My mother's death combined with another hard event in my life. When I was 18, I was sent to the forced labor camp in the village of Mikre, in the Lovech region. I was there until November 1942. We were released on 16th November and we spent December and January at home. In February we were sent to another camp – ‘Sveti Vrach.’ We were there until the end of the year. We were once again released for one or two months and in May we were sent to a third camp – in the village of Vesselinovo, in the Shumen region. 9th September [1944] [6] came while we were there. In fact, we were used as a free labor force. At that time we were building the road Shumen-Burgas. It was very hard.
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Aron Ishakh
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In 1942 my mother died from stomach cancer and we, the four children, remained with my father. I knew that my mother had cancer, but I did not know that she was so seriously sick. I remember clearly that on 16th November 1942 when we were released from the camp in the village of Mikre, Lovech region, coming to Ruse, I found my mother on her death bed. When she saw me, she said, ‘I am very sick, I am going away…You take care of the kids.’ I was 18 years old then. Three days later my mother died. A year after her death, my father remarried and went with Shlima, his second wife, to live in Sofia. We, the children, remained alone in Ruse. I know nothing more about Shlima. My brothers’ names are Moni [Solomon] born in 1925 and Sami [Samuel] Ishakh born in 1930. My sister Rifka [Rebecca] Levi was born in 1928 and now lives in Holon, Israel. I do not know the family name of my stepmother. At that time, since I was the eldest, I had to work and support my brothers until they left for Israel with the big aliyah of 1948. My father also moved to Israel and died there in 1969. My brothers and sister still live in Israel with their families.
Archive documents show that on 1st July 1912, 33 Jews from Ruse founded a charity called ‘Malbish Arumim’ [this name is taken from a blessing said every morning, thanking G-d for 'clothing the naked'.] They elected Moysey Avram Ventura as chairman and David Geron as secretary. The aim of the charity was to give away clothes and shoes to the poorer students from the Jewish school in Ruse. In 1913 the Education Ministry approved the charity's statute and it was registered in Ruse's district court as a legal entity. A letter from the charity to the Jewish Sephardi community [there was also an Ashkenazi community] shows that the initiative to found such a charity dates back to 1891. In 1938, remembering the history of the founding of the ‘Malbish’, one of the founding members, Samuil Ventura, tells how, they gathered and founded the charity, led by their good intentions. At first, their resources allowed them to dress 10 poor students, but over the course of time, this increased to 65 children. On 2nd April 1932, the charity bought a two-storey house on 16 Gurko Street from the Catholic bishop Damian Yosif Telen, which still exists, and it's still ours, now owned by ‘Shalom’ ; they used it as an office and club, in which to organize their meetings, so that the Jews would not be dispersed among other cafés and clubs.
Now this house is rented by various companies and the money goes to the regional ‘Shalom’ organization. The association is being funded by members' fees, income from the café reading room, which was in the building, periodic charity events, charity Purim balls and evening parties, and the daily ‘Hazkarat Neshamot’ [memorial services]. In 1933, the general assembly voted for changes to the Statute, increasing the goals of the association, including setting up a refectory in the Jewish school in Ruse where the poor students could eat, so that they would be supported in their physical, moral and intellectual growth. Such a refectory existed in the Jewish school on 30 Rila Street until the school was closed. A change to article III from the Statute was accepted; this stated that ‘honored members are those Jews who have donated at least 5,000 levs to the association.’ The first honored members were Jacques Elias, Perets Pizanti, Israel Moshe Levi – the founders. But in 1937, when they were declared as such, they lived in Sofia. Dr. Isak Kalmi was also an honored member. He was a long-time chairman of the board of the association.
At that time the Jewish community had its own building, consisting of three offices, a big hall and a library. It also stored various registers on the Jews of Ruse – a family register, marriage register, birth register and funeral register. The birth register noted the date of brit milah. There was another register for bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah. They are still preserved today. The Bikur Holim commission, chaired by Mois Israel Ashkenazi, provided nurses to sick and lonely poor Jews. The people responsible for the Chevra Kaddisha were Mois Aron Hakim and Yosif Shlomo Kapon. They took care of the Jewish cemeteries and made sure that funeral procedures were done in accordance with religious requirements of the Jewish tradition. There was a small house in the cemetery, where a paid guard lived the whole year. The women responsible for Etz Haim, the commission for sick poor people and women who have given birth, were Mari Avram Asher, Ernestina Aron Dzhaldeti and Sofi David Maer. They visited sick people and gave them money for medicine. The people responsible for the charities commission were Isak Leon Ashkenazi and Baruh Yako Magriso. Their mission was respected in the Jewish community, who provided money for the budget. Dr. Yako Kapon was in charge of the home for the elderly, which was owned by the community. Twenty poor and lonely people were fully supported there by the Jewish community. My grandfather and grandmother were among them.
Now this house is rented by various companies and the money goes to the regional ‘Shalom’ organization. The association is being funded by members' fees, income from the café reading room, which was in the building, periodic charity events, charity Purim balls and evening parties, and the daily ‘Hazkarat Neshamot’ [memorial services]. In 1933, the general assembly voted for changes to the Statute, increasing the goals of the association, including setting up a refectory in the Jewish school in Ruse where the poor students could eat, so that they would be supported in their physical, moral and intellectual growth. Such a refectory existed in the Jewish school on 30 Rila Street until the school was closed. A change to article III from the Statute was accepted; this stated that ‘honored members are those Jews who have donated at least 5,000 levs to the association.’ The first honored members were Jacques Elias, Perets Pizanti, Israel Moshe Levi – the founders. But in 1937, when they were declared as such, they lived in Sofia. Dr. Isak Kalmi was also an honored member. He was a long-time chairman of the board of the association.
At that time the Jewish community had its own building, consisting of three offices, a big hall and a library. It also stored various registers on the Jews of Ruse – a family register, marriage register, birth register and funeral register. The birth register noted the date of brit milah. There was another register for bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah. They are still preserved today. The Bikur Holim commission, chaired by Mois Israel Ashkenazi, provided nurses to sick and lonely poor Jews. The people responsible for the Chevra Kaddisha were Mois Aron Hakim and Yosif Shlomo Kapon. They took care of the Jewish cemeteries and made sure that funeral procedures were done in accordance with religious requirements of the Jewish tradition. There was a small house in the cemetery, where a paid guard lived the whole year. The women responsible for Etz Haim, the commission for sick poor people and women who have given birth, were Mari Avram Asher, Ernestina Aron Dzhaldeti and Sofi David Maer. They visited sick people and gave them money for medicine. The people responsible for the charities commission were Isak Leon Ashkenazi and Baruh Yako Magriso. Their mission was respected in the Jewish community, who provided money for the budget. Dr. Yako Kapon was in charge of the home for the elderly, which was owned by the community. Twenty poor and lonely people were fully supported there by the Jewish community. My grandfather and grandmother were among them.
In the Jewish neighborhood in my childhood on the streets of David, Vidin, Klementina, Gurko, Dondukov, Korsakov and others, densely inhabited by Jews, you could see small sagging houses, where the poor Jews lived in misery. In some places there were nice, tall houses owned by the richer Jews. Social interaction between the poor and the rich was helped by the Jewish community, who did everything possible to collect money from the richer Jews in order to support the poorer ones.
