‘Onward - for mother Bulgaria!’ in order to show patriotism, and the Turks killed him. My father was left alone with the 6 soldiers, who wanted to surrender. My father saw that night was falling and tried to raise their spirit. He told them to hold on until it got dark. He examined the area and saw that there was a covered ravine to which they could possibly withdraw. He took the responsibility for the battery and gave orders to carry out the withdrawal. Some had to keep up fire while the rest stripped the gun and divided it amongst each other. And they succeeded in withdrawing to that ravine; and thus, he saved the 6 soldiers and the weapon. He was awarded with a medal for bravery in front of the whole regiment. It was noted that in spite of his bravery, the sergeant major had shown a rather meaningless patriotism – unlike my father, who had done a truly courageous deed by saving the battery and the 6 men, who certainly would either have been captured or killed, if it hadn’t been for him. Because of this medal my father was a little more privileged in comparison to other Jews. When everyone, including me, wore yellow badges, my father wore a yellow button, which was meant to show that the fascist country was somehow obliged to him.

My father’s sister, Roza Sizi, was married to a man more enterprising than my father – Bohor Sizi. Everything that could possibly appear in the town, he had first. He was the first one to have a radio. In his yard there were fruit trees with everything from fig to almond trees. Note that it was the yard of a Jew, who initially was not an agricultural worker. When I entered his yard, I had the feeling that it was a paradise. He didn’t have any farm hands or other workers. He took care of his yard by himself. He even cut logs alone, and for that purpose he had made a special device. He used to joke that he would rather cut two pieces of wood instead of doing gymnastics. And he was among the richest people in town thanks only to his enormous drive.

He knew French very well; he used to read classics in original – Hugo, Eugene Sue. He was definitely the most knowledgeable man. I remember how amazing it was for us, the children, when we saw him listening to the radio with those enormous headphones. In Pazardzhik, where there wasn’t a house higher than 2 floors, he had a 30-meter gantry that could be seen by the whole city. He informed us about what was happening in Brussels, Paris, especially around Munich, 1939, and the invasion in Czechoslovakia. He received newspapers and magazines from abroad. He used to read and translate them for us. He was not a café-admirer but he had some games at home, and visiting his house was always a special event. He was a unique man. I don’t know if genes have something to do with it, but his grandson Alkalai was nominated for a Dimitrov award. [This was one of the highest governmental awards in communist times, named after communist prime minister Georgi Dimitrov]. He invented a machine for tobacco planting, which became known all over the world, as tobacco planting is a very labor-consuming activity. Thus, Bulgaria became a top country in agriculture. When Todor Zhivkov visited Plovdiv, his first stop was usually Alkalai, as he wanted to get acquainted with the latest innovations in the domain of agriculture.

My mother, Ester Danon, was an open-minded person, even though she was deeply religious. For example, she didn’t always observe the custom of not eating pork, but during difficult moments, she always turned to God. My mother was a typical Jewish woman who had to take care of her children. My mother and my father didn’t marry for love – because of those times and an age-difference of thirteen years that separated them. My father got married quite late – in 1921 – because of the wars between 1913 and 1920 [the Balkan wars and WWI]. They certainly had a religious marriage in the synagogue, as secular marriage wasn’t a common practice then. My father was a handsome man, a dandy – he was interested in clothes and fashion. My mother was just the opposite. My father was keen on decorating our house with sculptures and paintings. My mother paid less attention to those things. She loved reading novels instead. We used to read at home. I cannot say that we did it from dusk till dawn, but we were bright and aware of what was to come. During the war we had a chart where we used to mark the events – we were informed, and eagerly discussed everything. My father was a classical music fan. We had a gramophone with records and we used to listen to arias sung by world famous singers. His greatest pleasure was to ‘wind up’ the gramophone and enjoy Rigoletto and Traviata. Such things were not very common for 99% of the people in a town like Pazardzhik.

Growing up

I was born in 1927. I have a sister, Simha Moshe Danon, born in 1923 and a brother, Shemuel Danon, born in 1943. My brother was born ‘thanks to’ the Holocaust, so to speak, because the whole family was gathered in a small room. The house was crowded with exiles from Sofia. When he was born, I was 16-17 years old and our sister was 20. We took care of our brother. The situation was quite delicate, as our sister could already have her own children. My mother gave birth initially thinking that she had a terrible disease. The cancer that the doctors diagnosed actually turned out to be her pregnancy with my brother.

I completed elementary and secondary school in the Jewish school in Pazardzhik. We studied Hebrew and Jewish literature, as well as the Tannakh there. The other school subjects were the usual ones, the same as in the Bulgarian school. Until the 4th grade we also studied mathematics in Hebrew, as well as the Torah. I graduated from high school in Pazardzhik also – but from the Bulgarian one. At that time there wasn’t a Jewish high school in Bulgaria. The Jewish school in Pazardzhik was very interesting. There was a teacher there, Geveret Semo [geveret is Hebrew for teacher], who lived more than a hundred years. She settled in Israel. On her 100th birthday all her former students from Pazardzhik, who lived in Israel, prepared a great celebration. There were really a lot of people – now there are some 30 Jews in Pazardzhik left of the thousand Jews who once used to live there. Geveret Semo was a very interesting person. She only spoke Hebrew with her students. In the end her persistence proved helpful for those who left for Israel, as they had already acquired a considerable knowledge of the Hebrew language.

Every year there were theater performances at the Jewish school that were performed entirely in Hebrew. The spirit of Jewry was conveyed through them. I remember a play in which my sister Simha Moshe Danon participated. The play was staged by a Bulgarian director. A farewell dinner was given in his honor, to which all the actors were invited. It was a grandiose event for the Jews in our town. The play was about the massacre of Jews in Poland. It was around 1939/1940, just before the persecutions against Jews in Bulgaria had started, and when there were rumors about new restrictive laws against Jews [The so-called Law for the Protection of the Nation] 4. This united the Jewish community. To represent the burning of the Jewish houses in the play, newspapers and burning torches were waved behind the stage during the performance. There was a window close to the stage and the fire could be seen from the yard of one of the richest Jews – he used to buy up tobacco and his stores were in this yard – so his workers jumped in to put out the fire.

Around the time I started high school, the anti-Jewish laws had already come into force. Despite that, I enrolled in high school because my father had a medal for bravery from the Balkan war. The law at the time allowed the children of the Jews who had been presented with a medal for bravery to study. At the beginning of the first high-school class I had to sit with the village boys. There were one or two guys from Pazardzhik who were notorious for their bad behavior and unwanted by the other classes. At that time there were both Branniks 5 and legionaries 6 already.

When I started high school, my classmates used to tell me, ‘Hey, you don’t look like a Jew. You are good, you don’t lie, why aren’t all Jews like you?’ Those types of comments were common among the village boys. (As I was a Jew, I studied in the class of the village boys, not in the class of the city boys.) The village boys’ anti-Semitic attitude was rather naive and not based on any material interest, but that of the city boys’ was much stronger because they were sons of merchants and craftsmen who used to compete with the Jews. Envy existed. In my family they used to say: ‘Fine, be good at school, stay among the best students, but never actually be the first.’ My father used to tell me: ‘Even if there is no anti-Semitism, I always put you one point ahead of the others, because when they examine you, they usually take it away, because you are a Jew.’

A deep feeling that our capabilities were underestimated was implanted among Jews. Even in the best times a Jew could not hold a high position in the army, police or in finances. Although we constituted about one-twentieth of the town’s population, there wasn’t a single Jewish police officer, nor was there an army officer, or a city community official. This certainly provoked Zionist interests and it can be said for sure that Pazardzhik was a town with a strong Zionist influence. We had two official Zionist organizations. The first one was Betar. It was more like a political party, a right-wing oriented organization. The other one was the youth sports organization, the Maccabi, which I was a member of.      

I wouldn’t say that I have any particular sports talent but I was athletic and a quite good short distance runner, especially in 100 meters. I was good at it. I have 7-8 prizes from Jewish organization sports events. I was a member of the Maccabi – the Jewish sports organization. At a city competition in short-, and long-distance running I had to compete with the winner of the city boys’ class – one of the Brannik boys – in order to become a representative of the high school. The teacher would never have allowed me under different circumstances, but in this case he had no choice – I was the winner of our class. The guy could never cope with the fact that a Jew had beaten him.

The first time I entered the classroom (I was late because I had to take care of all the high school enrolling formalities), some Brannik boys stood up and said that they were forbidden to share a desk with a Jew. So the richest boy from Malo Konare village, whose brother was a partisan and a political commissar of the partisan detachment in the Pazardzhik district, offered me a place next to him. His name was Rangel Karaivanov. When [during WWII] the rest of the citizens received 300 gr. bread per day, Jews were given 150. Every morning, over the course of several years, Rangel used to pass me half of his breakfast slice of bread under the desk. He didn’t do it out of fear but because he didn’t want to hurt my dignity. When he passed away I said – and I have said it many times – that trees should be planted in Israel in memory of such people, who helped Jews on a daily basis, and not only for those who spoke loudly. Rangel himself was in a much more difficult position because his parents were sent to a camp, as his brother was a partisan. They watched and followed him, and also warned him not to carry out any anti-fascist actions – which he did, anyway.

During the war

Jews began to anticipate that they would have to resettle somewhere else. Around 1941 a ship, which was on its way to Israel, sank in the Black Sea. There were many people from Pazardzhik on board. Mishel Pamukov, who led the Jewish youth organization in Pazardzhik and was one of the most popular Jewish young men, drowned with it. He inspired many people with his nationalist sentiments. I know that he is now honored in Israel. He is mentioned as being one of the founders of the Jewish State in the memorial services that are held there.

It is mere talk that there was no fascism in Bulgaria. The atmosphere was rife with chauvinist tales about Great Bulgaria, Bulgaria above the other Balkan peoples, etc. Back then village boys in the education system didn’t have the opportunities that the city boys had. The village was quite backward compared to the town. There were children who came to school without having seen electricity. They lit their homes with kerosene lamps. In Pazardzhik there was electricity, running water, cinema, theatres – it wasn’t that underdeveloped culturally. Villages were millions of years backward, although there were some very bright and intelligent children, much more gifted than the city kids. For example, our alumni produced two ministers – Todoriev, of energy and Serafim Milchev – of mines. Bulgaria owes much to Todoriev. He is an innovator.

During the Holocaust we stayed in Pazardzhik. I would like to emphasize here that a wrong notion exists that the Bulgarian people saved its Jews. I have a slightly different opinion concerning this. I think that Jews in Bulgaria became more confident about their future not because of Bulgarian society as a whole. I cannot deny that there were quite a lot of Bulgarians who were helping Jews for different reasons. Actually, the ones who used to chase our people were rather shocked by the losses of the Germans on the East front. The more the Red Army approached our borders, the more some people felt ‘close’ to their Jewish compatriots. After the Stalingrad battle they began to fear that retribution would reach them for the things they had done. And they had done awful things. I remember the Brannik boys (only young people) one evening loading up some carts with paving stones and marching in our street. Ours was an entirely Jewish street. There weren’t any Bulgarian families there. There were only two Armenian houses: one in the beginning and one in the middle of the street. The youngsters systematically smashed windows and sashes. They only left out the Armenian houses. First they threw one big paving stone to break the window frame and after that – smaller ones – like a hailstorm. A large paving stone broke our bedroom window. We all lay under the beds because glass and stones were falling down and we feared for our lives. On the same night they attacked the Jewish community building as well. Everything was vandalized and robbed. There was a guy, Gogo Dulgia, who usually carried a whip in his hands. We could only go out from 4 to 6 p.m. It was the only time we could buy ourselves something. Everyone who hired Jews had to get special permission.

On my mother’s side our family suffered great losses. My aunt lost both her sons. Although they had left-wing convictions, they studied in the English College in Sofia. One night, Branniks came to my uncle’s place and blackmailed him to give them several million leva within two hours. As he couldn’t do it, they killed his children on the same night. The monument that was built in their memory has been ruined by Bulgarian neo-fascists.
My brother and my sister are both associate professors. My sister is a senior research professor in medical hygiene. My brother works in the oncology hospital. Until recently he was deputy director, and now he’s in charge of the state register of people with oncology diseases, a very responsible job.

Post-war

I reached the highest levels of power. I was deputy prosecutor-in-chief of the Republic [in communist times]. It means that I was responsible for a whole department in the chief prosecutor’s office. There isn’t a town in Bulgaria that I haven’t visited. There isn’t a prosecutor in Bulgaria who wouldn’t know me. I have appeared dozens of times on TV and radio with my full Jewish name – Shimon Eshua Danon. 

My wife, Anna Danon, is a doctor. I met her in the reading-room of the library of the Jewish community in the 1950s. At that time I was a law student but I also worked there as a librarian. It was a rich library, visited by a lot of Jewish students. There I met Anna and we soon got married – we had a secular wedding. We have one daughter Raia, who is a teacher of Spanish language at the Spanish high school in Sofia. In my adult life I have kept my Jewish identity by regularly observing certain Jewish traditions, like Pesach, for example. As I am a member of the Jewish community in Sofia, I often visit lectures and various events that are organized by it. And, throughout the years, I have maintained regular contact with my mostly Jewish friends. I visited Israel in 1993-1994. It was a visit to my wife’s relatives.

To pretend that there is no fascism in Bulgaria today is nonsense. Now Mein Kampf is sold here without any obstacles. Books are distributed that deny the Holocaust and speak the same way of the Jewry as of the Mafia, claiming that they destroy nations. Anti-Semitism, the international language of fascism, is now gaining power again. ‘Jews on soap’ is written on the walls of the French high school in Sofia – after everything that has happened, after the death of 6 million people. There are skinheads who speak on television about destroying the Jews. If Jews are still emigrating, it’s because – even since the beginning of democracy – anti-Semitism still continues to grow. And, in spite of the propaganda that is spread by some Jewish agencies that in communist times the position of Jews had been very bad, I would even say that it wasn’t bad then. It is bad now. It’s true, for example, that the relatives of some Jews who were living abroad were monitored and watched; they weren’t allowed to hold governmental and state posts. The number of Jews working in the network of the state security system was very limited. And now – for example, Jews in Bulgaria haven’t yet been compensated for their property losses during the Holocaust. On the contrary, and not without the support of famous Jewish circles, a certain policy is now circulated that – can you imagine? – there has never been fascism in Bulgaria. This is an absolute lie. And at the same time they say: ‘We saved you from fascism.’

Principally, the Jewish community exists only when it is necessary. I have the feeling that now it’s stronger – with the emphasis put on the concept of ‘Jewry’ in the community itself because of the need for protection. Recently I was at a meeting where my compatriots, in the presence of the ambassador of Israel and other official figures, said that anti-Semitism continues to grow in Bulgaria. There are authors, newspapers, TV magazines with obvious anti-Semitic sentiments. They say there are no laws to oppose that. I am a jurist and I can tell you that there are texts against pro-fascist activities and racial hatred in our constitution. Because the leading posts of SDS [Union of the Democratic Forces] were held by people with pro-fascist convictions some people prefer to close their eyes.

Glossary

Bernard Knezo Schönbrun
Bratislava
Slovakia
Interviewer: Martin Korcok
Date of interview: November 2005 – March 2006

Mr. Bernard Knezo Schönbrun was born into an Orthodox Jewish family 1 in Eastern Slovakia. He grew up in very modest living conditions. Modest conditions and sports activities, in which he excelled among his contemporaries, induced him to join the leftist-oriented Jewish youth in Michalovce. The war years and the tragedy that befell Jewry only served to entrench him in his leftist views. Unfortunately, he became inconvenient for the totalitarian system that came to power in the post-war period. Despite his education, he was stripped of his position and was assigned to manufacturing. Of course, Mr. Knezo’s family, which he loves above all else, helped him overcome all trials and tribulations that life brought him. During his life he always steered himself by the philosophy with which he also guided his family: ‘You always have to help people, because sooner or later it will return!’ I can’t but take this opportunity to mention that it was an honor for me to meet such modest people, with such big hearts, as are Mr. Bernard Knezo Schönbrun and his wife, Anna.

Family background
Growing up
At school
During the War
After the War
Glossary:

Family background

My father was named Moric [Moritz] Schönbrun, Jewish name Mojshe. He came from Subcarpathian Ruthenia 2. He was born in 1876, but I don’t remember the exact place. In 1929 he got pneumonia and was in a hospital in Kosice, where he also died. They buried him in one of the local Jewish cemeteries. My mother was named Mina, nee Fuchs. She was born in Eastern Slovakia, in the town of Pozdisovce, in 1883. She died during transport to Auschwitz, if you can say that she died. On the way there they trampled her to death in the wagon.

I don’t know my family from my father’s side at all, and neither did I ever find out anything about them. Neither do we know the names of my grandparents on my mother’s side. All I know is that they were very poor people. They had ten daughters and they all lived together in one room in Pozdisovce. I of course don’t remember the names of all ten girls. I remember only one of my mother’s sisters, we called her Ilonka neni [Auntie Ilonka]. From the time I was ten, I lived in Auntie Ilonka’s family in Michalovce.

As I’ve mentioned, my father was from Ruthenia. How did he get to the territory of today’s Slovakia? After World War I, the population started moving around. People went where they’d be better off. The living conditions in Ruthenia were worse than in Eastern Slovakia, and so my father moved here. After World War I there were 18 Jewish families living in the village of Inacovce, in the Michalovce region, where he settled. Mainly poor people of course, like tailors, shoemakers and also cleaners. But the number of Jewish families in Inacovce slowly decreased. Right before World War II, there were already only three Jewish families living in the village 3. It was apparently because poverty drove people towards a better life, westward.

In my mother’s native village, Pozdisovce, there were more Jewish families, that I know for sure. In the regional town itself, in Michalovce, there were in those days about 12,000 inhabitants, of those about 4,000 Jews. On Friday evening, when the stores closed, the whole town emptied and was empty on Saturday too. The Jewish population was at the synagogue. There was one beautiful synagogue in the town. People congregated either there, or in other smaller prayer halls.

I don’t know how my parents met. All I know is that my father was married twice. His first wife died. My father brought a son into the second marriage, he was named Lajb. After World War I Lajb moved to the USA and there he changed his name to Louis. Well, and with my mother my father had another three girls and me. My parents spoke Yiddish to each other. Our mother tongue was also Yiddish, and of course we also learned the Zemplin dialect. This dialect was used in our surroundings. At home we also spoke Hungarian, but we spoke Hungarian only very rarely. In those days Hungarian was the language of ‘better’ people, that’s how one could put it.

Together with my half-brother there were five of us children in the family. The oldest was my sister, who was named Malkele, or Malvin, Malvinka. Another sister was named Lincu, or Lina, Linka or Karolina. Her Jewish name was Lea. The last of my sisters was named Surele, or Sarika, Sarolta. My half-brother was Lajb. He left for the USA after World War I. He settled in the city of Detroit. Occasionally he wrote us something. Always, when a letter from him arrived, we had something to laugh about. In each letter he wrote the same thing: ‘Di geshefte geyn zeyer shlekht. Mer kanayes ken ikh oykh nisht shrayben un ferblayb ayer bruder Luis.’ In Yiddish this means: Business is very bad. Otherwise there’s nothing new to write, yours truly, your brother Louis. That was how he ended his letters. We relished laughing at this so much that it’s stayed in my mind until now.

I never met Louis. During the First Republic 4 I was still small, and during the time of the Slovak State 5 it wasn’t possible. After the war he did a very nice thing. He sent my wife and me a so-called affidavit and ten dollars, that we should come join him. We didn’t leave and I returned the money, saying that when we do once come to America, he can give us the money. That it would help us more there than here, as it was 70 Czechoslovak crowns. Apparently my brother was offended, as we didn’t use the affidavit and returned the dollars. I guess he really was doing ‘schlecht’ [badly]...

Jews differed from the other village inhabitants in the clothes they wore. This was also the case with my parents. My father always wore dark clothing and wore a hat on his head. My mother’s hair was cut very short and she wore a kerchief on her head. My parents were strictly Orthodox Jews. Now I’ll mention one touchy subject. There’s a rule that after menstruation women have to wash in running water. My mother took this rule so seriously that in the winter, together with one of her daughters, she’d chop a hole in the ice on a nearby stream and bathe, because that’s what the rule said. The result was that towards the end of her life it caused her to have serious rheumatism. During her last years she just laid in bed. The Bergmans from Senne, who brought her food, also helped her. Her strict observance of religious rules indirectly resulted in her becoming an invalid, and during the deportations they just threw her, crippled, into a wagon. People didn’t pay her any heed and trampled her.

At that time I was already with Auntie Ilonka in Michalovce. The way it was, was that my father died in 1929 and I was supposed to recite the Kaddish for him. As there weren’t enough men [for a minyan, a minimum of ten men above the age of 13 needed for prayer] in Inacovce, I had to go to Michalovce. I wasn’t even 10 yet, and I recited the Kaddish for my father. At that time my mother was already suffering from serious rheumatism. I remember that she wasn’t even able to wipe the sweat from her forehead. Always when she raised her arm, she said, ‘My boy, it hurts.’ I was still little, so I didn’t understand it, and answered, ‘Mommy, how could it hurt?’

Our father also closely followed religious rules. For example it would be Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. We didn’t have a minyan. So Jews from three to five villages got together and would go to one village favorably located for this purpose. Jastrabie was the central village where we used to gather at the home of one Jewish family. My mother, the poor thing, would go with us in the evening on those sore legs of hers, so that she could be at the Kol Nidre. Those two kilometers were no small feat for a sick person. The men went there every Friday evening for Sabbath and during holidays, women only for the High Holidays.

Normally, usually once a week, not only during the High Holidays, but also on other days, my father used to go with other men to bathe in the mikveh. Imagine that, in that hole, in Inacovce, there was a mikveh. When I was still a young boy I used to bathe in the mikveh, on Friday. I went there with my father. Later I also went to a mikveh in Michalovce. The religiosity of Jews in Inacovce also showed in the fact that the three, four Jewish families there had a melamed – teacher, for their children.

Unfortunately my father died very early on. I couldn’t directly participate in the funeral, because my father, and thus also I, were kohanim – priests, from a tribe of priests, favored among all the Jewish tribes. For example during the High Holidays I blessed the entire kehila [kehila: the Jewish community in any given town], where they’d wash my hands beforehand so that they’d be clean during the blessing. I stood on a wall and recited the Kaddish. They buried my father right by that wall. Kohanim weren’t allowed in the cemetery, so that they wouldn’t come near unclean corpses. It was this privilege of theirs. I’d say that kohanim were considered to be a special tribe.

Growing up

I was born in the town of Inacovce, as my parents’ fourth child, in the year 1919. My parents named me Dov ben Mojshe. Dov means bear, and as I was still small, in Yiddish little bear is Berele. So that’s why at home they called me Berele. In official documents I was registered with the name Bernat. Our family house was made from unfired bricks. The whole house was shaped like the letter L. In the front there was a store, about 4 x 2.75 meters. From the store you entered a room. The room had small windows, two by three panes. There were two beds and a couch in the room. Also there was a wardrobe, cupboards, a sewing machine, table and chairs. Our whole family slept there and in the neighboring kitchen. In the beginning we had only that one large room. After my father’s death the house was ‘redone.’ After the room there was a kitchen and a door out into the courtyard. From the kitchen you could walk through a closet into the stalls, where there was a cow and horse. We all took care of the livestock. The horse was used mainly when we’d go to town to do the shopping. We bought things from merchants in Michalovce. They were named Bley and Izo, both were Jews, the upper crust from Michalovce.

In Inacovce, people called us by the nickname ‘malovany’ [fancy], as during Purim my deceased father had dressed up as a youth and sang: ‘I’m a fancy lad, I’ve got a laced coat...’ That stuck with him for good, from that time on no one in the village called us by any other name. Maybe it was also because for people that spoke only the Zemplin dialect, it was hard to pronounce the surname Schönbrun. At best they pronounced it ‘Scheybrun.’ Some people even mangled our nickname and called us silken or snazzy.

In the courtyard we had a well and troughs into which water for the animals was pumped. By the well we had a wooden sukkah with a roof that could be opened. The non-Jewish residents in our region called Sukkot ‘shack.’ They’d say, ‘The Jews are going into the shack.’ I liked Sukkot very much, it was a pleasant holiday. Everything was decorated with greenery and flowers. I also liked Passover. Beside the sukkah was a small garden where we grew vegetables. Mainly carrots, parsley, kohlrabi and a few potatoes. At the back of the courtyard we had another garden where we grew other vegetables. Since we had a cow and horse, there was a manure pile in the back, in the other part of the courtyard. We milked the cow twice a day and because we were very poor, we even drank milk milked during Sabbath. Poverty forced us to.

We also had a dog, and I remember there being an outbreak of rabies in the village. Which is why they decreed that all dogs in the town should be shot. My sisters put pillows over their ears so that they wouldn’t hear the shooting. At that time I didn’t understand it very much yet. We couldn’t afford to get another dog, as we had no money for a new one.

My father used to go to Michalovce to shop. He’d harness up the horse and go. I already knew approximately when he’d return, and would be on the lookout for him in front of the village. He always returned by the same road. He’d take me on the wagon and sit me on his knees. He’d give me the reins and I’d steer the horses.

Before Sabbath my mother baked bread for the whole week. When I was staying with Auntie Ilonka in Michalovce, my mother used to return the favor for me staying with them by also baking sweet cakes and would always send them over with someone. Of course, on Friday we also baked barkhes. For Sabbath a chicken would be slaughtered, because we also kept chickens in the courtyard. During Sabbath we weren’t allowed to turn on any lights and weren’t even allowed to light or stoke a fire in the stove, back then we heated with wood. Even on weekdays my parents prayed twice a day, and of course we said blessings over everything, broche. For example we said blessings while washing our hands, while eating bread, basically we blessed everything ‘Ha-motzi lechem min ha-aretz.’ ‘Blessed is the bread of the earth.’

When we bought new dishes or cutlery for the household, which happened rarely, we immediately koshered it all. We’d stick the cutlery into the ground and left it like that for a certain amount of time. I don’t remember the exact procedures any more. But buying something new was rare in our household. Dishes that could be, were seared, but I don’t remember this procedure either.

When I was young Inacovce had between 300 and 400 people. There were about a hundred houses. We didn’t have a market in the village, people used to go to Michalovce. Markets took place every Tuesday and Friday. The big market was on Friday. Farmers would come on horse-drawn wagons. Michalovce was such a dirty, muddy hole that there you had to know how to cross the street. The main street was paved with stone, but the other streets were only packed dirt. The farmers stood at the sides of the road and sold their goods.

I have good memories of all my siblings. My oldest sister, Malvinka, was a brave person. In time she married, unfortunately her marriage wasn’t a happy one. They had one child, who died as a baby. Her husband came into our family from the village of Mokca. Mokca is located on the border of Slovakia and Hungary. An interesting thing is that we were the Schönbruns, and all my sisters married Schöns. The husbands of my younger two sisters were brothers, while the husband of the oldest one hadn’t been related to them before that, they just happened to have the same surname. I don’t remember Malvinka’s wedding, I was still very small at the time.

Malvinka’s husband used to take money from the store and go to Uzhorod [today Ukraine]. There he’d lose all the money playing cards and would then return home. He’d take some more money and leave again. In this way our whole little store went to the dogs. Even the little that there was came to naught. Malvinka later divorced him. Her fate was very sad, she ended up in Auschwitz, where she died. Her little boy was buried in the local Jewish cemetery in Inacovce. The cemetery still exists, even though it’s in a sorry state. From some sort of fear of the ‘Jewish God,’ the residents ‘leave it be.’

My second sister was named Karolina. She was exactly the same type of person as my wife, assertive and self-confident. A very pretty girl she was. She married another Schön, Eugen, in Stretava. Eugen had a store in Stretava, and they did fairly well. Stretava was the second to next village from Inacovce, one went there through either Senne or Palin. All the women in the family, beginning with my mother, rest her soul, worshipped me, as I was the only boy. They spoiled me. Karolinka was doing well, and so during my visits she would ‘fatten me up.’ Once she made me an omelet out of 12 eggs. I ate it all, and then felt horribly ill. My mother told her that she’d never let me go see her again. They had a better house, and larger as well, also from unfired bricks. They had two children. The daughter was named Gyöngyi, or Pearl, the son Vladko [Vladimir]. The whole family was dragged off to a concentration camp, where they died. To this day I’ve got the postcard that they sent me from the Miedzyrzec 6 camp.

My youngest sister, Sarika, was a delicate creature. She married Eugen’s brother, Maximilian Schön. We called Maximilian Mishi. I still remember their wedding. The dance for the young people that came to the wedding took place in a pub in Inacovce. Pubs in these small villages served as social gathering places, cultural centers of sorts. The day of their wedding, there was a lot of mud in the village, and so that the wedding guests wouldn’t get dirty, they hired some gypsies. Their task was to carry the young people on their backs to the pub, for which they got paid. This was because at Jewish weddings, young Jewish people that knew the bride and groom also participated.

My brother-in-law Mishi, a healthy, strong fellow, a vulcanizer by trade, got into the ‘Sonderkommando’ in Auschwitz, which means that he carried the dead from the gas chambers to the crematoria and put them onto the grates. One day he got my oldest sister, his sister-in-law, Malvinka, to cart over. Then he had to cart over his dead brother, Eugen. One day he got his own wife, Sarika, to take over. That finished him off, as two people told me independently of each other. The ‘Sonderkommando’ were preparing to bring in explosives and blow up the crematorium sky-high. But one fellow prisoner, a Pole, betrayed them. The Germans burned that Pole alive. They said that anyone who betrays his own will betray them as well. On the basis of the Pole’s testimony they then hung my brother-in-law and the others.

After our father’s death my oldest sister Malvinka took care of everything. At that time Mother was already seriously ill. Malvinka was a very slender woman. When she looked good, she weighed 51 kilos, otherwise she weighed 49 kilos. This woman took care of the family. It was misery. All of us lived in two rooms, as the closet was converted into another room. As my sisters grew, more room was needed. As far as books go, those went to my sisters, albeit rarely, as they were older. I didn’t get books until I was in high school. I left our family home right after my father’s death. Then my sister Linka also moved away.

The young people in the village began to gradually live more progressively. For example, the generation before us entertained themselves as follows: about 20 young single men and newlywed men would gather, and walk, singing, in the direction of the neighboring village. Young men from the neighboring village would on the other hand walk towards ours. When they were about 15, 20 meters from each other, they yelled: ‘Wanna fight?’ And tore into each other. Once they stabbed someone from our village, another time someone from the neighboring one. I’m not exaggerating. I saw it once as I was sitting on the couch underneath the window, when one youth caught up to another one, and stuck a knife into his back. He had to pull on it twice to get it out. That was their fun. I want to stress that Jewish boys never did this. When we came, my generation, we brought a new culture to the village. We put on plays. On Sunday, we’d play soccer. We were the first generation of Jewish children that began to make friends with non-Jews.

Those of us who attended school in larger towns, there were five, six of us, brought culture to the village. We sang city songs, put on plays, played volleyball and of course soccer. As there weren’t enough of us, we began to initiate the local village boys into the secrets of soccer. In the beginning they would kick once into the ground, once into the ball, but gradually they got better, until we could form a village team and play against the neighboring village. Our fellow village dwellers were already coming to watch us; ‘How our troopers are kicking that ball.’ Village fights were gradually replaced by sports events. The village elders, when they saw what we’re doing, that we’re bringing culture to life in the village, gave us property for a soccer field. The property was called ‘Olosinka.’ I’ve even heard that someone wrote about how we changed life in the village. Instead of fights, it was: ‘We’re going to have a look at our troopers, how they’re kicking that ball.’ Once it happened to me that after one such game, where there were already people from the village, one woman said to me, ‘Mr. Bernat, listen, they do so much running around after that ball, and when they’ve got it, instead of taking it and going home with it, they kick it away.’ That was her understanding of soccer.

As I’ve already mentioned, after my father’s death I moved to Michalovce, so that I could recite the Kaddish. Because that’s how religious we were. I was around nine, ten years old. My mother sent me to Michalovce, to her sister Ilonka. Ilonka was a very brave person, when she added me to her already eight children. They had only two rooms to live in. Their children were named Boriska, Anuska, Sarika, Rozika, Zolika, Sanika, and unfortunately I don’t remember the names of the last two. Aunt Ilonka’s husband was named Blau, and had a quasi-café. Quasi because you can’t compare it with a café in today’s sense of the word. Auntie Ilonka baked tarts, supplied them to her husband, and he sold them in the café. Old Jewish men used to come there to play cards. During cards they’d order coffee and a tart to go with it.

Still during the time of the First Republic, Ilonka and her husband sent their oldest daughter Boriska to America, to live with some family. Thanks to this she stayed alive. After the war my wife and I invited her to come for a visit. We drove her around Eastern Slovakia. She was overjoyed, and wept profusely when she stood in the places where she had grown up. I wasn’t all the same to me either. Well, and we also were in America to visit her.

In those days there were about 4,000 Jews in Michalovce. So necessarily there were also more prayer halls there. The largest, a beautiful synagogue, stood downtown across from City Hall. During the time of the Communist regime they tore it down and built a parking lot in its place. Apparently they tore it down so that there wouldn’t be a Jewish church across from City Hall. In the east non-Jews called synagogues ‘buzna.’ This main synagogue had a secondary room where devout old people used to go, who used to from the early hours of the morning pray there, and studied the Gemara. I also used to go pray there, each morning before going to school, to recite the Kaddish for my father. Of course there were more such places, where they met and prayed the mincha [afternoon service] and ma’ariv [evening service], for example on Hodvabna Street.

I began attending school in Inacovce. There I attended up to Grade 3. At that point I transferred to school in Michalovce. The religion teacher there was ‘Uncle’ Hellinger. He always walked around in a Sabbath overcoat. He didn’t know how to express himself properly in any other language, which is why he spoke Yiddish and Zemplin. He convinced my mother to put me into high school, that he would prepare me for German exams. I guess he prepared me well, as I passed the exam and transferred from council school, where I absolved only one grade, to high school. I liked gym a lot, as I was excellent in it. I was a good athlete, running, high jump, shot put, that went well for me. I also used to play soccer. I took sports seriously. I liked it a lot, it seems that our second-born daughter has taken after me in this.

At the same time, I also very much liked to draw. I excelled at it. When we went outside as a class to draw, my teacher told me, ‘All right, you’ll sit down here and you’ll draw this scene.’ This flattered me. What young person wouldn’t be flattered by this? People saw that I was drawing something different from the others. This teacher, who was named Müller, he was a Czech, also gave me advice regarding my future profession and my future in general. I went to him for advice. I was considering going to an academy, where we’d be taking drawing. He told me, ‘No, I wouldn’t recommend it, as there’ll be times when you’ll have lots to eat, and times when you won’t have anything to eat.’ I was also good at natural history. Otherwise, it can’t be said that I lagged in something, I was this better average. I didn’t lag in anything, but neither did I excel. To this day I’ve got all my report cards filed away.

Up to the age of 13, I also attended cheder. I had various teachers. One was named Katz, that was in Grade 6. The classes were graded. Then there was also 7th and 8th grade. There our teacher was, by coincidence, a certain Blau, but of a different type. He once told me this: ‘Berele, du bist eyn groyser sheygetz.’ You’re one big sheygetz. That means Christian, rascal or something like that. I excelled in Yiddish grammar. I had very nice handwriting. I even wrote out report cards for our home room teacher. To this day I know the entire Yiddish alphabet. So I attended cheder up to the age of 13, and also normal elementary school. Then I attended council school for one year, and then transferred to high school.

Besides Auntie Ilonka, two families from Michalovce have been permanently engraved in my memory, the Reichs and the Polaks, at whose places I used to eat ‘teg’ during the school year. [Editor’s note: ‘Teg’ is the plural form of the Yiddish word ‘tog,’ meaning day.] This means that they used to feed me one day a week. They liked me and treated me in the best possible way. They never made me feel like I was dependent on them. Their attitude towards me molded my character. Mrs. Reich has remained in my memories my whole life as Auntie Zelma, and her older son, my friend Erisko. Mrs. Polakova was Auntie Sidi and her son Arnold our ‘son,’ whom my wife and I took in after the war.

Each year on 28th October, a big celebration took place in Michalovce, to celebrate the anniversary of the founding of the First Republic. On that day town delegates and non-Jewish officers of the Czechoslovak Army would visit the synagogue, which was a great honor for us. The cantor would sing a song about the founder of the republic, Tomas Garrigue Masaryk 7. I remember it as if it had taken place today. The cantor was a very congenial person, he sang beautifully, and we young guys liked his daughter.

Back then there were also several upper-class Jewish families in Michalovce. Among them were the Gutmanns who moved to Michalovce from our village. They had a car and mainly drove people to the train station with it. The Michalovce train station was quite far away from the center of town. The car would be parked in front of the Zlaty Byk [Golden Bull] Hotel, when someone needed it, he came and they drove him there. Similarly if someone for example needed to quickly get to Kosice, he had himself driven there. The Gutmanns sometimes allowed me to sit in the car.

At the age of 15, 16, I began with questions like, ‘Mummy, what sort of bride should I bring to meet you?’ ‘Son of mine, if you’ll like her, I’ll like her as well’, was her answer. But at that time soccer was already being played in Michalovce. I liked this sport, because besides simple shoes you didn’t need anything else to play it. But my cap used to bother me while heading the ball, so I turned it around backwards. It also bothered me on backwards, so I asked my mother, ‘Mummy, why can’t I play soccer without a cap, when my friends are playing without caps?’ ‘Zun mayner, dos torstu mikh nisht fregn, dos iz an aveyre.’ ‘Son of mine, you’re not allowed to ask about that, it’s a sin to ask.’ [Jewish laws decree that from the age of 3 all boys cover their heads during the entire day]. That was my mother’s outlook on the world and on life.

In Michalovce I lived with Auntie Ilonka, and as they were also very poor and had many children, I used to go for lunch to other Jewish families. One day a week I used to for example go to the Polaks’. Their son Arnold was a very spoiled child. For example, when he didn’t like the soup, he’d put a hair in it and proclaim, ‘I don’t want soup that has a hair in it.’ They gave him a different soup, he took a fly from the flypaper and threw it in it, so that he’d have a reason to rebel.

One evening his parents sent for me. Arnold had enraged his father so much that he would have given him a severe beating. As he was afraid of being beaten, he ran away from home. Of course, eventually night came, and the boy wasn’t home. He liked me, so his parents sent for me, for me to bring him back home. They knew in which direction he’d gone. I went in that direction and found him. He was already returning slowly, step by step. We arrived in front of their house, and he didn’t want to go another step further, he was afraid. I told him, ‘Well, let’s not sit here all night, you know, I’ve got to go to school in the morning.’ He didn’t want to go home. I told him, ‘All right, I’ll make you a bed in the stable.’ I fixed him a bed from a blanket that was used to cover horses. That was too smelly for him. Finally I got him into his room. I put his pajamas on him, and in the meantime his father had calmed down.

His parents were very good to me. By coincidence, that’s how life wanted it, Arnold’s parents died during the war. He remained alone, and so my wife and I took him in as our own son. A beautiful relationship, which had already been growing from youth, developed between us. After the war he studied at a mechanical tech school in Kosice. Then he wanted at all costs to go see the world. In the end, though, he listened and after tech school also finished university in Prague. Then he moved to the USA, where he worked his way up to being a university professor. He currently lives in Cincinnati. My wife and I have been there to visit him.

At school

Young Jewish people used to speak Yiddish and Zemplin among themselves. Those of us that attended school spoke Slovak. We had excellent teachers and professors. For example, we liked ‘Uncle’ Hellinger very much. He taught us religion. But non-Jews also used to come to his classes, because we were all very amused by him. As I’ve already mentioned, he properly spoke only Yiddish, and when he wanted to say something in Slovak, he always mangled it. For example he asked, ‘How many of Moses’ books do we have?’ Right away he showed five fingers and answered his own question; ‘Hive.’

We also very much liked a professor by the name of Vymazal. He was a Czech and had a Jewish wife. He used an excellent method on us students. He always said, ‘Next week I’ll begin testing. Learn what I’ve dictated to you, I’ll call up to the blackboard the first two or three.’ We had one boy in our class whose father was the regional chief. Huncut didn’t study. He didn’t have to. His father was a non-Jew and he basically got everything, as his father was a chief. Who would have dared go against the chief’s son? We told that student, ‘If you don’t learn it, we’ll break your arms and legs.’ Under threat he learned.

We also worshipped our Slovak teacher, Dr. Alexander Matuska. He was our homeroom teacher in our last two years of high school. In class we would compete as to who would have read more books. In two and a half years I read 136 books, but I was only in 7th or 8th place. There were those that had read a whole lot more books. We read everything that was worth reading. I can’t forget how annoyed Matuska was when one student, later the chairman of the Central Union of Jewish Religious Communities in Prague, Dune [Dezider] Goldfinger, had read Romain Rolland [Rolland, Romain (1866 – 1944): French writer, musical scholar and pacifist], and he, a major literary critic, hadn’t. When he’s young, a person has time for everything.

When I was older, we used to have class or school dances. We also had dances for the Jewish holiday of Purim. Unfortunately, I had to rent a suit for these dances. At the age of 16, I already measured 180 cm and weighed 80 kilograms. I’m saying this because I was physically more mature than others of my age, and thus the rented suits were necessarily shorter. The sleeves were short, so I pulled my arms in so it wouldn’t show. Basically my height and weight made itself felt in sports. As a poor boy I tried to excel in something. I even became a Maccabi 8 leader for Jewish boys of my age. Some of us high school students used to go to the parties along with boys that were apprenticing as tradesmen. Despite my being a high school student, socially I was closer to those apprentices. The fact that we used to organize Purim dances also brought us together. We’d rent the Golden Bull Hotel and that’s where we’d dance. To this day I remember some of the songs that we used to sing there.

