The family dinner on Pesach is called seder. We gathered at home and we left the entrance door open: 'He who is hungry, let him come in and eat.' We ate the unsalted and unleavened bread that we took from the synagogue, matzah. There was bread called boyo - it was very thick and hard and it was round compared to matzah that is rather a plain pancake. As the youngest member of the family I was given a white towel with some unleavened bread wrapped in it and I walked three times round the table - to commemorate our ancestors' exodus from Egypt. We didn't strictly observe Sabbath - we have never asked somebody to do the housework on Saturday. Usually we lit candles when we gathered at the table for dinner on Sabbath.
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Displaying 571 - 600 of 50826 results
Victor Baruh
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Another holiday I remember clearly is Simchat Torah, Torah's Joy, when the scripts are solemnly taken out; they are carried round the synagogue and everyone stretches out and kisses them. At this holiday the reading of the last text of the Torah ends and then continues from the beginning. It is a very joyous holiday - there are many songs and dances, especially among the Ashkenazi Jews. I have never attended their celebrations but I know that among the Sephardi Jews in Bulgaria there have never been such dances. Now there are some attempts for introducing these dances into the Sephardi ceremonies.
I remember the celebration of different holidays - for example Chanukkah, the Holiday of the Lights that is connected with the Jewish Rebellion against the Syrians and the liberation of the Temple. In the Temple there was a little jar full of lighting oil that by miracle turned out to be enough for a long time. Hence there is a very beautiful set made for Chanukkah called chanukkiyah - it has eight little vessels and the ninth is at the top as a lamp. Now I have one at home and I light it as a family tradition, usually in December. I remember that my father read something and we all stayed at home on that evening.
I have very good and festive memories from the synagogue. The Jewish holidays always begin at sundown - with the rise of the first star. At the festal dinner on Saturday evening there was a chicken meal. I went to buy one at Zhenskiya Pazar [the biggest market place in Sofia; the name means Women's Marketplace. It is also simply called Pazara -The Marketplace.] and then I took it to the synagogue to be slaughtered by a shochet - the special person who is in charge of killing the ritual animals. There is another one, mohel, who does the ritual circumcision of boys. I had my brit milah but I didn't have a bar mitzvah.
In our mahala there were a lot of refugees from Macedonia and Armenia, and many Jews. [Mahala comes from the Turkish word mahalle meaning neighborhood] Children of all nationalities were friends - we played and wandered everywhere together - to Bashkov chiflik, to Batalova vodenica [in the suburbs of Sofia at the time - literally Bashkov's farm and Batalov's water mill]. At the corner of Sofronii and Vladayska reka [a water channel that passes through Sofia] there was a police squadron - its commander was Salabashev. When I published some memoirs from the years in Septemvri [meaning September, a monthly magazine edited by the Union of the Bulgarian Writers from 1948 to 1990], the writer Stoyan Zagorchinov [1889-1969] was deeply interested in that story about Salabashev as they had been colleagues at the Military School.
On every Todorovden [the Eastern Orthodox holiday St. Theodore on 15th March], the Horse Easter, horse races were organized on the right bank of the river and many children came there even from the other bank, from Banishora [a district neighboring Iuchbunar]. Fires were lit and jumped over and awards were given to the winners. The fire brigade of Zahartchuk came as well.
We had a football team in the neighborhood. It was called Pirin because of the numerous refugees from Macedonia; we paid membership fees and we had a rag ball. [Editor's note: Pirin is a mountain range located in southwestern Bulgaria near the present day border of the Republic of Macedonia] Nikushev, who came from Rousse, grew up with us - later he became a famous football player. We nailed a box for announcements on an acacia tree on our street. The Slaviya playing field was next to our district and we needed an adult to get inside free - we didn't have money to buy tickets.
