Vidin

"I went over and sat with Pascin and two models who were sisters. Pascin was a very good painter and he was drunk; steadily, purposefully drunk and making good sense." The author of this is, of course, Ernest Hemingway, who liked Jules Pascin so much that he described him in a chapter in his Moveable Feast (1964). Pascin, born in Vidin in 1885, originally bore the name Julius Mordecai Pincas, but would later be known as the Prince of Montparnasse. His father, a Sephardi Jew, was a grain merchant. The family moved to Bucharest in 1892. Pascin studied in Vienna and by 1905 was already a part of the Parisian boheme. His new name, Pascin, was a partial anagram of Pincas. He spent most of his life in Paris, producing exquisite artwork and drinking in the Montparnasse cafés. Jules Pascin committed suicide in 1930. The Vidin house where he was born has not been preserved but a plaque dedicated to the artist now marks its location. A monument to Pascin was erected, in 2003. 

The Jewish monument of gratitude is located in Vidin's central square.

An inscription from Vidin's earliest identified Jewish cemetery is exhibited in the inscription collection of Regional History Museum Vidin, in a designated building by the Danube. 

The Jewish Cemetery of Vidin is located at what the locals refer to as Nula Redut, just off the road leading to Vidin Ferry Port. 

The cemetery is indeed a gruesome sight. While under Communism it was just ignored, in the turbulent years of Bulgaria's transition to democracy it was actively vandalised. Many of the porcelain portraits of the deceased have been crushed with stones and many graves have been dug up and left gaping to the sombre northern Bulgarian skies. With its broken effigies, overturned tombstones, scattered human and animal bones and graves that look as if their occupants have just risen from the ground, the huge cemetery evokes an eerie feeling of Doomsday revisited. Trees grow from inside the holes that were once tombs. The last burial at the Jewish cemetery of Vidin took place in 1965. 

The Vidin Cemetery is perhaps the best (or worst) example of the general dilapidation of Bulgaria's Jewish heritage. It stands as a monu- ment not so much to the individual people who were buried there but as a memento to a whole culture, once rich and vibrant, that has irrevocably disappeared from the Bulgarian lands. 

The grand Vidin synagogue was constructed in 1894. Located at the intersection of today's Baba Vida and Jules Pascin streets, the Vidin Synagogue outshone all other synagogues in Bulgaria. Its architecture was inspired by the Great Synagogue of Budapest. Its ornaments were crafted out of wood from Transylvania and Hungary, and its chandeliers were imported from Vienna. 

The synagogue fell into disrepair after almost all of Vidin's Jews left for Israel in the late 1940s. In 1950 the Communist authorities turned it into a warehouse. In 1964 it was declared a monument of culture but plans to convert it into a concert hall never materialised. 

Today the Vidin Synagogue is a sorry sight. It still stands there with its domes and turrets on the bank of the Danube, but it is nothing but a skeleton. Its roof has caved in, its windows have been broken, its paint has peeled off, and its prayer hall has been overwhelmed by weeds and even trees. The only remains of its former grandeur are some intricately crafted wrought-iron ornaments and a few wooden Stars of David in the windows. The building is sometimes ringed with a wire fence, but the fence door is usually unlocked and unprotected. Enter at your own peril because the structure may collapse at anytime. 

In the late 2010s, the Shalom Organisation of Bulgarian Jews donated the synagogue and its plot of land to the Vidin City Council. The intention is to use EU funds to reconstruct it as a tourist information and cultural centre.