As a boy I of course had my idol. He was named Ali Dudlak. Dudlak was my idol because he worked for the Sfinx company, which sold books. Ali and his friend Fredy Saltzmann made a lot of money as buyers. Fredy was from Nizny Hrabovec, a village by Vranov nad Toplou. Two dandies, they made a lot of money, but also squandered it. So, I don’t know if I’m allowed to use an ugly expression, but all women, here you could also use a different expression, from Cheb to Jasin, stood in a row when they arrived. When I was 16 or 17 I set out with some friends on a rented bicycle for Uzhorod to see a soccer game. SK Rusj Uzhorod and Slavia Praha were playing. The world-famous soccer player Planicka was in goal for Slavia, for Rusj it was Boksaj. SK Rusj Uzhorod was composed of eleven teachers from all over Ruthenia, who had put together a team. These two teams were playing against each other, as Rusj had gotten into the Czechoslovak league. In the evening we all went to the Berecsényi Café, and when Ali Dudlak and Fredy Saltzmann arrived, the musicians stopped playing their usual repertoire, and began playing their songs. They were loaded and I was very flattered that I could be in their company. I was a pauper compared to them. They dressed like dandies, and I’ll repeat it again, everything queued up precisely for these reasons.

I also played soccer. In the 1937/38 season I even battled my way onto the Michalovce ‘A’ team. Despite the fact that it was only for a tryout, as a juvenile, we played against UKMSC Uzhorod teams and against one team from Kosice. Those were large cities, where there were more teams. I even scored a goal against Uzhorod, and assisted in another for an excellent soccer player by the name of Blazejovsky. After the game with UKMSC I became a ‘professional.’ I got supper, a large beer and ten crowns. Suddenly the world was my oyster. Everything was coming up roses. When I arrived home in the evening to Auntie Ilonka’s, I boasted that ‘győztünk’ [Hungarian for ‘we won’], to which she said, ‘Én is?’ [Hungarian for ‘me too?’]. The poor thing, she was funny in that poverty of hers... In those years I also participated in the All-Sokol Slet [Rally] 9 in Prague, which was something like later the Spartakiada.

My political evolution took the following course. When I came to Michalovce, I began to be friends with Emil Fürst. Gradually it began taking ‘the left side of the road’. The entire Fürst family was oriented towards the left. Emil and I went through Hashomer Hatzair 10 together. We also took courses. I remember that during the year 1937–38 I was on one such course in Levoca. Jozko Weiser, the ‘wisest Jew in Slovakia’ at the time, according to my opinion, lectured for us.

As far as sports are concerned, I learned and improved in them in school, for one. We had an excellent gym teacher, Professor Stranaja, the founder of the Faculty of Physical Education and Sports and Comenius University in Bratislava. Then in the FAK soccer club in Michalovce, and then finally in Maccabi, where we left-oriented students met up with ‘class-related’ apprentices. Together with them we rented a room, a workshop, where during the day they repaired cars. In the evening we’d come there, sweep the auto repair shop, and then exercised. We for example bought some old parallel bars from the school, our first equipment. As I excelled at sports, they elected me as their leader. It was this sports leadership position. There were about 10, 15 of us boys.

Some boys from so-called better families used to go exercise at Betar 11. These boys underestimated us a bit, which followed from our social standing. Betar was right-wing. We called them the Fascists. They exercised with clubs and were basically preparing to fight in Palestine. No, we said. In Israel, where we were preparing to go, it’s going to be necessary to convince the Arab laborers that we’re class comrades. So that the Arab laborers wouldn’t work for lower wages, but would ask for the same as Jewish ones. As a poorer student, I overall belonged to leftist-oriented youth.

Of course, in the town there were also boys that were very religious, and they weren’t in these two organizations, they had Mizrachi 12. Our outlook on their philosophy was that they were wrong. Slowly we were ceasing to believe in the religious way of Jewishness that our parents believed in. I saw the poverty, but not only saw; I experienced it firsthand. When I lived with Auntie Ilonka, their house was near the Laborec River, and when the water rose, the rats would get all the way up into the house we lived in. At night I wore a cap, in the naive hope that the rats wouldn’t bite my ears. As a child I had ‘as many as’ two outfits. One for everyday wearing, and one for holidays. Most of the time I ran around only in shorts, a t-shirt and tennis shoes, that was all I had to wear. This poverty had a great influence on me. At the age of 15, 16, a person begins to think differently. He tries to understand some things and I wanted to understand them.

In 1940 I finished high school. We were the last Jewish graduates 13. I played sports in high school as well, I was even one of the two best Jewish athletes. Thanks to sports I got to the Eastern Slovakia high school championships in Presov. I was the only Jew from our school who was eligible for a place in this event from a standpoint of performance. It was sometime during the years 1936–1937. As a Grade 10 student, I even got onto the relay team, as its fourth member. I battled for the position with a boy who was two years older, by the name of Stasko. All the non-Jews were rooting for him, and I defeated him in a race, and back then I was very proud of myself.

The first time I noticed strong anti-Semitism was in high school. Back then, the film Golem was showing in Prague. In school and in our class we talked a lot about the Golem [in Jewish folklore, the Golem is an artificial living being created out of inert material]. I remember that Professor Dostalova, who was a Czech, literally provoked a debate on this theme. As I’ve already mentioned, I was attending a Jewish-Czech class. Back then we argued: ‘Your Christ rose from the dead, that was possible? And to make the Golem come alive, that wasn’t possible?’ That was the argument. It almost ended with a fight.

During the War

We were already allocating who was going to fight with whom, if the worst was to come. At that time the Hungarians had attacked Southern Slovakia 14. Part of the territory fell to them. As the surrounding towns were in the border territory, some ended up as part of Hungary and others remained in Slovakia. In this way I lost part of my classmates, who had ended up part of Hungary. That’s why in our high school they combined two classes. One was mixed, Jews and Czechs, and the second was made up of Slovak Christians. And that’s when it started. Some of my classmates prepared for their graduation exams by coming dressed as Hlinka Youth. [The Hlinka Guard 15 founded youth groups and helped organize their activities. These groups were named the Hlinka Youth.] One of them was named Snincak and the other Hudak. Some of the teachers also promoted the Hlinka Party 16 and supported the Slovak State.

After graduation I was at home until March 1941. I was no longer allowed to work. I made money by giving private lessons. In time I had to stop with this as well. I also managed to make money by drawing. I also gave lessons in descriptive geometry to one high school student and her sister, a university student. In March 1941 they summoned me to the Sixth Labor Battalion 17. I served in it for 28 months.

The Sixth Battalion was a group of Jewish guys. They were all young people. Many of them were university graduates. Among them were doctors, lawyers, engineers, surveyors... men who where already independent. They were also summoned to the Sixth Battalion. The philosophy was likely that when they’ll have young Jewish men concentrated in one place, they’ll be easier to control. At first they gathered us in Cemerne, in the Vranov nad Toplou region. To there, and later, in the fall, to Sabinov, came about 1200 to 1800 young, healthy, sympathetic Jewish boys from the whole of Slovakia. In the beginning we were ordered about by simple, even primitive wardens, who were from Eastern Slovakia and Subcarpathian Ruthenia. Can you imagine it? A doctor was being commanded by a warden who perhaps didn’t even have two grades of elementary school.

In the beginning we only trained. We got old Austro-Hungarian army uniforms and sailor’s caps. We of course didn’t get weapons. In the beginning the uniforms were green, then blue, so we’d be easily distinguishable, and so that it would be immediately obvious who we are. Then they divided us up among various locations. Construction companies close to the army needed workers, so they asked the army for people, and thus work groups were created. In the beginning I worked in Presov. In time they transferred me to the Borkut region, near Presov. In Borkut we first built ourselves barracks, in which we then lived. Then we were building roads into the forest, where there were army supply dumps. After a month I got home on leave, which I of course had to pay for. At that time my middle sister’s husband asked me, ‘So, you’re not in the office anymore?’ [In those days and in that simple village environment, when someone had attended high school, it was naturally assumed that in the army he’d be working in an office, or would have an administrative function.] And I answered him that there were 600 such people there. If all 600 were in the office, they wouldn’t have anyone to train. A naive idea and opinion, which I had at the time.

When the Sixth Battalion was to be disbanded, after more than two years, some boys tried to leave the country. So for example, two had themselves shut up in a wagon full of charcoal in Eastern Slovakia. They managed to get all the way to Switzerland in that wagon. This happened in 1943. Not everyone was lucky, though. There were cases when the train stopped at one of the stations and they began to bang on the wagon’s walls, believing that they were already in Switzerland. Unfortunately, it was only Austria, and those were thrown in jail right away, and ended up according to whose hands they had found themselves in.

In Presov we were helping build a hospital and paving roads, which means we paved them with stones. First large stones are laid down, then small ones, then the whole thing is covered in gravel and is filled and asphalted. We had to quarry the stone ourselves in a quarry. About fifty of us were working there. As I could draw well, I made some extra money by drawing my friends. They used to give me some spare change for it. Back then, a person counted every crown. Once I drew a tableau for the commander of our unit. His name was Ocvirk. To each boy’s face, which was a photo, I drew a body according to his particular characteristics. I got three crowns from each one of them for it. But what was even better, I made some brownie points with Ocvirk. He even hung the tableau on the wall in his office.

Once another non-com, Grohol, stopped by our commander’s office, and saw the panel. Ocvirk was of course flattered by it, as he was pictured in the function of commander in it. Grohol asked him: ‘What’s this you’ve got here?’ ‘I’ve got very clever Jew-boys, and this one is good at drawing.’ ‘Would you lend me this Jew-boy?’ So I ended up in Grohol’s office. Our job there was to record army things being sent to the Eastern Front.

But I had an enemy in the commander of our group. My antagonist was the officer Psenicka. He arranged for me to return to where they had transferred me from. He literally bullied me. He used to come see how I was working, and he didn’t like the way I was digging. When I was in the latrine, he harangued me that I’m there all day. Once on Saturday, I came to ask him for leave to go home, where my ill mother was lying in bed. I reported, ‘Lieutenant, Sir, Laborer Jew Schönbrun, reporting my arrival in the office.’ That’s how we officially announced ourselves, ‘Laborer Jew.’ It should be mentioned that in the beginning we reported as ‘Worker Jew.’ The command decided that this was too dignified for us, which is why they changed the title to ‘Laborer’ for Jews and Gypsies, while Slovaks who weren’t fit for battle and were in the Sixth Battalion, were called ‘Worker.’

Psenicka didn’t pay any attention to my reporting. I’d been standing there, at attention, for about 15 minutes, when he turned to me with the words: ‘What do you want here?!’ ‘Lieutenant, Sir, I’d like leave. I want to visit my mother.’ ‘Why do you want to visit your mother?’ ‘Because she wants to see me.’ ‘So send her a photo!’ That was the answer of one officer of the Slovak Army. A person full of contradictions.

As punishment, he told me that on Monday I’ll be working on our section for 150 minutes longer. On Monday he didn’t forget to come to our section to have a look if I’m working, if I’m plugging away. He didn’t do this to anyone but me. The next Saturday, I came to see him after work. He threw me out, saying that I hadn’t shaved. The third Saturday I went home, on the sly, without leave. But I no longer found my mother there. They had deported her in the meantime. On Monday Psenicka came to see me and asked, ‘How come you didn’t come see me?’ At that point I didn’t care about anything any more, and so I shot back, ‘I was already home...’ and started weeping. Apparently it moved him, because he left me alone. So much for him. After the war he became a member of the Communist Party Central Committee. He was the chairman of the Regional Party Committee in Presov. The chairman of the Central Committee distributed financial aid for Eastern Slovakia, big-time millions.

In the post-war period I became the general secretary of SPROV [The Federation of Anti-Fascist Prisoners and Illegal Workers], and as such I tried to have Psenicka removed from his position. First they wanted to jail me instead, that I was sullying the Party. Some time later, I was going for an audience with Siroky 18, and Psenicka was just leaving his office. I asked Siroky: ‘Comrade Siroky, what did that person want with you?’ ‘And you know who he is?’ ‘Of course I know! The commander of the army Jewish labor division.’ At that time I already had some authority in SPROV, and wanted that person to be punished. Later it happened. There was a confrontation, and I testified against him. I’m not claiming that they jailed him only due to me, but I definitely contributed, as by this fact his cup of sins had run over. I found out that he had plotted against me and told two boys to falsely testify against me. It took five years until things were put right. After some time he was once again rehabilitated, and I was afraid to go to the East, in case he’d bought some gypsies ‘for a bottle,’ who’d stab me... Even these sorts of things could have happened back then.

I also have this memory of Presov. We had one warden who was small in stature. His name was Fajcik. This little Napoleon, who bellowed at us from morning till evening. We were working with the bricklayers at the army hospital construction site, where two weeks before there had been typhoid corpses. We were carting away soil on railway handcars from the hospital courtyard outside, where we were leveling it. As it was already late fall, the soil had frozen overnight, and in the morning we dug under it, so there was this kind of roof, on top of which this warden was standing, in all his haughtiness. As we were gradually undermining the soil, it collapsed and the warden fell off it, but immediately got up and began running. The frozen soil knocked him down. Luckily for him, he’d fallen into the angle formed between the soil and the tracks that the handcars were driving on. So the dirt hadn’t completely crushed him. The eight of us that were nearby immediately ran over and with a great effort lifted that huge chunk of frozen earth, and one of us pulled the guard out. His reaction was: ‘kleban’ – ‘a priest.’ We carried him to the army hospital building that stood in that courtyard. I don’t know if it was five, or twenty seconds, but the way we had reacted to the situation saved his life. He stayed in the hospital for six weeks, and when he returned, he never yelled at us again. He probably realized what we’d done for him.

At the end of 1942 and beginning of 1943, I arrived at Kuchyne pri Malackach. There were about 30 or 40 of us Jews there. There were also kosherites among us. [Editor’s note: kosherite, from the word kosher (ritually clean). In this case a person keeping ritual rules to do with food.] They didn’t have an easy life. In conditions like that, and to keep kosher on top of it. From there I went to Liptov. It was basically due to my friend, Bandy Sulc. Bandy was one of the surveyors, who were working on the building of a track from Liptovsky Hradek to Jamnik. Near the town of Jamnik there was a military airport. General Catlos 19 was from nearby Liptovsky Petr. As part of the construction of the tracks, the ground there was being meliorated. We had it really quite good in Liptov. The unit commander, but also the locals, Protestants, were very decent people.

On 31st May 1943, the Sixth Labor Battalion was officially disbanded. The guys from the battalion were assigned to the Sered and Novaky camps. A number of them stayed to work on the regulation of the Sur River. Many of them later joined the SNR 20 and many of them also fell in it. They kept 48 of us in the army as necessary ones. Among us were doctors, lawyers, builders, surveyors, tradesmen and guys with qualifications that were useful for the Slovak Army. Strangely enough, even here there were two people to be found that didn’t wish us well, the Protestant priest Rolko and the notary Reiskop, who railed against us. Luckily we already had our kindhearted protectors who were in our favor and helped us.

Until the rebellion broke out, I worked with the surveyors as a draftsman. After some time I got to Bratislava. I worked in one warehouse for a certain non-com by the name of Valko. On payday, he’d send all the guys under him home on leave, and took their pay. But the soldiers were glad that they could go home. He also did other things, like for example selling military materials – blankets. At that time I was doing the recordkeeping, which was dangerous both for him and for me. He knew that I knew what was happening. He needed to get rid of me, so he made me available [for transfer].

This section was under Major Franz, who had a Jewish wife. He asked why they wanted to get rid of me in the warehouse: ‘Don’t worry, you can tell me.’ ‘Major, Sir, if you want to know the situation, there’s black-marketeering going on there. The commander knows that I know about it. He needs to get rid of me.’ The major asked me, ‘What do you know how to do?’ ‘Everything.’ I wanted to save myself from the fate that would have awaited me, so I had to know how to do everything. ‘Do you know how to type?’ ‘No, but if a sixteen-year-old girl can do it, I’ll learn it too.’ I became a typist.

At that time they were bombing Bratislava. Major Franz had an apartment in the center of the city, and during one raid was hit. We went to help them pull out their things from underneath the rubble. He and his wife became fond of me. I’ll say once again, his wife was Jewish and he was a German. See what coincidences happen in life? After the war he left for Czechia, where he had big problems due to his being a German. At that time I was in SPROV. I wrote him an assessment as to how he had behaved towards me during the war. You can imagine what an assessment from SPROV meant in those days. Thus I saved him from being expelled to Germany.

During those times I met my future wife. I met her by the Danube, where the Propeler [a former river steamboat that was converted to a restaurant] is these days. It was after lunch on Saturday. A friend of mine and I were sitting on a bench, and we saw a pretty girl walking around there. As I later found out, they were making a hat for her nearby, and she was waiting for it to be finished. On Sunday after lunch I set out to visit one mixed family in Lamac. They had a very pretty girl, Irenka. They were named the Picks. When I got there the mother and daughter were having a picnic. It insulted me, as they had taken the father, a Jew, to a concentration camp, and they were having a picnic. I said to myself, they aren’t the right partners for me. I turned around and left.

On the way back I laid down on a meadow and fell asleep. Later some soldier walked by with a girl. They unintentionally woke me up. I looked over, and walking behind them was the girl I’d seen the day before on the riverbank. I started talking to her, as there was no other way of getting to know her. During the time of the Slovak State, I never used to hide my origins. I always did this, regardless of who I was talking to, except for the police. Well, and in the beginning she didn’t understand what I meant by it. She was from the town of Pukanec, from central Slovakia. She was surprised by my opinions. She even asked me, ‘The strange way you’re speaking, are you Spanish, or Italian?’ I answered, ‘No, I’m a Jew.’ That’s how we met. She was a seamstress. Of course, I walked her to the building where she lived. She went up to her apartment and brought me down some bread with lard and cracklings. It tasted very good to me, as I was hungry. That was the beginning. Then we used to meet. My wife, back then still my girlfriend, helped me very much later.

When the uprising broke out and the Russians were slowly approaching, I thought about how I’d save myself. I had a good friend from Inacovce. His name was Jozko [Jozef] Knezo, and he was a priest in the Eastern Slovak town of Vysoka nad Uhrom. He was a very good friend of mine. With his agreement I falsified my name as Knezo. He also sent me some documents and he and my future wife both helped me very much. When the uprising broke out, I acquired and made myself some false papers. I also made papers for people I knew. The seals of the Slovak State were easily forged. You just used special ink to draw a double cross and three peaks and that was it. [Slovak state symbol: First became the symbol of Slovakia during the revolutionary years of 1848-1849. The triple peak symbolizes the three Carpathian mountain ranges, Tatras, Fatra and Matra (currently on Hungarian territory). The double cross symbolizes Christianity and at the same time the traditions of St. Cyril and Methodius 21, who brought Christianity to the region during the time of Greater Moravia (9th Century)] I can’t imagine the problems it would have caused to have to forge the Czech lion. [The so-called small state insignia of the Czech Republic shows a white two-tailed lion, as the symbol of the entire Czech Republic, with a gold crown and gold claws].

With the arrival of the Germans in Bratislava, in 1944, my girlfriend, now my wife, and I decided to go to her home town, Pukanec. But there it wasn’t possible to hide properly. We soon returned to Bratislava. It was before Christmas, I had to hide. The owner of the apartment I was hiding in was named Turza. He lived there together with his brother-in-law. He was named Kocvara. They didn’t know I was a Jew. One night there was a large roundup held all over Bratislava. During the night an SS soldier woke me up. He was shining a flashlight right in my face. We had to get dressed immediately. When the SS soldier went to check the other room, I surreptitiously stuck my real documents under a suitcase on the wardrobe and left my false ones in my pocket.

There was a big commotion in the city due to the raids. Mr. Kocvara and I lived on Spitalska Street, along which they led us in the direction of the Manderlak [Manderlak: considered to be the first so-called skyscraper in Bratislava as well as in Slovakia. It has 11 floors and for a long time was the tallest residential building in Bratislava]. Through my head ran the thought that if they aim us to the left, it’s bad, because this was the way to the bridge to Petrzalka, where they shot people without mercy. In front of the Manderlak we turned right, up to the square. At that moment it meant a certain relief and the postponement of death. On the way I with difficulty tore up and ate one of my false documents. It didn’t seem to me to be the best forgery and I was afraid that they’d discover it.

We came to a place, Edlova Street, where they were gathering people. My roommate, Kocvara, found out from one girl that here they were concentrating Jews that had been in hiding. He was flabbergasted. He said that there’d been some mistake, that he’s not a Jew. As I’ve already mentioned, he didn’t know anything about my origins. We agreed that he’d let me do the talking. They were putting the people they’d caught into various rooms of the building. In the meantime I’d gotten my bearings and found out that the Slovaks and Germans who’d been picked up by mistake were meeting with the commander in one room. Kocvara and I joined them and I managed to convince the commander, a member of the SS, that we didn’t belong to the rest of the people that had been rounded up. I think that the main reason for our release wasn’t false documents, which also helped, but the fact that that SS officer was probably a lenient person. I saw how he also released other Slovaks.

After my release I didn’t spend the next night on Spitalska Street. My future wife and I soon returned to Pukanca and kept on hiding. We could no longer return to Bratislava. In the meantime, the front had stopped at Pukanec for three months. One time there were Russians there, another time Germans. It changed several times. I was so confused by it all, that when the Russians came, I started speaking German to them. At last the front moved westward, and after the liberation of Bratislava we also left for there, in April. After World War II, I wanted to change the world. Back then I thought that socialism was the right choice. To this day I say, ‘Every reasonable person can’t be other than progressive, but of course not in the sense of socialistically progressive.’

After liberation I went to have a look at my home village. I was hoping that at least my youngest sister’s husband would have survived. Because he was, as I’ve already mentioned, physically a very strong man and those types were more likely to survive. Unfortunately, I’ve already told you about his fate. For the villagers I was Bernat. I belonged among them, as I’d already been friends with them before the war. I also remembered how one of them Jozko Knezo, had helped me. Other good friends of mine were Misko Hajducko, Durco Zvonik, Mikulas Fedorik, ... This happened, for example. After the war I went to see a neighbor in the village. She was blind, and when I entered she was lying in bed. I greeted her politely, ‘Good day Auntie Kutasova.’ ‘Good day, good day.’ ‘Do you want guests?’ And she answered, ‘Yes, yes, just let them tell me who they are...’ When they wanted to show respect, they referred to people as ‘they.’ ‘...as I, a blind woman, can’t see.’ ‘So guess.’ ‘Let them say something more.’ She guessed who I was. ‘And they came to see a blind woman?’ So she was glad that I’d come to see her. I was also glad, as she was a good neighbor. But there were also other types.

 After the War

Right after the end of the war I began, among other things, to look for a place from where I could avenge the deaths of my nearest and dearest, my mother, sisters and their husbands and children and all the others. All told about 80–90 relatives. For this was the resolution I had made that Saturday night when I had gone home on the sly from the labor camp, from Presov, due to Psenicka not wanting to give me leave. I had found that my mother was no longer at home, she had gone to ‘work,’ helpless... They trampled her, poor thing, in the wagon on the way to Auschwitz.

The police were located on Ceskoslovenskej armady Street [Czechoslovak Army Street, in the building called U Dvou Levoch, or The Two Lions], and the chief was a certain Major Colak. He was a reputable, mature person that one could talk to reasonably. After a detailed conversation about where I was from, what I had experienced, what brought me to consider working for the police, it came out that he was also from Michalovce. His brother had been my professor at the Michalovce high school, whom I had gotten along well with. I had even worked for him in his office. When we got to the evaluation, he told me exactly this: ‘My dear countrymen, they should forget about the police. That’s not for them, for their temperament. They won’t be able to stand it, to root around in muck, in the dirt, believe me...’ Those were his expressions, which I’ve remembered my whole life. After considering all the pros and cons, I listened to him and didn’t join the police. I admitted that I didn’t suit them and they didn’t suit me. In the end the times confirmed this. All Jewish guys that joined the police ended up worse than catastrophically. They threw them all in jail. I didn’t end up all that great either, but not as badly as those that were with the police.

After the war, several institutions were formed in Slovakia, such as for example the Federation of Slovak Partisans, the Federation of Anti-Fascist Prisoners and Illegal Workers [SPROV], the Federation of Foreign Soldiers, the Federation of Soldiers-Rebels [SVOJPOV] and the Federation of The Racially Persecuted. You could say that every political party needed to have someone ‘behind them.’ That someone were these federations. The Federation of Anti-Fascist Prisoners and Illegal Workers, SPROV, was leftist-oriented, the same as the Federation of Slovak Partisans. The Federation of Foreign Soldiers, those were leftists as well as rightists, depending on if they had been at the Eastern or Western front, and what sort of upbringing they’d had. The Federation of Soldiers-Rebels was created by the Democratic Party, as a counterweight to leftist-oriented federations. This is how it gradually evolved. I joined SPROV, as its ideals corresponded with my thoughts and ideas about progressiveness. Back then I thought that only socialism can be progressive, and I wasn’t alone, even more mature and grown-up people thought this way.

The most influential federation was the Federation of Slovak Partisans. Unfortunately, this federation was partially anti-Semitic. In 1946 they demonstrated against Jews. They wanted to break windows in Jewish homes and shouted slogans: ‘Jews out!’, ‘Jews to Palestine!’ Many Jews had been in the partisan ranks during the war. That’s why members of this federation didn’t condemn everyone. Their principle was: ‘My Jew friend is a good Jew, but not the others!’ Partisans approached all things in a military fashion, in the style of: ‘Damn it, I’ll get my machine gun...’

Of course, there were also people of high principles among them. Not long ago Mrs. Hana Malatkova-Potocna died, that was a real partisan! Among other things, she expressed pro-Jewish sentiments. Another influential federation was SPROV. Its top official was first Andrej Bagar and then Viliam Siroky, later the premier. We had a lot of economic and political power. For example, the national administration was portioned out. That means that our people were installed into companies belonging to Fascists and collaborators. Very many important politicians also came from these circles.

In those days I was the general secretary of SPROV. There were many Jews among our membership. We published the newspaper Hlas Oslobodenych [Voice of the Liberated], which our people liked a lot, as we promoted their demands. Jews were secretaries in many regional towns. For example in Kosice it was Braun, in Michalovce Dr. Goldstein, in Dunajska Streda, Steckler. Mr. Steckler was a very honest person. Without a recommendation from the resistance elements, nothing happened. SPROV was politically a very strong organization. The largest federation in terms of numbers was SVOJPOV. They accepted almost anyone into their ranks, even former Guardists. SVOJPOV was connected to the Democratic Party, who needed to show boost their numbers.

The Federation of The Racially Persecuted didn’t have the same powers and influence as the other four. Its leader was an exceptionally capable person, Dr. Kucera. Basically every Jew had been racially persecuted, but after the war it was difficult to claim. At that time the state of Israel was also being created, which from the beginning had been leftist oriented. As I had been a member of Hashomer Hatzair before the war, I took it as a very positive thing. In 1948, as well as the state of Israel being created, the merging of the federations took place. Four federations, the Federation of Slovak Partisans, SPROV, SVOJPOV and the Federation of Foreign Soldiers merged into one. The Federation of The Racially Persecuted depended on the support of Jews that were in the other federations. The merger was ordered by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Slovakia.

As ‘there can’t be too many roosters in the henhouse,’ the leaders of the Federation of Slovak Partisans, Faltan, Salgovic and Drocar, sidetracked their future competitors in advance. Gradually they had them put in jail. First in line was SVOJPOV. Erich Uberal and Imre Rudas, who was half Jewish, were jailed.  Next up was the Federation of Foreign Soldiers. They arrested Messrs. Sindler and Mestan. Mestan was the cousin of the current director of the Museum of Jewish Culture in Bratislava. Him I managed to get out of the slammer, as they’d jailed him on the basis of falsified records, which I found out and notified the attorney general. The day after he’d been released, he came to my apartment to thank me.

Finally, after SPROV I was to be next as well. During the preparations for the merger of the federations, the division of individual positions gradually crystallized. As I had almost finished economics university, I was to be given an economical management function. To prevent this from happening, they prepared a dirty trick for me. We were on a large farm in the town of Kravany that belonged to the Federation of Partisans. My task was to take over the farm and approve everything that had happened on it prior to that with my signature. But I didn’t have the authority to take it over, I was only allowed to run it, direct it. I realized that they were preparing something. To prevent this, I quit my job at SPROV, giving as a reason that I wanted to finish school. With this I simplified the situation for the aforementioned ‘officials,’ as the federations were battling for power among themselves and they had gotten one competitor out of the way without a fight. They threw the guy that took the farm over in jail for 18 years by pinning on him dirty tricks that had been perpetrated there before him.

In 1945 I at first applied for construction engineering. After some time I found out that I’d be studying for five years, that for five years my wife would be working to support me, and we’d go hungry. That was the reason why I left it. Because there it was mandatory to go to lectures, you had to do drafting and so on, which took up a lot of time. Attending this school as well as working on top of it would have been possible only with great difficulty. That’s why I transferred to economics, where I didn’t have to attend all the lectures. An advantage was also that the studies lasted only four years. Back then economics was taught at the Business University Na Palisadoch in Bratislava. I successfully graduated from school. In 1946, during my studies, my wife’s father, who’d been a blacksmith, died. His neighbor had given him some iron to make a spit. He put it in the fire to heat it up. Apparently there had been a jammed cartridge in it, which exploded due to the heat. It exploded so unluckily that it literally ripped out my wife’s father’s guts.

I looked upon the year 1948 22 as a victory. The victory of the leftist oriented. Back then I thought that it was the best path for us. Unfortunately, I only gradually realized that the talk went one way and socialism another. I saw that major, serious mistakes and injustices were happening. For example, a few years after the war, I got into the commission for the resolution of the Hungarian 23 and German 24 question, for the expulsion of people out of the country. At the first session we got a list. I asked, ‘What did this person do? Did he kill someone? Did he rat on someone?’ The answer was, ‘No, but he’s a Hungarian.’ ‘Is he supposed to be expelled for the fact that he was begotten by a Hungarian, despite the fact that he’s not guilty of anything?’

The result was that I immediately quit the commission. The head of the commission was named Benko. He and higher party and state organs very much resented this, and I began to have problems that lasted for years, for the fact that I hadn’t grasped the party line. Gradually I was thrown out of everywhere. It began with them throwing me out of work, and finally also out of my own apartment. That was in the year 1951. It was a very tragic time. My wife had to return to her family home in Pukanec, as we didn’t have anywhere to live.

At that time there was also a country-wide initiative taking place, when many people, all together 77,000 25 were taken from administrative positions and put into manufacturing. I was among them. Up till then I’d been working at the Industry and Business Commission. Later it was split and I was at the Business Commission. Within the scope of this I was supposed to lecture at the Business University. When I found this out, I went to Luhacovice to have my throat treated. I still had problems with it from the war. One day a letter from Dr. Stahlova came to the spa for me. She was a friend of mine, the wife of one Czech intellectual, a very reputable man. She wrote me: ‘Don’t be surprised, you’re on the list as a factory worker,’ although only two weeks earlier I’d been named as a university lecturer. From the position of secretary of a Party organization at the Business Commission I got onto the factory worker list, without being told anything, why, or for what.

I became a class enemy. At first I couldn’t find any work. They followed me every day. Finally, through a friend of mine, I got an interview at Slovnaft. A friend of mine was working there as the director of one construction company. They allocated me work there. The first day I came to work, and one of the workers there asked me, ‘What do you want here?’ ‘They allocated me here.’ ‘You’re supposed to work here?’ Then he told me to watch carefully. He stuck his finger into boiling lead, stirred it, and said, ‘When will you manage to do this with your fingers?’ I still get chills up and down my spine when I remember it. I was there in manufacturing for three days, and had myself declared ill.

I was ill for three months and finally a person I knew helped me. He found me another job. For two years I had to work as a radio repairman, though I didn’t understand that work at all. I ‘repaired’ old radios. The only thing that I was capable of doing perfectly was that I cleaned those old radios out. Those radios, that was physical and mental suffering. To be doing something that I didn’t understand, what didn’t interest me, just torture. But I learned to wind transformers, this kept me going. The StB 26 followed me. Every day one copper came to have a look if I’m really at work. The way it was, was that each snoop had a few companies allocated, which he had to watch. At that time they watched pretty well everyone. One day they threw me out of manufacturing as well. The reasons were prosaic, ‘I had studied during the First Republic’ and I had ‘helped’ Fascists. So the fact that after the war we’d been rounding up Fascists to put them on trial had turned against me.

After two years in manufacturing I met up with an acquaintance of mine, a doctor. We’d met each other before. We began talking and so she learned that I was actually ‘on the street.’ She told me she’d help me. I was to drink some really strong coffee, and she’d send me for an EKG. So I did this, and after the coffee my heart began pounding, which showed up on the EKG. She wrote down that my health wasn’t in order and that I need different work. Thanks to this lady doctor, in 1954 I got into geodetics as a draftsman. A draftsman still qualified as a worker in manufacturing.

After some time they asked me whether I’d like to do different work. I answered that yes, but that I can’t. I’ve got to work in manufacturing. The director was a decent person, a Russian immigrant from the First Republic, Mr. Borovsky. He arranged permission for me, I think that it was a decree from the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, that I was also allowed to work in a different area. Borovsky was supposed to gradually start up a new company, though as a surveyor he didn’t understand economics. I of course helped him, like he had me. Finally the Regional Geodetic and Cartographic Institute was created. I was then employed in this resort for 31 years. I worked my way up through various positions to head economist. We built one seven-story building, 21 multi-story buildings and nine cottages. In those days I of course already knew that socialism won’t save the human race, that a different era had to come.

I married my wife on 8th April 1946. We’ve been together 60 years now. Her maiden name was Anna Krajcova. She was born in 1923 in Pukanec. Only one Jew lived in Pukanec before the war, Neumann, a doctor, who was helped very much by the residents during the war. We agreed on our wedding as follows. On Saturday, 6th April, I called her. In those days people still worked on Saturdays. ‘On Monday we’re getting married!’ She says, ‘Who?’ ‘Well, you and I.’ ‘What’s gotten into you?’ ‘You don’t want to?’ ‘I do, and what should I do?’ ‘Dress decently and on Monday at 9 we’re going to city hall.’ On Monday we went to city hall and got married. From city hall each one of us went to his own work and after lunch we had a get-together for our friends. About 25 people came. Back then I had a bachelor apartment. In the evening we went dancing and my wife got an armful of flowers.

At the end of the war, my wife had been working as a seamstress at the Hanka Salon. Of course, all the unpleasantness that I experienced from the year 1944, when we met, affected her as well. We lived through it together. In the end we overcame it all. We had two daughters, the first one in 1948 and the second in 1953. During my persecution we were thrown out of our apartment. My wife moved with our older daughter to Pukanec, where our second daughter was born. We were separated. During the week I worked, and on Saturday after lunch I traveled to Pukanec to see my family. On Sunday evening I again left for Bratislava. The girls cried each time I left. When we then returned back to Bratislava, we had to fight with great effort to get an apartment. Here you have to ‘fight’ for everything.

Before our departure for Pukanec, we lived on Kupelna Street. In the neighborhood there lived an old lady whose son had been murdered by the Russians. After the war the boy had been driving from Bratislava to Piestany to see his girlfriend. On the way there, he was stopped by Russian soldiers. Most likely they wanted his car. He didn’t give it to them, and so they shot him. Our neighbor, his mother, took such a liking to me that she saw her son in me. Once she called me, she was lying helpless on the ground. She’d had a heart attack. My wife then took care of her until she died.

Our older daughter, Minka [Mina], in Old German Liebe, was born in Bratislava. We named her after my mother, rest her soul. Our younger daughter is named Evicka [Eva], and was born in Pukanec. Both of our daughters got a Jewish upbringing. They got it because I say that I never had to be ashamed of my father nor my mother! They lived courageously. There was never a single person in the world that could say something bad about them.

I was a member of the Jewish Religious Community in Bratislava from 1945. My wife also became a member, as a non-Jew. My wife is Protestant by origin. In the beginning we observed holidays in the sense that we went to synagogue. We met up with many friends from the Sixth Battalion. I didn’t visit the synagogue because of religious convictions, but because of friends. My wife went with me.

When the children were small, we observed all Jewish and non-Jewish holidays. When our daughters Minka and Evicka went to Pukanec to their grandmother’s place for summer holidays, they prayed together with their grandma. Granny, being a Protestant, taught them this prayer: ‘My guardian angel, take care of my soul, so that I’ll be clean for Moses Christ. Amen.’ She used to say to them, ‘Children of mine, you can’t upset either of the Gods.’ With us, religion was never a problem. We were atheists! Where was God when they were trampling my brave mother?

Both of our daughters attended elementary school in Bratislava. They were very good students. The older one had a certain talent that was already apparent at a very young age. Always, when we put on a record on which a certain Katz sang, she cried. Katz apparently sang over the graves of Jews when they were killing them in the concentration camp. He sang so heartrendingly, that one of the SS soldiers didn’t shoot him with the others. Once we put this record on when our friend, the lawyer Dr. Sabinsky was visiting us. Minka, who was still in diapers, again started crying loudly. No one knew why. We thought that she had a stomachache. The record finished, and the crying stopped. Sabinsky said, ‘Put that record on again.’ Minka again started to cry. That voice, that sad voice, so touched her that she started crying. Sabinsky proclaimed that this child was going to be a musician. Later his words were confirmed. We still have that record, though by now it’s very worn.

After elementary school we were considering what next, what school should we send the girls to? We tried to guide them from childhood. For example, for Minka I carved a thermometer and stethoscope out of wood, so that she’d have something to play with. Maybe it would lead her to medicine. So we got to the subject of what she’d like to be. She answered, ‘Well, you don’t have money, so I’ll take music.’ ‘What, music?’ ‘You can’t afford a piano, so I’ll take the accordion.’ We bought her an accordion. First a 32-bass one, then a 60-bass, and finally a 120-bass Weltmeister. So all told, it cost us as much as one piano. At the conservatory she had an excellent teacher, a person worth her weight in gold. She was named Szokeova. She taught her the accordion. Minka considered her to be her second mother. To this day, she’s building on what that teacher gave her. Minka finished conservatory and in 1968 27 she traveled to Israel, as a reward for promoting culture among young people in the Jewish community. She’d sit down at a piano, or pick up the accordion, and play. Young people danced and had fun. Finally she also managed to finish Music University in Dortmund, Germany.

Both our daughters were raised in the spirit of ‘don’t start anything, but if someone was insulting them, to hold their own.’ We instilled this in them since they were little. Once in school some boy was calling Evicka names, that she was a Jewess. She knocked him to the ground, kneeled down on him and gave him a proper thrashing. When she came home, she of course told us everything. Our children confided in us with everything. The next day, comrade principal Pijakova summoned me to the school, back then people still used to say comrade principal. When I arrived, I said, ‘Comrade principal, I know why you’ve called me, and I’m telling you right now that I’m not going to punish my daughter, as there’s no reason to!’ ‘But, that boy has a weak heart.’ ‘We brought up our daughter this way, and she’s not someone that gives up without a fight. The boy was insulting her, and she won’t stand for that. So much for the worse that his father is a party official.’ But in the end the principal and I parted amiably.

Perhaps it won’t do any harm if here we get ahead of ourselves and touch upon a theme that ‘sapienti sat’ [Latin: ‘a word to the wise is sufficient’] will indicate something. When she was eleven, our granddaughter Esterka [Ester, the daughter of Mina Neustadt, nee Knezova-Schönbrunova] told us that someone had attacked her classmate, who is from Asia, whose side she took with these words: ‘Why don’t you leave her alone, she’s just a person like we are, her skin’s just a little differently colored...’

Our younger daughter liked sports from the time she was little. This she’s obviously inherited from me. From the time she was little she used to go play soccer with boys. Once after school they came for her, to come play with them. But we raised our daughters that work came first, obligations and then fun. So she told them that until the house is clean, she’s not going anywhere. In the meantime, my wife returned home, and saw that there were ten boys cleaning our place. Evicka said to her, ‘I’ve got a brigade. They want me to go play soccer with them.’ After the cleaning was done my wife told her that everything was fine and that she could go. Our daughter took sports so seriously that she wanted to study physical education. We tried to convince her that she should first of all have – as they say, ‘bread in her hands,’ and after that everything else. First she graduated from civil engineering tech school, and after that the Faculty of Physical Education at university. Finally she also did Hotel Academy.

When the children were small, we used to take them on walks out into the country. Every Saturday, every Sunday, we spent outside. My wife cooked and baked things in advance, and off we went. We also used to go to many sports events, be it soccer, hockey but also other sports. I very much liked sports as such, as I myself liked to play sports. I used to go to international matches, whether Prague or Budapest. I those days, train tickets were good for three days. So on Friday I’d go on a business trip, on Saturday or Sunday there’d be an international soccer match, and on Sunday after the game, I went back home, no problem.

I always rooted for good sportsmanship. I couldn’t stand injustice and brutality. I liked Puskas [Ferenc] and Sarosi [Gyorgy], Sindelar, Piola, Svoboda and others. I also remember a historical soccer match between Czechoslovakia and Hungary in Budapest. Czechoslovakia lost 8:3. Doctor Sarosi, who was a high school teacher by profession, scored on Planicka seven times. That was something, to score on Planicka. He scored seven of them in one game! [During this soccer game, which took place on 19th September 1935 in Budapest, the Czechoslovak team suffered their worst loss in the history of Czechoslovak soccer.]

To this day, still remember the team rosters from the World Cup in 1934 in Italy, when we lost to Italy. Playing for Italy were: Combi, Monzeglio, Allemandi, Ferraris, L. Monti, Bertolini, Guaita, Maezza, Schiavio, Giovanni, Ferrari, Orsi. For Czechoslovakia: Planicka, Ctyroky, Zenisek, Kostalek, Cambal, Krcil, Junek, Svoboda, Sobotka, Nejedly and Puc. [The final game of the World Cup in soccer, Italy – Czechoslovakia, took place on 10th June 1934 in Rome. The home team won 2:1, when Schiavo scored during overtime.] It’s interesting, that this I remember, but not some things from yesterday. That’s apparently a law. You can’t do anything about it.

