History of the Jews in Bulgaria

The Sofia Synagogue, an imposing Neo-Moorish building of the Sephardic community, was constructed to the designs of Austrian architect Friedrich Grünanger and opened in 1909

The history of the Jews in Bulgaria dates to at least as early as the 2nd century CE. Since then, the Jews have had a continuous presence in the Bulgarian lands and have played an often considerable part in the history of Bulgaria from ancient times through the Middle Ages until today.

Antiquity

The earliest written trace of Jewish communities in what is today Bulgaria date to the late 2nd century BCE. A Latin inscription found at Ulpia Oescus (modern day Gigen, Pleven Province) bearing a menorah and mentioning archisynagogos Joseph testifies to the presence of a Jewish population in the city. A decree of Roman Emperor Theodosius I from 379 regarding the persecution of Jews and destruction of synagogues in Illyria and Thrace is also a proof of earlier Jewish settlement in Bulgaria.

Bulgarian Empire

After the establishment of the First Bulgarian Empire and its recognition in 681, a number of Jews persecuted in the Byzantine Empire may have settled in Bulgaria. During the rule of Boris I there may have been attempts to convert the pagan Bulgarians to judaism, but in the end the Bulgarian Orthodox Church was established and the population of the Bulgarian Empire was Christianized in the 9th century. The names of many members of the 10th-11th-century Comitopuli dynasty—such as Samuil, Moses, David—could indicate partial Jewish origin, most likely maternal, though this is disputed.

Jews also settled in Nikopol in 967, as well as from the Republic of Ragusa and Italy, when merchants from these lands were allowed to trade in the Second Bulgarian Empire by Ivan Asen II. Later, Tsar Ivan Alexander married a Jewish woman, Sarah (renamed Theodora), who had converted to Christianity and had considerable influence in the court. A church council of 1352 led to the excommunication of the heretics and the Jews and the death sentence of three Jews, who were killed by the mob despite the verdict's having been repealed by the tsar.

The medieval Jewish population of Bulgaria was Romaniote until the 14th-15th century, when Ashkenazim from Hungary (1376) and other parts of Europe settled.

Ottoman rule

See also: History of the Jews in Turkey

By the time the Ottomans overran the Bulgarian Empire, there were sizable Jewish communities in Vidin, Nikopol, Silistra, Pleven, Sofia, Yambol, Plovdiv (Philippopolis) and Stara Zagora. Another wave of Ashkenazim, from Bavaria, arrived after being banished from this country in 1470, and Yiddish could often be heard in Sofia according to contemporary travellers. An ashkenazi prayer book was printed in Thessaloniki by the rabbi of Sofia in the middle of the 16th century.

The first waves of Sephardim came from various places (through Thessaloniki, Macedonia, Italy, Ragusa, Bosnia) after 1494, with Jews settling in the already established centres of Jewish population — the major trade centres of Ottoman-ruled Bulgaria. The modern capital, Sofia, had communities of Romaniotes, Ashkenazim and Sephardim until 1640, when a single rabbi was appointed for all three.

In the 17th century, the ideas of Sabbatai Zevi became popular in Bulgaria, with supporters of his movement like Nathan of Gaza and Samuel Primo being active in Sofia. Jews continued to settle in various parts of the country (such as the new trade centres like Pazardzhik), extending their economic activities due to the privileges they were given and the banishment of many ragusan merchants after they took part in the Chiprovtsi Uprising of 1688.

Independent Bulgaria

With Bulgaria being liberated from Ottoman rule after the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78 and some small-scale looting of Jewish property by people regarding them as supporters of the Ottomans, the Jews in Bulgaria were secured equal rights by the Treaty of Berlin. The rabbi of Sofia, Gabriel Mercado Almosnino, together with three other Jews welcomed the Russian forces in the city and took part in the Constituent National Assembly of Bulgaria in 1879.

Jews were drafted in the Bulgarian army and participated in the Serbo-Bulgarian War in 1885. The Treaty of Neuilly after World War I emphasized their equality. In 1936, the nationalist and anti-semitic organization Ratnik was established.

