APRIL 21 • 2022 | 57

C

ompared with the fate of Jews 
in other European countries 
during the horrible years of 
Nazi conquest, a high percentage of the 
Jews of Bulgaria survived. The numbers 
of the Jewish population of Bulgaria 
in 1939 was 52,000. After expulsions, 
48,000 remained. and 13,000 Jews were 
added from annexed territories. 
Who deserves credit for the survival 
of the majority of Bulgarian Jews?
Various interested political interests 
have championed their favorite 
heroes in this story. In the immediate 
aftermath of the war, Bulgaria was 
a Communist state: school texts 
explained that the Communist Party 
had protected the Jews. When the 
Communists lost power in 1989, 
nationalists lauded the wartime King of 
Bulgaria, Boris III, as having saved his 
Jewish subjects by skillfully resisting 
German demands. Michael bar Zohar 

agreed, declaring the King a rescuer in 
his 1998 book, Beyond Hitlet’s Grasp. 
In 2003, the U.S. Congress put 
forth a more diffuse answer, claiming 
that the parliament, the king, the 
Bulgarian Orthodox Church and the 
Bulgarian people as a whole protected 
their Jewish neighbors. A veteran 
of the Bulgarian army, Professor 
Dimitar Nadikov, recently published 
The Bulgarian Army and the Rescue of 
Bulgarian Jews — 1931-44,” touting the 
Bulgarian army as the heroes of this 
story.
According to each variation of this 
heartwarming story, an Axis power 
scored a victory in saving its Jews. 
Everyone claims a part of the victory. 
As President John Kennedy said, 
“There is an old saying that victory 
has a hundred fathers and defeat is an 
orphan.”
Documentary filmmaker Jacky 

Comforty explores this 
heartwarming story in 
The Stolen Narrative of the 
Bulgarian Jews and Holocaust, 
which he wrote with 
Michigan writer Martha 
Aladjem Bloomfield. 
Comforty traveled the world 
to interview historians, 
political scientists, military 
analysts and other experts 
to develop an unvarnished 
picture of Bulgarian actions 
during the war. 
Most significantly, 
Comforty, Israeli-born son 
of Bulgarian immigrants, interviewed 
his own parents and 150 Bulgarian 
Jews and non-Jews for their personal 
recollections of Jewish life in Bulgaria 
before and during the rise of Nazism. 
These interviews develop a darker 
portrait of Bulgaria.

Jacky 
Comforty

Martha 
Bloomfield

LOUIS FINKELMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

IMAGE COURTESY COMFORTY COLLECTION.

The Stolen Narrative 
 of the Bulgarian Jews 
 and the Holocaust

ARTS&LIFE
BOOK REVIEW

Jews who were held at 
Balkan Tabak are walk-
ing toward the Dupnitsa 
train station. From there 
they would be shipped 
via Lom and Vienna to 
Treblinka.

continued on page 58

