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We didn't have servants. As I said, my mother went to cook in other people's houses and I helped her. In 1941 when the Law for Protection of the Nation was passed a man called Ivan the Beast, the police chief, came and banished us from the house. We went to live under the hen-house and the shupron. We slept on the floor. All our belongings, the beds, the dishes, etc. remained with the Beast. At that time my father was in prison. Ivan the Beast returned from the Aegean region, when the Aegean Jews were all shipped to Majdanek [14]. [Jews from the Bulgarian occupied Yugoslav and Greek lands, Macedonia and Aegean Thrace, were deported to Nazi death camps.] From there he brought home so many clothes and other stuff that his wife didn't know what to do with it all.
I didn't go to kindergarten; my mother took care of me. I studied in a Bulgarian secular school. I loved two subjects: history and Bulgarian language and literature, because history was related to my ancestry and I simply love Bulgarian poems. I wasn't sent to a Jewish school, because my father was an atheist and I had already begun my studies in the Bulgarian elementary school in the village of Gradets, where I was born. My favorite teacher was the one who taught me to write. His name was Tsankov; I remember him from the first grade. Our teacher from high school, who taught us Russian and French, from the forth until the eighth grade was Russian. Her family name was Belcheva, nee Galkina. She was a very cordial and charming woman. When she was talking, we couldn't take our eyes off her. She was the reason I loved Pushkin [15]. I even named my daughter Tatyana after the female protagonist in 'Eugene Onegin'.
As I mention earlier, I didn't study in a Jewish school, but the Ivrit of the Jewish school, when he met me on the street, would shout, 'Pizantika, you must come to my class!' However, my parents had decided otherwise.
I didn't go to kindergarten; my mother took care of me. I studied in a Bulgarian secular school. I loved two subjects: history and Bulgarian language and literature, because history was related to my ancestry and I simply love Bulgarian poems. I wasn't sent to a Jewish school, because my father was an atheist and I had already begun my studies in the Bulgarian elementary school in the village of Gradets, where I was born. My favorite teacher was the one who taught me to write. His name was Tsankov; I remember him from the first grade. Our teacher from high school, who taught us Russian and French, from the forth until the eighth grade was Russian. Her family name was Belcheva, nee Galkina. She was a very cordial and charming woman. When she was talking, we couldn't take our eyes off her. She was the reason I loved Pushkin [15]. I even named my daughter Tatyana after the female protagonist in 'Eugene Onegin'.
As I mention earlier, I didn't study in a Jewish school, but the Ivrit of the Jewish school, when he met me on the street, would shout, 'Pizantika, you must come to my class!' However, my parents had decided otherwise.
Location
Bulgaria
Interview
Mimi-Matilda Petkova