Selected text
Thessaloniki I loved with all my heart and I still love today. Yesterday an Italian was here writing a book about the Jews of Thessaloniki and asked me if I was thinking about any other place to go and settle, if I had Italy in mind, for example. And I replied that Thessaloniki is my pride. I grew up here, and here is where my friends are.
It is very fortunate that after the war we created a team of five, five friends, old partisans, exiles etc, leftists, and every week we gathered at a small tavern to have a glass of wine. This was happening for years. Now, one is ill, the other has his foot hurt, but still something is going on between us, the company remained. We were the five of us, all from Thessaloniki, all residents of Thessaloniki that love the place, feel for it like a homeland. One of them was, in fact, from Chortiatis Mountain [a village near Thessaloniki]. He was a partisan from ELAS and after that he went to the People’s Republic and he died somewhere in Romania, I think.
We moved a great deal. The ten or eleven years that I was in the ‘151’ neighborhood, a Jewish neighborhood, I was playing with other children, who were all Jewish. We were playing, fighting with each other, playing ‘long donkey,’ etc. That was the first ten or eleven years. Then we left and moved to Agios Dimitrios Street, and there I started becoming an adult and Father sent me to work, to learn a craft.
At the beginning he sent me to a shop of a Christian, whose name was Laskaridis, and I didn’t know this at the time, but my father would go every week and give him two coins, and he would give them to me at the end of the week as my pay. So I learned the business. I didn’t know, and closer to the end he told me, ‘You should know that these coins are from your father and not from me, all I give you is my craft.’
After him, I went to another one, because it was more convenient for me, because at the Ifanet factory I had an uncle, who was my father’s cousin and who was an engineer there. He would arrange the order at machine works and I learned many things for my craft. My uncle put me there and told them to take care of me as their own child.
In this factory I really learned many things about my work. In fact, when I went to this factory Axilithioti, a father with two children, was making cars for spraying the roads and I started working as a trainee, but I knew my craft, so I had to be paid as a worker. When we came to terms with the management regarding labor issues, they called him and told him, ‘This man you should pay as a regular worker and not as a trainee.’ After that I got a fair amount of money with which I helped my sisters to get married and have their dowries and I, as a young man felt better, could dress better etc.
It is very fortunate that after the war we created a team of five, five friends, old partisans, exiles etc, leftists, and every week we gathered at a small tavern to have a glass of wine. This was happening for years. Now, one is ill, the other has his foot hurt, but still something is going on between us, the company remained. We were the five of us, all from Thessaloniki, all residents of Thessaloniki that love the place, feel for it like a homeland. One of them was, in fact, from Chortiatis Mountain [a village near Thessaloniki]. He was a partisan from ELAS and after that he went to the People’s Republic and he died somewhere in Romania, I think.
We moved a great deal. The ten or eleven years that I was in the ‘151’ neighborhood, a Jewish neighborhood, I was playing with other children, who were all Jewish. We were playing, fighting with each other, playing ‘long donkey,’ etc. That was the first ten or eleven years. Then we left and moved to Agios Dimitrios Street, and there I started becoming an adult and Father sent me to work, to learn a craft.
At the beginning he sent me to a shop of a Christian, whose name was Laskaridis, and I didn’t know this at the time, but my father would go every week and give him two coins, and he would give them to me at the end of the week as my pay. So I learned the business. I didn’t know, and closer to the end he told me, ‘You should know that these coins are from your father and not from me, all I give you is my craft.’
After him, I went to another one, because it was more convenient for me, because at the Ifanet factory I had an uncle, who was my father’s cousin and who was an engineer there. He would arrange the order at machine works and I learned many things for my craft. My uncle put me there and told them to take care of me as their own child.
In this factory I really learned many things about my work. In fact, when I went to this factory Axilithioti, a father with two children, was making cars for spraying the roads and I started working as a trainee, but I knew my craft, so I had to be paid as a worker. When we came to terms with the management regarding labor issues, they called him and told him, ‘This man you should pay as a regular worker and not as a trainee.’ After that I got a fair amount of money with which I helped my sisters to get married and have their dowries and I, as a young man felt better, could dress better etc.
Period
Interview
Moshe Burla