I would sing all the time. I had a very strong voice. Every day my father gave me money for breakfast. Once I decided to learn to play the violin. I bought a violin and I saved the five levs he gave me daily to pay for my violin lessons. But at one point I had no money to pay my tuition fee. I was in the second grade in the high school. Then I sold my violin; I realized that I had no interest in music. I paid my tuition fee with the money.
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Displaying 5491 - 5520 of 50826 results
Adela Hinkova
One third of the junior high school students were Jews. We were the best students in the school. I was a good student, studied a lot and was very good at mathematics. There was also a subject in religious studies at the school, but we, the Jews, were forbidden to take that class. In the winter when we had that subject, we had nowhere to go but out in the cold. We felt very offended and sad. In the summer we went into the yard, but there was nowhere for us to go in the winter. Wherever we went, they banished us. We were five or six students: three girls and two or three boys.
Then I went to the junior high school. It was close to Kaleto [the old part of the town dating back from the Middle Ages]. I was happy that now we had a different teacher for every subject. One very nice teacher in mathematics said that I was very good at calculations. I remember her, Miss Vasileva. There were a lot of Wallachian students in the town. They wore bowler hats. They teased me a lot and called me Duda [short for Adela]. They would twist my arms and pull my hair. Once the Bulgarian teacher met me and I was crying because they had teased me. He asked me what my name was. I told him my name was Adela and he said that my name was very nice. He sent me to the teachers’ room to take a sheet of paper and a pen. He wrote down on the paper that there was no Duda at the school, but Adela. Then they stopped calling me Duda and I passed the three junior high school grades as Adela. This man was an idol for me, he taught me Bulgarian, taught me to read, to write and to think.
When my parents enrolled me in the Jewish school, it was very hard for me at first, because nobody at home knew Ivrit. My brother knew a word or two, but he wasn’t interested in school. In the first grade we had a special teacher, who was also the director and also taught us gymnastics. Learning Ivrit was hard and the teacher, Mr. Koen, always said, ‘You have no textbooks, you should pay attention in class to what I say to you and you should repeat to yourself what I’m writing.’
At that time we didn’t know how to write yet and it was very hard. We studied the letters for a whole year. Mr. Koen would always give us new words. And here’s how I tried to learn them: the staircase at home had two big and three small steps. I jumped on the steps and I would say ‘I’ on the first step, ‘You’ on the second one, ‘He’ on the third one, I would go back – ‘We,’ ‘You,’ ‘They.’ I repeated them twenty times. Once my mother shouted, ‘Stop jumping on that staircase, you will break it!’ and I answered, ‘Leave me alone, I’m studying!’
When I passed to the second grade, my brother received some cubes as a present – when you rotate them, you make a picture. He asked me to give them back to him. I got very angry and threw them at him and hit him. My parents beat me very hard for that. He got sick. I thought it was because I had hit him, but it turned out that he had mumps. I was also not allowed to go to school for three weeks. After the three weeks, my mother, who had not had mumps as a child, also got sick. So, I had to stay home for another three weeks. Because of that I had to repeat the grade. I was very sad and depressed. I had been separated from my friends.
The Jewish school had four grades, and I studied five years. When I was in the second grade my brother went down with mumps. So, I was under quarantine for three weeks. Then my mother also caught it and our teacher in Ivrit, who was also the school headmaster, decided that I should repeat the year. We didn’t have any textbooks and I couldn’t catch up with the studies at home. I was happy when I received a ‘good’ [four out of six] as a grade. I studied a lot, because I had to repeat the grade. Once the teacher asked me to read aloud and I said, ‘Please, wait for me to take my pencil.’ I had the habit of underlining what I read in order to avoid making mistakes. The children laughed at me saying, ‘Are you reading with your mouth or with the pencil?
At that time we didn’t know how to write yet and it was very hard. We studied the letters for a whole year. Mr. Koen would always give us new words. And here’s how I tried to learn them: the staircase at home had two big and three small steps. I jumped on the steps and I would say ‘I’ on the first step, ‘You’ on the second one, ‘He’ on the third one, I would go back – ‘We,’ ‘You,’ ‘They.’ I repeated them twenty times. Once my mother shouted, ‘Stop jumping on that staircase, you will break it!’ and I answered, ‘Leave me alone, I’m studying!’
