I know that the Jewish community in Ukraine is reviving. There are books and newspapers published. There are charity organizations. Synagogues are open. I find it all wonderful. I don't attend any of these. We've never celebrated any Jewish holidays - we were raised that way. My wife and I often go to theater, read a lot, meet up with friends and look after our grandchildren. Our grandchildren often come to see us.
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Displaying 2131 - 2160 of 50826 results
ester josifova
I visit the Jewish cultural center regularly now. The Jewish organisation in Sofia, Shalom, gives us the chance for entertainment, cultural events and meetings. We are organized in clubs that we visit several times a week. We have the Health Club where we do physical exercises, the Ladino Club where we practice our language and we also have a doctor at the club who takes care of our health. When I went on vacation to Kovachevtsi with Shalom, I asked a local man to take me to my grandfather and father's dairy. He took me there and it really looked ruined but there was someone who continued to take care of it.
Life became more agitated after the political changes in Bulgaria in 1989, and people feel less secure. My daughters are extremely busy all the time. I think that Bulgaria hasn't been developing very well in recent years.
I welcome Eastern Europe's opening to the West. We can travel freely everywhere now. I was investigated for a month before I could go to Israel in the 1960s. I was instructed what to say when I would return from Israel. My cousins used to come to Bulgaria more often, and it seems they didn't experience the problems we did.
I welcome Eastern Europe's opening to the West. We can travel freely everywhere now. I was investigated for a month before I could go to Israel in the 1960s. I was instructed what to say when I would return from Israel. My cousins used to come to Bulgaria more often, and it seems they didn't experience the problems we did.
Both my daughters are musical. My older daughter plays the piano very well. Lora was a ballet dancer as a little girl, and it was her decision not to continue with music. She has two university degrees, one in chemistry and one in journalism. She works as a journalist now. Iza graduated from the Faculty of Pharmacy at the Medical Academy. She owns a small pharmacy now and works there. My two daughters aren't married.
I started work at the dressmaker's studio of the Joint. It was founded by the Joint [12] in order to provide jobs for Jews. I worked there until I retired in 1970. I was asked to go back to work after that because the studio needed a designer. Several dressmakers' studios merged back then. I fell severely ill with radicolithis. A Jewish doctor advised me not to have an operation and told me how to cure it myself. Upon that I started work as a quality controller at the Rodina dressmaker's studio.
I have suffered a lot during the two wars in Israel [the Six-Day-War and the Yom Kippur War] [11], because I have many relatives there. We also suffered because there was no objective information in Bulgaria at that time, and there was an anti-Israeli campaign. The authorities were pro-Arab during the wars in Israel.
I continued to observe all Jewish holidays after 9th September 1944. My husband's mother lived with us, and we used to prepare for all the Jewish holidays together. In recent years I've been going to the Central Synagogue regularly as it's very near our home. We make special dishes for Pesach. We have been conducting a seder in the last ten years. We have a specially arranged table: there must be fish on the table.
It was difficult for Jews to go on living their traditional life during the times of the Communist Party rule. It wasn't a secret that the authorities kept the people who entered the synagogue under observation. It wasn't desirable to go to the synagogue, especially not for young people. I didn't have any problems because I used to accompany my husband's old mother. Old people could go there unobstructed. There was a certain anti-Semitic attitude towards me at my workplace though. I heard unpleasant things about my origin but only in everyday conversations. For example, after I became the director of the Zoia designer's studio, a colleague of mine said that Hitler should have killed us all so that I wouldn't have become her boss.
I was very happy and enthusiastic in the first years after 9th September 1944. We had survived the hard times and were safe. Gradually I started to understand what was happening in the country. Many people without any education were privileged and allowed to work in leading positions. My husband's director, for instance, was an illiterate man. My husband was the one who wrote the reports all night long and did all the work for him. I suppose that his Jewish origin was the main reason for that. He also got disappointed with the communist rule, especially after a visit to the Soviet Union. He met a Georgian Jew there who was afraid to tell that he was a Jew. My husband was an extremely honest person, and he truly believed in communism, but he got quickly disappointed with it because of the great injustice of the totalitarian system that stimulated privileges and theft.
The great Jewish departure to Israel began in 1948. I was very sad that my two sisters were leaving. My daughter, Lora, was grieving a lot over my older sister's child. When my husband saw how sad I was because I wasn't leaving with my family, he told me that I could leave if I really wanted to. However, he insisted that I left our child with him. He didn't want to go to Israel, and that's why we stayed in Bulgaria. My brother and my sick parents also stayed here. My brother said that he had to stay here and take care of them. Moshe became a first violinist at the Musical Theatre and retired from there later.
