Tag #125393 - Interview #77984 (Leontina Arditi)

My mother's encounter with the commissioner Belev [18] of the so-called Committee on Jewish Affairs [19] in 1943 was interesting. The Committee was formed after the arrival of the Germans in Bulgaria, that is after the Law for the Protection of the Nation [20] was passed. Mum herself insisted to meet him at the time when they intended to expel us from our house. Her meeting was organized by a friend of a friend of Julia de la Gnese, who was in turn my father's friend. She was a very decent woman; she taught me French for free. She fell in love with some German and we used her contact. Although pointless, this encounter was remembered. I accompanied my mother - Belev appeared to me tall and sinister, with a yellowy-white face, pale as a dead man. My mother entered and came out again immediately. And said: 'Impossible'. That meant, we had to leave our house; we weren't allowed to stay there. But I remember well the cleaning woman at the Committee, who was sweeping and in front of her some young Germans in uniforms were sitting and smoking. She cursed them in the face: 'Got smite them', she shouted, 'and me, to sweep their shits here! Who brought them here...' And so on. A man heard her and said, 'What the hell are you talking! They will hear you!' 'You don't say! They don't speak Bulgarian let alone Shopski dialect.' [Editor's note: the northwestern part of Bulgaria is popularly called Shopluk or Shopsko.]

As a matter of fact this Julia had a very tragic fate. When the Germans came to Bulgaria in 1943 she fell in love and got engaged to one of them. But he went to fight at the Eastern front. He got killed and she suffered a lot. She had even got pregnant from him and mum took her somewhere to procure an abortion. Julia was a teacher in Italian and French. After 9th September 1944 she suddenly disappeared. She was slandered for having been a Germans' slut and was put in a very severe forced labor camp. My father was off to look for her. My mother went to search for her. They were told she had died.