The youth Zionist organizations Maccabi [3] and ‘Hashomer Hatzair’ [5] and mass events like maccabiada and moshav [summer camps of ‘Hashomer Hatzair’] were very important for Jewish communal life. The maccabiads were accompanied by gymnastic competitions. So, once a year, almost the whole Jewish community gathered together. For example, in 1930 a big gym was built on 20 Vidin Street in the Jewish neighborhood. Every day when classes were over, you could hear the hubbub of the Jewish children playing in the yard. The noticeable ‘Hashomer Hatzair’ youth leaders, were Elika Ayzner, Yonel Markus, Iko Konorti, Sofi Kapon, Yako Yakov and Tinka Dzhain. And for ‘Maccabi’ – Mimi Bensusan, Moni Hakim, Fifi Mashiah, Miko Yulzari, Itsko Ayzner and Rafael Kauli. The yard of the old Jewish school, which was opposite the Odeon cinema, was the girls' and boys' meeting place, fans of ‘Hashomer Hatzair’; they sang Jewish songs, whose lyrics and melodies I, personally, do not remember; played Jewish dances; and learned to love Palestine, which was also called ‘The Jews' Promised Land’. During summer vacations they sent groups of boys and girls to hakhsharah in state agricultural farms such as Obraztsov Chiflik [meaning ‘Model Farm’ in Bulgarian] – in Ruse and Sadovo, in the Plovdiv region, where they worked and learned how to cultivate the land. They were being prepared to be future members of kibbutzim and in fact, after the emigration of Bulgarian Jews from the shomrim [in Hebrew - members of ‘Hashomer Hatzair’], flourishing kibbutzim were created in bare, rocky areas. In 1939, an aliyah for Palestine was organized, and a group of young men from Ruse took part in it. Such an aliyah was also organized in 1941.
There was also a Jewish choir called ‘David’, which had a special wedding program, which they performed at Jewish weddings in the synagogue with the participation of talented Jewish singers. The opera ‘Cornevil Bells’ was performed in the theater in Ruse and was very successful, as well as the operetta ‘The Black Spot’; unfortunately I don't know the authors and directors of these works. The musical association ‘David’ was run by the conductor Isak Leon Ashkenazi and by the deputy chairman Rober Beraha. There was also a choir and an orchestra at the synagogue, and a youth jazz orchestra – one of the first in the country, run by Ziko Graciani. You could say that the musical association ‘David’ laid the grounds for the art of opera in Ruse.
During my childhood, the Jewish people in Ruse still continued to take an active part in the development of the economic life of the town. The founders included wealthy Jews such as Avram Ventura, owner of the Zhiti Factory, producing ironware and wire; Iskovich Levi, producing paint and varnish; Mushon Melamed, producing stationery; Nissim Mevorah, producing rubber materials; Herman Hirsch, producing cement, Atiyas and Buko Heskiya, producing canned vegetables; Haim and Shimon Barutchievi, producing cartridges and explosives; Nissim Nissimov, producing hats; Solomon Arie, producing shirts; Lazar Aron, import and trade of petrol products; brothers Mizrahi, Fazan Factory producing socks; Alkalay and Panizhel, trading eggs; Sabetay Beniesh, oil-factory and production of confectionery; Blaushtain, producing ladies’ palarii [‘hats’ in the local Bulgarian dialect] and haberdashery; Samuil Patak, producing stationery; Asher and Mois Yakov, commissioners.
The famous merchants in Ruse were Nissim Surozhon, Avram Bensusan, brothers Arditi, Asher Uziel, brothers Benvenisti, Nissim Dzhivri, Fiko Kapon, Marko Kohenov, brothers Aladzhem and brothers Shoev.
In the crafts sector there were tinsmiths with their own workshops: Haim Alfandari, Avram Ashkenazi, Sabetay Benyamin Ashkenazi and my grandfather, Gavriel Samuel Ishakh. Tailors and seamstresses: Sinto Ashkenazi, Rashel Vidas, Nora Fortune, Ester Machilarkata, Regina Ayzner.
The statistical data for the town of Ruse show that the majority of the Jews in Ruse were hired workers, craftsmen, retailers and servicemen – they earned their living with hard labor.
The famous merchants in Ruse were Nissim Surozhon, Avram Bensusan, brothers Arditi, Asher Uziel, brothers Benvenisti, Nissim Dzhivri, Fiko Kapon, Marko Kohenov, brothers Aladzhem and brothers Shoev.
In the crafts sector there were tinsmiths with their own workshops: Haim Alfandari, Avram Ashkenazi, Sabetay Benyamin Ashkenazi and my grandfather, Gavriel Samuel Ishakh. Tailors and seamstresses: Sinto Ashkenazi, Rashel Vidas, Nora Fortune, Ester Machilarkata, Regina Ayzner.
The statistical data for the town of Ruse show that the majority of the Jews in Ruse were hired workers, craftsmen, retailers and servicemen – they earned their living with hard labor.
As for our vacations, in 1929 and 1930 I was sent from the Ruse Jewish school to Varna [on the Black Sea coast] to a holiday home owned by the Jewish community of Varna. They took some poor children and with money from the Jewish community, they sent us on vacation. That was the first time I got on a train. A number of rooms with beds awaited us in Varna. There was also a cook, we called her Tanti [Aunt] Hursi. My friends at that time were Jewish kids living on the same street: Miko Polidi, Meto Rubitsa, Itshak – I don’t remember his family name, Fiko Koen, Marsela Blansh – we were all the same age, studying in the same class, and living close to each other in the Jewish neighborhood. Usually after school we went to the yard owned by ‘Maccabi’ [3] to play. We were very poor. We had no time for hobbies. Later, I was a member of Maccabi.
At that time charity giving was very popular in our neighborhood. The resources from the Jewish community's budget were used to implement concrete programs for the separate commissions. These programs gave poor people the chance to have a normal life. The whole community was involved. Jewish traditions were to a great extent supported by the Jewish school, funded by the Jewish community. In our Hebrew classes we read Tannakh and learned the origins of Jewish traditions. The school headmaster, Adon Yosif Safra, read the Tannakh and taught the children Ivrit. [Editor’s note: It must have been classical Hebrew that he taught (maybe besides Ivrit, the modern language) as the religious scripts are written in that language.] The school had 15 classrooms, a canteen and a gym. This is where the Jewish children received their primary education. We did not have a yeshivah. There was a canteen, where many children of poor parents ate, including my brothers and I.
When I was young, I went to the Jewish preschool at the Jewish school in Ruse. It started with the first grade and went up to seventh grade. I graduated from the Jewish school in the town of Ruse. Our teacher was Adon [‘mister’ in Hebrew] Yosif Safra. He was our favorite teacher. He was very educated. There were no teachers or subjects that I hated; I didn't go to any private lessons, nor did I play any instruments. I started working when I was 14 years old. I must say that everything I have achieved, I have done all by myself, with a lot of hard work and perseverance.
There were very nice markets organized in Ruse. Villagers brought their produce and the locals crowded to buy it. There was a big market and a small market. They were organized every Tuesday and Friday. We went to the small market. But we did not have any favorite vendors.
At home we all spoke only Ladino, but we also understood Bulgarian. My grandfather, grandmother and my mother could also speak Turkish, but my father could not. We did not read religious books; we read mostly secular novels, such as Mayne Reid. Later, during the war, we children also read Marxist literature, dialectical materialism.
We lived in two rooms and a small kitchen. We were four children, plus my mother and my father – six people in all. There was no electricity at that time, we used a gas lamp. Later, when electricity was introduced, we also used it. But we lived in a rented house, and we moved from one house to another. We used wood to warm the rooms. My father made a cooker, which could burn wood.
My parents were neither religious nor political and this passed on to my children as well. We seldom went to the synagogue. We went only on holidays: Yom Kippur, Pesach, Chanukkah, Lag ba-Omer, Purim, Rosh Hashanah. My favorite holiday was Pesach, because the poor children, including my siblings and me, received shoes and clothes from the Jewish community.
Before she married my father, she was not poor. But we were very poor, because my father had to support his father, his mother, and us, the four children, at home. Besides, he was forced to sell what he had made extremely cheaply to the merchants.
The family of my mother, Sofi Aron Ashkenazi are native inhabitants of Ruse. My grandfather, Aron Ashkenazi, had his own dressmaking and tailoring studio. This is how he provided for his large family with six children. He used to be a famous tailor in Ruse. My maternal grandmother, Duda Ashkenazi [nee Alfandari], was a housewife. They were religious. I don’t know anything else about their kin.
