The story of Gizela - Afik Shiraz. Abinun Shmuel

The Jewish Community

The Jewish community of Vishegrad has counted families of Spanish and Ashkenazi origin. The Spanish families were older, while the Ashkenazi arrived after World War I or in their search for work. All in all we had in town three Altarac families, one of whose heads owned the Zadok attorney's office Altarac, who later perished in Bergen-Belsen; Four families named Papo, one of which ran a hardware store and agricultural equipment; Three Levi families; The Kimchi family, who also owned a shop; The Romano family, who ran the butchery; Two Kayon families, one of which traded skins; The Reichman family; The Singer Family, who owned a hotel on the main street of the town; The Siler family, who ran another hotel down the main street, the Klinger family; Two Gaon families; The doctor's family, Dr. Daniel Ovadia, and the Rosenberg and Rosenrauch families, both of whom owned a sawmill and factory for woodworking. The social life of the Jewish community in the town mainly revolved around meetings at the Jewish Club, which also served as a small theater. There were no Zionist or youth movements in the town, but there were three Jewish organizations – ‘Matat-Yah’, which staged theatrical and organized plays excursions and social gatherings; 'Lira', a musical composition by singers and musicians, ‘La La Benbalencia’, a charity that raised funds for the needy, including collecting dowry for brides whose hand was not accomplished, assistance to patients and more. My mother, Erna nee Papo, sang in Serbian and Ladino in the Lira Choir in Sarajevo. She had a pleasant voice, very different from mine, and she used to sing along housework, folk songs and Schubert works in German. There was a large gramophone in our house that occupied almost a quarter of a table and played usually ballads, Yugoslav folk songs. Every time one of my parents traveled to Sarajevo for various arrangements he used to come back with a new record, and to this day I derive great pleasure from listening to this music. In 1934, when the Lira Choir visited Palestine, accompanied it one of my mother's brothers, Salomon Papo who was a violinist, and his cousin Salomon Ashkenazi and they purchased land in what is now the northern part of Dizengoff Street, near Tel Aviv Port. In 1936 they visited the country again with the choir and when they saw the situation, the decline of the area, they sold it, which turned out to be a luckless fate for them. My mother's brother did not survive the war while the cousin survived and died in the 1980s. My mother's second brother, Samuel Papo, was also a singer and a player in the Lira Choir, and his wife had a very hard time coping with the lifestyle he was running, with the shows in the wee hours of the night and wander from city to city, as the band used to perform everywhere: today in Sarajevo, tomorrow in Zagreb, the next day in Belgrade and back again. She eventually divorced from him and even made sure their daughter would not know who her father was, but laughing destiny – the daughter, Flory Yagoda, has grown to become a famous singer, appearing worldwide. Unlike its Wikipedia value, Flory was born

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