When I passed to the second grade, my brother received some cubes as a present – when you rotate them, you make a picture. He asked me to give them back to him. I got very angry and threw them at him and hit him. My parents beat me very hard for that. He got sick. I thought it was because I had hit him, but it turned out that he had mumps. I was also not allowed to go to school for three weeks. After the three weeks, my mother, who had not had mumps as a child, also got sick. So, I had to stay home for another three weeks. Because of that I had to repeat the grade. I was very sad and depressed. I had been separated from my friends.
The Jewish school had four grades, and I studied five years. When I was in the second grade my brother went down with mumps. So, I was under quarantine for three weeks. Then my mother also caught it and our teacher in Ivrit, who was also the school headmaster, decided that I should repeat the year. We didn’t have any textbooks and I couldn’t catch up with the studies at home. I was happy when I received a ‘good’ [four out of six] as a grade. I studied a lot, because I had to repeat the grade. Once the teacher asked me to read aloud and I said, ‘Please, wait for me to take my pencil.’ I had the habit of underlining what I read in order to avoid making mistakes. The children laughed at me saying, ‘Are you reading with your mouth or with the pencil?
Yes, my father was a very nice man. Once my mother’s brother Solomon with his wife and two children, Leon and Victoria, arrived. I’m not sure where they came from, Turkey or Greece, but their life had been difficult and they came to live in Bulgaria. My father found a house for them in Vidin. The daughter Victoria was in the higher grades, she was a very good student. But my mother’s brother left for Israel and was killed by the Arabs. He couldn’t find work in Bulgaria. His wife remained alone with the two children. I visited them in Israel, at that time the daughter, Victoria, had passed away and the son had made a career, he did business with Germans and didn’t want to meet us, the common people coming from communist Bulgaria.
And once when I was 13-14 years old, my father told me he had received a letter from the municipality. Some relatives from Dedeagac asked my parents to help them because they had no money at all. My father took the task to heart. So, this family arrived with their four daughters – one of them had studied in a French college and knew how to read. My father wrote to my brother asking whether he would like to hire them to work for him. And since we knew they would come with no luggage whatsoever, my father said in the municipality that the people would need some household stuff and asked everyone who could afford it to help them. So, my mother and I took the laundry basket and started from house to house, collecting buckets, rugs, pillows, a mattress, everything people could spare. We placed all that in an entrance below the staircase, which had no windows. My brother and I would say to the people, ‘For we are all Jews,’ and since it was religious to give away, everyone gave us what they could. The heavier things we put in the yard.
We loaded everything onto carts; my father borrowed a wagon for the household belongings and went to Yambol. My brother hired them there. The mother stayed at home, one of the daughters sewed bras, the father worked in the shop and the other daughters were spinners. That’s how they managed to survive. And thanks to the firm belief that if you are a Jew and your fellow man is in trouble, you have to help him. That’s the kind of man my father was!
And once when I was 13-14 years old, my father told me he had received a letter from the municipality. Some relatives from Dedeagac asked my parents to help them because they had no money at all. My father took the task to heart. So, this family arrived with their four daughters – one of them had studied in a French college and knew how to read. My father wrote to my brother asking whether he would like to hire them to work for him. And since we knew they would come with no luggage whatsoever, my father said in the municipality that the people would need some household stuff and asked everyone who could afford it to help them. So, my mother and I took the laundry basket and started from house to house, collecting buckets, rugs, pillows, a mattress, everything people could spare. We placed all that in an entrance below the staircase, which had no windows. My brother and I would say to the people, ‘For we are all Jews,’ and since it was religious to give away, everyone gave us what they could. The heavier things we put in the yard.
We loaded everything onto carts; my father borrowed a wagon for the household belongings and went to Yambol. My brother hired them there. The mother stayed at home, one of the daughters sewed bras, the father worked in the shop and the other daughters were spinners. That’s how they managed to survive. And thanks to the firm belief that if you are a Jew and your fellow man is in trouble, you have to help him. That’s the kind of man my father was!
At some point, my father started going deaf and then my brother [Nessim], who was in Italy, invited him there for treatment. He made himself a suit and left for Italy. He didn’t know any European language, but he left. I suppose the dust from the charcoals had settled in his ears and disturbed his hearing. And he returned with restored hearing. He also came with very nice clothes, which they bought for him there. When he returned, he opened a grocery store. But he sold a lot of goods on credit: sugar today, oil tomorrow. He couldn’t imagine turning someone away, because they had no money. So, the grocery store went bankrupt. There was a terrible economic crisis at that time, in 1929 [9]. He went to my elder brother Nessim, who was already the director of the ‘Tundzha’ factory. Nessim told him, ‘You go back to Vidin, I will send you the textiles, which stick out of the loom, and they have some machine oil on them and are a little bit torn.’ He sold them in his store.
