After that the government adopted another strategy. All Jews from Sofia, who were around 30,000, were to be interned from the capital to other parts of the country. Around 100 families came to Stara Zagora; most of them were put up with local Jewish families, the others in a school. The Mevorah family came to live with us together with another young family, whose name I have forgotten. We lived together for a month, when a new governmental order came that all Jews from Stara Zagora had to be interned to other towns. This was also applied to all bigger cities in the country, but there was one more reason why it was also enforced in Stara Zagora –the headquarters of a Nazi General named List, the Commander-in-Chief of the German army for the Balkans were in our town.
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Eshua Aron Almalech
I want to clarify something at this point. The Bulgarian government at that time, which was an ally to fascist Germany, signed an agreement with Germany to send 20,000 Jewish families to the death camps. After Germany occupied Yugoslavia and Greece, their governments ‘returned’ Macedonia (which was part of Yugoslavia) and parts of Greek Macedonia to Bulgaria – territories, which Bulgaria lost under the Neuilly treaty after World War I. 12,000 Jews from these territories were deported to the Treblinka death camp, of whom no more than ten survived. But in order to make them 20,000 the fascist government decided to add 8,000 more families from the country, choosing the most elite and distinguished Jewish families. In accordance with that decision around a hundred Jewish families were locked in the Jewish school to prepare themselves for the road to Death. Just when I went there, the local Bishop Kiril [7] also came and declared that the Bulgarian Orthodox Church led by the Holy Synod would not allow the Bulgarian Jews to be deported. He added that he would shelter the Plovdiv Jews in the Bishop’s Residence (the town residence of the Orthodox Church in Plovdiv), but that he would never allow the trains of death to leave.
I returned to the college intending to go back to Stara Zagora the next day. Then my class teacher Père Gotie Damper, who was a French Catholic priest, called me to his room. He told me that the college director Père Ozon and he would not allow the Jewish students in the college to be sent to death. He offered me to stay in the college and said that I should not worry about food, accommodation and clothes. But there was one condition: I had to adopt the Catholic faith. He said that they had spoken with our parents and that they would issue us a document that this had happened when I enrolled in the school in 1937 so that the authorities would not be suspicious. I do not know what would have happened if I had accepted their proposal or if I would have accepted it at all. But the same day shortly before leaving for Stara Zagora the message came that the deportation of the Jews was postponed and they could go back to their homes. The Jews in Bulgaria were defended by the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, large groups of Bulgarian intellectuals, Macedonian organizations, including deputies from the ruling party in parliament.
I returned to the college intending to go back to Stara Zagora the next day. Then my class teacher Père Gotie Damper, who was a French Catholic priest, called me to his room. He told me that the college director Père Ozon and he would not allow the Jewish students in the college to be sent to death. He offered me to stay in the college and said that I should not worry about food, accommodation and clothes. But there was one condition: I had to adopt the Catholic faith. He said that they had spoken with our parents and that they would issue us a document that this had happened when I enrolled in the school in 1937 so that the authorities would not be suspicious. I do not know what would have happened if I had accepted their proposal or if I would have accepted it at all. But the same day shortly before leaving for Stara Zagora the message came that the deportation of the Jews was postponed and they could go back to their homes. The Jews in Bulgaria were defended by the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, large groups of Bulgarian intellectuals, Macedonian organizations, including deputies from the ruling party in parliament.
