Monument

A Second World War-era forced labour camp for Jews was located near Pleven. Nothing remains of it, but there is a small monument to Communist Jews who died there. It is located in the Kaylaka Park, next to the swimming pool. On the stone there is a five-pointed star rather than a Star of David. 

In modern Nikopol there is a plaque dedicated to famed Jewish schollar Joseph Karo and a small park called Beit Yosef, another name for his seminal work Shulchan Aruch. 

Codifying the various Jewish legal traditions, prayers, holidays, eating precepts, marriages, divorces and civil law is a huge task. The man who did it was Rabbi Joseph Karo (1488-1575). His monumental Shulchan Aruch is now known to every Jew and his abode in Safed has become a pilgrimage site. What is less known about the 16th century Jewish scholar and mystic is that he actually spent some of his life in the Bulgarian lands. 

Jospeh Karo was born in a Sephardi family in Toledo, Spain. He was expelled from his home at the age of four, in 1492. During the next several decades his family migrated through various parts of the Ottoman Empire: Adrianople, Salonica and what is now a nondescript little town at the Bulgarian shore of the River Danube, Nikopol. It was in Nikopol that Karo started work on his Kessef Mishneh, a book of commentary on Maimonides, the medieval Jewish philosopher. 

One anecdote attributed to Karo is his encounter with a zealous student. "Name the five volumes of the Shulchan Aruh," the rabbi said. The student, thinking that the rabbi had made a slip of the tongue, named the four volumes, but the rabbi asked him to name the fifth. 

"There is no fifth volume," the student said. 

"There is indeed," the rabbi said. "Common sense is the fifth volume, and if you don't have it, all your rulings will be of no use, even if you know the other four volumes by heart." 

Commemorative plaque for the inmates in forced labour camp in Nedelino in the Rhodope mountains. An estimated 6,000 men worked there in 1942-1944.

A memorial in Lom on the River Danube indicates the location from where the Aegean Thrace and Pirot Jews were deported to the death camps in Poland.

Dimitar Peshev was born in Kyustendil in 1894 and was instrumental for the rescue of the Bulgarian Jews from deportation in 1943. Under Communism his achievement was largely forgotten and he died, in poverty, in 1973. 

In 1997, eight years after the collapse of the Communist regime, he was posthumously awarded Bulgaria's highest order, Stara Planina.

The name of Dimitar Peshev, until the 1990s unknown to most Bulgarians, has been turned into a major Bulgarian historical export, mainly owing to the book by an Italian, Gabriele Nissim, entitled The Man Who Stopped Hitler. An effigy of Peshev can be found at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg and the Raoul Wallenberg Foundation has minted a medal with his portrait. He is, of course, listed in the Righteous Among the Nations at Yad Vashem. Memories of Peshev and his actions to save the Bulgarian Jews have transcended the geographic boundaries of Europe: there is the Peshev Square in Jaffa, Israel; the Peshev Plaza in Washington DC, and the Peshev Ridge, named after the Kyustendil citizen, is in the South Shetland Islands in Antarctica. 

The Jews of Kyustendil built their first synagogue in 1863 on what is now Lyuben Karavelov Street, would soon be joined by a Jewish school, as well as a cultural house including a library. It was used by two Jewish choirs, a theatre company, a sports team and a women's organisation. 

After most of the local community emigrated to Israel, in the late 1940s-early 1950s, both the synagogue and the schools were nationalised, with a couple of school rooms being left to the now minuscule Jewish community, mainly for cultural activities. In the 1950s most Jewish artefacts, including objects used in the synagogue, were donated to the Central Synagogue in Sofia. Some of them are now in the Jewish Museum. 