My father came here as a young man with his family from Tsaribrod. As soon as he came to Ruse, he started looking for work as a tinsmith. So, he was hired in the tin factory of Moreno Atias; he is a relative of mine on my mother’s side. My father was so diligent in his work, that Uncle Atias liked him very much and suggested to him, ‘Let’s marry you to a girl of ours!’ It was he who introduced my mother to my father. They married in Ruse in 1919. The ceremony was in the synagogue; in fact, there were no civil marriages at that time.
I don’t know when my father’s parents were born. I know no details of their life before they came to Bulgaria. In any case, they weren’t religious and weren’t interested in politics. I remember their house. It was a sagging low house, plastered with mud and lime, similar to the typical Turkish houses from those times. When there was heavy rain, the water poured into the room. They had no garden. They lived in misery. Their neighbors respected them as elderly people. They spent the last years of their lives in a home for the elderly in Ruse.
My grandmother, Luna Ishakh, came to live in Ruse in her last years. Most probably she was a housewife before that. She was a stout, beautiful woman. She wore two or three skirts at the same time. You could even say that she wore all the clothes she had at the same time, in a Turkish fashion.
Bulgaria
I don’t know anything about my grandfather’s kin, except that the whole Ishakh family from Tsaribrod was burned to death in the death camps in 1943, when the Macedonian Jews were deported. Only one relative remained alive.
I come from a Sephardi family, whose roots reach back to Tsaribrod [today located in the Pirot District of Serbia and officially known as Dimitrovgrad] under Turkish rule. Unfortunately, I don’t have many concrete facts or emblematic family stories related to my ancestors. What I do know is that some time around 1917-18 Tsaribrod became Serbian territory and some of the Bulgarians living there together with some Jewish families moved to live in Bulgaria [2]. One of these families was that of my paternal grandfather and grandmother. They moved to live in Ruse – the beautiful Bulgarian town on the Danube coast, famous for its flourishing Jewish and Bulgarian communities.
David Kohen
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In Sofia I found myself in the circle of the Union of Young Workers [15] at [now called] Emil Shekerdjijski chitalishte [16], which was also known as the Jewish chitalishte. I was there for two years and I did relatively well at university. It was only once that I postponed a June exam for the fall one. I graduated in 1942 and I had just come back to Haskovo when I received the message that I had been mobilized into a [forced] labor [17] group for correction of the river flow of the Haskovska River.
I have written an article on the Jewish forced labor groups. I explained there that the legal basis for the formation of such groups was embodied chiefly in the Law for the Protection of the Nation [18] where there was a strict passage clarifying the status of the Jews as people who couldn’t be summoned to service in the army, but had to serve their time as soldiers in the labor corps. They were set up in January 1942. However, this happened after insistence from the part of the German Labor Front [The National Socialist Party created the German Labor Front (Deutsche Arbeitsfront-DAF) in 1933. The purpose of the German Labor Front was to ensure the political stability of the German labor unions by converting them into a centrally controlled organization lead by National Socialists.], which declared it would cancel all its contacts with Bulgarian labor troops [Construction corps, formed in 1920 by the statesman Alexander Stamboliiski, in order to ensure the rebuilding of infrastructure after the devastation of World War I. Labor troops became an alternative form of the military service, being part of Bulgaria’s armed forces and were created as a subdivision of the Ministry of Public Buildings, Roads and Regional Development. Construction corps existed until 2003, after which they were transformed into a state-owned enterprise.], if Jews were accepted as servants there, Jews weren’t sent to serve in the labor corps, but to separate labor groups set up by a verdict of the Council of Ministers and attached to the Ministry of Public Buildings, Roads and Public Works.
These groups were given separate projects for fulfillment such as corrections of river flows and drying of swamps. The Jewish labor groups were formed only of Jews. Until 1941 Jews weren’t separated in special labor units and took part in the construction corps with everybody else. After their separation in special labor corps they expended hard physical work without any payment in severe field conditions. The main difference between the Bulgarian labor troops and the Jewish ones was that we used to go there in our own clothes and shoes and our work wasn’t considered a military service. These groups were operating throughout the country and each of them was between 200 and 400-men strong. I was first mobilized to make correction on the river flow of the Haskovska River, and after that to Svilengrad to carry out correction on the Kanaliyska River. I also worked for the factory of Georgi Chonev near Haskovo, we dug the bomb shelter under Yamasha [a hill near Haskovo] and we worked there only in the evenings. In 1942 I was with my brothers after which I was sent to Smyadovo while they were in Haskovo.
The work was hard and most of the guys hadn’t done hard manual labor before. We used picks, spades and wheelbarrows for our work. We had a target of four cubic meters of soil but it was hard to fulfill it every day. As a result of the hard work my hand got infected and I was likely to lose it. The infection was caused by the excessive exercising of pressure on my hand in the area of the wrist. In the evenings I had to visit a surgeon, but he didn’t have the instruments to help me. He froze my hand and he made a section with ordinary scissors. After that I had to go to the hospital to disinfect it for two weeks. Haskovo’s hospital was near the railway station and about one or two kilometers away from the city center. In order to go there I had to ask for permission from the police commander. My father also had to ask permission from this institution so that he could take me there. I was bandaged for a month, but when I got well I had to return to the digging again.
In 1944 I got mobilized in Smyadovo for the construction of the Smyadovo-Veselinovo road. I was in the fourth group of workers out of nine that were building the section. We were accommodated in bungalows and the food was very bad. Our supervisor was an extremely wicked man and he didn’t allow anybody to get detached from work. There were people with malaria among us. A friend of mine suffered from malaria tertiana. The supervisor knew very well when my friend was expected to lose consciousness. Once he asked me to see him to the toilet because he was about to faint. And in fact, we hadn’t taken fifteen steps when he lost consciousness. Even these sick people didn’t get released from work. The situation was similar in all other work groups. There were a lot of Jewish forced labor groups working on the bank of the Danube. Malaria was raging there. Three thirds of the people there were ill. Only few of them, however, were released. For example, around five ill men were released out of 100; the others had to continue working despite the cruel conditions. In my group there was an engineer named Gesharov, who was a tormentor. He used to drag a gun and threaten to shoot us because we couldn’t fulfill the daily target. He worked us until late in the evening and left us without food, so that we could possibly fulfill those four cubic meters of soil.
I have written an article on the Jewish forced labor groups. I explained there that the legal basis for the formation of such groups was embodied chiefly in the Law for the Protection of the Nation [18] where there was a strict passage clarifying the status of the Jews as people who couldn’t be summoned to service in the army, but had to serve their time as soldiers in the labor corps. They were set up in January 1942. However, this happened after insistence from the part of the German Labor Front [The National Socialist Party created the German Labor Front (Deutsche Arbeitsfront-DAF) in 1933. The purpose of the German Labor Front was to ensure the political stability of the German labor unions by converting them into a centrally controlled organization lead by National Socialists.], which declared it would cancel all its contacts with Bulgarian labor troops [Construction corps, formed in 1920 by the statesman Alexander Stamboliiski, in order to ensure the rebuilding of infrastructure after the devastation of World War I. Labor troops became an alternative form of the military service, being part of Bulgaria’s armed forces and were created as a subdivision of the Ministry of Public Buildings, Roads and Regional Development. Construction corps existed until 2003, after which they were transformed into a state-owned enterprise.], if Jews were accepted as servants there, Jews weren’t sent to serve in the labor corps, but to separate labor groups set up by a verdict of the Council of Ministers and attached to the Ministry of Public Buildings, Roads and Public Works.
These groups were given separate projects for fulfillment such as corrections of river flows and drying of swamps. The Jewish labor groups were formed only of Jews. Until 1941 Jews weren’t separated in special labor units and took part in the construction corps with everybody else. After their separation in special labor corps they expended hard physical work without any payment in severe field conditions. The main difference between the Bulgarian labor troops and the Jewish ones was that we used to go there in our own clothes and shoes and our work wasn’t considered a military service. These groups were operating throughout the country and each of them was between 200 and 400-men strong. I was first mobilized to make correction on the river flow of the Haskovska River, and after that to Svilengrad to carry out correction on the Kanaliyska River. I also worked for the factory of Georgi Chonev near Haskovo, we dug the bomb shelter under Yamasha [a hill near Haskovo] and we worked there only in the evenings. In 1942 I was with my brothers after which I was sent to Smyadovo while they were in Haskovo.