In March 1943 we learned that we were to be sent to the Nazi death camps, and more specifically to Treblinka. (We had information about the Nazi death camps, because at that time Bulgarians could listen secretly to foreign radio stations, such as the BBC. There was also an illegal Bulgarian radio station, ‘Hristo Botev’, which broadcast from Moscow. Some of the Jews had relatives, who lived in other European countries and who informed them of the latest news.) At that time I was still a student in Plovdiv. My father called me at the college immediately to tell me to go back to Stara Zagora, because our family was among the first 12 families to be deported. My father had friends, railway workers, many of whom visited regularly our shop, and they had warned him that they were ordered by the government to prepare a cargo wagon for 55 people or 8 horses with two barrels inside – one full of water, the other empty… The railway workers had been ordered to lead the Jews into the wagon and seal it, but they themselves did not know its destination [The workers did not know the concrete final stop, but they knew to what place the people would be transported. The Bulgarian Jews had many Bulgarian friends, who had information and who warned them. At that time even the deputy Speaker of Parliament Dimitar Peshev and the leadership of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, knowing what was happening to the Jews in the other countries occupied by Germany, informed the people and defended the Jews before the Bulgarian government.] When I heard this, I went to the Jewish school in Plovdiv, in the Jewish quarter called ‘Ota Mezar’, where I had many friends. They told me that 100 families from Plovdiv had been listed to be deported to Treblinka.
After the adoption of the [Law for the Protection of the Nation] our rights were severely limited. All Jews had to wear the distinctive yellow star, we were not allowed to go out before 9 o’clock in the morning and after 8 o’clock in the evening and there were times when we were allowed to go out only for 3 hours a day. We were banned from working, except if they mobilized us for some heavy physical labor. My father’s shop was taken away, but his Bulgarian business partner continued to help us. We often gathered in the Jewish school, where we were not allowed to study, but still we met there, because it was dangerous for us to stay on the streets. It was our second home. But I returned to Stara Zagora only on my vacations because I was still studying in the [French College] in Plovdiv. My father and I had to put boards on the windows, because they broke them very often.
Very often the members of the youth fascist organizations Brannik [4], Ratnik [5] and the Bulgarian Legions [6] broke our windows and wrote anti-Semitic slogans on our walls. In 1941 the authorities forbade my father to have his own shop and work in trade. In fact, he was not allowed to work at all any more. My mother’s health deteriorated even more and she died on 31st July 1942 in Stara Zagora.
We had our own house with a yard, we had hens and a village girl came to help our mother. But with the adoption of the law we were allowed to have only one room and a kitchen. We were not allowed to have larger houses and we had to live in only one of the rooms. The rest of the house was confiscated by the municipality and other people were accommodated there. My sister and I, when I returned from Plovdiv for the vacations, slept in the kitchen, and my parents in the room.
My little sister’s illness and the rising anti-Semitism seriously affected my mother’s health. Her health deteriorated considerably within the course of a week.
As a distinguished social democrat my father was against Stalin’s policy of terror in the Soviet Union and despised the Nazi ideology. So, he started to fight actively against that law. That same year a representative of the government came from Sofia to give a speech against Jews in the Stara Zagora community center and there he proclaimed the ideas of Hitler and Mussolini. My father took the stage and publicly criticized the law and the government official in a very heated way. He was arrested, but since he was a very popular public figure in Stara Zagora, a social democrat and the chairman of the Jewish community, he was set free. Yet, he was forbidden to make public appearances.
There was a Jewish bank in Stara Zagora. Its director was Buco Assa, the father of my friend Berto Assa and all its employees were Jews. In 1940 the anti-Semitic [Law for the Protection of the Nation] was passed, which seriously violated the rights of the Jews. The Jews holding shares in the Jewish bank were forced to sell their shares to Bulgarians almost for free.
From my first until my fourth grade I studied in the Jewish school in Stara Zagora. The building also housed the synagogue and a canteen for the poorer Jewish families. Then I started studying in the First Junior High School in town. Every year we had to get enrolled in the school and when I was going to enroll for my third year there, the director, Mr. Ilkov, refused to accept my application, because I was a Jew. This happened in 1936. Then I enrolled in the Second Junior High School. Hitler had already taken the power in Germany and anti-Semitism was beginning to spread in Bulgaria. In 1937 my uncle Solomon, who lived in France with his family, visited us in Stara Zagora. He told my father that they should send me to the French College [3] and that he would pay for my education. So, I went to study in Plovdiv.
