site.btaEster Assa: “We Have to Believe in Good and Have Faith that It Will Prevail”

At 97, Ester Assa believes that one has to believe in good and have faith that it will prevail. BTA talked to her on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the rescue of the Bulgarian Jews. “Human life is the most beautiful thing and it should be lived in love and peace,” she said.

Ester Assa was born in Burgas, "between sea and land", to use her words. There she experienced the best things in her life - her childhood in the Jewish school and the synagogue - one of the most beautiful in the Balkans, the work of the Italian architect Riccardo Toscani. Assa says it was a great privilege to have such a synagogue in Burgas because it teaches beauty and grace. "We had many churches and many nationalities: Armenians, Greeks, Turks and they gave the city its richness," said Esther Assa.

At the Jewish school she received "very good lessons". Then she went to a Bulgarian school and the Second World War started. The Protection of the Nation Act was adopted, setting in place special regulations for all people of Jewish origin. "We were required to put a sign on the doors of our houses, reading 'Jewish housing'. We couldn't go out after 9pm. Staying out after the curfew could be punished with death. We had such cases. We were deprived of the opportunity to work. We were excluded from school. We couldn't go to the cinema, the theatre, we couldn't go on the main streets, where the windows of pastry shops and hotels had 'No entry for dogs and Jews' signs," recalled Assa. 

She said they were only allowed to shop after 10am during the day. “It was wartime, everything sold out quickly and what was left for us was only dry loaves of bread.”

She remembers a dramatic separation from her teachers and classmates. They spoke words of encouragement to the Jews and told them that they would not be forgotten. "They gave us gifts and told us we would be remembered forever," Ester Assa said. The scariest part, she said, was the men being taken to camps. Her mother was left without an income after her father was sent to the Atia camp near Burgas, where all Jewish men under 46 went. “The conditions were very harsh, there was malaria, there was no medicine and the food was cabbage soup: morning, noon and evening.” Then 15-year-old Ester and her mother worked for pennies in the vineyards. They worked the land from dawn to dusk under the scorching sun. They also worked in fish cleaning sheds, also in poor conditions. There the young woman fell ill with severe rheumatism and her mother was forced to look after her at home.

Her mother's sister lived with her five children in Kavala in the so-called New Lands, which is present-day Greece. They all died in the Treblinka concentration camp. "They sent the Jews there and they went up in smoke, they burned them," Esther Assa said. To the end of her days, her mother could not forget what happened to her sister and the kids. "When she washed the clothes of my children, her grandchildren, my mom would always cry, cry out loud about her sister being turned into soap. She always remembered that and I witnessed all this suffering," Assa said.

At that time in Burgas, as in all of Bulgaria, Jews had to put wear yellow stars on their clothes. Once Ester forgot to put on her star because she changed what she was wearing at the last minute. A neighbor who worked for the police followed her because he noticed she was without a star. "He grabbed me by the braids, took me to the station and said, 'This is a person who is not wearing a star,'" Assa remembers. At the police station, she explained why she had forgotten to wear the star and promised that would not happen again. "Then he got up and kicked me, and gave me a declaration to fill out that I would always wear the yellow star," she added.

The situation of the Assas became especially difficult when they received an order from the Commissariat for Jewish Affairs, telling them to leave Burgas within three days. They had to leave the key to their home and all their money with the Town Hall. They were to travel by train to an unknown destination. Neighbours told her mother to leave Ester with them so they would look after her. "They were willing to help, even though they were poor. There is no forgetting such kindness," Assa said. She has fold memories of some people from those days. One of them was Lyubcho Zurkov. Educated in Germany and the United States, he had a large drugstore where he employed six Jews from Burgas, although he was not allowed to. He also sent drugs to Jews in the labor camps. The mayor of Burgas, Dr. Djankov, was also sympathetic to the plight of the Jews of Burgas, Ester Assa said.

Of those who played a role in the rescue of Bulgarian Jews, she singled out the deputy chair of the National Assembly at that time, Dimitar Peshev, who in her words was “a very just and good man”. “He made a petition with the names of those who were against the deportation of Jews and with this petition he sought out King Boris,” she said of the man who eventually played a pivotal role in the salvation of Bulgarian Jews from the Nazi death camps. 

Ester Assa also stressed the big role of the church. "The church really helped a lot. Metropolitan Cyril and Stefan told the Jews, 'We will be the first to go on these trains, then you will follow.' These people are among the righteous in the Yad Vashem memorial in Israel,'" Assa said. 

After the end of World War II, the Jews in Burgas were left without sustenance. "Jews from all over the world collected food, blankets, money to help us. I am a happy person because I could be free," said Ester Assa. 

She now has two daughters, three grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren. “I am a happy person,” she said.