Bulgaria

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.

Few Jews live in Lom now but the town has a Jewish cemetery with about 100 granite and marble tombstones. Most are from the 20th century, and some have beautifully inscribed epitaphs in Hebrew. Many of the older headstones have been vandalised and parts of the site are used as a dumping ground. 

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. 

The Jewish plot in Kyustendil's cemetery has been repeatedly vandalised. The police have not identified any culprits.

A part of Kazanlak's Jewish cemetery survives but most of it was demolished to make room for the Kazanlak bypass. About a dozen graves remain, most in an appalling condition. At the entrance of the now unfenced and unguarded cemetery stands a lonely Christian effigy of a weeping woman. The inscription on it has been obliterated by the elements, but according to local hearsay the woman buried here was excommunicated by the Orthodox Church. The reasons for this have been lost through the years, but the poor lady was banned from the Christian section of the cemetery and, instead, her body was laid to rest with the Jews. 

Kazanlak's Jewish cemetery also used to be the last resting place of 22 Bulgarians sentenced to death by the Communist-dominated People's Court in 1945. They were shot dead with a single shot in the back of their heads, KGB style, and then buried in a common grave on the outskirts of the Jewish cemetery. That grave was rediscovered as late as 1992. The bones were exhumed and reburied in the Christian section in 1994. 

An upright stone next to the Post Office indicates where Kardzhali's synagogue used to stand.

The first Jews arrived in Kardzhali, in the eastern Rhodope, in the 1890s. The town ended up in Bulgaria after the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913. New arrivals from places that remained outside of Bulgaria, including Odrin (now Edirne in Turkey), Gyumyurdzhina and Ksanti (now Komotini and Xanthi in Greece) were quick to make their new homes in town. They were joined by Jews from the Bulgarian hinterland: Stara Zagora, Chirpan, Plovdiv and Haskovo. The community was small but active. It erected its synagogue in 1924. That synagogue was gutted by fire set up by Bulgarian nationalists when the antisemitic legislation was enforced. It was demolished for good in the 1950s. 

A monument marking the location of Kardzhali's former Jewish cemetery was placed in 2018. It is across the street from the town's court house, at the entrance of the Prostor Park. The cemetery was shut down and demolished in the 1970s.

In Gotse Delchev's town cemetery there is a small, unfenced and unprotected Jewish section.