We went in groups to the recently opened swimming pool, Dianabad - I remember a barrack full of building materials where we took our clothes off and went inside. One day when we looked for our clothes we found that they had disappeared. A man came and said, 'Oh, are these yours? Now you'll get it!' He slapped us before he gave our clothes back. Sometimes on Sundays we went to the quarter where the Dunovists dwelt - I live next to this place now, close to the grave of Petar Dunov [6]. We went there because they used to organize concerts - there was a hall where now the Russian Embassy is. There were many artists and musicians among them; they were vegetarians and cooked soups - bean soup for example. Now the garden next to Dunov's grave is kept clean and nice - I think that it is under the supervision of UNESCO; when Paco Raban [Spanish fashion designer] visited Bulgaria he went there - he is a follower of Dunov.
On every Todorovden [the Eastern Orthodox holiday St. Theodore on 15th March], the Horse Easter, horse races were organized on the right bank of the river and many children came there even from the other bank, from Banishora [a district neighboring Iuchbunar]. Fires were lit and jumped over and awards were given to the winners. The fire brigade of Zahartchuk came as well.
We had a football team in the neighborhood. It was called Pirin because of the numerous refugees from Macedonia; we paid membership fees and we had a rag ball. [Editor's note: Pirin is a mountain range located in southwestern Bulgaria near the present day border of the Republic of Macedonia] Nikushev, who came from Rousse, grew up with us - later he became a famous football player. We nailed a box for announcements on an acacia tree on our street. The Slaviya playing field was next to our district and we needed an adult to get inside free - we didn't have money to buy tickets.
We went in groups to the recently opened swimming pool, Dianabad - I remember a barrack full of building materials where we took our clothes off and went inside. One day when we looked for our clothes we found that they had disappeared. A man came and said, 'Oh, are these yours? Now you'll get it!' He slapped us before he gave our clothes back. Sometimes on Sundays we went to the quarter where the Dunovists dwelt - I live next to this place now, close to the grave of Petar Dunov [6]. We went there because they used to organize concerts - there was a hall where now the Russian Embassy is. There were many artists and musicians among them; they were vegetarians and cooked soups - bean soup for example. Now the garden next to Dunov's grave is kept clean and nice - I think that it is under the supervision of UNESCO; when Paco Raban [Spanish fashion designer] visited Bulgaria he went there - he is a follower of Dunov.
We lived in an ordinary home on Sofronii Street in the quarter of Iuchbunar [4]. The neighborhood was poor; refugees from Armenia, Aegean Thrace and Macedonia lived there together with Bulgarians from the countryside. Despite the different background of the residents we lived peacefully. The house where we were tenants was situated in a yard surrounded by other buildings. Our lodging was on the second floor, there was running water. It had two rooms - there was a hall in the middle, a small kitchen and a ceiling. In my childhood there was a mezuzah in every Jewish home - a small metal or plastic tube with a special part from the Torah inside. Each time you enter the flat you should reach for it and kiss it. We had a wall stove at home. My brothers and I lived in one room; Armand was reading till very late at night, he already had a big library. A great part of it consisted of socialist writings - mostly in Russian translation. I had a little bed that my parents moved next to the stove in their room because I fell sick very often. In the yard in front of our house there was a big chestnut tree and a washbasin. Our neighbors were Turks. The father was a wealthy man but his son was a bit of a rascal - he had a sports car. A Russian family, who had come after the Russian Revolution of 1917 [5], lived downstairs. I remember the woman - a very beautiful Russian lady who used to stand at the window staring out. It was like a picture - she stood behind the curtain with this very typical veil over her beautiful face - I will never forget it although I was nine or ten at the time.
When I think back, we lived very poorly - my father had a salary but he fell ill so we lived rather below the average. We could hardly make ends meet. In my childhood we have never gone on holidays, but there was one very beautiful girl on our street, Smaragda, whose parents were wealthy so they could afford to go the seaside, and she told us about it. The Jews lived very united - we went to the synagogue on holidays but we've never had any close relationships with other Jews. It was the relatives who came to our place more often - Roza and her husband Yosif came to visit us and drink coffee.
