At the time of the political and social changes in Bulgaria, I was already retired. I retired in 1985 and so did my wife. But after that I worked for one more year. Our pensions were neither small, nor big. But they were enough so that we could afford to go on holiday twice a year. Usually in the fall we went to the seaside in Varna, and in spring we went to the mountains in Bansko. But now the situation is different. We have very little money, and despite the help of our grandson, we can’t afford to go on holiday even once a year.
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Displaying 20611 - 20640 of 50826 results
Mayer Rafael Alhalel
At first, when the changes in the former socialist countries were introduced, after 10th November 1989, all Bulgarian Jews reacted very positively, although most of us were communists. I think it happened so, because it was obvious that the country needed some change for its development. By the way, those changes were started at the July Plenary Session [of the Bulgarian Communist Party] in the 1980s. We felt them even then, although nothing significant happened at that time. The important thing is that at the beginning of the changes we felt that they would bring greater freedom in Bulgaria. For example, we, the people in the printing business, felt the censorship and the fear. Naturally, we wanted that to change. I remember that censorship was covert, not open at that time. The journalists in Vidin regularly wrote lofty, enthusiastic, positive articles regardless of their subject. In order words, they were afraid to criticize, they didn’t want to be reproached or fired for their words. That situation grew quite intense before the changes and the people clearly realized that we all needed greater freedom. But the changes didn’t bring real freedom. In fact, after 10th November we received freedom of press, but everything else remained censored.
The totalitarian times weren’t dark times, although young people nowadays are raised to believe so. I remember that I felt good and respected. We lived a normal life.
I have been to Israel three times. The first two times were before 10th November 1989 [28]. The first time was in 1964, the second time in 1973 and the third time in 1993. The first two times I was with my wife and the last time I was alone. Of course, I noticed the big difference between the early and late Israel, I liked it there more and more each time. But that doesn’t mean that I have something against Bulgaria, to the contrary.
I have two children, whom I love very much. The elder one, Streya [Mayer Puncheva], was born in 1949. She graduated from the Chemical Technical School in Vidin. She has been working as a chemist in the local meat processing plant for a number of years. My younger daughter Sheli was born in 1954 and is a construction engineer. Unfortunately, she doesn’t have children. But I have grandchildren from Streya, who also worked for a long time in the municipality in Vidin. Her children are Lyubomir Punchev and Yanita Slavcheva [nee Puncheva]. Yanita now lives in a kibbutz. She has a daughter, Viara [nee Slavcheva]. She has a family in Northern Israel. My grandson Lyubomir, who is the director of Bulbank in Sofia, also has children. They are Konstantin Punchev and Mihaela Puncheva.
My wife also had a job. She was an accountant in a meat processing plant and in a construction company in Vidin. In fact, she retired from those two positions.
In Vidin my mother was still working as a seamstress and my father was still in the mill working as scales operator: he weighed the corn on the scales. So, we were financially stable. I had to work for one year as a supervisor in the printing house: I was in charge of a group of workers, some of whom were even better at the job than me. Soon after that the printing house was nationalized. I, personally, was never able to understand that part of the legislation of Bulgaria. I mean that not everyone was convinced that such nationalization was necessary. I think that only the big companies should have been nationalized, but the small private ones should have been left to function. To enter the workshop and take the instruments of a tailor or a shoemaker is just not acceptable, in my opinion. I don’t understand that.
In Vidin my mother was still working as a seamstress and my father was still in the mill working as scales operator: he weighed the corn on the scales. So, we were financially stable. I had to work for one year as a supervisor in the printing house: I was in charge of a group of workers, some of whom were even better at the job than me. Soon after that the printing house was nationalized. I, personally, was never able to understand that part of the legislation of Bulgaria. I mean that not everyone was convinced that such nationalization was necessary. I think that only the big companies should have been nationalized, but the small private ones should have been left to function. To enter the workshop and take the instruments of a tailor or a shoemaker is just not acceptable, in my opinion. I don’t understand that.
To be honest, there was a moment when we thought about going to Israel too. But our parents, hers and mine, didn’t want to immigrate, because of old age. Yet, there were many Jews older than them, who had left Bulgaria for Israel. I didn’t have any financial problems.
I married my wife Gitli Alhalel on 9th July 1949 in Cherven Bryag. Before that we lived together for a year. We got married before the registrar on a working day. We didn’t wear any wedding attire, because we couldn’t afford it yet. After our wedding we returned to Vidin, where we looked after our parents.