There were around 15 small stores one next to the other, all rented by Jews, one of which was my father’s. They were very small, three square meters each. If some fabric was left unsold, he gave it to us to sew something for ourselves. I sewed myself a blouse for my graduation ball, because I had no money to buy one. Mostly Gypsy women came to the shop and they made loose Turkish trousers from the materials. They would buy a meter and a half of the material and my brother put on a sign ‘Shop for Textile Lengths.’
This shop was all we had. So, he worked like that for some time until one nice day a neighbor, Bay Ilia, asked him to stand surety for him. Don’t worry, he told my father, lend me 100,000 levs, and I’ll return it to you. But he lied. When the loan had to be paid, he refused to do it since he went bankrupt and every month the bank deducted 1,000 levs from my father’s earnings. My father used to have the habit of sitting in front of the store, because he didn’t have many clients. But he could no longer stand seeing the man who lied to him and left the shop to my brother.
There were around 15 small stores one next to the other, all rented by Jews, one of which was my father’s. They were very small, three square meters each. If some fabric was left unsold, he gave it to us to sew something for ourselves. I sewed myself a blouse for my graduation ball, because I had no money to buy one. Mostly Gypsy women came to the shop and they made loose Turkish trousers from the materials. They would buy a meter and a half of the material and my brother put on a sign ‘Shop for Textile Lengths.’
This shop was all we had. So, he worked like that for some time until one nice day a neighbor, Bay Ilia, asked him to stand surety for him. Don’t worry, he told my father, lend me 100,000 levs, and I’ll return it to you. But he lied. When the loan had to be paid, he refused to do it since he went bankrupt and every month the bank deducted 1,000 levs from my father’s earnings. My father used to have the habit of sitting in front of the store, because he didn’t have many clients. But he could no longer stand seeing the man who lied to him and left the shop to my brother.
For Purim, my mother made sweet ring-shaped buns with ‘alkashul’ [the filling of the bun, made of honey and walnuts]. I loved them. There’s a belief that these sweets should be preserved exactly for Pesach. There’s one month between Purim and Pesach. They take place during the early spring. The snow had just started to melt. My mother took a big earthen jar and filled it with such buns. We had an attic full of mice and we could hear them running around. Once she made my brother climb up and put the jar there so that nobody would eat the buns before Pesach. But I loved them very much and usually I would go up, take one and close the jar again. And when Pesach came, my mother said, ‘Santo, go and fetch the jar, we will eat sweets now.’ Santo fetched the jar and it was empty. My mother shouted at me, ‘You ate them!’ and I said, ‘No, I didn’t, the mice ate them.’ My mother was angry that she wasn’t able to observe the ritual. On this holiday we give away food.
My mother would buy a chicken. She boiled it, stewed it, took some fruit and vegetables, filled the basket, put a white napkin with embroidery on it and went to give it to someone in need. That person was called ‘el mirkado’ [Ladino for ‘bought’]. This meant that we ‘bought’ him, that we had made a vow to help him. And my mother would bring him food on all high holidays. But that had to happen in secret. He wouldn’t have to feel offended that someone was helping him. She dressed officially and said she was going to her ‘kupets’ [dealer]. This was a different man every year. I understood that she was going to a different person by the way she cooked the food. She was convinced that that was the way to do it, although I didn’t agree with her on that.
My mother would buy a chicken. She boiled it, stewed it, took some fruit and vegetables, filled the basket, put a white napkin with embroidery on it and went to give it to someone in need. That person was called ‘el mirkado’ [Ladino for ‘bought’]. This meant that we ‘bought’ him, that we had made a vow to help him. And my mother would bring him food on all high holidays. But that had to happen in secret. He wouldn’t have to feel offended that someone was helping him. She dressed officially and said she was going to her ‘kupets’ [dealer]. This was a different man every year. I understood that she was going to a different person by the way she cooked the food. She was convinced that that was the way to do it, although I didn’t agree with her on that.
