Monument

GRAVES OF BISHOPS STEFAN AND KIRIL

Bishops Kiril and Stefan, the two senior clerics who stood up in defence of the Jews in 1940-1943, were buried inside the main church of Bachkovo Monastery. On 10 March every year there is a joint Jewish-Christian memorial service. In 2009 a commemorative plaque was placed at the monastery gates. Both Kiril and Stefan are listed in the Righteous Among the Nations at Yad Vashem. 

commemorative plaque

 

PLAQUES TO KING BORIS III AND QUEEN GIOVANNA

In the 1990s these memorial stones dedicated to King Boris III and his wife were placed at the Bulgarian Forest near Jerusalem to commemorate the rescue of the Bulgarian Jews. Following protests by relatives of the Greek and Macedonian Jews who were deported from their homes to Nazi-occupied Poland, the stones were removed. Bulgaria welcomed them back – and placed them on the north side of St Sophia Church, in front of Sofia City Council, where they stand to this day.

FORMER JEWISH NEIGHBOURHOOD

Little remains of Sofia's former Jewish neighbourhoods. One of them used to be around the place of Sofia's mineral springs, to the side of the Banya Bashi Mosque. Some of the poor houses were built around a large open-air courtyard known as La Haggadah. The residents there were unable to even read the Pesach texts in Hebrew, so they usually summoned a chacham to do it for them. This neighbourhood was one of the first to be demolished as part of the grand project to modernise Sofia. In its place now stand the Sofia Central Baths (the Regional History Museum Sofia occupies the building) and the Central Department Store. 

After the massive construction of the city, which started in 1889, the residents of La Haggadah were relocated to Üçbunar, a relatively new neighbourhood in the western reaches of modern Pirotska Street, which was an authentic working-class area. Infamous for the huge quantities of mud in its streets, Üçbunar was shared by impoverished Jews and Bulgarian immigrants from Macedonia and Thrace. The well-to-do Jews lived in their own neighbourhoods. One of them is roughly in the area between Maria Louisa Boulevard, Ekzarh Yosif Street, Vasil Levski Boulevard and Slivnitsa Boulevard. Many of these sometimes gorgeous houses were damaged during the Allied bombings of Sofia, and what remained was nationalised by the Communists after 1944. Some of these properties were returned to their rightful owners in the 1990s, but many were demolished to make room for the construction boom of the 2000s. In the 2010s the former neighbourhood of the richer Jews attracted some long overdue interest. Sofia City Council spotted the potential of the frayed yet very centrally-located area as a would-be arts neighbourhood. As a result, hip bars, small arts shops, galleries and boutique restaurants have been sprouting here and there, with varying success. In recent times, Sofia City Council has even commissioned graffiti artists to spruce up the area. 

Jewish neighbourhood Sofia

Dondukov Boulevard is a division line in Sofia's Jewish past. A well-to-do Jewish neighbourhood existed north of it, while in 1942-1944 the infamous Commissariat for Jewish Affairs was located on its southern side

JULES PASCIN MONUMENT

"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.