We stayed there from August 1942 to March 1944. Tamara worked in a joiner's workshop. She washed and cleaned it. My mother and father worked in the field.
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Displaying 3751 - 3780 of 50826 results
Vladimir Goldman
At night there were guards around the barrack. We decided to run away. At dawn we left the barrack. We walked the whole day until we came to a village. There was a barrack with Jews near the village and Kalmyks around the village. They were cooking lamb meat. We were hungry and I managed to pick some. I took it to the barrack and my mother and other women washed and cooked them. We had some food and left again at dawn. We went in the direction of Paseka where we left Tamara. We were afraid to go to the village and were hiding in pits in the field. My mother went to the village late. She returned a few hours later and told us that the Germans registered every individual in the barrack and threatened to kill ten people if one of them disappeared. We decided to return to the barrack.
Odessa was liberated on 10th April. Around the same time Tamara got a lift in a vehicle with the military. She reached Odessa on 12th April. My father, mother and I returned walking home on foot. On the way we met the Kroletskiy family, my parents' acquaintances. They were also going back to Odessa. Sergey Kroletskiy was Ukrainian and his wife, Lida, was a Jew, but they kept it a secret. She was a blond with blue eyes and pretended she was Ukrainian. She spoke fluent Ukrainian. Sergey had continuous problems with the sigurantza [the Romanian secret police] or the police because he looked very much like a Jew. However, he managed to survive. They had a cow and a horse pulling a cart. They had two children: 9-year-old Natasha and 8-year- old Tolik. Sergey told Lida to get off the cart and put my mother on it. When we entered Odessa the town was still on fire: the heating plant and the bakery were ablaze. We stayed with Sergey and Lida in their small room for some time. I took the horse and the cow to pasture in the Duke's Garden, and my mother was helping Lida with the cooking.
My mother, Maria, was born in Proskurov in 1893. She was a very beautiful woman. Her sisters were also beautiful. My mother finished a Russian primary school.
In the early 1920s she moved to Odessa and got a job as a hat maker. She got little money for her work, rented rooms and had meals at cheap canteens for workers and laborers.
My grandfather on my father's side, Israel Goldman, was born in the town of Akkerman, Bessarabia [4], in the early 1860s. Akkerman, which is now called Belgorod-Dnestrovsk, was located on the bank of the Dnestr firth. It was a picturesque town. In the 1980s I visited it to look for my grandparents' graves and saw gravestones from the 17th century at the local cemetery. The town had Russian, Ukrainian, Moldavian, Gagauz [5], Hungarian and Jewish inhabitants. There was a synagogue and a Jewish community. My grandfather owned a wine store and a tavern on the outskirts of town.
Jews had their houses spread all over the town. My father told me that they got on very well with their neighbors. During a big pogrom in 1905 a Christian priest, their neighbor, gave them shelter in his house.
On Pesach Grandmother Masia cooked traditional Jewish food: gefilte fish and pudding from matzah that she bought at the synagogue. She put a decanter of wine on the table. They went to the synagogue on holidays and celebrated Sabbath. My father didn't tell me whether they followed the kashrut.
His brother Leo was born around 1884. He lived in Akkerman. He was a merchant before the Revolution of 1917 [6]. He spoke Romanian and often went to purchase goods in Romania. I believe he was a merchant after the Revolution, too, but I'm not sure. He evacuated from Bessarabia in 1941 and came to Odessa. He was in the ghetto with us. He was shot in Dalnik [7] near Odessa on 23rd February 1942.
My father, Miron Goldman, was born in 1888. In 1907 he finished the 5th grade of a Russian secondary school in Akkerman. After that he studied pharmacy in the Moldavian village of Budaki and began to work in the village. He also treated people from the surrounding villages. He was called to families at any time of the day and night.
In 1914, when World War I began, my father was mobilized to the tsarist army. He was an assistant doctor in a hospital.
. Between 1920 and 1924 he studied at the Medical Faculty of the Donskoy University in Rostov and later continued his studies at the Medical Institute in Odessa. Upon graduation from the Institute my father worked at the Skin Diseases and Veneorological Hospital that became a Skin and Veneorology Research Institute later. [Editor's note: At present this building houses the Israeli Cultural Center.] In 1928 my father reaffirmed his qualification as a veneorologist at the Professional Education Commission of the Ministry of Education of the USSR.