And before Pesach the whole house has to be cleaned, no crumb of bread was to be seen anywhere. The wardrobes, the rugs, the curtains were cleaned, the whole house was painted again. I learned how to paint with distemper and oil paint very early. My mother tied the brush to a long stick and I painted the outside walls. Then we would go to the town’s bathroom. I said to my mother, ‘Now, we will become Chametz, too.’ Then we boiled all the dishes in ash, salt and soap – with no running water, but only with the pump in the yard. Everything had to shine. The tinsmith came to tin the baking dishes. Pesach is the greatest holiday. We didn’t eat leavened bread, only unleavened. In Vidin we made flat cakes from it. We made the cakes without yeast; they were as hard as stone. On Pesach we gathered in the corridor. This corridor led to all the other rooms. We would gather there and listen to the Legend [Haggadah], the book being read. Then we sat at the table.
My brother would be given a towel, a napkin for the waist and they placed a loaf of bread on his back symbolizing that he was carrying the bread our ancestors ate. The bread was then used in the cooking of various things, for example dumplings immersed in eggs for the soup. Usually at least two or three families came. My father would start reading the prayer. But before that, the unmarried woman in the family would hand a jug of water to the person reading to wash his hands because it was a sin if you didn’t wash your hands. He would start reading the prayer and from time to time he would wash his hands again. He would read about what troubles God inflicted on the Egyptians: ‘Snakes, lizards and natural disasters’ and he would repeat that on and on. [The interviewee probably means locusts instead of lizards and snakes.
My brother would be given a towel, a napkin for the waist and they placed a loaf of bread on his back symbolizing that he was carrying the bread our ancestors ate. The bread was then used in the cooking of various things, for example dumplings immersed in eggs for the soup. Usually at least two or three families came. My father would start reading the prayer. But before that, the unmarried woman in the family would hand a jug of water to the person reading to wash his hands because it was a sin if you didn’t wash your hands. He would start reading the prayer and from time to time he would wash his hands again. He would read about what troubles God inflicted on the Egyptians: ‘Snakes, lizards and natural disasters’ and he would repeat that on and on. [The interviewee probably means locusts instead of lizards and snakes.
I think my father wasn’t religious, because he spent most of his childhood away from home, working as a servant. When I was born, he was already old and got sick often. But he observed all laws. During the week he would smoke two to three cigarettes outside, if it was summer, or in the corridor, if it was winter, because my mother couldn’t stand the smoke and didn’t allow him to smoke inside. I asked him why he did that only in the evenings and he answered that he couldn’t smoke at work. But on Saturdays he didn’t smoke at all. [It’s forbidden to light fire on Sabbath.] While he was reading aloud, sometimes he would skip a passage, which a very religious Jew would never do. He winked at me, because I knew Ivrit, and I saw how he skipped some passages and was hurrying to finish the story, the legend, so that we could sit down to eat. He wasn’t one of those religious Jews, I don’t think there were such in Bulgaria. There are some Orthodox Jews in Israel; we call them ‘imbabucados.’ That word means ‘something which was too much’ in Ladino. They are too pedantic in a bad sense, because one can be pedantic for the sake of his work, but they were too pedantic - to the extreme.
My father went to the synagogue only on the high holidays. He didn’t have time to go there often, because he went to work. Once, on Taanit, when we were forbidden to eat and everyone would sit in the synagogue the whole day, he didn’t do that, but went to sleep, he found that unnecessary; he had the honor of playing the shofar. I loved the Taanit very much. Usually, on Saturdays we had a chicken slaughtered. One of the drumsticks was given to my father, the other to my brother, because he was a man, and I didn’t have one. When I was a child, I ate very little and was quite choosy. So, I sat at the table, eating nothing. Then my father would take the knife, divide his drumstick and give me half of it. But on Taanit, since they didn’t eat, they gave me the whole drumstick. And that’s why I loved that holiday.
My father went to the synagogue only on the high holidays. He didn’t have time to go there often, because he went to work. Once, on Taanit, when we were forbidden to eat and everyone would sit in the synagogue the whole day, he didn’t do that, but went to sleep, he found that unnecessary; he had the honor of playing the shofar. I loved the Taanit very much. Usually, on Saturdays we had a chicken slaughtered. One of the drumsticks was given to my father, the other to my brother, because he was a man, and I didn’t have one. When I was a child, I ate very little and was quite choosy. So, I sat at the table, eating nothing. Then my father would take the knife, divide his drumstick and give me half of it. But on Taanit, since they didn’t eat, they gave me the whole drumstick. And that’s why I loved that holiday.