I became a member of the Bulgarian Communist Party [26] in 1950.
Immediately after that I was elected chairman of the Komsomol there. Later, I became chairman of the Party Committee. I was also head of the organizational department. After that I was chairman of the Fatherland Front [27]. Then I was appointed representative of the Central Council of the Trade Unions. Those were very prestigious positions, which earned me the respect of my fellow citizens and provided a peaceful life. Besides, my family was financially well-off, which isn’t to be underestimated. But the most important thing for me was the respect of my fellow Bulgarians. During the whole totalitarian period and especially when I lived in Cherven Bryag, I was always treated with much respect and warmth. I have never had problems because of my origin. There were no other Jews in Cherven Bryag but me. I returned to Vidin in 1949.
Immediately after that I was elected chairman of the Komsomol there. Later, I became chairman of the Party Committee. I was also head of the organizational department. After that I was chairman of the Fatherland Front [27]. Then I was appointed representative of the Central Council of the Trade Unions. Those were very prestigious positions, which earned me the respect of my fellow citizens and provided a peaceful life. Besides, my family was financially well-off, which isn’t to be underestimated. But the most important thing for me was the respect of my fellow Bulgarians. During the whole totalitarian period and especially when I lived in Cherven Bryag, I was always treated with much respect and warmth. I have never had problems because of my origin. There were no other Jews in Cherven Bryag but me. I returned to Vidin in 1949.
I didn’t immigrate to Israel for a number of reasons. Firstly, as I already said, I had to stay in Cherven Bryag after my escape from the camp to help my sister in her work, because her husband was an ailing man. He had his own factory for paper products and I could be useful to him as a printer. I lived and worked for them from 1944 until 1949, when my sister immigrated to Ramat Gan in Israel. She asked me to go with her, but now I had another reason to stay in Bulgaria. When I settled in Cherven Bryag, I was immediately made a member of the local UYW organization, where I gladly took part in their social activities. Naturally, I soon joined the Party [the Communist Party, who took the power in the former kingdom of Bulgaria after 9th September 1944].
I’m convinced that the Bulgarian Jews are alive now because of the Bulgarian people and the Soviet army, who entered Bulgaria in September 1944. It’s interesting to note that as young Bulgarians, we welcomed the Soviet troops in Cherven Bryag. That happened shortly after my escape from the last camp, when I stayed with my sister in Cherven Bryag. I remember clearly that everything happened spontaneously. There were no groups organizing demonstrations like nowadays. All the young people just went to the station and stopped the trains with Russian troops coming from Ruse for a while. I was in a group of young people who stood at the station waiting for the trains all the time. When we heard that a train with Russian troops was coming, we would run to meet them. The locals also ran with us. I must note that those were the hungry post-war years. Yet, everyone was carrying bread with cheese to give to the soldiers. Although their trains stopped at the station for 15-20 minutes only, we were very happy to see them and welcomed them as liberators.
The idea was for the truck to drive us from Lovech to Pleven. But it so happened that the truck transported us to Pleven on 8th September 1944, right in front of the prison, just when the political prisoners were being freed. Then our Vidin group decided that we all should go to Vidin and only I should stay in Cherven Bryag. My sister Lea was married in Cherven Bryag. Her husband’s name was Yosef Helfon. I had to stay at their place, because the military command was in Pleven and I could go there if we needed some documents legalizing the release of those of us who had escaped. Marko Primov returned to Vidin with the group. Also in that group were my friends Haim Paparo, Isak Benaroy and some of my other classmates. We all studied in the same class in the only high school in Vidin at that time: ‘Tsar Simeon Veliki’ [Tsar Simeon the Great]. So, we had been together since childhood. We had also been sent to the same labor camps, so we had always been friends. We equally shared all the food and clothes we had received from our relatives.
Those of us who escaped went first to the village of Sokolovo, which was near the camp. We weren’t afraid of getting caught, so we weren’t hiding, and we didn’t move only at night. We hired five to six men with carts to drive us through the mountain roads to Lovech. We paid them with the money we had collected, which had been sent to us by our relatives. The food in the camp was never enough and we had to buy more food from the people in the nearby villages. We usually bought hominy, potatoes and cheese. Thanks to some of those villagers, who sold us food, we received news on the political changes in the country. We moved fast across the forest and reached Lovech. From there we couldn’t get on a train so we hired a truck to get us to places close to our hometowns. I personally wanted to go back to Vidin.
