When I was 19 years old, I graduated from high school and was appointed a teacher in the Jewish elementary school in Karnobat. I taught four classes and ran from room to room. It wasn't easy, but it was very pleasant. However, I didn't teach for long. The school was closed, because there were too few children. I no longer had a job and I realized that there was nothing more for me to do in Karnobat. I decided to go to Sofia and to continue with my studies. I rented an apartment there with the money my mother had put aside for me and enrolled in a six-month course in accounting and typewriting. After I finished it, I started looking for a job by searching the ads in the newspaper. I was turned down in four or five places and realized that it wouldn't be easy for me to find a job. The war [WWII] was about to start and when the employers heard my name they sent me away because of my Jewish origin. I worked for a while in a pharmaceutical laboratory, where I was appointed by my brother Jacque's father-in-law. I lived in Sofia for a few months more, but when the laws against the Jews were adopted as part of the Law for the Protection of the Nation, I realized that it would be better if I was closer to home, and I returned to Karnobat.
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Matilda Israel
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At that time I was also a member of Hashomer Hatzair [6], the Jewish youth organization. We spoke only in Hebrew during our meetings and I learned the language there. We often went to a hut near Karnobat, where we spent some days playing and having fun. We often played the following game: We had to find an object that had been hidden by someone. The person who hid it directed us by giving us hints, which we tried to figure out. I learned the Morse code then. I suppose that our games were similar to those of the present-day scout organizations.
My favorite classes were Bulgarian and French. I had problems only in zoology, or to be more precise, with the zoology teacher. Apparently, he didn't like Jews, because he often insulted me and gave me bad grades. My homeroom teacher advised me to request to be examined in zoology by a commission at the end of the year. In this way I got an excellent grade. The other teachers were very nice and we felt very close to them. Until some years ago one of my teachers was still alive and we telephoned each other from time to time. Even nowadays my friend Vaska and I keep in touch through letters.
My happy and easygoing childhood ended on the day when my father died. He had developed diabetes and after a long and painful battle with it, died of a shock to his brain. I was very close to him and mourned his death deeply. I was only 15 years old and I was left without the man who always protected me. Then my brother Sabetay took up that role. He wanted to send me to a tailoring school. There was no high school in Karnobat then and I had to go to study in Bourgas or in Sliven or in Kotel. However, I stood up against my brother's decision to become a seamstress.
I applied to the high school in Bourgas, but all the classes were already full and I had to go to a high school in Kotel. I gathered my luggage and went there. I was very scared and disappointed when I saw my classmates, because they were children expelled from other schools in Bulgaria and I soon found out that I wouldn't be able to learn much. I wanted to go home very much. Fortunately, soon after that I learned that a high school had been opened in Karnobat and without any hesitation I returned to my hometown. I was the only Jew in the class, but I became friends with the other children very quickly. We wore uniforms, black overalls, white collars or black skirts and white shirts and berets. We also had a number on the sleeve. Even nowadays I keep in touch with some of my high school friends. We were a very united class.
I applied to the high school in Bourgas, but all the classes were already full and I had to go to a high school in Kotel. I gathered my luggage and went there. I was very scared and disappointed when I saw my classmates, because they were children expelled from other schools in Bulgaria and I soon found out that I wouldn't be able to learn much. I wanted to go home very much. Fortunately, soon after that I learned that a high school had been opened in Karnobat and without any hesitation I returned to my hometown. I was the only Jew in the class, but I became friends with the other children very quickly. We wore uniforms, black overalls, white collars or black skirts and white shirts and berets. We also had a number on the sleeve. Even nowadays I keep in touch with some of my high school friends. We were a very united class.
