As a child I didn't attend Hashomer Hatzair. But my mother's sister, auntie Lisa, had a daughter, Zelma, who participated in Hashomer Hatzair. She was one or two years younger than me. Suddenly Zelma set off for Israel by boat; this was before 9th September 1944 [17] or maybe it was this very year. Their departure was arranged through Hashomer Hatzair, but I don't know anything else about it. Zelma lives in Rehovot up to the present day, where she retired as a teacher several years ago. Following her departure, her parents, who came from Kyustendil, went to Israel. They were accommodated in Kfar Hanagid, were they had an orange tree garden.
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Displaying 1681 - 1710 of 50826 results
Leontina Arditi
We, the Jewish children, were taken to a Jewish summer school. We were fed; our heads were cleaned from the lice, and we weren't in the streets - so that our mothers could be calm while working for a piece of bread. I used to play the violin at these summer schools; we gave performances and we were entertained with art and literature all day long. The persons in charge were boys and girls from Hashomer Hatzair [15], teenagers. One of them was the great Bulgarian writer-to-be, the fabulist Albert Dekalo. Then he was 19 and I was 11 or 12. This happened in 1943 well before our deportation.
I was small then and I remember vaguely the famous manifestation of 24th May 1943 [12] when the Jews marched to tell the King not to expel them. As a matter of fact 24th May [13], the day of the Slavic alphabet, as well as of the saint brothers Cyril and Methodius [14], who created it, was my favorite holiday. I was 14 years old then. I remember I had put on my red blouse. Suddenly the people who participated in the events started running because there was mounted police that scattered them. I was playing in the street; mum came, collected me, brought me home and said: 'Take off this red blouse! You have chosen a bad moment to wear it!' [red as a symbolic color of the communists] It was this day that I first heard of the word 'anti-Semites'. I heard: 'The anti-Semites battered to death the Jews!' I didn't know what it meant; I couldn't even pronounce it. We were six Jewish children, who studied in the Bulgarian school, but nobody bothered us, nobody maltreated us.
Papa regularly attended Jewish gatherings in Bet Am [11] and especially so after 1944. My mother didn't. I haven't seen them going there together. I remember my father coming back home and my mother saying: 'What's up, walkie, what's there in Betama [Bet Am]?' And dad would say: 'Jidios, jidios, jidios - munchos jidios' [Ladino, 'Jews, Jews, Jews - a lot of Jews.'] I want to underline that after 1944 my father sent me to Bet Am, where the great Bulgarian stage director, Boyan Danovsky, also of Jewish origin, gathered young Jews for his class in acting. There I played violin in Mario Menashe Brontsa's orchestra. We had a wonderful big symphony orchestra. My first theater recital was held at the library club of the Jewish Center years after that.
My parents weren't very religious, especially my father - he was an atheist. My mother used to prepare matzah and tarhanah [dough, turned into sheets of pastry which are left to dry out and then sliced to thin stripes resembling macaroni] for Pesach, but we used to eat pork at home and my parents always made fun of themselves when they ate pork. We always observed Rosh Hashanah. My father wouldn't go to work. We would put our new clothes on and pay visits to people. We didn't observe Sabbath in our family, but we used to go to my grandfather's, my mother's father, whom I hardly remember. We observed the religious holidays only as a tradition. We gathered with my maternal relatives at Purim and we, the children, wore masks. For example, [as a 'disguise'] I wore my father's coat turned inside out. I should say my father respected all religions. I remember him talking to me for hours about the Catholics, about Joan of Arc and the history of France.
I've never entered a synagogue in my life. Neither of my parents ever took me to one. Well, I recently went to Sofia's synagogue to see how they restored it, but that's it. I've never studied Ivrit, but my parents taught me morals with their behavior, and I'm thankful for that. I've never seen quarrels at home. Well, my father was very jealous, all the more so because a Russian guardsman once fell in love with my mother. All this passed quickly, but when in a certain moment I did something wrong with my life, my mother called me and said: 'Las judias son onoradas' [Ladino, meaning 'The Jewish women are honest.
I've never entered a synagogue in my life. Neither of my parents ever took me to one. Well, I recently went to Sofia's synagogue to see how they restored it, but that's it. I've never studied Ivrit, but my parents taught me morals with their behavior, and I'm thankful for that. I've never seen quarrels at home. Well, my father was very jealous, all the more so because a Russian guardsman once fell in love with my mother. All this passed quickly, but when in a certain moment I did something wrong with my life, my mother called me and said: 'Las judias son onoradas' [Ladino, meaning 'The Jewish women are honest.
