Tag #128162 - Interview #96679 (Venezia Kamhi)

we started to receive notes about the internment. According to these notes, we had to leave for Kiustendil; we had the right to take only 20 kilos of luggage. We started to get rid of our household belongings. The whole neighborhood brought their belongings out to the street to sell them and earn some money, and so did we.

We got the message to leave Sofia on May 24, 1943, and on the 25th-26th, we were already on our way to Kiustendil. There was not enough time to pack properly. We put only clothes and blankets into those 20 kilos of luggage. The officials sent us a message with the date and time we had to go to the railway station. People said we had to be assembled in different towns so that they could easily transport us to the Aegean region. The 11,000 Yugoslavian Jews who were deported there had died. Meanwhile, there were many protests by the Bulgarian public against the deportation of Bulgarian Jews to Poland. A great part of the population protested: religious organizations, the vladika [Bulgarian church leader], Petar Dunov [famous Bulgarian philosopher] who was very close to Czar Boris III. More than 50 members of the Parliament signed a petition against the deportation of Bulgarian Jews to concentration camps in Poland and that's how we were saved.