Tag #127805 - Interview #96104 (Bela Ishakh)

After 9th September 1944 [25], my husband worked many years for the police, then called militia, and after the democratic changes in Bulgaria [in 1989] became a chairman of the Israeli Religious Council in Ruse. He has always been one of the most respected people in both Bulgarian and Jewish communities. He is also known for the fact that he introduced the ‘Personal Number’ [‘Edinen Grazhdanski Nomer’ (EGN), which stands for ‘Unified Civil Number’, used to certify the identity of Bulgarian citizens] in Bulgaria after the pattern of western European societies. His major passion – to collect facts and commentaries on the history of Ruse’s Jewry materialized recently in his book ‘Historic Notes on the Jews in Ruse’ [Ruse, 2002].