When we were to be interned [see Internment of Jews in Bulgaria] [10], my mother sold a lot of things but the books we brought to Professor Kamen Popdimitrov - uncle Kamen - my violin teacher. He put them away in the attic. And when we returned [from the internment], he gave them back to my father, who said: 'Well, now I know I'm happy.
Once dad told my mother: 'Come to me on Sabbath all of you. I will take you to a restaurant.' He worked as a typist in the center of the town. And he added: 'But you will come by foot'. The restaurant was in fact a shed. We go there and he says: 'Today nobody came to me for me to write him an application, but don't worry.' We ate soup and kebapcheta [grilled oblong rissoles] and he said: 'Write it over there'. That is, we had our food on credit. That's what our financial situation was like. However, despite this absolute poverty, my parents regularly bought me children's books, because in our house we used to read a lot.
The financial situation of my family was very bad. We lived in the so- called 'Slatinsky redoubt'; there my parents had built a house, having bought the plot beforehand with my mother's dowry and hired a gypsy - according to the superstition of the time - to bring them good luck. The plot was abound in clay. The gypsy and my parents made clay bricks, burnt them and built a house: a room, a kitchen and a foyer. Oh, at the beginning we used to walk over some planks and often fell into the basement because we didn't have a floor, but after that they bought some furniture and took some things from my grandmother, the rich one, my father's mother; we even had an upholstered armchair. We had running water and a toilet only in the yard. We had hens, rabbits and cats. My father dug a pit in the ground and filled it with water so that we could have ducks. We even had a dog but a car ran over it. We heated the house gathering fir-cones from the wood for kindling.
I know very little about my parents' brothers and sisters. I am, however, most familiar with my maternal relatives, especially with my mother's sister - auntie Lisa. Her husband's name was Bentzion Bar David. He was from Kyustendil, where he worked as a tinsmith. It may sound strange, but his workshop in Kyustendil was named 'Silence'. Later they left for Israel and lived in Kfar Hanagid and had an orange tree garden there. In fact, their daughter, Zelma, first immigrated to Israel and settled in Rehovot, where she married a Polish Jew, but I don't remember his name. The names of my mother's brothers were Benjamin or uncle Buco, and Rahamim or uncle Raho. They immigrated to Israel, too. They lived in Haifa, working as stevedores at the port. Then they went to Jaffa working again as porters. After that they opened jointly a grocer's shop. When I first went to Israel - in 1964 - they had already bettered their position a lot. Each one had a grocer's of five square meters. They lived in Arabic houses, which were miserable, without fridges and without air conditioning.
My mother was an extremely beautiful woman. She became a seller in a perfumery as early as the age of 14. Once a wagon with perfumes was arranged outside and my mother was set to sell them. My father passed by chance and bought a bar of soap for shaving. That's how he met her. That happened in 1927. It was raining one the day of their first date. He was waiting for her in front of the Halite trading center and my mother was speeding with the umbrella so much so that she fell over and tore her, as my father used to say, 'veiling' stockings. When they had a quarrel later she used to say: 'Don't think I am nuts on you!' and he would calmly reply: 'You don't say; you nearly died for me, remember the veiling stockings?' They got married the same year in Sofia's [Great] Synagogue.
My mother Mariika Samuil Arditi was born in 1906 in Sofia, but her father was from the village of Kalishte, Radomir region. She had only elementary education but was intelligent by nature. She insisted on calling herself a Jew and brought home to us that the Jewish people are clever and that I shouldn't make an exception to this rule. She was tolerant to all nations. She had a gypsy woman for a friend; our house was always crowded with kadin [Turkish for married women] and so on. That's why I think the Balkans are the midpoint of the greatest culture in this world and I am convinced that it is a fortune that so many ethnic communities live in one and the same place.
