Selected text
My grandparents and my uncles lived in the Turkish quarter in Skopje and there were only Turkish families around with whom they got along very well and were good friends. The house was big with two floors. My grandmother was a very hard-working housewife and every morning she would sit by the charcoal pan and prepare the breakfast. After breakfast we went back to play. We played a lot with the Turkish children. It was more complicated with the Turkish women, because they always had their faces veiled and never showed them; especially not to men, but they did show them to us, the children. They had interesting traditions, like the Turkish bath, for example. It was made of stones only, big stone blocks and jugs full of warm water. There was a special room for sweating - something like a sauna. All women in the family went and stayed there from morning until evening - with eating and all that. We also had a Turkish bath in Kaleto in Vidin, but we didn't stay there for a long time, because we had our own bath at home.
The shops of my father and my uncles were situated on the main trade street in Vidin where various shops of Jews and Bulgarians were located. My father's shop was very close to the high school. Opposite the high school, 200-300 meters away, was the shop of my uncle Yosef, who sold textiles, while the shop of my uncle Jacques, who also had a grocery shop, was at the market. There weren't separate shops for Jews and Bulgarians; in fact the customers were mostly Bulgarians, because people from the villages came to our shop to renew their food supplies. The youngest of the brothers, uncle Sami, had a shop in a village near Vidin, called Alexandrovo. There were one or two other Jewish families there and they maintained good relations with the Bulgarian families. Uncle Sami and my aunt Lora rented a house next to their shop. They had two boys and we loved visiting them during vacations.
There was a synagogue and a Jewish school in Kaleto. The Vidin synagogue was very big and beautiful. As far as I remember it was one of the biggest synagogues on the Balkan Peninsula. It was a two-storied building: women prayed upstairs, men downstairs. There were very beautiful colored glass windows and a big yard where we, the children, played.
The shops of my father and my uncles were situated on the main trade street in Vidin where various shops of Jews and Bulgarians were located. My father's shop was very close to the high school. Opposite the high school, 200-300 meters away, was the shop of my uncle Yosef, who sold textiles, while the shop of my uncle Jacques, who also had a grocery shop, was at the market. There weren't separate shops for Jews and Bulgarians; in fact the customers were mostly Bulgarians, because people from the villages came to our shop to renew their food supplies. The youngest of the brothers, uncle Sami, had a shop in a village near Vidin, called Alexandrovo. There were one or two other Jewish families there and they maintained good relations with the Bulgarian families. Uncle Sami and my aunt Lora rented a house next to their shop. They had two boys and we loved visiting them during vacations.
There was a synagogue and a Jewish school in Kaleto. The Vidin synagogue was very big and beautiful. As far as I remember it was one of the biggest synagogues on the Balkan Peninsula. It was a two-storied building: women prayed upstairs, men downstairs. There were very beautiful colored glass windows and a big yard where we, the children, played.
Location
Bulgaria
Interview
sophie pinkas