The Jews of Bulgaria – Before, During, & After WWII
Before the War
There is no clear data when the first Jews appeared in Bulgarian lands. According to some researchers, this occurred shortly after the destruction of the First Temple (sixth century BCE), but the prevailing opinions are that the first settlers appeared in the period immediately before or after the Second Temple was destroyed (first century CE). There was a Jewish settlement in the region from the time of the Roman emperor Caligula (AD 37-41) while a Latin inscription from the late second century speaks about the existence of a Jewish community in the village of Oeskus near Nikopol. The inscription is mentioned also by Archisynagogus Joseph. In the center of Plovdiv were found the remains of an ancient synagogue from the 3rd century, when the city was under the control of the Severians. The synagogue was destroyed during the reign of Emperor Arcadius and the various decrees of the Byzantine emperors from this period speak about persecution of Jews and the destruction of synagogues in Thrace and Illyria.
During the reign of Emperor Leo III (718-741) and his persecution of Jews, the majority of the Jews crossed the border and settled in the territory of the First Bulgarian State. They obviously had an influence over the Khan’s family. Part of the 106 questions submitted on behalf of Khan Boris I to Pope Nicholas I had a Jewish focus: What has to be done with the first fruits of the harvest? Which is the day of rest – Saturday or Sunday? Which animals and birds can be eaten? Is it wrong to eat an animal if it is not slaughtered in a certain way? Should funeral rites be provided to someone who committed suicide? etc. The early Christian church in Bulgaria had good relations with the Jewish population, even the monks Cyril and Methodius, used the help of Jewish teachers from their hometown Thessaloniki in the preparation of their literary work.
There is evidence of a Jewish settlement in Nikopol from 967. In the early 12th century Leo Mung born as a Jew and a student of the Bulgarian Talmudist Tobiah ben Eliezer, converted to Christianity and became archbishop of the diocese of Ohrid and Bulgaria. Bogomilism which spread throughout Bulgaria during the 11th century, denied most of the books of the Old Testament (Torah), but opened interest in Judaism as the source of Christian doctrines. The Bulgarian attitude towards the Jews at that time was quite favorable: Jewish merchants from Italy and Dubrovnik, who settled in Bulgaria, received royal privileges. During the Crusades, many Jews who fled the massacres in the west settled in the Second Bulgarian Kingdom. Jacob ben Eliyahu in his letters to the apostate Pablo Christiani mentions two Jews who were thrown from the Tsarevets hill because they did not obey the order of Tsar Ivan Assen II to pull out the eyes of Thessaloniki King Theodore Comnenus Angel.
Tsar Ivan Alexander (1331-1371) married a Jewish girl named Sarah, who took the name Theodora at her baptizing. The struggle of the church against heresy also affected Jews. The Church Convention of 1352 excluded Jews and heretics from the church.
The main part of the Bulgarian Jewish community until the 15 Century belonged to Romaniote / Vizayntian type. Only a small part of them spoke Bulgarian. Romaniotes had their special prayer service, which was subsequently replaced by the Sephardic (Spanish) one. Romaniotes did not accept the decrees of the rabbis of Western Europe and to a very late stage practiced polygamy, although it was prohibited in the west in the 10th century. Among the most famous romaniote rabbis were Abraham Semo of the 15th century who lived in Sofia and Rabbi Joseph ben Isaac ibn Ezra of the late 16th century, who was known for his book Massa Melech.
Many Jews arrived in Bulgaria from Hungary after the expulsion of 1376. These Hungarian Jews had their traditions, but became part of the nascent Ashkenazi (German) community in the Bulgarian lands. A famous rabbi was Rabbi Shalom Ashkenazi of Neustadt, who opened a yeshiva (Talmudic academy) in Vidin. His student was Rabbi Dosa the Greek author of Perush ve Tosafot, which is a large commentary on Rashi on the Torah authored around 1430.