Bulgaria
My father wasn't in favor of the communists. He was an antifascist. He used to say that the communist idea was wonderful in that everybody wanted to live in fraternity and equality. That it all was amazing, but it was a utopia, because man is imperfect and pollutes the good. However, to a certain extent his views were leftist. When he came back from France in 1925, he was recommended for the position of a stenographer in the Parliament by Josif Herbst [famous journalist and publicist of Jewish origin, the first director of the state Bulgarian Telegraphic Agency (Press Bureau), who was killed during the events of 1925.] A little later Josif Herbst was killed. Somebody then noticed this recommendation and my father was entered in a list of people recommended by the Jew, the journalist with left views, Josif Herbst. And, as far as I know, my father was put in the Lovech forced labor camp which later was called 'Slanchev Briag' ['Sunny Beach'] [also see forced labor camps in Bulgaria] [7]. This was a camp for Jewish antifascists, but I'm not quite sure of these facts.
Bulgaria
My father had suffered a lot in his life, but he was a man of great dignity. He was half an orphan: as I mentioned before, his mother - granny Beya - had a second marriage, to the banker Aron Arav, a fabulously rich man, who couldn't stand his stepson, that is my father. Thus, being in a huge and expensive house, my father was thrown to live in the basement, and the only person who used to take pity on him was Berta the cook, around whom he grew up. Despite his merciless fate, my father managed to set off legally for France but in a goods wagon. There he started working jointly with some gypsy tinsmiths. Then he was accepted to study juridical sciences in Montpelier or in Toulouse, I don't know where exactly. As a student he found a job in a cathedral: washing the windows, cleaning, sweeping. He had worked for quite a long time there when one fine day somebody told the priest that 'he is a Jew and desecrates the church'. They fired him. After that he was a door-keeper in some French bar.
I have to tell you a funny little anecdote in regard to this: My maternal grandmother didn't like much my other grandmother because she had abandoned her child. And when she was angry, she would always feel pity for my dad: 'This golden youth, who worked in a cabaret at the door and the cloak room, where there is always such a draught! ...' And my mother when in a row with my father always used to shout: 'Of course, how can I be your favorite woman! You have seen so many naked women in this cabaret...!' My father would always set himself right with her: 'I wasn't allowed in at all.' Papa always insisted on his being a Jew. But he would say: 'I'm a Bulgarian Jew first of all.
I have to tell you a funny little anecdote in regard to this: My maternal grandmother didn't like much my other grandmother because she had abandoned her child. And when she was angry, she would always feel pity for my dad: 'This golden youth, who worked in a cabaret at the door and the cloak room, where there is always such a draught! ...' And my mother when in a row with my father always used to shout: 'Of course, how can I be your favorite woman! You have seen so many naked women in this cabaret...!' My father would always set himself right with her: 'I wasn't allowed in at all.' Papa always insisted on his being a Jew. But he would say: 'I'm a Bulgarian Jew first of all.
Although he originated from the Italian Jews, papa didn't have an ear for music. He was born in Belogradchik in 1902. After he got married, he lived in Sofia. My father specially showed me a paper issued by His Majesty King Boris III [5], which read: 'I hereby declare the Italian citizen Samuil Moisey Arditi a Bulgarian citizen - the same'. He needed this document so that he could marry in Bulgaria. So, he became a Bulgarian citizen before I was born. We used to celebrate Noce di Sabbath [Erev Sabbath] systematically in our family, mastika [6] would be drunk and the Jewish appetizers would be prepared under the Italian influence - with spaghetti: spaghetti with vinegar, since there were no lemons here, served cold and with pepper.
My father Samuil Moisey Arditi was a very intelligent and interesting, sweet-tempered man with a very rich inner life. I think he brought me up well. He taught me not to get dead set against anybody and anything. One of his major gestures towards me was that he sold his wedding-ring in order to buy me a violin. He felt I had an ear for music; I was only four then. The neighbors reproached him for this, because 'a musician can't make a living for a family', especially if the musician is a girl.
I've been told only about the brother of my paternal grandmother Beya - colonel Avram Tadzher. He was very clever and brave, a famous big shot with free access to the palace. He fought in the Bulgarian army in World War I [see Bulgaria in World War I] [4] and was awarded two military crosses for his bravery.
I know little about the military experiences of my relatives. I was told that my grandfather when he was a soldier, although wounded, saved a man. He dragged him 16 kilometers at the front during the Balkan War [see First Balkan War] [3].