While still in Bratislava, Minka met this one decent local Jewish boy. They went out for three years, until as a university student he went to Dortmund for summer work experience. Finally he decided to stay there and study, with the agreement of the appropriate officials here. A very clever and good student, he continued his studies in natural sciences at the university there. In 1968 Minka went to Israel. She was also there with the agreement of our pertinent officials for a half year, and she liked it there very much. She worked in kibbutzim and people grew very fond of her. She played various musical instruments like the accordion, piano, organ and flute. She was able to make sure that people had fun and in a good mood. Finally she and her boyfriend agreed that she’d travel to Germany to be with him and that they’d study there together. Of course, I wanted her to come home, to return. Well, her destiny was apparently there. She moved to Germany, where they got married.

Her husband is named Tominko [Tomas] Neustadt. He’s two years older than Minka. I was very, very unhappy when Minka emigrated despite being summoned by our officials to return. I took it very hard. I was more than just sad. My wife was also so unhappy because of it that she fell ill, but I have to honestly admit, that though she wasn’t any less unhappy than I, she weighed it realistically. I saw that my love, my firstborn, is leaving me. Is this possible? And it was possible, but that’s life. Luckily they were both well-liked and one of Tomas’s professors at university helped them immensely. Minka’s principal, who called her ‘Sonnenschein’ [Sunshine], also helped them. They gave them various options and advice, so that they could make something of themselves.

In time they had two children, Daniel and Ester. Daniel is 33 and is a music and English teacher. Ester is 28. She recently finished university; she studied music and history. Their mother tongue is German. But they also speak Slovak, with mistakes of course. All the more lovely. The times we’ve laughed at the muddles they’ve made in their ‘Slovak.’ I even wrote those muddles down. Daniel has already started his own family. His wife is named Katrin and they have two children. The boy is named Jakob and the little girl is Ella. So now I’ve become ‘Opa Bercinko’ [Grandpa Bercinko].

In 1969 a friend of my older daughter’s was getting married in Vienna. At that time Minka and her husband already couldn’t come to Bratislava. So we went to Devin, they were on one side of the Danube and we the parents on the other, and so we were waving at each other. Suddenly some soldier with a dog walked up and said, ‘Who were you waving at? Are you signaling someone?’ We answered, ‘We were just waving, people were waving, so we waved back.’ ‘They’re not some sort of signals?’ ‘No, no.’ Soon an already alarmed officer with five soldiers arrived. They had bayonets on their rifles. At that time we were afraid, as the times weren’t good. We didn’t know what was going to come of it. In the end he was decent enough to just ask us to leave. My wife was crying on the Slovak side. Minka was crying on the other side of the Danube. But there were also other people there, who were waving to each other like this and weeping.

Our younger daughter left for Israel in 1969 through the Jewish community. Visas were issued in Vienna. They weren’t hard to get at all. The bigger problem was with Czechoslovak officials, where it was necessary to be issued an exit permit. Finally she did get to Israel, but returned still that same year. During her university studies she used to go to the Tatras for ski lessons. There she met one older, divorced man from Brezno. He drank a lot and Evicka wanted to break his habit, but she didn’t succeed. He reported her, that she wanted to escape abroad. Finally they broke up.

Then she wanted to go join her sister in the West, but that was no longer possible. In order to get an exit permit she decided to enter into a false marriage with a Yugoslav citizen. She managed to get a permit to travel to Yugoslavia. For from there it was easier to travel to the West. At the beginning of the 1970s she finally got to Germany. In the beginning she lived with her sister in Dortmund. Finally she married this one friend by the name of Désiré Blitz. He’s from Holland. Désiré is a French name and means desired. This was because at a ripe old age his father had managed, besides daughters, to have a son. Désiré is a mixed Jew. He works as a manager, apparently he’s successful. Evicka is a housewife. He and Evicka were married in 1995 in Bratislava. They were married by the current mayor of Bratislava, Mr. Durkovsky. I have to touch wood; she’s got a very good husband. We’re very happy that her life has turned out well.

After my wife and I met, we set a goal that we’d travel a lot, see the world. That resolution of ours has also been kept. We’ve traveled through many countries. Our first trip, after the war, was to Switzerland. We actually planned this trip, in 1946, as our honeymoon. It was like a fairy tale. In 1947 we visited Paris. We were lined up there for movie tickets to the world premiere of ‘Rebecca,’ and standing in front of us in the queue was a couple of around the same age. They were slobbering over each other in public. My wife and I didn’t know where we should look, it was strange for us. People didn’t do things like that at the time here, though now they do.

There were years when we weren’t allowed to go abroad. So we crisscrossed all of Slovakia and Czechia. During hard times my wife and I helped our friends who had emigrated after 1968. We obtained various documents for them and sent them to them. Later, to return the favor, they even invited us to the USA a few times. When I was in the Jewish neighborhood in New York, I had the feeling that if I just walked down the street, I’d meet people I know from Michalovce... We were in Israel and in various other countries. One of them is for example Mongolia. Once we were notified at work that there was one free place to go there. No one applied, so I took it. An interesting experience, a Communist country with many Buddhist monks. Unfortunately Mongolia is a very backward country.

I worked for the Geodetic Institute after I retired as well. The last director, who recognized my talent for drawing, asked me if I wouldn’t put together a company chronicle. In the beginning I didn’t think much of this, but I took it as fun. Finally I immersed myself in it to the degree that I began to truly devote myself to it fully. To this day at the Geodetic Institute they’re proud of that chronicle, which is located in the institute’s boardroom. While I was working on that chronicle I got into it to the degree that I decided to put together a family chronicle, which I’m very proud of. Finally I also made chronicles for our daughters.

As I’ve already mentioned, during the time of the Slovak State, we were members of the Sixth Battalion. After the war many of us moved away. The emigrants kept in touch with each other. In Tel Aviv they met every Friday, and they even had two worldwide gatherings. We who stayed here were isolated and didn’t dare to meet publicly. Among us there were even those that denied being in the Sixth Battalion. After the Velvet Revolution 28, emigrants began to visit our spas and so we established contact with them.

In 1992 we finally managed to get a few boys from the Sixth Battalion together. It was due to the impetus and money of one of us, a friend from the USA, by the name of Pivko, originally Pick. Besides the fact that he was rich, he had an excellent Jewish heart. With his money, we were able to support boys that were badly off, and widows of Sixth Battalion members that were in financial need. We also organized a reunion in Czechoslovakia, with many international participants, with his money. The reunion took place in 1992 in Piestany. Other conferences and reunions were in Bratislava. Within the scope of Sixth Battalion activities, in twelve years we did a lot of work in the interests of Sixth Battalion members and their widows. With the participation of many prominent Slovak historians and resistance members, we filled in many blank spots in the history of the creation, existence and dissolution of the Sixth Jewish Labor Battalion. In this way we also helped to bring to light part of Slovakia’s history. We also documented the participation of Jewish boys in the resistance, as well as how many of them fell. We gained valuable materials from military archives.

I was chairman of the Sixth Battalion for the entire twelve years. This was only possible because my wife helped me the entire time as well. Unfortunately our ranks are shrinking and now basically only my friend Bachnar, the widow Mrs. Borska and I devote ourselves to the Sixth Battalion. With the remnants of the money that we have, we’d like to have one more memorial plaque made, which we’d then have placed on Kozia Street in the building of the Central Federation of Jewish Religious Communities or in the building of the Museum of Jewish Culture in Bratislava. The first memorial plaque is in the Museum of the Slovak National Uprising in Banska Bystrica.

We wanted to succeed in having our being put in the Sixth Battalion recognized by the state as a stay in a labor camp. Government representatives were very much against it. For a long time they refused to accept this idea from the Central Federation of Jewish Religious Communities, until we with great vehemence joined the effort, then things began moving. At a meeting with the Minister of Justice, Lipsic 29, we presented this request. Lipsic [Lipschitz] is originally from a Jewish family, but doesn’t admit to it. Finally, making use of documents from military archives, we managed to have ourselves put into a category that despite not having been in a concentration camp also got satisfaction in the form of compensation. Of assistance in this was a clause in the law which states that ‘also those, who were prepared for transport, and who were known to be going there,’ were also eligible for compensation, so we were also classified as such. The widows of our friends that hadn’t lived to receive it were also classified in this category.

Basically, we can thank the then minister of defense, General Catlos, that the entire Sixth Battalion didn’t end up in a concentration camp in 1942. He announced at the request of the Minister of the Interior of the Slovak State that the Sixth Battalion should be prepared for deportation, that the Sixth Battalion will go as the last transport of Jews from Slovakia. But that didn’t happen, they didn’t get to it! Luckily for us!

Glossary:

Bela Muller
Kolozsvar
Romania
Interviewer: Attila Gido
Date of interview: November 2003

The 81-year-old Benjamin Muller is a well-respected member of the Jewish community in Kolozsvar. His politeness and attentiveness earned him the respect of his entourage. He spends his mornings at the community center, performing religious and administrative related activities. As for the rest of the day, he fills it by reading the newspapers and watching television. He wasn’t willing to uncover the integrity and intimacy of his home, and so we arranged to meet during his time at the community center. Benjamin Muller told me the story of his family in the modestly furnished, unheated community center library room.

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

Family background

By the time I was born, only my grandmother on my mother’s side was alive. She was living in Szaplonca, located in Maramaros. My maternal grandmother was probably born in the 1850s, and her name was Perl Ganc. I don’t remember my grandfather’s name. If I recall correctly, he was a religion teacher in the cheder in Szaplonca. It was an Orthodox 1, observant family, and they raised my mother according to this spirit, as my parents did with me. As a small child my mother used to take my siblings and me to Szaplonca to my grandmother. I have no particular memories of the time I spent there. Szaplonca was a very small village in Maramaros, where people were in need and the Jews had a difficult life. There was a famous rabbi there called Abish. This rabbi was famous all over Maramaros, because he was a great tzaddik – a great Bible scholar. People used to turn to him with all kinds of grievances and litigations for justice. Many asked him to pray for them in order to remedy their problems.

For the holidays my grandmother used to visit us in Kolozsvar. She was a traditional Jewish woman, always wore a black dress and a shawl on her head, and in regard to the tradition, she wore a wig. The prescription was that since hair was every woman’s adornment, they had to cut it off before the wedding. Thus they wanted to prevent married women from being attractive to other men. She used to wear a black apron over her dress. She lived in modest conditions, but had a strictly religious life. After she became a widow – I don’t know when this happened, but probably before World War I – her children supported her materially. I remember when I was a child my late mother used to visit her during the winter holidays. She even took me along several times. When I was summoned for forced labor in 1943, my grandmother was still alive; she was about ninety years old then. She was probably deported. This is all I can recall about my grandmother from Szaplonca.

I had two uncles and one aunt from my mother’s side: Smil Leib Ganc was one of my mother’s brothers, and the other one was called Nosen. They both lived in Szaplonca. I don’t know anything particular about them, only that they were involved in transportation. My mother’s sister was Blima and she lived in Szatmar. She visited us quite often. Her husband, whose name I don’t remember anymore, was a carpenter. They lived a very religious life. The only difference between Auntie Blima and her siblings was that, as opposed to the others, she spoke perfect Hungarian. This was because of the fact that she was quite young when she left Szaplonca and went to Szatmar, where she learned the language perfectly. She was my only relative I didn’t speak with in Yiddish, but Hungarian. She had two daughters, but I don’t remember their names. All of my mother’s siblings were deported with their families. None of them survived.

My mother’s name was Gizella Ganc, and she was born sometime in the 1890s. She wasn’t very educated: she had only finished four grades of elementary school in Szaplonca. My parents never related anything about how they got acquainted. By the time they came to Kolozsvar, they were already married. The got married in Szaplonca, around the 1910s. My father’s parents lived in Ganya [today Hanyci, Ukraine] in Transcarpathia 2. I don’t know their names; I didn’t meet them, as they died before I was born. My father was born at the end of the 1880s, and his name was Wolf Muller.

Ganya, my father’s home village, was a small religious settlement. They were very poor, as well, and my grandparents had lots of children that they had to raise. My father’s siblings spread around the world. Our relatives were quite far away so we didn’t keep in touch with them. Unfortunately, I don’t even know their names. My father told me very few things about his childhood and education. I know he finished four grades of elementary school and the yeshivah in Ganya. He didn’t serve in the army, I don’t know why. My late father was a religion teacher. I think this is how he ended up in Kolozsvar, because the Orthodox community was in need of a religion teacher, and he applied for the job. My father was a follower of the famous rabbi from Vizsnic, that is, he was a ‘vizsnice chussed’ [Hasid 3 from Vizsnic]. The Jews used to say the prayers using Hasidic melodies, written by chazzanim. The rabbi from Vizsnic wrote his own melodies for each prayer, including the one on Friday evening. My father always used to say the Shalom Alechem, the Kol somer sabosz kados mechalelo and the Eshes Chajil with the melodies taught by the rabbi from Vizsnic.

Even today there are Hasidim from Vizsnic. I met several in Borszek myself. Three or four years ago my wife Anna, my grand-daughter Renata, and I, spent our summer holiday in Borszek, and there we saw Jews from America and Israel who said the prayers and the Friday evening songs with the melodies of the rabbi from Vizsnic. Otherwise there are many Jewish tourists that go to Borszek, because it’s probably the only spa in the country where you can find an operational synagogue and a ritual bath, a mikveh. There’s no Jewish community in Borszek anymore; the synagogue and the mikveh are supported by the national community center: the Federation. The Federation operates a spa network, where retired Jews with low incomes and the youth involved in teaching the talmud torah or in the choirs can spend their summer holiday at very reasonable costs.

I have to tell you my mother was my father’s second wife. His first wife died, and I don’t know anything about her. However, they had three sons. The eldest was Ignac, and the next was Jakab. I don’t remember the name of the third one. They were several years older than my elder sister Eszter. I don’t remember too much about them. Ignac and Jakab immigrated to America in the 1920s. The youngest boy emigrated in the same period and settled down in a village in Hungary. Before they emigrated the three boys lived with us, with our family. In 1943 my half-brother from this village came to Kolozsvar and looked us up. By then I was on forced labor and I wasn’t able to meet with him.

My parents were poor people. My father worked all his life as a religion teacher at the Orthodox community, and supplemented his income by tutoring the children of the wealthier families in the afternoons, teaching them religion. My father was a strictly religious, very fair, honest man. My mother was a housewife and raised the children. When my sisters grew old enough, my mother’s situation became somewhat easier, because they used to help her out around the house. We didn’t have our own house; we lived in a rented apartment in Kolozsvar in modest conditions. Our apartment was modestly furnished, and consisted of two rooms and a kitchen. It was arranged in order to accommodate a family of eight. We slept two children in one bed. It was always a problem to obtain wood for the winter. Since my father was an excellent chazzan, that is Baal tfile, he used to get himself a job at a prayer house in Kolozsvar for the period of the holidays of fall – Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot. From the money he earned as a chazzan he usually bought wood for us to have something to heat with.

We were many children, six in all. There were three girls and three boys. My sister Eszter was born around 1910. She was the eldest. She attended elementary school in the school of the Orthodox community, and she finished seven grades there. Next she learned the sewing profession at a private contractor. In 1936 she married Moricz Nuszen here in Kolozsvar. My brother-in-law was a clothier. Due to the difficult economic situation, it was very hard for them to get by, so they decided to immigrate to Argentina. As a matter of fact, it was entirely my brother-in-law’s idea, and he wanted it badly. First Moricz emigrated, toward the end of the 1930s, and my sister followed him shortly after. They settled in Buenos Aires, and stayed there right until the end. Moricz continued to work in his profession, while my sister became a housewife. In spring 1980 they sent me an invitation letter, so I was able to visit them. I stayed there for six weeks. There I met their daughter and son. Now both of their children are married, her daughter has three children, while her son has two children. I don’t know their names. Eszter passed away three years ago, in 2000.

My next brother, Josef, Jozsef to be precise, was born in 1912. He was a cabinet-maker and he immigrated to Palestine in 1936. He was able to emigrate with the help of the Transylvanian Zionist movement, as a member of a Zionist organization unknown to me. Emigration took place in an organized way. Palestine was the mandated territory of Great Britain 4 then, and they refrained from the emigration of the Jews. There was a fixed number of people each year they issued certificates for immigration. I didn’t know how many certificates were issued for Transylvania 5, and how many of those for Kolozsvar. The Zionist movement distributed these certificates amongst the militants. This way my brother Jozsef got to Palestine and began to build up his life. He married a girl from Zsibo [today Jibou, Romania], and they emigrated together, and they founded a family. The name of the girl was Sara Weisz. Before the state of Israel was founded, they lived in very difficult conditions, but after 1948 my brother became an independent contractor. He established a carpentry workshop and this way continued his life. They had three children, and they lived in Kiryat Motskin [Israel]. All the children have Jewish names: Matithiau, Echud and Ciporah. Josef died in 1994, while his wife Sara in 2001.

Chaja, in Hungarian Helen, was born in 1914. Like Eszter, she also learned to become a dressmaker. She got married in Kolozsvar, and she moved to Apahida. Her husband’s name was Mozes Aron. They had a small grocery store. They had two rooms, and the grocery store was in the front room. The store was so small that it didn’t even have an emblem. She had two children, but I remember only the name of one of them. His name was Mozes, after his father. They were all deported in 1944. They didn’t come back home.

Slomo was the fourth sibling; he was born in 1917. He was a student at a Bible university, in the yeshivah of the famous rabbi from Vizsnic. This elder brother was a real Bible scholar. They summoned him in 1936 to Arad. Unfortunately, he was a weak man, he didn’t resist to the instruction. He got lung-disease, and he was sent home. He died in 1938 in Kolozsvar. He had no family.

Growing up

I was born in 1922 as the fifth child of the family. I had a sister, Lea [Lili]; she was born in 1924. After she graduated from the seven grades of the Jewish community school, she worked in a hosiery shop. She was a seamstress. She was very young when they took her to the concentration camp in Auschwitz [today Poland], but she survived.

We were a strictly Orthodox family; we used to observe the Jewish holidays regularly. The holiest holiday of the Jews is the Sabbath, on Saturday. Actually, there’s only one even holier holiday: Yom Kippur. Every Jewish family, including my parents, of course, prepared very well for Sabbath. Our home was spotless, even we, the children, had to help out in the cleaning. My parents had special care for the Friday supper. I don’t exactly remember the preparations anymore. On Fridays, my mother used to light the candles. We, the boys, went with our father to the synagogue. When we came back from the synagogue, the table was laid with a white tablecloth, and there were two big loaves of challah covered, and the candles were lit.

We sat at the table and my father said the prayers and bentsched us. That is, he gave us a blessing. I don’t know the origin of the term bentsched. [Editor’s note: This is a Yiddish term. However, it does not mean to bless the children but to say the blessings after finishing the meal.] I can’t remember the text of the blessing, as it was in Hebrew. I think it began with ‘God bless the children of Abraham, Jacob and Yitzak [Isaac]…’ Even today the observant families do it the same way, but there are no such families in Kolozsvar. The Friday evening supper was a ceremony in itself. We used to sing songs at the table; we sang Friday evening songs: the Shalom Alechem, the Kol somer sabosz kados mechalelo and the Manei ha B'simcha. The meals had a specific order, as well. First we ate the fish aspic. This meal can only be prepared in Jewish households. My wife prepares fish aspic quite often even today, she knows the recipe, and I don’t. Then came the meat soup, the beef and then the farfel.

On Saturday morning we again went to the synagogue with my father, then we came home and we had a festive dinner. The Saturday dinner had already been prepared on Friday. We ate chulent then. The chulent was made from bean and hulled barley. They used to put meat in it and poured water over. After that [on Friday] we took it to the bakery and we put it in the preheated stove. We left it there for the night, and the shabesgoy brought it home on Saturday. On Saturday afternoon we used to go to the cheder, where we attended religion classes.

We used to socialize with families of similar conception. Apart from Jews, we also had relations with Christians, especially with our neighbors. For example, on Saturdays, when we were not allowed to put on the light or light the fire, one of our Christian neighbors, the shabesgoy, used to come over. We gave him a piece of challah, a plate of chulent, and he used to put the lights on or off or lit the fire in the stove and put some wood on the fire, when we needed it.

I liked Pesach best, because seder was a very nice family event. Even before seder my mother used to clean up the house, paying particular attention not to leave in the house chametz, that is, any meal that was made using yeast. On seder the family used to sit together, my mother used to read from the Haggadah, and the meals were exquisite. Each holiday has its special type of meal. On Pesach the main meal is matzah, as we aren’t allowed to eat anything containing yeast, only meals without yeast. In the meat soup my mother used to put special matzah balls. We had potato doughnuts, which is a traditional Jewish meal for that period.

Unfortunately we didn’t know Hebrew, we knew how to read, but we didn’t really understand the text. However, we always got some explanations from our father with regard to the prayers. Otherwise, in the family we used to talk in Yiddish. My parents’ mother tongue was Yiddish. We learned it living in a Hungarian environment.

It was customary in the Jewish families to send the boys to religion school, called cheder, even from the age of four or five. There I had my first contact with the Hebrew alphabet and I learned to read from the prayer book. I can clearly remember our teachers, Rebbeim Goldner and Samuel, as well as Rebbe Heszkl. They were very strict about teaching. We had to rehearse the weekly verse – the five books of Moses were divided into weekly verses. Each week they read one verse in the synagogue, and they taught the same verse in the cheder. In later years I continued to get a religious education, but to be honest, to no avail. However, through my parents, I picked up the most important basic principles of the Jewish life, and the essential elements for tending the Jewish tradition.

Bar mitzvah is a very important event in every Jewish family. They taught me every detail beforehand. I had to read in the synagogue the maftir of the weekly verse of the Torah. [Editor’s note: Maftir, informally, refers to the final section of the weekly portion read on Sabbath and holiday mornings in the synagogue from the Torah scroll; technically, it means the person who is called to read that section. The maftir section is usually a repetition of either the last part, or the entirety of the previous reading. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maftir] It was the first time they called me to read the Torah. After the reading I had to deliver a short speech, praising my education. I had to praise my parents’ devotion and love and I vowed, of course, that I would conduct my life according to the education I received in my father’s house. Because with the occasion of bar mitzvah, at the age of 13 one is graduated to be of full age, and beginning with that moment one is responsible for one’s deeds. Until one’s bar mitzvah the father holds the entire responsibility for the deeds of his son. At the end, the relatives and acquaintances attending the ceremony congratulated my father and me. Next the Kiddush followed, which was some kind of a festivity at our home. Pastry, strong and light alcoholic drinks were served. It’s customary to give gifts on this occasion. I don’t remember anymore what presents I got, but these used to be fountain pens, watches or books.

I attended the elementary school of the Orthodox community; I didn’t graduate from high school. Overall I was a good student. My favorite subjects were mathematics and history. My teacher was a man called Uncle Binder, who taught me from first to fourth grade. From fifth grade we had different teachers for each subject. The mathematics teacher was called Uncle Bihari. I completed eight grades.

Kolozsvar

I can clearly remember the Kolozsvar of my childhood. There was a very large Jewish community in Kolozsvar. There were some sixteen to seventeen thousand Jews back then. [Editor’s note: According to the census of 1930, the Jewish population of Kolozsvar consisted of some 13,000 people.] The Jewry of Kolozsvar was divided into three communities. The largest one was the Orthodox community, followed by the Reformed and the Neolog communities 6, and there was the strictly religious community, the Sephardim 7. The latter was the smallest; they had their own prayer house. In the city there were around 15 to 20 prayer houses and five larger synagogues. These greater temples were on Papp Street, Mikes Kelemen Street, Malom Street, Horea Street and Baritiu Street. Only the one on Horea Street was Neolog, the rest were Orthodox temples. We belonged to the Orthodox community.

The Jewry of Kolozsvar played an important role in the economic and cultural life of the city. There was a Jewish philharmonic society, the Goldmark 8, which was comprised of amateur Jewish musicians. This philharmonic society organized a concert every year, and my family used to attend these concerts.

There was a Jewish sports club, the Haggibor 9, where the Jewish youth could play sports. I didn’t participate in the activities of the Haggibor. When the weather allowed us to, I used to go on trips with my friends. I had mainly Jewish friends, but this had no special reason, it just worked out this way. These were simple walking tours to the surroundings of Kolozsvar. One of our main distractions was cycling. I was a poor child; I didn’t have a bicycle of my own. I used to get one from one of my wealthier friends, who lent it to me so that I could ride a bit. I learned to skate similarly: one of my friends took the skates off and gave them to me. My parents had no money to buy me skates.

The Jews also played their part in the economy. I remember that the main square, the main streets and the Szechenyi Square were full of Jewish stores. There were many craftsmen among the Jews, such as carpenters, tailors and tinsmiths.

In Kolozsvar, in the 1930s, there was a strong Zionist movement. The Hashomer Hatzair 10, the Hanoar Hatzioni 11, the Barissia 12 and the Aviva 13 had activities of education, preparing the young people participating in the movement for emigration. They established several agricultural ranches in Transylvania and trained the people there, who were idealists and aimed to build the Jewish homeland. They learned agriculture there. There was such a ranch in the vicinity of Kolozsvar, as well. They rented a plot of land, they had agricultural tools, and several young Zionists lived there. Not every young person who immigrated to Palestine participated in these agricultural trainings, but these were the majority of those who were favored to emigrate. In Kolozsvar the Zionist movement was very diverse; there were different trends. There were the observant and the less religious, the leftist and the rightist ones. I was still religious then, just like my parents and siblings, and I used to go to the Mizrachi 14, a religious Zionist organization. Its members came from families pertaining to the religious level. I don’t remember the name of any of its leaders.

As far as the authorities were concerned, and because Kolozsvar was an academic city, each year, on 24th January, when celebrating the Romanian national day [the unification of Muntenia and Moldova in 1859], the Iron Guard 15 fascist organization used it to organize the students for anti-Jewish demonstrations on this day. During these demonstrations they used to break the windows and doors of the Jewish stores and profaned the Jewish temples. If they managed to get hold of the Sefer Torahs [the Torah scrolls], they burned them. We were afraid to go out onto the streets on this day. Only the next day, when we got out, we could see the damage that had been done. A particularly aggressive pogrom was the one in December 1927, during the student demonstrations in Kolozsvar 16. The Romanian students marched through the main streets of the city and attacked the buildings owned by Jews.

After I completed school in 1936, I began to work, and I became somewhat self-dependent. My father was on good terms with a Jew called Wieder, who owned a hosiery shop. I worked there as an apprentice and I learned knitting and weaving. In the beginning I used to sweep the floor, but after three months I learned the profession so well, I was able to work on my own. I got a machine that I worked on. The owner received the orders from the merchants, and based on different samples I executed the work. In the factory there were both Jewish and non-Jewish employees, the owner didn’t care about the origin of his workers.

Since my parents were poor, I contributed weekly with part of my income to help them with their expenses. With the balance of my income, I saved some money and used some money for my entertainment. In 1940, at the time of the [Second] Vienna Dictate 17, I managed to save a decent sum of money in the bank.

Kolozsvar was a center of music. Since I had my own income, I used to go quite often to the Hungarian opera house, to concerts, and my favorite entertainment was music. There was a Jewish journal in Kolozsvar, appearing in Hungarian: the Uj Kelet 18. We used to read it regularly. It was especially my father who read it, but if I found an interesting article, I read it, as well. Then I began to read literature.

For a while, the Jewish youth was allowed to go to high schools and universities. Around 1938, when anti-Semitism got stronger, even here [in Romania] authorities began to declare the Numerus Clausus 19. The Jewish youth weren’t allowed to go to university, nor to high school. The situation got worse after 30th August 1940, when part of Northern Transylvania was annexed to Hungary 20. By then in Hungary the Anti-Jewish laws 21 were already in effect, and the situation of the Jewry got significantly worse. Unfortunately, we weren’t aware that the Vienna Dictate would bring nothing good for us. We knew the Anti-Jewish laws were already effective in Hungary. We read about the trial of Tiszaeszlar 22 from 1882, when an innocent Jew was accused of murdering a Christian girl. We knew that, unfortunately, this turn of events would not bring anything good for us. But, to be fair, anti-Semitism was already very strong in Romania, too. The Iron Guard was already active and, furthermore, when the Cuza government 23 was instated, pogroms became more frequent. From this point of view it was almost irrelevant what control we were under. We couldn’t expect anything beneficial from any of them.

During the War

The situation was that in Transylvania, after the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the Hungarian culture was predominant in the cities, and thus the Transylvanian Jewry spoke Hungarian and adapted to the Hungarian culture. In the villages, where the population was Romanian, the local Jewry spoke mainly Romanian. But Kolozsvar was, for example, a cultural city, so we assimilated the Hungarian culture. We considered Judaism as our religion, because we were raised in a religious spirit. But we spoke in Hungarian with our friends and acquaintances. We studied in Romanian [before September 1940], but outside school we spoke Hungarian. I didn’t learn any other language, besides Romanian and Hungarian.

After the second Vienna Dictate, the Jews who worked after 1940 in commerce or industry felt the effects of the anti-Jewish laws, more and more to an extent that in 1940 the Baross Association was created by the Hungarian traders, specifically to economically repress the Jews. [The Baross Association was an association of Christian and Hungarian traders, industrialists and crop growers. They got their motto from Kossuth: ‘The nation is living a colonial life, with our economic life in the hands of strangers.’ Their aim was to tend and develop the Hungarian commerce, industry and crop growers. The exclusion was evident.] In 1943 the Jewish traders weren’t receiving any products, and the Jewish industrialists were left without raw materials. Therefore the Jewish industrialists and merchants had to associate with Hungarian traders and industrialists and had to run their business under the name of their associates. This type of partnership was called the figurehead system.

I worked at a company called Kreier. In our profession, hosiery, there was a time of prosperity between 1940 and 1942, especially after [in 1941] Hungary entered the war against the Soviet Union. [They declared war on the Soviet Union, and WWII began for Hungary.]. In this period there was a goods shortage in Hungary, and we could sell in Budapest [today Hungary] any ‘rag’ we produced: stockings, pullovers and sweaters. We had a traveling salesman, who had connections with a Hungarian wholesale trader from Budapest, who bought all our products.

In fall 1943 the situation of the Jewry got even worse. The men able to work had been summoned for forced labor. I received my summon in October 1943 and I was enlisted at the 10th battalion. The 10th battalion was at Nagybanya. I was assigned to the fourth company, the 10/4. The people from Kolozsvar were usually assigned to the 10/2, but I got my summon in Kolozsvar with eight to ten days of delay, probably due to an administrative error. Thus I ended up in the 4th company. It was a famous company because the battalion commander, a general called Reviczky 24, was extremely nice to the forced laborers. He helped many Jewish families with numerous children, from which older people were summoned. The wives of the enlisted forced laborers used to go and have an audience with Reviczky, and he granted their husbands leave. He even discharged several men with large families.

From Nagybanya they took us to Oradna and to the nearby Rotunda – this is the name of a place in the vicinity of Oradna – to build fortresses. We had to do some very hard work, and the alimentation was poor. The company commander was called Morzenyi, and he was very harsh. From Nagybanya they took us to Transcarpathia. There we worked at a lumberyard, where we did lumbering. Our quarters were in a forest. We had to carry logs: Two people had to carry logs of 40 to 50 kilograms for around four to five kilometers. If someone wasn’t able to do that, or he did something against the rules, they punished him severely. For example, the most severe punishment in the Hungarian army was being tied up. This not only applied to the forced laborers, but to the regular army, as well. This was a very inhuman punishment. The two hands of the punished were tied behind his back, and then, he was hanged by his tied wrists on a tree, to a height at which the man wasn’t able to touch the ground with his feet. This was so painful that nobody could bear more than 10 to 15 minutes without fainting. Then they took him down, splashed some water on him and hanged him back again.

The tying up was proportional with the severity of the disorder. Some were tied up for half an hour, others for a whole hour. It was considered a disorder if one didn’t complete his daily piece rate. But punishments were given even for the smallest things. Once an army company marched by us and from their lines one of my Christian neighbors, Bela Gurat, recognized me. He lived on the same street as me in Kolozsvar. His parents owned a bakery, and until he was called in he worked in that bakery. When he saw me, he was very happy and he told me, ‘Come, I'll give you some bread.’ And he gave me four loaves of bread. I had no idea where he got that many from. I was punished because I stepped out of the lines for a moment and took those four loaves of bread.

Alimentation was very poor. There were occasions when we got our ration of bread in advance for two days. In the evening, there was a line for supper, which consisted of caraway soup, and eventually some other soup or a can of black coffee. By the time one’s turn came, we ate half of our ration of bread for two days. Unfortunately for us, the bread was fresh, and it ran out quite fast. Many couldn’t bear the famine, and when the Russians were closing in, many of the forced laborers tried to run over to them. But either the Hungarians or the Russians shot them. The Hungarians did it because they tried to flee, while the Russians thought they were spies. Epidemics and diseases were very frequent in the forced labor camps. We hardly had a place to wash up. As the doctor of the company, a photographer was assigned, because he said he knew how to do dressing. But other than that he knew nothing else.

In spring 1944 they took us to the front and attached us to a pioneer company from Transcarpathia. The front was on the line Sztaniszlov Sztrij [today Stanislov Striy, Ukraine], Gyelatin [today Delatin, Ukraine], Kolomea [today Colomea, Ukraine], and Koszov [today Kosov, Ukraine]. We lived in inhuman conditions. The members of the skeleton crew made fun of us, and there weren’t few who starved and couldn’t work, and died. We supplied the pioneer company with food and ammunition. The front was in a place unreachable with vehicles, only on foot or with horses. We carried the ammunition and food on our backs. The forced labor camp was even harder to bear due to the Russian progress, because we had to be on full alert all the time.

In fall 1944, when we were retreating, it was the first time I saw a Russian soldier who had been captured. We had to walk 35 to 40 kilometers each day towards Huszt [today Hust, Ukraine], and on the way we had to repair the roads, in order to allow the Hungarian troops to advance without problems. This retreat wasn’t only difficult because we had to march, but because we only had five-minute breaks after each hour of work. During these five minutes our joints grew so stiff due to the long march, that when we had to start marching again we felt like our flesh had been cut with a knife. On one occasion, after several weeks of marching, the commander informed us about the route of our retreat. He declared that those who couldn’t keep up and would fall behind could ask for directions at the headquarters of the pioneer company. Then, together with other fellow forced laborers, we decided to flee. In the vicinity of Tecso [today Tyachiv, Ukraine], in Transcarpathia, as we were marching, it grew dark, and we jumped out of the lines and hid in the cornfield beside the road. Tecso was a major railroad center. By then the Hungarian army was so scattered, and it was so disorganized that not only we, the forced laborers fled, but also many of the Hungarian soldiers did, as well. The Russians troops were closing in so fast that the leaders of the Hungarian army couldn’t control the situation anymore.

Because we were so many who fled, on that night the company commander, when they reached Tecso and saw many were missing, ordered the local fire-engine to go and search for us with searchlights. Those who had been found were shot in the head on the spot. I, for instance, felt the boot of Kenez on my cap’s end – Kenez was the orderly leading sergeant. If he stepped on my face, that would have meant the end for me. From then on, every day of my life has been a gift. We waited in the cornfield for a while, and after four or five hours we set off for the village. Four of us fellow forced laborers, who were from the same company, got to an izba [rustic peasant home]. We asked the owner to let us sleep in the hayloft. A widow called Auntie Mari lived there. The next day we put all our money on the table – we received some money from home even while in forced labor – and asked Auntie Mari how many days she could accommodate us for. By then the front was approaching very rapidly and we wanted to wait for our liberation there. It was the third day we were staying there when the Russians came into Tecso. They were very nice to us because they saw our yellow armbands and that we were victims of the fascists. Two days later we set off for Nagybanya, through the woods. The locals warned us that the forest was mined and it was very dangerous. Under normal circumstances the trip should have taken us two or three days, but we weren’t familiar with the area, and so we wandered for several more days through the woods.

Among the four of us I was from Kolozsvar, another one was from Nagybanya and I don’t know about the rest. In Nagybanya I met several people from Kolozsvar and we started to walk towards Kolozsvar. At Ilonda [Nagyilonda] – some 50 kilometers from Nagybanya – we asked a Russian truck to take us aboard. We told them we were going to Kolozsvar, and the Russians replied with ‘Turda’ – Torda in Romanian – and we told them ‘adyon,’ meaning all right in Russian, and got on. I got off in Kolozsvar in front of the Romanian opera house. This was in November or December 1944.

I knew there was nobody left from my family, because I corresponded with one of our neighbors, Mrs. Kiss. I knew my parents and siblings were gone. During the forced labor, right until my parents were deported, we wrote to each other regularly. Later, I kept in touch with Mrs. Kiss. When the Jews were taken to ghettos and my parents were taken to the car, my father was so ill that he wasn’t in a condition to be transported. Despite that, the gendarmes wanted to put him in the car, but then Mrs. Kiss went to the deputy mayor, Truca, who lived in the neighborhood. She told him, ‘Uncle Muller is ill,’ and she asked him to give her a certificate to prevent my father from being taken to the ghetto. Truca gave her the certificate, and Mrs. Kiss took my father to her place. A few days later she arranged for my father to be sent to the Jewish hospital.

The Jewish hospital was operational all through the war as a medical unit. Thus my father escaped the deportation, and I found out this way that he died here, in the hospital, in decent conditions. There was a forced labor unit here in Kolozsvar that worked at the food warehouse. They buried my father. From them and from this Hungarian family I learned where my father was buried. From my family, my mother and my two sisters, Chaja and Lea, were deported. Chaja had two small children, and they perished, as well. Only Lea survived. She escaped from the jaws of death, from Auschwitz [today Poland], in 1945.

So, I wondered where I should go next! I stood nailed to the ground; I didn’t know where to go. However, I went to the place my parents lived before the war. I wasn’t able to get into the house, and they didn’t let me in. I went to one of our neighbors, Mrs. Kiss, who looked after me for several days. Then I began to look for something so that I could go on with my life. Restarting my life was the most difficult thing to do. I don’t even want to look back on that period and don’t want to talk too much about it. A Romanian family, my father’s close friends helped me out. After I left Mrs. Kiss, I stayed for months with the family of Gheorghe Capusan, until I managed to find my own way.

After the War

When I came home to Kolozsvar the reception of the Jewish survivors hadn’t been organized yet. A few weeks later an American Jewish aid organization [the Joint] 25 transformed apartments into quarters and provided hot meal, clothes and washing places for the people returning from the concentration camps and forced labor. The so-called Peter-Pal villa 26 had been transformed for this. When I arrived home, this villa wasn’t operational yet, and I didn’t use this opportunity because the Capusan family offered me lodging and meals. I wore the clothes I wore in the forced labor camp for eight months. I bought myself the first piece of clothing from a junk dealer, thus changing my forced laborer clothes, from the money the Joint gave me as assistance.

I was looking for work and I managed to get a job at the hosiery. It wasn’t easy to restart; I ended up looking for my parents all the time. I knew that they had both died, but I still hoped that they would show up one day. As the months passed by, I met one of my old Christian friends, Lebovics, whose parents also operated a hosiery business. He had some inheritance, several knitting machines. Since I knew the profession and knew how to use those machines, he asked me to join him and to start a knitting company. We managed to start off and to produce. Thus my life began to take shape and I managed to pull myself together materially.

In the meantime, in Spring 1945, my little sister Lea came home, whom I had to support in every way. A few months later she immigrated to Israel. She got married there, to a Jew who emigrated from Romania. I don’t remember her husband’s name, but I know he wasn’t originally from Transylvania. She had a daughter, who’s now a kindergartner. Lea died in 1975.

After the war, I sympathized with the communist movement, because this was the ideology I considered I could regain my human dignity as a Jew. I believed in the ideas communism propagated. Unfortunately, it took me some time to make sure that ideology and practice are two different things. I joined the Party in 1945, but in 1949 they excluded me because they considered that my activities after the war as craftsman were against the class. I had no regrets for this. I was proud I was working honestly and I didn’t have to stay in line with those who used their ‘red booklet’ [the party membership booklet] to idle their time away and to jaw at the meetings. I kept quiet, but worked honestly. I never requested them to allow me to rejoin the Party.

In 1953 people still believed in the communist ideology. They were sorry Stalin had died. Later, they discovered that nothing the regime had promised was accomplished in reality. I watched closely through the radio and the newspapers the events of 1956 27. I was listening to the radio stations from Budapest and to Radio Free Europe 28.

In 1949 I got a job at the state hosiery in Kolozsvar, the Somesul, and that was the first time I worked as an assistant master, and later as a fashion designer. I worked in this factory for 33 years, until 1982, when I retired. People have always respected me for my work. In the communist era there was a covered nationalist spirit, but I never felt an explicit, public discrimination towards me as a Jew. I did my work honestly and they respected me for that.

At the end of the 1940s I got acquainted with Anna Szakacs, whom I married in 1952. We only had a civil marriage. Neither of us was religious, so we didn’t feel it was important to have a religious ceremony. Besides, my wife isn’t Jewish, she’s Reformed. She didn’t convert to Judaism. I had and I still have a harmonious marriage. We never had any disagreements related to our origins. We always saw the benignity in each other, not the ethnic origin or religion.

My wife was born in Jarabanya in 1929. She went to school in Jara [Alsojara], six kilometers from Jarabanya. They were a simple middle-class family. Her father owned a mill in Kisbanya, and later he got involved in the transportation business in Kolozsvar. He used a truck. My wife’s family moved to Kolozsvar in 1940. Anna graduated from the business college in Kolozsvar, and later she worked as an accountant for different companies. She had one sibling, whom I never met and who died very young.

There was a period when we planned to immigrate to Israel. But my wife’s parents were very old when we were still young enough, and they needed our help. So we gave up the idea of emigrating.