There was a word we used a lot and it was the key of the holiday. It was ‘chametz’ and it’s very important for Pesach. And my father would always tell us a story. He always stressed that we were Jews, which was our leitmotif in a way. He would say that we had our morality and we should observe it. Then we started eating. We always bought pumpkin seeds. Vidin was famous for its nice pumpkins: they were sweet and had very big seeds. We always prepared vegetable pickles and medlars for the winter and stored them in a blanket in the attic. My brother or I would go upstairs and fetch some for the guests. That was the most pleasant day of the week, when we were eager to gather and listen to the stories, to learn something new.
We all loved Sabbath at home. We started celebrating the holidays from the evening and finished the next evening. If the holiday started at five o’clock, it finished at five the next day. Our building was old and we had big rooms. It was dark and the neighbors passed through the ‘kapedjik’ the evening before Sabbath. So, we passed through that door. [Editor’s note: ‘Kapedjik’ is a Turkish word: There are fences between the yards, which surround the yard and the house, but their gates are facing the street. In order to avoid going out on the dark street to visit the neighbors, they make a small door in the fence and that is called ‘kapedjik.’]
So the evening before Sabbath, a cousin of my father and his wife came to visit us. Most of the time, we went to visit them, because the woman was a tailor and she continued working while we were there. She talked and sewed at the same time. She told very interesting stories. Her husband, my father’s cousin, didn’t speak. He would always fall asleep and she would tell him, ‘Yosef…’ – that was his name. My father would tell ‘massals’ [Turkish for ‘stories’] and his cousin wouldn’t listen to them. My father was very good at telling fairy tales and ‘massals’ and I learned many of them. Every one of them has a moral.
Another family, the Ashkenazi, also came to visit us. Our house was big and there were neighbors in half of the rooms. On paper, they rented the apartments from us. But when my mother would tell my father, ‘Okay, but won’t we take our rent?’ my father would say, ‘What rent?’ He couldn’t imagine taking money from these people. Our neighbors were the Farhi family. They weren’t relatives of ours and I called them all ‘visina’ [neighbor]. They had children.
So, on Friday evening we would prepare, wash ourselves and dress up to be ready for Saturday. On Saturdays we didn’t cook, it’s forbidden to work, it’s ‘asur’ [Hebrew for ‘forbidden’]. My mother usually made some sweets. The most used word at home was ‘mitzvah.’ She went to the neighbor’s window and said, ‘Take it and taste it.’ And I asked, ‘But what will be left for me?’ She said, ‘This is mitzvah!’ and she gave it away.
There were special things to be done for Saturdays. Firstly, we had to buy chicken from the market. The chicken had to be slaughtered. I found the preparation for the Saturday unpleasant, because I had to take that chicken to the shochet on Thursday and then I had to carry it back dead and covered in blood and this was very unpleasant. After that my mother didn’t scald it with water, it was forbidden. She plucked it, scorched it with paper and then she cooked it.
After the Saturday ceremony, there was always food and the hen was slaughtered.
So the evening before Sabbath, a cousin of my father and his wife came to visit us. Most of the time, we went to visit them, because the woman was a tailor and she continued working while we were there. She talked and sewed at the same time. She told very interesting stories. Her husband, my father’s cousin, didn’t speak. He would always fall asleep and she would tell him, ‘Yosef…’ – that was his name. My father would tell ‘massals’ [Turkish for ‘stories’] and his cousin wouldn’t listen to them. My father was very good at telling fairy tales and ‘massals’ and I learned many of them. Every one of them has a moral.
Another family, the Ashkenazi, also came to visit us. Our house was big and there were neighbors in half of the rooms. On paper, they rented the apartments from us. But when my mother would tell my father, ‘Okay, but won’t we take our rent?’ my father would say, ‘What rent?’ He couldn’t imagine taking money from these people. Our neighbors were the Farhi family. They weren’t relatives of ours and I called them all ‘visina’ [neighbor]. They had children.
So, on Friday evening we would prepare, wash ourselves and dress up to be ready for Saturday. On Saturdays we didn’t cook, it’s forbidden to work, it’s ‘asur’ [Hebrew for ‘forbidden’]. My mother usually made some sweets. The most used word at home was ‘mitzvah.’ She went to the neighbor’s window and said, ‘Take it and taste it.’ And I asked, ‘But what will be left for me?’ She said, ‘This is mitzvah!’ and she gave it away.
