Testimony

Isaac Bitton was born in 1926, in Lisbon, Portugal in a Jewish family. His father, David Tangi Bitton was a policeman and a truck driver later on, while her mother Simy Bitton was a housewife and took care of their ten children. In Lisbon he attended public school and he studied Hebrew in a Jewish school as well. During WW2 Portugal was a neutral country, therefore many people including Jews fled there. As a teenager Isaac helped Jewish refugees at the local Jewish centre, and later on he joined the Youth Aliyah Movement with his brother. In 1944 they emigrated to Palestine and there they were trained by the British Army, and at the end of the war they served at a displaced-persons camp helping Jews. After that he fought in Israel’s War of Independence. He got married in 1947. With his wife they moved to the United States. He has three children and six grandchildren. His interview was recorded in 1996, in Woodstock, Illinois.

Edward Polidi was born Sofia, Bulgaria on December 23rd, 1935. His father, Israel Polidi worked as a teacher at the University. His mother was an opera singer. He lived in an area with an active Jewish cultural life, being educated in Sofia Synagogue at an early age. In 1940, his family was thrown out of their home and placed into “Gypsy quarters” near the synagogue. In 1941, Bulgaria passed the Law for the Protection of the Nation, which introduced anti-Semitic policies. These included moving the Jews to specific quarters and ghettos and wearing the Star of David. The Polidi family was forced to pack up again and relocate to a ghetto in Vidin, a small city that bordered both Romania and Yugoslavia. None of the Bulgarian Jews were deported to concentration camps because the Bulgarian king never signed the documents that would have authorized their transport out of the ghetto. Edward stayed in Vidin for four years, until he was liberated by the Red Army in 1944. Soon after the war, his parents died, and Edward was given a stipend from the government to continue his studies in music. He won an internal audition to study in Moscow as a post-graduate student. He lived and studied in Russia for three years. Later, he applied to leave Bulgaria in 1962, and as a result, was fired from the University. Finally, he was allowed to emigrate to Israel, where he joined the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and became a successful violinist. He married Barbara Polidi, who is also a violinist. His interview was recorded in 1996, in Staten Island, New York, U.S.A.