Bulgaria

The now abandoned Jewish cemetery of Silistra is situated next to the old Christian one, a few yards from the actual border with Romania. It has scores of marble and granite gravestones inscribed in Bulgarian, Hebrew and Romanian, mostly dating to the 20th century. It is completely overgrown with vegetation and the only time of the year when access to it is possible is in early spring, after the snow has gone but the grass and bushes haven't started growing. 

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.

The monument was erected in 2015.

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. 

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

The graffiti on Sofia's Spanish Language High-school is dedicated to D. Julio Palencia y Tubau. As an ambassador of Spain in Bulgaria in 1940-1943, he saved 800 Jews, including 150 from Macedonia, by issuing them visas 

The largest Sephardi temple in Europe is situated in a central Sofia Street, in an area where a mosque and several churches of various denominations "rub shoulders" with each other. It is not far from Sofia's famous Women's Market. Its main prayer hall can accommodate up to 1,170 people, and its 31-metre high dome has a span of 20 metres. A 1,700-kilogram Vienna-manufactured brass chandelier, the largest in Bulgaria, hangs from it. 

The building, an amalgamation of Moorish and Viennese Secession styles, welcomed its first congregation on 9 September 1909. Bulgarian King Ferdinand (1887-1918), his wife Queen Eleonora, Prime Minister Aleksandar Malinov, as well as a number of government ministers, MPs and the heads of both the Orthodox and the Catholic Churches were all in attendance. 

At the beginning of the 20th century Sofia had eight synagogues but the Jewish community needed a large and really representative temple. 

To build such a temple, however, the Jews had to broker an agreement among themselves. Many of them refused to donate money for the construction works as they were ardent supporters of Theodor Herzl's Zionist ideas and considered it wasteful to spend money on buildings when the main purpose of all Jews was to return to the Holy Land. 

The Jewish Consistory did manage to collect the money, and the names of the main benefactors can still be seen on a plaque on one of its walls. Friedrich Grünanger, a reputable Viennese architect of the time, was contracted to go ahead with the project. 

Grünanger was instructed to erect a building similar to the great Sephardi synagogue in Vienna (now demolished). 

The project did not go very smoothly. 

The Consistory sent the initial project back to the drawing board. Then it decided it wanted a synagogue for 1,100 rather than the originally planned 700 people. Work on the building began as late as 1905. 

The synagogue was shut down in 1943-1944, in keeping with the wartime Defence of the Na- tion Act, as most Sofia Jews were deported to the hinterland. During the Allied bombings of Sofia a bomb fell on the roof. It failed to explode, but the walls of the synagogue collapsed under its weight. The library as well as some of the community's archives were destroyed for good. 

However, the most serious changes to the synagogue were yet to come. The new regime of the Soviet-backed Communists declared itself officially atheist and started to actively discourage religious practices. In the 1950s then Chief Rabbi Asher Hananel was tried for "malfeasance in office" and sent to prison. The synagogue was thus rendered rabbi-less, a situation that would continue up until 1994. 

Yet the regime had no intention of leaving the synagogue empty. The building had excellent acoustics, and the government decided, in the 1960s, to convert it into a concert hall. Construction work on the building's interior started in the 1980s, but was never completed. For much of that period the synagogue's interior was enmeshed in scaffolding and ladders. 

The synagogue was given back to the Jewish community after the fall of Communism. In 2008, major renovations began. They were paid for by the Bulgarian Culture Ministry, as well as by private donors in Israel and the United States. The works ended in time for the 9 September 2009 Centennial Anniversary of the Sofia Central Synagogue. 

Nowadays Sabbath and other prayers are usually held in the small hall of the synagogue. The great hall is used for major holidays, state visits and occasionally concerts. 

In 1898, the Sofia Central Cemetery was opened in the village of Orlandovtsti, now a part of metropolitan Sofia. The Jewish cemetery was moved there, into a special Jewish Sector in the northern reaches of the cemetery. The Orlandovtsi cemetery (on 14 Zavodska St and 11 Kamenodelska St) is still in use to this day. Many of the tombstones, especial- ly those of the richer Jews, are pure works of art, amongst the best in Bulgaria. They bear inscriptions in Hebrew and Bulgarian, but many also have lines in German, French, Italian and Ladino. 

The Jewish Sector is adjacent to the Muslim and Catholic sectors, and is easy to find. Make sure you enter the gates of the cemetery from the entrance next to the last stop of trams Nos. 2 and 3. 

Sofia's Ashkenazi synagogue was demolished in the 1990s to open space for a business centre. What remains of it, ironically, is the rabbi's house.

"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.