by Sarah Raz
Upon her last treatment, Alice received a proposal from the dentist. “I know how tough it is for Jews to find work right now. I think you can be of great assistance to me, if you would consent to do my laundry, mine and my sister’s that is. You can take it back to your place and return it to us clean and folded.” Having heard the sum that was being offered, Alice could not refuse. Every week, she would pick up big bundles of laundry, which came complete with bars of soap. The girls did the washing and Alice ironed. This had become their main source of income. The dentist gave her more soap than was needed for the laundry and Alice exchanged this commodity, which had become rather rare, for bread at the town bakery.
The girls had gone back to school and their lives continued apace with no news from Asher. They knew nothing about his whereabouts nor about what had befallen him. Every night before turning in, Alice made herself remember the good times in her life. This helped her keep herself strong and centered. She simply had to stay optimistic and believe that the good days will return sooner or later. Alice wrote to her brother, telling him of her distress at the lack of any news from Asher. She asked him to do his best to try and locate him, though she had no idea whether her letters would ever reach Jacques or whether he too had been deported to an unknown destination. She promised herself that she would keep her word to Asher and stay put so he could find her upon his return.
Alice and the lady dentist had become best friends. The doctor had become her guardian angel, following her, protecting her, helping her.
By late spring, nature felt none of the trauma that humanity had been busy inflicting on itself, and it erupted in an abundance of color beneath clear blue skies. All the farms around Kyustendil burst forth with the colors of bloom.
The dentist owned a vegetable farm on the outskirts of town and each harvest season she hired workers to harvest, sort, and sell her produce. On the farm, there stood a small dwelling in which the workers would gather at lunchtime for a hot meal. Alice was offered the job of cooking for the farmhands and making sure that they didn’t go hungry. This had become a true boon for the girls. Alice decided that they would go to work with her rather than attend school. Early each morning they climbed on top of a horse-drawn cart that took them to the farm, about an hour away. Alice would enter the kitchen and with the help of a peasant woman prepare a meal for fifty. At her disposal she had plenty of vegetables and meat, from which Alice produced delicacies that only she could muster. She spared no effort and cooked every meal as if it had been for a special occasion. The girls mingled with the farm workers in the vegetable rows. For the first time, they saw for themselves how produce was grown. They wandered among plantings of corn, onions, and potatoes and they played in cherry and plum orchards. This was a wonderful place, an oasis of sanity in a maelstrom of unexplainable human behavior. It was as if the Holocaust had not already been in full swing outside of the orchard hedge, as if the human notions of morality and decency had not been upended. The farm workers, men and women alike, toiled all day to harvest, sort, package, and ship to market the abundant harvest. As they worked, the laborers sang Bulgarian folk songs, songs that had never left the countryside and never made their way to the big cities. Mati and Luna learned from them songs about yearning, love, and patriotic ardor. As lunch time approached, the laborers redoubled their efforts, as if to more quickly make their way to tables laden with Alice’s delicacies.
Alice’s physical wellbeing improved and so did her mood. Her ability to arrange a peaceful and serene environment for her daughters made her be at peace with herself. With her indomitable spirit, she captivated everyone at the farm. It was simply impossible to ignore her. Externally, she looked like one of the peasant women. She wore their clothing; brightly colored skirts, blouses with wide sleeves, her hair done up in a kerchief. She garnered the attention of all with her vitality and her beauty, her talents and her skill. When she had been hard at work, she often sang, clearly enjoying herself. On multiple occasions, she had to refuse propositions from single farmhands, men who wished to have some entertainment during the busy harvest season.
If it hadn’t been for the war for survival out there, Alice thought, this could be the height of every mortal’s aspirations; to enjoy what Mother Earth had to offer, what every human being could wish for: to work, to create, to be at peace, and most of all, to live. How she wished that her husband could somehow know that she was safe and that she had found a way to protect their daughters, to raise them, and to keep their joy of living intact. How she yearned for Asher to be with her at those moments.
Each night when they returned home, they loaded for themselves basketfuls of fruits and vegetables. Alice, exhausted from the day’s work, placed the baskets on the sidewalk, where a few of her neighbors had already been waiting to purchase some of their contents. As she was busy putting down the baskets one night, a postman arrived carrying a letter. Alice wiped her hands on her apron and received it from his hands. “It’s from daddy!” she yelled. She sat down on the sidewalk flanked by the girls who were eager to hear what news there were of their father.