The work was hard and most of the guys hadn’t done hard manual labor before. We used picks, spades and wheelbarrows for our work. We had a target of four cubic meters of soil but it was hard to fulfill it every day. As a result of the hard work my hand got infected and I was likely to lose it. The infection was caused by the excessive exercising of pressure on my hand in the area of the wrist. In the evenings I had to visit a surgeon, but he didn’t have the instruments to help me. He froze my hand and he made a section with ordinary scissors. After that I had to go to the hospital to disinfect it for two weeks. Haskovo’s hospital was near the railway station and about one or two kilometers away from the city center. In order to go there I had to ask for permission from the police commander. My father also had to ask permission from this institution so that he could take me there. I was bandaged for a month, but when I got well I had to return to the digging again.
In 1944 I got mobilized in Smyadovo for the construction of the Smyadovo-Veselinovo road. I was in the fourth group of workers out of nine that were building the section. We were accommodated in bungalows and the food was very bad. Our supervisor was an extremely wicked man and he didn’t allow anybody to get detached from work. There were people with malaria among us. A friend of mine suffered from malaria tertiana. The supervisor knew very well when my friend was expected to lose consciousness. Once he asked me to see him to the toilet because he was about to faint. And in fact, we hadn’t taken fifteen steps when he lost consciousness. Even these sick people didn’t get released from work. The situation was similar in all other work groups. There were a lot of Jewish forced labor groups working on the bank of the Danube. Malaria was raging there. Three thirds of the people there were ill. Only few of them, however, were released. For example, around five ill men were released out of 100; the others had to continue working despite the cruel conditions. In my group there was an engineer named Gesharov, who was a tormentor. He used to drag a gun and threaten to shoot us because we couldn’t fulfill the daily target. He worked us until late in the evening and left us without food, so that we could possibly fulfill those four cubic meters of soil.
Bulgaria
Except for my brothers, I had a sister, too, Mazaltov, who died at the age of two from diphtheria. The doctor didn’t pay attention to her festering coatings in the throat that suffocated her. My mother had a great desire to have a daughter. The most pampered of us was my brother Leon Kohen. There is an expression in Ladino for that: ‘the child of the old age.’ In Ladino it sounds like this: ‘еl ijiko de la chikes’.
My second brother Aron became a doctor. He became a chief inspector in Haskovo’s regional healthcare department, after which he was appointed head of the healthcare department in Kardzhali. My third brother Leon was an examining magistrate on criminal cases and he was promoted to the rank of major at the Ministry of the Interior. We all had the opportunity to study at university, which wasn’t easy in those days. I remember that one day, it was after 9th September 1944, my mother expressed her wish to change the curtains in our house. I asked, ‘Why don’t we buy new ones.’ This happened in the presence of my father and his answer made me feel sorry for having asked at all. He answered that if they had bought everything they wanted to, the three of us wouldn’t have finished our university education. We used to lead a modest life and we never denied ourselves food.
I enrolled in Varna’s Finance University in fall 1938. My father accompanied me to the town to help me find lodgings. I had a meeting with the rector of the university and I went there in my high school uniform. My father asked him if I could become a student in my school uniform. He said I could, but it would be good if he bought me a red hat for my personal self-confidence. This was my first non-school clothing and it was much later that I had a suit made. So I became a university student in my school uniform.
In Varna I was a very good student. I found my place in the circle of people attending the Poor Student Canteen. This was an organization of anti-fascist students, while legionaries [13], who attended a different canteen, were supporters of fascism. On 24th May [14], when we were out on manifestation and we were formed in different lines, I realized that we outnumbered them four to five-fold. Representatives of the police came to persuade us to unite the two manifestations. We refused and the police scattered us, but we went in front of Varna’s cathedral on our own.
The university offered four-year courses, but meanwhile Sofia Open University was formed and ours was closed, so many of us found it convenient to complete our education in Sofia. In the third year of our studies we were already in Sofia. Many of the subjects were comparable and we had most of our exams acknowledged there.
I took all my exams in 1942. I had an ambitious Jewish girl for a colleague. She was from Pleven and her name was Regina Pinkas. We used to revise for our exams together. She had to pass all the exams that semester, because Jews were then no longer allowed to study at universities. It was also possible for us not to be allowed to sit for the exams at all. I also sat for all the remaining exams and passed them all, ten of them. They were really difficult. I stayed with one of my aunts on Dunav Street and in order to go to the university I had to go uphill and I staggered with exhaustion.
My second brother Aron became a doctor. He became a chief inspector in Haskovo’s regional healthcare department, after which he was appointed head of the healthcare department in Kardzhali. My third brother Leon was an examining magistrate on criminal cases and he was promoted to the rank of major at the Ministry of the Interior. We all had the opportunity to study at university, which wasn’t easy in those days. I remember that one day, it was after 9th September 1944, my mother expressed her wish to change the curtains in our house. I asked, ‘Why don’t we buy new ones.’ This happened in the presence of my father and his answer made me feel sorry for having asked at all. He answered that if they had bought everything they wanted to, the three of us wouldn’t have finished our university education. We used to lead a modest life and we never denied ourselves food.
I enrolled in Varna’s Finance University in fall 1938. My father accompanied me to the town to help me find lodgings. I had a meeting with the rector of the university and I went there in my high school uniform. My father asked him if I could become a student in my school uniform. He said I could, but it would be good if he bought me a red hat for my personal self-confidence. This was my first non-school clothing and it was much later that I had a suit made. So I became a university student in my school uniform.
In Varna I was a very good student. I found my place in the circle of people attending the Poor Student Canteen. This was an organization of anti-fascist students, while legionaries [13], who attended a different canteen, were supporters of fascism. On 24th May [14], when we were out on manifestation and we were formed in different lines, I realized that we outnumbered them four to five-fold. Representatives of the police came to persuade us to unite the two manifestations. We refused and the police scattered us, but we went in front of Varna’s cathedral on our own.
The university offered four-year courses, but meanwhile Sofia Open University was formed and ours was closed, so many of us found it convenient to complete our education in Sofia. In the third year of our studies we were already in Sofia. Many of the subjects were comparable and we had most of our exams acknowledged there.
I took all my exams in 1942. I had an ambitious Jewish girl for a colleague. She was from Pleven and her name was Regina Pinkas. We used to revise for our exams together. She had to pass all the exams that semester, because Jews were then no longer allowed to study at universities. It was also possible for us not to be allowed to sit for the exams at all. I also sat for all the remaining exams and passed them all, ten of them. They were really difficult. I stayed with one of my aunts on Dunav Street and in order to go to the university I had to go uphill and I staggered with exhaustion.
Bulgaria
Zionist ideas were spreading in Haskovo then. I was a member of one of the Zionist organizations, Maccabi [9] until I became a university student. Other organizations were Betar [10], our opponents, and Hashomer Hatzair [11] with which we were on friendly terms. There were organizations of the General Zionists [12] in the town, as well as of the Revisionists, and Betar was the youth revisionist organization. They had one common goal: to set up Israel. General Zionists tolerated Maccabi, which wasn’t very connected with political parties. On high Jewish holidays [on Passover only] we greeted each other with the phrase ‘Next year in Jerusalem.’ We wanted to incorporate our language in the Jewish organizations: we used to sing songs in Ivrit, danced Jewish dances, spoke Ivrit as much as we could.
My religious coming of age [bar mitzvah] was when I became 13. I had to learn my speech that I had to make at the tevah, in the synagogue. There the Torah scrolls are kept [read]. I had a text in Ladino, of which I remember only the salutation now, and I studied it for long hours. On my birthday, or on Saturdays, I had to read something from the Torah using a sliver pointer, since one must not touch the scrolls with fingers, after which I made my speech. That happened in the synagogue in the presence of my parents. So I came of age and could form and be part of a minyan: the quorum required for reading prayers [the Torah]. The synagogue in Haskovo was in the schoolyard of the Jewish school. The offices of the Jewish municipality were next to the school, but they looked down the street. Nothing remains now from these buildings, since they were destroyed, most probably because new city plans were developed.
