Jacky Comforty with Martha Bloomfield
THE STOLEN NARRATIVE OF THE BULGARIAN JEWS AND THE HOLOCAUST
Lanham: Lexington Books, 2021, ISBN: 978-1-7936-3291-3
Reviewed by Jason Hensley1
Collective memory refers to a memory shared by a group of people. Oftentimes countries attempt to shape a collective memory for their populace, specifically of crucial events in that country’s history. Memory is powerful. It can be used to inflame a population’s fears or to inspire national pride. Yet, oftentimes, memory does not and cannot fully equate with history. History is complex while memory is often one perspective. History encompasses all motivations and memory often simplifies. The Stolen Narrative of the Bulgarian Jews and the Holocaust is an attempt by Jacky Comforty and Martha Bloomfield to add a further perspective to Bulgaria’s memory, and the international community’s memory, of what took place in Bulgaria during the Holocaust. It seeks to correct what Comforty and Bloomfield see as a nationalistic and inaccurate narrative of rescue and kindness towards Bulgaria’s Jewish population. This distorted memory, the authors write, originated only a few decades ago in the early 1990s. With the fall of Communism, Bulgaria’s King Simeon sought to regain power. After all, rewriting both Bulgaria’s role and the world’s memory of Bulgaria’s role in the Holocaust could certainly enhance his prestige. Thus began a campaign to paint Bulgaria and its former king, King Boris III, as a nation and monarch that rescued and cared for its Jewish population, despite Nazi advances to the contrary (p. 305).
By looking at popular sources, one can easily establish that Bulgaria is seen as a nation that protected its Jews. In 2005, HaAretz reported that “more than 50 representatives of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations” commended Bulgaria’s 1943 decision to refuse the Nazi order to deport the nation’s Jews.2 In 2013, the Anti-Defamation League invited the President of Bulgaria to address its centennial gala. In his remarks, President Plevneliev dramatically professed Bulgaria’s rescuer role: “We, Bulgarians, made it clear that it is within the power of the civil society and ordinary people to change history; that through unwavering determination and resolute resistance even the worst of evils may be averted.”3 A few years later, in 2017, President Plevneliev received the Friends of Zion award to acknowledge the 50,000 Jews that Bulgaria saved during the Holocaust.4
Comforty and Bloomfield set out to correct the record. Using the transcripts of over one hundred interviews, the authors record the suffering that came upon Bulgaria’s Jewish population. Indeed, tens of thousands of people were not sent to Nazi death camps, but they were assaulted, hated, and incarcerated by their own government (pp. 118, 196, 213). This book provides a counter to the collective memory that has slowly seeped into society about Bulgaria and its role in the Holocaust. Through the transcripts of these interviews, the survivors themselves speak, powerfully relating their suffering and detailing their experiences. Their independent interviews corroborate one another, weaving together the “stolen narrative” of the survivors. This isn’t a government’s attempt to reshape memory. This is the people themselves giving their own testimony.
As indicated, this book is almost entirely transcripts from video interviews. Each interview includes a brief description of when and where it took place, and each chapter gives a short introduction that helps to tie the interviews together. The book is split into eight sections, each of which has a handful of chapters. The first section discusses Jewish identity in the Balkans and considers the community’s Iberian roots. The second examines the history of the Jewish community in Bulgaria from its origins to the early 1930s. The third considers life for the Bulgarian Jewish community starting in 1933, after Hitler came into power in Germany. After that, the community’s experience while Germany was initiating and carrying out the Final Solution is related in the next section. Part five is unique in that it follows the experiences of three specific survivors, detailing their harrowing experiences and afflictions. This section is devoted to unearthing that stolen narrative, to presenting to the world what Bulgaria’s Jews really did have to endure. The sixth part looks at the community’s experience after the war. Part seven considers the development of a new collective memory, Bulgaria’s rescuer narrative, described as “a myth” by Comforty and Bloomfield (p. 285). The final part contains reflections on the community’s experiences, survivors praise those who did help them and contemplate what their survival meant.
Overall, Comforty and Bloomfield succeed in challenging the popular narrative of Bulgaria and its government as rescuers. Instead, they demonstrate that antisemitism existed, and the government purposefully allied itself with the Nazis, deported over 10,000 Jews, and sent tens of thousands of its Jewish citizens to forced-labor camps. Comforty and Bloomfield’s method is extremely effective: one survivor after another speaks and supports what the survivors before and after them presented. The testimonies weave together to create a new narrative.
The largest challenge to this book, however, is not the opposing viewpoint. The testimonies recorded in the manuscript are strong enough to stand against the official narrative. Perhaps it is positive that the book’s greatest opponent is not opposing scholarship. Instead, the biggest challenge could be the misprints and typos, which unfortunately distract the reader and make it more difficult to follow the interviews.
The Stolen Narrative of the Bulgarian Jews and the Holocaust fills a lacuna in Holocaust history and in Bulgarian collective memory. It serves as a reminder of both the fragility of memory, its susceptibility to reshaping, and the gravity of memory, its ability to affect a population’s view of itself and even affect a nation’s international and political standing. Altogether, the book is an essential record of a narrative, the memories of the survivors –that have been repressed for far too long.
1 Jason Hensley, PhD, teaches Holocaust studies at Gratz College. He is a fellow of the Michael LaPrade Holocaust Education Institute of the Anti-Defamation League, a member of Civic Spirit's teacher education cohort, and the award-winning author of ten books. His work has been featured in The Huffington Post as well as the BBC, and he served as the historical advisor for a Holocaust documentary.
2 “U.S. Jews Praise Bulgaria for Saving Its Jews,” HaAretz, February 15, 2005.
3 Rosen Plevneliev, quoted in “Remembering the Rescue of Bulgaria’s Jews,” Anti-Defamation League, March 12, 2018, https://www.adl.org/news/op-ed/remembering-the-rescue-of-bulgarias-jews.
4 Katrin Gendova, “The Unheard Story: Bulgaria’s Rescue of 50,000 Jews During the Holocaust,” The Algemeiner, September 20, 2017.