Before World War II, the percentage of Jews steadily declined compared to that of other ethnic groups, however they still grew in number. In 1920 the 16,000 Jews were 0.9% of all citizens of Bulgaria, and in 1934 there were 48,565 (or 0.8%), with more than half living in Sofia. Ladino was the dominant language in most communities, but the young often preferred Bulgarian. The Zionist movement was completely dominant among the local population ever since Hovevei Zion.

Bulgarian Jews during World War II

Monument in honour of the Bulgarian people who saved Bulgarian Jews during the Holocaust, Jaffa

During World War II, the Bulgarian Parliament and Tsar Boris III enacted the 1941 Law for the Protection of the Nation, which introduced numerous legal restrictions on Jews in Bulgaria. Specifically, the law prohibited Jews from voting, running for office, working in government positions, serving in the army, marrying or cohabitating with ethnic Bulgarians, using Bulgarian names, or owning rural land. The legislation also established quotas that limited the number of Jews in Bulgarian universities. Not only did Jewish leaders protest the law, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, Bulgarian Workers' Party officials, twenty-one writers, and professional organizations also opposed.

Unlike some other Nazi Germany allies or German-occupied countries excluding Denmark, Bulgaria managed to save its entire 48,000-strong Jewish population during World War II from deportation to concentration camps, with Dimitar Peshev playing a crucial role in preventing the deportations, as well as Bulgarian Church officials and ordinary citizens. The story of the Bulgarian Jews during World War II has been told in "Beyond Hitler's Grasp: The Heroic Rescue of Bulgaria's Jews" by Michael Bar-Zohar, an Israeli historian, politician and former Knesset member who was born in Bulgaria. On the subject is also a book by Tzvetan Todorov, a French intellectual born in Bulgaria and the Director of Research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (C.N.R.S.) in Paris. Todorov wrote "The Fragility of Goodness: Why Bulgaria's Jews Survived the Holocaust" (published by Princeton Univ. Press), where he uses letters, diaries, government reports and memoirs to reconstruct what happened in Bulgaria during World War II, which led to the preservation of the lives of 50,000 Bulgarian Jews.

Bulgarian authorities deported the majority of the Jews (non-Bulgarian citizens) in the areas of Bulgarian occupation zone in Greece and Yugoslavia which were under Bulgarian administration during the war. Thus, 4,500 Jews from Greek Thrace and Eastern Macedonia reached Poland guarded by Bulgarian policemen, while 7,144 from Bulgarian occupied Vardar Macedonia and Pomoravlje reached Treblinka. None of them survived. Although Bulgaria had effectively occupied the regions immediately beyond its borders, German authorities, who were in charge, recognized only the Bulgarian military administration and not the civil one. Bulgaria granted citizenship both to all ethnic Bulgarians and to others who wished so in those territories, but not to Jews that were already beyond its borders. It is important to note, however, that the territories of Greece, Macedonia and other nations occupied by Bulgaria during WW2 were not considered Bulgarian; they were only administered by Bulgaria, but Bulgaria had no say as to the affairs of these lands, following directives from its ally (at the time) Germany. As to the Jews in the sovereign state of Bulgaria, deportation to the concentration camps was denied. Furthermore, Bulgaria was officially thanked by the government of Israel despite being an ally of Nazi Germany during the first part of WWII. This story was kept secret by the Soviet Union because the fascist Bulgarian government, the King of Bulgaria and the Church were responsible for the huge public outcry at the time, causing the majority of the country to defend its Jewish population. The communist Soviet regime could not countenance credit to be given to fascists, the Church or the King, as all three were considered enemies of communism. Thus, the documentation proving the saving of Bulgaria's Jews was suppressed until the end of the Cold War in 1989. Only then did the story come to light. The number of 48 000 Jews was known to Hitler, yet not not one was deported or murdered by the Nazis.

The Bulgarian occupational zone included neither Thessaloniki, with its over 55,000 Jews, neither the Western-most part of Macedonia, including the towns of Debar, Struga, and Tetovo, which were part of Italian-occupied Albania. Bulgarian authorities did offer protection to Jews with no Bulgarians nationality, including those who had fled to Bulgaria from Nazi occupation elsewhere. Approximately 14,000, including nearly all the Jews of Bulgarian-occupied Macedonia and Thrace, were arrested by Bulgarian authorities and deported through Bulgaria, transferred to German control and then shipped to Treblinka for extermination.

