Tag #128292 - Interview #96751 (Klara Kohen)

I didn’t hate any of the teachers, nor did I particularly like them that much. I remember my private teacher in French. The lessons in accordion were also private ones. Once my father even went to Stara Zagora after we had already been interned to Targovishte, and he brought it from there and I continued taking private lessons. We could afford it because we had financial stability in Targovishte, as my father’s associate kept sending him money during the internment. I was never a victim of anti-Semitic demonstrations on my teachers’ or classmates’ side. Yet there was a teacher in gymnastics who disappeared right after 1944. His name was Kirev. His wife, Mrs. Kireva, was a maths teacher. He constantly wore a Brannik uniform. He had crooked legs and tortured us by examining a girl, whose father was an outlaw, and I all the time. Immediately after 9th September [1944] this man sort of vanished. When they say now that some people were killed without charge or trial, I think that’s what happened with Kirev, too. Who knows, maybe they [the new authorities] harbored a grudge on him, as he used to be the chief of the Branniks in Stara Zagora. He simply disappeared. His wife used to ask me, ‘Klara, how are you?’ whenever she saw me after 9th September [1944]. I couldn’t even look her in the eye! But apart from this I cannot recall any bad attitude towards Jews on my neighbors’ or teachers’ side.