In the time of the Ottoman conquest of Bulgarian lands, Jews were living in Vidin, Nikopol, Silistra, Pleven, Sofia, Yambol, Philippopolis (now Plovdiv) and Stara Zagora. Jews came from Bavaria, which banished its Jews in 1470 and according to various travelers in Sofia at that time, Yiddish could often be heard in the street. Although they accepted part of the Sephardic tradition, these Jews retained their character and had their own synagogue. Their prayer book was printed in 1550 in Thessaloniki by Rabbi Binyamin Halevy Ashkenazi from Nuremberg, who was also chief rabbi of the Sofia Ashkenazi community.
Sephardi Jews reached the Bulgarian lands around 1494, and settled in commercial centers, which already had Jewish communities. They arrived from Thessaloniki via Macedonia and from Italy via Dubrovnik and Bosnia. Until 1640 Sofia had three distinct Jewish communities – Romaniote, Ashkenazi and Sephardic and the city had a chief rabbi for the three communities. Rabbi Levi ben Habib lived for a short period of time in Pleven, and Rabbi Yosef Karo lived 13 years in Nikopol (1523-1536). Karo established a yeshiva in the city and here he wrote his great book Beit Yosef. In the 17th century Jews in Bulgarian lands experienced the pseudo–messianic movement of Shabtai Zvi. His supporters Samuel Primo and Nathan of Gaza were active in Sofia around 1673.
Jews were mainly engaged in trade in the region of Turkey, Wallachia, Moldavia, Dubrovnik, and Venice. Jewish traders had different privileges. One of the most important commercial cities in the 16th century was Tatar Pazardzhik, where Jewish merchants from Thessaloniki settled after the war with Venice from 1571 to 1573. They created good relations with the traders in Sofia and some of them settled in the city. Merchants from Skopje bought clothes from Thessaloniki and sold them in Sofia and neighboring towns. In 1593 Sinan Pasha organized an annual fair in Uzundzhovo, near Haskovo in which Jews from Western Europe and the European part of Turkey participated. Jews also occupied government posts. At the beginning of the 19th century, Bakish from Tatar Pazardzhik held a high position at the Sultan and authored a law on unification of money and coins in the Ottoman Empire.
In 1878 fires, lootings, and riots broke out in Sofia, especially with the departure of the Turkish forces. Jews organized their own militia and fire brigade to prevent the Turks from burning the city.Тhe fire brigade remained after the liberation. Among those who welcomed the Russian troops led by General Gurko, was the chief Rabbi of Sofia – Mercado Almoznino along with three other Jews. During the war, Jewish property was seized in Vidin, Svishtov and Kazanlak, where locals considered the Jews to be supporters of the Ottoman Empire, and in some places the Jews were expelled. They left for Adrianople and Constantinople. Before the Berlin Congress of 1878 was held, the rights of the Jews in the new state were discussed. The new treaty itself obliged the Balkan countries to give equal rights to the Jews. Chief Rabbi Gabriel Almoznino participated as a Jewish delegate at the signing of the Turnovo Constitution and he became the first Bulgarian Chief Rabbi. In 1880 an official ordinance marked the beginning of the regulation of Jewish organizations. Jews served as councilors in municipalities. Despite equal rights, many of the parties in the parliament had anti-Semitic rhetoric and peasants avoided selling land to Jews. In some places there were blood libels.
In 1885 during the war between Serbia and Bulgaria, Jews were drafted into the Bulgarian army for the first time. They actively participated in the wars for national unification in the early 20th century.
In the decades before World War II, the relative percentage of Jews in the Bulgarian society gradually decreased due to a lower birth rate. In 1920, 16 000 Jews lived in the country amounting to 0.9% of the population. In 1926, they were 0.85%. According to the census of 1934, the country had 48, 565 Jews who represented 0.8 % of the population. In the mid-30s more than half of the Jews in Bulgaria lived in Sofia. Most dealt in trade and were self-employed. In the years before World War II the number of people who identified themselves with the Jewish national cause increased. The younger generation mainly communicated in Bulgarian, unlike their parents who communicated in Ladino.
