I remember that in the Jewish school we were taught Ivrit by Haim Levi from Vidin. At first we read fairy tales in Ivrit and then we learned both Ivrit and the Torah at the same time: we learnt how Ivrit was used in the Torah.
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Displaying 20641 - 20670 of 50826 results
Mayer Rafael Alhalel
I wasn’t a member of Hashomer Hatzair [in Bulgaria] [10] although I had friends there. I was a member of a strong Zionist organization for older children for some time. Its name was Betar [11]. In fact, all my friends were also members.
My two paternal aunts Sara and Buka were seamstresses: they were sewing some of the most fashionable clothes in the town. They dressed the high society in Vidin, especially for holidays or occasions such as baptisms. The most distinguished women from the local aristocracy were their clients, including some of the richest Jewish families: Arueti, Pinkas and Arie, and some Bulgarian families whom I don’t remember. Since we were a Danubian town, our fashion was strongly influenced by Vienna.
My mother had two brothers and four sisters. Their names were Rahamim, Yosef, Duda, Rashel, Sara and Roza. They were seven children altogether. All, except my parents moved to Israel during the Mass Aliyah [4] and passed away there.
My grandfather was a confectioner. He had a confectionery in Kaleto, the old Jewish residential district in Vidin. He owned the confectionery and sold ice-cream and Jewish sweets made by Grandmother Mazal, such as masapan [made of sugar and almonds] and burmolikos [see Burmoelos] [3]. For Pesach she made biskuchicos con lokum [Ladino: pastries with Turkish delight], roskitas [Ladino: ring-shaped buns], petikas de almendra [Ladino: almond sweets], which we loved a lot.
As far as I know, my mother’s parents were of Romanian origin. Honestly, I don’t know why they settled in Vidin at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century. All I know is that at that time Jews were looking for a better place to earn their living. My maternal grandparents were neither rich, nor poor. My maternal grandfather’s name was Naftali Pinkas, and that of my maternal grandmother was Mazal Pinkas. I don’t remember them well either.
My ancestors came from Spain [see Expulsion of the Jews from Spain] [1]. They were Sephardi Jews [2] persecuted by the Inquisition five centuries ago. They spoke Ladino. My paternal kin came from Silistra. Unfortunately, I don’t remember my father’s parents. My grandfather’s name was Mayer Rafael Alhalel, and my grandmother was Lia Rafael Alhalel. I know nothing about their personalities, habits or how they dressed, and neither do I have any photos.
In our free time we played games: mostly hide-and-seek and tip-cat. Tip-cat was played in the following way: you used a big board to hit the raised corner of a smaller one, which flew away and we measured that distance by steps. The person who sent the smaller board the furthest, won. At that time I was already a member of Maccabi [World Union] [8]. In Maccabi we had our own sports hall with a vaulting horse, hoops, a beam, etc. which was close to the Jewish school near the Baba Vida Fortress [9] in Kaleto. The school doesn’t exist any more.
I remember that when I was a child I would take a hen from home to the synagogue for the rabbi to slaughter. We called the rabbi Avramiko. He was both a rabbi and a shochet. Like most of my friends I studied both in junior high school and high school: Marko Primov, Haim Paparo, Jacques Kohen, Isak Benaroy, and Avram Levi. Rabbi Avramiko had the following habit: when he received money from memorial services or weddings, he gathered us and took us to a confectionery.
I was born in 1924 in Vidin. I spent my childhood, and I grew old, here in Kaleto. My family lived in a small Turkish-style adobe house: made of straw and mud. My parents’ houses were the same. They were next to each other. Grandmother Mazal also lived in the house I was born in and where we lived. It had two rooms and a yard. After all, we weren’t very rich, but we didn’t complain about that.
After 9th September 1944 [6] my father was hardly able to retire. It turned out that Moreno Pinkas had lied to my father for 30 years that he had been paying the social security benefits for my father’s pension. When my father had to retire in 1950, I was the chairman of the District Committee of the Komsomol [7]. I did my best to help him, but all I could arrange for him was to receive half his pension on the basis of the number of years he had worked after 9th September, while in fact, he had 50 years of working experience. Initially, only twelve of his working years were officially recognized. My father received such a meager pension that it was only enough for cigarettes. He had worked so hard. When his employer died, I refused to go to his funeral, although my father went.
