I remember once a blockade. The authorities were chasing a Jew, who hid in a hencoop in a Jewish house in the highest part of the town. Later he joined the partisans. And I recall another blockade as well. A friend of mine came to me and told me to destroy anything suspicious that I had. At that time I was corresponding in Esperanto with a teacher from the countryside. I wanted to practice and learn the language. I also had a book at home with a story about a sailing boat with some 300 Jews, leaving for Israel, which sank. In that book I had made a note, which said that the Gestapo or the police had a hand in that affair of killing so many Jews. [Editor's note: The interviewee is referring to to the tragedy of a sailing boat with Bulgarian Jews aboard, which left for Israel from the Bulgarian coast in 1941 and sank in the Black Sea.] I threw both the letters and the book into the stove.
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Displaying 10561 - 10590 of 50826 results
Gracia Albuhaire
In 1943 I went to gather the harvest and pull out the potatoes. The soil in Karnobat was fruitful and there were fields in the suburbs. It was a rich agricultural region. There were plenty of vineyards and well-developed stockbreeding - producing the best sheep and the best wool. People soon learned that I was a good student. The landowner I had to work for had a son, a second grade pupil with poor marks who had to retake an exam. He told me that he would pay everything if I prepared his son to pass his exam in Bulgarian. So I became a tutor and he passed the exam.
First I participated in gathering the harvest for a landowner in the summer of 1942. I tied sheaves there. The landowner had a daughter, who was my classmate. She must have told her father about this because the next day he came with a special reaper. He taught me how to regulate the knife in order to reap uniformly. He took me with him and from then on I didn't have to walk on foot. He drove the reaping machine and I regulated the harvesting. Thus my job was easier than that of my classmates, who gathered the crop and tied the sheaves.
My brother Jack was sent straight to Sofia to a camp. My father was already advanced in years and they didn't call him. We, the young people from the country, were sent to do agricultural work. The food we produced was sent to the Germans on the front line.
Yet the second order never came. It was postponed by the protests in Kjustendil. And the Soviet Army was already close as well.
Before the laws were repealed, uncle Yuda came and warned us to prepare no more than 30 kilograms of luggage because we would be sent somewhere. As we were in a border zone - Karnobat, Bourgas, and Kjustendil - we would be deported.
Medicine, doctors - all these things were a luxury! There was no cinema, no theater. We were so isolated that in the end it was like in a ghetto. Sometimes branniks [10] came, breaking the windows, damaging the doors, especially the hakham's house, on which swastikas were drawn.
The bakery belonged to a Turk from our neighborhood. Sometimes I went there and asked him to give me a half-bread, and when there were no people around, he did me the favor and on such days the situation was much better. There was a time when we ate only potatoes. Everyone could receive a kilogram. It was a period of severe hunger.
A coupon system was introduced. We couldn't buy anything. We were given very small portions of bread - a half or a quarter per person. My brother ate his whole portion in the morning. Later he didn't have any money for lunch or for dinner and my mother gave him her entire portion and she went hungry. I was quite a poor eater myself and somehow I managed to cope with hunger.
There were no possibilities either for dairy farming, or for leather processing or even trading! We all became unemployed, hungry, no matter how rich or poor we were. Only those were able to survive, who had plenty of gold or money and who had previously used the chance to put something aside for savings.
In Karnobat Jews mostly owned boutiques for textiles, paints and haberdashery, in the main street. There was also a Jewish café, as well as the 'Garti' kiosk for cigarettes.
When the Law for the Protection of the Nation was passed, everything was closed, sealed and confiscated. The Commissariat on the Jewish Questions was responsible for this. There were also some Jews in the Commissariat, thus they could influence its decisions in our favor, as the authorities dictated everything. Uncle Yuda was also a member.
After that our radios and jewelry were confiscated, we were forbidden to walk freely on the street. Our street had two ends - one end led to the main street, the other to the Gypsy neighborhood. We didn't have the right to walk in the center, which contained a large street with several branches. We didn't have the right to go to the cinema or to the theater. Bulgarians were forbidden to hire us for work.
They changed my name. Gracia wasn't Jewish enough, so I was renamed Zili.
In 1942 we were at first 'decorated' with yellow stars. We received them from the community and we stitched them to our clothes. We couldn't go out without the star on the overcoat! On my graduation photo I also wore that yellow star.
But we learned about the persecution of Jews much later, we even didn't know anything about the gas chambers. In early spring, when the earth was still frozen with ice, the Jewish men were sent to labor camps and women were left home alone.
When Haribi Haim read the Jewish prayer for kosher meat, he took livers and other animal innards and he divided it into portions in special plates called 'platicus' and each family was given one. The young lamb was called 'trofanda'. Rich people usually returned the plate with money, while poor people didn't put in anything. The hakham also used to do brit to the boys on the eighth day after their birth. Later, when the war started, those rituals stopped.
We bought only lamb and veal that was kosher, i.e. meat for Jews. The rest is called 'trofa' [or treyf] and it shouldn't be eaten. We had a special market where kosher meat was sold, yet it wasn't in the Jewish neighborhood, but quite far away.
We had a hakham, but we didn't have a rabbi. He said not only the prayers but was also the shochet. Our hakham, whose name was Haribi Haim, used to go to special market halls when he had to slaughter lambs. He read the prayer and performed the ritual.
The synagogue was decorated with large beautiful chandeliers. The synagogue seemed very large to me. It had a nice yard. All the rituals were performed. People didn't wear kippot but hats. Everyone wore whatever he had but nobody entered the synagogue without a hat. My father wore a suit. Men entered the synagogue with whatever clothes they had, with a hat or a cap, and it was obligatorily to wear a tallit. My father had a very beautiful tallit, inherited from his father, and a cap - but not a bowler hat as he didn't have one - and he took the prayer book with him. The tallit usually passes from one generation to another. But after my father's death, the tallit, as well as some books in Hebrew, prayer books and other things were all lost somewhere.
