Reflections on a sojourn in Bulgaria

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Reflections on a sojourn in Bulgaria

Prue Salasky

As the bus barreled across the Thracian plain towards Sofia, capital of Bulgaria, it followed a five-hour straight course west from my temporary home of Burgas, an ancient port on the shores of the Black Sea. Along this route, 9,000 years of civilization have etched their narratives. The armies of Alexander the Great (and his father, Philip, before him) marched this way, as did occupying Slavs and Turks, Germans and Russians, all passing the same Neolithic mounds and once treasure-filled Thracian tombs as the modern traveler. The plain and its richly layered history never failed to spark my imaginings. That day, i was further entranced by my first glimpse of storks, their spectral white figures harbingers of new life since ancient times. i had no inkling that this would likely be my last time traversing the distinctive landscape, its spring-touched fertile land rimmed by the Balkan Mountains on the horizon.

After six months of a 10-month teaching assignment through the U.S. Fulbright program, i was taking a week’s personal leave, flying from Sofia to attend my daughter’s wedding in Baltimore. i was filled with anticipation at reuniting with my family to celebrate such an auspicious occasion, but also excited to continue my Balkan adventure. i had plans to visit istanbul, Kiev, Odessa, and israel, and every weekend promised visits from family and friends.

Then, fate intervened: After my arrival in Baltimore and just one day before the March 14 wedding, Fulbright cancelled all its programs worldwide due to the novel coronavirus pandemic and sent everyone home—effective immediately. My foray into Eastern Europe was abruptly over, with no time to return for goodbyes or even to collect my belongings.

Two days later, i returned home to Norfolk and started the readjustment to U.S. life in the COVid-19 era. Meanwhile, i mourned the loss of an additional four months to dig into the fascinating culture, language, and history of Bulgaria.

History and geography

As a nation, Bulgaria dates to 681 CE, making it the oldest continuous civilization in Europe, but its land was inhabited centuries earlier by groups from the pre-literate, metalworking Thracians to Romans, Greeks, and Romaniote Jewish communities. There is layer upon layer of history to uncover in this intriguing and beautiful land, which also has the greatest biodiversity in Europe thanks to its location regarding glacial retreat. imagine a place the size of Virginia bounded by half a dozen neighbors, but instead of Maryland, West Virginia, and North Carolina, the shared borders include shifting lines with Greece, Romania, Serbia, and Turkey. in its most recent glory days, starting in 1878 when with Russian help it reclaimed independence after 500 years of Ottoman rule (aka “the Turkish yoke”) and ending with World War i, Bulgaria stretched almost the width of the Balkan peninsula, touching the Aegean Sea in the south and the Black Sea to the east. in its heyday in the 10th century, it stretched still farther to the ionian Sea. Today, the Balkan nation remains sandwiched between larger powers, bounded by the River danube to the north with the Black Sea its only remaining coastline. it has a still-declining population of 7 million, almost a third of whom live in and around Sofia, down from a peak of 9 million under the Soviets in the 1980s. initially neutral, then allied with Germany in WWii, Bulgaria and neighboring Romania changed sides in the waning years of the war, and both fell into the Soviet sphere between 1945 and 1989. Now a member of both NATO and the EU, Bulgaria is on course to adopt the Euro in 2023. Purportedly, as many as two million young Bulgarians currently live and work overseas in search of economic opportunity.

Buffeted by so many influences, Bulgaria has a proud, but understated culture, one in which people reveal themselves and their connections slowly.

For me, the country had multiple lures: it offered an intriguing location, poised at the juncture of Europe and Asia; from high school Russian studies i was familiar with the Cyrillic alphabet, in actuality invented by Bulgarian clerics, which i naively thought would make language acquisition a breeze; as a student of history it offered an unparalleled opportunity to see up-close a post-Soviet society struggling to establish and maintain the institutions and mindset necessary to democracy; and professionally i had the chance to practice my language-teaching skills gained through a recent Master’s degree in Applied Linguistics. And, not least, it halved the distance between me Massive brass chandelier in synagogue in Sofia

and my family in London. it didn’t disappoint on any of those would likely have swastikas carved into counts, but it also had an unanticipated them. All true, and hard to reconcile with impact: for the first time i didn’t just know the strikingly gentle, modest, inclusive, about the complete and utter devastation and caring people i met. wrought by the Holocaust across Europe, At a U.S. Embassy presentation, i but i felt it in lives and communities lost. sought out the resident physician, a New The ghosts were everywhere visible. Yorker married to a secular israeli, and Learning the basics community. He said he attended holiOur program started with a 10-day dawn- day services solo at Sofia’s magnificently to-dusk orientation in Sofia on everything restored 1909 synagogue, the largest in from teaching and language to customs, the Balkans and third largest in Europe, food, and holidays. during this, i and and that he and his wife kept a kosher my 30 U.S. colleagues (average age 22.5 home. When pressed about anti-Semiyears) learned that 85 percent of the pop- tism, he also mentioned, but dismissed ulation identify as Orthodox Christian, the Lukov March held in Sofia each 10 percent as Muslim, and 5 percent as February. Though no longer sanctioned “other.” The country’s estimated 2,000 to by the government, the march continues 6,000 Jews (most sources cite the lower to attract thousands of neo-Nazis to honor figure) don’t number sufficiently to even the memory of the Nazi-sympathizing rate a mention. For me, in all our tours, Bulgarian general. talks, and outings, the very absence of “You will find that Bulgarians take any mention was striking. By contrast, there were frequent references to the Roma, a vilified and growing minority often referred to as “gypsies,” possibly 10 percent or more of the population, who were also subjected to Nazi atrocities.