From our marriage we had one child, born in 1956. He’s my son Laszlo Muller. We didn’t bring him up in a religious spirit, but we never kept his origin secret. He considers himself a Jew. He finished high school in 1974, and then he entered the Technological University. He specialized in the field of information technology. He still works in this domain here in Kolozsvar. He has a family. Interestingly, his wife, Agnes Grunwald, is Jewish, too. But this is only a coincidence. None of them were frequenting Jewish circles, and they didn’t attend Jewish events. From this marriage I have a granddaughter called Renata. She was born in 1988. Renata is now almost fifteen, she took up sports, she’s a good student and she brings us a great deal of joy. Her parents didn’t educate her in the Jewish spirit, but they never kept her origin secret.

Our circle of friends was diverse. There were Jews and Christians, as well. And this hasn’t changed. We have nice acquaintances we get together with on important days and birthdays, and we always spend a few pleasant hours together. Our circle of friends consists of simple, honest people from the community or from my former workplace.

I have many friends and acquaintances in Israel. My siblings Jozsef and Lea lived there. I have been to Israel three times. First I went there in 1969. I had to request to be allowed to travel abroad, and only then I could get a passport. In the communist era it was much harder to leave the country. I visited Lea and Jozsef alternately. I liked Israel very much; I traveled around the major cities.

We were and are living in an environment where the majority are Christians, so it’s natural for us to respect the Christian holidays, like Christmas. We don’t observe them, of course. As opposed to this, we try to observe every Sabbath and Pesach, but this is more like a commemoration than a holiday. And we started doing this only at the beginning of the 1990s.

In 1989 29 we hoped the dictatorship would come to an end and the economic situation would bounce back. I look back disappointed to those hopes we had there. The situation hasn’t improved very much since then, as we are living in the same poor conditions. The only difference is that we have more freedom.

After 1944, I didn’t abandon my religion, but I didn’t go to the synagogue, I wasn’t a religious man. There’s an old saying, according to which the closer one gets to ‘Joe Black’ [Editor’s note: that is, to ‘death’], one remembers one’s childhood and one’s origins. Now, as a retiree, I began to go to the synagogue. And currently I perform different activities at the Jewish community of Kolozsvar, and I’m a member of the management. I’m in charge of the religious issues. My official title is ‘consilier cu probleme de cult’ [counselor in charge of religious issues]. I ended up at the community because after 1989 they needed someone who knows the religious prescriptions. Since they knew I got a religious education, they asked me to get involved in the activities of the community.

I have to tell you I’m not going to the synagogue because I’m religious, but because the Jews are the only nation on the face of the Earth whose history is strictly bound to religion. So going to the synagogue means for me to tend to the Jewish tradition. And this is how the majority of the other Jews in Kolozsvar feel. Currently there are around three hundred Jews living in Kolozsvar. The community is a very old one, and we have no rabbi, of course. Despite all this we are trying to practice the religious traditions, and we observe every holiday: Sabbath, Chanukkah, Pesach or Purim. We teach our youth Talmud Torah, and we have a choir, as well. Talmud Torah includes learning Hebrew, and the choir sings Jewish religious songs, such as Avadim Hayinu and Dayenu. I would like to emphasize that we are doing this because we want to maintain the Jewish traditions.

Glossary:

Edit Deutsch
Budapest
Hungary
Interviewers: Dora Sardi, Eszter Andor
Date of interview: December 2001

My family background
Growing up
During the war
Post-war
Glossary

My family background

The Czitrom family originates from Spain. At the time of the expulsion in 1492, a lot of Jews came to Europe, and the Czitroms were amongst them. Of the Czitroms, many went to France and also to other countries. Our family came here from Germany. They were already living here in the 1800s. Their mother tongue was Hungarian, but I don’t know whether they spoke German as well. They probably did. There are also a lot of Czitroms in Transylvania. I know that there was a rabbi named Czitrom in Debrecen too. But he could only have been a very distant relative, if he was a relative at all, because I know the descendants of all six children of my paternal great-grandfather.
My paternal great-grandfather was Benjamin Czitrom. He was religious, and he wore a hat and a beard and had earlocks. By profession he was a kind of farm manager. He lived in Berettyoujfalu. His wife was Lidia Asztalos. They raised six children: Rezi, born in 1869, Regina, born in 1871, Jeno, born in 1877, Bela, born in 1879, Sarolta, born in 1884, and Miksa.

Miksa was my grandfather. He was born in Berettyoujfalu in 1870. He and his brothers and sisters became orphans at an early age. Miksa was in his teens and he was a street-porter at first, I think. However, that wasn’t in Berettyoujfalu, they had moved from there, but I don’t know when. Later, he worked his way up by himself, and worked in some sort of official post in the capital [Budapest]. He was living in Soroksar when he met my grandmother, Adel Fekete, born in Nagyvazsony in 1875. They were already in Budapest when they got married. They had three sons: Tibor, Laszlo, my father, and Ede. My father was the middle boy, so he was the most disadvantaged because Tibor was the big child, and Ede was the spoilt little one.

Tibor was a bank officer, and so was Ede. But both of them Magyarized their names before the war; Tibor to Rethei; I don’t remember what Ede’s new name was. Ede had a daughter, Agi, she lives in America and has two or three boys there.

I was six years old when my grandmother died. My grandfather had died earlier. I remember having been to the Fekete family, my grandmother’s siblings. I’m sure they kept the high holidays because I remember that my mother told me that they went to their place on foot on Yom Kippur, and they stayed there for supper. Things like sewing couldn’t be done on Saturday, nor washing and ironing. They must have been moderately religious. And so was the Czitrom family. My grandparents were quite religious; I know that my father had had a fiancee before my mother. She was also a socialist and didn’t want to get married in the synagogue. His parents didn’t give their consent to the marriage because they wouldn’t allow my father to get married without a synagogue wedding. I know from my mother that they had horsemeat soup [which is not kosher] at their house, but they didn’t tell him that that’s what it was.

My father was born in August 1901. He probably graduated from some kind of industrial school. He learnt the mechanic or locksmith trade. Perhaps he didn’t even want to study, though he taught himself a lot; I saw lots of books on mechanics and other subjects in his home after the war. He took different jobs: anything from mechanic to locksmith jobs. I know that during the war, he worked in the petroleum factory.

My father got along very well with his Uncle Bela, my grandfather’s brother, who was a socialist and had worker’s sentiments. Bela was the leader of the Leather Union. He was probably some kind of leather worker. He lived in Zuglo with his family.
My mother, Ilona Fischer, was an only child. Her mother was Irma Schwartz, born in 1883, and her father was Mihaly Fischer, born in 1880. Both of them were from Gyoma. My mother was born in Gyoma in 1905, but only because her mother went home to have the baby – they already lived in Ujpest at that time. My grandfather was already dead at the time of mother’s engagement, back in 1931.
My maternal grandmother spoke Yiddish, though her mother tongue was probably Hungarian. But our mother already didn’t speak it. She understood it, so if my grandmother didn’t want the children to understand what they were talking about, she spoke to my mother in Yiddish. I don’t think my grandmother was kosher, and she didn’t have a wig either. I remember, that she told us that her mother, my great-grandmother, had a cooking shack and she used to go and cook for construction workers.

My grandmother had a younger sister and a brother. I know that her sister, Auntie Bella, became the wife of Ferenc Grosz in Bekescsaba, and there were six children, who came after each other like pipes of an organ, as I saw them in photographs. The oldest girl, Boriska, went to France before the war and she was the only one in this family to survive, except for Ferenc Grosz because he also survived the war. My grandmother and Auntie Bella and the other children perished in Auschwitz.

My mum was a dependent before the war; she was at home with her four children. The village tradition, which had come from her grandmother, or from her great-grandmother, says that it isn’t good for a child to know more than its mother. My mum completed six elementary classes. Otherwise she was very smart because I remember that when I studied physics in the 8th grade, she could help me.

Growing up

Before the war, we lived in a one-bedroom apartment with a kitchen. My mother, my father and us, children, slept in the room, and my grandmother stayed in the kitchen. And the monthly rent was my father’s salary for one week, so we were poor, even before the war.

We went to the synagogue on Gyorgy Dozsa Street once in a while. But we went more often to the movie theater, which was there, too. We weren’t religious. My mother fasted duly. My father drank water occasionally, sometimes in secret, during the fasting. But my mother was kosher, she knew what to do and how to do it. She also knew that the liver has to be made kosher on the cooking-plate. So, she was kosher. It wasn’t like it was in many Jewish houses. In our house things weren’t separated so that there were special dairy utensils – but we didn’t wash the utensils used for meat products together with those used for diary products. I have never washed them together to this day. There was no pork, there was no lard, but mostly poultry. But there was no rigorous observance of the kashrut, only that this cleanliness had roots in the kashrut. I remember, there were special cakes at Yom Kippur, Purim and Rosh Hashanah.

As I went to a state school, religion classes were held separately, and I had to go to another school for those. I know that my mother was good friends with the mothers of the children I went to religion classes with, but there was no special circle of friends. My mother had one girlfriend; she was Jewish. In the evenings she played merils or other similar games with my father by the light of the oil lamp.

I had a relative, Aunt Piri, who lived in Kisterenye with her husband. She was the cousin of my maternal grandmother and I went there two or three times for summer holidays. They lived in a rented house. Auntie Piri was a dressmaker; Uncle Guszti probably worked in a factory. They couldn’t have been very religious because when we were coming home on the way to the railway station, I remember that we went into a shop, and they gave me a kind of bread, into which they must have cut pork products. Uncle Guszti said, ‘It’s tasty, isn’t it? You haven’t eaten anything this good’. So they weren’t religious either. Uncle Guszti survived the war, but Auntie Piri didn’t.

I was born in 1935, my brother Rudolf in 1933, Klari in 1937, and my youngest sister, Gabriella, in 1943.

During the war

During the war, my mum, we four children, and my maternal grandmother lived on 18 Sip Street in the ghetto. First we were in a yellow star house 1. My mother fell into that age group from which the women were summoned to the brick-factory. Many of them from the house went there. One of the women called her to come. My mother arranged the family first, and by the time she got there, there were so many in the brick-factory, that those who had a child under three were let go. She came back to the yellow star house from the brick-factory. There were a lot of people in one apartment in the ghetto, but as there were six of us, we had a room that had a double-drawer bed, and we slept on that, all six of us. We ate potato-peel soup, and similar things, so we didn’t starve to death. We could go to some kitchen on Sip Street where they gave us cooked meals occasionally, and we had whatever we had been able to take with us on our backs from the yellow star house. I remember that I found a cup of apple seeds in the larder, and that was very tasty. We ate that bit by bit; we rationed it.
My father was taken to forced labor. He was at home to visit one week, and was going to come back the following week. While we were waiting for him one late afternoon or evening, a member of the skeleton staff appeared, and said that my father hadn’t gone back to Keleti railway station. He hadn’t come home either. He’d just disappeared, but there had been a shooting right around Keleti; so we don’t know exactly what happened to him.

Post-war

After the war, we were in a Joint 2 home for a while. We were in Budapest first. It was like an orphanage, or a boarding house, and we went to school from there. We used to go home in the summer. I was there for two years; I completed the 4th and 5th grades there. My sister transferred to Szeged a year earlier.

After the war, we ran a shop. During the Rakosi regime 3 the taxes were higher than my mother’s income, so she gave up this endeavor. Perhaps also because she didn’t want the children to be recorded as ‘class-alien’ at school. She delivered to the South-Pest Factory Catering.
My brother made aliyah. My mother said she wouldn’t let the girls, but would let a boy, go without parents. At the end of 1947 already, he left with those who couldn’t get in anymore, so he was in Cyprus for a while, and in Italy [in a DP camp]. He was posted into the kibbutz, so that he would learn the carpenter trade, but all his life he wanted to become an electrician. So later he studied to be an electrician and auto-electrician. He had two children, both born in Israel. His wife was a Jewish girl of Belgian origin. My brother later divorced her. Eva, his current wife, is of Hungarian origin. Hungarian culture is important to my brother, he couldn’t live with a woman whose culture isn’t Hungarian.

Klari was a miller, a skilled laborer. In those times the children were taught at school in such a way that they had to learn a trade. She got married to a Christian boy named Andras Szabo in 1951. There were no Jewish boys because the boys went to Israel earlier than the girls did. And the boys didn’t insist on Jewish girls that much. At the place where she worked there weren’t really any Jews, only Jew-bashings. Her husband became an independent craftsman, a tool-maker. He made tools for export, and he did his private work in his own workshop, in their house. Klari also worked in the workshop. They have two daughters.

Gabriella worked in the catering industry. She was a trainee at Csemege [socialist food-shop chain], then a saleswoman. She graduated from the evening faculty of a commercial secondary school, and she learnt bilateral chartered accounting while she was working. Now she is a deputy head book-keeper. She also had to make do with a goy [Gentile]. She had Jewish suitors, two actually, but finally, to avoid staying an old maid, she got married to Laszlo Legendi; she wasn’t young any more. They don’t have children.

After completing eight years of elementary school I dropped out of technical school due to great poverty. I worked for a year and took a special matriculation exam. We were almost starving on my mother’s salary in the Rakosi era. I was able to go to the special graduation exams because I starved less when I worked and earned 400 forints per month in the stationary factory for a year. There was a dormitory, there was breakfast, lunch and dinner and there was, I think, a stipend of 70 forints.

After that I went to the teacher training college as a mathematics-physics major. I taught there, in the 13th district, in Domb Street elementary school, and in the meantime I qualified as a teacher of mathematics at university. The headmistress was a very decent Jew, but she was a member of the Party, and she was always nagging me to join. And so I became a party member quite early and I was a pioneer-team leader. I did my work diligently in Domb Street for ten years, then I went into computing, working for a company named Imperol [which later became SZAMALK]. I was a programming mathematician, later I became a program-developer, a program designer, and system developer. And later, the Central Comittee of the Hungarian Socalist Worker’s Party asked for a person for the computing centre. SZAMALK recommended me for this programmer position. Later, I was the computer-system manager of the library.

Where I worked [in the school], there were no Jews among my collegues, and I probably wouldn’t have been able to love a non-Jew. So that’s probably why I didn’t fall in love with any of the boys. I lived with my mother, I nursed her, and I got married very late.

I met my husband, Ferenc Deutsch, when he was at home on a visit from America, not long after the death of his third wife. We have an apartment here, and we have an apartment in America. We live here for half a year, and there for half a year. I’m learning English and we have many friends there, too.

Glossary

My name is Serafima Nakhimovna Staroselskaya, I was born in Leningrad in 1949. I know about my grandparents from what my parents told me, since I was born after the war and the older generation was eliminated, shot by the Germans. I keep that in mind all my life because it is very important to me.

My family background

During the war

Growing up

After the war

My family background

My grandfather’s name on my mother’s side was Borukh Vigdergaus, and my grandmother’s name was Sima. They lived in the town of Nevel in Pskov province, where a lot of Jews lived. All our kinsfolk came from Nevel and Vitebsk. They were a very united family. Grandfather and grandmother were born approximately in the 1878-1880s. Grandfather's mother (my great grandmother) lived together with them, though she also had sons Grigory, Bentsion and daughter Manya. But grandmother loved Sima very much and said that she wanted to live only with her. Great grandmother was religious; she thoroughly observed all religious rules and the family celebrated Sabbath.

My grandfather’s brothers, Grigory and Bentsion, left Nevel for Leningrad in the 1920s. Grigory got married here, his wife’s name was Lisa. When other young relatives started to come to Leningrad, uncle Grisha and aunt Lisa’s house was always open for them, they were welcomed as if it were their home. They lived in the center of the city not far from the Technological Institute. Aunt always kept a bucket-sized pan on the stove, young people came to visit them very often.  It was in the 1930s, when everyone was always hungry. As soon as one ate, others came, aunt Lisa poured some water into the pan, so that it was always possible to get a plate of soup in her house.

Grandma Sima was very kind and sympathetic, everybody loved her. She was a person easy to get along with. They owned an inn. There were a lot of villages around Nevel and Russian peasants, who brought foodstuffs for sales, stayed at my grandparents’ inn.  As far as I know, they had no education, though outwardly they were very intelligent people. Grandma and grandpa had six children. They had seven  children, but the first girl died. Three sons and three daughters remained. Elder daughter Sarah-Dinah (they called her Sonya at home), was born in 1901.  Second daughter Lyuba was born in 1903. Then brother Semyon (Shlyoma) was born and later Yakov (Yankel) and finally Yefim (Khaim). Last and the youngest was my mom.

Their house was located right on the lakeside of the Nevel Lake. There was a lot of fish in the lake and many years later when we ate fish mom always said: “Now we can only recall the fish we ate in Nevel.” They fished themselves and sometimes fishermen brought the fish to us. Children had fun boating not only in boats but also in wash-tubs out on the water. Boys certainly were very naughty. Though there was a huge fruit garden of their own, they stole apples in neighboring gardens. The house was rather big, the family lived moderately but the children were always full. They kept two cows and lived owing to their own work.  All Jewish traditions were observed by the family: grandma wore a traditional Orthodox wig, Sabbath was strictly observed, there were special Sabbath candlesticks and kosher utensils and mom remembered it all. Matzah was always baked for Pesach.

There were a lot of Jewish houses in Nevel and they were all very different. Mom told me that, unfortunately, many of the houses were dirty and slovenly. Grandma’s house was always very clean and full of flowers. Grandma Soma always dressed very neatly and nicely and differed from the others. That’s why there even appeared an expression “Sima and her kids.” Grandma never yelled at them. She never had anyone to help her with the house and managed everything on her own. All children started to walk barefoot as soon as spring came, sparing their shoes. Festive shoes were worn only on Pesach. Synagogue was attended obligatorily. A certain number of men gathered for a prayer in the houses. All in all, they led their own Jewish township life. My mother spoke Yiddish since childhood, it was her mother tongue and everybody at home spoke Yiddish.

My mother was born in 1915. She has a very interesting name – Kisya. She was given this name in honor of uncle Kushi. The name is a rare one, really. At those times parents gave their kids Jewish names as they wished.  However, when mother obtained her passport during the Soviet time, she was told that there cannot be such a name. They offered her to change her name, to become Kseniya or Yekaterina, but mother insisted that her name remained as her parents had given her. Later since mother was a Comsomol member and worked with difficult-to-bring-up kids, she was called Katya or Ksenya, but basically she lived with the name Kisya, Kisulya.

When mother was a little girl, her elder brothers and sisters began to leave home. They began to move to Leningrad in the 1920s, as a lot of Jews who lived beyond the “Jewish Pale  of Settlement” before the Revolution had done. Mother lived in Nevel up to 1930. She finished a Russian school there and was the last to leave among the other kids. She was 15 years old at that time. Older sisters already had babies and mom’s nephews were 10 years younger then herself.  She even nursed them, because they were always brought for summer to Nevel to stay with grandparents. Only in winter, when everyone left for Leningrad, mother remained alone with her parents.

Her elder sister Soya (Sarah-Dinah) studied to become a seamstress at the age of 13. She sewed women’s lingerie beautifully. It was before the Revolution. Then she left for Leningrad and studied somewhere else. But no one managed to get a higher education. She got married in Leningrad, her husband was a military man and later on he worked at a printing-house till the end of his life. Second sister Lyuba got married at the age of 19. Her husband’s last name was Dernovsky, he also came from Nevel. He was the only person in the family who obtained a higher education. He studied at the Technological Institute in Leningrad, at the department of ceramics and refractories. It was such a starvation year - 1921 and Mikhail attended the Institute wearing only one rubber boot.  When he graduated from the Technological Institute, he was assigned to work in the town of Borovichi, where aunt Lyuba and uncle Misha always lived. A large refractory combine was being constructed there and uncle held an important position at the combine. In general it was a family known to the whole town. They had five kids born.

Mother’s brother Semyon (Shlyoma) finished the Red Commissars’ courses. There was also brother Yakov. He perished on the Leningrad front line; other brothers also participated in the war there. Yakov was the only one who perished. He left two daughters who were born before the war, Galya and Edith.

Mother’s brother Yefim, born in 1912, served in the navy on a man-of-war. Once in 1937 during the massiveStalinist  repressions, he mentioned in one of the conversations that people get orders like badges. Someone denunciated him and he was put into prison. All his family was, at it was called in those days, “incapacitated” and mother became a relative of the “national enemy,” but she never told about this at the place of her work. Later someone noticed her visiting the prison carrying parcels and informed the proper officials. Yefim stayed at Kolyma during the whole war. He got acquainted with a Russian girl, who came there with a Comsomol authorization, and a baby was born to them. They were allowed to leave Kolyma for Borovichi which was incredibly far away, since they were permitted to live only beyond “the 101st kilometer” [1946], and his elder sister Lyuba with her husband lived in Borovichi.

As I already mentioned, mother came to Leningrad in 1930 at the age of 15. It was the most difficult year - dreadful unemployment, so she had to visit the labor registry office all the time. Finally she managed to find a job at the technical school. She worked with machines: with a lathe and a metal machine, she also knew electricity well. She was rather crafty, all in all, besides, she sewed and cooked very well.

One of the brothers had a room on Nevsky prospect, in building # 1, with windows facing the Palace Square. All relatives and friends who came to Leningrad from the provinces, stayed in this room. All mom’s brothers and cousins were very amicable and visited the place very often. Mother lived also with her elder sister for some time. It was a Soviet-custom-type life. When mom came from Nevel, her Comsomol life period started. However, she spoke Yiddish in her midst. She was seriously in love with a Russian young man, but she parted with him, because she had been brought up believing that she should marry only a Jew.

My maternal grandmother died at the age of 43 of cancer. Before the war grandpa got married for the second time. The pre-war time was very difficult, but mom and dad recalled that all relatives were on friendly terms with each other. Bonds between relatives were different from that of contemporary. First of all, even a cousin was considered a very close relative and they helped each other. Mother was great friends with her cousin, Benstion’s daughter, her name was Rosalia. They were of the same age and they had one party dress for two, so they had to go on dates in turn, though there were a lot of admirers. Relatives visited each other often. There were no telephones at that time, but they all lived in the center, never locked the doors, no matter if it was a working day or a holiday.

Mother married Naum Staroselsky (his name was registered in the passport as “Nakhimya”) when she was 22 years old, in 1937. Father’s ancestors came from the town of Gorodok in Belorussia. By the way, the name of Staroselsky derives not from the nationality but from a location. I read about it in a book. Both Russians and Jews could have such a last name. I know less about my father’s parents. I think they were a bit older than my mom’s parents, born approximately in 1870. I do not have any of their pictures. My paternal grandmother’s name was Nekhama, and grandfather’s name was Alter-Shmuil. Though father’s patronymic was indicated in his documents as Adolfovich. I do not know what kind of education they had. I only know that grandma Nekhama was very beautiful and active and grandpa was, as they say, henpecked. Grandma was very enterprising, she was engaged in commerce, though I do not know, what kind of. They were better provided for than my mom’s parents. They owed two houses in Gorodok before the Revolution, a small one and a bigger one. They also had 2 or 3 cows. Everybody in the family worked. However, they were even “dispossessed as kulaks” in the 1930s.

Father (born in 1907) worked since he was a small kid, as he was the only boy. He had 4 sisters. The elder Dora was born in 1905 and Sonya was born in 1912; there was also Ida, who was born in 1913 and died right after the war; Bronislava, born in 1915, is still alive. Unfortunately, I do not know much  about this part of the family.

Father lived in Gorodok approximately up to 1928, because he had to help his parents. Later he moved to Leningrad. He had a room on Basseynaya (now Nekrasova) Street. There was a Jewish club nearby where a lot of young people gathered, so dad lived a Jewish life mostly owing to that. Jewish young people entertained themselves and relaxed there, it was not prohibited at those times--  yet. There was even a peculiar “meeting club.” Dad had a lot of friends. He was a very outgoing and cheerful person. He met mom in one such gathering. He was wounded in the war, lost his health, which had a significant effect on his temper. Mom very often recalled what kind of nature he had had before. 

Before the war mother worked at a mechanical plant. Before 1943 she worked as a secretary in Smolny [Leningrad Communist Center] for two years. When Kirov (a high party functionary) was murdered, everybody was fired and she lost the job. My parents got married on November 7th, 1937. The wedding took place on December 5th, it was the holiday of Stalin’s Constitution Day. Dad wanted to present mom a golden ring, but she told him that Comsomol members do not wear golden rings. So dad gave her a golden watch, which I still keep. They did not have a Jewish engagement ceremony and wedding. A trip to Leningrad was not possible for mom’s parents, so it was difficult to reach our relatives, who lived 40 kilometers from Nevel (in Vitebsk), and they did not see each other for years. The wedding was a fairly typical civil one.  

I am not sure what dad’s occupation before the war was; he was some type of an office worker. He had no higher education. He finished a Russian school in Gorodok, but he spoke Yiddish very well. Dad carried the spirit of Judaism throughout his life. I think that he was a dissident, according to contemporary understanding. Mother was 8 years younger than him and was brought up within the conditions of the Soviet power: she was a Comsomol member and accepted everything connected with this life. Deep in his soul Dad never accepted the Soviet power completely. He admitted some things, but the spirit of the past, the bourgeois spirit, lived within him all his life. We did not really understand it until later. When mother married him, her family did not have a friendly attitude toward him, regardless of the fact that he was a Jew. They were all brought up in the Comsomol-Communist and Soviet conditions, and it seemed to them that dad had a certain “bourgeois touch.” In half a year after mom and dad got married they moved from Nekrasova Street to 85 Sadovaya Street, into a huge communal apartment without any conveniences. In 1938 my sister Nina was born, she was given this name in honor of grandma Nekhama (on father’s side). Mom went to her parents, who lived in Nevel to give birth to Nina. I was born in Leningrad, at the maternity hospital #2, the most famous one in the city.

Every summer before the war mom and Nina went to visit my grandparents; actually, all the grandchildren gathered there for summer.

During the war

War caught them there. Mom decided to go to Leningrad. Grandparents said to her: “Leave Ninochka with us”. Mother hesitated for a long time, but finally took my sister away. Grandparents stayed in Nevel but later decided to leave. They had friends among peasants, who loved them very much and offered them a hiding place in case the Germans arrived. And they did really hide them for two years. I found out about it just recently. I thought that they were executed in Nevel at the beginning of the war. Later, they were either betrayed or someone told them that there were no Germans in Nevel anymore, so they returned back to the town and the Germans grabbed them. I know it happened on September 16th, 1943, because mom always lit a candle on September 16th in their memory. It was a massive execution of the Jews. Some Jews dug trenches, then they were shot and the rest of the Jews buried them. I found pictures of the execution in Nevel at the Hesed Center not long ago. It was a real shock for me to see this big picture of the monument at the place where my grandparents were executed. I only heard from mom before that the place was called the Blue Dacha (summerhouse).

Thus my sister was saved, as mother took her to Leningrad. When the war broke out, children were evacuated from the city with their kindergartens, separately from their parents. So mom sent Nina with the kindergarten. When she had left, mom understood what she had done and got frightened that she had sent a 3-year old child alone. So she left with the last special train to look for Nina, as she knew approximately where to look. She found her in the town of Nikopol. In September 1941 they were evacuated to the town of Belibey in Bashkiriya, not far from the town of Ufa, because two father’s sisters were evacuated there.

Mom told me a lot about evacuation. She left Leningrad together with her friend, who had two kids. They stayed together during the war. It was very difficult to find a place for living in Belibey, though finally they found a 5 meter poky little room, with hoarfrosted walls.  Mom was lucky, because in evacuation she met a good friend of hers, who helped her to get a job at the officer’s canteen. So she always had food. They lived in evacuation until 1944.

My dad lived through two wars: the Finnish and the Great Patriotic wars. He was a volunteer at both wars. He served as a medical assistant having finished special courses. He was not even wounded during the Finnish war.  Later he was at the Leningrad frontline and took part in military operations. I know that he save a lot of people, because even after the war people came to us and dad could not even remember them. They expressed their gratitude to him for saving their lives. In 1943 dad was wounded in his leg. He stayed for half a year in a hospital near Leningrad. The wound was very severe and they thought that the leg could not be saved. But they did save it, though he had to get about on crutches for a long time after. He managed to find mom in Belibey. She recalled the scene – when someone suddenly told her: “Kisya, go meet your one-legged!”

When the blockade was lifted, dad began to write to Leningrad and at the end of 1944 they received a permission to return. When mom and Nina came to Leningrad, the streets were totally deserted. Their room in Sadovaya Street was not occupied fortunately. But everything was stolen. Nobody really pondered on that, everybody was happy to be back home. Mom found a job of a passport office employee and worked there for several years.

All our men relatives participated in the war and the women remained in besieged Leningrad, some managed to get evacuated. Mom’s elder sister Sonya and many other relatives stayed in besieged Leningrad. They almost starved to death when dad returned from the frontline after he had been wounded. He found a dead horse on the way. He managed to get some horse-flesh and brought that meat to his relatives who lived on Fontanka embankment, when they already could not move and lay motionless. There were five of them. Finally they had something to eat. They recalled this story with gratitude all their lives, because dad saved their lives.

Two years after the war ended, in 1947, when dad was in a bad condition after being wounded and had to get about on crutches, he went to get some milk, one tram stop away. He brushed against a woman with his crutch, she called him a “Jewman”, and dad responded something. But the woman appeared to be a militia officer. He was immediately arrested, and dad spent 8 or 9 months in Kresty [Leningrad prison]. It was very difficult to get a permit for him to stay in Leningrad, it became possible only owing to his many orders and war wound. There was a criminal case brought against him, but he was acquitted. It is possible to talk about repressions today. But at that time everything was concealed, so I found out about that case only when I was a grownup. It was a real shock for me. A man, who had done so much for people, who participated in the war! After that dad’s health was undermined. And all this happened because he could not keep silent when he was called a “jewman”.

Growing up

I was born in 1949. I do not remember either my mother or my father young. When I was born, mom was 34 years old, but she really looked rather youthful. Dad was 42. He was very sick after the war wound and his temper changed a lot after the ordeals he survived, he became more reserved and suspicious. I got my name in honor of grandma. When mom registered me, she wanted the name to be written “Sima” in the birth certificate, but she was told that there was no such name and they wrote “Serafima”. I had a lot of cousins, but I was the only one, who resembled our grandma both by appearance and by temper. I also love flowers as much as she did.

Jewish spirit was always present in our family and I understood since childhood that I was Jewish. I had a lot of friends who were Jews only by passports, some even concealed their nationality.

My childhood was hallowed by Jewish holidays and attendance of the synagogue. It was before school. I remember our neighbor Masha, who was a year older than me. We attended the synagogue together with our fathers and not only for praying. It was a place for Jews to meet in Leningrad. Lermontovsky prospect, where the synagogue was situated, was overcrowded on holidays. This synagogue is located in the center of the city and holds more than 2,000 people. Old friends met there. I remember dad, mom and me walked from one group to another, say hello, and our friends always paid attention to how children were growing up. Father always prepared to such visits very solemnly, put on his best suit and a broad brimmed hat. They spoke mostly Yiddish at synagogue. We celebrated Jewish holidays at home but did not observe Jewish traditions thoroughly. Though mom always said that meat should not be mixed with dairy products. So we did not, though not because it was not allowed to, but simply because that was the way it used to be in our family.

I have been to the synagogue recently after the restoration of the building. Everything turned over in my soul when I remembered how the cantor sang when I sat there. I imagined dad and all our friends because the synagogue was never a mere empty phrase for me. When I hear songs in Hebrew, but especially in Yiddish, the “voice of the ancestors,” something stirs inside me, and though I never knew my grandparents, I have a feeling that I see them in front of me.

After the war

I attended the synagogue as a student and never missed a holiday. Simkhat-Torah was the most cheerful holiday. It is a very merry holiday with dancing and singing. Regardless of something happening around us all the time, like someone was expelled from the Institute, someone was arrested, I was not scared and continued attending synagogue. After synagogue services we continued having fun at somebody’s apartment. It was the end of the 1960s, beginning of the 1970s, the time which was later called the end of “Khruschtchev’s thaw” [ the beginning of liberal reforms in the Soviet Union ]

The district where we lived was very international. There were 9 apartments in our house but there was no apartment where a Jew did not live. For instance, our “communalka” had 7 rooms and 3 Jewish families lived in it. People came and went, but there were always at least 2-3 Jewish families. Tatars lived here as well as gypsies. Anti-Semitism was invisibly present, but we, children, always understood each other and played together. Since a lot of Jews lived in Sadovaya Street, people spoke Yiddish very loudly in the street, without any embarrassment. It remained like until the 1960s. Later we began to feel nationalism and anti-Semitism.  No one taught me this language, so I knew only some words, which I heard often. My parents spoke Russian with me, but when they wanted to conceal something, they proceeded in Yiddish. Some words I understood, some not. Though my sister understood Yiddish better than me because she learnt German at school.

There lived a very religious Jewish family in our house, the Golimbevich family. Mendel, the representative of the elder generation, never worked, except at the synagogue. This family always observed Sabbath and all holidays. They had a boy, Izya (Isaac), we were of the same age and were in the same class. He and Mendel wore kipas at home. He was the only one who did not go to school on Saturdays. Teachers were slightly displeased with that, but they finally accepted it, as he was a rather clever boy and studied well, so this did not influence his education. A rabbi visited him at home and he studied the Torah.

It was 1954-1955 and since we were friends, I came to their place often and saw him pray. I remember it very well, though I did not understand everything correctly. They invited me on some holidays, we celebrated Hanukah together, lit the candles and everything was the way it should be. Mendel had 3 daughters, one of them managed to leave to Palestine in 1930 and two other daughters tried to cross the border when the Israel state was established. They were caught and put into prison. One of them had a son named Izya. He remained with his grandparents who brought him up. In 1956 when we were in the 1st grade, his mother and aunt were released from prison. Izya and I were walking home from school and suddenly he rushed up to one of the women crying: “Mom!” I cannot imagine how he recognized her; he hadn’t seen her since he was very small. This family lives now in Israel..

Certainly I faced anti-Semitism in my life and not just once. I remember when at school my classmates peeked at the end of the class register and asked me: “What kind of patronymic you’ve got – Nakhimovna?” I was always busy with public tasks, I was a pioneer and later a Comsomol member. I also remember how in the 8th grade children were chosen to be sent to Artek [famous international pioneer’s camp on the Black Sea]. I was one of the first candidates to go. I was summoned to some commission and asked who my parents were by nationality. I answered that they were Jews. So another girl instead of me went to Artek, who never carried out any public work. It was like a first slap on the forehead for me, and a very unpleasant one.

Then there was another case. School children from Leningrad were authorized to go to the XXII Party Congress to welcome the Congress delegates. It was a tradition at that time. Only six children could go. The pioneer leader of our school, Lyudmila Valentinovna, was to supervise our delegation. She was half-Jew on her mother’s side. Neither me, nor she, were allowed to go to Moscow. Others went instead of us. I do not think I could have hindered someone from something at the Congress, it was absolutely clear that my Jewish origin was the problem. Almost the same happened when our group at the Institute went to Bulgaria. Without me. When I worked at the scientific enterprise and a group of employees was going to Poland, I “reached the district party committee (raykom)” and the commission asked me a question, which had nothing to do with Poland. Everybody was allowed to go and I was told: “Go and prepare yourself”. All in all, there were such moments, and not just a few.

I finished school with a silver medal and entered the Leningrad Technological Institute to obtain a profession of a chemist-technologist. After graduating I worked for 15 years at a Scientific Research Institute; later for 14 years at an environmental preservation laboratory. Being a final-year student in 1971 I had the right to choose the place of my future job, since I was second in the class. However, when before the assignment we were all collected together, our teacher warned us that it was no use to get a job at GIPKH (State Institute of Applied Chemistry) (this warning was meant for the Jews, and there were a lot in our group). Starting from 1972 Jews were not accepted to the scientific Research Institute of Synthetic Rubber, where I was assigned to after graduation.

I met my husband Mikhail Isaacovich in 1970, when I went with my friend to Seliger Lake for winter holidays. My husband-to-be also went there with his sister. We liked each other at first sight. We talked on the phone for a year and a half, then began to go out and married in 1972. Soon after that my husband was enlisted to the army. Nelya was born in 1975.

My husband’s father, Isaac Markovich Lokshin, was a military man and their family had to move constantly from one place to another. Only in 1975 they “settled” in Leningrad. That is why they were less used to Jewish life. My husband did not attend the synagogue like I did when he was young because he could have been fired for that. After graduating from the Aircraft Equipment Construction College he worked at a secret “Vector” enterprise. However, my husband still speaks Yiddish. He graduated from LIAP (Leningrad Aircraft Equipment Construction Institute) by correspondence and continued to work at the same Institute. For the last 10 years, since 1994, my husband has been working in St.Petersburg Department of the “Joint” organization (an American Jewish social welfare organization).

My husband’s grandfather’s name was Zalman Khenkin (he came from Tula). He left for Palestine in 1919. He left his wife and two children in Russia. My husband’s mother, Nekhama-Maryasya Khenkina (my mother-in-law) was not born yet at that time: grandma of my husband was pregnant with her third child, when grandfather left. He left the town of Yefremov near Moscow, there were pogroms, and their family was rich, they owned a jewelry store and Zalman permanently felt potential danger. He left for Palestine hoping that he would be able to settle and send for his family. At first the family kept in touch with him, he wrote letters. But in 1921-1922 the contact was interrupted. Zalman disappeared. No one knows what happened, but it was assumed that some relative, my husband’s grandmother did not want their daughter to leave forever, and interrupted the contact.

My mother-in-law, Nekhama-Maryasya (Lokshina after marriage) grew up without her father, but grandfather’s sister, her aunt, told her a lot about him. He was a very interesting person, a very musical one, he could even play the saw. He was very kind. He loved his wife (mother of my mother-in-law) very much. First 10 years of my married life I was sure that mother-in-law knew her father, as she spoke so much of him. They also led a Jewish life at home. But at the age of 12 she left [interviewer does not know where].  Her parents were also executed during the war in Belarus. She remained without any livelihood. After the war she lived in Leningrad and finished a technical school here. None of her relatives are alive. She got married after the war.

It was possible to find out about Nekhama-Maryasya’s father’s fate at the beginning of the 1990s, when our daughter Nelya got engaged in  Jewish life of the city and began to meet representatives of Jewish youth, who visited Leningrad. I would like to tell about this in detail. When at the beginning of the 1980s a massive departure to Israel started and fewer and fewer Jews remained here, we began to think, what could we do to bring our daughter into a Jewish environment? We never hid our Jewish identity from our daughter (although there were a few friends we never told). I even know families where the children did not even know what their nationality was. So we registered our daughter with the Sunday school at the synagogue. Nelya plunged into Jewish life and made a lot of new friends there. She asked one of them, Avraam, to try and find out something about grandfather’s fate in Israel. When he came home, he placed an announcement in a newspaper, seeking Zalman Khenkin, who had left in the 1920s from the town of Yefremov, Moscow region. And one wonderful evening the phone rang in our apartment. I only understood that the person spoke Hebrew and wanted to talk to Nelya. She was not at home. In a day there was another call and a woman said that she had seen an announcement saying that relatives are looking for Zalman Khenkin. “We are Khenikin, maybe my father was your relative?” She told that her father had died in 1967 and she kept his pictures. In order to find out if it was correct, we sent a picture, which grandmother kept, to Israel.

All in all, it appeared so, that Zalman Khenkin’s trip to Palestine was very long, he was even in Turkish captivity. When he settled in Palestine and his contact with his family was absolutely lost, he got married in 1930 and created a new family. He had two children, son Iser and daughter Shoshana, the woman who called us. We invited Shoshana and her brother to visit us in 1993. In order to meet guests from Israel, the sister of my mother-in-law came from Astrakhan, her name is Irina (they called her Fira at home). She and Shoshana were very much alike. A lot common memories popped up when they looked at their old pictures. Shoshana remembered how her father sometimes took out a casket, where he must have kept letters and pictures, then locked himself in the room and examined them for a long time. When Zalman died, the casket disappeared. Shoshana told us that they had all known about some secret in their father’s life, but he had never told anyone about it. He never even mentioned that there was a family of his left in Russia. She also told us that she had a feeling since childhood that she had a sister somewhere in this world. So it was: she had a stepsister! They both were very happy. Very often relatives now manage to find each other. But at that time, 10 years ago, it was a sensational story! We were all shocked, as well as our friends and our relatives from Israel. Such a big family we have. Both Nelya and grandmother are great friends with Shoshana, and she calls us often. My mother-in-law visited Israel 3 or 4 times.

I would like to add a couple of words about my husband’s aunt Ira (Fira), whom I mentioned above. She was born in 1918. She lived near Moscow before the war, in the town of Pervomaysk. She got married at a very young age, when she was 16. When her husband left for the frontline, she remained alone with her children. Very soon she received a notification about her husband’s death. She was supposed to share the fate of all Jews in town. They were collected together, arranged in columns and led to execution. Germans and Romanians guarded the column. Fira was very beautiful and one of the Romanians liked her. He managed to save her by miracle, pretend that she was Russian (aunt used the name of her killed friend Ira Molchanova). Later when the Red Army forces released Pervomaysk, one of the soldiers, Sergey Levchenko, met Ira, fell in love with her and married her in spite of the three children she had. Then another baby was born. After the war Ira suddenly (when she was walking along the railroad lines) met her first husband!  It turned out that the “death notification” was sent too soon - he was alive and looking for his family! So he had to resign himself and admit that the war and fatal circumstances separated him with Ira and the kids. He left for Odessa. Sergey brought up all kids and loved them all as if they were his own. Their family lived in Astrakhan and Ira worked there as an administrator in a theater. She is now 84 years old and lives with her son in Zhukovskoye near Moscow. 