Around 29th August, all of us, around 300 laborers, already felt that our freedom was approaching. In other words we anticipated the coming of 9th September 1944. And that feeling strengthened when we saw the German troops withdrawing from Bulgaria along the road near our camp. They were going to Yugoslavia to take part in the fighting there. When we saw them, we stopped working right away. What’s more, a group of 30-40 people, mostly from Vidin, decided to escape from the labor camp. We were Jews, members of UYW, from various cities: Sofia, Plovdiv, Vidin, Ruse, Pleven, etc. From them I remember my friend Marko Primov, Simcho Kohenov, also from Vidin, but I don’t remember any other names. At that time I wasn’t a UYW member yet, but I was a follower of their ideas, unlike Marko Primov, who was a member.
Later on, the military police came and surrounded the camp and appointed another supervisor, who was much more liberal than the previous one. But before that took place, since we slept in tents made of canvas, 100 people in each, we tore the canvas of two tents to pieces and gave it to the partisans to make their own tents. There was a poet among them, Tsvetan Spassov. He wrote poems and songs, which we all sang. A famous poem of his was: ‘Polyubi narodat poroben i pazi zaveta velik – da doide pri nazi voinik’ [Our enslaved people love and keep the great message – may our soldier come]. We often sang that song, even in the camps. When the partisans from the Lovech squad came and went, they also sang that song.
I remember 23rd August 1944 clearly, because it was just before my escape from the last labor camp. On that day partisans from the Lovech squad ‘Vasil Levski’ [25] came to our camp. I knew some of them, who were from Lovech, like my cousin Albert Vaida. He died in the first stage [of the Bulgarian participation] of World War II, in Stracin [today Macedonia], as a political dissident. We met the partisans and gave them our food. We had a very evil and cruel supervisor, whom we complained about to the partisans. They sentenced him to death immediately. At that time the partisan squad had its own jury. They shot him. But 9th September 1944 was approaching and our stay in the camp was becoming just a formality. So, all the people from the camp and the partisans held a meeting, at which some of us decided to escape.
I will never forget the performance organized by some of the Jews in the labor camps during the breaks from our hard physical labor. In one of the three camps I had been to, I don’t remember which one, a number of men performed the operetta ‘The Beautiful Helen’ [by Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880)]. That was a great event for the camp. In fact there were five to six camps working in the same area and located next to each other, but were divided into groups. I was in group five, which was the last one. There were Jewish musicians among us: violinists, accordionists, singers, etc. I only remember one name: Bitsko Eliezer. In the other groups there were also some Jewish musicians. Sometimes they would gather near one of the camps and perform something like a concert. Our camps were about two or three kilometers away from each other.
Once, the musicians in the labor camp gathered near the third camp and started rehearsing the operetta ‘The Beautiful Helen’ in front of the supervisors, who didn’t object. After all it was our free time. Their conductor was Bitsko Eliezer. Some of the men played the female parts in the performance: Helen, Venus, etc. They made an improvised stage with canvas, poles, trees, and used cloths as props, made some costumes from their working shirts and acted out a very nice and funny performance. And we, the public, the laborers from the five camps watched from a hill a bit above them. Below us was the orchestra, which included an accordionist, violinists, trumpeters, etc. It was magnificent. I must admit that there were some very good singers among the laborers. The future famous artist of Israel Bitush Davidov [23] was also among them. All I know about this very talented Vidin singer and artist of Jewish origin is that he immigrated to Israel during the Mass Aliyah in 1948 and became one of the most famous Israeli artists there. Their interpretation of ‘The Beautiful Helen’ was a bit like a parody, but it was performed professionally and in Bulgarian, the way it was performed by musicians in the Stephan Makedonski [24] State Musical Theater in the capital. We had a great time that evening. Then we returned to the camps in a formation together with the supervisors who made sure that no one would escape.
Once, the musicians in the labor camp gathered near the third camp and started rehearsing the operetta ‘The Beautiful Helen’ in front of the supervisors, who didn’t object. After all it was our free time. Their conductor was Bitsko Eliezer. Some of the men played the female parts in the performance: Helen, Venus, etc. They made an improvised stage with canvas, poles, trees, and used cloths as props, made some costumes from their working shirts and acted out a very nice and funny performance. And we, the public, the laborers from the five camps watched from a hill a bit above them. Below us was the orchestra, which included an accordionist, violinists, trumpeters, etc. It was magnificent. I must admit that there were some very good singers among the laborers. The future famous artist of Israel Bitush Davidov [23] was also among them. All I know about this very talented Vidin singer and artist of Jewish origin is that he immigrated to Israel during the Mass Aliyah in 1948 and became one of the most famous Israeli artists there. Their interpretation of ‘The Beautiful Helen’ was a bit like a parody, but it was performed professionally and in Bulgarian, the way it was performed by musicians in the Stephan Makedonski [24] State Musical Theater in the capital. We had a great time that evening. Then we returned to the camps in a formation together with the supervisors who made sure that no one would escape.