Now I often go to the Jewish Center, I do not miss the holidays in the synagogue and I often go there. My children also visit us during the holidays and we celebrate them together. Few Jews have remained in Bulgaria, maybe around 5,000, because after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many young and not so young people left for Israel. I have visited Israel many times. Especially since 1989 I have been going there almost every year. I take an active interest in what is happening in Israel and feel for the Israeli people, but I prefer to live in Bulgaria. This split is very typical for the Bulgarian Jews, because we have always lived in understanding with the Bulgarians and the exceptions due to political reasons or individual actions have not spoilt our relations. This split is also nostalgia for the relatives and for Israel, but when I am there, I feel the same for Bulgaria, which is after all my home country. I am a Jew from Bulgaria.
I think that one of the most important events of the 20th century is the fall of the Berlin Wall. But the road to democracy after so many years of stagnation is not easy. What’s more, people living under hard conditions start blaming the minorities for their hardships. Even in Bulgaria some translations of Nazi and anti-Jewish books have appeared. Skinheads also appeared, although not on such a big scale as in other European countries. These tendencies are a bit dangerous and although they are not very popular, they remind me of the ideas of the fascist organizations during the Holocaust in Bulgaria. Some of their leaders emigrated from Bulgaria in the past, but now although they are very old, they have started to come back. They claim to be victims of the communist regime, although they in fact have fascist orientation, in particular their former ideologist Ivan Dochev. I am worried by all these things…
The parents of my son-in-law Stephan divorced when he was 2-3 years old. He lived with his mother when he married my daughter in 1977. When he told his parents that he wanted to marry a Jew, his father was against it. Stephan’s mother told me that. She was present at this conversation and reacted very angrily. She was a Bulgarian, but had cousins, who had adopted Judaism and now live in Israel. I shared with you this story, because although Bulgarians are tolerant as a whole, there are always some prejudiced people, who are not only against Jews, but also against other minorities in Bulgaria.
My daughter worked for more than 27 years in the Bulgarian National Television first as an editor and later as editor-in-chief of the cultural programs and as a member of the board of the directors of the national television. From the beginning of this year, she works in the ‘Marketing and Public Relations’ department of the Anubis Publishing House. Being a journalist, my daughter also writes regularly on the issues related to Judaism and more particularly, to Bulgarian Jews. She completed the course ‘The Role of Media in Civil Society’ offered by the Israeli Foreign Affairs Ministry and she has many publications related to Israel and the problems of anti-Semitism. She is a member of the board of directors of the ‘Bulgarian-Jewish Cultural Relations’ foundation.
She has two children – a son, David Djambazov, who completed his university education in the USA and now works there, and a daughter Irina Djambazova, who is now in the 11th grade of the trade and banking high school in Sofia. Zelma’s husband, Stephan Djambazov is also a journalist.
She has two children – a son, David Djambazov, who completed his university education in the USA and now works there, and a daughter Irina Djambazova, who is now in the 11th grade of the trade and banking high school in Sofia. Zelma’s husband, Stephan Djambazov is also a journalist.
Both my son and my daughter feel Jews. My son is one of the best experts in Hebrew in Bulgaria. He completed a degree in Bulgarian philology at Sofia University and specialized in the area of linguistics. He is a Doctor of Philology and he studied for three years at the Jerusalem University. Now he works in the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. He is preparing for print a Hebrew-Bulgarian and Bulgarian-Hebrew dictionary. He is also the author of a Bulgarian-Hebrew phrase book and scholarly articles on Judaism and Hebrew. Although he lives in Bulgaria now, he is an Israeli citizen.
After the Israeli-Arab war in 1967 and the events in Czechoslovakia, my wife Nedyalka was fired from Sofia radio, where she worked as a journalist, because as they told her, she was married to a Jew and had a Jewish family name. During that time the director of the National Radio was the Jew Albert Cohen, a distinguished journalist and writer. He was also fired. I often traveled abroad as a sports journalist. I loved my job, but every time there was some possibility for promotion, they hinted to me, sometimes delicately, sometimes directly, that I was a Jew and this was impossible. But the most significant case was with my daughter. She completed her university degree in journalism with excellent marks at the Sofia University in 1974. While she studied at the university, she often worked for the Bulgarian National Television and the documentaries department wanted her to start working for them full-time. During that time there was a personnel department in every company, which researched every potential employee in order to find out if he or she was suitable. The research was done mainly for political reasons and for a media such as the Bulgarian National Television the selection was even stricter. They told my daughter that she could not work in the television as an editor unless she changed her name. She flatly refused, saying that she would find another job. But her colleagues and immediate editors-in-chief were very angry when they heard about that and after much insistence on their part, she was given the job. After some time it became known that there was an unwritten order that the recruitment of people with non-Bulgarian names was not advisable, even though they were Bulgarian citizens.