Now a little bit about my daughter, and how our family returned to its origins. As a child Nelya spent a lot of time with her grandmothers, she learned a lot from them and a lot passed between these generatons.  However, our family never celebrated real Jewish holidays and Sabbath. But the revival of Jewish life and our junction with it commenced at the end of the 1980s. Very quickly and surprisingly for all of us she learnt Hebrew in synagogue so successfully that by the end of the 10th grade at school she began to give lessons to small kids in Sunday school. Apparently certain Jewish genes guided her toward the language. She wanted to be a teacher since childhood and planned to enter the college named after Nekrasov, where students are trained to be educational specialists for children of preschool age. She finished her courses there. Suddenly she was persuaded to go study in Israel. She left and for a year studied at the “Makhon Gold” religious pedagogical college. At that time she began to observe Jewish customs and traditions, to celebrate Sabbath and wear a long skirt. I supported her studies and was glad that she would know the traditions and the Jewish culture very well, though I was afraid a little bit that her religiousness would go too far, that she would become an Orthodox. This fortunately did not happen. Her studies were very interesting and she traveled all around the country within a year.

Having returned to St. Petersburg Nelya became a leader of “Bney Akiva”, one of the first Youth’s Jewish organizations in our city [1990].  At that time there were no permanent offices and they had to rent an apartment. She celebrated Sabbath there according to the proper rules and cooked food. It was a real official job and it was accounted for her as a year of alternative service in the Israel Army, “Shrut Leumi”. After that Nelya decided to leave for Israel for permanent residence. She entered a Pedagogical Institute in Jerusalem, but visited home every year. Finally she married her classmate, Boris Onoprienko, and in 1997 she came home after graduation and started to work at “Adain Lo,” a regional public Jewish organization, where she was very much needed, because Jewish kindergartens, which started to open at that time, had no educational specialists with Israeli certificates.

For the last three years, since 1999 and up to now, I also work as a coordinator of “Yakhat,” a program developed by “Adain Lo” for disabled children. I like the work I am doing now, very much, because disabled children are the category of the society which never really received proper attention in this country.

Sima Staroselskaya is a very active woman with perfect taste, which is proved by cozy home environment and atmosphere, where a lot reminds one of the family history and Jewish traditions (for instance, pictures of relatives, candlesticks and a mezuzah at the entrance to the apartment).  Her family is a very vivid example of Jewish life revival in St.Petersburg: everyone in the family, including father, mother and daughter, work enthusiastically in the city’s Jewish organizations, not by word of mouth, but in actual deed assisting a lot of people, both children and adults to become aware of their belonging to the Jewish nationality. 

Dora Rozenberg
Subotica
Serbia
Interviewer: Nina Poljakovic

I know a bit about the origins of my paternal great grandmother and great grandfather. My great grandfather was Gaspar Spitzer, and his wife Betti Hirsch - married name Spitzer. They were middle-class merchants; they had a shop where one could find everything from groceries to household chemistry. Since the towns were smaller and shops like that one were rare, the business was good. They had five or six children but I do not remember their names other than my grandfather’s, Mor Spitzer. They were quite religious, they kept kosher and observed all the Jewish holidays, but unfortunately I don`t know how, when and where.

My paternal grandfather Mor Spitzer, was born in Subotica and lived on the Tompa farm, a small place in Vojvodina. His wife was Mimi – Marija Koh, married name Spitzer. She, unfortunately, died very young, at 40, from galloping consumption. She was a beautiful and strong woman, who kept the family on her shoulders. She left behind five children. They lived on a farm, at that time Jews did all sorts of things; they worked with meat, textiles, and tools which they used to sell in the village. They didn’t have an actual shop but it was known you could get everything you needed in their house and they even had inns.

Since it was a bohemian age, so to speak, where local people liked to spend all night at an inn making trouble, my grandmother tried to prevent it and succeeded most of the times by having gendarmerie on stand-by. I remember that after she died the chief of gendarmerie used to come to my father and tell him how she was a wonderful, energetic person, and we have always suspected that he was in love with her. They were pretty well-off materially while great grandmother was alive. After her death grandfather sold everything they had, he let the children go wild, without giving them anything, and became an alcoholic.

Their mother tongue was Hungarian and that was what they spoke at home. They were very religious, but you could not tell this from their dress. They were Neologs1. They kept kosher at home and, went to synagogue. They celebrated every holiday very strictly. They lit candles, made challah on Fridays, Shabbat was observed, etc.

They were members of the Jewish community but since the farm was very far away they did not socialize much, except for holidays when the family gathered together. They had a woman who sometimes came to help grandmother clean the house, and a woman who took care of the work outside. At that time it was not the practice to have a woman to take care of all the household activities. Grandmother died from her own carelessness. One winter the laundress did not come so she cleaned everything for the household (for five children and two adults) by herself in the yard, she caught a cold and died a short time later on Purim. After that the family fell apart but grandfather never married again, in fact he was so ill they amputated one of his legs. He was in a wheelchair for the rest of his life, until he was 75 or 77 years old. Grandmother and grandfather had siblings but I do not remember anything about them.
My maternal grandfather was named Salamon Merkler. He had nine children; he was widowed with five children and then married my grandmother, the most wonderful person in the world. Her name was Lujza Bek, she was born in Kiskunmajsa [Hungary] and she had four children with grandfather. She was a wonderful woman because she accepted grandfather’s children as her own. In fact when the grandchildren who were not hers went to visit them, they would not say they were going to grandfather’s but said they were going to grandmother’s. Grandfather was born around 1870 and grandmother was 18 or 20 years younger than grandfather. They lived in Cantavir, a village near Subotica. It was a wealthy village since there lived people with big households, it is as wealthy today actually. There lived quite a few Jews, 15-20 families for certain, but there was no synagogue, only one house represented the place of worship. Of course, there was no Jewish school in the village so the children went to Subotica to school. Jews in the village lived together with other ethnic backgrounds and had good relations. Grandmother and grandfather had a house and since he was a tinsmith he had his own workshop, while grandmother was a housewife and took care of the house and of the cows that they had at home. She could not work because she took care of the nine children. Two of the sons were also tinsmiths and worked with their father in the workshop.

Grandfather was a religious man; he knew the customs and religion itself. He dressed in everyday clothes. He probably wore kipa in the house and especially during the prayings, but never out on the streets, nor did he wear kaftan or payot, since they were not orthodox. Grandmother acted the same way. When he was young he went to cheder and had a special teacher who taught him about Jewish traditions and customs. Grandfather and grandmother were kosher, they kept Shabbat, went to synagogue, especially grandfather who went there every night and who strictly maintained orthodox customs. They never told me what the holidays looked like in their house. When they moved to Subotica they could buy kosher meat and eat kosher food. They were members of the Jewish community but they were never involved in politics, nobody harrased them and they lived quite well. They had two Christian women who helped grandmother with the cleaning, and taking care of the nine children and since they had a barn with cows they needed the attention too. They had a large garden with vegetables and my grandmother just couldn`t manage it alone, so the older girls helped grandmother in the kitchen and took care of the younger children. They were surrounded by Christians and  had good relations with them, there were never incidents nor they have been called out for being Jewish. They did not use to visit each other since they all worked all day long so there was no time for socializing. The part of the house where we lived had street windows and behind it, down the yard, was the workshop. I remember the yard itself. There were a lot of fruit trees, and when there was summer they used to put a large tin tub, for me to bathe in, under the trees.

The thing I remember from grandmother and grandfather’s is Friday evening (Shabbat). When I was in the concentration camp, I always dreamed about that and sometimes it was what kept me alive; seeing the table set, the candles burning, the smell of challah. We did not have a ring-cake, instead grandmother made crescents with cinnamon, they were enormous, or at least they seemed that way to me. I could not get a bite until grandfather came home from synagogue. When he came home he blessed us, grandmother had already lit the candles as was the custom and she served dinner. Since grandfather was old and was not allowed to eat everything, we always had dairy dinners. I can still smell those crescents. In the camps when I closed my eyes and remembered the smell I was no longer so hungry. This is something I have remembered through all the periods of my life up until today.

Grandfather’s only sister was named aunt Lenci.  She lived in Cantavir at her son`s who had four children (Zsiga, Margit, Rozsa and Ilus) and two grandchildren who were born after Lenci`s death. Margit, Rozsa and Ilus were sewers and lived in our neighborhood. Lenci was short, and she wore an apron as all the village women did. She died around 1920.

Grandmother had many brothers and sisters, around five or six. We liked uncle Maksi most. He was a huge man, a good man and he loved the family. My mother, father, brother and I used to go often at his place or he came to ours. There couldn’t pass a Sunday for us not to see each other.

My father Salamon Spitzer, called Sanjika, was born on February 18, 1888 in Subotica. His native tongue was Hungarian but he also spoke German. He finished the sixth grade of elementary school and was unable to continue his studies because as a youngster he suffered a lot. When his mother died, his father left him too. Being very poor he was often hungry for days and was even going barefoot in snow and cold because there was no one to take care of him. At the age of seven he lived with his aunt in Subotica, who was mean and treated him very poorly. Her husband was no better, and since they have not had children of their own, they did not now how to treat him. He lived with them until he was independent enough. When he finished sixth grade of the elementary school he started working at first as an apprentice in a glass-shop owned by a Jew, who was named Kohn. Kohn was a good man and he even helped my father in his growing up by supporting him materially. He made good progress and when he married my mother they opened a small workshop with minimal start-up capital. Because of his modesty they succeeded to build that small workshop into the biggest glassworks in the region with a shop in Subotica. When my father made inventory in his shop he took a box of matches from his pocket and said while looking at them: “Why do I need to make inventory? I started with these and everything above that is profit.”

My mother Cecilia Merkler, known as Cilika, was born in Cantavir on September 29, 1890. She was the sixth child in the family and my grandmother`s first. She spoke Hungarian and she finished the sixth grade of elementary school. She helped a lot around the house, and was very hard working. Mother knew knitting, and after she finished her school she often used to knit. I think that they met in the same manner that all Jews did back then, a shadchan introduced them. They married in Cantavir on March 17, 1914. in the small synagogue. When the war broke out in the fall, several months after their wedding, father was called for military service. Since my mother was pregnant with me she went back to stay with her parents and waited for him to come back from the war.

Father had three sisters and one brother. The eldest was Jozi, then Franciska, Ida, and Margit. Except for one sister, aunt Fani (Franciska) who was with me in the camp, they were all lost during the war. She was the only one to return. I do not know what she did. One sister, Ida, did not have a family because when she was four years old she was stricken with typhus and remained mentally impaired from that. Everybody else was lost in camps during the war. The only thing I know is that Margita’s granddaughter returned from the camp and she lives in London. We even had telephone contacts, but as the time went by we lost our connection.

Mother had brothers, sisters and step-siblings. Emma, Herman, Zsiga, Janka, Miska were step-siblings and Marton, Karoly, Cilka, Rozika were her brothers and sisters. Only my mother and Zsiga returned from the camps. Zsiga was a tinsmith and he lived in Subotica. He has a daughter Marta, who has two daughters in Israel and 7 grandchildren. The eldest sister Emma lived in Budapest and had four children. Uncle Herman lived in Szeged [Hungary] and had one daughter. Miska was deported to Austria and he did not live to see the liberation. Rozsika lived in Belgrade and had two daughters. She stayed with one daughter in Belgrade and they were executed at Sajmiste camp (a factory yard in Belgrade set up by the Germans for massacring Jews after the occupation of March 1941), while the other came to Subotica. She lives in Israel today with her family and has 8 grandchildren.

I was born in Cantavir on January 3, 1915, but I lived in Subotica. During W.W.I., before I was born, my father had been drafted into the war. Mother returned to her parents where I was born. I lived in Cantavir in my grandmother’s house until I was four years old.

As soon as the First World War ended father, mother and I went to Subotica. Subotica had about 100,000 residents 6,000 of which were Jews. Jews did not have their own special section of the town rather they lived all over the city.

There were two Jewish communities in the city, one Orthodox and the other Neolog. My family was part of the Neolog community. The synagogue, where religious services held, had already been there when we came to Subotica and that is where the religious services were held. The community had its own chazan, rabbi, shochet and the Orthodox community had a mikvah. Our women went to the public bathhouse. At that time there was public health care for children and a communal kitchen for the poor. There was a Jewish elementary school where I went. Orthodox boys went to yeshiva.

My parents were not very religious. We observed Shabbat and the high holidays, but we were not kosher. I remember the Sabbath at home. We used to cook the whole day on Friday only for the evening because my mother never cooked on Saturdays. I used to light the candles with my mother – four of them. Two for her and two for me. The smell of challah defined Friday nights for me. When I was a bit older I always went with my girlfriends to service in Synagogue, and when there was school on Saturdays, there had always been service for children afterwards.

When we came to Subotica Jews mostly worked in commerce although there were a few craftsmen. At that time there was no plumbing, but we had a well and we even had our own motor, which drew the water. Our material status was very good. She [my mother] did not work. She was a housewife. We could go on summer vacations every year especially to the seaside where my mother took my brother and me. My father was unable to come because he could not leave the store.  At one point we even had a villa at Palic2 so we spent a lot of time at the lake and there were even times when we spent the whole summer there.

Proof of our good material standing was that for three years I was educated in a woman’s educational institute because mother had to help father in the store and she did not want to leave me alone. We lived in a big house with four rooms and a hall. The most beautiful part of the house was the living room with plenty of daylight. We used to listen to the radio there and enjoy being together as a family. We had a bedroom where my mother brought the furniture when she married. I also had my own room, a real modern girl’s room with bed closets and a table. The dining room had furniture, which was all carved and beautifully designed. There were also my brother’s room and a bathroom. At the end of the garden we had a separate part of the house, an apartment, which was used for storage. The house had roses, grapevines, and we had a dog. Since we could indulge ourselves we had a full-time housekeeper who lived with us, but she was not permitted to cook because mother did that herself.
We had prayer books as well as secular books. We did not need to use the library because we bought all the books we wanted to read. My brother and I spent all of our pocket money on books. We used to read all the popular books in Hungarian and we always talked over our “shopping,” and all our pocket money was used for books. We collected over 350 books. At that time there were paper-deliverers so my parents used to read newspapers too. We were not very religious but we celebrated every holiday. Friday nights the candles burned, we made challah and ring cakes. We went to the Jewish community on Chanukah and Purim Pesach. We fasted on Yom Kippur. Even today I fast, although it is much more difficult than earlier. For such great holidays, the shop was closed and everything was very festive. After the synagogue we would always go to uncle Maksi`s and celebrate the holiday together with all my uncles and aunts. Mother and father were never involved in politics but my mother’s nephew was a communist. His name was Dr. Imre Ber. He was a surgeon, he wrote books, he taught at the Moscow University, and his textbooks were used. He was liquidated during Stalin’s reign.

Some of our relatives we saw every day. I used to see Aunt Rozsi, as well as mother`s cousin Adam Giza, who often visited us in the shop. When three of them got together, mother had to do at least some handwork, she could not sit and rest. Of course, she did not work on Saturdays or holidays. It wasn`t too fun for me, because they had children much younger than me, and I was the only one to take care of them. On the other hand, other friends we saw only for holidays. Many of them lived in Budapest or Szeged in Hungary, so we did not have many occasions to see them. But since our family was big, we actually have not even had the need to socialize with other people, while friends used to come to shop and they talked there.

I began the Jewish school when I was six-years old. I went to that school until the fourth grade. When I finished I was enrolled in a gymnasium for girls in Veliki Beckerek; there I completed three grades. Since I did not have the patience to be so far from home my parents allowed me to finish the fourth grade in Subotica. When I finished gymnasium I did a two-year stenography course. Since we were well off my family could indulge me in private tennis lessons (I played rather poorly), English and German lessons and piano lessons for three years. Since I had neither a good ear nor talent I bothered my parents and teacher enough so they let me give up on my musical education and my self-improvement.

During my time in school I had several teachers. In the first grade there was an old spinster who hated children, while in the second grade my teacher was Mrs. Hauser. She was really nice to me and she even had a daughter of my age, which I made friends with. In the third grade Mr. Kados was a strict, righteous and a very serious man. After him, in the third grade, Mr. Rosenstein, the school principal was our teacher. In Beckerek [Zrenjanin in Serbian] I had all the best teachers, and the most wonderful time in school. My friends were mostly Jewish, and we used to play together even after school. As far as anti-Semitism in school is concerned I never experienced it nor did anyone ever tease me.

When I finished school I began working in our store because I wanted to be a merchant. I worked together with father; in the beginning my salary was 500 dinars, but I did not have any expenses, and the money was all mine. Father always laughed and asked me, “What do you need a salary for?” I sat at the cash register and whatever I needed I just took. I never had to ask and could buy whatever I needed. The shop had a lot of desks, glass closets and shelves, which were full of glassworks. We had three shop assistants Lajos, Marci and Janos, and one apprentice who learned the trade. Our customers were mostly non-Jewish, but that was not important at all. There were four glass-stores in the town at that time and our worked even on Sabbath.

While in school and after school I socialized mostly with Jews, they were mainly the people I went to school with; I socialized with many of them until they died. I was a member of a Zionist organization Hashomer Hazair, and spent every free minute there. There we learned Hebrew, went to classes and organized classes of History of Judaism. I did all sports like tennis and rowing, halfheartedly, without desire. Since I was very skinny and weak, my parents spared me from physical work.

During the weekends and vacations I went with my friends to the movies from four to six in the evening; from six to eight we went together to the pastry shop. I had to be home by eight because I had to eat dinner with my family. When I grew up my group of friends was still made up of Jews.

During summer vacations my brother Djurika, mother and I went to the seaside. Father always remained behind in the store because he could not leave someone else in charge. Most frequently we went to Crikvenica, Makarska [on the Dalmatian coast of what is now Croatia] and usually for three weeks. We slept in a private accommodation and ate in a hotel. We had a housekeeper to take care of the house during that time. My aunt also stayed at home and took care of the father. My brother often went to camps with the Hashomer Hazair Zionist organization, but parents would not let me go, because I was weak, ate poorly – speaking in general, I was spoiled.

Since some of my father’s customers were restaurant owners, we sometimes went out to dinner with our parents. Most often we went to the Small Garden in Palic whose owner was my father’s friend and a good customer, so we liked to go to his place best.

My brother was named Djordje (at home we called him Djurika). He was born on August 28, 1919. We used to get on well in our childhood, and I remember one interesting occasion. I was very sick because of roundworms, and I started to get better. Father used to get me chocolate and cakes, but mother would not let us eat, because Djurika and I could eat ourselves sick with candies. One time we were left alone in the room, and we tried to get the candies from a two-piece cupboard. Since we tried to do it fast fearing someone might see us, we turned it over on us. Everything inside broke into pieces. Because he was little, Djordje managed to pull out under the cupboard. For a long time after that, he had a habit of crawling under tables and beds. He had more education than I did; he finished medical school and specialization in anesthesiology in Israel. He died there in 1980. He went to Israel after the war in 1948 with his wife Mira [nee Kop] who lives in Israel today. He has two children, Jorama and Nomi, who live there. First he was in a work camp, like all Hungarian Jews, and later in Mauthausen, Gunskirchen.

We did not keep kosher but the holidays were observed as the religion prescribes We separated milk and meat; I even remember we had different color dishes so that we would not mix them up. There were special dish towels which were used to wash and dry the meat and milk dishes. The candles burned on Shabbat, we went to synagogue. As a young girl, after school and Saturdays I went to synagogue because there were mandatory religious services for students. When I finished school I went every Friday evening to the religious services with my girlfriends.
We had religious studies classes. Unfortunately it did not last long, but what was important was that I had a Bat Mitzvah with all of the girls my age. Concerning religion and traditions I learned the most from my parents, especially from my father, since he was a little more religious. My favorite holidays were the ones when we received presents – mostly toys, candies and books, and they included every Rosh Hashanah, every Chanukah and Purim. So that we would not feel like we did not have Christmas we received presents for Chanukah. Later I taught my daughter that Jews did not have Christmas but they did have Chanukah.

I met my husband, Dr. Vladislav Rozenberg, through one of my uncles who studied with my husband`s father. After his studies my future father-in-law lived in Senta where my husband was born on September 21, 1908. Since they remained good friends they frequently visited one another. One time he came with his son and I happened to be there and we liked each other. We never learned whether our meeting was arranged and my husband and I have never spoken about it. We married first in a civil wedding on June 27, 1940, then in a religious wedding on June 30. Since at that time the pre-war waves of fear were felt in the air - the wave of anti–Semitism, so we had the wedding in our house. There was a chupah and the rites were preformed as dictated by the religion and religious law. After the wedding we lived in Velika Kikinda (Banat), which was one of the ethnic German speaking regions, for seven months before my husband went into the army, then he was taken prisoner. I went back to stay with my parents in Subotica where I remained until deportation.

My husband was an eloquent man. He spoke German and French. He finished medical school and then specialized in dentistry.

My father-in-law, that is my husband’s father, was Emil Rozenberg, and his mother Zseni Rozenberg [nee Broder]. His father was a teacher and later the school principal. His mother, as was the practice then, was a housewife. At the time the custom was that men earned money and worried about the family finances while the women took care of the children and the house. I can only say the nicest things about his family. They were exceptionally tolerant and good people. They always considered me to be their daughter; I was especially fond of his mother.

When I was young I did not experience anti-Semitism, but I heard my parents talk about it. There was no anti-Semitism among those in power, rather it appeared among the people. It was a period when many people sang patriotic songs, military parades passed through the city. The first wave of anti-Semitism appeared at the time of the Hungarian occupation; the residents themselves were more tolerant, or maybe I did not feel anything because my friends were Jewish. However the Hungarian government was not as tolerant as the Yugoslav government. They enacted laws, which caused our material and psychological decline. When Hitler came to power we could not possibly dream what was going to happen to us. Even when the war broke out and we were taken to the cargo station and when the German coaches arrived we still did not think we were going to be deported.

My first experience with anti-Semitism was when we started to wear yellow stars. I could not imagine that in the 20th century something was happening that I had only read about and talked about with my mother. I was not embarrassed and I never concealed the fact that I was a Jew; today whenever someone asks me officially or unofficially I always say I am a Jew.

When the anti-Jewish laws were enacted my brother lost his right to study and had to stop halfway through. Only after the war did he manage to finish. At that time my husband was already a prisoner of war in Germany so when he came home he did not have a chance to experience the humiliation, but he knew only what we wrote him in our letters. Since we had our own shop no one could fire us, blackmail us or the like. Unfortunately, later they managed to take the store from us. They took our house when they took us to the ghetto.

When they took us to the camp on June 16, 1944, from in front of the cargo station, the first stop was Bacsalmas where we spent about two to three weeks. There I learned the meaning of friendship. When we arrived the camp was full. They put us in a mill on the first floor where it was impossible to breathe, and my friend and my mother’s friend who were already waiting there for us made a place for us so that we would not be out in the open.

Afterwards we were transferred by wagons to Strashof bei Wien, which was the second stop. We were there for a week, and since we were of no use to anyone they put us in three or four camps so that in the end they would put us in one. We went to Kimber bei Gaming where there was a bomb factory and there we worked as street workers and cleaners. We painted the pipes, swept the streets, and cleaned the Russian prison camp. That was an awful work, because the Russians were dirty and they made the mess deliberately sometimes. One day we would have had it cleaned and the next day it would already be a pig barn. Russians once complained to the camp warden that we had not done any work in their barracks, so we went to him, and since he was a relatively fair man, we asked him to come with us to see for himself. Even if it rained or snowed we were on the street.

In mid-December they took us to Bergen-Belsen. What is hell? It is called Bergen-Belsen. Cold, hunger, dirt and fleas were all the characteristics of Bergen-Belsen. I spent four and a half months there. I was there with my mother, aunt, nieces, mother’s brother and his wife, daughter, grandchild, friends with their children. I was in the same barracks with them. From this camp, they wanted to send us to Theresienstadt in three groups. We were the first. We were “lucky” because we were traveling two or three weeks. On one side there were Germans, on the other side there were Americans and we were in the middle; they took us 40 kilometers on one side and then on the other. On April 13, when we were all, especially me, sick, they called us to the rifle range. As we got out of the wagon, someone yelled “Kids, American tanks are on the road.” Then unrest broke out, the Germans ran and people got back on the wagons.

A young soldier appeared out of the confusion. It was something that I would never forget. He went from wagon to wagon and told us, “Be patient, it is the end. Peace is coming. We are a fighting unit but peacemakers are coming, they will take care of you.”  We simply knew this soldier was a Jew. Tears were running down his face as he went from wagon to wagon, he did not have the words to console us. Then we heard the sad news that Roosevelt had died. We knew he was crying for two reasons, for losing his president and finding us in the condition we were in.

The first place we went was a Siemens hangar. They emptied it out to turn it into a recovery area. The Americans took care of us there; they fed us just a little at the beginning so that we would not die, but there were people who ate so voraciously that they died. Afterwards they gave us heavier and heavier food and care. Then they put us in a place near Hanover, in Magdeburg. That zone was taken over by the English and then the Russians. Under the Russians, unfortunately, we did not live well. We got some bread much of which was not baked so we ate elder plants. We were there from April until the September 8, 1945. We arrived in Velika Kikinda on Rosh Hashanah. Only once we arrived did we realize it was holiday. We arrived home with a group of prisoners of war. Jews from there waited for us, there were two or three families who had returned. We were in Velika Kikinda four or five days; I do not remember exactly. There I heard that my husband had returned, that my brother was alive and that he was at home in Subotica. One beautiful morning they appeared and took us home.

Unfortunately, many of my relatives, like my father, never returned. I never learned where he died. I know he was taken to Backa Topola, then to Auschwitz and that he died of hunger. My dearest aunt Rozika, her daughter Lucika, her husband, my uncle Karoly and his wife Ilonka were all asphyxiated by gas at Sajmiste (the Germans used gas vans then). Only my mother, my father’s sister, the grandchild Klarika who lives in London, my aunt Rozika’s daughter who lives in Israel and my brother returned home from the camps.

After having survived, my uncle Zsiga went to Israel and died there at the age of 95. My aunt Ema survived too, but she lost her two sons while two daughters and a son in law returned. We have been in touch and been visiting sometimes. One daughter died two years ago.

When we arrived home I did not find anything. We received one part of our house; after some time we got the whole thing back. We got the store which was sold out and which only had a little bit of merchandise in it. Later we gave the store up because we did not have the capital to start everything from the beginning. It was nice to see our neighbors who were very happy when we returned, they gave us bread and fruit. But there were those who said “And you returned too?”

There was a period when we had to start from the beginning. We started from the little bit of merchandise we found. The most important thing was the baby. We had a daughter, Mira, in 1946. My husband started to work as a civil-mobilized doctor in Macedonia. After that we returned to Subotica, my husband opened a practice and we started to gain property. We wanted to immigrate to Israel. We submitted a request and were on the list, but doctors were not granted permission at that time. We tried two or three times in 1948, and eventually when we lost the will to go, we found out that the next attempt would have been successful but at that time in 1952 we no longer wanted to go. My brother went with his family. When my brother immigrated to Israel, I visited him and spent more than 3 months there. I must say I felt good there for some reason.

After the camp, life had to go on. We hoped for some time that the father will return but he never did, neither have my in-laws. Lacika, my husband died in 1964. As a doctor he contracted infectious hepatitis from one of his patients. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery. After my husband`s death I did not work, because I was getting his pension and I could live fairly well on it. At the time of communism I was living well without any repercussions and difficulties, maybe because I was never politically involved.

After the end of the war when we returned home we still observed the religion and holidays. The reason was probably that not many of my family members returned from the war, and those were the days we most often were able to get together. We also got together in the Jewish community, a place of refuge, where we had fun, a place where all the Jews gathered. I took my daughter there too. Today she goes more infrequently to temple, because of her obligations, but naturally we go for the high holidays and Maskir.

In forced labor in Austria I made friends. Unfortunately they died but I am still in contact with their children. Our relationship was stronger than friendship, one could even say we were “relatives”. Concerning friends, that changed a lot after the war. Intermarriages started to appear so that the nationality of our circle of friends changed. Unfortunately, my relatives were scattered around the world, two of my nieces that I was close with lived in Budapest, and we rarely saw each other. My husband had one niece, she was married to a Christian who converted and became a better Jew than any Jew I ever met. She was my best friend. I socialized with the rest of my girlfriends until they died. Today I am almost the only remaining person from my generation.

My daughter was a very sweet girl. She was going to kindergarten from an early age, without knowing a word of Serbian. After only six weeks she was constantly babbling in Serbian. From elementary school on she was always one of the best in the class all the way to her graduation. I put a lot into her education, especially foreign languages, so today she fluently speaks German and English. She used to go to piano lessons but she tortured the teacher and me for so long until we finally gave up. My daughter finished law school and works as a lawyer in Subotica. She has two daughters and one granddaughter. The older daughter lives in Israel with her daughter and the younger in Subotica.

I systematically taught my daughter from childhood about Judaism. Since she was born after the war, she did not live through or see the horrors of war. Nevertheless, according to my own principles, what happened to the Jews should not be forgotten and must be told to future generations. I handed this down to my daughter. I told her about the terrible things but also about the friendships that I created in the camps. As long as I am alive I will talk about it to everyone so that this will never happen again.

Despite all of these tragedies, I still believe in God. At one time I did not believe, I did not light candles. However, when my daughter, my greatest happiness, grew up and I saw her succeed in life, I reconciled with God. Until recently I was very involved in the Jewish community. Now, I am old and I just come when they organize something. I was one of the founding members of the Subotica Women’s Section. Of the founding members only my friend Ela Vajs and I are still alive. Our section was very active. We held lectures, but during Tito’s time it was not very popular so we had to publicize them very discreetly. I can’t say we were afraid, but simply the things we celebrated were not popular. The communist party was a god and its own religion but we believed in the real God. I kept telling my daughter that the things we talked about in the house should not be discussed outside. We lived much more modestly than before the war, because we had lost most of our property, but I cannot say that we were harassed. Our goal was to fix the house to its pre-war condition.

I kept going to the Jewish community, same as before the war and I was not scared because of it. We helped poor people, visited the sick, cooked food according to the religious requirements for the Seder, for Purim, for Chanukah, and made packages for the children. Even today Ela and I make matzah dumplings for the Seder.

Livia Diaconescu
Bucharest
Romania
Interviewer: Anca Ciuciu
Date of the interview: January 2004

Livia Diaconescu is an expert in food chemistry who discovered her vocation of an archivist some time after she retired. She is a dynamic person with an extraordinary memory. At 72, she is still very stylish, paying much attention to her appearance. Her white, wavy hair still adds a lot of personality to her posture. She has been living on her own since her husband died and her only child left for Israel, then Canada. She resides in a green neighborhood, where streets are named after famous composers – a connection of sorts with the old piano in her living room. The walls are decorated with watercolors (the most valuable of which she gave to her child as a gift), while the massive, Viennese furniture, with leather-upholstered chairs, comes from her parents’ home in Focsani.

My family background
Childhood memories
During the war
Post-war
Married life
Glossary

My family background

My paternal grandfather was named Avram Filderman. I don’t know my grandmother’s name, as she died before I was born and they wouldn’t talk about them much at home. They were born and lived in Focsani, but I don’t know what they did for a living. I do know they had four children: Leon, Lazar, Mayer and Rebeca.

The first boy was Leon Filderman. He was born a few years before 1890, went to college in Germany and was an engineer. Back in the country, he became an oil engineer, lived in Ploiesti for a few years and married Malvina Bischoff. He had two children: Rozita (shortened to Zita) and Albert. Zita married for love, becoming the wife of Oscar Holsman, that is Oscar Lemnaru [a journalist who Romanianized his name]. Zita’s daughter taught Latin at a school in Lehliu [a town at about 100 km. from Bucharest] until she flunked the boy of a party member; she was forced to quit her teaching career and she stayed like that [unemployed] until she left for America. Albert Filderman ended up in Israel. I only met him once, in 1988, when I went to visit the children. I called him and, to my surprise, he came to see me. He didn’t invite me at his home in Tel Aviv and I never met his family.

My father, Lazar Filderman, was the second child. Mayer Filderman was the third. I know about him that he lived on Moise Nicoara St. [a residential area in Calarasilor quarter, in the eastern part of Bucharest], where he owned a vila [a residence larger than a house, of some pretensions to elegance], and that he didn’t have children.

The fourth child, Rebeca Filderman, married a Reichmann Her husband worked together with Leon Filderman in the oil business, but he wasn’t an engineer – he did something in the administration. They had two children: Rudolf and Edmond. Rudolf Reichmann went to the Commercial Academy and married the daughter of a fervent Communist. He had met her before the war, in college. She had been baptized before the war, her name was Angela, but she had to return to the religion she had been born into, whether she wanted it or not [in observance with a State decree of 8th August 1940 establishing the criteria to determine who was a Jew and who was not]. They didn’t have children. Edmond Reichmann went to study industrial chemistry, but only graduated after World War II because he had to register again. He worked at the Ministry of Paper and Wood (I don’t know the exact name) and was a manager at the Cellulose Institute. He got married, but he didn’t have children.

My father, who was born in 1890, was very bright, but lazy, and it was with great pains that he completed 4 years of high school. He didn’t want to go any further with his education. He later regretted this very much, for he was very fond of reading and listening to heavy [classic] music. He spoke French and German. While he was serving in the army, during World War I, they wanted to send him to a military academy, but he deemed it pointless. When he returned from the war, he went to work for his cousin in Bacau. Then he left for Constanta, where he took up the grain trade.

My father came to Focsani in the 1920s. He married my mother, Fanny Filderman (nee Finkelstein), both religiously, in front of a rabbi, and civilly. I don’t know more about this, since my parents didn’t talk about this period. My maternal grandfather, Lewi Finkelstein, owned a store called ‘Lewi’s’ and gave it to her after the wedding. Even after my grandfather died, the business kept its old name, in his memory.

My mother’s father was named Lewi Finkelstein. Although he didn’t wear traditional clothes, my grandfather was a very religious man, who went to the synagogue on a regular basis. At his place they kept all the holidays, used separate vessels for milk and meat and had special vessels for Pesach, which they only used once a year, on that particular occasion. My grandmother, Perla Finkelstein (nee Rabner), kept all the holidays and the Sabbath She observed the kashrut and went to a hakham-butcher who slaughtered poultry and animals in a ritual way. They only ate the parts that were allowed. There were also traditionalist Jews, but my grandparents would dress in a manner that was modern for that period, without breaking the religious prescriptions They spoke Yiddish and Romanian, but they didn’t teach us Yiddish so that they could speak freely about things we weren’t supposed to learn. My grandfather died in 1927 and my grandmother – in 1946.

My mother had taken piano lessons at the boarding school and my grandfather, having six daughters, kept three pianos at home. She had five sisters – Clara, Maria, Mina, Rebeca, Sofie – and two brothers, Oscar and Mayer. My grandmother was very busy looking after so many children. The eldest child was Clara Finkelstein, who got married, settled in Bucharest and, shortly after, died, at 21 or 22 years of age; she is buried at Filantropia [Jewish cemetery in Bucharest]. My mother was the second child; she was raised at the boarding school. Of course, she also stuck around the store to give a hand or learn the trade She loved piano. My piano is from my mother. She was very proud of it because it had bronze keys.

The third child was Maria Finkelstein, who married Jacques Ianconescu, a very good lawyer, nicknamed Jacques ‘silver spoon’, who was registered in a Masonic lodge. Another child was Mina Finkelstein, who married a Librescu and lived in Focsani. Her husband was a very good lawyer, but his practice was rather small. During World War II, he was sent to Transnistria 1 and this Mina stayed at Maria’s. I believe, however, that they provided for themselves. But what is praiseworthy for me is that my cousin, Isidor Librescu, aged 9, was the one who supported the family. The Germans had moved into the commercial school and he had come to do small business with them – he would buy and resell drugs or food that the Germans probably brought from somewhere else. One evening, he offered me some food I had never seen in my entire life. The Germans had an inspection once and he stayed hidden in a wooden box until the inspection was over. After the war, he went to high school and college, worked with Prof. Carafoli, then left for Israel. He married there and had two children.

Rebeca was another child of my grandmother’s; she was also called Rebecuta, hence the short form Cuta. She was a beautiful woman who also married a lawyer, Moritz Terdiman. They lived in Husi, in a beautiful house, with a vineyard; during the war, they stayed at Mita’s. Her husband was sent to the labor camp in Targu Jiu. My cousin, Angelica Terdiman, went to college in Husi and was appointed to work in Brasov She fell in love with a foreman from the 1 Mai Plant and married him. She became Angelica Sfetcu after the marriage. She supported her husband in learning more and becoming a technician. She had a boy, Adrian, who was raised by aunt Mita. They left for Israel in the 1970s, but didn’t stay there for long; then they went to Canada, where they had a hard time at the beginning. Today, Angelica Sfetcu owns 110 apartments in Montreal that she rents. Adrian Sfetcu, who was a very good student, works for Bell Helicopters.

Another sister was Sophie Finkelstein. She married a lawyer herself (and a good one too), Bernard Simiu. He also attended the Commercial Academy (this is where they met) and worked at the Bragadiru brewery. They bought a house, a vila on Alba St [a street in the center of the city that still exists today, in the vicinity of the Regina Maria Square]. Their next door neighbor was Lucretiu Patrascanu 2. During the war, the house was taken away from them and they rented a place from a Romanian who lived on Masina de paine St. [in the Colentina quarter, in the eastern suburbs of Bucharest]. They moved back after the war and he continued to work. My cousin, Lidia Simiu, who is five months older than me, went to the Jewish school during the war. She registered for the medical school and married a doctor, Marcel Solomon. They had a boy, Emil. She was appointed to work somewhere far away and quit the medical school. She worked as a translator for an institute.

Oscar Finkelstein, my mother’s brother, left for France after World War I, married a French Jewish woman and owned a stationery factory near Paris. I got a pencil box with everything from him. During World War II, his family was supposed to be sent to the Drancy camp, but they managed to hide. They had two children (a girl and a boy), Michelle and Jean-Jacques. While they were hiding, aunt Germaine had an intestinal occlusion. They couldn’t get a doctor, for they would have all been caught, so she died earlier than she should have. After the war, he lived in Paris, in a very nice apartment on Avenue de Versailles. The daughter became a doctor, got married and moved to Caen. After Oscar’s death, Jean-Jacques inherited the factory. But he changed his name a little, making Finkelstein a bit more French. He once manufactured some object at the factory and named it Perla, after his grandmother. The other brother, Mayer Finkelstein, attended the Faculty of Pharmacy in Germany. He was a very good pharmacist. Unfortunately, he was shy. He never married and didn’t have any children.

Childhood memories

I love Focsani, the town of my childhood, though it looks terrible now. I couldn’t even recognize the Cotesti St., where we lived. All I recognized was a house that was opposite from the school and which lost its courtyard. Modern buildings were erected and the old ones stand neglected, dilapidated – it’s such a pity. Foscani was a quiet, patriarchal town, with large courtyards and nice, neat houses. The streets were paved. There were two Jewish streets: one of them was Dindos St., near the Jewish elementary school, the other one was Artelor St. At the end of Cotesti St., which opened on to the Main Street, carriages would wait for customers. Their owner was a Jew named Poitas, whose daughter, Lili Poitas, was a fellow-student of my sister’s in high school.

The Zamfirescu family lived on Cotesti St. too. Mrs. Stela Zamfirescu had preconceptions about the Jews. I once entered her courtyard and was heading for the main stairs, when she told me ‘Get out, jidoavco [abusive word for female Jew in Romanian]!’. I didn’t know what jidoavca meant, but I thought it sounded like an insult, so I replied ‘You’re the jidoavca!’ and left the courtyard. They later turned out to be nice people and we became close.

Focsani was a town with many Jews. There were two Jewish quarters. They were situated pretty close to each other, but then again, the town itself was small. I lived, however, in a Christian quarter, inhabited by many officers. The Jews in Focsani were tradesmen – some of them had big businesses. There was a Chamber of Commerce and my father was a member. We had manufacturing workshops and tailor’s shops, many stores, drugstores, pharmacists, craftsmen, clocksmiths, hatters, tinsmiths, photographers, physicians. The town had many synagogues – there were eight Orthodox ones 3.

Since the minute I saw the light of day for the first time, I remember my father being a community man. He was tall, had a stately appearance and made himself noticed everywhere. He was severe by nature and very intelligent. He cared a lot about the Jewish community and he held many offices – he was a president for 3 years, around 1938, and then a vice-president. I have a photo of my father with Heinrich Israel, the president of the community in the period before World War II. My mother observed the tradition; she kept the Sabbath. She had a candlestick with one branch that she would light for Sabbath on Friday evenings. She would cover her hair with a white kerchief and would say the prayer above the candle. She had a very nice siddur, with a nacre cover. She went to the synagogue each Saturday and wouldn’t have it any other way. Men were separated from the women at the synagogue – women stood upstairs. I rarely went there as a child and this didn’t change as I grew up. I don’t know the name of the rabbi, but I know he was also a religion teacher. I enjoyed the classes when he spoke about the history of the Jews. My mother and father regularly went to the synagogue on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, until the synagogue burnt. I don’t know whether the fire was set by the Germans or by the Legionaries 4. It was pulled down during the war and it remained in ruins after the war – walls only. I don’t know if they recovered anything. I didn’t think of the sacred rolls back then.

My mother was a very gentle person. She gave birth to several children, but they didn’t survive for long. At 2, Adolf caught diphteric angina and died of asphyxiation. Rodica died at 2 and my mother was walking around the room with the child in her arms and couldn’t believe she was dead. My sister, Clara, was six years older than me. She was born in Focsani, in 1922. I was born in October 1928, in Focsani. Clara wore braids and was pretty. When she was 11, they realized she had diabetes. After the disease was spotted, they took her to the clinic, but an assistant told them to take her to Vienna. In those times, at the beginning of the 1930s, getting a passport wasn’t a problem; generally speaking, money wasn’t a problem either. They went to a sanatorium there and the doctors managed, through diet, to bring her to the minimum risk level. They also gave her a book about how she had to be nursed – she had to use scales to portion her food. There was a time when she had to weigh her cherries and, to get another portion, she also added the weight of the pits. My mother cooked specially for her. Clara had to measure her glycosuria twice a day using a solution, she dosed the insulin on her own and injected it in her leg by herself – she did that from 11 to 22 years old.