I was happy on 10th November 1989, although I keep my left views. But I gradually got aware of the fact that we go from a certain lie to another. I am still sorry for the totalitarian period because one could do everything then, despite the immense difficulties that I encountered. And now one just has to have money and be an insolent lout in order to make one's way in life. Once there also were such kind of people, but the strong and the intelligent managed to make their way. The period that has come to our country is pernicious and corrupt, especially for the young people.
I first went to Israel in 1964. The second time was shortly before 1989 - I was invited as a guest artist with the act '24 Hours of a Life of a Woman'. After 1997 I visited my daughter and granddaughters three or four times, and I am going to visit them this spring again. Although this is a very beautiful and intelligent country I have never felt cozy there, partly because of the Israeli way of thinking. Otherwise it is a very precious country to me.
My granddaughters, the twins Leontina and Maria, were born on 13th October 1982. Maria is the elder - by four or five minutes. I helped with their bringing up until they turned 14. They had just finished the Jewish elementary school in Sofia and were accepted to elite schools: Leontina to NGDEK [National Lyceum for Ancient Languages and Cultures] and Maria to the Spanish High School. Several months after their acceptance they immigrated to Israel. In Tel Aviv Leontina graduated from the most prestigious local high school, in which Yitzhak Rabin had studied. Maria graduated from an art school. She is now professionally in coiffures and maquillage. Leontina graduated concurrently from a music school, directed by Russian teachers in Israel. When she graduated she was offered a chance to give a Mozart violin concert. But she didn't want to continue studying music, because in Israel the situation is like this: you can find a good violinist at every corner. She is of such nature that she chose a male profession to establish herself. She went to the hardest army in Israel - 'Kravi'. She became an officer there and 30 boys were entrusted to her care. Even now, Leontina continues serving at the hottest spots in Jerusalem.
Our daughter Tanya [short for Tatyana] had hard childhood years. She was a well cared for but very unhealthy child. She grew up in sanatoria. At the age of nine she had a serious cardiac malfunction. She had to study at the sanatoria, we often called her tutors home, because she wasn't allowed to go to school. Tanya wanted to become a painter. But she completed her education at HTI [Higher Institute of Chemical Technology] in 1975 or 1976. First she was a professor at HTI, but she worked as a painter, too. She had cardiac surgery when she was 27. The annual exhibition of the Union of Painters in Bulgaria was opened on the day of her operation and she received an award for the original puppets she had made. Then she became a member of this union and was sent as its representative to an international competition and puppet exhibition in Poland, wherefrom she returned with a gold medal. 59 countries took part. After that she received the award of the children audience at this competition. She and her two daughters, Leontina and Maria, immigrated to Israel in February 1996, where she is a well-known puppet designer and teacher, and a member of UNIMA - the international union of puppet makers [Union Internationale de la Marionette].
I met my husband Dilo by chance. I was a student in the third year when I suddenly got paralysis nervi facialis - a disgusting distortion of the face caused by stiffened muscles. The reason was perhaps some kind of flu. It passed, but the doctor recommended me in any case to go to a brigade [28] so that I could have sunbaths. That's how I found myself in the students' camp at the Black Sea. There my husband-to-be was, suffering from some kind of illness on his legs; apart from that he was studying to become a hydro- engineer. There I was continuously playing the violin, because I was to have an exam at the Conservatory. He was often listening to me. And that's how we met.
More than ten of my performances were banned during the totalitarian period [communism]. The reasons: 'snobbism and unhealthy western influence', 'cosmopolitanism' and 'eclectics'. These were especially my performances of 'Vanity Fair' based on Thackeray, 'Crime and Punishment' based on Dostoevsky [28] and '24 Hours from the Life of a Woman' based on Zweig. Those three were banned en block for 'snobbism and unhealthy western influence'. 'The Researcher or Don Quixote Fighting' by Vadim Karastilev was stopped for political reasons. 'Earth, Wait' - same thing. They didn't even explain to me why 'In the Sun and in the Shade' was stopped. The commission just saw it and gave me a curt refusal. However, I think the reasons were neither political, nor anti-Semitic. In my opinion, it was due to the famous envy that colleagues in the theater harbor against each other.
The Theater School, where I was accepted as a student in acting, offered a two-year course then. In 1947, following a decree of the National Assembly, it was transformed into DVTU [Public Higher School of Theater], which was known as VITIZ [Higher Institute of Theatrical Art] in the totalitarian period [Communist regime] and as NATFIZ [National Academy of Theater and Film Arts] after 10th November 1989 [25]. We, the students, had just finished our second year. We were told that one may graduate and have a lower educational degree or may choose to continue his studies for two more years completing his education in the newly formed Public Higher School of Theater. Some of us, including me, stayed in the school, others scattered to the theaters to perform there.