My religious coming of age [bar mitzvah] was when I became 13. I had to learn my speech that I had to make at the tevah, in the synagogue. There the Torah scrolls are kept [read]. I had a text in Ladino, of which I remember only the salutation now, and I studied it for long hours. On my birthday, or on Saturdays, I had to read something from the Torah using a sliver pointer, since one must not touch the scrolls with fingers, after which I made my speech. That happened in the synagogue in the presence of my parents. So I came of age and could form and be part of a minyan: the quorum required for reading prayers [the Torah]. The synagogue in Haskovo was in the schoolyard of the Jewish school. The offices of the Jewish municipality were next to the school, but they looked down the street. Nothing remains now from these buildings, since they were destroyed, most probably because new city plans were developed.
Bulgaria
In Haskovo we were surrounded by Bulgarians, Turks, Armenians, Gypsies, but I never heard a bad word about them at home. We shared the same yard with an Armenian family in Haskovo, and they were good neighbors, I should say. Turkish was widely spoken in Haskovo, because many Turkish people lived there then. My father spoke Turkish very well, I knew a little bit, too. As a whole, Haskovo was an international [multi-ethnic] town and there was no separation between the people.
In Haskovo there was a Jewish school that consisted of four classes and a prep-class. There were as many as 20 pupils in a class. The school building had one storey only: a high ground floor. Once, I remember, I was punished not to go home for lunch for misbehaving. We, the kids then had the so-called gangs: a small group of friends with whom we played and walked around with. The boys from my gang then came and the ‘captain’ of the group put his back under the window so that I stepped on it and managed to escape. I ran home, had lunch and they helped me enter the classroom through the window again. The teachers didn’t realize that I had escaped. Usually we had only half-day classes and I don’t remember why on this day we had classes after lunch, too.
We had two teachers in Ivrit. The first one, Saul Levi, was a good teacher, but a bad pedagogue. He used to punish us for the least misbehavior. He beat my palms with a steel ruler. We didn’t like him and had our revenges in our own ways. We had slings and our pockets were always full of pebbles. There was a garden near the Jewish school where a local inhabitant, Aunt Vanya, grew vegetables. The garden was at a lower level than the street and was irrigated by this old-fashioned mechanism driven by a donkey. Saul Levi was used to walking along the garden on the street, reading a newspaper. We used to wait for him to pass by, his attention wholly occupied by the newspaper. Then we ordered ‘Fire!’ and shot five or six pebbles onto his back after which we hid. We had some other teachers who used to punish us, but they had milder ways of doing so.
The Jewish school was a four-year one. After that I attended a Bulgarian three-year junior high school and a Bulgarian five-year high school. In high school the Jews were free not to attend religion lessons. Our rabbi in Haskovo launched a course called ‘Shar Hatorah’ – Gate of the Torah [in Hebrew], where we studied texts from the Bible, and I still remember almost the entire text of the first book in the Bible, which I had then learnt by heart. However, I was curious and used to attend the lectures in Christian religion. I learned by heart all their prayers only from hearing them. Once just before Easter, the teacher wanted to examine one of my classmates in prayers and he, alas, didn’t know them. I whispered it to him, but the teacher heard me. She made me stand up and say not only this prayer, but some others, too. Then she scolded him for not knowing the prayers, as he was a Christian, and I, who was a Jew, knew them perfectly. Christian pupils were on special duties to attend the religious services in the churches on Sundays, and I didn’t have to go. But I always went with the others. I didn’t want to differ from them.
In Haskovo there was a Jewish school that consisted of four classes and a prep-class. There were as many as 20 pupils in a class. The school building had one storey only: a high ground floor. Once, I remember, I was punished not to go home for lunch for misbehaving. We, the kids then had the so-called gangs: a small group of friends with whom we played and walked around with. The boys from my gang then came and the ‘captain’ of the group put his back under the window so that I stepped on it and managed to escape. I ran home, had lunch and they helped me enter the classroom through the window again. The teachers didn’t realize that I had escaped. Usually we had only half-day classes and I don’t remember why on this day we had classes after lunch, too.
We had two teachers in Ivrit. The first one, Saul Levi, was a good teacher, but a bad pedagogue. He used to punish us for the least misbehavior. He beat my palms with a steel ruler. We didn’t like him and had our revenges in our own ways. We had slings and our pockets were always full of pebbles. There was a garden near the Jewish school where a local inhabitant, Aunt Vanya, grew vegetables. The garden was at a lower level than the street and was irrigated by this old-fashioned mechanism driven by a donkey. Saul Levi was used to walking along the garden on the street, reading a newspaper. We used to wait for him to pass by, his attention wholly occupied by the newspaper. Then we ordered ‘Fire!’ and shot five or six pebbles onto his back after which we hid. We had some other teachers who used to punish us, but they had milder ways of doing so.
The Jewish school was a four-year one. After that I attended a Bulgarian three-year junior high school and a Bulgarian five-year high school. In high school the Jews were free not to attend religion lessons. Our rabbi in Haskovo launched a course called ‘Shar Hatorah’ – Gate of the Torah [in Hebrew], where we studied texts from the Bible, and I still remember almost the entire text of the first book in the Bible, which I had then learnt by heart. However, I was curious and used to attend the lectures in Christian religion. I learned by heart all their prayers only from hearing them. Once just before Easter, the teacher wanted to examine one of my classmates in prayers and he, alas, didn’t know them. I whispered it to him, but the teacher heard me. She made me stand up and say not only this prayer, but some others, too. Then she scolded him for not knowing the prayers, as he was a Christian, and I, who was a Jew, knew them perfectly. Christian pupils were on special duties to attend the religious services in the churches on Sundays, and I didn’t have to go. But I always went with the others. I didn’t want to differ from them.
Bulgaria
In Haskovo we lived in rented apartments. We moved to different places every year or so. My mother was a great housekeeper and cleanliness loving person. When we were to move to a new place she would always stay to the end to brush the wooden floors with hard brush, sand and soap until they literally started shining [Some special stuff called ‘Ikonomia’ with solid quartz granules was used for polishing solid surfaces], so that the people who were to come and live in the place after us might say that a civilized family had lived there before them. I remembered this as one of the burdens of our endless moving from place to place. After that we lived in a house owned by an Austrian company for production of tobacco, ‘Nikotea,’ for which my father worked as chief accountant. It was in the town’s suburbs near the tobacco warehouse. My father was well paid at this company and he also received bonuses. When the Austrian officials came to carry out an inspection, the whole enterprise was alarmed. My father always made a good impression because he kept the books very precisely. The plant’s director was a Jew and his name was Pinkas. His son was my classmate in the Jewish school.
While working as a chief accountant, my father figured out that we needed a house of our own. He decided to become a self-dependant tradesman. Of course, he couldn’t compete with the large companies and their capitals. One day he told my mother about his idea of owning a house. But he didn’t have enough money to carry out his plans. Then my mother went to the sleeping room, turned something over in a chest, found some money and put it on the table in front of him. All this happened in the presence of my second brother, Aron Kohen. My father’s eyes opened wide and he asked her where she had gotten this money from. She said she had saved it from the sums he had given her in order to keep the household. That’s how my father bought a house in Haskovo.
My mother was a really thrifty person. She kept the household alone, and she used to patch our trousers. When we tore our socks, she didn’t buy us new ones immediately. She taught us how to mend them and she checked if we did it the right way. My second brother was the best at mending. We used to wear mended clothes: a ragged spot was mended by a thick patch of threads. We used to sew our collars alone. She had taught us to be well groomed. Once a week each of us had the obligation to clean and polish the shoes of the whole family. There was a special place under the staircase where I gathered all the boots, shoe-creamed them and then polished them. My two brothers also did it. We had to keep the house very clean and every day we brushed the floor covers, because we lived next to the street and there was a lot of dust. My mother didn’t let us throw out any food. There was a sentence she always repeated in such cases: instead of throwing food into the washbasin, throw it into your mouth.
