As we weren’t allowed to take furniture with us during the internment, we gave our household belongings to the neighbors in order for them to keep them for us. And when we came back from the internment they did return everything to us the way we had left it to them! When Jews were forbidden to own companies, my father passed the workshop he had to his business associate – a Bulgarian, who returned it to my father when we came back from the internment. So, from parents’ point of view there was no anti-Semitism at all. Actually that happened with the children mostly because of the Branniks [16]. They were given clothes, taken to camps and incited against the Jews and the communists.
- 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 40711 - 40740 of 50826 results
Klara Kohen
When I was a child I didn’t feel any anti-Semitism. When I was a little girl, some four or five years old, I remember playing with all children outside. When I turned ten and the Law for the Protection of the Nation was passed the children started chasing me away! Not the adults, but the children who listened to the anti-Jewish propaganda. I wondered why it happened so. I wanted to go to a vacation camp and was rejected with the explanation that Jews weren’t allowed there. Yet our neighbors, elderly people, helped us a lot.
I didn’t have many Jewish classmates. Most of them were Bulgarians. Outside school we stuck to our Jewish circle [especially] when the anti-Jewish persecutions began. I was a schoolgirl then. The Bulgarian children started avoiding us at that time. I made friends with Jews then. I remember, although I was a little girl, that the Jews were afraid of Hitler. My parents used to discuss the persecution of Jews and the war [WWII]. I remember how my father was happy that the Soviet Army took Kharkhov back. My father used to say that Bai Ivan would save us. [Editor’s note: ‘Bai Ivan’, meaning Uncle Ivan, is a popular expression for Russia and the Russians in Bulgaria.
I remember manifestations, which Jewish organizations like Maccabi [15] took part in. They marched in their white shirts and navy blue trousers – handsome, young and shapely. The songs were about the tsar, different marches, some of which are still popular today. It’s a shame that at that time there were no suitable sports organizations for me. They simply didn’t exist then. There were no tennis clubs, nor any other kind of ‘modern’ sports organizations. I used to go bowling and played chess, but there were no organized sports events like there are now, say, in swimming or tennis etc. I was more energetic than my sister. I loved climbing trees. I used to play in the neighborhood until the other children started avoiding me.
My family celebrated the high holidays: Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Chanukkah and Fruitas [14]. On Sabbath we used to cook something more festive. The house was cleaned, but we didn’t light candles or read anything because Bulgarian Jews are not fanatics. Besides Ivrit we didn’t study any special religious subjects at school. Only on holidays we were served special sweetmeats on the occasion of certain holidays. We were girls and we didn’t have our bat mitzvah, whereas now they do it in the synagogue. Years ago we had the bar mitzvah for our son at home and we invited some guests. I don’t have a favorite holiday. Our holidays are not connected with God. They are more linked to our history and similar from this point of view, so I don’t have a favorite one.
The Jewish traditions were observed at home. We visited the synagogue only on the high holidays. Otherwise we celebrated every holiday at home. For example, we ordered mavlach, which is something like today’s red sugar cockerels for Purim. Mavlach came in all kinds of shapes: there were various patterns such as scissors. The whole table was covered with ‘mavlach’ and we used to give some of it to our neighbors too. On Easter our Bulgarian neighbors used to bring us a wonderful homemade Easter cake as well as red-painted eggs. We exchanged presents. And this probably describes best our relations with the neighbors.
During the holidays we used to go out for a walk, and on slides if there was snow in Stara Zagora. We often went to Aiazmoto, which was close to town. We brought the accordion with us, played and sang songs with our classmates or parents. We visited each other. Special dishes were prepared on holidays, for example agristada [boiled chicken stuffed with home-made mayonnaise].
I never went on vacations with friends. My father was very strict – he had what we call a ‘Turkish’ moral. Until I got married he didn’t let me be late or go out with people, let alone when I was younger. I remember that I went for a drive in a car only after I got married. My husband bought a car around 1970. Anyway, I got on a plane for the first time as early as 1955, when I traveled from Stara Zagora to Sofia to get married. And I boarded a train when I went on vacations to Burgas with my parents. We stayed there for two or three weeks and we used to go to the beach. Sometimes we had vacations at the Stara Zagora spa and in Bankya, close to Sofia. I cannot remember my family going to any restaurant in Stara Zagora. We did go to a confectioner’s shop though when we went out for a walk on the main street.