Bulgarian Jewry was extremely active in the Zionist movement. Three Bulgarian delegates participated in the First Zionist Congress in Basel in 1907 – Zvi Belkovsky, Karl Herbst and Yehoshua Kalev. Before the Congress, Bulgarian Jews established the settlement Har Tuv in the land of Israel. There was also a significant immigration to other countries. In 1900 a number of Jews settled in Kefken, Turkey on the Black Sea. Between 1919-1948 over 7,000 Jews from Bulgaria immigrated to Palestine.
At the end of World War I, Serbian troops reconquered Macedonia from Bulgaria. Under the provisions of the Treaty of Neuilly, signed in November 1919, the victorious Entente powers confirmed the incorporation of Macedonia into the newly constructed state of Yugoslavia and required Bulgaria to cede Thrace to Greece. The treaty established a limit of 20,000 armed soldiers permitted in the Bulgarian forces. A popularly elected Bulgarian government forced King Ferdinand to abdicate in the autumn of 1918. Ferdinand’s son, Boris ascended the throne as Tsar Boris III.
Between 1919 and 1945, Bulgaria was one of several kingdoms located in southeastern Europe, an area often referred to as the Balkans. In 1934, Bulgaria had a population of more than six million people. In that year, Jews constituted 0.8 percent of the total population, or roughly 50,000 individuals.
In 1935, Boris established a royal dictatorship. Under various governments since 1923, the Bulgarian regime supported Italian policy in attempting to destabilize Yugoslavia, in the hopes of acquiring Macedonia. After 1935, Boris aligned the country increasingly with Germany with the Nazi aim of destroying the postwar peace treaty system. Boris also removed all restrictions on Bulgaria’s armed forces.
A gathering of Bulgarian Jews in Sofia in the interwar period
During the War
Bulgarians and Jews lived together in a tolerant and loyal manner for centuries. The very first Bulgarian Constitution, adopted upon the Liberation of Bulgaria from Ottoman Rule, guaranteed the political equality of the ethnic and religious minorities in a period when Jews had a major role not only in the economic, but also in the political and cultural life of the country. Several Bulgarian Jews were internationally recognized individuals like the painter Jules Pascin, originally from Vidin and the Nobel Prize winner for literature Elias Canetti, born in Rousse, as well as many other members of the Bulgarian intellectual elite. The Bulgarian Jewish Community maintained excellent relations with the state and in 1909 the Bulgarian royal family attended the grand opening of the impressive new Sofia Synagogue – the third largest in Europe and among the most beautiful.
As loyal subjects of the Bulgarian state, the Jews took part in the wars for Bulgarian national unification. During the Serb-Bulgarian War of 1885 some Jews reached the rank of colonel in the Bulgarian army. Names of some Jewish soldiers and officers are prominent during the Balkan wars of 1912-1913 and during the First World War. The total number of Jews killed in these wars is 952.
As mentioned above, in the period between the two world wars the Jewish Community in Sofia accounted for around 0.8% of the total Bulgarian population, reaching approximately 50 000 people. More than half of them lived in the capital – Sofia. Almost 90% of them were born in Bulgaria, 92% were Bulgarian subjects and their total share in the Bulgarian business and trade was 5.17%. Together with the Greeks and the Armenians, the Jews were representatives of the commerce in the country only historically, as the number of wealthy Jews was very low.
Bulgaria’s small Jewish minority was well-integrated into wider Bulgarian society prior to World War II. They experienced relatively low levels of antisemitism. With Bulgaria’s declaration of neutrality at the onset of the war, few anticipated the persecution to come. In 1940, however, as German and Bulgarian ties deepened, Bulgaria proposed a ‘Law for the Defence of the Nation,’ modelled on the Nuremberg laws, that sought to ban Jews from voting, holding public office, marrying Bulgarians, holding any leadership or management role, or changing residence. The government was surprised at the strong negative public reaction to the proposed law, which included widespread public protests.
