Tag #138205 - Interview #96722 (Tinka Kohen)

During my childhood all of my friends were Bulgarians, I didn’t have any Jewish friends. We lived very happily. When I was six years old, I became friends with a Bulgarian girl and we were inseparable until just two years ago when she died. We went to parties with my friends, in the summer I went to the seaside in Varna, sometimes with my sister, sometimes in organized school camps. My classmates and I went on excursions to the Vitosha Mountain. I seldom went out with my parents, because I was the youngest child and we didn’t have much in common. Ever since I was 12 years old, at the end of each school year, they used to put me on the train and send me to spend the summer with my sister Sophie in Sliven. I loved her as if she were my mother and so did she. We went to Karandila [a region in the Balkan Mountains of Sliven] or to Varna. If I didn’t go to Sliven, I went with my mother to Bankya. But when I grew older, I preferred to spend the whole summer with my sister in Sliven.

As a child, I never experienced any anti-Semitic attitudes directed towards me. But I remember an incident that made a great impression on me. As a student during religion class, since I was the only Jew there I had nothing to do, as class wasn’t mandatory for me. So instead of wandering around, I asked if I could stay in class and listen. The teacher, Mrs. Kovacheva, refused squarely, “You cannot stay. You are a Jew and you cannot stay.” I was so shocked, I went home and told my father about that. He was a militant man and we went straight to the headmaster’s office. The headmaster said that I could visit those classes if I wanted to and that the teacher was in the wrong. After many years we became neighbors of that teacher, but I’ve never reminded her of that although it hurt me a lot.