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I was born in 1920 in Ruse. I was the eldest of three children in the family and I remember that we spoke only Ladino at home. I didn't have a nanny, because my family was poor. I didn't experience much anti-Semitism in my childhood. I studied first in the local Jewish school, which was private and then in the Bulgarian secular school. I then studied in the Jewish school for 4-5 years, until I finished junior high school. In 1932-33 when I went to the Bulgarian school, I had to repeat one grade. I don't know exactly why, such were the laws then.
In the Jewish school my teacher in Ivrit was Giveret [‘Miss’ in Ivrit] Dina. She came especially from Israel [then Palestine] to teach us, using mainly the Tannakh. The only teacher I hated was in the Bulgarian school, the director Mr Boyadzhiev, who taught us arithmetic and geometry; there was no maths then, but two separate subjects. He was very strict, although he was fair. And yet I hated his subjects. My favorite subjects were history and especially literature, because when I was a child I loved reading Bulgarian literature. I inherited that from my mother – I ran away from school to go to the Hashomer Hatzair club [10] where we had a library and where we went to read fiction. I read a lot the works of Jack London, Maxim Gorky, Upton Sinclair [(1878-1968): American writer of novels and non-fiction], Soviet literature – Sholokhov [11] and others. That was in the 1930s. There was one publishing house, ‘New World,’ a party one, in which many distinguished writers and poets worked. The address for ‘Hashomer Hatzair’ and ‘New World’ was my address. They sent me the catalogues, and then we, the Jewish kids, collected stotinkas [Bulgarian cents] to buy books. We had a decent library.
In the Jewish school my teacher in Ivrit was Giveret [‘Miss’ in Ivrit] Dina. She came especially from Israel [then Palestine] to teach us, using mainly the Tannakh. The only teacher I hated was in the Bulgarian school, the director Mr Boyadzhiev, who taught us arithmetic and geometry; there was no maths then, but two separate subjects. He was very strict, although he was fair. And yet I hated his subjects. My favorite subjects were history and especially literature, because when I was a child I loved reading Bulgarian literature. I inherited that from my mother – I ran away from school to go to the Hashomer Hatzair club [10] where we had a library and where we went to read fiction. I read a lot the works of Jack London, Maxim Gorky, Upton Sinclair [(1878-1968): American writer of novels and non-fiction], Soviet literature – Sholokhov [11] and others. That was in the 1930s. There was one publishing house, ‘New World,’ a party one, in which many distinguished writers and poets worked. The address for ‘Hashomer Hatzair’ and ‘New World’ was my address. They sent me the catalogues, and then we, the Jewish kids, collected stotinkas [Bulgarian cents] to buy books. We had a decent library.
Location
Bulgaria
Interview
Yako Yakov