During the holidays we often went to Bankya with Liza, the wife of my brother Sabetay. She went there to have her sick heart treated. I mostly loved the weekends when we went to Bourgas [a port town at the Black Sea coast]. We caught the train which passed through Karnobat at 6am and in an hour we were in Bourgas. It's a very nice town, where we used to go sunbathing. We spent the whole day there and we returned with the last train. Sometimes during the holidays I also went to Sofia to visit my maternal grandmother Ester, who I loved very much, because she indulged my every whim. She lived with her son Jacques in the Krasna Poliana living estate. She was a very lean and small woman with light blue eyes. Her husband, my mother's father, left for Palestine and never returned. We never received any news from him and we don't know what happened to him. My mother, who was the oldest child, had to work to support the family. There was a rumor going around that my grandfather married an Arab woman in Palestine, but we never found out if it was true. I don't know why he left. Since then my grandmother lived at my uncle's home in Sofia. Grandma Ester died in 1942.
In the winter we went sledding and I put on baggy trousers, so that I wouldn't have to wear a skirt - all the girls wore skirts then. We often organized something like 'evening parties' in the schoolyard and I played folk dances until late with my Jewish friends and with my Bulgarian friends too when I was in high school. I know all kinds of Bulgarian folk dances and I love them very much. We also organized plays in an improvised theatre. Once we acted out some script in which the beloved of a young man was shot and was all covered in blood. The man was carrying her in his hands and cursing the murderer. But since I, in the role of the woman, was all covered with red paint, the older women who knew me thought that something bad had happened to me and started crying out loud and lamenting my death: 'Negra dea de Matika la matoron. Esta entera en sangre.' [In Ladino: Poor Matika, she is dead. She is all covered in blood.] And I was saying to them, 'Keep quiet, I'm alright' and couldn't stop laughing. So the play was a comedy for some and a tragedy for others. I also very much loved the celebrations of 24th May [5], when we played Bulgarian folk dances on the square until late.
When I was seven years old and it was time for me to go to school, they enrolled me in the Jewish school in the town. There was one class in each grade - from first to fourth grade. We studied in two rooms, two classes in a room. We were around ten children in a class, the boys and the girls studied together, but in high school the boys studied separately from the girls. While the teacher taught one of the classes, the other students did written exercises. Our teacher was a young woman of Jewish origin from Kazanlak. Several years later, I don't remember when exactly, the school was closed because there weren't enough children there. This was also the time when the laws against us were adopted [see Law for the Protection of the Nation] [4]. All of us, the children who had studied in that school, had excellent marks later in high school. I remember many of my friends then - Sarah Konfino, Nora Konfino, who was my 'milk sister', because my mother suckled her too; Rashelina, Mari Behar, Benji, Miko and many others. Both the girls and the boys played together. We, the girls, played boys' games too. My father would often scold me for that.
My mother did almost all the household work at home. My sisters, of course, helped her, but most of them were married and lived elsewhere with their families. They didn't call her 'mom', because they were almost the same age as her, so they called her by her name. When she came to my father's house, she couldn't cook at all and my sisters laughed at her, but gradually she became an excellent cook. My sons still remember her dishes. I learned many Jewish dishes from her and passed many Sephardi recipes to my daughter-in- law. Some of them are: 'apio' - an hors d'oeuvre of celery and carrots, 'agristada' - white chicken meat with white sauce and gumbo, 'albondigitas con merengena' - veal meatballs with eggplant, 'pastel' - meat pastry, 'borecas' - cheese pastries, 'boicos' - cheese crackers, 'bormoelos' - made of matzah for Pesach, 'roskitas de alhashu' - sweets, 'the ears of Haman' - sweets for Purim, 'leche papeada' - condensed milk, 'friticas de prasa' - leek balls. We ate only kosher in my father's house. The chazzan slaughtered the animals. We all did the shopping from the Hali [covered market]. Everyone had their favorite butcher, from whom they bought meat and the kosher meat was marked with a purple seal. Most shops in Karnobat were small grocer's shops. Meat was sold in the Hali. There were also shops for dairy products, where you could buy yogurt that was so thick that it had to be cut with a knife and everyone went there with a baking dish to put it in.
