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Jewish Heritage
The Jewish community in Bulgaria dates back to before the destruction of the second Temple (70 C.E.). Jews settled on Bulgarian soil during the Middle Ages and the Byzantine era, but the Jewish community grew most significantly after the expulsion of Spanish Jewry in 1492. The Turkish Sultan allowed Jews fleeing the Inquisition to settle in the Ottoman Empire, where they were treated with tolerance both by the authorities and by the population of the Peninsula as a whole.
These Ladino-speaking migrants, known as Sepharades, are the ancestors of almost 90 percent of the Jews in Bulgaria today. The Holocaust Anti-Jewish legislation was introduced after World War I, and popular anti-Semitism intensified throughout the 1920s, setting the stage for BulgariaÕs eventual alliance with Nazi Germany.
As part of this alliance, Bulgaria deported 20,000 Jews from Thrace and Macedonia, areas then under Bulgarian rule, to German concentration camps. In 1943, under pressure from the Third Reich, the Bulgarian Parliament passed a deportation order for the Jews in Bulgaria proper. However, all segments of Bulgarian society Ð the general population, the press, the intelligentsia, key members of Parliament, the Church, and the king Ð protested, causing the government to rescind the deportation order. Not a single Bulgarian Jew was deported.
On the eve of World War II, Bulgaria was home to approximately 48,000 Jews, who were living primarily in the capital, Sofia, and in Plovdiv. During the war years, Jews were prohibited from traveling and participating in commerce; they were forced to wear yellow stars; and some were sent to forced labor camps. The Jews of Sofia were forcibly resettled in the provinces.
In 1944, a new government repealed all anti-Jewish legislation and began to withdraw from the war. That same year, the Russians invaded Bulgaria and installed a Communist government.
With the establishment of the Jewish state, over 40,000 Bulgarian Jews made aliyah to Israel, leaving behind a small community of 9,695 Jews. By the 1950s, all Jewish activities not officially sanctioned by the Communist Party were abolished. Jewish holidays could not be celebrated except for Purim and Hanukkah, which could only be observed in specified ways. However, in private, BulgariaÕs Jews remained connected to Jewish life, closely following events in Israel and maintaining a strong feeling of solidarity with their relatives in the Jewish State.
Since 1990, BulgariaÕs Jews have been writing a new chapter in their history. They are represented today by SHALOM Ð an organization established to improve Jewish life. Now 6,000 strong, the Jewish Community of Bulgaria takes pride in its Sephardic heritage, its ties with Israel, its position in Bulgarian society, and its commitment to the revival of Bulgarian Jewish life. When you visit the Jewish Club or walk by the synagogue in downtown Sofia, you can smell the strong aroma of Turkish coffee and hear the clatter of the ladino, or Judeo-Spanish, language. The Jewish community has a distinct Mediterranean flavor since many families trace their ancestral roots to the Jewish families expelled from Spain and Portugal in the late 1400s.
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P.O. Box 446 Mill Valley, CA 94941all text & photos © 1997-03, Barbara Sansone