It was I who started accompanying my mother when shopping and after me, my brothers did as well. There was a ‘village’ market on Saturdays when villagers from the nearby settlements came to sell their goods. My mother would always walk around the whole market to see where the best product was sold at the lowest price. One day a village woman cheated her nicely. My mother had bought a bar of butter, which looked very nice, but when she put it in the water, this was the way we used to keep butter then, she found a small head of cabbage in it. I should confess that I gloated over it a bit, because her pretensions at selecting the right product for a long time tormented me.
We also used to go shopping in the trade street of manufacturers where pupils’ clothes were sold. Sometimes my mother would select something from the top shelf and the shopkeeper had to mount a chair to reach it. My mother looked at the clothes for a long time and we often went out of the shop without having bought anything if she didn’t like the clothes. That she did again and again in several shops, so that I started worrying about the sellers who had a hard time with her. However, they would always see her politely to the front door and invite her to come again.
While working as a chief accountant, my father figured out that we needed a house of our own. He decided to become a self-dependant tradesman. Of course, he couldn’t compete with the large companies and their capitals. One day he told my mother about his idea of owning a house. But he didn’t have enough money to carry out his plans. Then my mother went to the sleeping room, turned something over in a chest, found some money and put it on the table in front of him. All this happened in the presence of my second brother, Aron Kohen. My father’s eyes opened wide and he asked her where she had gotten this money from. She said she had saved it from the sums he had given her in order to keep the household. That’s how my father bought a house in Haskovo.
My mother was a really thrifty person. She kept the household alone, and she used to patch our trousers. When we tore our socks, she didn’t buy us new ones immediately. She taught us how to mend them and she checked if we did it the right way. My second brother was the best at mending. We used to wear mended clothes: a ragged spot was mended by a thick patch of threads. We used to sew our collars alone. She had taught us to be well groomed. Once a week each of us had the obligation to clean and polish the shoes of the whole family. There was a special place under the staircase where I gathered all the boots, shoe-creamed them and then polished them. My two brothers also did it. We had to keep the house very clean and every day we brushed the floor covers, because we lived next to the street and there was a lot of dust. My mother didn’t let us throw out any food. There was a sentence she always repeated in such cases: instead of throwing food into the washbasin, throw it into your mouth.
It was I who started accompanying my mother when shopping and after me, my brothers did as well. There was a ‘village’ market on Saturdays when villagers from the nearby settlements came to sell their goods. My mother would always walk around the whole market to see where the best product was sold at the lowest price. One day a village woman cheated her nicely. My mother had bought a bar of butter, which looked very nice, but when she put it in the water, this was the way we used to keep butter then, she found a small head of cabbage in it. I should confess that I gloated over it a bit, because her pretensions at selecting the right product for a long time tormented me.
We also used to go shopping in the trade street of manufacturers where pupils’ clothes were sold. Sometimes my mother would select something from the top shelf and the shopkeeper had to mount a chair to reach it. My mother looked at the clothes for a long time and we often went out of the shop without having bought anything if she didn’t like the clothes. That she did again and again in several shops, so that I started worrying about the sellers who had a hard time with her. However, they would always see her politely to the front door and invite her to come again.
Bulgaria
My parents didn’t know Ivrit and we didn’t speak Ivrit at home. We usually communicated in Bulgarian, but when my parents wanted to hide something from us they spoke with each other in Ladino. I didn’t like that because my mother could start a sentence in Ladino and finish it in Bulgarian; we used to think those days it was Spanish. I wasn’t pleased to hear her putting Bulgarian, Turkish and Ladino words in one sentence.
I have always spoken Bulgarian in my family. I didn’t want to speak the language of my mother intentionally [the mixture of Bulgarian and Ladino], because in my views it was broken Bulgarian. It was just the language of Sephardi Jews that passed through many countries and every one of them imprinted on it part of its own linguistic culture. People passed through Italy and borrowed some Italian words, from Africa they took certain Arabic expressions, others were borrowed from Turkish, and that is how the present-day Ladino was formed. This was the way Ladino became a steady communicational tool between Jews in Bulgarian territories, but not only here. I remember that my father could write in Ladino using a strange alphabet called Solitreo. I begged him to teach me the alphabet, since I thought it might turn useful one day, but he said there were different versions of letters [sic] for designating separate sounds and he couldn’t teach me Solitreo, because he found it too difficult.
I have always spoken Bulgarian in my family. I didn’t want to speak the language of my mother intentionally [the mixture of Bulgarian and Ladino], because in my views it was broken Bulgarian. It was just the language of Sephardi Jews that passed through many countries and every one of them imprinted on it part of its own linguistic culture. People passed through Italy and borrowed some Italian words, from Africa they took certain Arabic expressions, others were borrowed from Turkish, and that is how the present-day Ladino was formed. This was the way Ladino became a steady communicational tool between Jews in Bulgarian territories, but not only here. I remember that my father could write in Ladino using a strange alphabet called Solitreo. I begged him to teach me the alphabet, since I thought it might turn useful one day, but he said there were different versions of letters [sic] for designating separate sounds and he couldn’t teach me Solitreo, because he found it too difficult.
Bulgaria
There was no Jewish neighborhood in Nova Zagora. In Haskovo the Jewish neighborhood had between 600 and 800 inhabitants. There was a self-contained Jewish community and no Jews lived outside the neighborhood.
My father was the deputy mayor of Nova Zagora in 1919, because the legally elected mayor had been arrested in the barracks. The party of the narrow socialists supported him and he was elected mayor of Nova Zagora. Bulgaria’s socialist party [6] had split into narrow and broad socialists. The narrow ones were with Dimitar Blagoev [7], while the broad ones were with Yanko Sakazov [Sakazov, Yanko (1860-1934): socialist leader, elected Member of Parliament eleven times from 1894 to 1934, participant in the Socialist International. In 1918 he became Minister of Trade, Industry and Labor and introduced the eight-hour working day. Sakazov started the construction of the first state workers’ home for miners in Pernik, and initiated projects for developing measures for the protection of children and women workers]. After he became the mayor, a woman assistant told him that representatives of the municipal administration didn’t work. My father was surprised and asked about the reason. She told him that up to that day it was routine for every new mayor from any party to fire all the employees of the administration and to appoint new people from his own party for their positions. Then he gathered the salaried staff and told them he would assess them only by their work, nothing else mattered, so that they could calmly continue doing their work. The people calmed down and took on their tasks.
My family moved to Haskovo in the early 1920s and I lived there until 1945. I have unforgettable memories from my childhood years and I’ll keep them for the rest of my life. Those two events: the one with the repeated dish cleaning for Pesach, and that with the Turkish girl, who was hired to switch on the light, as well as another one, which took place when I was in the first or second grade, determined me as a life-long atheist. The third one was as follows: A wooden box for pens, pencils and rubbers was stolen in my classroom. The box belonged to a girl whose father was the wealthiest Jew in Haskovo. He was a patron of the Jewish community and the synagogue. Our teacher panicked that the girl’s father may learn about the theft. He started persuading us to give back the box, with no success. And as a last resort he told us he would bring us to the synagogue, which was in the Jewish school’s schoolyard, he would make us stand in front of the bimah, and every one of us would have to swear that he or she hadn’t stolen the box. God would punish the liar by sending him an immediate thunderbolt. We were curious to see how the thunder was to fall from the skies. Then, in front of the synagogue, we had to form a queue and our teacher asked for the last time who had stolen the box. Nobody answered and he changed his mind and scattered us to go home. He didn’t have the guts to make us stand in front of the bimah. Thus into my childish mind crept the question why he didn’t have us enter the synagogue and ask in front of the bimah who had stolen the box. My childish conclusion was then that there was no God at all.