There were special things to be done for Saturdays. Firstly, we had to buy chicken from the market. The chicken had to be slaughtered. I found the preparation for the Saturday unpleasant, because I had to take that chicken to the shochet on Thursday and then I had to carry it back dead and covered in blood and this was very unpleasant. After that my mother didn’t scald it with water, it was forbidden. She plucked it, scorched it with paper and then she cooked it.
After the Saturday ceremony, there was always food and the hen was slaughtered.
At home my mother wasn’t religious, but she observed all the rituals and holidays. I was born on a Friday evening. On Rosh Hashanah, New Year’s Eve, my mother would make a special cake called ‘tispishtil’ in a special small copper pan. It was made of oily dough and sugar and walnuts were put in the middle. She always made such a cake, observed the traditions and the Saturdays.
My mother made me work a lot. She didn’t take ‘I can’t do it’ for an answer. She worked a lot and made me work, too. But I also had to go to school, to see my friends so I sometimes avoided it. In 1927, when I was ten years old, they made a water pump at home. She made me save the water in a barrel for irrigation and I filled the barrel with a bucket. I filled it in and she would do the irrigation. Gradually I took up all the household chores, because they both [Adela’s parents] went down ill. I went out to buy medications, I had to go shopping, light the stove, and go to school and because of all the work to be done, I had to repeat my grade at school. My mother made me work, but my brother was exempted from that.
And so, I didn’t have a strong connection with my mother. My father was calmer and told me some warm words sometimes. All those years were very oppressive for me. There’s no photo from my childhood where I’m smiling, I’m always serious. Life in general was very hard.
And so, I didn’t have a strong connection with my mother. My father was calmer and told me some warm words sometimes. All those years were very oppressive for me. There’s no photo from my childhood where I’m smiling, I’m always serious. Life in general was very hard.
There were always people at home and my mother offered them jam. I wasn’t given jam, it was only for the guests. We madе jam from everything: plums, cherries, mostly of plums, because there were different varieties. We had quinces in the yard. When we grated them for jam, their stubs remained. My mother cut them, boiled them, drained the water, put some jam and it became some kind of puree, which she wrapped in paper and preserved in tins. It was called ‘tajiko.
To be honest, I don’t like present-day capitalism. It’s wrongly interpreted capitalism. Many economic problems aren’t solved in Bulgaria. I don’t accept the idea of having both very rich and very poor people. There are many such people now. Why should my daughter, whose job as an anesthetist is very hard, go and work at another place in order to pay her bills? Many Bulgarians hope that the situation will get better if we become a member of the European Union. Maybe that’s the only right way.
In 1990 when there was a deep crisis in Bulgaria, my daughter and granddaughter went to Israel for four years. There my granddaughter learned Ivrit perfectly and graduated from her secondary education. Her knowledge of Ivrit helps her now in her work in the Historical Museum of the [Great] Synagogue. My granddaughter is very well-brought up and visits me every week.
It’s my fault that my children weren’t raised Jewish. I remember that when my son was in the first grade, he asked me what his nationality was. He had noticed that we celebrated Chanukkah and made sweets, which the other families didn’t. Then I said that he was a Bulgarian, because he lived in Bulgaria and spoke Bulgarian. My children were informed about their origin, but they didn’t feel Jewish.
I myself didn’t observe the Jewish traditions. At the moment my physical condition doesn’t allow me to cook. But people from the Jewish Home come and bring me matzah on Pesach and alkashul for Chanukkah. I receive ready-made food from the canteen of the Jewish Home every day.
I myself didn’t observe the Jewish traditions. At the moment my physical condition doesn’t allow me to cook. But people from the Jewish Home come and bring me matzah on Pesach and alkashul for Chanukkah. I receive ready-made food from the canteen of the Jewish Home every day.
I went to Israel a couple of times. I went for the first time in 1966 when I went to see my brother in Holon. He had married a German Jew, which I didn’t like much. They had just had a son and performed the circumcision. The next time I visited other relatives of mine. They loved inviting me to visit and when I went there, I carried three suitcases of presents for them. They loved it when I told them about Bulgaria, because my nephews were born in Israel. During totalitarianism I didn’t have any problems traveling to Israel.
