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Aunt Souzana had married in Stara Zagora. She decided to leave with her family – with her husband and her son David, who was a year old – for Israel in 1948–1949 [Mass Aliyah] [15]. In a year’s time her brother David went there together with his wife Olga and their child. There they had two more children. Afterwards her mother went there too – my granny in 1950 or 51. She sold the house and paid for the journey with that money. My mother wanted us to leave for Israel very much because almost all her relatives emigrated but papa laid down a condition: ‘If you want to go, go, but I and the children will stay here.’ So we stayed. At that time everything was ready, even the documents but dad remained on his position. I don’t know why. Even now I feverishly believe that I have to stay here and I didn’t agree to leave for Israel then or later.
Uncle Yeshua’s son, Albert, stayed in the Big family house and lived there. After 9th September [1944] my cousin, who had been in jail, started work at the Ministry of Interior and became an investigator.
In 1949 I went to Sofia to study there. They had just opened a boarding house and a vocational school sponsored by Joint [16]. They called it ORT [17]. It was situated near Rouski Monument whereas the boarding house was on 20 ‘Pozitano’ Street, next to the Jewish school. In the first year there was only me and three other girls. In the second – there were eight girls form all over Bulgaria, in the third – fifteen. In the first year there were 52 boys and 4 girls. The person in charge of the boarding house was Rouzha Isakova. At that time she was 61 – a learned, intelligent woman. There we, the kids from the remote part of the country, learned manners and general culture. All that I know I have learned from her – how to eat with fork and knife; at home, to be honest, nobody was using knives at the table, we were a simple, ordinary family. There we learned how to keep our hygiene; what we had known before that was that we had to go to the public bath once a week; she was teaching us that we have to take a bath at least twice a week. Every evening or every morning we had to wash our intimate parts, in the evening we would go to bed only in our pyjamas, not wearing any other clothes. She explained that how the body had to breathe, to take a rest from everything. She was sleeping there, in the girls’ bedroom. We were all looking at her going to bed, then we would lie down, she turned off the lights; she made her bed look like a sack, only one corner was tuned invitingly… A woman of refined manners... She used to wear a corset… She would undress, remove the corset, put on the nightgown and go to bed. That is what I took from her and even now I cannot get used to sleeping with underwear. In the morning we were waken up with an alarm, so we would get up, wash, prepare ourselves and go downstairs for breakfast. By the way, food was scarce in those times but we didn’t feel it so much because everything was from Joint. In the morning we always had milk with cocoa, a spoonful of margarine and some jam – that was serious breakfast for those years. There were coupons for bread and we used to give our coupons to the steward but we weren’t given an exact amount of bread. They simply sliced the bread and put it on the tables – some people eat more bread, some less – but we always had bread on the table.
Uncle Yeshua’s son, Albert, stayed in the Big family house and lived there. After 9th September [1944] my cousin, who had been in jail, started work at the Ministry of Interior and became an investigator.
In 1949 I went to Sofia to study there. They had just opened a boarding house and a vocational school sponsored by Joint [16]. They called it ORT [17]. It was situated near Rouski Monument whereas the boarding house was on 20 ‘Pozitano’ Street, next to the Jewish school. In the first year there was only me and three other girls. In the second – there were eight girls form all over Bulgaria, in the third – fifteen. In the first year there were 52 boys and 4 girls. The person in charge of the boarding house was Rouzha Isakova. At that time she was 61 – a learned, intelligent woman. There we, the kids from the remote part of the country, learned manners and general culture. All that I know I have learned from her – how to eat with fork and knife; at home, to be honest, nobody was using knives at the table, we were a simple, ordinary family. There we learned how to keep our hygiene; what we had known before that was that we had to go to the public bath once a week; she was teaching us that we have to take a bath at least twice a week. Every evening or every morning we had to wash our intimate parts, in the evening we would go to bed only in our pyjamas, not wearing any other clothes. She explained that how the body had to breathe, to take a rest from everything. She was sleeping there, in the girls’ bedroom. We were all looking at her going to bed, then we would lie down, she turned off the lights; she made her bed look like a sack, only one corner was tuned invitingly… A woman of refined manners... She used to wear a corset… She would undress, remove the corset, put on the nightgown and go to bed. That is what I took from her and even now I cannot get used to sleeping with underwear. In the morning we were waken up with an alarm, so we would get up, wash, prepare ourselves and go downstairs for breakfast. By the way, food was scarce in those times but we didn’t feel it so much because everything was from Joint. In the morning we always had milk with cocoa, a spoonful of margarine and some jam – that was serious breakfast for those years. There were coupons for bread and we used to give our coupons to the steward but we weren’t given an exact amount of bread. They simply sliced the bread and put it on the tables – some people eat more bread, some less – but we always had bread on the table.
Location
Bulgaria
Interview
Berta Pando