Tag #122431 - Interview #78551 (Matilda Albuhaire)

In March 1943 we received notice that we were going to be interned and that we had to prepare our luggage. I was very affected, because at that time my brothers were in labor camps. My father’s illness had reached an advanced stage; he was bed-ridden. We were given a schedule for leaving our houses. At that time we used to live in a house by the railway station, and I remember very well the lined-up horse wagons on which we were supposed to be loaded. And then came the canceling order. That was why we were not interned. We were supposed to be taken to Poland, like the Aegean Jews. We didn’t know what it was like in Poland. We thought we were going to work in the agricultural sector. I only remember that I went to a doctor to be examined. He was my aunt’s neighbor. His name was Dr. Fashnov, he was not a Jew, but Bulgarian. It was said that he had contacts with the British, because he had been their informer about what was going on the front. I said I wanted him to examine me because I had pains in my back. And he said: ‘You have to come for an examination, but you don’t know what’s happening to Jews. I heard it had nothing to do with working in Poland, but with gas chambers’.