Selected text
The Jewish community in Sofia was always very well organized - there were newspapers, different organizations - charities, for example. There were different political trends - the strongest one was Zionism. They were called the General Zionists - they had newspapers, there were meetings for founding a Jewish state. I was never present at such meetings because I wasn't a Zionist - I was a communist. After 9th September 1944 a great part of the Bulgarian Jews left for Israel because they were influenced by Zionism. My father was a moderate Zionist and my brother Armand was a communist. Although my father wasn't alien to the social idea he said of communism that no change could come from it, that it was in vain.
The communists thought that the Jewish problem couldn't be resolved by founding a separate state. They believed that the victory of the social revolution would solve the principle conflict. The Zionists and the communists represented the main trends among the Bulgarian Jewish community. The relations between them became strained at times, but sometimes the contradictions ceased - for example during the war. There was a youth organization called Hashomer Hatzair [7] whose members were socialists but they supported the idea of founding a Jewish state. They left for Israel after the war and became founders of the kibbutzim. I remember that a younger friend of mine, Izi Mezan, left for Palestine with a group of young people in 1943. He worked there at a fishing farm. After 1944 he came back to Bulgaria and he graduated in medicine. Now he is a famous neurologist. His father, the intellectual Shaul Mezan, left for Albania in 1944 as a guerilla and he was killed there. Before 1944 many of them became partisans and died. Apart from the youth organizations there were some women's organizations.
The communists thought that the Jewish problem couldn't be resolved by founding a separate state. They believed that the victory of the social revolution would solve the principle conflict. The Zionists and the communists represented the main trends among the Bulgarian Jewish community. The relations between them became strained at times, but sometimes the contradictions ceased - for example during the war. There was a youth organization called Hashomer Hatzair [7] whose members were socialists but they supported the idea of founding a Jewish state. They left for Israel after the war and became founders of the kibbutzim. I remember that a younger friend of mine, Izi Mezan, left for Palestine with a group of young people in 1943. He worked there at a fishing farm. After 1944 he came back to Bulgaria and he graduated in medicine. Now he is a famous neurologist. His father, the intellectual Shaul Mezan, left for Albania in 1944 as a guerilla and he was killed there. Before 1944 many of them became partisans and died. Apart from the youth organizations there were some women's organizations.
Location
Sofia
Bulgaria
Interview
Victor Baruh