Tag #128289 - Interview #96751 (Klara Kohen)

I didn’t have many Jewish classmates. Most of them were Bulgarians. Outside school we stuck to our Jewish circle [especially] when the anti-Jewish persecutions began. I was a schoolgirl then. The Bulgarian children started avoiding us at that time. I made friends with Jews then. I remember, although I was a little girl, that the Jews were afraid of Hitler. My parents used to discuss the persecution of Jews and the war [WWII]. I remember how my father was happy that the Soviet Army took Kharkhov back. My father used to say that Bai Ivan would save us. [Editor’s note: ‘Bai Ivan’, meaning Uncle Ivan, is a popular expression for Russia and the Russians in Bulgaria.