When he returned my parents had a civil wedding ceremony at a registry office. They didn't have a traditional Jewish wedding.
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Displaying 10531 - 10560 of 50826 results
dora postrelko
My parents were poor. My father was a joiner and my mother was a housewife. My father didn't have much work to do. It was the period of the Civil War 7, and nobody needed his skills.
My father was very enthusiastic about the Revolution. He liked the fact that poor people like him came to power. He supported the Soviet power and agitated for the Soviets. He helped to expropriate wealthy people's houses and belongings. At that time, when regimes in the town switched at least once a month from the Reds 8 to the Whites 9 and the Greens 10, there were pogroms 11 during which Jews were robbed and killed. Our family didn't suffer from them since my father had many Ukrainian friends that were hiding us.
My father survived thanks to his friends. When another gang 12 came to town they began to execute supporters of the Soviet regime. My father was buried up to his chest for not being a Jew but cooperating with the authorities instead. They would have buried him alive, but one of those bandits knew my father and was his friend. They used to drink vodka together. This man persuaded their chief to let my father go. Therefore, my father's wild, reckless character rescued him. The bandits didn't touch my grandparents, who were hiding in the basement. They attacked younger people that supported the Soviet power.
My father survived thanks to his friends. When another gang 12 came to town they began to execute supporters of the Soviet regime. My father was buried up to his chest for not being a Jew but cooperating with the authorities instead. They would have buried him alive, but one of those bandits knew my father and was his friend. They used to drink vodka together. This man persuaded their chief to let my father go. Therefore, my father's wild, reckless character rescued him. The bandits didn't touch my grandparents, who were hiding in the basement. They attacked younger people that supported the Soviet power.
My mother fell ill after my father left. She loved him dearly and couldn't bear his betrayal. She refused to eat or breastfeed the baby. The baby was given cow milk with some water. It was a period of famine [in Ukraine] 13 and it was hard to get milk. The baby contracted enteric fever and died. I have dim memories of a small coffin with a little body inside and my grandfather Srul praying and crying.
It was a Jewish children's home in Tomashpol. At least we got regular meals there. In those years the Joint 14 provided assistance and support to Russian children's institutions. We sometimes ate American tinned meat and egg powder - it was a feast. We wore trousers, sweaters and dresses from America. It was a small children's home: a one-storied building with about 40 children and a few teachers. We didn't learn anything. We played a lot and spoke Yiddish. I don't remember any celebration of religious holidays there; I don't remember any holidays from my childhood. It seems to me now that there were none.
I went to a local Jewish school when I was in one of those children's homes, and my sister studied in a Jewish school in Bratslav.
We went to another children's home in Kuznechnaya Street [today Gorkogo Street, named after Gorky 15, one of the central streets in Kiev]. This children's home was no different from others, but we liked living in the center of the city with its wide streets. Along with other children of the home I went to a Jewish lower secondary school. The teachers and other children at school treated us well.
Uncle Abram helped me to enter a vocational school at Kiev Locomotive Repair Plant. I worked at the plant and studied. Life was very hard. This was a period of famine. My uncle helped me to get a job in a shop, where I had to carry heavy planks to get 800 grams of bread per coupons. I got very tired at work.
After one year of studies I became a manual typesetter and got a job assignment to the printing house of the journale called Communist. I and two other girls, employees of the printing house, lived in a room near the railway station. The printing house paid our rent.
Gracia Albuhaire
Masapan' is a traditional Jewish delight, meant especially for celebrations. It is prepared only from sugar and ground almonds. Sugar is condensed to the required thickness, which we call 'al punto' - to capture the moment! Then the almonds are added. When my daughter got married, I made masapan. All the Jews gobbled up the masapan, while the Bulgarians preferred the chocolate. None of them tried the masapan, because they had never tasted it and they didn't know how delicious it was.
We used to make special sweets called 'mavlach' - either white or white and red. This is condensed sugar in the form of scissors or pretzels. We also gave each other presents and ate other kinds of sweets also - 'saralia', 'baklava', 'burikitas elhashu' - filled with nuts, raisins and sugar inside and generously poured with syrup.
