We also lived in Dupnitza for a while, where we were interned to on 3rd June 1943. We came back to Sofia in October 1944.
- Traditions 11756
- Language spoken 3019
- Identity 7808
- Description of town 2440
- Education, school 8506
- Economics 8772
- Work 11672
- Love & romance 4929
- Leisure/Social life 4159
- Antisemitism 4822
-
Major events (political and historical)
4256
- Armenian genocide 2
- Doctor's Plot (1953) 178
- Soviet invasion of Poland 31
- Siege of Leningrad 86
- The Six Day War 4
- Yom Kippur War 2
- Ataturk's death 5
- Balkan Wars (1912-1913) 35
- First Soviet-Finnish War 37
- Occupation of Czechoslovakia 1938 83
- Invasion of France 9
- Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact 65
- Varlik Vergisi (Wealth Tax) 36
- First World War (1914-1918) 216
- Spanish flu (1918-1920) 14
- Latvian War of Independence (1918-1920) 4
- The Great Depression (1929-1933) 20
- Hitler comes to power (1933) 127
- 151 Hospital 1
- Fire of Thessaloniki (1917) 9
- Greek Civil War (1946-49) 12
- Thessaloniki International Trade Fair 5
- Annexation of Bukovina to Romania (1918) 7
- Annexation of Northern Bukovina to the Soviet Union (1940) 19
- The German invasion of Poland (1939) 94
- Kishinev Pogrom (1903) 7
- Romanian Annexation of Bessarabia (1918) 25
- Returning of the Hungarian rule in Transylvania (1940-1944) 43
- Soviet Occupation of Bessarabia (1940) 59
- Second Vienna Dictate 27
- Estonian war of independence 3
- Warsaw Uprising 2
- Soviet occupation of the Balitc states (1940) 147
- Austrian Civil War (1934) 9
- Anschluss (1938) 71
- Collapse of Habsburg empire 3
- Dollfuß Regime 3
- Emigration to Vienna before WWII 36
- Kolkhoz 131
- KuK - Königlich und Kaiserlich 40
- Mineriade 1
- Post War Allied occupation 7
- Waldheim affair 5
- Trianon Peace Treaty 12
- NEP 56
- Russian Revolution 351
- Ukrainian Famine 199
- The Great Terror 283
- Perestroika 233
- 22nd June 1941 468
- Molotov's radio speech 115
- Victory Day 147
- Stalin's death 365
- Khrushchev's speech at 20th Congress 148
- KGB 62
- NKVD 153
- German occupation of Hungary (18-19 March 1944) 45
- Józef Pilsudski (until 1935) 33
- 1956 revolution 84
- Prague Spring (1968) 73
- 1989 change of regime 174
- Gomulka campaign (1968) 81
-
Holocaust
9685
- Holocaust (in general) 2789
- Concentration camp / Work camp 1235
- Mass shooting operations 337
- Ghetto 1183
- Death / extermination camp 647
- Deportation 1063
- Forced labor 791
- Flight 1410
- Hiding 594
- Resistance 121
- 1941 evacuations 866
- Novemberpogrom / Kristallnacht 34
- Eleftherias Square 10
- Kasztner group 1
- Pogrom in Iasi and the Death Train 21
- Sammelwohnungen 9
- Strohmann system 11
- Struma ship 17
- Life under occupation 803
- Yellow star house 72
- Protected house 15
- Arrow Cross ("nyilasok") 42
- Danube bank shots 6
- Kindertransport 26
- Schutzpass / false papers 95
- Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (1943) 24
- Warsaw Uprising (1944) 23
- Helpers 521
- Righteous Gentiles 269
- Returning home 1090
- Holocaust compensation 112
- Restitution 109
- Property (loss of property) 595
- Loss of loved ones 1724
- Trauma 1029
- Talking about what happened 1807
- Liberation 558
- Military 3322
- Politics 2640
-
Communism
4468
- Life in the Soviet Union/under Communism (in general) 2592
- Anti-communist resistance in general 63
- Nationalization under Communism 221
- Illegal communist movements 98
- Systematic demolitions under communism 45
- Communist holidays 311
- Sentiments about the communist rule 930
- Collectivization 94
- Experiences with state police 349
- Prison/Forced labor under communist/socialist rule 449
- Lack or violation of human and citizen rights 483
- Life after the change of the regime (1989) 493
- Israel / Palestine 2190
- Zionism 847
- Jewish Organizations 1200
Displaying 4771 - 4800 of 50826 results
Victoria Behar
![](/themes/custom/centro/flags/bg.svg)
We spoke Bulgarian at home and Ladino only when my grandmothers came to visit.