My husband was a silent and calm man. A military officer, neither tall, nor short, good-looking. We had been corresponding with each other before that, we had taken part in anti-fascist demonstrations together. I met him in Stezherevo; he had a friend living there who introduced us to each other. He invited me to the theater, he was very well read. But later it turned out that he was from the ‘silent academy’ [i.e. he didn’t speak much]. He couldn’t graduate from the Academy in Svishtov. He was negligent, not trying too hard, an inert man. He did hard work and didn’t mind doing household work either.
We lived like that for 30 years and raised two children. I looked after the children and did everything that was expected of me. He knew only ‘no’ in his life. For everything I asked him to do or buy, he said no. Let’s buy a fridge – we shouldn’t, let’s buy a stove – we shouldn’t. We already had two granddaughters, when he met an old love of his and we separated. But even nowadays I’m in very good relations with his sisters, Lyuba and Vera. He went to live with this old lover from Svishtov, but we got divorced three years later. After less than two years he died. Everything we have and we have achieved was thanks to me. I supported the children by myself.
We lived like that for 30 years and raised two children. I looked after the children and did everything that was expected of me. He knew only ‘no’ in his life. For everything I asked him to do or buy, he said no. Let’s buy a fridge – we shouldn’t, let’s buy a stove – we shouldn’t. We already had two granddaughters, when he met an old love of his and we separated. But even nowadays I’m in very good relations with his sisters, Lyuba and Vera. He went to live with this old lover from Svishtov, but we got divorced three years later. After less than two years he died. Everything we have and we have achieved was thanks to me. I supported the children by myself.
After 9th September 1944 I took an active part in the party activities in Haskovo where I had been interned [13], and then in those in Sofia. I worked in the district committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party [BCP] [14] for a number of years. I have always been very serious in my work. While the other employees used to work until 6 or 7pm, I usually stayed until 1am. However, this reflected on my nervous system and I got a nervous disorder. I could stand neither phone ringing nor music playing. The doctors advised me to leave my job for a while. At that time I had just married. My husband was a military officer and he was able to provide for me. I was a very good housewife also; I never wasted money and strictly allocated it.
My mother rented a room at a friend’s in Sofia. I found one for myself, too. It wasn’t a real room, but a room for the housemaids: with four doors, and extremely cold. What a life it was! Then I moved to another place, renting half a room. In 1948, we lived on my money, I worked and I was paid well. It was very hard for my mother, she wanted to go out and have a good time, because she had become a widow very early and there were candidates who wanted to marry her. She went to Israel, but my brother didn’t have a room for her, he had no apartment, but lived in a very miserable place. She died during a storm [in 1949]. It was an accident. She lived in a wooden shed, which fell down during a storm. At first she managed to get out, but then she went back to get the mezuzah from the doorframe. Unfortunately, at that moment the whole house fell over her.
There were no graveyards at that time and she was buried in a soldiers’ graveyard. I went to her grave five times. She’s placed at a distance from the other graves and has a big stone instead of a monument. I don’t know how they managed to move that stone there. Her name is inscribed on it. Now I only have my memories of her. She had her views that everything she did was right and that everything she did was for the children’s sake.
There were no graveyards at that time and she was buried in a soldiers’ graveyard. I went to her grave five times. She’s placed at a distance from the other graves and has a big stone instead of a monument. I don’t know how they managed to move that stone there. Her name is inscribed on it. Now I only have my memories of her. She had her views that everything she did was right and that everything she did was for the children’s sake.
Then I went to Pleven to work for the [Communist] Party, because I had already been involved in anti-fascist activities. But my mother and I wanted to get together, that’s why we both moved to Sofia. They didn’t want to let me go, because I had higher education.
It was already in 1943, and the fascists were going to lose the war and the regime wasn’t so rigid in some towns. So, my mother made me go to my sister [Zhaneta], and she herself went to Ruse, to a friend of hers. I went to my sister’s village [Stezherevo]. There several other girls like me and I were taking care of the grape vines. We were paid for that. And my sister helped me and that’s how I got through this. I tried to make shoes out of rope at a certain point, since I was without a job, but it was extremely hard. That was in 1944.
After a year, we were forced to move to Haskovo [in 1943, as a result of the anti-Jewish laws]. We weren’t allowed to work in Haskovo. We lived in a small corridor. We put a mattress there every evening and slept on the floor. People passed by there to get to their rooms. We didn’t have a man to take care of us. Men went and bought food in the black-market for their families, and we were given tomatoes to eat. I can’t eat tomatoes since then.