My mother had the works of Goethe, Schiller, Molière. She loved to read. She had a very beautiful hair and wore it in a knot that was not to her best advantage. Even at 72, her hair was still wavy and beautiful. The only time she had her hair done was when she left for Paris with my sister. She had long hands, slender fingers and beautiful nails; when she played the piano, she stroked the keys. She had an unusual sensitiveness. When she felt upset or moved, she would sit at the piano. She particularly liked Beethoven (symphonies, sonatas and overtures), Chopin (nocturnes and waltzes), Brahms, Liszt and Schubert. Before we got to go to opera performances, she had already played for us at home the entire Rigoletto and The House of the Three Girls. She loved Gounod’s Ave Maria. When I was a child, I would sit next to my mother while she played. She would often play the Pastoral Symphony in the evening and that was the time when cows came back from the pastures. Every time I listen to this work, I can’t help recalling this episode, which I kept deep down in my heart. She also liked The Moonlight Sonata a lot. All I know about music I learnt from her. When I was 15 or 16, they hired a piano teacher for me. I enjoyed studying. One day, I was returning from her place and the air-raid alarm sounded while I was still on the street. I interrupted the piano lessons in high school.

When she was in high school, my sister, Clara, had her friends come over on Saturday and my mother would play the piano for them. She was so thorough that she chose her repertoire every week and rehearsed it lest she should make mistakes. I turned the pages for her and she used to ask me how she had played. I didn’t know too much, but everything my mother did was very good. She sometimes played together with a schoolmate of my sister’s, Misu Mendel, who played the violin. It was a pleasure to listen to them. We didn’t have too much dancing at our place, though I suppose they liked it. We would also go to Clara Zeidman’s. She was our neighbor and she sang extremely beautifully. I once enjoyed it so much that I started to sing along and my sister urged me to shut up. Mrs. Zeidman told her to let me sing, for they couldn’t hear me anyway – her voice was strong and covered mine, and thus I was able to indulge in singing. They served chocolates there and everyone helped themselves except Clara. Both their place and ours were nice. There was another family, Csato, who came from Transylvania. According to the records I researched, their sons were sent to forced labor. There was also the family of the pharmacist Rudich, who used to go out in the morning and walk barefoot in the dew. I recently heard this is a healthy thing to do. Mrs. Rudich was a walking encyclopedia; she read enormously.

There were some nice pillars in the front part of our house; the stairs were large and the entrance door had a stained-glass window. There were two doors: a wooden one and a glass one. After the hallway, came a huge room, like a ballroom, then some other rooms and a spacious kitchen; it had a stove with a range, a cupboard and a rack of vessels which were so tidy they shone. We had Viennese furniture, nice and enduring. (Later, my husband made friends with a Greek lawyer who tried to persuade me to give up this massive furniture. He failed.) We also had a crystal Venetian mirror, in my sister’s room. Her bed was covered with a large bedspread that had Arab letters on the four sides. This bedspread now belongs to Diana, my granddaughter.

We always had a maid. We had a water pump in the courtyard and I would carry water in a bucket. My mother taught me that, although there was a maid, it wasn’t beneath my dignity to do chores (like carrying water, cleaning windows or removing snow) once in a while. We had a Turkish toilet [a flat, ‘elephant’s feet’ type of toilet on which one squats rather than sits], but it was properly maintained and tidy. I once grew fond of a Russian maid. She tried to teach me a few Russian words so that I would impress my father. But I forgot them before I got to utter them. I was very upset when she left. Then we had another one, a stout girl from the countryside. She had white, shiny shirts made of a fabric that I liked. During the war, we kept a girl whom we hid with us. My mother knew how to spare her – she would ask for the least possible from her and did all the hard work herself. The girl used to sleep outdoors; it was nice, because there were the flowers – queens of the night, irises – which spread their perfume all over the courtyard. I wanted to sleep next to her too, but my parents wouldn’t let me. In the summer evenings, I looked at the sky and saw the Milky Way and other constellations. I wanted a little dress made of dark blue velvet, with silver stars. It was a child’s dream. A woman did our laundry once a month, for three days in a row. She washed, boiled, dried and ironed it.

Wednesday was the market day, when peasants would come to town. If one didn’t get to the marketplace in time, chances were the peasants wouldn’t be there anymore. My mother went there with the maid, who carried a large basket. They would take me with them – it was a very rich market and I enjoyed it. I never asked for anything – I knew they wouldn’t buy candy because of my sister with diabetes. I used to eat at least one kilo of fruits daily: apricots, plums, cherries, apples. In the fall, a cart with cretesti apples [a local variety of green, slightly flattened, crisp, tart apples] would come by our place. We would buy for the winter and store them under the table in the big room, which wasn’t heated. Other foods supplies were also delivered at home: there was the woman who brought us quality milk, cheese and cream, the cart loaded with water melons, the peasants carrying yokes with yogurt loads, the man who sold pretzels and croissants.

Our store wasn’t a large store [near Moldovei Sq., perpendicular on the Main Street, a ten minutes’ walk from home] My father sought to extend it and bought other stores next to it. When I was very young, my father kept a second store together with a German, Leon Proschinger, who often came by. I couldn’t say why they broke up, but I was sorry. He employed clerks (shop assistants) at ‘Lewi’s’. Two of them were about 25 years old. The others were raised at the store from the age of 12-13. Before World War II, he had a contracting agent who would travel to many places and order merchandise. My father set the prices so that his own benefit would not encumber the customer. He sold small wears, clothes, ties, peaked caps, silk stockings, photo cameras with a tripod. My father had turned the little room next door into a small lab where he developed the films; I don’t think he charged much for this – it was fun for him. My sister, Clara, received an Acqua camera as a gift. It was very easy to use.

The Zamfirescu sisters would come to the store and talk to my father, who was always willing to learn from the others, if there was something to learn. The program at the store was from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., then from 4 to 8 p.m., but I think my father had a replacement during the time he spent at the community. He came home for lunch at an exact hour. At 1, the table had to be laid. In the summer, we ate outdoors, in the courtyard. There was always a bucket of cool water with a bottle of soda and a bottle of wine in it. He didn’t drink in excess, but good wine was never missing. A friend of his would provide a demijohn of wine. He would pour it into bottles, put a cork and some bitumen, and kept it in the cellar. In the afternoon, when the store was closed, he liked to sit on a small chair and clear the grass growing between the stones in the courtyard – one part of the courtyard was a garden and the other one was a playground and a space of transition. He wasn’t harsh with the children. However, if he asked something of you and you let him down, you would go crazy only if he looked at you. I remember one time when I climbed the fence with my sister to eat cherries and she squeezed some in my hair. My father disentangled my hair and pulled a bit too hard. When he was done combing, I was so upset that I took hold of my hair and got it all tousled. My father said something to me. Pretty naughty as I was and not knowing the value of the words he had told me, I talked back. He gave me a hard glance and I left walking on the tip of my toes.

I didn’t go to the kindergarten much. There was a teacher there, Betty, who prepared a Chinese dance for a festivity. I was in it and wore a crepe dress. When there wasn’t anyone I could play with – there weren’t many children in the neighborhood – I would sing on my own and jump up and down to the tune of the songs I had learnt in school.

I studied at the Jewish School in the first three grades. I did my homework by myself and I never thought of asking for help. I remember Mrs. Weber, a very good teacher, Mrs. Leslean from Falticeni, Mrs. Vigder. Towards the end of the school year, I usually caught some contagious disease and could not attend the festivities marking the end of the school year. In the 4th elementary grade, they transferred me to the Romanian school, the School no.1 for girls, which was very close to home. One day, during the break, I was summoned to the entrance gate – my former mates from the Jewish School, Suzy Leibovici and Felicia Marcus, had come to ask me if I wouldn’t return there. I didn’t go back – even if I had wanted to, the decision had already been made. It was pretty hard at the beginning, but I had a tutor and I caught up fast. I enjoyed everything I studied in the 4th. I was good at math, I liked Romanian and physical training. I had heard there would be some exams at the end of the year and I was terrified because I wondered whether I would remember anything I learnt. It wasn’t like that. One of my teachers at the School no.1 for girls was Mrs. Popescu. Her husband was the headmaster of the School no.1 for boys; they were very nice people.

I had both Jewish and Romanian friends. My mother thought I wasn’t old enough to go see my schoolmates, Suzy Leibovici or Felicia Marcus, by myself (they didn’t live far from the end of the Cotesti St.), and so I made friends with Romanian girls. My mother began to teach me French. Then my sister took care of me. My mother would have me memorize fables by La Fontaine, fragments from Corneille’s Cid and Racine’s Athalie She would constantly check on me – there was no escape from that. Before the school started, she made me study the history and geography lessons. I felt frustrated then, but now, when I look back, I realize what she did was right.

During the war

In the summer of 1939, my mother took my sister to Paris for treatment. They left on 13th July, although my sister wanted to catch the parade [the parade on 14th July, France’s national holiday]. While in Paris, my sister bought me a hardback fairy-tale book gilded at the edges, with thin pages and nice pictures, and a picture of Santa Clause and other characters. (I gave them to my son in 1988, but I don’t know if they made it to my grandchildren.) On their way to Paris, they made stops in Milan and Venice. They were gone for a month, but my mother had wanted to come back sooner. From Venice, my sister brought home some gondola-shaped brooches for her schoolmates and two coral necklaces for me. She was friends with almost everyone in her grade, especially with Adina Rabinovici. Her father was an engineer and later taught geometry and Hebrew at the Jewish High School. When she was sick, she sent me over to Adina’s to get the lessons for her. She had very nice schoolmates, but, unfortunately, the war came and those friendships had to come to an end. During the war, Dorina Gheorghe got married. While she was in love, mail was exchanged through my sister. When she was 16, her mother wanted to marry her with someone else and arranged for a ‘viewing session’. Dorina claimed she would teach her mother a lesson and, when the suitor came, she laughed all the time and acted funny. Dorina came to our place and told my mother (who was her confidante) everything. During the war, Clara began to break the rules of the diet and had to increase the dose on insulin. Insulin was hard to get – it came from Germany. When she was with friends, she had to eat; she couldn’t say she had diabetes. This was a shameful thing back then and brought about complications – girls couldn’t find a husband anymore. Clara tutored in literature and studied English.

What I particularly enjoyed about the school for girls was strajeria [the scouting] 5. As a strajera [girl scout], I was sub-chief of unit. I loved it – I don’t know why children like this military thing so much. There were six of us in a unit. In the morning, we would sit in a square, the flag would be raised, we would report, then sing Long Live the King: ‘Long live the King / In peace and honor, / Who loves his country / And defends his country. / May he be eternally victorious / In war, / May he reign eternally / Over us / Oh, holy Lord, oh, holy Lord, / Heavenly Father, / May Thy hand protect / The Romanian Crown.’ [text reproduced by Mrs. Livia Diaconescu] 6 On 10th May [Heroes’ Day], I went to the Stadium with my class. There were other schools too – not the Jewish school though. I sang and I exercised with my scout uniform on. I had the country’s coat of arms sown with silk, a tie fastened with a ring, a white blouse with shoulder straps, a folded navy-blue skirt and a belt on whose buckle was written ‘Always ready, for the country and King’ I was really into it. I had a picture of the royal family [the family of King Carol II] 7 which I recall with pleasure. This is how I grew up – with the king and the royal family [in the sense of a monarchist education]. I didn’t experience anti-Semitic episodes at the public school; my fellow-students were very nice.

My father didn’t come with us on vacations, he stayed at the store – he said he couldn’t close it. My mother would take us and the maid. First, we would go to Techirghiol [a lake near the Black Sea], then to Carmen Sylva [a spa at the Black Sea]. I loved the seaside. We went sunbathing between certain hours, like it was recommended. Other relatives of ours would come too – Mita Ianconescu, my mother’s sister, with her children, Dori and Bernel. We were a small pack. Then we went to the mountains, to Soveja [close to the Vrancei Mts.], where the air was very good. We used to go to the park, where Tita Pavelescu, Zelea Codreanu’s godmother 8, would sell croissants with nuts. Other relatives and acquaintances would come there too and it was nice. When I was 19, I went with my mother to Poiana Tapului, and I was amazed by all that beauty. Two friends came along, Ernest and Lazar Rudich, and we went together on short trips, for my mother would have never let me go climbing mountains with two boys. Years later, my mother took her grandson, Gabriel, to Poiana Tapului; the boy tired her very much, but she had an advanced sense of duty.

My father used to tell us about Poland, Czechoslovakia and the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact 9. In 1939, we sheltered Polish refugees at our place – they were clean and very refined. Uncle Leon Filderman from Bucharest also had Poles living with him – one of them even sculpted him a bust. When they took Bessarabia and Transylvania away from us [the Second Vienna Diktat] 10, we all felt hurt. Although I was only a child, I suffered for these losses. I was a Romanian Jew, I lived in this country, I was born here and I love my country. There were suspicions about a Jewish involvement [in connection with the so-called Jewish Communist conspiracy], but I think all the Jews were hurt by these territorial losses.

In 1940, a colored square with two dots in the middle was painted on the wall of our house – a warning that we were Jewish. I strived to wipe them off – it was a black paint, very hard to remove. We had a Telefunken radio that we hid. [Jews were not allowed to keep radio sets so that the lack of information would make them even more vulnerable. Any failure in observing this rule was harshly punished.] My father did everything he could and got a 2nd-category Jew certificate [as a WW I Romanian veteran, he could gain certain civil rights, proving that he had been ‘loyal’ to the Romanian nation], so that we could enter a public high school, but it wasn’t meant to be, it turned out useless. I went to high school in the 1st grade, but I had to quit. [In October 1940, Jewish pupils and students were forbidden access to public education of any level. Jews were left the liberty to organize private primary and secondary schools.]

I was lucky the Jewish High School was founded pretty soon after, in 1940. There were engineers and teachers in the staff: Sami Lazar, who was the president of the Jewish community until a few years ago, taught law, Romanian history, and some geography; Mr. Gabor was also the headmaster; Mrs. Ida Kholf, a teacher whom we loved and who taught us Romanian language and grammar in an exemplary way. I liked the Latin teacher and the one who taught German (and did it beautifully). I also liked the physical training teacher, because I liked physical training. My father bought me skates, took me to the Maccabi 11, put me on the ice and let me learn to skate by myself. He wasn’t a Maccabi member.

I could keep in touch with the girls from the Jewish School, as I would meet them in the religion class; in the period when I attended the Romanian school, I studied religion separately, with the Jewish children. One time, at the Jewish High School, during the war, I was so naughty that the rabbi told me to leave the classroom. I met Iosefina Grunberg in the schoolyard. She wanted to go home, but was afraid to, because it was time for the boys from the Romanian high school to come out. I offered to help. We went out on the street together and the boys tried to scare us. But they mustn’t have been too brave, after all, since they let a girl intimidate them! As the windows of our classroom opened on to the street, our boys heard us and wanted to join me and beat up the other kids. Luckily, the rabbi (who was usually a soft man) had the strength to forbid them to get out; a fight between the Romanian and the Jewish students was not a good thing to happen.

At the festivities, we used to sing in a choir. While at the Jewish elementary school, I witnessed an unforgettable seder, held in a large hall, at the public School for boys. My schoolmate, Felicia Marcus, who had an exceptional voice, was a soloist. A boy played the father, another boy – the son who was supposed to find the hidden matzah and ask ‘Ma nistana?’. We sang certain fragments and we all wore white veils on our heads. I had a booklet with religious songs and I sang them at home too. We also had festivities during the war, but the authorities had to be present to supervise us. [The law forbade the Jews to organize gatherings, on the grounds that they could plot against the State. Even the religious gatherings had to be announced in advance at the Police. They were attended by representatives of the State. The punishment for failing to observe this provision was the deportation to Transnistria.] Some schoolmates would organize a ‘jour’ [tea-party], but with few guests, as Jews weren’t allowed to gather in great number. I was happy to go, as we couldn’t have that at our place, because of my sister’s diabetes. When friends would come over on Saturday, they weren’t offered anything, for my sister would have wanted some too.

During World War II, I had some troubles with anti-Semitism when my mother sent me with a basket to buy bread. The rations were small, so I had to be there at a certain hour. Well, that cursed hour [at noon] was also the time when the girls came out from the vocational high school. I got called a jidoavca sometimes, but I grew used to it in time and stopped being afraid. An unpleasant episode took place when I was walking on the roundabout route – I wasn’t allowed to take the Main Street [the Jews’ access to the central areas was restricted]: a carriage stopped, the passenger stood up, spit me in the face, and then signaled the driver to move on. That was humiliating. He knew I was Jewish because I wore the Star of David, which wasn’t yellow, but was sown with blue on a white background (that is the colors of the tallit and of today’s Israeli flag). I don’t remember how long I had to wear the Star; it didn’t bother me though. We didn’t have too much trouble – however, we couldn’t see our Romanian friends anymore.

A curious thing: our neighbors, the Gheorghe family, kept on inviting us at their place; Dorina Gheorghe came to my mother to learn how to make hamantashen, which she liked very much. Communications were exchanged through my sister and me. Mr. Gheorghe was in a forced labor commission and could provide some help [he could remove those who had large families to support from the forced labor lists, or could help them by sending them to less demanding places]. The relationship with our neighbor, Coca Radulescu, was resumed after the war. We didn’t have problems with our neighbors – we would talk to them over the fence. I would hear Mistress Aretia call ‘Ioane, Maria, come and get a load of these songs!’. Of course, those were songs of the Legionary Movement 12: ‘The Guard, the Captain and the Archangel from Heaven’. Our friends, the Leustean family, wouldn’t have us over anymore. Lucian, however, was too young to be an anti-Semite. I once went skating on the street (I had nowhere else to go) and Lucian began to sing me ‘The Guard’ loud. I sang just as loud myself, I wasn’t intimidated.

My father kept his store during the war. I think even the Germans bought from him and sent many items back to Germany. It was a store with quality products, which were hard to find under war circumstances. I enjoyed working there. I remember that, during the war, he gave me the key from the shutter and I was the one who would open the shutter, the door, the store. At a certain point in 1941, Jewish clerks were doubled by Romanians [because of the numerus clausus] 16. I was on my summer vacation, but I wasn’t allowed to walk on the Main Street. I would stay at the store till 6 p.m., when my father would send me home. However, there were times when I came back home with him, in the evening. I had a double too at the store [the employers had to hire one Romanian for every Jewish employee they kept]; she was a very kind-hearted girl, who also went to work in the campaign hospitals on the front; she told about how she washed the frostbitten feet of soldiers and her hand dived into live flesh. One would wonder what those poor men had gone through and why they had to suffer so much.

During the Holocaust, we lived in fear; we had heard talks in the town about us being deported too, I don’t know whether it was to Auschwitz or to Transnistria. I talked to my friends about what we would take with us, for the luggage was limited. Thank God we stayed at home! [Editor’s note: The Jews of Focsani were not mass deported. There were only individual cases caused by certain incompliances with the rules.] I didn’t know much about the massacres in Transnistria, but I wasn’t totally ignorant of them either – my father thought I shouldn’t become a wimp. I learnt about ‘that Sunday’, how they called it [the pogrom in Iasi, 1941] 14, in college, from a fellow-student whose father had died on the Death Train. I knew everything about the forced labor – including the places where it was performed.

We received a notification that we had to move, as the house was to be taken by the CNR [Centrul National de Romanizare – The National Center for Romanianization]. A plate with the initials of the CNR showed up on our door. We went to see a place to rent and my mother pulled out the roses from the garden and gave them to the neighbors Eventually, we were allowed to remain at our place, on condition that we paid a rent. My father had to give clothes, footwear, linen and blankets [the Jewish population had to contribute effects towards supporting the war effort of the Romanian army and population]. I don’t have the receipts to prove it, but I think my father contributed money to help the needy – there were several categories of Jews who could no longer work or whose clientele had diminished. Towards the end of the war, they summoned my father with only one day’s notice and he did forced labor at a German military airfield near Focsani, although he had exceeded the age limit. He was afraid he would go there just so that they could shoot him. In exchange, the Germans gave them papers with the eagle of the Third Reich, certifying they had worked there.

Until the Russians arrived [before 23rd August 1944] 15, there was peace and quiet. The Germans had requisitioned the front part of the house and had brought Russian girls there. When the Germans had to withdraw, the girls were very frightened, as they had left Russia with them by their own choice. In the vicinity of our house, was a spirits factory, where a man named Cosnita would manufacture alcoholic beverages When the Russians came, they carried the liquor cases in our garden and took great pleasure in emptying them. They lived opposite from us, but they also lived at our place – they never asked if we agreed. They turned a part of the place in a warehouse. Because of it, I found myself facing a rat one night – it was on me. I got up, turned on the light, caught it and threw it away. My father was glad to see I had guts. After the warehouse routine was over, it was their turn to settle in. I was 16, they called me Liduska and I was stunned with fear. I was in mourning for my sister, Clara. My mother and I, wearing veils on our heads, went to spend the night at some relatives’. They protested – they said they had sent their wives to a safe place only to find themselves stuck with us. The Russian captain – who was in a good mood – looked for me at home with a lamp in his hand. Thank God I wasn’t there!

Another time, it was in the evening and my father told us: ‘Pay attention, when they start to sing, you get inside, lock yourselves in and, when I say «Now», you jump out of the window’. We stayed in the courtyard until the ‘choir’ began and my father sent us inside. They were talking with him and, at a certain point, we heard him say ‘Now’ My mother (who was 53 at that time) and I both jumped out of the upper window and went to a Jewish family who let us spend the night at their place. Afterwards, I found out the Russians had broken the door open, but found no one. They got over it and had my father drink with them. They brought a wine demijohn which had also contained gas and water melons. My father, who was used to quality wines, had to drink that!

The Russians didn’t linger long, they left for the front. I felt pity for them a couple of times. A small creature once entered the courtyard… It was a man on a carriage, a Russian soldier whose legs had been amputated. Russian women were so crazy about nice things that they would take the Milanese silk lace chemises and wear them on the street. There was a time of such great shortage. They had their picture taken while holding watches.

A family who lived on our street was deported to Siberia because one of them, who worked at the camp for German prisoners of war, was said to have done some favors to the inmates. The Romanians sent one of our shop assistants to Transnistria because she had organized a party – I don’t know if the authorities actually caught her red-handed. Nothing could be done for her and she was never heard of again.

Hard times came after the war, after 23rd August 1944. It wasn’t very hard at the beginning though. I went to the public high school, where I studied with many of my former teachers. My schoolmates from the Jewish High School sat at desks in the back of the classroom, but I didn’t want us to look as though we were keeping our distance, so I sat in the third row. I interrupted my piano classes so I could study properly. My father, who wasn’t used to seeing me so persevering, would send me to bed, but I always had something extra to do. I was an ordinary student, but I caught up with what I had missed at the Jewish High School, where I had been able to choose the subjects I liked more. They didn’t give me this opportunity at the public high school.

Post-war

I thought of emigrating to Israel. Misu Leibovici, a very smart boy, came to me and said ‘We can use someone like you in Israel, Livia!’. I never knew boys appreciated me, in spite of my being rather boyish. I wanted to go, but my parents told me about the conditions there. My father donated money to Keren Kayemet 16 and Keren Hayesod 17, but there was no real interest in emigrating to Israel. I joined the Hanoar LeZioni, but got disappointed: the leader of the group didn’t manage to persuade me, he didn’t explain anything to us, nor did he tell us about Israel. All we did was get together and dance. I later found out that a friend of ours was with the Betar – this would have tempted me, for it was a combative organization. I also know of the existence of Hasomer Hatair; a high school mate was there – he was a left-winger. I rejoined the Maccabi and I had a very nice time. I did gymnastics, volleyball and table tennis. We also had dancing parties, but not often.

I continued to live in Focsani. I was sick for two years, stayed indoors and lost contact with my schoolmates. I wasn’t allowed to make any effort; they confined me to the bed and protected me as if I were an eggshell. My mother took me to Poiana Tapului, as the doctor recommended.

After two years, I had had enough and began to study really hard in order to catch up for admission to college. But what college was I supposed to choose? I was drawn towards the Letters, as I had enjoyed reading ever since I was a child. But my frustration about not having studied chemistry at the Jewish High School and about having had a chemistry teacher who used to humiliate us at the public high school made me go for the Faculty of Chemistry in Bucharest. I also had to learn about the nationalization, the laws and so on, and about the rights of the socialist woman: how ‘she used to be long-haired and short-minded in the past’ and how things had changed for the better after the war [the emancipation of the socialist woman and the parting with the bourgeois traditions, according to which a woman could be successful in life only through marriage]. My average was over 8 and I took the exam. I was very delighted. I went to college with Dori Ianconescu and Lili Bercovici, her former classmate, who had to leave for Israel soon. My fellow-students were very special, both the Romanians and the Jews. I didn’t keep in touch with the community in Bucharest, as I was very busy. My daily schedule was always full, I studied a lot and didn’t go to parties much. Looking back, I feel frustrated about that. In the first two years, they didn’t give me a free ticket for the canteen, as my father was an owner (he still had one shop assistant). In the 3rd year of college, the State took away his store [through nationalization] 18, and moved him to another store. Things became more difficult for us. I had to find another place to rent in Bucharest.

Married life

I met my husband, Ioan Diaconescu, while I was in college, in the 3rd year, at the Calarasi student canteen in Bucharest. We married in Bucharest, at the City Hall. It was a simple ceremony, with only a few members of the family attending. We didn’t go to the meal they had prepared for us. We thanked them, took the train to Focsani and went to my parents’. We didn’t have a religious ceremony – it would have been impossible anyway, as my husband was a Christian Orthodox –, though any girl wants to be a bride. Ioan was a very hard-working man. Even as a student, he would work in the summer to make some extra money, as he didn’t get much from home. His parents came from the countryside and didn’t have money, and the scholarship wasn’t enough to cover the expenses. He was born in Bucharest, but grew up in Malureni [a village in the Prahova County]. He went to high school in Pitesti and attended the Faculty of Law in Buhcarest. In 1954, the year of his graduation, he was hired at the Prosecutor’s Office. His mother came from the countryside; she had worked at the Filatura Factory in Bucharest and had lost an arm in a work accident. His father was modestly employed as a lamp maker. They had a plot of land in the countryside which they labored. My husband supported them. 3 or 4 years before he died, he became a lawyer. He was earnest, didn’t charge big fees, like other colleagues did, and helped everybody.

The Jewish origin was not a criterion in choosing my husband. I chose the one I loved, the one who had charmed me at that age. My husband was a very agreeable, intelligent, civilized man. Although he was ailing and weakened, everyone loved him for his conduct and his good heart.

After graduation, I first worked for the State Committee for Planning I stayed with them for just a month or two, because I wanted to actually work in my field, chemistry; so I got employed at a new factory, called Electroizolantul, based at the exit from Bucharest, on Catelu Dr. It was hard to get there. After I got married, my husband and I lived in Focsani for a year, in 1958. I worked in the local industry, at a factory that processed meat and made tin cans, then at a medical lab where I did tests. I only encountered overt conflicts because of my Jewish origin once: it was in Focsani, in the food industry. I had discovered some shocking errors. Someone told on me to the party. They called my husband there, told him that, if it hadn’t been for that regime, I would have never married him, and asked him to divorce me.

Our boy was born in 1955, in Bucharest. My husband gave him the name of Gabriel and my mother named him Paul, after grandmother Perla. In 1959, we moved back to Bucharest. I worked for a little while at the lab of the Vasile Roaita Hospital, then I applied for another job and, after passing an examination, I was employed at the Food Research Institute. I stayed there until 1979, when the Sugar section was closed and a new institute for the cultivation and processing of the sugar beet was founded. I worked for them till 1st January 1986, when I retired.

In Bucharest, we first lived in an apartment on Mosilor Ave. As he was working for the Prosecutor’s Office, my husband was supported by the housing authorities to get an apartment. I worked in Catelu [outside the city], where access was hard, by bus, and the work day was more than 8 hours long. We would come back with the factory’s truck, even when it snowed or rained. This is where the winter of 1953-1954 caught me. Bucharest was buried in snow and I once left to work on foot and went in a wrong direction. When we came back from Focsani [she only stayed there for a year; she returned in 1959, after her father’s death.], my husband obtained a two-room apartment on Beethoven St., where we lived together with my mother and our son. The following year, we changed the apartment with a place on J. S. Bach St.

Having a job and a small child, I didn’t have much time for anything else. After my mother moved in with us and started to look after the boy, we could go to the theater and the opera once in a while. We loved to buy books – literature and anything else. We would return from business trips with a suitcase full of books. [During the communist regime, light books were the only way of evasion for many; the television, the press and even the theatrical performances were politicized.] After the war, my father had received a book about Antonescu’s trial 19 from a friend. My husband tore it to pieces and burnt them, because he was afraid [possessing books that rendered history differently from the official version was dangerous]. When I went to Israel, in 1988, I also destroyed the sale purchase papers of my father’s store, for I feared the Securitate 20 Now I have no proof left. But it’s not a great loss.

We would celebrate both Christian and Jewish holidays. Speaking of holidays: we were under the communist regime, the Romanians refrained themselves from going to church, many priests had been imprisoned, people were afraid. Jews kept their holidays, even though some of them didn’t go to the synagogue. I would make hamantashen for Purim, as my mother had taught me. On Pesach, my husband would make me a surprise and bring me matzah, or we would go to the synagogue on Adamache St. and buy it from there.

One time, we went on vacation to my husband’s parents’, who were simple, decent people, and we slept at his aunt’s. When we returned, we found the priest there, who had performed a service because a Jew had set foot in there. My husband got very upset and didn’t speak with her anymore. But I don’t think it was her fault, but the fault of the environment in which she had grown up. [The rural environment is full of superstitions about the image of strangers, especially if they belong to another religion, like the Turks or the Jews. Her husband’s aunt probably feared for her very own salvation or that bad luck would fall upon her house because a Jew had been there.]

When Gabriel became older, we went on vacations to the mountains. My husband took him to the Black Sea. I couldn’t accompany them there [because of the health problems]. We sent Gabriel to youth camps in Navodari [at the Black Sea; children of school age or under school age would board special trains and go to youth camps where they were under the strict surveillance of their teachers]. I was waiting at the station for their return once. The train had already emptied and Gabriel was nowhere to be found. I was desperate. All that had remained on the platform was someone small, weak and with a suntan. It was Gabriel.

Gabriel was a good boy. He went to school in the Floreasca quarter, where we lived. Then he went to the D. Cantemir High School, which was a good high school. Though he enjoyed reading all sorts of books, he was inclined towards science. He went to the Thermal Engines Department of the Faculty of Mechanics, at the Polytechnic After graduation, he was employed at the National Institute of Thermal Engines. He worked there until 1987, when he emigrated to Israel. He married Carmen Matei. Her father was a manager at the Craftsmen’s Cooperative and her mother worked for the Ministry of the Light Industry. My daughter-in-law is a Christian Orthodox. They met in college (she went to the Polytechnic too), got married in 1979 and had three children. The eldest, Diana, was born in 1981, in Bucharest, and got married in 2003, with an engineer born in Timisoara. Her husband is an expert in computers, while she studies medicine at McGill, in Canada. The second child, Marius, was born in 1984, in Bucharest. He wants to study medicine too, and now goes to a Jewish school in Canada. The youngest child, born in 1987, in Israel, also goes to a Jewish school.

Gabriel didn’t receive any special religious education; we let him choose his religion at an adult age. He probably had an inclination towards Judaism, as he left for Israel, where he stayed for 7 years. He now lives with his family in Montreal. He moved to Canada in 1994 to seize a new career opportunity. He keeps both Jewish and Christian holidays. They celebrate Christmas too – it’s a happy holiday, they adorn the tree, buy presents. They even celebrate Halloween.

Many people in our circle of friends would brag about the trips they had taken abroad, in the socialist countries [Hungary, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, Poland, East Germany etc.]. I would remain quiet, I had nothing to say about this. My husband decided I couldn’t go on like this and sent me on a trip to Czechoslovakia by coach. I enjoyed it a lot and felt sorry I was alone – he couldn’t come with me, as he was busy. Then I went to Vienna for a month, at a cousin of my mother’s, and to Paris, in 1976, at my mother’s brother, Oskar Finkelstein, with whom I kept in touch. While both in Paris and Vienna, I went to museums, performances, and even to cemeteries. When I came back, I was nervous, as I carried books by Solzhenitsyn in my luggage 21.

We would listen to Radio Free Europe 22 on a regular basis during the communist period. At a certain point, a prosecutor who had fled the county made a positive comment about my husband on air. I don’t know if my husband, who was still a prosecutor, had troubles because of it. I knew from this radio how the Securitatea acted against those who had responsibility positions and tried to eliminate them physically.

My relatives are buried in different places. My sister, Clara, and my father are buried in Focsani. My husband placed a special order for two marble monuments for them – he thought it was his duty. My mother is buried in Bucharest, at Filantropia, a Jewish cemetery. She died in 1964. My husband is buried at Izvorul Nou, a Christian cemetery; he died in 1977. I wanted to bury him at the Bellu cemetery, but it was impossible those days, so I took him where I could find a place. I held requiems for each commemoration of his death until now. The other relatives’ funerals were always attended by a rabbi and a cantor; someone would recite the Kaddish for them. I kept the Yahrzeit, the day when their death is commemorated.

The birth of the State of Israel was a great achievement. Although I was married to a Romanian, that made me happy and my husband was happy with me too. While in high school, I wanted to do aliyah. Several decades after, my son wanted me to come with him to Israel, but I wasn’t young anymore and I was afraid. I was used to this place and I thought it best for the children not to live with the old folks. I don’t know whether this was a right decision or not. I hadn’t been to Israel before 1988. If my husband had still been alive, maybe we would have gone to Canada together, after 1994. The parents of my daughter-in-law, Carmen Diaconescu, the Matei family, have lived there for almost 5 years. Before 1989, I had relatives in the US and kept in touch in them in writing. We couldn’t exchange very detailed news – it was dangerous, as the mail was read by the secret police – so we would write what we could. Uncle Oscar Finkelstein from Paris paid our subscription to Paris Match. We regularly received the magazine for as long as he lived, and it was a delight.

I was very glad after 1989 23. When things started to happen, I was just queuing – like we all used to, for hours, in order to get one liter of milk or oil, or half a pack of butter. Today, at my age, I realize how cruel it is to do this to an elderly. At the beginning, the market was flooded with all the products that Ceausescu had denied us 24. I was delighted with the freedom of speech, the food, the export clothes [of superior quality compared to those manufactured domestically]. Then, slowly but surely, we couldn’t afford them anymore [due to the decrease of the standard of living]. When the Berlin Wall fell, I was glad the Germans would be reunited. I will never forget the news I heard in the 1980s, about how they shot the Germans trying to get across the wall.

During the mineriada in 1991 25, I was preparing to get out from the subway station, when a lady warned me it was dangerous. At the University, there was this student girl coming my way, crying, with a miner behind her. Playing the brave and totally unaware, I asked her why she was crying. She didn’t replied, so I asked the miner ‘What have you done to her to make her cry and unable to speak?’. He didn’t pay any attention to me either. I climbed a large stone, to see what was going on. I made some comment, but was quickly silenced [by their allusions]. I had a sack full of medicines from abroad and I was afraid I would only provoke them. I left on foot and came across more miners. All that made a very unpleasant impression on me.

After I retired, I got closer to my Jewish origins. I could afford to make anything I wanted of my spare time and I wasn’t tired anymore. I went to Israel and met Romanians who acquired the Jewish lifestyle. There is another atmosphere there. Every time I hear Ivrit, I prick up my ears, because I like how it sounds.

From a professional point of view, I turned from chemist to archivist [at the Center for the Study of the History of the Romanian Jews, where she has been working for 9 years]. I like this work. I processed documents from the time when Jews would leave [emigrate] on foot [until the end of the 19th century]. These were things I hadn’t heard about before, and there were others just like them. I am delighted I can work, for I feel totally useless at home. [Mrs. Livia Diaconescu deals with the compensation claims submitted by those who were discriminated during the Holocaust]. I received damages from Switzerland myself, and they were welcome.

Glossary

Peter Reisz
Budapest
Hungary
Interviewer: Dora Sardi and Eszter Andor

There were many Jews living in Obuda.  And Trauhaxlers (that is, ethnic Germans, or Swabians) and Slovaks.  They lived together very peacefully.  My mother’s grandparents moved to Obuda from what is now Slovakia in 1900, and lived here ever since. I remember that my grandmother celebrated every German acquaintance’s holiday, and these Swabians congratulated her on Jewish holidays.  The trouble started when Hitler sugared up the Swabs, and one or two kids were willing to break the family tradition and start saying evil things about Jews, and acting irredentist.

The Swabs farmed and had vineyards and sold things at the market.  Many of the Slovaks worked in the textile factory, because there were numerous plants preparing things for textile factories in Obuda.  Many of the Jews also worked in the textile factory.  They learned the trade, first as workers, later as plant and economic directors.  Other Jews were traders.  There were very well known Jewish confectioners in Obuda.  The Brull Confectionery, for instance, was very famous.

My maternal great-grandfather was a trader, and his father, my great-great grandfather was a trader, too. As my grandmother told it, my great-grandfather was illiterate, and if some client couldn’t pay his bill, my great-grandfather registered it by putting a mark next to the client’s name, and when he had the money they would do the accounting.  My great-grandfather was born in Balassagyarmat, but my grandfather was born in what is now Slovakia (but then was northern Hungary).

My grandparents owned and operated a food shop before the First World War.  But my maternal grandfather, Kalman Breiner, was a prisoner of war for a long time during World War I, and my grandmother had to stay at home with the three kids, so the business went under.  After the war my grandfather worked as an agent for the Szent Istvan Feed Plant, and traveled around the villages near Budapest selling their goods.  He died in 1938.  After my grandfather’s death the children were cared for my grandmother, who from then on, always lived with her children.

My grandparents were religious people.  I know that because I had a place in the great temple here in Obuda, and not just on holidays, but on Friday evenings, too.  What I learned of religious customs, and of reading Hebrew, I learned from my grandmother.  My grandfather lies in a place of honor in the cemetery, because I believe he was some sort of representative of the congregation.  There weren’t really any kosher shops in Obuda, but my grandparents pretty well kept the faith.  There was a kosher slaughterhouse, but later it closed.  At first my grandmother went to a little market on the corner of Lehel road and Robert Karoly Ring-Road for kosher meat. Later, she went to Lipotvaros.  My grandmother was completely kosher; she kept dairy and meat products separate. Up until the day she died, she never ate pork.

Grandma knew the Swabs well.  She would go to visit them when someone in their families died, or when someone was born, and she also went to congratulate them on their holidays.  She brought them gifts, and they gave her gifts, like shlachmones (any gift given at Purim).  We never had a Christmas tree, but Grandma always went to congratulate the Swabs on Christmas.  We celebrated Hanukkah, and if Hanukkah didn’t fall on Christmas, then they would come to congratulate us.  They would bring us something, pears, plums, grapes.  But they didn’t bring any other food, because they knew that grandmother and her family wouldn’t eat it, but fruit they would eat.

My grandmother had six siblings.  One of her sisters, Berta, was a trained candy maker. The Brull Confectionery belonged to her and her husband.  They did really well financially, and bought a two-story apartment house.

My father’s parents were barkeepers, and owned their own bar.  Like my mother’s parents, they came from Slovakia.

My father, Imre Reisz, was born in 1888 in Budapest.  He was a man skilled with his hands. He graduated from high school and would have liked to study more, but he couldn’t because of the Numerus Clausus (laws of 1920 limiting number of Jews allowed into university)  Since he didn’t have work here in Budapest, and he wasn’t allowed to study, he went to Paris, or perhaps Lyons, and worked in a silk-factory there, drawing Hungarian motifs that were incorporated into necktie designs.  He was abroad from about 1925-30. Then he came home, and married my mother in 1930. I don’t know exactly where my parents met, but it could be that they got together because both their families came from Slovakia. They had a proper wedding in the synagogue in Obuda.

After their marriage, my father couldn’t find work, so they went to Holland. My father was a zincographer, and the printers’ trade union was very powerful, so he was able to get a job in Rotterdam through the union.  My parents returned home before I was born, and my father found a job here in the Atheneum Printing House. His job was to make plates from the pictures that were to go into newspapers, journals and books. The Printers’ Trade Union was part of the Social Democratic Party.  My father was a member of some board, if I remember correctly, in the Social Democratic Party.  That’s why when the Germans came into Budapest in 1944 they came to our flat right away for my father.  But he wasn’t at home, as he had already escaped from forced labor and was in hiding.  He obtained false papers, and hid here in Pest.  The Social Democrats helped him.  There was a shoemaker, a fellow with leftist sympathies, who supported him.  After the War he continued his zincographic work.

My mother, Olga Breiner, was born in 1907 in Obuda.  Until the war, she didn’t work outside the home.  As she tells it, there was an intensive cultural life in Obuda.  A group of young Jews would go there for balls, to socialize and get to know each other.  My uncle, my mother, and my aunt all went. Then there was the Brodi Coffee House. The Brodis were also Jews.  They owned a distillery, an ice-making plant, an ash-factory, and the Brodi Coffee House – and Obuda’s citizens would go there, the Jews among them.  My father didn’t go there much, because he had a job for which he had to report to work at 1:00 in the afternoon, and he would come home late at night, but my mother did visit the Brodi Coffee House from time to time.  My mom and dad read Thomas Mann, Zsigmond Moricz, Jokai, and the European classics.  When I was at school, my mom had more time to read.  My father, when he was at home with mom in the morning, had time to read too.  After the war there was a Joint Kitchen in Zichy Street where the Jewish school was located. My mother started working there, and when that was closed, she went to work for the Wholesale Fabric Corporation where she became an administrator.

I was born in 1935, and spent my childhood in Obuda.  I attended the Jewish grade school there because you could feel that the country was turning fascist from 1938 on, and the Jewish laws had appeared.  I got chased here in Obuda, when I was still a school kid.  The majority of the proletarian children would specifically hunt Jewish children, and when they found out I was on my way to school, they would chase me, and when they caught me, they would beat me.