“My dear Alice and my precious daughters,
I am writing to you after a long while, hoping that this letter will find its way to you. No one here can promise us that. One of our wardens, a kind-hearted Bulgarian, told us to write and he would do his best to mail the letters. I am so close to you and yet so far. We are in a work camp situated in the Struma River valley, where they are working us very hard, blasting rocks with dynamite and then clearing the rubble with wheelbarrows. This rubble will be used to build highways and railroads that will connect Bulgaria with Thracia, Macedonia, and Austria. Every day we can see with our own eyes trains that are going from Thracia to the camps of Gorna-Djomia and Dopchina. I am managing to survive here in spite of the poor food and the horrible sanitary conditions. We are housed in tents that are exposed to the elements, to the cold and the heat. A few of us have contracted malaria and we are all infested with lice and with bedbugs. I haven’t shaved in two months. Apart from the man to whom I am entrusting this letter, a good and honest man who always tries to help, the treatment we get from the authorities is rough and often cruel; we are beaten and punished for the slightest of infractions. Regardless, my spirits are high because I am keeping faith that one day I shall be reunited with you, my darlings, and once the war is over, we shall once again stroll the streets of Sofia. We shall go to the theater, listen to wonderful music, and above all, be together again. We have suffered so much as a family and now that we are apart and cannot comfort each other, all that remains to me is to tell you, Alice, that your love is keeping me in the fight for survival. You should know that I love you more than anything and had I not have your love, I would have long since given up.
Kisses to all from your loving father who misses you very much.”
Alice read the letter quickly. At its end, Asher added an address to which she could forward packages, which would then be delivered to the camp by kind people.
She became resolved in her mind to sew, once again, a new suit of clothes for Asher, a suit that would bring closer his return to her.
Every letter she had received and every package she was able to send gave Alice renewed hope. As long as she knew that Asher was managing to survive, she could do so herself. Undeterred by the strict anti-Jewish curfew, Alice had gone out after dark to take part in illicit meetings of the Kyustendil Jewish leadership committee. Rumors were once again circulating that Bulgarian Jews would soon be deported from the country as a whole. Members of the police began to visit Jewish homes, verifying details as to their exact addresses and the number of family members in each household.
Finally, the Jews were instructed to buy the necessities that they would need at the camp to which they would be deported, Camp Radomir.
Alice filled jars with homemade jam. She soaked bread slices in milk and sugar and dried them in the oven. The sweet biscuits became a fa
vorite of the girls.
Jews were now forbidden to talk on the telephone, so that direct communications with the remnants of the Sofia and Plovdiv communities were severed and news took much longer to arrive. Plovdiv began the deportation process and concentrated its Jews to prepare for it. Jews were woken up by knocks on their doors in the middle of the night, given thirty minutes to gather what belongings they could, and taken to the vast tobacco warehouse. Then that same night, an all-clear was sounded and everyone could return home.
Alice went out to a meeting that was being held at the school, leaving her daughters in the care of a neighbor. She just had to be in the know. At the meeting, a local Jewish operative by the name of Haim Bachar, informed them that several trains used for the transport of livestock had already been scheduled to travel to places were Bulgarian Jews had been concentrated in order to transport them to Poland. It was then that it had become known to everyone that these were not work camps, but places of mass genocide. In an impassioned speech, Mr. Bachar told the committee members of the many last minute efforts undertaken by Bulgarian dignitaries. They had organized a delegation to try and plead with the Minister of the Interior Gabronsky, Prime Minister Filov, and King Boris himself. Church leaders like the Metropolit Kirill, writers, painters, and other community leaders openly demonstrated their sympathy with the Jewish community and were able to at least delay the final verdict. King Boris had come to an agreement with the Germans that they would deport the Thracian and Macedonian Jews, but for now take no action against Jews who were his direct subjects.
This agreement was enough to save the lives of most Bulgarian Jews. The Kyustendil Jewish leadership had received news from the capital that the British authorities in Mandatorial Palestine had agreed to issue immigration visas to four hundred adult Bulgarian Jews and four thousand children. These Jews would be exchanged for Bulgarian subjects who were living in South America and who would be repatriated to Bulgaria via Turkey. The Bulgarian government had given its ascent, but locating Zionist Bulgarian Jews who wanted to immigrate to Palestine had been a challenge. This had been made worse by the prohibition against the movement of Jews around the country. Everything had to be accomplished in a clandestine fashion. We are awaiting an emissary, he said. We know that he had made it as far as Istanbul from a village in Palestine that is populated mostly by Bulgarian Jews, a village by the name of Beit Hanan, and he is doing all he can to repatriate Bulgarian Jews to Eretz Israel.