Although my wife Nedyalka is a Bulgarian, after she spent a couple of years with my stepmother Luna, she learned the Jewish cuisine. Later when we lived with her parents, they also got to like our cuisine. Both the Jewish and the Christian holidays have been observed in our family. We lived together with Nedyalka’s parents in Sofia until they passed away. My wife’s mother died in 1973 and her father died in 1980. At that time our children Zelma and Mony had already married and Nedyalka and I lived alone. We often get together with their families, especially on the Jewish and personal holidays. We have almost never observed the Christian holidays since the death of my wife’s parents.
My children grew up in a democratic atmosphere at home. In the old passports issued to all Bulgarian citizens when they become 16 years old, there was a column ‘nationality’. When they were old enough to be issued passports, they both wrote ‘Jew’ in it.
When we learned about the process against the Jewish doctors in the Soviet Union [the Doctors’ Plot [11]] from the newspapers, my father had not left for Bulgaria yet. My wife Nedyalka and he thought that this was some kind of provocation by the Stalinist regime. I admit I was in two minds. The communist regime forbade listening to foreign radio stations such as the BBC, Deutsche Welle, Free Europe, the Voice of America. But my wife and I were journalists and we listened to them. In 1956 after the events in Hungary, I started having doubts about socialism, all the more when most of Stalin’s atrocities became public. [Eshua is referring to the Hungarian revolution against the Soviet type communist regime in Hungary.] But in 1968 after the Soviet armies [i.e. the armies of the Warsaw Pact] occupied Prague, I just could not accept it despite my leftist orientation.
I have always kept in touch with (my relatives) – through letters, visits. I went to Israel for the first time in 1957. I have visited them many times since then. We even sent our daughter Zelma, when she was 8 years old, to her grandparents and my sister Roza for the whole summer in 1958. In 1960 my wife and my son also spent the summer with them. Roza, her husband, Izidor Natan and their son Amnon, left for Israel in 1948. They lived in Ramle together with her husband’s parents. In 1970 they moved to Tel Aviv. Her husband died in 1971. She still lives in Tel Aviv.
When the first Bulgarian Jews started leaving for Israel, my father was most eager, he even organized groups. All my relatives and friends started leaving. I was already working as a journalist and I liked my job very much. I knew that I could not work as a journalist in Israel because I did not know the language and I was not sure if I could learn it well enough to be able to write articles in it as well as I can write in Bulgarian. This was the main reason, but I was also deeply attached to the Bulgarian nation – after [9th September 1944] the attitude towards Jews was wonderful. I also love Bulgarian nature. Unlike my father I joined the left wing of the social democratic party, which united with the communists. I became a member of the Communist Party. I married a Bulgarian woman. So, I decided not to leave for Israel, but I believe that everybody has the right to make his or her own choice where to live.
My father’s second wife, Luna Almalech, lived in Sofia with us until 1954. Then my parents left for Israel and lived in Tel Aviv until my father died in 1977. Luna settled in an old people’s home in Rishon Letzion near Tel Aviv where she died in 1981.
My father was a distinguished social democrat, and as early as 1946 in Stara Zagora he was invited to run for MP from this party. But then came the heated division between the parties, which formed the coalition Fatherland Front [10] against the fascist government. After the 9th September victory the communists started following closely the Soviet and pro-Stalinist policy, while their other allies did not agree with it and formed an opposition, which my father joined. He did not manage to become an MP because many social democrats were sent to the communist jails. He was also sent to jail for a couple of days because he had spoken against the dictatorship in Stara Zagora. But I was able to have him released with the help of some friends of mine and of my friend Mony Dekalo. I took him to Sofia where he worked for the Jewish organization and no longer took part in politics.
