JEWISH MUSEUM OF HISTORY

The only Jewish museum in Bulgaria was set up in the early 1990s, in an upstairs room in the Sofia Synagogue, which was used as a rehearsal hall for the Jewish Choral Society before the Second World War. Some of its exhibits started as early as 1968 with a permanent collection entitled "The Rescue of Bulgarian Jews 1941-1944." In 1992, the Shalom Organisation of Jews in Bulgaria transformed it into a larger exhibition focusing on the development and evolution of the Jewish communities throughout Bulgaria. A section of the one-room museum is dedicated to the Jews of Aegean Thrace and Vardar Macedonia who perished in the Holocaust. 

The museum is managed by the Bulgarian Culture Ministry. 

Jewish history in Bulgaria is displayed chronologically and feature photographs, lithographs and drawings. 

These represent many aspects of Jewish life in the Bulgarian lands, including famous people such as Sarah-Theodora, the Jewish-born queen in mediaeval Bulgaria; the first Chief Rabbi Gabriel Almosino; Col Moreno Grasiani, a Balkans War hero; young athletes from a Jewish sports club doing their exercises, and so on. 

Some of the photographs show the earliest dated Jewish artefact in Bulgaria, the tombstone of Archsynagogus Ioses, who lived in the Roman City of Oescus in the 2nd century CE, and the mosaics of the 3rd century synagogue in Plovdiv. 

The bulk of the museum's exhibition dates back to the 18th-20th centuries. These include artefacts sent to Sofia during and after the Great Aliyah by the now disappeared Jewish communities of Kazanlak, Samokov and Provadiya, among many others. 

Much of the museum collection is devoted to various Torahs, Torah mantles and shields, and other religious artefacts like exquisite Torah crowns and finials; Scrolls of Esther; Banylonian Talmud Zevahim, written in Salzbach in 1768; kiddush silver cups; rabbi caps; and a heavily embroidered tunic for Bar Mitzvah. 

Some bindalli, Sephardi women's festive clothes from the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, are also noteworthy. Together with some period furniture as well as embroidered fabrics and pillows, they give a good impression of the life of urban Jewish communities at the turn of the 19th century. 

Some of the artefacts have a very strong emotional value. These include a collection of yellow stars of the sort Jews were ordered to wear during the Second World War, and archive photographs of Jews in Bulgarian forced labour camps as well as portraits of internees in the provinces.