When I think back, we lived very poorly - my father had a salary but he fell ill so we lived rather below the average. We could hardly make ends meet. In my childhood we have never gone on holidays, but there was one very beautiful girl on our street, Smaragda, whose parents were wealthy so they could afford to go the seaside, and she told us about it. The Jews lived very united - we went to the synagogue on holidays but we've never had any close relationships with other Jews. It was the relatives who came to our place more often - Roza and her husband Yosif came to visit us and drink coffee.
I was born on 2nd June 1921 in Sofia. I have two brothers, Armand and Emil, who are quite older than me. Armand, born in 1908, was a communist. He thought that the victory of the social revolution would efface the contradictions between the separate nationalities so that men would be brothers, which in fact turned out to be a false conception. Before the war he was a dental mechanic; afterwards he was a writer. In September 1941, after the declaration of war by Germany on the Soviet Union, he was sent to Enikioy [town in present day northern Greece.], to a concentration camp, as he had received a political sentence in the 1930s. In 1933 he married a Jewish woman, Roza Hershkovich, but they divorced before 1944. She was an actress; she became a guerilla during the war and was killed near Pazardjik. Then Armand married Matilda, or Mati, Pinkas, an opera singer, and they have one daughter, Klery. Emil, my second brother, born in 1911, became a tradesman. He was interned to Pleven with his family in 1943-1944. He has two sons, Sabat and Yakov.
Bulgaria
I don't know how my parents met but their marriage was an ordinary Jewish one - they were Sephardi Jews, moderately religious. At the end of the 19th century they used to speak Ladino at home and they attended Bulgarian schools in order to learn Bulgarian and be able to communicate.
My maternal grandfather, Nisim Gheron, was from Pazardjik. I don't remember my grandparents - they had died long before I was born. My mother, Rashel Gheron was born in 1882 in the town of Pazardjik. She graduated from the Alliance Israelite Universelle [2] - something very unusual for that time because women weren't supposed to study. She was a housewife like her sisters Roza, Beya and Victoria. They lived in Pazardjik. When we were interned to Pazardjik, we lived in Victoria's house. Her brother Avram was a businessman. Roza married Yosif Astrug, who was a bank manager, but the bank went bankrupt. Their son Anri graduated in dentistry in Bordeaux, as Beya's son did too, and they came back to work here. My mother died in Pazardjik at the age of 62 during our internment. She had a heart attack from all these events.
My father, Sabat Baruh, was born in Kjustendil in 1878. He graduated in Pedagogy and he worked as a teacher in elementary school subjects such as writing, reading and arithmetic in Kjustendil before he came to Sofia in 1907. At this time in Sofia, as a capital it began to attract people from the countryside because there were lots of opportunities for work and a better life. He knew French and Spanish and worked as a teacher and translator in Sofia. I know that he was a translator at the headquarters of the Bulgarian army in Kjustendil during the First World War [During the First World War (1914-1918) Bulgaria was an ally with Germany and Austria- Hungary]. My father wasn't religious - we celebrated the Jewish holidays but it was due to paying respect to the tradition and it wasn't a matter of piety. I remember that my father brought home matzah - there were special stores where it was sold. He never prayed as far as I remember, nor did he ever wear a kippah. In 1934 my father fell ill and we went to live in Kjustendil where he died in 1936.
My children don't speak Ladino and I'm sorry for that because in my family as well as in my wife's family they used to talk in Ladino and many people knew Ivrit at that time. I know Ladino from the conversations that I listened to as a child in my family - my parents took me to weddings, to requiems, to visit some friends of theirs and gradually I learned it. It's a conserved Spanish similar to the Bulgarian in the speech of the people in the Rhodope mountains where some ancient Bulgarian words are preserved. Once in the holiday house of the UBW near Varna I came across a Spanish writer who had come to Bulgaria for an international meeting of writers. One day he was standing by the sea and I said to him, 'Espanoles en la mar' [Spaniards by the sea] - it is a radio program for fishermen in Spain. Then we met in the bar and had a talk and after he went back to Spain he wrote an anecdote of our conversations in ABC newspaper and in the meanwhile he also wrote, 'That man talked to me in Cervantes's language'. The reason for this is that while we were talking about my youth I said, 'Mi mansevez'. 'Mansevez', he said, is a word out of use nowadays. Now they say juventud.