My father Aron Almalech was always an ardent Zionist. He was the chief secretary of the Mapai. [Before it became an Israeli party, Mapai was a Jewish social democratic party. It was represented in international bodies such as the Socialist International, for example.] He accompanied Ben Gurion when he came to Bulgaria for the first time in the middle of the 1940s. When the Israel state was founded in 1948, my father received an invitation by the Israeli government to become a ‘sheliach’, that is, the chairman of the Sochnut in Bulgaria. One of the first diplomats, Ben Zur, ambassador in Vienna and responsible for the whole of Eastern Europe, came to Bulgaria to hand him the invitation. My father exercised this duty until he left for Israel in 1954.
Bulgaria
My wife has a degree in history. We are both journalists. While I was still studying at the university in 1945, I started working as a journalist for the ‘Sotsialisticheska Mladej’ [‘Socialist Youth’] newspaper, then for the ‘Narod’ [‘Nation’] newspaper, published by the social democratic party and when it stopped appearing in 1947, I started working for the newly founded ‘Narodna Mladej’ [‘National Youth’]. I headed the Interior Affairs department and the Sports department there and worked there until 1958. From 1958 until 1971 I worked at ‘Naroden Sport’ [‘National Sport’] and then, until my retirement in 1986 at the illustrated sports weekly ‘Start’. I was one of its founders and headed the International Affairs department. Later I became its secretary-in-chief.
I married Nedyalka Nikolova, nee Dineva, in 1948. She was born in 1928 in Stara Zagora. She is Bulgarian. Her parents and she herself were from Stara Zagora too. Our families knew each other; they had even done shopping in our shop sometimes. Her mother Marinka and my mother Zelma had been classmates as children. But I got acquainted to Nedyalka in the end of 1944 when she came to study in Sofia. We were inseparable after that and later we married. Our daughter Zelma Eshua Almalech was born in 1950 and our son Mony Eshua Almalech in 1954.
Bulgaria
I hadn’t started school yet, when, around 1929, the first car appeared in town. There were only carriages until then. In the following years we often went to a restaurant where we could listen to the radio and in 1936 my father bought a Phillips radio set, which was confiscated during the Holocaust.
My father often took me to the synagogue for Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Pesach. On Noche di Shabbat [the eve of Sabbath in Ladino] the whole family gathered at home and my father read the prayer. On Saturday morning he went to the synagogue, but after that, since he was a merchant, he went to work. All his life he chaired the board of the Jewish school in Stara Zagora. At that time there were around 30,000 people in the town, of which 400 were Jews from different organizations – Maccabi, the Zionist sports organization, Hashomer Hatzair, Zionists and more right-wing predecessor to the present-day Likud organization. There was a rabbi, who was also a shochet. His name was Tovia and everybody loved him. One of my most vivid memories is my Bar Mitzvah, which brought together almost the whole Jewish community in town. In the synagogue they gave me a tallit to put on, I went up to the kebat and gave a speech.
I was a member of the Hashomer Hatzair, a leftist Zionist organization, since my childhood. My father was a distinguished social democrat ever since his youth and read lots of scholarly work and political literature, mostly Plehanov and Kautsky, but he admired most the French Jean Jaures. Yet, my father was a Jew before all and observed the traditions. But he was not а believer. My mother Zelma Almalech was more religious in that she observed very strictly all religious rules. She never ate pork and the rare times the family went to a restaurant, she never ate, because the food was not kosher. At home she insisted most on observing the traditions for each holiday.
My parents respected the Jewish religion and, most of all, the Jewish nation. But we had an atheistic upbringing. [The duality of not being religious yet observing the religious traditions is typical of the whole Bulgarian population regardless of their ethnicity. There are many explanations for this. The main one is that during the Turkish rule people who were not muslim were forbidden many things, including the observance of the religious rites. Thus, the rites gradually lost their religious meaning and took on a more secular meaning.