In my third and fourth year at DVTU I started making records for the radio. Then I experienced my first meeting with a great writer - the living classic Elin Pelin [Dimitar Stoyanov, famous under his literary pseudonym Elin Pelin (1877-1949): among the greatest masters of the short story in Bulgarian literature, a 'painter' of Bulgarian village life.] It must have been in my fourth year, in 1950. I partnered with the unique actor Konstantin Kisimov and I nearly lost consciousness with those two classics around me. We were recording 'Choheno kontoshche' ['choha' is the Turkish word for a silky thick cloth, while 'kontosh' is a Persian word for a short outer garment to the waist]. When we came out of the room, I was introduced to Elin Pelin and he asked me: 'Where have you mastered our dialect from?' I told him I had grown up in the country. Then he offered me to perform some other of his works. This gave me wings. I performed 'Pizho and Pend?' as a one-man show - my first performance - and it became part of the repertoire of the Army Theater in Sofia after its premiere. It was presented hundreds of times over several decades and is now in the golden fund of the National Radio. I was then being sent to different regions of Bulgaria to present it, especially to military audience, at garrisons, and in library clubs.
In my third and fourth year at DVTU I started making records for the radio. Then I experienced my first meeting with a great writer - the living classic Elin Pelin [Dimitar Stoyanov, famous under his literary pseudonym Elin Pelin (1877-1949): among the greatest masters of the short story in Bulgarian literature, a 'painter' of Bulgarian village life.] It must have been in my fourth year, in 1950. I partnered with the unique actor Konstantin Kisimov and I nearly lost consciousness with those two classics around me. We were recording 'Choheno kontoshche' ['choha' is the Turkish word for a silky thick cloth, while 'kontosh' is a Persian word for a short outer garment to the waist]. When we came out of the room, I was introduced to Elin Pelin and he asked me: 'Where have you mastered our dialect from?' I told him I had grown up in the country. Then he offered me to perform some other of his works. This gave me wings. I performed 'Pizho and Pend?' as a one-man show - my first performance - and it became part of the repertoire of the Army Theater in Sofia after its premiere. It was presented hundreds of times over several decades and is now in the golden fund of the National Radio. I was then being sent to different regions of Bulgaria to present it, especially to military audience, at garrisons, and in library clubs.
As I've already said, I started going in for the arts more seriously in my school years. Then I was in the 5th or in the 6th class of the business high school in Sofia. Simultaneously I was playing the violin in the symphony orchestra of the Jewish Center, conducted by the superb Mario Menashe Brontsa. At the same time I took up the drama course of the great Jewish stage director Boyan Danovsky, who formed a class in acting at the Jewish library club. The first he gave us to work on was: 'For lunch at Bear's Place', a well-known fable by Krylov. [Editor's note: Krylov, Ivan Andreyevich (1769-1844): Russian fabulist, playwright and journalist; famous for his short fables in verse. The best-known of his dramatic works are 'The Fashionable Shop' and 'A Lesson for Daughters'.] It must have been 1945-1946, because I was accepted at Sofia's Theater School as a full-time student in 1946-1947 and as an extra violin student at Sofia's Musical Academy.
I don't remember precisely the other students in Danovsky's drama course, but I remember an outstanding performance of poetic art from 1944, presented in Bet Am by the great director Grisha Ostrovsky, then an actor, the famous violinist Yosko Rozanov and Viza Kalcheva who drowned the following year. I was 15 years old then and this event definitely helped me in choosing the profession of an actress.
I don't remember precisely the other students in Danovsky's drama course, but I remember an outstanding performance of poetic art from 1944, presented in Bet Am by the great director Grisha Ostrovsky, then an actor, the famous violinist Yosko Rozanov and Viza Kalcheva who drowned the following year. I was 15 years old then and this event definitely helped me in choosing the profession of an actress.
