Tag #126957 - Interview #97701 (Albert Ozlevi )

99% of our neighborhood was Jewish, but I don’t know the exact number. The Jewish community was in the hands of one person only, I regret to say. Yuda Romano. Yuda Romano was the head of Edirne community. There was Dr. Sarih Araz in the community, there was Moiz Kohen, there was Hayim Derazon. These were leaders and supposedly concerned people in the Jewish community. But Yuda Romano never allowed them to act, never gave them any responsibilities. Everything was in his hands. In a community there should be a directors’ board, this or that, but there was no such thing here. They were like puppets. Whenever they dissented a little, Yuda Romano immediately would say “I am not here, take the keys”. I consider this person as the cause of certain things based on my experiences. He would act without ever getting the board of directors’ approval. He was like a dictator. For example when I was 13, I was going to mahaziketora [4]. There was a teacher called Mosyo (Mr.) Hason. He was a very polite, very self-assured, very knowledgeable person. One day Natan Eskenazi, Avram Mitrani and I, 3 friends, we went to the temple. We sat in the 2nd or 3rd row. Yuda Romano yelled “get up rightaway, rightaway, go to the back seats”, he yelled a lot. We are obviously children, how dare he yell at us, we said we won’t go to the temple again. I did not go to mahaziketora again after I was 13, we were 26 in the mahaziketora, my older brother and a friend of his were 1st and 2nd in the mahaziketora and I was 3rd. And I really liked it then. After that day, until I turned 33 when my father died and then 49 days later when my mother died, I did not set foot in the temple. There was also someone named Pinto, he later became the chief rabbi in the Istanbul sisli synagogue, even he clashed with Yuda Romano  about some subjects, subjects I don’t know about, and was obliged to come to Istanbul. There was someone else, a friend named Azuz, he served as cantor. What I am talking about is happening around the 1970’s. He was teaching religion to the kids at the age of mahaziketora so well. The guy was saying, I can play poker if I want to have fun, I can sing and play, he had a very nice voice because he was a cantor, I am a cantor, he was saying, I will have fun as I see fit. Yuda Romano said, no, you have to be serious, and they couldn’t get along and Azuz took off and left for Israel. All of this caused the community to slowly leave for Israel and Istanbul.