My wife Ester was a teacher in Biology. Both my children, Valeri and Shelly grew up without being educated in the Jewish traditions - it's a pity that I didn't instill them in my family. Maybe my ideas from those times had influenced this decision. Valeri graduated from Sofia Technical University with a degree in refrigerator engineering, and Shelly graduated from Sofia University in Bulgarian philology. My wife died in 1997 and now I live with Shelly and her daughter, Ada Evtimova. She is 21 and is now a student at the University of National and World Economy. They accept the Jewish traditions willingly and with great interest. I attend some activities at the Jewish Community Center in Sofia.
When the Berlin Wall fell down we lived with expectations but now after 10th November 1989 [23] a second great disappointment came - after the disappointment of the years following 9th September 1944. A miserable situation - you can't even buy a book. The life of old people is very hard: I mean the current financial situation.
The Eichmann case was in 1961. I called in the UBW [The Union of the Bulgarian Writers] and they said, 'Go!' They gave me some money to cover my travel expenses. Probably I'm the only one from Eastern Europe who was present at the trial. I could send some correspondence, take notes, etc. In my books there are some recollections from the trial. It was very well guarded, there were many searches. They kept Eichmann because they were afraid of some mob law on the part of his men as well as on the part of the relatives of the victims. I was in Jerusalem in July and August during the interrogations. He was always very well dressed, he used two pairs of glasses. He was standing in a booth made of fireproof glass where he was given some documents to inspect. His line was, 'I had orders, I have never taken part in a murder.' There were many questions concerning the role of the oath, of the duty and so on.
Eichmann was the person who organized the deportations of the Jews. In Bulgaria his representative was Theodor Daneker, who in February 1943 signed the contract for the internment of the Jews with the commissioner of the Jewish Affairs Alexander Belev, [21] when 20,000 Jews from the 'new lands' had to be interned [from the Aegean Thrace and Macedonia]. On 4th March 1943 a blockade began in which not only the police but unfortunately also the Bulgarian army took part - all the members of the Committee were there with Belev and they began gathering the Jews from Aegean Thrace and bringing them to the railway stations. They were transported by the narrow- gauge railway of Demir-Hisar, which passed next to the Jewish labor camps and the people squeezed in the wagons were given bread by the people from outside - a tragic picture.
Eichmann was the person who organized the deportations of the Jews. In Bulgaria his representative was Theodor Daneker, who in February 1943 signed the contract for the internment of the Jews with the commissioner of the Jewish Affairs Alexander Belev, [21] when 20,000 Jews from the 'new lands' had to be interned [from the Aegean Thrace and Macedonia]. On 4th March 1943 a blockade began in which not only the police but unfortunately also the Bulgarian army took part - all the members of the Committee were there with Belev and they began gathering the Jews from Aegean Thrace and bringing them to the railway stations. They were transported by the narrow- gauge railway of Demir-Hisar, which passed next to the Jewish labor camps and the people squeezed in the wagons were given bread by the people from outside - a tragic picture.
I was a member of the Bulgarian Communist Party but this has never influenced my attitude toward Israel. The anti-Semitism among the Bulgarian communists was due to the position of the Soviet Union. Although I was a member of the Party I experienced things that caused me to think. I wasn't a blind follower, for example in 1970 I was discharged from the magazine Plamak [flame in Bulgarian]. I saw a lot of things that I didn't approve of. The official attitude of the state toward the wars in Israel wasn't the only thing.
Bulgaria was the only country from the Eastern Block that permitted the free emigration of Jews to Israel - Georgi Dimitrov [20] had a role in this. 90% of the Bulgarian Jews left by 1949. In 1967 under the pressure of the Soviet Union Bulgaria broke diplomatic ties with Israel. Only Romania kept them. But the contacts with Israel never ceased, I went to Israel five times in those years. I liked the country very much - it experienced rapid development and an excellent welfare system. The Bulgarian Jews in Israel are highly regarded for their honesty and diligence, thus the breakdown in diplomatic ties didn't change much.