Bulgaria, as a potential beneficiary of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact in August 1939, had competed with other such nations to curry favour with Nazi Germany by passing antisemitic legislation. Bulgaria was economically dependent on Germany, with 65% of Bulgaria’s trade in 1939 accounted for by Germany, and militarily bound by an arms deal. Bulgarian extreme nationalists lobbied for a return to the enlarged borders of the 1878 Treaty of San Stefano. On 7 September 1940, Southern Dobruja, lost to Romania under the 1913 Treaty of Bucharest, was returned to Bulgarian control by the Treaty of Craiova, formulated under German pressure. A citizenship law followed on 21 November 1940, which transferred Bulgarian citizenship to the inhabitants of the annexed territory, including around 500 Jews, alongside Roma, Greeks, Turks, and Romanians who lived in the area. This policy was not implemented in the territories occupied by Bulgaria during the war.
In late 1938 and early 1939 Bulgarian police officials and the Interior Ministry were already increasingly opposed to the admittance of Jewish refugees from persecution in Central Europe. In response to a query by British diplomats in Sofia, the Foreign Ministry confirmed the policy that from April 1939, Jews from Germany, Romania, Poland, Italy, and what remained of Czechoslovakia (and later Hungary) would be required to obtain consent from the ministry to secure entry, transit, or passage visas. Nevertheless, at least 430 visas (and probably around 1,000) were issued by Bulgarian diplomats to foreign Jews, of which there were as many as 4,000 in Bulgaria in 1941. On 1 April 1941 the Police Directorate allowed the departure of 302 Jewish refugees, mostly underage, from Central Europe for the express purpose of Bulgaria “freeing itself from the foreign element“.
In 1939 Jews who were foreign citizens were forced to leave Bulgaria. This act marked the beginning of the anti-Jewish propaganda and legislation. Starting in July 1940, Bulgarian authorities began to institute discriminatory policies against Jews. In December 1940, 352 members of the Bulgarian Jewish community boarded the S.S. Salvador at Varna bound for Palestine. The ship sank after running aground 100 metres off the coast of Silivri, west of Istanbul. 223 passengers drowned or died of exposure to the cold. Half of the 123 survivors were sent back to Bulgaria, while the remainder were allowed to board the Darien II and continue to Palestine, where they were imprisoned at Atlit by the British Mandate authorities.
A few days later, Tsar Boris III enacted the Law for Protection of the Nation, which had been introduced to the Bulgarian Parliament the preceding October and passed by parliament on 24 December 1940, which imposed numerous legal restrictions on Jews in Bulgaria. The bill was proposed to parliament by Petar Gabrovski, Interior Minister and former Ratnik leader in October 1940. Enforced on January 24, 1941, it was written on the model of the Nuremberg Laws. The law forbade mixed marriages, the access to a set of professions, and imposed a 20% additional tax on any Jewish property. Jews were obliged to “wear Davidic badges, to respect curfews, to buy food from particular shops, to avoid public areas and even to stop discussing political and social matters.“ There were persecuted alongside secret societies like the Freemasons.
Ratniks’ protégé, government lawyer and fellow Ratnik, Alexander Belev, had been sent to study the 1933 Nuremberg Laws in Germany and was closely involved in its drafting. Modelled on this precedent, the law targeted Jews, together with Freemasonry and other targeted organizations deemed “threatening” to Bulgarian national security. 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. Authorities began confiscating all radios and telephones owned by Jews, and Jews were forced to pay a one-time tax of 20 percent of their net worth. The legislation also established quotas that limited the number of Jews in Bulgarian universities. The law was protested not only by Jewish leaders, but also by the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, some professional organizations, and twenty-one authors. Later that year in March 1941, the Kingdom of Bulgaria acceded to German demands and entered into a military alliance with the Axis Powers.
