site.btaDora Zemach: We Should Not Carry Malice for Past Doings, Life Goes On and Good Is Most Important in It

"We should not carry vengefulness and malice for something once done and gone. Life goes on and in it, the good is most important," Dora Zemach said in an interview with BTA on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the rescue of the Bulgarian Jews.

She is a native of Pleven, four generations back in her family are residents of the town. She completed her secondary education in Pleven and her higher education in Sofia and is now retired.

Everything she told about the years during World War II when Jews in Bulgaria were subjected to persecution and restrictions because of the Law for the Protection of the Nation are memories preserved in the family by her father and mother, by relatives with whom she interacted.   

During the period when the Law for the Protection of the Nation was in force in Bulgaria, Dora Zemach's parents were about 20 years old. Her father, Binyamin Zemach, was a student at the textile technical school in Sliven when he was called up to the labour camps. "He used to say that when he arrived at the camp, on the road in Ihtiman, one of the elderly people shouted, 'What sin does this child have that he is here too?' My father was then a student in the final year of the technical school, and what impressed me was that the principal called him in and told him that he had ordered that his grades in all subjects be formed so that he could receive his diploma at the end of the school year, even though he would not be there. This is a gesture that was made by a person from the community. We even keep a flask at home, given to him by his classmates, which he carried everywhere with him," Dora Zemach recalls. 

Her father's stories are from the time he was in the labour camp. The great violinist Leon Surujon was there with him, and the camp inmates tried to protect his hands so that he could continue playing. The great actor Leo Konforti was also there. In the evenings, when the inmates lined up on the plaza to say the prayer, he would come out to say it in Ladino, the language spoken by the Jews in Bulgaria, an ancient Spanish language. During this prayer, Konforti was trying to tell the inmates how far the hostilities had reached, how close the front was to Bulgaria, and what could be expected.  

Dora Zemach's mother left school during the war years. She was the eldest child in the family. "She told us about the landlord whose house they lived in. When the Law for the Protection of the Nation forbade Jews to work, their landlord took the children to work in his candy workshop. Their job was to wrap the candy in paper. That was how they got money, and that was how they supported themselves at that time," added Tzemach. Her mother said that their house had no windows because the panes had been broken and were nailed with wooden planks. 

She said that in all the years, until her last breath, her mother and her younger sister had mentioned their landlord's family. They had a close relationship with his descendants. "They were always spoken of with respect in our family," Dora Zemach added.

She recounted her father's memories of 1943, when Jews were expelled from Sofia. About 3,000 people arrived in Pleven. At that time there were about 220 - 230 Jewish families in the town. According to the Law for the Protection of the Nation, the deported Jews could not be accepted into Bulgarian families. Thus there was one family in each room of a Jewish home, but this was not enough. Many of the displaced had left without money or luggage. There was a very powerful community in Pleven then. There was a Jewish community that took care of the expenses and the maintenance of those people who had nowhere to settle. They were accommodated in the Jewish school by buying blankets and everything they needed for the night, as well as two cauldrons for preparing food. Separate help was also given to other Jews who had found shelter but had no food. The coupon system was then in force and there was not enough food, and by law the Jewish population was given half rations.

Dora Zemach told us about a little known fact in Pleven. In those years there was an inn called "Barkach". Its location was at the intersection of the present San Stefano Street in the direction of the museum. "The owner, besides sheltering families in the inn, provided them with food, supported them in every way. After 1948, when the great migration of Jews to Israel took place, he received many letters of thanks from people who survived thanks to him," she added.

She also recounted preserved memories of Jews who were housed in the camp in the area of "Kaylaka", established in 1944. The inmates were mostly people from towns in southern Bulgaria - Yambol, Haskovo, Dupnitsa and Kyustendil. Arrested for violations of the Law for the Protection of the Nation or as relatives of illegal partisans. There were 112 camp inmates aged from 3 to 84. The oldest was Shabat Rubenov, grandfather of the partisan Mati Rubenova. When the camp was set on fire, he was burned because he could not get up from his plank-bed. The camp was set on fire at night on July 11, 1944. It burned for 10 minutes. The door was bolted. It was broken by one of the inmates, but there was a crowd, which made it even more difficult to get people out of the barrack.

The youngest victim of the fire was 15-year-old Sami Polikar, who was rescuing others but caught fire. He died the next day. There were 10 victims in total. 

Dora Zemach is adamant that the bad things of those years are forgotten in her family. Life went on - her father worked as chief engineer at the Asen Halachev textile enterprise, then he was director of the Sanya factory. "All the fears, worries, the starvation were forgotten, including the people who used to bother us. I still believe that human memory is arranged in such a way that it forgets the bad first and only the good memories remain," Dora Zemach said. 

She also showed a book compiled by local historian Svetlozar Damyanov. In it are published the lists of all Jews deported from Sofia to Pleven with the addresses where they were accommodated. "From it we get information about people who have not lived in Bulgaria for a long time. There is also a list of Jews and Jewish families living in Pleven, something that is also unknown to us because even their descendants know nothing about their roots," she explained.

According to her, the help that the Jews received from the Bulgarians in those years - their neighbours and friends - was born not only from kindness, but also from the fact that they lived together and what oppressed one oppressed the other. 

In her words, the fact that the deportation of the Jews had been cancelled on March 10, 1943, did not mean that this issue did not remain on the agenda. "Jews from Sofia were moved to towns near the Danube, where barges with deportees sailed from, which means there was some preliminary preparation," she said. 

"While we are eternally grateful to the people who made the unusual gesture to save their fellow compatriots in Bulgaria, we must remember that we were persecuted and went through what the state did to us then. We must also remember that 11,000 of our compatriots from the annexed territories died in the death camps because they were not granted Bulgarian citizenship. The lessons of history must be remembered because when we forget them, they can be repeated, and on a far more terrible scale," Dora Zemach said. 

Bulgaria will be marking the 80th anniversary of the salvation of Bulgarian Jews in 2023. The anniversary raises many historical and historiographical questions about who the rescuers were, what made this great humanitarian act possible and why it happened in Bulgaria. The Bulgarian News Agency (BTA), in partnership with the Alef Jewish-Bulgarian Cooperation Center, set itself the task of answering these questions with the help of prominent scholars, public figures, and experts on the subject with a series of articles to recall the events of the past and the participants in them, and to present the importance of the rescue and the rescuers.

Bulgaria and Denmark are believed to be the only countries that did not allow their Jewish citizens to be deported to Nazi death camps. Nearly 50,000 lives were saved in Bulgaria. According to information on the website of the Yad Vashem Holocaust Remembrance Center, Bulgaria had 50,000 Jews before World War II and zero victims. It is the only country with zero victims.