A mural depicting "labour and artistic freedom" in Communist Bulgaria, at the former Jewish school in Kyustendil

Initially, Kyustendil's synagogue was turned into a picture gallery showing artwork mainly by Vladimir "Master" Dimitrov (1882-1960), a native of Kyustendil and one of Bulgaria's top artists. When the city council erected a new, modern art gallery, the former synagogue fell into disrepair. At the beginning of the 1990s it was returned to the Jewish community but the damage done to it through the years of neglect had taken its toll. Besides, there were so few Jews left in Kyustendil that repairing it and turning it into a synagogue again was out of the question. The building was demolished and the plot was used for a small commercial centre now known as the Jewish Market. 

It is run by the community and there are a number of plaques to remind visitors what ground they are walking on. There is also a copy of a plaque commemorating the local Jews who died in the 1912-1918 wars. 

What makes Kyustendil interesting historically is that the house of Dimitar Peshev, the deputy speaker of parliament who was instrumental in the rescue of the Bulgarian Jews during the Second World War, was rebuilt in the 2000s and turned into a museum. It has a small collection of memorabilia associated with Peshev. 

The name of Dimitar Peshev, until the 1990s unknown to most Bulgarians, has been turned into a major Bulgarian historical export, mainly owing to the book by an Italian, Gabriele Nissim, entitled The Man Who Stopped Hitler. An effigy of Peshev can be found at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg and the Raoul Wallenberg Foundation has minted a medal with his portrait. He is, of course, listed in the Righteous Among the Nations at Yad Vashem. Memories of Peshev and his actions to save the Bulgarian Jews have transcended the geographic boundaries of Europe: there is the Peshev Square in Jaffa, Israel; the Peshev Plaza in Washington DC, and the Peshev Ridge, named after the Kyustendil citizen, is in the South Shetland Islands in Antarctica. 

In 1929, two black marble plaques were built into the wall of Dupnitsa's synagogue to commemorate local Jews who had died in the 1912-1918 wars. In 2008 the City Council erected them next to the Youth Home, the Communist structure that occupies the plot where the former synagogue used to be. In the past they have been vandalised and sprayed with swastikas, but are now clean. 

In 2021, the local council decided to move the local history museun in the former Youth Home.

Luckily for Bulgaria, it rarely makes its way into international headline news. One such instance, unfortunately, was on 18 July 2012. 

In the afternoon of that day an airplane carrying Israeli tourists landed at Bulgaria's busiest airport at the Black Sea. The visitors collected their luggage and headed toward three buses that were supposed to bring them to their hotels at the Sunny Beach resort, a few miles to the north. The buses were still parked as a bomb went off, at 5.23pm. 

Seven people were killed, including the Bulgarian driver of one of the buses, and 35 were injured. 

Investigators were quick to converge on Burgas. Security cameras revealed the bomb was planted in one of the buses' holds by a man carrying a backpack. That man had lingered on in the terminal and later mingled with the tourists as they headed outside. He was killed in the blast. 

The investigation concluded three men were responsible for the attack. They lived in Lebanon and travelled on Australian and Canadian passports. Years later the Bulgarians conceded the attack had been masterminded by Hezbollah, a claim the Israeli government had held throughout. Iran, another culprit fingered by Israel, has not admitted any responsibility. The two surviving perpetrators were never arrested. 

A curious Jewish touch to the history of Burgas was added by Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855). Born in what is now Belarus, Mickiewicz lived in what is now Lithuania, and is considered to be one of the greatest poets of what is now Poland. He is buried in Krakow's Wawel Cathedral, the burial site of Polish kings. 

Mickiewicz fiercely opposed the Russian Empire's invasion of his homeland and vowed to fight the Russians to the end. During the Crimean War in 1855 he went to Stamboul in an attempt to put together a Polish legion to fight against the Russians. He was not very successful with the Poles, but managed to gather a few hundred Jews, the "Hussars of Israel," who were ready to go into battle. The expedition never materialised. Mickiewicz travelled on to what was then Burgas, where he spent just 10 days (8-18 October 1855) in a military tent, probably stricken with malaria. He then returned to the Bosporus where he died. In the Burgas Maritime Park there is a monument to Mickiewicz, though the inscription on it is misleading.