Selected text
After school we usually went to the Maccabi [7] yard to play. The chairman of Maccabi was Baruh Ovadia, a prominent public figure of Ruse’s Jewish community. Wonderful celebrations of the high holidays Chanukkah, Purim and Pesach were organized under his auspices. On Lag ba-Omer for example we had an impressive manifestation with music in the streets of Ruse, we always had a drummer in the avant-garde. In the afternoon the whole Jewish community would gather at the Habermann site near Ruse, on a meadow, where we, the Maccabi members, would present complex physical exercises and gymnastic pyramids. It was a nice time.
Back then Maccabi was openly a Zionist organization whose aim was to prepare healthy and strong young men and women who would then immigrate to Palestine in order to build anew the Jewish State. We were prepared for that and most of my friends emigrated there during the great immigration process in 1948 [cf. Mass Aliyah] [8] and some of them even before that.
Back then Maccabi was openly a Zionist organization whose aim was to prepare healthy and strong young men and women who would then immigrate to Palestine in order to build anew the Jewish State. We were prepared for that and most of my friends emigrated there during the great immigration process in 1948 [cf. Mass Aliyah] [8] and some of them even before that.
Period
Location
Ruse
Bulgaria
Interview
Bela Ishakh