Roza Kamhi

This is a photograph of me after the war. It must have been after the war because I don't have any pictures of myself before the war. But I cannot recall when or where this was taken. During the war i was a political prisoner. Eventually the Party made contact with the head of the prison. Since it was already the end of the war, Bulgaria had already capitulated, they said, 'if you do not release the political prisoners - there were three large cells of male political prisoners and one female cell - you will be killed.' And they released us, only the political prisoners; the criminals remained. We went straight to the partisans to Podmocani where we were given orders. I was instructed to stay in this place to work with women on behalf of the Party. Some went to the army, to partisans. I was in this place for almost a year, until the final liberation of Macedonia. I went to visit different villages to talk to women. We helped them organize and prepare for the new government. We visited women and told them they had to give food for partisans. I was in the Communist Party's Regional Committee. We worked for the Party then. That area had 20-30 villages. There were Albanian villages so we went with a woman who knew Albanian. This was political work. I didn't go home before going to Podmocani. We didn't think about our homes, only about the war ending, to work, to prepare food and everything that was necessary for the army. For a very long time I didn't know what happened to my family. All the time I thought that someone would come back. I couldn't fathom that they had killed everyone. I cannot say the exact date when I learned what had happened. But all the time I thought that someone would return. Even when I was in Skopje - I got work there afterwards - I thought that someone would appear. Only later did I learn that all the Jews had been killed in Treblinka. Maybe a year later. Before that I hadn't heard of Treblinka. I had heard about the camps but I didn't know that all of our people had been taken to Treblinka. This we learned slowly.