We used to make mill-clacks on the holiday. There is a song which says: 'Avanarisha, rash, rash, rash...' and then we started with the mill-clacks and such yelling and screaming began at school that you can hardly imagine! The evening before we disguised ourselves with whatever we found - we wore the clothes of our grannies and mothers, we painted ourselves and we prepared masks. And in groups we went about from one house to another singing that special song: 'Hak Purim, hak el feia lel aldim!' We sang the song and the housewife gave us 'mahpuri' [money]. If she had mahpurim she would give us some, if not she would treat us with sweets!
Albert left for Israel in 1948-1949. He had a shop for roasted kernels there, inherited later by his children. During one of my visits to Israel, in Herzlia, I met him and had a formal lunch with his family.
his parents didn't accept me during my school years, because we were poor. I even got a letter from his mother that she would report me to the teacher if I were dating her son. This did not offend me, as he was the one who actually mattered to me.
During the Holocaust we used to write letters and that is how he wrote to me. We saw each other only when he left for the labor camps in early spring [see forced labor camps in Bulgaria] [7]. And we only met for four or five minutes - the time when the train was waiting at the station. And when he was coming back from the camps, we again met for five minutes. He was in many camps. There was mail, so I got letters from the camps. We wrote in Bulgarian. Once he even played a trick on me. I received a letter from an unknown man, a Jew named Nicko Varsano, who wanted to correspond with me and get to know me. But when I read the letter, I realized that it was from my boyfriend because I recognized his writing style.
When this group of young men came from Bourgas, I really fell for Albert. I was introduced to him in the evening but he didn't really notice me. The next evening I decided to find a way to attract his attention. I had a blue and white dotted cotton costume. It was like the color of my eyes. I put it on and it looked perfect on me. I wore large sandals, given to me by my cousin Fortune from Sliven. I had beautiful curly hair, which I usually plaited into two braids. But on this occasion I let my hair loose and turned the plaits into curls. I made myself look smart and in the evening I went out in the street together with the company. When I arrived, the boy who I liked asked the others to introduce me to him. On the next day, while I was going to school, he met me in the street, looked at me, smiled and said: 'Hey, kid!' And since then he always called me 'My little kid!
I was a poor girl, therefore the town's boys didn't pay much attention to me. Moreover, I was quite small and thin, and I went to school dressed in a black overall with a white collar and a beret. I didn't raise any interest as a woman.
I was so sad that I couldn't go to school. I remember that even for the poorest people the school fee was still expensive - 1,200 leva. I cried for a week and finally my mother decided there was something wrong. She managed to collect the money from here and there and finally I went to school about two months late. I enrolled in the 5th grade in the same way - several months late, yet this time I wrote to my elder brother Jack in Sofia and he sent me the money.
Bulgaria
At the time when I was to start high school we had no money. Everyone said I should be responsible and begin work in order to support my family. I had just finished the 7th grade in junior high school. I had no choice so I started working for a tailor. I had to hem garments. I was stuck at my work place all day long; I wasn't even allowed to eat. The tailor kept telling my mother how skillful I was, and how I would become an excellent tailor. But I wasn't satisfied with this, because I wanted to continue studying.
I wrote the poem in Bulgarian. [It translates as follows:]
'Day of Purim, our holiday, coming here again! We will wear masks and scare the children! How much fear they will feel - The well-known fear of the old times - Of the Jewish people - from those Mizrims awful! They would slaughter them, they would hang them, By the order of minister Haman the 'tipesh' [fool]. Yet, our queen, Beauty Ester, She would save all Jews from death!
'Day of Purim, our holiday, coming here again! We will wear masks and scare the children! How much fear they will feel - The well-known fear of the old times - Of the Jewish people - from those Mizrims awful! They would slaughter them, they would hang them, By the order of minister Haman the 'tipesh' [fool]. Yet, our queen, Beauty Ester, She would save all Jews from death!
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
I have a memory of celebrating the Jews' liberation from Egypt during Purim with a lot of games, songs, and with masks. Our teacher, geverit ['Miss' in Hebrew] Ester prepared the program. Everyone had something to perform - a sketch, a song, a poem, etc.