My father was an atheist, but tolerant to religious people. He never mocked at the religiosity of my mother or my grandmother. He was a broad-minded person. He was the chairman of the Jewish community in Haskovo. He would always put on a praying shawl for the high Jewish holidays. He also had a prayer book. We used to wear hats in those days, regardless whether there were caps or bowler hats; the important thing was that the head was to be covered. We didn’t have kippot then. It wasn’t a part of the Bulgarian Jews’ everyday life then. Kippot were introduced here after 9th September 1944 [8] as an instance of influence from Israel. I recently saw a Bulgarian movie called ‘Journey to Jerusalem,’ directed by Ivan Nichev, it was about the rescue of a Jewish girl during the war [WWII], and the Jews were wearing kippot there, which was simply not in line with the lifestyle in those years.
My father was the deputy mayor of Nova Zagora in 1919, because the legally elected mayor had been arrested in the barracks. The party of the narrow socialists supported him and he was elected mayor of Nova Zagora. Bulgaria’s socialist party [6] had split into narrow and broad socialists. The narrow ones were with Dimitar Blagoev [7], while the broad ones were with Yanko Sakazov [Sakazov, Yanko (1860-1934): socialist leader, elected Member of Parliament eleven times from 1894 to 1934, participant in the Socialist International. In 1918 he became Minister of Trade, Industry and Labor and introduced the eight-hour working day. Sakazov started the construction of the first state workers’ home for miners in Pernik, and initiated projects for developing measures for the protection of children and women workers]. After he became the mayor, a woman assistant told him that representatives of the municipal administration didn’t work. My father was surprised and asked about the reason. She told him that up to that day it was routine for every new mayor from any party to fire all the employees of the administration and to appoint new people from his own party for their positions. Then he gathered the salaried staff and told them he would assess them only by their work, nothing else mattered, so that they could calmly continue doing their work. The people calmed down and took on their tasks.
My family moved to Haskovo in the early 1920s and I lived there until 1945. I have unforgettable memories from my childhood years and I’ll keep them for the rest of my life. Those two events: the one with the repeated dish cleaning for Pesach, and that with the Turkish girl, who was hired to switch on the light, as well as another one, which took place when I was in the first or second grade, determined me as a life-long atheist. The third one was as follows: A wooden box for pens, pencils and rubbers was stolen in my classroom. The box belonged to a girl whose father was the wealthiest Jew in Haskovo. He was a patron of the Jewish community and the synagogue. Our teacher panicked that the girl’s father may learn about the theft. He started persuading us to give back the box, with no success. And as a last resort he told us he would bring us to the synagogue, which was in the Jewish school’s schoolyard, he would make us stand in front of the bimah, and every one of us would have to swear that he or she hadn’t stolen the box. God would punish the liar by sending him an immediate thunderbolt. We were curious to see how the thunder was to fall from the skies. Then, in front of the synagogue, we had to form a queue and our teacher asked for the last time who had stolen the box. Nobody answered and he changed his mind and scattered us to go home. He didn’t have the guts to make us stand in front of the bimah. Thus into my childish mind crept the question why he didn’t have us enter the synagogue and ask in front of the bimah who had stolen the box. My childish conclusion was then that there was no God at all.
My father was an atheist, but tolerant to religious people. He never mocked at the religiosity of my mother or my grandmother. He was a broad-minded person. He was the chairman of the Jewish community in Haskovo. He would always put on a praying shawl for the high Jewish holidays. He also had a prayer book. We used to wear hats in those days, regardless whether there were caps or bowler hats; the important thing was that the head was to be covered. We didn’t have kippot then. It wasn’t a part of the Bulgarian Jews’ everyday life then. Kippot were introduced here after 9th September 1944 [8] as an instance of influence from Israel. I recently saw a Bulgarian movie called ‘Journey to Jerusalem,’ directed by Ivan Nichev, it was about the rescue of a Jewish girl during the war [WWII], and the Jews were wearing kippot there, which was simply not in line with the lifestyle in those years.
Bulgaria
My father grew up in Plovdiv, where he studied at the Alliance Israelite Universelle [5] up to the seventh grade. He studied accountancy on his own and started working as a white-collar worker with various companies. His work required him to move to Nova Zagora, where he met my mother and married her. I was born in Nova Zagora, while my two brothers, Aron Kohen and Leon Kohen were born in Haskovo.
My father married my mother, Klara Kohen, nee Aron Mori, in Nova Zagora in 1915. My mother was born in 1889 and died in 1958. At one of the annual meetings of Balkan Sephardi Jews [The ‘Esperanza’ festival of culture and creative work of Balkan Sephardi Jews was set up in Sofia in 1998. It’s held every two years under the auspices of Joint. Up to now, it has taken place thrice in Sofia and once in Belgrade with participants from Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, Croatia and Turkey.], I mentioned this family name and one of the participants exclaimed that there was a family carrying the same name in Adrianople. I can’t say where my mother was born for sure. Maybe she was born in Nova Zagora, where she lived with her parents and where she met my father, but it’s also possible that she was born in Adrianople, where her parents had moved from.
I hardly remember my maternal grandfather, Aron Mori, but I can recall my grandmother, Mazaltov Mori, very well. She was a very religious woman. There was an interesting incident that took place in Haskovo shortly before Pesach. The whole house was to be cleaned up perfectly, of course. There shouldn’t have remained even a single crumb of bread or speck of dust. She carried out a special inspection of the house lest a crumb of bread had remained. A special check up of the whole house was conducted. All the dishes were washed and polished to brilliance with boiling water, soap and sand, and then they were put into a special cupboard so that nobody could touch or pollute them. Once it happened that the dishes were put into the cupboard, but there was a pot of jam in it. I liked jam and I took a spoon and had a bite. My mother saw this and she told my grandmother who had all the dishes brushed anew, washed and dried, because of my touching the cupboard where the dishes for Pesach were put.
My grandmother used to visit us often for long hours and on Saturdays as well. My mother was also very religious and she didn’t work on Saturdays, she also wouldn’t touch money nor would she kindle a fire on Saturdays. When she was with us on Saturdays, she hired a Turkish girl of our neighbors to switch on the light at night. I used to ask her if it was a great sin to switch on an electric light. She would confess it was, and I would then ask her why she always made this girl commit a sin. She couldn’t answer. This and some other events made me start alienating from her, in contrast to my other grandmother whom I loved very much.
We lived in Nova Zagora only for a couple of years after I was born; I have only one memory of this time. We used to live in a rented apartment in the building of a vet doctor, Vitanov. This name was often repeated in my family. Our kitchen was exactly above theirs, and there was a hole in the floor so my family could directly speak with the Vitanovs. They didn’t have children and often had rows. But in my presence they would always cool down. They wanted to have children very much, that was all. My mother told me she had often sent me to them and this settled down the disagreements between them every time.
My father married my mother, Klara Kohen, nee Aron Mori, in Nova Zagora in 1915. My mother was born in 1889 and died in 1958. At one of the annual meetings of Balkan Sephardi Jews [The ‘Esperanza’ festival of culture and creative work of Balkan Sephardi Jews was set up in Sofia in 1998. It’s held every two years under the auspices of Joint. Up to now, it has taken place thrice in Sofia and once in Belgrade with participants from Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, Croatia and Turkey.], I mentioned this family name and one of the participants exclaimed that there was a family carrying the same name in Adrianople. I can’t say where my mother was born for sure. Maybe she was born in Nova Zagora, where she lived with her parents and where she met my father, but it’s also possible that she was born in Adrianople, where her parents had moved from.
I hardly remember my maternal grandfather, Aron Mori, but I can recall my grandmother, Mazaltov Mori, very well. She was a very religious woman. There was an interesting incident that took place in Haskovo shortly before Pesach. The whole house was to be cleaned up perfectly, of course. There shouldn’t have remained even a single crumb of bread or speck of dust. She carried out a special inspection of the house lest a crumb of bread had remained. A special check up of the whole house was conducted. All the dishes were washed and polished to brilliance with boiling water, soap and sand, and then they were put into a special cupboard so that nobody could touch or pollute them. Once it happened that the dishes were put into the cupboard, but there was a pot of jam in it. I liked jam and I took a spoon and had a bite. My mother saw this and she told my grandmother who had all the dishes brushed anew, washed and dried, because of my touching the cupboard where the dishes for Pesach were put.