My father served the Pinkas family for forty years. They were one of the richest Jewish families in Vidin, famous corn-dealers [they owned grain and traded it]. The Pascin [originally Pinkas] family was an old Jewish family from Ruse. I don’t know when they moved to Vidin and why. All I know is that they were a number of brothers. One of them was my father’s boss. The father of Jules Pascin [5] was his younger brother. They were middlemen: they bought corn, rice, maize and sunflower from the villagers living in the nearby villages and sold it to the mills in Vidin. They also exported barges of corn, but I don’t know to where. So, they had a stable business, importing and exporting grain. At that time everyone in town and the nearby villages knew my father, because he could speak fluent Wallachian and Turkish. [Wallachian is a neo-Latin language, closest to Romanian. Wallachians are scattered around in South-Eastern Europe, many of them live in the villages by the Danube, near Vidin.] He was something like a distributor of food products. He bought corn, maize, millet from the villagers and sold it in town.
My mother was also a seamstress: she sewed ladies’ underwear and men’s shirts. My aunts’ clients also went to my mother. They were mostly intellectuals, public figures, merchants, or industrialists. Their opinions shaped the Vidin society. I remember that my mother sewed laced and silk ladies’ underwear, all kinds of corsets from expensive materials, and fine men’s shirts. The materials were mostly from abroad and were transported by salesmen from various parts of Western Europe. At that time the European traveling salesmen came to Bulgaria themselves to sell their expensive merchandise.
In our free time we played games: mostly hide-and-seek and tip-cat. Tip-cat was played in the following way: you used a big board to hit the raised corner of a smaller one, which flew away and we measured that distance by steps. The person who sent the smaller board the furthest, won. At that time I was already a member of Maccabi [World Union] [8]. In Maccabi we had our own sports hall with a vaulting horse, hoops, a beam, etc. which was close to the Jewish school near the Baba Vida Fortress [9] in Kaleto. The school doesn’t exist any more.
Klara Karpati
When Laszlo returned, he got a paper giving him permission to sleep in his own flat because of the lack of space in the barracks. There was a raid on the house in the autumn of 1944, and despite his paper, Laszlo was taken away, and sent out of the country for forced labor, but I don't know where. He never came back.
My mother did not attend synagogue much, nor did my father, even though he came from a relatively observant family. He went to synagogue during the festivals; he owed that much to the community. My mother lit a candle on Friday evenings. We had meat soup on Fridays and on a plate beside it, there was black radish, tomato sauce, and this or that kind of sauce with meat and challah. My mother did not make the challah; we bought it. I remember that my father used to do kiddush with a glass of wine.
My grandmother wore the sheytl, a traditional wig worn by religious married women. My poor mother and I found some of the traditions strange; for instance, in my grandparents’ home it was forbidden for us even to wash our hands with soap on Saturdays. My mother secretly discussed this with me, saying that she did not really like it, but we would have to adapt ourselves to those customs. There was a very vivid Jewish life in my paternal grandparents’ home.
My mother did not work outside the home. She stayed at home, managed the household, cooked and did the shopping. We went to Klauzal Square to the market to shop for food. Mother usually took me along with her. There in Klauzal Square was the goose-merchant she always bought from. Mother kept a kind of kosher kitchen. We bought butchered geese from the Klauzal Square market, and we kept dairy goods and meat items separate.
Then the elder of the two girls thought that it would be nice to organize a date for Laszlo and me to get to know each other better. They organized a date for us at the Astoria hotel, a posh hotel of that time. Well, this resulted in an unbelievable love. In 1942 we had our wedding in the synagogue in Rumbach Sebestyen Street.
I attended the Jewish school at 44 Wesselenyi Street until the third grade primary and secondary school. I was taught well at the school. There were courses in the Hebrew language and literature. We studied the Bible and prayer books, and learned various songs, and prayers. We also did translations and we had to know all sorts of things, but after finishing school we didn't have to deal with those subjects further.
