Tag #138375 - Interview #99032 (Nissim Kohen)

In 1981 a colleague of mine invited me on a visit to Leningrad [present-day Saint Petersburg]. He was a Russian Jew in a design organization and we made a project together on the glass factory in Razgrad. His name was Ilya Faintich. In Razgrad glass production with Soviet machines was introduced and the project was mostly a Soviet one. We met a couple of times and I wanted to visit the Soviet Union. So he invited me. In Leningrad I had an embarrassing situation. An officer in the police station interrogated me about who I was and what I was doing there in order to fill in an address card. All that was because of my Jewish origin. That cast a gloom on my stay in the city. What's more, there were anti-Jewish posters on the walls in the police station. I think that the negative attitude towards the Jews after 1944 was not an ideology, but introduced by people who wanted to preserve their positions in the power structures and were malicious in nature. That is, it is all up to the individual person. Now Ilya Faintich and I exchange postcards for our birthdays. Sometimes we phone each other. We speak in Russian. Ilya Faintich and his wife Irina Solomonova now live in Germany.

My wife and I were not rich, but we were both engineers and we managed to lead a comfortable life and go on holidays. We received vouchers for tourist holidays homes allocated to the design organizations, in which we worked. Every summer we brought our children to the seaside resort of Kiten.

Now I visit the Jewish home [Bet Am] [40] regularly. I lead a group of 18 people speaking Ivrit. We meet once every two weeks. We read in Ivrit and visit each other. I also visit the meetings of the 'Golden Age' club every Saturday ['Golden Age' club is established in 1999, where 30-40 Jews gather every Saturday. They have guests who are famous personalities, musicians, artists, economists, politicians. That is one of the most active and interesting clubs in the Jewish Home in Sofia.