In summer 1942 we were given five to six days of leave to visit out families.
During that time the camp was moved from Sveti Vrach to the nearby village called Belitsa. Many of us were absent and there weren’t enough Jews to carry the baggage of the others as well as the common tents. So, our ‘rude’ supervisor also helped them move the camp. Naturally, at that time his action was more than strange and unforgivable. His chiefs started suspecting him and fired him. He had incidentally revealed his sympathies towards us. That was the end of our holiday. It was only after 9th September that we learnt that our strict supervisor was also a UYW member, just like us. But he became a supervisor in a Jewish labor camp, because he was very poor and needed the money.
During that time the camp was moved from Sveti Vrach to the nearby village called Belitsa. Many of us were absent and there weren’t enough Jews to carry the baggage of the others as well as the common tents. So, our ‘rude’ supervisor also helped them move the camp. Naturally, at that time his action was more than strange and unforgivable. His chiefs started suspecting him and fired him. He had incidentally revealed his sympathies towards us. That was the end of our holiday. It was only after 9th September that we learnt that our strict supervisor was also a UYW member, just like us. But he became a supervisor in a Jewish labor camp, because he was very poor and needed the money.
So now we worked very slowly and leisurely at the big excavation site because no one from the outside could see what we were doing. When one of us noticed that the head of our supervisor was approaching, he would make a signal and we would all start working very hard, while our supervisor started swearing at us and calling us names. When his boss would leave, we would stop working and start playing belote with the supervisor.
I remember that we were around 300-400 people in the first and second camp. We were divided into groups: a Vidin one, a Vratsa one and a more general one including workers of Jewish origin born in Northwest Bulgaria. Of course, each group had its platoon commander, something like a supervisor. Our group, the Vidin one, had a very vicious and cruel supervisor. In the first days of spring 1942, he humiliated us a lot: he hit us, shouted at us, swore at us, called us anti-Semitic names like ‘chifuti’ [22]. He always punished someone who had stolen the bread of a fellow worker. The psychological attack discontinued after a month. We worked there for around ten months. He made us sweat our guts out, we were his slaves. We had to haul 15 wagons of stones from the excavation site we were digging. It was only after we made it so deep that we couldn’t be seen from outside when the strange supervisor gathered us all and said, ‘Guys, the sweating was up to here. I trust you now. From now on I will protect you and you will protect me.
During the Law for the Protection of the Nation I was also sent to Jewish labor camps. I was forced to go to three camps, in which I worked, with some short breaks, more than 20 months in all. Firstly, I worked in the village of Zhelezartsi near the town of Strazhitsa. Then I was sent to a camp near the town of Sveti Vrach. Lastly, I was sent to a third camp near the village of Mikre, Lovech region. I escaped from there on 7th or 8th September 1944.
One night, when the whole family was in the house and I had just returned from one of my labor camps [see Forced labor camps in Bulgaria] [21], I don’t remember which one, and we had just fallen asleep, suddenly there was a knock on the door. I was 18 or 20 at that time and went to see who that was which was very foolish of me. When I went outside the house, I saw a German soldier holding a knife. He was drunk. He asked me in German: ‘Jude? Jude?’ That is, if Jews lived here. I started shouting at him and he raised the knife to stab me. But I was strong then and very fit from my work in the printing house before the Holocaust. So, I caught him and took away his knife. I remember that I was wearing a gold ring on my right hand, a present from my mother. I had squeezed the drunk German so hard that the ring stuck deeply into the flesh of my finger. The German ran away, but I immediately went to Dimitar. He was an influential man and lived next to us. I woke him and his children up at 2am. He immediately sent his son to the police station. The police came and took away the German who was still wandering in Kaleto. The story had a happy ending, but it could have been much worse.