Young Jews couldn't study at university between 1939-1944. My future husband had to interrupt his education in law at Sofia University. He continued studying after 9th September 1944 but he didn't graduate. It was his own decision not to. He started to work in the choir of the Ministry of Internal Affairs as an announcer. After we married our family financially relied entirely on me. I was very good at my profession as a dressmaker, and I worked with two other girls. Later my husband found prestigious work as deputy general manager of the trade and industry association called Co- operative Union. Even so we were short of money and I continued working.
We went to live on Ekzarh Josif Street opposite the central public baths after we got married. Several families lived there. It was very packed, so we rented a lodging on Dondukov Boulevard with the help of a friend of my father's. We didn't live on our own there either - we shared the place with one more family. Menahem and I hardly managed to see each other in that period for we were both busy working all the time. We worked hard, and I even had to look after my two children after work. My older daughter, Lora, was born in 1946 and my younger one, Iza, in 1950.
My mother's brother, David, was a very good musician and a singer. He was the founder of the well-known Sofia choir 'Gusla'. He completed his musical education in Italy. My father provided for his studying there. David got married in Sofia and had one son. His family went to Israel in 1949. He was a musician there, too.
My other aunt, Tamara, lived in the town of Shumen. She married a rich merchant called Meranda, and they had five children. Her husband went bankrupt and for a certain period of time my father provided for their family. Aunt Tamara's family left for Israel in 1948 and settled in Jaffa.
Aunt Victoria married a Greek Jew, Mois Arenos. They lived in Plovdiv where Mois owned a shoe shop. They had one daughter, Zelma. They were sent to Greece during the Holocaust. Later they were deported to Poland and killed in a concentration camp.
My grandfather was very religious, he had a long beard and used to spend the entire Saturday praying. He was the president of the Jewish community in Sofia and the director of the Jewish school. He wasn't only well-known in Sofia but in the whole country.
My maternal grandfather, Moshe Ninio, was a merchant. He exported eggs, flour and grain from Bulgaria to Austria, Greece and the Czech Republic. He was a very rich man and owned a big property in the center of Sofia, where the Sheraton Hotel stands today. Their house was there. It was a low building and consisted of several wings and an inner yard. There were houses of other families in the yard, and only Jewish families stayed there. They lived in harmony and gathered every morning to have coffee in the yard.
At the beginning of the 20th century Jews could work in high diplomatic positions in Bulgaria. Religion wasn't an issue regarding the social or political position of people back then. Grasiani and Tacher, for example, became colonels during World War I just because of their personal merits. [Editor's note: They were both of Jewish origin: Grasiani was a doctor and Tacher a lawyer.] I didn't feel any anti-Semitic attitude until Hitler's rise to power. I lived in a Bulgarian neighborhood, and my family always got along very well with the Bulgarians.
My grandfather's first wife, my real grandmother, had a brother, Haim Farhi, who was one of the most eminent Zionist leaders in Bulgaria. He knew Theodor Herzl [1] personally. He warned my father many years before the Holocaust that hard times for Jews were to come. He even advised him to leave for Israel with the family. My father said that it wasn't the right time because the children had to continue their education in Bulgaria. However, he bought land in Israel, before the country was even founded, with foresight for his children's future. When my sisters went to live in Israel in 1948 they settled on this plot of land.
Haim Farhi was a close associate of King Ferdinand. He was sent to Spain as a diplomat for five years thanks to his excellent knowledge of Spanish. He had studied diplomatic science before that. I remember that he lived on Pirotska Street and there were security guards in front of the house. He held a very high public position. I remember that he visited my father in 1926-1927 to advise him to emigrate to Palestine. Haim Farhi supported many Jewish emigrants financially when they left for Palestine. After World War I, Haim became the Foreign Affairs Counselor of King Boris III, the son of King Ferdinand. He was sent to Palestine in the 1930s with great respect from the King of Bulgaria. There is a street named after Haim Farhi in Jerusalem.
Haim Farhi was a close associate of King Ferdinand. He was sent to Spain as a diplomat for five years thanks to his excellent knowledge of Spanish. He had studied diplomatic science before that. I remember that he lived on Pirotska Street and there were security guards in front of the house. He held a very high public position. I remember that he visited my father in 1926-1927 to advise him to emigrate to Palestine. Haim Farhi supported many Jewish emigrants financially when they left for Palestine. After World War I, Haim became the Foreign Affairs Counselor of King Boris III, the son of King Ferdinand. He was sent to Palestine in the 1930s with great respect from the King of Bulgaria. There is a street named after Haim Farhi in Jerusalem.
