Tag #128049 - Interview #97525 (Zelda Ers)

I remember the wealth tax [8] from my youth. After my father died, my mother continued with the business, she would sew pants. They would bring her items for her to work on, they would take it after she sewed. If I am not wrong she received a wealth tax of 500 liras because she did this. The smallest wealth tax was 500 liras. My mother quit the business because she could not pay it. “I cannot afford to pay this, i don’t have money”  she objected. We had a coalman in or neighborhood, our mukhtar. One day I went to buy coal, I had just started elementary school. There was a woman, an informer, she lived above the mukhtar. “E, Zumbul, what are you doing?” “Nothing”, I said, “I am going to school”. I was only 7 years old. “What does your older brother do” “My brother is an ironworker, he works” I said. “Your oldest brother?” “He is a soldier” I said. “Your  mother?” “My mother is at home” I said. This woman tells all of this to the mukhtar. And the mukhtar sues us. Why? Because at the time they would pay a salary to the family of the person who was a soldier, either 150 liras or 200 liras. But of course in order to get this money there shouldn’t be anyone working in the house. All of a sudden we receive a summons saying you have someone working in the house. The day came when the trial took place, they made me testify. But they were wrong about one thing. My working brother was Avram. Instead of writing Avram, they wrote Zumbul. They took me to the courthouse. We did not have a lawyer or anyone, only the lawyer appointed by the government. They asked my mother, do you work, she said no, I was, but I quit. They asked my sister-in-law she said I don’t work, I stay home. They said to me you work. No,  sir, I said, I attend the Ikinci Karma [2nd coeducational] Jewish school. “What grade are you in?” “I am in 3rd grade”, I said. “O.k., give us the address of the school”, they said, and they went to the school, they asked, “yes”, they said, “she attends the school” and in this way we won the lawsuit. We had received a fine of I don’t know how much. We didn’t have a single penny to pay this. We left the place and at first we didn’t know if we won the lawsuit. My mother asked the attorney what happened. The attorney said “You are lucky, there was a mix-up with the names, you won in the court”. And so we won the lawsuit.

There was a lot of poverty at the time of the wealth tax, we used to buy bread with a ration card It was wartime at the same time. I remember, I slept with my mother, we had something like a small cloth bag under our pillow. In it we kept our birth certificates, important papers, 1-2 pieces of underwear. The lights would go out at midnight. Our curtains were dark blue roller blinds, light should not be seen from the outside. Airplanes would pass over, sirens would be heard immediately. I wasn’t going to school then, I was about 4 or 5. We would all leave the house and run to a shelter a little further down from  Sishane. We would all wait there, we would all gather one on top of another. Whenever the whistle ended, that is when we returned home.