We knew many Turkish people in Karnobat, because they lived near us. I remember a Turkish woman who was a famous fortune-teller. She was really a phenomenon and was also right many times. My sister-in-law Liza, Sabetay's wife, had a wonderful ring with a diamond but she had the habit of taking it off when washing her hands. But once when she took it off, she forgot it and the ring disappeared. They blamed a Turkish girl, who helped them with the household work, but she denied it. Then my sister went to the fortune- teller and she was told that the ring was in the house and some day they would find it. And they really did find it one day when the roof broke down. When they climbed up to fix it, they found the ring there. It was impossible for a person to throw it up there, because although the house had only one floor it was very tall. We decided that maybe some magpie had stolen it, attracted by its glow. That same woman also told my brother where to find an overcoat he was looking for. She told him that it was a beige coat and that he would find it buried under a lot of things. And this is exactly what happened!
When I was young, a Turkish girl, Mirem, looked after me. I learned Turkish from her, which I spoke very well, although later I forgot it. She learned Ladino from us - the language in which we spoke at home. My father sheltered her, because she was an orphan and in turn she looked after me, although she was only ten years old. She was like a sister to me and we were together the whole day. My father had even promised her that he would introduce her to some boy and if she liked him, he would marry her and prepare a dowry for her. But one day she eloped.
There was always a big baking tin full of fruit on the table in the kitchen. We had a big garden where we grew fruit trees - cherries, morello cherries, peaches and many other things. This garden was the pride of my father. We all worked in it and we liked being in it very much, even if there was a lot of work to be done there. I remember many summer evenings when all the family was gathered at the table under the vine; there was laughter and there were games. There was also a big well in the yard, because there was no water in Karnobat at that time - only later the problem was fixed with water being supplied from the Kamchiya dam. We carried drinking water from a water fountain in the center of the town and this was the most tiresome work that I sometimes had to do.
Our house was very comfortable, with one floor. My father didn't build it himself, but bought it when he went to live in Karnobat. We had a large glazed foyer, three rooms, a summer and winter kitchen.
On Chanukkah the Jews in Karnobat always lit candles and sang songs. Usually we made halva [3] then. Here, in Sofia and in Western Bulgaria as a whole, the halva is made from flour, while in southeastern Bulgaria it is made from semolina.
Another holiday, which was my favorite, was Sukkot. This is the holiday of the harvest. The yard of the synagogue was large and every year we made a tent out of canvas and small boards. We hung different fruit and vegetables from its ceiling - grapes, apples, pears, peppers, onion, garlic and everything that the Earth and the trees gave us. It was very beautiful! There were benches inside, on which the men sat and they often read the prayers there. Afterwards they treated themselves to some mastika [2], bread, goat cheese, yellow cheese and grapes. We, the children, played outside and very often the more naughty boys pricked their fathers' backs from outside with needles and the men scolded us. Now we also make a sukkah in the yard of the synagogue in Sofia, but this time we, the women, also enter it. It was different when I was a child. There was overgrown grass in the yard in the synagogue in Karnobat and after the prayers each child picked some grass and gave it to his or her father. He took it, sprinkled the head of the child with it and said, 'May you grow up like the grass!
On Rosh Hashanah our parents didn't always buy us new clothes. Usually they bought us shoes. We cooked traditional dishes - chicken, a cake with walnuts - tishpishti.
On Yom Kippur we all kept 'taanit' [fast in Hebrew], but it wasn't obligatory for us children, because we usually couldn't bear to stay hungry all day. We had dinner early and then we went to the synagogue. When we returned the tradition didn't allow us to light the lamp ourselves and so a Turkish child came to light it for us and later to put it out. Now this sounds strange and even a little funny, but we observed it very strictly. On Yom Kippur all the children were very happy, because we were left without anyone to look after us. All the grown-ups were in the synagogue and we did whatever we wanted to. We were also released from school on that day. We, the Jewish children, were rather privileged, because we celebrated both the Jewish and the Christian holidays, that is, we were let out of school on both holidays. We played all day long! Since the day my father died, I have fasted in his honor on every single Yom Kippur, because he died on Yom Kippur.