After the start of war, in 1940 “labour units” were established as a separate corps “used to enforce anti-Jewish policies during World War Two” as part of an overall “deprivation” plan. In August 1941, at the request of Adolf-Heinz Beckerle – German minister-plenipotentiary at Sofia – the War Ministry relinquished control of all Jewish forced labour to the Ministry of Buildings, Roads, and Public Works. Mandatory conscription applied from August 1941: initially men 20–44 were drafted, with the age limit rising to 45 in July 1942, and 50 a year later. Bulgarians replaced Jews in the commands of the Jewish labour units, which were no longer entitled to uniforms. On 29 January 1942, new all-Jewish forced labour battalions were announced; their number was doubled to twenty-four by the end of 1942. Jewish units were separated from the other ethnicities – three quarters of the forced labour battalions were from minorities: Turks, Russians, and residents of the territories occupied by Bulgaria – the rest were drawn from the Bulgarian unemployed.
The Jews in forced labour were faced with discriminatory policies which became stricter as time went on; with increasing length of service and decreasing the allowance of food, rest, and days off. On 14 July 1942 a disciplinary unit was established to impose new punitive strictures: deprivation of mattresses or hot food, a “bread-and-water diet”, and the barring of visitors for months at a time. As the war progressed, and round-ups of Jews began in 1943, Jews made more numerous efforts to escape and punishments became increasingly harsh.
Despite the opposition, some antisemitic parliamentarians strongly supported the measure, while others did not regard it as important enough to oppose, and the government proceeded with the law. Over the course of 1941 and 1942, conditions slowly worsened for the Jews in Bulgaria. Jews were subject to onerous taxation, Jewish men aged 20–46 were required to undertake forced labour, a night-time curfew was imposed, and there was a range of other restrictions. As 1942 progressed, the Bulgarian government came under increasing pressure from Nazi Germany to intensify its anti-Jewish policies and prepare to deport its Jews ‘to the East.’ The German legation in Sofia was instructed to make arrangements for the ‘Final Solution.’
When Bulgaria vacillated in response to Nazi requests for deportations, Eichmann sent a special envoy to the country to remedy the situation. SS Hauptsturmführer Theodor Dannecker, who had previously been in France, had a reputation for being efficient, for placing the deportation of the Jews above all else, and for being willing to employ extreme methods to achieve his goal.
A ‘deportation specialist’ and trusted confidante of Eichmann, between 1942 and 1945 he was responsible for arranging the transportation of hundreds of thousands of Jews to concentration and extermination camps. Following his arrival in Sofia, Dannecker pressured the Commissariat for Jewish Affairs and the Minister of Internal Affairs, eventually reaching an agreement. The Jews from Thrace and Macedonia would be first to be deported, in a top-secret arrangement.
Thrace and Macedonia had been invaded by Nazi Germany and given to Bulgaria to occupy in 1941, to the great joy of the Bulgarian people (who perceived them as lost Bulgarian territories). Whereas all other inhabitants had been offered Bulgarian citizenship, the Bulgarian government specifically excluded Jews from this offer, due to the prevailing antisemitism. They were thus uniquely vulnerable. But the secret agreement went further. It specified some 20,000 Jews to be deported in the first instance, despite there being only 12,000 or so Jews residing in Thrace and Macedonia. And while the agreement specified deportations were ‘from the new Bulgarian lands Thrace and Macedonia’, at some point during or after the signing this clause was crossed out with ink. The figure of 20,000 effectively meant that for the agreement to be fulfilled, 8,000 Bulgarian Jewish citizens would also need to be deported.
At 4a.m. on 4 March 1943, the deportations from Thrace began. Jews were rounded up and deported to temporary concentration centers in south-west Bulgaria, in preparation for deportation to the death camps in the East. At the same time, the Commissariat for Jewish Affairs began urgently compiling lists of rich and prominent Jews throughout Bulgaria, singling them out for deportation. In the south-west, where local Jews might witness the plight of their brethren, all Jews were to be targeted. The operation was conducted with the upmost secrecy, but rumors began to spread. In the town of Kyustendil, news of the impending deportation of the entire Jewish population caused widespread outrage, and within hours a delegation had been organized to travel to the capital Sofia and advocate on behalf of the Jews. As the delegation boarded their train, long lines of cattle cars were already waiting at the station for the deportation of the Jews.