After the war and the establishment of a communist government, most of the Jewish population left for Israel, leaving only several thousand today (1,363 according to the 2001 census). According to Israeli government statistics, 43,961 people from Bulgaria have emigrated to Israel between 1948 and 2006, which is the fourth largest number of all European countries, behind the Soviet Union, Romania and Poland.

Famous Bulgarian Jews

• Albert Aftalion (1874–1956), economist, from Ruse
• Mira Aroyo (b. 1977), musician and member of Ladytron, from Sofia
• Elias Canetti (1905–1994), Nobel Prize-winning writer, from Ruse
• Itzhak Fintzi (b. 1933), actor, from Sofia
• Solomon Goldstein (1884–1968/1969), communist politician, from Shumen
• Nikolay Kaufman (b. 1925), musicologist and composer, from Ruse
• Milcho Leviev (b. 1937), composer and musician, from Plovdiv
• Jacob L. Moreno (1889–1974), founder of psychodrama, father from Pleven
• Jules Pascin (1885–1930), modernist painter, from Vidin
• Isaac Passy (1928–2010), philosopher, from Plovdiv
• Solomon Passy (b. 1956), politician and former Minister of Foreign Affairs, from Plovdiv
• Valeri Petrov (b. 1920), writer, from Sofia
• Sarah-Theodora (14th century), wife of Tsar Ivan Alexander
• Angel Wagenstein (b. 1922), film director, from Plovdiv
• Alexis Weissenberg (b. 1929), pianist, from Plovdiv

Knesset members

• Binyamin Arditi (1897–1981), from Sofia
• Michael Bar-Zohar (b. 1938), from Sofia
• Shimon Bejarno (1910–1971), from Plovdiv
• Ya'akov Nehoshtan (b. 1925)
• Ya'akov Nitzani (1900–1962), from Plovdiv
• Victor Shem-Tov (b. 1915), from Samokov
• Emanuel Zisman (1935–2009)

See also

• List of synagogues in Bulgaria

References

• "The Virtual Jewish History Tour Bulgaria". Jewish Virtual Library. Retrieved 2006-11-26.
• "Историческа справка за евреите в България" (in Bulgarian). OMDA. Retrieved 2006-11-26.
• "The Optimists: A film about the Rescue of the Bulgarian Jews during the Holocaust". 2001. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |director= ignored (help)
• Chary, Frederick B. (1972). The Bulgarian Jews and the Final Solution, 1940-1944. University of Pittsburgh Press.

Further reading

• Avraham Ben-Yakov, Encyclopaedia of the Holocaust vol. 1, pp. 263–272 (map, illus.)
• Frederick B. Chary, The Bulgarian Jews and the Final Solution 1940–1944. University of Pittsburg Press, 1972. ISBN 0-8229-3251-2
• Michael Bar-Zohar, Beyond Hitler's Grasp: The Heroic Rescue of Bulgaria's Jews. Holbrook, MA: Adams Media, 2001. ISBN 158062541X
• Pavel Stefanov, "Bulgarians and Jews throughout History," Religion in Eastern Europe, XXII,6 (2002), 1-11; http://www.georgefox.edu/academics/undergrad/departments/soc-swk/ree/Stefanov_Bulgarian%20and%20Jews_Dec%202002.pdf.
• Tzvetan Todorov, "The Fragility of Goodness: Why Bulgaria's Jews Survived the Holocaust." Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 2003. ISBN13: 978-0-691-11564-1
• Pavel Stefanov, "The Bulgarian Orthodox Church and the Holocaust: Addressing Common Misconceptions," Religion in Eastern Europe, XXVI,2 (2006), 10-19; http://www.georgefox.edu/academics/undergrad/departments/soc-swk/ree/Stefanov_The%20Bulgarian_May%202006.pdf.
• Dimana Trankova, Anthony Georgieff, "A Guide to Jewish Bulgaria," published by Vagabond Media Sofia in 2011, http://www.vagabond.bg/jewishbulgaria

External links

• Bulgarian Subject Files - Social Issues: Minorities: Jews Open Society Archives, Budapest