My parents regularly read newspapers: ‘Utro’ [Morning], ‘Zora’ [Dawn], ‘Zarya’ [Sunrise], which were the most popular newspapers at the time. My mother used to tell us how she read between the lines and realized what had happened. We had a radio set but it was confiscated after the legislation of the anti-Jewish laws [see Law for the Protection of the Nation] [12]. Upon our return from the internment we got it back [see Internment of Jews in Bulgaria] [13].
We had a lot of books: the ones by the Russians I mentioned earlier and by classical Western European writers such as Ibsen and Zola. [Editors note: Ibsen, Henrik Johan (1828-1906): Norwegian poet and playwright; Zola, Emile (1840-1902): French writer and critic, leader of the naturalist school.] The books were in Bulgarian. My mother bought them, but she also read books from the library – there was a city library in Stara Zagora. There was a dentist, a Jew, from whom she also used to borrow novels. She used to send me to collect them and later I returned them. My mother also bought children’s books. We didn’t have religious books.
In my childhood there was electricity as well as running water inside the house. My mother always complained that my father didn’t spend much money on furnishing. Everything was simple in the house. We heated the rooms with coal-burning stoves. We didn’t have a bath. We always had a cat and a dog. We also had hens. There was a maid, a girl from the villages. She helped my mother with the cleaning. She used to live with us. Not for very long, maybe two or three years. My mother did the shopping in our family.
Jews lived in a community. The richer ones brought to the poorer ones hens during holidays; people used to help each other. There was a synagogue, a chazzan and a shochet, but no rabbi. Kosher meat was eaten. Lambs were also slaughtered and the internal organs were provided for the chazzan. That was before 9th September 1944; after that these rituals weren’t performed. Bar mitzvah and brit milah were celebrated. There wasn’t a separate Jewish neighborhood in Stara Zagora and the typical Jewish professions were various: there was a bank director and an accountant, there were also a lot of craftsmen such as tinsmiths, leather-workers, butchers ... My father had his own workshop for the production of beds. There was a Jew who was a car-mechanic, and there were traders. But it is not true that the Jews were rich – most of them were poor. Maybe there were around ten people who were well off; the rest were quite poor.
The opera in Stara Zagora, and the books of Russian and Western European classics were important parts of my childhood. I had a great childhood. Back then there were around 30,000 citizens in Stara Zagora. I don’t know about the exact number of Jews, but they weren’t few. There were horses and carts in the town, but the streets weren’t paved and became very muddy when it was raining. One of my father’s cousins had a cab and he used to give us a ride in it in order to take us to Stara Zagora spa, about 10 kilometers away. That was our greatest pleasure.
I was born in 1930 in Stara Zagora. My childhood was wonderful. I studied in the Jewish school the first four years, where I also learned Ivrit. Later, in the three years before the Holocaust, when Bulgarian children had religious classes, we went to the Jewish school, which was very close in order to continue studying Ivrit. I understand a little of it even now. My sister also studied in a Jewish school, then in a high school, and as soon as she graduated from it, we were interned to Targovishte. After the four grades in the Jewish school I attended the Bulgarian junior high school. Of all school subjects I loved languages most, but since I didn’t want to study German, I studied Italian. German sounded rather harsh to me, and it even became more unpleasant to me because of the events that took place at that time. I liked the ‘music’ of Italian and Spanish. I also took private lessons in French. My mother influenced my choice to study French as her father had connections in France. She also insisted that I should learn to play the piano but my time was preoccupied with languages and I couldn’t pay attention to it, for which I felt sorry for the rest of my life. I was deeply attracted to music and I had a nice voice.
I didn’t go to kindergarten. My mother was a housewife at home and she took care of me. I didn’t have a nanny either. At home I communicated mainly with my mother. She introduced me to literature and music. She used to perform arias from operettas. At that time there was an opera house in Stara Zagora – it wasn’t a state one but a municipal one.