Bulgaria
My father didn't complete his university studies in economics, but he nonetheless worked as an accountant in a knitwear factory. My mother graduated from a junior high school, but she didn't work so that she could look after my sisters and me.
My aunt Rosa lived in Pernik, Uncle Avram and my father in Sofia. They weren't very religious and only observed the high holidays, mainly at home, where the whole family gathered. My father only went to the synagogue on the high holidays, and mostly alone. He very strictly observed Yom Kippur and fasted. On Pesach we had the seder. My mother's family was more religious; they ate kosher food, observed Yom Kippur, and the whole family gathered on Sabbath.
My mother's sister, Rosa Komforti, died of Spanish fever during World War I, in 1918. All her siblings emigrated to Israel after the war.
Bulgaria
My grandmother Devora was a housewife; she looked after her children and grandchildren, both in Romania and in Israel. They dressed in the same way as the Bulgarians. There was nothing special in their clothing, except that my grandmother always wore a kerchief on her head. Their house was very beautiful, and there was also a yard. In the summer we all gathered there, mainly the children.
My grandfather on my mother's side, Bohor Komforti, was a flour dealer. I will always remember him in his brown, coarse clothes, sprinkled with flour. He had his own business - a medium-size one, according to Bulgarian standards. He didn't have any employees and worked every day, except for Saturdays. His clients knew that he didn't work on Saturdays.
I don't know about my grandfather, but my grandmother never went to school. She lived a long life and moved to Israel in 1949. She lived with the families of her children there and received a small pension. She died in Israel, but I don't know when.
My ancestors came to Bulgaria as early as the end of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th century after the persecutions in Spain [see Expulsion of the Jews from Spain] [1]. Then Bulgaria was under Ottoman rule [2]. The native language of both my maternal and paternal grandparents was Ladino. I even remember my sisters and cousins and me made our grandmothers speak Bulgarian and mocked them a bit because they didn't know it well. They also spoke Turkish.
milena prochazkova
![](/themes/custom/centro/flags/cz.svg)
My husband was, on the contrary, very culturally minded, we often went to theaters and dancing to balls together. My husband and I were passionate dancers. We danced away countless evenings, even when we already had children, small and big. We were always somewhere. We had a great group of friends, where I was the only Jewess. We would go play cards together. Some of my girlfriends have already died, but their husbands still come over to my place for lunch, about once every three weeks. And also the rest of my husband's family. As far as sports go, my husband and I used to go skiing a lot in the winter.
My husband was a cultural officer of the ROH [16] at that computer equipment company. Back then the ROH gave out theater tickets. They bought them and were glad if someone went. My husband couldn't stand opera, he was absolutely tone-deaf. He couldn't tell one tone from another. But plays, that we could manage. He didn't like going to ballet either, I used to go by myself. Especially when they put on Romeo and Juliet at the National Theater, then I just sat on the steps and listened to that beautiful music.
My husband was a passionate hobbyist. For a long time he acted in amateur theater, and as I've said, he drew beautifully.
We also spent all vacations with the children.
In the beginning my husband had only vocational high school, because he wasn't allowed to go to university, as I've said. He worked back then for various companies, also in Remos, where he did mainly electrical work. It wasn't until later, when our children were already in school, sometime in 1964, 1965 I think, that he began studying at CTU while working. Already during his studies he was working as a programmer for a computer technology company, where he then worked until the end of his life.