My grandmother used to visit us often for long hours and on Saturdays as well. My mother was also very religious and she didn’t work on Saturdays, she also wouldn’t touch money nor would she kindle a fire on Saturdays. When she was with us on Saturdays, she hired a Turkish girl of our neighbors to switch on the light at night. I used to ask her if it was a great sin to switch on an electric light. She would confess it was, and I would then ask her why she always made this girl commit a sin. She couldn’t answer. This and some other events made me start alienating from her, in contrast to my other grandmother whom I loved very much.
We lived in Nova Zagora only for a couple of years after I was born; I have only one memory of this time. We used to live in a rented apartment in the building of a vet doctor, Vitanov. This name was often repeated in my family. Our kitchen was exactly above theirs, and there was a hole in the floor so my family could directly speak with the Vitanovs. They didn’t have children and often had rows. But in my presence they would always cool down. They wanted to have children very much, that was all. My mother told me she had often sent me to them and this settled down the disagreements between them every time.
Bulgaria
My ancestors came from the Sephardic [1] branch of Jews who were expelled from Spain [2] in 1492 by King Fernando and Queen Isabela because they didn’t want to be baptized. Jews crossed the Mediterranean by boats to reach Northern Africa; many of them, however, by land through Southern France and Italy, went to the Balkan Peninsula, where the Ottoman dynasty ruled. [Editor’s note: The Sephardim mainly settled in Ottoman maritime cities, first of all Salonika, today Greece. They probably went there by sea and less typically by land.]. The Jews were warmly received there. The Ottoman rulers then needed their knowledge in the field of medicine and handicrafts. [A typical occupation of the Balkan Sephardim was textile production and trade.] According to some reports, there were even advisors to the sultan who were Jews. The Jewish people were granted the right of freedom of religion, which was very important to them. [According to the Sharia (Islam religious code), the Muslim state was to tolerate all people of monotheistic faiths. As a result Muslims, Jews and Christians coexisted relatively peacefully within the Ottoman Empire for hundreds of years.]. So they remained within the borders of the Ottoman Empire.
Jews who came to live in the Bulgarian territory [3] came chiefly from Salonika, Adrianople and Istanbul [both today Turkey]. There a compact mass of Jewish people lived, and as far as I know my paternal and maternal grandparents came from Adrianople. In Bulgaria they found a place granting them full religious freedom, which they needed very much, as well as the right to practice their professions. [The territory of Bulgaria was an integral part of the Ottoman Empire up until 1878.] Here, as it was in Spain, they were detached from land and didn’t occupy themselves with agriculture. Their professions were connected with the city life; they were into handicrafts and small trade. Since they had relations with many of their coreligionists throughout Europe, part of them managed to establish profitable connections with large Jewish centers such as Rome, Vienna, and Paris.
My paternal grandmother and grandfather, Luna Kohen and Yuda Kohen, were grocers in Plovdiv. My maternal grandfather, Aron Mori, was engaged in production of confectionery in Nova Zagora. I have heard my father, Bucco Kohen, bantering with my mother, Klara Kohen, that her family promised to give him a wagon of sugar in dowry, but he never caught a glimpse of that wagon. Of course, there was no such wagon at all. It was just that my father had a very good sense of humor.
My father told me that in the mornings, before he went to school, he used to put a tray full of snacks on his head, which had been prepared by my grandfather. He would go to the market to sell them, and it wasn’t before it that he would go to school. Thus he helped his family, which wasn’t small at all. They were four brothers and one sister. My father was born in 1888, most probably in Samokov. He died in 1982. He was the eldest son in the family. One of my father’s brothers, David Yuda Kohen, died during World War I [4] in French captivity. According to my father, he was killed by Bulgarian soldiers who envied him for allegedly being in a privileged position before the Frenchmen since he spoke French very well. We can’t be sure if that was exactly the case. I don’t know where my father got this information from. Another brother of his, Israel Kohen, immigrated to France at the beginning of the century and was captured with his wife during the fascist years. His daughter and my cousin Jacqueline happened not to be at home by chance; she was with a friend. Her parents were taken to Auschwitz where they were gassed.
My father’s last brother, Samuil Kohen, ran a grocery store in Haskovo, next to Boff railway station. I don’t now when exactly Uncle Israel immigrated to France, but it was at the beginning of the 20th century. He left in search of a better job. He was a white-collar worker. My cousin Jacqueline, his daughter, showed me the recommendation letters he had when he changed jobs with different companies. He had been recommended as a clerk who worked consciously. I have seen a picture of him on a beach in Marseilles where they first lived. He changed his name in France from Israel Kohen to Jacques Kohen. His wife’s name was Victoria Kohen. They both died on 16th September 1942. He was only 39 years old. His daughter, Jacqueline, managed to move to Algeria during the war to stay with a maternal uncle, who was an industrialist there. She worked as a blue-collar laborer there for a while and returned to France after the war ended. There she married a Frenchman: Henry Chevalier. They have a very nice family with three children: two boys and a girl.
Jews who came to live in the Bulgarian territory [3] came chiefly from Salonika, Adrianople and Istanbul [both today Turkey]. There a compact mass of Jewish people lived, and as far as I know my paternal and maternal grandparents came from Adrianople. In Bulgaria they found a place granting them full religious freedom, which they needed very much, as well as the right to practice their professions. [The territory of Bulgaria was an integral part of the Ottoman Empire up until 1878.] Here, as it was in Spain, they were detached from land and didn’t occupy themselves with agriculture. Their professions were connected with the city life; they were into handicrafts and small trade. Since they had relations with many of their coreligionists throughout Europe, part of them managed to establish profitable connections with large Jewish centers such as Rome, Vienna, and Paris.
My paternal grandmother and grandfather, Luna Kohen and Yuda Kohen, were grocers in Plovdiv. My maternal grandfather, Aron Mori, was engaged in production of confectionery in Nova Zagora. I have heard my father, Bucco Kohen, bantering with my mother, Klara Kohen, that her family promised to give him a wagon of sugar in dowry, but he never caught a glimpse of that wagon. Of course, there was no such wagon at all. It was just that my father had a very good sense of humor.
My father told me that in the mornings, before he went to school, he used to put a tray full of snacks on his head, which had been prepared by my grandfather. He would go to the market to sell them, and it wasn’t before it that he would go to school. Thus he helped his family, which wasn’t small at all. They were four brothers and one sister. My father was born in 1888, most probably in Samokov. He died in 1982. He was the eldest son in the family. One of my father’s brothers, David Yuda Kohen, died during World War I [4] in French captivity. According to my father, he was killed by Bulgarian soldiers who envied him for allegedly being in a privileged position before the Frenchmen since he spoke French very well. We can’t be sure if that was exactly the case. I don’t know where my father got this information from. Another brother of his, Israel Kohen, immigrated to France at the beginning of the century and was captured with his wife during the fascist years. His daughter and my cousin Jacqueline happened not to be at home by chance; she was with a friend. Her parents were taken to Auschwitz where they were gassed.
My father’s last brother, Samuil Kohen, ran a grocery store in Haskovo, next to Boff railway station. I don’t now when exactly Uncle Israel immigrated to France, but it was at the beginning of the 20th century. He left in search of a better job. He was a white-collar worker. My cousin Jacqueline, his daughter, showed me the recommendation letters he had when he changed jobs with different companies. He had been recommended as a clerk who worked consciously. I have seen a picture of him on a beach in Marseilles where they first lived. He changed his name in France from Israel Kohen to Jacques Kohen. His wife’s name was Victoria Kohen. They both died on 16th September 1942. He was only 39 years old. His daughter, Jacqueline, managed to move to Algeria during the war to stay with a maternal uncle, who was an industrialist there. She worked as a blue-collar laborer there for a while and returned to France after the war ended. There she married a Frenchman: Henry Chevalier. They have a very nice family with three children: two boys and a girl.
Bulgaria