Before the war I had a lot of Jewish friends - the poet Edi Arueti, Yosif Beraha, Zhak Danon. They all left for Israel after the war. Among my friends who left for Israel there were twin brothers, Haim and Solomon Mevorah, who used to live in my quarter, at the corner of Simeon Street and Antim I Street. They had Spanish citizenship. When one of them came from Israel as my guest, he wanted to see his father's shop along Pirotska Street and a dead-end street - I think it's called Bulgaria - and the Commercial High School in Lozenetz. I brought him there and he burst into tears - there was a balcony at the back of the building and he said, 'Our headmaster talked to us here.' And when the other one came to Sofia we went to see the place where they had lived - we went upstairs, we rang the bell, but the current owners weren't very kind and we didn't go inside. But they felt a great nostalgia - they were very excited when they came back to Bulgaria. In Israel they have an organization, some dance clubs, they sew traditional costumes, they dance the horo [traditional Bulgarian dances], sing Bulgarian songs and cry.
After 9th September 1944 almost all my friends left for Israel, where I have visited them several times. I have very fond memories of this; we looked at some photographs together and they even gave me a few - I had studied with some of them till the 4th grade. They warmly welcomed my wife and me. Yet I stayed in Bulgaria because at that time I was a leftist like my elder brother Armand and I thought that the Jewish question would be resolved along with the social problems. But political differences did not trouble our friendship.
Bulgaria
When we came back to Sofia from Pazardjik, we didn't find anything - everything had disappeared: the furniture, the books, everything. We found ourselves 'at a bare meadow' [Bulgarian idiom for 'down and out']. I joined the II Guards Regiment in Radomir but I didn't leave for the front, I worked as a journalist with the Narodna Gvardiya [National Guard]. After the demobilization I worked at Partizdat publishing house as a technical editor; we produced two very good editions - one of them was a volume of poetry by Nikola Vaptsarov [19] with Radevsky as editor and Shmirgela as illustrator [Hristo Radevsky (1903-1997) is a famous Bulgarian poet; Shmirgela a famous Bulgarian artist]. Afterwards I worked at Narodna Mladezh, then at their publishing house and finally at the publishing house of Bulgarski Pisatel [Bulgarian Writer] where I was editor-in-chief at the time when I retired. Meanwhile I was also engaged in literature. I wrote ten or eleven books for adults and three books for children. My novel Beyond the Law was a success - it has six editions and it has been translated into French [under the title 'Hors-la-loi'] and English. I don't know if it's still available.
Immediately after the wedding in 1948 my wife went to the village of Nedelino [a village in the Rhodope Mountains in the Zlatograd district, close to the Greek border] as a temporary freelance teacher at an elementary school. I visited her there and I remember how we were riding horses along the borderline with a frontier officer and looking at the Aegean Sea. I wrote a story of a woman-teacher at the border, 'At the Front Post' that was published as a serial in the newspaper Narodna Mladezh [People's Youth] in 1949 but now I see it as a bit of a conjuncture. In fact, we celebrated our wedding when she came back for the Easter vacation in the spring of 1949 in the house of my brother Armand who had already married Mati Pinkas - a lot of people gathered; it was a great fun.
In the following summer Armand and I were mobilized in the Jewish labor group in Verinsko [a village between the towns of Ihtiman and Vakarel]. We lived in tents next to some petrol tanks. In August 1944 after the Yash- Kishinev Operation at the Eastern Front some defeated German units withdrew, passing through Bulgaria. I remember that trucks full of German soldiers passed nearby. There was a Bulgarian unit in the neighborhood and they were commanded to disarm the passing German soldiers. We asked them why they didn't disarm them. 'Why don't you disarm them!', they answered. And how exactly could we do it - with spades? Afterwards they really did take captives and sent them to the yard of the Vakarel church. The Germans knew that their soldiers were there and one day an airplane flew past very close to the ground - as a final salute and in a few days they bombarded the tanks.