At school we spoke more Bulgarian, while at home we spoke Judezmo. My aunt Dudu, for example, didn't know Bulgarian and she spoke Judezmo and Turkish. The Turkish [Ottoman] Empire reigned in this country and she was a witness of those times [see Ottoman Rule in Bulgaria] [6]. With Bulia Neda they communicated both in Bulgarian and Turkish.
When my father was young he attended the Jewish school. They studied in Ladino, or Judezmo-Espaniol, as we used to call it in our town. In Sofia they call it Ladino but we used to call it Judezmo-Espaniol, which means Judeo-Spanish. But they wrote in the Rashi script. Therefore my father and my uncle Chelebi, who was from Sofia, used to correspond in Rashi. The letters greatly resembled the ones of the Hebrew alphabet, but the meaning was not understandable. I asked my father about it, he laughed and said that he didn't want me to know what their correspondence was about. I can speak Judezmo-Espaniol, which I learned from my parents. I don't know Rashi, because when I started studying, everybody used Hebrew already. That's why I can write in Hebrew but I don't know Rashi.
I went to the nursery school and then to the Jewish school where I studied until the 4th grade. I had lessons in Hebrew and Bulgarian, and then we had an exam and transferred to a Bulgarian school - first to an elementary school and then to high school.
Starting as early as summer, my father saved coin after coin to buy an ox cart full of logs for winter. It was enough only for a month and what would we do in the remaining five to six winter months? We had a 'Gypsy love' stove at home - a small one. My mother used to get up early in the morning, when it was still dark - sometimes at one, two, three, or five o'clock. She never knew what time it was, as we didn't have a clock at home. She fired up the stove, put on the traditional rye coffee, which she roasted and ground herself. My brother and I had only coffee and bread for breakfast. Every time she shuddered by the stove until it lit up. She had bronchitis and a heart disease as well. Nevertheless she got up every morning to prepare us for school.
My father fought as a soldier in the Balkan War [see First Balkan War] [4] and later in World War I. It was such a misery with no food in wartime. My mother was left in the shop but there were no goods, no money, and she went bankrupt! The shop was closed and this was when we became very poor. My father had no profession and he didn't know where to start. He was thin and feeble. His participation in wars had brought nothing positive to him. He was in the army supply train and he even caught the Spanish disease - this was a kind of severe influenza, which usually had a lethal outcome in those times. They brought him home and he was saved literally in the last minute. That was the time when an indescribable misery visited our house. When I was one and two years old, we used to be the poorest family in town.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
Our house was at the end of the street, very close to the hill. Next to it there was a pasture with sheep and wolves would frequently appear there. Our toilet was outside and I was so scared to go in there in winter because I thought a wolf might come and attack me. I was really very frightened. So, when I went to the toilet, especially in winter when there was a thick layer of snow, my mother used to escort me!
The house was at the edge of the Jewish neighborhood, where at that time some 100 or 120 Jewish families lived. Almost all of them were Sephardi. We used to live very harmoniously together. Young people were friends and the older people also knew and respected each other.
We lived in a house that was inherited from my grandfather Kemal, who built it. It was a very solid house for the time. We had two large rooms and a big entrance-hall. Later, in a part of the entrance hall, which was covered from above but opened at the side, another room was built, on a higher level. It belonged to my aunt but I used to sleep there too. By the time that I lived in this house, it was already old. We had only three floorboards in the entrance-hall, the rest were decayed and thrown away. We had no money and we couldn't repair the house. I was terrified of going into the toilet, because some of the floorboards would shake and I had that awful fear of falling down.
The Jewish school was immediately occupied - first by the German troops in 1941, when they were on their way to Greece, and later by the police. It was never opened again. Jews weren't allowed to study in high schools. Interned young people from Sofia came to our town, excellent students, who were deprived from the opportunity to continue their education. Only the best among the local Jewish schoolgirls and schoolboys were allowed to study in the Bulgarian school. The ones from the capital were forbidden. Of some 1,000 Jewish students, only three people from Karnobat - I, Nora Hanne and Mois Tano - were admitted to go on with our education in the Bulgarian school.