Tag #141545 - Interview #78604 (Adela Nissimova Levi)

Then we were interned again because there were some kinds of military facilities in Stara Zagora or something of the kind. We had to go to the town of Ferdinand [now Montana]. Once again we got on a train and traveled for a long time. We passed through Sofia. Something very dramatic happened here. My sisters Raina and Sofka had some friends: Armenian brothers, who lived near the station. When we reached Sofia, our wagon stopped far away from the station and we didn’t know when we would leave for Ferdinand. Both my sisters decided, although the train was guarded, to fool the guards and visit their friends. I can’t describe how worried my mother was before they left. She behaved as if she would never see them again. She asked them not to go, she cried, but they left. They had managed to fool the guards. Later, they told us that the mother of the brothers gave them food, because they were hungry. And the people at the station were already telling us that the train was about to leave. But my sisters were nowhere to be seen. My mother was hysterical with worry. And at the last second they appeared! We got on the train and arrived in Ferdinand. There we were once again taken to a school and lived in it for two or three months. We had very little money, which we had saved from the sale of the furniture. But even one loaf of bread was enough for us.

Then we rented a room in the ghetto which they had prepared for us. This was a residential district with specific borders. We weren’t allowed to leave it, but the Bulgarians could enter it, because some Bulgarians also lived there. Our landlady was Dafinka, a widow with two sons. One of them was Mitko and the other, Goshko. Mitko was in the military police and fought against the partisans and terrorists. Goshko hadn’t done his military service yet. We lived in the basement: a room with a small corridor. The landlady gave us an iron stove and we used it to warm the room. She was also a poor woman, but helped us with what she could. She even found a bed, although it wasn’t big enough for everybody; the others slept on the ground. We paid her some rent just like we did in Stara Zagora.