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I studied philosophy in Sofia University ‘St Kliment Ohridski’ [4], but I did not graduate. When I was a student I helped my parents a lot. I went shopping with my mother who was always busy, I helped her in the sewing, cooking, cleaning. I also helped my father who had a hard time earning money from the shop and I sold instead of him the clothes sewn by my mother. Besides the miserable conditions we lived in, I also have other unpleasant memories. I was still a high school student, when I felt anti-Semitism for the first time. On some Bulgarian holiday lots of people gathered in the center of the town, folk music was playing and a beautiful folk ring dance was winding around the central square. We, the three Jewish girls who studied in the Bulgarian school, also joined the dance. Suddenly a tall student came, stood between us and with a strong hit accompanied with dirty and insulting words drove us out of the dance. The three of us also sang in the school choir. We sang patriotic, Bulgarian songs, which I liked very much. Soon after that incident our music teacher, whom I respected very much, summoned us and told us that a higher authority forbade us to sing in the choir. That happened before the Law for Protection of the Nation [5] was adopted in 1942 [Editor’s note: the law was promulgated in 1941].
We had a Jewish youth group in Samokov, we met often and had a great time. At first we gathered in the Sunday school, where we sang and studied Ivrit. My favorite song at that time was ‘Adio kerida’ [Goodbye darling]. We also tried to improvise short plays and theater performances, whose plots we made up by ourselves. My friends then were Stela, Bella, Panka and others (unfortunately I cannot remember their family names). When the Law for Protection of the Nation was adopted, our group disintegrated. We stayed at our homes in Samokov, but it was like living in a ghetto. We wore the shameful yellow stars, we were humiliated and had to observe a number of limitations, such as the curfew and the ban on Jews to go to social places such as theaters, cafeterias, shops and restaurants in front of which there were the degrading notices ‘Entrance Forbidden for Jews’ or ‘Sale for Jews only’.
In the worst time during the Law for Protection of the Nation, we, the young Jews, had a small Jewish orchestra, including a violin, accordion and other instruments. We gathered, sang and had fun. But suddenly, in 1943, my family learned that we would no longer live in Samokov, because we would have to be sent somewhere else, no one knew where. [Internment of Jews in Bulgaria] [6] At that time some of the interned Jews from Sofia had already been living in Samokov. We had to think about what to pack. Of course, the first thing I thought of was the violin. The rest of the orchestra also packed their instruments. We thought that we were sent to somewhere only temporarily, to some place like Samokov. Gradually my parents learned that something was not right, that things were not as we thought. I remember that my father’s Bulgarian friends supported us a lot, so did the people from the villages to which my father went and sold bread during the Law for Protection of the Nation. They would bring us a little butter, a little yogurt, a little bread. And they would tell us, ‘Don’t worry, we will help you, everything will be okay.’ In the end, they did not send us anywhere, although we never fully realized how nightmarish our journey would have been.
When the scary days came, other friends of my father’s, and some classmates of mine also came to console us, although we were afraid for our lives all the time. We were really very afraid. Germans walked around the town all the time, people shouted at us and threatened us with murder, that they would cleanse Bulgaria from the Jews and horrible things like that. The scariest thing was when a classmate of my sister’s tried to kill her once. She was returning home one evening, when he ran after her with a gun and tried to catch her and kill her. I remember very well how horrified she was when we came home. Then we realized that something very frightening awaited us. And our friends came secretly and told us, ‘We will stand beside you, we will not let those horrible people hurt you.’ The people consoling us were Bulgarians again.
From the articles that I read in the papers at that time (‘Utro’ [Morning] and ‘Zarya’ [Dawn]) I remember that the Law for Protection of the Nation was introduced after the fateful meeting between the monarch at that time King Boris III [7] and Hitler in November 1940 and with the signing of the Trilateral Pact by the Prime Minister Bogdan Filov in Vienna on 1st March 1941. Very few people know that in a strange concurrence of consequences the Hitler forces entered Bulgaria on 3rd March – 63 years after the Russian forces liberated us from Turkish rule [8]. In fact, the meeting between Hitler and Boris III introduced a lot of the Nazi ideology and practice to Bulgaria.
We had a Jewish youth group in Samokov, we met often and had a great time. At first we gathered in the Sunday school, where we sang and studied Ivrit. My favorite song at that time was ‘Adio kerida’ [Goodbye darling]. We also tried to improvise short plays and theater performances, whose plots we made up by ourselves. My friends then were Stela, Bella, Panka and others (unfortunately I cannot remember their family names). When the Law for Protection of the Nation was adopted, our group disintegrated. We stayed at our homes in Samokov, but it was like living in a ghetto. We wore the shameful yellow stars, we were humiliated and had to observe a number of limitations, such as the curfew and the ban on Jews to go to social places such as theaters, cafeterias, shops and restaurants in front of which there were the degrading notices ‘Entrance Forbidden for Jews’ or ‘Sale for Jews only’.
In the worst time during the Law for Protection of the Nation, we, the young Jews, had a small Jewish orchestra, including a violin, accordion and other instruments. We gathered, sang and had fun. But suddenly, in 1943, my family learned that we would no longer live in Samokov, because we would have to be sent somewhere else, no one knew where. [Internment of Jews in Bulgaria] [6] At that time some of the interned Jews from Sofia had already been living in Samokov. We had to think about what to pack. Of course, the first thing I thought of was the violin. The rest of the orchestra also packed their instruments. We thought that we were sent to somewhere only temporarily, to some place like Samokov. Gradually my parents learned that something was not right, that things were not as we thought. I remember that my father’s Bulgarian friends supported us a lot, so did the people from the villages to which my father went and sold bread during the Law for Protection of the Nation. They would bring us a little butter, a little yogurt, a little bread. And they would tell us, ‘Don’t worry, we will help you, everything will be okay.’ In the end, they did not send us anywhere, although we never fully realized how nightmarish our journey would have been.
When the scary days came, other friends of my father’s, and some classmates of mine also came to console us, although we were afraid for our lives all the time. We were really very afraid. Germans walked around the town all the time, people shouted at us and threatened us with murder, that they would cleanse Bulgaria from the Jews and horrible things like that. The scariest thing was when a classmate of my sister’s tried to kill her once. She was returning home one evening, when he ran after her with a gun and tried to catch her and kill her. I remember very well how horrified she was when we came home. Then we realized that something very frightening awaited us. And our friends came secretly and told us, ‘We will stand beside you, we will not let those horrible people hurt you.’ The people consoling us were Bulgarians again.
From the articles that I read in the papers at that time (‘Utro’ [Morning] and ‘Zarya’ [Dawn]) I remember that the Law for Protection of the Nation was introduced after the fateful meeting between the monarch at that time King Boris III [7] and Hitler in November 1940 and with the signing of the Trilateral Pact by the Prime Minister Bogdan Filov in Vienna on 1st March 1941. Very few people know that in a strange concurrence of consequences the Hitler forces entered Bulgaria on 3rd March – 63 years after the Russian forces liberated us from Turkish rule [8]. In fact, the meeting between Hitler and Boris III introduced a lot of the Nazi ideology and practice to Bulgaria.
Location
Bulgaria
Interview
Lora Melamed
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