My grandfather on my mother's side, Natan Frenkel, was born in Proskurov, Podolsk province, in the early 1860s. My mother told me that my grandfather was very religious. He followed the kashrut, fasted on Yom Kippur and observed all traditions. He attended the synagogue, where he had a seat of his own, and prayed regularly. He had a tallit and all the other necessary accessories. He wore a black jacket, white shirt and a hat. He leased a plot of land from a landlord and hired employees to farm it. He gave crops to the landlord and left a portion for himself. He provided well for his family. My grandfather had a house in the Kut neighborhood at the outskirts of Proskurov. There were five or six rooms in the house. There were also sheds in the yard, but they didn't have a garden.
My mother told me a lot about her family. She was very proud of their closeness. On Sabbath they dressed up and sat at the table with the visiting relatives. My grandmother lit two candles and my grandfather said a prayer. The family celebrated all Jewish holidays, but my mother's favorite holidays were Chanukkah and Purim. On Chanukkah the children got gifts and Chanukkah gelt, and on Purim my grandmother made delicious hamantashen. On Yom Kippur the adults fasted and my mother observed this tradition until the end of her life.
During the war the Kornblitt family were in the ghetto. Zhenia's fiancé, Henry Ostashevskiy, paid ransom for Zhenia to free her from the ghetto. There were Romanian guards in the ghetto, and it was possible to negotiate with them. She lived with counterfeit documents during the war. In 1942 her daughter, Valentine, was born. Ilia was killed in the ghetto. Sophia was in the Jewish ghetto in Domanevka village [3]. Sophia and Zhenia survived the war.
Rosa and Oktav failed to evacuate. Rosa was aware of the Germans' attitude towards Jews and always had morphine with her. When the Germans occupied Odessa she poisoned her son and herself to avoid the horrors of the ghetto.
Luna Davidova
My mother cooked very well, she made a special mayonnaise with chicken and fish. She also made a meal called apio with celery and lots of lemon juice,, it which is served cold. She cooked a lot of meals with aubergines, especially a kind of moussaka [a meal of potatoes, minced meat and yogurt]. And a special meal made from zucchini - andjenara. I loved her baked blue tomatoes minced with meat croquettes. She also cooked okra with a lot of tomato juice. I learned to cook all these meals, my sister too, and now my daughters-in-law, the Bulgarian girls are fond of them and cook them. And I don't know whether they will pass this tradition on to their children. I don't have this particular contact with my grandchildren. But I suppose that mothers will pass the things on to their children that they themselves like.
Bulgaria
In the Soviet Union, as well as in Russia, there has been a lot of anti-Semitism, in Romania too. Not to speak of Poland - there is terrible anti-Semitism there. In France there is also anti-Ssemitism but I've been many times to England and I haven't experienced this there. There is no anti-Semitism among our Balkan neighbors, Greece and Turkey.
As for the Hungarian Revolt [see 1956] [35], the Prague Spring [36] - I consider these events as an expression of the peoples' discontent and disagreement; each nation has the right to do it. It' is a matter of importance how the opposite side would react, the side that bears the guilt for the state of affairs - they should think how to act too.
I don't get any help from the Jewish community but there are people who do. My pension is regarded as big but it is n'ot enough. In my flat it is cold the whole winter. I simply can't figure out how to make ends meet. I have nowhere to get money from - if I do take part in some artistic shows, I do it for free, because of solidarity.
Since we were socialists, the changes that we experienced after 10th November 1989 were very hard for us. We stand for a social politics that supersedes the incredible division among the people. It is the awful division of people into rich and poor that binds me to socialism; I feel it with my heart. We lived painfully through the terrible things that happened - the plunder, the fire in the House of the Party, the destruction of the Mausoleum: a whole series of negative events. Here in our park they destroyed the huge garden that led to Bratskata Mogila [the Monument of those who died in the anti-Fascist fight] because they were afraid that someone would go and lay a flower commemorating those who were killed in the name of just an idea.
I've been to Israel several times. During the communist rule we didn't say that we had relatives there, it was forbidden although my uncle and aunt were there. In the beginning we didn't send them any letters. Neither did they because it could do us harm. Our politicians didn't make just a few mistakes - they made many. We began to correspond without difficulties from the beginning of the 1980s. After the ottepel [Russian for thaw; synonym of perestroika] [34] my aunt Solchi and my uncle Gavriel came to Bulgaria to visit my father and my aunt Shella. She was still here in Bulgaria at the time.
Bulgaria
The breakdown of the diplomatic ties between Bulgaria and Israel was very hard for us. We thought that this nation had the right to its own piece of land. Maybe the Jews have made mistakes regarding the Palestinians but I think that these conflicts stem from the Arab world. They have enormous territories but none of them give asylum to their Palestinian brothers. The Jordanian king Hussein expelled them, no one wants them and they felt envious of this land and decided that Jerusalem belongs to them. If you open the Bible you will see that everyone has conquered this piece of land - the Syrians, the Babylonians, the Romans, the Crusaders, the Turks. But the country is still there, it is the birthplace of this nation according to the Bible.
