Selected text
I was never a victim of anti-Semitic reactions from the part of my teachers, but from pupils – yes. When I was at the high school there was a small legionnaire that tried to banter with me, but we had a Bulgarian friend – strong and well-built member of the Union of Young Workers – he just took him by the armpits and lifted him up after which the boy ran away. Later we became very close friends with this Bulgarian boy who helped me then. In the third grade of the junior high school I took private lessons in Bulgarian grammar. I was not good at all at this subject and we had a very refined teacher in grammar, a Bulgarian woman, who agreed to give private lessons to me. When I studied at the Jewish school, my friends were Jews. Even in our group of UYW we were Jews only. But at the high school I had one or two Bulgarians for friends. We still meet with them now. Apart from our school responsibilities, we regularly went to the cinema. There was a cinema in the neighborhood, called ‘Odeon’. We often watched films there. There was a total of four cinemas in the town. We used to watch American films, but I liked the French ones, too. There was an American sequel series ‘Andy Hardy’. Mickey Rooney [a popular American actor] was playing Andy Hardy and he was starring in each of the films in the series: ‘Andy Hardy in New York’, ‘Andy Hardy…’ - God knows where… He was a very good actor.
We used to gather sometimes on birthdays – we were both girls and boys. We also used to dance - we had a record disk with dance music and we used to listen to it all day long. The gramophone was a mechanic one. During the war a café was opened in a shop and it became something like the Jewish café. We used to gather there. The Maccabi organization had a cultural section, too. We had a group leader there and he used to make us play ‘court sessions’ – we had to write our speeches in advance. It was interesting. Once a boy from Haskovo came to lecture on the sex subject.
I started swimming in the Danube River when I was 9 – before that I was weak and often ill. After the age of nine I started getting stronger. But we never visited beaches. There was a wooden building with two wooden swimming pools next to it – the first was for men, the second one – for women. The river water flowed into these pools. It was not until we became 15 or 16 when we started swimming in another place – it was outside Ruse and it had sand and the riverbed was flatter. It was after 1944 when they opened a beach with a big opened swimming pool for both men and women. The river then was already dirty. Swollen corpses of animals floated on it and tree trunks were carried perhaps by some floods.
In summers, together with my parents we used to go to Obraztsov Chiflik or to Lipnik, where there is a park now. These days, however, there was only a spring and a forest. We would wake up at 3 o’clock in the morning and walk the 12-kilometer distance to Lipnik. Sometimes we used to go only teenagers there. When the economy started to recover in 1933-1934, the whole group of friends around my father used to hire a bus to go there. Then they could afford it to go by bus to Obraztsov Chiflik, too. There was also an Austrian steamship agency that used to organize various celebrations and offered river cruises for 24th May [16]. And then we, the children, received Vienna ice-cream with two biscuits into it. We also visited the hunter’s park in Ruse – we used to have diner on Sundays there. There was a bus line to that place. We didn’t go there regularly – just sometimes. There was also a train that had a stop at Obraztsov Chiflik – it was the train for Varna. My friends and I were on our way to Obraztsov Chiflik on 22nd June 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Some students from the Agricultural School broke the news for us when we came to Obraztsov Chiflik. I was 15 then.
We used to gather sometimes on birthdays – we were both girls and boys. We also used to dance - we had a record disk with dance music and we used to listen to it all day long. The gramophone was a mechanic one. During the war a café was opened in a shop and it became something like the Jewish café. We used to gather there. The Maccabi organization had a cultural section, too. We had a group leader there and he used to make us play ‘court sessions’ – we had to write our speeches in advance. It was interesting. Once a boy from Haskovo came to lecture on the sex subject.
I started swimming in the Danube River when I was 9 – before that I was weak and often ill. After the age of nine I started getting stronger. But we never visited beaches. There was a wooden building with two wooden swimming pools next to it – the first was for men, the second one – for women. The river water flowed into these pools. It was not until we became 15 or 16 when we started swimming in another place – it was outside Ruse and it had sand and the riverbed was flatter. It was after 1944 when they opened a beach with a big opened swimming pool for both men and women. The river then was already dirty. Swollen corpses of animals floated on it and tree trunks were carried perhaps by some floods.
In summers, together with my parents we used to go to Obraztsov Chiflik or to Lipnik, where there is a park now. These days, however, there was only a spring and a forest. We would wake up at 3 o’clock in the morning and walk the 12-kilometer distance to Lipnik. Sometimes we used to go only teenagers there. When the economy started to recover in 1933-1934, the whole group of friends around my father used to hire a bus to go there. Then they could afford it to go by bus to Obraztsov Chiflik, too. There was also an Austrian steamship agency that used to organize various celebrations and offered river cruises for 24th May [16]. And then we, the children, received Vienna ice-cream with two biscuits into it. We also visited the hunter’s park in Ruse – we used to have diner on Sundays there. There was a bus line to that place. We didn’t go there regularly – just sometimes. There was also a train that had a stop at Obraztsov Chiflik – it was the train for Varna. My friends and I were on our way to Obraztsov Chiflik on 22nd June 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Some students from the Agricultural School broke the news for us when we came to Obraztsov Chiflik. I was 15 then.
Location
Bulgaria
Interview
Avram Pinkas