Tag #141464 - Interview #98678 (Yosif Avram Levi)

There were two Jewish schools in Sofia. One was in the center of the city, and the other one was in the Jewish neighborhood to the west of the center, which was called Iuchbunar [4]. The concentration of Jews in the central part of the city was smaller than in Iuchbunar and there was a shortage of students there. Therefore, about 20 children from Iuchbunar’s Jewish school were moved to the central Jewish school. I was in that group. There was even greater competition there because the children there were from intellectuals’ families whose parents were doctors and teachers. I could no longer be in the elite as I was somewhere at the average level. Our teachers were very good indeed and I finished with a 5 & 4/5 mark out of 6 maximum. This is equal to 5.80.

I was very good in Ivrit indeed and I got 5 & 5/6, which is more than 5.80. I remember that at the end of the school year representatives of the Ministry of Education came in order to examine how the Jews studied the Bulgarian language and history. Therefore, our teachers were very strict and demanding, as a result of which I never had more than a four in Bulgarian. No more than two people from our class got a five, and no one could even imagine a six. But the knowledge we gained was so useful for us and later when I was in high school, I knew much more than the rest of the students. The high school was a Bulgarian one and I studied there till the fifth grade. That was in 1941. The situation then was very hard and I had to begin to work, on the suggestion of my brother Isak. At 16, I started working in a drugstore as a laborer.