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Published by Rowman and Littlefield in their Series: Studies in Jewish Literature
The Stolen Narrative of the Bulgarian Jews and the Holocaust collects narratives of Bulgarian Jews who survived the Holocaust. Through the analysis of eye-witness testimonies, archival documents, photographs, and researchers’ investigations, the authors weave a complex tapestry of voices that were previously underrepresented, ignored, and denied. Taken together, the collected memories offer an alternative perspective that counters official accounts and corroborates war crimes.
The Story Behind The Story
A new book The Stolen Narrative of the Bulgarian Jews and the Holocaust by internationally acclaimed documentary filmmaker, Jacky Comforty, with award-winning author, Martha Aladjem Bloomfield, has come out this April 2021, published by Rowman and Littlefield, in the series, Lexington Studies in Jewish Literature.
Endorsed by scholars from the United States, Bulgaria, Israel, Germany, and France, this new book shares a complex tapestry of voices and memories previously underrepresented, ignored and denied.
“We offer this alternative perspective on the Holocaust in Bulgaria that includes stolen, silenced, but now reclaimed voices who experienced, witnessed and survived the tragedies,” said Comforty. “We include oral histories of our people and friends who helped them, which fills a void in the Bulgarian Holocaust literature–specifically first-hand accounts of memory of survivors and eyewitnesses, photographs, official publications, laws, and newspaper articles. We reclaim the Jewish narrative based on our peoples’ experiences, put faces and people in places, contextualize and personalize our history, reconstruct the puzzle, praise those who helped protect the Jews and share their exemplary acts of humanity for future generations.”
Bloomington, Indiana resident, Jacky Comforty was born in Israel in 1954 to Bulgarian Jews who had immigrated there in 1950. During the 1980s, as a young filmmaker of comedies, Comforty lived and worked in Stuttgart, West Germany. During the summers, his parents visited him from Israel in Stuttgart. They drove all over Germany, Austria and Italy, spinning stories and ideas for short no-budget silent comedies about heroes and anti-heroes, which they would film upon return. His dad and he wrote the scripts. He directed. His father acted. A friend filmed. His mom helped with production and costumes.
“During one of their visits, my parents told me, ‘You know, there is one story you must tell, which is how we were saved during the Holocaust.’ I had never heard their story before and started recording this conversation on an audio-cassette tape. The stories they told were exciting, anecdotal. I did not understand the context but became aware of their wartime experiences. Bits and pieces. It was September, 14, 1984. This was the beginning of my new journey. Upon their return to Israel, my parents began to collect literature for me on the subject.
“After the Holocaust, my grandmother, Rachelle Comforty, emigrated from Bulgaria and settled in the ancient city of Jaffa, Israel, where she lived for the rest of her life.
“One summer afternoon in 1988, three years after her death, I went to her apartment to begin the task of sorting through her possessions. The apartment had been left untouched. Everything was covered with sheets for protection from the fine desert dust. We opened chests, drawers and closets and found shoe boxes filled with photographs, thousands of photographs, postcards, notes, letters, recipes. They were all about life in Bulgaria before and during the Holocaust. Here was my family at the turn of the 20th century, stiffly posed in photographers’ studios. Pictures included my grandfather and other family members as soldiers in World War I. And there was my grandmother, a young girl, playing the guitar on her front porch in 1923, cousins posing in their bathing suits at a Black Sea resort in 1937, my grandfather wearing the yellow Jewish star in 1943.”
Comforty decided to keep the photos and preserve them. In return, they guided him in his search for answers to a much larger story of survival amid genocide and ethnic cleansing. He began reading all he could find, building a library, narrowing down the stories about which he planned to collect information, and compiling lists of potential interviewees who represented the spectrum of the Jewish experience in Bulgaria. The journey took him to archives and people, stories, documents, artifacts, and images in many countries including the USA, Bulgaria, Israel, Spain, Northern Macedonia, Greece, and Germany. A puzzle with endless pieces. He could not stop filming interviews and continues doing it today. He can not stop collecting and preserving this history. His feeling is–what is not collected today, may not be here tomorrow.
For more than thirty-five years, Comforty gathered stories from Bulgarian Jews who survived the Holocaust in Bulgaria and eye-witnesses. The research and the primary evidence he has collected helps reconstruct and contextualize social and historical reality and aims to show how history not only affects common people, but also how common people can positively impact history. These peoples’ stories provide invaluable examples of humanity amid cruelty, social justice, friendship, responsibility, and resilience during a time of institutional anti-Semitism, persecution, and planned annihilation.
So far, among his many documentaries, he has created two films about Bulgaria’s Jews during the Holocaust: The Optimists and Balkan Jazz, The Optimists won numerous international awards including: the 2001 Peace Prize, Honorable Mention at the International Forum of New Cinema Berlin International Film Festival, the 2001 CINE Golden Eagle; the 2001 Best Documentary, Hope and Dreams Film Festival, 2000, First Prize, Jerusalem Film Festival, The Jewish Experience.
A number of years ago, Comforty received several emails with questions from Martha Aladjem Bloomfield, an East Lansing, Michigan resident, who was researching Bulgarian Jews and interviewing elderly Jews who survived the Holocaust in Bulgaria. She is an author, oral historian, researcher, and artist, who had retired from the Michigan Historical Museum with an abundance of skills and expertise. Comforty realized she just might be able to help him with his myriad of projects so they met and decided to collaborate. She insisted, however, it was time for him to write a book on the Bulgarian Jews and the Holocaust to give the subject more visibility and accessibility–a totally new concept for him since he identified himself as a filmmaker! But he was ready to take the giant step and she was ready to help based on her extensive experience writing books and in the museum world. Thus began their partnership in earnest.
“We had the foresight and insight to bring this important story to life in a book based on his oral history interviews and photographs and documents,” Bloomfield said. “Our multitude of verbal and visual abilities would complement each other’s and we could inspire one another to collaborate effectively, sensitively, resolutely and tenaciously.”
“And this is only the beginning of our partnership,” said Comforty. “Currently we are working on a documentary based on the same content as this book.”
More information the-stolen-narrative.org