During the Holocaust the Bulgarians always helped us, although our closest neighbor was a fascist. His name was Dimitar Chomorev. He had a son and a daughter. His wife had died. Dimitar Chomorev believed in Hitler’s ideas. His son was an admirer of English culture. His daughter was a Legionnaire. But we respected each other as neighbors. We always helped each other, and we never discussed our different ideologies. During the Law for the Protection of the Nation in 1942, the radio sets owned by Jews were confiscated and the others in the town sealed. We would invite Dimitar and the other neighbors to play tablanet [a card game] at home, while a Jewish boy, interned from Sofia to Vidin [see Internment of Jews in Bulgaria] [17], and I went to Dimitar’s home to listen to the news on the radio. His radio hadn’t been confiscated or sealed because he worked in the police force.
During the Law for the Protection of the Nation police officer Savov lived in Kaleto. He was killed either by the partisans or by the People’s Court, I don’t remember by whom, after 9th September 1944. Another police officer, Gromkov, who also lived in Kaleto, was killed in Dimovo. In fact, the people who were most cruel to us during the Holocaust were just simple-minded people. There was a tailor, who made me a great fur coat, and his mother was a police informer. She did nothing against us. I remember some people who were from ‘Social Power’ [pro-fascist organization during the Law for the Protection of the Nation]. They helped the police, and came to the Jewish neighborhood: they were informers, but they didn’t treat us badly. Their head was Shotilov. In the evening, they walked along the Jewish streets to check if anybody was outside after the curfew.
Between 12,000 and 13,000 Bulgarians, Turks, Wallachians, Armenians and Jews [see Bulgarian Minorities] [15], all lived in Vidin. Each of those had their own neighborhood. The Jews were only 1,200 and lived in the Jewish neighborhood Kaleto [‘kale’ means fortress in Turkish and ‘to’ is the Bulgarian definite article, so it means ‘the fortress’]. In the past Kaleto had been surrounded by a ditch and that was the whole town. But at the beginning of the 20th century, the town expanded and only Jews remained in Kaleto. During the Law for the Protection of the Nation [16] it was turned into a Jewish ghetto. That’s why only a few Bulgarians lived there and we got along well with them. During the Holocaust Colonel Marko Borandjiev, the head of the Vidin garrison, lived here. He was also nice to us. His daughter was a classmate of ours. Although she was a Legionnaire, she sympathized with us. I don’t know why, probably because of the social environment here, which is friendly to minorities.
Bulgaria
We observed the kashrut, because my parents were religious. We also followed the traditions during the Jewish holidays. We didn’t go to the synagogue often, only on holidays and sometimes on Sabbath. My maternal grandfather took me to the synagogue on Sabbath. When I grew up, we went there more rarely.
Friday was the typical market day in Vidin, though, in fact, every day was a market day here. No servants were hired at our market, although in other Bulgarian towns they were. I remember that we also had a maid for a short time, because my mother was a seamstress and didn’t have much free time for anything else. We hired some village girl. She helped mostly with the cleaning. My mother always did the cooking.
I have always worked as a polygraphic printer. That was my first and last job. My uncle, the younger brother of my father, had his own printing house in Vidin. He took me as a child to learn the craft. At that time I was a student at the Vidin high school and I needed the money for the fees, which wasn’t little for those times. It didn’t matter if you had good grades or not. If you studied in high school, no matter how poor you were, you had to pay a fee. After 9th September 1944 the situation changed. That is why I had to work for my uncle.
I remember an anti-Semitic case from my school. I had a friend, a Bulgarian, his name was Tsanko Urmanov, and his family was rich. He had a Jewish girlfriend. One evening, I went out with him and my best friend Haim Paparo for a walk. Haim’s grandfather was a rabbi in our synagogue. Haim and I were neighbors and we often went for a walk together. That evening a Legionnaire approached Haim and I, and ordered us to make the sign of the cross. Tsanko defended us and they started a fight. In the end the Legionnaire ran away, because Tsanko was a big boy. The next evening the three of us went for a walk again and Tsanko opened his coat and said, ‘Look at what I bought today!’ And he showed us a dagger. He said, ‘If someone tries to threaten you again, I’ll kill him, I won’t think twice!
I loved mathematics, history, geography and literature. I was a great fan of Meyne Reid, Jack London, Jules Verne, Gorky [12] and Marxist literature. I also love classical music, especially the Italian and Russian composers: Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Borodin, Khachiturian, Shostakovich, and Prokofiev. We were five Jews and 20 Bulgarians in our class. But we were very united. This was probably because most of us were UYW [13] members and we shared the same ideology. There were some Legionaries [see Bulgarian Legions] [14] in our class, but they were isolated from the rest. At that time we had to choose a class board. I was usually elected the chairman of the board: probably because I was an active UYW member.