The government changed. But we had already removed the yellow stars beforehand. In July Slaveiko Vasilev, a famous military officer who had taken part in the coup d'état in 1923 [see events of 1923] [18], passed through. He stopped his car and said, 'You don't have stars anymore.' On 6th-7th September 1944 I was in Pazardjik; there was an ex-priest, 'the red priest', who held a meeting where he spoke a satirical and symbolic public prayer to bury fascism.
The government changed. But we had already removed the yellow stars beforehand. In July Slaveiko Vasilev, a famous military officer who had taken part in the coup d'état in 1923 [see events of 1923] [18], passed through. He stopped his car and said, 'You don't have stars anymore.' On 6th-7th September 1944 I was in Pazardjik; there was an ex-priest, 'the red priest', who held a meeting where he spoke a satirical and symbolic public prayer to bury fascism.
In June my mother and I were interned to Pazardjik. From there I was taken to the forced labor groups in Kurtovo Konare [a village southwest of Plovdiv]. We worked under extremely hard conditions on the correction of Vucha's riverbed - the river swelled there and caused floods. We lived in small and dirty sheds. When we were on our way to the camp with our luggage the policeman who was accompanying us made us stop, drew his gun and said, 'Look, here you are under my command, you are not leaving the camp. I have the right to shoot.' Our rooms were separated by planks; several ex- prisoners lived here. They worked on the same site as diggers but they were paid and free - at the weekends they went to Plovdiv and when they came back they told us about their adventures in the big city - craps [the dice game] and prostitutes. We stayed there till 11th November 1943. In Pazardjik I met my brother Armand who was released from Enikioy.
On 24th May [15] there was a spontaneous Jewish protest and the Laborers' Party came to help us [UYW] [16]. But in fact everything was spontaneous. Rabbi Daniel Zion wasn't liked by the other rabbis, went to Exarch Stefan [17] and explained everything to him. At the official public prayer on the occasion of 24th May where the tsar was present, the exarch told him, or is reported to have said, 'Boris, thou shall not chase, in order to be left unchased.' These words are from the Bible. Thousands of people gathered in the yard of the Iuchbunar synagogue [a Sephardi synagogue at the corner of Klementina boulevard and Osogovo street, demolished during the Communist rule; the Central Synagogue is located at the corner of Exarch Yosif and George Washington streets]. The Rabbi came, made a speech to calm down the crowd and the people went on a march along Osogovo Street and Klementina [now Alexandar Stamboliiski boulevard] and finally stopped at Vazrazhdane Square. The policemen encountered us there and began to run after the protesters and beat them.
I remember that a young man took a flag off a green wooden fence and walked with it at the head of the procession. When the writer Dragomir Assenov [pen name of Jacques Nisim Melamed - a famous Bulgarian writer (1926-1981)] read this in my novel 'Beyond the Law', he said, 'That was me'. A great number of protesters were arrested. We were hiding for a couple of hours next to St. Peter and Paul church and all the people who were arrested on that day were driven to a camp in Somovit on the bank of the Danube. This camp was established as a direct response to this incident. The plan was to disperse the compact Jewish population, to drive them to the Danube and then to send them to Poland and Germany. This demonstration compelled the Committee to put off the internment of the Jews from Sofia till the beginning of June. It was said that the tsar interfered.
I remember that a young man took a flag off a green wooden fence and walked with it at the head of the procession. When the writer Dragomir Assenov [pen name of Jacques Nisim Melamed - a famous Bulgarian writer (1926-1981)] read this in my novel 'Beyond the Law', he said, 'That was me'. A great number of protesters were arrested. We were hiding for a couple of hours next to St. Peter and Paul church and all the people who were arrested on that day were driven to a camp in Somovit on the bank of the Danube. This camp was established as a direct response to this incident. The plan was to disperse the compact Jewish population, to drive them to the Danube and then to send them to Poland and Germany. This demonstration compelled the Committee to put off the internment of the Jews from Sofia till the beginning of June. It was said that the tsar interfered.