The typical Jewish professions in Sofia these days were mainly those of small tradesmen and small craftsmen, for example cobblers. Some were kebapche makers; others were selling things at the market: needles, threads, vegetables arranged on a hand cart. There were no Jewish tavern- keepers, because Jews didn't drink and that was very important. But they had small grocer's shops. At a certain stage the Jewish quarter Koniovitsa was transformed into a ghetto. There was no electricity, no running water. From all the houses from three streets there was only one with a radio and we all used to go there to listen to it. Even now I can still smell the absolute poverty when I pass through there. But there was no anti-Semitism. I remember I was six or seven years old when a kid told me: 'You are Jewish', and I answered: 'What's that?'
The market of the past was fabulous - a diversity of colors and melodies from all languages. I used to steal fruits because I didn't have the money to buy them. A friend of the family, a Bulgarian policeman, often went to this market. His name was uncle Doncho. He used to say to my father: 'Today I'll fill my bag and I'll be in pocket from your Jews.' And he pursued those who hadn't paid their taxes or the fees for selling goods at the market. In the evening my father would say: 'What happened with my Jews?' And his friend, the policeman replied: 'I got hold of what I could. Here - I've brought three heads of cabbage, two kilos of waffles...' They gave him these things as a bribe for him not imposing fares on them. Would you call that anti-Semitism?
The market of the past was fabulous - a diversity of colors and melodies from all languages. I used to steal fruits because I didn't have the money to buy them. A friend of the family, a Bulgarian policeman, often went to this market. His name was uncle Doncho. He used to say to my father: 'Today I'll fill my bag and I'll be in pocket from your Jews.' And he pursued those who hadn't paid their taxes or the fees for selling goods at the market. In the evening my father would say: 'What happened with my Jews?' And his friend, the policeman replied: 'I got hold of what I could. Here - I've brought three heads of cabbage, two kilos of waffles...' They gave him these things as a bribe for him not imposing fares on them. Would you call that anti-Semitism?
After 9th September 1944 I joined the UYW [24]. I entered this left movement thankful I had survived. After that I joined the Communist Party with the thought it would offer me protection. I was given free education. At a certain point the arts became more important for me than everything else and I withdrew from the Party. In spite of that, up to the present day I still have left views.
A little later my father and sergeant Derepchiisky went to the synagogue together. In fact the fate of this sergeant was also very tragic. He came from Vinitsa. His wife was also a Jew; they had a daughter, Ezdra. Derepchiisky always used to say: 'You will study with Ezdra'. His daughter played the violin. One night he got drunk; my father treated him to vodka. And he told us that when he had got back to Vinitsa during his leave in place of his house he had found only a pit filled with water. Neither his wife was alive, nor his daughter. And he showed us a photo which I remember very clearly: it was of his wife who was wearing a single plait.
After 9th September 1944, we moved from Dupnitsa, where we were interned, to Sofia to live in the small house built by my father, my mother and the gypsy. Then two Russian women-soldiers were accommodated with us, one of who turned out to be a Jew. Her name was Lida Kunkunina. The name of the other one was Mira. By night these girls disappeared somewhere and came back in the mornings. Then they would take off their clothes and walk topless to the tap to wash themselves before the critical eyes of the whole neighborhood. Of course people talked: 'These are sluts. By night they attend to the needs of the army and then they come back here to have a wash. Mariika, what an evil has entered your house!' One morning they didn't come back. Sergeant-major Derepchiisky who accommodated them with us and was also a Jew came home in tears. Their beds were taken away and it wasn't until then that we understood the two girls had been bombarding Belgrade every night. We were told they were killed. I came to love these unknown girls, who left us books and who left us guns. They had brought me a pair of boots, because I was walking barefoot then in the bitterest cold, muddy up to the ears. I didn't have anything to put on.
I remember another event. It was a great occasion for me when King Boris III died, a king whom my family respected. He died on 28th August [1943] but the funeral was on 1st or 2nd September in Rila Monastery. The train, the cortège with his body was to pass through Dupnitsa. We, the kids of between eight and ten years of age, climbed a hill, which stood exactly over the tunnel where the train had to pass. We got on there and started waiting for it. And we saw it - an open wagon with the King's body and four guardsmen who were standing straight. The train was moving very slowly with the coffin, covered with a wine-red cloth. It passed slowly and then it was gone. I remember the little boys taking off their hats. An old woman brought us a loaf of bread and shared it between us saying: 'Even though from another religion, he was your king too, and a mortal man as he was.' I remember this scene very clearly.