My parents kept in touch with some cousins from Stara Zagora. They met on holidays or weddings, graduation balls and other celebrations. The cousins used to drink mastika [11] with boiled eggs and salads. One of my father’s cousins was very close to us – his name was uncle Kemal and he used to drive us in a cab.
My parents’ relations with the neighbors were wonderful. They were Bulgarians, who kept our property during the internment. Our closest neighbors were the Hadzhimihovs, to whom we left our furniture then as well as to my father’s associate Stefan Belchev. Other neighbors of ours were the teachers’ family Balkanski, who also treated us well. I cannot recall any other specific examples of this nice coexistence between Jews and Bulgarians, but I’ve heard about similar cases many times. Otherwise my parents became friends with Jews. They lived in a closed Jewish circle. Only during the socialist times did they open up to other people. Before that they lived an isolated life.
The one-floor house we lived in was our property. I lived there with my parents and my sister. Our house had three rooms: a dining room, a living room and a bedroom. My sister and I slept in one of the rooms, and my parents inhabited the other one. And there was a drawing room kept especially for guests. There was a separate kitchen and quite a large larder, a lean-to – a summer kitchen with a fireplace, as well as a beautiful garden and a nice tiled yard. This house belonged to the owners of the factory, in which my father was employed. The owners were two brothers, Iliya and Vitalii Assa. They left for Sofia and transferred the management of the factory to my father. Upon their leaving they left the house to him and I remember that he paid for it in installments throughout his life. It was a wonderful place with very nice trellis-vines. As my father got part of the profit, as soon as he bettered his position, he separated with an associate to develop his own business. There were flowers and various fruit trees – cherries, apricots, pears, plums, and grapes. There were no vegetables.
My father was quite strict. He was devoted to his family, but he was a very tough man indeed. Even if I fell down he would scold me. On the other hand he was very kind-hearted. He was educated but he couldn’t spare much time on reading unlike my mother. She was very well read and musical. She could speak about operas and operettas, and I still keep wondering – how come this woman was so well informed in her young years? It remains a mystery to me. She read a lot. I learned from her about the literature classics – the Russians like Tolstoy [9], Dostoevsky [10] as well as Western European ones ... My mother wasn’t highly educated, but she was clever.
My mother was a Zionist and my father wasn’t happy with that. She was a member of WIZO [6], which was involved in educational and charity activities. After 9th September 1944 the organization ceased to exist. Once every Jewish house had two sealed tin boxes – one for the Keren Kayemet Leisrael [7] organization – for money collected in order to buy land in Israel. In this box, which we used to call ‘kumbarichka’, my father never dropped coins as he considered it to be too Zionistic. He usually dropped coins in the other box – for Bikur Cholim [8], a charity for sick and poor people. A commission came from time to time in order to collect the savings from every house.
My father took an active part in the September uprising [see Events of 1923] [4] and held the power for seven days in the village of Koniovitsa in Nova Zagora district. When the uprising was suppressed, he was taken on foot from Koniovitsa to Nova Zagora. He was beaten not only for being a communist but also because he was a Jew. My mother was engaged to him at that time. She went to the place were he was kept under arrest in order to take him with her to Stara Zagora. It was then that he broke contacts with the Communist Party because he had been severely beaten. After he returned to Stara Zagora he became an accountant in the bed factory and cut his ties with the communists. He did this because of his family. After 9th September 1944 [5], when the communists took power, he enrolled in the Bulgarian Communist Party again.
Bulgarian is my parents’ mother tongue, but they also knew Spanish [Ladino]. They didn’t speak Ivrit, but my father could read it. My father worked in a Jewish factory manufacturing beds and my mother was a housewife. My father’s cousin Shapat introduced them to one another. They got married in 1924 and in 1925 my sister Suzi Sami Eshkenazi, nee Solomonova, was born. My parents dressed in secular [conventional] clothes just like the Bulgarians did. My family has always been quite well off. In the very beginning, until my father got that job, their situation was rather miserable. As my mother told me, they used to feed my sister with bread and coffee when she was a little child. It seems that at that time coffee was cheap. Later my father became an accountant and was able to provide for his family.