At that time my brother Armand was a prisoner at the concentration camp in Enikioy. The Enikioy concentration camp was established in September 1941 as a preventive measure against the communists because of their alliance with Germany. Its official name was 'State Security Settlement'. The prisoners had to build the fences themselves. The Communist Party, which was banned by the Protection of the State Act at the time, organized fund- raising for the prisoners, but only their relatives were allowed to send them parcels with food and other supplies. The authorities had to grant a special permission for each parcel to be sent. At the camp my brother began to translate War and Peace by Tolstoy [14]- I received parts of it hidden in damadjani [demijohn]. Later this translation was published. In fact, it wasn't very good but it was the first one in Bulgarian. My brother Armand was released from Enikioy camp in November 1943.
On 24th May 1943 [10] the Jews from Sofia were given notice to leave Sofia in three days on the decree of the Commissariat for Jewish Affairs [11]. This Committee was founded under the special jurisdiction of the Minister of Interior [Petar Gabrovski] [12]. Its headquarter was on Dondukov Boulevard in the confiscated building of Samuel Patak [a Jewish merchant], the owner of Sampatak - a well-known stationery company. The Jewish property had to be confiscated. A number of young lawyers from the pro- fascist organization, the Ratniks [13] co-operated in the Committee. They benefited from the confiscation and liquidation of the Jewish shops and other property. We had to leave with no more than 20 kilograms of luggage; it was said where, when and with which train we had to leave. They deliberately chose the holidays because they wanted to keep the whole affair a secret. Emil and his family received instructions to go to Pleven and my mother and I were to be sent to Pazardjik.
laszlo nussbaum
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One thing is important: I hate those people who have no ethnic identity. One has to undertake something; to have nothing is the vilest of all. You have to belong somewhere; you can't be just floating in the air. Everybody hates that kind of person, and he can't expect anything from anybody. My ethnic group is Jewish, but I'm not religious. Sartre says that a Jew is a person who considers himself a Jew, and the neighbors consider him a Jew as well. So I claim myself not Jewish in vain. From the point of view of culture I'm a Hungarian; but my Jewish origin is ineffaceable.
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After WW2
See text in interview
Where there are larger Jewish communities there are Jewish cemeteries, but they don't bury a gentile in the Jewish cemetery. In the last few years they wanted to procure, with success, something that was the opposite of a centuries-old tradition. Separation was always the centuries-old tradition of the Jews: there were only marriages between Jews. They got married inside a nation of the same religion. They expelled themselves, religiously, from society. After World War II mixed marriages became very frequent, and in mixed marriages it became more frequent that they [the children] remained Protestant or Catholic, especially under communism.
I attended the same elementary school as my wife, in Torda, before the war, but I didn't remember her. I left Torda very early, at the age of about ten, and I went back in 1944. Only a few months separated me from the concentration camp and I needed only one thing: great-great silence. I was a young boy, 16 years old and I started to court a Jewish girl, but she could have been Turkish or Tartar, I didn't care. The whole courtship consisted of me going to her in the early afternoon and listening to her as she practiced on the violin.
As a simple librarian I wrote for the newspaper a lot. I had time; in the library I read what I wanted, and I wrote lots of articles. I had to check each item - I had many documents - and after I checked them I wrote about them. There were two of us in the whole library whom they named 'alte nationalitati' [other nationalities]. There were no others except 'maghiari si alte nationalitati' [Hungarians and other nationalities] regardless of whether they were Serbs, Slovaks or Jews.
I had been working at the university library for a long time before they appointed a Romanian person, with whom I was on informal, friendly terms, as manager. He became the manager though he knew nothing about the library. He made me play, without ill-will, the role of the home Jew. He would call me in asking, 'What should I do in this situation?' He would discuss it with me, and then he would tell the conclusion to the departmental manager, as if it had been his idea. When my departmental manager died he called me: 'Whom should we appoint as a manager at the documentation department?' By coincidence, the newly-chosen man also died after a few years. Then he said again: 'Hey, who should we appoint, because we obviously can't appoint you.' The situation affected me profoundly, because I had to hear: 'I can discuss it with you, but you know I can't propose you. There can't be a manager of a different nationality.