In Sofia, the delegation met with Deputy Speaker of the Parliament and Member for Kyustendil, Dimitar Peshev. Peshev had grown up in Kyustendil and had Jewish friends in his childhood. A few days earlier, he had heard rumors regarding the secret deportation plans, but the meeting provided clear and verifiable evidence. Peshev’s immediate response was that ‘the reputation of the Bulgarian people must not be blackened in this way’.
Peshev asked the group to meet him at the National Assembly at 3pm that afternoon. Once there, Peshev attempted to engineer a meeting with Prime Minister Filov, but Filov refused to meet with him or the delegation. Peshev, with a group of parliamentary colleagues, then met with Interior Minister Gabrovski. After a series of tense and heated discussions, it was finally agreed that the deportations of the Jews from ‘old’ Bulgaria would be postponed. The news came with just hours to spare—the police had been scheduled to commence the first round-ups at midnight that evening. Indeed, so close was the timing that Peshev himself rang Kyustendil’s governor to ensure the change of plans was communicated in time. In some cities, where the telegrams did not arrive until the next day, the Jews were rounded up and taken to temporary concentration centers in preparation for deportation, before being released the next day.
While the deportations of Bulgarian Jews had been halted temporarily, they were not yet safe. Indeed, German Ambassador Beckerle was already maneuvering for the deportations to recommence. In a report to the Gestapo, Beckerle noted ‘Prime Minister Filov has explicitly assured the German Ambassador that the deportation of Jews from the old territories of Bulgaria will be carried out … [and] will be resumed very shortly’.
Peshev acted quickly and decisively. He drafted a letter to the Prime Minister vigorously protesting the deportations and obtained the signatures of 42 parliamentary colleagues in support. Prime Minister Filov responded with fury, and the issue cost Peshev his career. Yet Peshev’s actions, and the publicity and subsequent public disapproval of the planned deportations, had the desired result. The Bulgarian government could not proceed with deporting its Jewish citizens, at least for a time. For the Jews in Bulgarian-occupied Thrace and Macedonia, however, there was no reprieve.
By the end of March 1943, 7,160 Jews from Macedonia, 4,075 from Thrace and 158 from the Pirot region (a tiny part of Serbia occupied by Bulgaria in 1941) had been rounded up for deportation. A few managed to obtain release, such as foreign citizens. Of the 11,343 people deported to Treblinka, there were less than 100 survivors.
At this point, there were powerful forces in Bulgaria both for and against the deportation of the Jews. The Bulgarian Orthodox Church, the leading religious authority in Bulgaria, was firmly opposed to the deportations. The communist and social democratic opposition was also opposed, while the position of the King was ambiguous. There were powerful elements within the government firmly advocating for deportation, including the Prime Minister and the Director of the Commissariat for Jewish Affairs. While the majority of the Bulgarian public appeared to oppose the antisemitic policies, there were those firmly in favour of the deportations (the Holy Synod). Public figures supporting the Jews were targeted in violent campaigns.
Moreover, Nazi pressure to resume the deportations was relentless. A second secret plan to deport the Jews was developed. This time, the 25,000 Jews in Sofia were first to be deported to different locations in the provinces, conveniently located next to railways and ports from whence further deportation could occur. On 21 May, the Bulgarian cabinet approved the first stage of this plan—deportation to the provinces. Within just two days, most of Sofia’s Jews had received orders to leave the capital.
A new crisis erupted. Once again, the Jews used every contact they had to attempt to ameliorate their fate. They found significant support among the Bulgarian population. Key figures, such as opposition leaders, church leaders and others publicly protested. A Jewish protest in the capital was brutally suppressed but reinforced the widespread public support for the Jews. Following it, the Bulgarian police chief reported ‘the native Bulgarian population expresses its complete solidarity with the Jews and is taking part in their actions. Every attempt to deport the Jews has met with not only the people’s indignation, but also with their resistance. We are forced to give up our plan to resettle the Jews in Poland.’ Radio Sofia announced that in response to the demonstrations, the deportation orders had changed to exclude deportation from the country, but the Jews were still to be sent out from the capital. The pressure of the protests and internal resistance once again rendered the policy unfeasible.