My grandfather married Rebeca Farhi, who was born in Dupnitsa, and went to live in Kovachevtsi village with her. Unfortunately she died of tuberculosis very young - shortly after my father, Buko Pinkas, was born. My grandfather married Mazal Alkalai after that. She was born in Sofia and she was an educated and refined woman, she spoke French and often used French expressions in her speech. She originated from the rich Jewish kin of Alkalai, who were leaders in the tobacco business. I remember that she was a very beautiful woman with blond hair and blue eyes. She looked after my father as if he was her own child. Though her family was rich she did the housekeeping on her own. She treated all her grandchildren very well. My father supported her until the end of her life - he used to send her money every week. It was a tradition in Jewish families that the older children looked after the younger. That's why, after my grandfather's death in 1908, my father looked after his mother as well as his brothers and sisters.
My paternal great-grandfather and grandfather were very religious and they had both been rabbis in the Netherlands and Germany. They wore payes and had studied in special schools for rabbis. My grandfather spoke and wrote Ladino fluently, and he also knew Hebrew. He strictly observed Jewish traditions and rituals. Despite the fact that he lived in a village far from Sofia, he used to come to Sofia to buy kosher meat from the kosher butcher's in the central market hall.
My family on both my mother's and my father's side originally comes from Spain. My father's ancestors hadn't settled in Bulgaria straight away - they first lived in Western Europe. I know that my paternal great- grandfather, Iacov Pinkas, was born in the Netherlands but went to live in Germany later, and my grandfather, Naftali Pinkas, was born there in the 1860s. He was the one who came to Bulgaria, settled in Kovachevtsi village [50 km west of Sofia] and built a dairy there. He made kosher cheese and sold it to the Jews from Dupnitsa, Kjustendil and other nearby places. I suppose that his ancestors had also been in the dairy business. The village of Kovachevtsi was a relatively small one. Only a few hundred people lived there; they were stock-breeders and supplied my grandfather's dairy with milk.
My husband's father, Israel Menahem, was an important egg merchant - he exported production wholesale to Austria. He lived in the town of Pleven. There was such a concurrence of circumstances that he went bankrupt and died. His family moved to Sofia in 1935. They rented a lodging in the town and started to work. The Jewish choir was a meeting place for young Jews. My husband and I met each other in the choir of the synagogue where we both used to sing. I married him on 30th June 1945. Our marriage was one of the first civil marriages in Sofia. Our love lasted and we waited for several years for each other while we were interned from Sofia. My family was interned in Kjustendil and his in Byala Slatina in Northern Bulgaria.
Our father owned a little shop opposite our house and a Bulgarian rented it. He turned out to be a very good person and even came to Kjustendil during the internment to assure us that the shop would be ours again when the internment was over. That shop was where I began to work later and that was how we started our life in Sofia again.
We came back from the internment at the end of 1944 and found our house completely robbed. It was very cold and one of the walls was ruined. Lika and her child also came with us because her husband had gone to the front with the Bulgarian army. After the Soviet army entered Bulgarian territory many Bulgarian soldiers joined it and took part in the battles against the Germans. My brother was also mobilized. I couldn't even see him off because he left straight after he was freed from the labor camp where he had been sent to from 1942-1944.
Our family was in a difficult situation after the failure of our first shop. We all did our best to help. I was a dressmaker and helped my family, even during the internment. Thanks to the fact that I was a dressmaker I managed to earn some money. My parents had sent me to a dressmaker and designer's course, held by the court dressmaker at the palace, and that was where I learned my profession very well. I managed to help my fiancéJosifov, who was in Pleven back then. I used to send his family parcels. I also provided for my brother and my sister Lika, who came to live with us to give birth to her first child. My life was hard, but I didn't think that way back then, and I cannot say that I suffered because I worked hard to help my family. I have always been in high spirits and believed that I had to work to provide for my family. I still think that way today.
There was a lot of violence against Jews in Dupnitsa. Some witness told me that Brannik members used to take girls against their will to the Germans. There wasn't anything like that in Kjustendil, probably because there was a strong pressure on behalf of the local deputies against the repressions of Bulgarian Jews.
We experienced terrible times but the attitude of Bulgarians towards Jews was mostly good. I remember that general Zhekov desisted from his son, the one who had humiliated my father during the internment in Kjustendil, in the state newspaper after 9th September 1944 [10]. He did that because of his son's outrageous deeds as a Brannik. The general went to the Jewish community to ask for a public excuse because of his son's behavior.
I remember an incident from the beginning of the 1940s. I had already got engaged to my future husband, and I was walking with my sister-in-law on Klementina Street, which was a Jewish street back then. Suddenly Branniks started to come out from all the small streets and intercepted us. They started to pull us, humiliated us and even tore my sister-in-law's blouse. When they attacked us, a group of young Jewish men saved us in a very witty way: they chose a Brannik, claimed he was a Jew and attacked him.
My brother Moshe also experienced such trouble. He used to play in a band of Jews, and one evening they organized a small concert. A group of Branniks intercepted and attacked them. They wanted to take my brother's violin away. He fought bravely and managed to keep his violin but they stole his expensive watch.