When I was 40, I started at the National Gallery. And I was there until I retired, until 1984.
Druteva was an invalids' collective. I was on disability from the age of 25 due to my heart defect, and so that's how I got there. In Druteva they didn't only do handicrafts, but also various types of manufacturing.
His mother worked anywhere, she was a housewife, and his father was the general director of the Steam Navigation Society of Prague, so he was the first one they fired when 1948 [14] arrived. So they were basically without an income. That's why my husband couldn't attend any school. We had to help them out financially, and what's more, as the son of a former general director, he wasn't even allowed to attend university. His father also soon died, in 1955, five years after we were married.
My husband wasn't of Jewish origin, but in light of the fact that we didn't live in a Jewish fashion either, it wasn't a problem. On the contrary, our children are even baptized, as he had wished. He was baptized, but he wasn't religiously inclined at all, and didn't go to church.
We met at dance evenings when he was 19 and I was 16 or 17. On Narodni Trida [National Avenue] there used to be the Metro cinema and a dance hall. We used to go there, I remember that the dance-master was named Oplt. I know exactly what on him first caught my attention. I used to go to dance evenings together with Anita Frank.
It wasn't my cup of tea, I could have done without school. I had tons of girlfriends and was already going out with my future husband, Petr Prochazka.
In January of 1946 I wrote entry exams for gymnasium [academic high school], and was there for four years. After the war I terribly looked forward to school, but then got over it quickly. I only liked going there because of my friends.
My father had no problem finding work, he was an expert in heavy structural engineering, so they immediately hired him to work for Chemoprojekt.
My father began working in his little company that he'd already had before the war. There were three of them, two took care of finding business, and Dad just calculated and calculated. He lost his business sometime in 1951, I think. The Communists took it away from them. But he didn't make some sort of tragedy out of it, he took it as a matter of fact. Because he had such trials and tribulations behind him, that some little company couldn't upset him.
Due to the state of his health my father spent a lot of time in hospitals, but my mother had to go to work right away, so that we'd have something to live on. But people tried to help us with all their might. I, for example, remember some Mr. Benc, who had a corner store. He'd often come to visit us, and we'd then always find maybe a hundred or five hundred crown bill under something.
Then after some time we were able to return to the apartment on Letna, where we had originally lived, and tried to begin leading a normal life. But of course absolutely nothing was the same as before. When we returned, there was a huge homecoming welcome in that building on Veletrzni Street. I remember it well, how I was horribly sick in the evening. Because our neighbors said: 'Come for dinner.' And then the others, too. I know that it's a wonder that I didn't die that first evening. I couldn't control myself.
And so we returned home. We had absolutely nothing, only wooden shoes and some rags on us. For some time, until everything somehow settled down, we lived with the Geshmays again.
My mother lived and also worked somewhere else. For some time she was seriously ill, she had meningitis and then didn't even recognize anyone. But somehow she got over it. Then she worked in the 'Putzkolonne' [cleaning squad], i.e. washed the barracks, toilets and these tubs in which we could wash. Then, which saved my life, she slaved away in the bakery. From there she brought home, officially, one bun and one meatball a week, occasionally she managed to steal something. She still had burn marks from the heavy baking sheets on both wrists for a good five years after the war.
In Terezin even children had to work. In the summer I worked in the 'Landwirtschaft,' in the gardens. Between the ramparts there were these big gardens, where all sorts of things for the SS were grown. We would lug watering cans there. I was all kaput from that. And in the winter we would peel mica in these special unheated wooden shacks. This was called 'Glimmerspalten,' which in English means peeling mica. It was in this block, the mica, and peeled off of it were very thin sheets for airplane windows. It was fiddly work and mainly it was cold there. I remember that our hands would be completely frozen.
From there my father went in the spring of 1944 to the Wulkow-Zeesen concentration camp, which is not far from Berlin, where he stayed until the end of the war. He worked at the 'Baustelle' [German for 'construction site'] there, which was a labor camp.
We lived with the Geshmays until 11th September 1943, when my father, mother and I left for Terezin.