My father sat on the ground floor - men gathered in the stalls, while women gathered upstairs, in the box. Men and women don't sit together in the synagogue according to the Jewish custom. Children used to gather downstairs, because if they took us upstairs, we became very noisy. In the stalls everything was covered with white marble and we weren't able to make that much noise.
For Pesach my parents always bought me something - usually patent leather shoes with buttons on the sides and squeaking; they were fashionable at that time. We always compared them to see who had the loveliest pair. We didn't wear special clothes, we wore what we had; it just had to be neat. My aunt, who belonged to the older generation, put a bonnet on her head. She made it out of special tea lace: a beautiful bonnet, a hat for a parade. When she went out she put on a large lined taffeta underskirt. When I got married I made an official evening dress out of it. She put on a sleeveless jacket. She had a nice coat and elegant patent leather shoes.
Some ten days before Pesach the Jewish community hired a bakery. Women came and sterilized it, they washed it, took out everything that was chametz and they kneaded bread - boyo and matzah - and gave all the people unleavened bread to eat for eight days. Poor people received it for free. They paid for it with the social support provided by the community for such purposes. In these eight days we ate only boyo, which was as hard as a stone. Even those who had good teeth couldn't eat it, let alone those who didn't have teeth. My mother put it under vapor in a pot, and it got a little softer so we were able to eat it.
At Pesach, besides the basic cleaning we did, we had special dishes to serve in 'pascual', special glasses for water, a frying pan, in which we used to prepare Burmoelos [8] for Pesach. We soaked bread, added eggs and roasted it. We had a special pot, in which we cooked; plates, forks and spoons especially for Pesach. After the holiday was over, we washed the dishes and placed them in a special cupboard, keeping them for the next Pesach.
At 'ESPERANSA 2000' we shared experiences and knowledge in how to preserve our ancestors' language Judezmo-Espaniol, in which many books have been written. It will be a real treasure to read them and learn about our history.
,
2000
See text in interview
Quite a lot of weddings are carried out currently in the synagogue, something that has never been done before. Traditions that have fallen into oblivion are renewed. There is a youth organization. There is also a Bulgarian school where Hebrew is taught. We call it a Jewish school. There are young Bulgarian people who have also enrolled to study Hebrew. The children also gather on Sunday. They visit the events of the different clubs, organized by Shalom, such as concerts, meetings with composers, artists, etc. They visit the synagogue also, especially on Sukkot. Older people are more active in terms of visiting the Bet Am. There is also the women's organization, the WIZO.
Almost all of my generation, the middle-aged or even the youngest ones, in the Jewish community know me. They ask me to read books or recite poems for them. I have recited poems in Ladino when there were guests from Israel. I think that people have respect for me. Nowadays I regularly visit the Bet Am. I am happy with the life within the Bet Am now. We have different celebrations and gather on different occasions. The time I need for personal amusement and recreation I usually spend in the Bet Am. Some of its initiatives are financially supported by the Joint because the Jews that live here don't have many financial possibilities.
I went to Israel in 2000. My nephews sent me the ticket and organized my stay there. In the course of a month I visited all the relatives on my father's side and some on my husband's side. When I arrived I felt like I was on an Asian continent. In Tel Aviv I saw broad-leaved trees. My first impression was that the country was wonderful. I had meetings with poets and leaders of different organizations, who had arranged literary meetings for me. I saw many people from Bulgaria. Obviously they had announced my visit and people from Karnobat came especially to see me. I traveled to many cities. Be'er Sheva, Jaffa, Tel Aviv, Rishon Letzion, Ramat Gan, Jerusalem, Haifa. When I was in Israel I was as though in a dream-like state - full of emotions and experiences. We were all the time worried about our relatives and friends in Israel, as well as now.
During my trip to Israel that year, I also visited professor Albert Behar in Jerusalem. We saw the sights of Jerusalem; we visited the Yaf Ashen memorial. At the same time the road to old Jerusalem was closed. The Arabs had announced a day of revenge, a day for peaceful manifestations and meetings, although they actually fired shots. It was frightening. Therefore the police had cordoned off the whole region. I celebrated Yom Kippur in Jerusalem; we did taanit [means fast in Ivrit] and went to the olive forest. The professor showed me the city. When we saw a package with a bottle sticking out of it, he told me that we should immediately report it to the police because it might be an explosive. I thought that it was probably a bottle of water. But he insisted that it might be a 'Molotov' cocktail.
During my trip to Israel that year, I also visited professor Albert Behar in Jerusalem. We saw the sights of Jerusalem; we visited the Yaf Ashen memorial. At the same time the road to old Jerusalem was closed. The Arabs had announced a day of revenge, a day for peaceful manifestations and meetings, although they actually fired shots. It was frightening. Therefore the police had cordoned off the whole region. I celebrated Yom Kippur in Jerusalem; we did taanit [means fast in Ivrit] and went to the olive forest. The professor showed me the city. When we saw a package with a bottle sticking out of it, he told me that we should immediately report it to the police because it might be an explosive. I thought that it was probably a bottle of water. But he insisted that it might be a 'Molotov' cocktail.
After 10th November 1989 we would have had to get documents to prove that my grandfather owned his house and to prove our rights as heirs, but most of the family members were in Israel. It was all too complicated, so we left it at that. Nobody had the nerves and the time to deal with this.
My younger daughter, Olya, married Victor Avramov but they got divorced. He didn't like being a Jew and being called Beraha, so he calls himself Victor Avramov, after his father's and grandfather's name.
,
After WW2
See text in interview