Uninformed and uneducated on Bulgaria with the exception of its Qudditch team and star Seeker Viktor Krum (and its Holocaust history I just wrote a paper on), I had no expectations for traveling and touring Bulgaria. After spending all of Sunday flying to Istanbul, having a five-hour layover, having my tampons searched and scrutinized by Turkish security, and having a two-hour delay to our connecting flight, we finally arrived to Sofia, Bulgaria. My first impressions consisted of associations with other European countries. The historic, government buildings seemed French, and everything else seemed very Russian, Soviet-era. The atmosphere reminded me of Poland, but considerably less gloomy and more populated.
Our days here are intense, but new and explorative and interesting. Yesterday, we first traveled to an unusual Bulgarian school: public, but also privately funded by American billionaire and philanthropist Ronald Lauder (who is known for funding Jewish and Hebrew charter schools across Europe). Though Jewish students only constitute 30% of the student body, the school teaches Hebrew and Jewish culture classes. When asked how and why non-Jewish students relate to this curious curriculum, the principal of the school (through a translator) spoke about the prestige of and competition to enroll in the school. Simply speaking, the school is well-organized and possesses substantial resources. Moreover, she articulated about the good nature of the relationship between Jews and non-Jews in Sofia; the idea of isolating the Jewish community is not present. When the question of anti-Semitism towards the school or the student body arose, the principal spoke of only a few isolated incidents, nothing recent. In addition, in response to a question about religious Jews, she mentioned that there are none in Bulgaria. The small, Sephardi Jewish community of Sofia is vibrant and culturally based rather than religiously based.
I found it hilarious to step into a second grade class learning Hebrew - with kids' names like "Petar," "Alexander," and "Stefan" - and watch them say "ANACHNU OCHLIM CHALLAH BASHABBAT." Their walls resembled BT's own with maps of Israel, Hebrew question words, shorashim, and more. Their colorful, graphic Hebrew workbooks far outshone our Neta books. How many of them were Jewish out of a class of twenty? Five? Fewer?
Following our visit to the Lauder School, we bought food from a local supermarket for a picnic in the park. Though we knew the Bulgarian economy is weak, we were surprised to discover how cheap everything else. Water bottles for less than the equivalent of an American dollar, fruit for forty people for approximately fifteen American dollars. We then gathered at the JCC to split into groups for a scavenger hunt to explore the city. We found the bank, the library, the Museum of Natural History, the theater, churches, and so forth. The layers of Sofia intrigued me the most: those left from Ottoman rule, the bombing of World War II, the rebuilding, Soviet occupation. 
Stopping at some sort of Bulgarian hybrid of a shuk and a yard sale, I was reminded of the tomato festival I attended in Cape May this past summer. Basically, it served as an opportunity for locals to rid themselves of their tchotchkes under the appealing alias of a festival. Similarly, the Bulgarian market was advertised as such a festival. However, the tchotchkes were not Cape May's beaten Vera Bradley purses: old cameras, films, and "war relics." This how an elderly Bulgarian man described to me a knife, Swiss army knife, pocket watch, and ring all inscribed with swastikas. I cannot imagine the tomato festival selling war relics (aka Nazi apparel) back in Cape May; however, I suppose you can compare it to selling Confederate uniforms and flags and kitchenware in the South. Still, whether Confederate or Nazi, the "war relics" confuse me to who would buy or collect something like that, especially in a country that struggled for so long to resist the Nazi influence and occupation.
This morning, we took the two and a half hour bus ride to Plovdiv, where the second largest Jewish community in Bulgaria lives. Visiting a 120-year Sephardi shul there, we also met with leaders of the Jewish community. They described to us the Bulgarian Holocaust story once again: a relatively unknown story in which all 48,000 Jews of Bulgaria survived (later there was a mass immigration to Israel to escape the communism). Bulgarian society, specifically Vice President of Parliament Dimiter Peshev and local Archbishops Kiril and Stefan, spoke out in protest of the Law of the Defense of the Nation, the Nuremberg-like laws enacted, and the plans for deportation. In addition, we lit a yarhzeit candle at the memorial thanking the Plovdiv community for saving the Jewish community, the only memorial of its kind in Europe.
During lunch, we walked to the JCC of Plovdiv to meet with the elders of the community. We communicated through a medley of Hebrew, French, Spanish, and Russian; few only knew Bulgarian. I had to remind myself that that despite their age and experience through the war, these were not Holocaust survivors depicting their journey to and at Auschwitz. Instead, they expressed to us how the Plovdiv community halted their deportation, after they had already been rounded up in the Jewish school's courtyard. One woman remembered Bishop Kiril leaning over the fence of the courtyard, referring to the Jews as "brothers and sisters" and promising that he would "lie in front of the train tracks before the Jews were deported."Finally, we completed the mountainous journey to pay our respects at the graves of the archbishops at Bachkovo Monastery. These were two men who Yad Vashem recognized as Hasidei Umot Haolam, or Righteous Gentiles of the Earth. I have never said Kaddish for a non-Jew before, especially not in a monastery in the mountains of Bulgaria.
Rebecca Abbott
(Kivunim - www.kivunim.org) - a gap year before Barnard
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