After my father’s death we came to Sofia, and my mother sold everything, even our water pump. It was very hard for me after my father died. I loved him very much. And we didn’t have any money, not even my brother. There was help from nowhere. We sold everything we had: clothes, the sewing machine, whatever dowry we had. I didn’t even have money to pay for my diploma. My sister Zhaneta gave me money for that and that’s how I graduated. We rented a room. I applied for a job. I worked in an attorney’s office for a whole year. I still have some knowledge in this field. He was dealing with claims against people in debt and I assisted him with the accountants.
This was an insurance company named OREL, which is still in that same building, it was then outside the town. I walked on foot for two hours to get to work. It was very cold. I arrived at work freezing, wanted to drink some tea, but my boss was looking at the clock. My salary was 2,000 levs, and a bottle of vegetable oil was worth 1,000 levs. We lived in the house of good people, but we had no money. After some time I found out that my mother went to various houses to do the washing so that we had enough bread. Our bread was a bit sour, made of maize and something else. When we cut it, it stuck to the knife, but I had to eat it, because I was working. It was a very hard year.
This was an insurance company named OREL, which is still in that same building, it was then outside the town. I walked on foot for two hours to get to work. It was very cold. I arrived at work freezing, wanted to drink some tea, but my boss was looking at the clock. My salary was 2,000 levs, and a bottle of vegetable oil was worth 1,000 levs. We lived in the house of good people, but we had no money. After some time I found out that my mother went to various houses to do the washing so that we had enough bread. Our bread was a bit sour, made of maize and something else. When we cut it, it stuck to the knife, but I had to eat it, because I was working. It was a very hard year.
At that time, my father got sick; he had a bladder stone and was always wetting his pants. My mother spent all her time looking after him and washing his clothes. The mineral baths opened in Yambol at that time and he went there for treatment. One day he slipped in the bath. He was a very tall man and probably weighed around 100 kilograms. Nobody in the family was as tall as him. So, he fell down, lost consciousness and they poured cold water on him. He caught bronchopneumonia. A Jewish hospital had just opened in Sofia and he was transferred there. My brother was on some business trip and they called my mother and me to tell us that he was in a very bad condition. He couldn’t eat. His tongue was swollen. I was very frightened. He couldn’t swallow. He died at the age of 72 at the hospital. The year was 1938.
There were some debts yet to be paid, and my brother did that. My mother and I remained at home. We buried him in accordance with the Jewish ritual: we sat [shivah] doing nothing for seven days. Relatives and neighbors would come to bring us food and the people mourning would do nothing. The rabbi would come during the day to read and when he left, we would eat the food brought to us. If there was no food, my mother would sit mourning and I would make something to eat. My brother made a big gravestone out of marble for him.
There were some debts yet to be paid, and my brother did that. My mother and I remained at home. We buried him in accordance with the Jewish ritual: we sat [shivah] doing nothing for seven days. Relatives and neighbors would come to bring us food and the people mourning would do nothing. The rabbi would come during the day to read and when he left, we would eat the food brought to us. If there was no food, my mother would sit mourning and I would make something to eat. My brother made a big gravestone out of marble for him.
When I finished high school, my father enrolled me in the free university in Sofia. But the university was closed for reasons unknown to me, so I was transferred to the university in Varna, where I continued my studies in the same field, Economics. There I got in touch with the progressive-minded people. I felt my place was among them.
leonid rozenfeld
Maria couldn't find a job for a long time. This was the period of the campaign against cosmopolitans [27] when Jews couldn't get a job or keep their previous employment. We were lucky in our institute. Our director Vassili Lukianchenko, a Ukrainian man, was very positive about having Jewish employees. He didn't care about nationality, but valued performance and personality. Many Jews were promoted in our institute, but such attitude was rare in those years.
Maria went back to work in 1955, two years after Stalin died and when state anti-Semitism mitigated.
We didn't think that Stalin was to blame for the many misfortunes of our people. When he died I took it as a personal loss. Millions of Soviet people asked themselves, 'How are we going to live without him?' However, life went on and after the revelatory speech of Khrushchev [28] at the Twentieth Party Congress [29], 'The cult of Stalin and its consequences', we believed in the triumph of truth and humanity.