The grade school was on Zichy Street.  There was only one two-story house on that street, and the congregation had a four-class grade school in it.  The synagogue was very near the school, and I went to temple straight from class.  I started school there, I started learning Hebrew there, and I could pray well from a prayer book.  I only attended that school for three years, however, because of World War II (editor’s note: meaning 1944 in Hungary).

My mother, my aunt, my grandmother, my parents and I all ended up in a yellow-star house.  My mother, together with my aunt, was driven out of the yellow-star house to the brick works in Obuda.  From there they walked to the Austrian-Hungarian border.  At the border, a Christian priest told them that anyone waiting for a Schutzpass should stand aside.  They stood to one side, and were brought back to Budapest by train, ending up in a yellow-star house, from where they were liberated.

One day, my father showed up in the yellow-star house.  He was dressed as a peasant, had grown a mustache, was wearing a peasant jacket, and told me to call him Uncle Jozsi, and to stay 10-15 meters behind him.  That’s how he got me on foot to somewhere near Nyugati Train Station, into a protected house.  From there, I ended up in the ghetto, and that’s where the Russians found me with my maternal grandmother, when they came and liberated us.

After liberation, my parents enrolled me at the State Arpad High-School, which was a very modern school with very good teachers.  After two years my father took me out of that school, because he noticed that the spirit of the past was still so alive there, and he thought it would be better for me to attend the Jewish school on Wesselenyi Street. Before the war children of high officials attended this school, and certainly not the children of workers from Obuda.

My grades were pretty mediocre.  My parents didn’t understand how it happened that I fell so far behind in my grade-school studies.  When my father, who was an outstanding artist, drew my homework assignment for me, and I got a bad grade anyway, my father was sure that because I was among the first Jewish kids in that school since the War, there was no place for me there.  I didn’t have many friends in Arpad High-School, but I didn’t get any flak for being a Jew.

I ended up going to the Jewish general school on Wesselenyi Street with the kids who had been my classmates at the Jewish school in Obuda before the war, and after that, I went on with them to the textile industry technical school.  There were about twenty-five of us in the class, both girls and boys.  I don’t remember my classmates too well, but I remember that my teachers were outstanding.  At school, and at the Obuda temple, they prepared me for my Bar Mitzvah. That was a great celebration, and I wasn’t the only one having a Bar Mitzvah then, several other kids did too.  They congratulated us and gave us presents.  I got clothing from my parents.

Right after the war, my mother worked for the Joint Kitchen on Zichy Street, where the congregation was, and where Joint had a home. We went there every day, because there we could get something to eat. Through Joint I got into a Zionist home belonging to Hashomer Hatzair, where they intensively prepared us to go to Israel.  It was a live-in school, as if we were in a kibbutz.  I went from there to regular school in the mornings. Afternoons and also during the summer and winter breaks, they taught us in the home.  We learned dances, we learned songs, we learned Israel’s history, and Hebrew.  When there was a break, we were prepared for the holidays.  We would talk about what the holidays mean.  And we went to camp every year.  At camp we would go for walks, play, listen to lectures, and learn songs.  My parents were happy that I was at camp because at home we didn’t have enough to eat, and at camp they took good care of me.  But then I stopped going, because I couldn’t stand leaving my parents.

After I finished the eighth grade at the school on Wesselenyi Street, I attended the textile technical school.  It was really interesting, the way I ended up with a career in textiles.  I had never had anything to do with textiles, but there were so many Jewish kids whose parents were in textiles, that I went into the trade too.  My parents didn’t interfere with my career choice; they were happy that I could study, because they saw the fulfillment of their desires in that.

There were a lot of Jews in the textile technical school--I think 30% of the class was Jewish. And there were rich Jews, too, who had small factories before the War, whose kids went there.  We didn’t talk much about being Jewish because it wasn’t a topic then.  But after 1956, when we had class reunions, we found out that there were many Jews among the students and the teachers, too.

After finishing technical school, I continued my studies at the Technical University, in the textile department.  After graduating from the university, I worked in textile factories, as director of the maintenance department, and later, because they paid the textile workers really badly, I ended up at Ganz Mavag, as an engine designer in the Engine, Wagon, and Machine Factory.  From there I went back into the textile business, and I became the Associate Director Engineer of a factory.

After 1935, when my parents returned from Holland, my father didn’t really go to temple.  I went with my mother and my grandmother, and, of course, in Jewish school with my class. We weren’t kosher at home.  We didn’t eat pork, but we didn’t keep the dairy and meat products separate, and we didn’t buy kosher meat.  But, say, a chicken paprikash with sour cream – that was impossible to even imagine.  The customs stayed.  We bought a goose in the fall, and we’d bake the fat out of it, and then we’d use the fat.  In November, December, and January we’d eat goose several times, and those geese, I believe, were always kosher.  For instance, if we wanted a chicken killed, we’d take it to the shochet, and he’d kill it for us.

But we kept those holidays.  I remember we had separate Pesach dishes.  The chomets, that is, food containing yeast, was cleared out of the house. The point of that was really the cleaning.  We’d get a woman – she’d come to do the washing too – who would help us, and then she would clean the whole flat, so there wouldn’t be a crumb anywhere, and then we’d bring the dishes out from the attic, and we’d use them during the Pesach holiday.  We’d eat matzoh, and we made pastries with the matzoh, things they hardly even know these days, dumplings out of matzoh flour, plum dumplings.  When my grandfather died, my father didn’t hold the ceremony at Pesach, but Seder evening was held, because we’d either go to temple, or acquaintances or friends would hold the Seder.  We knew a lot of Jews, and either we’d go to their place, or they’d come to ours to hold Seder.

On Friday evenings there was candle lighting; my father wouldn’t be home, because he had to work, but my mom and grandma did it.  They’d put scarves on their heads, and that’s how they’d bless the flame.  There was challah, too. I was still a child, but I knew the prayers, and I’d say them together with my mother and grandmother.  Then that slowly ended too.  We ate a lot of sauce with our Friday food, I remember.  We went to temple on Friday evenings and on the Sabbath.  We didn’t go in the mornings, because that’s when there was household work, cooking, and cleaning to do.  There was never anything like us not lighting lights, or not taking a tram, or anything like that.  My father went to work. I went to school.

We kept Yom Kippur, and we would fast, and we took part in the celebration of Sukkoth that they organized in the temple.

But we were completely Hungarian, Hungarians of Jewish extraction from Upperland Hungary (present-day Slovakia, which was part of Hungary before WWI).  Language, the organization, and tradition tied us to Judaism.  The same was true for Roman Catholics and Catholicism.  At one point, they moved the Swabians here.  Those Swabians later became Hungarians.  Two hundred years later the Czechs came.  By now they had also become Hungarians.  While the Swabs were Swabs, and the Czechs were Czechs, the Hungarians could be Evangelists, Catholics or Jews, who were Hungarians.  We weren’t foreigners. We were Hungarians. We just had a different religion.

I remember spending several summer vacations during my childhood with the Gerendas family in Trans-Carpathia (now part of Ukraine, but before WWI, a part of Hungary).  The family were distant relatives of ours on my mother’s side.  Marika Gerendas and her husband lived in Nagymuzsaj, which is near Ungvar (today Uzhgorod, Ukraine).  We traveled there by train, and these people I stayed with would come to meet me. When my vacation was over, my parents would come for me. I found life really interesting there, because as a city child from Obuda, I had had no experience of country life.  I loved the animals and the fruit trees, and the fact that, there, I could play freely. I don’t know how many children there were in the Gerendas family, but there were lots of Jewish kids around, and some of them were about my age.  I spent two summers there, for about three weeks each time.  That must have been in 1940-41.  I remember that the Gerendas weren’t especially religious.  On Fridays they would go to temple, but they weren’t kosher, and the men didn’t have beards, and their hairstyles were the same as those worn all over Europe. When the persecution of the Jews began in their area, they came to Hungary for a while to live with us.

I married my wife in 1960. We met through a friend in the technical school – I’d gone to school with him in Obuda too – and this friend was introduced to a girl at his relatives’ place, and he asked her if she had a girlfriend, and she brought her girlfriend, who later became my wife. That’s how we met, and both pairs ended up getting married.  It was important that my wife should be a Jew. I always looked for Jewish company, and I believe my parents expected it too.  When we got married we moved in with my wife’s parents in Kispest.  They lived in a very poor flat. The Arrow Cross had taken their flat from them in the Second World War, and they didn’t get it back. 

My maternal grandfather had a sister named Julia who never married. Her parents had sent her too Budapest where she worked as a servant in the home of a Jewish family until 1956, when the family left Hungary.  She inherited their apartment and lived alone there in her flat.  When she grew elderly and ill, my mother’s sister, Ilona Breiner, moved in with her to look after her.  When Julia died, my Aunt Ilona went to live with her mother, Grandma, and we got Julia’s flat. That is how we could finally move from the flat of my wife’s parents in Kispest where we spent five years.

Before the war, Ilona worked as a seamstress in the Goldberger Textile Factory, and after the war she became an administrator in the state-owned Company for River Control. She had no family because her fiancé died in WWII.

When I first went to my wife’s family’s home, I thought I’d pass out, because I saw that they had a Christmas tree.  They always celebrated Christmas.  Her father, when there weren’t enough Jews in Kispest, always went to the temple to make a minyan, but he didn’t know how to pray.  My wife’s mother was taken away in 1944.  There was a lady from the country who had stayed with my wife’s parents as a sort of live-in servant. After World War II my wife’s father married this woman.  As a matter of fact, my wife couldn’t have had a Jewish upbringing from her mother.  But I was really surprised by the Christmas tree.  My grandmother wouldn’t come to visit when she found out they had a Christmas tree.

We have one daughter, named Judit, who was born in 1964, and one grandson.  They also live in Obuda.  I sent my daughter to England after she graduated, and she learned English well.  She makes gifts with her partner now. They’re entrepreneurs.

I’m sorry I can’t pass on Judaism to my daughter or grandson. They aren’t happy to hear about it.  I raise my grandchild telling him, “You’re a Jew,” and what it means.  My daughter has noticed this, but she’s not happy about it.  When my daughter was small we had a Christmas tree. Now we don’t, but her family still does.

My daughter has Jewish sentiments.  Her whole work style, the whole way she thinks, the planning ahead, the thoughtfulness, she got that from us.  She didn’t get the religion, because we didn’t really practice it. She doesn’t know Hebrew, she doesn’t know the Jewish prayers, but she’s getting interested, more and more interested in what it means.

Ребека Гершон

Произходът на моето семейство идва от град Пловдив.  Родителите на майка ми и баща ми са родени и са живели в този град. Аз също съм родена  в град Пловдив – на 29 май 1923 г. Животът ми като дете в този град беше невероятен. Пловдив беше спокоен, уютен и много добре уреден град. Къщата, в която съм родена не си спомням, защото сме живели под наем и затова сме се местили няколко пъти през времето на моето детство. По това време беше съвсем естествено да се живее под наем и повечето семейства живееха по този начин. Изобщо животът ми в Пловдив беше една приказка. Семейството ми не беше особено богато, но аз съм изживяла детството си много щастливо. Пловдив беше за мен някакво очарование.

Прадядо ми по майчина линия е живял в Пазарджик и е бил гръцки поданик. Неговият произход идва от Гърция. Кога е дошъл в Бъпгария и откъде точно никога не е ставало дума в семейството на майка ми. Занимавал с търговия на дървен материал. Бил е много достоен и хубав човек. Спомням си, че баба ми, неговата дъщеря, ходеше всяка година да си заверява паспорта в службата по общинска безопасност в Пловдив, защото се водеше гръцка поданичка. Майка ми, нейната сестра и брат получават българско поданство след 18 годишната си възраст.

Прабаба ми по майчина линия се е казвала Естреа. Говореше и на ладино и на български. Прабаба ми по майчина линия живя доста дълго – при една от дъщерите си в Ямбол и идваше на гости в Пловдив при моята баба. Дори сме ходили на курорт – аз с баба ми и прабаба ми. Спомням си, че баба ми по майчина линия, Мазалтов Калеф пишеше на ладино. Беше много спокойна и мила жена. Разказваше ми приказки, беше много сладкодумна. Имаше неизчерпаем списък от приказки. Любимата ми беше за 1001 нощ. Баба ми беше много интелигентна и добра и всички в Пловдив много я уважаваха и обичаха. Когато почина, вече бяхме отишли да живеем  в София и аз бях в седми клас на гимназията.

Спомням си и един брат на прадядо ми, който живееше в Пловдив и беше много достолепен старик – много сериозен и достоен човек. Живееше на главната улица в града и аз му ходех на гости. Живееше сам с една домашна помощничка.

Майка ми Сарина имаше брат и сестра – Шмуел и Ернеста, а баща ми Алберт имаше трима братя и една сестра от първия брак на баща си – Шимон, Самуел, Йосеф и Матилда. Майката на баща ми е починала много рано и баща му се е оженил повторно. От втората съпруга на баща си има природени две сестри и един брат – Мари, Виктория и Леон.

Дядо ми по бащина линия, Аврам Гершон, е роден в Пловдив. Той беше комисионер по професия, но в по-голяма степен е издържан от баща ми и неговия брат, които бяха търговци и имаха голям магазин.Дядо ми и баба ми по бащина линия живееха в Пловдив на Сахат тепе в една стара българска къща с голям чардак[дървен навес] и огромен двор. Къщата имаше масивен каменен зид. Там имаше невероятна атмофера. Аз много обичах да ходя там. Къщата имаше три огромни стаи, които много ме впечатляваха, тъй като тогава живеех в по-скромно пространство. Там обичах да закусвам сутрин на софра [тадиционна ниска масичка] попара [популярна закуска от надробен хляб и прясно мляко].

Дядо ми по бащина линия дружеше изключително с българи. Цялата му среда се състоеше от българи и имаше непрекъснато гости за обяд или вечеря. Беше строг, хубав мъж, не много висок на ръст. Изпитвах страхопочитание към него, тъй като беше много строг, но и много грижовен.

В близост до къщата на баба ми и дядо ми се намираше малък площад, в който се намираше цирка. За мен беше невероятно изживяване да ходя на цирк и да гледам номерата с животните. В тази част на града се намираше стопанското училище и смесената гимназия, в която учих една година преди да се преместим в София.

Дядо ми по майчина линия, Хаим Калеф, почина когато бях едва на шест години. Спомням си, че когато се разхождах из Пловдив чух две жени да си приказват на улицата за това. Бях много малка и не разбирах добре какво се случва. Стана ми ясно едва когато майка ми ми обясни. Според нашите обичаи жените не ходят на гробища и не помня абсолютно нищо от погребението.

В Пловдив сме живели на няколко места. Местили сме се много често. Къщата, в която съм родена, не си спомням. Къщата, в която живеехме първоначално в Пловдив, се намираше на главната улица “Цар Освободител” срещу Бунарджика. След това отидохме да живеем на Сахат Тепе на улица “Станфорд”. На улица  “Цар Освободител” сме живели два пъти – веднъж в началото на улицата, веднъж в нейния край. Първият път живеехме с хазяи евреи, които живееха на горния етаж, а ние – на долния етаж. В тази къща се роди брат ми.

Със сигурност си спомням, че когато живеехме в къщата срещу Бунарджика, нямаше електрическо осветление, тъй като вечерно време баща ми използваше фенер. Тогава имахме и момиче слугинче, което помагаше в домакинството. Една вечер, когато се прибирахме вкъщи от някакво гостуване аз започнах да закачам и дърпам момичето, което носеше на ръце брат ми, който беше бебе тогава. Момичето изпусна брат ми да падне на земята. За радост не се беше  наранил, но аз изядох голям пердах. (или: “бях наказана от родителите си” б.а.).

Спомням си и друга случка от тази къща. Брат ми се роди много хубаво дете. Имаше къдрави коси, сини очи и големи бузки. Тогава започнах да ревнувам от него, тъй като цялото внимание вече беше насочено към него. Един ден помолих майка ми да го понося малко и заедно с мой братовчед излязохме на терасата. Бяхме купили големи червени бонбони и се опитахме да пъхнем един такъв бонбон в устата на бебето. Едва не го задушихме и си получихме наказанието.

Брат ми, Хаим Алберт Калеф,е роден на 16. 1. 1929 г.в Пловдив . Там е бил в детска градина. Едва в София започва първо отделение, стига до трето и тогава ни изселиха в Плевен. Фактически в България той остана без образование. След като се върнахме в София той започна да работи. Беше сръчно момче изапочна работа в един обущарски цех. Когато заминаваше за Израел, направи разкошни туристически обувки за цялото семейство. В Израел започна да се интересува от механика и завърши училище за “мазгер” механик, след което стана преподавател. Изработвал е проекти за големи конструкции в металургията.

Учех в еврейското училище до 4-то отделение. Беше ми много трудно и започнах да моля майка ми да ме премести. Особено трудно ми беше да науча едно стихотворение наизуст на иврит. До ден днешен не знам иврит и изпитвам голямо неудобство от това когато ходя в Израел.

Живеехме на улица “Карнеги” като срещу нас се намираше училището “Карнеги”. Преместих се в прогимназията в това училище, което се намираше точно от другата страна на улицата. Тази къща се намираше между Бунарджика и пожарната команда. Това е много приятен квартал в Пловдив. Там живеехме при една братовчедка на майка ми, която обитаваше първия етаж. При нас, на втория етаж, живееше още едно еврейско семейство, което беше пристигнало от Гърция. Започнах гимназиалното си образование в Пловдив – в 4-ти клас в смесената гимназия. През лятото на 1938 г. се преместих в София, където продължих да уча.

Най-накрая, преди да заминем за София, живеехме на Бунарджика, срещу главния вход - на улица “Цар Освободител”. Представляваше къща близнак – една къща, разделена на две. Гръцкото семейство живееше в едната част – гъркинята със съпруга си, двамата и сина, които бяха ученици и една дъщеря. В другата част живеехме аз, майка ми , баща ми и брат ми. Имахме отделни входове за къщата. Самата къща разполагаше с голям двор и насаждения, за които се грижеше гъркинята. Спомням си, че тя се отнасяше много недоверчиво към нас, защото може би си мислеше, че ще повредим насажденията и, но след като ни опозна, започна да дружи с нас. Гъркинята беше протестантка и агитираше майка ми да ходи на събранията на протестантската църква. Аз я придружавах, защото ми беше любопитно да наблюдавам техните събрания и обстановката – как насядалите по скамейките хора пеят псалми, тъй като това го няма в нашата синагога. Сега тази къща не съществува, защото на нейно място е направена жилищна кооперация.

Много обичах да се разхождам из Пловдив и имах тази възможност. Любимите ми места бяха Сахат Тепе [един от тите хълма на града ] , Бунарджика, [ един от тите хълма на града ]  река Марица. Събирахме се голяма група от деца и се скитахме из града. Играехме на много игри - като малка играех с момчетата на топчета. Тези топчета ги взимахме от бутилките за сода и лимонада. Играехме много и на стражари и апаши. Много интересна беше играта на духове. Събирахме се в къщи, спускахме пердетата и започвахме да викаме духове, докато не ни се привиждаше нещо и обикновено някой изпищяваше от страх. Разбира се, това правехме само когато родителите ни отсъстваха от къщи. Играехме и на криеница.

Спомням си, че когато живеехме на улица “Цар Освободител”, се събирахме няколко деца, на които бях казала, че ако копаем, можем да достигнем до средата на Земята. Представях си, че там има езеро, до което има лодка, на която можем да се повозим. Започнахме да копаем и разбира се, не стигнахме до нищо. Обичахме да берем сливи и други плодове от чуждите дворове и често ни се караха за това.

Винаги съм общувала с приятелите си на български език. Баба ми и майка ми говореха на ладино, но аз смятах този език за нещо архаично. Иврит не сме говорили. Едва сега започнах да се интересувам от ладино, защото виждам връзката с испанския език.

В семейството ми беше прието да се пазарува през дните сряда и четвъртък, а в петък да се готви. В събота не се готвеше, но се палеха електрически крушки и се слушаше радио; понякога ходехме и на кино. Семейството ми спазваше Кашер. Пазарувахме винаги от магазини, където равинът бе сложил печат и се ядеше изключително телешко месо За първи път вкусихме свинско месо след 9 септ. 1944 г., когато имаше голяма криза за храна и бях получила от службата си такова месо, което занесох вкъщи и за първи път майка ми сготви свинско месо.

Когато бях малка, баба ми по майчина линия ме водеше на синагога. Спомням си, че ме водеше на празника Кипур – празника на всеопрощението – когато не се яде по цял ден и се вечеря в шест часа вечерта. Тогава близките си прощават взаимно греховете. Празникът е посветен и на мъртвите и на живите. Когато свещенникът завършваше словото си в синагогата, захапвахме първо една голяма дюла, която беше първото нещо, което се ядеше през деня. Беше истинско събитие, ако децата успееха да издържат да не се хранят цял ден.

Празнувахме винаги Песах, когато най-възрастният от семейството чете молитвата за празника, свързана с легендата за спасяването на евреите от египетското нашествие. В нашата къща най-възрастен беше баща ми, но понякога се събирахме с близките на майка ми или на баща ми и тогава дядовците прочитаха молитвата. Бях по-привързана към семейството на майка ми, докато към роднините на баща ми изпитвах любопитство и интерес.

Почитахме и Ханука. Имахме специален свещник, който палехме на празника. Винаги се правеха богати трапези за празниците. На празника Пурим ми правеха торбичка с плодове – портокал, ябълка, фурма, рошков[специфично широколистно дърво] орех. Даваха ни и по някой лев и отивахме да се въртим на люлките.

Баща ми приемаше по свой начин религията. Преди всичко се вълнуваше от политиката – беше изключителен политикан. Баща ми не беше много религиозен. Но след като замина за Израел, стана по-религиозен. Там научи иврит и четеше вестници. Брат ми също научи иврит преввъзходно, преподавал е на иврит. Баща ми беше много ученолюбив и четеше редовно, въпреки че не беше завършил училище. Беше отявлен ционист и ревизионист и аз редовно спорех с него, тъй като имах леви убеждения. Баща ми, както и брат ми, нямаха много време да четат и да се образоват. Въпреки това имаха изключително задълбочени познания по някои въпроси. Не бяха учили нещо специално, но имаха имаха изключителни познания по география, история и икономика.

Баща ми беше търговец и отявлен политикан. Той търгуваше с кинкалерия и работеше повече със селяни. Продаваше панделки, дантели, копчета, но за мое съжаление не и играчки. Магазинът му се намираше на търговската улица близо до джамията при аптека “Марица”. Магазинът беше на два етажа. Първият етаж представляваше приемната, а вторият етаж беше за стоката. На първия етаж баща ми обичаше да приема гости. За тази цел винаги имаше осигурени пресни банички и други неща за хапване. Баща ми беше отявлен ревизионист и ционист и беше член на организацията “Жаботински” – еврейска организация, която пропагандира идеята и има за цел възстановяването на територията на Израел с бойни средства. Името на организацията идва от името на нейния основател, който е бил полски евреин – Владимир Жаботински. По това време евреите в Пловдив имаха много разнообразни политически въгледи като  баща ми беше от най-десните. Спомням си, че в организацията, в която членуваше баща ми, имаше и един Паси, който се явява дядо на сегашния министър на външните работи Соломон Паси.

Баща ми влагаше много средства в този магазин за политически сбирки и когато дойде кризата от 1929 г. , той фалира. Това е годината, в която се роди брат ми и оттогава започна бедността. Имахме домашна прислужница до времето, когато живеехме на улица “Станфорд”. След това вече нямахме възможност и майка ми сама пое домакинството.[ През 1929 г. в България започва икономическа криза, която засяга и семейството на Ребека Гершон]

За мен Пловдив беше като еврейски град-държава. Чувствах се много уютно в Пловдив. Роднините ми бяха много задружни и винаги са се събирали и са държали един на друг. Освен това през 20-те години аз бях единствената внучка и се ползвах с изключителното внимание на целия род. Живеех безгрижно и не съм мислила за политическата и икономическата обстановка в България. Винаги съм била нахранена и добре облечена.

Всяка събота и неделя излизахме извън Пловдив. Понякога тръгвахме и в петък вечер. Придвижвахме се с талиги [четириколесни закрити каруци с два впрегатни коня]. Ходили сме в Коматово, Куклино, Марково [села в Пловдивско]. Минавахме през великолепни орехови гори, които за съжаление не съществуват вече. С нас носехме специални скари за барбекю, кладяхме огньове. Моите родители много обичаха разходките в околностите на Пловдив.

Често, обикновено в събота, отивахме на Бунарджика, където беше Казиното. Живеехме наблизо и сядахме заедно с познати семейства да послушаме музика. Навремето беше известен певеца и танцьора Джип. В събота на децата даваха пари и отивахме да ядем пържени дробчета, кебапчета, купувахме си царевици, отивахме на сладкарница. Пловдив беше рогът на изобилието.

През 1937 г. родителите ми заминаха с брат ми за София,  а аз остаенах в Пловдив до следващата година. До заминаването си живях при моя вуйчо Шмуел и учех в смесената гимназия в Пловдив. Животът ми в Пловдив беше очарователен и когато дойдох в София плаках много. Цели шест месеца не можах да дойда на себе си. Аз заминах през лятото на 1938 г. за София, която тогава ми се стори отвратителна. Всичко ми беше чуждо и неприятно. Преживях много болезнено тази промяна. След няколко месеца отново заминах за Пловдив, тъй като бях във ваканция. Едва след като се върнах отново в София, успях да се адаптирам към новата обстановка, тъй като вече имах познати съученички. Ходех и в читалището, където също имах приятели.

След като заминаха за София, родителите ми отидоха да живеят първоначално на улица “Опълченска”, а след това – в къщата на една моя съученичка от гимназията на улица “Цар Симеон”. От тази къща ни изселиха в Плевен през 1943 г.Помня една бомбардировка в София, тогава живеехме на улица “Цар Симеон” при моята съученичка, която се казва Ани Пастуркова. Къщата беше на три етажа. Бомбардировката беше ужасна. Скрихме се в мазето на една съседна къща. Бомбардираха гарата, а жилището ни бише наблизо и всички гърмежи се чуваха много силно. В Плевен виждахме само ята от самолети, които отиваха към София. Променен параграф

Баща ми започна работа в София като търговски пътник в една шоколадова фабрика. Станаха близки със собственика, защото в лицето на баща ми той намери талантлив и отговорен човек.
Баща ми обикаляше страната и осъществяваше пласмента на продукцията в цялата провинция. Баща ми нямаше възможност да влезе в контакт с евреите в София. Пътуваше през цялото време и изобщо не се задържаше в града. Обикаляше страната, беше контактен човек и имаше приятели навсякъде из страната.Нивото на семейството на собственика по нищо не можеше да се сравнява с нашето. Семейството му беше от преуспели селяни. Бях съученичка с дъщерята на собственика в Трета девическа гимназия.

Първите антисемитски настроения усетих през 1939 г., когато обявиха Закона за защита на нацията [множество наредби за репресии срещу евреите в Б-я]. Спомням си, че се разхождах по булевард “Христо Ботев” заедно с моя приятелка. Тогава няколко души “бранници”[организация за репресии срещу евреите] започнаха да ни закачат и тогава за щастие моята приятелка, която не беше еврейка се обърна за помощ към един случайно преминаващ офицер. Изпитвах голямо унижение, когато ходех със значката. Била съм истинска късметлийка, че не съм поругавана и малтретирана.

Законът за защита на нацията от 1939 г. засегна първо собствениците на имоти – отнемаха им правото на собственост. Ние нямахме нито пари, нито собственост, но въпреки че баща ми работеше при български работодател, стагнацията започна да се усеща и при нас.

През 1941 – 1942 г. “Бранник” беше официална организация [организация за репресии срещу евреите]. Имах съученичка от гимназията, която стана член на тази организация. Случи се така, че след много години я срещнах отново. Нейната личност беше много отблъскваща. Срещата беше случайна на входа на Съдебната палата. Бяхме заедно с моя втори съпруг, който я познавал от службата си. Тогава съпругът ми я разцелува без да знае за моето отношение към нея. Аз реагирах емоционално и му зашлевих шамар. Тогава бях стажант в Съдебната палата, а съпругът ми беше юрист. След тази случка, макар и трудно, съпругът ми ми прости.

Завърших гимназия през 1941 г. През 1942 г. ни окачиха значките, за да личи, че сме от еврейски произход, но не загубихме кураж. Опитах се да започна работа в София, тъй като бях завършила машинописни курсове. В София нямахме възможност да се установим постоянно, защото нямахме въэможност за това. Семейството ни разполагаше с една заплата – тази на баща ми, а аз и брат ми бяхме ученици. Но през 1943 г. дойде известие, че сме изселени в Плевен. Бяхме принудени да разпродадем цялата си покъщнина от къщата на улица “Цар Симеон”, в която живеехме тогава. Променен параграф

Моите роднини от Пловдив не бяха изселени от града. Имали са ограничителен режим. Не са могли да ходят на работа и да напускат града.  

Леля ми по майчина линия беше женена за равин в Бургас. Той имаше гръцко поданство. Когато са започнали гоненията срешу евреите, околийският управител на Бургас е посъветвал равина да напусне страната, за да не попадне в концлагерите. За една вечер се приготвят и заминават за Турция през 1942г. и оттам в Израел. Леля ми тогава е имала две деца. В Израел не е живяла щастливо и се е развела с мъжа си. Пишехме си писма, от които стана ясно това. Писах й, че ще направя всичко възможно, за да й помогна да се върне в България, ако желае това. Но тя не пожела и остана в Тел Авив в Изарел, където почина от левкемия. Много обичах тази моя леля.

В Плевен първоначално ни настаниха в едно училище и след това ни разрешиха да си наемем квартира, която представляваше една стая. В Плевен живеехме до пътя, който водеше към затвора “Кайлъка” [“Кайлъка” е използван и за концентрационен лагер]. Този район е в покрайнините на града. Хазяите ни бяха много любезни и ни канеха да си наберем грозде от тяхната овощна градина.  Хранехме се в обществена кухня [на определено място в града в определен час се раздава безплатна храна за новопристигналите евреи]. Започнах работа в една фабрика за обувки. Станах “саяджийка” – правихме “саите”- това са горните части на обувките.променен параграф

В Плевен имах един изключително неприятен период. Единствено хората около мен бяха добри. В обущарската фабрика работех заедно с много други момичета, други хора отиваха да работят по лозята. Във фабриката бях репресирана от един майстор, който непрекъснато ме наблюдаваше и се занимаваше само с мен. Издевателстваше над мен и когато беше в лошо настроение ме караше да излизам навън и да събирам изрезки от кожата за обувки без никакъв смисъл. Накрая собственикът на фабриката дойде нри мен и ме посъветва да напусна и аз напуснах. Отидох в друга фабрика, където собственикът беше фашист. Там за щастие работеше един симпатичен евреин на възрастта на баща ми, който ме ориентира в обстановката и ме покровителстваше през цялото време. Слава Богу, дойде 9. септември[комунистически преврат през 1944]   и напуснах.

Майсторът от фабриката имаше нахалството да дойде в София и да ме потърси. Тогава аз го заплаших с арест. Не можех да проумея как възрастен човек със семейство може да постъпва така.

Това беше изключително лош период за мен. Благодарение на това, че ние, евреите умеем да се организираме, успяхме да преживеем. Събирахме се всяка събота и неделя с повод и без повод. Дори бяхме направили музикална група, в която се свиреше на цигулки. Пеехме, изнасяха се беседи.

В Плевен се случи нещо любопитно и парадоксално. Запознах се с трима младежи, които се държаха с мен като с принцеса, въпреки че бяха с крайно десни убеждения. Дори единият от тях беше легионер [профашистка организация до 1944 г.]. Покровителстваха ме и дори единият от тях беше влюбен в мен и ми подари красива гривна. Правихме си разходки, гостувах му и му имах безкрайно доверие. Тези младежи се държаха с мен като истински джентълмени.

В Плевен се запознах с представител на известната и заможна фамилия Асео, които бяха собственици на големи имоти в София, сред които и най-известното кино в града. Беше млад човек – студент, но беше с побеляла коса. Станахме близки, но след като се върнахме в София, пътищата ни се разделиха.

По времето на Холокоста вуйчо ми, баща ми и брат му бяха разпределени в трудови групи. Баща ми беше разпределен в трудовите групи [групи за принудителен труд] в Белене.  Вуйчо ми не е бил изселен, но е държан в гето, което е било създадено специално за евреите.Баща ми беше изключително издръжлив човек. Бил е болен само веднъж на старини. През 1988 г. получи тежък удар и е настанен в дом с медицинско обслужване.променено според желанието на Дора от Венгрия

Когато баща ми беше в трудовите групи, нямахме никаква връзка с него. Едва по-късно научихме къде е бил разпределен – в Белене [населено място в северна България]. В Плевен не разполагахме с никакви средства освен с моята скромна заплата.

Върнах се в София през месец октомври 1944 г. Влаковете бяха претъпкани. След 9 септември 1944 г. веднага ме поканиха в областното управление на МВР в Плевен. Работех в нравствения отдел и пишех протоколи на машина. Когато бе обявено, че можем да се върнем в София, отидох при областния управител, който беше много симпатичен човек и ми даде много препоръчителни писма. Когато се върнах в София, отидох в Дирекцията на милицията на площад “Лъвов мост”. Там един много симпатичен човек ме прие на работа в паспортния отдел.

Родителите ми се върнаха малко по-късно от мен и намериха квартира на улица “Цар Иван-Асен ІІ” в една двуетажна къща. Аз получих жилище от МВР на улица “Граф Игнатиев” и бул.”Толбухин”[днес “В. Левски”]. Тъй като квартирата на улица “Цар Иван-Асен ІІ” беше една стая, отидохме да живеем на бул. “Толбухин 2”, откъдето се беше изнесъл мой колега. Там делихме жилището с една моя сънародничка еврейка, която първоначално отказваше да ни приеме, дори на два пъти ни изнасяше багажа от жилището. Накрая, все пак, станахме добри приятели. Тя живееше в едната стая, а моето семейство – баща ми, майка ми, брат ми и аз в стая, кухня и хол. Апартаментът беше огромен. След като се изселиха родителите ми от България в Израел, получих предложение да го купя, но първият ми съпруг Мюнцер Благоев не се съгласи, защото смяташе, че всичко ще се превърне в държавна собственост. По-късно се наложи да освободим жилището, защото сестрата на собственичката продаде жилището. Междувременно родителите ми и брат ми заминаха за Израел. Тогава се преместихме с първиях ми съпруг на ул. “Марин Дринов”.

На работното си място не съм имала конфликти заради еврейския си произход. Спомням си една случка, когато една служителка от Дирекцията на милицията разказваше на колегите си, че е била изгонена от една “мръсна” еврейка, която е била собственичката на жилището, в което е била настанена. Тогава съществуваше практика властите да настаняват новопристигналите в София хора в къщи и апартаменти на други хора. Аз също бях настанена в подобно жилище на булевард “Толбухин” [сега “Васил Левски”]. Същият беше случаят с тази служителка. Аз станах и и ударих шамар. Дори да живеех при българка, никога нямаше да я нарека така. След това имах неприятности от моя началник, който ме заплашваше със съд. В крайна сметка всичко се размина и дори останахме приятелки с моята колежка. Животът е бил снизходителен към мен и не съм имала големи неприятности.

Имаше партийно решение от страна на БКП за заминаването на евреите – всички можеха да заминат. Но тогавашният началник на Дирекцията на милицията ме извика и ми съобщи, че дори да подам молба за заминаване, няма да ме пуснат поне 5-6 години. Действително, мен ме пуснаха да се видя с роднините си едва след 13 години – през 1963 г.След деветосептемврийския преврат от 1944 г. аз имах леви убеждения [прокомунистически]. Въпреки че много мои сънародници заминаха, аз не желаех това. Направих само формални постъпки, за да бъда толерантна към родителите си. Голяма промяна

След 9 септ. 1944 г. направих постъпки за специализация на брат ми в Чехия в училище на фирмата “Бата”. От мястото, в което работеше, не получи добра характеристика и не замина. Може би ако беше получил добра характеристика и бе заминал за Чехия, нямаше да замине така скоро за Израел. Това беше преломен момент в живота му.

След като се основа Израелската държава, евреите започнаха да напускат България. Родителите ми заминаха през 1949 г. , а роднините ми в Пловдив – през 1948 г. След това имаше една голяма “алиа” – заминаха всичките ми приятели. От около 45 000 души тогава останаха 10 000, а сега в България не знам дали има 5 000 евреи.Моите родители са били настанени в т.нар. “срикове” – специални бараки. Брат ми не желаеше да бъдат настанени в квартира в града и първото му жилище беше в Яфо – в новозаселената част на града.преместено

Баща ми е започнал веднага работа в Израел. Положението е било трудно, тъй като не е имало достатъчно работа за всички новопристигнали. Търсили са препитание на много места. Брат ми разказва една тъжна история, когато са ходили с баща ми от Пардес Хана, където са били на лагери, чак до Хайфа да търсят работа, но не са намерили, спали са на открито и са се върнали обратно. Брат ми е работил във варници, където са му били изгорени краката. После баща ми си намира работа в общинска строителна организация “Амидар” за строежи на жилища на новодошлите като домакин. Помагал е на хората да се настаняват и много са го обичали и уважавали. На 78 годишна възраст е обявил, че напуска и  цяла група хора са дошли при него да го молят да остане. Получавал е добра пенсия, майка ми е получавала социална пенсия. Имаха собствено жилище, което са оставили на брат ми.

Преди изселването ни в Плевен посещавах много редовно еврейското читалище “Климентина”. Много обичах да чета и ходех там предимно да чета. Постепенно там се запознах с различни хора, които започнаха да се занимават с мен и да ме просвещават. Преди заминаването бях в еврейска среда. След като се завърнах от изселването продължавах да ходя в еврейския дом и дори участвах в хора на еврейския дом. Но като служител в милицията имах неограничено работно време и това ми попречи да продължа. Средата ми се обособи с работното място и приятелката ми от училище.

С първия ми съпруг се запознах в работата си. Той се казва Мюнцер Благоев и не е евреин. Баща му е бил съратник на Георги Димитров[първия мин-председател на България сдлед 09.09.1944  и председател на БКП] и Васил Коларов[министър в правителството на Г.Димитров]. Неговото семейство е заминало нелегално в Русия през 1923г. През 1947г. се завръща от Москва. Завършил е право. През XII. 1949г. сключихме брак. Родителите ми не присъстваха.

По това време не чествах еврейските празници. След 09. IX.1944г. не беше актуално да се честват празниците. Повечето ми приятели бяха българи. Съпругът ми беше особен човек и живееше изолирано. Признаваше само братята си. Така постепенно се отчуждих от еврейската си среда.

Когато заминаха родителите ми, аз продължих да живея на бул. “Толбухин”2. Там живяхме и със съпруга ми. Той имаше конфликт с Вълко Червенков [тогавашен министър на културата] заради някакви възражения от страна на съпруга ми към управлението на коменистическата партия. От друга страна майка му беше със самочувствието на активен партиен функционер. Дори са били изгонени от жилището си по нареждане на Вълко Червенков.

Работих в Дирекцията на милицията до 1951г. Тогава изгониха съпруга ми Мюнцер Благоев, който работеше като инспектор, за неразбирателство с ръководството на Дирекцията и заедно с него – и мен. Бях много щастлива от този факт, защото докато работех там, бях много ограничавана и чувствах, че работата ми тежи. Тогава получихме по една заплата допълнително и аз си спомням, че отидох в магазина за платове, който се намираше на мястото на Американското посолство и си купих прекрасни платове. Получих препоръки за работа, докато него го уволниха и го наказаха партийно. Препоръките ми бяха за три места. Аз избрах съюза на Българо-съветските дружества. Другата ми препоръка беше за Градския комитет на БКП. Съюзът на Българо-съветските дружества се намираше на ул. “Мизия” и започнах работа като завеждащ връзки с чужбина. Там работих до заминаването ми в Китай.

Мюнцер Благоев бе уволнен през 1951г.. Чак през 1954г. започна работа. Хранила съм го 4 години. През 1954г. чрез министъра на финансите – Кирил Лазаров, който му е бил кръстник, влиза във МВнР с длъжност “аташе по печата”. През 1958г. бе предложен за заминаване в Китай и заминахме. Там живяхме 4 години. Мюнцер Благоев работеше като втори секретар на българското посолство в Китай.

Когато бях в Китай пращах писмата до родителите ми до майката на Мюнцер в България и тя ги слагаше в друг плик и ги препращаше до Израел. От България пращах директно писмата си.

След като се завърнах, нямах работа и реших да завърша образованието си. През 1956г. бях положила изпити за специалност право. След това прекъснах контактите си с университета, тъй като нямах време да уча и работя едновременно. Когато се завърнах от Китай направих постъпки пред деканата да продължа следването си. Зарърших през 1967 година, дипломирах се. Започнах работа в Съюза на юристите. След това бях юрисконсулт във “Водно стопанство” и оттам се пенсионирах.

Разведох се с Мюнцер Благоев през 1965г. заради големите неприятности, които сам си създаваше с конфликтното си поведение към официалната власт и произтичащите от   товa
последици върху мен. През 1974г. се объжих пак за мой сънародник от Пловдив, който познавам от ученичка. Вторият ми съпруг се казва Соломон Леви. Той ми остави син и дъщеря, които не бих имала, ако не го бях срещнала и с които сме в много добри отношения. Много са ми помагали – особено при преместванията ми в нови жилища. Времето, което изживях с втория ми съпруг беше изпълнено с много приятни мигове от пътешествия и ексурзии в страната. След като се оженихме, през 1975 г. , направихме едно пътуване до Израел като на връщане минахме през Гърция.

Докато бяха живи родителите ми, ходех много често в Израел – през 2-3 години. Понякога имах проблеми със заминаването си. Имаше една абсурдна ситуация - когато майка ми беше на смъртно легло ми казаха, че ще ме пуснат само ако отивам на погребение. Това се случи през 1983 година. Тогава вече беше починал съпругът  ми. Майка ми почина през следващата година.