Half of my friends are Jews - now the Jewish community is what binds us together. I celebrate the holidays, we attend the synagogue but this is just a tradition - we are not religious. Our children are atheists, too.
We have two sons, - Anri and Albert. Anri, the older one, graduated in Chemistry, Microbiology and Foreign Commerce - he has two diplomas. He is fluent in English and Russian, he can use French and Italian and I regret that we never spoke in Ladino at home. Nowadays he is unemployed. Albert, who graduated in Economics, left for Israel in 1991. He has one daughter, Lora. She is a student of Economics at the University of National and World Economy in Sofia.
My husband graduated from the Svishtov University in Economy, then he studied Law at Sofia University but he didn't graduate. He was a journalist;, his main interests were in economics. He worked within different newspapers - the daily 'Trud' [Labor], the biweekly 'Evreiski Vesti' [Jewish News] as well as the weekly 'Ikonomicheski Zhivot' [Economic Life] from where he retired and received his pension.
As an actress I advanced quickly through the ranks; I took part in a lot of radio shows, in radio plays, I read poetry. I made several TV performances and I participated in several films - the best role I had was that of Varvara in 'Tobacco' [Dimitar Dimov (1907-1966) - one of the classics of Bulgarian literature. His novel 'Tobacco' - Tiutiun - was stigmatized by the cCommunist ideology as 'bourgeois and Freudist' when it was first published in 1951 and he was forced to re-write it]. But it seemed that I was not created for cinema;, my good roles were those in the theater. I had many recitals - Yavorov's poetry for example; we made performed plays with Chaprazov and Duparinova [famous Bulgarian actors]. Nowadays the young people don't know me but there are some adults who see me and say: Ah you are Maria Stuart [from Friedrich Schiller's play], or 'Aesopus'!, or ah yes, 'A Holiday In Arco Iris', ah you acted in 'The Stone Guest' by Pushkin [32]. I can remember quite well ten or fifteen roles that I had, as well as my excellent colleagues and directors. I've always had good relations with my colleagues - I' have never been envious of someone else's role, talent, or intelligence. And I have been respected for this quality of mine. This is one of the very few things that give me the self-confidence of a good human being.
In the Jewish school where I worked until 1948 I had a good salary, I was given a scholarship during my study in VITIZ by the Konsistoria [the Jewish Community Foundation]. I also won an award named after Georgi Dimitrov [29], thus I had no material troubles. Otherwise we went on brigades [3020], I recited Smirnensky [Hristo Smirnensky (1898-1923), - famous Bulgarian poet], Vaptszarov, Mayakovsky [31]. When I first came to Sofia, I lived at on 38 Iskar Street 38 in the same room where my husband came to live when we married. Our first son was born while we lived there, in the student lodging. In 1958 we moved to the flat where I still live - we don't have any other property. We remained proletarians until the end.
When we came back to Kazanlak after the internment the people welcomed us; my father became a secretary of the chitalishte 'Iskra'. He was a communist and that's why he stayed in Bulgaria. We were 'progressive' - I was a member of the UYW, then of DCYU [stands for Dimitrov's Communist Youth Union], and of the Komsomol -- we were fond of these great ideas. And if they were not realized, it was due not to the ideas themselves but to the people who tried to realize them. Communism turned out to be a mistake, maybe a criminal attempt, but not because of the criminal essence of the idea but because of the people who tried to make it real. Communism, socialism - these are things dreamt by Jesus Christ as well, the same Ten Commandments are found in the principle of the great ideas and ideologies. But neither Christianity nor socialism made them real. I applied for membership in the Party in 1950 and I was accepted as a member in 1953. I' am still member of the Bulgarian Socialist Party [the successor of the Bulgarian Communist Party].
My mother has never been member or supporter of any parties. My father was a member of the Bulgarian Communist Pparty but he was expelled in 1963 in Kazanlak because he stood up for a friend of his, an ex-military officer named Slavov. Later my father was invited to join the Party but he refused;, he was very grieved.
My mother has never been member or supporter of any parties. My father was a member of the Bulgarian Communist Pparty but he was expelled in 1963 in Kazanlak because he stood up for a friend of his, an ex-military officer named Slavov. Later my father was invited to join the Party but he refused;, he was very grieved.
In the first several years after 9th September 1944 many Bulgarian Jews left for Israel - 35-40,000 people. The third district where the school was located became desolate due to their departure; in Kazanlak there is only one Jew left nowadays. But a lot of people remained here, mostly the communists.