On Sabbath my mom lit the candles. We always had supper together. My father went to the synagogue, but the others didn't. Mother rarely went to the synagogue. My father blessed the children. On Saturdays the Turkish girl, who looked after me, helped us with the household work.
One week before Pesach we cleaned the whole house so that not a single breadcrumb could be found. We even ate in the yard the day before Pesach. We had different dishes for Pesach, which we kept in a separate cabinet, which we took out only on the holiday. Afterwards we washed it and put it back. There was no matzah produced then. We bought special bread from the bakery, made without salt and yeast - boyos [similar to matzah]. It was prepared in small loaves, which were very hard and my mother heated them over steam to make them softer. My sister-in-law, Liza, Sabetay's wife, didn't observe the tradition and ate bread at home during Pesach, which annoyed my father. We celebrated Pesach in the traditional way. We observed all the traditions and read the Haggadah aloud on Pesach. On seder my father and sometimes my brothers read the Haggadah and we sang songs. There was a tradition to dress up for the holiday or buy new clothes. We rarely invited guests on Pesach. This is a family holiday and we gathered only with our closest relatives.
I also liked Tu bi-Shevat. On Fruitas [1] my mother sewed satin purses for all sisters, brothers, cousins and children of our friends, which she filled with different fruits. In fact, this is the New Year of the trees. I remember that on the eve of Tu bi-Shevat my father took me to the yard and made me listen to the whispers of the trees. He told me that they were just about to blossom and were talking to each other, because this was their holiday. At that time there were kinds of fruit, which our children nowadays have never seen. For example, there was a fruit called 'roshkovi'. It looks like the fruit of the acacia - long brown pods with seeds inside. They were dry, but very tasty. There was quite a lot of fruit on the table on that holiday. We also brought out home-preserved fruit in jars, which we had prepared in the fall.
My favorite holiday, like that of all children, was Purim, when we all dressed in fancy costumes. We were all looking forward to Purim, because we knew that when it was close, spring was also near. There was a family that on occasion of the holidays made various figures from sugar - such as lambs, scissors and birds. We children always bought some. This is a holiday of the sweets, so people make various desserts out of sugar. We all put on fancy dress clothes; whatever we found at home. It was most fun in the evenings, when our parents also put on masks. They made rounds from house to house and everyone had to try and guess who was hiding behind the mask. We had such a good time! At school we always prepared a play about Ester, Haman and Mordecai.
We celebrated all Jewish holidays and observed almost all traditions related to them. My father was very religious and was a gabbai in the synagogue. We had a wonderful synagogue in Karnobat and a chazzan, who was in charge of everything there. There was only one rabbi in Bulgaria then, who was in the Sofia synagogue. So, the chazzan in Karnobat had to perform all the rabbi's duties. In the synagogue the women sat on the balcony and the men downstairs. We, the children, had a special bench. I remember that we were always giggling and fussing during the service and my father scolded us or teased us.
My father met my mother by chance, at the kiosk where she sold cigarettes. Gradually, he persuaded her to marry him and together they moved to Karnobat taking my half-brother Haim with them. I suppose that my mother felt nervous about what she would find there, because she was the age of my father's daughters. At first they treated her quite distantly, but gradually she became part of the family.
I guess the news that my father was about to have both a daughter and a granddaughter at the same time was a big scandal during those times, but it is a fact that Mati, the daughter of my sister Buka, was born almost at the same time that I was. My other niece, Viki, the daughter of my sister Ana is also about the same age as me, and some time after my birth the two sons of my brother Sabetay, Leon and Misho, were born. We all grew up together. In the beginning I was also not accepted very warmly by the family, but gradually they became attached to me and they couldn't stop hugging me. I am named after the first wife of my father. My sisters insisted on that and my mother didn't mind.
I guess the news that my father was about to have both a daughter and a granddaughter at the same time was a big scandal during those times, but it is a fact that Mati, the daughter of my sister Buka, was born almost at the same time that I was. My other niece, Viki, the daughter of my sister Ana is also about the same age as me, and some time after my birth the two sons of my brother Sabetay, Leon and Misho, were born. We all grew up together. In the beginning I was also not accepted very warmly by the family, but gradually they became attached to me and they couldn't stop hugging me. I am named after the first wife of my father. My sisters insisted on that and my mother didn't mind.