По време на войните в Израел аз бях изцяло на страната на моя народ, за което щях да получа наказание. Смятах, че тази държава трябва да съществува, защото заради нея са загинали хиляди хора. Тогава бях стажантка в Народния съд. Спомням си, че един млад колега, чийто баща беше декан на Икономическия факултет, носеше всеки ден карта на Близкия Изток и отбелязваше със знаменца мястото на военните действия.

Помня едно събрание, в което Тодор Живков [първи секретар на българската комунистическа партия] имаше доклад и стана дума за израелско-арабския конфликт. Тогава един от присъстващите се изкза, че е готов да отиде да се бие на страната на арабите, на което Тодор Живков отговори с ирония. .

Смятам за нормално развитието на политическите процеси в Източна Европа. Процесът на отваряне на Източна Европа е правилен.

Смятах нахлуването на руските войски в Чехия за нещо нормално. Мислех, че там стават лоши неща, така бях възпитана. По време на събитията в Чехия бях в Израел на гости на моя приятелка, която ми беше колежка от структурите на МВР. Тя беше голяма комунистка. В Израел беше омъжена за един много симпатичен лекар. Била е изгонена от МВР и наказана заради връзка е един от началниците си, който е бил обявен за “враг”. Нейното име е Бека Франсез. На това гости тя изрази позиция срещу намесата на Съветския съюз. Тогава бях изумена. За мен това беше ерес. Въпреки негативните последствия върху мен от брака ми с Мюнцер Благоев – знаех, че щом спомена, че съм му съпруга, ще бъда изгонена от работа – у мен бе останало убеждението, че трябва да бъда вярна на  партията [БКП].

Пенсионирах се през 1978г. След 1989г. отначало бях много стресната. Струваше ми се, че се връщах назад към онова минало, от което се боях и което ненавиждах. След това разбрах, че е дошло време за промяна и на политиката и на икономиката. Съветският съюз пръв даде сигнал за това. Тогава разбрах, че не всичко е черно или бяло, че има и нюанси, че не всички които не са членове на БСП са фашисти, че не всички, които са членове на БСП са демократи и т.н. Започнах да чувствам хората като хора, а не като членове на дадена партия. След 1989г. бяхме изключително политизирани, беше еуфория. Сега разбирам, че един човек не прави политика. Уважавам хората заради качествата им.

Сега живея добре с помощта на брат ми, без грижа за насъщния. Посещавам еврейската общност. За съжаление нямам много близки приятели.

Sonya Adolf Lazarova
Sofia
Bulgaria
Interviewer: Svetlana Avdala
Date of interview: November 2005

‘When I get up in the morning the first thing I do is put on lipstick.’ And the lipstick suited her. During our work of several days she always met me with a large smile and a table arranged, because Sonya is a person who likes to give and help people. It’s not accidental that she fulfilled her dream to become a nurse.
And one day she said to her mother, ‘How happy I am that you gave birth to me!’ Sonya really has a jolly character. For her there are no bad people or situations. She speaks about the events in her life without pompous heroism or stoicism. They just happened like that.
At the age of 82 Sonya starts her day with applying lipstick and yet she still shivers when speaking about her first big and unfulfilled love. Years simply passed by without touching her.

Growing up 
My family
Going to school 
During the War 
After the War
Glossary

Growing up

My name is Sonya Adolf Nusan. I was born on 12th August 1923 in Ruse [Northeastern Bulgaria, 251km from Sofia]. My ancestors were German and Russian Jews but I have no memories about them, as I’m the youngest of the six children in our family. My eldest sister’s name was Gizela, born in 1910, and then came Liza, born in 1912, Hilda, born in 1915, my brother Fridrich, born in 1917, and my sister Zivi, born in 1921. Only Zivi and Fridrich are alive today. She lives in Israel, while he lives in Bulgaria. They were all born in Ruse.

From my earliest childhood I remember the pretty house that we had in the center of Ruse, behind the theater on Konstantin Velichkov Street. It was owned by my maternal family: my mother, Berta Hirsh Nusan [nee Goldenberg] who was born in 1888, her sisters Liza and Erma as well as my maternal grandparents. We sold it about two or three years ago. It was surrounded by an orchard. I remember my mother and father but I have no memories of my grandparents. When I was born they weren’t alive and I have no information about their names. Later my sisters used to tell me that they had had servants at home, as well as a remarkable order, which indicates that they were well off.

My father, Adolf [Avram] Lazarovich Nusan, was born in Ploesti in 1887. I have no information about his exact date of birth. At the age of 20 he came to Bulgaria, to Ruse. He spoke Romanian, Bulgarian and Yiddish. I know that he wasn’t rich, it was even rumored that he came here ‘barefoot,’ when he, sort of quickly, married my mother. I don’t recall anyone telling me why he came to Bulgaria – but most probably to search for a more profitable market for his craft – millinery, as well as better treatment of his Jewish origin, because his real name was Avram, yet he changed it to Adolf in Romania for the sake of convenience. I don’t know how and why he married my mother, but I know that she was a true beauty, she came from a well-off family, and moreover she was a very kind-hearted woman and always ready to help people. So I believe these were the reasons for their marriage.

Though my father was ‘barefoot,’ he had a successful business: the millinery. In Ruse he established a hatter’s workshop with seven employees. In this workshop they initiated the production of hats with a stiff body, both cylinders and straw hats, which was a rare practice for Bulgaria in those days. In the period of the wars [the First Balkan War 1, the Second Balkan War 2 and World War I 3] the workers enrolled in the army and the workshop closed down. Maybe this was the reason why my family moved to Sofia in order to try to make a living.

My mother was born in Ruse. Her mother tongue was Yiddish and Bulgarian, but she spoke several other languages: French, German, Russian, and English. She had graduated from a German college in Ruse, which was a high level of education for a woman at that time. At home we spoke Bulgarian and Yiddish.

I was three years old when my family decided to leave Ruse and move to Sofia. We settled on the fifth, i.e. last, floor of a building on Maria Luiza Street, as it was the cheapest one. We used to rent it until our internment in 1943 4.

There was a yard in which we, the children used to play draughts, ‘people’s ball’ [ball game in which two teams try to get the other side’s players out by hitting them with a ball], rope. The neighbors in the block of apartments were mostly Bulgarians, but other Jewish families also lived in the blocks, which surrounded the common backyard.

Our family inhabited a kitchen and two rooms. My parents used to sleep in one of the rooms, while we, the girls, slept in the other one. My brother used to sleep in the kitchen. The furniture was very modest. There were beds, tables and a dresser. Instead of a wardrobe we used to hang our clothes on a hat and coat rack, which we covered with a piece of cloth. We used a firewood-burning stove. There was a toilet in the hallway and running water in the kitchen, yet there was no bath. My sisters used to go to the public city bath, and when I was a little girl I used to be washed in a trough with heated water.

We used to sleep two in one bed, head to toe. And when my mother woke us in the morning she always confused our names because she could never recognize us in this position. Actually all of us always woke up at the same time.

At that time Sofia used to be calm, clean and green. It wasn’t crowded with enormous blocks of apartments and there was no terrible deafening noise. Jews were dispersed all over the city, but mostly in Iuchbunar 5, where the poorer ones used to live.

I remember the synagogue on Ekzarh Yosif and Bacho Kiro Streets: the old one. [The interviewee means the Midrash. According to the statistics by 1912 there were 5 synagogues in Sofia, one of which was attended by the Ashkenazi Jews. By 1928 the number of Ashkenazi Jews in Sofia was 1,600, with a synagogue and a rabbi. There was also a cheder with 15-20 children and a teacher.] There was a rabbi but I can’t recall his name and he was wonderful. I remember the service. It was in Bulgarian. I remember the cautionary speeches [prayers], choir, etc.

My family

My mother was an educated woman. Although she had graduated from a German college in Ruse and despite the fact that she spoke several languages, after her marriage she was devoted to bringing up her children, born every second year. She was a very noble person. She lived for the sake of helping people. There weren’t bad people according to her. She was ready to help anyone yet she never took part in charity organizations. Her genuine goodness was expressed in many cases, which I would love to share with you. She never yelled at us, nor did she punish us. Calmness was the most important thing to her. She always taught us to forgive people and to never get angry. She was tall, with a white face and blue eyes; the only blue eyes in our family. She always put her hair up in a bun. She didn’t use make up and always dressed in a plain manner.

My father was also a very handsome man: tall, slender, dark hair and eyes, and a mustache like that of a movie star. He always dressed elegantly and wore a soft hat. In Sofia he opened a millinery workshop with an associate of his. It was on Lege Street. Later this associate cheated him, my father went bankrupt and got divorced for reasons that I don’t know. [Editor’s note: Until 1944 marriage of Jews in Bulgaria was performed and legalized by the consistory with a marriage contract (ketubbah). In Bulgaria at that time there was no institution of civil marriage (Christians respectively got married in the church). Regarding divorces the quoted books usually are: ‘Shulhan Arouh’ and ‘Even Aezer’ by Joseph Caro, where the following sections are examined in detail: engagement, vow, marriage, ceasing of marriage, divorce, chaliza (release of marriage due to childlessness). ‘Jewish marriage and divorce law,’ a handbook by Rabbi Daniel Zion and Albert Varsano comments on all cases of Jewish practice in ceasing marriage and divorce and generalizes the rabbi experience until 1940.] Then he decided to leave for Israel in 1939. He remained there and stopped supporting our family. He passed away there but I have no information about the year, most probably between 1955 and 1965.

My father wasn’t interested and had no respect for money. He wasn’t capable of saving; he had a Bohemian nature. He was always ready to give his last penny to someone who would ask him. He traveled a lot on business and when he returned home there were always presents for us: something nice and delicious, very often kebapcheta [grilled oblong rissoles] or ‘marzipanes’ [a confectionery consisting primarily of ground almonds and sugar]. He didn’t earn much and never did he bring home the full amount, but my mother never blamed him for it. Actually they resembled each other a lot in this matter because she in her turn willingly invited anyone even if she would deprive us of something. My parents were tender and kind people. They never punished us, nor did they scream at us. My elder sisters were engaged in my upbringing. I would like to talk about them.

Gizela Asher-Anski [nee Nusan] was the eldest among us and a leader in every sense. She was talented, ambitious and intelligent. She made a brilliant artistic career with appearances in Israel and the USA, where she passed away.

She graduated from a Bulgarian elementary, junior high and high school. After graduation she initially worked in the famous dress atelier of Otto Seiner on Lege Street. There she sewed, cut, and worked as a model and sometimes, because imagination was among her greatest gifts, she designed her own clothes. As early as her work in Otto Seiner’s fashion atelier she used to play in the Jewish amateur theater [In 1928 a theater troupe was formed at Byalik chitalishte 6. It was led by Mois Beniesh and Leo Konforti: a theater and film actor, who was born in 1911 in Dupnitsa, and died in 1970. His work is mostly associated with the ‘Ivan Vazov’ National Theater.] together with Leo Konforti, Bitush Davidov [a librettist], Milka Mandil [an actress, she’s still alive and lives in Israel], Nichko Benbasat [a public figure, journalist, who worked at the Bulgarian National Radio for many years]. There she met her future husband, Eliezer Asher Anski [a writer and playwright, who was active in the 1920s-1930s], who was a director.

Leo Konforti, with whom they were close friends, most probably introduced her to some leading actors of the time. She attracted their attention and later she appeared on the stage of the National Theater with Ruzha Delcheva [(1915-2002), a famous Bulgarian drama and film actress, graduated from Nikolay Osipovich Massalitinov’s theater school in 1935, specialized for three years in ‘Deutsches Theater’ in Germany, actress of ‘Ivan Vazov’ National Theater since 1938], Magda Kolchakova [b. 1914, a Bulgarian drama and film actress, played in the ‘Ivan Vazov’ National Theater from 1940] and Ivanka Dimitrova [b. 1920, a Bulgarian drama and film actress, played in ‘Ivan Vazov’ National Theater.] It’s difficult for me to name the theater plays she performed, although I have seen them all. Nor can I remember the years when I watched them.

She knew many people from Sofia’s artistic Bohemian circles. The people mentioned above often visited us. She was always the center of attention in these merry companies: she sang, told funny stories, recited poems by [Hristo] Smirnenski 7, [Hristo] Botev 8, [Nikola] Vaptsarov 9, and others. She got married around 1939 to Eliezer Asher Anski. He was a Sephardi Jew. His family was well-off. They owned an apartment on the corner of Tsar Boris and Tsar Simeon Street [in the center of Sofia]. He was always quiet, reticent, and uncommunicative; maybe sort of a calm background to the ‘bright’ Gizela, who always shone. Probably it was due to his character that he couldn’t achieve a good career as a director. Later, when in 1948 their whole family moved to Israel, he changed his profession and started making art mosaics.

Gizela and her husband were two complete opposites. Eliezer adored Gizela and immensely loved their son Alex, who was born in 1940. In Sofia they lived at first in a lodging on Sofronii Street and after that they moved to Eliezer’s own apartment. When they left for Israel, their son Alex also started appearing on the theater stage as early as a little boy. He also made a good artistic career and now is a famous actor in the Abima [Hebrew: ‘the stage’] National Israeli Theater of Tel Aviv. His artistic talent, a continuation of his parents’ gift, was also revealed when he starred in a radio show addressed to mothers of Israeli soldiers which was meant to keep their spirits high. [Apart from being an actor, Alex Anski leads a radio show on the Israeli Military Radio. He also speaks Bulgarian].

Lili [Liza] also worked as a seamstress in the fashion atelier of Otto Seiner. She finished Bulgarian elementary, junior high and high school as well. She was also artistically gifted and was attracted by Gizela to the Jewish amateur theater, but she didn’t have Gizela’s genuine talent. She loved reading a lot. She had inherited the affinity to learning foreign languages from my mother. She attended language courses, spoke several languages and later became a bookseller. She was well-measured and frugal in company. She was always elegantly dressed, attentive to the smallest detail of her dress, because she was very exacting both to herself and to the other people. She got married in 1956 to the dentist Isak Assa, with whom she lived but had no children. She divorced him in 1958 and left for Israel by herself. There she worked as a seamstress, and got married again, to a Russian Jew with the family name Nisan, who had a daughter. She raised the child as her own. She died in Israel around 2000.

Hilda finished only a Bulgarian elementary and junior high school. She had a beautiful voice and participated in an amateur Jewish choir at the Jewish chitalishte. [Editor’s note: After World War I, in 1919 the ‘Obsht Podem’ [Common Uplift] Jewish chitalishte was founded. It existed until 1924. In 1924 the Jewish chitalishte ‘H.N.Byalik’ was formed, which by 1928 was already fourth in range among the Sofia community centers, ‘Aleko Konstantinov’, ‘Gotse Delchev’ and ‘Hristo Botev.’ The community center had 1900 volumes of literature, a theater troupe, a literature circle and a Jewish choir. There was also another Jewish chitalishte that was situated in Iuchbunar quarter, between Klementina and Opalchenska Streets.] In her selflessness and devotion to people Hilda resembled mostly my mother. She worked in a hosiery factory. She married Mihayl Mihaylov, who was a Bulgarian and an electrician by profession. They had two daughters, Lilyana and Borisalva. She never moved to Israel and died in Sofia, but I can’t recall the year of her death.

Fridrich was diligent, strict and reserved. He had the gift of an artist. Very often, when Gizela and Lili brought patterns home, which they had to draw and design in accordance with their clients’ bodies’ dimensions, he used to help them. It was as early as then that he started revealing his designer capabilities. He graduated from the ‘Hristo Botev’ construction vocational school. [Editor’s note: Technical schools are dedicated to specialized technical education. There are 3- and 4-year ones. Apart from the common subjects, the educational system includes specialized technical subjects oriented to the respective industrial branch – construction, mechanics, chemistry, electronics, etc. A great part of the students of technical schools continue with a higher technical education.] It was because of these skills that he became a designer and later, a constructor, in a science institute.

He has married twice. His first wife, Valka, was Bulgarian. He has a daughter, Nina, with her. He lived with Valka for ten years before they got divorced. Later he married a colleague of mine, Vanya, a midwife. I introduced them to one another. They liked each other and went to a sweet shop. They got married in 1965. Vanya also has a daughter from her first marriage. The two stepdaughters lived together with Vanya and Fridrich. Vanya actually raised Fridrich’s daughter from his first marriage, who had never lived with her mother. Vanya was a very noble person, yet Fridrich also divorced her due to property arguments.

Zivi was shy, meek, caring and a great housewife. She graduated from the Romanian school [Editor’s note: According to the practice every official religion in the country registered in Sofia after Bulgaria’s Liberation from the Turkish rule in 1878 had the right to support its own school, for example: Armenian church with an Armenian school, Greek church with a Greek school, Catholic church with a Catholic school, etc.]. It was situated behind the Central Synagogue. She was deeply in love with Isak. They went to live with his family a year before they got married.

Isak was a very handsome and ambitious man. His family was poor and as a student he had to both study and work in order to provide for his family. Until the third grade he used to work as a shop assistant and a barber’s assistant. But as ambitious as he was, he finished evening classes and later the Institute of Ecomomics with honor. Finally he became the director of the ‘Stalin’ technical school. Zivi worked for many years as a typist in OJB ‘Shalom’ 10. They have two children: a son, Sabitay and a daughter, Ruth. Isak died in 1981. In 1992 Zivi left for Israel and currently she lives with her daughter.

Apart from my parents, my sisters and brother were also involved in bringing me up. Actually they were the tough ones. They inspected whether my shoes were polished, whether all the buttons were well sewed, whether everything was neatly and tidily put in order. I wasn’t supposed to be late in the evening and had to strictly do everything I was told.

Once a friend of mine took me to a hairdresser. I was 12-13 years old then. When I came home Lili saw me and told me to immediately wash my hair, although I hadn’t even paid for my hairstyle. How strict she was! If I had done everything like I was ordered and supposed to, I was awarded with a small cone of ice-cream; it cost stotinkas [pennies, 1 stotinka = 0.01 lev]. It was my award and it was possible for me to receive it only at the end of the week: on Saturday or Sunday. I often told them that I was going to marry an ice-cream man, because I just love ice-cream, even now.

Fridrich was responsible for the preparation of my lessons. He examined me and checked whether I had learned my lessons. Gizela and Lili worked and all the rest went to school. Thus they supported the family budget. My two sisters dressed very elegantly; after all they worked in a fashion atelier and I wore their clothes. How impatiently I used to wait for Hilda to come home, so that I could wear her coat and go out. I wore all of her clothes with the exception of underwear and shoes, because I had large feet. When I was growing up they used to buy me larger shoes, which often ‘banged.’ Therefore they always made me wear wool socks, in order to fill up the shoes. And Gizela and Lili used to wear silk ones. When the soles tore, we used to cut them and fill them with cardboard and that is how I wore them.

We weren’t poor and we always had something on our table, yet we lived economically. Once a week, Zivi, Hilda and I used to go to the women’s market [one of the first Sofia markets. It was called this way, because its sellers were mostly women from neighboring villages. Other popular markets are: Rimskata Stena [The Roman Wall Market] in Lozenets quarter, as well as ‘Dimitar Petkov’ Market and Pavlovo Market.]. We usually went there late in the afternoon when the sellers lowered the prices. We used to buy meat and sausages from the Dokuzanov butcher’s. We used to buy from the so-called ‘pieces:’ the smaller parts of the big parts, which were cheaper. I would like to mention here that we, the children, didn’t observe the kashrut. Such kind of food was never cooked at home, therefore we felt free to buy meat from Dokuzanov.

At that time in Sofia street-vendors used to sell salep and boza 11. We used to drink salep 12. It was a colorless sweet drink with a very pleasant scent and the thickness of boza, but it was cheaper than boza and we often used to dilute it with water. It was very tasty indeed.

Thanks to the contacts of my two sisters Gizela and Lili, who communicated with the artistic circles, we used to read a lot of fiction books at home. I remember ‘Gone with the Wind’ [by Margaret Mitchell (1900-1949)], and ‘From Heraclitus to Darwin’. I was most interested in the medical books. While the others were playing with dolls I used play ‘doctors and patients.’ I dreamed of healing people.

My parents’ friends were both Jews and Bulgarians. They kept relations with the Jewish community also. A Bulgarian friend of mine, whose name was Victoria, often visited us. She had become part of our family. We used to share everything with each other: we went to the cinema, we studied together, but as soon as we offered her something to eat she always declined the invitation. Only after 9th September [1944] 13 she admitted to us that she had been told that Jews prepared their food with human blood. She felt really sorry about that and about all these missed opportunities to taste our delicious food. My mother used to cook quite well but I can’t say she was a great cook. I don’t remember any of her recipes. The whole family used to gather around the table every evening. At lunchtime we were always busy and we weren’t able to have lunch together.

At that time people visiting your home wasn’t such a common practice as it is now. The most important thing for a housewife was keeping the household and bringing up the children. We were six kids and practically my mother didn’t have any free time at all for meeting with her friends. We used to gather with my maternal family mostly during the high holidays. My mother had two sisters. The elder one, Liza, had four children, and the younger one Erma, had one daughter. Later, during the Holocaust, Erma burned to death in a camp near Pleven [Kailuka camp] 14, set on fire by the Branniks 15, while she was helping to save people.

Liza’s family was richer than ours. Some of her five children had good jobs and earned well. Their family used to live close to us, on Ekzarh Yosif Street. Erma’s family was really well-off. They had a bakery for bread, buns and sweetmeats on Dondukov Street [now Blvd.] and they often used to help us with money and various things. We were closer to aunt Liza’s family and used to walk together in the Borisova Garden [a central Sofia park created by Austrian specialists for Tsar Ferdinand at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century], or used to visit a tripe-shop, and I hate tripe soup.

We didn’t go to restaurants often. Of all siblings Gizela most often visited restaurants, with her friends and admirers. She used to bring home the remains of the large portions. I first went to a restaurant much later with Gizela’s and Lili’s friends, and my two sisters especially warned me not to order too many things. I’ve learned from them that the best meal to order is a portion of kebapcheta.

I used to visit the synagogue on every holiday, but not every Friday. I went with my mother because she was more religious than my father who, being a hatter-trader, used to travel a lot. In the evening or during her spare time she used to read us the Old Testament and told us different biblical stories in a very picturesque way. Tanti [aunt] Liza was religious and on holidays she often visited us with her children. I remember Yom Kippur and the taanit. It was difficult for me to fast, as I was the youngest and I was always tempted to eat something delicious, yet I wouldn’t dare. My mother forbade us and kept an eye on us.

On Pesach we used to move the table from the kitchen to the living-room because there was more space there. Very often at that time Gizela’s friends used to visit us including the Bulgarian ones. They showed great interest in this holiday. They were most interested in matzah, which we used to receive from the Jewish community house or the synagogue for free, as far as I remember. My mother also used to prepare burmolikos 16: crumbled matzah dipped into fresh milk and eggs. This mixture was poured with a spoon in heated oil. My favorite holiday was Chanukkah. I loved the kindling of candles and making a wish. I always wished to become a medical worker and it just happened so.

I must say that our Bulgarian neighbors regularly treated us with Easter cake and eggs on Easter.

Going to school

I studied at a Bulgarian school: the elite 11th secondary school. There were 25-30 students in our class. Five of them were Jews. Our class teacher was called Vassilev. My favorite subjects were Psychology and Logic. I also loved the Religion classes, although we, the Jews, weren’t obliged to take them. Yet I insisted and the teacher allowed me in. It was very interesting for me to listen to various biblical stories from the New Testament.

I remember that my desk neighbor was the cleverest Jewish child at school. His name was Isak. I can’t remember his family name. He wasn’t only clever but also kind and well-bred. So my decision to sit next to him wasn’t accidental. The teachers often praised him, and at such moments some classmates made vicious remarks mentioning his origin. They never showed such negative feelings to the other excellent students, such as Slavka Slavova [Slavova, Slavka (1924-2002): a Bulgarian drama actress, from 1942 till 1992 she performed on the stage of ‘Ivan Vazov’ National Theater], who was among the most exemplary students in our school. Once some Bulgarian pupils even wanted to beat Isak. But how interesting that another Bulgarian student called Hristo interfered and defended him. Maybe he was brought up in this way – to defend the outcasts. But I think that he rather sympathized with the Jews. Later he became a prominent artist. Unfortunately, I can’t remember his family name.

I used to sing in the school choir and often performed on the loudspeaker system. We used to sing a lot of songs, which we performed most often during holidays: ‘Varvi, narode vazrodeni’ [March Ahead, O Revived People] 17, ‘Shumi Maritsa’ [Maritsa Rushes] 18, ‘Chernei, goro’ ['Loom Dark, Forest' - a city folklore song] as well as a bunch of Bulgarian national folk songs.

My relations with the Jewish community were mostly in terms of the Jewish sports organization Maccabi 19. Besides me, its members were 25-30 Jewish boys and girls of different ages. There was a Bulgarian boy in it as well and his name was Lyubcho. ‘Maccabi’ carried out its activities in the gym of the Jewish school on Lavele Street. [In the place of today’s Rila hotel in the center of Sofia, right next to the small church ‘St. Nikolay Chudotvorets’ (Miracle worker) a Jewish school, one of the oldest in Sofia, was situated.] We used to gather two or three times a week in the gym. We were engaged in sports, did Jewish dances; we were brought up in good sportsmanship, and we also went on excursions.

They also supported us materially by means of sports clothes and snacks. Once they gave me money. Very nice relations were encouraged and kept among the Jewish children in Maccabi. I had a lot of friends there: Suzi, Zhak, Lili Yulzari, Sarika, Sheli, with whom I stayed in touch throughout the years. Once a week we used to gather at our houses in turns. Those were overnight stays during which we used to discuss topics from the Jewish history, we sang Jewish songs, I can’t remember which ones, which we learned from the pupils who attended the Jewish school, and we danced.

In our spare time we used to walk in the Borisova Garden with my friends from Maccabi; we also used to go to the cinema. We never spent our vacations outside Sofia and we never went on holiday. We most often went to the cinema. ‘Gloria Palace’ was right opposite our block of apartments. I used to buy tickets in the first row, which were the cheapest ones. I have watched all the movies of Charlie Chaplin. I remember the Soviet films, for example, ‘The Circus Princess.’ [Editor’s note: ‘The Circus Princess’ is an operetta by Hungarian-Jewish composer Emmerich Kálmán (1882-1953). The interviewee is probably referring to the German film adaptation of 1929.] My passion for the cinema lasted until 1942. After that, during the anti-Semitic acts 20, I was afraid to enter the closed room of the cinema hall, because there was no way to escape from it. Thanks to my two elder sisters I used to visit all theater and opera performances for free. I never missed a performance with Gizela’s participation, yet unfortunately it’s hard for me to recall their names.

During the 1940s as young boys and girls, we used to gather in front of the Jewish community house. There were UYW 21 members among them also. In this company I met my big adolescent crush, Rafael Nissimov – Feto. It lasted for four years. After that he got married, but not to me, and later he settled in Israel. At that time he used to live close to the Jewish community house and was an active revolutionary. I fell under his influence and decided to join the UYW. He inspired me to read, to pursue my aims, to be strong.

During the War

In 1942-43 the anti-Semitic acts started and it was then when we put on the badges [yellow stars] 22. I had two long plaits, with which I used to hide my yellow star and thus I walked the streets, and yet it was always visible. Twice Branniks and Legionaries 23 pushed me and pulled my plaits, they didn’t beat me up, but I fell down. The interesting thing was that people immediately came to help. Thrashings often took place in the Borisova Garden, but I always stayed aside.   

I remember that a man told us that ‘Jews would be taken’ and we decided to hide at our closest friends’ place. One night my sister and I went to their house but they didn’t open the door, they hid themselves and we had to return home after the curfew.

My noble mother was keen on helping people. She had a disabled friend, I can’t recall her name, whom she often visited in order to help her with the housework and cooking. She lived in Knyazhevo [a suburb of Sofia]. One day when she was coming back from her friend’s place the police checked her documents and found out that she was a Jew. Yet my mother didn’t wear the [yellow] star then for reasons unknown to me. Therefore she was sent to the Somovit camp 24, where she was kept for eight months.

In May 1942 my sister Hilda and I were interned to Karnobat [a town in Southeastern Bulgaria, 300km from Sofia]. My mother was sent to the labor camp in Somovit. Liza, Zivi, Gizela and her son Alex were sent to Vratsa, while Fridrich was sent to a forced labor camp 24. My father was already in Israel [Palestine at that time].

In Karnobat all Jews were allocated and settled in local Jews’ houses. They were scattered all over the town. We used to inhabit a large house with three other families. Asya and Olya Weisberg were in one of the rooms; Rafael Nissim’s aunt and cousin were in the other room and my sister Hilda and I were in the third. The landlords, also Jews, helped her a lot with furniture and food.

The life in Karnobat was like in a ghetto. There was a curfew and certain streets and places were forbidden for Jews. We didn’t have the right to leave the town. We weren’t allowed to work. We were given food from a cauldron. During the [police] blockade of Karnobat in which outlaws were hunted for, they not only broke into the Jewish houses and sought for people in hiding places but also robbed canteens, rucksacks and clothes.

We used to gather in the small park, where we walked and sang songs, but I can’t remember exactly which ones. I helped the landlords mainly with the household, because we were restricted from walking around. [At that time] I wasn’t a part of a UYW group and I wasn’t engaged in UYW activities.

One day Feto came to visit me and we went out for a walk to some hills. There we came across a man, who said that he knew a lot of things about Feto and me, and that he would give us away to the police. Feto pushed me and said to me, ‘Run.’ I ran down the hills shouting ‘Help, help!’ The two of them fought. In the end the man took Feto’s watch.

After that incident the head of the Jewish organization in Karnobat came to me and told me that I had to leave the town, as I was already rumored to be a dangerous political enemy and that would be of harm for the other Jews in Karnobat. He obtained permission from the town’s police for leaving the town and thus I found myself in Lukovit [Northwestern Bulgaria, 90km from Sofia].

I spent the time from spring 1943 to 9th September 1944 in this town. My mother was already in Lukovit, she was sent there from the Somovit camp, as well as my brother, who had come from the forced labor camps. My mother was accommodated in the priest’s lodging and instead of the rent, which most of the interned Jews were supposed to pay; she took care of him and helped him in the household. Being true to her selflessness and kind-hearted, she helped him with the housework and took care of an ill Jewish woman; I can’t remember her name.

Many rich Jewish families were interned from Stara Zagora [Central Bulgaria, 192km from Sofia] to Lukovit also. They rented more luxurious lodgings, they were elegant and they didn’t want to mingle with the poorer ones, especially if they had found out that those people were leftists or had been arrested or sanctioned by the authorities because of their leftist convictions. Life here was also like in a ghetto. There was a curfew and a ban to cross certain streets or places. We were fed from a cauldron, but a much better one.

I was engaged in a UYW group here. We used to gather at Mutsi’s place: the girlfriend of the well-known revolutionary Moni Dekalo. Her family was rich and this fact dispersed the police suspicions. We used to read books, write and prepare ourselves to spread leaflets, listened to Radio London, we were taught how to use a gun, we collected clothes and rusks and invented ways to send them to our friends detained in the police station.

There was a [Bulgarian Communist] Party group in the town, too. My brother Fridrich was a member of it. I was involved in an underground activity, I hid and distributed leaflets and if I have to be honest, I was always afraid. Once I went out in the yard of the priest’s house in order to fetch some firewood for the stove. Suddenly I saw some kind of light among the trees and I was scared to death. I quickly returned to the priest’s house. Then Priest Nikola accompanied me in order to check the situation and it turned out to be just a firefly. So these are the eyes of fear. Although fear never actually left me, I have never broken the [Communist] Party discipline.

Once I was told to bring some materials, leaflets, to the girlfriend of a [Communist] Party functionary, in order to hide them there. When I went there she refused to take them, because she said she was under surveillance and this could be dangerous for other communists also. So I had to return with the leaflets but I never thought, even for moment, that I might destroy them. I simply knew I had to find a place for them. 

When there was an alarm to hide in the air-raid shelter because of the bombardments, we used to run through some hills. Several Brannik members used to block our way then, but immediately other Bulgarians stopped them telling them that all people, no matter if Bulgarians or Jews, had the right to hide in the shelters.

In Lukovit I was arrested. Firstly Moni Dekalo was arrested and as he didn’t want to betray the more superior comrades, he gave us away, the smaller fish. I was sought for several days. When the police examined the lodging I was accommodated at, they couldn’t find me. My mother hid me for several days in the place of the ill woman she was helping, but I couldn’t stay there for a long time, so I had to come back home and I was arrested at my place. When the policemen were taking me away, she only told me, ‘God will help you. Put on warm clothes, so that when they beat you, you will be able to survive the pain.’

I was arrested and they led me under an escort in the streets. The whole town of Lukovit saw me, including the priest. I was confronted with Moni Dekalo. When they brought him in he was covered with blood. He only said that everything was disclosed. But in the corridors of the police station I passed by my brother and another comrade of his, who gestured with his hand to keep quiet. I was beaten up but not the way they had beaten my brother, for example. I was detained for two days. I didn’t say anything.

On the second day the priest came in order to intercede for me. He couldn’t believe that the girl with the plaits was involved in underground activities. Priest Nikola was a reputable man in Lukovit and thanks to him I was set free on the second day. Yet soon after that he realized that it wasn’t a slander and that my brother and I were involved in underground activities indeed and he threw us out in the street with all our luggage. His daughters begged him to leave us, yet he was adamant. He couldn’t cope with the thought that he was hiding communists. One of his daughters helped us find a room in the house of a gendarme. It was with an earth floor, isolated from the other parts of the house. We paid minimum rent and took care of the garden in the yard. I had to look for a job and found one in a bookshop. I was a typesetter.

The bookseller-owner was called Pencho Vlahov. His wife was German and her name was Ani. One day while I was at work the agent who had arrested me entered the bookshop. I immediately recognized him because his face was covered with pockmarks. The bookseller had told me to go and fetch something. There were a lot of people in the bookshop. I can only imagine how I looked when I came back after I had seen the agent. Pencho noticed my reaction yet he deliberately didn’t pay attention to it. He knew that I had been taken into custody for two days. The whole town of Lukovit knew. Of course, it was a great worry for my mother, but she also shared my leftist ideas without being a [Communist] Party member. She always supported me and calmed me down.

At that time my sister Zivi gave birth in Vratsa. My mother asked for permission from the police to go there and see her grandchild. I was afraid to stay alone and asked the bookseller Pencho to shelter me in his house. In return I would help raising his two children, as well as in keeping the household. I was accommodated in a closet.

One evening I heard a strong drumming on the door. I thought they were coming to arrest me again. I kept some leaflets in the closet. While all the rest were in the other room I hid the leaflets under the wardrobe in the bedroom. They weren’t coming for me. They just asked the bookseller to borrow his car, as they wanted to meet some boss. He refused, telling them that the tyres were punctured. The next day the family saw the leaflets. The German asked me to clean all the rooms and she went out with her two children so that I would be able to hide the leaflets again. And yet, she was German!

After the War

After the war we came back to Sofia. We rented a new lodging on Moskovska Street and 11th August Street. First we were given one room 26. All of us were accommodated in it: my mother, Fridrich, Hilda, Lili and I. Zivi had already married and she stayed with her husband. Gizela and her husband also rented a house somewhere but I can’t remember where. Nothing had remained from our belongings. We began collecting old furniture from our friends: Jews and Bulgarians, which they presented to us. We had a landlady. She was quite unmanageable and she didn’t behave very well. But not because we were Jews but because of her temper. Her daughter was very kind to us.

Life had a new beginning. I decided to make my dream come true: to cure and take care of people. I enrolled into nursing classes. My family wanted me to become a doctor yet this seemed very difficult for me. In the medical vocational school, where I graduated from, I made many new friends. I had a colleague, very beautiful, from the village of Buzovets [Northwestern Bulgaria, 107 km from Sofia]. She introduced me to my future husband, who was born in the same village. She decided to take me for a holiday there. For the first time in my life I not only visited a village but traveled in a certain direction. In order to reach the place I had to change trains. When I entered the railway station I didn’t know how to ask for the tickets. Otherwise the holiday in the village was a very merry one. We danced various dances and horo [Bulgarian national folk dance], we sang, we ate and we laughed. My future husband Yoncho Lazarov was also present there. This experience made our relationship even closer and more spontaneous.

My husband was born on 1st November 1920. His father was a disabled soldier, but his entire family: father, mother, brother and sister used to work in the TKZS 26. His family is of Bulgarian origin and with leftist convictions. During the anti-fascist struggle Yoncho was in prison in Sliven [Southeast Bulgaria, 246km South of Sofia]. After 9th September [1944] he was already a [Communist] Party member. He had already finished his studies in veterinary medicine; nevertheless he received an order by the Bulgarian Communist Party [BCP] to make a military career, because of the insufficient military personnel in the army.

We got married in April 1948. My parents, i.e. my mother and my sisters were a little prejudiced against my marriage, because Yoncho was of Bulgarian origin and was a military man, which meant a lot of traveling. None of my or his relatives was present at our wedding, which took place in the Civic Council. We only took our passports and we went there. Some military men, colleagues of my husband, were witnesses to our wedding. After the ceremony they invited us to lunch.

Afterward all of us lived in our apartment on Moskovska Street. My mother quickly ‘fell in love’ with her new son-in-law. They got along very well. Later she raised both my children. When we were in Sofia she used to live with us. And when we were on a trip to the countryside, as Yoncho often traveled, she stayed at my sisters’ and brother’s.

When we lived on Moskovska Street we were given one more room, something like a living room with a sliding glass door. In 1948 our first child, Orlin, was born. We still lived on Moskovska, but we filed an application for another home. Then we were given an apartment on Vrabcha Street. Then we had to leave for Razgrad [Northeastern Bulgaria, 277km from Sofia] because of Yoncho’s job, where our second child, Vanya, was born in 1952. After that we went to Kabiyuka: an elite horse breeding company in Shumen [Northeastern Bulgaria, 301km from Sofia]. Yoncho was invited as a head doctor there. There he learned that there was a competition for a scientific degree at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. He enrolled in it and passed the test, so we came back to Sofia again. He worked there until his retirement and now he’s a Professor in Physiology.

After I graduated from the medical vocational school I worked as a nurse in the Fourth City Surgery. I started there and retired there. In 1954 I became a member of the Bulgarian Communist Party. There was a call at that time for the former UYW members to become BCP members. I used to be a BCP functionary and a deputy BCP secretary at the hospital. I was also the chairwoman of the Democratic Youth Committee. I have never had any problems because of my Jewish origin at my workplace. On the contrary, I was much respected for it.

After we began living separately from our children we used to spend our vacations and holidays in the mountain and at the sea at holiday villages. We celebrated all holidays: the Bulgarian, Christmas and Easter, and the Jewish ones. I buried my mother in the Jewish cemetery [in Sofia] in 1971 in accordance with the Jewish ritual. While my mother-in-law was buried in accordance with the Bulgarian traditions.

Our children were both raised with Jewish awareness, which means that they know facts from the Jewish people’s history and they know some of the Jewish traditions, and a Bulgarian one. Orlin graduated from the ‘Hristo Botev’ radio and television vocational school. He used to work in the Isotope Center. Today he owns a copier service company. He married a Bulgarian. Her name is Kalina Andonova. They have three children: Orlin, Toni and Yoncho, and a granddaughter, Ela. They live in Sofia.

My daughter Vanya also married a Bulgarian. His name is Emil Kostov. He is a roentgenologist. After graduating from a medical college, Vanya worked for a while as a laboratory assistant in the Institute for Infectious and Parasitic Diseases. Currently she lives in Angola with her family. They have two children, Andrea and Katerina, and a granddaughter, Alicia.

The Jewish self-identification is less revealed in our grandchildren. We did invite them to Jewish holidays, but they celebrate Christmas and Easter in their own environment. Whether my kids and grandkids feel like Jews or not, they have always participated in various initiatives of the Jewish community center.

I visited Israel three times: in 1961, 1966 and 1989. I went to see my relatives there. I have never had difficulties as far as Bulgarian state authorities are concerned in terms of my trips to Israel. Nor did I want to emigrate there, because my husband is a Bulgarian. Moreover Ivrit is a difficult language for me. Yet being there has always been very pleasant for me. I took to heart the Six-Day-War 28 and every event in Israel; moreover the official political line of the government here was anti-Israeli. Yet, politics is politics. The most interesting thing is that my husband supported me and suffered with me through everything that happened in Israel.

After 1989 29 we embraced the desire for democratic changes as something positive. But in the course of time I started feeling more and more embarrassed about this confrontation between socialists and rightists. Apart from the fact that our life is getting worse. I don’t approve the extremist acts such as setting fire to the Communist Party House and the Parliament 30.

As a whole our daily life became harder. Once we could allow ourselves to go on vacation, now it’s completely impossible due to financial reasons. When Yoncho used to work in the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences 31 we used to get together with his colleagues, no matter if Bulgarian or Jewish. Now we are leading a rather isolated life. Yoncho writes his books and scientific works, while I am engaged in the Jewish community center. I managed to incorporate him into the Jewish community, as a result of which he became more sociable and sort of came out of his private world.

I’m glad that the Jewish home [Bet Am] 32 revived its activities and raised the Jewish conscience to a higher level. I regularly attend the events there. What’s more, I actively participate in the life of the Jewish community, as I’m involved in all the events of the Health Club, which I’m a member of, as well as the Club of the disabled people. [The Club of disabled people gathers once a month in order for them to socialize with each other. They are informed about all changes in the social sphere and the Bulgarian legislation, which are focused on people with different levels of disability. With the support of this club Jews are able to visit sanatoriums once a year. All the expenses for their stay are being covered by the organization.] I visit the synagogue during holidays. I’m grateful for the compensations I received from Switzerland and Germany, as well as for the support of the Joint foundation 33.

Glossary