We were constantly warned about a lack of tolerance for diversity, to expect racism and the free use of the ‘n’ word, and

queried him about Jewish life in the that many school desks Square of tolerance.

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their religion lightly,” the doctor said in explanation of this apparent conflict between tolerance and open prejudice. Over the ensuing months his words rang true. Certainly, Orthodox Christianity is culturally embedded: there are churches and monasteries galore, innumerable saints’ days offer reasons to celebrate, and age-old customs, such as the Nestinari icon-bearing firewalkers, continue. despite a constitution that endorses separation of church and state, Orthodox priests often have a role in official state and city celebrations. However, church attendance hasn’t recovered from 45 years of communist rule and is largely confined to major holidays. Likewise, there’s no recognition of any day as a Sabbath, with school functions and training happening at all hours on weekends. As to the Muslim 10 percent, there are active mosques in only the major cities, and in six months i never observed anyone in traditional dress. The most passion i encountered on the subject of beliefs came from students expressing fiercely held atheistic views. it was in keeping then, on our finalday walking tour of Sofia, when the guide stopped in the Square of Tolerance, so called for the side-by-side Synagogue, Catholic, and Orthodox churches and Mosque (the only Mosque remaining from 400 extant under the Ottomans), and explained that the muezzin foregoes two of the five daily calls to worship in order to comply with the city’s noise ordinance. He then introduced the story of how Bulgaria saved its 50,000-strong Jewish population in World War ii, including shout-outs to the then-head of the Orthodox Church for being prepared to give up his own life; to ruler Tsar Boris iii for his procrastination or intentional obstruction (no one’s sure which) to Nazi deportation demands; and to the people of Bulgaria for protecting their Jewish neighbors.

Bulgarian Jews in WWII

The history of the Jews in Bulgaria goes back 2,000 years to Romaniote groups, later followed by small Ashkenazi settlements in cities along its northern border. By WW ii, however, the vast majority of the 50,000 Jewish citizens were Sephardic with roots in the 1492 expulsion from Spain, L ad i no speakers who uniquely wrote the language in Bulgarian Cyrillic script.

Bulgaria carries the distinction of being one of only two Eastern European countries during World War ii to protect their Jewish populations, the other being Muslim-majority Albania, which took in and sheltered Jewish refugees. in recent years, Jewish organizations have donated prominent “thank you” sculptures to several towns to honor the Bulgarian people for their protection, the message mixing gratitude with a caution against a repeat of the horrors of the Holocaust. The plaques stand in stark contrast to both the somber, heart-wrenching Holocaust Memorial built in Bucharest in 2009 to commemorate the deaths of 280,000 Romanian Jews (and thousands of Roma) in which the blame is laid squarely with the Romanians themselves, and the “Red Cross” Concentration Camp Museum in Nis, Serbia, so close to the city center as to make it crystal clear that residents must have been aware of the atrocities perpetrated there.

However, Bulgaria’s story is not straightforward. in 1940, before any formal alliance with Germany, Bulgaria enacted discriminatory laws regarding Jewish identification, along with housing restrictions and curfews, and in March 1943 it allowed the deportation to Nazi camps of more than 11,300 Jews from territories it controlled outside its borders. Sofia resident Leah davcheva (mother of a friend of one of my daughters) recalled how her father was in a forced labor camp in the southwest part of the country at that time. From there, he witnessed trains carrying Jews from Greece and northern Macedonia to Treblinka and he warned Leah to never forget that they were Bulgarian trains protected by Bulgarian soldiers. Nearly all those transported died in the camps, a sobering contrast to the last-minute rescue of Jews within Bulgaria’s own borders. i asked Sofia native, Prof. Joseph Benatov, director of Modern Hebrew Studies at U of P, about this discrepancy in treatment. He explained that in March 1943 the Bulgarian administration had secretly agreed to German demands for the deportation of 20,000 Jews, to include those within Bulgaria as well as the 11,000-plus beyond its borders as a quid pro quo for Bulgaria’s desired territorial expansion. However, when the extra-territorial deportations in Greece and Macedonia began, the information leaked, and dimitar Peshev, an influential politician from Kyustendil, set the internal rescue in Bulgaria in motion. Peshev, who was deputy speaker of the Bulgarian parliament and a member of the majority ruling party, was looking after his constituents, his friends and neighbors. With support from Orthodox Church leaders and multiple others who had already publicly opposed the discriminatory 1940 laws, Peshev won a last-minute reprieve and a delay. Two months later, in May 1943, presented with two courses of action, Tsar Boris iii chose the life-saving option of dispersal rather than deportation.

Still, after the war, when the Sovietbacked communist regime took over, 48,000 Jews left Bulgaria voluntarily

Holocaust Memorial in Bucharest.

for the new state of israel, more than three-quarters between October 1948 and the following May, according to heritageabroad.com.

To read more about Jewish life in Sofia and beyond in Bulgaria, go to JewishNewsVa.org or read it in the next issue of Jewish News.