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I got married in 1942, during the Holocaust. When the internments [7] started in the 1940s my wife [Dora Levi, nee Avram Ronko] and I were interned first to Kyustendil, then to Pazardzhik and finally back to Kyustendil again. Before our internment we sold everything we had in Sofia almost for nothing. During the Holocaust we suffered a lot and in the material sense the Jews were deprived of and lost much. The restrictions were great and we had no financial resources.
In Kyustendil we were accommodated at our relatives’ place. Upon our arrival a cousin of my wife came to meet us. But we remained at their place only for a few days. We didn’t get on well, they made our life unbearable and we moved to a Bulgarian lodging. Out landlady’s name was Linka and she helped us a lot. At that time my father was ill.
During our internment to Pazardzhik, in order to provide for ourselves, we did some agricultural work. We dug gardens, planted cherry trees and gathered grapes. The wages were miserable, but we had no other choice.
At that time I realized that my wife had been arrested. So I went to Sofia in order to see what the situation was, we got married on the second day, and I returned immediately. I was punished, detained for 24 hours, but later they set me free. My service was from June to 5th December, until it started snowing.
My wife was arrested before 9th September [1944] [8] as a Jewish activist. There was a Jewish UYW [9] [i.e. only with Jewish members], which struggled against fascists. She was arrested because she collected money for the partisans. Nikola Geshev [a popular policeman and chief of a State Security department in the 1930s and the beginning of the 1940s at the time of the pro-Hitler regime in Bulgaria] interrogated her personally. He applied his own methods, yet it was already too late.
When he saw that she was a young girl, he tried to recruit her in order to get some more information about the others through her. Yet, in 1943-1944 the political situation had already changed, the Soviet troops began their attacks, so did the USA and England. Therefore Geshev’s methods – although he was a very bright cop – were not as effective as before.
In Pazardzhik there was only one textile enterprise, in which clothes were being made out of jute and sacks were being sewed. Some good people recommended me to the owners and thus I started working. My wife also joined me there as a weaver, and so did twelve more Jews, who were interned like us. They were very grateful to me for that.
So the winter of 1943 finally came to its end. During the next spring I received an instruction to go to a forced labor camp [10]. All young men were mobilized. We were sent to the village of Gabrovenitsa, 10 kilometers away from Pazardzhik. We were accommodated in sheds and we started digging.
Yet, the chief engineers from the textile factory decided that they needed me. After I had been in the camp for two days one of the factory’s owners, Sotirov was his name, together with the local colonel went to the camp’s superior and asked him to release me. He agreed and thus I got back to work.
The other Jews were both happy about me and envied me. I was released from the forced labor camp because the order said that if there were more than three brothers in a [Jewish] family, one of them had to be liberated [from the forced labor camp].
At that time my wife got ill. I sent her to her parents, who were interned to Kyustendil and in a few months I joined them. I did mostly agricultural work there. We helped local people to cultivate the earth and gather the crops. I am a technician and whenever it was necessary to maintain a machine, I was asked to fix the problem. Our relations with the Bulgarians were very good but the payment was very low.
In Kyustendil we were accommodated at our relatives’ place. Upon our arrival a cousin of my wife came to meet us. But we remained at their place only for a few days. We didn’t get on well, they made our life unbearable and we moved to a Bulgarian lodging. Out landlady’s name was Linka and she helped us a lot. At that time my father was ill.
During our internment to Pazardzhik, in order to provide for ourselves, we did some agricultural work. We dug gardens, planted cherry trees and gathered grapes. The wages were miserable, but we had no other choice.
At that time I realized that my wife had been arrested. So I went to Sofia in order to see what the situation was, we got married on the second day, and I returned immediately. I was punished, detained for 24 hours, but later they set me free. My service was from June to 5th December, until it started snowing.
My wife was arrested before 9th September [1944] [8] as a Jewish activist. There was a Jewish UYW [9] [i.e. only with Jewish members], which struggled against fascists. She was arrested because she collected money for the partisans. Nikola Geshev [a popular policeman and chief of a State Security department in the 1930s and the beginning of the 1940s at the time of the pro-Hitler regime in Bulgaria] interrogated her personally. He applied his own methods, yet it was already too late.
When he saw that she was a young girl, he tried to recruit her in order to get some more information about the others through her. Yet, in 1943-1944 the political situation had already changed, the Soviet troops began their attacks, so did the USA and England. Therefore Geshev’s methods – although he was a very bright cop – were not as effective as before.
In Pazardzhik there was only one textile enterprise, in which clothes were being made out of jute and sacks were being sewed. Some good people recommended me to the owners and thus I started working. My wife also joined me there as a weaver, and so did twelve more Jews, who were interned like us. They were very grateful to me for that.
So the winter of 1943 finally came to its end. During the next spring I received an instruction to go to a forced labor camp [10]. All young men were mobilized. We were sent to the village of Gabrovenitsa, 10 kilometers away from Pazardzhik. We were accommodated in sheds and we started digging.
Yet, the chief engineers from the textile factory decided that they needed me. After I had been in the camp for two days one of the factory’s owners, Sotirov was his name, together with the local colonel went to the camp’s superior and asked him to release me. He agreed and thus I got back to work.
The other Jews were both happy about me and envied me. I was released from the forced labor camp because the order said that if there were more than three brothers in a [Jewish] family, one of them had to be liberated [from the forced labor camp].
At that time my wife got ill. I sent her to her parents, who were interned to Kyustendil and in a few months I joined them. I did mostly agricultural work there. We helped local people to cultivate the earth and gather the crops. I am a technician and whenever it was necessary to maintain a machine, I was asked to fix the problem. Our relations with the Bulgarians were very good but the payment was very low.
Location
Bulgaria
Interview
Isak Avram Levi