My mother was born in 1900 in Stara Zagora and my father in 1896 in Nova Zagora. My father graduated from the commercial school in Burgas, while my mother had elementary education. My father had two brothers: the first one, Mordo, died after the war [WWI], while the second one, Solomon, is over 80 years now and lives with his son in a kibbutz in Israel. My father also had a sister named Joia, about whom I know only that she used to live in Israel. Mordo, my father’s elder brother was the most intelligent one among the siblings, who took my father to study in Burgas. My father served as a telephone operator during World War I [also see Bulgaria in World War I] [3]. He knew the Morse codes. Unfortunately Mordo died early. He fought on the front and after he returned he died of the Spanish flue.
My grandparents lived in a house, but they didn’t own it, as my grandfather was a good-for-nothing man. They lived in a rented place. There was neither running water, nor electricity. My mother used to say that they went as far as the next street corner in order to fetch water. My mother got engaged to my father in 1923, so she probably spoke about her younger years, when she was ten or eleven years old. In Stara Zagora there was no electricity. People used coal in order to heat their stoves.
My mother didn’t tell me about a yard, but probably they had one, because all houses had yards at that time. They didn’t have any servants, as they weren’t well off.
My mother didn’t tell me about a yard, but probably they had one, because all houses had yards at that time. They didn’t have any servants, as they weren’t well off.
So, as I mentioned before, my grandmother had those clothes – some kind of a violet velvet dress embroidered with tinsel. There were also man’s overcoats – again in violet with gold-lace embroideries. My mother had those clothes from her mother, but later, before she left for Israel, I think she endowed them to the synagogue.
My grandfather spoke French; he maintained contacts with France for some kind of clothes. Later, because of the drinking habit of my grandfather, my grandmother Buka fell sick – maybe of tuberculosis – and my mother Zhana Santo Avramova started taking care of her and thus couldn’t get proper education.
I never met my paternal grandfather Avram Solomonov, because he died young. Most likely he did some kind of trade – peddling, because his family wasn’t rich. They spoke Ladino. I don’t have any photos and I don’t know how they dressed. But I remember some clothes my mother kept. They used to belong to her mother Buka Avram Almalech, who was from a very rich family from Svishtov. She married Avram Almalech, who was from a well-known family. My mother used to say that a whole caravan of chests and packing cases was used to transport her mother’s dowry through the Balkan Mountain. She was very rich. Her father in Svishtov dealt with wheat. He was well off and therefore my mother had this rich dowry. When she came to Stara Zagora, she used to help everyone there. Unfortunately my grandfather Avram Almalech, who was a very intelligent man, took to drinking. I’ve always felt sorry that my grandfather couldn’t give my mother the education she really deserved, as she was very intelligent, well read, musical, very talented and skilful... My grandfather became a habitual drunkard – and they say Jews don’t drink! He fell on the streets. And so he died of bronchopneumonia young, before he turned 50. He was quite different from his brother Aron.
My ancestors came from Spain. They spoke Spanish, which had changed through the years and now is called Ladino. I know neither what they dealt with nor what their material status was. They were religious for sure, as the older generations of Jews were religious and that preserved their identity. Not until the socialist times [1944-1989] did Jewish people start mingling with Bulgarians, with Christians. Before that our ancestors had kept their national identity strictly. They came to Bulgaria in the 16th century during the Turkish rule [see Ottoman Rule in Bulgaria] [1]. They were chased away from Spain and probably they had come in groups by sea and land spreading over Turkey, Bulgaria and the Balkans as a whole [also see Expulsion of the Jews from Spain] [2]. I remember asking my paternal grandmother Rivka Avram Solomonova to tell me about the Turkish times but never did she say anything special about it. I think nevertheless that they had lived well both with Turks and Bulgarians.
Naum Baru
I remember well Hitler coming to power and invasion of Poland. My father was a reserve officer and was recruited to the army in 1939 for half a year service term. He worked as an accountant, business manager and lieutenant-technician at a military institution in Kharkov. He was wearing a military uniform.
Darvin street was the House of Officers. The authorities began arresting commanding officers. Kharkov was the capital of Ukraine and there were many military institutions in it. There were many high rank officers. The ranks were different then: kombrig (Russian: brigade commander), komcor (Russian: corps commander).