Alice began to feel that a circle was closing in her life. Once again she was hearing details of that faraway land in which her brother had lost his life. Once again she knew that there was indeed a place that she had yearned for her entire life in order to fulfill her brother’s dying wish, to gather her entire family in their ancestral homeland.
Everyone felt a great commonality of destiny and everyone knew that any piece of information they received was meant for all of them.
Alice returned home. The girls had been fast asleep and having no one with whom to share her thoughts, she decided to put them down on paper.
“Upon your return, my darling, I shall not be able to recount to you all our travails. So much has happened to us. So many decisions I have had to make on my own. Every day I face a myriad problems and I have no one to rely on but myself. I am scared of failure. The smallest misstep can endanger our very survival. I know, I hear, that everywhere Jews are suffering and Jewish lives are in danger. From some places, they are being sent to Germany or Poland. Here, we have pooled our resources and prepared a few packages that we are sending to you. Though I have little time and even less energy, I try to be involved in community affairs, so I can be informed about what is coming and be prepared for it. I feel that I and the girls are as protected as we can be. We have plenty of food and we are keeping busy. They are always with me. It seems to me that here in Kyustendil the Bulgarians have no interest in this war and no intention of harming the Jews. Local dignitaries have traveled to Sofia on their own initiative to try and change anti-Jewish edicts. Asher, I am keeping the shaving box safe for you. Just come back home. I have wrapped your new suit in a clean sheet and it is waiting for that happy day when I shall see you again. I can find no time to keep myself attractive for you. You will not find your wife beautiful, but you will find her determined to stand up to all the trouble and survive. Be well, my dear friend, I can feel that we shall see each other soon.”
On August 29th, 1943, King Boris III died having returned from a visit to Germany. His underage son Simeon assumed the throne, supported by a council of regents. The new government had adopted a slate of policies quite different from those of its predecessor. Jewish leadership had been informed that Jews over forty-five years old who had a transit visa through Turkey could now travel to Palestine. Unfortunately, there were not many people who met these criteria.
With the king’s death, suspicions ran high that he had been poisoned by the Germans, which led to a deterioration of the relations between Bulgaria and Germany, a deterioration that was further aggravated by the Bulgarians growing lack of trust in Germany’s ability to win the war. The ranks of the anti-German partisans swelled and their raids against German targets grew in daring. Many Jewish youths who had been trained in the Zionist HaShomer HaTzair movement in preparation for repatriation to Israel, answered the call of the anti-fascists and joined the partisan ranks.
The sound of cannon fire had become a nightly occurrence. On her way home from work, Alice had stopped by the synagogue to see if any news was forthcoming from those who secretly listened to broadcasts from Radio Free France. The general feeling was that their deliverance was at hand. The Red Army had already taken Romania and was on its way south to Bulgaria. Every night, there were more and more Soviet bombers harassing the German army in its retreat. As soon as she heard that the Soviets were now at the approaches to Kyustendil, Alice rushed home to her daughters. She dressed them in their finest, and with everyone else, Jews and Gentiles, they went out to the town square. Alice gave her daughters candy and flowers and told them to throw those at the Russian soldiers passing by.
A multitude of people waited as the rumble of trucks grew louder. Emotions ran high. The travails of all Bulgarians seemed to be at an end. As soon as the trucks had made the turn into the square, people rushed them, showering them with flowers and candy. Everyone was crying and singing the Bulgarian national anthem. Suddenly, someone in the crowd noticed that the trucks had been of German manufacture. “These are not Russians, these are Germans in disguise, they are trying to run away,” he yelled. The joyful energy of the crowd at once gave way to vengeful pursuit. The German soldiers were fearful and confused. They fell into the hands of the crowd, which, after a through beating, surrendered them to the authorities. Alice took hold of her yellow star and tore it from her lapel, instructing her daughters to do the same. “From now on,” she told them, “the only color of the Star of David we shall ever wear will be blue. We shall never wear the yellow color of slavery again. We shall wait here for your father and then make our way home to Eretz Israel.”
The ninth of September was the official liberation day. The Red Army surprised the fascist regime and everywhere Jews began escaping from the work camps. Partisans came down from the hillsides and reunited with the resistance cells inside the cities. Together, they stormed the government buildings and formed a new government called the Homeland Front.