Parties were very fashionable back then. My mother had a good relationship with the other parents, so I was invited to many parties. I had only Jewish friends. Circumstances worked towards my having a Jewish circle around me: my father worked for the community, we lived in the synagogue building in Rumbach Sebestyen Street, and I attended the Jewish school. In the afternoons I studied; sometimes a girlfriend would come over, and we would pass the afternoon studying together. We read a lot. My mother loved books. I went to the library with my stepsister, Rozsa. We always discussed who would go to the library. She liked reading, just like me.
After secondary school I attended the Jewish commercial school on Bethlen Square, where I completed a year of commercial studies. We learned shorthand, typing and bookkeeping there, too. At first, I first worked at the office of a lawyer, who was an acquaintance of my father. Later, I got into a glass and china store, working in the office there as well. I did the invoices, and had to do a lot of other things.
After the wedding we went to look for a flat. On Hungaria Street and Stefania Alley four- and five-story houses were growing like mushrooms. And there were lots of signs indicating flats for sale. We liked one of the flats very much and paid the advance for it. It was a charming little flat. There was a main room, a kitchen with a French balcony, a hall, a larder, a bathroom and an indoor toilet.
When Pest was liberated, I went to find out what had happened to the flat in Rumbach Sebestyen Street. I ended up going to live at my father’s place in Gyomro with my child. One of my sisters-in-law had a shoelace plant there. She asked me if I wanted to work there. "You could make shoelaces," she said. I told her that I wanted to work, so I went to work producing her shoelaces.
My second husband’s original name was Aron Kraus, which he “magyarized” in 1948 to Karpati. He worked with leather, and before the war had worked in Paulay Ede Street, which in those times was the street of the leather workers. Aron made quite a good living.
Then it happened that the house on Terez Street became a yellow-star house. Then one day, the Arrow-Cross men came, and ordered everyone to take their luggage into the yard. In the house there was a hairdresser’s shop and the lady owner told me, “If you want, I'll help you.” I collected a pile of diapers and put them in my son’s big pram along with some other things I thought we might need, and that woman took me out of the house. I went to the house of the woman who was hiding my brother-in-law.
He was not observant. The place, Soltvadkert, and the family he came from, was observant. But he had left home quite young, lived in a rented room in Pest, and hadn't stuck to his religion. He didn't like going to synagogue. On Fridays, I still lit a candle. And there was the Friday evening supper, even though it was not like at home. On high holidays we went to synagogue and Aron came along, too, and there was fasting at Yom Kippur. Later, when Aron became ill, he gave up fasting. To this day I do not cook on Saturdays. And I do not cook pork, or use pork fat. I cook with oil or goose fat instead. I also do not eat meat with vegetable dishes that have sour cream as an ingredient. My son has a lot of Jewish feeling in him, as do his children.
Finally, I went to work for the Buda Jewish community, doing office work. The taxes for the Jewish community were gathered as ordinary community taxes. There were still some wealthy Jews in Buda. The local board had information about the taxpayers’ incomes. We set up a committee and invited the taxpayers to a meeting, where we told them that their taxes would be lowered if they paid them on the spot. There were some who put the money on the table right then and there. There were quite a lot of things to spend the money on. There was a kitchen where the employees got lunch, and there was an office, and there were Jewish graveyards in Buda. When the community of Buda and that of Pest were combined, I was working at the Audit Office. Later, I went to work for the management of the housing estate.
In 1971 I retired from “The Culture,” a company that dealt with books, newspapers, records, didactic materials and such. I was an assistant executive in the book department. We sent books to East Germany. The assistant executive was the right hand of the dealer. The dealer made the deals and the assistant executive executed the transactions. There were quite a lot of Jews working there, even in management. The director was also a Jew. My boss was a Jewish woman.
When I was about four or five, my father got another flat from the community on Sebestyen Rumbach Street, in the same house as the synagogue. Only employees of the community lived there. There was quite a big kitchen and main room, and a sort of larder in the internal corridor. We redecorated the kitchen and turned it into a bathroom, and turned the larder into a kitchen. My mother very much liked the old bedroom furniture: the two big beds, two bedside tables, and the dressing-table. The furniture was beautiful. In the kitchen there was an old fashioned item of furniture which had an upper part and a lower part and at the back of it we kept the mortar and things of that kind.