Jacques got married to a woman called Mary, but only after a tragic event happened. He had a fiancé in Sofia who was extraordinarily beautiful. They were very happy and they loved each other a lot. But she was short-sighted and so once when she lit a gas stove; she didn't see that there was already a flame in there. She continued to feed gas and then a flame jumped so high that it burned her severely. Soon after that she died from her wounds. My uncle never overcame her death. Not long afterwards he got married. He loved his wife, a good woman, but I think that he never forgot the lovely Anushka.
My mother's first husband was killed during the war [WWI] and left her alone with a one-year-old son. My mother and her sisters worked when they were young. I know that they even worked in the factory of my husband's father, Marko Israel, in Plovdiv, where they produced umbrellas and other articles, which I don't remember.
Jacques was a dentist; he graduated in France and in 1951 moved to Israel with his family. His son, Mihael Bar Zoar, was a deputy in the Knesset. He wrote a book on the salvation of the Bulgarian Jews - 'Outside Hitler's Grasp'. A movie was made based on it two years ago. He often comes to Bulgaria and we always see each other when he is here. Albert died very young, only 17 years old, of typhus. I know from my mother that he was a very good man. Once she noticed that the cheese supply at home ran out very quickly and that Albert would wear one and the same shirt. She asked him about that and he admitted that he had given all his clothes as well as the cheese to a poor family. My other sisters and brothers moved to Israel in 1948 where they settled. Now their families live there. I feel closest to the children of my brother Haim, Yitzhak and Rebecca.
I remember that my father was always neatly dressed in a suit, with a bowler hat and a cane. He was very strict, but also a very nice man. All children in the neighborhood loved him, because he always had sweets in his pockets to give them.
Like most of the Jews in Karnobat, my father became a merchant too. He had a textile shop, which was quite big. My brother, Sabetay, also worked in the shop. My father and Sabetay were partners.
I was born on 20th October 1921 in the town of Karnobat, where I grew up. It was a small town in southeastern Bulgaria then, a cattle-breeding center with around 10,000 citizens. All the Jewish families - around fifty - lived in the same neighborhood. Now there are no longer Jews living there. We formed this neighborhood ourselves, based on our own initiative and will. It was on the outskirts of town but at the same time it was near the center. We were all very united and perhaps the years of my childhood were the happiest in my life. The yards of our houses weren't surrounded by tall fences and we could pass from one part of the neighborhood to the other by crossing the backyards instead of walking along the streets. The whole Jewish community was very united and we all helped the poorer families among us. I remember that when I was a child, I played all day from morning until late in the evening, when I went home for dinner, as my father insisted that the whole family should eat together. All of my friends then were Jews, the older and the younger children all played together. Every evening we visited some family or they came to visit us. We didn't arrange the visits beforehand; we just decided to visit someone and went there. We ate cooked corn, popcorn, fruit; the children gathered in one of the rooms and the parents in the other. And we did this every evening! Even when there was a curfew, we could pass through the yards and no one would know that we weren't at home. All children from the Jewish neighborhood played together and got sick together. We quite often passed various viruses to each other - measles, tonsillitis, and mumps. We went through all the children's diseases. If a child went down with an infectious illness, all the other children also caught it and our mothers treated us together.
silvia nussbaum
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He still feels he is Jewish but
he cannot pray.
he cannot pray.
Then
everyone was Communist, and he was in the Party. Then they threw him out
the university (from his job as assistant), as he was in Hungary in 1956,
and when he came home, they threw him out for being in Hungary. Yet it was
quite by chance that he was there during the revolution.
everyone was Communist, and he was in the Party. Then they threw him out
the university (from his job as assistant), as he was in Hungary in 1956,
and when he came home, they threw him out for being in Hungary. Yet it was
quite by chance that he was there during the revolution.