While the plan no longer involved deportation out of Bulgaria, deportation to the provinces proceeded. There, the Jews endured poverty and forced labour, but worst of all, was the uncertainty as to whether they would indeed be deported to Poland. By late spring of 1943, however, it was becoming increasingly clear that the tide of the war had turned. This, combined with the strong public opposition to the deportations, proved decisive. By August 1943, Prime Minister Filov had determined that, absent German victory, it was no longer feasible to deport the Jews out of the country. As Nazi Germany faced increasing challenges on many fronts, pursuing the matter decreased as a policy priority. The situation effectively froze for many months. Over the first half of 1944, as the prospect of Allied victory grew along with international pressure on Bulgaria, conditions for the Jews began to slowly ease. By July 1944, the government was expressing regret as to its treatment of the Jews; by September Soviet forces had entered the country, and the safety of the Jews was assured.
After the War
In 1945, the Jewish population of Bulgaria was still about 50,000, its prewar level. After the war, most of the Jewish population left for Israel, leaving only about a thousand Jews living in Bulgaria today (1,162 according to the 2011 census). According to Israeli government statistics, 43,961 people from Bulgaria emigrated to Israel between 1948 and 2006, making Bulgarian Jews the fourth largest group to come from a European country, after the Soviet Union, Romania and Poland. The various migrations outside of Bulgaria has produced descendants of Bulgarian Jews mainly in Israel, but also in the United States, Canada, Australia, and some Western European and Latin American countries.
After 1948 organized religious life gradually decreased, and in Bulgaria no rabbis remained to deal with the maintenance of schools or Jewish education. The rate of assimilation increased. Religious affairs were conducted by the Central Religious Board, which was linked to the cultural and educational organization of Jews in Bulgaria – a secular organization that inherited the Consistory in 1957 and organized cultural life of Jews in the country and represented them before the authorities. Once in two weeks the newspaper Jewish News was published, which was the only paper left of the rich Jewish journalism of the 20s and 30s.
Since the 70s the number of Jews subsequently reduced to about 5000, but limited Jewish life continued. Besides Jewish News, the Jewish community started publishing an annual collection of historical essays called Almanac. In Bulgaria at that time there was no rabbi and only the Central Sofia Synagogue was open all year round. In Plovdiv, the synagogue was only used for Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) and the Burgas synagogue was converted into a gallery. In this period there were no educational institutions for Jewish youth.
After 1978 the Chief Rabbinate was established in Sofia. In 1900 the Conference of Jewish communities created and adopted its new constitution, but the Bulgarian government did not accept it. This document described the election of the leading bodies of the synagogue, the community and the school. The separate leading committees elected their Central Council – Consistory of Bulgarian Jewry, which represented the Jewish community in Bulgaria. There was also the position of the Chief Rabbi, who was also the head of the rabbinical court in Sofia. He was responsible for the smaller religious communities and rabbinical courts in Plovdiv and Ruschuk / Ruse.
After the changes of 1989, the Jewish community was revived. In Bulgaria there were about 3000 – 4000 Jews, mainly in Sofia. Since 1989, the Organization of Jews in Bulgaria “Shalom” was established, which inherited the cultural and educational organization “The Consistory” and took on the task of restoring Jewish life. In 1992, School 134 in Sofia began teaching Hebrew, and the community began organizing children’s camps, youth programs and programs for the middle aged. The social activity and support of the community were especially strong, especially in the initial, economically difficult years of the 90s.
In 1998, Bulgarian Jews in the United States and a private organization, called Jewish National Fund, erected a monument in the Bulgarian Forest in Israel honouring Tsar Boris. However, in July 2003, a public committee headed by Chief Justice Moshe Bejski decided to remove the memorial because Tsar Boris had consented to the deportation of the Jews from occupied territories of Macedonia, Thrace and Pirot.
