Sofia סופיה
A community of three layers—Romaniotes, Ashkenazim, the exiles of Spain—which almost wholly survived the Shoah and almost wholly left for Israel.
Jews lived in these parts already under the Romans; by the Middle Ages there were Romaniotes here speaking Greek, then came Ashkenazim from Hungary and Bavaria, and after 1492 the exiles from Spain. Three communities converged into one, and Ladino prevailed: Sofia became a Sephardi city.
In 1909 the synagogue was consecrated here, the largest in the Balkans—it stands to this day.
The chief thing in its history is the year 1943. Bulgaria was Germany's ally and agreed to hand over its Jews; the deportation was stopped from within—by deputies, the church, the rabbis and ordinary people. Fifty thousand people remained alive. But from the lands Bulgaria occupied in Thrace and Macedonia more than eleven thousand were deported and murdered, and this must be said alongside.
After 1948 almost the whole community left for Israel: of fifty thousand, a few thousand remained.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Documents of the period
- The documents of the Bulgarian government and church of 1943 — the cancelled deportation and the removal from the occupied lands
Scholarship
- The standard reference works and encyclopedias — the three layers of the community, the synagogue of 1909, the departure after 1948
Basis: documents and evidence.